title: Prostration

text: In ancient Hawaii, a form of prostration known as "kapu moe" required all to prostrate in the presence of a "nīʻaupiʻo" or a "piʻo" chief on the pain of death. The only people exempt from this were chiefs of the next grade the "naha" and "wohi" chiefs who were required to sit in their presence. Other Polynesian groups are known to practice this.


title: Prostration

text: In Imperial China, a form of prostration known as a kowtow or kētou was used as a sign of respect and reverence.


title: Prostration

text: In Japan, a common form of prostration is called dogeza, which was used as a sign of deep respect and submission for the elders of a family, guests, samurai, "daimyōs" and the Emperor. In modern times, it is generally used only in extreme circumstances, such as when apologizing for very serious transgressions or begging for an incredible favor.


title: Prostration

text: To perform dogeza, a person first enters the sitting/kneeling position known as seiza, and then proceeds to touch the head to the ground. This practice may be related to rites of the Shinto religion and culture of Japan dating back centuries.


title: Prostration

text: Shugyo in martial arts, particularly in the Shōtōkai and Kyokushin styles of Karate, it is a form of extreme spiritual discipline.


title: Prostration

text: In modern yoga practice, "sun salutations" ("sūrya namaskāra") are a regular part of practitioners' routines. Such a practice may be used for both maintaining physical well-being and spiritual attainment.


title: Prostration

text: In traditional and contemporary Yoruba culture, younger male family and community members greet elders by assuming a position called ""ìdọ̀bálẹ̀"". The traditional, full Yoruba prostration involves the prostrator lying down almost prone with his feet extended behind his torso while the rest of his weight is propped up on both hands. This traditional form is being replaced by a more informal bow and touching the fingertips to the floor in front of an elder with one hand, while bending slightly at the knee. The female form of the greeting is the ""ìkúnlẹ̀"", a form of kneeling where the younger party bows to one or both knees in front of an elder relative or community member. Both gestures are widely practiced; to not perform them would be considered ill-mannered.


title: Prostration

text: Modified versions of both greetings are also common in traditional Yoruba religious and cultural contexts in the African diaspora, particularly in Brazil and Cuba.


title: Carlos Castaño Gil

text: Carlos Castaño Gil (16 May 1965 – 16 April 2004) was a Colombian paramilitary leader. who was a founder of the Peasant Self-Defenders of Córdoba and Urabá (ACCU), a far-right paramilitary organisation in Colombia and a former member of the Medellin Cartel. Castaño and his brothers Fidel and Vicente founded the ACCU (and its previous incarnations) after their father was kidnapped and killed by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), in association with other enemies or victims of the guerrillas. The ACCU later became one of the founding members of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC).


title: Carlos Castaño Gil

text: Carlos Castaño Gil was the youngest son of the family Castaño Gil, a rich landowner who would have been close to the Alianza Americana Anticomunista. Like his brothers, he experienced firsthand the murder of his father. Led by FARC Guerrilla, at 16 years old, he was determined to take up arms against FARC In revenge of his father's murder. He became a member of a self-defense group, which were among the first of their kind.


title: Carlos Castaño Gil

text: He was introduced to the Medellin Cartel kingpin Pablo Escobar by his brother Fidel, but he was against drugs. Castaño received combat training from his brother, from army officers and members of the paramilitary group as well as from the Israeli mercenary Yair Klein. Of this training came out the order for the extermination against the UP between the 1985-96


title: Carlos Castaño Gil

text: The Castaño's paramilitary groups were financed by drug kingpin José Gonzalo Rodriguez Gacha. The friendship between the Castaño brothers and Pablo Escobar broke after the murders of Galeano and Moncada clan (also Castaño's partners) while being detained inside his personal prison "La Catedral". Castaño and his brothers then became founders of the group "Los Pepes" (an acronym for "people persecuted by Pablo Escobar"). During this time Carlos was known by the aliases of "the Phantom" or "the Kid". Contacts between Los Pepes and the Colombian National Police Search Bloc allegedly resulted in Escobar's death.


title: Carlos Castaño Gil

text: 1 month after the Escobar's death, Fidel Castaño was killed in a battle against the EPL guerrillas. However, it is believed that Carlos may have had a role in Fidel's death in retaliation for the alleged rape and murder (or possible suicide) of Rumalda Castaño, a woman alleged to have been a lover of both brothers. After Fidel's death, Carlos Castaño assumed leadership of AUC, a paramilitary federation.


title: Carlos Castaño Gil

text: In a 1996 interview with writer Robin Kirk, later published in "More Terrible Than Death: Massacres, Drugs and America's War in Colombia" (PublicAffairs: New York, 2003), Castaño acknowledged that the men under his command committed "excesses", but defended them as necessary in Colombia's conflict. "Look, the guerrillas hide themselves within the civilian population, they manipulate the population". In a September 1997 interview in "El Tiempo" newspaper, Castaño admitted responsibility for the Mapiripán massacre.


title: Carlos Castaño Gil

text: In 1997, Castaño later founded an umbrella organization of paramilitaries operating in Colombia known as the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC). The AUC demobilised in 2006 admitting to several brutal murders to the Colombian population. The AUC was accused by human rights organisations of committing atrocities, and it has openly admitted to its involvement in the drug trade. The AUC was listed by the US Department of State as a Foreign Terrorist Organisation. AUC was disbanded after then Colombian President Alvaro Uribe Vélez reached a peace agreement with reduced terms for its members.


title: Carlos Castaño Gil

text: Castaño was convicted in absentia of the murder of journalist Jaime Garzón, and sentenced to 38 years in prison.


title: Carlos Castaño Gil

text: In a biographical work published in 2001, he admitted to having friendly relations with the high Catholic clergy and political leaders. He added that "the Americans tolerated" the paramilitary groups and had the support of the Colombian national army.


title: Carlos Castaño Gil

text: On 24 September 2002, the United States Department of Justice unsealed an indictment against Castaño which accused him of trafficking over 17 tons of cocaine into the United States. Castaño announced that he would give himself up for trial in the United States and would accept his participation in numerous crimes, though he resented his being personally linked to the drug trade.


title: Carlos Castaño Gil

text: Castaño had become isolated from the organisation according to some observers, as he seemed to become relatively critical of the AUC's increasing association with narcotraffickers in recent years and was more willing to compromise with the Colombian Government. Allegedly this caused some AUC commanders to turn their backs on him.


title: Carlos Castaño Gil

text: Castaño stated on Colombian television in 2000 that 70 percent of AUC funds came from narcotrafficking.


title: Carlos Castaño Gil

text: Castaño was killed on 16 April 2004. Acting AUC commanders claimed initially that there was an accidental exchange of gunfire between his bodyguards and a separate group of paramilitary fighters.


title: Carlos Castaño Gil

text: Other sources within the group and among its dissident factions claimed that he and his men were captured and tortured before being killed and then buried by order of other AUC top leaders (perhaps his own brother Vicente Castaño and Diego Murillo AKA "Don Berna"), who had become increasingly close to narcotraffickers and their trade. Colombian investigators found a makeshift grave and an unidentified body (yet apparently not Castaño's) near the supposed area of the events. Those same sources alleged that the bodies of Castaño and his other companions were dug up and taken to other locations before the investigators could arrive.


title: Carlos Castaño Gil

text: The possible death of the AUC co-founder remained in the air and was the subject of wild and rampant speculation. One of the rumours, dating from June 1, 2004, stated that unidentified diplomatic sources told the AFP agency that Castaño may have been spirited away to either Syria or Egypt, via Panama, allegedly with U.S. assistance. No specific reasoning or details regarding this claim were produced and the parties allegedly involved separately denied their participation.


title: Carlos Castaño Gil

text: Sources from the AUC and other local militant factions continued to dispute the exact whereabouts of Carlos Castaño. His personal and financial connections between narcotraffickers and other sectors of society could have allowed for their possible collaboration in his conspicuous disappearance or murder. Despite these claims, the truth regarding Castaño's exact condition remained unknown.


title: Carlos Castaño Gil

text: On 23 August 2006, Colombia's Attorney General publicly ordered the capture of his brother Vicente Castaño and seven other individuals, accusing them of being involved in Carlos Castaño's apparent death. Alleged witnesses to the crime stated that Castaño's body was apparently dismembered and incinerated.


title: Carlos Castaño Gil

text: Castaño's skeleton was recovered from a shallow grave on 1 September 2006, and identified through DNA testing by the Colombian government authorities. His brother's second lieutenant named Jesús Roldán AKA "MonoLeche", a former Popular Liberation Army (Ejército Popular de Liberación) guerrilla who later joined the paramilitaries, confessed to his murder and led authorities to the grave.


title: Natural History (Pliny)

text: The Natural History () is a work by Pliny the Elder. The largest single work to have survived from the Roman Empire to the modern day, the "Natural History" compiles information gleaned from other ancient authors. Despite the work's title, its subject area is not limited to what is today understood by natural history; Pliny himself defines his scope as "the natural world, or life". It is encyclopedic in scope, but its structure is not like that of a modern encyclopedia. It is the only work by Pliny to have survived, and the last that he published. He published the first 10 books in AD 77, but had not made a final revision of the remainder at the time of his death during the AD 79 eruption of Vesuvius. The rest was published posthumously by Pliny's nephew, Pliny the Younger.


title: Natural History (Pliny)

text: The work is divided into 37 books, organised into 10 volumes. These cover topics including astronomy, mathematics, geography, ethnography, anthropology, human physiology, zoology, botany, agriculture, horticulture, pharmacology, mining, mineralogy, sculpture, art, and precious stones.


title: Natural History (Pliny)

text: Pliny's "Natural History" became a model for later encyclopedias and scholarly works as a result of its breadth of subject matter, its referencing of original authors, and its index.


title: Natural History (Pliny)

text: Pliny's "Natural History" was written alongside other substantial works (which have since been lost). Pliny (AD 23–79) combined his scholarly activities with a busy career as an imperial administrator for the emperor Vespasian. Much of his writing was done at night; daytime hours were spent working for the emperor, as he explains in the dedicatory preface addressed to Vespasian's elder son, the future emperor Titus, with whom he had served in the army (and to whom the work is dedicated). As for the nocturnal hours spent writing, these were seen not as a loss of sleep but as an addition to life, for as he states in the preface, "Vita vigilia est", "to be alive is to be watchful", in a military metaphor of a sentry keeping watch in the night. Pliny claims to be the only Roman ever to have undertaken such a work, in his prayer for the blessing of the universal mother:


title: Natural History (Pliny)

text: Hail to thee, Nature, thou parent of all things! and do thou deign to show thy favour unto me, who, alone of all the citizens of Rome, have, in thy every department, thus made known thy praise.


title: Natural History (Pliny)

text: The "Natural History" is encyclopaedic in scope, but its format is unlike a modern encyclopaedia. However, it does have structure: Pliny uses Aristotle's division of nature (animal, vegetable, mineral) to recreate the natural world in literary form. Rather than presenting compartmentalised, stand-alone entries arranged alphabetically, Pliny's ordered natural landscape is a coherent whole, offering the reader a guided tour: "a brief excursion under our direction among the whole of the works of nature ..." The work is unified but varied: "My subject is the world of nature ... or in other words, life," he tells Titus.


title: Natural History (Pliny)

text: Nature for Pliny was divine, a pantheistic concept inspired by the Stoic philosophy, which underlies much of his thought, but the deity in question was a goddess whose main purpose was to serve the human race: "nature, that is life" is human life in a natural landscape. After an initial survey of cosmology and geography, Pliny starts his treatment of animals with the human race, "for whose sake great Nature appears to have created all other things". This teleological view of nature was common in antiquity and is crucial to the understanding of the "Natural History". The components of nature are not just described in and for themselves, but also with a view to their role in human life. Pliny devotes a number of the books to plants, with a focus on their medicinal value; the books on minerals include descriptions of their uses in architecture, sculpture, art, and jewellery. Pliny's premise is distinct from modern ecological theories, reflecting the prevailing sentiment of his time.


title: Natural History (Pliny)

text: Pliny's work frequently reflects Rome's imperial expansion, which brought new and exciting things to the capital: exotic eastern spices, strange animals to be put on display or herded into the arena, even the alleged phoenix sent to the emperor Claudius in AD 47 – although, as Pliny admits, this was generally acknowledged to be a fake. Pliny repeated Aristotle's maxim that Africa was always producing something new. Nature's variety and versatility were claimed to be infinite: "When I have observed nature she has always induced me to deem no statement about her incredible." This led Pliny to recount rumours of strange peoples on the edges of the world. These monstrous races – the Cynocephali or Dog-Heads, the Sciapodae, whose single foot could act as a sunshade, the mouthless Astomi, who lived on scents – were not strictly new. They had been mentioned in the fifth century BC by Greek historian Herodotus (whose history was a broad mixture of myths, legends, and facts), but Pliny made them better known.


title: Natural History (Pliny)

text: "As full of variety as nature itself", stated Pliny's nephew, Pliny the Younger, and this verdict largely explains the appeal of the "Natural History" since Pliny's death in the Eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79. Pliny had gone to investigate the strange cloud – "shaped like an umbrella pine", according to his nephew – rising from the mountain.


title: Natural History (Pliny)

text: The "Natural History" was one of the first ancient European texts to be printed, in Venice in 1469. Philemon Holland's English translation of 1601 has influenced literature ever since.


title: Natural History (Pliny)

text: The "Natural History" consists of 37 books. Pliny devised a "summarium," or list of contents, at the beginning of the work that was later interpreted by modern printers as a table of contents. The table below is a summary based on modern names for topics.


title: Natural History (Pliny)

text: Pliny's purpose in writing the "Natural History" was to cover all learning and art so far as they are connected with nature or draw their materials from nature. He says:My subject is a barren one – the world of nature, or in other words life; and that subject in its least elevated department, and employing either rustic terms or foreign, nay barbarian words that actually have to be introduced with an apology. Moreover, the path is not a beaten highway of authorship, nor one in which the mind is eager to range: there is not one of us who has made the same venture, nor yet one among the Greeks who has tackled single-handed all departments of the subject.


title: Natural History (Pliny)

text: Pliny studied the original authorities on each subject and took care to make excerpts from their pages. His "indices auctorum" sometimes list the authorities he actually consulted, though not exhaustively; in other cases, they cover the principal writers on the subject, whose names are borrowed second-hand from his immediate authorities. He acknowledges his obligations to his predecessors: "To own up to those who were the means of one's own achievements."


title: Natural History (Pliny)

text: In the preface, the author claims to have stated 20,000 facts gathered from some 2,000 books and from 100 select authors. The extant lists of his authorities cover more than 400, including 146 Roman and 327 Greek and other sources of information. The lists generally follow the order of the subject matter of each book. This has been shown in Heinrich Brunn's "Disputatio" (Bonn, 1856).


title: Natural History (Pliny)

text: One of Pliny's authorities is Marcus Terentius Varro. In the geographical books, Varro is supplemented by the topographical commentaries of Agrippa, which were completed by the emperor Augustus; for his zoology, he relies largely on Aristotle and on Juba, the scholarly Mauretanian king, "studiorum claritate memorabilior quam regno" (v. 16). Juba is one of his principal guides in botany; Theophrastus is also named in his Indices, and Pliny had translated Theophrastus's Greek into Latin. Another work by Theophrastus, "On Stones" was cited as a source on ores and minerals. Pliny strove to use all the Greek histories available to him, such as Herodotus and Thucydides, as well as the "Bibliotheca Historica" of Diodorus Siculus.


title: Natural History (Pliny)

text: Does it surprise you that a busy man found time to finish so many volumes, many of which deal with such minute details?... He used to begin to study at night on the Festival of Vulcan, not for luck but from his love of study, long before dawn; in winter he would commence at the seventh hour... He could sleep at call, and it would come upon him and leave him in the middle of his work. Before daybreak he would go to Vespasian – for he too was a night-worker – and then set about his official duties. On his return home he would again give to study any time that he had free. Often in summer after taking a meal, which with him, as in the old days, was always a simple and light one, he would lie in the sun if he had any time to spare, and a book would be read aloud, from which he would take notes and extracts.


title: Natural History (Pliny)

text: After dinner a book would be read aloud, and he would take notes in a cursory way. I remember that one of his friends, when the reader pronounced a word wrongly, checked him and made him read it again, and my uncle said to him, "Did you not catch the meaning?" When his friend said "yes," he remarked, "Why then did you make him turn back? We have lost more than ten lines through your interruption." So jealous was he of every moment lost.


title: Natural History (Pliny)

text: Pliny's writing style emulates that of Seneca. It aims less at clarity and vividness than at epigrammatic point. It contains many antitheses, questions, exclamations, tropes, metaphors, and other mannerisms of the Silver Age. His sentence structure is often loose and straggling. There is heavy use of the ablative absolute, and ablative phrases are often appended in a kind of vague "apposition" to express the author's own opinion of an immediately previous statement, e.g.,


title: Natural History (Pliny)

text: dixit (Apelles) ... uno se praestare, quod manum de tabula sciret tollere, memorabili praecepto nocere saepe nimiam diligentiam.


title: Natural History (Pliny)

text: Everything from "a salutary warning" onwards represents the ablative absolute phrase starting with "memorabili praecepto".


title: Natural History (Pliny)

text: Pliny wrote the first ten books in AD 77, and was engaged on revising the rest during the two remaining years of his life. The work was probably published with little revision by the author's nephew Pliny the Younger, who, when telling the story of a tame dolphin and describing the floating islands of the Vadimonian Lake thirty years later, has apparently forgotten that both are to be found in his uncle's work. He describes the "Naturalis Historia" as a "Naturae historia" and characterises it as a "work that is learned and full of matter, and as varied as nature herself."


title: Natural History (Pliny)

text: The absence of the author's final revision may explain many errors, including why the text is as John Healy writes "disjointed, discontinuous and not in a logical order"; and as early as 1350, Petrarch complained about the corrupt state of the text, referring to copying errors made between the ninth and eleventh centuries.


title: Natural History (Pliny)

text: About the middle of the 3rd century, an abstract of the geographical portions of Pliny's work was produced by Solinus. Early in the 8th century, Bede, who admired Pliny's work, had access to a partial manuscript which he used in his "De Rerum Natura", especially the sections on meteorology and gems. However, Bede updated and corrected Pliny on the tides.


title: Natural History (Pliny)

text: There are about 200 extant manuscripts, but the best of the more ancient manuscripts, that at Bamberg State Library, contains only books XXXII–XXXVII. In 1141 Robert of Cricklade wrote the "Defloratio Historiae Naturalis Plinii Secundi" consisting of nine books of selections taken from an ancient manuscript.


title: Natural History (Pliny)

text: The work was one of the first classical manuscripts to be printed, at Venice in 1469 by Johann and Wendelin of Speyer, but J.F. Healy described the translation as "distinctly imperfect". A copy printed in 1472 by Nicolas Jenson of Venice is held in the library at Wells Cathedral.


title: Natural History (Pliny)

text: Philemon Holland made an influential translation of much of the work into English in 1601. John Bostock and H. T. Riley made a complete translation in 1855.


title: Natural History (Pliny)

text: The "Natural History" is generally divided into the organic plants and animals and the inorganic matter, although there are frequent digressions in each section. The encyclopedia also notes the uses made of all of these by the Romans. Its description of metals and minerals is valued for its detail in the history of science, being the most extensive compilation still available from the ancient world.


title: Natural History (Pliny)

text: The first topic covered is Astronomy, in Book II. Pliny starts with the known universe, roundly criticising attempts at cosmology as madness, including the view that there are countless other worlds than the Earth. He concurs with the four (Aristotelian) elements, fire, earth, air and water, and records the seven "planets" including the sun and moon. The earth is a sphere, suspended in the middle of space. He considers it a weakness to try to find the shape and form of God, or to suppose that such a being would care about human affairs. He mentions eclipses, but considers Hipparchus's almanac grandiose for seeming to know how Nature works. He cites Posidonius's estimate that the moon is 230,000 miles away. He describes comets, noting that only Aristotle has recorded seeing more than one at once.


title: Natural History (Pliny)

text: Book II continues with natural meteorological events lower in the sky, including the winds, weather, whirlwinds, lightning, and rainbows. He returns to astronomical facts such as the effect of longitude on time of sunrise and sunset, the variation of the sun's elevation with latitude (affecting time-telling by sundials), and the variation of day length with latitude.


title: Natural History (Pliny)

text: In Books III to VI, Pliny moves to the Earth itself. In Book III he covers the geography of the Iberian peninsula and Italy; Book IV covers Europe including Britain; Book V looks at Africa and Asia, while Book VI looks eastwards to the Black Sea, India and the Far East.


title: Natural History (Pliny)

text: Book VII discusses the human race, covering anthropology and ethnography, aspects of human physiology and assorted matters such as the greatness of Julius Caesar, outstanding people such as Hippocrates and Asclepiades, happiness and fortune.


title: Natural History (Pliny)

text: Zoology is discussed in Books VIII to XI. The encyclopedia mentions different sources of purple dye, particularly the murex snail, the highly prized source of Tyrian purple. It describes the elephant and hippopotamus in detail, as well as the value and origin of the pearl and the invention of fish farming and oyster farming. The keeping of aquariums was a popular pastime of the rich, and Pliny provides anecdotes of the problems of owners becoming too closely attached to their fish.


title: Natural History (Pliny)

text: Pliny correctly identifies the origin of amber as the fossilised resin of pine trees. Evidence cited includes the fact that some samples exhibit encapsulated insects, a feature readily explained by the presence of a viscous resin. Pliny refers to the way in which it exerts a charge when rubbed, a property well known to Theophrastus. He devotes considerable space to bees, which he admires for their industry, organisation, and honey, discussing the significance of the queen bee and the use of smoke by beekeepers at the hive to collect honeycomb. He praises the song of the nightingale.


title: Natural History (Pliny)

text: Botany is handled in Books XII to XVIII, with Theophrastus as one of Pliny's sources. The manufacture of papyrus and the various grades of papyrus available to Romans are described. Different types of trees and the properties of their wood are explained in Books XII to XIII. The vine, viticulture and varieties of grape are discussed in Book XIV, while Book XV covers the olive tree in detail, followed by other trees including the apple and pear, fig, cherry, myrtle and laurel, among others.


title: Natural History (Pliny)

text: Pliny gives special attention to spices, such as pepper, ginger, and cane sugar. He mentions different varieties of pepper, whose values are comparable with that of gold and silver, while sugar is noted only for its medicinal value.


title: Natural History (Pliny)

text: He is critical of perfumes: "Perfumes are the most pointless of luxuries, for pearls and jewels are at least passed on to one's heirs, and clothes last for a time, but perfumes lose their fragrance and perish as soon as they are used." He gives a summary of their ingredients, such as attar of roses, which he says is the most widely used base. Other substances added include myrrh, cinnamon, and balsam gum.


title: Natural History (Pliny)

text: A major section of the "Natural History", Books XX to XXIX, discusses matters related to medicine, especially plants that yield useful drugs. Pliny lists over 900 drugs, compared to 600 in Dioscorides's "De Materia Medica", 550 in Theophrastus, and 650 in Galen.


title: Natural History (Pliny)

text: The poppy and opium are mentioned; Pliny notes that opium induces sleep and can be fatal. Diseases and their treatment are covered in book XXVI.


title: Natural History (Pliny)

text: Pliny addresses magic in Book XXX. He is critical of the Magi, attacking astrology, and suggesting that magic originated in medicine, creeping in by pretending to offer health. He names Zoroaster of Ancient Persia as the source of magical ideas. He states that Pythagoras, Empedocles, Democritus and Plato all travelled abroad to learn magic, remarking that it was surprising anyone accepted the doctrines they brought back, and that medicine (of Hippocrates) and magic (of Democritus) should have flourished simultaneously at the time of the Peloponnesian War.


title: Natural History (Pliny)

text: The methods used to cultivate crops are described in Book XVIII. He praises Cato the Elder and his work "De Agri Cultura", which he uses as a primary source. Pliny's work includes discussion of all known cultivated crops and vegetables, as well as herbs and remedies derived from them. He describes machines used in cultivation and processing the crops. For example, he describes a simple mechanical reaper that cut the ears of wheat and barley without the straw and was pushed by oxen (Book XVIII, chapter 72). It is depicted on a bas-relief found at Trier from the later Roman period. He also describes how grain is ground using a pestle, a hand-mill, or a mill driven by water wheels, as found in Roman water mills across the Empire.


title: Natural History (Pliny)

text: Pliny extensively discusses metals starting with gold and silver (Book XXXIII), and then the base metals copper, mercury, lead, tin and iron, as well as their many alloys such as electrum, bronze, pewter, and steel (Book XXXIV).


title: Natural History (Pliny)

text: He is critical of greed for gold, such as the absurdity of using the metal for coins in the early Republic. He gives examples of the way rulers proclaimed their prowess by exhibiting gold looted from their campaigns, such as that by Claudius after conquering Britain, and tells the stories of Midas and Croesus. He discusses why gold is unique in its malleability and ductility, far greater than any other metal. The examples given are its ability to be beaten into fine foil with just one ounce producing 750 leaves four inches square. Fine gold wire can be woven into cloth, although imperial clothes usually combined it with natural fibres like wool. He once saw Agrippina the Younger, wife of Claudius, at a public show on the Fucine Lake involving a naval battle, wearing a military cloak made of gold. He rejects Herodotus's claims of Indian gold obtained by ants or dug up by griffins in Scythia.


title: Natural History (Pliny)

text: Silver, he writes, does not occur in native form and has to be mined, usually occurring with lead ores. Spain produced the most silver in his time, many of the mines having been started by Hannibal. One of the largest had galleries running up to two miles into the mountain, while men worked day and night draining the mine in shifts. Pliny is probably referring to the reverse overshot water-wheels operated by treadmill and found in Roman mines. Britain, he says, is very rich in lead, which is found on the surface at many places, and thus very easy to extract; production was so high that a law was passed attempting to restrict mining.


title: Natural History (Pliny)

text: Fraud and forgery are described in detail; in particular coin counterfeiting by mixing copper with silver, or even admixture with iron. Tests had been developed for counterfeit coins and proved very popular with the victims, mostly ordinary people. He deals with the liquid metal mercury, also found in silver mines. He records that it is toxic, and amalgamates with gold, so is used for refining and extracting that metal. He says mercury is used for gilding copper, while antimony is found in silver mines and is used as an eyebrow cosmetic.


title: Natural History (Pliny)

text: The main ore of mercury is cinnabar, long used as a pigment by painters. He says that the colour is similar to "scolecium", probably the kermes insect. The dust is very toxic, so workers handling the material wear face masks of bladder skin. Copper and bronze are, says Pliny, most famous for their use in statues including colossi, gigantic statues as tall as towers, the most famous being the Colossus of Rhodes. He personally saw the massive statue of Nero in Rome, which was removed after the emperor's death. The face of the statue was modified shortly after Nero's death during Vespasian's reign, to make it a statue of Sol. Hadrian moved it, with the help of the architect Decrianus and 24 elephants, to a position next to the Flavian Amphitheatre (now called the Colosseum).


title: Natural History (Pliny)

text: Pliny gives a special place to iron, distinguishing the hardness of steel from what is now called wrought iron, a softer grade. He is scathing about the use of iron in warfare.


title: Natural History (Pliny)

text: In the last two books of the work (Books XXXVI and XXXVII), Pliny describes many different minerals and gemstones, building on works by Theophrastus and other authors. The topic concentrates on the most valuable gemstones, and he criticises the obsession with luxury products such as engraved gems and hardstone carvings. He provides a thorough discussion of the properties of fluorspar, noting that it is carved into vases and other decorative objects. The account of magnetism includes the myth of Magnes the shepherd.


title: Natural History (Pliny)

text: Pliny moves into crystallography and mineralogy, describing the octahedral shape of the diamond and recording that diamond dust is used by gem engravers to cut and polish other gems, owing to its great hardness. He states that rock crystal is valuable for its transparency and hardness, and can be carved into vessels and implements. He relates the story of a woman who owned a ladle made of the mineral, paying the sum of 150,000 sesterces for the item. Nero deliberately broke two crystal cups when he realised that he was about to be deposed, so denying their use to anyone else.


title: Natural History (Pliny)

text: Pliny returns to the problem of fraud and the detection of false gems using several tests, including the scratch test, where counterfeit gems can be marked by a steel file, and genuine ones not. Perhaps it refers to glass imitations of jewellery gemstones. He refers to using one hard mineral to scratch another, presaging the Mohs hardness scale. Diamond sits at the top of the series because, Pliny says, it will scratch all other minerals.


title: Natural History (Pliny)

text: Pliny's chapters on Roman and Greek art are especially valuable because his work is virtually the only available classical source of information on the subject.


title: Natural History (Pliny)

text: In the history of art, the original Greek authorities are Duris of Samos, Xenocrates of Sicyon, and Antigonus of Carystus. The anecdotic element has been ascribed to Duris (XXXIV:61); the notices of the successive developments of art and the list of workers in bronze and painters to Xenocrates; and a large amount of miscellaneous information to Antigonus. Both Xenocrates and Antigonus are named in connection with Parrhasius (XXXV:68), while Antigonus is named in the indexes of XXXIII–XXXIV as a writer on the art of embossing metal, or working it in ornamental relief or intaglio.


title: Natural History (Pliny)

text: Greek epigrams contribute their share in Pliny's descriptions of pictures and statues. One of the minor authorities for books XXXIV–XXXV is Heliodorus of Athens, the author of a work on the monuments of Athens. In the indices to XXXIII–XXXVI, an important place is assigned to Pasiteles of Naples, the author of a work in five volumes on famous works of art (XXXVI:40), probably incorporating the substance of the earlier Greek treatises; but Pliny's indebtedness to Pasiteles is denied by Kalkmann, who holds that Pliny used the chronological work of Apollodorus of Athens, as well as a current catalogue of artists. Pliny's knowledge of the Greek authorities was probably mainly due to Varro, whom he often quotes (e.g. XXXIV:56, XXXV:113, 156, XXXVI:17, 39, 41).


title: Natural History (Pliny)

text: For a number of items relating to works of art near the coast of Asia Minor and in the adjacent islands, Pliny was indebted to the general, statesman, orator and historian Gaius Licinius Mucianus, who died before 77. Pliny mentions the works of art collected by Vespasian in the Temple of Peace and in his other galleries (XXXIV:84), but much of his information about the position of such works in Rome is from books, not personal observation. The main merit of his account of ancient art, the only classical work of its kind, is that it is a compilation ultimately founded on the lost textbooks of Xenocrates and on the biographies of Duris and Antigonus.


title: Natural History (Pliny)

text: In several passages, he gives proof of independent observation (XXXIV:38, 46, 63, XXXV:17, 20, 116 seq.). He prefers the marble "Laocoön and his Sons" in the palace of Titus (widely believed to be the statue that is now in the Vatican) to all the pictures and bronzes in the world (XXXVI:37). The statue is attributed by Pliny to three sculptors from the island of Rhodes: Agesander, Athenodoros (possibly son of Agesander) and Polydorus.


title: Natural History (Pliny)

text: In the temple near the Flaminian Circus, Pliny admires the Ares and the Aphrodite of Scopas, "which would suffice to give renown to any other spot". He adds:


title: Natural History (Pliny)

text: At Rome indeed the works of art are legion; besides, one effaces another from the memory and, however beautiful they may be, we are distracted by the overpowering claims of duty and business; for to admire art we need leisure and profound stillness (XXXVI:27).


title: Natural History (Pliny)

text: Pliny provides lucid descriptions of Roman mining. He describes gold mining in detail, with large-scale use of water to scour alluvial gold deposits. The description probably refers to mining in Northern Spain, especially at the large Las Médulas site. Pliny describes methods of underground mining, including the use of fire-setting to attack the gold-bearing rock and so extract the ore. In another part of his work, Pliny describes the use of undermining to gain access to the veins. Pliny was scathing about the search for precious metals and gemstones: "Gangadia or quartzite is considered the hardest of all things – except for the greed for gold, which is even more stubborn."


title: Natural History (Pliny)

text: Book XXXIV covers the base metals, their uses and their extraction. Copper mining is mentioned, using a variety of ores including copper pyrites and marcasite, some of the mining being underground, some on the surface. Iron mining is covered, followed by lead and tin.


title: Natural History (Pliny)

text: The anonymous fourth-century compilation "Medicina Plinii" contains more than 1,100 pharmacological recipes, the vast majority of them from the "Historia naturalis"; perhaps because Pliny's name was attached to it, it enjoyed huge popularity in the Middle Ages.


title: Natural History (Pliny)

text: Isidore of Seville's "Etymologiae" ("The Etymologies", c. 600–625) quotes from Pliny 45 times in Book XII alone; Books XII, XIII and XIV are all based largely on the "Natural History". Through Isidore, Vincent of Beauvais's "Speculum Maius" ("The Great Mirror", c. 1235–1264) also used Pliny as a source for his own work.


title: Natural History (Pliny)

text: In this regard, Pliny's influence over the medieval period has been argued to be quite extensive. For example, one twentieth century historian has argued that Pliny's reliance on book-based knowledge, and not direct observation, shaped intellectual life to the degree that it "stymie[d] the progress of western science". This sentiment can be observed in the early modern period when Niccolò Leoniceno's 1509 "De Erroribus Plinii" ("On Pliny's Errors") attacked Pliny for lacking a proper scientific method, unlike Theophrastus or Dioscorides, and for lacking knowledge of philosophy or medicine.


title: Natural History (Pliny)

text: Sir Thomas Browne expressed scepticism about Pliny's dependability in his 1646 "Pseudodoxia Epidemica":


title: Natural History (Pliny)

text: Grundy Steiner of Northwestern University, in a 1955 judgement considered by Thomas R. Laehn to represent the collective opinion of Pliny's critics, wrote of Pliny that "He was not an original, creative thinker, nor a pioneer of research to be compared either with Aristotle and Theophrastus or with any of the great moderns. He was, rather, the compiler of a secondary sourcebook."


title: Natural History (Pliny)

text: The Italian author Italo Calvino, in his 1991 book "Why Read the Classics?", wrote that while people often consult Pliny's "Natural History" for facts and curiosities, he is an author who "deserves an extended read, for the measured movement of his prose, which is enlivened by his admiration for everything that exists and his respect for the infinite diversity of all phenomena". Calvino notes that while Pliny is eclectic, he was not uncritical, though his evaluations of sources are inconsistent and unpredictable. Further, Calvino compares Pliny to Immanuel Kant, in that God is prevented by logic from conflicting with reason, even though (in Calvino's view) Pliny makes a pantheistic identification of God as being immanent in nature. As for destiny, Calvino writes:


title: Natural History (Pliny)

text: The art historian Jacob Isager writes in the introduction to his analysis of Pliny's chapters on art in the "Natural History" that his intention is:to show how Pliny in his encyclopedic work – which is the result of adaptations from many earlier writers and according to Pliny himself was intended as a reference work – nevertheless throughout expresses a basic attitude to Man and his relationship with Nature; how he understands Man's role as an inventor ("scientist and artist"); and finally his attitude to the use and abuse of Nature's and Man's creations, to progress and decay. More specifically, Isager writes that "the guiding principle in Pliny's treatment of Greek and Roman art is the function of art in society", while Pliny "uses his art history to express opinions about the ideology of the state".


title: Natural History (Pliny)

text: Paula Findlen, writing in the "Cambridge History of Science", asserts that Natural history was an ancient form of scientific knowledge, most closely associated with the writings of the Roman encyclopedist Pliny the Elder ... His loquacious and witty "Historia naturalis" offered an expansive definition of this subject. [It] broadly described all entities found in nature, or derived from nature, that could be seen in the Roman world and read about in its books: art, artifacts, and peoples as well as animals, plants, and minerals were included in his project. Findlen contrasts Pliny's approach with that of his intellectual predecessors Aristotle and Theophrastus, who sought general causes of natural phenomena, while Pliny was more interested in cataloguing natural wonders, and his contemporary Dioscorides explored nature for its uses in Roman medicine in his great work "De Materia Medica".


title: Natural History (Pliny)

text: In the view of Mary Beagon, writing in "The Classical Tradition" in 2010:the "Historia naturalis" has regained its status to a greater extent than at any time since the advent of Humanism. Work by those with scientific as well as philological expertise has resulted in improvements both to Pliny's text and to his reputation as a scientist. The essential coherence of his enterprise has also been rediscovered, and his ambitious portrayal, in all its manifestations, of 'nature, that is, life'.. is recognized as a unique cultural record of its time.


title: Birmingham Six

text: The Birmingham Six were six Irishmen who were each sentenced to life imprisonment in 1975 following their false convictions for the 1974 Birmingham pub bombings. Their convictions were declared unsafe and unsatisfactory and quashed by the Court of Appeal on 14 March 1991. The six men were later awarded financial compensation ranging from £840,000 to £1.2 million.


title: Birmingham Six

text: The Birmingham pub bombings took place on 21 November 1974 and were attributed to the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA). Improvised explosive devices were placed in two central Birmingham pubs: the Mulberry Bush at the foot of the Rotunda, and the Tavern in the Town – a basement pub in New Street. The resulting explosions, at 20:25 and 20:27, collectively were the most deadly attacks in the UK since World War II (until surpassed by the Denmark Place fire in 1980); 21 people were killed (ten at the Mulberry Bush and eleven at the Tavern in the Town) and 182 people were injured.


title: Birmingham Six

text: Six men were arrested: Hugh Callaghan, Patrick Joseph Hill, Gerard Hunter, Richard McIlkenny, William Power and John Walker. Five were Belfast-born, while John Walker was born in Derry. All six had lived in Birmingham since the 1960s. All the men except for Callaghan had left the city early on the evening of 21 November from New Street Station, shortly before the explosions. They were travelling to Belfast to attend the funeral of James McDade, an IRA member whom they all knew. McDade had accidentally killed himself on 14 November when his bomb detonated prematurely while he was planting it at a telephone exchange in Coventry.,


title: Birmingham Six

text: When they reached Heysham, Lancashire, they and others were subject to a Special Branch stop and search. The men did not tell the police of the true purpose of their visit to Belfast, a fact that was later held against them. While the search was in progress the police were informed of the Birmingham bombings. The men agreed to be taken to Morecambe, Lancashire, police station for forensic tests.


title: Birmingham Six

text: On the morning of 22 November, after the forensic tests and questioning by the Morecambe police, the men were transferred to the custody of West Midlands Serious Crime Squad police unit. Callaghan was taken into custody on the evening of 22 November.


title: Birmingham Six

text: While the men were in the custody of the West Midlands Police they were allegedly deprived of food and sleep, and were sometimes interrogated for as much as 12 hours without a break.Threats were made against them and they suffered abuse: punches, dogs being let loose within a foot of them, and a mock execution. William Power alleged that he was assaulted by members of Birmingham Criminal Investigation Department. Richard McIlkenny's daughter said, "When they (the family) saw him the next day, he had been so badly beaten he was unrecognisable."


title: Birmingham Six

text: Power confessed while in Morecambe while Callaghan, Walker and McIlkenny confessed at Queens Road in Aston, Birmingham.


title: Birmingham Six

text: On 12 May 1975, the six men were charged with murder. Three other men, James Kelly, Mick Murray and Michael Sheehan, were charged with conspiracy.


title: Birmingham Six

text: The trial began on 9 June 1975 at the Crown Court sitting at Lancaster Castle, before Mr Justice Bridge and a jury. After legal arguments the statements made in November were deemed admissible as evidence. The unreliability of these statements was later established. Thomas Watt provided circumstantial evidence about John Walker's association with Provisional IRA members.


title: Birmingham Six

text: Forensic scientist Dr Frank Skuse used positive Griess test results to claim that Hill and Power had handled explosives. Callaghan, Hunter, McIlkenny and Walker all had tested negative. GCMS tests at a later date were negative for Power and contradicted the initial results for Hill. Skuse's claim that he was 99% certain that Power and Hill had explosives traces on their hands was opposed by defence expert Dr Hugh Kenneth Black of the Royal Institute of Chemistry, the former HM Chief Inspector of Explosives, Home Office. Skuse's evidence was clearly preferred by Bridge. The jury found the six men guilty of murder. On 15 August 1975, they were each sentenced to 21 life sentences.


title: Birmingham Six

text: On 28 November 1974, the men appeared in court for the second time after they had been remanded into custody at HM Prison Winson Green. All showed bruising and other signs of ill-treatment. Fourteen prison officers were charged with assault in June 1975, but were all acquitted at a trial presided over by Mr. Justice Swanwick. The Six brought a civil claim for damages against the West Midlands Police in 1977, which was struck out on 17 January 1980 by the Court of Appeal (Civil Division), constituted by the Master of the Rolls, Lord Denning, Goff LJ and Sir George Baker, under the principle of estoppel.


title: Birmingham Six

text: In March 1976 their first application for leave to appeal was dismissed by the Court of Appeal, presided over by Lord Widgery CJ. Journalist Chris Mullin investigated the case for Granada TV's "World in Action" series. In 1985, the first of several "World in Action" programmes casting doubt on the men's convictions was broadcast. In 1986, Mullin's book, "Error of Judgment: The Truth About the Birmingham Pub Bombings", set out a detailed case supporting the men's claims that they were innocent. It included his claim to have met some of those who were actually responsible for the bombings.


title: Birmingham Six

text: The Home Secretary, Douglas Hurd, referred the case back to the Court of Appeal. In January 1988, after a six-week hearing (at that time the longest criminal appeal hearing ever held), the convictions were ruled to be safe and satisfactory. The Court of Appeal, presided over by the Lord Chief Justice Lord Lane, dismissed the appeals. Over the next three years, newspaper articles, television documentaries and books brought forward new evidence to question the safety of the convictions.


title: Birmingham Six

text: Their second full appeal, in 1991, was allowed. Hunter was represented by Lord Gifford QC, the others by Michael Mansfield QC. New evidence of police fabrication and suppression of evidence, the successful attacks on both the confessions and the 1975 forensic evidence caused the Crown to decide not to resist the appeals. The Court of Appeal, constituted by Lord Justices Lloyd, Mustill and Farquharson, stated that "in the light of the fresh scientific evidence, which at least throws grave doubt on Dr. Skuse's evidence, if it does not destroy it altogether, these convictions are both unsafe and unsatisfactory." On 14 March 1991 the six walked free.


title: Birmingham Six

text: In 2001, a decade after their release, the six men were awarded compensation ranging from £840,000 to £1.2 million.


title: Birmingham Six

text: Richard McIlkenny, one of the six men wrongly convicted of the Birmingham pub bombings, died of cancer on 21 May 2006, aged 73. He had returned to Ireland shortly after he was freed from prison, and died in hospital with his family at his bedside. McIlkenny was buried on 24 May in Celbridge, County Kildare. The other members of the Birmingham Six were present at his wake and funeral.


title: Birmingham Six

text: Of the five surviving members of the Birmingham Six, Patrick Hill currently resides in Ayrshire; Gerard Hunter in Portugal; John Walker in Donegal; and both Hugh Callaghan and William Power in London.


title: Birmingham Six

text: The success of the appeals and other miscarriages of justice caused the Home Secretary to set up a Royal Commission on Criminal Justice in 1991. The commission reported in 1993 and led to the Criminal Appeal Act 1995 which established the Criminal Cases Review Commission in 1997. Superintendent George Reade and two other police officers were charged with perjury and conspiracy to pervert the course of justice but were never prosecuted. During the inquest into the bombings in 2016, Hill stated that he knew the identities of three of the bombers who were still "free men" in Ireland.


title: Birmingham Six

text: On 28 March 1990, ITV broadcast the Granada Television docudrama, "Who Bombed Birmingham?", which re-enacted the bombings and subsequent key events in Chris Mullin's campaign. Written by Rob Ritchie and directed by Mike Beckham, it starred John Hurt as Mullin, Martin Shaw as "World in Action" producer Ian McBride, Ciarán Hinds as Richard McIlkenny, one of the Six, and Patrick Malahide as Michael Mansfield (QC). It was repackaged for export as "The Investigation – Inside a Terrorist Bombing", and first shown on American television on 22 April 1990. Granada's BAFTA-nominated follow-up documentary after the release of the six men, "World in Action Special: The Birmingham Six – Their Own Story", was telecast on 18 March 1991. It was released on DVD in 2007 in Network's first volume of "World in Action" productions.


title: Birmingham Six

text: In 1994, Frank Skuse brought libel proceedings against Granada, contending that "World in Action" had falsely portrayed him as negligent. His counsel asserted in the High Court that scientific tests performed in 1992, after the Crown's substantive concession of the accused men's third appeal, showed that traces of nitroglycerine were detected on swabs taken after the bombings from the hands of Hunter and Hill, and on rail tickets handled by McIlkenny and Power. Granada maintained there were never any traces of explosives on the six men. Skuse abandoned the action later that year.


title: Birmingham Six

text: In December 1987, the Court of Appeal granted an injunction which prevented Channel 4 from re-enacting portions of a hearing in the litigation, as it was "likely to undermine public confidence in the administration of justice" if shown during the appeal, in violation of the Contempt of Court Act 1981. In their book "The Three Pillars of Liberty" (1996) Keir Starmer, Francesca Klug, and Stuart Weir said the decision had had a "chilling effect" on other news and current affairs programmes.


title: Birmingham Six

text: In January 1988 after their first appeal failed, "The Sun" said "LOONY MP BACKS BOMB GANG" and an editorial said, "If "The Sun" had its way, we would have been tempted to string 'em up years ago".


title: Birmingham Six

text: In 1993 and 1994, the Birmingham Six received an undisclosed amount from both "The Sunday Telegraph" and "The Sun" in an action for libel for the newspapers' reporting of police statements. "The New York Times" reported in 1997 that the Six had brought libel actions against publications for reporting slurs against them, and that a libel law that usually favours plaintiffs was sending a chill through the British press. The Conservative MP David Evans was sued by them in March 1997 for saying that they were guilty of killing hundreds of people before they were caught. Evans apologised 16 months later. He paid both damages and costs and promised he would never repeat the allegation again.


title: Birmingham Six

text: During his investigation, that proved crucial in establishing the innocence of the Six, Chris Mullin located one of the actual bombers and persuaded him to provide information which helped the men falsely convicted. Mullin promised that he would never reveal his source. At the time the police were not interested, as they believed that they had already arrested the culprits.


title: Birmingham Six

text: However, in 2018 the West Midlands police reopened the investigation, almost 50 years after the event. Two of the four bombers had died. Mullin cooperated with the investigation as far as he felt was possible, for example providing notes of interviews with dead bomber Michael Murray and a redacted copy of notes of other interviews. But Mullin refused to name other people interviewed. The West Midlands police applied for an order under the Terrorism Act 2000 to compel Mullin to reveal his sources; he refused, later saying that source protection is a cornerstone of the free press in a democracy.


title: Birmingham Six

text: In March 2022 Judge Lucraft ruled that it was not in the public interest to oblige Mullin to identify the living perpetrator. Mullin's legal team later said, hailing the ruling, that the right of a journalist to protect their sources was fundamental to a free press in a democracy.


title: Age of Empires (video game)

text: Age of Empires (AoE) is a real-time strategy video game based on history, developed by Ensemble Studios and published by Microsoft, and the first game in the "Age of Empires" series. The game uses the Genie Engine, a 2D sprite-based game engine. The game allows the user to act as the leader of an ancient civilization by advancing it through four ages (the Stone, Tool, Bronze, and Iron Ages), gaining access to new and improved units with each advance.


title: Age of Empires (video game)

text: Originally touted as "Civilization" meets "Warcraft", some reviewers felt that the game failed to live up to these expectations when it was released. Despite this, it received generally good reviews, and an expansion pack, titled "", was released in 1998. Both the original "Age of Empires" and the expansion pack were later released as "The Gold Edition". The first sequel, "Age of Empires II", was released in 1999. "", a remastered version of the game, was released on February 20, 2018.


title: Age of Empires (video game)

text: "Age of Empires" requires the player to develop a civilization from a handful of hunter-gatherers to an expansive Iron Age Empire. To assure victory, the player must gather resources in order to pay for new units, buildings and more advanced technology. Resources must be preserved, as no new resources become available as the game progresses; for example, trees that are cut down will not grow back.


title: Age of Empires (video game)

text: Twelve civilizations are available, each with individual sets of attributes, including a varying number of available technologies and units. Each civilization has technologies unique to them, so that no civilization possesses all the technologies possible within the game.


title: Age of Empires (video game)

text: A major component of the game is the advancement through four ages. These are the Stone Age (Mesolithic/Nomad/Paleolithic), the Tool Age (Neolithic/Chalcolithic), the Bronze Age and the Iron Age. Advancement between ages is researched at the Town Center, and each advancement brings the player new technologies, weapons, and units.


title: Age of Empires (video game)

text: The game features four single-player campaigns in which the player is required to complete specific objectives. Campaigns are a collection of scenarios which are completed in a linear fashion. The campaigns follow the history of the Egyptian, Greek, Babylonian and Yamato civilizations; there is also a complete campaign specially made for the demo version that takes place in the Hittite Empire. Aside from the campaigns, there is a game mode called "random map", in which a different map is generated for each new game. Variations of random map, such as the resource-heavy "death match", are also available.


title: Age of Empires (video game)

text: "Age of Empires" facilitated online and network play with up to 8 people simultaneously. Because the network play is less sophisticated than that of modern games, lag and disconnections often occur. Until June 19, 2006, multiplayer gameplay was supported by Microsoft Gaming Zone. At that point, the Zone abandoned support of most CD-ROM games, including "Age of Empires" and "".


title: Age of Empires (video game)

text: The creation of user-made scenarios or series of scenarios (campaigns) for the game was made possible using the "Scenario Builder". This tool is simpler and easier to learn than comparable editors used in more modern games, but it has fewer capabilities as a result. Ensemble Studios used the Scenario Builder to make the single-player campaigns which shipped with the retail game. Various unofficial sites exist where custom scenarios can be submitted and downloaded. In late 2005, it was discovered that by modifying various data files, units present in the beta versions of the game could be made available in the editor. Some obscure units include a spaceship and a hero that changes ownership when units move near it. Through data editing, the rules of unit placement can also be modified. This allows units to be placed on any terrain and on top of other units, which creates new possibilities for design. Other significant discoveries include new terrain templates, a mode to triple each unit's hitpoints and a tool to edit map sizes.


title: Age of Empires (video game)

text: Players choose to play as one of 12 civilizations. The civilizations are sorted into four distinct architectural styles, based on East Asian, Mesopotamian, Egyptian and Greek architecture, which determine their in-game appearance.


title: Age of Empires (video game)

text: Technology is researched at specific buildings, to which they are generally related; for example, religious research is done in temples and improved armor is researched in the storage pit. Technological advances come in many categories, such as military upgrades (better arms and armor for units), economic upgrades (increasing the efficiency of resource gathering), religious upgrades (faster conversion rates and more abilities for priests) and infrastructure upgrades (stronger fortifications and more resilient buildings). As basic technology research is completed, more advanced technologies may become available. Some technologies are not available to certain civilizations.


title: Age of Empires (video game)

text: Technology plays a very important role in the strategy of the game. As a civilization progresses through the ages, technology becomes more and more expensive, which makes collecting the necessary resources to research them difficult. As a consequence, balancing the workforce of villagers across the various resources can make the difference between victory and defeat.


title: Age of Empires (video game)

text: Players control a variety of civilian and military units. Most units can be upgraded through research (e.g. faster gathering for villagers, stronger armor for military units, and longer range for archers).


title: Age of Empires (video game)

text: Land-based units are the most prevalent in gameplay. Villagers are the most basic units in "Age of Empires". Their primary function is to collect resources, cutting down trees for wood, mining for stone and gold, and hunting, foraging, farming, or fishing to acquire food. Villagers can construct buildings and repair both buildings and naval vessels, and are capable of engaging in hand-to-hand combat when necessary. Priests are non-combat units which can heal allied units or "convert" enemy units (in which case the target unit changes allegiance). Infantry units, such as clubmen, swordsmen, and hoplites use melee combat to attack at short range. Mounted units include chariots, cavalry, and war elephants. Archers, mounted or on foot, attack at range. Siege units are of two types: catapults and ballista. Catapults hurl stones which generate blast damage, affecting all units in a small area, and are especially effective against buildings and groups of units. The ballista is less damaging against buildings and units, but it fires faster and is cheaper than the catapult.


title: Age of Empires (video game)

text: Nautical units often play a secondary role, but can be essential to victory. Fishing boats are similar to villagers in that they can gather fish. Merchant ships trade resources from the stockpile and exchange it for gold at another player's dock, with the amount of gold earned being relative to the distance between both docks. Transport ships carry land units from one area of land to another. As well as attacking enemy ships, warships can be very effective in attacking land-based units close to the shoreline (because melee units cannot fight back). Warships come either as galleys which fire arrows or triremes which launch bolts or boulders (very effective against buildings near the shoreline).


title: Age of Empires (video game)

text: Unit types are identical, regardless of civilization (though certain civilizations may have improved variations of these units). So, for example, a Korean Choson broad swordsman is identical to a Persian or Phoenician one, as are bowmen, axemen, short swordsmen, cavalry, and so forth. Some armors and clothes are historically inaccurate, with the long swordsman bearing more resemblance to a Roman praetorian. Some units were also available in the game to civilizations that never, historically, had them; hoplites can be trained by every civilization except Persia, and some middle-Asian civilizations can train Legions and Centurions, while Japanese Yamato can build triremes.


title: Age of Empires (video game)

text: The Town Center is one of the most important buildings in the game. Here villagers are created, and age advancement is researched. Most scenarios have each player begin with a single Town Center; the ability to build multiple Town Centers is unlocked by the construction of the Government Center during the Bronze Age. The Town Center provides population support for four units. In order to build more units, houses must be constructed. Each house supports four units, and although any number of houses can be built, they can only support a maximum of fifty units.


title: Age of Empires (video game)

text: Military units are produced at specific buildings relevant to their area. All sea units are created at the docks. Walls and towers are defensive fortifications ("Age of Empires" was one of the first real-time strategy games to include walls strong enough to form a feasible means of defense). Farms are used to produce food. Granaries, storage pits, and the Town Center are used to store resources deposited by the villagers.


title: Age of Empires (video game)

text: Wonders are enormous monuments representing the architectural achievements of the time, such as the Egyptian Pyramids. They require huge amounts of resources to build and are constructed very slowly. Wonders can neither produce units nor conduct research. In scenarios with "Standard Victory" conditions, a player can win by constructing a wonder and keeping it from being destroyed for 2,000 years (about 10 minutes in the real world). Building a wonder also greatly increases a player's score, which is beneficial in "score" games. Players typically make it their top priority to destroy enemy wonders, especially under Standard Victory conditions. For this reason and because a wonder is relatively easy to destroy, a wonder must be well-guarded at all times.


title: Age of Empires (video game)

text: "Age of Empires" (under the working title "Dawn of Man") was the first game developed by Ensemble Studios. Its historical setting was chosen to be more plausible and accessible, particularly to casual gamers, than existing games. At the time, other real-time strategy games had science fiction and fantasy settings, so the historical setting of "Age of Empires" enabled it to stand out. The designers received much of their inspiration from the game "Civilization", with its proven historical setting; this was noted among reviewers as something positive. The game was announced in June 1996 at the Electronic Entertainment Expo. "Age of Empires" was designed by Bruce Shelley, Tony Goodman (in charge of the game's artwork), and Dave Pottinger (in charge of the game's artificial intelligence). Stephen Rippy was the music director (a role he kept through the series), with occasional help from his brother, David Rippy, as well as Kevin McMullan. He created the original music in "Age of Empires" using sounds from actual instruments from the periods in the game, as well as their digital samples. The tunes were the result of extensive research on the cultures, styles, and instruments used.


title: Age of Empires (video game)

text: "The Rise of Rome" is an expansion pack for "Age of Empires". It is based on the rise of the Roman Empire, and adds the Roman Empire and three other playable civilizations to "Age of Empires". It was officially released on October 22, 1998.


title: Age of Empires (video game)

text: Gameplay-wise, the expansion introduced numerous interface tweaks, such as unit queuing, the ability to double click a single unit and highlight others of the same unit-type, balancing damage done by catapults, and the option to increase the population limit beyond 50 (only in multiplayer games).


title: Age of Empires (video game)

text: By installing the 1.0a update from 1999, it is also possible to use the period key to cycle through idle villagers. "The Rise of Rome" also features a new Roman architectural design, shared by all four new civilizations, the Romans, Palmyrans, Macedonians and Carthaginians. Four new researchable technologies have been added. Additional new features include five new units, four new random map types, and a larger map size option. Pathfinding for all units is also considerably improved. New music was composed for this expansion, which replaced the original score entirely. After the last official patch by the developer, the game's community continued the support by an own-made unofficial patch to address remaining issues and to improve compatibility with modern hardware and OSes.


title: Age of Empires (video game)

text: According to Microsoft, "The Rise of Rome"s demo received 1 million downloads from its official website alone by April 1999, and another 350,000 from CNET's Download.com. Sales of the game reached 1.2 million copies by June 2001. "The Rise of Rome" won "Computer Games Strategy Plus"s 1998 "Add-On of the Year" award. The editors wrote that it "added whole new campaigns, refined rules, and a fresh new gaming experience for a title that was already highly regarded."


title: Age of Empires (video game)

text: In the United States, "Age of Empires" debuted at #7 on PC Data's computer game sales rankings for October 1997. It secured places eighth and 13th the following two months, respectively. By the end of 1997, "Age of Empires" totaled sales in the country above 178,000 units, for revenues in excess of $8 million. This performance made it the United States' most successful real-time strategy game during late 1997: a writer for "PC Gamer US" noted that its sales surpassed the combined totals of rivals "Total Annihilation" and "" over the same period, and were over four times greater than those of "".


title: Age of Empires (video game)

text: "Age of Empires" was also successful worldwide, according to Microsoft. It was released in 55 countries during its first four months, and over 650,000 copies were shipped globally by December 12. Microsoft reported that it was consistently the top-selling computer strategy title in the United States, France, Germany and the United Kingdom through January 1998. Globally, the game sold-through 850,000 units by February.


title: Age of Empires (video game)

text: "Age of Empires" was a hit in the German market, where it debuted at #1 on 's sales rankings for the latter half of October 1997. After holding this position in the first half of November, it remained in Media Control's top 5 through the end of 1997. The following year, "Age of Empires" placed consistently in the top 3 through March, when it rose again to #1 in the last two weeks of the month. By the end of May, it had spent 28 consecutive weeks in Media Control's top rankings, with placements of fifth and eighth that month. "Age of Empires" proceeded to become the fourth-best-selling computer game in the German market during 1998's first nine months. It received a "Gold" award from the (VUD) in August, for sales of at least 100,000 units across Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Sales in the German market totaled 115,000 units by the end of September, and the VUD raised "Age of Empires" to "Platinum" status, for 200,000 sales, by November. At the 1999 Milia festival in Cannes, "Age of Empires" took home a "Gold" prize for revenues above €15 million in the European Union during 1998. It remained at 14th on Media Control's charts for the German region by January 1999, continuing a 60-week streak on the charts.


title: Age of Empires (video game)

text: Sales of the game in South Korea alone reached roughly 150,000 units by 2000. According to PC Data, it was the United States' 10th-best-selling computer game during the January–November 1998 period. "Age of Empires" was a commercial success, selling 3 million copies by 2000 and grossing $120 million in revenue.


title: Age of Empires (video game)

text: "Age of Empires" was generally well received by critics, and scored highly on review aggregator websites including an 8.3 out of 10 on Metacritic, an 87% on GameRankings, an 85 out of 100 on MobyGames.


title: Age of Empires (video game)

text: "Game Informer" ranked it the 81st best game made in its 100th issue in 2001. They called it a cross between "Warcraft" and "SimCity" and praised its multiplayer and its popularity among gamers. Game Revolution categorized the game as "a cross between "Civilization II" and """, while GameSpot lamented that it was "a simple combat game rather than a glorious empire-builder", describing it as ""Warcraft" with a hint of "Civilization"." While "Computer Gaming World"s Elliott Chin compared the game extensively to "WarCraft II", he said that it has "great depth, and when compared to its real-time brethren, it has to be the most sophisticated of the bunch". GameVortex wanted less of a combat-oriented gameplay, but praised the modes of play, commenting that "the random map generation [...] really keeps the game spiced up." GameSpot decried the level of micromanagement necessary to control the game (which was due to absence of production queues and low AI of the player's units) calling it "a poor idea", which "seriously diminishes ["Age of Empires"] enjoyability." GameVortex echoed this criticism, while PC Gameworld pointed out the subsequently released patches improving some of the faulty AI programming. Elliott Chin criticized the game's population limit, which he thought to be its "most serious grievance".


title: Age of Empires (video game)

text: While noting the similarities with "Warcraft II", PC Gameworld praised the uniqueness of each playable civilization, and noted that the "graphics are extremely detailed and have a hand-painted feel to them. It's rare to see a game this beautiful with such detailed unit movements." Game Revolution was impressed by the amount of different units of the game, and noted that the developers "obviously did [their] research here, and the result is a well rounded, historically accurate product (at least for a game)". The soundscape of the game was also criticized, with GameVortex stating that "the oral clues just aren't enough to let you differentiate just what's going on." With a view to the future of the game, GameRevolution emphasized the scenario editor, which "allows you total control in the design of scenarios and campaigns", a "tool at your disposal to create a scenario exactly to your liking."


title: Age of Empires (video game)

text: "Next Generation" reviewed the PC version of the game, rating it four stars out of five, and stated that "Having been in development for nearly an eternity, "Age of Empires" has largely delivered what was promised by "Civilization" co-creator, Bruce Shelley, and his team at Ensemble Studios."


title: Age of Empires (video game)

text: The game won numerous awards, including Gamecenter's 1997 "Game of the Year" and the 1st annual AIAS Interactive Achievement Awards' "Computer Strategy Game of the Year" award. "Age of Empires" was a runner-up for "Computer Gaming World"s 1997 "Strategy Game of the Year" award, which ultimately went to "".


title: Age of Empires (video game)

text: In June 2017, Adam Isgreen, creative director of Microsoft Studios announced "Age of Empires: Definitive Edition" at the Electronic Entertainment Expo 2017 and it was developed by Age of Empires' new internal studios namely, Forgotten Empires. It features overhauled graphics with support for 4K resolution, a remastered soundtrack, and other gameplay improvements, and was planned to be released on October 19, 2017, but was delayed until February 20, 2018. "Age of Empires: Definitive Edition" was released through the Windows Store and was met with mixed or average reviews and weighted score of 70 out of 100 in Metacritic. PC Gamer gave the game 60/100, calling the game "solid remake of a game past its time". GameSpot gave the game 6/10, praising its 4K graphics and upgraded soundtrack but criticizing old problems still persisting.


title: Oncotic pressure

text: Oncotic pressure, or colloid osmotic-pressure, is a form of osmotic pressure induced by the proteins, notably albumin, in a blood vessel's plasma (blood/liquid) that causes a pull on fluid back into the capillary. Participating colloids displace water molecules, thus creating a relative water molecule deficit with water molecules moving back into the circulatory system within the lower venous pressure end of capillaries.


title: Oncotic pressure

text: It has the opposing effect of both hydrostatic blood pressure pushing water and small molecules out of the blood into the interstitial spaces within the arterial end of capillaries and interstitial colloidal osmotic pressure. These interacting factors determine the partition balancing of extracellular water between the blood plasma and outside the blood stream.


title: Oncotic pressure

text: Oncotic pressure strongly affects the physiological function of the circulatory system. It is suspected to have a major effect on the pressure across the glomerular filter. However, this concept has been strongly criticised and attention has been shifted to the impact of the intravascular glycocalyx layer as the major player.


title: Oncotic pressure

text: 'Oncotic' by definition is termed as 'pertaining to swelling', indicating the effect of oncotic imbalance on the swelling of tissues.


title: Oncotic pressure

text: The word itself is derived from onco- and -ic; 'onco-' meaning 'pertaining to mass or tumors' and '-ic', which forms an adjective.


title: Oncotic pressure

text: Throughout the body, dissolved compounds have an osmotic pressure. Because large plasma proteins cannot easily cross through the capillary walls, their effect on the osmotic pressure of the capillary interiors will, to some extent, balance out the tendency for fluid to leak out of the capillaries. In other words, the oncotic pressure tends to pull fluid into the capillaries. In conditions where plasma proteins are reduced, e.g. from being lost in the urine (proteinuria), there will be a reduction in oncotic pressure and an increase in filtration across the capillary, resulting in excess fluid buildup in the tissues (edema).


title: Oncotic pressure

text: The large majority of oncotic pressure in capillaries is generated by the presence of high quantities of albumin, a protein that constitutes approximately 80% of the total oncotic pressure exerted by blood plasma on interstitial fluid . The total oncotic pressure of an average capillary is about 28 mmHg with albumin contributing approximately 22 mmHg of this oncotic pressure, despite only representing 50% of all protein in blood plasma at 35-50 g/L. Because blood proteins cannot escape through capillary endothelium, oncotic pressure of capillary beds tends to draw water into the vessels. It is necessary to understand the oncotic pressure as a balance; because the blood proteins reduce interior permeability, less plasma fluid can exit the vessel.


title: Oncotic pressure

text: Oncotic pressure is represented by the symbol Π or π in the Starling equation and elsewhere. The Starling equation in particular describes filtration in volume/s (J) by relating oncotic pressure (π) to capillary hydrostatic pressure (P), interstitial fluid hydrostatic pressure (P), and interstitial fluid oncotic pressure (π), as well as several descriptive coefficients, as shown below:


title: Oncotic pressure

text: At the arteriolar end of the capillary, blood pressure starts at about 36 mm Hg and decreases to around 15 mm Hg at the venous end, with oncotic pressure at a stable 25–28 mm Hg. Within the capillary, reabsorption due to this venous pressure difference is estimated to be around 90% that of the filtered fluid, with the extra 10% being returned via lymphatics in order to maintain stable blood volume.


title: Oncotic pressure

text: In tissues, physiological disruption can arise with decreased oncotic pressure, which can be determined using blood tests for protein concentration.


title: Oncotic pressure

text: Decreased colloidal osmotic pressure, most notably seen in hypoalbuminemia, can cause edema and decrease in blood volume as fluid is not reabsorbed into the bloodstream. Colloid pressure in these cases can be lost due to a number of different factors, but primarily decreased colloid production or increased loss of colloids through glomerular filtration. This low pressure often correlates with poor surgical outcomes.


title: Oncotic pressure

text: In the clinical setting, there are two types of fluids that are used for intravenous drips: crystalloids and colloids. Crystalloids are aqueous solutions of mineral salts or other water-soluble molecules. Colloids contain larger insoluble molecules, such as gelatin. There is some debate concerning the advantages and disadvantages of using biological vs. synthetic colloid solutions. Oncotic pressure values are approximately 290 mOsm per kg of water, which slightly differs from the osmotic pressure of the blood that has values approximating 300 mOsm /L. These colloidal solutions are typically used to remedy low colloid concentration, such as in hypoalbuminemia, but is also suspected to assist in injuries that typically increase fluid loss, such as burns.


title: Yayoi people

text: The were an ancient ethnicity that migrated to the Japanese archipelago from Korea and China during the Yayoi period (300 BCE–300 CE). Although highly controversial, a single study that utilized radiometric dating techniques inconclusively suggested a period that began between 1000 and 800 BCE. They interacted, intermarried, and warred with the established Jōmon people to form the modern Japanese people. Modern Japanese people have primarily Yayoi ancestry (about 90% on average, with their remaining ancestry deriving from the Jōmon).


title: Yayoi people

text: The terms Yayoi and Wajin can be used interchangeably, though "Wajin" (倭人) refers to the people of Wa and "Wajin" (和人) is another name for the modern Yamato people.


title: Yayoi people

text: It is estimated that Yayoi people mainly belonged to Haplogroup O-M176 (O1b2) (today accounting for about 32% of Japanese males), Haplogroup O-M122 (O2, formerly O3) (today ~20%) and Haplogroup O-M119 (O1) (today ~1%). Haplogroups O2-M122 and O1a-M119 are typical for East and Southeast Asians, whereas the present-day distribution of haplogroup O1b2-M176 is rather limited to Japan and Korea. suggests that haplogroup O1b2, which is common in today Koreans, Japanese and some Manchu, and O1 are one of the carriers of Yangtze civilization. As the Yangtze civilization declined several tribes crossed westward and northerly, to the Shandong peninsula, the Korean Peninsula and the Japanese archipelago. One study calls haplogroup O1b1 a major Austroasiatic paternal lineage and the haplogroup O1b2 (of Koreans and Japanese) a "para-Austroasiatic" paternal lineage.


title: Yayoi people

text: The modern Yamato people are predominantly descendants of the Yayoi people and closely related to other modern East Asians, particularly Koreans and Han Chinese. It is estimated that the majority of Japanese people around Tokyo have about 12% Jōmon ancestry or less. A genome research (Takashi et al. 2019) confirmed that modern Japanese (Yamato) descend mostly from the Yayoi people. Mitochondrial DNA analysis of Jōmon and modern Japanese samples show that there is a discontinuity between the mtDNAs of people from the Jōmon period and people from the Kofun and Heian periods. This finding implies that the genetic conversion of the Japanese people may have occurred during or before the Kofun era, at least at the Shomyoji site.


title: Yayoi people

text: Another genetic study (2019) estimated that modern Japanese (Yamato) share more than 90% of their genome with the Yayoi people and less than 10% with the Jomon. A more recent study by Gakuhari et al. 2019 estimates that modern Japanese people have between 90.2–92% Yayoi ancestry (with the 8–9.8% from the Jōmon) and cluster closely with other East Asians but are clearly distinct from the Ainu people. A geneflow estimation by the same study however suggests only 3.3% Jōmon ancestry in modern Japanese. A study by Kanazawa-Kiriyama et al. (2019) suggests 9–13% Jomon ancestry in the modern Japanese, and 27% in Ryukyuans, with the remainder in both being from the Yayoi.


title: Slazenger

text: Slazenger () is a British sports equipment brand owned by the Frasers Group (formerly Sports Direct). The company was established as a sporting goods shop in 1881 by Ralph and Albert Slazenger on London's Cannon Street. Slazenger was acquired by Dunlop Rubber in 1959. Dunlop was acquired by BTR in 1985. Sports Direct acquired the business in 2004.


title: Slazenger

text: The Frasers Group offers a range of products under the "Slazenger" label, including equipment for cricket, field hockey, golf, swimming, and tennis, including athletic shoes and a clothing line.


title: Slazenger

text: Slazenger has the longest-running sporting sponsorship in the world, thanks to its association with the Wimbledon Tennis Championship, providing balls for the tournament since 1902. Slazenger also produced the official match ball for the 1966 FIFA World Cup.


title: Slazenger

text: In 1881, Ralph and Albert Slazenger, Jewish brothers from Manchester, established a shop on London's Cannon Street, selling rubber sporting goods. Slazenger quickly became a leading manufacturer of sporting equipment for golf and tennis. Four years after the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club held its first-ever championships in 1877, Slazenger produced 'The New Game of Lawn Tennis' (tennis rackets and balls) complete in a box.


title: Slazenger

text: Their plant in Barnsley manufactured tennis balls and exported them round the world. The plant closed in 2002, and production is now based in the Philippines.


title: Slazenger

text: In 1902, Slazenger was appointed as the official tennis ball supplier to The Championships at Wimbledon, and it remains the longest unbroken sporting sponsorship in history.


title: Slazenger

text: In 1910, a public company was incorporated to acquire Slazenger and Sons, "manufacturers of sports equipment, india rubber, gutta percha and waterproof goods, leather merchants and dealers", which floated on the stock market. In 1931, Slazenger acquired H. Gradidge and Sons.


title: Slazenger

text: During the Second World War, Slazenger, like most nonessential manufacturing in the UK, redirected its production to manufacture a wide variety of items for military purposes, utilising Slazenger's expertise in wood and rubber manufacturing.


title: Slazenger

text: On 15 September 1940, during the Blitz on London, incendiary bombs fell on the Slazenger factory. The Gradidge factory in Woolwich similarly suffered. The competing William Sykes Ltd factory at Horbury was undamaged by the bombings. Slazenger and Gradidge were able to continue production at other facilities but began a series of mergers with competing companies. In 1942, it acquired William Sykes Ltd to broaden its wartime production facilities. Around 1943, Slazenger acquired F. H. Ayres. Founded in the year of 1810 by Edward Ayres, the firm manufactured a range of sporting equipment. It was best known as a quality manufacturing of equipment for archery, in particular, the bow (or longbow as it is more commonly known). Before man-made fibres became the standard for which bows are made, Ayres manufactured bows principally from yew (Taxus baccata), made to the standard measurements of the time – for men and for women. Thereafter the company was known as Slazenger Sykes Gradidge and Ayres.


title: Slazenger

text: The following lists a snapshot of some of their larger contracts completed for the UK Government in the years 1939–1945, as recorded by Slazenger, Gradidge, Sykes and Ayres in 1946:


title: Slazenger

text: Slazenger in New South Wales, Australia, produced naval utility launches at Newcastle, NSW for their WW II effort.


title: Slazenger

text: In its heyday, the empire of Slazenger Gradidge Sykes and Ayres stretched across the world with either licensed distributors or agents and/or manufacturing operations in which the company had partnerships or licensing agreements with. Distributors were flung far and wide as far away as New Zealand and Africa, in remote places such as Iceland, Newfoundland, Madagascar and even Bolivia.


title: Slazenger

text: In the days when wooden tennis racquets held no peer, brands such as Slazenger and Dunlop were a dominant force in the world, but with the popularity of the metal tennis racquets from the early 1980s and then the fast transition to even more popular composite materials such as fiberglass, graphite, Kevlar and so on more and more brands became available to the consumer. The new brands became popular due to their ability to meet consumer trends and demand for the new technology. Slazenger was slow to react. The company could not re-gear its existing factories to produce products in the new materials and there was a major existing investment in plant and raw materials. The company tried to market its product against these new products using quality as the unique selling point, but the quality level of imports quickly improved and soon Slazenger lost popularity and fell from prominence.


title: Slazenger

text: The purchase of Dunlop Slazenger by Sports World International (SWI) did not confer global rights to the brand. SWI chose not to diversify the brands it acquired internally, and thus strain its own resources and finances, but to license them globally. With Slazenger, this was achieved successfully, with the Slazenger name being seen on a wide range of products not previously associated with the brand, such as sunglasses, toiletries and push bikes.


title: Slazenger

text: In Australia and New Zealand, the Slazenger brand is owned and licensed by Pacific Brands, with full and exclusive rights to sell and distribute throughout those territories. From the early 2000s due to poor management sales plummeted. Rather than investing in the brand, the Slazenger management began downsizing staff numbers, closing branches, cutting back long-standing sponsorship as well as stripping back costs elsewhere within the business. Despite these radical moves the Slazenger brand still ultimately offered no real return to Pacific Brands and in 2010/11 they sub-licensed it to Spartan Sports who had been operating in Australia since 2005 and is owned by Spartan Sports in Jallandhar, India (established in 1954).


title: Slazenger

text: During its peak, many famous cricket players such as Sir Don Bradman, Sir Garfield Sobers, Sir Viv Richards, Sir Len Hutton, Denis Compton, Rohan Kanhai, Mark Waugh, Jacques Kallis , Jason Roy, James Anderson Geoffrey Boycott used Slazenger's bats and products. The Pakistan cricket team wore the Slazenger kit in their winning campaign during the 2009 ICC World Twenty20.


title: Slazenger

text: There are also many famous golf players who have used Slazenger products, such as Jack Nicklaus, Seve Ballesteros, Tom Weiskopf, Tom Watson and Johnny Miller. Besides professional golf players, film-star Sean Connery also wore the Slazenger v-neck jumper while playing golf in his free time. Furthermore, in the golf scene at Stoke Park Golf Club in Buckinghamshire in the James Bond film "Goldfinger" (1964), he wears a burgundy v-neck Slazenger jumper and the Slazenger brand of golf balls are shown on screen and mentioned several times in dialogue—Bond: "You play a Slazenger 1, don't you?"—as they play a key plot point.


title: Fancy Bear

text: Fancy Bear (also known as APT28 (by Mandiant), Pawn Storm, Sofacy Group (by Kaspersky), Sednit, Tsar Team (by FireEye) and STRONTIUM (by Microsoft)) is a Russian cyber espionage group. Cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike has said with a medium level of confidence that it is associated with the Russian military intelligence agency GRU. The UK's Foreign and Commonwealth Office as well as security firms SecureWorks, ThreatConnect, and Mandiant, have also said the group is sponsored by the Russian government. In 2018, an indictment by the United States Special Counsel identified Fancy Bear as GRU Unit 26165.


title: Fancy Bear

text: The name "Fancy Bear" comes from a coding system security researcher Dmitri Alperovitch uses to identify hackers.


title: Fancy Bear

text: Likely operating since the mid-2000s, Fancy Bear's methods are consistent with the capabilities of state actors. The group targets government, military, and security organizations, especially Transcaucasian and NATO-aligned states. Fancy Bear is thought to be responsible for cyber attacks on the German parliament, the Norwegian parliament, the French television station TV5Monde, the White House, NATO, the Democratic National Committee, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe and the campaign of French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron.


title: Fancy Bear

text: The group promotes the political interests of the Russian government, and is known for hacking Democratic National Committee emails to attempt to influence the outcome of the United States 2016 presidential elections.


title: Fancy Bear

text: Fancy Bear is classified by FireEye as an advanced persistent threat. Among other things, it uses zero-day exploits, spear phishing and malware to compromise targets.


title: Fancy Bear

text: Trend Micro designated the actors behind the Sofacy malware as Operation Pawn Storm on October 22, 2014. The name was due to the group's use of "two or more connected tools/tactics to attack a specific target similar to the chess strategy," known as pawn storm.


title: Fancy Bear

text: Network security firm FireEye released a detailed report on Fancy Bear in October 2014. The report designated the group as "Advanced Persistent Threat 28" (APT28) and described how the hacking group used zero-day exploits of the Microsoft Windows operating system and Adobe Flash. The report found operational details indicating that the source is a "government sponsor based in Moscow". Evidence collected by FireEye suggested that Fancy Bear's malware was compiled primarily in a Russian-language build environment and occurred mainly during work hours paralleling Moscow's time zone. FireEye director of threat intelligence Laura Galante referred to the group's activities as "state espionage" and said that targets also include "media or influencers."


title: Fancy Bear

text: The name "Fancy Bear" derives from the coding system that Dmitri Alperovitch's company CrowdStrike uses for hacker groups. "Bear" indicates that the hackers are from Russia. "Fancy" refers to "Sofacy", a word in the malware that reminded the analyst who found it, of Iggy Azalea's song "Fancy".


title: Fancy Bear

text: Fancy Bear's targets have included Eastern European governments and militaries, the country of Georgia and the Caucasus, Ukraine, security-related organizations such as NATO, as well as US defense contractors Academi (formerly known as Blackwater and Xe Services), Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Raytheon. Fancy Bear has also attacked citizens of the Russian Federation that are political enemies of the Kremlin, including former oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, and Maria Alekhina of the band Pussy Riot. SecureWorks, a cybersecurity firm headquartered in the United States, concluded that from March 2015 to May 2016, the "Fancy Bear" target list included not merely the United States Democratic National Committee, but tens of thousands of foes of Putin and the Kremlin in the United States, Ukraine, Russia, Georgia, and Syria. Only a handful of Republicans were targeted, however. An AP analysis of 4,700 email accounts that had been attacked by Fancy Bear concluded that no country other than Russia would be interested in hacking so many very different targets that seemed to have nothing else in common other than their being of interest to the Russian government.


title: Fancy Bear

text: Fancy Bear also seems to try to influence political events in order for friends or allies of the Russian government to gain power.


title: Fancy Bear

text: In 2011–2012, Fancy Bear's first-stage malware was the "Sofacy" or SOURFACE implant. During 2013, Fancy Bear added more tools and backdoors, including CHOPSTICK, CORESHELL, JHUHUGIT, and ADVSTORESHELL.


title: Fancy Bear

text: From mid-2014 until the fall of 2017, Fancy Bear targeted numerous journalists in the United States, Ukraine, Russia, Moldova, the Baltics, and other countries who had written articles about Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin. According to the Associated Press and SecureWorks, this group of journalists is the third largest group targeted by Fancy Bear after diplomatic personnel and U.S. Democrats. Fancy Bear's targeted list includes Adrian Chen, the Armenian journalist Maria Titizian, Eliot Higgins at Bellingcat, Ellen Barry and at least 50 other "New York Times" reporters, at least 50 foreign correspondents based in Moscow who worked for independent news outlets, Josh Rogin, a "Washington Post" columnist, Shane Harris, a "Daily Beast" writer who in 2015 covered intelligence issues, Michael Weiss, a CNN security analyst, Jamie Kirchick with the Brookings Institution, 30 media targets in Ukraine, many at the Kyiv Post, reporters who covered the Russian-backed war in eastern Ukraine, as well as in Russia where the majority of journalists targeted by the hackers worked for independent news (e.g. "Novaya Gazeta" or "Vedomosti") such as at and mainstream Russian journalists Tina Kandelaki, Ksenia Sobchak, and the Russian television anchor , all of which worked for Dozhd.