title: Immaculate Reception

text: Steelers fullback Franco Harris, after initially blocking on the play, had run downfield in case Bradshaw needed another eligible receiver. After Bradshaw threw the pass towards Fuqua, Harris recounted the advice of his college football coach Joe Paterno, who always told his players "Go to the ball." Harris, in the vicinity of the deflected pass, scooped up the sailing ball just before it hit the ground (3). Harris ran past Raiders linebacker Gerald Irons, while linebacker Phil Villapiano, who had been covering Harris, was blocked by Steelers tight end John McMakin (4). Harris used a stiff arm to ward off Raiders defensive back Jimmy Warren (5), and went in for a touchdown. The touchdown gave the Steelers a 13–7 lead when Roy Gerela added the ensuing extra point.


title: Immaculate Reception

text: The critical question: whom did the football touch in the Fuqua/Tatum collision? If it bounced off Fuqua without ever touching Tatum, then Harris's reception was illegal. If the ball bounced off only Tatum, or if it bounced off both Fuqua and Tatum (in any order), then the reception was legal. The rule stated in pertinent part that if an offensive player touches a pass first, he is the only offensive player eligible to catch the pass. "However, if a [defensive] player touches [the] pass first, or simultaneously with or subsequent to its having been touched by only one [offensive] player, then all [offensive] players become and remain eligible" to catch the pass. (This rule was rescinded in 1978.) If the reception was illegal, the Raiders would have gained possession (by a turnover on downs), clinching a victory.


title: Immaculate Reception

text: One official, Back Judge Adrian Burk, signaled that the play was a touchdown, but the other game officials did not immediately make any signal. When the officials huddled, Burk and another official, Umpire Pat Harder, thought that the play was a touchdown because Tatum and Fuqua had both touched the ball, while three others said that they were not in a position to rule. Referee Fred Swearingen approached Steelers sideline official Jim Boston and asked to be taken to a telephone. Boston took Swearingen to a baseball dugout in the stadium. There was a video monitor in the dugout, but it was not used by Swearingen. (Terry Bradshaw's assertion that a special television was rigged up on the sideline so that Swearingen could watch the replay is not supported by other accounts.) From the dugout telephone Boston put in a call to the press box to reach the NFL's supervisor of officials, Art McNally. Before the call McNally had "an opinion from the get-go" that the ball had hit Tatum's chest, which he confirmed by looking "at one shot on instant replay." In the press box the telephone was answered either by Dan Rooney, son of Steelers owner Art Rooney, or by Steelers public relations director Joe Gordon (reports vary), and McNally was put on the line. According to McNally, Swearingen "never asked me about the rule, and never asked what I saw. All he said was, 'Two of my men say that opposing players touched the ball.' And I said, 'everything's fine then, go ahead.'" After Swearingen hung up the phone Boston asked, "What do we got?" "We got a touchdown," answered Swearingen, who then went back onto the field to signal the ruling to the crowd. Franco Harris crossed the goal line at approximately 3:29 PM EST. Fans immediately rushed the field, and it took 15 minutes to clear them so that the extra point could be kicked to give the Steelers what turned out to be their final margin of victory, 13–7.


title: Immaculate Reception

text: Although this has been described as the first known use of television replay to confirm a call (there was no instant replay review then), at the time the NFL denied that the decision was made in the press box or using a television replay. An "Oakland Tribune" article two days after the game reported that Steelers publicist Joe Gordon told reporters in the press box that the decision had been made using the replay. Gordon has dismissed this as "a total fabrication." NFL officials Jim Kensil and Val Pinchbeck, who were in the press box with McNally, also deny that replay was used in making the decision on the play.


title: Immaculate Reception

text: In various NFL Films productions about the play years later, various Raiders have theorized that the real purpose of Swearingen's phone conversation was to see if there were enough police on hand to ensure the players' safety if the play was ruled incomplete. The theory claims that there were too few police, so the play was called for the Steelers out of fear. In one of the films, McNally laughs at the suggestion.


title: Immaculate Reception

text: The play is still disputed by those involved, particularly by living personnel from the Raiders and their fans, who insist the Raiders should have won. Tatum said that the ball did not bounce off him, both immediately after the game as well as later; however, in his memoirs, Tatum equivocated, stating that he could not honestly say whether or not the ball hit him. Raiders linebacker Phil Villapiano, who was covering Harris at the time, maintains that the ball hit Fuqua. Fuqua has been coy, supposedly saying he knows exactly what happened that day but will never tell.


title: Immaculate Reception

text: According to Raiders defensive back George Atkinson, the play is known by the Raiders and their fans as the "Immaculate Deception" because "the public was deceived, the officials were deceived, and we got deceived".


title: Immaculate Reception

text: John Madden, coach of the 1972 Raiders, maintained (until his passing) that he would never get over the play, and has indicated that he was bothered more by the delay between the end of the play and the final signal of touchdown than by which player the ball truly hit. After the game, he said that from his view the football had indeed touched Tatum. A few days later, however, Madden indicated that the Raiders game films showed that the ball hit Fuqua's shoulder pads, Jack Tatum conceded that "even after we viewed the game films with stop action, nobody could tell who the ball hit on that moment of impact." Years later Madden wrote, "No matter how many times I watch the films of the 'immaculate reception' play, I never know for sure what happened."


title: Immaculate Reception

text: In 1998, during halftime of the AFC Championship game, NBC showed a replay from its original broadcast. The replay presented a different angle than the NFL Films clip that is most often shown. According to a writer for the "New York Daily News", "NBC's replay showed the ball clearly hit one and only one man[:] Oakland DB Jack Tatum." Curt Gowdy, doing the live TV play-by-play, called it as having been deflected by Tatum, and reiterated that during the video replay.


title: Immaculate Reception

text: Pittsburgh sportscaster Myron Cope, in a 1997 article and in his 2002 book "Quintuple Yoi!", related that two days after the game he reviewed film taken by local Pittsburgh TV station WTAE-TV (channel 4), and that the film showed "[n]o question about it – Bradshaw's pass struck Tatum squarely on his right shoulder." Cope stated that Channel 4's film would be next to impossible to find again, because of inadequate filing procedures at WTAE.


title: Immaculate Reception

text: In 2004 John Fetkovich, an emeritus professor of physics at Carnegie Mellon University, analyzed the NFL Films clip of the play. He came to the conclusion, based on the trajectory of the bounced ball and conservation of momentum, that the ball must have bounced off Tatum, who was running upfield at the time, rather than Fuqua, who was running across and down the field. Fetkovich also performed experiments by throwing a football against a brick wall at a velocity greater than , twice the speed Fetkovich calculated that Bradshaw's pass was traveling when it reached Tatum and Fuqua. Fetkovitch achieved a maximum rebound of when the ball hit point first, and when the ball hit belly first, both less than the that the ball actually rebounded during the play. Timothy Gay, a physics professor and a longtime Raiders fan, cited Fetkovich's work with approval in his book "The Physics of Football", and concluded that "the referees made the right call in the Immaculate Reception."


title: Immaculate Reception

text: Terry Bradshaw himself had made points similar to those of Fetkovich 15 years earlier, stating that he did not think that he had thrown the ball hard enough for it to bounce that far back off Fuqua, and that since Fuqua was running across the field, the ball would have veered to the right if it had hit him. Bradshaw opined that the ball must have bounced off the upfield-moving Tatum – if that had happened then "Tatum's momentum carries the ball backward."


title: Immaculate Reception

text: The ball came very close to hitting the ground before Harris scooped it up. In the sideline views of both film and video, Harris had caught the ball out of frame, and came running into frame from the right side on his path to the end zone. The only other known NBC video was an end zone shot from above and behind the goalposts depicting Harris scooping the ball before it touched the ground. The best NFL Films shot of the play, from ground level, is a tight shot from the end zone of Harris snaring the ball, with his feet and the ground just out of frame below.


title: Immaculate Reception

text: Villapiano has also stated that he was illegally blocked by Steelers tight end John McMakin as he was pursuing Harris following the reception, and he would have tackled Harris without it. Raiders coach Madden echoed this complaint; McMakin, who calls his contribution the ""Magnificent Obstruction"", insists the block was perfectly legal, and is "puzzled" that the Raiders would think otherwise.


title: Immaculate Reception

text: The week after this playoff victory, the Steelers lost the AFC championship game, 21–17, to the Miami Dolphins, who went on to win Super Bowl VII in their landmark undefeated season. Had the Raiders advanced to the AFC championship game instead, they would have entered that contest with an all-time record (including playoffs) of 6–1–1 against the Dolphins.


title: Immaculate Reception

text: Despite the loss to the Dolphins, the Steelers started to reverse four decades of futility and went on to become a dominant force in the NFL for the rest of the 1970s, winning four Super Bowls in six years with such stars as Bradshaw, Harris, John Stallworth, and Lynn Swann along with the Steel Curtain defense led by Jack Ham, Jack Lambert, "Mean Joe" Greene, Mel Blount, and Dwight White.


title: Immaculate Reception

text: 1972 was the year before the team's 40th year in the league, during which they had finished above .500 only nine times, and until then had never won a playoff game. In fact, before this game, the only playoff game the team had ever played was a loss to the Philadelphia Eagles in 1947 after the two teams finished tied for the Eastern Division championship. The Immaculate Reception was actually the first touchdown the Steelers ever scored in the postseason (they were shut out against the Eagles in the 1947 playoff game). (The Steelers also lost to the Detroit Lions in the 1962 Playoff Bowl, though this was considered an exhibition game between the two second place teams in league record books and not an actual playoff game.) They had long been regarded as one of the league's doormats (as the 1944 Card-Pitt merger was 0–10 and was ridiculed as the "Carpitts," a play on the word "carpet"). As recently as 1969, the team had posted a 1–13 record, thus securing the first draft choice in the subsequent NFL draft (in which the Steelers chose Terry Bradshaw) and seeding their remarkable turnaround. Since the AFL–NFL merger, the Steelers have the NFL's best record (surpassing Miami in 2007 because of the Dolphins' recent struggles), have had a league-low three head coaches, and have had only nine losing seasons, none worse than 5–11. Only twice since the Immaculate Reception has the team had losing seasons two years in a row and none three years in a row.


title: Immaculate Reception

text: The Immaculate Reception spawned a heated rivalry between the Steelers and Raiders, a rivalry that was at its peak during the 1970s, when both teams were among the best in the league and both were known for their hard-hitting, physical play. The teams met in the playoffs in each of the next four seasons, starting with the Raiders' 33–14 victory in the 1973 divisional playoffs. Pittsburgh used the AFC championship game victories over Oakland (24–13 at Oakland in 1974 and 16–10 at Pittsburgh in 1975) as a springboard to victories in Super Bowl IX and Super Bowl X, before the Raiders notched a 24–7 victory at home in 1976 on their way to winning Super Bowl XI. To date, the two last met in the playoffs in 1983 when the eventual Super Bowl champion Raiders, playing in Los Angeles at the time, crushed the Steelers, 38–10. The rivalry has somewhat died off in the years since, mainly due to the Raiders on-field struggles since appearing in Super Bowl XXXVII.


title: Immaculate Reception

text: The play itself started another rivalry between the Raiders and the rest of the league, as Raider fans have long thought that the league has wanted to shortchange the team and specifically owner Al Davis. In 2007, NFL Network ranked the "Raiders versus the World" as the biggest feud in NFL history.


title: Immaculate Reception

text: For the 1978 NFL season, the NFL passed two rule changes that would have impacted the Immaculate Reception had it happened today. The first one regarding the forward pass touching an offensive player but being caught by another without touching a defender was repealed. There are no longer any restrictions on any deflections of passes, and a future play that mirrored the Immaculate Reception would simply be an extraordinary but legal reception. Secondly, the NFL also passed tougher pass interference rules (ironically as a result of the Steelers own Mel Blount, among others), which if in effect in 1972 would've penalized the Raiders regardless of the result of the play due to Tatum's hit on Fuqua; as the goal post would be at the goal line until 1974 when they were moved back to the end line, such a penalty would have placed the Steelers in relatively short field goal range for Gerela to try a game-winning field goal from 42 yards out. Whether a future Franco Harris would have been ruled as catching such a deflected football before it struck the turf is a different matter, thanks to myriad cameras and use of instant replay that is part of the present-day NFL.


title: Immaculate Reception

text: As 1972 was the last year that the NFL forbade any local telecasts of home games, the game itself wasn't shown live on Pittsburgh NBC affiliate WIIC-TV (now WPXI), nor was it shown on nearby NBC affiliates WJAC-TV in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, WFMJ-TV in Youngstown, Ohio; WBOY-TV in Clarksburg, West Virginia; and then-NBC affiliate WTRF-TV in Wheeling, West Virginia, all of which are secondary markets to the Steelers—WICU-TV in Erie, Pennsylvania, and then-NBC O&O WKYC-TV in Cleveland, Ohio, were the closest stations to air the game (although WIIC-TV showed the game on tape delay the following day). Starting the next year, any home games that sold out 72 hours before kick-off could be televised locally. As the Steelers began their home sell-out streak in 1972, blackouts have never been needed in the Pittsburgh area.


title: Immaculate Reception

text: The actual ball ended up in the hands of fan Jim Baker, who attended the game with his young nephew, Bobby. Baker managed to scoop up the ball during the ensuing melee after the extra point kick, grabbed his nephew, and ran off the field. He had offered to give the ball back to the Steelers in return for lifetime season tickets but was rebuffed. He has since declined any offer to sell it, including the highest offer of $150,000 from heavy equipment provider Ray Anthony International. Baker has instead kept this coveted piece of NFL memorabilia in a guarded bank vault in West Mifflin, Pennsylvania, occasionally bringing it out for public appearances involving the Steelers including one with Franco Harris in 1997 to commemorate the play's 25th anniversary.


title: Immaculate Reception

text: The Steelers organization still consider the Immaculate Reception the greatest moment in team history. The Immaculate Reception was documented by NFL Network's "A Football Life" in 2012.


title: Immaculate Reception

text: On December 23, 2012, on the 40th anniversary of the play just hours before the Steelers hosted the Cincinnati Bengals, the Steelers unveiled a monument at the exact spot where Harris made the reception at a parking lot just outside Heinz Field, where Three Rivers Stadium formerly stood. This is the third such monument that commemorates the play in the city (the others are located at the Pittsburgh International Airport and the Heinz History Center).


title: Immaculate Reception

text: In the 2013–14 NFL playoffs, Seattle Seahawks' Richard Sherman deflected a pass by San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick, that was intended for Michael Crabtree, which was caught by teammate Malcolm Smith to seal the Seahawks' 23–17 victory in the NFC Championship Game. The play was later dubbed "the Immaculate Deflection" (as an homage to the Immaculate Reception), and would later be voted by Seahawks fans to be the most significant play in franchise history.


title: Immaculate Reception

text: For Super Bowl XLIX, Wix.com ran an ad featuring retired football players using its tools to build websites for their new businesses, including Franco Harris who creates a fictional wedding planning website called "Immaculate Receptions" named after the famous play.


title: Immaculate Reception

text: "The 100-Year Game", a short film created by the league for Super Bowl LIII, featured many current and former football stars. In it, Terry Bradshaw is seen throwing a football across the room towards such contemporary star receivers as Larry Fitzgerald and Odell Beckham Jr. — only to see the ball tipped, and snatched by Harris just before it hits the floor.


title: Immaculate Reception

text: A 2019 poll of media members by the NFL named the Immaculate Reception as the greatest NFL play in its history.


title: From the New World (novel)

text: The story received a manga adaptation with slight disparities in Kodansha's "Bessatsu Shōnen Magazine", which was serialized between May 2012 and June 2014, and an anime television series adaptation by A-1 Pictures, which aired in Japan between October 2012 and March 2013. In North America, the manga has been licensed by Vertical (itself an imprint of Kodansha USA) and the anime by Sentai Filmworks.


title: From the New World (novel)

text: In AD 3013, 1,000 years after the modern era, 0.3 percent of the population developed psychic abilities called "Canto". Soon after these powers manifest themselves, many begin using Canto for violence and crime, and the conscious and unconscious use of these powers altered the wildlife and the environment. This led to a breakdown of modern society and a world war which devastated the human population and caused the fall of modern society. This was followed by oppressive and feudalistic regimes, but these too dissolved in chaos due to the violence of the psychic humans. Eventually, the psychic-endowed humans established a stable society by controlling their powers using genetic modification and social conditioning. They made themselves incapable of violence against other humans by implementing Attack Inhibition and creating Death Feedback which would be activated if a psychic human kills another, causing the murderer's organs to shut down and die almost instantly. The villages also used genetically designed animals for various purposes. The mole-like Queerats resemble humanity, are able to speak human language and live in a complex eusocial society ruled by queens. The feline Impure Cats are used to kill children at risk of developing one of the two dangerous disorders: the , who are unable to control their powers, and the , who can suppress the Attack Inhibition and Death Feedback and use their special powers against humans.


title: From the New World (novel)

text: "Shin Sekai Yori" follows the life of Saki Watanabe, a girl from the town of Kamisu 66. In this era, all humans possess powerful psychic abilities and live an idyllic life in agrarian villages. Despite her parents' fears that she may not awaken her powers, Saki gains her special powers at the age of twelve and joins her friends—Satoru Asahina, Maria Akizuki, Mamoru Itou, Shun Aonuma, and Reiko Amano—in Sage Academy, a special school for psychics. However, the children are unaware that the village government is monitoring and evaluating students through the education system. Based on these evaluations, certain students are removed from society because of reasons such as poor performance (such as with Reiko) or for cheating. The memories of the removed students are erased from the community; Saki and her remaining friends have no memory of Reiko and other students. During an unsupervised camping field trip, Saki and her friends capture a False Minoshiro, a mythical animal revealed to be an ancient library robot. The False Minoshiro explains the violent truth of how the current era came about and what their special powers truly are.


title: From the New World (novel)

text: While interrogating the False Minoshiro, Saki and her friends are found by the monk Rijin. He destroys the False Minoshiro and seemingly seals away the children's special powers for associating with a demon. On the way back to be judged at the village, Rijin is killed by a rogue Queerat tribe while Saki and Satoru are separated from their friends. They are captured by the rogue Queerat colony. Using objects found during their trip, Saki and Satoru are able to escape their prison. During their escape, they meet a Queerat, Squealer, of the Robber Fly colony who rescues them from their pursuers. Saki and Satoru help Squealer and his colony to defeat the rogue Queerats, later with assistance from General Kiroumaru and his Giant Hornet colony, a colony with an especially close relationship to humans. After regrouping with their friends with the help of Squealer and general Kiroumaru, Saki restores their powers, using the same hypnotic methods the village uses to control children, before returning to the village under the belief that the adults do not know of their transgressions.


title: From the New World (novel)

text: Two years later, as Saki and her friends reach adolescence and develop relationships, Shun starts to distance himself from the others and eventually goes missing. Saki finds Shun in an abandoned house and learns that he has become a Karmic Demon and had been sent to die in isolation. After holding himself back for the duration of their meeting, Shun tells Saki to go while telling her the adults know of their transgressions two years ago before using his powers to take his own life. Soon after, unlike with Reiko, Saki and her remaining friends start to realize Shun's absence despite being unable to fully remember him. In time, Saki learns that the survival of herself and her friends has been orchestrated by the Education board and the Ethics Committee Head Tomiko Asahina, who sees Saki as a potential successor. Later, Mamoru and Maria run away after the Education Board tries to purge Mamoru. Squealer, renamed by the humans as Yakomaru as a reward for his usefulness, helps them by staging their deaths. However, after finding the Robber Fly queen lobotomized and that Yakomaru acquired a False Minoshiro, Saki begins to have dreams of a faceless child that tells her not to find Mamoru and Maria as they must die.


title: From the New World (novel)

text: Now 26 years old, Saki works for the village government in the "Department of Mutant Management" which oversees the Queerats. Yakomaru's colony slowly ascends to power while conquering other colonies and wiping out the Giant Hornet colony, eventually attacking Kamisu 66 with what is believed to be a Fiend that the Queerats refer to as their "Messiah." This is later revealed to be the biological child of Mamoru and Maria who Yakomaru raised after murdering the parents. After evading the Fiend and learning that Yakomaru intends to steal more human infants to create an army to wipe out the human race, Saki and Satoru are joined by Kiroumaru who guides them to the ruins of Tokyo to find the "Psychobuster"; an anthrax-like anti-psychic weapon. With Yakomaru's forces surrounding them, Satoru attempts to kill the Messiah with the Psychobuster, but Saki destroys the weapon because its use at such close proximity would also have killed Satoru. Saki realizes that the Messiah is not truly a Fiend, but actually a regular psychic like themselves, with one key difference: the Messiah considers Queerats as his kin which is what enables him to bypass the Death Feedback when attacking other humans. With seemingly no options left, Saki and Satoru plead with Kiroumaru for help. After admitting his own disdain towards humans and their treatment of his kind, Kiroumaru agrees to help, but asks for his colony to be spared the humans' retaliation once the revolt is ended. He disguises himself as a human and attacks the Messiah. The Messiah kills Kiroumaru, but upon realizing that Kiroumaru is a type of Queerat, dies due to Death Feedback.


title: From the New World (novel)

text: With the Messiah dead and his rebellion crushed Squealer is defeated. Renouncing the name the humans gave him, Squealer is sentenced to perpetual torture of the "Infinite Hell" where his body is simultaneously regenerated and destroyed using psychic powers. However, Saki is troubled when Squealer explains the reasons behind his revolt, claiming that his people are human. Later, Saki learns from Satoru that the Queerats are the descendants of normal humans whose DNA had been altered with mole rat genes to make it easier for the psychic humans to control them, since they will not trigger Attack Inhibition and Death Feedback. Now feeling sorry for Squealer, Saki secretly puts him out of his misery.


title: From the New World (novel)

text: In the epilogue ten years later, Saki has married Satoru and they expect their first child. Both are positive that the world will be a better place by the time their child grows up.


title: From the New World (novel)

text: The are humanoid molerat mutants who live in colonies and appear obedient to the humans to the point of referring to them as gods. However, during the attack on the humans by Squealer, it's revealed that the Queerats disdain humans for the way they're treated. Saki eventually learns to her horror that Queerats are actually the descendants of normal humans who were genetically modified with molerat DNA to enable the humans with special powers to subjugate those who don't suffer the Death of Shame, whom they would otherwise be defenseless against.


title: From the New World (novel)

text: The novel "From the New World" was written by the Japanese author Yusuke Kishi and published by Kodansha. It is titled after Antonín Dvořák's Symphony No. 9 "From the New World", whose Movement II appears in the story several times. Its original publication was on January 23, 2008, in two volumes. On August 7, 2009, it was re-released as a single volume under the Kodansha Novels imprint and again on January 14, 2011, as three volumes under the Kodansha Bunko imprint.


title: From the New World (novel)

text: A manga adaption of the novel, drawn by Tōru Oikawa, was serialized in Kodansha's "Bessatsu Shōnen Magazine". The first chapter was published in the June 2012 issue on May 9, 2012, and the final in the July 2014 issue on June 9, 2014. The series has been collected in seven "tankōbon" volumes under the Kodansha Comics imprint, released between October 9, 2012, and August 8, 2014. In 2013 the series was licensed in English by Vertical Inc, who released it between November 12, 2013, and January 20, 2015.


title: From the New World (novel)

text: The novel was adapted into an anime television series by A-1 Pictures which aired on TV Asahi from October 2012 to March 2013. The anime does not have an opening theme but has two ending themes. by Risa Taneda was used for episode 1 through 16, which was replaced by by Kana Hanazawa starting in episode 17.


title: From the New World (novel)

text: It has been licensed by Sentai Filmworks in North America. Sentai Filmworks later released the English dub version on DVD and Blu-Ray on April 15, 2014. Hanabee Entertainment later licensed the series on February 23, 2014 alongside "Campione!" and "The Familiar of Zero".


title: From the New World (novel)

text: Along with "Den-noh Coil", "From the New World " received the Grand Prize of the 29th Nihon SF Taisho Award by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of Japan (SFWJ) in 2008.


title: Borassus flabellifer

text: Borassus flabellifer, commonly known as doub palm, palmyra palm, tala or tal palm, toddy palm, wine palm or ice apple, is native to South Asia (especially in Bangladesh & South India) and Southeast Asia. It is reportedly naturalized in Socotra and parts of China.


title: Borassus flabellifer

text: "Borassus flabellifer" is a robust tree and can reach a height of . The trunk is grey, robust and ringed with leaf scars; old leaves remain attached to the trunk for several years before falling cleanly. The leaves are fan-shaped and long, with robust black teeth on the petiole margins. Like all "Borassus" species, "B. flabellifer" is dioecious with male and female flowers on separate plants. The male flowers are less than 1 cm long and form semi-circular clusters, which are hidden beneath scale-like bracts within the catkin-like inflorescences. In contrast, the female flowers are golfball-sized and solitary, sitting upon the surface of the inflorescence axis. After pollination, these blooms develop into fleshy fruits 15–25 cm wide, each containing 1-3 seeds. The fruits are black to brown with sweet, fibrous pulp and each seed is enclosed within a woody endocarp. Young palmyra seedlings grow slowly, producing only a few leaves each year (establishment phase), but at an as yet undetermined time, they grow rapidly, producing a substantial stem.


title: Borassus flabellifer

text: The fruit (palmyra fruit) measures to in diameter, has a black husk, and is borne in clusters. The top portion of the fruit must be cut off to reveal the sweet jelly seed sockets, translucent pale-white, similar to that of the lychee but with a milder flavor and no pit. The sweet jelly seed sockets occur in combinations of two, three or four seeds inside the fruit. The jelly part of the fruit is covered with a thin, yellowish-brown skin. These are known to contain watery fluid inside the fleshy white body. These seed sockets have been the inspiration behind certain sandeshes called "jalbhora" (জলভরা) found in Bengal. The soft orange-yellow mesocarp pulp of the ripe fruit is sugary, dense and edible, rich in vitamins A and C. They also contain bitter compound called flabelliferrins, which are steroidal saponins.


title: Borassus flabellifer

text: The conventional way this fruit is eaten is when the outer casing is still unripe while the seeds are eaten as the fruit. But if the entire fruit is left to ripen, the fibrous outer layer of the palm fruits can also be eaten raw, boiled, or roasted. When this happens, the fruit takes a purple-blackish hue and tastes similar to coconut flesh. The skin is also eaten as part of the fruit similar to how mango skins are often consumed along with the fruit. Bengalis have perfected the art of making various sweet dishes with the yellowish viscous fluid substance obtained from a ripe palm fruit. These include mustard oil-fried (alternately sunflower oil-fried) "taal-er bora" (তালের বড়া) "palmyra vadas" or mixed with thickened milk to prepare "taal-kheer" (তাল ক্ষীর).


title: Borassus flabellifer

text: In Kerala it is called "nonku" (നൊങ്ക്) whereas in Tamil Nadu, it is called "nungu" (நுங்கு). In Odisha, it is called "tala" (ତାଳ). Ice apple in Indonesia is called "buah lontar" or "siwalan".In Karnataka it is called "Taati Nungu"(ತಾಟಿ ನುಂಗು / ತಾಟಿ ನಿಂಗು). In Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, this fruit is called as "Thaati Munjalu" (తాటి ముంజలు). In Tulu language of Coastal Karnataka it is called “Erolu”(ಇರೋಲು).


title: Borassus flabellifer

text: Obtaining the sap traditionally involves tapping the top shoots and collecting the dripping juice in hanging earthen pots (in some regions a plastic or bamboo bottle). The juice collected in evening or after fermentation becomes sour, and is called Tadi (ताडी) in Marathi. This sap was the main source of sugar production in Thailand before sugarcane was introduced, as can be seen in the Thai word for sugar, "nam tan" (น้ำตาล), which literally means the water of the tala palm.


title: Borassus flabellifer

text: A sugary sap called toddy can be obtained from the young inflorescence, either male or female. Toddy is fermented to make a beverage called arrack, or it is concentrated to a crude sugar called jaggery or Taal Patali (তাল পাটালী) in Bengali and Pana Vellam or Karuppukatti (கருப்புகட்டி or கருபட்டி) in Tamil. It is called "Gula Jawa" (Javanese sugar) in Indonesia, and is widely used in Javanese cuisine. In Thailand, it is called "nam tan pik" (น้ำตาลปึก), referring to the pack of sugar obtained from drying the palm sap, though in the modern day "nam tan pik" is often made from coconut water because the convenient of farming and harvesting.


title: Borassus flabellifer

text: In Thailand, there are techniques that utilize the anti-bacterial agents of some woods to keep the sap from becoming sour while tapping. After sterilization, the sap is available as a beverage called "nam tan sod" (น้ำตาลสด, ) or used to make an alcoholic beverage called "nam tan mao" (น้ำตาลเมา ).


title: Borassus flabellifer

text: In the Indian states of Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Bihar, and in Jaffna, Bengal, Sri Lanka, the seeds are planted and made to germinate and the fleshy stems (below the surface) are boiled or roasted and eaten. It is very fibrous and nutritious. It is known as Thegalu (తేగలు) or Gaygulu (గేగులు) or Gengulu (గెంగులు) (especially in Telangana) in Telugu, as Panai Kizhangu or Panangkizhangu (பனங்கிழங்கு) in Tamil, and as htabin myiq (ထန်းပင်မြစ်) in Myanmar.


title: Borassus flabellifer

text: The germinated seed's hard shell is also cut open to take out the crunchy kernel, which tastes like a sweeter water chestnut. It is called Buragunju (బురగుంజు) in Telugu and "thavanai" in Tamil.


title: Borassus flabellifer

text: The white kernel of the ripe palm fruit after being left for a few months is used as an offering in Lakshmi Puja in various parts of Bengal and is also eaten raw.


title: Borassus flabellifer

text: The "Borassus flabellifer" leaves are used for thatching, mats, baskets, fans, hats, umbrellas, and as writing material.


title: Borassus flabellifer

text: All the literature of the old Tamil was written in preserved palm leaves also known as Palm-leaf manuscript. In Tamil "Yaedu" or "Olai chuvadi". Most of the ancient literature in Telugu are written on palm leaves (Tala patra grandhas).


title: Borassus flabellifer

text: In Indonesia the leaves were used in the ancient culture as paper, known as "lontar" (from Old/Modern Javanese "ron tal" "tal leaves") Leaves of suitable size, shape, texture, and maturity were chosen and then seasoned by boiling in salt water with turmeric powder, as a preservative. The leaves were then dried. When they were dry enough, the face of the leaf was polished with pumice, cut into the proper size, and a hole made in one corner. Each leaf made four pages. The writing was done with a stylus and had a very cursive and interconnected style.


title: Borassus flabellifer

text: The skin of the stem can be peeled off and be used as rope and also used to weave into cots ("நார்க்கட்டில்" in Tamil). In some part of Tamil Nadu, a variety of rice flour cake (called "Kozhukattai") is prepared using the leaf.


title: Borassus flabellifer

text: The stalks are used to make fences and also produce a strong, wiry fiber suitable for cordage and brushes. The black timber is hard, heavy, and durable and is highly valued for construction. It is superior to coconut timber, or red palm.


title: Borassus flabellifer

text: When the crown of the tree is removed, the segment from which the leaves grow out is an edible cake. This is called 'pananchoru" (பனஞ்சோறு) in Tamil or "thati adda" (తాటి అడ్డ/తాటి మట్ట) in Telugu.


title: Borassus flabellifer

text: In Cambodia, where the palm is known as "thnôt"' (Khmer), the roots are dried and smoked to heal nasal complaints.


title: Borassus flabellifer

text: "Borassus flabellifer" has a growth pattern, very large size, and clean habits that make it an attractive ornamental tree, cultivated for planting in gardens and parks as landscape palm species.


title: Katie Featherston

text: Katie Dianne Featherston (born October 20, 1982) is an American actress. She is known for playing Katie in the "Paranormal Activity" series.


title: Katie Featherston

text: Was born in Texas. She attended Bowie High School in Arlington, Texas and participated in numerous drama activities. She attended college at the Southern Methodist University where she studied acting.


title: Katie Featherston

text: She is best known for portraying Katie in the film "Paranormal Activity", which was made in 2007 and released theatrically in the United States in 2009. She reprises her role in the film's sequels, including the spin-off "", where she makes a cameo appearance.


title: Battle of Badon

text: The Battle of Badon /ˈbeɪdən/ also known as the Battle of Mons Badonicus (, "Blockade/Siege of the Badonic Hill"; "Bellum in monte Badonis", "Battle on Badon Hill"; "Bellum Badonis", "Battle of Badon"; Old Welsh: "Badon"; Middle Welsh: "Gweith Vadon", "Battle of Badon"; , "Battle of Badon Mount/Hill") was a battle purportedly fought between Britons and Anglo-Saxons in Post-Roman Britain in the late 5th or early 6th century. It was credited as a major victory for the Britons, stopping the encroachment of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms for a period.


title: Battle of Badon

text: The earliest references to the battle by the British cleric Gildas date to the 6th century. It is chiefly known today for the supposed involvement of the man who would later be remembered as the legendary King Arthur, a tradition that first clearly appeared in the 9th-century "Historia Brittonum", in which he is mentioned participating as a war commander and not a king himself. Because of the limited number of sources, there is no certainty about the date, location, or details of the fighting.


title: Battle of Badon

text: The earliest mention of the Battle of Badon is Gildas' "De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae" ("On the Ruin and Conquest of Britain"), written in the early to mid-6th century. In it, the Anglo-Saxons are said to have "dipped [their] red and savage tongue in the western ocean" before Ambrosius Aurelianus organized a British resistance with the survivors of the initial Saxon onslaught. Gildas describes the period that followed Ambrosius' initial success:


title: Battle of Badon

text: "De Excidio Britanniae" describes the battle as such an "unexpected recovery of the [island]" that it caused kings, nobles, priests, and commoners to "live orderly according to their several vocations." Afterwards, the long peace degenerated into civil wars and the iniquity of Maelgwn Gwynedd.


title: Battle of Badon

text: That Arthur had gone unmentioned in the source closest to his own time, Gildas, was noticed at least as early as the 12th-century hagiography which claims that Gildas had praised Arthur extensively but then excised him completely after Arthur killed the saint's brother, Hueil mab Caw. Modern writers have suggested the details of the battle were so well known that Gildas could have expected his audience to be familiar with them.


title: Battle of Badon

text: The battle is next mentioned in an 8th-century text of Bede's "Ecclesiastical History of the English People" ("Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum"). It describes the "siege of Mount Badon, when they made no small slaughter of those invaders," as occurring 44 years after the first Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain. Since Bede places that arrival just before, during or just after the joint reign (in Rome) of Marcian and Valentinian III in 449456, he must have considered Badon to have taken place between 493 and 500. Bede then puts off discussion of the battle "But more of this hereafter" only to seemingly never return to it.


title: Battle of Badon

text: Bede does later include an extended account of Saint Germanus of Auxerre's victory over the Saxons and Picts in a mountain valley (traditionally placed at Mold in Flintshire in northeast Wales), which he credits with curbing the threat of invasion for a generation. However, as the victory is described as having been accomplished bloodlessly, it was presumably a different occasion from Badon. Accepted at face value, St. Germanus' involvement would also place the battle around 430, although Bede's chronology shows no knowledge of this.


title: Battle of Badon

text: The earliest surviving text mentioning Arthur at the battle is the early 9th-century "Historia Brittonum" ("The History of the Britons"), attributed to Nennius, in which the soldier (Latin "mīles") Arthur is identified as the leader of the victorious British force at Badon:


title: Battle of Badon

text: The Battle of Badon is next mentioned in the "Annales Cambriae" ("Annals of Wales"), assumed to have been written during the mid- to late-10th century. The entry states:


title: Battle of Badon

text: Geoffrey of Monmouth's c. 1136 "Historia Regum Britanniae" ("The History of the Kings of Britain") was massively popular and survives in many copies from soon after its composition. Going into (and fabricating) much greater detail, Geoffrey closely identifies Badon with Bath, including having Merlin foretell that Badon's baths would lose their hot water and turn poisonous. He also mixes in aspects of other accounts: the battle begins as a Saxon siege and then becomes a normal engagement once Arthur's men arrive; Arthur bears the image of the Virgin both on his shield and shoulder. Arthur charges and kills 470, ten more than the number of Britons ambushed by Hengist near Salisbury.


title: Battle of Badon

text: Elements of the Welsh legends are added: in addition to the shield "Pridwen", Arthur gains his sword, "Caliburnus" (Excalibur), and his spear, "Ron". Geoffrey also makes the defence of the city from the Saxon sneak attack a holy cause, having Dubricius offer absolution of all sins for those who fall in battle.


title: Battle of Badon

text: There is considerable scholarly debate as to the exact date and location of the battle, though most agree that it took place in southern England sometime around the turn of the sixth century.


title: Battle of Badon

text: Dates proposed by scholars for the battle include 493, 501 and 516. Daniel McCarthy and Dáibhí Ó Cróinín have posited that Gildas' 44 years and one month is not a reference to the simple chronology but a position within the 84-year Easter cycle used for computus at the time by the Britons and the Irish church. The tables in question begin in January 438, which would place their revised date of the battle in February 482.


title: Battle of Badon

text: Andrew Breeze, in a 2020 book, argues that the Battle of Badon or "Braydon, Wiltshire" took place in 493, deducing that Gildas was writing "De Excidio" in 536, in the middle of the extreme weather events of 535–536, because he cited a "certain thick mist and black night" which "sits upon the whole island" of Britain, but not the subsequent famine in the year 537. Breeze concluded that Badon was fought "(...) in southern Britain, was fought in 493 and had nothing to do with Arthur."


title: Battle of Badon

text: Though academics have never reached any consensus, Mount Badon’s location has traditionally been sited in the hills around Bath, most notably at Bathampton Down. Alternatively, Tim and Annette Burkitt have proposed Caer Badden (; now Bath, Somerset), some 20 miles northeast of the Roman mines at Charterhouse, on the basis of the "Welsh Annals", as well as archaeological and toponymic evidence.


title: Battle of Badon

text: Susan Hirst, Geoffrey Ashe and Michael Wood argue for the site of Liddington Castle on the hill above Badbury (Old English: "Baddan byrig") in Wiltshire. This site commands The Ridgeway, which connects the River Thames with the River Avon and River Severn beyond.


title: Battle of Badon

text: The similarly-named Badbury Rings in Dorset have also been argued to be the location of the battle. David Cooper agrees that this is the most likely site and has provided the most comprehensive analysis of the battle available to date.


title: Battle of Badon

text: Andrew Breeze has argued that "Badon" must be etymologically Brittonic rather than English (thus eliminating Bath from consideration as its name is entirely Germanic), and that the toponym as given by Gildas ("Badonici Montis") is a misprint of "Bradonici Montis", based on known Celtic place names in Wales and Cornwall. Breeze posits Ringsbury Camp near Braydon in Wiltshire as the site of the battle.


title: Battle of Badon

text: Some authors have speculated that Ælle of Sussex may have led the Saxon forces at this battle. Others reject the idea out of hand.


title: Battle of Badon

text: The A Text of the "Annales Cambriae" includes the entry: "The first celebration of Easter among the Saxons. The second battle of Badon. Morgan dies." The date for this action is given by Phillimore as 665, but the Saxons' first Easter is placed by the B Text in its entry 634 years after the birth of Christ and "the second Badon" is not mentioned.


title: Battle of Badon

text: The 13th-century French Arthurian prose romance Vulgate Cycle replaced the Battle of Badon with the Battle of Clarence (spelling variants: "Clarance", "Clarans", "Clarenche", "Clarens"). In the first round of fighting, a coalition of British kings is defeated by the Saxons (or the Saracens in some versions, including that by Thomas Malory). In the second phase, Arthur joins the battle and enemy forces are destroyed, driving invaders into the sea.


title: Battle of Badon

text: Apart from the professional scholarship, various communities throughout Wales and England have their own traditions maintaining that their area was the site of the battle. These include (besides Badbury Rings and Bathampton Down), the mountain of Mynydd Baedan near Maesteg in South Wales, and Bowden Hill in Wiltshire.


title: Battle of Badon

text: King Arthur leads the Knights of the Round Table into battle against the Saxons led by Hengist in the "Prince Valiant" comic strip series episodes 1430 (5 July 1964) and following. The battle is mentioned in the 1975 comedy film "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" as one of the many questionable feats of Sir Robin, who in the film's bardic narration is said to have "personally wet himself at the Battle of Badon Hill". The battle is featured prominently in 1997's "" by Bernard Cornwell in the book's second part, "Mynydd Baddon", in which the armies of Angle and Saxon kings Aelle and Cerdic, aided by Celtic traitors led by Lancelot, are defeated in an epic battle by an uneasy alliance of various British and Irish kingdoms. The author combines various medieval accounts of the battle, such as it beginning as an Anglo-Saxon siege of a hilltop (here initially desperately defended by Guinevere, who is depicted as brilliant strategist and rallying figure) and having Arthur's cavalry appear with the sign of the cross on their shields (here a requisite demanded by the Christian king Tewdric for him to also join the battle), to create a more grounded and realistic depiction than the ones from his medieval sources. The 2004 film "King Arthur" ends in a climactic battle scene occurring along the Hadrian Wall as the mostly Romano-British forces of Arthur defeat these of the Saxon kings Cerdic and Cynric, at a heavy cost to Arthur.


title: Slate (magazine)

text: Slate is an online magazine that covers current affairs, politics, and culture in the United States. It was created in 1996 by former "New Republic" editor Michael Kinsley, initially under the ownership of Microsoft as part of MSN. In 2004, it was purchased by The Washington Post Company (later renamed the Graham Holdings Company), and since 2008 has been managed by The Slate Group, an online publishing entity created by Graham Holdings. "Slate" is based in New York City, with an additional office in Washington, D.C.


title: Slate (magazine)

text: "Slate", which is updated throughout the day, covers politics, arts and culture, sports, and news. According to its former editor-in-chief Julia Turner, the magazine is "not fundamentally a breaking news source", but rather aimed at helping readers to "analyze and understand and interpret the world" with witty and entertaining writing. As of mid-2015, it publishes about 1,500 stories per month.


title: Slate (magazine)

text: A French version, "slate.fr", was launched in February 2009 by a group of four journalists, including Jean-Marie Colombani, Eric Leser, and economist Jacques Attali. Among them, the founders hold 50 percent in the publishing company, while The Slate Group holds 15 percent. In 2011, "slate.fr" started a separate site covering African news, "Slate Afrique", with a Paris-based editorial staff.


title: Slate (magazine)

text: "Slate" features regular and semi-regular columns such as "Explainer, Moneybox, Spectator, Transport", and "Dear Prudence". Many of the articles are short (less than 2,000 words) and argument-driven. Around 2010, the magazine also began running long-form journalism. Many of the longer stories are an outgrowth of the "Fresca Fellowships", so-called because former editor Plotz liked the soft drink Fresca. "The idea is that every writer and editor on staff has to spend a month or six weeks a year not doing their regular job, but instead working on a long, ambitious project of some sort," Plotz said in an interview.


title: Slate (magazine)

text: "Slate" introduced a paywall-based business model in 1998 that attracted up 20,000 subscribers but was later abandoned. A similar subscription model was implemented in April 2001 by "Slate"s independently owned competitor, Salon.com.


title: Slate (magazine)

text: "Slate" started a daily feature, "Today's Pictures", on November 30, 2005, which featured 15–20 photographs from the archive at Magnum Photos that share a common theme. The column also features two Flash animated "Interactive Essays" a month.


title: Slate (magazine)

text: On its 10th anniversary, "Slate" unveiled a redesigned website. It introduced "Slate V" in 2007, an online video magazine with content that relates to or expands upon their written articles. In 2013, the magazine was redesigned under the guidance of design director Vivian Selbo.


title: Slate (magazine)

text: "Slate" was nominated for four digital National Magazine Awards in 2011 and won the NMA for General Excellence. In the same year, the magazine laid off several high-profile journalists, including co-founder Jack Shafer and Timothy Noah (author of the "Chatterbox" column). At the time, it had around 40 full-time editorial staff. The following year, a dedicated ad sales team was created.


title: Slate (magazine)

text: The next year, "Slate" became profitable after preceding years had seen layoffs and falling ad revenues.


title: Slate (magazine)

text: In 2014, "Slate" introduced a paywall system called "Slate Plus", offering ad-free podcasts and bonus materials. A year later, it had attracted 9,000 subscribers generating about $500,000 in annual revenue.


title: Slate (magazine)

text: "Slate" moved all content behind a metered paywall for international readers in June 2015, explaining "our U.S.-based sales team sells primarily to domestic advertisers, many of whom only want to reach a domestic audience. ...The end result is that, outside the United States, we are not covering our costs." At the same time, it was stated that there were no plans for a domestic paywall.


title: Slate (magazine)

text: Since 2006, "Slate" has been known for publishing contrarian pieces arguing against commonly held views about a subject, giving rise to the #slatepitches Twitter hashtag in 2009. The "Columbia Journalism Review" has defined "Slate" pitches as "an idea that sounds wrong or counterintuitive proposed as though it were the tightest logic ever," and in explaining its success wrote "Readers want to click on Slate Pitches because they want to know what a writer could possibly say that would support their logic".


title: Slate (magazine)

text: In 2014, "Slate"s then editor-in-chief Julia Turner acknowledged a reputation for counterintuitive arguments forms part of "Slate"'s "distinctive" brand, but argued that the hashtag misrepresents the site's journalism. "We are not looking to argue that up is down and black is white for the sake of being contrarian against all logic or intellectual rigor. But journalism is more interesting when it surprises you either with the conclusions that it reaches or the ways that it reaches them."


title: Slate (magazine)

text: In a 2019 article for the site, "Slate" contributor Daniel Engber reflected on the changes that had occurred on the site since he started writing for it 15 years previously. He suggested that its original worldview, influenced by its founder Kinsley and described by Engber as "feisty, surprising, debate-club centrist-by-default" and "liberal contrarianism", had shifted towards "a more reliable, left-wing slant", whilst still giving space for heterodox opinions, albeit "tempered by other, graver duties". He argued that this was necessary within the context of a "Manichean age of flagrant cruelty and corruption", although he also acknowledged that it could be "a troubling limitation".


title: Slate (magazine)

text: According to NiemanLab, "Slate" has been involved in podcasts "almost from the very beginning" of the medium. Its first podcast offering, released on July 15, 2005, featured selected stories from the site read by Andy Bowers, who had joined "Slate" after leaving NPR in 2003. By June 2012, "Slate" had expanded their lineup to 19 podcasts, with "Political Gabfest" and "Culture Gabfest" being the most popular. This count had shrunk to 14 by February 2015, with all receiving six million downloads per month. The podcasts are "a profitable part of ["Slate"'s] business"; the magazine charges more for advertising in its podcasts than in any of its other content.


title: Slate (magazine)

text: "Slate" podcasts have gotten longer over the years. The original "Gabfest" ran 15 minutes; by 2012, most ran about 45 minutes.


title: Slate (magazine)

text: Jacob Weisberg was "Slate's" editor from 2002 until 2008. Weisberg's deputy editor David Plotz then became editor until July 2014, when he was replaced by Julia Turner.


title: Ruturaj Gaikwad

text: Ruturaj Dashrat Gaikwad (born 31 January 1997) is an Indian international cricketer who plays for Maharashtra in domestic cricket and for the Chennai Super Kings in the Indian Premier League (IPL). He made his international debut for the India cricket team in July 2021. He was the leading run-scorer in the 2021 Indian Premier League tournament. He captained Maharashtra in T20 in the 2021 Mushtaq Ali Trophy and Vijay Hazare Trophy.


title: Ruturaj Gaikwad

text: Ruturaj Gaikwad is from Pune, Maharashtra. His father is Dashrath Gaikwad, who was a Defence Research Development Organisation's (DRDO) employee. His mother Sawita Gaikwad is a teacher in a municipality school. According to Gaikwad his parents never insisted him to study more and play less Cricket. Gaikwad's native village is Pargaon Memane village in Saswad area of Pune district, Maharastra.


title: Ruturaj Gaikwad

text: He did his primary schooling from St. Joseph school. He studied in Lakashmi bai Nadgude school of Pimpri Nilakh in Pune. He did college studies from "Marathvada Mitra Mandal's" college.


title: Ruturaj Gaikwad

text: Gaikwad at the age of 13 joined the Pimpri Chinchwad Municipal Corporation's (PCMC) Varroc Dilip Vengsarkar Academy' in Thergaon in Pimpri Chinchwad, Pune.


title: Ruturaj Gaikwad

text: In Cadence trophy of 2010, He scored 63* (71) against Mumbai's MIG Cricket club for Varroc Vengsarkar Academy, he got man of the match. His academy beat MIG Cricket club by 7 wickets, Cadence Cricket ground.


title: Ruturaj Gaikwad

text: At Maharashtra invitational tournament of 2015, he scored 306 runs in a match in partnership of 522 runs with his teammate Vinay.


title: Ruturaj Gaikwad

text: He made his first-class debut for Maharashtra in the 2016–17 Ranji Trophy on 6 October 2016. He made his Twenty20 debut for Maharashtra in the 2016–17 Inter State Twenty-20 Tournament on 2 February 2017. In the 2019 Ranji trophy season, he scored 108 (199) in first inning and 76 (170) in Pune in second inning, while opening for Maharashtra Cricket team versus Chhattisgarh. He became man of the match in this match. He made his List A debut for Maharashtra in the 2016–17 Vijay Hazare Trophy on 25 February 2017. In this tournament he scored 444 runs along 63.42 average in 7 matches. He scored 3 half centuries and one century. He was the third highest run getter in 2016–17 Vijay Hazare trophy.


title: Ruturaj Gaikwad

text: In Indian domestic cricket structure he played for India A, India B, India Blue, Maharashtra and India U-23. In October 2018, Gaikwad was named in India B's squad for the 2018–19 Deodhar Trophy. In December 2018, he was named in India's team for the 2018 ACC Emerging Teams Asia Cup.


title: Ruturaj Gaikwad

text: In June 2019, he scored 187 not out for India A against Sri Lanka A. In August 2019, he was named in the India Blue team's squad for the 2019–20 Duleep Trophy. In October 2019, he was named in India B's squad for the 2019–20 Deodhar Trophy.


title: Ruturaj Gaikwad

text: In the 2021 Mushtaq Ali trophy, Gaikwad captained Maharashtra and scored 259 runs in five matches at an average of 51.80, including three fifties at a strike rate of 150.71. He finished as one of the top scorers in the tournament. in the 2021–22 Vijay Hazare trophy he scored four hundreds and equaled Virat Kohli's record of scoring maximum hundreds in single Vijay Hazare tournament and scored over 600 runs in the tournament for Maharashtra.


title: Ruturaj Gaikwad

text: In November 2022, during 2nd quarter-final match between Maharashtra and Uttar Pardesh of 2022–23 Vijay Hazare Trophy, Gaikwad became the first batter to hit seven sixes in an over (one off a no-ball) in all forms of cricket. With the 108-run knock against Saurashtra ( In the Final of Vijay Hazare Trophy 2022-23), Gaikwad now owns the record for the most centuries by any player in Vijay Hazare Trophy history (12). Former Indian cricketer Robin Uthappa and Gaikwad's current Maharashtra teammate Ankit Bawne jointly held the record previously (11 centuries each).


title: Ruturaj Gaikwad

text: In June 2021, Gaikwad was named in India's One Day International (ODI) and Twenty20 International (T20I) squads for their series against Sri Lanka. He made his T20I debut on 28 July 2021, for India against Sri Lanka. In December 2021, Gaikwad was named in India's ODI squad for their series against South Africa. In January 2022, Gaikwad was again named in India's ODI squad, this time for their home series against the West Indies. In June 2022, he scored his maiden T20I half-century against South Africa.


title: Ruturaj Gaikwad

text: In July 2022, he was named in India's ODI squad for their away series against the West Indies. In October 2022, he was named in India's ODI squad, for their series against South Africa. He made his ODI debut on 6 October 2022 against the South Africa.


title: Ruturaj Gaikwad

text: In December 2018, Gaikwad was bought by the Chennai Super Kings (CSK) in the player auction for the 2019 Indian Premier League.


title: Ruturaj Gaikwad

text: On 2 October 2021, Gaikwad scored his first IPL century, with 101 not out against the Rajasthan Royals in the 2021 tournament. On 15 October, Chennai Super Kings beat Kolkata Knight Riders by 27 runs in the finals with Gaikwad contributing to CSK's total by scoring 32 runs off 27 balls. He won the Orange Cap for scoring the most runs (635) in the 2021 tournament and was also awarded the Emerging Player of the Year award.


title: Ruturaj Gaikwad

text: After his good performances the in the 2021 season, Gaikwad was retained by Chennai Super Kings for ₹6 crores ahead of the 2022 IPL auction.


title: Ruturaj Gaikwad

text: Gaikwad lives in Madhuban society in Old Sangvi area of Pimpri-Chinchwad in Pune, Pune district of Maharashtra. He is originally from Pargaon Memane village of Purandar taluka, his father Dasharath Gaikwad worked in Indian Army - DRDO and retired from senior post. He is the first player from Pimpri Chinchwad city who played for India.


title: United States Forces Korea

text: United States Forces Korea (USFK) is a sub-unified command of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command (USINDOPACOM). USFK is the joint headquarters for U.S. combat-ready fighting forces and components under the ROK/US Combined Forces Command (CFC) – a supreme command for all of the South Korean and U.S. ground, air, sea and special operations component commands. Major USFK elements include U.S. Eighth Army (EUSA), U.S. Air Forces Korea (Seventh Air Force), U.S. Naval Forces Korea (CNFK), U.S. Marine Forces Korea (MARFORK) and U.S. Special Operations Command Korea (SOCKOR). It was established on .


title: United States Forces Korea

text: Its mission is to support the United Nations Command (UNC) and Combined Forces Command by coordinating and planning among U.S. component commands, and exercise operational control of U.S. forces as directed by United States Indo-Pacific Command.


title: United States Forces Korea

text: USFK has Title 10 authority, which means that USFK is responsible for organizing, training and equipping U.S. forces on the Korean Peninsula so that forces are agile, adaptable and ready.


title: United States Forces Korea

text: With 28,500 U.S. soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines in South Korea, U.S. forces in South Korea are a major presence in the region and a key manifestation of the U.S. government's aim to rebalance toward the Asia-Pacific. The USFK mission also includes planning non-combatant evacuation operations to ensure that if the need arises, U.S. and other previously agreed-upon countries' citizens are removed from harm's way. To this end, USFK conducts routine exercises to ensure that this process is effective, efficient, and orderly.


title: United States Forces Korea

text: With the relocation of the new USFK and UNC headquarters to Camp Humphreys (in Pyeongtaek) on 29 June 2018, the USFK command and the majority of its subordinate units have officially moved out of the city of Seoul; headquarters are now further south.


title: United States Forces Korea

text: While USFK is a separate organization from United Nations Command (UNC) and ROK/US Combined Forces Command (CFC), its mission is to support both UNC and CFC by coordinating and planning among US component commands and providing US supporting forces to the CFC. As such, USFK continues to support the ROK-US Mutual Defense Treaty.


title: United States Forces Korea

text: In response to the North Korean attack against South Korea on 25 June 1950, the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) established the UNC as a unified command under the US in UNSC Resolution 84 on 7 July 1950. The UNC mission was to assist South Korea to repel the attack and restore international peace and security in Korea. Throughout the war, 53 nations provided support to the UNC; 16 nations provided combat forces and five sent medical and hospital units. After three years of hostilities, the commanders of both sides signed the Armistice Agreement on 27 July 1953.


title: United States Forces Korea

text: Hostilities today are also deterred by this bi-national defense team that evolved from the multi-national UNC. Established on 7 November 1978, the ROK/US Combined Forces Command (CFC) is the warfighting headquarters. Its role is to deter, or defeat if necessary, outside aggression against the ROK.


title: United States Forces Korea

text: The following is a partial list of border incidents involving North Korea since the of 27 July 1953, ended large scale military action of the Korean War. Most of these incidents took place near either the Korean Demilitarized Zone or the Northern Limit Line. This list includes engagements on land, air and sea but does not include alleged incursions and terrorist incidents that occurred away from the border.


title: United States Forces Korea

text: Many of the incidents occurring at sea are due to border disputes. The North claims jurisdiction over a large area south of the disputed western maritime border, the Northern Limit Line in the waters west of the Korean Peninsula. This is a prime fishing area, particularly for crabs, and clashes commonly occur. In addition, the North claims its territorial waters extend for from the coast, rather than the recognized by other countries. According to the 5 January 2011 "Korea Herald", since July 1953 North Korea has violated the armistice 221 times, including 26 military attacks.


title: United States Forces Korea

text: Each year the ROK, the US and a selection of Sending States from the United Nations Command participate in multiple defense-oriented, combined and joint training events designed to defend the Republic of Korea, protect the region, and maintain and increase stability on the Korean peninsula.


title: United States Forces Korea

text: Ulchi-Freedom Guardian, Key Resolve, and Foal Eagle, in addition to multiple Rehearsal of Concept (ROC) Drills, are the three theater level exercises.


title: United States Forces Korea

text: In June 2018 the South Korea and the USA claimed they are ready to stop the conducting of military drills in order to create significant opportunities for the negotiations with DPRK.


title: United States Forces Korea

text: A shield-shaped embroidered device in height and in width overall blazoned: azure, in chief four mullets bendwise argent, all above a stylized American bald eagle, issuant from sinister base volant to dexter chief; the eagle's body gules surmounted by two bendlets, wider at base, of the second throughout; head of the second, eyed of the field, leg and talons of the second grasping a laurel branch and seven arrows or. The entire shield shape is edged with a white border. Attached above the device is a designation band in scarlet inscribed "USFK" in white letters. The entire device is edged with a blue border.


title: United States Forces Korea

text: The shield shape reflects the United States Forces Korea's steadfast commitment to defend the sovereignty of South Korea. The abbreviation "USFK" stands for United States Forces Korea which activated on 1 July 1957. The four stars symbolize the service and contributions of the United States Army, United States Navy, United States Air Force, and the United States Marine Corps. The stylized American bald eagle represents cohesion and unity among the services. The laurel sprigs and arrows depict the mission of the United States Forces Korea to defeat aggression if necessary. Red, white, and blue are the colors of the flag of the United States of America. Red symbolizes hard work and honor, white represents innocence and purity, and blue refers to justice and perseverance. Yellow signifies wisdom and intuition.


title: United States Forces Korea

text: Gwangju convinced a new generation of young [Koreans] that the democratic movement had developed not with the support of Washington, as an older generation of more conservative Koreans thought, but in the face of daily American support for any dictator who could quell the democratic aspirations of the Korean people. The result was an anti-American movement in the 1980s that threatened to bring down the whole structure of American support for the ROK. American cultural centers were burned to the ground (more than once in Gwangju); students immolated themselves in protest of Reagan's support for Chun [Doo-hwan].


title: United States Forces Korea

text: Fundamental to this movement was a perception of U.S. complicity in Chun's rise to power, and, more particularly, in the Gwangju massacre itself. These matters remain controversial. It is clear, for example, that the U.S. authorized the Korean Army's 20th Division to re-take Gwangju – as acknowledged in a 1982 letter to the "New York Times" by then-Ambassador Gleysteen.


title: United States Forces Korea

text: [General Wickham], with my concurrence, permitted transfer of well-trained troops of the twentieth R.O.K.A. Division from martial-law duty in Seoul to Gwangju because law and order had to be restored in a situation that had run amok following the outrageous behavior of the Korean Special Forces, which had never been under General Wickham's command.


title: United States Forces Korea

text: However, as Gwangju Uprising editors Scott-Stokes and Lee note, whether the expulsion of government troops left the situation lawless or "amok" is very much open to dispute.


title: United States Forces Korea

text: In 2002, anti-American sentiment in South Korea spiked after two U.S. soldiers in an M60 armored vehicle-launched bridge (AVLB) accidentally hit and killed two South Korean teenage girls in the Yangju highway incident.


title: United States Forces Korea

text: An expansion of Camp Humphreys later in the decade served as a catalyst for the Daechuri Protests, drawing thousands of South Korean citizens, resulting in occasional violent clashes and arrests. Following a series of large protests against the U.S. and Republic of Korea governments' plan to expand Camp Humphreys and make it the main base for most U.S. troops in South Korea, residents of Daechuri and other small villages near Pyeongtaek agreed to a government settlement to leave their homes in 2006 and allow the base's expansion. Compensation for the land averaged 600 million won (about US$600,000) per resident.


title: United States Forces Korea

text: During the COVID-19 pandemic, members of USFK, and other foreign nationals were reported to have no-mask parties at Haeundae Beach in Busan for the Independence Day of 2020, and the Memorial Day of 2021, despite local social distancing restrictions. They engaged in unruly behavior, which included playing loud music, heavy drinking, and the shooting of firecrackers at locals.


title: United States Forces Korea

text: Western princesses (prostitutes servicing U.S. soldiers) have resulted in a negative image for South Korean women who have relationships with American men.


title: Kabocha

text: Kabocha (; from Japanese カボチャ, 南瓜) is a type of winter squash, a Japanese variety of the species "Cucurbita maxima." It is also called kabocha squash or Japanese pumpkin in North America. In Japan, ""kabocha"" may refer to either this squash, to the Western pumpkin, or indeed to other squashes.


title: Kabocha

text: Many of the kabocha in the market are "kuri kabocha", a type created from "seiyo kabocha" (buttercup squash). Varieties of kabocha include Ajihei, Ajihei No. 107, Ajihei No. 331, Ajihei No. 335, Cutie, Ebisu, Emiguri, Marron d'Or and Miyako.


title: Kabocha

text: Kabocha is hard on the outside with knobbly-looking skin. It is shaped like a squat pumpkin and has a dull-finished, deep-green skin with some celadon-to-white stripes and an intense yellow-orange color on the inside. In many respects it is similar to buttercup squash, but without the characteristic protruding "cup" on the blossom (bottom) end. An average kabocha weighs two to three pounds, but a large squash can weigh as much as eight pounds.


title: Kabocha

text: Kabocha has an exceptionally sweet flavor, even sweeter than butternut squash. It is similar in texture and flavor to a pumpkin and sweet potato combined. Some kabocha can taste like Russet potatoes or chestnuts. The rind is edible although some cooks may peel it to speed up the cooking process or to suit their personal taste preferences. Kabocha is commonly utilized in side dishes and soups, or as a substitute for potato or other squash varieties. It can be roasted after cutting the squash in half, scooping out the seeds, and then cutting the squash into wedges. With a little cooking oil and seasoning, it can be baked in the oven. Likewise, cut Kabocha halves can be added to a pressure cooker and steamed under high pressure for 15–20 minutes. One can slowly bake Kabocha whole and uncut in a convection oven, after which the entire squash becomes soft and edible, including the rind.


title: Kabocha

text: Kabocha is primarily grown in Japan, South Korea, Thailand, California, Florida, Hawaii, Southwestern Colorado, Mexico, Tasmania, Tonga, New Zealand, Chile, Jamaica, and South Africa, but is widely adapted for climates that provide a growing season of 100 days or more. Most of the kabocha grown in California, Colorado, Tonga and New Zealand is actually exported to Japan.


title: Kabocha

text: In Japan, kabocha is a common ingredient in vegetable tempura and is also made into soup and croquettes. Less traditional but popular usages include its incorporation in desserts such as pies, pudding, and ice cream.


title: Kabocha

text: "Fak thong" (Thai: ฟักทอง) is used in traditional Thai desserts and main courses. Kabocha is used in Jamaican chicken foot soup.


title: Kabocha

text: This squash is rich in beta carotene, with iron, vitamin C, potassium, and smaller traces of calcium, folic acid, and minute amounts of B vitamins.


title: Kabocha

text: When kabocha is just harvested, it is still growing. Therefore, unlike other vegetables and fruits, freshness is not as important. It should be "fully matured" first, in order to become flavorful, by first ripening the kabocha in a warm place (77 °F/25 °C) for 13 days to convert some of the starch to sugar. Then the kabocha is transferred to a cool place (50 °F/10 °C) and stored for about a month in order to increase carbohydrate content. In this way the just-harvested, dry, bland-tasting kabocha is transformed into a smooth, sweet kabocha. Fully ripened, succulent kabocha will have reddish-yellow flesh, a hard skin, and a dry, corky stem. It reaches the peak of ripeness about 1.5–3 months after it is harvested.


title: Kabocha

text: All squashes were domesticated in Mesoamerica. In 1997, new evidence suggested that domestication occurred 8,000 to 10,000 years ago, a few thousand years earlier than previous estimates. That would be 4,000 years earlier than the domestication of maize and beans, the other major food plant groups in Mesoamerica. Archeological and genetic plant research in the 21st century suggests that the peoples of eastern North America independently domesticated squash, sunflower, marsh elder, and chenopod.


title: Kabocha

text: Portuguese sailors introduced kabocha to Japan in 1541, bringing it with them from Cambodia. The Portuguese name for the squash, "Camboja abóbora" (カンボジャ・アボボラ), was shortened by the Japanese to "kabocha". Alternatively, the Portuguese origin is the word "cabaça" for "gourd". Kabocha is written in Kanji as 南瓜 (literally, "southern melon"), and it is also occasionally referred to as 南京瓜 (Nanking melon). In China, this term is applied to many types of squashes with harder skin and beefier flesh (including pumpkins), not just kabochas.


title: Francis Poulenc

text: Francis Jean Marcel Poulenc (; 7 January 189930 January 1963) was a French composer and pianist. His compositions include songs, solo piano works, chamber music, choral pieces, operas, ballets, and orchestral concert music. Among the best-known are the piano suite "Trois mouvements perpétuels" (1919), the ballet "Les biches" (1923), the "Concert champêtre" (1928) for harpsichord and orchestra, the Organ Concerto (1938), the opera "Dialogues des Carmélites" (1957), and the "Gloria" (1959) for soprano, choir, and orchestra.


title: Francis Poulenc

text: As the only son of a prosperous manufacturer, Poulenc was expected to follow his father into the family firm, and he was not allowed to enrol at a music college. Largely self-educated musically, he studied with the pianist Ricardo Viñes, who became his mentor after the composer's parents died. Poulenc also made the acquaintance of Erik Satie, under whose tutelage he became one of a group of young composers known collectively as "Les Six". In his early works Poulenc became known for his high spirits and irreverence. During the 1930s a much more serious side to his nature emerged, particularly in the religious music he composed from 1936 onwards, which he alternated with his more light-hearted works.


title: Francis Poulenc

text: In addition to his work as a composer, Poulenc was an accomplished pianist. He was particularly celebrated for his performing partnerships with the baritone Pierre Bernac (who also advised him in vocal writing) and the soprano Denise Duval. He toured in Europe and America with both of them, and made a number of recordings as a pianist. He was among the first composers to see the importance of the gramophone, and he recorded extensively from 1928 onwards.


title: Francis Poulenc

text: In his later years, and for decades after his death, Poulenc had a reputation, particularly in his native country, as a humorous, lightweight composer, and his religious music was often overlooked. In the 21st century, more attention has been given to his serious works, with many new productions of "Dialogues des Carmélites" and "La voix humaine" worldwide, and numerous live and recorded performances of his songs and choral music.


title: Francis Poulenc

text: Poulenc was born in the 8th arrondissement of Paris, the younger child and only son of Émile Poulenc and his wife, Jenny, "née" Royer. Émile Poulenc was a joint owner of Poulenc Frères, a successful manufacturer of pharmaceuticals (later Rhône-Poulenc). He was a member of a pious Roman Catholic family from Espalion in the département of Aveyron. Jenny Poulenc was from a Parisian family with wide artistic interests. In Poulenc's view, the two sides of his nature grew out of this background: a deep religious faith from his father's family and a worldly and artistic side from his mother's. The critic Claude Rostand later described Poulenc as "half monk and half naughty boy".


title: Francis Poulenc

text: Poulenc grew up in a musical household; his mother was a capable pianist, with a wide repertoire ranging from classical to less elevated works that gave him a lifelong taste for what he called "adorable bad music". He took piano lessons from the age of five; when he was eight he first heard the music of Debussy and was fascinated by the originality of the sound. Other composers whose works influenced his development were Schubert and Stravinsky: the former's "Winterreise" and the latter's "The Rite of Spring" made a deep impression on him. At his father's insistence, Poulenc followed a conventional school career, studying at the Lycée Condorcet in Paris rather than at a music conservatory.


title: Francis Poulenc

text: In 1916 a childhood friend, Raymonde Linossier (1897–1930), introduced Poulenc to Adrienne Monnier's bookshop, the "Maison des Amis des Livres". There he met the "avant-garde" poets Guillaume Apollinaire, Max Jacob, Paul Éluard and Louis Aragon. He later set many of their poems to music. In the same year he became the pupil of pianist Ricardo Viñes. The biographer Henri Hell comments that Viñes's influence on his pupil was profound, both as to pianistic technique and the style of Poulenc's keyboard works. Poulenc later said of Viñes:


title: Francis Poulenc

text: He was a most delightful man, a bizarre hidalgo with enormous moustachios, a flat-brimmed sombrero in the purest Spanish style, and button boots which he used to rap my shins when I didn't change the pedalling enough. ... I admired him madly, because, at this time, in 1914, he was the only virtuoso who played Debussy and Ravel. That meeting with Viñes was paramount in my life: I owe him everything ... In reality it is to Viñes that I owe my fledgling efforts in music and everything I know about the piano.


title: Francis Poulenc

text: When Poulenc was sixteen his mother died; his father died two years later. Viñes became more than a teacher: he was, in the words of Myriam Chimènes in the "Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians", the young man's "spiritual mentor". He encouraged his pupil to compose, and he later gave the premieres of three early Poulenc works. Through him Poulenc became friendly with two composers who helped shape his early development: Georges Auric and Erik Satie.


title: Francis Poulenc

text: Auric, who was the same age as Poulenc, was an early developer musically; by the time the two met, Auric's music had already been performed at important Parisian concert venues. The two young composers shared a similar musical outlook and enthusiasms, and for the rest of Poulenc's life Auric was his most trusted friend and guide. Poulenc called him "my true brother in spirit". Satie, an eccentric figure, isolated from the mainstream French musical establishment, was a mentor to several rising young composers, including Auric, Louis Durey and Arthur Honegger. After initially dismissing Poulenc as a bourgeois amateur, he relented and admitted him to the circle of protégés, whom he called ""Les Nouveaux Jeunes"". Poulenc described Satie's influence on him as "immediate and wide, on both the spiritual and musical planes". Pianist Alfred Cortot commented that Poulenc's "Trois mouvements perpétuels" were "reflections of the ironical outlook of Satie adapted to the sensitive standards of the current intellectual circles".


title: Francis Poulenc

text: Poulenc made his début as a composer in 1917 with his "Rapsodie nègre", a ten-minute, five-movement piece for baritone and chamber group; it was dedicated to Satie and premiered at one of a series of concerts of new music run by the singer Jane Bathori. There was a fashion for African arts in Paris at the time, and Poulenc was delighted to run across some published verses purportedly Liberian, but full of Parisian boulevard slang. He used one of the poems in two sections of the rhapsody. The baritone engaged for the first performance lost his nerve on the platform, and the composer, though no singer, jumped in. This "jeu d'esprit" was the first of many examples of what Anglophone critics came to call "leg-Poulenc". Ravel was amused by the piece and commented on Poulenc's ability to invent his own folklore. Stravinsky was impressed enough to use his influence to secure Poulenc a contract with a publisher, a kindness that Poulenc never forgot.


title: Francis Poulenc

text: In 1917 Poulenc got to know Ravel well enough to have serious discussions with him about music. He was dismayed by Ravel's judgments, which exalted composers whom Poulenc thought little of above those he greatly admired. He told Satie of this unhappy encounter; Satie replied with a dismissive epithet for Ravel who, he said, talked "a load of rubbish". For many years Poulenc was equivocal about Ravel's music, though always respecting him as a man. Ravel's modesty about his own music particularly appealed to Poulenc, who sought throughout his life to follow Ravel's example.


title: Francis Poulenc

text: From January 1918 to January 1921 Poulenc was a conscript in the French army in the last months of the First World War and the immediate post-war period. Between July and October 1918 he served at the Franco-German front, after which he was given a series of auxiliary posts, ending as a typist at the Ministry of Aviation. His duties allowed him time for composition; the "Trois mouvements perpétuels" for piano and the Sonata for Piano Duet were written at the piano of the local elementary school at Saint-Martin-sur-le-Pré, and he completed his first song cycle, "Le bestiaire", setting poems by Apollinaire. The sonata did not create a deep public impression, but the song cycle made the composer's name known in France, and the "Trois mouvements perpétuels" rapidly became an international success. The exigencies of music-making in wartime taught Poulenc much about writing for whatever instruments were available; then, and later, some of his works were for unusual combinations of players.


title: Francis Poulenc

text: At this stage in his career Poulenc was conscious of his lack of academic musical training; the critic and biographer Jeremy Sams writes that it was the composer's good luck that the public mood was turning against late-romantic lushness in favour of the "freshness and insouciant charm" of his works, technically unsophisticated though they were. Four of Poulenc's early works were premiered at the Salle Huyghens in the Montparnasse area, where between 1917 and 1920 the cellist Félix Delgrange presented concerts of music by young composers. Among them were Auric, Durey, Honegger, Darius Milhaud and Germaine Tailleferre who, with Poulenc, became known collectively as ""Les Six"". After one of their concerts, the critic Henri Collet published an article titled, "The Five Russians, the Six Frenchmen and Satie". According to Milhaud:


title: Francis Poulenc

text: In completely arbitrary fashion Collet chose the names of six composers, Auric, Durey, Honegger, Poulenc, Tailleferre and myself, for no other reason than that we knew each other, that we were friends and were represented in the same programmes, but without the slightest concern for our different attitudes and our different natures. Auric and Poulenc followed the ideas of Cocteau, Honegger was a product of German Romanticism and my leanings were towards a Mediterranean lyrical art ... Collet's article made such a wide impression that the Groupe des Six had come into being.


title: Francis Poulenc

text: Cocteau, though similar in age to "Les Six", was something of a father-figure to the group. His literary style, "paradoxical and lapidary" in Hell's phrase, was anti-romantic, concise and irreverent. It greatly appealed to Poulenc, who made his first setting of Cocteau's words in 1919 and his last in 1961. When members of "Les Six" collaborated with each other, they contributed their own individual sections to the joint work. Their 1920 piano suite "L'Album des Six" consists of six separate and unrelated pieces. Their 1921 ballet "Les mariés de la tour Eiffel" contains three sections by Milhaud, two apiece by Auric, Poulenc and Tailleferre, one by Honegger and none by Durey, who was already distancing himself from the group.


title: Francis Poulenc

text: In the early 1920s Poulenc remained concerned at his lack of formal musical training. Satie was suspicious of music colleges, but Ravel advised Poulenc to take composition lessons; Milhaud suggested the composer and teacher Charles Koechlin. Poulenc worked with him intermittently from 1921 to 1925.


title: Francis Poulenc

text: From the early 1920s Poulenc was well received abroad, particularly in Britain, both as a performer and a composer. In 1921 Ernest Newman wrote in "The Manchester Guardian", "I keep my eye on Francis Poulenc, a young man who has only just arrived at his twenties. He ought to develop into a farceur of the first order." Newman said that he had rarely heard anything so deliciously absurd as parts of Poulenc's song cycle "Cocardes", with its accompaniment played by the unorthodox combination of cornet, trombone, violin and percussion. In 1922 Poulenc and Milhaud travelled to Vienna to meet Alban Berg, Anton Webern and Arnold Schönberg. Neither of the French composers was influenced by their Austrian colleagues' revolutionary twelve-tone system, but they admired the three as its leading proponents. The following year Poulenc received a commission from Sergei Diaghilev for a full-length ballet score. He decided that the theme would be a modern version of the classical French "fête galante". This work, "Les biches", was an immediate success, first in Monte Carlo in January 1924 and then in Paris in May, under the direction of André Messager; it has remained one of Poulenc's best-known scores. Poulenc's new celebrity after the success of the ballet was the unexpected cause of his estrangement from Satie: among the new friends Poulenc made was Louis Laloy, a writer whom Satie regarded with implacable enmity. Auric, who had just enjoyed a similar triumph with a Diaghilev ballet, "Les Fâcheux", was also repudiated by Satie for becoming a friend of Laloy.


title: Francis Poulenc

text: As the decade progressed, Poulenc produced a range of compositions, from songs to chamber music and another ballet, "Aubade". Hell suggests that Koechlin's influence occasionally inhibited Poulenc's natural simple style, and that Auric offered useful guidance to help him appear in his true colours. At a concert of music by the two friends in 1926, Poulenc's songs were sung for the first time by the baritone Pierre Bernac, from whom, in Hell's phrase, "the name of Poulenc was soon to be inseparable." Another performer with whom the composer came to be closely associated was the harpsichordist Wanda Landowska. He heard her as the soloist in Falla's "El retablo de maese Pedro" (1923), an early example of the use of a harpsichord in a modern work, and was immediately taken with the sound. At Landowska's request he wrote a concerto, the "Concert champêtre", which she premiered in 1929 with the Orchestre Symphonique de Paris conducted by Pierre Monteux.


title: Francis Poulenc

text: The biographer Richard D. E. Burton comments that, in the late 1920s, Poulenc might have seemed to be in an enviable position: professionally successful and independently well-off, having inherited a substantial fortune from his father. He bought a large country house, , at Noizay, Indre-et-Loire, south-west of Paris, where he retreated to compose in peaceful surroundings. Yet he was troubled, struggling to come to terms with his sexuality, which was predominantly homosexual. His first serious affair was with the painter Richard Chanlaire, to whom he sent a copy of the "Concert champêtre" score inscribed:


title: Francis Poulenc

text: Nevertheless, while this affair was in progress Poulenc proposed marriage to his friend Raymonde Linossier. As she was not only well aware of his homosexuality but was also romantically attached elsewhere, she refused him, and their relationship became strained. He suffered the first of many periods of depression, which affected his ability to compose, and he was devastated in January 1930 when Linossier died suddenly at the age of 32. On her death he wrote, "All my youth departs with her, all that part of my life that belonged only to her. I sob ... I am now twenty years older". His affair with Chanlaire petered out in 1931, though they remained lifelong friends.


title: Francis Poulenc

text: At the start of the decade, Poulenc returned to writing songs, after a two-year break from doing so. His "Epitaphe", to a poem by Malherbe, was written in memory of Linossier, and is described by the pianist Graham Johnson as "a profound song in every sense". The following year Poulenc wrote three sets of songs, to words by Apollinaire and Max Jacob, some of which were serious in tone, and others reminiscent of his earlier light-hearted style, as were others of his works of the early 1930s. In 1932 his music was among the first to be broadcast on television, in a transmission by the BBC in which Reginald Kell and Gilbert Vinter played his Sonata for clarinet and bassoon. At about this time Poulenc began a relationship with Raymond Destouches, a chauffeur; as with Chanlaire earlier, what began as a passionate affair changed into a deep and lasting friendship. Destouches, who married in the 1950s, remained close to Poulenc until the end of the composer's life.


title: Francis Poulenc

text: Two unrelated events in 1936 combined to inspire a reawakening of religious faith and a new depth of seriousness in Poulenc's music. His fellow composer Pierre-Octave Ferroud was killed in a car crash so violent that he was decapitated, and almost immediately afterwards, while on holiday, Poulenc visited the sanctuary of Rocamadour. He later explained:


title: Francis Poulenc

text: A few days earlier I'd just heard of the tragic death of my colleague ... As I meditated on the fragility of our human frame, I was drawn once more to the life of the spirit. Rocamadour had the effect of restoring me to the faith of my childhood. This sanctuary, undoubtedly the oldest in France ... had everything to captivate me ... The same evening of this visit to Rocamadour, I began my "Litanies à la Vierge noire" for female voices and organ. In that work I tried to get across the atmosphere of "peasant devotion" that had struck me so forcibly in that lofty chapel.


title: Francis Poulenc

text: Other works that followed continued the composer's new-found seriousness, including many settings of Éluard's surrealist and humanist poems. In 1937 he composed his first major liturgical work, the Mass in G major for soprano and mixed choir "a cappella", which has become the most frequently performed of all his sacred works. Poulenc's new compositions were not all in this serious vein; his incidental music to the play "La Reine Margot", starring Yvonne Printemps, was pastiche 16th-century dance music, and became popular under the title "Suite française". Music critics generally continued to define Poulenc by his light-hearted works, and it was not until the 1950s that his serious side was widely recognised.


title: Francis Poulenc

text: In 1936 Poulenc began giving frequent recitals with Bernac. At the École Normale in Paris they gave the premiere of Poulenc's "Cinq poèmes de Paul Éluard". They continued to perform together for more than twenty years, in Paris and internationally, until Bernac's retirement in 1959. Poulenc, who composed 90 songs for his collaborator, considered him one of the "three great meetings" of his professional career, the other two being Éluard and Landowska. In Johnson's words, "for twenty-five years Bernac was Poulenc's counsellor and conscience", and the composer relied on him for advice not only on song-writing, but on his operas and choral music.


title: Francis Poulenc

text: Throughout the decade, Poulenc was popular with British audiences; he established a fruitful relationship with the BBC in London, which broadcast many of his works. With Bernac, he made his first tour of Britain in 1938. His music was also popular in America, seen by many as "the quintessence of French wit, elegance and high spirits". In the last years of the 1930s, Poulenc's compositions continued to vary between serious and light-hearted works. "Quatre motets pour un temps de pénitence" (Four Penitential Motets, 1938–39) and the song "Bleuet" (1939), an elegiac meditation on death, contrast with the song cycle "Fiançailles pour rire" (Light-Hearted Betrothal), which recaptures the spirit of "Les biches", in the opinion of Hell.


title: Francis Poulenc

text: Poulenc was briefly a soldier again during the Second World War; he was called up on 2 June 1940 and served in an anti-aircraft unit at Bordeaux. After France surrendered to Germany, Poulenc was demobilised from the army on 18 July 1940. He spent the summer of that year with family and friends at Brive-la-Gaillarde in south-central France. In the early months of the war, he had composed little new music, instead re-orchestrating "Les biches" and reworking his 1932 Sextet for piano and winds. At Brive-la-Gaillarde he began three new works, and once back at his home in Noizay in October he started on a fourth. These were "L'Histoire de Babar, le petit éléphant" for piano and narrator, the Cello Sonata, the ballet "Les Animaux modèles" and the song cycle "Banalités".


title: Francis Poulenc

text: For most of the war, Poulenc was in Paris, giving recitals with Bernac, concentrating on French songs. Under Nazi rule he was in a vulnerable position, as a known homosexual (Destouches narrowly avoided arrest and deportation), but in his music he made many gestures of defiance of the Germans. He set to music verses by poets prominent in the French Resistance, including Aragon and Éluard. In "Les Animaux modèles", premiered at the Opéra in 1942, he included the tune, repeated several times, of the anti-German song "Vous n'aurez pas l'Alsace et la Lorraine". He was a founder-member of the Front National (pour musique) which the Nazi authorities viewed with suspicion for its association with banned musicians such as Milhaud and Paul Hindemith. In 1943 he wrote a cantata for unaccompanied double choir intended for Belgium, "Figure humaine", setting eight of Éluard's poems. The work, ending with "Liberté", could not be given in France while the Germans were in control; its first performance was broadcast from a BBC studio in London in March 1945, and it was not sung in Paris until 1947. The music critic of "The Times" later wrote that the work "is among the very finest choral works of our time and in itself removes Poulenc from the category of "petit maître" to which ignorance has generally been content to relegate him."


title: Francis Poulenc

text: In January 1945, commissioned by the French government, Poulenc and Bernac flew from Paris to London, where they received an enthusiastic welcome. The London Philharmonic Orchestra gave a reception in the composer's honour; he and Benjamin Britten were the soloists in a performance of Poulenc's Double Piano Concerto at the Royal Albert Hall; with Bernac he gave recitals of French "mélodies" and piano works at the Wigmore Hall and the National Gallery, and recorded for the BBC. Bernac was overwhelmed by the public's response; when he and Poulenc stepped out on the Wigmore Hall stage, "the audience rose and my emotion was such that instead of beginning to sing, I began to weep." After their fortnight's stay, the two returned home on the first boat-train to leave London for Paris since May 1940.