title: Offa of Mercia

text: At the start of the 8th century, sceattas were the primary circulating coinage. These were small silver pennies, which often did not bear the name of either the moneyer or the king for whom they were produced. To contemporaries these were probably known as pennies, and are the coins referred to in the laws of Ine of Wessex. This light coinage (in contrast to the heavier coins minted later in Offa's reign) can probably be dated to the late 760s and early 770s. A second, medium-weight coinage can be identified before the early 790s. These new medium-weight coins were heavier, broader and thinner than the pennies they replaced, and were prompted by the contemporary Carolingian currency reforms. The new pennies almost invariably carried both Offa's name and the name of the moneyer from whose mint the coins came. The reform in the coinage appears to have extended beyond Offa's own mints: the kings of East Anglia, Kent and Wessex all produced coins of the new heavier weight in this period.


title: Offa of Mercia

text: Some coins from Offa's reign bear the names of the archbishops of Canterbury, Jænberht and, after 792, Æthelheard. Jænberht's coins all belong to the light coinage, rather than the later medium coinage. There is also evidence that coins were issued by Eadberht, who was Bishop of London in the 780s and possibly before. Offa's dispute with Jænberht may have led him to allow Eadberht coining rights, which may then have been revoked when the see of Lichfield was elevated to an archbishopric.


title: Offa of Mercia

text: The medium-weight coins often carry designs of high artistic quality, exceeding that of the contemporary Frankish currency. Coin portraits of Offa have been described as "showing a delicacy of execution which is unique in the whole history of the Anglo-Saxon coinage". The depictions of Offa on the coins include a "striking and elegant" portrait showing him with his hair in voluminous curls, and another where he wears a fringe and tight curls. Some coins show him wearing a necklace with a pendant. The variety of these depictions implies that Offa's die-cutters were able to draw on varied artistic sources for their inspiration.


title: Offa of Mercia

text: Offa's wife Cynethryth was the only Anglo-Saxon queen ever named or portrayed on coinage, in a remarkable series of pennies struck by the moneyer Eoba. These were probably derived from contemporary coins from the reign of the Byzantine emperor Constantine VI, who minted a series showing a portrait of his mother, the later Empress Irene, though the Byzantine coins show a frontal bust of Irene rather than a profile, and so cannot have been a direct model.


title: Offa of Mercia

text: Around the time of Jænberht's death and replacement with Æthelheard in 792–93, the silver currency was reformed a second time: in this "heavy coinage" the weight of the pennies was increased again, and a standardised non-portrait design was introduced at all mints. None of Jænberht's or Cynethryth's coins occur in this coinage, whereas all of Æthelheard's coins are of the new, heavier weight.


title: Offa of Mercia

text: There are also surviving gold coins from Offa's reign. One is a copy of an Abbasid dinar struck in 774 by Caliph Al-Mansur, with "Offa Rex" centred on the reverse. It is clear that the moneyer had no understanding of Arabic as the Arabic text contains many errors. The coin may have been produced to trade with Islamic Spain; or it may be part of the annual payment of 365 mancuses that Offa promised to Rome. There are other Western copies of Abbasid dinars of the period, but it is not known whether they are English or Frankish. Two other English gold coins of the period survive, from two moneyers, Pendraed and Ciolheard: the former is thought to be from Offa's reign but the latter may belong either to Offa's reign or to that of Coenwulf, who came to the throne in 796. Nothing definite is known about their use, but they may have been struck to be used as alms.


title: Offa of Mercia

text: Although many of the coins bear the name of a moneyer, there is no indication of the mint where each coin was struck. As a result, the number and location of mints used by Offa is uncertain. Current opinion is that there were four mints, in Canterbury, Rochester, East Anglia and London.


title: Offa of Mercia

text: The title Offa used on most of his charters was "rex Merciorium", or "king of the Mercians", though this was occasionally extended to "king of the Mercians and surrounding nations". Some of his charters use the title "Rex Anglorum," or "King of the English," and this has been seen as a sweeping statement of his power. There is debate on this point, however, as several of the charters in which Offa is named "Rex Anglorum" are of doubtful authenticity. They may represent later forgeries of the 10th century, when this title was standard for kings of England. The best evidence for Offa's use of this title comes from coins, not charters: there are some pennies with "Of ℞ A" inscribed, but it is not regarded as definite that this stood for "Offa Rex Anglorum."


title: Offa of Mercia

text: In "Anglo-Saxon England", Stenton argued that Offa was perhaps the greatest king of the English kingdoms, commenting that "no other Anglo-Saxon king ever regarded the world at large with so ... acute a political sense". Many historians regard Offa's achievements as second only to Alfred the Great among the Anglo-Saxon kings. Offa's reign has sometimes been regarded as a key stage in the transition to a unified England, but this is no longer the general view among historians in the field. In the words of Simon Keynes, "Offa was driven by a lust for power, not a vision of English unity; and what he left was a reputation, not a legacy." It is now believed that Offa thought of himself as "King of the Mercians," and that his military successes were part of the transformation of Mercia from an overlordship of midland peoples into a powerful and aggressive kingdom.


title: Offa of Mercia

text: Offa died on 29 July 796, and may be buried in Bedford, though it is not clear that the "Bedeford" named in that charter was actually modern Bedford. He was succeeded by his son, Ecgfrith of Mercia, but according to the "Anglo-Saxon Chronicle" Ecgfrith died after a reign of only 141 days. A letter written by Alcuin in 797 to a Mercian ealdorman named Osbert makes it apparent that Offa had gone to great lengths to ensure that his son Ecgfrith would succeed him. Alcuin's opinion is that Ecgfrith "has not died for his own sins; but the vengeance for the blood his father shed to secure the kingdom has reached the son. For you know very well how much blood his father shed to secure the kingdom on his son." It is apparent that in addition to Ecgfrith's consecration in 787, Offa had eliminated dynastic rivals. This seems to have backfired, from the dynastic point of view, as no close male relatives of Offa or Ecgfrith are recorded, and Coenwulf, Ecgfrith's successor, was only distantly related to Offa's line.


title: Skylar Diggins-Smith

text: Skylar Kierra Diggins-Smith (born August 2, 1990) is an American professional basketball player for the Phoenix Mercury in the Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA). Diggins was drafted third overall by the Tulsa Shock in the 2013 WNBA draft. In high school, she was the National Gatorade Player of the Year and the Gatorade Female Athlete of the Year. Diggins played point guard for Notre Dame, where she led Notre Dame to three consecutive Final Fours and two consecutive NCAA championship appearances. She finished her Notre Dame career ranked first in points and steals, second in assists, and as a two-time winner of the Nancy Lieberman Award as the top point guard in the nation.


title: Skylar Diggins-Smith

text: Diggins-Smith was born in South Bend, Indiana. She is the daughter of Tige Diggins and Renee Scott. Diggins-Smith has three younger brothers Tige, Destyn, and Maurice and one younger sister, Hanneaf. She also grew up playing softball.


title: Skylar Diggins-Smith

text: Diggins-Smith was four-year varsity basketball letter winner at Washington High School in South Bend, where the Panthers had a combined record of 102–7. Diggins-Smith led the Panthers to state championship games, including Washington's title-winning season of 2007and finished her career with 2,790 points, the third-highest girls' scoring total in Indiana history for an average of 25.9 points per game. She received national honors including the Naismith Prep Player of the Year, Gatorade National Player of the Year, Gatorade Female Athlete of the Year, and Miss Indiana Basketball. Diggins-Smith was named a WBCA All-American, and was a McDonald's All-American selection. She participated in the 2009 WBCA High School All-America Game, where she scored 24 points. In addition to basketball, she participated in volleyball and did well academically, earning High Academic Honors as a senior, and being a member of National Honor Society.In the March 30, 2009, issue of "Sports Illustrated", she was part of its Faces in the Crowd segment. Diggins-Smith chose Notre Dame over Stanford, but was able to make friends with Stanford alum Candice Wiggins after visiting the university.


title: Skylar Diggins-Smith

text: As a freshman, Diggins-Smith became the fourth Indiana native to join the Irish roster in 2009–10, and she was one of three Miss Basketball honorees on the 2009–10 Notre Dame roster. Diggins-Smith played and started in 30 of ND's 35 games. She led the team in scoring (13.8 ppg), steals (2.6 spg) and assists (tied – 3.2 apg), and set freshman records for steals (90), free throws made (111), free throws attempted (142) and minutes played (1,028). Diggins had a team-high eight "5–5–5" games (including all three NCAA tournament games) and at least one steal in 33 of 35 games (16 outings with 3 or more steals, including all six postseason games). She is the fourth Notre Dame player to score 400 points as a freshman and was the first Notre Dame freshman with 100 assists in a debut season since Mollie Peirick in 1994–95.


title: Skylar Diggins-Smith

text: Diggins-Smith rose to national prominence in her sophomore year, finishing the regular season first on the team in assists per game (4.8 average), while placing second in scoring (14.4) and third in steals (1.9). She scored in double figures 30 times, including eight 20-point outings, and notched at least five assists in 21 games. Diggins-Smith continued her stellar play in the NCAA tournament, leading the Irish to the second championship game appearance in school history, ten years after Notre Dame captured the national title in 2001. In the regional final, they beat Tennessee (fourth-ranked team in the country) by a score of 73–59. Diggins-Smith scored a then-season-high 24 points in the game, and was named the Most Outstanding Player of the 2011 NCAA Dayton Regional. Diggins went over the 1,000-point mark for her career, becoming just the second Notre Dame women's basketball player to reach that milestone before the end of her sophomore season. In the semifinal game, the Notre Dame point guard led her team to victory over heavily favored UConn (the number-one team in the country) with 28 points (her highest single-game total on the season), 4 rebounds, 6 assists and 2 steals. Diggins also made all six of her free-throw attempts. Notre Dame was victorious in its third Final Four appearance ever, defeating the two-time defending champion Huskies by a score of 72–63. However, the Fighting Irish lost to the Texas A&M Aggies in the final game of the 2011 women's basketball tournament, by a score of 76–70. In the losing effort, Diggins-Smith finished with 23 points, 3 rebounds, 3 assists and 4 steals. She made 8 of 9 free-throws in the game, including two with 40.7 seconds remaining. But the sophomore struggled from beyond the arc, sinking only 1-of-5 three-point attempts. Diggins-Smith also committed 6 turnovers, the last one ending Notre Dame's chances for good as the game clock wound down. As the Associated Press reported, "Diggins, fighting back tears, said the Irish couldn't handle A&M's pressure. 'We turned it over too much. I don't know if it was nerves or what,' she said. 'We just didn't handle the pressure.'"


title: Skylar Diggins-Smith

text: For her excellence on the court, Diggins-Smith was selected by the Associated Press as a 2011 Third Team All-American, and she was also honored as one of ten members of the 2011 State Farm Coaches All-America Team. She joined Baylor's Brittney Griner as one of only two sophomores honored, and was just the third Irish women's basketball player to earn the award, joining Ruth Riley (2001) and Jacqueline Batteast (2005).


title: Skylar Diggins-Smith

text: Diggins-Smith started all 39 games, averaging career-high 16.8 points, 5.7 assists and 2.6 steals per game and became the first Fighting Irish player and just the fourth NCAA Division I player in the past decade (since 2001–02) to register 600 points, 200 assists and 100 steals in a single season. She set a school record with 102 steals, while her 222 assists were third-most on the Notre Dame single-season list, and her 657 points ranked fourth on the school's single-season chart. She was the only player to be ranked in the top five in the Big East in three of five major statistical categories, leading in both assists (5.7 apg. – 16th in nation) and steals (2.6 spg. – 55th in nation), and fourth in scoring (16.8 ppg. – 70th in nation). She also posted a conference-best 2.16 assist-turnover ratio (10th in nation), and ranked among the top 10 in the Big East in free throw percentage (9th – .786) and field goal percentage (tied-10th – .500; 35th in nation).


title: Skylar Diggins-Smith

text: Following the end of the regular season, Diggins was named a unanimous selection to the Big East All-First team, was awarded the Big East Player of the Year, and was a Consensus first team All-American. During the postseason, she made history in the NCAA Raleigh Regional final against No. 5 Maryland with 22 points, 11 assists, and 10 rebounds to tally the first triple-double in Notre Dame postseason history. Notre Dame met UConn for a second straight year in the Final Four, with the Irish again coming out victorious, winning 83–75 in overtime. The Irish would go on to lose in the finals to Baylor. Diggins was named the Nancy Lieberman Point Guard of the Year, the first Notre Dame player to win the award.


title: Skylar Diggins-Smith

text: In her final year, Diggins-Smith started in all 37 games, averaging a career-high 17.1 ppg, 6.1 apg, 3.5 rpg. and 3.1 spg., with three double-doubles and one triple-double. She set a school record with 114 steals, while a career-high 225 assists were third-most for one season in program history. Diggins-Smith scored in double figures 33 times, including 12 20-point games (both team highs), and posted a team-best 10 "5–5–5" games this season (at least 5 in three of five major statistical categories) She led the Big East and ranked 19th in the nation in assists, and was also third in the Big East and 18th nationally in steals. In the Big East, she was fourth in free throw percentage (.814) and scoring, fifth in assist/turnover ratio (1.67) and sixth in three-point percentage (.362). At the end of the regular season, Diggins-Smith was a unanimous selection to the Big East first team, was awarded the Big East Player of the Year, and was a Consensus first team All-American for the second straight season.


title: Skylar Diggins-Smith

text: In the Big East Tournament, Diggins-Smith was named to the All-Tournament team after leading the Irish to their Big East championship game victory, defeating the UConn Huskies, as she had 12 points, 6 assists, 5 steals and 3 rebounds, and came up with decisive steal with eight seconds left in a tie game, then weaved through three Connecticut defenders before passing off to Natalie Achonwa for a game-winning layup with 1.8 seconds remaining. In the NCAA Tournament, Notre Dame earned a 1 seed as Diggins-Smith led them easily over Tennessee-Martin, Kansas, and won the Norfolk Regional final defeating No. 5 Duke as Diggins-Smith was named the Norfolk Regional Most Outstanding Player. Her college career came to an end in the 2013 NCAA women's basketball final four to Big East rival and eventual champion the University of Connecticut, who Notre Dame had met up with and defeated in the two previous Final Fours. Diggins-Smith was named the Nancy Lieberman Point Guard of the Year for the second straight year.


title: Skylar Diggins-Smith

text: Diggins-Smith is the only Notre Dame basketball player (either gender) and one of only six NCAA Division I players since 1999–2000 to compile 2,000 points/500 rebounds/500 assists/300 steals in her career. Diggins-Smith finished her career as the all-time Notre Dame leading scorer with 2,357 points. She also holds Notre Dame career records for points, steals, free throws made, free throws attempted, games started, minutes played, double-figure scoring games and triple-doubles. She is ranked second in school history for career assists, field goals made, field goals attempted and games played. Diggins-Smith is the only Notre Dame player to earn the Nancy Lieberman Award (nation's top point guard) and one of only three players in the award's history to claim the honor twice.


title: Skylar Diggins-Smith

text: Diggins-Smith averaged 8.5 points per game, 1.9 rebounds per game, 26.4 minutes per game and led the Shock in assists per game (3.8). She was named to the All-Rookie Team. Diggins had a breakout year in the 2014 WNBA season and was named a WNBA All-Star for the first time and was also voted as a starter. In a regular season game loss to the San Antonio Stars, Diggins-Smith scored a career-high 34 points. During the All-Star game, she had a team high 27 points including a lay-up that sent the game into overtime. She ranked second in league in scoring with 20.1 points per game, fourth in assists with 5.0 and tenth in steals with 1.5. Diggins-Smith passed former guard Deanna Nolan for the most points in a Shock season with 683 points. Diggins-Smith won the 2014 WNBA Most Improved Player Award.


title: Skylar Diggins-Smith

text: On June 28, 2015, Diggins-Smith suffered a torn ACL with 44 seconds left in a regular season game victory against the Seattle Storm, she would miss the rest of the season, including the playoffs since the Shock had a playoff berth finishing 3rd in the western conference. They would get swept in the first round by the Phoenix Mercury. Diggins-Smith only played 9 games and averaged 17.8 points per game, she was named a WNBA all-star starter for the second year in a row despite missing the all-star game due to the torn ACL injury.


title: Skylar Diggins-Smith

text: After recovering from a torn ACL injury, Diggins-Smith returned in time for the 2016 season, her first game back from injury was on May 21, 2016. By this time the Tulsa Shock had relocated to Dallas, Texas with the franchise being renamed the Dallas Wings. Diggins-Smith had also signed a multi-year contract extension with the Wings. She played 27 games and averaged 13.1 points per game throughout the season.


title: Skylar Diggins-Smith

text: In the 2017 season, Diggins-Smith would play all 34 games of the season and return to peak form. She scored a season-high 30 points along with a franchise record 7 three-pointers in an 81–69 win over the San Antonio Stars. Diggins-Smith would then be voted into the 2017 WNBA All-Star Game. Diggins-Smith finished off the season averaging 18.5 ppg as well as a career-high in assists and rebounds, helping the Wings reach the playoffs as the number 7 seed in the league. In her first career playoff game, Diggins-Smith scored 15 points in a losing effort to the Washington Mystics of the first round elimination game.


title: Skylar Diggins-Smith

text: On June 8, 2018, Diggins-Smith scored a new career-high of 35 points along with 12 rebounds in an 89–83 victory over the Indiana Fever. Diggins-Smith would be voted into the 2018 WNBA All-Star Game for her fourth all-star game appearance. Diggin-Smith would averaged a new career-high in assists. The Wings finished 15–19 with the number 8 seed in the league. They would lose in the first round elimination game yet again by a score of 101–83 to the Phoenix Mercury.


title: Skylar Diggins-Smith

text: In 2019, Diggins-Smith opted to sit out the entire season after giving birth to her first child in April. Without Diggins-Smith, the Wings missed out on the playoffs with a disappointing 10–24 record. Days after the end of the 2019 season, Diggins-Smith confirmed on her twitter account that she had played the entire 2018 season while pregnant without telling anybody in response to the negative criticism she received for not playing. She had also mentioned that she had taken time away from basketball due to postpartum depression and expressed her displeasure with the Dallas Wings organization for their lack of support during her absence.


title: Skylar Diggins-Smith

text: In January 2020, Diggins-Smith announced that she wouldn't return and play for the Dallas Wings. In February 2020, Diggins-Smith was acquired by the Phoenix Mercury in a sign-and-trade deal for 2020 draft picks and a future first-round pick. The 2020 season was delayed and shortened to 22 games in a bubble at IMG Academy due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Diggins-Smith made her return on July 25, 2020, scoring 14 points along with 6 assists in a 99–76 loss to the Las Vegas Aces. On September 9, 2020, Diggins-Smith scored a season-high 33 points in a 100–95 overtime win against the Connecticut Sun. The Mercury finished 13–9 as the number 5 seed. In the first round elimination game, the Mercury won 85–84 against the defending champion Washington Mystics. In the second round elimination game, the Mercury were defeated by the Minnesota Lynx by a final score of 80–79.


title: Skylar Diggins-Smith

text: Diggins-Smith was a member of the USA Women's U18 National Team, starting all five games at the 2008 FIBA U18 Americas Championship in Buenos Aires, Argentina. She was part of the United States team that went undefeated and won the gold medal. She averaged 10.8 points on 50-percent shooting from the field, 3.2 rebounds, 3.6 assists and 2.0 steals in 23.2 minutes per game. In the tournament, she ranked among the top 5 in scoring (1st), field goal percentage (7th), assists (1st), steals (1st) and assist-to-turnover ratio (1st).


title: Skylar Diggins-Smith

text: Diggins-Smith played on the 2009 USA U19 World Championship Team that posted an 8–1 record in Bangkok, Thailand, and brought home the gold medal. She played in eight games and averaged 11.6 ppg., 3.0 rpg. and 1.9 apg. in 23.1 minutes a game.


title: Skylar Diggins-Smith

text: Diggins-Smith again played for USA Basketball at the 2011 World University Games held in Shenzhen, China. They won all six games to earn the gold medal. She led the team in points, assists and steals in the game against Great Britain. Diggins was the third leading scorer on the team, with 74 points, and led the team in assists and steals with 29 and 20, respectively.


title: Skylar Diggins-Smith

text: In September 2014, Diggins-Smith got the news that she didn't make the World Championship team after meeting with U.S. women’s national team director Carol Callan and coach Geno Auriemma. She averaged 5.0 ppg. and 1.3 apg. in three USA National Team exhibition games and was one of the final three cuts.


title: Skylar Diggins-Smith

text: Diggins-Smith has become an advocate against childhood obesity, a guest interviewer for ESPN, and a model for Nike. She has appeared in Vogue magazine and in a swimsuit shoot for Sports Illustrated.


title: Skylar Diggins-Smith

text: Diggins-Smith has a degree from Notre Dame's Mendoza College of Business. In June 2016, Diggins got engaged to her longtime boyfriend Daniel Smith who is a former Clay High School and Notre Dame wide receiver. The couple got married in May 2017, and she changed her last name to Diggins-Smith. The couple had their first child in April 2019.


title: Skylar Diggins-Smith

text: In 2013, Diggins-Smith signed with Roc Nation Sports, becoming the first female athlete to do so. That same year, she also signed an endorsement deal with Nike. In 2014, Diggins-Smith signed an endorsement deal with Bodyarmor SuperDrink.


title: Killarney

text: Killarney ( ; , meaning 'church of sloes') is a town in County Kerry, southwestern Ireland. The town is on the northeastern shore of Lough Leane, part of Killarney National Park, and is home to St Mary's Cathedral, Ross Castle, Muckross House and Abbey, the Lakes of Killarney, MacGillycuddy's Reeks, Purple Mountain, Mangerton Mountain, Paps Mountain, the Gap of Dunloe and Torc Waterfall. Its natural heritage, history and location on the Ring of Kerry make Killarney a popular tourist destination.


title: Killarney

text: Killarney won the Best Kept Town award in 2007, in a cross-border competition jointly organised by the Department of the Environment and the Northern Ireland Amenity Council. In 2011, it was named Ireland's tidiest town and the cleanest town in the country by Irish Business Against Litter.


title: Killarney

text: Killarney featured prominently in early Irish history, with religious settlements playing an important part of its recorded history. Its first significantly historical settlement was the monastery on nearby Innisfallen Island founded in 640 by St. Finian the Leper, which was occupied for approximately 850 years.


title: Killarney

text: Innisfallen (from Irish: "Inis Faithlinn", meaning "Faithlinn's island") is an island in Lough Leane, one of the three Lakes of Killarney. It is home to the ruins of Innisfallen Abbey which was founded in 640 by St. Finian, and was occupied until the monks were dispossessed in 1594, by Elizabeth I, Queen of England. According to tradition, the Irish High King Brian Boru received his education at Innisfallen.


title: Killarney

text: Aghadoe, the local townland which overlooks present day Killarney, may have begun as a pagan religious site. The site has also been associated with the 5th century missionary St. Abban, but 7th century ogham stones mark the first clear evidence of Aghadoe being used as an important site. According to legend, St. Finian founded a monastery at Aghadoe in the 6th or 7th century. The first written record of a monastery dates from 939 AD in the Annals of Innisfallen where the Aghadoe monastery is referred to as the "Old Abbey."


title: Killarney

text: Following the Anglo-Norman invasion of Ireland in 1169, the Normans built Parkavonear Castle, also at Aghadoe. The castle was perhaps intended as an early warning outpost due to its views of the entire Killarney valley and lakes region.


title: Killarney

text: Ross Castle was built on the lake shore in the late 15th century by local ruling clan the O'Donoghues Mor (Ross). Ownership of the castle changed hands during the Desmond Rebellions of the 1580s to the Mac Carty Mor.


title: Killarney

text: Muckross Abbey was founded in 1448 as a Franciscan friary for the Observantine Franciscans by Donal McCarthy Mor. The abbey was burned down by Cromwellian forces under General Ludlow in 1654, and today remains a ruin.


title: Killarney

text: Killarney was heavily involved in the Irish War of Independence. The town, and indeed the entire county, had strong republican ties, and skirmishes with the British forces happened on a regular basis.


title: Killarney

text: The Great Southern Hotel was for a while taken over by the British, both as an office and barracks, and to protect the neighbouring railway station. One notable event during the war was the Headford Ambush when the IRA attacked a railway train a few kilometres from town.


title: Killarney

text: However, divisions among former colleagues were quick to develop following the truce and treaty, and Killarney, like many other areas, suffered in the rash of increasing atrocities during the Civil War. A day after the Ballyseedy Massacre, five Republican prisoners were murdered in Killarney by Free State forces.


title: Killarney

text: Killarney's tourism history goes back at least to the mid 18th century, when Thomas, fourth Viscount Kenmare (Lord Kenmare), began to attract visitors and new residents to the town. The date of 1747 was used in recent 250-year celebrations to honour the history of Killarney tourism. A visit by Queen Victoria in 1861 gave the town some international exposure.


title: Killarney

text: Killarney benefited greatly from the coming of the railway in July 1853. British trade directory publisher Isaac Slater noted that there were three hotels in the town in 1846 but by 1854, one year after the coming of the railway, James Fraser named seven hotels and described their locations:the Railway Hotel opposite the Railway Station; the Kenmare Arms and Hibernia which are on the main street and immediately opposite the church... the Victoria which is about a mile [1.5 km] to the west of the town on the shores of the Lower Lake; the Lake View which is about the same distance to the east of the town and also on the shore of the Lower Lake; the Muckross about two and a half miles [4 km] away and near the Muckross Lake and the Torc which occupies an elevated site about a mile and a half [2.5 km] from the town on the hill which rises immediately over the Lake Hotel.


title: Killarney

text: In 1858, Irish born Victorian journalist, Samuel Carter Hall named O'Sullivan's Hotel and the Innisfallen rather than the Hibernia and Torc, but Isaac Slater also named the Hibernia in 1846. At the time he was writing, tours of the Ring of Kerry were already an industry and Killarney was considered the starting point of the circuitous route. He was fascinated by the horses' endurance on the two-day trip, and leaves clear advice for other travellers;


title: Killarney

text: It is a common and wise custom of those who make this tour, and are not pressed for time, to hire the carriage at the hotel in Killarney and continue with it 'all the way round.' It is absolutely marvellous what these mountain bred horses can get through "thinking nothing" of thirty miles [50 km] for days together or even fifty miles [80 km] in a single day.


title: Killarney

text: As part of the trip, he noted that there were hotels in Glenbeigh and Waterville along with a "comfortable inn", which is now The Butler Arms Hotel.


title: Killarney

text: Thomas Browne, 4th Viscount Kenmare founded linen mills in the 1740s as part of his efforts to increase the population and economy of Killarney. In later years, hosiery and shoe making were major industries in the town.


title: Killarney

text: Modern employers include Liebherr Cranes, which has had a presence in Killarney since 1958, with a combined manufacturing/research and development facility in the town manufacturing container cranes. In honour of its founder, a street in Killarney was named Dr. Hans Liebherr Road. Other businesses include Tricel (also known as Killarney Plastics) which was founded in 1973.


title: Killarney

text: In the public sector, both the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media and Department of Justice have offices in Killarney.


title: Killarney

text: Tourism is the largest industry in Killarney, generating around €410 million every year. Roughly 1.1 million tourists visit the town every year, with foreign tourists making up over 60% of all visitors.


title: Killarney

text: Killarney is served by National Primary Route N22 (north to Tralee and Castleisland and east to Cork); the National Secondary Routes N72 (west to Killorglin and east to Mallow, Fermoy, and Dungarvan) and the N71 (south to Kenmare and Bantry).


title: Killarney

text: Killarney railway station (operated by Iarnród Éireann) has direct services to Tralee, Cork and Dublin, with connections to the rest of the rail network.


title: Killarney

text: Bus Éireann provides bus services to Limerick (and onwards to Dublin), Tralee, Cork, Kenmare and Skibbereen.


title: Killarney

text: Kerry Airport (17 km), in Farranfore between Tralee and Killarney, provides a number of air services with connecting trains running from Farranfore railway station to Killarney railway station. Cork Airport (89 km), easily accessible by bus or rail, also serves the Kerry region.


title: Killarney

text: The International Football Association Board (IFAB), the body that determines the Laws of the Game, met at the Lake Hotel in Killarney in 1905.


title: Killarney

text: Killarney Athletic A.F.C. was founded in 1965, and played its first competitive game in the Desmond League as a youth team. It entered a junior team at the start of 1966. In the early 1970s, the club became a founding club of the Kerry District League (KDL). Originally the club played in the centre of Killarney, but have since moved to a modern facility (with two pitches) in the Woodlawn area of the town.


title: Killarney

text: Killarney Celtic was founded in 1976. The club purchased their own ground in 1993 and have invested in their facilities since then. There is a grass pitch and a FIFA 1-star full-size synthetic all-weather pitch (both floodlit to match standard), a 50 x 80 meter grass training pitch and a 70 x 35 metre synthetic training pitch which is also fully floodlit.


title: Killarney

text: Cedar Galaxy was formed in 2011 and play in the Kerry District League Division 2B. The team were promoted to Division 2A for the 2013/2014 campaign.


title: Killarney

text: The Kerry GAA branch of the Gaelic Athletic Association was founded in 1888. Kerry's county hurling and county football teams play at the Fitzgerald Stadium in Killarney, which opened in 1936 and has capacity for 43,180 spectators.


title: Killarney

text: Killarney has three Gaelic football clubs: Dr Crokes, Killarney Legion and Spa. The rural hinterland has a large number of football teams, such as Kilcummin, Fossa, Firies, Glenflesk and Gneeveguilla. All these teams compete in the Kerry County league and the East Kerry Senior Football Championship (O'Donoghue Cup) and league.


title: Killarney

text: Dr. Crokes is the most successful of these teams, winning the All-Ireland Senior Club Football Championship in 1992 and the Munster Senior Club Football Championship in 1991, 1990 and 2007. The club has also won the County Championship on 7 separate occasions, including in 2010. Dr. Crokes is the only club in Killarney with a hurling team; it won the Kerry Intermediate Hurling Championship in 1999 and 2001.


title: Killarney

text: There are six rowing clubs in the town, who share a common history in Ireland's oldest surviving regatta, the Killarney Regatta, which is held annually on the first or second Sunday in July. The six clubs are Commercial RC (Killarney), Flesk Valley RC, Fossa RC, Muckross RC, St. Brendan's RC and Workmen RC. The style of rowing seen at the regatta is traditional, fixed seat rowing in wide, wooden six-person boats. Since the 1980s, a number of the clubs have moved toward coastal type rowing and modern 'slide' or Olympic style rowing.


title: Killarney

text: Muckross Rowing Club is the largest of the clubs, having developed into a full-time 'sliding' club with 32 National Championships (since 1996) at various levels from Junior to Senior. A number of members of the club have also been selected to row for Ireland and have competed at the Home International Regatta, Coupe de la Jeunesse, World Rowing Championships and Olympic Games. Paul Griffin, Sean Casey and Cathal Moynihan members of Muckross Rowing Club, are Olympic and Irish World Championship rowers.


title: Killarney

text: Killarney RFC play in the Munster Junior League. The club's 1st XV won promotion to Division 2 in 2009-10. while the same season the club fielded a 2nd XV for the first time. The club has also a large youth and underage set-up catering for all young enthuasists from the town and surrounding areas.


title: Killarney

text: The Ring of Kerry Cycle, a charity cycle around the Ring (175km) takes place every first Saturday in July. There is also a club in Killarney called Killarney Cycling Club.


title: Killarney

text: St. Paul's Killarney Basketball Club, established in 1985, has youth teams and a senior national league team that plays in the Irish Basketball Division one league. Killarney is also the home of Irish floorball.


title: Killarney

text: In 1900 the composer Cyril Rootham wrote his Op.8 "Four Impressions (Killarney)" for solo violin and small orchestra. The work was never published, but Rootham later arranged the work for pianoforte duet (Op.8 No.2, unpublished) and for violin and piano (Op.8.No.3, published in 1902 as "Impressions pour Violon et Piano").


title: Killarney

text: At the beginning of the 20th century, many songs which romanticized Ireland made direct mention of Killarney. Examples included "My Father Was Born In Killarney - Don’t Run Down The Irish" (1910), "Too Ra Loo Ra Loo Ral" (1914) and "For Killarney and you" (1910).


title: Killarney

text: "There's Only the One Killarney" is a song that was written by Irish songwriter Dick Farrelly and recorded by Irish tenor Patrich O'Hagan. Killarney also appears in "How Can You Buy Killarney," written by Kennedy, Steels, Grant and Morrison, and recorded by Joseph Locke, among others. Killarney is also mentioned in "Christmas in Killarney" (written by Redmond, Cavanaugh and Weldon) and "Did Your Mother Come From Ireland?" (written by Kennedy and Carr), both most notably recorded by Bing Crosby. "Some Say the Devil Is Dead" by Derek Warfield contains the line "Some say the devil is dead and buried in Killarney/ More say he rose again and joined the British Army." In the chorus of Celtic rock band Gaelic Storm's song "Raised on Black and Tans", the singer declares his Irish heritage by saying "my mother’s brother’s sister’s cousin’s auntie’s Uncle Barney’s father’s brother had a cousin from Killarney."


title: Killarney

text: Van Morrison references the town in the opening lines of his 1974 song "Fair Play" off of his album "Veedon Fleece": ""Fair play to you / Killarney's lakes are so blue / And the architecture I'm taking in with my mind / So fine"."


title: Killarney

text: In 2013 Colin O'Sullivan published a novel called "Killarney Blues", set in his native town and for which he was awarded the "Prix Mystère de la critique" in 2018.


title: Cimetidine

text: Cimetidine, sold under the brand name Tagamet among others, is a histamine H receptor antagonist that inhibits stomach acid production. It is mainly used in the treatment of heartburn and peptic ulcers.


title: Cimetidine

text: The development of longer-acting H receptor antagonists with fewer drug interactions and adverse effects, such as ranitidine and famotidine, decreased the use of cimetidine, and though it is still used, cimetidine is no longer among the more widely used of the H receptor antagonists.


title: Cimetidine

text: Cimetidine was developed in 1971 and came into commercial use in 1977. Cimetidine was approved in the United Kingdom in 1976, and was approved in the United States by the Food and Drug Administration for prescriptions in 1979.


title: Cimetidine

text: Cimetidine is used to inhibit stomach acid production and is used in the treatment of heartburn and peptic ulcers.


title: Cimetidine

text: Some evidence suggests cimetidine could be effective in the treatment of common warts, but more rigorous double-blind clinical trials found it to be no more effective than a placebo.


title: Cimetidine

text: Cimetidine inhibits ALA synthase activity and hence may have some therapeutic value in preventing and treating acute porphyria attacks.


title: Cimetidine

text: Reported side effects of cimetidine include diarrhea, rashes, dizziness, fatigue, constipation, and muscle pain, all of which are usually mild and transient. It has been reported that mental confusion may occur in the elderly. Because of its hormonal effects, cimetidine rarely may cause sexual dysfunction including loss of libido and erectile dysfunction and gynecomastia (0.1–0.2%) in males during long-term treatment. Rarely, interstitial nephritis, urticaria, and angioedema have been reported with cimetidine treatment. Cimetidine is also commonly associated with transient raised aminotransferase activity; hepatotoxicity is rare.


title: Cimetidine

text: Cimetidine appears to be very safe in overdose, producing no symptoms even with massive overdoses (e.g., 20 g).


title: Cimetidine

text: Due to its non-selective inhibition of cytochrome P450 enzymes, cimetidine has numerous drug interactions. Examples of specific interactions include the following:


title: Cimetidine

text: The mechanism of action of cimetidine as an antacid is as a histamine H receptor antagonist. It has been found to bind to the H receptor with a K of 42 nM.


title: Cimetidine

text: Cimetidine is a potent inhibitor of certain cytochrome P450 (CYP) enzymes, including CYP1A2, CYP2C9, CYP2C19, CYP2D6, CYP2E1, and CYP3A4. The drug appears to primarily inhibit CYP1A2, CYP2D6, and CYP3A4, of which it is described as a moderate inhibitor. This is notable since these three CYP isoenzymes are involved in CYP-mediated drug biotransformations; however, CYP1A2, CYP2C9, CYP2C19, CYP2D6, CYP2E1, and CYP3A4 are also involved in the oxidative metabolism of many commonly used drugs. As a result, cimetidine has the potential for a large number of pharmacokinetic interactions.


title: Cimetidine

text: Cimetidine is reported to be a competitive and reversible inhibitor of several CYP enzymes, although mechanism-based (suicide) irreversible inhibition has also been identified for cimetidine's inhibition of CYP2D6. It reversibly inhibits CYP enzymes by binding directly with the complexed heme-iron of the active site via one of its imidazole ring nitrogen atoms, thereby blocking the oxidation of other drugs.


title: Cimetidine

text: Cimetidine has been found to possess weak antiandrogenic activity at high doses. It directly and competitively antagonizes the androgen receptor (AR), the biological target of androgens like testosterone and dihydrotestosterone (DHT). However, the affinity of cimetidine for the AR is very weak; in one study, it showed only 0.00084% of the affinity of the anabolic steroid metribolone (100%) for the human AR (K = 140 μM and 1.18 nM, respectively). In any case, at sufficiently high doses, cimetidine has demonstrated weak but significant antiandrogenic effects in animals, including antiandrogenic effects in the rat ventral prostate and mouse kidney, reductions in the weights of the male accessory glands like the prostate gland and seminal vesicles in rats, and elevated gonadotropin levels in male rats (due to reduced negative feedback on the axis by androgens). In addition to AR antagonism, cimetidine has been found to inhibit the 2-hydroxylation of estradiol (via inhibition of CYP450 enzymes, which are involved in the metabolic inactivation of estradiol), resulting in increased estrogen levels. The medication has also been reported to reduce testosterone biosynthesis and increase prolactin levels in individual case reports, effects which might be secondary to increased estrogen levels.


title: Cimetidine

text: At typical therapeutic levels, cimetidine has either no effect on or causes small increases in circulating testosterone concentrations in men. Any increases in testosterone levels with cimetidine have been attributed to the loss of negative feedback on the HPG axis that results due to AR antagonism. At typical clinical dosages, such as those used to treat peptic ulcer disease, the incidence of gynecomastia (breast development) with cimetidine is very low at less than 1%. In one survey of over 9,000 patients taking cimetidine, gynecomastia was the most frequent endocrine-related complaint but was reported in only 0.2% of patients. At high doses however, such as those used to treat Zollinger–Ellison syndrome, there may be a higher incidence of gynecomastia with cimetidine. In one small study, a 20% incidence of gynecomastia was observed in 25 male patients with duodenal ulcers who were treated with 1,600 mg/day cimetidine. The symptoms appeared after 4 months of treatment and regressed within a month following discontinuation of cimetidine. In another small study, cimetidine was reported to have induced breast changes and erectile dysfunction in 60% of 22 men treated with it. These adverse effects completely resolved in all cases when the men were switched from cimetidine to ranitidine. A study of the United Kingdom General Practice Research Database, which contains over 80,000 men, found that the relative risk of gynecomastia in cimetidine users was 7.2 relative to non-users. People taking a dosage of cimetidine of greater than or equal to 1,000 mg showed more than 40 times the risk of gynecomastia than non-users. The risk was highest during the period of time of 7 to 12 months after starting cimetidine. The gynecomastia associated with cimetidine is thought to be due to blockade of ARs in the breasts, which results in estrogen action unopposed by androgens in this tissue, although increased levels of estrogens due to inhibition of estrogen metabolism is another possible mechanism. Cimetidine has also been associated with oligospermia (decreased sperm count) and sexual dysfunction (e.g., decreased libido, erectile dysfunction) in men in some research, which are hormonally related similarly.


title: Cimetidine

text: In accordance with the very weak nature of its AR antagonistic activity, cimetidine has shown minimal effectiveness in the treatment of androgen-dependent conditions such as acne, hirsutism (excessive hair growth), and hyperandrogenism (high androgen levels) in women. As such, its use for such indications is not recommended.


title: Cimetidine

text: Cimetidine is rapidly absorbed regardless of route of administration. The oral bioavailability of cimetidine is 60 to 70%. The onset of action of cimetidine when taken orally is 30 minutes, and peak levels occur within 1 to 3 hours. Cimetidine is widely distributed throughout all tissues. It is able to cross the blood–brain barrier and can produce effects in the central nervous system (e.g., headaches, dizziness, somnolence). The volume of distribution of cimetidine is 0.8 L/kg in adults and 1.2 to 2.1 L/kg in children. Its plasma protein binding is 13 to 25% and is said to be without pharmacological significance. Cimetidine undergoes relatively little metabolism, with 56 to 85% excreted unchanged. It is metabolized in the liver into cimetidine sulfoxide, hydroxycimetidine, and guanyl urea cimetidine. The major metabolite of cimetidine is the sulfoxide, which accounts for about 30% of excreted material. Cimetidine is rapidly eliminated, with an elimination half-life of 123 minutes, or about 2 hours. It has been said to have a duration of action of 4 to 8 hours. The medication is mainly eliminated in urine.


title: Cimetidine

text: Cimetidine, approved by the FDA for inhibition of gastric acid secretion, has been advocated for a number of dermatological diseases. Cimetidine was the prototypical histamine H receptor antagonist from which the later members of the class were developed. Cimetidine was the culmination of a project at Smith, Kline and French (SK&F) Laboratories in Welwyn Garden City (now part of GlaxoSmithKline) by James W. Black, C. Robin Ganellin, and others to develop a histamine receptor antagonist to suppress stomach acid secretion. This was one of the first drugs discovered using a rational drug design approach. Sir James W. Black shared the 1988 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the discovery of propranolol and also is credited for the discovery of cimetidine.


title: Cimetidine

text: At the time (1964), histamine was known to stimulate the secretion of stomach acid, but also that traditional antihistamines had no effect on acid production. In the process, the SK&F scientists also proved the existence of histamine H receptors.


title: Cimetidine

text: The SK&F team used a rational drug-design structure starting from the structure of histamine — the only design lead, since nothing was known of the then hypothetical H receptor. Hundreds of modified compounds were synthesized in an effort to develop a model of the receptor. The first breakthrough was "N"-guanylhistamine, a partial H receptor antagonist. From this lead, the receptor model was further refined and eventually led to the development of burimamide, the first H receptor antagonist. Burimamide, a specific competitive antagonist at the H receptor, 100 times more potent than "N"-guanylhistamine, proved the existence of the H receptor.


title: Cimetidine

text: Burimamide was still insufficiently potent for oral administration, and further modification of the structure, based on modifying the pKa of the compound, led to the development of metiamide. Metiamide was an effective agent; it was associated, however, with unacceptable nephrotoxicity and agranulocytosis. The toxicity was proposed to arise from the thiourea group, and similar guanidine analogues were investigated until the ultimate discovery of cimetidine. The compound was synthesized in 1972 and evaluated for toxicology by 1973. It passed all trials.


title: Cimetidine

text: Cimetidine was first marketed in the United Kingdom in 1976, and in the U.S. in August 1977; therefore, it took 12 years from initiation of the H receptor antagonist program to commercialization. By 1979, Tagamet was being sold in more than 100 countries and became the top-selling prescription product in the U.S., Canada, and several other countries. In November 1997, the American Chemical Society and the Royal Society of Chemistry in the U.K. jointly recognized the work as a milestone in drug discovery by designating it an International Historic Chemical Landmark during a ceremony at SmithKline Beecham's New Frontiers Science Park research facilities in Harlow, England.


title: Cimetidine

text: The commercial name "Tagamet" was decided upon by fusing the two words "antagonist" and "cimetidine". Subsequent to the introduction onto the U.S. drug market, two other H receptor antagonists were approved, ranitidine (Zantac, Glaxo Labs) and famotidine (Pepcid, Yamanouchi, Ltd.) Cimetidine became the first drug ever to reach more than $1 billion a year in sales, thus making it the first blockbuster drug.


title: Cimetidine

text: In a deal expected to take effect in 2012, GlaxoSmithKline sold Tagamet and 16 other brands to Prestige Brands.


title: Cimetidine

text: Tagamet has now been largely replaced by the proton pump inhibitors for treating peptic ulcers, but is now available as an over-the-counter medicine for heartburn in many countries.


title: Johns Hopkins

text: Johns Hopkins (May 19, 1795 – December 24, 1873) was an American merchant, investor, and philanthropist. Born on a plantation, he left his home to start a career at the age of 17, and settled in Baltimore, Maryland where he remained for most of his life.


title: Johns Hopkins

text: Prudent early 19th-century investments in the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (B&O) (that eventually led to a directorship and elevation to the chairmanship), and a rise to the position of president at Baltimore's Merchants' National Bank allowed Hopkins to retire at an early age. Hopkins was a staunch supporter of Abraham Lincoln and the Union, often using his Maryland residence as a gathering place for Union strategists. He was a Quaker and supporter of the abolitionist cause, though he may have had slaves at an earlier stage of his life.


title: Johns Hopkins

text: Hopkins was a philanthropist his whole life, but the trait became very evident after the Civil War. His concern for the poor and newly freed slave populations drove him to create free medical facilities, orphanages, asylums, and schools to help alleviate the impoverished conditions for all, regardless of race, sex, age, or religion, but especially focused on the young. Following his death, his bequests founded numerous institutions bearing his name, most notably Johns Hopkins Hospital and the Johns Hopkins University system (including its academic divisions: Johns Hopkins School of Nursing, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Johns Hopkins Carey Business School, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies). At the time, it was the largest philanthropic bequest made to an American educational institution.


title: Johns Hopkins

text: Johns Hopkins was born on May 19, 1795, at his family's home of White's Hall, a tobacco plantation in Anne Arundel County. His first name was inherited from his grandfather Johns Hopkins, who received his first name from his mother Margaret Johns Hopkins. He was one of eleven children born to Samuel Hopkins of Crofton, Maryland, and Hannah Janney, of Loudoun County, Virginia.


title: Johns Hopkins

text: The Hopkins family were of English descent and members of the Society of Friends (Quakers). They emancipated their enslaved laborers in 1778 in accordance with their Quaker meeting's decree, which called for freeing the able-bodied and caring for the others, who would remain at the plantation and provide labor as they could. The second eldest of eleven children, Johns was required to work on the farm alongside his siblings and indentured and free Black laborers. From 1806 to 1809, he likely attended The Free School of Anne Arundel County, which was located in modern-day Davidsonville, Maryland.


title: Johns Hopkins

text: In 1812, at the age of 17, Hopkins left the plantation to work in his uncle Gerard T. Hopkins's Baltimore wholesale grocery business. Gerard T. Hopkins was an established merchant and clerk of the Baltimore Yearly Meeting of Friends. While living with his uncle's family, Johns and his cousin, Elizabeth, fell in love; however, the Quaker taboo against the marriage of first cousins was especially strong, and neither Johns nor Elizabeth ever married.


title: Johns Hopkins

text: As he became able, Hopkins provided for his extended family, both during his life and posthumously through his will. He bequeathed a home for Elizabeth, where she lived until her death in 1889. He also gave $5,000 and a house to his longest serving servant, James Jones, and $3,000 to two other servants.


title: Johns Hopkins

text: Whiteshall Plantation is located in today's Crofton, Maryland. Its home, since modified, is on Johns Hopkins Road, adjacent to Riedel Road. The property is surrounded by Walden Golf Course and bears a historic marker.


title: Johns Hopkins

text: Hopkins's early experiences and successes in business came when he was put in charge of the store while his uncle was away during the War of 1812. After seven years with his uncle, Hopkins went into business together with Benjamin Moore, a fellow Quaker. The business partnership was later dissolved with Moore alleging Hopkins's penchant for capital accumulation as the cause for the divide.


title: Johns Hopkins

text: After Moore's withdrawal, Hopkins partnered with three of his brothers and established "Hopkins & Brothers Wholesalers" in 1819. The company prospered by selling various wares in the Shenandoah Valley from Conestoga wagons, sometimes in exchange for corn whiskey, which was then sold in Baltimore as "Hopkins' Best". The bulk of Hopkins's fortune, however, was made by his judicious investments in myriad ventures, most notably the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (B&O), of which he became a director in 1847 and chairman of the Finance Committee in 1855. He was also President of Merchants' Bank as well as director of a number of other organizations. After a successful career, Hopkins was able to retire at the age of 52 in 1847.


title: Johns Hopkins

text: A charitable individual, Hopkins put up his own money more than once to not only aid Baltimore City during times of financial crises but also to twice bail the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad company out of debt, in 1857 and 1873.


title: Johns Hopkins

text: In 1996, Johns Hopkins ranked 69th in "The Wealthy 100: From Benjamin Franklin to Bill Gates – A Ranking of the Richest Americans, Past and Present".


title: Johns Hopkins

text: One of the first campaigns of the American Civil War was planned at Johns Hopkins's summer estate, Clifton, where he had also entertained a number of foreign dignitaries including the future King Edward VII. Hopkins was a strong supporter of the Union, unlike some Marylanders, who sympathized with and often supported the South and the Confederacy. During the Civil War, Clifton became a frequent meeting place for local Union sympathizers, and federal officials.


title: Johns Hopkins

text: Hopkins's support of Abraham Lincoln also often put him at odds with some of Maryland's most prominent people, particularly Supreme Court Justice Roger B. Taney, who continually opposed Lincoln's presidential decisions, such as his policies of limiting habeas corpus and stationing troops in Maryland. In 1862 Hopkins wrote a letter to Lincoln requesting the President not to heed the detractors' calls and continue to keep soldiers stationed in Maryland. Hopkins also pledged financial and logistic support to Lincoln, in particular the free use of the B&O railway system.


title: Johns Hopkins

text: In 2020, Johns Hopkins University researchers discovered that Johns Hopkins may have owned or employed enslaved people who worked in his home and on his country estate, citing census records from 1840 and 1850.


title: Johns Hopkins

text: Johns Hopkins's reputation as an abolitionist is currently disputed. An email sent from the Johns Hopkins University to all employees on December 9, 2020, stated "The current research done by Martha S. Jones and Allison Seyler finds no evidence to substantiate the description of Johns Hopkins as an abolitionist, and they have explored and brought to light a number of other relevant materials. They have been unable to document the story of Johns Hopkins' parents freeing enslaved people in 1807, but they have found a partial freeing of enslaved people in 1778 by Johns Hopkins' grandfather, and also continued slaveholding and transactions involving enslaved persons for decades thereafter. They have looked more closely at an 1838 letter from the Hopkins Brothers (a firm in which Johns Hopkins was a principal) in which an enslaved person is accepted as collateral for a debt owed, and recently located an additional obituary in which Johns Hopkins is described as holding antislavery political views (consistent with the letter conveying his established support for President Lincoln and the Union) and as purchasing an enslaved person for the purpose of securing his eventual freedom. Still other documents contain laudatory comments by Johns Hopkins' contemporaries, including prominent Black leaders, praising his visionary philanthropic support for the establishment of an orphanage for Black children."


title: Johns Hopkins

text: A second group of scholars disputes the university's December 2020 declarations. In a pre-print paper published by the Open Science Framework, these scholars argue that Johns Hopkins's parents and grandparents were devout Quakers who liberated the family's enslaved laborers prior to 1800, that Johns Hopkins was an emancipationist who supported the movement to end slavery within the limits of the laws governing Maryland, and that the available documentation, including relevant tax records these researchers have uncovered, does not support the university's claim that Johns Hopkins was a slaveholder.


title: Johns Hopkins

text: Before the discovery of possible slaveholding or employment, Johns Hopkins had been described as being an "abolitionist before the word was even invented", having been represented as such both prior to the Civil War period, as well as during the Civil War and Reconstruction Era. Prior to the Civil War, Johns Hopkins worked closely with two of America's most famous abolitionists, Myrtilla Miner and Henry Ward Beecher. During the Civil War, Johns Hopkins, being a staunch supporter of Lincoln and the Union, was instrumental in bringing fruition to Lincoln's emancipatory vision.


title: Johns Hopkins

text: After the Civil War and during Reconstruction, Johns Hopkins's stance on abolitionism infuriated many prominent people in Baltimore. During Reconstruction and up to his death his abolitionism was expressed in the documents founding the Johns Hopkins Institutions and reported in newspaper articles before, during, and after the founding of these institutions. Before the war, there was significant written opposition to his support for Myrtilla Miner's founding of a school for African American females (now the University of the District of Columbia). In a letter to the editor, one subscriber to the widely circulated De Bow's Review wrote:


title: Johns Hopkins

text: Similarly, opposition (and some support) was expressed during Reconstruction, such as in 1867, the same year he filed papers incorporating the Johns Hopkins Institutions, when he attempted unsuccessfully to stop the convening of the Maryland Constitutional Convention where the Democratic Party came into power and where a new state Constitution, the Constitution still in effect, was voted to replace the 1864 Constitution of the Republicans previously in power.


title: Johns Hopkins

text: Apparent also in the literature of the times was opposition, and support for, the various other ways he expressed opposition to the racial practices that were beginning to emerge, and re-emerge as well, in the city of Baltimore, the state of Maryland, the nation, and in the posthumously constructed and founded institutions that would carry his name. A "Baltimore American" journalist praised Hopkins for founding three institutions, a university, a hospital, and an orphan asylum, specifically for colored children, adding that Hopkins was a "man (beyond his times) who knew no race" citing his provisions for both blacks and whites in the plans for his hospital. The reporter also pointed to similarities between Benjamin Franklin's and Johns Hopkins's views on hospital care and construction, such as their shared interest in free hospitals and the availability of emergency services without prejudice. This article, first published in 1870, also accompanied Hopkins's obituary in the "Baltimore American" as a tribute in 1873. Cited in many of the newspaper articles on him during his lifetime and immediately after his death were his provisions of scholarships for the poor, and quality health services for the under-served without regard to their age, sex, or color, the colored children asylum and other orphanages, and the mentally ill and convalescents.


title: Johns Hopkins

text: A biography entitled "Johns Hopkins: A Silhouette" written by his grand niece, Helen Hopkins Thom, was published in 1929 by the Johns Hopkins University Press. This biography was one source for the story that Hopkins was an abolitionist.


title: Johns Hopkins

text: Living his entire adult life in Baltimore, Hopkins made many friends among the city's social elite, many of them Quakers. One of these friends was George Peabody, who was also born in 1795, and who in 1857 founded the Peabody Institute in Baltimore. Other examples of public giving were evident in the city, as public buildings housing free libraries, schools, and foundations sprang up along the city's widening streets. On the advice of Peabody, some believe, Hopkins determined to use his great wealth for the public good.


title: Johns Hopkins

text: The Civil War had taken its toll on Baltimore, however, as did the yellow fever and cholera epidemics that repeatedly ravaged the nation's cities, killing 853 in Baltimore in the summer of 1832 alone. Hopkins was keenly aware of the city's need for medical facilities, particularly in light of the medical advances made during the war, and in 1870 he made a will setting aside seven million dollars—mostly in B&O stock—for the incorporation of a free hospital and affiliated medical and nurse's training colleges, as well as an orphanage for colored children and a university. The hospital and orphan asylum would each be overseen by the 12-member hospital board of trustees, and the university by the 12-member university board of trustees. Many board members were on both boards. Johns Hopkins's bequest was used to posthumously found the Johns Hopkins Colored Children Orphan Asylum first as he requested, in 1875; the Johns Hopkins University in 1876; the Johns Hopkins Press, the longest continuously operating academic press in America, in 1878; the Johns Hopkins Hospital and the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing in 1889; the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in 1893; and the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health in 1916.


title: Johns Hopkins

text: Johns Hopkins's views on his bequests, and on the duties and responsibilities of the two boards of trustees, especially the hospital board of trustees led by his friend and fellow Quaker Francis King, were formally stated primarily in four documents, the incorporation papers filed in 1867, his instruction letter to the hospital trustees dated March 12, 1873, his will, which was quoted from extensively in his "Baltimore Sun" obituary, and in his will's two codicils, one dated 1870 and the other dated 1873.


title: Johns Hopkins

text: In these documents, Hopkins also made provisions for scholarships to be provided for poor youths in the states where Johns Hopkins had made his wealth, as well as assistance to orphanages other than the one for African American children, to members of his family, to those he employed, black and white, his cousin Elizabeth, and, again, to other institutions for the care and education of youths regardless of color, and the care of the elderly, and the ill, including the mentally ill, and convalescents.


title: Johns Hopkins

text: John Rudolph Niernsee, one of the most famous architects of the time, designed the orphan asylum and helped to design the Johns Hopkins Hospital. The original site for the Johns Hopkins University had been chosen personally by Hopkins. According to his will, it was to be located at his summer estate, "Clifton". However, a decision was made not to found the university there. The property, now owned by the city of Baltimore, is the site of a golf course and a park named Clifton Park. While the Johns Hopkins Colored Children Orphan Asylum was founded by the hospital trustees, the other institutions that carry the name of "Johns Hopkins" were founded under the administration of the first president of the Johns Hopkins University and Johns Hopkins Hospital, Daniel Coit Gilman and his successors.


title: Johns Hopkins

text: As stipulated in Johns Hopkins's instruction letter, the Johns Hopkins Colored Children Orphan Asylum (JHCCOA) was founded first, in 1875, a year before Gilman's inauguration, now the founding date of the university. The construction of the asylum, including its educational and living facilities, was praised by "The Nation" and the "Baltimore American", the latter stating that the orphan asylum was a place where "nothing was wanting that could benefit science and humanity". As was done for other Johns Hopkins Institutions, it was planned after visits and correspondence with similar institutions in Europe and America.


title: Johns Hopkins

text: The Johns Hopkins Orphan Asylum opened with 24 boys and girls. Under Gilman and his successors, this orphanage was later changed to serve as an orphanage and training school for black female orphans principally as domestic workers, and next as an "orthopedic convalescent" home and school for "colored crippled" children and orphans. The asylum was eventually closed in 1924 nearly fifty years after it opened, and was never reopened.


title: Johns Hopkins

text: In accordance with Hopkins's March 1873 Instruction Letter, the school of nursing was founded alongside the hospital in 1889 by the hospital board of trustees in consultation with Florence Nightingale. Both the nursing school and the hospital were founded over a decade after the founding of the orphan asylum in 1875 and the university in 1876. Hopkins's instruction letter explicitly stated his vision for the hospital; first, to provide assistance to the poor of "all races", no matter the indigent patient's "age, sex or color"; second, that wealthier patients would pay for services and thereby subsidize the care provided to the indigent; third, that the hospital would be the administrative unit for the orphan asylum for African American children, which was to receive $25,000 in annual support out of the hospital's half of the endowment; and fourth, that the hospital and orphan asylum should serve 400 patients and 400 children respectively; fifth, that the hospital should be part of the university, and, sixth, that religion but not sectarianism should be an influence in the hospital.


title: Johns Hopkins

text: By the end of Gilman's presidency, Johns Hopkins University, Johns Hopkins Press, Johns Hopkins Hospital and Johns Hopkins School of Nursing, and Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, and Johns Hopkins Colored Children Orphan Asylum had been founded; the latter by the trustees, and the others in the order listed under the Gilman administration. "Sex" and "color" were major issues in the early history of the Johns Hopkins Institutions. The founding of the school of nursing is usually linked to Johns Hopkins's statements in his March 1873 instruction letter to the trustees that: "I desire you to establish, in connection with the hospital, a training school for female nurses. This provision will secure the services of women competent to care for those sick in the hospital wards, and will enable you to benefit the whole community by supplying it with a class of trained and experienced nurses".


title: Johns Hopkins

text: Following Hopkins's death, "The Baltimore Sun" wrote a lengthy obituary that closed thus: "In the death of Johns Hopkins a career has been closed which affords a rare example of successful energy in individual accumulations, and of practical beneficence in devoting the gains thus acquired to the public." His contribution to the university that has become his greatest legacy was, by all accounts, the largest philanthropic bequest ever made to an American educational institution.


title: Johns Hopkins

text: Johns Hopkins's Quaker faith and his early life experiences, in particular the 1778 emancipation, had a lasting influence throughout his life and his posthumous legacy as a businessman, railroad man, banker, investor, ship owner, philanthropist, and a founder of several Institutions. From very early on, Johns Hopkins had looked upon his wealth as a trust to benefit future generations. He is said to have told his gardener that: "like the man in the parable, I have had many talents given to me and I feel they are in trust. I shall not bury them but give them to the lads who long for a wider education"; his philosophy quietly anticipated Andrew Carnegie's much-publicized "Gospel of Wealth" by more than 25 years.


title: Johns Hopkins

text: In 1973, Johns Hopkins was cited prominently in the Pulitzer Prize-winning book "The Americans: The Democratic Experience" by Daniel Boorstin, Librarian of Congress from 1975 to 1987. From November 14, 1975, to September 6, 1976, a portrait of Hopkins was displayed at the National Portrait Gallery in an exhibit on the democratization of America based on Boorstin's book. In 1989, the United States Postal Service issued a $1 postage stamp in Johns Hopkins's honor, as part of the Great Americans series.


title: Hot sauce

text: Hot sauce is a type of condiment, seasoning, or salsa made from chili peppers and other ingredients. Many commercial varieties of mass-produced hot sauce exist.


title: Hot sauce

text: Humans have used chili peppers and other hot spices for thousands of years. Inhabitants of Mexico, Central America and South America had chili peppers more than 6,000 years ago. Within decades of contact with Spain and Portugal in the 16th century, the New World plant was carried across Europe and into Africa and Asia, and altered through selective breeding. One of the first commercially available bottled hot sauces in America appeared in 1807 in Massachusetts. Few of the early brands from the 1800s survived to this day, however. Tabasco sauce is the earliest recognizable brand in the United States hot sauce industry, appearing in 1868. As of 2010, it was the 13th best-selling seasoning in the United States preceded by Frank's RedHot Sauce in 12th place, which was the sauce first used to create buffalo wings.


title: Hot sauce

text: Many recipes for hot sauces exist, but the only common ingredient is some variety of chili pepper. Many hot sauces are made by using chili peppers as the base and can be as simple as adding salt and vinegar. Other sauces use some type of fruits or vegetables as the base and add the chili peppers to make them hot. Manufacturers use many different processes from aging in containers to pureeing and cooking the ingredients to achieve a desired flavor. Because of their ratings on the Scoville scale, spicier peppers such as the Ghost pepper or Habanero pepper are sometimes used to make hotter sauces. Alternatively, other ingredients can be used to add extra heat, such as pure capsaicin extract or mustard oil. Other common sauce ingredients include vinegar and spices. Vinegar is used primarily as a natural preservative, but flavored vinegars can be used to alter the flavour.


title: Hot sauce

text: Belizean hot sauces are usually extremely hot and use habaneros, carrots, and onions as primary ingredients. Marie Sharp's is a popular brand of hot sauce produced in the Stann Creek Valley.


title: Hot sauce

text: Bermudian sherry peppers sauce is made from a base of Spanish sherry wine and hot peppers. The major producer on the island is Outerbridge Peppers.


title: Hot sauce

text: Hot pepper sauces, as they are most commonly known there, feature heavily in Caribbean cuisine. They are prepared from chilli peppers and vinegar, with fruits and vegetables added for extra flavor. The most common peppers used are habanero and Scotch bonnet, the latter being the most common in Jamaica. Both are very hot peppers, making for strong sauces. Over the years, each island developed its own distinctive recipes, and home-made sauces are still common.


title: Hot sauce

text: Trinidad Scorpion is considered one of the hottest and most frutal families of strains, and is primarily cultivated and hybridized in the United States, United Kingdom, and Australia.


title: Hot sauce

text: Sofrito - small piquins ("bird peppers") with annatto seeds, coriander leaves, onions, garlic, and tomatoes. Pique () sauce is a Puerto Rican hot sauce made by steeping hot peppers in vinegar. Don Ricardo Original Pique Sauce, which is made with pineapple, is a Puerto Rican staple. Don Ricardo originated in Utuado (Spanish pronunciation: [uˈtwaðo]) a municipality of Puerto Rico located in the central mountainous region of the island known as La Cordillera Central.


title: Hot sauce

text: The most popular sauce is the Diaguitas brand, made of pure red (very hot) or yellow (hot) Chilean peppers mixed only with water and salt. Other hot sauces are made from "puta madre", "cacho de cabra", "rocoto", "oro" and "cristal" peppers, mixed with various ingredients. Mild hot sauces include some "creamy style" (like "ají crema"), or a pebre-style sauce, from many local producers, varying in hotness and quality.


title: Hot sauce

text: Mexican cuisine more often includes chopped chili peppers, but when hot sauces are used, they are typically focused more on flavor than on intense heat. Chipotle peppers are a very popular ingredient of Mexican hot sauce. Vinegar is used sparingly or not at all in Mexican sauces, but some particular styles are high in vinegar content similar to the American Louisiana-style sauces. Some hot sauces may include using the seeds from the popular achiote plant for coloring or a slight flavor additive. The process of adobos (marinade) has been used in the past as a preservative but now it is mainly used to enhance the flavor of the peppers and they rely more on the use of vinegar. Mexican-style sauces are primarily produced in Mexico but they are also produced internationally. The Spanish term for sauce is salsa, and in English-speaking countries usually refers to the often tomato-based, hot sauces typical of Mexican cuisine, particularly those used as dips. There are many types of salsa which usually vary throughout Latin America.


title: Hot sauce

text: Traditional Panamanian hot sauce is usually made with "Aji Chombo", Scotch Bonnet peppers. Picante Chombo D'Elidas is a popular brand in Panama, with three major sauces. The yellow sauce, made with habanero and mustard, is the most distinctive. They also produce red and green varieties which are heavier on vinegar content and without mustard. Although the majority of Panamanian cuisine lacks in spice, D'Elidas is seen as an authentic Panamanian hot sauce usually serviced with Rice with Chicken or soups.


title: Hot sauce

text: In the United States, commercially produced chili sauces are assigned various grades per their quality. These grades include U.S. Grade A (also known as U.S. Fancy), U.S. Grade C (also known as U.S. Standard) and Substandard. Criteria in food grading for chili sauces in the U.S. includes coloration, consistency, character, absence of defects and flavor.


title: Hot sauce

text: The varieties of peppers that are used often are cayenne, chipotle, habanero and jalapeño. Some hot sauces, notably Tabasco sauce, are aged in wooden casks similar to the preparation of wine and fermented vinegar. Other ingredients, including fruits and vegetables such as raspberries, mangoes, carrots, and chayote squash are sometimes used to add flavor, mellow the heat of the chilis, and thicken the sauce's consistency. Artisan hot sauces are manufactured by smaller producers and private labels in the United States. Their products are produced in smaller quantities in a variety of flavors. Many sauces have a theme to catch consumers attention. A very mild chili sauce is produced by Heinz and other manufacturers, and is frequently found in cookbooks in the U.S. This style chili sauce is based on tomatoes, green and/or red bell peppers, and spices; and contains little chili pepper. This sauce is more akin to tomato ketchup and cocktail sauce than predominantly chili pepper-based sauces.


title: Hot sauce

text: A type of sriracha sauce manufactured in California by Huy Fong Foods has become increasingly popular in the United States in contemporary times.


title: Hot sauce

text: Louisiana-style hot sauce contains red chili peppers (tabasco and/or cayenne are the most popular), vinegar and salt. Occasionally xanthan gum or other thickeners are used.


title: Hot sauce

text: New Mexican style chile sauces differ from others in that they contain no vinegar. Almost every traditional New Mexican dish is served with red or green chile sauce. The sauce is often added to meats, eggs, vegetables, breads, and some dishes are, in fact, mostly chile sauce with a modest addition of pork, beef, or beans.


title: Hot sauce

text: The availability of a wide variety of hot sauces is a relatively recent event in most of southern Australia (with little more than the flagship Tabasco cayenne variety and thick, medium hot Indochinese sauces widely available last century), although very faithful locally produced versions of habanero and Trinidad Scorpion sauces are now available.


title: Hot sauce

text: Two of the hottest chilies in the world, the Naga Viper and Infinity chili were developed in the United Kingdom and are available as sauces which have been claimed to be the hottest natural chili sauces (without added pepper extract) available in the world. The Naga Viper and Infinity were considered the hottest two chili peppers in the world until the Naga Viper was unseated by the Trinidad Moruga Scorpion in late 2011.


title: Hot sauce

text: The heat, or burning sensation, experienced when consuming hot sauce is caused by capsaicin and related capsaicinoids. The burning sensation is caused by the capsaicin activation of the TRPV1 heat and ligand-gated ion channel in peripheral neurons. The mechanism of action is then a chemical interaction with the neurological system. Although the "burning" sensation is not real, repeated and prolonged use of hot spices may harm the peripheral heat-sensing neurons; this mechanism may explain why frequent spice users become less sensitive to both spices and heat.


title: Hot sauce

text: Foods containing capsaicin, like hot sauces, can have different effects on each individual. Those with stomach issues can experience worse symptoms than just the “burning” sensation. People with Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) can have gas, diarrhea, or stomach pains after ingesting hot sauces.


title: Hot sauce

text: The seemingly subjective perceived heat of hot sauces can be measured by the Scoville scale. The Scoville scale number indicates how many times something must be diluted with an equal volume of water until people can no longer feel any sensation from the capsaicin. The hottest hot sauce scientifically possible is one rated at 16 million Scoville units, which is pure capsaicin. An example of a hot sauce marketed as achieving this level of heat is Blair's 16 Million Reserve, marketed by Blair's Sauces and Snacks. By comparison, Tabasco sauce is rated between 2,500 and 5,000 Scoville units (batches vary) - with one of the mildest commercially available sauces, Cackalacky Classic Sauce Company's Spice Sauce, weighing in at less than 1000 Scoville units on the standard heat scale.


title: Hot sauce

text: A general way to estimate the heat of a sauce is to look at the ingredients list. Sauces tend to vary in heat based on the kind of peppers used, and the further down the list, the less the amount of pepper.


title: Hot sauce

text: Capsaicinoids are the chemicals responsible for the "hot" taste of chili peppers. They are fat soluble and therefore water will be of no assistance when countering the burn. The most effective way to relieve the burning sensation is with dairy products, such as milk and yogurt. A protein called casein occurs in dairy products which binds to the capsaicin, effectively making it less available to "burn" the mouth, and the milk fat helps keep it in suspension. Rice is also useful for mitigating the impact, especially when it is included with a mouthful of the hot food. These foods are typically included in the cuisine of cultures that specialise in the use of chilis. Mechanical stimulation of the mouth by chewing food will also partially mask the pain sensation.


title: Anna Akhmatova

text: Anna Andreyevna Gorenko ( – 5 March 1966), better known by the pen name Anna Akhmatova, was one of the most significant Russian poets of 20th century. She was shortlisted for the Nobel Prize in 1965 and received second-most (three) nominations for the award the following year.


title: Anna Akhmatova

text: Akhmatova's work ranges from short lyric poems to intricately structured cycles, such as "Requiem" (1935–40), her tragic masterpiece about the Stalinist terror. Her style, characterised by its economy and emotional restraint, was strikingly original and distinctive to her contemporaries. The strong and clear leading female voice struck a new chord in Russian poetry. Her writing can be said to fall into two periods – the early work (1912–25) and her later work (from around 1936 until her death), divided by a decade of reduced literary output. Her work was condemned and censored by Stalinist authorities, and she is notable for choosing not to emigrate and remaining in the Soviet Union, acting as witness to the events around her. Her perennial themes include meditations on time and memory, and the difficulties of living and writing in the shadow of Stalinism.


title: Anna Akhmatova

text: Primary sources of information about Akhmatova's life are relatively scant, as war, revolution and the Soviet regime caused much of the written record to be destroyed. For long periods she was in official disfavour and many of those who were close to her died in the aftermath of the revolution. Akhmatova's first husband, Nikolay Gumilyov, was executed by the Soviet secret police, and her son Lev Gumilyov and her common-law husband Nikolay Punin spent many years in the Gulag, where Punin died.


title: Anna Akhmatova

text: Akhmatova was born at Bolshoy Fontan, a resort suburb of the Black Sea port of Odessa. Her father, Andrey Antonovich Gorenko, was a naval engineer and descendant from a noble Ukrainian cossack family, and her mother, Inna Erazmovna Stogova, was a descendant from the Russian nobility with close ties to Kiev. She wrote:


title: Anna Akhmatova

text: No one in my large family wrote poetry. But the first Russian woman poet, Anna Bunina, was the aunt of my grandfather Erasm Ivanovich Stogov. The Stogovs were modest landowners in the Mozhaisk region of the Moscow Province. They were moved here after the insurrection during the time of Posadnitsa Marfa. In Novgorod they had been a wealthier and more distinguished family. Khan Akhmat, my ancestor, was killed one night in his tent by a Russian killer-for-hire. Karamzin tells us that this marked the end of the Mongol yoke on Russia. [...] It was well known that this Akhmat was a descendant of Genghiz Khan. In the eighteenth century, one of the Akhmatov Princesses – Praskovia Yegorovna – married the rich and famous Simbirsk landowner Motovilov. Yegor Motovilov was my great-grandfather; his daughter, Anna Yegorovna, was my grandmother. She died when my mother was nine years old, and I was named in her honour. Several diamond rings and one emerald were made from her brooch. Though my fingers are thin, still her thimble didn't fit me.


title: Anna Akhmatova

text: Her family moved north to Tsarskoye Selo, near St. Petersburg, when she was eleven months old. The family lived in a house on the corner of Shirokaya Street and Bezymyanny Lane (the building is no longer there today), spending summers from age 7 to 13 in a dacha near Sevastopol. She studied at the Mariinskaya High School, moving to Kiev (1906–10) and finished her schooling there, after her parents separated in 1905. She went on to study law at Kiev University, leaving a year later to study literature in St Petersburg.


title: Anna Akhmatova

text: Akhmatova started writing poetry at the age of 11, and was published in her late teens, inspired by the poets Nikolay Nekrasov, Jean Racine, Alexander Pushkin, Evgeny Baratynsky and the Symbolists; however, none of her juvenilia survives. Her sister Inna also wrote poetry though she did not pursue the practice and married shortly after high school. Akhmatova's father did not want to see any verses printed under his "respectable" name, so she chose to adopt her grandmother's distinctly Tatar surname 'Akhmatova' as a pen name.


title: Anna Akhmatova

text: She met a young poet, Nikolay Gumilev, on Christmas Eve 1903. Gumilev encouraged her to write and pursued her intensely, making numerous marriage proposals starting in 1905. At 17 years old, in his journal "Sirius", she published her first poem which could be translated as "On his hand you may see many glittering rings", (1907) signing it "Anna G." She soon became known in St Petersburg's artistic circles, regularly giving public readings. That year, she wrote unenthusiastically to a friend, "He has loved me for three years now, and I believe that it is my fate to be his wife. Whether or not I love him, I do not know, but it seems to me that I do." She married Gumilev in Kiev in April 1910; however, none of Akhmatova's family attended the wedding. The couple honeymooned in Paris, and there she met and befriended the Italian artist Amedeo Modigliani.


title: Anna Akhmatova

text: In late 1910, she came together with poets such as Osip Mandelstam and Sergey Gorodetsky to form the Guild of Poets. It promoted the idea of craft as the key to poetry rather than inspiration or mystery, taking themes of the concrete rather than the more ephemeral world of the Symbolists. Over time, they developed the influential Acmeist anti-symbolist school, concurrent with the growth of Imagism in Europe and America. From the first year of their marriage, Gumilev began to chafe against its constraints. She wrote that he had "lost his passion" for her and by the end of that year he left on a six-month trip to Africa.


title: Anna Akhmatova

text: She had "her first taste of fame", becoming renowned, not so much for her beauty, but for her intense magnetism and allure, attracting the fascinated attention of a great many men, including the great and the good. She returned to visit Modigliani in Paris, where he created at least 20 paintings of her, including several nudes.


title: Anna Akhmatova

text: She later began an affair with the celebrated Acmeist poet Osip Mandelstam, whose wife, Nadezhda, declared later, in her autobiography that she came to forgive Akhmatova for it in time. Akhmatova's son, Lev, was born in 1912, and would become a renowned Neo-Eurasianist historian.


title: Anna Akhmatova

text: In 1912, the Guild of Poets published Akhmatova's book of verse "Evening" ("Vecher") – the first of five in nine years. The small edition of 500 copies quickly sold out and she received around a dozen positive notices in the literary press. She exercised a strong selectivity for the pieces – including only 35 of the 200 poems she had written by the end of 1911. (She noted that "Song of the Last Meeting", dated 29 September 1911, was her 200th poem). The book secured her reputation as a new and striking young writer, the poems "Grey-eyed king", "In the Forest", "Over the Water", and "I don't need my legs anymore" making her famous. She later wrote "These naïve poems by a frivolous girl for some reason were reprinted thirteen times [...] And they came out in several translations. The girl herself (as far as I recall) did not foresee such a fate for them and used to hide the issues of the journals in which they were first published under the sofa cushions".


title: Anna Akhmatova

text: Akhmatova's second collection, "The Rosary" (or "Beads" – "Chetki") appeared in March 1914 and firmly established her as one of the most popular and sought after poets of the day. Thousands of women composed poems "in honour of Akhmatova", mimicking her style and prompting Akhmatova to exclaim: "I taught our women how to speak, but don't know how to make them silent". Her aristocratic manners and artistic integrity won her the titles "Queen of the Neva" and "Soul of the Silver Age," as the period came to be known in the history of Russian poetry. In "Poem Without a Hero", the longest and one of the best known of her works, written many decades later, she would recall this as a blessed time of her life.


title: Anna Akhmatova

text: Akhmatova became close friends with Boris Pasternak (who, though married, proposed to her many times) and rumours began to circulate that she was having an affair with influential lyrical poet Alexander Blok. In July 1914, Akhmatova wrote "Frightening times are approaching/ Soon fresh graves will cover the land"; on August 1, Germany declared war on Russia, marking the start of "the dark storm" of world war, civil war, revolution and totalitarian repression for Russia. The Silver Age came to a close.


title: Anna Akhmatova

text: Akhmatova had a relationship with the mosaic artist and poet Boris Anrep; many of her poems in the period are about him and he in turn created mosaics in which she is featured. She selected poems for her third collection, "Belaya Staya" ("White Flock"), in 1917, a volume which poet and critic Joseph Brodsky later described as writing of personal lyricism tinged with the "note of controlled terror". She later came to be memorialised by his description of her as "the keening muse". Essayist John Bayley describes her writing at this time as "grim, spare and laconic".


title: Anna Akhmatova

text: In February 1917, the revolution started in Petersburg (then named Petrograd); soldiers fired on marching protestors, and others mutinied. They looked to a past in which the future was "rotting". In a city without electricity or sewage service, with little water or food, they faced starvation and sickness. Akhmatova's friends died around her and others left in droves for safer havens in Europe and America, including Anrep, who escaped to England. She had the option to leave, and considered it for a time, but chose to stay and was proud of her decision to remain.:


title: Anna Akhmatova

text: At the height of Akhmatova's fame, in 1918, she divorced her husband and that same year, though many of her friends considered it a mistake, Akhmatova married prominent Assyriologist and poet Vladimir Shilejko. She later said "I felt so filthy. I thought it would be like a cleansing, like going to a convent, knowing you are going to lose your freedom." She began affairs with theatre director Mikhail Zimmerman and composer Arthur Lourié, who set many of her poems to music.


title: Anna Akhmatova

text: In 1921, Akhmatova's former husband Nikolay Gumilev was prosecuted for his alleged role in a monarchist anti-Bolshevik conspiracy and in August was shot along with 61 others. According to the historian Rayfield, the murder of Gumilev was part of the state response to the Kronstadt Rebellion. The Cheka (secret police) blamed the rebellion on Petrograd's intellectuals, prompting the senior Cheka officer Yakov Agranov to forcibly extract the names of 'conspirators', from an imprisoned professor, guaranteeing them amnesty from execution. Agranov's guarantee proved to be meaningless. He sentenced dozens of the named persons to death, including Gumilev. Maxim Gorky and others appealed for leniency, but by the time Lenin agreed to several pardons, the condemned had been shot. Within a few days of his death, Akhmatova wrote:


title: Anna Akhmatova

text: The executions had a powerful effect on the Russian intelligentsia, destroying the acmeist poetry group, and placing a stigma on Akhmatova and her son Lev (by Gumilev). Lev's later arrest during the purges and terrors of the 1930s was based on being his father's son. From a new Marxist perspective, Akhmatova's poetry was deemed to represent an introspective "bourgeois aesthetic", reflecting only trivial "female" preoccupations, not in keeping with these new revolutionary politics of the time. She was roundly attacked by the state and by former supporters and friends, and seen to be an anachronism. During what she termed "The Vegetarian Years", Akhmatova's work was unofficially banned by a party resolution of 1925 and she found it hard to publish, though she did not stop writing poetry. She made acclaimed translations of works by Victor Hugo, Rabindranath Tagore, and Giacomo Leopardi and pursued academic work on Pushkin and Dostoyevsky. She worked as a critic and essayist, though many USSR and foreign critics and readers concluded that she had died.


title: Anna Akhmatova

text: She had little food and almost no money; her son was denied access to study at academic institutions because of his parents' alleged anti-state activities. The nationwide repression and purges decimated her St Petersburg circle of friends, artists and intellectuals. Her close friend and fellow poet Mandelstam was deported and then sentenced to a Gulag labour camp, where he would die. Akhmatova narrowly escaped arrest, though her son Lev was imprisoned on numerous occasions by the Stalinist regime, accused of counterrevolutionary activity. She would often queue for hours to deliver him food packages and plead on his behalf. She describes standing outside a stone prison:


title: Anna Akhmatova

text: One day somebody in the crowd identified me. Standing behind me was a woman, with lips blue from cold, who had, of course, never heard me called by name before. Now she started out of the torpor common to us all and asked me in a whisper (everyone whispered there):'Can you describe this?'And I said: 'I can.'Then something like a smile passed fleetingly over what had once been her face.


title: Anna Akhmatova

text: Akhmatova wrote that by 1935 every time she went to see someone off at the train station as they went into exile, she'd find herself greeting friends at every step as so many of St Petersburg's intellectual and cultural figures would be leaving on the same train. In her poetry circles Mayakovsky and Esenin committed suicide and Marina Tsvetaeva would follow them in 1941, after returning from exile.


title: Anna Akhmatova

text: Akhmatova was a common-law wife to Nikolai Punin, an art scholar and lifelong friend, whom she stayed with until 1935. He also was repeatedly taken into custody, dying in the Gulag in 1953. Her tragic cycle "Requiem" documents her personal experience of this time; as she writes, "one hundred million voices shout" through her "tortured mouth".


title: Anna Akhmatova

text: In 1939, Stalin approved the publication of one volume of poetry, "From Six Books"; however, the collection was withdrawn and pulped after only a few months. In 1993, it was revealed that the authorities had bugged her flat and kept her under constant surveillance, keeping detailed files on her from this time, accruing some 900 pages of "denunciations, reports of phone taps, quotations from writings, confessions of those close to her". Although officially stifled, Akhmatova's work continued to circulate in secret. Akhmatova's close friend, chronicler Lydia Chukovskaya described how writers working to keep poetic messages alive used various strategies. A small trusted circle would, for example, memorise each other's works and circulate them only by oral means. She tells how Akhmatova would write out her poem for a visitor on a scrap of paper to be read in a moment, then burnt in her stove. The poems were carefully disseminated in this way, but it is likely that many compiled in this manner were lost. "It was like a ritual," Chukovskaya wrote. "Hands, matches, an ashtray. A ritual beautiful and bitter."


title: Anna Akhmatova

text: During World War II, Akhmatova witnessed the 900-day Siege of Leningrad (now St Petersburg). In 1940, Akhmatova started her "Poem without a Hero", finishing a first draft in Tashkent, but working on "The Poem" for twenty years and considering it to be the major work of her life, dedicating it to "the memory of its first audience – my friends and fellow citizens who perished in Leningrad during the siege". She was evacuated to Chistopol in spring of 1942 and then to greener, safer Tashkent in Uzbekistan, along with other artists, such as Shostakovich. During her time away she became seriously ill with typhus (she had suffered from severe bronchitis and tuberculosis as a young woman). On returning to Leningrad in May 1944, she writes of how disturbed she was to find "a terrible ghost that pretended to be my city".