title: Quality of service

text: Early work used the integrated services (IntServ) philosophy of reserving network resources. In this model, applications used RSVP to request and reserve resources through a network. While IntServ mechanisms do work, it was realized that in a broadband network typical of a larger service provider, Core routers would be required to accept, maintain, and tear down thousands or possibly tens of thousands of reservations. It was believed that this approach would not scale with the growth of the Internet, and in any event was antithetical to the end-to-end principle, the notion of designing networks so that core routers do little more than simply switch packets at the highest possible rates.


title: Quality of service

text: Under DiffServ, packets are marked either by the traffic sources themselves or by the edge devices where the traffic enters the network. In response to these markings, routers and switches use various queuing strategies to tailor performance to requirements. At the IP layer, DSCP markings use the 6 bit DS field in the IP packet header. At the MAC layer, VLAN IEEE 802.1Q can be used to carry 3 bit of essentially the same information. Routers and switches supporting DiffServ configure their network scheduler to use multiple queues for packets awaiting transmission from bandwidth constrained (e.g., wide area) interfaces. Router vendors provide different capabilities for configuring this behavior, to include the number of queues supported, the relative priorities of queues, and bandwidth reserved for each queue.


title: Quality of service

text: In practice, when a packet must be forwarded from an interface with queuing, packets requiring low jitter (e.g., VoIP or videoconferencing) are given priority over packets in other queues. Typically, some bandwidth is allocated by default to network control packets (such as Internet Control Message Protocol and routing protocols), while best-effort traffic might simply be given whatever bandwidth is left over.


title: Quality of service

text: At the Media Access Control (MAC) layer, VLAN IEEE 802.1Q and IEEE 802.1p can be used to distinguish between Ethernet frames and classify them. Queueing theory models have been developed on performance analysis and QoS for MAC layer protocols.


title: Quality of service

text: Cisco IOS NetFlow and the Cisco Class Based QoS (CBQoS) Management Information Base (MIB) are marketed by Cisco Systems.


title: Quality of service

text: One compelling example of the need for QoS on the Internet relates to congestive collapse. The Internet relies on congestion avoidance protocols, primarily as built into Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), to reduce traffic under conditions that would otherwise lead to congestive collapse. QoS applications, such as VoIP and IPTV, require largely constant bitrates and low latency, therefore they cannot use TCP and cannot otherwise reduce their traffic rate to help prevent congestion. Service-level agreements limit traffic that can be offered to the Internet and thereby enforce traffic shaping that can prevent it from becoming overloaded, and are hence an indispensable part of the Internet's ability to handle a mix of real-time and non-real-time traffic without collapse.


title: Quality of service

text: End-to-end quality of service can require a method of coordinating resource allocation between one autonomous system and another. The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) defined the Resource Reservation Protocol (RSVP) for bandwidth reservation as a proposed standard in 1997. RSVP is an end-to-end bandwidth reservation and admission control protocol. RSVP was not widely adopted due to scalability limitations. The more scalable traffic engineering version, RSVP-TE, is used in many networks to establish traffic-engineered Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) label-switched paths. The IETF also defined Next Steps in Signaling (NSIS) with QoS signalling as a target. NSIS is a development and simplification of RSVP.


title: Quality of service

text: Research consortia such as "end-to-end quality of service support over heterogeneous networks" (EuQoS, from 2004 through 2007) and fora such as the IPsphere Forum developed more mechanisms for handshaking QoS invocation from one domain to the next. IPsphere defined the Service Structuring Stratum (SSS) signaling bus in order to establish, invoke and (attempt to) assure network services. EuQoS conducted experiments to integrate Session Initiation Protocol, Next Steps in Signaling and IPsphere's SSS with an estimated cost of about 15.6 million Euro and published a book.


title: Quality of service

text: A research project Multi Service Access Everywhere (MUSE) defined another QoS concept in a first phase from January 2004 through February 2006, and a second phase from January 2006 through 2007. Another research project named PlaNetS was proposed for European funding circa 2005.


title: Quality of service

text: A broader European project called "Architecture and design for the future Internet" known as 4WARD had a budget estimated at 23.4 million Euro and was funded from January 2008 through June 2010.


title: Quality of service

text: It included a "Quality of Service Theme" and published a book. Another European project, called WIDENS (Wireless Deployable Network System), proposed a bandwidth reservation approach for mobile wireless multirate adhoc networks.


title: Quality of service

text: Strong cryptography network protocols such as Secure Sockets Layer, I2P, and virtual private networks obscure the data transferred using them. As all electronic commerce on the Internet requires the use of such strong cryptography protocols, unilaterally downgrading the performance of encrypted traffic creates an unacceptable hazard for customers. Yet, encrypted traffic is otherwise unable to undergo deep packet inspection for QoS.


title: Quality of service

text: Protocols like ICA and RDP may encapsulate other traffic (e.g. printing, video streaming) with varying requirements that can make optimization difficult.


title: Quality of service

text: The Internet2 project found, in 2001, that the QoS protocols were probably not deployable inside its Abilene Network with equipment available at that time. The group predicted that “logistical, financial, and organizational barriers will block the way toward any bandwidth guarantees” by protocol modifications aimed at QoS.


title: Quality of service

text: They believed that the economics would encourage network providers to deliberately erode the quality of best effort traffic as a way to push customers to higher priced QoS services. Instead they proposed over-provisioning of capacity as more cost-effective at the time.


title: Quality of service

text: The Abilene network study was the basis for the testimony of Gary Bachula to the US Senate Commerce Committee's hearing on Network Neutrality in early 2006. He expressed the opinion that adding more bandwidth was more effective than any of the various schemes for accomplishing QoS they examined. Bachula's testimony has been cited by proponents of a law banning quality of service as proof that no legitimate purpose is served by such an offering. This argument is dependent on the assumption that over-provisioning isn't a form of QoS and that it is always possible. Cost and other factors affect the ability of carriers to build and maintain permanently over-provisioned networks.


title: Quality of service

text: Mobile cellular service providers may offer mobile QoS to customers just as the wired public switched telephone network services providers and Internet service providers may offer QoS. QoS mechanisms are always provided for circuit switched services, and are essential for inelastic services, for example streaming multimedia.


title: Quality of service

text: Mobility adds complications to QoS mechanisms. A phone call or other session may be interrupted after a handover if the new base station is overloaded. Unpredictable handovers make it impossible to give an absolute QoS guarantee during the session initiation phase.


title: Quality of service

text: Quality of service in the field of telephony was first defined in 1994 in ITU-T Recommendation E.800. This definition is very broad, listing 6 primary components: Support, Operability, Accessibility, Retainability, Integrity and Security. In 1998 the ITU published a document discussing QoS in the field of data networking. X.641 offers a means of developing or enhancing standards related to QoS and provide concepts and terminology that should assist in maintaining the consistency of related standards.


title: Quality of service

text: Some QoS-related IETF Request for Comments (RFC)s are , and ; both these are discussed above. The IETF has also published two RFCs giving background on QoS: , and .


title: Quality of service

text: The IETF has also published as an informative or "best practices" document about the practical aspects of designing a QoS solution for a DiffServ network. The document tries to identify applications commonly run over an IP network, groups them into traffic classes, studies the treatment required by these classes from the network, and suggests which of the QoS mechanisms commonly available in routers can be used to implement those treatments.


title: OpenWrt

text: OpenWrt (from "open wireless router") is an open-source project for embedded operating systems based on Linux, primarily used on embedded devices to route network traffic. The main components are Linux, util-linux, musl, and BusyBox. All components have been optimized to be small enough to fit into the limited storage and memory available in home routers.


title: OpenWrt

text: OpenWrt is configured using a command-line interface (ash shell) or a web interface (LuCI). There are about 8000 optional software packages available for installation via the opkg package management system.


title: OpenWrt

text: OpenWrt can run on various types of devices, including CPE routers, residential gateways, smartphones, pocket computers (e.g. Ben NanoNote). It is also possible to run OpenWrt on personal computers and laptops.


title: OpenWrt

text: The OpenWrt project was started in 2004 after Linksys had built the firmware for their WRT54G series of wireless routers with code licensed under the GNU General Public License. Under the terms of that license, Linksys was required to make the source code of its modified version available under the same license, which enabled independent developers to create derivative versions. Support was originally limited to the WRT54G series, but has since been expanded to include many other routers and devices from many different manufacturers.


title: OpenWrt

text: Using this code as a base and later as a reference, developers created a Linux distribution that offers many features not previously found in consumer-level routers. Early on some features required proprietary software. For example, prior to OpenWrt 8.09 (based on Linux 2.6.25 and the codice_1 kernel module) WLAN for many Broadcom-based routers could only be had via the proprietary codice_2 module (and which required Linux 2.4.x).


title: OpenWrt

text: OpenWrt releases were historically named after cocktails, such as White Russian, Kamikaze, Backfire, Attitude Adjustment, Barrier Breaker and Chaos Calmer, and their recipes were included in the message of the day (motd) displayed after logging in using the command-line interface.


title: OpenWrt

text: In May 2016, OpenWrt was forked by a group of core OpenWrt contributors due to disagreements on internal process. The fork was dubbed Linux Embedded Development Environment (LEDE). The schism was reconciled a year later. Following the remerger, announced in January 2018, the OpenWrt branding is preserved, with many of the LEDE processes and rules used. The LEDE project name was used for v17.01, with development versions of 18.01 branded OpenWrt, dropping the original cocktail based naming scheme.


title: OpenWrt

text: The Linux Embedded Development Environment (LEDE) project was a fork of the OpenWrt project and shared many of the same goals. It was created in May 2016 by a group of core OpenWrt contributors due to disagreements on OpenWrt internal processes. The schism was nominally reconciled a year later in May 2017 pending approval of the LEDE developers. The remerger preserves the OpenWrt branding, but uses many of the LEDE processes and rules. The remerge proposal vote was passed by LEDE developers in June 2017, and formally announced in January 2018. The merging process was completed before the OpenWrt 18.06 release.


title: OpenWrt

text: OpenWrt features a writeable root file system, enabling users to modify any file and easily install additional software. This is in contrast with other firmware based on read-only file systems which don't allow modifying installed software without rebuilding and flashing a complete firmware image. This is accomplished by overlaying a read-only compressed SquashFS file system with a writeable JFFS2 file system using overlayfs. Additional software can be installed with the "opkg" package manager and the package repository contains approximately 8000 packages (by 2022).


title: OpenWrt

text: OpenWrt can be configured through either a command-line interface or a web interface called LuCI. OpenWrt provides set of scripts called UCI (unified configuration interface) to unify and simplify configuration through the command-line interface. Additional web interfaces, such as Gargoyle, are also available.


title: OpenWrt

text: OpenWrt provides regular bug fixes and security updates even for devices that are no longer supported by their manufacturers.


title: OpenWrt

text: OpenWrt provides exhaustive possibilities to configure common network-related features, like IPv4, IPv6, DNS, DHCP, routing, firewall, NAT, port forwarding and WPA.


title: OpenWrt

text: OpenWrt's development environment and build system, known together as "OpenWrt Buildroot", are based on a heavily modified Buildroot system. OpenWrt Buildroot is a set of Makefiles and patches that automates the process of building a complete Linux-based OpenWrt system for an embedded device, by building and using an appropriate cross-compilation toolchain.


title: OpenWrt

text: Embedded devices usually use a different processor than the one found in host computers used for building their OpenWrt system images, requiring a cross-compilation toolchain. Such a compilation toolchain runs on a host system but generates code for a targeted embedded device and its processor's instruction set architecture (ISA). For example, if a host system uses x86 and a target system uses MIPS32, the regular compilation toolchain of the host runs on x86 and generates code for x86 architecture, while the cross-compilation toolchain runs on x86 and generates code for the MIPS32 architecture. OpenWrt Buildroot automates this whole process to work on the instruction set architectures of most embedded devices and host systems.


title: OpenWrt

text: Besides building system images, OpenWrt development environment also provides a mechanism for simplified cross-platform building of OpenWrt software packages. Source code for each software package is required to provide a Makefile-like set of building instructions, and an optional set of patches for bug fixes or footprint optimizations.


title: OpenWrt

text: OpenWrt runs many different routers and includes a table of compatible hardware on its website. In its buyer's guide, it notes that users recommend devices equipped with wireless chips from either Qualcomm's Atheros, Ralink (now MediaTek) or any vendor with open source drivers and specifications. OpenWrt also recommends choosing a device with a minimum of 16 MB of flash and 64 MB of RAM, preferably higher amounts.


title: OpenWrt

text: OpenWrt, especially its Buildroot build system, has been adopted as the structure for other efforts. For example


title: Nine Worthies

text: The Nine Worthies are nine historical, scriptural, and legendary men of distinction who personify the ideals of chivalry established in the Middle Ages, whose lives were deemed a valuable study for aspirants to chivalric status. All were commonly referred to as 'Princes', regardless of their historical titles. In French they are called "Les Neuf Preux" or "Nine Valiants", giving a more specific idea of the moral virtues they exemplified: those of soldierly courage and generalship. In Italy they are "i Nove Prodi".


title: Nine Worthies

text: The Nine Worthies include three pagans (Hector, Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar), three Jews (Joshua, David and Judas Maccabeus) and three Christians (King Arthur, Charlemagne and Godfrey of Bouillon).


title: Nine Worthies

text: They were first described in the early fourteenth century, by Jacques de Longuyon in his "Voeux du Paon" (1312). Their selection, as Johan Huizinga pointed out, betrays a close connection with the romance genre of chivalry. Neatly divided into a triad of triads, these men were considered to be paragons of chivalry within their particular traditions, whether Pagan, Jewish, or Christian. Longuyon's choices soon became a common theme in the literature and art of the Middle Ages and earned a permanent place in the popular consciousness. The medieval "craving for symmetry" engendered female equivalents, the "neuf preuses", who were sometimes added, though the women chosen varied. Eustache Deschamps selected "a group of rather bizarre heroines" selected from fiction and history, among them Penthesilea, Tomyris, Semiramis. Literature and suites of tapestry featured the full complement of eighteen, whose allegorical figures preceded King Henry VI of England in his triumphal royal entry to Paris, 1431. A "tenth worthy" was added by Deschamps, in the figure of Bertrand du Guesclin, the Breton knight to whom France owed recovery from the battles of Crécy (1346) and Poitiers (1356). Francis I of France still occasionally paraded himself at court dressed in the "antique mode" to identify himself also as one of the "Neuf Preux".


title: Nine Worthies

text: The 1459 Ingeram Codex presents the coat of arms of the Nine Worthies among a larger list of attributed arms of exemplary individuals, as the three "better Jews", "best pagans" and "best Christians" alongside the arms attributed to three heroes of King David (glossed as "the first coats of arms"), the Three Magi, the "three mildest princes", the "three worst tyrants" (Nebuchadnezzar, Antiochos Epiphanes and Nero), "three patient ones" (Alphonse the Wise, Job and Saint Eustachius), "three anointed kings" (France, Denmark and Hungary) and "three noble dynasties" (Louis XI of France, called "Louis the Prudent" as Dauphin, Ladislaus I of Hungary, and Otto III, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg of the House of Welf).


title: Nine Worthies

text: The Nine Worthies were also a popular subject for masques in Renaissance Europe. In William Shakespeare's play "Love's Labour's Lost" the comic characters attempt to stage such a masque, but it descends into chaos. The list of Worthies actually named in the play include two not on the original list, Hercules and Pompey the Great. Alexander, Judah Maccabee, and Hector also appear on stage before the show collapses into complete disorder. The worthies are also mentioned in "Henry IV, Part 2" in which Doll Tearsheet is so impressed by Falstaff's bravery in fighting Ancient Pistol that she says he is "as valorous as Hector of Troy, worth five of Agamemnon, and ten times better than the Nine Worthies".


title: Nine Worthies

text: Don Quixote evokes the Nine Worthies in Volume I, Chapter 5, telling a peasant (who is trying to get him to admit who he is) "I know that I may be not only those I have named, but all the Twelve Peers of France and even all the Nine Worthies, since my achievements surpass all that they have done all together and each of them on his own account".


title: Nine Worthies

text: The Nine Worthies had not devolved to folk culture even in the seventeenth century, for a frieze of the Nine Worthies, contemporary with Shakespeare's comedy, was painted at the outset of the seventeenth century at North Mymms Place, Hertfordshire, an up-to-date house built by the Coningsby family, 1599.


title: Nine Worthies

text: The Cloisters, in New York City, has important portions of an early 15th-century tapestry series illustrating the surviving five of the Nine Worthies: King Arthur, Joshua, David, Hector, and Julius Caesar.


title: Nine Worthies

text: "I Nove Prodi", a fresco by the "Maestro del Castello della Manta", an anonymous master, painted c. 1420 in the "sala baronale" of the Castello della Manta, Saluzzo, Italy. The series also includes depictions of their female counterparts.


title: Nine Worthies

text: Montacute House has sculptures of the Nine Worthies spaced along the upper eastern façade on the exterior of the long gallery piers. These figures are dressed in Roman armour.


title: Nine Worthies

text: In the late fourteenth century, Lady Worthies began to accompany the Nine Worthies, though usually not individualized and shown as anonymous Amazon-styled warriors. In later years, nine of the "Most Illustrious Ladies of All Ages and Nations" were chosen from scripture, history and legend to be placed alongside their male counterparts, though the choices for the Lady Worthies were not usually standardized and often varied by region, author and artist.


title: Nine Worthies

text: Eustache Deschamps added "neuf preuses" (women) to the list of "neuf preux" , including Penthesilea, Tomyris, and Semiramis. Together with their male counterparts, they precede Henry VI as he enters Paris in 1431, and figure in "Le Jouvencel" (1466). The list of "preuses" was however less fixed, and not always structured in pagan, Jewish and Christian triads. Thomas III of Saluzzo has: "Deiphille, Synoppe, Hippolyte, Menalyppe, Semiramis, Lampetho, Thamarys, Teuta, Penthésilée".


title: Nine Worthies

text: A very fine set of Siennese fifteenth century panel paintings, attributed to the Master of the Griselda Legend and others, now incomplete and widely dispersed, showed male and female worthies - the remaining paintings were reunited in a 2007 exhibition at the National Gallery, London.


title: Nine Worthies

text: In the German Renaissance, Hans Burgkmair made a set of six woodcuts, each showing three of the "Eighteen Worthies". In addition to the usual males, his prints showed the Pagan Lucretia, Veturia and Virginia, the Jewish Esther, Judith and Yael, and the Christian Saints Helena, Bridget of Sweden and Elizabeth of Hungary. Burgkmair was in touch with Augsburg Renaissance Humanist circles, who may have helped choose the group. Apart from Veturia, mother of Coriolanus, who tried to save Rome from defeat by her son, the other pagan two were examples of chastity, responsible for no heroic acts except their defence of their own virtue. In contrast, two of the Jewish women, Judith and Jael, are known for their personal assassination of leaders opposed to Israel. Judith carries a sword in one hand and Holofernes's severed head in the other, and Jael carries the mallet with which she hammered a peg in the head of Sisera. The "Power of Women" and female violence was an interest of German artists at the time, and Lucas van Leyden, Albrecht Altdorfer and others made prints of Jael in the act.


title: Nine Worthies

text: The Christian trio of saints, all very popular in Germany at the time, are all women who had been married - Bridget became an abbess as a widow. In addition, like three of the male worthies, Elizabeth of Hungary was an ancestor of Burgkmair's patron Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor, and Helena was a Roman Empress. Unlike the other two groups, who all face each other, apparently in conversation, these three all look down, and may illustrate the female virtue of silence. Burgkmair's conception was not very widely followed.


title: Nine Worthies

text: "Nine Worthies of London" is a book by Richard Johnson, written in 1592, which borrows the theme from the Nine Worthies. The book is subtitled "Explaining the Honourable Excise of Armes, the Vertues of the Valiant, and the Memorable Attempts of Magnanimous Minds; Pleasaunt for Gentlemen, not unseemly for Magistrates, and most profitable for Prentises", celebrated the rise of nine famous Londoners through society from the ranks of apprentices or commoners.


title: Nine Worthies

text: The nine were Sir William Walworth, Sir Henry Pritchard, Sir Thomas White, Sir William Sevenoke, Sir John Hawkwood, Sir John Bonham, Christopher Croker, Sir Henry Maleverer of Cornhill, and Sir Hugh Calverley.


title: Nine Worthies

text: The term "Nine Worthies" was later used to refer to nine of the privy councillors of William III: Devonshire, Dorset, Monmouth, Edward Russell, Carmarthen, Pembroke, Nottingham, Marlborough, and Lowther.


title: Belgorod Oblast

text: Belgorod Oblast (, "Belgorodskaya oblast") is a federal subject of Russia (an oblast). Its administrative center is the city of Belgorod. Population:


title: Belgorod Oblast

text: At the turn of the 17th century, a solid line of military fortifications was built in the area, stretching for almost . Ukrainian Cossacks, who moved here because of the nobility and the tax burden, were in charge of the line defenses. Even more Cossacks moved to the area during the Khmelnytsky Uprising (1648–1657) and the internecine wars in the Cossack Hetmanate (1659–1679). Belgorod became the military and administrative center, after originating as an outpost on the southern borders of Russia.


title: Belgorod Oblast

text: From 1708 to 1727, the territory of the modern Belgorod Oblast was part of Kiev and Azov Governorates. In 1727, Belgorod Governorate was established from parts of Kiev Governorate. The governorate lasted until 1779. This territory was much greater than that of today, and the governorate incorporated territories of modern Kursk, Oryol, and parts of Bryansk and Kharkiv Oblasts. The coat of arms of the then-Governorate is still used by the modern Belgorod Oblast.


title: Belgorod Oblast

text: In 1775–1779, the territory of Belgorod Governorate was abolished and divided between the newly formed governorates and vice-royalties. The city of Belgorod and the area around it became a part of Kursk Vice-Royalty, while the southeastern uyezds became a part of Voronezh Governorate.


title: Belgorod Oblast

text: During the 19th century and up until 1928 the territory of modern Belgorod Oblast remained part of Kursk and Voronezh Governorates. After the signing of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk in April 1918, in January 1919 the territory was incorporated into the Ukrainian State under hetman Pavlo Skoropadskyi.


title: Belgorod Oblast

text: The current administrative-territorial boundaries of Belgorod Oblast were formed by the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR on 6 January 1954. The oblast was formed from several districts of Kursk and Voronezh Oblasts.


title: Belgorod Oblast

text: For the courage and resilience shown by the people of Belgorod Oblast in defense of the Motherland during the Great Patriotic War, and for progress in reconstruction and development of national economy. On 4 January 1967, Belgorod Oblast was awarded the Order of Lenin, and in 1980 the city of Belgorod was awarded the Order of the Patriotic War, first degree.


title: Belgorod Oblast

text: Belgorod Oblast is part of the Central Black Earth economic region and the Central Federal District. It borders with Luhansk, Kharkiv, and Sumy Oblasts of Ukraine in the south and west, Kursk Oblast in the north and northwest, and Voronezh Oblast in the east. The total length of its borders is about , of which are on the border with Ukraine.


title: Belgorod Oblast

text: The area of the oblast is ; the oblast stretches for about from north to south and for about from east to west. The oblast is located in the southwestern and southern slopes of the Central Russian Upland in the Dnieper and Don River basins, in the steppe zone of elevated hilly plain with an average height of above the sea level. The highest point is above sea level, in Prokhorovsky District. The lowest point is located at the bottom of the Oskol and Seversky Donets River valleys.


title: Belgorod Oblast

text: The climate of Belgorod Oblast is temperate continental with a relatively mild winter with some snowfall and long summers. Average annual air temperature varies from to , being warmer on average in the southeast than the north. The coldest month is January and the frost-free period is 155–160 days, with an average of 1800 hours of sunshine. Rainfall is uneven by year and season, with an average of 540–550 mm although rainfall can dramatically differ between the western and northern areas and the warmer, drier eastern and southeast where some years lows of around have been recorded.


title: Belgorod Oblast

text: Over 40% of known iron ore reserves of Russia are concentrated in the oblast. Deposits are confined to the Kursk Magnetic Anomaly area. Among them are Korobkovsky, Lebedinskoye, Stoylenskoye, and prospective Prioskolskoye iron ore deposits in Stary Oskol District, Bolshetroitskoye in Shebekinsky District, as well as Yakovlevskoye and Pogremetskoye fields.


title: Belgorod Oblast

text: Identified and explored in varying degrees are the large deposits of bauxites, apatites, underground mineral waters, and numerous deposits of construction materials such as chalk, sand, clay, and more. There are also known occurrences of gold, graphite, and other rare metals. Geographical features make the oblast likely to have deposits of platinum, hydrocarbons, and other minerals.


title: Belgorod Oblast

text: Rivers, lakes, and marshes occupy about 1% of the oblast's territory. There are more than 480 small rivers and streams. The largest of them are in the northwest — the Seversky Donets, Vorskla, Vorsklitsa, Psyol, and in the eastern regions — the Oskol, Tikhaya Sosna, Chyornaya Kalitva, Valuy. The total length of the river network is roughly , and in addition, there are 1,100 ponds and four artificial reservoirs.


title: Belgorod Oblast

text: The fauna of Belgorod Oblast is predominantly of the meadow-steppe variety and comprises, by various estimates, from ten to fifteen thousand species.


title: Belgorod Oblast

text: About 10% of the animal species are in need of special protection. Fifty species are included in the IUCN Red List. There are about 279 species of birds, including 152 which breed in the oblast. The richest bird populations include sparrows (111 species); waders (45 species); geese (up to 30 species); day predators (21 species). The richest bird populations include sparrows (111 species); waders (45 species); geese (up to 30 species); day predators (21 species). The numbers of game animal species are as follows: moose – 387; deer – 501; roe deer – 4474; boar – 2574; hare – 18361; fox – 3856; marten – 2025; polecat – 1120; wolf – 36. The annual number of game animals remains stable.


title: Belgorod Oblast

text: Vegetation in Belgorod Oblast reflects the features of the northern forest-steppe, characterized by the alternation of forests with the meadow steppes. It is chiefly represented by two types of vegetation — the zonal and extrazonal. In all, there are 1,284 flora species. Woodlands cover 9.8% of the total area, of which over 800 hectares are classified as protected areas because their rare species of plants and habitats of animals are on the IUCN red list.


title: Belgorod Oblast

text: It was inhabited by different tribes besides East Slavs and was one of the earliest Rus' principalities. Belgorod region played an important role in the Russian wedding tradition of the Rushnyk. Belgorod is also famous for its wood carving.


title: Belgorod Oblast

text: During the Soviet period, the high authority in the oblast was shared between three persons: The first secretary of the Belgorod CPSU Committee (who in reality had the biggest authority), the chairman of the oblast Soviet (legislative power), and the Chairman of the oblast Executive Committee (executive power). Since 1991, CPSU lost all the power, and the head of the Oblast administration, and eventually the governor was appointed/elected alongside elected regional parliament.


title: Belgorod Oblast

text: The Charter of Belgorod Oblast is the fundamental law of the region. The Legislative Assembly of Belgorod Oblast is the province's standing legislative (representative) body. The Legislative Assembly exercises its authority by passing laws, resolutions, and other legal acts and by supervising the implementation and observance of the laws and other legal acts passed by it. The highest executive body is the Oblast Government, which includes territorial executive bodies such as district administrations, committees, and commissions that facilitate development and run the day to day matters of the province. The Oblast administration supports the activities of the Governor who is the highest official and acts as guarantor of the observance of the oblast Charter in accordance with the Constitution of Russia.


title: Belgorod Oblast

text: The governor of Belgorod Oblast, Yevgeny Savchenko, was first appointed to this position in 1993 and subsequently re-elected in 1995, 1999, 2003, 2012 and 2017. In the 1999 election, his rival was Vladimir Zhirinovsky. Savchenko holds the title of longest-serving governor in post-Soviet Russia, being in office for 27 years. Since November 2020, Vyacheslav Gladkov is the governor of Belgorod Oblast.


title: Belgorod Oblast

text: On 13 September 2020, elections to the 7th Belgorod Oblast Duma were conducted. The United Russia Party has won 44 out of 50 seats, 4 seats were won by the Communist Party, 1 by the LDPR, and 1 by the Russian Party of Pensioners for Social Justice.


title: Belgorod Oblast

text: In terms of area, the oblast is in the 67th place among the federal subjects of Russia; while in terms of population it is 28th (as of the results of the 2010 Census, up two places compared to the 2002 Census results. According to the results of the 2010 Census, the population of the oblast was 1,532,526, with the urban population of 66.1% and the rural population of 33.9%. This is up from 1,511,620 recorded in the 2002 Census, and 1,380,723 recorded in the 1989 Census.


title: Belgorod Oblast

text: Population density in 2008 was 56.1 persons per 1 km. The average age is 38.5 years—35.6 for men and 41 for women; 46% of the population are economically active.


title: Belgorod Oblast

text: As in other regions of the European part of Russia, since the dissolution of the Soviet Union there has been a natural population decrease (about -5 per 1,000 of the population). In recent years, there has been some reversion of this decline as a result of growth of fertility and mortality. Nevertheless, despite the negative trend of growth, the population of the area has remained relatively stable because of immigration. Belgorod, even in Soviet times, attracted retirement workers from the Far North and Ukraine. This trend has increased since 2005 and now cancels out the natural decline in population. Worker migrants also arrive in Belgorod from Uzbekistan; though unlike Ukrainian immigrants, Muslim migrants face discrimination on a daily basis, and choose to leave.


title: Belgorod Oblast

text: According to a 2012 survey 50.5% of the population of Belgorod Oblast adheres to the Russian Orthodox Church, 8.1% are nondenominational Christians (excluding Protestant churches), 1.7% are Orthodox Christians who don't belong to the Russian Orthodox Church. In addition, 22.2% of the population declares to be spiritual but not religious, 10.5% is atheist or irreligious, and 7% follows other religions or did not give an answer to the question.


title: Belgorod Oblast

text: Belgorod Oblast is administratively divided into twenty-one districts ("raions"), which are further divided into 335 rural okrugs. There are ten cities/towns in the oblast, as well as twenty urban-type settlements and 1,592 rural-type settlements.


title: Belgorod Oblast

text: Belgorod Oblast is a highly developed industrial-agrarian region, whose economy relies on its enormous wealth of mineral resources and the unique black soils.


title: Belgorod Oblast

text: Belgorod Oblast has traditionally had and still has strong ties with the agro-industrial complex of Ukraine. Despite its relatively small size, the oblast accounts for one fifth of the trade turnover between Russia and Ukraine.


title: Belgorod Oblast

text: Some 2,713.4 thousand hectares is dedicated to agriculture, over 70% of which are chernozems. Per capita, there are an average of 1.43 hectares of pastoral land, and 1.1 hectares of arable land. Natural forests and forest plantations occupy 248.3 thousand hectares, or 12.5% of the oblast's area. Total timber reserves are estimated to be 34.3 million m.


title: Belgorod Oblast

text: Important railways and highways of regional significance cross the oblast's territory, connecting Moscow with the southern and western regions of Russia and Ukraine. Of major importance is the Crimea Highway, or federal highway M-2 Crimea, and the Moscow-Kharkiv-Sevastopol railway line. The length of railways for general use is 694.6 km; the length of paved roads is 8,500 km; roughly 87% of the total road surface in the oblast.


title: European Champion Clubs' Cup

text: The European Champion Clubs' Cup, also known as Coupe des Clubs Champions Européens, or simply the European Cup, is a trophy awarded annually by UEFA to the football club that wins the UEFA Champions League. The competition in its older format shared its name with the trophy, being also known as the "European Cup", before being renamed for the 1992–93 season onwards.


title: European Champion Clubs' Cup

text: Several physical trophies have had the name, as a club was entitled to keep the cup after five wins or three consecutive wins, with a new cup having to be forged for the following season. During the first years of the competition, up until 1966–67 season, the trophy had a distinctively different design.


title: European Champion Clubs' Cup

text: The original European Cup trophy was donated by "L'Équipe", a French sports newspaper. This trophy was awarded permanently to Real Madrid in March 1967. At the time, they were the reigning champions, and had won six titles altogether, including the first five competitions from 1956 to 1960. Celtic therefore became the first club to win the cup in its current design in 1967.


title: European Champion Clubs' Cup

text: The replacement trophy, with a somewhat different design from the original, was commissioned by UEFA from Jörg Stadelmann, a jeweller from Bern, Switzerland. At a cost of 10,000 Swiss francs, it was silver, 74 cm high, weighing 11 kg. Subsequent replacement trophies have replicated this design. The shape of the handles have earned it the nickname of "big ears" in multiple languages, including French (""la Coupe aux grandes oreilles""), Italian (""La Coppa dalle grandi orecchie""), Spanish (""La Orejona""), Russian (""Ушастый""), Vietnamese ("Cúp tai voi") and Chinese ("大耳朵杯"). Between 1967 and 1994, the trophy bears the title "Coupe des Clubs Champions Européens" in sentence case. Milan were the last team to win this type of trophy. Since then, the trophy bears the title fully in capital letters, albeit the size is increased in the subsequent and current trophy.


title: European Champion Clubs' Cup

text: The trophy that currently is awarded is the sixth and has been in use since 2006, after Liverpool won their fifth European Cup in 2005. Since 2009, Champions League winners have not kept the real trophy, which remains in UEFA's custody at all times. A full-size replica trophy, the "Champions League winners trophy", is awarded to the winning club with their name engraved on it. Winning clubs are permitted to make replicas of their own. They must be clearly marked as such and can be a maximum of eighty percent the size of the actual trophy.


title: European Champion Clubs' Cup

text: The previous rule introduced before the 1968–69 season, allowed a club to keep the trophy after five wins or three consecutive wins. At that point, Real Madrid was the only club meeting either qualification and indeed met both. Once a club had been awarded the trophy, the count was reset to zero. For example, a club with no prior titles which won six titles in a row would have been permanently awarded trophies after the third and sixth wins (each for three-in-a-row) but not after their fifth win. A club whose Champions League title win was not a fifth overall or third consecutive previously kept the real trophy for ten months after their victory and received a scaled-down replica to keep permanently.


title: European Champion Clubs' Cup

text: The "multiple-winner badge", sometimes called "badge of honour", was introduced for the start of the 2000–01 competition for clubs that kept the trophy permanently. The badge itself adorns the left sleeve of the team's shirt during Champions League matches. The original badge was a blue oval on which was an outline of the current trophy in white, overlaid with part of the Champions League starball logo. Above the trophy was the total number of titles held by the club. At the start of 2012–13 competition, the badge became grey with a new design, which was used until the end of 2020–21 season.


title: European Champion Clubs' Cup

text: Starting with 2021–22, UEFA abolished the badge's use on the left sleeve, allowing for sleeve sponsors, and incorporated the badge into the regular "Starball Badge" for the clubs who normally wear the multiple-winner badge, with the number of victories placed on top of the middle star. Additionally, title holders with three consecutive or five overall wins have their number of victories etched onto the title-holder logo, with the starball scrapped.


title: European Champion Clubs' Cup

text: Because the current trophy permanently remains UEFA property, it is no longer given to a team that wins a fifth overall or third consecutive title. However, the multiple-winner badge is still awarded to such clubs. Liverpool therefore became the last team to be permanently awarded the trophy.


title: European Champion Clubs' Cup

text: Six teams have won five overall or three consecutive titles, and thus can wear the multiple-winner badge:


title: European Champion Clubs' Cup

text: A separate "title-holder logo" is worn by the reigning Champions League champions in the following season's competition in place of the regular patch worn by the other competing teams. The logo is predominantly dark blue and was introduced in 2004–05, with Porto as the defending champions. The distinction between the title-holder logo and the badge of honour can be compared to the distinction between the "Scudetto" ("shield") worn by the reigning Serie A champions in Italy, and the "stella" ("star") worn by teams with over ten Serie A titles in total. However, whereas Juventus wear three stars as they have won over thirty titles, there is no provision for multiple UEFA badges of honour, as the count within the badge can be incremented indefinitely. From 2006–07 to 2010–11, the title holders also played with the match ball used in their triumphant final in their home matches, but from 2011–12, the title holders use the same match ball as the 31 other teams.


title: European Champion Clubs' Cup

text: The original design for the title-holder badge featured two of the interconnecting stars of the competition's star ball logo at the top, with the caption "champions" and the season of triumph in the centre of the badge. It was slightly modified in 2008–09 to feature the entirety of the star ball logo, albeit with the other stars faded out, and it was drastically changed for the 2009–10 competition. Without the star ball background, it instead featured a design of the trophy which was used for the branding of the previous season's final.


title: European Champion Clubs' Cup

text: It was revamped again in 2010–11 to feature part of the star ball on show below the "champions" caption and the year of triumph. A replaced design was first worn by Chelsea in 2012–13; it featured an outline design of the trophy along with the year of triumph, the same design was kept from 2015–16 for the logo, but the material used on the logo was changed. Starting with the 2021–22 competition, reigning champions wear a new logo, which still keeps the same design, but is grey and no longer keeps the championship year in it. In case the title holder also wears a multiple-winner badge, the number of victories is incorporated in the logo which is used in place of the starball.


title: Rocket (Marvel Cinematic Universe)

text: Rocket is a fictional character in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) media franchise voiced by Bradley Cooper and based on the Marvel Comics character of the same name. Rocket was based on movements from Sean Gunn and an actual raccoon named Oreo. Rocket is depicted as a hot-tempered mercenary and weapons expert who, along with his companion Groot, joins the Guardians of the Galaxy in their battle against Ronan the Accuser. Following the Blip, Rocket remains on Earth as a member of the Avengers. He and his allies successfully obtain the Infinity Stones from the past using time travel, with Rocket contributing to the construction of the Nano Gauntlet used by Bruce Banner to restore the trillions of lives lost across the universe. Rocket fights in the final battle against Thanos, and rejoins the Guardians after their victory; departing for space, now accompanied by Thor.


title: Rocket (Marvel Cinematic Universe)

text: Rocket made his first appearance in "Guardians of the Galaxy" (2014), and has become a central MCU character, appearing in six films as of 2022, and in one episode of the "I Am Groot" series of animated series shorts on Disney+, the TV special of "The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special" (2022), as well as in the upcoming film "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3" (2023).


title: Rocket (Marvel Cinematic Universe)

text: The comic book character was created by Bill Mantlo and Keith Giffen, and inspired by the Beatles song "Rocky Raccoon". Rocket Raccoon first appeared in "Marvel Preview" #7 (Summer 1976), in the back-up feature "The Sword in the Star", under the name "Rocky". He would next appear in "The Incredible Hulk" #271 (May 1982), where it is learned that "Rocky" is short for "Rocket". In 1985, he received his own four-issue limited series and in an afterword to the first issue, Mantlo himself asserted that this was the same character seen in "Preview", penciled by Mike Mignola and inked by Al Gordon with Al Milgrom. Rocket appeared in "Quasar" #15 in 1990 and later appeared in three issues of "Sensational She-Hulk" in 1992 (#44–46). The character only appeared in a total of ten comic books in his first thirty years of existence. Besides a brief appearance in a 2006 issue of "Exiles", Rocket Raccoon was next seen in 2007's "" and "Annihilation: Conquest - Star-Lord" limited series, and their spin-off series, a new volume of "Guardians of the Galaxy". He remained a regular member of the series cast until it was canceled with issue #25 in 2010.


title: Rocket (Marvel Cinematic Universe)

text: Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige first mentioned "Guardians of the Galaxy" as a potential film at the 2010 San Diego Comic-Con International, stating, "There are some obscure titles, too, like "Guardians of the Galaxy". I think they've been revamped recently in a fun way in the [comic] book." Feige reiterated that sentiment in a September 2011 issue of "Entertainment Weekly", saying, "There's an opportunity to do a big space epic, which "Thor" sort of hints at, in the cosmic side" of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Feige added, should the film be made, it would feature an ensemble of characters, similar to "X-Men" and "The Avengers". Feige announced that the film was in active development at the 2012 San Diego Comic-Con International during the Marvel Studios panel, with an intended release date of August 1, 2014. He said the film's titular team would consist of the characters Star-Lord, Drax the Destroyer, Gamora, Groot, and Rocket. In August 2013, Marvel announced that Bradley Cooper would voice Rocket in "Guardians of the Galaxy".


title: Rocket (Marvel Cinematic Universe)

text: In "Guardians of the Galaxy", Rocket was characterized as a genetically engineered raccoon-based bounty hunter, mercenary, and master of weapons and battle tactics. Gunn worked with live raccoons to get the correct feel for the character, and to make sure it was "not a cartoon character", saying, "It's not Bugs Bunny in the middle of the Avengers, it's a real, little, somewhat mangled beast that's alone. There's no one else in the universe quite like him, he's been created by these guys to be a mean-ass fighting machine". Gunn also based the character on himself. Describing Rocket in relation to the rest of the Guardians, Cooper said, "I think Rocket is dynamic. He's the sort of Joe Pesci in "Goodfellas" guy."


title: Rocket (Marvel Cinematic Universe)

text: Cooper voiced Rocket, while Sean Gunn (James' younger brother) stood in for the character during filming. James Gunn said that for the role of Rocket, some physical movements from Cooper, including facial expressions and hand movements, were recorded as potential references for the animators, though much of Sean Gunn's acting is used throughout the film. Sean noted they "kind of stumbled" into the process of him performing on set since they "weren't sure how we were going to create that character". The same process continued to be used for all subsequent appearances of Rocket. Before Cooper was cast, James Gunn said that it was a challenge finding a voice for Rocket, that he was looking for someone who could balance "the fast-talking speech patterns that Rocket has, but also can be funny, because he is really funny. But also has the heart that Rocket has. Because there are actually some pretty dramatic scenes with Rocket." In addition to Cooper's voice and Sean Gunn's movements, the appearance of Rocket was based on an actual raccoon named Oreo. James Gunn said of the process, "We needed a raccoon to study how he looked and his behavior, so that our on-screen raccoon, which is generated through CGI will be realistic. Our Rocket is based on a combination of our voice actor, Bradley Cooper, our on-set actor, my brother Sean Gunn, the movements and behavior and look of Oreo [the raccoon], as well as my own animation". Gunn brought Oreo to the red carpet premiere of the film.


title: Rocket (Marvel Cinematic Universe)

text: In "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2", Sean Gunn once again served as the stand-in for the character during filming, with Cooper's performance also referenced. Sean Gunn said that "Rocket has the same sort of crisis of faith [that he had in the first film] about whether or not he belongs in this family", with James Gunn adding, "this is really about Rocket coming to terms with accepting his place within a group of people, which probably seemed like a good idea" when they were heroes together at the end of the first film, but now "he's just not very comfortable with the idea". Feige stated that the relationship between Rocket and Groot has changed, saying, "Groot was Rocket's protector in the first movie, [and now] Rocket is Groot's protector."


title: Rocket (Marvel Cinematic Universe)

text: Rocket's origins are unclear, but he is unique; according to the Nova Corps, he was "the result of illegal genetic and cybernetic experiments on a lower life form". His record with the Nova Corps indicates a lengthy history of theft, arson, and escape from incarceration. At some point in his travels, Rocket becomes friends and partners with Groot, a sentient anthropomorphic tree.


title: Rocket (Marvel Cinematic Universe)

text: On the planet Xandar, Rocket and Groot attempt to capture Peter Quill for a bounty, interfering in a fight between Quill and Gamora over possession of the Power Stone that Quill had acquired. All four are captured by the Nova Corps and sent to the space prison, the Kyln. Rocket devises a plan to escape from the Kyln, and they escape along with Kyln inmate Drax the Destroyer. The five then travel to Knowhere to sell the Power Stone, where Rocket and Drax have a heated argument. After Drax drunkenly calls powerful enemy Ronan to confront him, Ronan acquires the Power Stone. Rocket wanted to flee, but is convinced by Groot and by Drax's apology to help save Xandar from Ronan's attack. As other members of the group battle Ronan aboard his ship, the "Dark Aster", Rocket crashes a Ravager ship through the "Dark Aster", which crash-lands on Xandar. Groot sacrifices himself to shield Rocket and the others, and the remaining Guardians are able to gain control of the Power Stone and destroy Ronan. Rocket plants a sapling cut from Groot in a pot, which grows into a baby of his species, whom Rocket adopts, also naming Groot in his biological father's honour.


title: Rocket (Marvel Cinematic Universe)

text: Two months later, Rocket and the Guardians are hired by the Sovereign to fight off an alien attacking their valuable batteries, in exchange for Nebula. Annoyed by the arrogance of the Sovereign, Rocket steals some of their batteries, leading the Sovereign fleet to chase and attack the Guardians' ship. They crash land on a planet, where Quill meet his father, revealed to be Ego, a primordial Celestial who manifests a human avatar that allows him to interact with other races. Quill, Gamora, and Drax go with Ego to his planet while Rocket and Groot stay behind to watch Nebula and repair the ship. Ravagers arrive searching for Quill and, after a fight, capture Rocket and Groot and free Nebula. The Ravagers mutiny against their leader, Yondu, and aboard the Ravager ship, Rocket and Yondu plot their escape, eventually destroying most of the Ravager vessel except for a breakaway quarter in which they travel to Ego. They learn that Ego is an evil living planet intent on dominating the universe. Quill keeps Ego occupied in combat with his newfound Celestial powers until Rocket is able to assemble a bomb, which the baby Groot places in Ego's brain. Later, Rocket and the rest of the Guardians hold a funeral for Yondu.


title: Rocket (Marvel Cinematic Universe)

text: At one point, Rocket finds Baby Groot trying to fix a hole in the ship caused by the explosion. Rocket finds himself unable to stay mad when Groot gives Rocket a drawing he made of the Guardians. Rocket is then almost sucked out of the ship before Groot saves him.


title: Rocket (Marvel Cinematic Universe)

text: Four years later, Rocket and the Guardians respond to a distress signal and end up rescuing Thor, who is floating in space amidst the wreckage of the "Statesman". Thor tells them of Thanos' plan to obtain the Infinity Stones, and the Guardians split up, with Rocket and Groot accompanying Thor to Nidavellir to create a new weapon to kill Thanos. On the way, Rocket gives Thor a replacement for an eye Thor has lost. They find an abandoned Nidavellir and meet the dwarf king Eitri. The four work together to create Stormbreaker, a powerful axe that also grants Thor the power of the Bifröst. Thor transports himself, Rocket, and Groot to Wakanda on Earth via the Bifröst to help members of the Avengers, Bucky Barnes, and the Wakandan army in the battle against the Outriders. Despite being severely wounded, Thanos is able to activate the Infinity Gauntlet, snap his fingers, and teleports away. Rocket watches helplessly as Groot weakly calls out "I am Groot" one final time as he disappears alongside half of living things in the universe to dissolve. Director James Gunn revealed that this phrase translated to "...Dad?" as Groot looked to Rocket for help.


title: Rocket (Marvel Cinematic Universe)

text: Rocket stays with Steve Rogers, Natasha Romanoff, Bruce Banner, James Rhodes and Thor at the Avengers Compound and witnesses Tony Stark and Nebula’s return, realising that only he and Nebula were the remaining Guardians. After finding Thanos' location, he, Thor, Rogers, Romanoff, Rhodes, Banner, Carol Danvers, and Nebula go into space to confront Thanos and retrieve the Stones. However, after Thanos reveals that he destroyed the Stones, Thor kills him, and they leave defeated.


title: Rocket (Marvel Cinematic Universe)

text: In 2023, Rocket has joined the Avengers and works on missions in space with Nebula. When a means is discovered to use time travel to reverse the Blip, Rocket and Nebula return to the Compound and Rocket accompanies Banner to New Asgard to convince a depressed Thor to return to help with the effort. Rocket then gives his spaceship to Clint Barton. Using the quantum tunnel, Rocket and Thor travel through the Quantum Realm to an alternate 2013 timeline and go to Asgard to get the Reality Stone, during the time when it had been absorbed into Jane Foster. They retrieve the Stone and return to the Compound in the main timeline, but after Banner uses the new Infinity Gauntlet to undo the Blip, an alternate Thanos attacks, trapping Rocket, Rhodes, and Banner underneath the destroyed Compound. Scott Lang, in his Giant-Man form, saves them, and Rocket joins the battle against alternate Thanos' army, where he is reunited with Groot. A week later, Rocket and the reunited Guardians of the Galaxy attend Stark’s funeral, before leaving with them and Thor into space.


title: Rocket (Marvel Cinematic Universe)

text: Rocket, Thor, and the rest of the Guardians return to space and embark on several adventures, while reuniting with Kraglin, who joins the team. After arriving on Indigarr, they are joined by Korg and fight off an invading army. Afterwards, they learn of several distress calls caused by a god killer and split up from Thor, as he sets off to locate his Asgardian friend.


title: Rocket (Marvel Cinematic Universe)

text: In 2025, the Guardians buy Knowhere from the Collector, and Rocket befriends Cosmo the Spacedog who joins their team. Rocket and the Guardians then work on rebuilding Knowhere following its' attack. Later that year, Rocket participates in the Christmas celebration and is given what appears to be Barnes' arm by Nebula as a gift.


title: Rocket (Marvel Cinematic Universe)

text: An alternate version of Rocket appears in the animated series "What If...?" as a non-speaking character.


title: Zapp (band)

text: Zapp (also known as the Zapp Band, Zapp & Roger) is an American funk band that emerged from Dayton, Ohio, United States, in 1977. Particularly influential in the electro subgenre of funk, Zapp were known for their trademark use of the talk-box effect. The original line-up consisted of four Troutman brothers—frontman Roger, Larry, Lester and Terry—and non-Troutman family members Bobby Glover, Gregory Jackson, Sherman Fleetwood, Jerome Derrickson, Eddie Barber and Shirley Murdock. Zapp also worked closely with George Clinton and Bootsy Collins of Parliament-Funkadelic during its early stages, their support being a factor in the group gaining a record deal with Warner Bros. Records in 1979.


title: Zapp (band)

text: Zapp released its eponymous debut album in 1980, and achieved mainstream recognition from the single "More Bounce to the Ounce". The group's follow-up "Zapp II" was released in 1982, selling well and becoming certified gold. In the 1990s, Zapp would also be an influence on the regional G-funk sound and the broader cultural scene of West Coast hip-hop itself. The band disbanded in 1999 after the deaths of Roger and Larry Troutman in a murder-suicide apparently carried out by Larry. Zapp reformed briefly in 2003 with the remaining brothers of the Troutman family to produce the album "".


title: Zapp (band)

text: Born on November 29, 1951, in Hamilton, Ohio, Roger Troutman began recording music in the mid to late 1960s, issuing his first solo recording efforts "Jolly Roger" and "Night Time" on the obscure and now defunct Ohio label, Teen Records in 1966 under the band name 'Lil' Roger and His Fabulous Vels. Although neither song received recognition due to its very limited release, Troutman and brothers pursued their music career throughout the 1970s, forming Roger & The Human Body in 1976, on their privately owned label Troutman Bros. Records. Their own label allowed Troutman and the band to give a slightly wider and more high-profile release of their own music, issuing their first (and only) album "Introducing Roger" in 1976.


title: Zapp (band)

text: In the late 1970s Roger Troutman continued to record with his brothers, losing the name Roger & The Human Body and adopting the Zapp nickname from his brother Terry in 1977. The group searching for recognition, began playing at various small venues locally around Ohio. The Troutman family had long-standing friendships with Ohio natives Phelps "Catfish" Collins and William Earl "Bootsy" Collins, who had both been involved with Parliament-Funkadelic in the early 1970s. Phelps and Bootsy were attendees at a performance, and were impressed with Zapp's musical abilities, prompting Bootsy to invite Roger to the United Sound Studios in Detroit (the P-Funk studio base) which was frequently used by Parliament-Funkadelic. Roger Troutman subsequently wrote and recorded the demo for "More Bounce to the Ounce" in 1978. George Clinton, the leader of Funkadelic liked the recording and encouraged Troutman to present the demo to Warner Bros. Records. Warner Bros. signed Zapp in early 1979, and on July 28, 1980, Zapp released their debut album, which was recorded by Roger and produced by Bootsy between 1979 and early 1980 at the United Sound Studios in Detroit, their first recording on a major label. The album's sound, which is highly influenced by Parliament-Funkadelic, contrasts largely with Zapp's later releases. "More Bounce to the Ounce" reached number two on the Billboard Hot R&B tracks for two weeks during the autumn of 1980. By November 18, 1980, "Zapp" had been certified gold by the RIAA.


title: Zapp (band)

text: After the 1980 release of Zapp's debut album, tensions rose between Roger Troutman and George Clinton. Troutman's solo album "The Many Facets of Roger" was primarily funded by Clinton, through CBS, and was slated to be released on his own Uncle Jam Records label. By the early 1980s, Clinton and his musical projects were experiencing financial troubles due to his poor management skills and shifting tastes in music. Around the time that Troutman's debut was due to be released, Warner Bros. Records dropped Clinton from their label. Funkadelic's final recording with Warner Bros., on which Troutman had worked briefly, was "The Electric Spanking of War Babies". Under pressure from the label, it was cut from a double album to a single disc. Warner Bros. did not promote the release, which emerged in early 1981 and made little impact.


title: Zapp (band)

text: Troutman could see the disarray surrounding Clinton and severed their partnership by accepting a higher offer for the demo recordings of his album from Warner Bros. With Clinton out of the picture, Troutman was left to exercise virtually full creative control over the band's subsequent work. When "The Many Facets of Roger" was finally released in August 1981 it was on the Warner Bros. label. In Clinton's biography "George Clinton: For the Record", Troutman was quoted as off-handedly commenting, "... Heck gee-willickers, Warner Bros. offered me mo' money". Clinton's view, expressed in his response, was that "CBS paid for it, I paid for it. I don't like to go into it on the negative side, but it cost about 5 million [dollars], and a lot of people's jobs and what we consider as the empire falling". The financial loss from the rupture with Troutman is credited as one of the factors that derailed Clinton's musical career and sent Funkadelic into hiatus.


title: Zapp (band)

text: Zapp released its second album, "Zapp II", on October 14, 1982. Electronic production techniques featured prominently, including liberal use of the talk-box that became Troutman's signature. Despite the contrasting styles between the first and the second albums, "Zapp II" attained gold status by September 21, 1982. The album fared almost as well as Zapp's debut, peaking at number two on the Billboard R&B chart, and reaching 25 on The Billboard 200 Albums chart. The single "Dancefloor (Part I)" peaked at number one on the R&B singles chart of 1982.


title: Zapp (band)

text: Zapp spawned several more albums in close succession, retaining the slick electronic style that "Zapp II" had adopted, but with diminishing success. "Zapp III" was released in 1983, and managed to gain a gold certification, but peaked at only 39 on the Billboard 200 and nine on the R&B chart. "<nowiki>Zapp III'</nowiki>"s poorer commercial performance became a sign that the band's popularity and impact were beginning to decline toward the mid 1980s, with post-disco music falling out of trend. By the release of "The New Zapp IV U" in October 1985, the downward trajectory was evident. The album did not attain gold status until 1994, almost a decade after its initial release. Zapp's presence faded further in the latter half of the 1980s, as Troutman focused his attention on his solo career. The final release by Zapp before Troutman's death was "Zapp V" in September 1989, which achieved only moderate commercial success and failed to receive an RIAA certification.


title: Zapp (band)

text: The increasingly dominant West Coast hip-hop scene of the early- to mid-1990s briefly brought Zapp and Roger back into the spotlight as their material came into favour as a source of samples for hip-hop tracks. Troutman gained recognition for providing talk-box backing vocals for both the original and remixed version of Tupac Shakur's 1995-96 comeback single "California Love"; the alternate version of the music video features Troutman playing the keyboard and talk-box during a party. Roger's involvement in "California Love" awarded him a Grammy nomination for "Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group" in 1997.


title: Zapp (band)

text: On Sunday morning, April 25, 1999, Roger Troutman was fatally wounded as a result of an apparent murder–suicide that was orchestrated by his older brother, Larry. Roger was shot several times in the torso by Larry as he exited a recording studio in Dayton, Ohio. Roger was taken to Good Samaritan Hospital, but died shortly after. Larry's body was found in a car a short distance away from the murder scene. There were no witnesses at the time, and Larry's motive for the murder of Roger remains unclear. Larry had been experiencing increasingly severe financial problems managing the family-run housing company, Troutman Enterprises, which eventually filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy owing $400,000 in tax. Larry might also have been bitter after Roger fired him as manager of his music career, a position Larry had held for several years.


title: Zapp (band)

text: During Roger's funeral, his nephew Clet Troutman performed a talk-box rendition of "Amazing Grace". Roger was survived by his six sons and five daughters; his eldest son, Roger Lynch Troutman Jr., died of head injuries just a few years after the murder of his father (January 31, 1970 – January 22, 2003).


title: Zapp (band)

text: After Troutman's death, Ice Cube said that "More Bounce To The Ounce" introduced him to hip-hop. "I was in the sixth grade, we'd stayed after school. We had this dude named Mr. Lock, and he used to bring in his radio with these pop-lockers. He used to teach [the dance group] the L.A. Lockers, and he would do community service in after-school programs. He knew a lot of kids and introduced them to all the new dances, he put on that song 'More Bounce', and they started pop-locking. And I think from that visual, from seeing that, it was my first introduction into hip-hop. Period. I didn't know nothing about nothing. I hadn't heard 'Rapper's Delight' yet. It was the first thing that was really fly to me. They started dancing, and since 'More Bounce' goes on forever, they just got down. I just think that was a rush of adrenaline for me, like a chemical reaction in my brain."


title: Zapp (band)

text: The resulting impact of Roger and Larry's deaths left the band stranded, halting production. Without Roger serving as the creative source, they effectively disbanded, and quietly left the music industry altogether. Warner Bros. Records eventually dropped the band from their label, bringing the professional recording career of Zapp to a close. A few years later, Zapp resurfaced for a short period after the establishment of its own independent label, Zapp Town Records, managed by the Troutman family. The label released its only album, "", in 2003. Zapp returned to performing only in live concert, touring across the U.S. at various venues.


title: Anfal campaign

text: The Anfal campaign or the Kurdish genocide was a counterinsurgency operation which was carried out by Ba'athist Iraq from February to September 1988, at the end of the Iran–Iraq War. The campaign targeted rural Kurds because its purpose was to eliminate Kurdish rebel groups and Arabize strategic parts of the Kirkuk Governorate.


title: Anfal campaign

text: The Iraqi forces were led by Ali Hassan al-Majid, on the orders of President Saddam Hussein. The campaign's name was taken from the title of Qur'anic chapter 8 ("al-ʾanfāl").


title: Anfal campaign

text: In 1993, Human Rights Watch released a report on the Anfal campaign based on documents captured by Kurdish rebels during the 1991 uprisings in Iraq; HRW described it as a genocide and estimated between 50,000 to 100,000 deaths. Although many Iraqi Arabs reject that there were any mass killings of Kurdish civilians during Anfal, the event is an important element constituting Kurdish national identity.


title: Anfal campaign

text: Following the Iraqi invasion of Iran in 1980, the rival Kurdish opposition parties in Iraq—the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) as well as other smaller Kurdish parties—experienced a revival in their fortunes. Kurdish fighters (peshmerga) fought a guerrilla war against the Iraqi government and established effective control over the Kurdish-inhabited mountainous areas of northern Iraq. As the war went on and Iran counterattacked into Iraq, the peshmerga gained ground in most Kurdish-inhabited rural areas while also infiltrating towns and cities. In 1983, after the joint KDP-Iranian capture of Haj Omran, the Iraqi government arrested 8,000 Barzani men and executed them. During the battle for Haj Omran, the Iraqi government also used gas weapons for the first time against both Kurdish and Iranian forces.


title: Anfal campaign

text: "Al Anfal", literally meaning "the spoils (of war)", was used to describe the military campaign of extermination and looting against the Kurds. It is also the title of the eighth sura, or chapter, of the Qur'an which describes the victory of 313 followers of the new Muslim faith over almost 900 non-Muslims at the Battle of Badr in 624 AD. According to Randal, "Jash" (Kurdish collaborators with the Baathists) were told that taking cattle, sheep, goats, money, weapons and even women was "halal" (religiously permitted or legal).


title: Anfal campaign

text: The Anfal campaign began in February 1988 and continued until August or September and included the use of ground offensives, aerial bombing, chemical warfare, systematic destruction of settlements, mass deportation and firing squads. The campaign was headed by Ali Hassan al-Majid (nicknamed "Chemical Ali" for the chemical attacks) who was a cousin of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein from Saddam's hometown of Tikrit.


title: Anfal campaign

text: The Iraqi Army was supported by Kurdish collaborators whom the Iraqi government armed, the so-called "Jash" forces, who led Iraqi troops to Kurdish villages that often did not figure on maps as well as to their hideouts in the mountains. The "Jash" forces frequently made false promises of amnesty and safe passage. Iraqi state media extensively covered the "Anfal" campaign using its official name. To many Iraqis, "Anfal" was presented as an extension of the ongoing Iran–Iraq War, although its victims were overwhelmingly Kurdish civilians.


title: Anfal campaign

text: In March 1987, Ali Hassan al-Majid was appointed secretary-general of the Ba'ath Party's Northern Bureau, which included Iraqi Kurdistan. Under al-Majid, control of policies against the Kurdish insurgents passed from the Iraqi Army to the Ba'ath Party.


title: Anfal campaign

text: Anfal, officially conducted in 1988, had eight stages (Anfal 1–Anfal 8) altogether, seven of which targeted areas controlled by the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan. The Kurdish Democratic Party-controlled areas in the northwest Iraqi Kurdistan, were the target of the Final Anfal operation in late August and early September 1988.


title: Anfal campaign

text: The first Anfal stage was conducted between 23 February and 18 March 1988. It started with artillery and air strikes in the early hours of 23 February 1988. Then, several hours later, there were attacks at the Jafali Valley headquarters of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan near the Iranian border, and the command centers in Sargallu and Bargallu. There was heavy resistance by the Peshmerga. The battles were conducted in a theater around 1,154 square kilometres (445 sq. mi.). The villages of Gwezeela, Chalawi, Haladin and Yakhsamar were attacked with poison gas. During mid March, the PUK, in an alliance with Iranian troops and other Kurdish factions, captured Halabja. This led to the poison gas attack on Halabja on 16 March 1988, during which 3,200–5,000 Kurdish people were killed, most of them civilians.


title: Anfal campaign

text: During the second Anfal from 22 March and 2 April 1988, the Qara Dagh region, including Bazian and Darbandikhan, was targeted in the Suleimanya governorate. Again several villages were attacked with poison gas. Villages attacked with poisonous gas were Safaran, Sewsenan, Belekjar, Serko and Meyoo. The attacks began on 22 March after Newruz, surprising the Peshmerga. Although of shorter duration, Peshmerga suffered more severe casualties in this attack than the first Anfal. As a result of the attack, the majority of the population in the Qara Dagh region fled in direction Suleimanya. Many fugitives were detained by the Iraqi forces, and the men were separated from the women. The men were not seen again. The women were transported to camps. The population that managed to flee, fled to the Garmia region.


title: Anfal campaign

text: In the next Anfal campaign from 7 to 20 April 1988, the Garmian region east of Suleimanya was targeted. In this campaign, many women and children disappeared. The only village attacked with chemical weapons was Tazashar. Many were lured to come towards the Iraqi forces due to an amnesty announced through a loudspeaker of a mosque in Qader Karam from 10 to 12 April. The announced amnesty was a trap, and many who surrendered were detained. Some civilians were able to bribe Kurdish collaborators of the Iraqi Army and fled to Laylan or Shorsh. Before the Anfal campaign, the mainly rural Garmian region counted over 600 villages around the towns of Kifri, Kalar and Darbandikhan.


title: Anfal campaign

text: Anfal 4 took place between 3–8 May 1988 in the valley of the Little Zab, which forms the border of the provinces of Erbil and Kirkuk. The morale of the Iraqi army was on the rise due to the capture of the Faw Peninsula on the 17–18 April 1988 from Iran in the Iran–Iraq War. Major poisonous gas attacks were perpetrated in Askar and Goptapa. Again it was announced an amnesty was issued, which turned out to be false. Many of the ones who surrendered were arrested. Men were separated from the women.


title: Anfal campaign

text: In these three consecutive attacks between 15 May and 16 August 1988, the valleys of Rawandiz and Shaqlawa were targeted, and the attacks had different successes. The Anfal 5 failed completely; therefore, two more attacks were necessary to gain Iraqi government control over the valleys. The Peshmerga commander of the region, Kosrat Abdullah, was well prepared for a long siege with stores of ammunition and food. He also reached an agreement with the Kurdish collaborators of the Iraqi Army so that the civilians could flee. Hiran, Balisan, Smaquli, Malakan, Shek Wasan, Ware, Seran and Kaniba were attacked with poisonous gas. After the Anfal 7 attack, the valleys were under the control of the Iraqi government.


title: Anfal campaign

text: The last Anfal was aimed at the region controlled by the KDP named Badinan and took place from 25 August to 6 September 1988. In this campaign, the villages of Wirmeli, Barkavreh, Bilejane, Glenaska, Zewa Shkan, Tuka and Ikmala were targeted with chemical attacks. After tens of thousands of Kurds fled to Turkey, the Iraqi Army blocked the route to Turkey on 26 August 1988. The population who did not manage to flee was arrested, and the men were separated from the women and children. The men were executed, and the women and children were brought to camps.


title: Anfal campaign

text: Detention camps were established to accommodate thousands of prisoners. Dibs was a detention camp for women and children and located near an army training facility for the Iraqi commando forces. From Dibs, groups of detainees were transferred to Nugra Salman in a depression in the desert about 120 Km southwest of Samawah, in the Muthanna Governorate. Nugra Salman held an estimated 5'000 to 8'000 prisoners during the Anfal campaign. Another detention camp was Topzawa near an army base near the highway leading out of Kirkuk.


title: Anfal campaign

text: "Arabisation," another major element of al-Anfal, was a tactic used by Saddam Hussein's regime to drive pro-insurgent populations out of their homes in villages and cities like Kirkuk, which are in the valuable oil field areas, and relocate them in the southern parts of Iraq. The campaign used heavy population redistribution, most notably in Kirkuk, the results of which now plague negotiations between Iraq's Shi'a United Iraqi Alliance and the Kurdish Kurdistani Alliance. Saddam's Ba'athist regime built several public housing facilities in Kirkuk as part of his "Arabisation," shifting poor Arabs from Iraq's southern regions to Kirkuk with the lure of inexpensive housing. Another part of the Arabisation campaign was the census of October 1987. Citizens who failed to turn up for the October 1987 census were no longer recognized as Iraqi citizens. Most of the Kurdish population who learned that a census was taking place did not take part in the census.


title: Anfal campaign

text: Precise figures of Anfal victims do not exist due to lack of records. In its 1993 report, Human Rights Watch wrote that the death toll "cannot conceivably be less than 50,000, and it may well be twice that number". This figure was based on an earlier survey by the Sulaymaniyah–based Kurdish organization Committee for the Defence of Anfal Victims' Rights. According to HRW, Kurdish leaders met with Iraqi government official Ali Hassan al-Majid in 1991 and mentioned a figure of 182,000 deaths; the latter reportedly replied that "it couldn't have been more than 100,000". The 182,000 figure provided by the PUK was based on extrapolation and "has no empirical relation to actual disappearances or killings". In 1995, the Committee for the Defence of Anfal Victims' Rights released a report documenting 63,000 disappeared and stating that the entire death toll was lower than 70,000, with almost all these deaths occurring in the area of Anfal III. According to Hiltermann, the figure of 100,000, although considered too low by many Kurds, is probably higher than the actual number of deaths.


title: Anfal campaign

text: In September 1988, the Iraqi government was satisfied with its achievements. The male population between 15 and 50 had either been killed or fled. The Kurdish resistance fled to Iran and was no longer a threat to Iraq. An amnesty was issued, and the detained women, children and elderly were released but not permitted to return. They were sent into camps known as "mujamm'at" where they lived under military rule until a regional autonomy for Iraqi Kurdistan was achieved in 1991. Following, most survivors returned, and began to reconstruct the villages. In Kurdish society, the Anfal survivors are known as Anfal mothers (Kurdish: "Daykan-î Enfal)", Anfal relatives (Kurdish: "Kes-u-kar-î Enfal)" or Anfal women without men (Kurdish: "Bewajin-î Enfal)".


title: Anfal campaign

text: Human Rights Watch unsuccessfully attempted to attract support for a lawsuit under the Genocide Convention against Iraq at the International Court of Justice. It convinced the United States Department of State's legal bureau that Anfal met the legal criteria for genocide.


title: Anfal campaign

text: In December 2005, a court in The Hague convicted Frans van Anraat of complicity in war crimes for his role in selling chemical weapons to the Iraqi government. He was given a 15-year sentence. The court also ruled that the killing of thousands of Kurds in Iraq in the 1980s was indeed an act of genocide. In the 1948 Genocide Convention, the definition of genocide is "acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group". The Dutch court said that it was considered "legally and convincingly proven that the Kurdish population meets the requirement under the Genocide Conventions as an ethnic group. The court has no other conclusion than that these attacks were committed with the intent to destroy the Kurdish population of Iraq".


title: Anfal campaign

text: In an interview broadcast on Iraqi television on 6 September 2005, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, a respected Kurdish politician, said that judges had directly extracted confessions from Saddam Hussein that he had ordered mass killings and other crimes during his regime and that he deserves to die. Two days later, Saddam's lawyer denied that he had confessed.


title: Anfal campaign

text: In June 2006, the Iraqi Special Tribunal announced that Saddam Hussein and six co-defendants would face trial on 21 August 2006 in relation to the Anfal campaign. In December 2006, Saddam was put on trial for the genocide during Operation Anfal. The trial for the Anfal campaign was still underway on 30 December 2006, when Saddam Hussein was executed for his role in the unrelated Dujail massacre.


title: Anfal campaign

text: The Anfal trial recessed on 21 December 2006, and when it resumed on 8 January 2007, the remaining charges against Saddam Hussein were dropped. Six co-defendants continued to stand trial for their roles in the Anfal campaign. On 23 June 2007, Ali Hassan al-Majid, and two co-defendants, Sultan Hashem Ahmed and Hussein Rashid Mohammed, were convicted of genocide and related charges and sentenced to death by hanging. Another two co-defendants (Farhan Jubouri and Saber Abdel Aziz al-Douri) were sentenced to life imprisonment, and one (Taher Tawfiq al-Ani) was acquitted on the prosecution's demand.


title: Anfal campaign

text: Al-Majid was charged with war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. He was convicted in June 2007 and was sentenced to death. His appeal for the death sentence was rejected on 4 September, 2007. He was sentenced to death for the fourth time on 17 January 2010 and was hanged eight days later, on 25 January 2010. Sultan Hashem Ahmed was not hanged due to opposition of the Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, who opposed the death penalty.


title: Anfal campaign

text: There have been few publications about the Anfal campaign and as of 2008, the only comprehensive account of it is that which was published by HRW. Human Rights Watch's 1993 report on Anfal was based on Iraqi documents, examination of grave sites, and interviews with Kurdish survivors.


title: Anfal campaign

text: In 1993, the United States government collected 18 tons of Iraqi government documents which were captured by the Peshmerga during the 1991 uprising and airlifted them to the United States. In those files, HRW conducted research on the Anfal campaign in collaboration with United States federal government agencies such as the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), the Defense Intelligence Agency, and the Defense Department. The US government provided Arabic translators and CD ROM scanners. HRW accepted the US government role under the condition that personnel involved worked under its direction. The files include documents which were collected by the Kurdish parties PUK and KDP, both parties hold the ultimate ownership of the documents that were airlifted to the US.


title: Anfal campaign

text: In exchange for access to the National Archives documents, HRW agreed to help the United States government find information about Iraqi atrocities. Joost Hiltermann, HRW's lead researcher on Anfal, referred to these files as "the good stuff…material to smear the enemy with". Kanan Makiya, an Iraqi–American academic and pro-Iraq War advocate, criticized HRW for promising that the records proved genocide. He warned that the records contained neither "smoking guns" nor do they contain records of the "explosive nature" as HRW claimed. Furthermore, he said that certain documents that seemed incriminating could have been planted by Kurdish rebels. After the invasion of Iraq, Makiya said in December 2003 that the Iraqi document archives contained no "smoking gun" to convict Saddam Hussein of war crimes.


title: Anfal campaign

text: After the United States invasion of Iraq in 2003, mass graves were discovered in parts of western Iraq that had been under Ba'athist control.


title: Anfal campaign

text: The event has become an important element in the constitution of Kurdish national identity. The Kurdistan Regional Government has set aside 14 April as a day of remembrance for the Al-Anfal campaign. In Sulaymanya a museum was established in the former prison of the Directorate of General Security. Many Iraqi Arabs reject that any mass killings of Kurds occurred during the Anfal campaign.


title: Anfal campaign

text: On 28 February 2013, the British House of Commons formally recognized the Anfal as genocide following a campaign which was led by Conservative MP Nadhim Zahawi, who is of Kurdish descent.


title: Mentmore Towers

text: Mentmore Towers, historically known simply as "Mentmore", is a 19th-century English country house built between 1852 and 1854 for the Rothschild family in the village of Mentmore in Buckinghamshire. Sir Joseph Paxton and his son-in-law, George Henry Stokes, designed the building in the 19th-century revival of late 16th and early 17th-century Elizabethan and Jacobean styles called Jacobethan. The house was designed for the banker and collector of fine art Baron Mayer de Rothschild as a country home, and as a display case for his collection of fine art. The mansion has been described as one of the greatest houses of the Victorian era. Mentmore was inherited by Hannah Primrose, Countess of Rosebery, née Rothschild, and owned by her descendants, the Earls of Rosebery.


title: Mentmore Towers

text: Mentmore was the first of what were to become virtual Rothschild estates in the Vale of Aylesbury. Baron Mayer de Rothschild began purchasing land in the area in 1846. Later, other members of the family built houses at Tring in Hertfordshire, Ascott, Aston Clinton, Waddesdon and Halton.


title: Mentmore Towers

text: Much of the estate was sold in 1944, but the mansion, its grounds, formal gardens several farm and the majority of the village of Mentmore remained in the ownership of Harry Primrose, 6th Earl of Rosebery, until his death in 1974. The Earl’s executors explored the possibility of Mentmore Towers along with its contents being preserved intact as a heritage property and opened to the public, as has been the case with some other National Trust properties. Despite prolonged discussions between the Executors and Government representatives over the following three years, no agreement to save the house for the nation was reached. Thus, in 1977, the contents of the house were sold at public auction by Sotheby’s. The following year the empty mansion with its formal gardens and 80 acres were sold to the Maharishi Foundation who occupied it for the next two decades. In 1999, it was again sold, to investor Simon Halabi, who planned to build additional hotel and conference facilities. In 1992 the Mentmore Golf and Country Club opened, with two 18-hole courses.


title: Mentmore Towers

text: Baron Rothschild commissioned Sir Joseph Paxton, who was then designing and supervising construction of the much-admired Crystal Palace, to design Mentmore. Paxton was responsible for the ridge and furrow glass roof which covered the central hall, designed to imitate the arcaded courtyard of a Renaissance palazzo, while Stokes was co-architect and clerk of works. The builder was the London firm George Myers, frequently employed by members of the Rothschild family.


title: Mentmore Towers

text: In keeping with the contents intended to be displayed within, the interiors take their inspiration principally from the Italian Renaissance, although the house also contains drawing rooms and cabinets decorated in the gilded styles of late 18th-century France. The external design is closely based on that of Robert Smythson's Wollaton Hall.


title: Mentmore Towers

text: Baron Mayer de Rothschild and his wife enjoyed the house for over twenty years before their deaths, his in 1874 and the Baroness’s some eighteen months later. The house and estate were then inherited by their daughter Hannah, later Countess of Rosebery. Following her death from Bright's Disease in 1890 at age 39, the house became the home of her widower Archibald Philip Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery, later Prime Minister for two years from 1894. In 1922, the fifth earl gave the estate to his son Harry Meyer Archibald Primrose, Lord Dalmeny, who in 1929 on the death of his father, became the sixth Earl.


title: Mentmore Towers

text: Both earls bred numerous winners of classic horse races at the two stud farms on the estate, including five Epsom Derby winners. These were Ladas, Sir Visto, and Cicero from the Crafton Stud; plus Ocean Swell and Blue Peter from the Mentmore stud. Both stud farms were within a kilometre of the mansion and together with the stable yard were designed by the architect George Devey, who also designed many cottages in the estate's villages of Mentmore, Crafton and Ledburn.


title: Mentmore Towers

text: The second wife of the sixth Earl, Eva Primrose, Countess of Rosebery (DBE), was interested in the arts and was acquainted with Kenneth Clark and other national art museum directors. As a result of Lady Rosebery's friendships, Mentmore was chosen by the British government to store part of the British national art collections during the Second World War. The collections of the National Portrait Gallery were subsequently stored at Mentmore for the duration of the war, along with pieces from the Royal Collection, including the Gold State Coach. Further works transferred to Mentmore included the portraits from Speaker's House in the Palace of Westminster, and tapestries, furniture and Grinling Gibbons carvings from Hampton Court Palace.


title: Mentmore Towers

text: The royal coach was stored in the "battery room" subsequently nicknamed the "refuge", part of the "gas house", a group of outbuildings where gas and electricity had once been produced for the estate. Four men guarded the refuge at night, and two during the day.


title: Mentmore Towers

text: The possible purchase of Mentmore for the nation through the government's National Land Fund was the desire of Roy Strong, the director of the V&A, who hoped that Mentmore would become a "branch" of his museum devoted to 19th-century decorative arts as Ham House was for the 17th century and Osterley was for the 18th century. The government refused to spend such large sums from the fund, and the sale fell through.


title: Mentmore Towers

text: Following the death of the sixth earl in 1974, the Labour government of James Callaghan refused to accept the contents in lieu of inheritance taxes, which could have turned the house into one of England's finest museums of European furniture, "objets d'art" and Victorian era architecture. The government was offered the house and contents for UK £2 million () but declined.


title: Mentmore Towers

text: After three more years of fruitless discussion, the executors of the estate sold the contents by public auction, and the large collection was dispersed. The estate made over £6,000,000 (), but a tiny fraction of its estimated worth today. Among the paintings sold were works by Gainsborough, Reynolds, Boucher, Drouais, Moroni and other well known artists, and cabinet makers, including Jean Henri Riesener and Chippendale. Also represented were the finest German and Russian silver- and goldsmiths, and makers of Limoges enamel. This Rothschild/Mentmore collection is said to have been one of the finest ever to be assembled in private hands, other than the collections of the Russian and British royal families. The sale of Mentmore has been described as a "turning point for the preservation movement".


title: Mentmore Towers

text: Several family portraits, sculptures and furnishing were relocated from Mentmore prior to the sale by the Roseberys to their ancestral Scottish home, Dalmeny House, near Edinburgh. Items from Mentmore at Dalmeny include tapestries, Sèvres porcelain, and an equestrian statue by Joseph Boehm of "King Tom", the foundation stallion for Baron Mayer de Rothschild's Mentmore and Crafton Studs.


title: Mentmore Towers

text: Mentmore became the headquarters for Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's educational charity, the Maharishi Foundation, in 1978. As of 1997 the Natural Law Party also rented rooms there. The building was put up for sale in 1997 but did not change owners until 1999 when it was purchased by investor Simon Halabi.


title: Mentmore Towers

text: Under the ownership of Halabi the property was renamed Mentmore Towers Ltd with the intention of converting it into a luxury hotel with 171 suites, including 122 in a new wing on the slope below the house. However, in September 2004 Jonathan Davey, a local resident, won a last-minute injunction in the High Court to halt work on the hotel while a judicial review investigated if the planning permission granted had followed the correct procedures. In March 2005 the High Court ruled that Aylesbury Vale District Council's decision to grant planning permission to the developers was "unimpeachable" and legally sound.


title: Mentmore Towers

text: Halabi's property company, Buckingham Securities Holdings, was also proposing to develop the In & Out Club at 79–81 Piccadilly, London, also known as Cambridge House, before it became the Naval and Military Club and once occupied by Lord Palmerston. The intention was to turn both properties into Europe's first six-star hotels, one located in town and the other to be the sister Country Manor hotel with 36 hole private golf club. The original architects, EPR were replaced by AFR in 2005 but the development stalled in 2007. In 2004 Hotel Design Inc were retained as interior designers for both projects leading to a 2005 launch event for the marketing of the properties as a private members' club with hotel facilities (the PM Club).


title: Mentmore Towers

text: The last proposal, after the sister Piccadilly property was sold to the Rueben Brothers in 2009, was to renovate the original Mentmore Towers building and not construct the new extension containing guest-room suites, conference facilities and a large spa. However, with Halabi's property empire in serious trouble due to the housing market's collapse, the project stalled, and the property seems to be in decline.


title: Mentmore Towers

text: The house needs urgent work on the roof and chimneys. There is concern that weather will penetrate to the interiors, considered among the finest examples of Victorian design and craftsmanship in Britain. Historic England (previously English Heritage) has placed Mentmore Towers on the "At Risk" register, listing it in "poor" condition with "immediate risk of further rapid deterioration or loss of fabric", explaining that "the service wing roof is in very poor condition and the deterioration of the main house is accelerating with areas of water ingress into the main hall and adjacent reception rooms". A recent video, published at the end of 2021, has confirmed this deterioration.


title: Mentmore Towers

text: Much of the historic estate was sold off in 1944 and reverted to agricultural use before becoming the Mentmore Golf and Country Club, established in 1992, which had two eighteen-hole golf courses designed by Bob Sandow, the Rothschild Course and the Rosebery Course. The club ceased trading in 2015.


title: Mentmore Towers

text: The house has appeared in many films, including: "Brazil" (1985), "Slipstream" (1989), "Incognito" (1997), "Eyes Wide Shut" (1999), "Quills" (2000), "The Mummy Returns" (2001), "Ali G Indahouse" (2002), "Johnny English" (2003), "Batman Begins" (2005) and "Infinite" (2021). It has also been used as a location for music videos including; the Roxy Music video to "Avalon" (1982), "Magic Touch" (1987/88), "Only If..." (1997), "Until the Time Is Through" and "Goodbye" (1998), and "Thinking of You" (2000). It also featured as a location in the "Inspector Morse" episode "Cherubim and Seraphim".


title: Dayanand Shetty

text: Dayanand Chandrashekhar Shetty (born 11 December 1969) is an Indian film and television actor and model, best known for his role as Senior Inspector Daya Singh in India's longest-running television police procedural "CID". He was inducted into the Gold Awards Hall of Fame in 2018.


title: Dayanand Shetty

text: He is a sportsman-turned-actor due to a leg injury. He was a shot put and discus thrower, which won him many prizes in these sports. He was the champion of discus throw from Maharashtra in 1996. He has acted in many commercials and has even won awards as a theatre artist. He won the Best Actor award for his role in the Tulu language play Secret.


title: Dayanand Shetty

text: He then auditioned for the role of "CID" officer in 1998 and was the one who got selected. He is known for his role of Senior Inspector Daya in "CID". He along with actors Shivaji Satam and Aditya Srivastava are the main leads of the show. He has also written for some of the episodes of "CID".