title: The Ledge (film)

text: Gavin counters with the story of the adulteress from John 8, whom Jesus saves by ordering only those without sin to cast a stone at her. Joe agrees that Gavin has a point, but he questions whether Gavin has the conviction to die for his beliefs. The next day, when Shana is supposed to leave Joe, Gavin is waiting for her to call. Joe calls Gavin instead and orders him to the top of a building. Joe has decided that, "I'm more of an Old Testament kind of guy", but instead of killing both Gavin and Shana, only one of them has to die. Joe has Shana at gunpoint and will kill her at noon if Gavin does not jump off the building.


title: The Ledge (film)

text: Lucetti grows increasingly desperate to save Gavin. He tells him more about his story, explaining that his wife committed adultery out of love and fear that she would lose her husband. She wanted their children to look as much like Lucetti as possible. So, she slept with his younger brother. Gavin scolds Lucetti for focusing too much on the pain of his wife's betrayal instead of the love that motivated her. He asks Lucetti to tell Shana he loves her before jumping off the building. The police find Joe and Shana in a hotel room with a direct view of Gavin's suicide. Joe is arrested. Lucetti goes home to his wife and kids, seemingly determined to reconcile.


title: The Ledge (film)

text: Chapman, an atheist who identifies himself as a distant relative of Charles Darwin, wrote the character of Gavin Nichols to be the first openly atheist hero in a story about religious conflict. According to Chapman, it is "the first pro-atheist feature film ever to be released in America." His goal was to "put out a piece of work that makes the basic intellectual arguments for atheism, but also makes a powerful emotional argument against cruelty of a religious kind" and the "ways people suffer as a result."


title: The Ledge (film)

text: Chapman was able to recruit his desired actors starting with Hunnam and the film was shot in Baton Rouge, Louisiana in March 2010.


title: The Ledge (film)

text: Shortly after its premiere, IFC paid just over $1 million to win the domestic rights to the film over three other bidders.


title: The Ledge (film)

text: The film was primarily available on IFC's On Demand channel as it was given a very limited release in just 2 domestic theaters (making $9,216). The film did make $601,770 from international box office receipts. Upon its release, the film was attacked by Bill Donohue of the Catholic League, to whom Chapman responded directly.


title: The Ledge (film)

text: On Rotten Tomatoes the film holds an approval rating of 14% based on 29 reviews, with an average rating of 4.6/10. On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 34 out of 100, based on 14 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews".


title: The Ledge (film)

text: Stephen Holden in "The New York Times" called "The Ledge" "the cinematic equivalent of what used to be called a problem play, in which the characters’ crises neatly mesh: in this case, neatly and preposterously." Holden, along with most other critics, was also critical of Tyler for "her usual blank, cow-eyed performance, pitching her voice more quietly than usual and adding a tinge of sadness". "Variety" praised Wilson, and to a lesser degree Hunnam, for working hard to give life to their "mostly one-dimensional characters."


title: Spring (2014 film)

text: Spring is a 2014 American romantic body horror film directed by Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead and starring Lou Taylor Pucci and Nadia Hilker. The film follows Evan, a young man who travels to Italy and pursues a woman named Louise who, unbeknownst to Evan, harbors a dangerous secret.


title: Spring (2014 film)

text: "Spring" premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 5, 2014, before receiving a limited theatrical release through Drafthouse Films on March 20, 2015. The film received positive reviews from critics and grossed $49,970 worldwide.


title: Spring (2014 film)

text: Evan Russell, a young American man, loses his mother to cancer. The next day, following his mother's funeral, he gets into a physical altercation with another man while drinking at the restaurant he works at, resulting in the loss of his job. His friend advises him to travel to get his mind clear. Evan travels to Italy and meets a flirtatious girl named Louise. He is initially suspicious of her but becomes more interested. To pursue his relationship with Louise he takes a job at a local farm and starts living in a small town in southern Italy.


title: Spring (2014 film)

text: Louise, who initially rejected Evan, finally has sex with him without using a condom. The next morning she wakes up before he does and has a monstrous appearance and leaves, killing a cat. When Evan is wandering the town later, he catches sight of Louise and talks to her again. They later explore the town together. After a few dates, Louise asks Evan about his family story. Although he is reluctant to reveal details, he relents and then asks Louise to tell him something about her. Louise takes out the contact lens from her right eye to show Evan that she has heterochromia. Evan sees the same condition reflected in the women on many of the paintings in the museum and also on the cover of a book. One night, Louise is having dinner with Evan when her skin condition starts getting worse. She runs off the street and is followed by a tourist who mistakes her for a prostitute. Louise unwillingly kills him after she mutates into a reptilian creature.


title: Spring (2014 film)

text: Evan, who has been working illegally on the farm, has to leave when immigration police make a visit there. As he has nowhere to go, he goes to Louise's house. The door is chain-locked, through which he sees blood on the floor and hears a strange voice. He breaks the chain to open the door and finds an octopus-like creature on the floor wearing Louise's dress, trying to reach a syringe. He quickly picks up the syringe and injects it into the creature's neck.


title: Spring (2014 film)

text: Louise reveals to Evan that she's a 2,000-year-old mutant. She is the woman in all of the paintings of women with dual eye color, including the one on the cover of the book. Every 20 years in spring she gets herself pregnant, and then her body uses cells in the embryo she carries to recreate her while she changes into different creatures during the process. Evan is shocked and leaves. Louise follows him and keeps telling him more about the condition. She reveals that she did not use a condom during intercourse with Evan in order to purposely get pregnant. She also reveals that if she falls in love with someone, her body will produce oxytocin, a hormone which will keep embryo cells from consumption, resulting in the loss of her immortality. Evan asks if she is in love with him, to which she replies she is not and also that she would not give up her immortality for anyone.


title: Spring (2014 film)

text: Evan then asks her to spend her last 24 hours with him before she re-evolves. They spend all night talking to each other. In the early morning Louise takes Evan to the ruins of Pompeii, where she was born, and tells him her family history. The time comes and Evan makes one last attempt begging her not to change, to which Louise replies that she does not control it, her body does, and it has started to change, meaning she may attack Evan. He refuses to go, so Louise lies down with her head on his lap and she begins to change, while listening to Evan talk about the experience of being mortal and all the positive aspects to it. The sun rises before a calm and resigned Evan looks down at Louise when a grotesque sound is heard. However, he finds Louise still in her current human form while the volcano that resulted in the death of Louise’s family is seen to begin erupting in the background.


title: Spring (2014 film)

text: The film's soundtrack was composed by Jimmy Lavalle. The soundtrack was released on March 25, 2015 by Lavalle's own label, Eastern Glow Recordings.


title: Spring (2014 film)

text: "Spring" premiered on September 5, 2014 as part of the Toronto International Film Festival. The film received a limited theatrical release on March 20, 2015 through Drafthouse Films and a video on demand release a day later through FilmBuff.


title: Spring (2014 film)

text: The film received positive reviews from critics. Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reports a rating of 85% based on 60 reviews, with a weighted average score of 7.40/10; the site's critics' consensus states: "Rich in atmosphere and intelligence, "Spring" is a singular horror film with a sneaky, lingering impact." On Metacritic, the film has a normalized score of 70% from 13 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".


title: Spring (2014 film)

text: Jon Dickinson of "SCREAM: The Horror Magazine" gave "Spring" a 5 star rating, stating that it "transcends all genres to deliver a story that feels entirely unique…a monster you won’t want to miss."


title: Spring (2014 film)

text: Mexican filmmaker Guillermo del Toro has highly praised the film, stating that "["Spring"] is one of the best horror films of this decade." He added that it is one of the only Lovecraftian films "that has blown me away."


title: Athabaskan languages

text: Athabaskan (also spelled "Athabascan", "Athapaskan" or "Athapascan", and also known as Dene) is a large family of indigenous languages of North America, located in western North America in three areal language groups: Northern, Pacific Coast and Southern (or Apachean). Kari and Potter (2010:10) place the total territory of the 53 Athabaskan languages at .


title: Athabaskan languages

text: Chipewyan is spoken over the largest area of any North American native language, while Navajo is spoken by the largest number of people of any native language north of Mexico.


title: Athabaskan languages

text: "Athebaskan " is a version of a Cree name for Lake Athabasca ( '[where] there are reeds one after another'), in Canada. Cree is one of the Algonquian languages and therefore not itself an Athabaskan language. The name was assigned by Albert Gallatin in his 1836 (written 1826) classification of the languages of North America. He acknowledged that it was his choice to use that name for the language family and its associated peoples:


title: Athabaskan languages

text: The four spellings, "Athabaskan", "Athabascan", "Athapaskan", and "Athapascan", are in approximately equal use. Particular communities may prefer one spelling over another (Krauss 1987). For example, the Tanana Chiefs Conference and Alaska Native Language Center prefer the spelling "Athabascan". "Ethnologue" uses "Athapaskan" in naming the language family and individual languages.


title: Athabaskan languages

text: Although the term "Athabaskan" is prevalent in linguistics and anthropology, there is an increasing trend among scholars to use the terms and "Dené languages", which is how many of the native speakers identify it, and are applying these terms to the entire language family. For example, following a motion by attendees in 2012, the annual Athabaskan Languages Conference changed its name to the Dené Languages Conference.


title: Athabaskan languages

text: Linguists conventionally divide the Athabaskan family into three groups, based on geographic distribution:


title: Athabaskan languages

text: The 32 Northern Athabaskan languages are spoken throughout the interior of Alaska and the interior of northwestern Canada in the Yukon and Northwest Territories, as well as in the provinces of British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba. Five Athabaskan languages are official languages in the Northwest Territories, including Chipewyan (), Dogrib or , Gwich'in (Kutchin, Loucheux), and the Northern and Southern variants of Slavey.


title: Athabaskan languages

text: The seven or more Pacific Coast Athabaskan languages are spoken in the Pacific Northwest of the United States. These include Applegate, Galice, several Rogue River area languages, Upper Coquille, Tolowa, and Upper Umpqua in Oregon; Eel River, Hupa, Mattole–Bear River, and Tolowa in northern California; and possibly Kwalhioqua-Clatskanie in Washington.


title: Athabaskan languages

text: The seven Southern Athabaskan languages are isolated by considerable distance from both the Pacific Coast languages and the Northern languages. Reflecting an ancient migration of peoples, they are spoken by Native Americans in the American Southwest and the northwestern part of Mexico. This group comprises the six Southern Athabaskan languages and Navajo.


title: Athabaskan languages

text: The following list gives the Athabaskan languages organized by their geographic location in various North American states, provinces and territories (including some languages that are now extinct). Several languages, such as Navajo and Gwich'in, span the boundaries: these languages are repeated by location in this list. For alternative names for the languages, see the classifications given later in this article.


title: Athabaskan languages

text: Eyak and Athabaskan together form a genealogical linguistic grouping called "Athabaskan–Eyak" (AE) – well-demonstrated through consistent sound correspondences, extensive shared vocabulary, and cross-linguistically unique homologies in both verb and noun morphology.


title: Athabaskan languages

text: Tlingit is distantly related to the Athabaskan–Eyak group to form the Na-Dene family, also known as "Athabaskan–Eyak–Tlingit" (AET). With Jeff Leer's 2010 advances, the reconstructions of Na-Dene (or Athabascan–Eyak–Tlingit) consonants, this latter grouping is considered by Alaskan linguists to be a well-demonstrated family. Because both Tlingit and Eyak are fairly remote from the Athabaskan languages in terms of their sound systems, comparison is usually done between them and the reconstructed Proto-Athabaskan language. This resembles both Tlingit and Eyak much more than most of the daughter languages in the Athabaskan family.


title: Athabaskan languages

text: Although "Ethnologue" still gives the Athabaskan family as a relative of Haida in their definition of the Na-Dene family, linguists who work actively on Athabaskan languages discount this position. The Alaska Native Language Center, for example, takes the position that recent improved data on Haida have served to conclusively disprove the Haida-inclusion hypothesis. Haida has been determined to be unrelated to Athabaskan languages.


title: Athabaskan languages

text: A symposium in Alaska in February 2008 included papers on the Yeniseian and Na-Dené families. Edward Vajda of Western Washington University summarized ten years of research, based on verbal morphology and reconstructions of the proto-languages, indicating that these languages might be related.


title: Athabaskan languages

text: The internal structure of the Athabaskan language family is complex, and its exact shape is still a hotly debated issue among experts. The conventional three-way split into Northern, Pacific Coast, and Southern is essentially based on geography and the physical distribution of Athabaskan peoples rather than sound linguistic comparisons. Despite this inadequacy, current comparative Athabaskan literature demonstrates that most Athabaskanists still use the three-way geographic grouping rather than any of the proposed linguistic groupings given below, because none of them has been widely accepted. This situation will presumably change as both documentation and analysis of the languages improves.


title: Athabaskan languages

text: Besides the traditional geographic grouping described previously, there are a few comparatively based subgroupings of the Athabaskan languages. Below the two most current viewpoints are presented.


title: Athabaskan languages

text: The following is an outline of the classification according to Keren Rice, based on those published in Goddard (1996) and Mithun (1999). It represents what is generously called the "Rice–Goddard–Mithun" classification (Tuttle & Hargus 2004:73), although it is almost entirely due to Keren Rice.


title: Athabaskan languages

text: Branches 1–7 are the Northern Athabaskan (areal) grouping. Kwalhioqua–Clatskanai (#7) was normally placed inside the Pacific Coast grouping, but a recent consideration by Krauss (2005) does not find it very similar to these languages.


title: Athabaskan languages

text: A different classification by Jeff Leer is the following, usually called the "Leer classification" (Tuttle & Hargus 2004:72–74):


title: Athabaskan languages

text: Neither subgrouping has found any significant support among other Athabaskanists. Details of the Athabaskan family tree should be regarded as tentative. As Tuttle and Hargus put it, "we do not consider the points of difference between the two models ... to be decisively settled and in fact expect them to be debated for some time to come." (Tuttle & Hargus 2004:74)


title: Athabaskan languages

text: The Northern group is particularly problematic in its internal organization. Due to the failure of the usual criteria of shared innovation and systematic phonetic correspondences to provide well-defined subgroupings, the Athabaskan family – especially the Northern group – has been called a "cohesive complex" by Michael Krauss (1973, 1982). Therefore, the "Stammbaumtheorie" or family tree model of genetic classification may be inappropriate. The languages of the Southern branch are much more homogeneous and are the only clearly genealogical subgrouping.


title: Athabaskan languages

text: Debate continues as to whether the Pacific Coast languages form a valid genealogical grouping, or whether this group may instead have internal branches that are tied to different subgroups in Northern Athabaskan. The position of Kwalhioqua–Clatskanai is also debated, since it may fall in either the Pacific Coast group – if that exists – or into the Northern group. The records of Nicola are so poor – Krauss describes them as "too few and too wretched" (Krauss 2005) – that it is difficult to make any reliable conclusions about it. Nicola may be intermediate between Kwalhioqua–Tlatskanai and Chilcotin.


title: Athabaskan languages

text: Similarly to Nicola, there is very limited documentation on Tsetsaut. Consequently, it is difficult to place it in the family with much certainty. Athabaskanists have concluded that it is a Northern Athabaskan language consistent with its geographical occurrence, and that it might have some relation to its distant neighbor Tahltan. Tsetsaut, however, shares its primary hydronymic suffix ("river, stream") with Sekani, Beaver, and Tsuut'ina – PA *-ɢah – rather than with that of Tahltan, Tagish, Kaska, and North and South Tutchone – PA *-tuʼ (Kari 1996; Kari, Fall, & Pete 2003:39). The ambiguity surrounding Tsetsaut is why it is placed in its own subgroup in the Rice–Goddard–Mithun classification.


title: Athabaskan languages

text: For detailed lists including languages, dialects, and subdialects, see the respective articles on the three major groups: Northern Athabaskan, Pacific Coast Athabaskan, Southern Athabaskan. For the remainder of this article, the conventional three-way geographic grouping will be followed except as noted.


title: Athabaskan languages

text: The Northern Athabaskan languages are the largest group in the Athabaskan family, although this group varies internally about as much as do languages in the entire family. The urheimat of the Athabaskan family is most likely in the Tanana Valley of east-central Alaska. There are many homologies between Proto-Athabaskan vocabulary and patterns reflected in archaeological sites such as Upward Sun, Swan Point and Broken Mammoth (Kari 2010). The Northern Athabaskan group also contains the most linguistically conservative languages, particularly Koyukon, Ahtna, Dena'ina, and Dakelh/Carrier (Leer 2008).


title: Athabaskan languages

text: Very little is known about Tsetsaut, and for this reason it is routinely placed in its own tentative subgroup.


title: Athabaskan languages

text: The Nicola language is so poorly attested that it is impossible to determine its position within the family. It has been proposed by some to be an isolated branch of Chilcotin.


title: Athabaskan languages

text: The Kwalhioqua–Clatskanie language is debatably part of the Pacific Coast subgroup, but has marginally more in common with the Northern Athabaskan languages than it does with the Pacific Coast languages (Leer 2005). It thus forms a notional sort of bridge between the Northern Athabaskan languages and the Pacific Coast languages, along with Nicola (Krauss 1979/2004).


title: Athabaskan languages

text: Using computational phylogenetic methods, Sicoli & Holton (2014) proposed the following classification for the Athabaskan languages based exclusively on typological (non-lexical) data. However, this phylogenetic study was criticized as methodologically flawed by Yanovich (2020), since it did not employ sufficient input data to generate a robust tree that does not depend on the initial choice of the "tree prior", i.e. the model for the tree generation.


title: Michael Gira

text: Michael Rolfe Gira (; born February 19, 1954) is an American singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, author and artist. He is the main force behind the New York City musical group Swans and fronted Angels of Light. He is also the founder of Young God Records.


title: Michael Gira

text: Michael Rolfe Gira was born February 19, 1954 in Los Angeles, California to Alice (née Shulte), originally from Iowa, and Robert Pierre Gira. His mother was an alcoholic, and Gira spent much of his early life caring for his younger brother. Gira has commented that his parents were "not around much" during his early childhood.


title: Michael Gira

text: As an adolescent, Gira was arrested in California several times for petty crimes. Facing the risk of being incarcerated in a juvenile hall, he relocated with his father to Germany following a short stay in South Bend, Indiana. While in Germany, Gira ran away and hitchhiked across Europe, lived in Israel for a year, and spent four and a half months in an adult jail in Jerusalem for selling hashish. He turned 16 when in jail.


title: Michael Gira

text: Returning to California around age seventeen, Gira worked at a bakery on Redondo Beach Pier, completed his GED, went to community college, and then attended Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles. He moved to New York in 1979, where he played in a band called Circus Mort, before forming the band Swans. In Manhattan, Gira found employment as a construction worker, doing demolition, sheetrock installation, and plastering.


title: Michael Gira

text: Initially, Swans' focus was raw rhythm and abrasive textures, usually eschewing melody for visceral power, becoming known for their abrasive experimental and post-industrial sound. Their commercial success was limited, but Swans earned critical notice and had a devoted following.


title: Michael Gira

text: The band's lineup and sound evolved over time, and their music became somewhat more conventional. A marked shift in Swans' music came with inclusion of Gira's partner, Jarboe, who added her ethereal voice and synthesizers to the group in 1985. Gira and Swans spent the next twelve years releasing studio, live, and side-project albums. Gira's frustration with various record labels grew over time, and he disbanded Swans in 1997.


title: Michael Gira

text: However, in 2010, Gira decided to revive the band, with members new and old. They released a new album titled "My Father Will Guide Me Up a Rope to the Sky". A second post-revival album, "The Seer", was released in 2012. A third, "To Be Kind", was released in 2014. All three were met with increasing critical acclaim. "The Glowing Man" followed and was released in June 2016. The band's latest album, "Leaving Meaning", was released in 2019.


title: Michael Gira

text: After dissolving Swans in 1997 Gira released a solo album under his own name and began a new musical direction with Angels of Light, which are a quieter, more acoustic-based group than Swans.


title: Michael Gira

text: Gira also spent time experimenting with soundscapes, found sound, and loops with The Body Lovers / The Body Haters project. He has also released several albums under his own name including "Drainland" (1995), a spoken word album called "The Somniloquist" (2000), and "What We Did" (2001), a collaboration with Windsor for the Derby's frontman Dan Matz.


title: Michael Gira

text: Gira founded his own record label, Young God Records, which has released albums from such artists as Devendra Banhart, Mi and L'au, and Akron/Family as well as Swans, The Angels of Light and The Body Lovers' back catalogues.


title: Michael Gira

text: Akron/Family served as Gira's backing band during the recording of and touring for The Angels of Light's 2005 album, "The Angels of Light Sing 'Other People'".


title: Michael Gira

text: Gira has spoken of his decision to shift his focus from The Angels of Light back to Swans as a move based on impassivity. He has stated, "I had been doing this band Angels of Light for thirteen years, and had reached a kind of impassivity with that, sorta like I had reached an impassivity with Swans when I initially stopped it."


title: Michael Gira

text: Gira's first short story collection "The Consumer" () was published in 1995 by Henry Rollins's 2.13.61 publications. It is divided into two parts, the first being "The Consumer", a series of short stories from the early 1990s, the second, "Various Traps, Some Weaknesses", made up mostly of prose-poems and vignettes, all dating from 1983–1986. (Many of these earlier stories had previously been published by SST Records as "Selfishness", with illustrations by Raymond Pettibon.) The stories contain many disturbing images and scenes including incest, identity loss, murder, self-hatred, rape, and both mental and physical decay.


title: Michael Gira

text: In February 2018, Gira released his second short story collection, "The Egg". Limited to 2,500 hand-signed copies, "The Egg" compiles seventeen stories written over 2016. Included with the release is a disc containing narrations of a handful of stories from "The Egg" as well as a few from "The Consumer".


title: Michael Gira

text: In May 2022, Gira released a collection of Swans lyrics, stories, and journals titled "The Knot", in a collector's edition of 3,000 hand-numbered copies. "The Knot" is 408 pages long, and additionally contains 101 color images. "The Knot" contains all of the lyrics from the first "Swans" EP to "Leaving Meaning", as well as lyrics from Angels of Light and World of Skin, among Gira's other projects, and includes archived writings from 1974 to 2022.


title: Michael Gira

text: Michael Gira is known for using a Guild antique burst electro acoustic guitar, and a Roland JC-120 Jazz Chorus Guitar Amplifier during his solo concerts. With Swans, Gira has used a variety of instruments including Ovation acoustic guitars and a Westbury Track II bass guitar during early performances. During the "Soundtracks for the Blind" and "Swans are Dead" era, Gira can be seen with a Gibson Lucille (which has since become his main guitar for the Swans reunion) and a Gibson Les Paul. Recent shows have seen Gira using Orange amplifiers and cabinets, as well as Mesa Boogie cabinets.


title: Military history

text: Military history is the study of armed conflict in the history of humanity, and its impact on the societies, cultures and economies thereof, as well as the resulting changes to local and international relationships.


title: Military history

text: Professional historians normally focus on military affairs that had a major impact on the societies involved as well as the aftermath of conflicts, while amateur historians and hobbyists often take a larger interest in the details of battles, equipment and uniforms in use.


title: Military history

text: The essential subjects of military history study are the causes of war, the social and cultural foundations, military doctrine on each side, the logistics, leadership, technology, strategy, and tactics used, and how these changed over time. On the other hand, just war theory explores the moral dimensions of warfare, and to better limit the destructive reality caused by war, seeks to establish a doctrine of military ethics.


title: Military history

text: As an applied field, military history has been studied at academies and service schools because the military command seeks to not repeat past mistakes, and improve upon its current performance by instilling an ability in commanders to perceive historical parallels during a battle, so as to capitalize on the lessons learned from the past. When certifying military history instructors the Combat Studies Institute deemphasizes rote detail memorization and focuses on themes and context in relation to current and future conflict, using the motto "Past is Prologue."


title: Military history

text: The discipline of military history is dynamic, changing with development as much of the subject area as the societies and organisations that make use of it. The dynamic nature of the discipline of military history is largely related to the rapidity of change the military forces, and the art and science of managing them, as well as the frenetic pace of technological development that had taken place during the period known as the Industrial Revolution, and more recently in the nuclear and information ages. An important recent concept is the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) which attempts to explain how warfare has been shaped by emerging technologies, such as gunpowder. It highlights the short outbursts of rapid change followed by periods of relative stability.


title: Military history

text: In terms of the history profession in major countries, military history is an orphan, despite its enormous popularity with the general public. William H. McNeill points out:


title: Military history

text: In recent decades University level courses in military history remain popular; often they use films to humanize the combat experience. For example, Eugene P. A. Scleh, history professor at the University of Maine, has explored the advantages and problems of teaching a course of "Modern War and Its Images" entirely through films. Students said they found the documentaries more valuable than the dramas. However, military historians are frustrated by their marginal status in major history departments.


title: Military history

text: Historiography is the study of the history and method of the discipline of history or the study of a specialised topic. In this case, military history with an eye to gaining an accurate assessment of conflicts using all available sources. For this reason military history is periodised, creating overlaying boundaries of study and analysis in which descriptions of battles by leaders may be unreliable due to the inclination to minimize mention of failure and exaggerate success. Military historians use Historiographical analysis in an effort to allow an unbiased, contemporary view of records.


title: Military history

text: One military historian, Jeremy Black, outlined problems 21st-century military historians face as an inheritance of their predecessors: Eurocentricity, a technological bias, a focus on leading military powers and dominant military systems, the separation of land from sea and recently air conflicts, the focus on state-to-state conflict, a lack of focus on political "tasking" in how forces are used.


title: Military history

text: If these challenges were not sufficient for the military historians, the limits of method are complicated by the lack of records, either destroyed or never recorded for its value as a military secret that may prevent some salient facts from being reported at all; scholars still do not know the exact nature of Greek fire for instance. Researching Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom, for example, have presented unique challenges to historians due to records that were destroyed to protect classified military information, among other reasons. Historians use their knowledge of government regulation and military organization, and employing a targeted and systematic research strategy to piece together war histories. Despite these limits, wars are some of the most studied and detailed periods of human history.


title: Military history

text: Military historians have often compared organization, tactical and strategic ideas, leadership, and national support of the militaries of different nations.


title: Military history

text: In the early 1980s, historian Jeffrey Kimball studied the influence of a historian's political position on current events on interpretive disagreement regarding the causes of 20th century wars. He surveyed the ideological preferences of 109 active diplomatic historians in the United States as well as 54 active military historians. He finds that their current political views are moderately correlated with their historiographical interpretations. A clear position on the left-right continuum regarding capitalism was apparent in most cases. All groups agreed with the proposition, "historically, Americans have tended to view questions of their national security in terms of such extremes as good vs. evil." Though the Socialists were split, the other groups agreed that "miscalculation and/or misunderstanding of the situation" had caused U.S. interventionism." Kimball reports that:


title: Military history

text: People interested in military history from all periods of time, and all subtopics, are increasingly turning to the Internet for many more resources than are typically available in nearby libraries. Since 1993, one of the most popular sites, with over 4000 members (subscriptions are free) has been H-WAR, sponsored by the H-Net network based at Michigan State University. H-War has six coeditors, and an academic advisory board that sets policy. It sponsors daily moderated discussions of current topics, announcements of new publications and conferences, and reports on developments at conferences. The H-Net family of lists has sponsored and published over 46,000 scholarly book reviews, thousands of which deal with books in military history broadly conceived. Wikipedia itself has a very wide coverage of military history, . Its editors sponsor and encourage readers to join.


title: Military history

text: Military museums specialize in military histories; they are often organized from a national point of view, where a museum in a particular country will have displays organized around conflicts in which that country has taken part. They typically take a broad view of warfare's role in the nation's history. They typically include displays of weapons and other military equipment, uniforms, wartime propaganda, and exhibits on civilian life during wartime, and decorations, among others. A military museum may be dedicated to a particular or area, such as the Imperial War Museum Duxford for military aircraft, Deutsches Panzermuseum for tanks, the Lange Max Museum for the Western Front (World War I), the International Spy Museum for espionage, The National World War I Museum for World War I, the "D-Day Paratroopers Historical Center" (Normandy) for WWII airborne, or more generalist, such as the Canadian War Museum or the Musée de l'Armée. For the Italian alpine wall one can find the most popular museum of bunkers in the small museum n8bunker at Olang / Kronplatz in the heard of the dolomites of South Tyrol. The U.S. Army and the state National Guards operate 98 military history museums across the United States and three abroad.


title: Military history

text: Curators debate how or whether the goal of providing diverse representations of war, in terms of positive and negative aspects of warfare. War is seldom presented as a good thing, but soldiers are heavily praised. David Lowenthal has observed that in today's museums, "nothing seems too horrendous to commemorate". Yet as Andrew Whitmarsh notes, "museums frequently portray a sanitised version of warfare." The actual bomber that dropped the atomic bomb on Japan became the focus of an angry national controversy with veterans attacking curators and historians when the Smithsonian Institution planned to put its fuselage on public display in 1995. The uproar led to cancellation of the exhibit.


title: Military history

text: The documentation of military history begins with the confrontation between Sumer (current Iraq) and Elam (current Iran) c. 2700 BC near the modern Basra. Other prominent records in military history are the Trojan War in Homer's "Iliad" (though its historicity has been challenged), "The Histories" by Herodotus (484 BC – 425 BC) who is often called the "father of history". Next was Thucydides whose impartiality, despite being an Athenian, allowed him to take advantage of his exile to research the war from different perspectives by carefully examining documents and interviewing eyewitnesses. An approach centered on the analysis of a leader was taken by Xenophon (430 BC – 355 BC) in "Anabasis", recording the expedition of Cyrus the Younger into Anatolia.


title: Military history

text: The records of the Roman Julius Caesar (100 BC – 44 BC) enable a comparative approach for campaigns such as "Commentarii de Bello Gallico" and "Commentarii de Bello Civili".


title: Military history

text: New weapons development can dramatically alter the face of war, the cost of warfare, the preparations, and the training of soldiers and leaders. A rule of thumb is that if your enemy has a potentially war winning weapon, you have to either match it or neutralize it.


title: Military history

text: Chariots originated around 2000 BC. The chariot was an effective, fast weapon; while one man controlled the maneuvering of the chariot, a second bowman could shoot arrows at enemy soldiers. These became crucial to the maintenance of several governments, including the New Egyptian Kingdom and the Shang dynasty and the nation states of the early to middle Zhou dynasty.


title: Military history

text: For settled agrarian civilizations, the infantry became the core of military action. The infantry started as opposing armed groups of soldiers underneath commanders. The Greeks and early Romans used rigid, heavily armed phalanxes. The Macedonians and Hellenistic states would adopt phalanx formations with sarissa pikemen. The Romans would later adopt more flexible maniples from their neighbors which made them extremely successful in the field of battle. The kingdoms of the Warring States in East Asia also adopted infantry combat, a transition from chariot warfare from centuries earlier.


title: Military history

text: Archers were a major component of many ancient armies, notably those of the Persians, Scythians, Egyptians, Nubians, Indians, Koreans, Chinese, and Japanese.


title: Military history

text: Cavalry became an important tool. In the Sicilian Expedition, led by Athens in an attempt to subdue Syracuse, the well-trained Syracusan cavalry became crucial to the success of the Syracusans. Macedonian Alexander the Great effectively deployed his cavalry forces to secure victories. In battles such as the Battle of Cannae of the Second Punic War, and the Battle of Carrhae of the Roman-Persian Wars, the importance of the cavalry would be repeated.


title: Military history

text: There were also horse archers, who had the ability to shoot on horseback – the Parthians, Scythians, Mongols, and other various steppe people were especially fearsome with this tactic. By the 3rd–4th century AD, heavily armored cavalry became widely adopted by the Parthians, Sasanians, Byzantines, Eastern Han dynasty and Three Kingdoms, etc.


title: Military history

text: The early Indo-Iranians developed the use of chariots in warfare. The scythed chariot was later invented in India and soon adopted by the Persians.


title: Military history

text: War elephants were sometimes deployed for fighting in ancient warfare. They were first used in India and later adopted by the Persians. War elephants were also used in the Battle of the Hydaspes River, and by Hannibal in the Second Punic War against the Romans. One of the most important military transactions of the ancient world was Chandragupta Maurya's gift of 500 elephants to Seleucus I Nicator.


title: Military history

text: Naval warfare was often crucial to military success. Early navies used sailing ships without cannons; often the goal was to ram the enemy ships and cause them to sink. There was human oar power, often using slaves, built up to ramming speed. Galleys were used in the 3rd millennium BC by the Cretans. The Greeks later advanced these ships.


title: Military history

text: In 1210 BC, the first recorded naval battle was fought between Suppiluliuma II, king of the Hittites, and Cyprus, which was defeated. In the Greco-Persian Wars, the navy became of increasing importance.


title: Military history

text: Triremes were involved in more complicated sea-land operations. Themistocles helped to build up a stronger Greek navy, composed of 310 ships, and defeated the Persians at the Battle of Salamis, ending the Persian invasion of Greece.


title: Military history

text: In the First Punic War, the war between Carthage and Rome started with an advantage to Carthage because of their naval experience. A Roman fleet was built in 261 BC, with the addition of the corvus that allowed Roman soldiers to board enemy ships. The bridge would prove effective at the Battle of Mylae, resulting in a Roman victory.


title: Military history

text: The Vikings, in the 8th century AD, invented a ship propelled by oars with a dragon decorating the prow, hence called the Drakkar. The 12th century AD Song Dynasty invented ships with watertight bulkhead compartments while the 2nd century BC Han dynasty invented rudders and sculled oars for their warships.


title: Military history

text: Fortifications are important in warfare. Early hill-forts were used to protect inhabitants in the Iron Age. They were primitive forts surrounded by ditches filled with water. Forts were then built out of mud bricks, stones, wood, and other available materials. Romans used rectangular fortresses built out of wood and stone. As long as there have been fortifications, there have been contraptions to break in, dating back to the times of Romans and earlier. Siege warfare is often necessary to capture forts.


title: Military history

text: Bows and arrows were often used by combatants. Egyptians shot arrows from chariots effectively. The crossbow was developed around 500 BC in China, and was used heavily in the Middle Ages. The English/Welsh longbow from the 12th century also became important in the Middle Ages. It helped to give the English a large early advantage in the Hundred Years' War, even though the English were eventually defeated. The Battle of Crécy and the Battle of Agincourt are excellent examples of how to destroy an enemy using a longbow. It dominated battlefields for over a century.


title: Military history

text: There is evidence for gunpowder evolving slowly from formulations by Chinese alchemists as early as the 4th century, at first as experiments for life force and metal transmutation, and later experiments as pyrotechnics and incendiaries. By the 10th century, the developments in gunpowder led to many new weapons that were improved over time. The Chinese used incendiary devices based on this in siege warfare against the Mongols starting in the mid 13th century. "Pots with wicks of flax or cotton were used, containing a combination of sulfur, saltpeter (potassium nitrate), aconitine, oil, resin, ground charcoal and wax." Joseph Needham argued the Chinese were able to destroy buildings and walls using such devices. Such experimentation was not present in Western Europe, where the combination of saltpeter, sulfur and charcoal were used exclusively for explosives and as a propellant in firearms. What the Chinese often referred to as the "fire drug" arrived in Europe, fully fleshed out, as gunpowder.


title: Military history

text: Cannons were first used in Europe in the early 14th century, and played a vital role in the Hundred Years' War. The first cannons were simply welded metal bars in the form of a cylinder, and the first cannonballs were made of stone. By 1346, at the Battle of Crécy, the cannon had been used; at the Battle of Agincourt they would be used again.


title: Military history

text: The first infantry firearms, from fire lances to hand cannons, were held in one hand, while the explosive charge was ignited by a lit match or hot coal held in the other hand. In the mid-15th century came the matchlock, allowing the gun to be aimed and fired while held steady with both hands, as used in the arquebus. Starting about 1500, clever but complicated firing mechanisms were invented to generate sparks to ignite the powder instead of a lit match, starting with the wheel lock, snaplock, snaphance, and finally the flintlock mechanism, which was simple and reliable, becoming standard with the musket by the early 17th century.


title: Military history

text: At the beginning of the 16th century, the first European fire ships were used. Ships were filled with flammable materials, set on fire, and sent to enemy lines. This tactic was successfully used by Francis Drake to scatter the Spanish Armada at the Battle of Gravelines, and would later be used by the Chinese, Russians, Greeks, and several other countries in naval battles.


title: Military history

text: Naval mines were invented in the 17th century, though they were not used in great numbers until the American Civil War. They were used heavily in the First and Second World Wars. Air-deployed naval mines were used to mine the North Vietnamese port of Haiphong during the Vietnam War. The Iraqi Navy of Saddam Hussein used naval mines extensively during the Tanker War, as part of the Iran–Iraq War.


title: Military history

text: The first navigable submarine was built in 1624 by Cornelius Drebbel, it could cruise at a depth of 15 feet (5 m). However, the first military submarine was constructed in 1885 by Isaac Peral.


title: Military history

text: The "Turtle" was developed by David Bushnell during the American Revolution. Robert Fulton then improved the submarine design by creating the "Nautilus".


title: Military history

text: The Howitzer, a type of field artillery, was developed in the 17th century to fire high trajectory explosive shells at targets that could not be reached by flat trajectory projectiles.


title: Military history

text: Organizational changes resulting in better training and intercommunication, made the concept combined arms possible, allowing the use of infantry, cavalry, and artillery in a coordinated way.


title: Military history

text: Bayonets also became of wide usage to infantry soldiers. Bayonet is named after Bayonne, France where it was first manufactured in the 16th century. It is used often in infantry charges to fight in hand-to-hand combat. General Jean Martinet introduced the bayonet to the French army. They were used heavily in the American Civil War, and continued to be used in modern wars like the Invasion of Iraq.


title: Military history

text: Balloons were first used in warfare at the end of the 18th century. It was first introduced in Paris of 1783; the first balloon traveled over 5 miles (8 km). Previously military scouts could only see from high points on the ground, or from the mast of a ship. Now they could be high in the sky, signalling to troops on the ground. This made it much more difficult for troop movements to go unobserved.


title: Military history

text: At the end of the 18th century, iron-cased artillery rockets were successfully used militarily in India against the British by Tipu Sultan of the Kingdom of Mysore during the Anglo-Mysore Wars. Rockets were generally inaccurate at that time, though William Hale, in 1844, was able to develop a better rocket. The new rocket no longer needed the rocket stick, and had a higher accuracy.


title: Military history

text: In the 1860s there were a series of advancements in rifles. The first repeating rifle was designed in 1860 by a company bought out by Winchester, which made new and improved versions. Springfield rifles arrived in the mid-19th century also. Machine guns arrived in the late 19th century. Automatic rifles and light machine guns first arrived at the beginning of the 20th century.


title: Military history

text: In the later part of the 19th century, the self-propelled torpedo was developed. The HNoMS Rap was the world's first torpedo boat.


title: Military history

text: The fire lance, the predecessor of the gun, was invented in China between the tenth and eleventh century. The barrel was originally designed out of bamboo shoots, later with metal. Joseph Needham notes "all the long preparations and tentative experiments were made in China, and everything came to Islam and the West fully fledged, whether it was the fire lance or the explosive bomb, the rocket or the metal-barrel handgun and bombard." By the 1320s Europe had guns, but scholars state that the exact time and method of migration from China remains a mystery. Evidence of firearms is found in Iran and Central Asia in the late fourteenth century. It was not until roughly 1442 that guns were referenced in India. Reliable references to guns in Russia begins around 1382.


title: Military history

text: An illustration of a "pot-shaped gun" found in the Holkham Hall Milemete manuscript dated to 1326 shows earliest advent of firearms in European history. The illustration shows an arrow, set in the pot-shaped gun pointed directly at a structure. Archaeological evidence of such "gun arrows" were discovered in Eltz Castle, "dated by relation to a historical event (a feud with the Archbishop of Trier in 1331-36 leading to a siege), seem to confirm again that this was at least one of the types of guns like the Milemete used in these very early examples."


title: Military history

text: According to Peter Fraser Purton, the best evidence of the earliest gun in Europe is the Loshult gun, dated to the fourteenth century. Discovered in 1861, the Loshult was made of bronze measured 11.8 inches in length. A replica of the Loshult was created, using similar gunpowder compounds with present-day materials, to determine the effectiveness of the weapon. The Gunpowder Research Group, who designed the recreation, found that at high elevations, the Loshult could fire as far as 1300 meters. Though inaccurate, missing targets further than 200 meters, the Loshult could fire a range of projectiles such as arrows and shot. It was determined that the Loshult could be effectively fired at ranks of soldiers and structures.


title: Military history

text: Written works from the Cabinet des Titres of the Imperial Library of Paris has found evidence of canons in France in 1338. The works illustrate canons being used on-board ships at the Rouen during that time. "...an iron Fire-arm, which was provided with forty-eight bolts, made of iron and freather; also one pound of saltpetre and half a pound of sulphur to make the powder propel arrows."


title: Military history

text: Researchers have been unable to determine the sizes of these cannons and others, outside the artifacts recovered. Sir Henry Brackenbury was able to surmise the approximate size of these cannons by comparing receipts for both the firearms and the corresponding amounts of gunpowder purchased. The receipts show a transaction for "25 Livres for 5 canons." Brackenbury was able to deduce, when comparing the costs of the cannons and the gunpowder apportioned, that they each iron cannon weighed approximately 25 lbs, while the brass cannons weighed roughly 22 lbs.


title: Military history

text: Philip the Bold (1363-1404) is credited with creating the most effective artillery power in Europe in the late fourteenth century, effectively creating the Burgundian estate. Philip's development of a large artillery army made the small country a reputable force against larger empires such as England and France. Philip had achieved this by establishing a large scale artillery manufacturing economy in Burgundy. Philip used his new cache of artillery to help the French capture an English-held fortress of Odruik. The artillery used to take Odruik used cannonballs measuring to about 450 pounds.


title: Military history

text: Large artillery was a major contributing factor to the fall of Constantinople at the hands of Mehmed the Conqueror (1432-1481). Having resigned his position as ruler due to youth and inexperience in 1446, Mehmed moved to the Ottoman capital of Manisa. After his uncle, Murad II died in 1451, Mehmed once again became Sultan. He turned his attention to claiming the Byzantine capital, Constantinople. Mehmed, like Philip, started mass-producing cannons by enticing craftsmen to his cause with money and freedom. For 55 days, Constantinople was bombarded with artillery fire, throwing cannonballs as large as 800 lbs at its walls. On May 29, 1453, Constantinople fell into Ottoman control.


title: Military history

text: As guns and artillery became more advanced and prevalent, so to did the tactics by which they were implemented. According to Historian Michael Roberts "...a military revolution began with the broad adoption of firearms and artillery by late sixteenth-century European armies." Infantry with firearms replaced cavalry. Empires adapted their strongholds to withstand artillery fire. Eventually drilling strategies and battlefield tactics were adapted for the evolution in firearms use.


title: Military history

text: In Japan, at the same time during the sixteenth-century, this military evolution was also taking hold. These changes included a universal adoption of firearms, tactical developments for effective use, logistical restructuring within the military itself, and "the emergence of centralized and political and institutional relationships indicative of the early modern order."


title: Military history

text: Tactically, beginning with Oda Nobunaga, the technique known as "volleying" or countermarch drills were implemented. Volley fire is an organized implementation of firearms, where infantry are structured in ranks. The ranks will alternate between loading and firing positions, allowing more consistent rates of fire and preventing enemies from taking over a position while members reload.


title: Military history

text: Historical evidence shows that Oda Nobunaga implemented his volley technique successfully in 1575, twenty years before evidence of such a technique is shown in Europe. The first indications of the countermarch technique in Europe was by Lord William Louis of Nassau (1538-1574) in the mid-1590s.


title: Military history

text: Korea also seemed to be adapting the volley technique, earlier than even the Japanese. "Koreans seem to have employed some kind of volley principle with guns by 1447, when the Korean King Sejong the Great instructed his gunners to shoot their 'fire barrels' in squads of five, taking turns firing and loading."


title: Military history

text: This was on display during what Kenneth Swope called the First Great East Asian War, when Japan was trying to take control and subjugate Korea. Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1537–1598) made a failed invasion of Korea, which lasted six years, eventually pushed back by the Koreans with the aid of Ming China. Japan, using overwhelming firepower, had many early victories on the Korean peninsula's. Though the Korean's had similar manpower, "the curtain of arrows thrown up by defenders was wiped out by (Japanese) gunfire." After the Japanese were finally pushed back in 1598, sweeping military reforms took place in Korea, largely based on updating and implementing the volley technique with firearms.


title: Military history

text: It was Qi Jiguang, a Ming Chinese General that provided the original treatise, disseminated to Koreans, that aided in this venture. In these manuals, Qi "...gave detailed instructions in the use of small group tactics, psychological warfare, and other 'modern' techniques." Qi emphasized repetitive drilling, dividing men into smaller groups, separating the strong from weak. Qi's ethos was one of synthesizing smaller groups, trained in various tactical formations, into larger companies, battalions and armies. By doing this they could "operate as eyes, hands, and feet..." aiding to overall unit cohesion.


title: Military history

text: At the start of the World Wars, various nations had developed weapons that were a surprise to their adversaries, leading to a need to learn from this, and alter how to combat them. Flame throwers were first used in the First World War. The French were the first to introduce the armored car in 1902. Then in 1918, the British produced the first armored troop carrier. Many early tanks were proof of concept but impractical until further development. In World War I, the British and French held a crucial advantage due to their superiority in tanks; the Germans had only a few dozen AV tanks, as well as 170 captured tanks. The British and French both had several hundred each. The French tanks included the 13 ton Schneider CA1, with a 75 mm gun, and the British had the Mark IV and Mark V tanks.


title: Military history

text: On December 17, 1903, the Wright Brothers performed the first controlled, powered, heavier-than-air flight; it went 39 meters (120 ft). In 1907, the first helicopter flew, but it wasn't practical for usage. Aviation became important in World War I, in which several aces gained fame. In 1911 an aircraft took off from a warship for the first time. Landings on a cruiser were another matter. This led to the development of an aircraft carrier with a decent unobstructed flight deck.


title: Military history

text: Chemical warfare exploded into the public consciousness in World War I but may have been used in earlier wars without as much human attention. The Germans used gas-filled shells at the Battle of Bolimov on January 3, 1915. These were not lethal, however. In April 1915, the Germans developed a chlorine gas that was highly lethal, and used it to moderate effect at the Second Battle of Ypres. Gas masks were invented in matter of weeks, and poison gas proved ineffective at winning battles. It was made illegal by all nations in the 1920s.


title: Military history

text: World War II gave rise to even more technology. The worth of the aircraft carrier was proved in the battles between the United States and Japan like the Battle of Midway. Radar was independently invented by the Allies and Axis powers. It used radio waves to detect objects. Molotov cocktails were invented by General Franco in the Spanish Civil War, directing the Nationalists to use them against Soviet tanks in the assault on Toledo. The atomic bomb was developed by the Manhattan Project and dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, quickly ending World War II.


title: Military history

text: During the Cold War, the main powers engaged in a Nuclear arms race. In the space race, both nations attempted to launch human beings into space to the moon. Other technological advances centered on intelligence (like the spy satellite) and missiles (ballistic missiles, cruise missiles). Nuclear submarine, invented in 1955. This meant submarines no longer had to surface as often, and could run more quietly. They evolved into becoming underwater missile platforms.


title: Military history

text: Much of what we know of ancient history is the history of militaries: their conquests, their movements, and their technological innovations. There are many reasons for this. Kingdoms and empires, the central units of control in the ancient world, could only be maintained through military force. Due to limited agricultural ability, there were relatively few areas that could support large communities, so fighting was common.


title: Military history

text: Weapons and armor, designed to be sturdy, tended to last longer than other artifacts, and thus a great deal of surviving artifacts recovered tend to fall in this category as they are more likely to survive. Weapons and armor were also mass-produced to a scale that makes them quite plentiful throughout history, and thus more likely to be found in archaeological digs.


title: Military history

text: Such items were also considered signs of prosperity or virtue, and thus were likely to be placed in tombs and monuments to prominent warriors. And writing, when it existed, was often used for kings to boast of military conquests or victories.


title: Military history

text: Writing, when used by the common man, also tended to record such events, as major battles and conquests constituted major events that many would have considered worthy of recording either in an epic such as the Homeric writings pertaining to the Trojan War, or even personal writings. Indeed, the earliest stories center on warfare, as war was both a common and dramatic aspect of life; the witnessing of a major battle involving many thousands of soldiers would be quite a spectacle, even today, and thus considered worthy both of being recorded in song and art, but also in realistic histories, as well as being a central element in a fictional work.


title: Military history

text: Lastly, as nation states evolved and empires grew, the increased need for order and efficiency lead to an increase in the number of records and writings. Officials and armies would have good reason for keeping detailed records and accounts involving any and all things concerning a matter such as warfare that, in the words of Sun Tzu, was "a matter of vital importance to the state". For all these reasons, military history comprises a large part of ancient history.


title: Military history

text: Notable militaries in the ancient world included the Egyptians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Ancient Greeks (notably the Spartans and Macedonians), Kushites, Indians (notably the Magadhas, Gangaridais, Gandharas and Cholas), Early Imperial Chinese (notably the Qin and Han Dynasties), Xiongnu Confederation, Ancient Romans, and Carthaginians.


title: Military history

text: The fertile crescent of Mesopotamia was the center of several prehistoric conquests. Mesopotamia was conquered by the Sumerians, Akkadians, Babylonians, Assyrians and Persians. Iranians were the first nation to introduce cavalry into their army.


title: Military history

text: Egypt began growing as an ancient power, but eventually fell to the Libyans, Nubians, Assyrians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines and Arabs.


title: Military history

text: The earliest recorded battle in India was the Battle of the Ten Kings. The Indian epics "Mahabharata" and "Ramayana" are centered on conflicts and refer to military formations, theories of warfare and esoteric weaponry. Chanakya's "Arthashastra" contains a detailed study on ancient warfare, including topics on espionage and war elephants.


title: Military history

text: Alexander the Great invaded Northwestern India and defeated King Porus in the Battle of the Hydaspes River. The same region was soon re conquered by Chandragupta Maurya after defeating the Macedonians and Seleucids. He also went on to conquer the Nanda Empire and unify Northern India. Most of Southern Asia was unified under his grandson Ashoka the Great after the Kalinga War, though the empire collapsed not long after his reign.


title: Military history

text: In China, the Shang dynasty and Zhou dynasty had risen and collapsed. This led to a Warring States period, in which several states continued to fight with each other over territory. Philosopher-strategists such as Confucius and Sun Tzu wrote various manuscripts on ancient warfare (as well as international diplomacy).


title: Military history

text: The Warring States era philosopher Mozi (Micius) and his Mohist followers invented various siege weapons and siegecraft, including the Cloud Ladder (a four-wheeled, extendable ramp) to scale fortified walls during a siege of an enemy city. The warring states were first unified by Qin Shi Huang after a series of military conquests, creating the first empire in China.


title: Military history

text: His empire was succeeded by the Han dynasty, which expanded into Central Asia, Northern China/Manchuria, Southern China, and present day Korea and Vietnam. The Han came into conflict with settled people such as the Wiman Joseon, and proto-Vietnamese Nanyue. They also came into conflict with the Xiongnu (Huns), Yuezhi, and other steppe civilizations.


title: Military history

text: The Han defeated and drove the Xiongnus west, securing the city-states along the silk route that continued into the Parthian Empire. After the decline of central imperial authority, the Han Dynasty collapsed into an era of civil war and continuous warfare during the Three Kingdoms period in the 3rd century AD.


title: Military history

text: The Achaemenid Persian Empire was founded by Cyrus the Great after conquering the Median Empire, Neo-Babylonian Empire, Lydia and Asia Minor. His successor Cambyses went on to conquer the Egyptian Empire, much of Central Asia, and parts of Greece, India and Libya. The empire later fell to Alexander the Great after defeating Darius III. After being ruled by the Seleucid dynasty, the Persian Empire was subsequently ruled by the Parthian and Sassanid dynasties, which were the Roman Empire's greatest rivals during the Roman-Persian Wars.


title: Military history

text: In Greece, several city-states rose to power, including Athens and Sparta. The Greeks successfully stopped two Persian invasions, the first at the Battle of Marathon, where the Persians were led by Darius the Great, and the second at the Battle of Salamis, a naval battle where the Greek ships were deployed by orders of Themistocles and the Persians were under Xerxes I, and the land engagement of the Battle of Plataea.


title: Military history

text: The Peloponnesian War then erupted between the two Greek powers Athens and Sparta. Athens built a long wall to protect its inhabitants, but the wall helped to facilitate the spread of a plague that killed about 30,000 Athenians, including Pericles. After a disastrous campaign against Syracuse, the Athenian navy was decisively defeated by Lysander at the Battle of Aegospotami.


title: Military history

text: The Macedonians, underneath Philip II of Macedon and Alexander the Great, invaded Persia and won several major victories, establishing Macedonia as a major power. However, following Alexander's death at an early age, the empire quickly fell apart.


title: Military history

text: Meanwhile, Rome was gaining power, following a rebellion against the Etruscans. During the three Punic Wars, the Romans defeated the neighboring power of Carthage. The First Punic War centered on naval warfare. The Second Punic War started with Hannibal's invasion of Italy by crossing the Alps. He famously won the encirclement at the Battle of Cannae. However, after Scipio invaded Carthage, Hannibal was forced to follow and was defeated at the Battle of Zama, ending the role of Carthage as a power.


title: Military history

text: After defeating Carthage the Romans went on to become the Mediterranean's dominant power, successfully campaigning in Greece, (Aemilius Paulus decisive victory over Macedonia at the Battle of Pydna), in the Middle East (Lucius Licinius Lucullus, Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus), in Gaul (Gaius Julius Caesar) and defeating several Germanic tribes (Gaius Marius, Germanicus). While Roman armies suffered several major losses, their large population and ability (and will) to replace battlefield casualties, their training, organization, tactical and technical superiority enabled Rome to stay a predominant military force for several centuries, utilizing well trained and maneuverable armies to routinely overcome the much larger "tribal" armies of their foes (see Battles of Aquae Sextiae, Vercellae, Tigranocerta, Alesia).


title: Military history

text: In 54 BC the Roman triumvir Marcus Licinius Crassus took the offensive against the Parthian Empire in the east. In a decisive battle at Carrhae Romans were defeated and the golden Aquilae (legionary battle standards) were taken as trophies to Ctesiphon. The battle was one of the worst defeats suffered by the Roman Republic in its entire history.


title: Military history

text: While successfully dealing with foreign opponents, Rome experienced numerous civil wars, notably the power struggles of Roman generals such as Marius and Sulla during the end of the Republic. Caesar was also notable for his role in the civil war against the other member of the Triumvirate (Pompey) and against the Roman Senate.


title: Military history

text: The successors of Caesar – Octavian and Mark Anthony, also fought a civil war with Caesar's assassins (Senators Brutus, Cassius, etc.). Octavian and Mark Anthony eventually fought another civil war between themselves to determine the sole ruler of Rome. Octavian emerged victorious and Rome was turned into an empire with a huge standing army of professional soldiers.


title: Military history

text: By the time of Marcus Aurelius, the Romans had expanded to the Atlantic Ocean in the west and to Mesopotamia in the east and controlled Northern Africa and Central Europe up to the Black Sea. However, Aurelius marked the end of the Five Good Emperors, and Rome quickly fell into decline.


title: Military history

text: The Huns, Goths, and other barbaric groups invaded Rome, which continued to suffer from inflation and other internal strifes. Despite the attempts of Diocletian, Constantine I, and Theodosius I, western Rome collapsed and was eventually conquered in 476. The Byzantine empire continued to prosper, however.


title: Military history

text: When stirrups came into use some time during the Dark Ages militaries were forever changed. This invention coupled with technological, cultural, and social developments had forced a dramatic transformation in the character of warfare from antiquity, changing military tactics and the role of cavalry and artillery.


title: Military history

text: Similar patterns of warfare existed in other parts of the world. In China around the 5th century armies moved from massed infantry to cavalry based forces, copying the steppe nomads. The Middle East and North Africa used similar, if often more advanced, technologies than Europe.


title: Military history

text: In Japan the Medieval warfare period is considered by many to have stretched into the 19th century. In Africa along the Sahel and Sudan states like the Kingdom of Sennar and Fulani Empire employed Medieval tactics and weapons well after they had been supplanted in Europe.


title: Military history

text: In the Medieval period, feudalism was firmly implanted, and there existed many landlords in Europe. Landlords often owned castles to protect their territory.


title: Military history

text: The Islamic Arab Empire began rapidly expanding throughout the Middle East, North Africa, and Central Asia, initially led by Rashidun Caliphate, and later under the Umayyads. While their attempts to invade Europe by way of the Balkans were defeated by Byzantium and Bulgaria, the Arabs expanded to the Iberian Peninsula in the west and the Indus Valley in the east. The Abassids then took over the Arab Empire, though the Umayyads remained in control of Islamic Spain.


title: Military history

text: At the Battle of Tours, the Franks under Charles Martel stopped short a Muslim invasion. The Abassids defeated the Tang Chinese army at the Battle of Talas, but were later defeated by the Seljuk Turks and the Mongols centuries later, until the Arab Empire eventually came to an end after the Battle of Baghdad in 1258.


title: Military history

text: In China, the Sui dynasty had risen and conquered the Chen Dynasty of the south. They invaded Vietnam (northern Vietnam had been in Chinese control since the Han dynasty), fighting the troops of Champa, who had cavalry mounted on elephants. After decades of economic turmoil and a failed invasion of Korea, the Sui collapsed and was followed by the Tang dynasty, who fought with various Turkic groups, the Tibetans of Lhasa, the Tanguts, the Khitans, and collapsed due to political fragmentation of powerful regional military governors (jiedushi). The innovative Song dynasty followed next, inventing new weapons of war that employed the use of Greek Fire and gunpowder (see section below) against enemies such as the Jurchens.


title: Military history

text: The Mongols under Genghis Khan, Ögedei Khan, Möngke Khan, and Kublai Khan conquered most of Eurasia. They took over China, Persia, Turkestan, and Russia. After Kublai Khan took power and created the Yuan dynasty, the divisions of the empire ceased to cooperate with each other, and the Mongol Empire was only nominally united.


title: Military history

text: In New Zealand, prior to European discovery, oral histories, legends and whakapapa include many stories of battles and wars. Māori warriors were held in high esteem. One group of Polynesians migrated to the Chatham Islands, where they developed the largely pacifist Moriori culture. Their pacifism left the Moriori unable to defend themselves when the islands were invaded by mainland Māori in the 1830s.


title: Military history

text: They proceeded to massacre the Moriori and enslave the survivors. Warrior culture also developed in the isolated Hawaiian Islands. During the 1780s and 1790s the chiefs and alii were constantly fighting for power. After a series of battles the Hawaiian Islands were united for the first time under a single ruler who would become known as Kamehameha I.


title: Military history

text: After gunpowder weapons were first developed in Song dynasty China (see also Technology of Song Dynasty), the technology later spread west to the Ottoman Empire, from where it spread to the Safavid Empire of Persia and the Mughal Empire of India. The arquebus was later adopted by European armies during the Italian Wars of the early 16th century.


title: Military history

text: This all brought an end to the dominance of armored cavalry on the battlefield. The simultaneous decline of the feudal system – and the absorption of the medieval city-states into larger states – allowed the creation of professional standing armies to replace the feudal levies and mercenaries that had been the standard military component of the Middle Ages.


title: Military history

text: In Africa, Ahmad ibn Ibrihim al-Ghazi, was the first African commander to use gunpowder on the continent in the Ethiopian–Adal War, that lasted for fourteen years (1529–1543).


title: Military history

text: The period spanning between the 1648 Peace of Westphalia and the 1789 French Revolution is also known as "Kabinettskriege" (Princes' warfare) as wars were mainly carried out by imperial or monarchics states, decided by cabinets and limited in scope and in their aims. They also involved quickly shifting alliances, and mainly used mercenaries.


title: Military history

text: Over the course of the 18th-19th centuries all military arms and services underwent significant developments that included a more mobile field artillery, the transition from use of battalion infantry drill in close order to open order formations and the transfer of emphasis from the use of bayonets to the rifle that replaced the musket, and virtual replacement of all types of cavalry with the universal dragoons, or mounted infantry.


title: Military history

text: The Military Revolution is a conceptual schema for explaining the transformation of European military strategy, tactics and technology in the early modern period. The argument is that dramatic advances in technology, government finance, and public administration transformed and modernized European armies, tactics, and logistics. Since warfare was so central to the European state, the transformation had a major impact on modernizing government bureaucracies, taxation, and the national economy. The concept was introduced by Michael Roberts in the 1950s as he focused on Sweden 1560–1660. Roberts emphasized the introduction of muskets that could not be aimed at small targets, but could be very effective when fired in volleys by three ranks of infantry soldiers, with one firing while the other two ranks reloaded. All three ranks march forward to demolish the enemy. The infantry now had the firepower that had been reserved to the artillery, and had mobility that could rapidly advance in the battlefield, which the artillery lacked. The infantry thereby surpassed the artillery in tactical maneuvering on the battlefield. Roberts linked these advances with larger historical consequences, arguing that innovations in tactics, drill and doctrine by the Dutch and Swedes 1560–1660 led to a need for more and better trained troops and thus for permanent forces (standing armies). Armies grew much larger and more expensive. These changes in turn had major political consequences in the level of administrative support and the supply of money, men and provisions, producing new financial demands and the creation of new governmental institutions. "Thus, argued Roberts, the modern art of war made possible—and necessary—the creation of the modern state". In the 1990s the concept was modified and extended by Geoffrey Parker, who argued that developments in fortification and siege warfare caused the revolution. The concept of a military revolution based upon technology has given way to models based more on a slow evolution in which technology plays a minor role to organization, command and control, logistics and in general non-material improvements. The revolutionary nature of these changes was only visible after a long evolution that handed Europe a predominant place in warfare, a place that the industrial revolution would confirm.


title: Military history

text: The concept of a military revolution in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries has received a mixed reception among historians. Noted military historians Michael Duffy and Jeremy Black have strongly criticised it as misleading, exaggerated and simplistic.


title: Military history

text: As weapons—particularly small arms—became easier to use, countries began to abandon a complete reliance on professional soldiers in favor of conscription. Technological advances became increasingly important; while the armies of the previous period had usually had similar weapons, the industrial age saw encounters such as the Battle of Sadowa, in which possession of a more advanced technology played a decisive role in the outcome. Conscription was employed in industrial warfare to increase the number of military personnel that were available for combat. Conscription was notably used by Napoleon Bonaparte and the major parties during the two World Wars.


title: Military history

text: Total war was used in industrial warfare, the objective being to prevent the opposing nation to engage in war. Napoleon was the innovator. William Tecumseh Sherman's "March to the Sea" and Philip Sheridan's burning of the Shenandoah Valley during the American Civil War were examples. On the largest scale the strategic bombing of enemy cities and industrial factories during World War II was total warfare.


title: Military history

text: Since the 1940s, preparation for a major war has been based on technological arms races involving all sorts of new weapons systems, such as nuclear and biological, as well as computerized control systems, and the opening of new venues, such as seen in the Space race involving the United States, the Soviet Union, and more recently, China.


title: Military history

text: Modern war also saw the improvement of armored tank technology. While tanks were present in the First World War, and the Second World War, armored warfare technology came to a head with the start of the Cold War. Many of the technologies commonly seen on main battle tanks today, such as composite armor, high caliber cannons, and advanced targeting systems, would be developed during this time.


title: Military history

text: A distinctive feature since 1945 is the absence of wars between major powers—indeed the near absence of any traditional wars between established countries. The major exceptions were the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971, the Iran–Iraq War 1980–1988, and the Gulf War of 1990–91. Instead actual fighting has largely been a matter of civil wars and insurgencies. The most recent example of a war between two nation states would be the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.


title: Take Me to Your Leader (King Geedorah album)

text: Take Me to Your Leader is the second studio album by British-American MC/producer MF DOOM, released under the alias King Geedorah via Big Dada on June 17, 2003. King Geedorah is the alias MF DOOM used as part of the underground super group Monsta Island Czars. The album features guest appearances from MF Grimm (as Jet-Jaguar) as well as other MIC members. The character is based on the three-headed King Ghidorah, a fictional monster who appears as Godzilla's enemy in the "Godzilla" films.


text: Mark Martelli of "Pitchfork" wrote that "Take Me to Your Leader" "will excite you in a way most hip-hop projects just aren't able: It's not straining for credibility nor putting effort into being revelatory; it just is." Noel Dix of "Exclaim!" remarked that the album "plays like a cinematic space adventure that you never want to end".


text: In 2009, Rhapsody ranked "Take Me to Your Leader" 17th on its list "Hip-Hop's Best Albums of the Decade". In 2012, "Stereogum" named it the third best MF DOOM album. In 2014, it was listed by "Complex" as one of the "Best One-Producer Albums of the 2000s". Retrospectively, Jacob Adams of "Spectrum Culture" wrote, "It's perhaps one of the weirdest rap albums of the past decade, yet one of the most endlessly fascinating. It deserves a second listen."


title: Spring, Texas

text: Spring is a census-designated place (CDP) within the extraterritorial jurisdiction of Houston in Harris County, Texas, United States, part of the metropolitan area. The population was 62,559 at the 2020 census. While the name "Spring" is popularly applied to a large area of northern Harris County and a smaller area of southern Montgomery County, the original town of Spring, now known as Old Town Spring, is located at the intersection of Spring-Cypress and Hardy roads and encompasses a relatively small area of perhaps .


title: Spring, Texas

text: The large geographic area now known as Spring was originally inhabited by the Orcoquiza Native Americans. In 1836, the Texas General Council of the Provisional Government placed what is now the town of Spring in the Harrisburg municipality. In 1838, William Pierpont placed a trading post on Spring Creek. In 1840, the town of Spring had 153 residents. By the mid-1840s, many German immigrants, including Gus Bayer and Carl Wunsche, moved to the area and began farming. People from Louisiana and other parts of the post-Civil War Southern U.S. settled in Spring. The main cash crops in Spring were sugar cane and cotton; area residents also grew vegetables.


title: Spring, Texas

text: The International and Great Northern Railroad, built through Spring, opened in 1871, which caused Spring to expand. In 1873, Spring received a post office. By 1884, Spring had 150 residents, two steam saw and grist mills, two cotton gins, three churches, and several schools. In 1901–1903, the International-Great Northern Railroad opened, connecting Spring to Fort Worth. Spring, now with a roundhouse, became a switchyard with 200 rail workers and fourteen track yards. The population increased to 1,200 by 1910. The Spring State Bank opened in 1912. In 1923, the roundhouse relocated to Houston, causing Spring to enter a decline; by 1931, Spring had 300 people. The bank was robbed several times in the 1930s; it was stated that Bonnie and Clyde robbed the bank once. The bank consolidated with Tomball Bank in 1935.


title: Spring, Texas

text: By 1947, Spring had 700 residents. In the 1970s, Houston's suburbs began to expand to the north, and more subdivisions and residential areas opened in the Spring area. Some older houses in the town of Spring received restorations and housed shops. The Old Town Spring Association opened in 1980 to promote the Old Town Spring shopping area, which consists of the restored houses. In 1984 and 1989, the Spring area had 15,000 residents. By 1989, Old Town Spring became a tourist area. In 1990, the Spring area had 33,111 residents.


title: Spring, Texas

text: From 1969 to 1992, the Goodyear airship "America" was based in Spring from its large hangar visible just off Interstate 45. Takeoffs and landings were a major attraction and motorists continually pulled off to the interstate's shoulders to watch. In 1992 the "America" was moved to Akron, Ohio, and the massive hangar was eventually torn down. As of 2020, the hangar's concrete foundation is still visible at the intersection of Holzwarth Road and Meadow Edge Lane west of Lowe's Home Improvement Center.


title: Spring, Texas

text: According to the United States Census Bureau, the CDP has a total area of , of which is land and , or 1.51%, is water.


title: Spring, Texas

text: The climate in this area is characterized by hot, stifling, humid summers and generally mild to cool winters. According to the Köppen Climate Classification system, Spring has a humid subtropical climate, abbreviated "Cfa" on climate maps.


title: Spring, Texas

text: As of the 2020 United States census, there were 62,559 people, 20,185 households, and 15,092 families residing in the CDP. As of the census of 2010, there were 54,298 people, 18,050 households, and 14,068 families residing in the CDP. The population density was 2,300.8 people per square mile (890.1/km). There were 19,191 housing units at an average density of 813.2 per square mile (314.6/km).


title: Spring, Texas

text: In 2010, the racial makeup of the CDP was 63.8% White, 19.5% African American, 0.6% Native American, 3.1% Asian, 0.4% Pacific Islander, 9.3% from other races, and 3.3% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino people of any race were 28.4% of the population. In 2000, the racial makeup of the CDP was 83.01% White, 6.99% African American, 0.51% Native American, 1.42% Asian, 0.13% Pacific Islander, 5.62% from other races, and 2.31% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino people of any race were 16.06% of the population.


title: Spring, Texas

text: In 2000, were 12,302 households, out of which 46.2% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 62.9% were married couples living together, 12.6% had a female householder with no husband present, and 20.1% were non-families. 15.4% of all households were made up of individuals, and 2.8% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.96 and the average family size was 3.30.


title: Spring, Texas

text: In the CDP, the population was spread out, with 31.0% under the age of 18, 8.7% from 18 to 24, 33.8% from 25 to 44, 22.0% from 45 to 64, and 4.5% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 32 years. For every 100 females, there were 95.0 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 91.4 males.


title: Spring, Texas

text: The median income for a household in the CDP was $56,662, and the median income for a family was $60,934 as of 2000. Males had a median income of $42,134 versus $30,270 for females. The per capita income for the CDP was $21,027. About 3.1% of families and 4.1% of the population were below the poverty line, including 4.7% of those under age 18 and 4.5% of those age 65 or over.


title: Spring, Texas

text: The Spring Fire Department serves areas within the Spring CDP and some areas outside the CDP with Spring addresses. The fire department is headquartered at 656 E. Louetta, in the middle of the CDP. Stations within the Spring CDP include Station 71 at 646 E. Louetta, Station 73 at 4923 Treaschwig Road, Station 74 at 24030 Old Aldine-Westfield, and Station 78 at 1225 Booker Road. Station 77 at 2900 Cypresswood is adjacent to the Spring CDP, on the other side of Interstate 45. The North Harris County Regional Water Authority provides water services to the Spring CDP, which is located in Voting District No. 5. The Texas House of Representatives bill that created the water authority, HB 2965, was signed into law on June 18, 1999. On January 15, 2000, voters voted to confirm the creation of the authority in a special election.


title: Spring, Texas

text: Harris County Housing Authority (HCHA) operates Louetta Village, a public housing complex for seniors near the Spring CDP, with a Spring postal address. It has 116 units.


title: Spring, Texas

text: Spring is within Harris County Precinct 3. Spring previously was in Precinct 4 until a redistricting plan approved in October 2021. As of 2022 Tom Ramsey heads the precinct. The CDP is served by Harris County Sheriff's Office District II Patrol, headquartered from the Humble Substation at 7900 Will Clayton Parkway in Humble. Areas west of Interstate 45 which have Spring addresses and are located outside the CDP are served by Harris County Sheriff's Office District I Patrol, headquartered from the Cypresswood Substation at 6831 Cypresswood Drive. The office formerly operated the Old Town Spring Storefront, which was located in Old Town Spring.


title: Spring, Texas

text: Harris County Precinct 4 operates a recycling center at Jesse H. Jones Park, located southeast of the Spring CDP. Montgomery County operates the Precinct 3 Recycling Center at 1122 Pruitt Road in an unincorporated area of Montgomery County, north of the Spring CDP.


title: Spring, Texas

text: The Harris Health System (formerly Harris County Hospital District) designated the E. A. "Squatty" Lyons Health Center in Humble for the ZIP code 77373. The designated public hospital is Lyndon B. Johnson Hospital in northeast Houston.


title: Spring, Texas

text: Spring is located in District 150 of the Texas House of Representatives. As of 2017 Valoree Swanson represents the district. Spring is within District 7 of the Texas Senate; as of 2008 Dan Patrick represents the district.


title: Spring, Texas

text: Spring's designated United States Postal Service post office is the Spring Post Office at 1411 Wunsche Loop. The post office serves around 80,000 people.


title: Spring, Texas

text: In January 2010 the "Houston Business Journal" reported that real estate officials said that ExxonMobil planned to build a corporate campus in unincorporated Harris County along Interstate 45, adjacent to the Spring CDP. According to the article, ExxonMobil plans to consolidate thousands of employees from Houston and Fairfax County, Virginia into the facility; employees from over two dozen locations in Greater Houston are expected to be consolidated into the new facility. The 9,000-employee campus opened in 2014, and is due to become ExxonMobil's new headquarters as announced in 2022, after moving from its campus Irving, Texas.


title: Spring, Texas

text: All areas within the Spring CDP are within the Spring Independent School District. Several elementary schools, George E. Anderson, Chet Burchett, Pearl M. Hirsch, Mildred I. Jenkins, Ginger McNabb, Northgate Crossing, Salyers, Lewis Eugene Smith, and John A. Winship, are within the CDP and serve sections of the CDP. Marshall Elementary School was scheduled to open in 2010.


title: Spring, Texas

text: Four middle schools, Bailey, Dueitt, Springwoods Village, and Twin Creeks, are within the CDP and serve sections of the CDP. All residents are zoned to Spring High School. Carl Wunsche Sr. High School is in the Spring CDP. In February 2017 the district proposed redrawing the attendance boundaries of its high schools; this would take effect in the 2020–2021 school year. According to the proposed 2020-2021 high school map, the eastern portion of the Spring CDP will be reassigned from Spring High School to Dekaney High School. Due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in Texas the district delayed the high school boundary changes until at least 2022–2023.


title: Spring, Texas

text: Harris County residents with Spring addresses that are not in the CDP either attend schools in Spring ISD or Klein Independent School District. Montgomery County residents with Spring addresses attend schools in Conroe Independent School District. Areas in Klein ISD with "Spring" addresses are served by Klein Oak High School, Klein High School, and Klein Collins High School. Areas in Conroe ISD with "Spring" addresses are served by Oak Ridge High School and Grand Oaks High School on the eastern side, and both The Woodlands High School and The Woodlands College Park High School on the western side.


title: Spring, Texas

text: Originally Spring was served by the Spring Common School District. In 1935 that district and the Harrell Common School District merged, forming the Spring Independent School District. The Southwell School, the segregated African-American school, served Spring from the early 1900s until 1945. In 1932 the Wunsche family donated land to the Spring school district, and the Carl Wunsche School, serving middle and high school, opened. In 1947 an addition opened and elementary school students began to be served by Wunsche. Salyers, opened in 1959 as Spring Elementary School, was the first dedicated elementary school of Spring ISD. As a result of Salyers opening, elementary school classes were removed from Wunsche School. Spring High School opened in 1969, taking high school students from Wunsche. As a result, Wunsche became SISD's first dedicated middle school.


title: Spring, Texas

text: Winship Elementary School's classes began in fall 1972; the Winship campus opened on December 15 of that year. Jenkins opened on February 6, 1977. Hirsch opened in 1978. Anderson opened in 1979. Dueitt opened in 1980. Wunsche closed as a regular middle school in 1983, and it was retrofitted to become a multi-purpose school. Twin Creeks, which took the middle school population of Wunsche, opened in 1984. Smith opened in 1986. Anderson was named a 1989-90 National Blue Ribbon School. Burchett opened in August 2005. Bailey opened in August 2006 and was dedicated on October 15 of that year. By the spring of 2015, Spring ISD planned to have built a new elementary school and High School #4 within the Spring CDP. Middle School #8 (Springwoods Village) is scheduled to open in fall 2020.


title: Spring, Texas

text: In addition St. Thomas High School, an all boys' high school in central Houston, has a bus service from and to St. Edward Catholic School. In 2013 Saint John XXIII High School, in Greater Katy, also served the Spring area; Frassati opened in 2013 with the 9th grade and did not immediately serve all grade levels.


title: Spring, Texas

text: Northwoods Catholic School, a private Catholic school in the Spring area, was located off of the intersection of Farm to Market Road 2920 and Gosling Road, in a campus. It used a curriculum from the Legionaries of Christ. Established circa 1999, it was not affiliated with the archdiocese. It initially had 13 students, and was in a facility in the Ponderosa Forest neighborhood, an apartment clubhouse temporarily used as a school.


title: Spring, Texas

text: In 2003 it had 200 students. By that year its permanent facility opened; it had a price tag of $6 million. In 2004 it had 250 students. In 2005 academic dean Susan Horne became the principal, and the previous principal, Joe Noonan, became Northwood's executive director. In 2010 it had about 230 students, with about 40% of them originating from The Woodlands. The building's first floor had of space. Its second floor, with offices, computer and science labs, and a library, was blessed on August 13, 2010, and opened on August 18 of that year. It was built in three months.


title: Spring, Texas

text: In the 2015–2016 school year, the school's final year of operation, it had 268 students; it was projected to have 160 students for the following school year. The school announced on May 4, 2016, that it was closing, and a shrinking budget and declining enrollment were cited as reasons. It closed on June 30, 2016. An area developer who was buying land from the school got into a legal dispute with the owner of the land and with a Catholic priest.


title: Spring, Texas

text: Lone Star College System (formerly the North Harris Montgomery Community College District) serves the areas of Spring ISD, Klein ISD, and Conroe ISD, and therefore the entire Spring area. Areas in Cy-Fair ISD (and therefore Lakes on Eldridge) are located in Lone Star College. Residents of Spring ISD and two other K–12 school districts voted to create the North Harris County College. The community college district began operations in the northern hemisphere fall of 1973.


title: Spring, Texas

text: HCPL operates the Baldwin Boettcher Branch Library at Mercer Park at 22248 Aldine Westfield Road, south of the Spring CDP. The branch opened in 1986. It was constructed on donated land. It was named after Baldwin Boettcher, a German settler. His descendants deeded the homestead to Harris County. The plans stated that the Boettcher staff would assist the Mercer Park staff in finding any botanical reference books that they or the public need.


title: Spring, Texas

text: The Barbara Bush Branch Library at Cypress Creek is located in at 6817 Cypresswood Drive in an area with a Spring address west of the Spring CDP. The branch originally opened in June 1976. The Library was upgraded and expanded in 2002. Construction of the current library began in the northern hemisphere summer of 2000. The current branch was anticipated to house over 120,000 books and materials, making it twice as large as the previous branch. Jesse Sendejas of the "Houston Chronicle" said there was "a need to provide a more spacious and accommodating facility to Spring and its surrounding areas. That was apparent when county voters approved a $15 million bond for library improvements in November 1997."