title: Domestic long-haired cat

text: How they developed in the first place is still a matter of speculation. The long coat may have been the result of a recessive mutant gene. When a long-haired cat is mated to one with a short coat, only short-haired kittens can result; however, their offspring, when mated, can produce a proportion of long-coated kittens. Successive litters of early European long-haired cats produced more and more long-coated offspring, which were more likely to survive in the cooler European climates. By the year 1521, around the time they were first documented in Italy, the variety had become fixed after only a few generations.


title: Domestic long-haired cat

text: In the late 18th century, Peter Simon Pallas had advanced the hypothesis that the manul (also known as Pallas's cat) might be the ancestor of the long-haired domestic cat. He had anecdotal evidence that established even though the male offspring would be sterile hybrids, the female offspring could again reproduce with domestic cats and pass on a small proportion of the manul's genes. In 1907, zoologist Reginald Innes Pocock refuted this claim, citing his work on the skull differences between the manul and the Angoras or Persians of his time. This early hypothesis overlooked the potential for crossbreeding within the family Felidae. For example, the Savannah cat is a crossbreed between a domestic short-haired cat and a wild serval—both of which have different skulls and evolutionary lineage. Furthermore, hybrid females in the related genus "Panthera", such as ligers and tigons, have successfully mated, producing tiligers and litigons.


title: Domestic long-haired cat

text: The first modern, formal breeds of long-haired cats were the Persian and the Angora (named after Ankara, Turkey) and were said to have come from those two areas.


title: League of Legends Champions Korea

text: "League of Legends" Champions Korea (LCK) is the primary competition for "League of Legends" esports in South Korea. Contested by ten teams, the league runs two seasons per year and serves as a direct route to qualification for the annual "League of Legends" World Championship. The LCK is administered in cooperation between Riot Games and KeSPA.


title: League of Legends Champions Korea

text: The league was formerly named League of Legends Champions before undergoing a major restructuring in late 2014, which saw a change in the competition's format and a rebranding to its current name. OGN reserved exclusive broadcasting rights of the league until 2016 when rights were split with SPOTV Games. In 2019, Riot Games took over the broadcasting of LCK. In 2021 the LCK franchised, and Challengers Korea (CK) and the LCK promotion tournament were discontinued.


title: League of Legends Champions Korea

text: The LCK is considered one of the strongest "League of Legends" competitions in the world, with teams from the league winning the World Championship a record seven times, including five consecutive titles from to 2017.


title: League of Legends Champions Korea

text: Following the launch of South Korea's "League of Legends" server in December 2011, cable broadcaster OnGameNet launched the country's first major "League of Legends" tournament in March 2012. Named "The Champions Spring 2012", the tournament ran from March to May and was contested by a total of 16 teams. MiG Blaze was crowned the competition's inaugural champion after defeating their organizational sibling team MiG Frost in the finals. "The Champions Summer 2012" followed later that year, with a rebranded MiG Frost, now known as Azubu Frost, claiming the title themselves. Azubu Frost, along with NaJin Sword, went on to represent South Korea in their first appearance at the in October.


title: League of Legends Champions Korea

text: A tri-tournament annual circuit was soon set as the norm for the league's calendar year, now consisting of three seasons held in the winter, spring, and summer. Azubu Frost and NaJin Sword clashed early in 2013 in the finals of "Champions Winter 2012–13", with the latter emerging victorious. "Champions Spring 2013" and "Champions Summer 2013" later followed, being won by MVP Ozone and SK Telecom T1 K respectively. SK Telecom T1 K went on to win the later that year, becoming the first team from the league to do so.


title: League of Legends Champions Korea

text: SK Telecom T1 K became the first team to successfully defend their title the following year, sweeping Samsung Galaxy Ozone in the finals of "Champions Winter 2013–14" to cap off an undefeated tournament run. Ozone's sibling team, Samsung Galaxy Blue, went on to win "Champions Spring 2014" but were bested in the finals of "Champions Summer 2014" by kt Rolster Arrows.


title: League of Legends Champions Korea

text: In October 2014, plans were announced for a drastic overhaul of the league's structure. "League of Legends" Champions was rebranded to "League of Legends" Champions Korea (LCK), and the winter season was abolished in favor of an annual circuit consisting of the Spring Split and Summer Split. The competition's format, which consisted of a 16-team tournament with a group stage progressing into a knockout stage, was changed to a 10-team league operating on a round-robin basis, with the top 5 teams qualifying for a playoffs bracket. Furthermore, organizations were prohibited from owning more than one team - in particular, this change most heavily affected KeSPA-affiliated teams, all of which operated two squads as part of a sibling team system - forcing numerous organizations to merge or disband rosters.


title: League of Legends Champions Korea

text: "LCK Spring 2015" marked the debut of the league operating under its new format and identity. A newly minted SK Telecom T1, a product of the prior year's merger between SK Telecom T1 K and SK Telecom T1 S, swept the calendar year by winning both "LCK Spring 2015" and "LCK Summer 2015".


title: League of Legends Champions Korea

text: SK Telecom T1 retained their crown in "LCK Spring 2016", becoming the first team in competition history to win three consecutive titles. Their streak of dominance was ended in "LCK Summer 2016" by ROX Tigers, who became only the second team to win the league since its restructuring.


title: League of Legends Champions Korea

text: SK Telecom T1 won their sixth title as an organization on 22 April 2017, by defeating KT Rolster in the finals of "LCK Spring 2017". In LCK Summer 2017 Finals, Longzhu Gaming won their first title on 26 August 2017 after defeating the spring winner SK Telecom T1.


title: League of Legends Champions Korea

text: Longzhu Gaming rebranded to Kingzone DragonX following the 2017 World Championship, and they defended their title in LCK 2018 Spring by defeating the Afreeca Freecs. kt Rolster won the LCK Summer 2018 championship, defeating Griffin in the finals.


title: League of Legends Champions Korea

text: SK Telecom T1 won the LCK Spring 2019 title after defeating Griffin in the finals with 3–0. This marked the seventh LCK title for SK Telecom T1. On 31 August 2019, SK Telecom T1 once again defeated Griffin in the finals with a score of 3–1. This was their eighth championship title, and also their back-to-back LCK title in 2019.


title: League of Legends Champions Korea

text: T1 also won the LCK Spring 2020 title after defeating Gen.G in the finals (3–0), taking the title for the third time in a row. The title also marked the organization's ninth championship title, and their first after rebranding from SK Telecom T1 to T1. In LCK Summer 2020, Damwon Gaming won their first championship title after defeating DRX in the finals.


title: League of Legends Champions Korea

text: DWG KIA (previously Damwon Gaming) won the title for both LCK Spring and Summer 2021, making them the champions for three consecutive splits. They defeated Gen.G in the Spring, and T1 in the Summer.


title: League of Legends Champions Korea

text: On 2 April 2022, T1 won the LCK Spring 2022 title after defeating Gen.G in the finals. This marked their tenth championship title.


title: Low Rider

text: "Low Rider" is a song written by American funk band War and producer Jerry Goldstein, which appeared on their album "Why Can't We Be Friends?", released in 1975. It reached number one on the "Billboard" R&B singles chart, peaked at number seven on the Hot 100 singles chart, and number six in Canada.


title: Low Rider

text: According to the AllMusic review of the song, "the lyric takes the cool, laidback image of the lowrider—the Chicano culture practice of hydraulically hot-rodding classic cars—and using innuendo, extends the image to a lifestyle". The song features a driving bass line by B. B. Dickerson, which is present almost throughout, and an alto saxophone riff by Charles Miller, who also provides lead vocals and a saxophone solo towards the end of the song that includes a siren-like noise. This song is the theme song for the TV series "George Lopez", which ran from 2002 to 2007.


title: Opinion polling for the next Ukrainian presidential election

text: In the run up to the 2024 Ukrainian presidential election, various organisations carried out opinion polling to gauge voting intention in Ukraine. The results of such polls are displayed in this article. The date range for these polls are from the 2019 Ukrainian presidential election to the present day.


text: During the 2019 Ukrainian presidential election candidate (and latter winner of the election) Volodymyr Zelenskyy stated that he was running for only one term. In May 2021, Zelenskyy stated that it was too early to say whether he will run for a second term, but this decision would depend on the attitude to him in society and would be influenced by his family.


title: Dan Balan

text: Dan Mihai Bălan (born 6 February 1979) is a Moldovan artist, songwriter, and record producer. He is the founder of Moldovan eurodance band O-Zone, and wrote their international hit single "Dragostea Din Tei", which topped the charts in 32 countries and sold 12 million copies worldwide. Nominated for the Grammy Award in 2009


title: Dan Balan

text: The artist was chosen by Disney Channel Romania to sing the theme song from the series "Brandy & Mr. Whiskers".


title: Dan Balan

text: Dan Mihai Balan was born on 6 February 1979 in Chișinău, to Mihai Balan, a diplomat, and Ludmila Balan, a TV presenter. He has a sister, TV presenter Sanda Bălan (born 1984). His maternal grandfather, Boris Vasiliev, was deported to Siberia as a child.


title: Dan Balan

text: He was given his first instrument, a second-hand accordion, as a present at age 11 and began pursuing music at a young age. Balan attended music school, but his parents urged him to attend university to study law. After following their wishes for a short time, he eventually left law school to play with his first band Inferialis, a gothic doom metal band.


title: Dan Balan

text: After Balan formed the band, Inferialis held its first concert in 1995 in a concert hall in one of Chișinău's factories. His entire family was present at the concert, and his parents having been impressed by the performance bought him an expensive synthesizer. He spent the next two years performing with the band, taking several small gigs, and then decided to move to commercial-sounding music. In an interview, he explained that he had never considered himself a heavy metal musician and instead identified as a producer with an interest in working with varying musical styles. He started experimenting and exploring a new, commercial pop sound, and recorded and released his first solo song, "De la Mine", in 1998.


title: Dan Balan

text: In 1998, Balan formed O-Zone, a new musical project, with Petru Jelihovschi, former vocalist in Inferialis. The duo released their first album entitled "Dar unde esti?" later that year and it became a commercial hit with seven of the album's ten songs reaching number one on the charts of the main radio stations in Moldova. At the same time, he became a producer of a new children's TV show called "Tanti Ludmila Show", which was hosted by his mother. When the show needed a title song, the singer offered up a track he'd written when he was younger.


title: Dan Balan

text: Shortly afterwards, Jelihovschi left the band to take up his own career in television. In order to continue the band, Balan announced auditions to select new band members. He auditioned several individuals but was unable to find somebody who fit his concept for the music. Finally, Arsenie Todiraș, who he met through his vocal coach, was selected. After the auditions were closed, Radu Sirbu heard about the selection and requested Balan to audition him. Subsequently, Sirbu became the third member of the band.


title: Dan Balan

text: Throughout 2001, Balan wrote and recorded O-Zone's second album, "Number 1". Four Romanian record labels offered the band a deal. O-Zone elected Cat Music and their album was released in 2002 by the label. Much to Balan's disappointment, the album did not become an instant commercial success. However, O-Zone won Best Music Video Award at the MTV Romania Music Awards in 2002 for their single "Numai tu". The album's second single, "Despre Tine", was more experimental, driven by the singer's goal of working in styles of music, which were completely different from those dictating the Romanian music industry at that time. The song became a commercial success and reached number one on Romania Airplay Top 100, where it stayed for seventeen consecutive weeks. The next year, O-Zone won two more MTV Romania Music Awards, for Best Song and Best Dance. The band was also nominated for Best Romanian Act at the MTV Europe Music Awards.


title: Dan Balan

text: The song "Dragostea Din Tei", also known as the "Numa Numa Song", which was released in 2003, brought the group to global prominence. The single, written and produced by Balan, reached the number one position on the charts of more than thirty countries and was the third bestselling single in the U.K that year. It sold more than 8 million copies worldwide, receiving a gold and multi-platinum certification in most of the countries of Europe, Asia and Latin America. It became the bestselling track in Europe and Japan in 2004 and 2005. Over the years, more than two hundred artists have sung the song in fourteen different languages. "Dragostea Din Tei" is one of the best-selling singles in the history of world music.


title: Dan Balan

text: In 2004, O-Zone won Best Dance Award again at MTV Romania Music Awards and, for the second year in a row, they were nominated for Best Romanian Act at the MTV Europe Music Awards. Later that year, the band unveiled their third album, "DiscO-Zone," which became their best-selling release, certified gold and platinum in various countries. By the end of the year, it was the best-selling album in Japan, Europe and Latin America. In France, it was number fifteen but stayed for 36 weeks in the top 200. In Japan it reached the number one position in its 24th week on the chart. "DiscO-Zone" featured their hit singles "Dragostea Din Tei" and "Despre Tine (About You)". The album was a commercial success in many European countries, particularly in Portugal where it was hit number one for eight consecutive weeks and was ranked for 26 weeks in the top 30. It also reached the top ten in Wallonia (Belgium), Poland, Norway, Switzerland, and Finland.


title: Dan Balan

text: By late 2004, O-Zone released another single "De Ce Plang Chitarele", which was a cover of a song by the Moldovan band Noroc. Commenting on their songs and style, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty wrote that they have "breathed fresh air into European Pop Music Scene." O-Zone announced their breakup in 2005, right at the peak of their fame and popularity. Their last European concert was held at the 2005 Golden Stag music festival in Romania.


title: Dan Balan

text: After O-Zone's break-up, Balan started the eponymous rock group “Balan” and began working on new music. He moved to Los Angeles in early 2006 to record at Ocean Way. There he recorded and co-produced his first solo rock album with Jack Joseph Puig. Despite having recorded the album, the singer did not release it. However, some songs, such as “Cry Cry” and “The 24th Letter” were later released as part of his 2012 album “Freedom, Part 1”.


title: Dan Balan

text: He returned from the U.S. in early 2007 and began working on a new experimental musical project. Balan performed the songs, which were a deviation from his prior material, in a falsetto voice. These shifts led him to decide to release the music under the stage name Crazy Loop, an alter ego that contrasted with his real personality. The musician described Crazy Loop as "funnier, crazier and more ironic" than himself and said, "I'm not like that really but part of Crazy Loop lives inside me." Balan officially launched Crazy Loop in October 2007 with new single "Crazy Loop (Mm Ma Ma)", which landed on the charts in Germany, Austria, Poland and Romania, as well as on European chart Euro Hot 200.


title: Dan Balan

text: Crazy Loop's debut album, "The Power of Shower", was released in December, and included some of the songs Balan had created for his unreleased album in Los Angeles, the previous year. The album's second single, "Johanna, Shut Up!" was released in the summer of 2008 along with a music video directed and shot in Los Angeles by Marc Klasfeld. The single was the final official track released under the name Crazy Loop. The artist released a third single from "The Power of Shower" in October 2008 under his own name, Dan Balan. The track, a rock ballad called "Despre Tine Cant (Part 2)," dropped in Romania and Moldova and was accompanied by a music video directed by Greg Olive. Crazy Loop was nominated for Best Romanian Act at the 2008 MTV Europe Music Awards but lost to Morandi.


title: Dan Balan

text: Later in 2009, the singer re-released "The Power of the Shower" album as "Crazy Loop Mix", an exclusive release with four new tracks, which included "Friday Night", "My Best Summer", "Judy's Love Line" and new single "Chica Bomb". This release marked the beginning of a new phase in his solo career. In November 2009 acting President of Moldova Mihai Ghimpu, awarded him the honorary title of Master in Art for successes in creative activity, contributions to propagation of musical art and high performing artistry.


title: Dan Balan

text: In 2008, Balan was contacted by producers to become co-writer of Rihanna and T.I.'s "Live Your Life", since the song sampled and was extensively based on the melody of “Dragostea Din Tei”. The song stayed at number one on the "Billboard" Hot 100 chart for six weeks following its release, jumping from number eighty to number one in just one week. "Live Your Life" was certified 4× Platinum, with 4,532,000 copies sold in the U.S. In 2009, his co-writing of the song lead to Balan being nominated for a Grammy Award, the first and only Moldovan ever to do so.


title: Dan Balan

text: Balan's solo single "Chica Bomb" which featured vocals from American singer Katie DiCicco and production from Italian DJ Andrea Bertolini, was officially released in 2010. The song became a hit in Europe and made it into the top ten charts in several European countries, including Germany, Denmark, Austria, Romania, Russia, Greece, and the U.K., where it reached No. 7 on the U.K. Dance Chart. The track received positive reviews from music critics. Nick Levine, from Britain's "Digital Spy" described "Chica Bomb" as "a sleek and reasonably sexy electro-house track with a nice bit of synthy bounce to it." It became one of the five most played songs on Radio in Bulgaria and Romania. The video for the song was directed by Hype Williams.


title: Dan Balan

text: Balan re-recorded the single in Greece as a duet with Greek pop star Eleni Foureira. The duo launched the new Greek version at the MAD Video Music Awards in Athens in May 2010. The song continued its global dominance and Balan was invited as a special guest to the Russian music industry's annual awards ceremony, the Muz-TV Awards, on 11 June 2010, where he performed the single.


title: Dan Balan

text: The singer unveiled his next single, "Justify Sex" in July 2010 at the Europa Plus Live festival in Moscow. It reached number one on the Russian charts, where it remained for 43 weeks. A video for the song was directed by Jesse Dylan, who shot the video in Los Angeles and based its concept around the movie "Friday the 13th."


title: Dan Balan

text: Following the success of two consecutive singles reaching number one on the charts, Balan decided to shift his focus to the Eastern European market. In the summer of 2010 he recorded lyrical song "Lepestkami Slez", translated as “Petals of Tears”, as a duet with Vera Brezhneva, who he had met in New York. The song, Balan's first in Russian, was released on 29 October and became his third consecutive number one single in Russia. Its music video was shot by Ukrainian video director Sergei Solodky and earned over 24 million views on YouTube, becoming the most watched Russian-language music video in the history of Russian music. The song was nominated for Best Duo at the awards for Russian music channel RU.TV in 2011. He won a Golden Gramophone Award, Russia's most prestigious music prize, for his single "Lepestkami Slez" at the 16th Golden Gramophone awards ceremony in the State Kremlin Palace in Moscow. The artist was nominated for the Best Romanian Act for the fourth time at the 2010 MTV Europe Music Awards.


title: Dan Balan

text: Balan released a new English single, "Freedom", which featured American singer Corey Gibson and DJ Andrea Bertolini, in the spring of 2011. The song reached the Top 30 in Russia and the Ukraine, and eventually bowed at number two on the charts. In Romania, the single went to number four on the Romanian Top 100 in 2011. The song remained on the charts for a total of 49 weeks. Balan started recording the video for "Freedom", which was directed by Pavel Hudeakov in May 2011 in southern France. While recording for the song, the singer climbed up and stood on a steep cliff without protective equipment. In an interview after the official video was released, he said that the video was one of the most dangerous shootings of his career.


title: Dan Balan

text: He released his second Russian single, "Lish do Utra," on 26 September 2011. The song was recorded in studios in several countries, including Romania, the U.K., Russia and the U.S. In an interview, Balan explained that upon thinking the concept of the song, he had an immediate notion that the song would be best presented in the Russian language. The single reached number one position on the Russian digital sales chart. He wrote the concept for the song's music video himself and enlisted French director Steven Ada to direct the video. The singer selected Ada because he wanted a director with a very particular, photographic eye for composition and light, who could convey the natural beauty of the waking day and contrast it with the two lovers sharing their last morning together. The video was filmed in Corsica Island, with Balan starring opposite Ioana Raicu. The video premiered on 25 October 2011.


title: Dan Balan

text: In April 2012, Balan released another Russian single, pop-rock song "Lyubi". The song reached number one on the Top Hit Weekly Audience Choice, number thirteen on the Russian chart and number two on the Ukrainian chart. The music video for the song was directed by Alan Badoev and starred Russian theater and film actress Ekaterina Vilkova. Later that year, he was nominated for the best male singer award by the music channel Muz-TV. and was named as Russia's sexiest singer by online magazine Woman.ru at the RU.TV Russian music awards ceremony. He was also nominated for Best Singer and Best Song for "Lish do Utra". On 1 December 2012, the singer won a Golden Gramophone award for the second year in a row for "Lish do Utra". Balan was also awarded the Krasnaya Zvezda award in nomination Best Songs of the Year for his single, which was one of the top twenty most popular songs of 2012 in Russia.


title: Dan Balan

text: In November 2012, he announced that he was working on his latest album "Freedom (Part 1)" He recorded the album in several studios in the U.S., the U.K., Italy and Romania. The album was launched in the Arena Moscow Concert Hall as part of a solo concert and included "Chica Bomb", "Justify Sex", "Lepestkami Slyoz" and "Freedom". The album became popular in Russia and was certified gold.


title: Dan Balan

text: In May 2013, Balan released "Lendo Calendo", a bilingual single with lyrics in Spanish and English. The track featured Tany Vander and French rapper Brasco. He sang his part in Spanish, which he had studied in Barcelona. The words Lendo Calendo were coined by Balan himself who thought of them as magic words like Abracadabra. The song topped the iTunes Chart and reached number one in Russia and also peaked the charts in Romania and other CIS countries. The music video of the song, directed by Alan Badoev, was released on 9 July 2013. The song received positive reviews and the singer received several awards for "Lendo Calendo". On 25 May, he was nominated for the best singer award at the annual Russian music awards RU.TV. Later he won the award for The Best Singer at the Real Musicbox awards ceremony.


title: Dan Balan

text: In January 2014, Balan began recording a new studio album, Freedom, Part 2 in London in the Abbey Road Studios, AIR Studios, RAK Studios, Strongroom Studios and Sarm Studios. He wrote the music and lyrics and produced all of the tracks on the album. The recordings featured the Symphony Orchestra of the British Musicians' Union, the London Community Gospel Choir, London Voices led by Terry Edwards and Ben Parry, as well as Massive Attack drummer Julien Brown, guitarist Seton Daunt, and percussionist Andy Duncan. Chris Elliott worked on the arrangement for the symphony orchestra.


title: Dan Balan

text: The album's first single "Domoy" was released in September 2014. In contrast to Dan's previous work, "Domoy" was quite experimental, moving away from his typical style and appealing to an older audience. According to Dan, the track also differs from the other songs on the new album, which will have a more commercial sound.


title: Dan Balan

text: In 2015, Balan returned from his creative break to release another experimental single, “Funny Love”. The music video was directed by acclaimed Ukrainian director Alan Badoev, who has recorded hundreds of music videos, and several of Balan's songs. The music video took a whole 4 months to film, involving 20 different scenes. 13 models and 16 dancers had in total 120 costumes and 300 kg of luggage. Badoev used “unusual graphics” and novel editing techniques in the video, and was impressed by Balan's dedication to his music. The singer admitted he wanted to take his songs to a new level after Lendo Calendo, and worked more than any other on the sound design for Funny Love.


title: Dan Balan

text: Balan also released a version of his song “Cry Cry”, originally written for his unreleased rock album in 2006, with different, experimental and complex sound, and new Russian lyrics, differing somewhat from the English, to appeal to an Eastern European audience.


title: Dan Balan

text: In 2017, Balan decided to return from his three-year creative break, in which he had been working on experimental music styles, to return with a more commercial sounding single which would not be featured on Freedom, Part 2. Balan felt that before releasing the new album he should return to the stage with a dance hit such as “Hold on Love”. To that end, he was invited performed the song at the popular M1 (Ukraine) Music Awards in 2017. The music video, Balan's fifth collaboration with Ukrainian director Alan Badoev was described by Badoev as a dark and mysterious David Fincher-style clip. Badoev decided on a theme of “do not be afraid of what is inside of you”, casting Balan as a Pastor tempted by his desires, and filmed in a district of Los Angeles. The director's team had to close off one quarter of the city to complete filming.


title: Dan Balan

text: Dan Balan decided to re unite O-Zone in 2017 to have 2 concerts on 9 May 2017 in Chisinau and Bucharest.


title: Dan Balan

text: In March 2018, Dan Balan released a new single called "Allegro Ventigo", featuring Matteo. Successful in the likes of Romania, Ukraine, Russia, and Bulgaria, there was much talk around the language the lyrics are written in. Balan joked in an interview that this is "Old Moldavian", but the settled view is that the lyrics are written in a fictional language that combines elements of Spanish, Italian, Greek and Romanian.


title: Dan Balan

text: On 12 September 2018, Dan Balan released a new single called "Numa Numa 2" in association with Marley Waters. After a few days, the song reached #1 in the Japan Charts and was a great success. He then had a small show/concert in Japan singing Numa Numa 2.


title: Dan Balan

text: In 2019, Dan Balan created an audio and video production company Monarda Studios, that deals with managing and developing music artists and internet celebrities. The company's offices are located in Kyiv, Ukraine, and Bucharest, Romania.


The People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) was a Marxist–Leninist political party in Afghanistan established on 1 January 1965. Four members of the party won seats in the 1965 Afghan parliamentary election, reduced to two seats in 1969, albeit both before parties were fully legal. For most of its existence, the party was split between the hardline "Khalq" and moderate "Parcham" factions, each of which claimed to represent the "true" PDPA.


title: People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan

text: The party originally followed leftist and Marxist–Leninist ideals. Despite its orientation, the party did not describe itself as "communist", instead using labels such as "national democratic" and "socialist". In its final years, the party gradually moved away from Marxism–Leninism and towards Afghan nationalism.


text: While a minority, the party helped Mohammed Daoud Khan, former Prime Minister of Afghanistan, overthrow King Mohammed Zahir Shah in 1973 and establish the Republic of Afghanistan. Initially the PDPA was highly represented in the government cabinet, but many PDPA officials were later dismissed as relations between the party and President Daoud Khan worsened. In 1978 the PDPA, with help from members of the Afghan National Army, seized power from Daoud Khan in what became known as the Saur Revolution. The PDPA led by Nur Muhammad Taraki established the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan which would last until 1987. After National Reconciliation talks in 1987, the official name of the country was reverted back to the "Republic of Afghanistan" (as it was known prior to 1978). Under the leadership of Mohammad Najibullah in 1990, the party was renamed the Homeland Party (, ) and much of the party's symbols and policies were altered or removed. The republic lasted until 1992, when mujahideen rebels seized the capital Kabul and took over the country's government. The PDPA was subsequently dissolved, with some officials joining the new government, some joining militias, and others deserting.


text: Nur Mohammad Taraki started his political career as an Afghan journalist. On 1 January 1965, Taraki, with Babrak Karmal, established the Democratic People's Party of Afghanistan. In the beginning the party ran under the name "People's Democratic Tendency", since secularist and anti-monarchist parties were illegal. The People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) was officially formed at the unity congress of the different factions of the Socialist Party of Afghanistan on 1 January 1965. Twenty-seven men gathered at Taraki's house in Kabul, elected Taraki as the first party Secretary General and Karmal as Deputy Secretary General, and chose a five-member Central Committee (also called a Politburo). Taraki was invited to Moscow by the International Department of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) later that year.


text: The PDPA was known in Afghan society at that time as having strong ties with the Soviet Union. Eventually, the PDPA was able to get three of its members into parliament, in the first free elections in Afghan history; these three parliamentarians were Karmal, Anahita Ratebzad, Nur Ahmed Nur. Later on, Taraki established the first radical newspaper in Afghan history under the name "The Khalq"; the newspaper was eventually forced to stop publishing by the government in 1966.


text: In 1967 the party divided into several political sects, the biggest being the Khalqs and the Parchams, as well as the Setami Milli and Grohi Kar. These new divisions started because of ideological and economic reasons. Most of Khalqs supporters came from ethnic Pashtuns from the rural areas in the country. The Parchams supporters mostly came from urban citizens who supported social-economic reforms in the country. The Khalqs accused the Parchams of allegiance to King Mohammed Zahir Shah because their newspaper, the "Parcham", was tolerated by the king and published from March 1968 to July 1969.


text: Karmal sought, unsuccessfully, to persuade the PDPA Central Committee to censure Taraki's excessive radicalism. The vote, however, was close, and Taraki in turn tried to neutralize Karmal by appointing new members to the committee who were his own supporters. After this incident, Karmal offered his resignation, which was accepted by the Politburo. Although the split of the PDPA in 1967 into two groups was never publicly announced, Karmal brought with him less than half the members of the Central Committee.


text: As a result of the internal strife within the party, the party's representation in the Afghan parliament decreased from four to only two seats in the Afghan parliamentary election in 1969. In 1973 the PDPA assisted Mohammed Daoud Khan with a seizure of power from Zahir Shah in a nearly bloodless military coup. After Daoud had seized power, he established Daoud's Republic of Afghanistan. After the coup, the Loya jirga approved Daoud's new constitution, establishing a presidential one-party system of government in January 1977. The new constitution alienated Daoud from many of his political allies.


text: The Soviet Union set in Moscow played a major role in the reconciliation of the Khalq faction led by Taraki and the Parcham faction led by Karmal. In March 1977, a formal agreement on unity was achieved, and in July the two factions held their first joint conclave in a decade. Since the parties division in 1967 both sides had held contact with Soviet government.


text: Both parties were consistently pro-Soviet. There are allegations that they accepted financial and other forms of aid from the Soviet embassy and intelligence organs. However, the Soviets were close to King Zahir Shah and his cousin Daoud Khan—the first Afghan President—and it could have damaged their relations. There are no facts proving that the Soviets provided financial help to either Khalqis or Parchamis.


text: Taraki and Karmal maintained close contact with the Soviet Embassy and its personnel in Kabul, and it appears that Soviet Military Intelligence ("Glavnoye Razvedyvatel'noye Upravleniye" – GRU) assisted Khalq's recruitment of military officers.


text: In 1978 a prominent member of the PDPA on the Parcham side of the party, Mir Akbar Khyber, is claimed to have been assassinated by the government and its associates. While the government rejected any claims of having assassinated him, the PDPA members apparently feared that Mohammad Daoud Khan was planning to exterminate them all. Shortly after a massive protest against the government during the funeral ceremonies of Khaibar, most of the leaders of PDPA were arrested by the government. With a number of Afghan military officers supporting the Khalq faction of the PDPA wing, Hafizullah Amin stayed out of prison long enough to organize an uprising with the group.


text: On the eve of the coup, the Afghan police did not send Amin to immediate imprisonment, as it did with the three Politburo members and Taraki on 25 April 1978. His imprisonment was postponed for five hours, during which time he was under house arrest. He gave instructions to the Khalqi military officers through his family before being sent to jail on 26 April 1978.


text: The regime of President Daoud came to a violent end in the early morning hours of 28 April 1978, when military units from the Kabul military base loyal to the Khalq faction of the party stormed the Presidential Palace in Kabul. The coup was also strategically planned for this date because it was the day before Friday, the Muslim day of worship, and most military commanders and government workers were off duty. Tanks were utilized in the coup d'état, with Major Aslam Watanjar commanding the tank units. With the help of the Afghan air force led by Colonel Abdul Qadir, the insurgent troops overcame the resistance of the Presidential Guard, assassinated Daoud, and killed most members of his family. Hafizullah Amin renamed the country to the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan (DRA)., and Qadir assumed the control of the country from 27–30 April 1978 as the Head of the Military Revolutionary Council.


text: The divided PDPA succeeded the Daoud regime with a new government under the leadership of Nur Muhammad Taraki of the Khalq faction. In Kabul, the initial cabinet appeared to be carefully constructed to alternate ranking positions between Khalqis and Parchamis. Taraki was Prime Minister, Babrak Karmal was senior Deputy Prime Minister, and Hafizullah Amin was foreign minister.


text: Once in power, the PDP embarked upon a program of rapid modernization centered on separation of Mosque and State, eradication of illiteracy (which at the time stood at 90%), land reform, emancipation of women, and abolition of feudal practices. A Soviet-style national flag replaced the traditional black, red, and green.


text: Traditional practices that were deemed feudal – such as usury, bride price and forced marriage – were banned, and the minimum age of marriage was raised. The government stressed education for both women and men, and launched an ambitious literacy campaign. Sharia Law was abolished, and men were encouraged to cut off their beards.


text: These new reforms were not well received by the majority of the Afghan population, particularly in rural areas; many Afghans saw them as un-Islamic and as a forced approach to Western culture in Afghan society. Most of the government's new policies clashed directly with the traditional Afghan understanding of Islam, making religion one of the only forces capable of unifying the tribally and ethnically divided population against the unpopular new government, and ushering in the advent of Islamist participation in Afghan politics.


text: The first signs of a rebellion appeared on 20 July 1978 in the far eastern provinces of Nuristan and Kunar.


text: The new government launched a campaign of repression, which killed thousands, mostly at Pul-e-Charkhi prison. Estimates for the number executed at the prison, between April 1978 and December 1979, are as high as 27,000.


text: Despite accusations and predictions by conservative elements, a year and a half after the coup no restrictions had been placed on religious practice.


text: In the 1979 Soviet Operation Storm-333, the Soviet special force Spetnaz stormed the Tajbeg Palace and killed PDPA general secretary Hafizullah Amin. The death of Amin led to Babrak Karmal becoming the new Afghan leader and General Secretary of the PDPA. The Soviet-Afghan War followed the death of Amin, and Karmal was exiled to Prague in Czechoslovakia, where he assumed the role of Afghan ambassador.


text: The Khalq-Parcham rivalry remained in place. Clashes between members often resulted in fatalities, with rival gangs of each side firing at each other.


text: Moscow came to regard Karmal as a failure and blamed him for the problems. Years later, when Karmal's inability to consolidate his government had become obvious, Mikhail Gorbachev, then General Secretary of the CPSU, said:


text: Additionally, some Afghan soldiers who had fought for the socialist government began to defect or leave the army. In May 1986, Karmal was replaced as party general secretary by Mohammad Najibullah, and six months later he was relieved of the presidency. His successor as head of state was Haji Mohammad Chamkani. Karmal then moved (or, allegedly, was exiled) to Moscow.


text: After the Soviet Union had leveled most of the villages south and east of Kabul, creating a massive humanitarian disaster, the demise of the PDPA continued with the rise of the Mujahideen guerrillas, who were trained in Pakistani camps with US support. Between 1982 and 1992, the number of people recruited by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency to join the insurgency topped 100,000.


text: The Soviet Union withdrew in 1989, but continued to provide military assistance worth billions of dollars to the PDPA regime until the USSR's collapse in 1991.


text: The Soviet troop withdrawal in late 1989 changed the political structure that had enabled the PDPA to stay in power all those years. Inner collapse of the government started when Gulbuddin Hekmatyar withdrew his support for the government. Later in March 1990 Defense Minister and Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces Shahnawaz Tanai tried to seize power in a military coup. The coup failed and Tanai was forced to flee the country. Najibullah still hung on to the presidency, so in June 1990 he renamed the party the "Homeland Party". The party dropped the Marxist–Leninist ideology that had been held previously by the PDPA.


text: In 1991, the USSR dissolved. All support for the government stopped. In April 1992, the PDPA regime in Afghanistan collapsed after the sudden change of allegiance of General Abdul Rashid Dostum following President Najibullah's resignation. Post-Najibullah interim leader Abdul Rahim Hatif agreed on 22 April 1992 to a rebel-led state.


text: Since 1919, the Soviet Union had strongly influenced Afghan politics, economy and military (see Soviet–Afghan relations before 1979).


text: The thousands of Afghan academic students and military trainees in the USSR were compelled to study Marxism–Leninism and the international communist movement; some of them converted to that ideology. Nur Muhammad Taraki, the first PDPA General Secretary in 1978, had worked and studied in India in 1932, had met members of the Communist Party of India there, and had converted to communism. Hafizullah Amin, the second PDPA General Secretary, had seen his leftist beliefs strengthened during his studies in the United States in the late 1950s. Taraki and Babrak Karmal (the third PDPA General Secretary) were Soviet agents since the 1950s.


text: From its inception in 1965 until at least 1984, the PDPA labeled themselves "national democratic", not communist; however, in its view of international relations, the PDPA was clearly pro-Soviet oriented. The secret party constitution of 1965 called for "expanding and strengthening Afghan-Soviet friendly relations". A party history in 1976 stated, "The party struggles against imperialism, particularly American imperialism and its ally, Maoism, and is fighting alongside our brother parties, foremost among them the Leninist party of the Soviet Union."


text: In a 1978 party pamphlet, the PDPA described itself as a "vanguard of the working class" and General Secretary Taraki as an "experienced Marxist–Leninist". These descriptions led Western authors to label PDPA as either of "clear Marxist orientation", "an avowedly pro-Soviet socialist movement", or reformist "with a socialist bent".


text: After the April 1978 PDPA coup d'état, PDPA general secretary Taraki stated that the PDPA were nationalists and revolutionaries but not communists, and declared a commitment to Islam within a secular state. Once in power, however, it became clear that the PDPA was dominated by an urban intelligentsia and lacked any real social base in the overwhelmingly rural and Islamic communities of Afghanistan. The party launched a programme ranging from land redistribution to emancipation and education of women, which violated traditional customs, religious laws, and the balance of power between Kabul and the rural localities. The radical reform program, class-struggle, anti-imperialistic rhetoric, the signing of a friendship treaty with the Soviet Union, increased presence of Soviet advisers in the country, and support of countries like Cuba and North Korea led to the international media and domestic opponents giving the label of "communist" to the PDPA.


text: In the period April 1978 – September 1979 the Central Committee contained 38 individuals, of these, 12 were either purged, imprisoned or executed on the orders of Taraki after the Saur Revolution. With Taraki's ouster and execution in 1979, another member was removed. During Hafizullah Amin's short rule, September–December 1979, the Central Committee had at most 33 members, 12 of which were appointed by him. Upon Babrak Karmal's ascension to power 25 members were either executed or purged on his orders (76% of the members). He reinstated 14 members (including himself), who had been purged by either Taraki or Amin, appointed 15 newcomers and retained 7 Amin appointees. The Central Committee now contained 36 members. A year later, in June 1981, 10 new members were appointed to the Central Committee (the body now containing a record high 46 members), in a bid to increase the representation of Parchamites. Two years later, in 1983, six more members were appointed, with the Central Committee now containing 52 full members and 27 candidate members. Of these 52 members, only three had held offices continuously through Taraki's, Amin's and Karmal's rule; they were Abdur Rashid Arian, Mohammed Ismail Danesh and Saleh Mohammad Zeary (often referred to as a Khalqist).


text: The Politburo and Secretariat were elected by a plenum of the Central Committee, exactly as how it was done within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). As in the CPSU, the Politburo was the main executive and legislative body of the PDPA when the congress, conference nor the Central Committee were in session. All decisions of the Politburo were implemented by the Secretariat, a body concurrently in session with the Politburo.


text: Throughout its existence, the body usually had between 7 and 9 members. During Taraki's rule, 10 members had held seats in the PDPA Politburo, this was reduced to seven by Amin (only four members from the Taraki period were retained under Amin), and it was increased back to nine by Karmal. 6 members from the Amin period were either executed or disappeared, and Karmal turned the Politburo into a Parcham-dominated body. In the immediate aftermath of the Saur Revolution, there was "almost an even balance" between the Khalqist and the Parchamites in the body, but Khalqist representation was continuously increased under they formed a majority under Amin. The Politburo had one female member throughout its existence; Anahita Ratebzad. Unlike the Soviet practices the PDPA did not publish the list of Politburo members according to rank, but rather by alphabetical order. There is one exception however, and it was published in the book "Handbook for Party Activists of the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan" (published after the 6th Plenary Session of the 1st Central Committee in June 1981).


text: The PDPA Central Committee had several specialized commissions which handled day-to-day affairs. For instance, the party had the International Relations Commission, responsible for PDPA's relations with other parties, the Organization Commission, responsible for personnel appointments nationwide, and the Defense and Judicial Commission, responsible for military policy.


text: From 1982 onward, the PDPA experienced an organizational expansion into the countryside. For instance, in 1982 there existed 144 district and sub-district party committees, by mid-1984 it had increased to 205. Out of Afghanistan's fifty-five border districts, fifteen of them lacked a primary party organization (PPO), another nineteen had only one PPO in each district, and in the remaining twenty-one the party, while better organized, remained ineffective. Despite this, in the period 1982 to 1987 the PDPA did witness an organizational growth; witnessing a growth of PPOs form 443 to 1,331. However, the main problem facing the party was that it was not organized in the small villages scattering Afghanistan; out of an estimated 25,000 villages which existed in Afghanistan, the party was organized in an estimated 2,000. Another daunting problem was that the central party leadership had little contact with lower-level organizations in the provinces or, in general, with the people. In 1987, during Najibullah's rule, village-level party secretaries were appointed to the Central Committee in a bid to strengthen central-local contact. Concurrently, a threefold increase in visits by central party personnel to the provinces occurred, in another bid to strengthen the party's contact with the PDPA's lower-level and non-members alike.


text: A major problem throughout PDPA's rule was that the majority of mid-level cadres resided in Kabul, rather than the places they were responsible for. Of the 10,000 mid-level cadres in the mid-1980s, 5,000 of them resided in Kabul. For instance, in the period 1982–83 the governor of Faryab province only visited the province during the winter months, since the mujahideen withdrew their troops from the area during those months. Another problem, in Faryab province the PDPA was inactive and the majority of the locals believed that Mohammad Daoud Khan, the president which the communists overthrew in 1978, was still ruling the country. Another case, that of Nangrahar province (in which the government was in complete control) faced a similar problem; the party organization laying dormant. To solve this problem, the PDPA sought to improve the cadres' education by enrolling them to educational institutions within the PDPA, public universities or giving them educational opportunities in the Eastern Bloc or the Soviet Union. The Social Science Institute of the PDPA had a capacity of 2,500 students, and by the end of the 1980s it had given degrees to over 10,000 individuals. Despite all this, the main problem facing the party was the unsafe conditions facing party members serving in the countryside; for instance, when the Ghazni Provincial Committee convened for a meeting the participants had to wait for three months to get home (waiting for an armoured column and a helicopter).


text: The PDPA had 5,000 to 7,000 members upon taking power. However, author Bruce Amstutz believes that PDPA membership probably stood at around 6,000 when Karmal took power. A little over a year later, the membership was estimated to stand between 10,000 and 15,000. By 1984, the party had between 20,000 and 40,000 members (this figure included both ordinary and probationary members), as a result of concerted membership drives in government institutions, state-owned enterprises, and the military. However, at the 1st PDPA Conference, Karmal claimed that the party had 62,820 ordinary and probationary members; this number was exaggerated. The conference reported a growth of 21,700 members since August 1981. From then until a party meeting in 1983, leading party officials claimed the party had between 63,000 and 70,000 members. Half of the members in 1982, were in the armed forces (which was dominated by the Khalqists). In August 1982, Karmal alleged that the PDPA had 20,000 members within the military, and said that "the army party organization forms the greatest part of the PDPA". Earlier that year, in March, Soviet sources stated that the largest concentration of PDPA members were to be found in Kabul Polytechnic Institute (with an estimated 600 members) and at Kabul University (with an estimated 1,000 members). In 1983, Karmal claimed that party membership had grown 35% to 90,000, the following year it had allegedly grown 33% to 120,000 members.


text: While the membership increase did make the PDPA look more powerful than it really was, the increase was concurrently followed with increased indiscipline amongst members (a majority joined because of sheer opportunism). Before the 1973 coup led by Mohammad Daoud Khan, the vast majority of members either had "graduates of junior colleges or colleges", with many of them either being students or working in the public sector. After the 1973 coup, the Khalqist began recruiting members amongst the Officers Corps, which was proven successful by the takeover of 1978. However, in the aftermath of the coup, membership decreased notably (probably because of the increasing authoritarian policies of the government). By 1979, only the most blatant opportunists would be willing to join the party; the party was at its nadir. After the Soviet intervention, the Soviets forced the PDPA to recruit more members; in 1981 the probationary period for a new member was reduced from one year to six months, and to join a person needed fewer party sponsors. The 1981–83 recruitment drive increased party membership; the majority of the new members worked either in state-owned enterprises, the military. The main problem was that most of these new recruits were "functional illiterate", which in reality led to an overall decline in the quality of party members. In April 1981, 25–30% of members were "workers, farmers, soldiers, and other toilers"; this increased to 38% (both ordinary and probationary members) in 1982 and in 1983, according to Karmal, 28.4% were ordinary members.


text: In 1997, Watan Party of Afghanistan was formed, which made attempts to register the old name of the PDPA, but the party was refused registration.


text: In 2003, the National United Party of Afghanistan, which sought to unite former PDPA members, was registered.


title: Desert Tech MDR

text: The MDR (an acronym for micro dynamic rifle) is a family of autoloading bullpup rifles designed by Desert Tech (formerly Desert Tactical Arms) in 2014. A second generation version of the rifle is marketed as the MDRX (an acronym for micro dynamic rifle eXtreme). In 2018 a military version of the MDR, the NGSAR, was submitted, but was not one of the finalists in the United States Army Next Generation Squad Weapon Program trials to replace standard issue US army Infantry Weapons.


title: Desert Tech MDR

text: The Desert Tech MDR is a gas operated, conventional rotary bolt bullpup rifle. The gas system features a gas piston located above the barrel and a 6 position manual gas regulator.


title: Desert Tech MDR

text: The MDR rifle is designed to be ambidextrous. The MDR contains an ambidextrous forward and side eject port and viewing window that allows for tool free forward ejector side change. A non reciprocating ambidextrous charging handle is installed on both sides of the gun, and two or three-position safety / selector levers and magazine release are provided on both sides of the pistol grip. The rifle is compatible with Desert Tech caliber conversion kits that allow the rifle to change caliber. This provides a unique feature in which the rifle chassis can accept both intermediate cartridges and full-powered rifle cartridges on the same serial number platform (such as 5.56×45mm NATO and 7.62×51mm NATO magazines).


title: Desert Tech MDR

text: The .308/7.62 MDR was 10,000 round endurance tested with .308 win 150 grain FMJ American Eagle, 7.62x51 149 grain American Eagle, 7.62 m80 ball US Surplus and averaged 1 failure in 2000 rounds.


title: Desert Tech MDR

text: In 2018 a modified MDR family rifle, the NGSAR, chambered in a proprietary 6.8mm polymer-cased ammunition cartridge made by PCP was selected as one of the United States Army's Next Generation Squad Weapon Program (NGSW) weapons trial finalists to replace the United States Army's 5.56×45mm NATO caliber weapon systems. Desert Tech partnered with PCP tactical who provided a custom ammunition solution. The NGSAR was trialed in a carbine and automatic rifle configuration and were ultimately rejected.


title: Desert Tech MDR

text: The NGSAR rifle included improvements in the design such as a T-Worx battery powered integrated data rail, onboard round counter, longer receiver, bolt carrier, barrel extension, charging handle, forward eject system, barrel mounting system, proprietary 6.8mm PCP magazines, custom flow reflex suppressor, CNOD day/night optic.


title: Desert Tech MDR

text: The 2017 MDR in .308/7.62 win received public feedback that resulted in an upgrade program by Desert Tech on the gas and extractor system in 2019 to improve the rifle's ammunition tolerance without having to adjust the gas setting as frequently. This update is considered the Generation 2 MDR Gas System.


title: Desert Tech MDR

text: Desert Tech publicly addressed the MDR criticism on January 10, 2019. Desert Tech directly attributed the most vocal criticism of the platform to the InRangeTV company in collaboration with the Forgotten Weapons Company that demonstrated numerous failures in the system that were identified to be from varying ammunition loads used in the gas system on December 13, 2018. In addition to addressing the criticism, Desert Tech provided a technical root cause analysis presentation on the platform failures and resulting improvements with the generation 2 gas system. As a supplemental incentive, Desert Tech announced their MDR generation 2 gas system upgrade was to be covered under their warranty program for all owners.


title: Desert Tech MDR

text: The Micro Dynamic Rifle eXtreme, MDRX, variant was produced and marketed as a separate firearm in 2020. Improvements to the firearm include the following: Improved impact-resistant polymer, improved trigger, improved gas block, and a new "Ratchet" compensator.


title: Desert Tech MDR

text: The firearm was offered in .300 BLK, 6.5 Creedmoor (The first production semi auto Bullpup chambered in this cartridge), along with its original .223/5.56 and .308/7.62 calibers as well as 20" barrel and side ejection options. This update is considered the generation 3 MDR gas system.


title: Desert Tech MDR

text: A California compliant variant was produced with a 20" barrel, shark fin grip, reduced magazine size, and California compliant Ratchet compensator to qualify for a featureless rifle restrictions.


title: Desert Tech MDR

text: On January 28, 2021, the MDRX Micron conversion kit was announced that allowed the purchase of a 11.5" 5.56/.223 Wylde barrel, replacement hand guard, ejector plates, a new 'Raiden' flash hider, and bolt replacement for a side eject bullpup with a total length of 23.43". These kits allow standard MDRX and MDR rifles to be classified and regulated as a short-barreled rifle (SBR) requiring the user to apply with the appropriate regulatory bodies before install of the conversion kit in their rifle. These kits became available for sale on January 29, 2021.


title: Desert Tech MDR

text: On March 18, 2021, a collaboration effort between Desert Tech and BLK LBL Bipods was announced to develop, produce, and sell the Mantis handguard. The handguard is a , , aluminum handguard with an integrated bipod that replaces the factory polymer handguard and improved zero for handguard mounted parts. The aluminum handguard with integrated bipod is designed for both 16" and 20" barrel MDR/MDRX rifles and allows both an M-LOK under handguard attachment as well as an integrated bipod to be used at the same time without interference.


title: Desert Tech MDR

text: In March 2022, ES Tactical, a Desert Tech Dealer who specializes in precision upgrade parts, began to sell after market caliber conversion kits in .350 Legend and .450 Bushmaster, resulting in the first Bullpup to be chambered in those cartridges.


title: Desert Tech MDR

text: In June 2022, Desert Tech and BLK LBL announced a and ALX hand guard solution similar to the Mantis without the Bipod attachment.


title: Gary Chapman (musician)

text: Gary Winther Chapman (born August 19, 1957) is an American contemporary Christian music singer-songwriter and former television talk show host.


title: Gary Chapman (musician)

text: Born in Waurika, Oklahoma, Chapman grew up in De Leon, Texas, the son of an Assemblies of God pastor, the Rev. Terry W. Chapman, who ministered for 56 years before his death in 2009.


title: Gary Chapman (musician)

text: Chapman performed in bands throughout high school and college. After going to Bible college at what is now Southwestern Assemblies of God University in Waxahachie, Texas, he moved to Nashville, Tennessee, and was hired as guitar player for The Rambos. In 1979, his song "Father's Eyes" was recorded as the title track to Amy Grant's Grammy-nominated second album "My Father's Eyes". In 1982, his song "Finally", recorded by T. G. Sheppard, reached No. 1 on the country music charts. He also received a Dove Award as Songwriter of the Year from the Gospel Music Association in 1981.


title: Gary Chapman (musician)

text: During the rest of the 1980s and the early 1990s, Chapman continued to write, record, and produce music, while touring as an opening act for various artists. He sang "Brave Hearts" in 1987 for the Touchstone Pictures film "Ernest Goes to Camp". He also collaborated with numerous artists in the singing of "Amazing Grace" in the 1994 film "Maverick".


title: Gary Chapman (musician)

text: He was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Pop/Contemporary Gospel Album in 1994 for "The Light Inside". The album also resulted in a Dove Award nomination for Male Vocalist of the Year, and yielded a contemporary Christian music chart No. 1 song, "Sweet Glow of Mercy." He won a second Dove Award in 1994 for co-producing the album "Songs from the Loft", featuring various artists.


title: Gary Chapman (musician)

text: In April 1996, Chapman won Male Vocalist of the Year at the GMA Dove Awards. His 1996 album, "Shelter", delivered another No. 1, "One of Two", with "Man After Your Own Heart" resulting in a Dove Award for Inspirational Recorded Song of the Year and featuring on the Dove Award-winning Special Event Album of the Year, "My Utmost for His Highest". "Shelter" also received a 1997 Grammy nomination for Best Pop/Contemporary Gospel Album. At the 1998 Dove Awards, his album "Hymns From The Ryman", featuring him and other artists, won Country Album of the Year.


title: Gary Chapman (musician)

text: In the middle of 1996, The Nashville Network announced that Chapman would replace Tom Wopat as host of their evening talk show, "Prime Time Country". The show ended after 1999. Chapman went on to produce "Muzik Mafia" on CMT as well as appearing numerous times on the network's "Gone Country" as a songwriting mentor. Chapman, along with John Rich and Big Kenny (the country duo Big and Rich) traveled to Vietnam to document the story of Niles Harris, a Vietnam veteran, in the production of "The 8th of November: A True Story of Pain and Honor". Chapman produced, wrote, directed, and scored the documentary.


title: Gary Chapman (musician)

text: Chapman married Amy Grant on June 19, 1982. Grant filed for divorce from Chapman in March 1999, citing "irreconcilable differences", and the divorce was finalized in June 1999.


title: Gary Chapman (musician)

text: On December 22, 2008, Chapman married Cassie Piersol. The couple began a project called A Hymn a Week in 2010 to honor the musical heritage left to Chapman by his parents. Chapman has stated that both his parents, who were small-town pastors for their entire lives, had a strong influence in his life and they "implanted the hymns into [his] heart". Chapman's mother Mary died on December 26, 2002. His father Terry died on April 12, 2009, after a lengthy battle with Parkinson's disease and multiple myeloma. During his last years, he lived with Chapman and Cassie, and Chapman played and sang old hymns at his father's bedside. Being asked to perform a hymn at a friend's funeral inspired him to begin compiling a brief history and personal connection to a different hymn each week, on a webpage that he titled A Hymn a Week.


title: Gary Chapman (musician)

text: Chapman has three children with Grant. He and his third wife, Cassie Piersol Chapman, adopted an infant girl, Eva, in March 2014.


title: Gary Chapman (musician)

text: He is a licensed helicopter pilot, and once surprised his friend and fellow Christian singer/songwriter Steven Curtis Chapman (no relation) by landing in his yard.


title: Gary Chapman (musician)

text: Chapman and his wife are involved in many charities and organizations, including the Nashville Rescue Mission, Agape Animal Rescue, the T.J. Martell Foundation, and the Make-A-Wish Foundation.


title: Manoj K. Jayan

text: Manoj Kadampoothramadom Jayan also known as Manoj K.Jayan is an Indian actor of Malayalam and Tamil films. He has also done a few Telugu and Kannada films and has also acted in a Bollywood film. Manoj has won three Kerala State Film Award for Second Best Actor for his portrayal of Hariharan's "Kuttan Thampuran" in "Sargam" (1992), "Thalakkal Chandu" in "Pazhassi Raja" (2009) and "Kunjiraman" in Farook Abdul Rahiman's "Kaliyachan". He has played some critically acclaimed characters in his career such as "Kuttan Thampuran" ("Sargam"), "Thirumangalath Neelakandan Namboothiri" ("Perumthachan"), "Kunjunni Namboothiri" ("Parinayam"), "Unnikrishnan" ("Venkalam"), "Ananthakrishna Warrier" ("Sopanam"), "Digambaran" ("Anandabhadram") and "Thalakkal Chandu" ("Pazhassi Raja"). He is known for his polished acting skills and style quotient. He is the son of famous singer Jayan of Jaya-Vijaya combo. He is also a singer.


title: Manoj K. Jayan

text: He was born on 15 March 1966, in Kottayam District, Kerala to the famous Carnatic musician and Padma Shri awardee K. G. Jayan and V. K. Sarojini, a teacher. He has an elder brother Biju K Jayan (musician). He had his primary education from St. Joseph Convent UPS Kottayam and Sacred Heart Mount High School and pre-university degree from Government College, Kottayam (Nattakam). Then he joined Southern Film Institute, Trivandrum to learn acting but discontinued later.


title: Manoj K. Jayan

text: Manoj married film actress Urvashi on 2 May 2000, which ended in divorce in 2008. They have a daughter Tejalakshmi, born in 2001. Later, he married Asha on 2 March 2011, and they have a son Amrit, born on 30 December 2012.


title: Beattie Edmondson

text: Beatrice Louise "Beattie" Edmondson (born 19 June 1987) is an English actress. She played a main character in the BBC Three sitcom "Josh".


title: Beattie Edmondson

text: Beatrice Louise Edmondson is the middle daughter of comedians Ade Edmondson and Jennifer Saunders. She grew up in Devon with an elder sister, Ella, and a younger sister, Freya. After being educated at Exeter School, during her second year at her father's "alma mater" of the University of Manchester she decided not to audition for the Drama Society, instead forming a comedy group with four female friends. They appeared at the following Edinburgh Festival Fringe.


title: Beattie Edmondson

text: After working the comedy circuit with the all-female sketch troupe, which they named Lady Garden (and later reformed as Birthday Girls with Rose Johnson and Camille Ucan) she broke through into television in 2008. She made her début in the Ben Elton sitcom "The Wright Way", which was axed after one series. Her role in the 2015 six-part BBC Three series "Josh" was singled out by "The Independent" newspaper as "very watchable", saying her "comic timing stuck out". The show's second series was broadcast in 2016, with a third broadcast in October 2017.


title: Beattie Edmondson

text: Edmondson married BBC News researcher Sam Francis on 4 June 2017. She gave birth to their first child in 2019. In 2021 the couple had a second child.


title: Boreham Wood F.C.

text: Boreham Wood Football Club is a professional football club based in Borehamwood, Hertfordshire, England. They are currently members of the National League, the fifth tier of English football, and play at Meadow Park. Established in 1948, they are known as "the Wood" and have a local rivalry with St Albans City.


title: Boreham Wood F.C.

text: The club was established in 1948 as a merger of Boreham Wood Rovers and Royal Retournez, and began playing in the Mid-Herts League. In 1951 they joined the Parthenon League, and finished as runners-up in 1953–54 and 1954–55 before winning the title in 1955–56. After finishing as runners-up again in 1956–57, they joined the Spartan League. They finished as runners-up in 1963–64 and again in 1965–66, after which they switched to Division Two of the Athenian League.


title: Boreham Wood F.C.

text: The 1968–69 season saw Boreham Wood win Division Two, earning promotion to Division One. The following season they finished as runners-up in Division One and were promoted to the Premier Division. After the division was disbanded in 1973, the club were placed in Division One for the 1973–74 season, in which they were league champions and reached the first round of the FA Cup for the first time, eventually losing 3–0 at Southend United. At the end of the season the club joined Division Two of the Isthmian League. They won the division in 1976–77 and were promoted to the renamed Premier Division. The following season saw them reach the first round of the FA Cup again, losing 2–0 in a replay to Swindon Town after a 0–0 draw at home.


title: Boreham Wood F.C.

text: The club remained in the Premier Division until being relegated to Division One at the end of the 1981–82 season, in which they finished bottom of the table. In 1994–95 they were Division One champions, and were promoted back to the Premier Division. The 1996–97 season saw them reach the second round of the FA Cup for the first time after they beat Rushden & Diamonds 3–2 in a first round replay. In the second round they lost 2–1 at Luton Town. In the same season they also won the Isthmian League Cup. They repeated their FA Cup feat the following season, beating Hayes in the first round before losing 2–0 to Cheltenham Town in a replay. In 1998–99 they reached the first round again, losing 3–2 at home to Luton.


title: Boreham Wood F.C.

text: After being relegated in 1999–2000 they won Division One at the first attempt to make an immediate return to the Premier Division. However, they were relegated again at the end of the 2002–03 season, although the season did see them reach the FA Cup first round again, where they lost 5–0 at Torquay United. After one season in Division One North (and another FA Cup first round appearance, a 4–0 defeat at Blackpool), they were transferred to Division One East of the Southern League.


title: Boreham Wood F.C.

text: After winning Division One East in 2005–06, a season in which they also reached the semi-finals of the FA Trophy, losing 3–0 on aggregate to Woking, the club were promoted to the Premier Division of the Isthmian League. A fourth-place finish in 2009–10 saw them qualify for the promotion play-offs, and after beating Aveley 1–0 in the semi-finals, a 2–0 win over Kingstonian in the final resulted in promotion to the Conference South. The 2012–13 and 2013–14 seasons saw the club reach the FA Cup first round again, losing at home to Brentford and away at Carlisle United in a replay. In 2014–15 Boreham Wood finished as runners-up in the Conference South. In the subsequent play-offs, they beat Havant & Waterlooville 4–2 on aggregate before defeating Whitehawk 2–1 in the final to earn promotion to the renamed National League. Their first season in the National League saw a tenth FA Cup first round appearance, ending with a 2–1 defeat at home to Northwich Victoria.


title: Boreham Wood F.C.

text: In the 2017–18 FA Cup Boreham Wood beat Football League opposition for the first time, defeating Blackpool 2–1 at home in the first round. In the second round they lost 3–0 at Coventry City. The club went on to finish fourth in the National League at the end of the season, qualifying for the play-offs. After beating AFC Fylde 2–1 and Sutton United 3–2, they lost 2–1 to Tranmere Rovers in the Wembley final. In 2019–20 the club finished fifth and again qualified for the play-offs. After defeating Halifax Town 2–1 in the quarter-finals, they lost 1–0 to Harrogate Town in the semi-finals. The club reached the first round of the 2020–21 FA Cup, in which they defeated League Two club Southend United 4–3 on penalties after a 3–3 draw. They went on to beat Canvey Island 3–0 in the second round, earning a third round tie with Millwall, which they lost 2–0. In the 2021–22 FA Cup, the club reached the fifth round for the first time after beating League One club AFC Wimbledon in the third round and Championship club AFC Bournemouth in the fourth. They lost 2–0 to Premier League club Everton in the fifth round.


title: Magic lantern

text: The magic lantern, also known by its Latin name , is an early type of image projector that used pictures—paintings, prints, or photographs—on transparent plates (usually made of glass), one or more lenses, and a light source. Because a single lens inverts an image projected through it (as in the phenomenon which inverts the image of a camera obscura), slides were inserted upside down in the magic lantern, rendering the projected image correctly oriented.


title: Magic lantern

text: It was mostly developed in the 17th century and commonly used for entertainment purposes. It was increasingly used for education during the 19th century. Since the late 19th century, smaller versions were also mass-produced as toys. The magic lantern was in wide use from the 18th century until the mid-20th century when it was superseded by a compact version that could hold many 35 mm photographic slides: the slide projector.


title: Magic lantern

text: The magic lantern used a concave mirror behind a light source to direct the light through a small rectangular sheet of glass—a "lantern slide" that bore the image—and onward into a lens at the front of the apparatus. The lens adjusted to focus the plane of the slide at the distance of the projection screen, which could be simply a white wall, and it therefore formed an enlarged image of the slide on the screen. Some lanterns, including those of Christiaan Huygens and Jan van Musschenbroek, used three lenses for the objective.


title: Magic lantern

text: Biunial lanterns, with two objectives, became common during the 19th century and enabled a smooth and easy change of pictures. Stereopticons added more powerful light sources to optimize the projection of photographic slides.


title: Magic lantern

text: Originally the pictures were hand painted on glass slides. Initially, figures were rendered with black paint but soon transparent colors were also used. Sometimes the painting was done on oiled paper. Usually black paint was used as a background to block superfluous light, so the figures could be projected without distracting borders or frames. Many slides were finished with a layer of transparent lacquer, but in a later period cover glasses were also used to protect the painted layer. Most handmade slides were mounted in wood frames with a round or square opening for the picture.


title: Magic lantern

text: After 1820 the manufacturing of hand colored printed slides started, often making use of decalcomania transfers. Many manufactured slides were produced on strips of glass with several pictures on them and rimmed with a strip of glued paper.


title: Magic lantern

text: The first photographic lantern slides, called "hyalotypes", were invented by the German-born brothers Ernst Wilhelm (William) and Friedrich (Frederick) Langenheim in 1848 in Philadelphia and patented in 1850.


title: Magic lantern

text: Apart from sunlight, the only light sources available at the time of invention in the 17th century were candles and oil lamps, which were very inefficient and produced very dim projected images. The invention of the Argand lamp in the 1790s helped to make the images brighter. The invention of limelight in the 1820s made them even brighter. The invention of the intensely bright electric arc lamp in the 1860s eliminated the need for combustible gases or hazardous chemicals, and eventually the incandescent electric lamp further improved safety and convenience, although not brightness.


title: Magic lantern

text: Several types of projection systems existed before the invention of the magic lantern. Giovanni Fontana, Leonardo da Vinci and Cornelis Drebbel described or drew image projectors that had similarities to the magic lantern. In the 17th century, there was an immense interest in optics. The telescope and microscope were invented (in 1608 and the 1620s respectively) and apart from being useful to some scientists, such instruments were especially popular as entertaining curiosities to people who could afford them. The magic lantern would prove a nautral successor.


title: Magic lantern

text: The magic lantern can be seen as a further development of camera obscura. This is a natural phenomenon that occurs when an image of a scene at the other side of a screen (for instance a wall) is projected through a small hole in that screen as an inverted image (left to right and upside down) on a surface opposite to the opening. It was known at least since the 5th century BC and experimented with in darkened rooms at least since . The use of a lens in the hole has been traced back to . The portable camera obscura box with a lens was developed in the 17th century. Dutch inventor Cornelis Drebbel is thought to have sold one to Dutch poet, composer and diplomat Constantijn Huygens in 1622, while the oldest known clear description of a box-type camera is in German Jesuit scientist Gaspar Schott's 1657 book "Magia universalis naturæ et artis".


title: Magic lantern

text: The 1645 first edition of German Jesuit scholar Athanasius Kircher's book "Ars Magna Lucis et Umbrae" included a description of his invention, the "Steganographic Mirror": a primitive projection system with a focusing lens and text or pictures painted on a concave mirror reflecting sunlight, mostly intended for long-distance communication. He saw limitations in the increase of size and diminished clarity over a long distance and expressed his hope that someone would find a method to improve on this.


title: Magic lantern

text: In 1654, Belgian Jesuit mathematician André Tacquet used Kircher's technique to show the journey from China to Belgium of Italian Jesuit missionary Martino Martini. Some reports say that Martini lectured throughout Europe with a magic lantern, which he might have imported from China, but there's no evidence that it used anything other than Kircher's technique. However, Tacquet was a correspondent and friend of Christiaan Huygens and may thus have been a very early adapter of the magic lantern technique that Huygens developed around this period.


title: Magic lantern

text: Dutch scientist Christiaan Huygens is considered as one of the possible inventors of the magic lantern. He knew Athanasius Kircher's 1645 edition of "Ars Magna Lucis et Umbrae" which described a primitive projection system with a focusing lens and text or pictures painted on a concave mirror reflecting sunlight. Christiaan's father Constantijn had been acquainted with Cornelis Drebbel who used some unidentified optical techniques to transform himself and to summon appearances in magical performances. Constantijn Huygens wrote about a camera obscura device that he got from Drebbel in 1622.


title: Magic lantern

text: The oldest known document concerning the magic lantern is a page on which Christiaan Huygens made ten small sketches of a skeleton taking off its skull, above which he wrote "for representations by means of convex glasses with the lamp" (translated from French). As this page was found between documents dated in 1659, it is believed to have been made in the same year. Huygens soon seemed to regret this invention, as he thought it was too frivolous. In a 1662 letter to his brother Lodewijk he claimed he thought of it as some old "bagatelle" and seemed convinced that it would harm the family's reputation if people found out the lantern came from him. Christiaan had reluctantly sent a lantern to their father, but when he realized that Constantijn intended to show the lantern to the court of King Louis XIV of France at the Louvre, Christiaan asked Lodewijk to sabotage the lantern.


title: Magic lantern

text: Christiaan initially referred to the magic lantern as "la lampe" and "la lanterne", but in the last years of his life he used the then common term "laterna magica" in some notes. In 1694, he drew the principle of a "laterna magica" with two lenses.


title: Magic lantern

text: (–1681), a mathematician from Gotland, studied at the university of Leiden in 1657–58. He possibly met Christiaan Huygens during this time (and/or on several other occasions) and may have learned about the magic lantern from him. Correspondence between them is known from 1667. At least from 1664 until 1670, Walgensten demonstrated the magic lantern in Paris (1664), Lyon (1665), Rome (1665–1666), and Copenhagen (1670). He "sold such lanterns to different Italian princes in such an amount that they now are almost everyday items in Rome", according to Athanasius Kircher in 1671. In 1670, Walgensten projected an image of Death at the court of King Frederick III of Denmark. This scared some courtiers, but the king dismissed their cowardice and requested to repeat the figure three times. The king died a few days later. After Walgensten died, his widow sold his lanterns to the , but they have not been preserved. Walgensten is credited with coining the term "Laterna Magica", assuming he communicated this name to Claude Dechales who, in 1674, published about seeing the machine of the "erudite Dane" in 1665 in Lyon.


title: Magic lantern

text: There are many gaps and uncertainties in the magic lantern's recorded history. A separate early magic lantern tradition seems to have been developed in southern Germany and includes lanterns with horizontal cylindrical bodies, while Walgensten's lantern and probably Huygens' both had vertical bodies. This tradition dates at least to 1671, with the arrival of instrument maker Johann Franz Griendel in the city of Nürnberg, which Johann Zahn identified as one of the centers of magic lantern production in 1686. Griendel was indicated as the inventor of the magic lantern by Johann Christoph Kohlhans in a 1677 publication. It has been suggested that this tradition is older and that instrument maker Johann Wiesel (1583–1662) from Augsburg may have been making magic lanterns earlier on and possibly inspired Griendel and even Huygens. Huygens is known to have studied samples of Wiesel's lens-making and instruments since 1653. Wiesel did make a ship's lantern around 1640 that has much in common with the magic lantern design that Griendel would later apply: a horizontal cylindrical body with a rosette chimney on top, a concave mirror behind a fixture for a candle or lamp inside and a biconvex lens at the front. There is no evidence that Wiesel actually ever made a magic lantern, but in 1674, his successor offered a variety of magic lanterns from the same workshop. This successor is thought to have only continued producing Wiesel's designs after his death in 1662, without adding anything new.


title: Magic lantern

text: Before 1671, only a small circle of people seemed to have knowledge of the magic lantern, and almost every known report of the device from this period had to do with people that were more or less directly connected to Christiaan Huygens. Despite the rejection expressed in his letters to his brother, Huygens must have familiarized several people with the lantern.


title: Magic lantern

text: In 1664 Parisian engineer Pierre Petit wrote to Huygens to ask for some specifications of the lantern, because he was trying to construct one after seeing the lantern of "the dane" (probably Walgensten). The lantern that Petit was constructing had a concave mirror behind the lamp. This directed more light through the lens, resulting in a brighter projection, and it would become a standard part of most of the lanterns that were made later. Petit may have copied it from Walgensten, but he expressed that he made a lamp stronger than any he had ever seen..


title: Magic lantern

text: Starting in 1661, Huygens corresponded with London optical instrument-maker Richard Reeve. Reeve was soon selling magic lanterns, demonstrated one in his shop on 17 May 1663 to Balthasar de Monconys, and sold one to Samuel Pepys in August 1666.


title: Magic lantern

text: One of Christiaan Huygens' contacts imagined how Athanasius Kircher would use the magic lantern: "If he would know about the invention of the Lantern he would surely frighten the cardinals with specters." Kircher would eventually learn about the existence of the magic lantern via Thomas Walgensten and introduced it as "Lucerna Magica" in the widespread 1671 second edition of his book "Ars Magna Lucis et Umbrae". Kircher claimed that Thomas Walgensten reworked his ideas from the previous edition of this book into a better lantern. Kircher described this improved lantern, but it was illustrated in a confusing manner: the pictures seem technically incorrect—with both the projected image and the transparencies (H) shown upright (while the text states that they should be inverted), the hollow mirror is too high in one picture and absent in the other, and the lens (I) is at the wrong side of the slide. However, experiments with a construction as illustrated in Kircher's book proved that it could work as a point light-source projection system.


title: Magic lantern

text: The projected image in one of the illustrations shows a person in purgatory or hellfire and the other depicts Death with a scythe and an hourglass. According to legend Kircher secretly used the lantern at night to project the image of Death on windows of apostates to scare them back into church. Kircher did suggest in his book that an audience would be more astonished by the sudden appearance of images if the lantern would be hidden in a separate room, so the audience would be ignorant of the cause of their appearance.


title: Magic lantern

text: The earliest reports and illustrations of lantern projections suggest that they were all intended to scare the audience. Pierre Petit called the apparatus "lanterne de peur" (lantern of fear) in his 1664 letter to Huygens. Surviving lantern plates and descriptions from the next decades prove that the new medium was not just used for horror shows, but that many kinds of subjects were projected. Griendel didn't mention scary pictures when he described the magic lantern to Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz in December 1671: "An optical lantern which presents everything that one desires, figures, paintings, portraits, faces, hunts, even an entire comedy with all its lively colours." In 1675, Leibniz saw an important role for the magic lantern in his plan for a kind of world exhibition with projections of "attempts at flight, artistic meteors, optical effects, representations of the sky with the star and comets, and a model of the earth (...), fireworks, water fountains, and ships in rare forms; then mandrakes and other rare plants and exotic animals." In 1685–1686, Johannes Zahn was an early advocate for use of the device for educational purposes: detailed anatomical illustrations were difficult to draw on a chalkboard, but could easily be copied onto glass or mica.


title: Magic lantern

text: By the 1730s the use of magic lanterns started to become more widespread when travelling showmen, conjurers and storytellers added them to their repertoire. The travelling lanternists were often called Savoyards (they supposedly came from the Savoy region in France) and became a common sight in many European cities.


title: Magic lantern

text: In France in the 1770s François Dominique Séraphin used magic lanterns to perform his "Ombres Chinoises" (Chinese shadows), a form of shadow play.


title: Magic lantern

text: Magic lanterns had also become a staple of science lecturing and museum events since Scottish lecturer Henry Moyes's tour of America in 1785–86, when he recommended that all college laboratories procure one. French writer and educator Stéphanie Félicité, comtesse de Genlis popularized the use of magic lanterns as an educational tool in the late 1700s when using projected images of plants to teach botany. Her educational methods were published in America in English translation during the early 1820s.


title: Magic lantern

text: A type of lantern was constructed by Moses Holden between 1814 and 1815 for illustrating his astronomical lectures.


title: Magic lantern

text: In 1821, Philip Carpenter's London company, which became Carpenter and Westley after his death, started manufacturing a sturdy but lightweight and transportable "Phantasmagoria lantern" with an Argand style lamp. It produced high quality projections and was suitable for classrooms. Carpenter also developed a "secret" copper plate printing/burning process to mass-produce glass lantern slides with printed outlines, which were then easily and quickly hand painted ready for sale. These "copper-plate sliders" contained three or four very detailed 4" circular images mounted in thin hardwood frames. The first known set "The Elements of Zoology" became available in 1823, with over 200 images in 56 frames of zoological figures, classified according to the system of the Swedish scientist Carl Linnaeus. The same year many other slides appeared in the company's catalogue: "The Kings and Queens of England" (9 sliders taken from David Hume's History of England), "Astronomical Diagrams and Constellations" (9 sliders taken from Friedrich Wilhelm Herschel's textbooks), "Views and Buildings", Ancient and Modern Costume (62 sliders from various sources). Fifteen sliders of the category "Humorous" provided some entertainment, but the focus on education was obvious and very successful.


title: Magic lantern

text: Through the mid-19th century, the market for magic lanterns was concentrated in Europe with production focused primarily on Italy, France, and England. In 1848, a New York optician began advertising imported slides and locally produced magic lanterns. By 1860, however, mass production began to make magic lanterns more widely available and affordable, with much of the production in the latter half of the 19th century concentrated in Germany. These smaller lanterns had smaller glass sliders, which instead of wooden frames usually had colorful strips of paper glued around their edges with the images printed directly on the glass.


title: Magic lantern

text: The popularity of magic lanterns waned after the introduction of movies in the 1890s, but they remained a common medium until slide projectors became widespread during the 1950s.


title: Magic lantern

text: The magic lantern was not only a direct ancestor of the motion picture projector as a means for visual storytelling, but it could itself be used to project moving images. Some suggestion of movement could be achieved by alternating between pictures of different phases of a motion, but most magic lantern "animations" used two glass slides projected together — one with the stationary part of the picture and the other with the part that could be set in motion by hand or by a simple mechanism.


title: Magic lantern

text: Motion in animated slides was mostly limited to either two phases of a movement or transformation, or a more gradual singular movement (e.g., a train passing through a landscape). These limitations made subjects with repetitive movements popular, like the sails on a windmill turning around or children on a seesaw. Movements could be repeated over and over and could be performed at different speeds. A common technique that is comparable to the effect of a panning camera makes use of a long slide that is simply pulled slowly through the lantern and usually shows a landscape, sometimes with several phases of a story within the continuous backdrop.


title: Magic lantern

text: Movement of projected images was also possible by moving the magic lantern itself. This became a staple technique in phantasmagoria shows in the late 18th century, often with the lantern sliding on rails or riding on small wheels and hidden from the view of the audience behind the projection screen.


title: Magic lantern

text: In 1645, Kircher had already suggested projecting live insects and shadow puppets from the surface of the mirror in his Steganographic system to perform dramatic scenes.


title: Magic lantern

text: Christiaan Huygens' 1659 sketches (see above) suggest he intended to animate the skeleton to have it take off its head and place it back on its neck. This can be seen as an indication that the very first magic lantern demonstrations may already have included projections of simple animations.


title: Magic lantern

text: In 1668, Robert Hooke wrote about the effects of a type of magic lantern installation: "Spectators not well versed in optics, that should see the various apparitions and disappearances, the motions, changes and actions that may this way be represented, would readily believe them to be supernatural and miraculous."


title: Magic lantern

text: In 1675, German polymath and philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz proposed a kind of world exhibition that would show all types of new inventions and spectacles. In a handwritten document he supposed it should open and close with magic lantern shows, including subjects "which can be dismembered, to represent quite extraordinary and grotesque movements, which men would not be capable of making" (translated from French).


title: Magic lantern

text: Several reports of early magic lantern screenings possibly described moving pictures, but are not clear enough to conclude whether the viewers saw animated slides or motion depicted in still images.


title: Magic lantern

text: In 1698, German engraver and publisher Johann Christoph Weigel described several lantern slides with mechanisms that made glass parts move over one fixed glass slide, for instance by the means of a silk thread, or grooves in which the mobile part slides.


title: Magic lantern

text: By 1709 a German optician and glass grinder named Themme (or Temme) made moving lantern slides, including a carriage with rotating wheels, a cupid with a spinning wheel, a shooting gun, and falling bombs. Wheels were cut from the glass plate with a diamond and rotated by a thread that was spun around small brass wheels attached to the glass wheels. A paper slip mask would be quickly pulled away to reveal the red fiery discharge and the bullet from a shooting gun. Zacharias Conrad von Uffenbach visited Themme's shop and liked the effects, but was disappointed about the very simple mechanisms. Nonetheless he bought seven moving slides, as well as twelve slides with four pictures each, which he thought were delicately painted.


title: Magic lantern

text: Several types of mechanical slides were described and illustrated in Dutch professor of mathematics, physics, philosophy, medicine, and astronomy Pieter van Musschenbroek's second edition (1739) of "Beginsels Der Natuurkunde" (see illustration below). Pieter was the brother of Jan van Musschenbroek, the maker of an outstanding magic lantern with excellent lenses and a diaphragm (see illustration above).


title: Magic lantern

text: In 1770, Edmé-Gilles Guyot described a method of using two slides for the depiction of a storm at sea, with waves on one slide and ships and a few clouds on another. Lanternists could project the illusion of mild waves turning into a wild sea tossing the ships around by increasing the movement of the separate slides. Guyot also detailed how projection on smoke could be used to create the illusion of ghosts hovering in the air, which would become a technique commonly used in phantasmagoria.


title: Magic lantern

text: An especially intricate multiple rackwork mechanism was developed to show the movements of the planets (sometimes accompanied by revolving satellites) revolving around the sun. In 1795, one M. Dicas offered an early magic lantern system, the Lucernal or Portable Eidouranian, that showed the orbiting planets. From around the 1820s mechanical astronomical slides became quite common.


title: Magic lantern

text: The effect of a gradual transition from one image to another, known as a dissolve in modern filmmaking, became the basis of a popular type of magic lantern show in England in the 19th century. Typical dissolving views showed landscapes dissolving from day to night or from summer to winter. This was achieved by aligning the projection of two matching images and slowly diminishing the first image while introducing the second image. The subject and the effect of magic lantern dissolving views is similar to the popular Diorama theatre paintings that originated in Paris in 1822. 19th century magic lantern broadsides often used the terms "dissolving view", "dioramic view", or simply "diorama" interchangeably.


title: Magic lantern

text: The effect was reportedly invented by phantasmagoria pioneer Paul de Philipsthal while in Ireland in 1803 or 1804. He thought of using two lanterns to make the spirit of Samuel appear out of a mist in his representation of the Witch of Endor. While working out the desired effect, he got the idea of using the technique with landscapes. An 1812 newspaper about a London performance indicates that De Philipsthal presented what was possibly a relatively early incarnation of a dissolving views show, describing it as "a series of landscapes (in imitation of moonlight), which insensibly change to various scenes producing a very magical effect."


title: Magic lantern

text: Another possible inventor is Henry Langdon Childe, who purportedly once worked for De Philipsthal. He is said to have invented the dissolving views in 1807, and to have improved and completed the technique in 1818. The oldest known use of the term "dissolving views" occurs on playbills for Childe's shows at the Adelphi Theatre in London in 1837. Childe further popularized the dissolving views at the Royal Polytechnic Institution in the early 1840s.