title: Persecution of Muslims

text: By law, religious communities must register by the State Committee on Religious Affairs (SCRA) and with local authorities. Registration with the SCRA requires a charter, a list of 10 or more members, and evidence of local government approval prayer site location. Religious groups who do not have a physical structure are not allowed to gather publicly for prayer. Failure to register can result in large fines and closure of place of worship. There are reports that registration on the local level is sometimes difficult to obtain. People under the age of 18 are also barred from public religious practice.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: The reason for having Tajikistan in this article is primarily because the government of the country itself, is – or is seen to be – the source of claimed persecution of Muslims. (As opposed to coming from outside forces or other religious groups.) This can make the reported issues open to bias by media and personal religious beliefs or preferences. In fact, the government – with the apparent approval of the people – is attempting to keep the government completely secular (full separation of Church and State) to avoid what they perceive as problems in other surrounding countries.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: Mosques are not permitted to allow women inside due to a fatwa issued in August 2004, by the Tajik Council of Ulema, or scholars – the country's highest Muslim body. Part of the reasoning for this is that Tajikistan has 3,980 mosques, but very few are designed to allow men and women to worship separately, a practice Islam generally requires. The fatwa was not strictly enforced and more recently, it has been reported that the Ulema Council will relax the ban.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: Only state controlled religious education is approved for children and long beards are banned in Tajikistan.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: In Tajikistan, Mosques are banned from allowing Friday Prayers for children younger than 18 year old.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: From the beginning of 2011, 1,500 mosques were shut down by the Tajik government, in addition to banning the hijab for children, banning the use of loudspeakers for the call of prayer, forbidding mosques from allowing women to enter, and monitoring Imams and students learning an Islamic education abroad, having sermons in the Mosque approved by the government and limiting the Mosque sermons to 15 minutes. Muslims experienced the most negative effects from the "Religion Law" enacted by the government of Tajikistan, curtailing sermons by Imams during weddings, making the "Cathedral mosques" the only legal place for sermons to be given by Imams with sermons not being allowed in five-fold mosques, the five-fold mosques are small mosques and serve a limited number of people while the medium and big mosques are categorized as Cathedral mosques, girls who wore the hijab have been expelled from schools and hijabs and beards are not permitted on passport photos. Mosques have been demolished and shut down by the Tajikistan government on the justification that they were not registered and therefore not considered as mosques by the government.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: Tajikistan has targeted religious groups like Jehovah's Witnesses, Jews, Christians, and Muslims who try to evade control by the government, synagogue, churches, and Mosques have been shut down and destroyed, only a certain amount of mosques are allowed to operate and the state must approve all "religious activity", in which younger than 18-year-old children are not allowed to join in. Buildings for religious worship for Jehovah's Witnesses, Protestant Churches, the Jewish Synagogue, and Muslim mosques have been targeted, destroyed, and shut down and prayers are forbidden to take place in public halls, with severed restrictions placed on religion. Churches, a synagogue, and mosques have been destroyed by the Tajikistan government.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: Government approval is required for Tajiks seeking to engage in religious studies in foreign countries and religious activities of Muslims in particular are subjected to controls by the Tajikistan government. State control has been implemented on Islamic madrasahs, Imams, and Mosques by Tajikistan. A list of sermon "topics" for Imams has been created by the Tajikistan government. Towns are only allowed to have a certain number of mosques and only religious buildings sanctioned by the government are allowed to host religious activities, schools have banned hijab, religious studies in private have been forbidden mosque religious services are not allowed to admit children and non-registered mosques have been closed. Religious matters are banned for children under 18 year old. Public buildings do not allow beards, schools ban hijabs, unregistered mosques are shut down, and sermons are subjected to government authority. Only if "provided the child expresses a desire to learn" can a family teach religion to their own children, while the Tajik government banned all non-family private education. Islam and Muslims have been subjected to controls by the Tajikistan government, the states decides what sermons the Imams give, the government discharges the salaries of Imams and there is only a single madrasah in Tajikistan.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: Jehovah's Witnesses have been declared illegal in Tajikistan. Abundant Life Christian Centre, Ehyo Protestant Church, and Jehovah's witnesses have accused Tajikistan of lying about them not being declared illegal at a Warsaw OSCE conference for human rights.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: Among increasingly religious Tajiks, Islamic-Arabic names have become more popular over Tajik names. However the government has considered the outlawing of Arabic-Islamic names for children. Tajikistan President Rakhmon (Rahmon) has said that the Persian epic Shahnameh should be used as a source for names, with his proposed law hinting that Muslim names would be forbidden after his anti-hijab and anti-beard laws.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: The Tajik government has used the word "prostitute" to label hijab wearing women and enforced shaving of beards. As well as that the black coloured Islamic veil was attacked and criticized in public by Tajik President Emomali Rahmon.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: Tajikistan's restrictions on Islam has resulted in a drastic decrease of big beards and hijabs. Tajikistan bans Salafism under the name "Wahhabi", which is applied to forms of Islam not permitted by the government.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: 160 Islamic clothing stores were shut down and 13,000 men were forcibly shaved by the Tajik police and Arabic names were banned by the parliament of Tajikistan as part of a secularist campaign by President Emomali Rajmon.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: In Uzbekistan and Tajikistan women wore veils which covered their entire face and body like the Paranja and faranji. The traditional veil in Central Asia worn before modern times was the faranji but it was banned by the Soviet Communists but the Tajikistan President Emomali has misleadingly tried to claim that veils were not part of Tajik culture.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: After an Islamic Renaissance Party member was allowed to visit Iran by the Iranian government a diplomatic protest was made by Tajikistan.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: The Cham Muslims in Vietnam are only recognized as a minority, and not as an indigenous people by the Vietnamese government despite being indigenous to the region. Muslim Chams have experienced violent religious and ethnic persecution and restrictions on practising their faith under the current Vietnamese government, with the Vietnamese state confisticating Cham property and forbidding Cham from observing their religious beliefs. In 2010 and 2013 several incidents occurred in Thành Tín and Phươc Nhơn villages where Cham were murdered by Vietnamese. In 2012, Vietnamese police in Chau Giang village stormed into a Cham Mosque, stole the electric generator, and also raped Cham girls. Cham Muslims in the Mekong Delta have also been economically marginalized and pushed into poverty by Vietnamese policies, with ethnic Vietnamese Kinh settling on majority Cham land with state support, and religious practices of minorities have been targeted for elimination by the Vietnamese government.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: The majority of persecutions that have been reported were during the Bosnian War. Primarily, the actions taken by all three factions has led to the Bosnian genocide, which refers to either the genocidal actions that took place at Srebrenica and Žepa which were committed by the Army of Republika Srpska in 1995, or the more broader ethnic cleansing campaign throughout certain areas that were controlled by Republika Srpska during the 1992–1995 Bosnian War.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: The events in Srebrenica in 1995 included the complete cleansing of more than 8,000 Bosniak men and boys, as well as the mass expulsion of another 25,000–30,000 Bosniak civilians, in and around the town of Srebrenica in Bosnia and Herzegovina, committed by units of the Army of the Republika Srpska (VRS) under the command of General Ratko Mladić.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: The ethnic cleansing campaign that took place throughout areas controlled by the VRS targeted Bosnian Muslims. The ethnic cleansing campaign included unlawful confinement, murder, rape, sexual assault, torture, beating, robbery, and inhumane treatment of civilians; the targeting of political leaders, intellectuals, and professionals; the unlawful deportation and transfer of civilians; the unlawful shelling of civilians; the unlawful appropriation and plunder of real and personal property; the destruction of homes and businesses; and the destruction of places of worship.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: The Srebrenica massacre, also known as the Srebrenica genocide (), was the July 1995 killing of more than 8,000 Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims), mainly men and boys, in and around the town of Srebrenica during the Bosnian War. The killing was perpetrated by units of the Army of Republika Srpska (VRS) under the command of General Ratko Mladić. The Secretary-General of the United Nations described the mass murder as the worst crime on European soil since the Second World War. A paramilitary unit from Serbia known as the Scorpions, officially part of the Serbian Interior Ministry until 1991, participated in the massacre, along with several hundred Russian and Greek volunteers.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: In 1989, 310,000 Turks left Bulgaria, many of them left under pressure as a result of the communist dictator Todor Zhivkov regime's assimilation campaign (though up to a third of them returned before the end of the year). That program, which began in 1984, forced all Turks and all other Muslims who lived in Bulgaria to adopt Bulgarian names and renounce all Muslim customs. The motivation behind the 1984 assimilation campaign is unclear; however, some experts believe that the disproportionately high birth rate of the Turks and the lower birth rate of the Bulgarians were major factors. During the name-changing phase of the campaign, Turkish towns and villages were surrounded by army units. Citizens were issued new identity cards with Bulgarian names. Failure to present a new card meant forfeiture of salary, pension payments, and bank withdrawals. Birth or marriage certificates would only be issued in Bulgarian names. Traditional Turkish costumes were banned; homes were searched and all signs of Turkish identity were removed. Mosques were closed. According to contemporary estimates, 500 to 1,500 people were killed when they resisted assimilation measures, and thousands of others were imprisoned, sent to labour camps or forcibly resettled.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: In the week after the Islamist terrorist attack against "Charlie Hebdo" which made 23 casualties, 54 anti-Muslim incidents were reported in France. These included 21 reports of actions (shootings with non-lethal weapons such as bb gun and dummy grenades) against Islamic buildings (e.g. mosques) and 33 cases of threats and insults. Three grenades were thrown at a mosque in Le Mans, west of Paris, and a bullet hole was found in its windows. A Muslim prayer hall in the Port-la-Nouvelle was also fired at. There was an explosion at a restaurant affiliated to a mosque in Villefranche-sur-Saône. No casualties were reported. Seven days after the attack, Mohamed El Makouli was stabbed to death at home by 28-year-old neighbour Thomas Gambet shouting "I am your God, I am your Islam." His wife, Nadia, suffered hand injuries while she tried to save him.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: Between 24 and 28 December 2015, a Muslim prayer hall was burned down and Qur'ans were set alight following marches by Corsican nationalists in a series of protests in Corsica. The protesters claimed to be acting in revenge for an incident that occurred the day prior when firefighters and police were assaulted in the neighbourhood of Jardins de l'Empereur; however, outside observers labeled the ensuing riots as anti-Arab and anti-Muslim. The Corsican nationalist politicians have claimed their view does not legitimise xenophobia, blaming the protest on French nationalism instead. Scholarly opinions on this claim are divided.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: On 28 May 1993, four neo-Nazi skinheads (ages 16–23) set fire to the house of a Muslim Turk family in Solingen in North Rhine-Westphalia. As a result of the attack 3 girls and 2 women died and 14 other family members, including several children, were injured, some of them severely.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: On 9 June 2004 a nail bombing in a business area popular with Turkish immigrants in Cologne injured 22 Turks, completely destroyed a barber shop and many other shops and seriously damaged numerous parked cars.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: On 1 July 2009, Marwa El-Sherbini was stabbed to death in a courtroom in Dresden, Germany. She had just given evidence against her attacker who had used insults against her because she wore an Islamic headscarf. El-Sherbini was called "Islamist", "terrorist", and (according to one report) "slut".


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: The National Socialist Underground murders took place between 2000 and 2006. The Neo-Nazi group killed 10 people. The police discovered a hit list of 88 people that included "two prominent members of the Bundestag and representatives of Turkish and Islamic groups".


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: German officials recorded more than 70 attacks against mosques from 2012 to 2014. In 2016, 91 mosques in Germany were attacked. Police stated that the majority of cases have gone unsolved, and only one arrest was made so far. There were 950 attacks reportedly on Muslims and mosques in Germany in 2017 injuring 34 Muslims. In 2018, police recorded 813 hate crimes against Muslims, injuring at least 54 Muslims. 132 Islamophobic incidents occurred in Germany in the first half of 2019, injuring 4 Muslims.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: On 17 July 2018, a man fired six shots at a female employee wearing a headscarf in a Turkish-owned bakery, leaving no casualties.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: According to research by Ineke van der Valk, an author and researcher at the University of Amsterdam, a third of mosques in the Netherlands have experienced at least one incident of vandalism, threatening letters, attempted arson, or other aggressive actions in the past 10 years.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: On 22 July 2011, two sequential lone wolf domestic terrorist attacks by Anders Behring Breivik against the government, the civilian population, and a Workers' Youth League (AUF) summer camp killed 77 people and injured at least 319. Analysts described him as having Islamophobic views and a hatred of Islam, and as someone who considered himself as a knight dedicated to stemming the tide of Muslim immigration into Europe. In a manifesto, he describes opposition to what he saw as the Islamisation of Europe as his motive for carrying out the attacks.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: On 10 August 2019 21 year old lone gunman Philip Manshaus opened fire on a mosque in Bærum, Norway, a suburbia 20 kilometers outside of Oslo. He injured one person and was then subdued by two worshippers. At the time of the shooting there were three congregants in the mosque.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: Two people died and 13 were injured in a series of shootings targeting people with dark skin and non-Swedish appearance in Malmö in 2009 and 2010. The perpetrator had "strong anti-immigrant sentiments" and all but one of the victims were not ethnically Swedish.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: Between 25 December 2014 and 1 January 2015, three arson attack against mosques occurred across Sweden in Eslöv, Uppsala and Eskilstuna injuring at least five Muslim civilians.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: On 22 October 2015, a masked swordsman killed three and wounded another at Kronan School in Trollhättan. The perpetrator chose the school as his target due to its high immigrant population. He was later shot and killed by police. It is the deadliest attack on a school in Swedish history.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: Zürich Islamic center shooting was a mass shooting of several people in an Islamic center in Central Zürich that occurred on 19 December 2016. Three people were wounded in the attack, two seriously, though all are expected to survive.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: In 2019, one in every two Muslims in Switzerland stated that they had been discriminated against based on their religious identity.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: After the Manchester Arena bombing in May 2017, there was a 700% rise in the number of reported hate crimes against Muslims in U.K. 94,098 hate crimes were recorded in the country in 2017–2018, 52% of them targeted Muslims which is about 130 to 140 hate crimes against Muslims reported each day. Scotland Yard stated that such crimes were "hugely underreported". According to Tell MAMA, between March and July 2017, 110 attacks targeting mosques occurred in United Kingdom.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: Boris Johnson's comments on women wearing the veil in August 2018 led to a surge in anti-Muslim attacks and incidents of abuse. In the week following Johnson's comments, Tell MAMA said anti-Muslim incidents increased from eight incidents the previous week, to 38 in the following which equals an increase of 375%. Twenty-two of the recorded anti-Muslim hate crimes targeted women who wore the niqab, or face veil.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: In 2019, there were 3,530 recorded cases of Islamophobic hate crime in UK. A week after the March 2019 Christchurch mosque shootings in New Zealand, the number of reported hate crimes against Muslims increased by 593% and 95 incidents were reported to The Guardian between 15 March (day of the Christchurch mosque shootings) and midnight on 21 March.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: Police forces from across Canada have reported that Muslims are the second most targeted religious group, after Jews. And while hate crimes against all religious groups (except Jews) have decreased, hate crimes against Muslims have increased following 9/11. In 2014, police forces recorded 99 religiously motivated hate crimes against Muslims in Canada, the number was 45 in 2012.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: In 2015, the city of Toronto reported a similar trend: hate crimes in general decreased by 8.2%, but hate crimes against Muslims had increased. Police hypothesized the spike could be due to the Paris attacks or anger over refugees. Muslims faced the third highest level of hate crimes in Toronto, after Jews and the LGBTQ community.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: On 29 January 2017, a mass shooting occurred at the Islamic Cultural Centre of Quebec City, killing 6 and injuring 19 Muslims. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Premier Philippe Couillard called the shooting a terrorist attack, but the perpetrator was not charged with terrorism. The incident was classified as a hate crime and an Islamophobic attack.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: In June 2021, five members of a Muslim family were the victims of a domestic terrorist attack in the city of London, Ontario. Four members died as a result of this attack, leaving the fifth, a 9-year-old boy, with severe injuries. The act was reported as premeditated and motivated by anti-Muslim hate.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: In the aftermath of 9/11, the number of hate crimes against people of Middle-Eastern descent in the country increased from 354 attacks in 2000 to 1,501 attacks in 2001.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: Zohreh Assemi, an Iranian American Muslim owner of a nail salon in Locust Valley, New York, was robbed, beaten, and called a "terrorist" in September 2007 in what authorities call a bias crime. Assemi was kicked, sliced with a boxcutter, and had her hand smashed with a hammer. The perpetrators, who forcibly removed $2,000 from the salon and scrawled anti-Muslim slurs on the mirrors, also told Assemi to "get out of town" and that her kind were not "welcomed" in the area. The attack followed two weeks of phone calls in which she was called a "terrorist" and told to "get out of town", friends and family said.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: On 25 August 2010, a New York taxi driver was stabbed after a passenger asked him whether he was a Muslim.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: On 27 December 2012, in New York City 31-year-old Erika Menendez allegedly pushed an Indian immigrant and small businessman named Sunando Sen onto the subway tracks where he was struck and killed by a train. Menendez, who has a long history of mental illness and violence, told police: "I pushed a Muslim off the train tracks because I hate Hindus and Muslims... Ever since 2001 when they put down the Twin Towers, I've been beating them up." She was charged with second-degree murder as a hate crime and was sentenced to 24 years imprisonment in 2015.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) keeps track of Nationwide Anti-Mosque Activity where they have noted at least 50 anti-mosque incidents in the previous five years.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: In 2017, a Tennessee man harassed two Muslim girls after they got off a school bus. He yelled at the girls "Go back to your country!". The man injured the father of the girls by assaulting him and swinging a knife. The man also chased the mother while still holding the knife. When he was taken into custody, he called the family "terrorists" and vowed to kill them when released from jail. Acting U.S. Attorney Mary Jane Stewart said of the attack, "The cowardly and unprovoked attack and display of hate-filled aggression by this defendant toward two innocent young girls and their father is despicable. An attack upon the free exercise of any person's religious beliefs is an attack on that person's civil rights. The Department of Justice will continue to vigorously prosecute such violent acts motivated by hate.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: In 2020, it was reported that Muslim detainees at a federal immigration facility in Miami, Florida, were repeatedly served pork or pork-based products against their religious beliefs, according to claims made by immigrant advocates. The Muslim detainees at the Krome detention facility in Miami were forced to eat pork because religiously compliant/halal meals that ICE served had been consistently rotten and expired. In one instance, the Chaplain at Krome allegedly dismissed pleas from Muslim detainees for help, saying, "It is what it is." Civil rights groups said many had suffered illness, like stomach pains, vomiting, and diarrhea, as a result. An ICE spokesman said, "Any claim that ICE denies reasonable and equitable opportunity for persons to observe their religious dietary practices is false." Previously in 2019, a Pakistani-born man with a valid US work permit was reportedly given nothing but pork sandwiches for six consecutive days.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: In the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, Arabs and Muslims complained of increased scrutiny and racial profiling at airports. In a poll conducted by the "Boston Globe", 71 percent of Blacks and 57 percent of Whites believed that "Arabs and Arab-Americans should undergo special, more intensive security checks before boarding airplanes." Some Muslims and Arabs have complained of being held without explanation and subjected to hours of questioning and arrest without cause. Such cases have led to lawsuits being filed by the ACLU. Fox News radio host Mike Gallagher suggested that airports have a "Muslims Only" line in the wake of the 9/11 attacks stating "It's time to have a Muslims check-point line in America's airports and have Muslims be scrutinized. You better believe it, it's time." In Queens, New York, Muslims and Arabs have complained that the NYPD is unfairly targeting Muslim communities in raids tied to the alleged Zazi terror plot.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: The war on terror has been labelled a war against Islam by ex-United States Attorney General Ramsey Clark, who said that "Most of the politicians are putting it as Islamic terrorists but what they really mean is the threat of Islam. So the idea of the war on Islam is the idea of extermination of a proportion never seen in history at any time."


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: There is no widely agreed on figure for the number of people that have been killed so far in the War on Terror as it has been defined by the Bush Administration to include the war in Afghanistan, the war in Iraq, and operations elsewhere. The International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, and the Physicians for Social Responsibility and Physicians for Global Survival give total estimates ranging from to casualties. Another study from 2018 by Brown University's Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs puts the total number of casualties of the War on Terror in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan between 480,000 and 507,000. A 2019 Brown University study places the number of direct deaths caused by the War on Terror at over 800,000 when Syria and Yemen are included, with the toll rising to 3.1 million or more once indirect deaths are taken into account.


title: Persecution of Muslims

text: The new Christchurch mosque shootings were two consecutive white supremacist terrorist attacks at Al Noor Mosque and the Linwood Islamic Centre in Christchurch, New Zealand, during Friday prayers on 15 March 2019. The attacks killed 51 people and injured 40 others.


title: Discovery Life

text: Discovery Life is an American cable television network owned by Warner Bros. Discovery. Launched on February 1, 2011 as Discovery Fit & Health, it was the result of the merger of Discovery Health Channel and FitTV (following the former's replacement in its channel space by OWN), and focuses on reality programming dealing with "life events". Its programming is drawn from the libraries of its predecessors and TLC.


title: Discovery Life

text: As of February 2015, approximately 46,696,000 American households (40.1% of households with television) received Discovery Life.


title: Discovery Life

text: On January 17, 2011, Discovery Communications announced that FitTV would be re-launched as Discovery Fit & Health on February 1, 2011. Its formation was the result of Discovery Health's replacement with the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN) at the beginning of the year; the company noted that Discovery Health's programming still had loyal viewership, even as the network was being wound down in favor of OWN. Initially, the channel's programming was similar to what was being carried by Discovery Health, but with a fitness-oriented block in the morning featuring FitTV programs.


title: Discovery Life

text: On January 15, 2015, the channel was re-branded as Discovery Life. The rebranding was meant to reflect a broadening of the network's concept targeting women aged 25–54, focusing upon life events and "the drama inherent in our everyday lives".


title: Discovery Life

text: The majority of the network's schedule consists of library programs (including series and specials) from TLC. Programs span the topics of medical emergencies ("Untold Stories of the ER", "Mystery Diagnosis"), addiction and mental illness ("Cracking Addiction", ""), pregnancy and childbirth ("A Baby Story", "Outrageous Births: Tales from the Crib"), and sex ("Sex Sent Me to the ER").


title: Reseda, Los Angeles

text: Reseda is a neighborhood in the San Fernando Valley region of Los Angeles, California. It was founded in 1912, and its central business district started developing in 1915. The neighborhood was devoted to agriculture for many years. Earthquakes struck the area in 1971 San Fernando earthquake and 1994 Northridge earthquake.


title: Reseda, Los Angeles

text: The neighborhood has 15 public and five private schools. The community includes public parks, a senior center and a regional branch library.


title: Reseda, Los Angeles

text: The area now known as Reseda was inhabited by Native Americans of the Tongva tribe who lived close to the Los Angeles River.


title: Reseda, Los Angeles

text: In 1909 the Suburban Homes Company, a syndicate led by H.J. Whitley, general manager of the Board of Control, Harry Chandler, H.G. Otis, M.H. Sherman and O.F. Brandt purchased 48,000 acres of the Farming and Milling Company for $2,500,000. Henry E. Huntington extended his Pacific Electric Railway (Red Cars) through the Valley to Owensmouth (now Canoga Park). The Suburban Home Company laid out plans for roads and the towns of Van Nuys, Reseda (Marian) and Canoga Park (Owensmouth). Los Angeles annexed the rural areas in 1915.


title: Reseda, Los Angeles

text: On land that was originally part of the San Fernando Mission, Reseda originated in 1912 as the town of Marian. It was named after Marian Otis Chandler, the daughter of "Los Angeles Times" publisher Harrison Gray Otis and wife of Harry Chandler. The name Reseda refers to the fragrant plant "Reseda odorata" (mignonette) which was commonly found in gardens of the time and is native to many areas with a Mediterranean climate.


title: Reseda, Los Angeles

text: The geographic name "Reseda" was first used for a siding on a branch of the Southern Pacific Railroad, which ran between the cities of Burbank and Chatsworth in the San Fernando Valley. In the 1920s, the name was transferred from the Southern Pacific Railroad to the Western Division of the Pacific Electric Railway "Red Cars Line", which had expedited development after the building of the Los Angeles Aqueduct. Later, it was used as the name of a stop on the Pacific Electric interurban railway along Sherman Way.


title: Reseda, Los Angeles

text: Throughout this time, the town's name of Marian remained; then in 1921, when a Fourth Class Post Office was found to be necessary, the town's name had to be changed. As the "Zelzah Tribune" reported:


title: Reseda, Los Angeles

text: The Marian territory has made application for a post office to serve that district. To avoid confusion in mail distribution it is necessary that the name of the town be changed and the people of that community have decided upon the name Reseda, and if the application is granted it will be the only post office in the United States by that name. Mrs. Turner, we are told, who has taken an active interest in the canvass and to create a sentiment for post office advantages, will possibly be the postmistress.


title: Reseda, Los Angeles

text: Ninety-two residents convened and agreed to rename the town Reseda. The new post office bearing the name was established on May 9, 1922, although local records show that the post office was dedicated on May 26. The post office officially opened on July 1, with receipts of $1.59.


title: Reseda, Los Angeles

text: The central business district began in 1915, at what is now the intersection of Reseda Boulevard and Sherman Way, with the construction of a hardware store. Soon a blacksmith shop and an auto repair garage were built nearby, followed by a grocery store and a drug store. There were no sidewalks or pavement yet; most were added between 1918 and the early 1920s. On the southwest corner of Sherman Way a wooden building housed the volunteer fire department until 1922, when the present brick building was erected, as was the Reseda Bank. The wooden building housing the fire department was then moved to the southeast side of Sherman Way, where it remained until 1933. In May 1929, the city's namesake roadway, Reseda Avenue, was renamed Reseda Boulevard by a Los Angeles City ordinance. Parts of the original 1920s and 1930s residential neighborhood remain southwest of Sherman Way and Reseda Boulevard as well as in Reseda Ranch near Grover Cleveland High School.


title: Reseda, Los Angeles

text: Reseda grew slowly, with the stock market crash of 1929 and subsequent Great Depression further slowing expansion.


title: Reseda, Los Angeles

text: During the late 1920s and 1930s, the area's reputation developed for its production of lettuce, lima beans, sugar beets, and walnuts, becoming known as one of the nation's largest producers of lettuce by the late ‘30s. The Southern Pacific Railroad trains came up the middle of Sherman Way to pick up freight cars of lettuce daily during the lettuce harvest season. Around that time, manufacturing roof tile, canning poultry products, and processing walnuts began to emerge as viable businesses as well.


title: Reseda, Los Angeles

text: Reseda remained primarily an agricultural community, with a population of 1,805 in 1930. By 1940 the population had increased to 4,147. The mid- to late 1940s saw a large increase in the numbers of single-family dwellings and the loss of numerous acres of agriculture, and the addition of First Class Postal Service. Reseda was one of the early suburbs in the San Fernando Valley. The large ranches were subdivided, and the area was developed by realtors just as World War II veterans were returning home. The familiar orange groves were successively plowed under in favor of housing. At the time, most jobs were in the Los Angeles Basin and to the south, over the Santa Monica mountains.


title: Reseda, Los Angeles

text: By 1950, Reseda had over 16,000 residents, and in the early 1950s a population explosion took place, making Reseda one of the most popular and populated Valley communities. Because of this, Reseda's merchants provided bus service to transport shoppers throughout the busy downtown Reseda areas.


title: Reseda, Los Angeles

text: In the early 1950s, the Valley's population reached 400,000. The average new Valley home, in 1949, cost $9,000. By 1955, that same house could go for nearly $15,000. Even at that price, though, a household income was about $6,000 per year, making Valley incomes higher than the national average. By 1960, the average market value of a Valley home reached $18,850.


title: Reseda, Los Angeles

text: During the 1970s, the above-average residential real estate values and income patterns began to decline. Land and housing costs shot upward, while most incomes only crept. By the beginning of the 1980s, the average price of a home in the Valley reached $110,000. According to a 2004 study by the U.S. Bureau of the Census, it has tripled that of the early 1980s.


title: Reseda, Los Angeles

text: The 1994 Northridge earthquake struck at 4:31 a.m. on January 17 and measured 6.7 on the moment magnitude scale. It remains the only large earthquake to originate directly under a major U.S. city in modern times as well as the most damaging earthquake to strike the U.S. since the San Francisco Earthquake of 1906. Its epicenter was between Arminta Street and Ingomar Street, just west of Reseda Boulevard.


title: Reseda, Los Angeles

text: This was the second time in 23 years the area had been affected by a strong earthquake. On February 9, 1971, the San Fernando earthquake (also known as the Sylmar earthquake) struck the area with a magnitude of 6.5.


title: Reseda, Los Angeles

text: Reseda is flanked on the north by Northridge, on the east by Lake Balboa, on the south by Tarzana and Encino, on the southwest by Woodland Hills, and on the west by Winnetka. Its street boundaries are Roscoe Boulevard on the north, White Oak Avenue on the east, Victory Boulevard on the south and Corbin Avenue on the west.


title: Reseda, Los Angeles

text: The 2010 U.S. census counted 74,363 residents in Reseda's 91335 ZIP code. The median age was 35.5, and the median yearly household income was $53,842.


title: Reseda, Los Angeles

text: In 2008, the "Los Angeles Times, Mapping L.A." project described Reseda as "highly diverse" ethnically within Los Angeles. The breakdown of the population using the 2000 census was 43.5% Latino; 37.2% non-Hispanic white; 11.2% Asian; 4.2% black; and 3.9% other. Mexico (33.7%) and El Salvador (12.4%) were the most common birthplaces of the 43.1% of the residents who were born abroad.


title: Reseda, Los Angeles

text: Los Angeles Fire Department Station 73 (Reseda) and Station 100 (West Van Nuys/Lake Balboa) serve the community.


title: Reseda, Los Angeles

text: Mail services are provided by the United States Postal Service's branch post office at 7320 Reseda Boulevard. On October 14, 2006, the branch office was renamed the Coach John Wooden Post Office on Wooden's 96th birthday. Wooden lived in nearby Encino and his daughter lived in Reseda.


title: Reseda, Los Angeles

text: Nineteen percent of Reseda residents 25 and older had earned a four-year degree by 2000, an average figure for both the city and the county. The proportion of residents with a high school diploma was high for the county.


title: Reseda, Los Angeles

text: In 1982, the board considered closing Garden Grove Elementary School. In April 1983, an advisory committee of the Los Angeles Unified School District recommended closing eight schools, including Garden Grove School and Newcastle Avenue School. In August 1983, the board publicly considered closing Garden Grove, which had 176 students at the time, and Newcastle Avenue, which had 314 students. In 1984, the board voted to close the Garden Grove and Newcastle Avenue schools.


title: Reseda, Los Angeles

text: A decade after the schools closed, which occurred due to thousands of parents withdrawing their children from the Los Angeles Unified School District in the wake of mandatory busing, they were reopened. With the advent of class-size reduction becoming the priority, many parents began returning their children to the city's schools, and the number of newly arrived immigrants was boosting enrollments, officials said.


title: Reseda, Los Angeles

text: The Reseda Country Club was a well-known concert venue during the Los Angeles punk rock and new wave scenes of the 1980s. At the intersection of Canby Avenue and Sherman Way, the Country Club hosted bands, including Oingo Boingo, U2, Culture Club, Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, and Roxy Music, from 1980 to 1982. The site began in the 1950s as one of the first Sav-On Drug stores in the San Fernando Valley, then became a nightclub, and remained a dancehall and music venue during the 1990s; it was also used as a boxing venue. It later became and remains a Spanish-language Christian church.


title: Reseda, Los Angeles

text: The Reseda Theater, at 18443 Sherman Way, was built in 1948 and closed in 1988. The exterior was briefly seen at the beginning of the film "Boogie Nights".


title: Slayyyter

text: Catherine Grace Garner (born September 17, 1996), known professionally as Slayyyter, is an American pop singer and songwriter from St. Louis, Missouri, currently based in Los Angeles. She started her career independently through SoundCloud. Her single "Mine" reached number 38 on the iTunes pop chart. The song was included on her self-titled debut mixtape which was released in 2019. Her debut studio album, "Troubled Paradise", was released in June 2021 under Fader.


title: Slayyyter

text: Slayyyter is from Kirkwood, Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis, where she has "kind of lived [her] whole life". She went to private grade schools, and later continued her education in public school, where she was "offered great music classes for the first time."


title: Slayyyter

text: Slayyyter spent a year in college, studying at the University of Missouri. This time was an "expensive experiment" in which she started her career as a musician, writing "'80s lo-fi pop" that she herself produced and edited, but never published. She later dropped out and committed fully to her music career. Her most frequent collaborator, Ayesha Erotica, is from Southern California. The artists met through Twitter, which is where Slayyyter first developed a following. The artist credits Stan Twitter for introducing her to Ayesha.


title: Slayyyter

text: Apart from Slayyyter's debut single "BFF", the singles "Ghost", "Candy", "Alone", "Hello Kitty" (produced by Boy Sim but written/sold by Ayesha), and "All I Want for XXXmas" also sprung from the collaboration between the two artists. Slayyyter's 2018 single releases included "I'm High" (produced by GhostHaus) and "Platform Shoes" (produced by Boy Sim). In 2018, she and Ayesha Erotica were doxxed by a SoundCloud artist named Quinn Fatal, which caused Erotica to quit music entirely. As of 2022, Erotica remains in retirement.


title: Slayyyter

text: After a 14-second snippet of the song gathered attention on Twitter with over 200,000 views, "Mine" was released on Valentine's Day and in less than 24 hours reached number 38 on the iTunes pop chart in the United States.


title: Slayyyter

text: In June 2019, Slayyyter embarked on her sold-out debut tour, entitled "The Mini Tour". The tour began on June 24 in New York City, and concluded on July 27 in her hometown of St. Louis.


title: Slayyyter

text: On September 17, 2019, Slayyyter released her self-titled mixtape, "Slayyyter", on iTunes. The mixtape peaked at #4 on the US iTunes Pop Chart, and #14 on the US iTunes Albums Chart. She released a remix of Britney Spears' "Gimme More" to her SoundCloud in April 2020. In October and November, she released the singles "Self Destruct" and "Throatzillaaa", respectively.


title: Slayyyter

text: Slayyyter's debut studio album, "Troubled Paradise", was released on June 11, 2021 through Fader Label. The title track and its music video were released on January 22. On January 26, Heidi Montag confirmed via Twitter that she would be collaborating with Slayyyter. On February 26, she released the song "Clouds".


title: Slayyyter

text: On June 11, 2021 her debut album "Troubled Paradise" was released"." All visualizers & A music video for “"Dog House"”, was released. VEVO Live performances for Letters & Troubled Paradise were released.


title: Slayyyter

text: On November 5, 2021, she released “Stupid Boy”, a pop-dance song with Big Freedia. After that, she released Inferno Euphoria, an EP of remixes from the Troubled Paradise Album. She has also released multiple features for other artists’ catalogues.


title: Slayyyter

text: In early June 2022, she played a song on tour titled “Hollywood”. She played 2 and a half minutes of the song. Fans speculate that this will be the first single off her Second Studio Album. Fans also think that the song will come out in August.


title: Slayyyter

text: On July 24, 2022, Slayyyter tweeted, “album almost done with a lipstick emoji”. On July 29, 2022, she tweeted “one sec im finishing it all!! with a clock & hand hearts emoji“ after replying to a fan asking for a status on the new music.


title: Slayyyter

text: On October 3, 2022, Swedish singer Tove Lo confirmed via Instagram that Slayyyter will be the opening act on the North American leg of her Dirt Femme Tour.


title: Slayyyter

text: Her music style has been likened to Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan, and Paris Hilton, as well as sounding somewhat "like Charli XCX on whippets". Slayyyter cites Spears, Fergie, Timbaland, Nelly Furtado, Lady Gaga, Taylor Swift, Justin Timberlake, Madonna, Heidi Montag, Janet Jackson, and Whitney Houston as some of the artists she listened to the most growing up and who ultimately influenced her musical style. Slayyyter's visual style has been defined as "distinct MySpace-era". She frequently collaborates with British-based artist Glitchmood for single artworks.


title: Slayyyter

text: Slayyyter previously tried to keep her real name private, going by the pseudonym Catherine Slater, which has been referenced in media as her real name, in an attempt to keep fans and press away from her family.


title: Slayyyter

text: In 2019, it was revealed that Slayyyter made a series of tweets in 2012 and 2013 containing racial slurs. She later apologized for the tweets, saying that "I have grown and changed so much in the past eight years and the person I am today is not who I was at age 15. Eight years is a lot of time to reflect, grow, mature and better yourself as a human being. And I know that being young or uneducated about the matter also does not excuse any of these things, but please know that people do change." As a result, Slayyyter committed funds resulting from her CD and vinyl sales to the Sylvia Rivera Law Project and Black Trans Travel Fund, two charities benefitting black trans youth.


title: The Ringer (website)

text: The Ringer is a sports and pop culture website and podcast network, founded by sportswriter Bill Simmons in 2016 and owned by Spotify since 2020.


title: The Ringer (website)

text: The Ringer was launched in March 2016 by Bill Simmons, who brought along several editors who had previously worked with him on "Grantland", an ESPN-owned blog he operated from 2011 to 2015. At launch, the Ringer had a staff of 43 and focused primarily on sports and pop culture as content areas, with a few writers also working on technology and politics. HBO, the network on which Simmons hosted his weekly television program "Any Given Wednesday" one season in 2016, was an initial investor in the website.


title: The Ringer (website)

text: The website was previously published on the Medium platform. In May 2017, The Ringer entered into an advertising and technology partnership with Vox Media (owner of "SB Nation"), under which Vox would handle advertising sales, and give the site access to its in-house publishing platform.


title: The Ringer (website)

text: Former Grantland writers who have since written for or worked for The Ringer include Mark Titus, Shea Serrano, Ben Lindbergh, Robert Mays, Sean Fennessey, Chris Ryan, Mallory Rubin, Juliet Litman, Craig Gaines, Bryan Curtis, David Shoemaker, Ryan O'Hanlon, Danny Chau, Jason Concepcion, Riley McAtee, Joe Fuentes, and Tate Frazier.


title: The Ringer (website)

text: In May 2018, The Ringer published a story by Ben Detrick about Bryan Colangelo, then the GM of the Philadelphia 76ers, and his apparent use of various Twitter accounts to criticize players and defend himself. This led to Colangelo's resignation on June 7, 2018.


title: The Ringer (website)

text: In August 2019, The Ringers editorial staff voted to unionize with the Writers Guild of America, East. The union was voluntarily recognized by the Ringer's management four days later.


title: The Ringer (website)

text: On February 5, 2020, subscription music streaming service Spotify announced it was acquiring The Ringer for an estimated $195 million and an additional $50 million in performance-driven incentives. Spotify chief content officer Dawn Ostroff stated that Simmons was "one of the brightest minds in the game and he has successfully innovated as a writer and content creator across mediums and platforms."


title: The Ringer (website)

text: Like the content on the website, the Ringer's podcast network covers both sports and pop culture. The flagship podcast, "The Bill Simmons Podcast", is an interview show hosted by Simmons, featuring other Ringer writers and podcast hosts as well as athletes, filmmakers, comedians, and pop culture figures. Popular podcast hosts include former "Daily Show" correspondent Larry Wilmore (host of "Black on the Air") and James Beard Award-winning chef David Chang ("The Dave Chang Show").


title: The Ringer (website)

text: Former podcasts include "Keepin' it 1600", a politics podcast featuring former Obama speechwriters Jon Favreau, Dan Pfeiffer, and others. After leaving the Ringer, the hosts of "Keepin' it 1600" created a new podcast called "Pod Save America" as part of their own new media company, Crooked Media.


title: The Ringer (website)

text: In 2017, The Ringer began the video podcast series "Talk the Thrones", an aftershow for "Game of Thrones" hosted by Ringer staff writers and live-streamed on Twitter. "Talk the Thrones" is a continuation of "After the Thrones", which aired on HBO.


title: The Ringer (website)

text: The Ringer premiered "Binge Mode" in 2017, a podcast that has recapped every episode of "Game of Thrones" and every book in the "Harry Potter" series.


title: The Ringer (website)

text: As of April 30, 2018, The Ringer's world-wide Alexa ranking is 2,077 with over 15 million views per month. Of those, 6,150,000 are unique visitors.


title: The Ringer (website)

text: The list of podcasts offered as of August 2021. The Ringer podcast network features a slate of more than 30 podcasts. Since being acquired by Spotify in February 2020, The Ringer has continued to publish its podcasts across platforms while promoting additional shows that are exclusive to Spotify.


title: Azurite

text: Azurite is a soft, deep-blue copper mineral produced by weathering of copper ore deposits. During the early 19th century, it was also known as chessylite, after the type locality at Chessy-les-Mines near Lyon, France. The mineral, a basic carbonate with the chemical formula Cu(CO)(OH), has been known since ancient times, and was mentioned in Pliny the Elder's "Natural History" under the Greek name (κυανός: "deep blue," root of English "cyan") and the Latin name "caeruleum". Since antiquity, azurite's exceptionally deep and clear blue has been associated with low-humidity desert and winter skies. The modern English name of the mineral reflects this association, since both "azurite" and "azure" are derived via Arabic from the Persian (لاژورد), an area known for its deposits of another deep-blue stone, lapis lazuli ("stone of azure").


title: Azurite

text: Azurite has the formula Cu(CO)(OH), with the copper(II) cations linked to two different anions, carbonate and hydroxide. It is one of two relatively common basic copper(II) carbonate minerals, the other being bright green malachite. Aurichalcite is a rare basic carbonate of copper and zinc. Simple copper carbonate (CuCO) is not known to exist in nature, due to the high affinity of the ion for the hydroxide anion .


title: Azurite

text: Azurite crystallizes in the monoclinic system. Large crystals are dark blue, often prismatic. Azurite specimens can be massive to nodular or can occur as drusy crystals lining a cavity.


title: Azurite

text: Azurite is soft, with a Mohs hardness of only 3.5 to 4. The specific gravity of azurite is 3.77. Azurite is destroyed by heat, losing carbon dioxide and water to form black, copper(II) oxide powder. Characteristic of a carbonate, specimens effervesce upon treatment with hydrochloric acid. The combination of deep blue color and effervescence when moistened with hydrochloric acid are identifying characteristics of the mineral.


title: Azurite

text: The optical properties (color, intensity) of minerals such as azurite and malachite are characteristic of copper(II). Many coordination complexes of copper(II) exhibit similar colors. According to crystal field theory, the color results from low energy d-d transitions associated with the d metal center.


title: Azurite

text: Azurite is unstable in open air compared to malachite, and often is pseudomorphically replaced by malachite. This weathering process involves the replacement of some of the carbon dioxide (CO) units with water (HO), changing the carbonate:hydroxide ratio of azurite from 1:1 to the 1:2 ratio of malachite:


title: Azurite

text: From the above equation, the conversion of azurite into malachite is attributable to the low partial pressure of carbon dioxide in air.


title: Azurite

text: Azurite is quite stable under ordinary storage conditions, so that specimens retain their deep blue color for long periods of time.


title: Azurite

text: Azurite is found in the same geologic settings as its sister mineral, malachite, though it is usually less abundant. Both minerals occur widely as supergene copper minerals, formed in the oxidized zone of copper ore deposits. Here they are associated with cuprite, native copper, and various iron oxide minerals.


title: Azurite

text: Fine specimens can be found at many locations. Among the best specimens are found at Bisbee, Arizona, and nearby locations, and have included clusters of crystals several inches long and spherical aggregates and rosettes up to in diameter. Similar rosettes are found at Chessy, Rhône, France. The best crystals, up to in length, are found at Tsumeb, Namibia. Other notable occurrences are in Utah; Mexico; the Ural and Altai Mountains; Sardinia; Laurion, Greece; Wallaroo, South Australia; and Broken Hill.


title: Azurite

text: Azurite is unstable in air. However it was used as a blue pigment in antiquity. Azurite is naturally occurring in Sinai and the Eastern Desert of Egypt. It was reported by F. C. J. Spurrell (1895) in the following examples; a shell used as a pallet in a Fourth Dynasty (2613 to 2494 BCE) context in Meidum, a cloth over the face of a Fifth Dynasty (2494 to 2345 BCE) mummy also at Meidum and a number of Eighteenth Dynasty (1543–1292 BCE) wall paintings. Depending on the degree of fineness to which it was ground, and its basic content of copper carbonate, it gave a wide range of blues. It has been known as "mountain blue" or "Armenian stone", in addition it was formerly known as Azurro Della Magna (from Italian). When mixed with oil it turns slightly green. When mixed with egg yolk it turns green-grey. It is also known by the names "blue bice" and "blue verditer", though "verditer" usually refers to a pigment made by chemical process. Older examples of azurite pigment may show a more greenish tint due to weathering into malachite. Much azurite was mislabeled "lapis lazuli", a term applied to many blue pigments. As chemical analysis of paintings from the Middle Ages improves, azurite is being recognized as a major source of the blues used by medieval painters. Lapis lazuli (the pigment ultramarine) was chiefly supplied from Afghanistan during the Middle Ages, whereas azurite was a common mineral in Europe at the time. Sizable deposits were found near Lyons, France. It was mined since the 12th century in Saxony, in the silver mines located there.


title: Azurite

text: Heating can be used to distinguish azurite from purified natural ultramarine blue, a more expensive but more stable blue pigment, as described by Cennino D'Andrea Cennini. Ultramarine withstands heat, whereas azurite converts to black copper oxide. However, gentle heating of azurite produces a deep blue pigment used in Japanese painting techniques.


title: Azurite

text: Azurite pigment can be synthesized by precipitating copper(II) hydroxide from a solution of copper(II) chloride with lime (calcium hydroxide) and treating the precipitate with a concentrated solution of potassium carbonate and lime. This pigment is likely to contain traces of basic copper(II) chlorides.


title: Azurite

text: Azurite is used occasionally as beads and as jewelry, and also as an ornamental stone. However, its softness and tendency to lose its deep blue color as it weathers leaves it with less uses. Heating destroys azurite easily, so all mounting of azurite specimens must be done at room temperature.


title: Azurite

text: The intense color of azurite makes it a popular collector's stone. The notion that specimens must be carefully protected from bright light, heat, and open air to retain their intensity of color over time may be an urban legend. Paul E. Desautels, former curator of gems and minerals at the Smithsonian Institution, has written that azurite is stable under ordinary storage conditions.


title: Azurite

text: While not a major ore of copper itself, the presence of azurite is a good surface indicator of the presence of weathered copper sulfide ores. It is usually found in association with the chemically similar malachite, producing a striking color combination of deep blue and bright green that is strongly indicative of the presence of copper ores.


title: Azurite

text: Azurite was known in the pre-classical ancient world. It was used in ancient Egypt as a pigment, obtained from mines in Sinai. Ancient Mesopotamian writers report the use of a special mortar and pestle for grinding it. It does not appear to have been used in ancient Roman wall paintings but Roman writers certainly knew about its use as a pigment. The fusing of glass and azurite was developed in ancient Mesopotamia.


title: Azurite

text: The use of azurite and malachite as copper ore indicators led indirectly to the name of the element nickel in the English language. Nickeline, a principal ore of nickel that is also known as niccolite, weathers at the surface into a green mineral (annabergite) that resembles malachite. This resemblance resulted in occasional attempts to smelt nickeline in the belief that it was copper ore, but such attempts always ended in failure due to high smelting temperatures needed to reduce nickel. In Germany this deceptive mineral came to be known as "kupfernickel", literally "copper demon." The Swedish alchemist Baron Axel Fredrik Cronstedt (who had been trained by Georg Brandt, the discoverer of the nickel-like metal cobalt) realized that there was probably a new metal hiding within the kupfernickel ore, and in 1751 he succeeded in smelting kupfernickel to produce a previously unknown (except in certain meteorites) silvery white, iron-like metal. Logically, Cronstedt named his new metal after the "nickel" part of "kupfernickel".


title: Soyuz 1

text: Soyuz 1 (, "Union 1") was a crewed spaceflight of the Soviet space program. Launched into orbit on 23 April 1967 carrying cosmonaut colonel Vladimir Komarov, Soyuz 1 was the first crewed flight of the Soyuz spacecraft. The flight was plagued with technical issues, and Komarov was killed when the descent module crashed into the ground due to a parachute failure. This was the first in-flight fatality in the history of spaceflight.


title: Soyuz 1

text: The original mission plan was complex, involving a rendezvous with Soyuz 2 and an exchange of crew members before returning to Earth. However, the launch of Soyuz 2 was called off due to thunderstorms.


title: Soyuz 1

text: Soyuz 1 was the first crewed flight of the first-generation Soyuz 7K-OK spacecraft and Soyuz rocket, designed as part of the Soviet lunar program. It was the first Soviet crewed spaceflight in over two years, and the first Soviet crewed flight following the death of the Chief Designer of the space program Sergei Korolev. Komarov was launched on Soyuz 1 despite failures of the previous uncrewed tests of the 7K-OK, Kosmos 133 and Kosmos 140. A third attempted test flight was a launch failure; a launch abort triggered a malfunction of the launch escape system, causing the rocket to explode on the pad. The escape system successfully pulled the spacecraft to safety.


title: Soyuz 1

text: According to interviews with Venyamin Russayev, a former KGB agent, prior to launch, Soyuz 1 engineers are said to have reported 203 design faults to party leaders, but their concerns "were overruled by political pressures for a series of space feats to mark the anniversary of Lenin's birthday". Russayev also claims that Yuri Gagarin was the backup pilot for Soyuz 1, and was aware of the design problems and the pressures from the Politburo to proceed with the flight. He attempted to "bump" Komarov from the mission, knowing that the Soviet leadership would not risk a national hero on the flight. At the same time, Komarov refused to pass on the mission, even though he believed it to be doomed. He explained that he could not risk Gagarin's life. Russayev's account, though not disprovable, has been seen as implausible and exaggerated by most historians of the Soviet space program.


title: Soyuz 1

text: Mission planners intended to launch a second Soyuz flight the next day carrying cosmonauts Valery Bykovsky, Yevgeny Khrunov, and Aleksei Yeliseyev, with Khrunov and Yeliseyev scheduled to do an EVA over to Soyuz 1.


title: Soyuz 1

text: Soyuz 1 was launched on 23 April 1967 at 00:32 GMT from Baikonur Cosmodrome carrying Komarov, the first Soviet cosmonaut to fly in space twice. Problems began shortly after launch when one solar panel failed to unfold, leading to a shortage of power for the spacecraft's systems. Further problems with the orientation detectors complicated maneuvering the craft. By orbit 13, the automatic stabilisation system was completely dead, and the manual system was only partially effective.


title: Soyuz 1

text: The crew of Soyuz 2 modified their mission goals, preparing themselves for a launch that would include fixing the solar panel of Soyuz 1. However, that night, thunderstorms at Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan affected the booster's electrical system, causing the mission to be called off.


title: Soyuz 1

text: As a result of Komarov's report during the 13th orbit, the flight director decided to abort the mission. After 18 orbits, Soyuz 1 fired its retrorockets and reentered the Earth's atmosphere. Despite the technical difficulties up to that point, Komarov might still have landed safely. To slow the descent, first the drogue parachute was deployed, followed by the main parachute. However, due to a defect, the main parachute did not unfold; the exact reason for the main parachute malfunction is disputed.


title: Soyuz 1

text: Komarov then activated the manually deployed reserve chute, but it became tangled with the drogue chute, which did not release as intended. As a result, the Soyuz descent module fell to Earth in Orenburg Oblast almost entirely unimpeded, at about . A rescue helicopter spotted the descent module lying on its side with the parachute spread across the ground on fire. The retrorockets then started firing which concerned the rescuers since they were supposed to activate a few moments prior to touchdown. By the time they landed and approached, the descent module was in flames with black smoke filling the air and streams of molten metal dripping from the exterior. The entire base of the capsule burned through. By this point, it was obvious that Komarov had not survived, but there was no code signal for a cosmonaut's death, so the rescuers fired a signal flare calling for medical assistance. Another group of rescuers in an aircraft then arrived and attempted to extinguish the blazing spacecraft with portable fire extinguishers. This proved insufficient and they instead began using shovels to throw dirt onto it. The descent module then completely disintegrated, leaving only a pile of debris topped by the entry hatch. When the fire at last ended, the rescuers were able to dig through the rubble to find Komarov strapped into the center couch, his body had turned into charred clothing and flesh. Doctors pronounced the cause of death to be from multiple blunt-force injuries. The body was transported to Moscow for an official autopsy in a military hospital where the cause of death was verified to match the field doctors' conclusions.


title: Soyuz 1

text: The Soyuz 1 crash site coordinates are , which is west of Karabutak, Orenburg oblast, in Soviet Union. This is about east-southeast of Orenburg. There is a memorial monument at the site in the form of a black column with a bust of Komarov at the top, in a small park on the roadside.


title: Soyuz 1

text: Eight years after Komarov's death, a story began circulating that Komarov cursed the engineers and flight staff, and spoke to his wife as he descended, and these transmissions were received by an NSA listening station near Istanbul. Historians such as Asif Azam Siddiqi regard this to be untrue.


title: Soyuz 1

text: Komarov was posthumously named a Hero of the Soviet Union for the second time. He was given a state funeral, and his ashes were interred in the Kremlin Wall Necropolis at Red Square, Moscow.


title: Soyuz 1

text: The Soyuz 1 tragedy delayed the launch of Soyuz 2 and Soyuz 3 until 25 October 1968. This 18-month gap, with the addition of the explosion of an uncrewed N-1 rocket on 3 July 1969, scuttled Soviet plans of landing a cosmonaut on the Moon. The original mission of Soyuz 1 and Soyuz 2 was ultimately achieved by Soyuz 4 and Soyuz 5.


title: Soyuz 1

text: A much improved Soyuz program emerged from this eighteen-month delay, mirroring the improvements made in the Apollo program after the Apollo 1 tragedy. Although it failed to reach the Moon, the Soyuz went on to be repurposed from the centerpiece of the Zond lunar program to the people-carrier of the Salyut space station program, the Mir space station, and the International Space Station. Although it suffered another tragedy with the Soyuz 11 accident in 1971, and went through several incidents with non-fatal launch aborts and landing mishaps, it has become one of the longest-lived and most dependable crewed spacecraft yet designed.


title: Soyuz 1

text: Komarov is commemorated in two memorials left on the lunar surface: one left at Tranquility Base by Apollo 11, and the "Fallen Astronaut" statue and plaque left by Apollo 15.


title: Mousterian

text: The Mousterian (or Mode III) is an archaeological industry of stone tools, associated primarily with the Neanderthals in Europe, and to the earliest anatomically modern humans in North Africa and West Asia. The Mousterian largely defines the latter part of the Middle Paleolithic, the middle of the West Eurasian Old Stone Age. It lasted roughly from 160,000 to 40,000 BP. If its predecessor, known as Levallois or Levallois-Mousterian, is included, the range is extended to as early as  300,000–200,000 BP. The main following period is the Aurignacian (c. 43,000–28,000 BP) of "Homo sapiens".


title: Mousterian

text: The culture was named after the type site of Le Moustier, three superimposed rock shelters in the Dordogne region of France. Similar flintwork has been found all over unglaciated Europe and also the Near East and North Africa. Handaxes, racloirs, and points constitute the industry; sometimes a Levallois technique or another prepared-core technique was employed in making the flint flakes.


title: Mousterian

text: The European Mousterian is the product of Neanderthals. It existed roughly from 160,000 to 40,000 BP.


title: Mousterian

text: Some assemblages, namely those from Pech de l'Aze, include exceptionally small points prepared using the Levallois technique among other prepared core types, causing some researchers to suggest that these flakes take advantage of greater grip strength possessed by Neanderthals.


title: Mousterian

text: In North Africa and the Near East, Mousterian tools were produced by anatomically modern humans. In the Eastern Mediterranean, for example, assemblages produced by Neanderthals are indistinguishable from those made by Qafzeh type modern humans. The Mousterian industry in North Africa is estimated to be 315,000 years old.


title: Mousterian

text: Possible variants are Denticulate, Charentian (Ferrassie & Quina) named after the Charente region, Typical, and the Mousterian Traditional Acheulian (MTA) Type-A and Type-B. The industry continued alongside the new Châtelperronian industry during the 45,000-40,000 BP period.


title: Bruce Chatwin

text: Charles Bruce Chatwin (13 May 194018 January 1989) was an English travel writer, novelist and journalist. His first book, "In Patagonia" (1977), established Chatwin as a travel writer, although he considered himself instead a storyteller, interested in bringing to light unusual tales. He won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for his novel "On the Black Hill" (1982), while his novel "Utz" (1988) was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. In 2008 "The Times" ranked Chatwin as number 46 on their list of "50 Greatest British Writers Since 1945."


title: Bruce Chatwin

text: Chatwin was born in Sheffield. After completing his secondary education at Marlborough College, he went to work at the age of 18 at Sotheby's in London, where he gained an extensive knowledge of art and eventually ran the auction house's Antiquities and Impressionist Art departments. In 1966 he left Sotheby's to read archaeology at the University of Edinburgh, but he abandoned his studies after two years to pursue a career as a writer.


title: Bruce Chatwin

text: "The Sunday Times Magazine" hired Chatwin in 1972. He travelled the world for work and interviewed figures such as the politicians Indira Gandhi and André Malraux. He left the magazine in 1974 to visit Patagonia, Argentina; a trip that inspired his first book. He wrote five other books, including "The Songlines" (1987), about Australia, which was a bestseller. His work is credited with reviving the genre of travel writing, and his works influenced other writers such as William Dalrymple, Claudio Magris, Philip Marsden, Luis Sepúlveda, Rich Cohen, and Rory Stewart.


title: Bruce Chatwin

text: Chatwin was born on 13 May 1940 at the Shearwood Road Nursing Home in Sheffield, England, to Charles Leslie Chatwin, a Birmingham solicitor and Royal Naval Reserve officer during World War II, and Margharita (née Turnell), daughter of a Sheffield knife manufacturer's clerk. She was born in Sheffield and worked for the local Conservative party prior to her marriage. The Chatwin family were well known in Birmingham, with Charles Chatwin's grandfather, Julius Alfred Chatwin, an eminent architect.


title: Bruce Chatwin

text: Chatwin's early years were spent moving regularly with his mother while his father was at sea. Prior to his birth, Chatwin's parents had lived at Barnt Green, Worcestershire, but Margharita moved to her parents' house in Dronfield, near Sheffield, shortly before giving birth. Mother and son remained there for a few weeks. Worried about The Blitz, Margharita sought a safer place to stay. She took her son with her as they travelled to stay with various relatives during the war. They would remain in one place until Margharita decided to move, either because of concern for their safety, or because of friction among family members. Later in life Chatwin recalled of the war, "Home, if we had one, was a solid black suitcase called the Rev-Robe, in which there was a corner for my clothes and my Mickey Mouse gas mask."


title: Bruce Chatwin

text: During the war Chatwin and his mother stayed at the home of his paternal grandparents, who had a curiosity cabinet that fascinated him. Among the items it contained was a "piece of brontosaurus" (actually a mylodon, a giant sloth), which had been sent to Chatwin's grandmother by her cousin Charles Milward. Travelling in Patagonia, Milward had discovered the remains of a giant sloth, which he later sold to the British Museum. He sent his cousin a piece of the animal's skin, and members of the family mistakenly referred to it as a "piece of brontosaurus". The skin was later lost, but it inspired Chatwin decades later to visit and write about Patagonia.


title: Bruce Chatwin

text: After the war, Chatwin lived with his parents and younger brother Hugh (19442012) in West Heath in Birmingham, where his father had a law practice. At the age of seven he was sent to boarding school at Old Hall School in Shropshire, and then Marlborough College, in Wiltshire. An unexceptional student, Chatwin garnered attention from his performances in school plays. While at Marlborough, Chatwin attained A-levels in Latin, Greek, and Ancient History.


title: Bruce Chatwin

text: Chatwin had hoped to read Classics at Merton College, Oxford, but the end of National Service in the United Kingdom meant there was more competition for university places. He was forced to consider other options. His parents discouraged the ideas he offered: an acting career or work in the Colonial Service in Kenya. Instead, Chatwin's father asked one of his clients for a letter of introduction to the auction house Sotheby's. An interview was arranged, and Chatwin secured a job there.


title: Bruce Chatwin

text: In 1958, Chatwin moved to London to begin work as a porter in the Works of Art department at Sotheby's. Chatwin was ill-suited for this job, which included dusting objects that had been kept in storage. Sotheby's moved him to a junior cataloguer position, working in both the Antiquities and Impressionist Art departments. This position enabled him to develop his eye for art, and he quickly became known for his ability to discern forgeries. His work as a cataloguer also taught him to describe objects in a concise manner and required him to research these objects. Chatwin advanced to become Sotheby's expert on Antiquities and Impressionist art and would later run both departments. Many of Chatwin's colleagues thought he would eventually become chairman of the auction house.


title: Bruce Chatwin

text: During this period Chatwin travelled extensively for his job and also for adventure. Travel offered him a relief from the British class system, which he found stifling. An admirer of Robert Byron and his book, "The Road to Oxiana", he travelled twice to Afghanistan. He also used these trips to visit markets and shops, where he would buy antiques that he would resell at a profit in order to supplement his income from Sotheby's. He became friends with artists, art collectors and dealers. One friend, Howard Hodgkin, painted Chatwin in "The Japanese Screen" (1962). Chatwin said he was the "acid green smear on the left."


title: Bruce Chatwin

text: Chatwin was ambivalent about his sexual orientation and had affairs with both men and women during this period of his life. One of his girlfriends, Elizabeth Chanler, an American and a descendant of John Jacob Astor, was a secretary at Sotheby's. Chanler had earned a degree in history from Radcliffe College and worked at Sotheby's New York offices for two years before transferring to their London office in 1961. Her love of travel and independent nature appealed to Chatwin.


title: Bruce Chatwin

text: In the mid-1960s Chatwin grew unhappy at Sotheby's. There were various reasons for his disenchantment. Both women and men found Chatwin attractive, and Peter Wilson, then chairman of Sotheby's, used this appeal to the auction house's advantage when using Chatwin to try to persuade wealthy individuals to sell their art collections. Chatwin became increasingly uncomfortable with the situation. Later in life Chatwin also spoke of having become "burnt out" and said, "In the end I felt I might just as well be working for a rather superior funeral parlour. One's whole life seemed to be spent valuing for probate the apartment of somebody recently dead."


title: Bruce Chatwin

text: In late 1964 he began to suffer from problems with his sight, which he attributed to the close analysis of art work entailed by his job. He consulted eye specialist Patrick Trevor-Roper, who diagnosed a latent squint and recommended that Chatwin take a six-month break from his work at Sotheby's. Trevor-Roper had been involved in the design of an eye hospital in Addis Ababa, and suggested Chatwin visit East Africa. In February 1965, Chatwin left for Sudan. It was on this trip that Chatwin first encountered a nomadic tribe; their way of life intrigued him. "My nomadic guide," he wrote, "carried a sword, a purse and a pot of scented goat's grease for anointing his hair. He made me feel overburdened and inadequate..." Chatwin would remain fascinated by nomads for the rest of his life.


title: Bruce Chatwin

text: Chatwin returned to Sotheby's, and to the surprise of his friends, proposed marriage to Elizabeth Chanler. They married on 21 August 1965. Chatwin was bisexual throughout their married life, a circumstance Elizabeth knew and accepted. Chatwin had hoped he would "grow out of" his homosexual behaviour and have a successful marriage like his parents. During their marriage, Chatwin had many affairs, mostly with men. Some who were aware of Chatwin's affairs with men assumed the Chatwins had a chaste marriage, but according to Nicholas Shakespeare, the author's biographer, this was not true. Both Chatwin and his wife had hoped to have children, but they remained childless.


title: Bruce Chatwin

text: In April 1966, at the age of 26, Chatwin was promoted to a director of Sotheby's, a position to which he had aspired. To his disappointment, he was made a junior director and lacked voting rights on the board. This disappointment, along with boredom and increasing discomfort over potentially illegal side deals taking place at Sotheby's, including the sale of objects from the Pitt-Rivers museum collection, led Chatwin to resign from his Sotheby's post in June 1966.


title: Bruce Chatwin

text: Chatwin enrolled in October 1966 at the University of Edinburgh to study Archaeology. He had regretted not attending Oxford and had been contemplating going to university for a few years. A visit in December 1965 to the Hermitage in Leningrad sparked his interest in the field of archaeology. Despite winning the Wardrop Prize for the best first year's work, he found the rigour of academic archaeology tiresome, and he left after two years without taking a degree.


title: Bruce Chatwin

text: Following his departure from Edinburgh, Chatwin decided to pursue a career as a writer, successfully pitching a book proposal on nomads to Tom Maschler, publisher at Jonathan Cape. Chatwin tentatively titled the book "The Nomadic Alternative" and sought to answer the question "Why do men wander rather than stand still?" Chatwin delivered the manuscript in 1972, and Maschler declined to publish it, calling it a "chore to read".


title: Bruce Chatwin

text: Between 1969 and 1972, as he was working on "The Nomadic Alternative", Chatwin travelled extensively and pursued other endeavours in an attempt to establish a creative career. He co-curated an exhibit on "Nomadic Art of the Asian Steppes," which opened at Asia House Gallery in New York City in 1970. He considered publishing an account of his 1969 trip to Afghanistan with Peter Levi. Levi published his own book about it, "The Light Garden of the Angel King: Journeys in Afghanistan" (1972). Chatwin contributed two articles on nomads to "Vogue" and another article to "History Today".


title: Bruce Chatwin

text: In the early 1970s Chatwin had an affair with James Ivory, a film director. He pitched stories to him for possible films, which Ivory did not take seriously. In 1972 Chatwin tried his hand at film-making and travelled to Niger to make a documentary about nomads. The film was lost while Chatwin was trying to sell it to European television companies.


title: Bruce Chatwin

text: Chatwin also took photographs of his journeys and attempted to sell photographs from a trip to Mauritania to "The Sunday Times Magazine." While "The Times" did not accept those photographs for publication, it did offer Chatwin a job.


title: Bruce Chatwin

text: In 1972, "The Sunday Times Magazine" hired Chatwin as an adviser on art and architecture. Initially his role was to suggest story ideas and put together features such as "One Million Years of Art," which ran in several issues during the summer of 1973. His editor, Francis Wyndham, encouraged him to write, which allowed him to develop his narrative skills. Chatwin travelled on many international assignments, writing on such subjects as Algerian migrant workers and the Great Wall of China, and interviewing such diverse people as André Malraux, Maria Reiche, and Madeleine Vionnet.


title: Bruce Chatwin

text: In 1972, Chatwin interviewed the 93-year-old architect and designer Eileen Gray in her Paris salon, where he noticed a map she had painted of the area of South America called Patagonia. "I've always wanted to go there," Chatwin told her. "So have I," she replied, "Go there for me."


title: Bruce Chatwin

text: Two years later, in November 1974, Chatwin flew out to Lima in Peru, and reached Patagonia, Argentina; a month later. He would later claim that he sent a telegram to Wyndham merely stating: "Have gone to Patagonia." Actually he sent a letter: "I am doing a story there for myself, something I have always wanted to write up." This marked the end of Chatwin's role as a regular writer for "The Sunday Times Magazine", although in subsequent years he contributed occasional pieces, including a profile of Indira Gandhi.


title: Bruce Chatwin

text: Chatwin spent six months in Patagonia, travelling around gathering stories of people who came from elsewhere and settled there. This trip resulted in the book "In Patagonia" (1977). He used his quest for his own "piece of brontosaurus" (the one from his grandparents' cabinet had been thrown away years earlier) to frame the story of his trip. Chatwin described "In Patagonia" as "the narrative of an actual journey and a symbolic one... It is supposed to fall into the category or be a spoof of Wonder Voyage: the narrator goes to a far country in search of a strange animal: on his way he lands in strange situations, people or other books tell him strange stories which add up to form a message."


title: Bruce Chatwin

text: "In Patagonia" contains fifteen black and white photographs by Chatwin. According to Susannah Clapp, who edited the book, "Rebecca West amused Chatwin by telling him that these were so good they rendered superfluous the entire text of the book."


title: Bruce Chatwin

text: This work established Chatwin's reputation as a travel writer. One of his biographers, Nicholas Murray, called "In Patagonia" "one of the most strikingly original post-war English travel books" and said that it revitalised the genre of travel writing. However, residents in the region contradicted the account of events depicted in Chatwin's book. It was the first time in his career, but not the last, that conversations and characters which Chatwin presented as fact were later alleged to be fiction.


title: Bruce Chatwin

text: For "In Patagonia" Chatwin received the Hawthornden Prize and the E. M. Forster Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Graham Greene, Patrick Leigh Fermor, and Paul Theroux praised the book. As a result of the success of "In Patagonia", Chatwin's circle of friends expanded to include people like Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Susan Sontag, and Jasper Johns.


title: Bruce Chatwin

text: Upon his return from Patagonia, Chatwin discovered a change in leadership at "The Sunday Times Magazine" and his retainer was discontinued. Chatwin intended his next project to be a biography of Francisco Félix de Sousa, a 19th-century slave trader born in Brazil, who became the Viceroy of Ouidah in Dahomey. Chatwin had first heard of de Sousa during a visit to Dahomey in 1972. He returned to the country, by then renamed the People's Republic of Benin, in December 1976 to conduct research. In January 1977, during the 1977 Benin coup d'état attempt, Chatwin was accused of being a mercenary and detained for three days. Chatwin later wrote about this experience in "A Coup – A Story," which was published in "Granta" and included in "What Am I Doing Here?" (1989).


title: Bruce Chatwin

text: Following his arrest and release, Chatwin left Benin and went to Brazil to continue his research on de Sousa. Frustrated by the lack of documented information on de Sousa, Chatwin chose instead to write a fictionalised biography of him, "The Viceroy of Ouidah". This book was published in 1980, and Werner Herzog's film "Cobra Verde" (1987) is based on it.


title: Bruce Chatwin

text: Although "The Viceroy of Ouidah" received good reviews, it did not sell well. Nicholas Shakespeare said that the dismal sales caused Chatwin to pursue a completely different subject for his next book. In response to his growing reputation as a travel writer, Chatwin said he "decided to write something about people who never went out." His next book, "On the Black Hill" (1982), is a novel of twin brothers who live all of their lives in a farmhouse on the Welsh borders. For this book Chatwin won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the Whitbread Prize for Best First Novel, even though he considered his previous book, "The Viceroy of Ouidah", a novel. It was made into a film in 1987.


title: Bruce Chatwin

text: In the late 1970s Chatwin spent an increasing amount of time in New York City. He continued to have affairs with men, but most of these affairs were short-lived. In 1977 he began his first serious affair with Donald Richards, an Australian stockbroker. Richards introduced him to the gay nightclub scene in New York. During this period Chatwin became acquainted with Robert Mapplethorpe, who photographed him. Chatwin is one of the few men Mapplethorpe photographed fully clothed. Chatwin later contributed the introduction to a book of Mapplethorpe's photographs, "Lady, Lisa Lyon" (1983).


title: Bruce Chatwin

text: Although Elizabeth Chatwin had accepted her husband's affairs, their relationship deteriorated in the late 1970s, and in 1980 she asked for a separation. By 1982 Chatwin's affair with Richards had ended and he began another serious affair with Jasper Conran.


title: Bruce Chatwin

text: In 1983 Chatwin returned to the topic of nomads and decided to focus on Aboriginal Australians. He was influenced by the work of Ted Strehlow, a controversial figure who was the author of "Songs of Central Australia". Strehlow had collected and recorded Aboriginal songs, and shortly before his death in 1978, he sold photographs of secret Aboriginal initiation ceremonies to a magazine.


title: Bruce Chatwin

text: Chatwin went to Australia to learn more about Aboriginal culture, specifically the songlines or dreaming tracks. Each songline is a personal story and functions as a creation tale and a map, and each Aboriginal Australian has their own songline. Chatwin thought the songlines could be used as a metaphor to support his ideas about humans' need to wander, which he believed was genetic. However, he struggled fully to understand and describe the songlines and their place in Aboriginal culture. This was due to Chatwin's approach to learning about the songlines. He spent several weeks in 1983 and 1984 in Australia, during which he primarily relied on non-Aboriginal people for information, as he was limited by his inability to speak the Aboriginal languages. He interviewed people involved in the Land Rights movement, and he alienated many of them because he was oblivious to the politics and also because he was an admirer of Strehlow's work.


title: Bruce Chatwin

text: While in Australia, Chatwin, who had been experiencing some health problems, first read about AIDS, then known as the gay plague. It frightened him and compelled him to reconcile with his wife. The fear of AIDS also drove him to finish the book that became "The Songlines" (1987). His friend the novelist Salman Rushdie said, "That book was an obsession too great for him... His illness did him a favour, got him free of it. Otherwise, he would have gone on writing it for ten years."


title: Bruce Chatwin

text: "The Songlines" features a narrator named Bruce whose biography is almost identical to Chatwin's. The narrator spends time in Australia trying to learn about Aboriginal culture, specifically the songlines. As the book goes on, it becomes a reflection on what Chatwin stated was "for me, the question of questions: the nature of human restlessness." Chatwin also hinted at his preoccupation over his own mortality in the text: "I had a presentiment that the 'travelling' phase of my life might be passing... I should set down on paper a resume of the ideas, quotations, and encounters that amused me and obsessed me." Following this statement in "The Songlines" Chatwin included extensive excerpts from his moleskine notebooks.


title: Bruce Chatwin

text: Chatwin published "The Songlines" in 1987, and it became a bestseller in the United Kingdom and in the United States. The book was nominated for the Thomas Cook Travel Award, but Chatwin requested that it be withdrawn from consideration, saying the work was fictional. After its publication, Chatwin became friends with the composer Kevin Volans, who was inspired to base a theatre score on the book. The project evolved into an opera, "The Man with Footsoles of Wind" (1993).


title: Bruce Chatwin

text: While at work on "The Songlines" between 1983 and 1986, Chatwin frequently came down with colds. He also developed skin lesions that may have been symptoms of Kaposi's sarcoma. After finishing "The Songlines" in August 1986, he went to Switzerland, where he collapsed in the street. At a clinic there, he was diagnosed as HIV-positive. Chatwin provided different reasons to his doctors as to how he might have contracted HIV, including from a gang rape in Dahomey or possibly from Sam Wagstaff, the patron and lover of Robert Mapplethorpe.


title: Bruce Chatwin

text: Chatwin's case was unusual as he had a fungal infection, "Talaromyces marneffei", which at the time had rarely been seen and only in South Asia. It is now known as an AIDS-defining illness, but in 1986 little was known about HIV and AIDS. Doctors were not certain if all cases of HIV developed into AIDS. The rare fungus gave Chatwin hope that he might be different and served as the basis of what he told most people about his illness. He gave various reasons for how he became infected with the fungus – ranging from eating a thousand-year-old egg to exploring a bat cave in Indonesia. He never publicly disclosed that he was HIV-positive because of the stigma at the time. He wanted to protect his parents, who were unaware of his homosexual affairs.


title: Bruce Chatwin

text: Although Chatwin never spoke or wrote publicly about his disease, in one instance he did write about the AIDS epidemic in 1988 in a letter to the editor of the "London Review of Books":


title: Bruce Chatwin

text: During his illness, Chatwin continued to write. Elizabeth encouraged him to use a letter he had written to her from Prague in 1967 as an inspiration for a new story. During this trip, he had met Konrad Just, an art collector. This meeting and the letter to Elizabeth served as the basis for Chatwin's next work. "Utz" (1988) was a novel about the obsession that leads people to collect. Set in Prague, the novel details the life and death of Kaspar Utz, a man obsessed with his collection of Meissen porcelain. "Utz" was well-received and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize.


title: Bruce Chatwin

text: Chatwin also edited a collection of his journalism, which was published as "What Am I Doing Here" (1989). At the time of his death in 1989, he was working on a number of new ideas for future novels, including a transcontinental epic provisionally titled "Lydia Livingstone".


title: Bruce Chatwin

text: Chatwin died at a hospital in Nice on 18 January 1989. A memorial service was held at the Greek Orthodox Church of Saint Sophia in West London on 14 February 1989, Salman Rushdie, a close friend of Chatwin's, attended the service. Paul Theroux, who also attended the service, later commented on it and Chatwin in a piece for "Granta". The novelist Martin Amis described the memorial service in the essay "Salman Rushdie", included in his anthology "Visiting Mrs Nabokov".


title: Bruce Chatwin

text: In 1985, suffering from a mysterious illness (which turned out to be HIV) Chatwin interrupted his writing to make a pilgrimage to Mount Athos. Until that point he had never struck friends as being religious, but the visit had a profound effect, and he eventually decided to become an Orthodox Christian. At the memorial service Bishop Kallistos Ware told the congregation: ‘Bruce was always a traveller and he died before all his journeys could be completed… his journey into Orthodoxy was one of his unfinished voyages.’


title: Bruce Chatwin

text: Chatwin's ashes were scattered near a Byzantine chapel above Kardamyli in the Peloponnese. This was close to the home of one of his mentors, the writer Patrick Leigh Fermor. Chatwin had spent several months in 1985 near there, working on "The Songlines".


title: Bruce Chatwin

text: Chatwin's papers, including 85 moleskine notebooks, were given to the Bodleian Library, Oxford. Two collections of his photographs and excerpts from the moleskine notebooks were published as "Photographs and Notebooks" (US title: "Far Journeys") in 1993 and "Winding Paths" in 1999.


title: Bruce Chatwin

text: News of Chatwin's AIDS diagnosis first surfaced in September 1988, although the obituaries at the time of his death had referred to Chatwin's statements about a rare fungal infection. After his death, some members of the gay community criticised Chatwin for lack of courage to reveal the true nature of his illness, thinking he would have raised public awareness of AIDS, as he was one of the first high-profile individuals in Britain known to have contracted HIV.


title: Bruce Chatwin

text: John Updike described Chatwin's writing as "a clipped, lapidary prose that compresses worlds into pages", while one of Chatwin's editors, Susannah Clapp, wrote, "Although his syntax was pared down, his words were not – or at least not only – plain... His prose is both spare and flamboyant."


title: Bruce Chatwin

text: Chatwin's writing was shaped by his work as a cataloguer at Sotheby's, which provided him with years of practice in writing concise, yet vivid descriptions of objects with the intention of enticing buyers. In addition, his writing was influenced by his interest in nomads. One aspect that interested him was the few possessions they had. Their Spartan way of life appealed to his aesthetic sense, and he sought to emulate it in his life and his writing, striving to strip needless objects from his life and needless words from his prose.


title: Bruce Chatwin

text: Chatwin experimented with format in his writing. With "In Patagonia", Clapp said Chatwin described the book's structure of 97 vignettes as "Cubist." "[I]n other words," she said, "lots of small pictures tilting away and toward each other to create this strange original portrait of Patagonia." "The Songlines" was another attempt by Chatwin to experiment with format. It begins as a novel narrated by a man named Bruce, but about two-thirds of the way through it becomes a commonplace book filled with quotations, anecdotes, and summaries of others' research, in an attempt to explore restlessness. Some of Chatwin's critics did not think he succeeded in "The Songlines" with this approach, but others applauded his effort at an unconventional structure.


title: Bruce Chatwin

text: Several 19th and 20th-century writers influenced Chatwin's work. He admitted to imitating the work of Robert Byron when he first began making notes of his travels. While in Patagonia he read "In Our Time" by Ernest Hemingway, whom he admired for his spare prose. While writing "In Patagonia", Chatwin strove to approach his writing as a "literary Cartier-Bresson." Chatwin's biographer described the resulting prose as "quick snapshots of ordinary people". Along with Hemingway and Cartier-Bresson, Osip Mandelstam's work strongly influenced Chatwin during the writing of "In Patagonia". An admirer of Noël Coward, Chatwin found the breakfast scene in "Private Lives" helpful in learning to write dialogue. Once Chatwin began work on "The Viceroy of Ouidah", he began studying the work of 19th-century French authors such as Honoré de Balzac and Gustave Flaubert, who would continue to influence him for the rest of his life.


title: Bruce Chatwin

text: Chatwin explored several different themes in his work: human restlessness and wandering; borders and exile; and art and objects.


title: Bruce Chatwin

text: He considered human restlessness to be the focus of his writing. He ultimately aspired to explore the subject in order to answer what he saw as a fundamental question of human existence. He thought humans were meant to be a migratory species, and once they settled in one place, their natural urges "found outlets in violence, greed, status-seeking or a mania for the new." In his first attempt at writing a book, "The Nomadic Alternative", Chatwin had tried to compose an academic exposition on nomadic culture, which he believed was unexamined and unappreciated. With this, Chatwin had hoped to discover: "Why do men wander rather than sit still?" In his book proposal he admitted that the interest in the subject was personal: "Why do I become restless after a month in a single place, unbearable after two?"


title: Bruce Chatwin

text: Although Chatwin did not succeed with "The Nomadic Alternative", he returned to the topic of restlessness and wandering in subsequent books. Writer Jonathan Chatwin (no relation) stated that Chatwin's works can be grouped into two categories: "restlessness defined" and "restlessness explained." Most of his work focuses on describing restlessness, such as in the case of one twin in "On the Black Hill" who longs to leave home. Another example is the protagonist of "Utz", who feels restless to escape to Vichy each year, but always returns to Prague. Chatwin attempted to explain restlessness in "The Songlines", which focused on the Aboriginal Australians' walkabout. For this, he returned to his research from "The Nomadic Alternative".


title: Bruce Chatwin

text: Borders are another Chatwin theme. According to Elizabeth Chatwin, he "was interested in borders, where things were always changing, not one thing or another." Patagonia, the subject of his first published book, is an area that is in both Argentina and Chile. The Viceroy of Ouidah is a Brazilian who trades slaves in Dahomey. "On the Black Hills" takes place on the borders of Wales and England. In "The Songlines" the characters the protagonist mostly interacts with are people who provide a bridge between the Aboriginal and white Australian worlds. The main character in "Utz" travels back and forth across the Iron Curtain.