title: Neutron moderator

text: The form and location of the moderator can greatly influence the cost and safety of a reactor. Classically, moderators were precision-machined blocks of high purity graphite with embedded ducting to carry away heat. They were in the hottest part of the reactor, and therefore subject to corrosion and ablation. In some materials, including graphite, the impact of the neutrons with the moderator can cause the moderator to accumulate dangerous amounts of Wigner energy. This problem led to the infamous Windscale fire at the Windscale Piles, a nuclear reactor complex in the United Kingdom, in 1957. In a carbon dioxide cooled graphite moderated reactor where coolant and moderator are in contact with one another, the Boudouard reaction needs to be taken into account. This is also the case if fuel elements have an outer layer of carbon - as in some TRISO fuels - or if an inner carbon layer becomes exposed by failure of one or several outer layers.


title: Neutron moderator

text: The moderators of some pebble-bed reactors are not only simple, but also inexpensive: the nuclear fuel is embedded in spheres of reactor-grade pyrolytic carbon, roughly of the size of tennis balls. The spaces between the balls serve as ducting. The reactor is operated above the Wigner annealing temperature so that the graphite does not accumulate dangerous amounts of Wigner energy.


title: Neutron moderator

text: In CANDU and PWR reactors, the moderator is liquid water (heavy water for CANDU, light water for PWR). In the event of a loss-of-coolant accident in a PWR, the moderator is also lost and the reaction will stop. This negative void coefficient is an important safety feature of these reactors. In CANDU the moderator is located in a separate heavy-water circuit, surrounding the pressurized heavy-water coolant channels. The heavy water will slow down a significant portion of neutrons to the resonance integral of increasing the neutron capture in this isotope that makes up over 99% of the uranium in CANDU fuel thus decreasing the amount of neutrons available for fission. As a consequence, removing some of the heavy water will increase reactivity until so much is removed that too little moderation is provided to keep the reaction going. This design gives CANDU reactors a positive void coefficient, although the slower neutron kinetics of heavy-water moderated systems compensates for this, leading to comparable safety with PWRs. In the light water cooled graphite moderated RBMK, a reactor type originally envisioned to allow both production of weapons grade plutonium and large amounts of usable heat while using natural uranium and foregoing the use of heavy water, the light water coolant acts primarily as a neutron absorber and thus its removal in a Loss of Coolant Accident or by conversion of water into steam will "increase" the amount of thermal neutrons available for fission. Following the Chernobyl nuclear accident the issue was remedied so that all still operating RBMK type reactors have a slightly negative void coefficient but they now require a higher degree of uranium enrichment in their fuel.


title: Neutron moderator

text: Good moderators are free of neutron-absorbing impurities such as boron. In commercial nuclear power plants the moderator typically contains dissolved boron. The boron concentration of the reactor coolant can be changed by the operators by adding boric acid or by diluting with water to manipulate reactor power. The Nazi Nuclear Program suffered a substantial setback when its inexpensive graphite moderators failed to function. At that time, most graphites were deposited onto boron electrodes, and the German commercial graphite contained too much boron. Since the war-time German program never discovered this problem, they were forced to use far more expensive heavy water moderators. This problem was discovered by famous physicist Leó Szilárd


title: Neutron moderator

text: Some moderators are quite expensive, for example beryllium, and reactor-grade heavy water. Reactor-grade heavy water must be 99.75% pure to enable reactions with unenriched uranium. This is difficult to prepare because heavy water and regular water form the same chemical bonds in almost the same ways, at only slightly different speeds.


title: Neutron moderator

text: The much cheaper light water moderator (essentially very pure regular water) absorbs too many neutrons to be used with unenriched natural uranium, and therefore uranium enrichment or nuclear reprocessing becomes necessary to operate such reactors, increasing overall costs. Both enrichment and reprocessing are expensive and technologically challenging processes, and additionally both enrichment and several types of reprocessing can be used to create weapons-usable material, causing proliferation concerns. Reprocessing schemes that are more resistant to proliferation are currently under development.


title: Neutron moderator

text: The CANDU reactor's moderator doubles as a safety feature. A large tank of low-temperature, low-pressure heavy water moderates the neutrons and also acts as a heat sink in extreme loss-of-coolant accident conditions. It is separated from the fuel rods that actually generate the heat. Heavy water is very effective at slowing down (moderating) neutrons, giving CANDU reactors their important and defining characteristic of high "neutron economy". Unlike a light water reactor where adding water to the core in an accident might provide enough moderation to make a subcritical assembly go critical again, heavy water reactors will decrease their reactivity if light water is added to the core, which provides another important safety feature in the case of certain accident scenarios. However, any heavy water that becomes mixed with the emergency coolant light water will become too diluted to be useful without isotope separation.


title: Neutron moderator

text: Early speculation about nuclear weapons assumed that an "atom bomb" would be a large amount of fissile material, moderated by a neutron moderator, similar in structure to a nuclear reactor or "pile". Only the Manhattan project embraced the idea of a chain reaction of fast neutrons in pure metallic uranium or plutonium. Other moderated designs were also considered by the Americans; proposals included using uranium deuteride as the fissile material. In 1943 Robert Oppenheimer and Niels Bohr considered the possibility of using a "pile" as a weapon. The motivation was that with a graphite moderator it would be possible to achieve the chain reaction without the use of any isotope separation. However, plutonium can be produced ("bred") sufficiently isotopically pure as to be usable in a bomb and then has to be "only" separated chemically, a much easier processes than isotope separation, albeit still a challenging one. In August 1945, when information of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima was relayed to the scientists of the German nuclear program, interred at Farm Hall in England, chief scientist Werner Heisenberg hypothesized that the device must have been "something like a nuclear reactor, with the neutrons slowed by many collisions with a moderator". The German program, which had been much less advanced, had never even considered the plutonium-option and didn't discover a feasible method of large scale isotope separation in uranium.


title: Neutron moderator

text: After the success of the Manhattan project, all major have relied on fast neutrons in their weapons designs. The notable exception is the "Ruth" and "Ray" test explosions of Operation Upshot–Knothole. The aim of the University of California Radiation Laboratory designs was the exploration of deuterated polyethylene charge containing uranium as a candidate thermonuclear fuel, hoping that deuterium would fuse (becoming an active medium) if compressed appropriately. If successful, the devices could also lead to a compact primary containing minimal amount of fissile material, and powerful enough to ignite RAMROD a thermonuclear weapon designed by UCRL at the time. For a "hydride" primary, the degree of compression would not make deuterium to fuse, but the design could be subjected to boosting, raising the yield considerably. The cores consisted of a mix of uranium deuteride (UD), and deuterated polyethylene. The core tested in "Ray" used uranium low enriched in U, and in both shots deuterium acted as the neutron moderator. The predicted yield was 1.5 to 3 kt for "Ruth" (with a maximum potential yield of 20 kt) and 0.5-1 kt for "Ray". The tests produced yields of 200 tons of TNT each; both tests were considered to be fizzles.


title: Neutron moderator

text: The main benefit of using a moderator in a nuclear explosive is that the amount of fissile material needed to reach criticality may be greatly reduced. Slowing of fast neutrons will increase the cross section for neutron absorption, reducing the critical mass. A side effect is however that as the chain reaction progresses, the moderator will be heated, thus losing its ability to cool the neutrons.


title: Neutron moderator

text: Another effect of moderation is that the time between subsequent neutron generations is increased, slowing down the reaction. This makes the containment of the explosion a problem; the inertia that is used to confine implosion type bombs will not be able to confine the reaction. The end result may be a fizzle instead of a bang.


title: Neutron moderator

text: The explosive power of a fully moderated explosion is thus limited, at worst it may be equal to a chemical explosive of similar mass. Again quoting Heisenberg: "One can never make an explosive with slow neutrons, not even with the heavy water machine, as then the neutrons only go with thermal speed, with the result that the reaction is so slow that the thing explodes sooner, before the reaction is complete."


title: Neutron moderator

text: While a nuclear bomb working on thermal neutrons may be impractical, modern weapons designs may still benefit from some level of moderation. A beryllium tamper used as a neutron reflector will also act as a moderator.


title: Neutron moderator

text: Other light-nuclei materials are unsuitable for various reasons. Helium is a gas and it requires special design to achieve sufficient density; lithium-6 and boron-10 absorb neutrons.


title: Hugh Trevor-Roper

text: Hugh Redwald Trevor-Roper, Baron Dacre of Glanton (15 January 1914 – 26 January 2003) was an English historian. He was Regius Professor of Modern History at the University of Oxford.


title: Hugh Trevor-Roper

text: Trevor-Roper was a polemicist and essayist on a range of historical topics, but particularly England in the 16th and 17th centuries and Nazi Germany. In the view of John Kenyon, "some of [Trevor-Roper's] short essays have affected the way we think about the past more than other men's books". This is echoed by Richard Davenport-Hines and Adam Sisman in the introduction to "One Hundred Letters from Hugh Trevor-Roper" (2014): "The bulk of his publications is formidable... Some of his essays are of Victorian length. All of them reduce large subjects to their essence. Many of them... have lastingly transformed their fields." On the other hand, his biographer Adam Sisman also writes that "the mark of a great historian is that he writes great books, on the subject which he has made his own. By this exacting standard Hugh failed."


title: Hugh Trevor-Roper

text: Trevor-Roper's most widely read and financially rewarding book was titled "The Last Days of Hitler" (1947). It emerged from his assignment as a British intelligence officer in 1945 to discover what happened in the last days of Hitler's bunker. From his interviews with a range of witnesses and study of surviving documents he demonstrated that Hitler was dead and had not escaped from Berlin. He also showed that Hitler's dictatorship was not an efficient unified machine but a hodge-podge of overlapping rivalries.


title: Hugh Trevor-Roper

text: Trevor-Roper's reputation was "severely damaged" in 1983 when he authenticated the Hitler Diaries shortly before they were shown to be forgeries.


title: Hugh Trevor-Roper

text: Trevor-Roper was born at Glanton, Northumberland, England, the son of Kathleen Elizabeth Davidson (died 1964) and Bertie William Edward Trevor-Roper (1885–1978), a doctor, descended from Henry Roper, 8th Baron Teynham, who married, Anne, (her second husband) 16th Baroness Dacre. Trevor-Roper "enjoyed (but not too seriously)... that he was a collateral descendant of William Roper, the son-in-law and biographer of Sir Thomas More... as a boy he was aware that only a dozen lives (several of them those of elderly bachelors) separated him from inheriting the Teynham peerage."


title: Hugh Trevor-Roper

text: Trevor-Roper's brother, Patrick, became a leading eye surgeon and gay rights activist. Trevor-Roper was educated at Belhaven Hill School, Charterhouse, and Christ Church, Oxford, where he read first Classics (Literae Humaniores) and then Modern History, later moving to Merton College, Oxford, to become a Research Fellow. Whilst at Oxford, he was a member of the exclusive Stubbs Society and was initiated as a Freemason in the Apollo University Lodge.


title: Hugh Trevor-Roper

text: Trevor-Roper took a first in Classical Moderations in 1934 and won the Craven, the Ireland, and the Hertford scholarships in Classics. Initially, he intended to make his career in the Classics but became bored with what he regarded as the pedantic technical aspects of the classics course at Oxford and switched to History, where he obtained first-class honours in 1936. Trevor-Roper's first book was a 1940 biography of Archbishop William Laud, in which he challenged many of the prevailing perceptions surrounding Laud.


title: Hugh Trevor-Roper

text: During World War II, Trevor-Roper served as an officer in the Radio Security Service of the Secret Intelligence Service, and then on the interception of messages from the German intelligence service, the "Abwehr". In early 1940, Trevor-Roper and E. W. B. Gill decrypted some of these intercepts, demonstrating the relevance of the material and spurring Bletchley Park efforts to decrypt the traffic. Intelligence from "Abwehr" traffic later played an important part in many operations including the Double-Cross System.


title: Hugh Trevor-Roper

text: He formed a low opinion of most pre-war professional intelligence agents, but a higher one of some of the post-1939 recruits. In "The Philby Affair" (1968) Trevor-Roper argues that the Soviet spy Kim Philby was never in a position to undermine efforts by the chief of the "Abwehr", German Military Intelligence, Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, to overthrow the Nazi regime and negotiate with the British government.


title: Hugh Trevor-Roper

text: In November 1945, Trevor-Roper was ordered by Dick White, then head of counter-intelligence in the British sector of Berlin, to investigate the circumstances of Adolf Hitler's death, and to rebut the Soviet propaganda that Hitler was alive and living in the West. Using the alias of "Major Oughton", Trevor-Roper interviewed or prepared questions for several officials, high and low, who had been present in the "Führerbunker" with Hitler, and who had been able to escape to the West, including Bernd Freytag von Loringhoven.


title: Hugh Trevor-Roper

text: For the most part Trevor-Roper relied on investigations and interviews by hundreds of British, American and Canadian intelligence officers. He did not have access to Soviet materials. Working rapidly, Trevor-Roper drafted his report, which served as the basis for his most famous book, "The Last Days of Hitler", in which he described the last ten days of Hitler's life and the fates of some of the higher-ranking members of the inner circle, as well as those of key lesser figures. Trevor-Roper transformed the evidence into a literary work, with sardonic humour and drama, and was much influenced by the prose styles of two of his favourite historians, Edward Gibbon and Lord Macaulay.


title: Hugh Trevor-Roper

text: The book was cleared by British officials in 1946 for publication as soon as the war crimes trials ended. It was published in English in 1947; six English editions and many foreign language editions followed. According to American journalist Ron Rosenbaum, Trevor-Roper received a letter from Lisbon written in Hebrew stating that the Stern Gang would assassinate him for "The Last Days of Hitler", which, they believed, portrayed Hitler as a "demoniacal" figure but let ordinary Germans who followed Hitler off the hook, and that for this he deserved to die. Rosenbaum reports that Trevor-Roper told him this was the most extreme response he had ever received for one of his books.


title: Hugh Trevor-Roper

text: In June 1950, Trevor-Roper attended a conference in Berlin of anti-Communist intellectuals along with Sidney Hook, Melvin J. Lasky, Ignazio Silone, Arthur Koestler, Raymond Aron and Franz Borkenau that resulted in the founding of the Congress for Cultural Freedom and its magazine "Encounter". In the 1950s and 1960s, he was a frequent contributor to "Encounter", but had reservations about what he regarded as the over-didactic tone of some of its contributors, particularly Koestler and Borkenau.


title: Hugh Trevor-Roper

text: Trevor-Roper was famous for his lucid and acerbic writing style. In reviews and essays he could be pitilessly sarcastic, and devastating in his mockery. In attacking Arnold J. Toynbee's "A Study of History", for instance, Trevor-Roper accused Toynbee of regarding himself as a Messiah complete with "the youthful Temptations; the missionary Journeys; the Miracles; the Revelations; the Agony".


title: Hugh Trevor-Roper

text: For Trevor-Roper, the major themes of early modern Europe were its intellectual vitality, and the quarrels between Protestant and Catholic states, the latter being outpaced by the former, economically and constitutionally. In Trevor-Roper's view, another theme of early modern Europe was expansion overseas in the form of colonies and intellectual expansion in the form of the Reformation and the Enlightenment. In Trevor-Roper's view, the witch hunts of the 16th and 17th centuries can ultimately be traced back to the conflict between the religious values of the Reformation and the rationalistic approach of what became the Enlightenment.


title: Hugh Trevor-Roper

text: Trevor-Roper argued that history should be understood as an art, not a science and that the attribute of a successful historian was imagination. He viewed history as full of contingency, with the past neither a story of continuous advance nor of continuous decline but the consequence of choices made by individuals at the time. In his studies of early modern Europe, Trevor-Roper did not focus exclusively upon political history but sought to examine the interaction between the political, intellectual, social and religious trends. His preferred medium of expression was the essay rather than the book. In his essays in social history, written during the 1950s and 1960s, Trevor-Roper was influenced by the work of the French Annales School, especially Fernand Braudel and did much to introduce the work of the "Annales" school to the English-speaking world. In the 1950s, Trevor-Roper wrote that Braudel and the rest of the school were doing much innovative historical work but were "totally excluded from Oxford which remains, in historical matters, a retrograde provincial backwater".


title: Hugh Trevor-Roper

text: In Trevor-Roper's opinion, the dispute between the Puritans and the Arminians was a major, although not the sole, cause of the English Civil War. For him, the dispute was over such issues as free will and predestination and the role of preaching versus the sacraments; only later did the dispute become a matter of the structure of the Church of England. The Puritans desired a more decentralised and egalitarian church, with an emphasis on the laity, while the Arminians wished for an ordered church with a hierarchy, an emphasis on divine right and salvation through free will.


title: Hugh Trevor-Roper

text: As a historian of early modern Britain, Trevor-Roper was known for his disputes with fellow historians such as Lawrence Stone and Christopher Hill, whose materialist (and in some measure "inevitablist") explanations of the English Civil War he attacked. Trevor-Roper was a leading player in the historiographical storm over the gentry (also known as the "Gentry controversy"), a dispute with the historians R. H. Tawney and Stone, about whether the English gentry were, economically, on the way down or up, in the century before the English Civil War and whether this helped cause that war.


title: Hugh Trevor-Roper

text: Stone, Tawney and Hill argued that the gentry were rising economically and that this caused the Civil War. Trevor-Roper argued that while office-holders and lawyers were prospering, the lesser gentry were in decline. A third group of history men around J. H. Hexter and Geoffrey Elton, argued that the causes of the Civil War had nothing to do with the gentry. In 1948, a paper put forward by Stone in support of Tawney's thesis was vigorously attacked by Trevor-Roper, who showed that Stone had exaggerated the debt problems of the Tudor nobility. He also rejected Tawney's theories about the rising gentry and declining nobility, arguing that he was guilty of selective use of evidence and that he misunderstood the statistics.


title: Hugh Trevor-Roper

text: Trevor-Roper attacked the philosophies of history advanced by Arnold J. Toynbee and E. H. Carr, as well as his colleague A. J. P. Taylor's account of the origins of World War II. Another dispute was with Taylor and Alan Bullock over the question of whether Adolf Hitler had fixed aims. In the 1950s, Trevor-Roper was ferocious in his criticism of Bullock for his portrayal of Hitler as a "mountebank" instead of the ideologue Trevor-Roper believed him to be. When Taylor offered a picture of Hitler similar to Bullock's, in his 1961 book "The Origins of the Second World War", the debate continued. Another feud was with the novelist and Catholic convert Evelyn Waugh, who was angered by Trevor-Roper's repeated harsh attacks on the Catholic Church.


title: Hugh Trevor-Roper

text: In the globalist–continentalist debate between those who argued that Hitler aimed to conquer the world and those who argued that he sought only the conquest of Europe, Trevor-Roper was one of the leading continentalists. He argued that the globalist case sought to turn a scattering of Hitler's remarks made over decades into a plan. In his analysis, the only consistent objective Hitler sought was the domination of Europe, as laid out in "Mein Kampf." The American historian Lucy Dawidowicz in "The Holocaust and Historians" (1981) delivered what the British historian David Cesarani called an ""ad hominem" attack", writing that Trevor-Roper in his writings on Nazi Germany was indifferent to Nazi antisemitism, because she believed that he was a snobbish antisemite, who was apathetic about the murder of six million Jews. Cesarani wrote that Dawidowicz was wrong to accuse Trevor-Roper of antisemitism but argued that there was an element of truth to her critique in that the "Shoah" was a blind-spot for Trevor-Roper.


title: Hugh Trevor-Roper

text: Trevor-Roper was a very firm "intentionist" who treated Hitler as a serious, if slightly deranged thinker who, from 1924 until his death in 1945, was obsessed with "the conquest of Russia, the extermination of the Slavs, and the colonization of the English". In his 1962 essay "The Mind of Adolf Hitler", Trevor-Roper again criticized Bullock, writing "Even Mr. Bullock seems content to regard him as a diabolical adventurer animated solely by an unlimited lust for personal power... Hitler was a systematic thinker and his mind is, to the historian, as important as the mind of Bismarck or Lenin". Trevor-Roper maintained that Hitler, on the basis of a wide range of antisemitic literature, from the writings of Houston Stewart Chamberlain to "The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion", had constructed a racist ideology that called for making Germany the world's greatest power and the extermination of perceived enemies like the Jews and Slavs.


title: Hugh Trevor-Roper

text: Trevor-Roper wrote that the mind of Hitler was "a terrible phenomenon, imposing indeed in its granite harshness and yet infinitely squalid in its miscellaneous cumber, like some huge barbarian monolith; the expression of giant strength and savage genius; surrounded by a festering heap of refuse, old tins and vermin, ashes and eggshells and ordure, the intellectual detritus of centuries". Cesarani wrote that Trevor-Roper regarded Hitler, in marked contrast to Bullock, as a man who was serious about what he said but at the same time, Trevor-Roper's picture of Hitler as a somewhat insane leader, fanatically pursuing lunatic policies, meant paradoxically that it was hard to take Hitler seriously, at least on the basis of Trevor-Roper's writings. Cesarani stated that Trevor-Roper was sincere in his hatred and contempt for the Nazis and everything they stood for but he had considerable difficulty when it came to writing about the complicity and involvement of traditional German elites in National Socialism, because the traditional elites in Germany were so similar in many ways to the British Establishment, which Trevor-Roper identified with so strongly.


title: Hugh Trevor-Roper

text: In this respect, Cesarani argued that it was very revealing that Trevor-Roper in "The Last Days of Hitler" was especially damning in his picture of the German Finance Minister, Count Lutz Schwerin von Krosigk, whom Trevor-Roper noted "had been a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, but he had acquired none of its values". Cesarani wrote "Thus, to Trevor-Roper the values of Oxford University stood at the opposite pole to those of Hitler's Reich, and one reason for the ghastly character of Nazism was that it did not share them". Cesarani noted that while Trevor-Roper supported the Conservatives and ended his days as a Tory life-peer, he was broadly speaking a liberal and believed that Britain was a great nation because of its liberalism. Because of this background, Cesarani wrote that Trevor-Roper naturally saw the liberal democracy Britain as anathema to Nazi Germany. Cesarani concluded "...to maintain the illusion of virtuous British liberalism, Hitler had to be depicted as either a statesman like any other or a monster without equal, and those who did business with him as, respectively, pragmatists or dupes. Every current of Nazi society that made it distinctive could be charted, while the anti-Jewish racism that it shared with Britain was discreetly avoided".


title: Hugh Trevor-Roper

text: A notable thesis propagated by Trevor-Roper was the "general crisis of the 17th century". He argued that the middle years of the 17th century in Western Europe saw a widespread break-down in politics, economics and society caused by demographic, social, religious, economic and political problems. In this "general crisis,” various events, such as the English Civil War, the "Fronde" in France, the climax of the Thirty Years' War in Germany, troubles in the Netherlands, and revolts against the Spanish Crown in Portugal, Naples and Catalonia, were all manifestations of the same problems. The most important causes of the “general crisis” in Trevor-Roper's opinion were conflicts between “Court” and “Country”; that is between the increasingly powerful centralizing, bureaucratic, sovereign princely states, represented by the Court, and the traditional, regional, land-based aristocracy and gentry, representing the country. In addition, he said that the religious and intellectual changes introduced by the Reformation and the Renaissance were important secondary causes of the "general crisis."


title: Hugh Trevor-Roper

text: The "general crisis" thesis generated controversy between supporters of this theory, and those, such as the Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm, who agreed with him that there was a "general crisis,” but saw the problems of 17th century Europe as more economic in origin than Trevor-Roper would allow. A third faction denied that there was any "general crisis,” for example the Dutch historian Ivo Schöffer, the Danish historian Niels Steengsgaard, and the Soviet historian A. D. Lublinskaya. Trevor-Roper's "general crisis" thesis provoked much discussion, and led experts in 17th century history such as Roland Mousnier, J. H. Elliott, Lawrence Stone, E. H. Kossmann, Eric Hobsbawm and J. H. Hexter to become advocates of the pros and cons of the theory.


title: Hugh Trevor-Roper

text: At times the discussion became quite heated; the Italian Marxist historian Rosario Villari, speaking of the work of Trevor-Roper and Mousnier, claimed that: "The hypothesis of imbalance between bureaucratic expansion and the needs of the state is too vague to be plausible, and rests on inflated rhetoric, typical of a certain type of political conservative, rather than on effective analysis." Villari accused Trevor-Roper of downgrading the importance of what Villari called the English Revolution (the usual Marxist term for the English Civil War), and insisted that the "general crisis" was part of a Europe-wide revolutionary movement. Another Marxist critic of Trevor-Roper, the Soviet historian A. D. Lublinskaya, attacked the concept of a conflict between "Court" and "Country" as fiction, arguing there was no "general crisis"; instead she maintained that the so-called "general crisis" was merely the emergence of capitalism.


title: Hugh Trevor-Roper

text: In 1973, Trevor-Roper in the foreword to a book by John Röhl endorsed the view that Germany was largely responsible for the First World War. Trevor-Roper wrote that in his opinion far too many British historians had allowed themselves to be persuaded of the theory that the outbreak of war in 1914 had been the fault of all the great powers. He claimed that this theory had been promoted by the German government's policy of selective publication of documents, aided and abetted by most German historians in a policy of "self-censorship." He praised Röhl for finding and publishing two previously secret documents that showed German responsibility for the war.


title: Hugh Trevor-Roper

text: In 1973, Trevor-Roper was invited to visit Switzerland to examine a manuscript entitled "Decadence Mandchoue" written by the sinologist Sir Edmund Backhouse (1873–1944) in a mixture of English, French, Latin and Chinese that had been in the custody of Reinhard Hoeppli, a Swiss diplomat who was the Swiss consul in Beijing during World War II. Hoeppli, given "Decadence Mandchoue" in 1943 by his friend Backhouse, had been unable to publish it owing to its sexually explicit content. But by 1973 looser censorship and the rise of the gay rights movement meant a publisher was willing to release "Decadence Mandchoue" to the market. However, before doing so they wanted Trevor-Roper, who as a former MI6 officer was an expert on clandestine affairs, to examine some of the more outlandish claims contained in the text.


title: Hugh Trevor-Roper

text: For an example, Backhouse claimed in "Decadence Mandchoue" that the wives and daughters of British diplomats in Beijing had trained their dogs and tamed foxes to perform cunnilingus on them, which the fascistic Backhouse used as evidence of British "decadence", which in turn explained why he was supporting Germany and Japan in the Second World War. Trevor-Roper regarded "Decadence Mandchoue" with considerable distaste calling the manuscript "pornographic" and "obscene" as Backhouse related in graphic detail sexual encounters he claimed to have had with the French poet Paul Verlaine, the Irish playwright Oscar Wilde, Wilde's lover Lord Alfred Douglas, the French poet Arthur Rimbaud, the Russian ballet dancer Vaslav Nijinsky, the British Prime Minister Lord Rosebery and the Empress Dowager Cixi of China whom the openly gay Backhouse had maintained had forced herself on him.


title: Hugh Trevor-Roper

text: Backhouse also claimed to have been the friend of the Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy and the French actress Sarah Bernhardt. For the next two years, Trevor-Roper went on an odyssey that took him all over Britain, France, Switzerland, the United States, Canada and China as he sought to unravel the mystery of just who the elusive Backhouse was. Backhouse had between 1898 and his death in 1944 worked as a sinologist, the business agent for several British and American companies in China, a British spy, gun-runner and translator before finally ending his days in World War II China as a fascist and a Japanese collaborator who wished fervently for an Axis victory which would destroy Great Britain. Trevor-Roper noted that despite Backhouse's homosexuality and Nazi Germany's policy of persecuting homosexuals, Backhouse's intense hatred of his own country together with his sadistic-masochistic sexual needs meant that Backhouse longed to be "...ravished and possessed by the brutal, but still perverted masculinity of the fascist "Führerprinzip"".


title: Hugh Trevor-Roper

text: The end result was one of Trevor-Roper's most successful later books, his 1976 biography of Backhouse, originally entitled "A Hidden Life" but soon republished in Britain and the US as "The Hermit of Peking". Backhouse had long been regarded as a world's leading expert on China. In his biography, Trevor-Roper exposed the vast majority of Sir Edmund's life-story and virtually all of his scholarship as a fraud. In "Decadence Mandchoue", Backhouse spoke of his efforts to raise money to pay the defence lawyers for Wilde while he was an undergraduate at Oxford. Trevor-Roper established that while Backhouse did indeed raise money for the Wilde defence fund, he spent it all on buying expensive jewellery, especially pearl necklaces, which were a special passion of Backhouse's. It was this embezzlement of the money Backhouse had raised for the Wilde defence fund that led to him fleeing Britain in 1895. The discrediting of Backhouse as a source led to much of China's history being re-written in the West. Backhouse had portrayed Prince Ronglu as a friend of the West and an enemy of the Boxers when the opposite was true.


title: Hugh Trevor-Roper

text: Trevor-Roper noted that in the "diary" of Ching Shan, which Backhouse claimed to have looted from Ching's house just before it was burned down by Indian troops in the Boxer Rebellion, it has Prince Ronglu saying about the government's support of the Boxers: ""C'est pire qu'un crime, c'est une faute"" ("It was worse than a crime; it was a blunder."). Trevor-Roper argued that it was extremely unlikely that Prince Ronglu – who only knew Manchu and Mandarin – would be quoting a well-known French expression, but noted that Backhouse was fluent in French. Backhouse was fluent in Mandarin and Cantonese, lived most of his life in Beijing and after moving to China had declined to wear western clothes, preferring instead the gown of a Chinese mandarin, which led most Westerners to assume that Backhouse "knew" China. Trevor-Roper noted that despite his superficial appearance of affection for the Chinese, much of what Backhouse wrote about on China worked subtly to confirm Western "Yellow Peril" stereotypes, as Backhouse variously depicted the Chinese as pathologically dishonest, sexually perverted, morally corrupt and generally devious and treacherous – in short, Chinese civilization for Backhouse was a deeply sick civilization.


title: Hugh Trevor-Roper

text: In 1960, Trevor-Roper waged a successful campaign against the candidacy of Sir Oliver Franks who was backed by the heads of houses marshalled by Maurice Bowra, for the Chancellorship of the University of Oxford, helping the then Prime Minister Harold Macmillan to be elected instead. In 1964, Trevor-Roper edited a "Festschrift" in honour of his friend Sir Keith Feiling's 80th birthday. In 1970, he was the author of "The Letters of Mercurius", a satirical work on the student revolts and university politics of the late 1960s, originally published as letters in "The Spectator".


title: Hugh Trevor-Roper

text: Another aspect of Trevor-Roper's outlook on history and on scholarly research that has inspired controversy, is his statement about the historical experiences of pre-literate societies. Following Voltaire's remarks on the fall of the Roman Empire at the hands of barbarian tribes, he asserted that Africa had no history prior to European exploration and colonisation. Africa is "no historical part of the World; it has no movement or development to exhibit". Trevor-Roper said "there is only the history of Europeans in Africa. The rest is darkness", its past "the unedifying gyrations of barbarous tribes in picturesque but irrelevant corners of the globe." These comments, recapitulated in a later article which called Africa "unhistoric", spurred intense debate between historians, anthropologists, sociologists, in the emerging fields of postcolonial and cultural studies about the definition of "history". Historians have argued, in response, that historical myths of the kind perpetrated by Trevor-Roper need to be actively countered: "Only a process of counter-selection can correct this, and African historians have to concentrate on those aspects which were ignored by the disparaging mythologies".


title: Hugh Trevor-Roper

text: Many historians now argue, against Trevor-Roper, that historical evidence should also include oral traditions as well as written history, a former criterion for a society having left "prehistory". Critics of Trevor-Roper's claim have questioned the validity of systematic interpretations of the African past, whether by materialist, Annalist or the traditional historical methods used by Trevor-Roper. Some say approaches which compare Africa with Europe or directly integrate it into European history cannot be accurate descriptions of African societies. Virtually all scholars now agree that Africa has a "history". Despite controversies over historical accuracy in oral records, as in Alex Haley's "Roots" book and popular TV mini-series, African griots, or oral memoirists, provided a historical oral record.


title: Hugh Trevor-Roper

text: The nadir of his career came in 1983, when as a director of "The Times", Baron Dacre of Glanton (as he was by this point) made statements that authenticated the so-called Hitler Diaries. Others were unsure: holocaust denier, David Irving, for example, initially decried them as forgeries but subsequently changed his mind and declared that they could be genuine, before finally stating that they were a forgery. Historians Gerhard Weinberg and Eberhard Jäckel had also expressed doubt regarding the authenticity of the diaries.


title: Hugh Trevor-Roper

text: Within two weeks, forensic scientist Julius Grant demonstrated that the diaries were forgeries. The ensuing fiasco gave Trevor-Roper's enemies the opportunity to criticise him openly, while Trevor-Roper's initial endorsement of the diaries raised questions about his integrity: "The Sunday Times", a newspaper to which he regularly contributed book reviews and of which he was an independent director, had already paid a considerable sum for the right to serialise the diaries if and only if they were genuine.


title: Hugh Trevor-Roper

text: Trevor-Roper explained that he had been given assurances (that turned out to be false) about how the diaries had come into the possession of their "discoverer", and about the age of the paper and ink used in them and of their authenticity. Nonetheless, this incident prompted the satirical magazine "Private Eye" to nickname him "Hugh Very-Ropey" ("Lord Lucre of Claptout"), or more concisely, Lord Facre.


title: Hugh Trevor-Roper

text: Despite the shadow this cast over his later career, he continued to write and publish and his work remained well received.


title: Hugh Trevor-Roper

text: In 1980 at the age of 67, he became Master of Peterhouse, the oldest and smallest college in the University of Cambridge. His election, which surprised his friends, was engineered by a group of fellows led by Maurice Cowling, then the leading Peterhouse historian. The fellows chose him because Cowling's reactionary clique thought he would be an arch-conservative who would oppose the admission of women. In the event, Trevor-Roper feuded constantly with Cowling and his allies, while launching a series of administrative reforms. Women were admitted in 1983 at his urging. The British journalist Neal Ascherson summarised the quarrel between Cowling and Trevor-Roper as:Lord Dacre, far from being a romantic Tory ultra, turned out to be an anti-clerical Whig with a preference for free speech over superstition. He did not find it normal that fellows should wear mourning on the anniversary of General Franco’s death, attend parties in SS uniform or insult black and Jewish guests at high table. For the next seven years, Trevor-Roper battled to suppress the insurgency of the Cowling clique ("a strong mind trapped in its own glutinous frustrations"), and to bring the college back to a condition in which students might actually want to go there. Neither side won this struggle, which soon became a campaign to drive Trevor-Roper out of the college by grotesque rudeness and insubordination. In a review of Adam Sisman's 2010 biography of Trevor-Roper, the "Economist" wrote that the picture of Peterhouse in the 1980s was "startling", stating the college had become under Cowling's influence a sort of right-wing "lunatic asylum", who were determined to sabotage Trevor-Roper's reforms. In 1987 he retired complaining of "seven wasted years."


title: Hugh Trevor-Roper

text: In 1981 a Festschrift was published in honour of Trevor-Roper, "History and the Imagination". Some of the contributors were Sir Geoffrey Elton, John Clive, Arnaldo Momigliano, Frances Yates, Jeremy Catto, Robert S. Lopez, Michael Howard, David S. Katz, Dimitri Obolensky, J. H. Elliott, Richard Cobb, Walter Pagel, Hugh Lloyd-Jones, Valerie Pearl and Fernand Braudel. The topics contributed by this group of American, British, French, Russian, Italian, Israeli, Canadian and German historians extended from whether the "Odyssey" was a part of an oral tradition that was later written down, to the question of the responsibility for the Jameson Raid.


title: Hugh Trevor-Roper

text: On 4 October 1954, Trevor-Roper married Lady Alexandra Henrietta Louisa Howard-Johnston (9 March 1907 – 15 August 1997), eldest daughter of Field Marshal Earl Haig by his wife, the former Hon. Dorothy Maud Vivian. Lady Alexandra was a goddaughter of Queen Alexandra and had previously been married to Rear-Admiral Clarence Dinsmore Howard-Johnston, by whom she had had three children. There were no children by his marriage with her.


title: Hugh Trevor-Roper

text: Trevor-Roper was made a life peer in 1979 on the recommendation of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. He was raised to the Peerage on 27 September 1979, and was introduced to the House of Lords as Baron Dacre of Glanton, "of Glanton in the County of Northumberland". He did not base his title on his surname, because "double-barrelled titles are an invention, and a monopoly, of Wilsonian peers", and "under the rules of the College of Arms either ['Lord Trevor' or 'Lord Roper'] would require him to change his surname to either 'Trevor' or 'Roper.'" On mentioning the family's connection to the Dacre title to his wife, who liked the sound of it, Trevor-Roper was persuaded to opt for the title of "Baron Dacre", despite staunch opposition from the "suo jure" 27th Baroness Dacre (née Brand). She had her cousin, Anthony Brand, 6th Viscount Hampden, "as titular head of the Brand family", inform Trevor-Roper that the Dacre title belonged to the Brand family "and no-one else should breach their monopoly", on the grounds of the title's antiquity of over six centuries. This high-handed treatment strengthened Trevor-Roper's resolve in the face of his initial ambivalence; he observed "why should the Brands be so 'proud', or so jealous, of a mere title... a gewgaw, which has been bandied intermittently from family to family for six centuries, without tradition or continuity or distinction (except for murder, litigation and extravagance) or, for the last 250 years, land? They only acquired this pretty toy, in 1829, because a Mr Brand, of whom nothing whatever is known, had married into the Trevor-Ropers (who had themselves acquired it by marrying into the Lennards). Now they behave as if they had owned it for six centuries and had a monopoly of it for ever. A fig for their stuffiness!" Notwithstanding objections, Trevor-Roper duly took the title of Baron Dacre of Glanton.


title: Hugh Trevor-Roper

text: In his last years he had suffered from failing eyesight, which made it difficult for him to read and write. He underwent cataract surgery and obtained a magnifying machine, which allowed him to continue writing. In 2002, at the age of 88, Trevor-Roper submitted a sizable article on Thomas Sutton, the founder of Charterhouse School, to the "Oxford Dictionary of National Biography" in part with notes he had written decades earlier, which editor Brian Harrison praised as "the work of a master". Trevor-Roper suffered several other minor ailments related to his advanced age, but according to his stepson, "bore all his difficulties stoically and without complaint". That year, he was diagnosed with cancer and died on 26 January 2003 in a hospice in Oxford, aged 89.


title: Hugh Trevor-Roper

text: Five books by Trevor-Roper were published posthumously. The first was "Letters from Oxford", a collection of letters written by Trevor-Roper between 1947–59 to his close friend the American art collector Bernard Berenson. The second book was 2006's "Europe’s Physician", an unfinished biography of Sir Theodore de Mayerne, the Franco-Swiss court physician to Henri IV, James I and Charles I. The latter work was largely completed by 1979, but for some unknown reasons was not finished.


title: Hugh Trevor-Roper

text: The third book was "The Invention of Scotland: Myth and History", a critique written in the mid-1970s of what Trevor-Roper regarded as the myths of Scottish nationalism. It was published in 2008. The fourth book collecting together some of his essays on "History and the Enlightenment: Eighteenth Century Essays" was published in 2010. The fifth book was "The Wartime Journals", edited by Richard Davenport-Hines, published in 2011. "The Wartime Journals" are from the journals that Trevor-Roper kept during his years in the Secret Intelligence Service.


title: Earl Manigault

text: Earl Manigault (September 7, 1944 – May 15, 1998) was an American street basketball player who was nicknamed "The Goat". He is widely regarded as one of the greatest basketball players to never play in the NBA.


title: Earl Manigault

text: Earl Manigault was born in Charleston, South Carolina, and raised in Harlem, New York. He grew up playing basketball and practiced constantly. With per game averages of 24 points and 11 rebounds, Manigault starred at Benjamin Franklin High School, a basketball powerhouse in the Public School Athletic League. Manigault set the NYC junior high school record by scoring 57 points in a game in the late 1950s. While attending high school, Manigault's life took a fateful turn when he began associating with groups that would eventually lead to his expulsion. He started using drugs and skipping classes. He was the star of his high school team and seemed destined for greatness in the National Basketball Association. Manigault was expelled from school for smoking marijuana. He finished high school at a private academy, Laurinburg Institute, in North Carolina. In one year there, he averaged 31 points and 13 rebounds per game.


title: Earl Manigault

text: He enrolled in Johnson C. Smith University, but left after one semester due to his constant problems with school and continuous quibbles with the coach.


title: Earl Manigault

text: The nickname "Goat" has several proposed origins. In an article for the "New York Times", Earl stated that he got the nickname because a junior high school teacher kept pronouncing his name "Mani-Goat." Other theories state that by the time Manigault was in high school, he was known as "The Goat" because of his quiet demeanor. Another states that the nickname started by confusion over Manigault's last name; people thought Manigault referred to himself as Earl Nanny Goat, so he became "The Goat". However, the most popular belief is that he was called The Goat as the acronym for Greatest Of All Time. Although it is unclear how the name was dubbed, Greatest of All Time is the idea that lasted. The "Happy Warrior Playground" on Amsterdam at West 99th Street in Manhattan is more commonly referred to as "Goat Park" where Manigault reigned.


title: Earl Manigault

text: Manigault was particularly famous for his leaping abilities on the basketball court. However much of his legend is unsupported playground myth, including his signature move - the double dunk. He allegedly would dunk the ball, catch it with his left hand, switch the ball to his right hand, bring it back around to the top of the basket and jam it through again, all done while still in the air on a single jump, and without hanging on the rim. However this is a story repeatedly told but unconfirmed. It was refuted by Manigault himself in a CNN interview available on YouTube when he called the reports of this feat rubbish, stating not even The Goat could do that. Like other street basketballers of the day such as Jackie Jackson, Earl was reportedly able to touch the top of the backboard to retrieve quarters and dollar bills, part of "elaborate innovations and tricks" elite street players of the era performed before games to help build their reputations. Again, this has never been confirmed. Like the dunking myth, it is always referred to as "reportedly" without a credible source to support it. It is refuted in Todd Gallagher's book " Andy Roddick Beat Me With a Frying Pan." The book dedicates an entire chapter to this myth concluding it was never done by Manigault or anyone else, including NBA stars. Gallagher writes " Earl "The Goat" Manigault is widely regarded as one of the greatest playground basketball players of all time. There are a number of tales regarding Manigault's prowess, but the central story that propelled his legend was that he had such extraordinary leaping ability he could pull dollar bills off the top of the backboard and leave change. What made this even more amazing was that Manigault was, depending on who you talk to, somewhere between 5-11 and 6-1. Considering that the top of the backboard is at thirteen feet and the average six-foot-tall man can only touch about eight feet high standing flat-footed, Manigault would have had to jump at least sixty inches to even come close. He was only 6' 1", but attributed his tremendous jumping ability to having in childhood often worn ankle weights during practice. (Such efficacy of ankle weights is doubtful, however.) He once reverse dunked 36 times in a row to win a $60 bet.


title: Earl Manigault

text: But to prove dunking was not his only skill, he would practice hundreds of shots each day, making him a deadly long-range shooter as well. Manigault played with some of the best players of his day, such as Earl Monroe, Connie Hawkins, and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. When Abdul-Jabbar finished his career with the Los Angeles Lakers and had his number retired at the Los Angeles Forum, he was asked who was the greatest player he had played with or against and he responded by saying Manigault.


title: Earl Manigault

text: Earl is featured in the 2012 documentary film "Doin' It in the Park" about New York City street basketball.


title: Earl Manigault

text: Manigault returned to Harlem and developed a heroin addiction. He served sixteen months in prison in 1969 and 1970 for drug possession. While incarcerated, Manigault was a subject in Pete Axthelm's book "The City Game," which came to the attention of Utah Stars owner Bill Daniels.


title: Earl Manigault

text: After he was released in 1970 at age 25, he hung on the Upper West Side, in and near the projects known as the Frederick Douglass Houses, often with close friends who enjoyed his humor and friendship—friends like Sleepy Thomas, L. Byrd and so many others. Later he tried out for the Utah Stars of the American Basketball Association, but he did not make the team and never played professionally. After shunning an offer from the Harlem Globetrotters, Manigault started the Goat Tournament, a summer tourney that would feature NBA stars such as Bernard King and Mario Elie. Still, his drug habit reappeared and he served another term of two years from 1977 to 1979 for a failed robbery attempt so he could buy heroin. After this prison term in the Bronx House of Detention and Sing Sing, Manigault quit heroin and moved to Charleston with his two youngest sons, far away from New York City and the temptation of drugs. In 1980, Manigault returned to New York and brought back the Goat Tournament. Never married, he started the "Walk Away From Drugs" tournament for kids in Harlem to prevent them from making the same mistakes he had made. Much of his later years were dedicated to working with kids on the court.


title: Earl Manigault

text: Manigault made a living by painting houses, mowing lawns, and working for the local recreation department. By the late 1980s, however, he was almost destitute, became frail, and suffered from serious heart problems. In February 1987, he had to have two heart operations. He became a counselor and coach at East Harlem's La Guardia Memorial House, working for New York's Supportive Children's Advocacy Network.


title: Earl Manigault

text: Manigault is quoted in the "New York Times" article 'A Fallen King Revisits His Realm' as saying "For every Michael Jordan, there's an Earl Manigault. We all can't make it. Somebody has to fall. I was the one."


title: Earl Manigault

text: Manigault died from congestive heart failure in 1998, at the age of 53 at Bellevue Hospital in New York City. He twice underwent heart surgery, including surgery on two valves in 1989. Manigault entered the hospital two weeks before his death with heart complications. Doctors said for years that he needed a heart transplant, but he had been rejected once because his health was so bad he was considered a poor candidate. "I need a heart transplant," Manigault said in an interview a year earlier. "All of my doctors are telling me that my heart is very weak, and it is all attributed to drugs."


title: Earl Manigault

text: Manigault was called the greatest player never to make the National Basketball Association, and in the "New York Times", Kareem Abdul-Jabbar referred to Manigault as “the best basketball player his size in the history of New York City". His domination of the players at the 98th Street courts was so total that it became known as "Goat Park." And his high-flying antics were credited with changing the game, paving the way for players including Julius Erving and Michael Jordan.


title: Earl Manigault

text: Although he never played in the NBA and only briefly played in college, the legend of Manigault has spread far and wide and led to his play being glorified in magazines, books, and movies. In 1996, HBO aired a TV movie about Manigault's life entitled "", starring Don Cheadle in the title role.


title: Vernor Vinge

text: Vernor Steffen Vinge (; born October 2, 1944) is an American science fiction author and retired professor. He taught mathematics and computer science at San Diego State University. He is the first wide-scale popularizer of the technological singularity concept and perhaps the first to present a fictional "cyberspace". He has won the Hugo Award for his novels "A Fire Upon the Deep" (1992), "A Deepness in the Sky" (1999), "Rainbows End" (2006), and novellas "Fast Times at Fairmont High" (2002), and "The Cookie Monster" (2004).


title: Vernor Vinge

text: Vinge published his first short story, "Apartness", in the June 1965 issue of the British magazine "New Worlds". His second, "Bookworm, Run!", was in the March 1966 issue of "Analog Science Fiction", then edited by John W. Campbell. The story explores the theme of artificially augmented intelligence by connecting the brain directly to computerised data sources. He became a moderately prolific contributor to SF magazines in the 1960s and early 1970s. In 1969, he expanded the story "Grimm's Story" ("Orbit 4", 1968) into his first novel, "Grimm's World". His second novel, "The Witling", was published in 1976.


title: Vernor Vinge

text: Vinge came to prominence in 1981 with his novella "True Names", perhaps the first story to present a fully fleshed-out concept of cyberspace, which would later be central to cyberpunk stories by William Gibson, Neal Stephenson and others. His next two novels, "The Peace War" (1984) and "Marooned in Realtime" (1986), explore the spread of a future libertarian society, and deal with the impact of a technology which can create impenetrable force fields called 'bobbles'. These books built Vinge's reputation as an author who would explore ideas to their logical conclusions in particularly inventive ways. Both books were nominated for the Hugo Award, but lost to novels by William Gibson and Orson Scott Card.


title: Vernor Vinge

text: Vinge won the Hugo Award (tying for Best Novel with "Doomsday Book" by Connie Willis) with his 1992 novel, "A Fire Upon the Deep". "A Deepness in the Sky" (1999) was a prequel to "Fire", following competing groups of humans in The Slow Zone as they struggle over who has the rights to exploit a technologically emerging alien culture. "Deepness" won the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 2000.


title: Vernor Vinge

text: His novellas "Fast Times at Fairmont High" and "The Cookie Monster" also won Hugo Awards in 2002 and 2004, respectively.


title: Vernor Vinge

text: Vinge's 2006 novel "Rainbows End", set in the same universe and featuring some of the same characters as "Fast Times at Fairmont High", won the 2007 Hugo Award for Best Novel. In 2011, he released "The Children of the Sky", a sequel to "A Fire Upon the Deep" set approximately 10 years following the end of "A Fire Upon the Deep".


title: Vernor Vinge

text: Vinge retired in 2000 from teaching at San Diego State University, in order to write full-time. Most years, since its inception in 1999, Vinge has been on the Free Software Foundation's selection committee for their Award for the Advancement of Free Software. Vernor Vinge was Writer Guest of Honor at ConJosé, the 60th World Science Fiction Convention in 2002.


title: Vernor Vinge

text: His former wife, Joan D. Vinge, is also a science fiction author. They were married from 1972 to 1979.


title: Charlie Utter

text: Charles H. "Colorado Charlie" Utter (March 14, 1838 – July 3, 1915) was a figure of the American Wild West, best known as a great friend and companion of Wild Bill Hickok. He was also friends with Calamity Jane.


title: Charlie Utter

text: Utter was born in 1842 near Niagara Falls, New York, and grew up in Illinois, then traveled west in search of his fortune, becoming a trapper, guide, and prospector in Colorado in the 1860s. He met and married 15 year old Matilda "Tily" Nash on September 30, 1866, in her parents' home in Empire, Clear Creek, Colorado Territory. Their marriage record lists Empire as his place of residence at the time of their marriage and by the 1870 Federal Census shows they had settled in nearby Georgetown, Colorado Territory.


title: Charlie Utter

text: In early 1876, Utter and his brother Steve took a 30-wagon train of prospectors, gamblers, prostitutes, and assorted hopefuls from Georgetown, Colorado, to the burgeoning town of Deadwood in the Black Hills of the Dakota Territory, where the recent discovery of gold had sparked a gold rush. Like many wagon trains, the wagons were Schuttler wagons, which were notable for "gaudy paint jobs." In Cheyenne, Wyoming, famed gunman "Wild Bill" Hickok became partners with Utter in the train; Calamity Jane joined in Fort Laramie. The wagon train arrived in Deadwood in July 1876, and Utter began a lucrative pony express delivery service to Cheyenne, charging 25 cents to deliver a letter and often carrying as many as 2,000 letters per 48-hour trip.


title: Charlie Utter

text: Utter had been a close friend of Hickok's for some time previously, constantly watching to ensure that Hickok's weaknesses of alcohol and gambling would not bring Hickok to a bad end. Unfortunately, Utter was not present on August 2, 1876, when Jack McCall fatally shot Hickok in the back of the head as Hickok played poker in a Deadwood saloon. Utter later claimed the body and placed a notice in the local newspaper, the "Black Hills Pioneer", which read:


title: Charlie Utter

text: Attendance at the funeral was heavy, and Utter had Hickok buried with a wooden grave marker which read:


title: Charlie Utter

text: Utter left for Colorado, but returned in 1879 to have Hickok re-interred, at Calamity Jane's urging, in a ten-foot-square plot at the Mount Moriah Cemetery, surrounded by a cast-iron fence and with an American flag in the ground.


title: Charlie Utter

text: In February 1879, Utter purchased the Eaves Saloon in Gayville, a mining town 1.75 miles (2.82 km) west of Deadwood, but ran into a string of bad luck. He was found guilty of selling liquor without a license.


title: Charlie Utter

text: Later that year, Utter opened a dance hall in Lead, a company town far more sedate than its raucous, rollicking neighbor, Deadwood. The dance hall's "boisterous music and scandalous cancan dancing" earned Charlie an appearance before the honorable Gideon C. Moody. Charlie was convicted of "operating a nuisance," but because he had already closed the establishment, Judge Moody sentenced him to a mere one hour in jail. He was also fined $50 on the charge of disturbing the peace.


title: Charlie Utter

text: Utter was back in Deadwood by the fall of the year. He opened another dance hall and also managed one of Deadwood's theaters. On September 26, 1879, a fire devastated Deadwood, destroying more than three hundred buildings (including Charlie's dance hall and the theater he managed) and consuming the belongings of many inhabitants.


title: Charlie Utter

text: Following the destructive fire, Deadwood ceased to be a frontier town where fortunes could be built (or rebuilt) from nothing, and the newly impoverished left to try their luck in other gold rushes. Utter followed, first to Leadville, Colorado in February 1880; then Durango, Colorado showing separated or divorced from his wife; then Socorro, New Mexico, where he opened a saloon and was reported to have a relationship with faro dealer Minnie Fowler. Utter's biographer, Agnes Wright Spring, traced him to Panama in the early 1900s. Now losing his eyesight, he owned drugstores in Panama City and Colón.


title: Charlie Utter

text: According to ship manifests, Utter made several trips back and forth between the United States and Panama in 1888, 1891, 1905, 1910, 1912 each listing his occupation as a "druggist". He finally returned to Panama in 1913. His gravestone is in Cementario Amador, Calle B, Santa Ana, Panama listed as Charles H. Utter having died on July 3, 1915. There is an Emma B. Utter wife of Charles H. Utter buried nearby in the same cemetery who died in 1894.


title: Charlie Utter

text: Utter cut a notable figure; he was 5'6" (167 cm), and was reported as being extremely meticulous in his appearance, highly unusual for that place and time. He had long, flowing black hair and a mustache, perfectly groomed, wore hand-tailored fringed buckskins, fine linen shirts, beaded moccasins, and a large silver belt buckle, and carried a pair of gold, silver, and pearl ornamented pistols. He would allow nobody into his tent, even Hickok, on pain of being shot; in his tent he slept under the highest quality blankets, imported from California, and carried with him mirrors, combs, razors, and whisk brooms. Most unusual of all, he was well known for his "bizarre habit" of bathing daily.


title: Charlie Utter

text: Utter is portrayed by Dayton Callie in the HBO television series "Deadwood" and "". Contrary to the meticulous historical Utter, the character is portrayed as rough-mannered and often unkempt in his appearance. The film, set in 1889, shows the character still living in Deadwood, although the historical Charlie Utter had moved back to Colorado in 1880. The film also shows Utter being murdered in 1889 by henchmen sent by George Hearst, after Utter declined to sell his land to Hearst.


title: Cretan State

text: The Cretan State (; ) was established in 1898, following the intervention by the Great Powers (United Kingdom, France, Italy, Austria-Hungary, Germany and Russia) on the island of Crete. In 1897, the Cretan Revolt led the Ottoman Empire to declare war on Greece, which led the United Kingdom, France, Italy and Russia to intervene on the grounds that the Ottoman Empire could no longer maintain control. It was the prelude to the island's final annexation to the Kingdom of Greece, which occurred "de facto" in 1908 and "de jure" in 1913 after the First Balkan War.


title: Cretan State

text: The island of Crete, an Ottoman possession since the end of the Cretan War (1645–1669), was inhabited by a mostly Greek-speaking population, whose majority was Christian. During and after the Greek War of Independence, the Christians of the island rebelled several times against external Ottoman rule, pursuing union with Greece. These were brutally subdued, but secured some concessions from the Ottoman government under the pressure of European public opinion. In 1878, the Pact of Halepa established the island as an autonomous state under Ottoman suzerainty, until the Ottomans reneged on that agreement in 1889.


title: Cretan State

text: The collapse of the Pact heightened tensions in the island, leading to another rebellion in 1895, which greatly expanded in 1896–1897 to cover most of the island. Six Great Powers (Austria-Hungary, France, the German Empire, the Kingdom of Italy, the Russian Empire, and the United Kingdom) sent warships to Crete in February 1897, and their naval forces combined to form an "International Squadron" charged with intervening to bring fighting on Crete to a halt. In Greece, nationalist secret societies and a fervently irredentist public opinion forced the Greek government to send military forces to the island. Although the International Squadron quickly halted their activities, the presence of Greek forces on Crete provoked a war with the Ottoman Empire. Although most of Crete came under the control of Cretan insurgent and Greek forces, the unprepared Greek Army was crushed by the Ottomans, who occupied Thessaly. The war was ended by the intervention of the Great Powers (the United Kingdom, France, Italy and Russia), who forced the Greek contingent to withdraw from Crete and the Ottoman Army to stop its advance. In the Treaty of Constantinople the Ottoman Government promised to implement the provisions of the Halepa Pact.


title: Cretan State

text: In February 1897, the Great Powers decided to restore order by governing the island temporarily through an "Admirals Council" consisting of admirals from the six powers making up the International Squadron. Through naval bombardments of Cretan insurgent forces, by placing sailors and marines ashore to occupy key cities, and by establishing a blockade of Crete and key ports in Greece, the International Squadron brought organized fighting on Crete to an end by the end of March 1897, although the insurrection continued. Soldiers from the armies of five of the powers (Germany declined to send any) arrived to occupy key Cretan cities in late March and April 1897. Thereafter, the Admirals Council focused on a negotiated settlement that would bring the insurrection to an end without bringing Ottoman governance of Crete to an end, but this proved impossible. They then decided that Crete would become an autonomous state under the suzerainty of the Ottoman Empire. Germany strongly opposed this idea and withdrew from Crete and the International Squadron in November 1897 and Austria-Hungary followed in March 1898, but the remaining four powers carried on with their plans.


title: Cretan State

text: On 6 September 1898 (25 August 1898 according to the Julian calendar then in use on Crete, which was 12 days behind the modern Gregorian calendar during the 19th century), a Cretan Muslim mob massacred hundreds of Cretan Greeks and murdered the British vice-consul, his family, and 14 British soldiers and sailors, in the city of Candia (modern Heraklion). As a result, the International Squadron and the occupying forces ashore expelled all Ottoman forces from Crete in November 1898. The autonomous Cretan State, under Ottoman suzerainty, garrisoned by an international military force, and with its high commissioner provided by Greece, was founded when Prince George of Greece and Denmark arrived to take office as the first high commissioner (, "Hýpatos Harmostēs"), effectively detaching Crete from the Ottoman Empire, on 21 December 1898 (9 December according to the Julian calendar). The Admirals Council was dissolved on 26 December 1898.


title: Cretan State

text: The National Bank of Greece established a bank, the Bank of Crete, which had a 40-year monopoly on note issuance. The Cretan State also established a paramilitary force, the Cretan Gendarmerie, modeled on the Italian Carabinieri, to maintain public order. The Cretan Gendarmerie incorporated the four small gendarmerie units the four remaining occupying powers had created before the arrival of Prince George.


title: Cretan State

text: On 13 December 1898, Prince George of Greece and Denmark arrived as high commissioner for a three-year tenure. On 27 April 1899, an Executive Committee was created, in which a young, Athens-trained lawyer from Chania, Eleftherios Venizelos, participated as minister of justice. By 1900, Venizelos and Prince George had developed differences over domestic policies, as well as the issue of "Enosis", the union with Greece.


title: Cretan State

text: Venizelos resigned in early 1901, and for the next three years, he and his supporters waged a bitter political struggle with the Prince's faction, leading to a political and administrative deadlock on the island. Eventually, in March 1905, Venizelos and his supporters gathered in the village of Therisos, in the hills near Chania, constituted a "Revolutionary Assembly", demanded political reforms and declared the "political union of Crete with Greece as a single free constitutional state" in a manifesto delivered to the consuls of the Great Powers. The Cretan Gendarmerie remained loyal to the Prince, but numerous deputies joined the revolt, and despite the Powers' declaration of martial law on 18 July, their military forces did not move against the rebels.


title: Cretan State

text: On 15 August, the Cretan Assembly voted for the proposals of Venizelos, and the Great Powers brokered an agreement, whereby Prince George would resign and a new constitution created. In the 1906 elections the pro-Prince parties took 38,127 votes while pro-Venizelos parties took 33,279 votes, but in September 1906 Prince George was replaced by former Greek prime minister Alexandros Zaimis and left the island. In addition, Greek officers came to replace the Italians in the organization of the Gendarmerie, and the withdrawal of the foreign troops began, leaving Crete "de facto" under Greek control.


title: Cretan State

text: A Constitution was promulgated in February 1907, but in 1908, taking advantage of domestic turmoil in Turkey as well as the timing of Zaimis' vacation away from the island, the Cretan deputies declared unilateral union with Greece. The flag of the Cretan State was replaced by the Greek flag, all public servants took an oath to King George I of Greece, and the Greek constitution and laws were enacted on the island. This act was not recognized internationally, including by Greece, where Eleftherios Venizelos was elected prime minister in 1910. In May 1912, the Cretan deputies travelled to Athens and tried to enter the Greek Parliament, but were forcibly prevented from doing so by the police.


title: Cretan State

text: Upon the outbreak of the First Balkan War, Greece finally recognized the union and sent Stephanos Dragoumis as the island's governor-general. The Great Powers tacitly recognized the "fait accompli" by the act of lowering their flags from the Souda fortress on 14 February 1913, and by the Treaty of London in May 1913, Sultan Mehmed V relinquished his formal rights to the island.


title: Cretan State

text: On 1 December, the formal ceremony of union took place: the Greek flag was raised at the Firka Fortress in Chania, with Eleftherios Venizelos and King Constantine I in attendance. The Muslim minority of Crete initially remained on the island but was later relocated to Turkey under the general population exchange agreed to in the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne between Turkey and Greece.


title: G3 battlecruiser

text: The G3 battlecruisers were a class of battlecruisers planned by the Royal Navy after the end of World War I in response to naval expansion programmes by the United States and Japan. The four ships of this class would have been larger, faster and more heavily armed than any existing battleship (although several projected foreign ships would be larger). The G3s have been considered to be proper "fast battleships" since they were well-balanced designs with adequate protection. Nonetheless the class was officially designated as a "battlecruiser" due to their higher speed and lesser firepower and armour relative to the planned N3-class battleship design. The G3s carried nine guns and were expected to achieve , while the N3s would carry nine guns on the same displacement at the expense of a slower speed.


title: G3 battlecruiser

text: The G3 design was approved by the Board of Admiralty on 12 August 1921. Orders were placed in October, but were suspended in mid-November shortly after the beginning of the Washington Naval Conference which limited battleship sizes. The orders were cancelled in February 1922 with the ratification of the Washington Naval Treaty which limited construction to ships of no more than displacement.


title: G3 battlecruiser

text: In 1916 the US had declared its intention to create a Navy "second to none"; the United States Congress had authorized the building of a large number of battleships and battlecruisers. In the aftermath of the First World War, the Japanese government were also embarking on a large programme of warship building. Meanwhile, in Great Britain, the s were followed by the slower and cheaper . Two improved "Revenge"-class hulls were converted during construction into the two s as emergency builds during the war. The only new capital ships laid down in the war were the s. Their design had been called into question after the Battle of Jutland in 1916. Three of this class were cancelled, leaving only to be completed to an altered design.


title: G3 battlecruiser

text: The US plan had been delayed by the wartime need to build smaller vessels. Nevertheless, estimates by the Admiralty were that by the early 1920s the UK would be behind in ships. The British did have access to German technology through ships such as the battleship which had been saved from the scuttling of the interned German High Seas Fleet in Scapa Flow and the experiences of the war. A committee concluded that any new ship should be able to match the speed of the new US s, expected to make 32 knots. Consequently, a series of designs was prepared of ships with displacements ranging from , the only limitations being the ability to use British dockyards and passage through the Suez Canal. These designs were given letters of the alphabet running backwards from K to G. The related battleship designs under consideration at the same time had design letters from L upwards.


title: G3 battlecruiser

text: The first two design proposals, 'K2' and 'K3', had a general layout similar to "Hood", but were armed with either eight or nine 18-inch guns, in four twin or three triple gun turrets, respectively. The numeral in the designation came from the number of guns in each turret. These ships were very large, displacing , could only reach , and could only be docked in a single ex-German floating dock and one dock, Gladstone Dock, in Liverpool. The next proposal, 'J3' saved nearly by reducing the main armament to nine 50-calibre guns and the main deck armour to . This reduction in size allowed the ship to dock anywhere that "Hood" could dock and to pass through the Suez and Panama Canals. 'I3' took another route in saving weight and concentrated the main armament amidships with 'X' turret placed between the forward superstructure and the funnels. The consequent weight savings were negated by additional hull and machinery weights and the ship displaced only slightly less than 'K3'. It had the advantage, however, that it could be docked in Rosyth and Portsmouth and pass through both canals, once the Suez Canal had been deepened. The primary drawback was that the main armament had a blind spot towards the rear of the ship of not less than 40°. Several variations were evaluated of the 'H3' design with the number of turrets reduced. In 'H3a' both turrets were forward of the superstructure while in 'H3b' one was forward and the other was aft of the forward superstructure. 'H3c' retained the layout of 'H3b', but lowered the turrets by one deck and saved over the of 'H3b'. All three 'H3' designs had a maximum speed of , but the reduced number of main guns was disliked so the 'G3' was proposed with the three triple turrets, armed with guns to save weight.


title: G3 battlecruiser

text: This design was accepted at the end of 1920, but changes were made as the plans were finalized in early 1921, including the reduction of the ship's horsepower from 180,000 to 160,000 and the reduction of the main armament from 16.5 in to .


title: G3 battlecruiser

text: The G3s incorporated several novel features for dreadnought-era capital ships, or at least for British designs of this type. Most immediately noticeable was the concentration of the main battery forward of the bridge and engineering spaces, giving the ships a tanker-like appearance. Since the G3s were to use existing dockyard facilities, this layout allowed designers to keep the length of the ships, as well as the weight of armour, to a minimum. The resulting loss of heavy fire astern was considered justifiable since the ships were intended to fight on the broadside. A related feature of the G3 and N3 designs was their tower bridge structure behind the first two gun turrets. This provided a better and more stable foundation for fire-control equipment, greatly improved accommodation and protection from the weather.


title: G3 battlecruiser

text: The G3 battlecruisers were significantly larger than their predecessors of the Admiral class. They had an overall length of , a beam of , and a draught of at deep load. They would have displaced normally and at deep load, over more than the older ships. They had a metacentric height of at deep load as well as a complete double bottom.


title: G3 battlecruiser

text: The G3 battlecruisers would have had four geared steam turbine sets, each of which drove one propeller shaft. They were arranged in three engine rooms. The forward engine room held the two turbines for the wing shafts, the middle compartment housed the turbine for the port inner shaft and the aft engine room contained the turbine for the starboard inner shaft. The turbines were powered by 20 Yarrow small-tube boilers divided between nine boiler rooms. They were designed to produce a total of at a working pressure of and temperature of with superheat. Maximum speed would have been .


title: G3 battlecruiser

text: The ships had a maximum capacity of of fuel oil. Using the cruising turbines, they had an estimated maximum range of at . They had six turbo-driven dynamos and two diesel generators.


title: G3 battlecruiser

text: Housing the main armament in triple turrets was new to the Royal Navy though British companies had been involved in the production of triple gun turret designs for other navies. The choice of a high muzzle velocity with a relatively lighter shell was taken from the German practice; it ran counter to previous British guns such as the BL 15-inch Mark I gun of 42-calibre length which were lower-muzzle-velocity weapons firing heavy shells.


title: G3 battlecruiser

text: The G3 design mounted nine BL 16-inch Mark I 45-calibre guns in three triple hydraulically powered Mark I gun turrets, designated 'A', 'B', and 'X' from front to rear. The guns could be depressed to −3° and elevated to 40°. The ships' maximum stowage was 116 shells per gun. They fired projectiles at a muzzle velocity of . Their maximum range was about at maximum elevation. The G3s carried a secondary armament of sixteen BL 6-inch Mark XXII guns in superfiring twin turrets instead of casemates or shields – the first time in a British capital ship since the of 1904. Four turrets were sited around the forward superstructure and four at the stern. The forward turrets were provided with 150 rounds per gun and the rear turrets with 110 rounds per gun. The guns could elevate between –5° and +60°. They fired projectiles at a muzzle velocity of . Their maximum range was at 45° elevation. Their rate of fire was five rounds per minute.


title: G3 battlecruiser

text: An anti-aircraft battery of six QF 4.7-inch Mark VIII guns was included. They had a maximum depression of -5° and a maximum elevation of 90°. They fired a high explosive shell at a muzzle velocity of at a rate of eight to twelve rounds per minute. The guns had a maximum ceiling of , but an effective range of much less. A maximum of 256 rounds per gun could be carried. The ships were intended to carry four 8-barreled mountings for the QF 2-pounder Mark VIII gun (commonly known as a "pom-pom"), two abaft the funnels and two at the stern. Each barrel was provided with 1300 rounds of ammunition. The gun fired a shell at a muzzle velocity of to a distance of . The gun's rate of fire was approximately 96–98 rounds per minute.


title: G3 battlecruiser

text: Like previous classes of British battlecruisers, a pair of submerged, broadside-firing torpedo tubes were planned for these ships. Their compartment was located just forward of the 'A' shell room on the platform deck. Six torpedoes per tube were to be carried in peacetime, but this would increase to eight in wartime. These Mark I torpedoes had a warhead of of TNT and were powered by oxygen-enriched air. They had two speed settings which governed their range: either at , or at .


title: G3 battlecruiser

text: The main guns of the G3 battlecruisers could be controlled from any of the three director-control towers (DCT). The primary DCT was mounted at the top of the forward superstructure. Another was mounted on the roof of the conning tower in an armoured hood and the third was aft. Each main gun turret was provided with a coincidence rangefinder in an armoured housing on the turret roof. The secondary armament was primarily controlled by three DCTs. Two mounted on each side of the bridge and the third was aft. The anti-aircraft guns were controlled by a high-angle control system mounted on the very top of the forward superstructure. Each "pom-pom" mount had its own director and there was also a height-finder aft. Two torpedo rangefinders were located on the sides of the funnels.


title: G3 battlecruiser

text: A first for any British dreadnought was the use of the all or nothing protection scheme in the G3s. Medium-thickness armour had proven to be useless in stopping heavy-calibre shells during World War I so the vital areas of the ship were protected by the thickest possible armour and the rest of the ship was left unarmoured. Use of this system was pioneered by contemporary U.S. Navy battleship designs starting with the . However, this system of protection required that the armoured citadel should have enough reserve buoyancy to keep the ship stable even if the rest of the hull was riddled by gunfire.


title: G3 battlecruiser

text: The waterline belt of the G3 had a maximum thickness of with the top of the armour angled 18° outwards. This angle increased the armor's relative thickness to horizontal, close-range fire, albeit at the cost of reducing its relative height which increased the chance of plunging shellfire going over or under it. It ran some , from the forward edge of 'A' barbette to the rear of the after 6-inch magazine. The belt had a height of , of which was below the designed waterline. Only the forward of the belt had the maximum thickness, it thinned to for the rest of its length. The lower edge of the belt abreast the magazines was continued down another by a thickness of high-tensile steel inclined at 36° to prevent a shell from reaching the magazines via a wave trough at high speed. The forward and rear ends of the belt terminated in 12-inch and transverse bulkheads respectively. The waterline belt extended forward at a thickness of 6 inches that reduced to in two steps.


title: G3 battlecruiser

text: The funnel and boiler room ventilation shafts were surrounded by an armoured box long intended to prevent shells fired from behind the ship reaching 'X' magazine. The box narrowed at an angle of 21° as it rose and had a maximum thickness of 12 inches nearest to the magazine. Aft it reduced in a series of steps to , 6 inches, and . The armoured deck matched the length of the waterline belt and sloped down 2.5° to meet the upper edge of the belt. It had a maximum thickness of from the 'A' barbette to partway over the mid-boiler rooms and thinned to a minimum of 4 inches over the rear engine and boiler rooms. The deck's thickness increased to partway over the rear engine room and covered the aft 6-inch magazines. The armoured deck extended forward 46 feet over the torpedo compartment with a maximum thickness of 8 inches, thinning to 6 inches. The armoured deck's rear extension was long and was 5 inches thick until the last when it thinned to .


title: G3 battlecruiser

text: The turret faces were thick while their sides ranged from in thickness, and the roof was 8 inches thick. The armour of the barbettes ranged from in thickness and it was carefully arranged to minimize the likely risk. The conning tower armour was 9 to 12 inches thick and its communications tube to the upper deck was 8 inches thick. The fire-control director atop the conning tower was protected by an armoured hood 3 to 5 inches thick.


title: G3 battlecruiser

text: The anti-torpedo bulges of the G3 battlecruisers were intended to withstand the explosion of a torpedo warhead. They consisted of an outer air space, an inner buoyancy space and the torpedo bulkhead that consisted of two layers of high-tensile steel. The bulkhead was situated some inboard from the side of the ship. Postwar tests done on a replica of this system showed that filling the buoyancy space with water rather than the sealed steel crushing tubes as used in was just as effective and weighed less. A compressed air system was fitted to blow the water out of the buoyancy spaces and bring the ship upright in 15 minutes after two torpedo hits. The ship's double bottom ranged from in depth.


title: G3 battlecruiser

text: At the end of the tendering process, the four G3 battlecruisers were ordered on 24 October 1921, without names, from John Brown, Swan Hunter, William Beardmore and Fairfield. Following the visit of an Admiralty delegation, detailed constructional drawings were sent to John Brown on 3 November with a request that copies be urgently circulated to the other successful contractors. Work at John Brown progressed on the keel blocks and hull plates for the subsequent two weeks. Notwithstanding other events, instructions and amendments continued to arrive from various departments within the Admiralty until 25 November.


title: G3 battlecruiser

text: The Washington Naval Conference on arms limitation between the five leading naval powers which began negotiations on 11 November 1921, led to the suspension of building on 18 November. Outright cancellation followed on 21 February 1922 with the Washington Naval Treaty signatories agreeing not to build any ship larger than . As no photographic evidence is available to show the ships' keels were actually laid down, it is asserted by at least one historian that none were, although the Admiralty paid John Brown for work and materials which would have been incurred in doing so.


title: G3 battlecruiser

text: Many of the aspects of their design ultimately were incorporated into the two s, and they are often described as being a cut-down G3. The "Nelsons" received the design designation 'O3', marking them as next in the design sequence from the 'N3' battleship design although they used the guns intended for the G3 class for cost reasons and to comply with the Treaty's 16-inch limitation on main armament.


title: Ghibli Museum

text: The is a museum showcasing the work of the Japanese animation studio Studio Ghibli. It is located in Inokashira Park in Mitaka, a western city of Tokyo, Japan. The museum combines features of a children's museum, technology museum, and a fine arts museum, and is dedicated to the art and technique of animation. Features include a replica of the Catbus from "My Neighbor Totoro" (1988), a café, bookstore, rooftop garden, and a theater for exclusive short films by Studio Ghibli.


title: Ghibli Museum

text: Planning for the museum began in 1998. Construction started in March 2000. Upon completion, the museum opened on 1 October 2001.


title: Ghibli Museum

text: Studio Ghibli director Hayao Miyazaki designed the museum himself, using storyboards similar to the ones he creates for his films. The design was influenced by European architecture such as the hilltop village of Calcata in Italy. The museum features internal and external spiral staircases built from iron, interior bridges, and balconies stretching throughout the building's height. These stairways lead to exhibits, dead ends, and across bridges. These characteristics are meant to reflect Miyazaki's building designs displayed in his film work. Miyazaki's aim was to make the building itself part of the exhibit, and for the museum to be an uplifting and relaxing experience "that makes you feel more enriched when you leave than when you entered".


title: Ghibli Museum

text: Photography and video recording is prohibited inside the museum, because the museum is described as a "portal to a storybook world." Hayao Miyazaki's goal was also for people to experience the museum with their own eyes and ears.


title: Ghibli Museum

text: "Let's get lost together" is the museum's slogan, derived from Hayao Miyazaki's vision for visitors to immerse themselves in his imagination and film work.


title: Ghibli Museum

text: In February 2020, the museum closed temporarily as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. The museum later re-opened to Mitaka residents only in July and later fully reopened in September.


title: Ghibli Museum

text: On the bottom floor is an exhibit room showing the history and science of animation, including a three-dimensional zoetrope named "Bouncing Totoro", with models of characters from "My Neighbor Totoro" (1988). On the first floor is a mock-up of an animation studio. Called "Where a Film is Born," the five-room exhibit is meant to showcase the creative process of an animation filmmaker such as illustration techniques. Packed with books and toys, the room also displays drawings and illustrations that cover the walls. Another exhibit demonstrates the process of creating an animated film, with sketches, storyboarding, keyframing, cleanup, coloring and background painting.


title: Ghibli Museum

text: In addition to Ghibli-oriented exhibitions, the museum hosts an area showcasing work from other studios.


title: Ghibli Museum

text: The Ghibli Museum shows several short films exclusive to the Ghibli Museum. Located in the basement of the museum is The Saturn Theater. The theater has windows where automated shades lower and open before and after each showing of its short films. This is because Hayao Miyazaki designed the theater with small children in mind, who could possibly be scared of the closed in theater. The museum shows one of the following Ghibli short-films in the Saturn Theatre:


title: Ghibli Museum

text: Tri Hawks is a reading room and bookstore in the Ghibli Museum. Opened on February 6, 2002, it is filled with books recommended by Hayao Miyazaki. The name Tri Hawks comes from a pun based on the city's name. "Mi-taka," the city where the Ghibli Museum is located, means three hawks.


title: Ghibli Museum

text: Mamma Aiuto, on the top of the Ghibli Museum, is the souvenir gift shop named after the band of sky pirates in the movie "Porco Rosso". The name Mamma Aiuto translates to "mama, help me" in Italian, which was where "Porco Rosso" was set. Among other items, it sells classic and non-Japanese animation movies under the eponymous Ghibli Museum Library label.


title: Ghibli Museum

text: The Straw Hat Café is the Ghibli Museum's only sit-down restaurant. It was created with the help of a housewife who is a mother of four; Miyazaki wanted the café's food to be "a kind of home cooking". The Café serves hot and cold foods, snacks, and desserts. Sold at the takeout section is an original alcoholic beverage: "Valley of the Wind" beer. The beer was created by a collaboration with Dairy Kingdom Oratche, a microbrewery in Tanna Basin. The beverage's label was hand drawn by Gorō Miyazaki, Hayao Miyazaki's son, who is an animation director at Studio Ghibli as well.


title: Ghibli Museum

text: There is a playroom for children age 12 and below with a Catbus toy to play in. Its size was slightly downsized from the original scale in "My Neighbor Totoro" (1988) for it to fit into the museum.


title: Ghibli Museum

text: On the museum's roof is a garden with a life-size, five meter tall statue of a robot from the final episode of "Lupin III Part II" and "Castle in the Sky".


title: Ghibli Museum

text: The Robot Soldier was made by the artist Kunio Shachimaru. The statue is formed from hammered copper plate and took 2 years to create. The keystone from the movie "Castle in the Sky" can be found here. The keystone, bearing an inscription in Old Persian cuneiform, is a replica of the control room stone found in the floating castle, Laputa, in the movie "Castle in the Sky".


title: Ghibli Museum

text: Tickets to the Ghibli Museum are only accepted if bought in advance. These reserve tickets can be purchased outside Japan in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Korea, North America, Europe, and Australia, and on internet by the LAWSON Ticket Online Shop, or via one of the authorized JTB Corporation locations for the respective region. Tickets go on sale on the tenth day of each month at 9:00 AM local time for reservations the following month. Reservations are strictly for the date and time purchased, and cannot be changed once booked. Tickets range from ¥1,000 for adults to ¥700 for ages thirteen to eighteen year olds, ¥400 for ages seven to twelve year olds, and ¥100 for ages four to six year olds. Ages four years old and under are free. At the museum's entry, the reserve tickets are exchanged for a 35mm film strip that features a scene from one of the Studio Ghibli films.


title: Ghibli Museum

text: At the entrance of the building, the museum's ceiling is covered in a fresco painting. The painting features characters from the Studio Ghibli films such as Kiki on her broomstick from the film "Kiki's Delivery Service" (1989).


title: Parallels (TV series)

text: Parallels (; stylized as Para//èles) is a French science-fiction streaming television series about four teenage friends who are affected by a physics experiment which fractures spacetime, sending their lives in divergent directions. It was produced by Daïmôn Films and Empreinte Digitale for the Walt Disney Company. The series premiered on Disney+ on March 23, 2022 in France, the US, and other countries.


title: Parallels (TV series)

text: Four lifelong friends preparing to start high school – Bilal, Romane, and brothers Sam and Victor – find their reality disrupted when the test of an experimental particle collider sends them into parallel worlds.


title: Parallels (TV series)

text: Joel Keller of "Decider" stated that the first episode manages to raise interest through its story, giving "Parallels" the potential to take many directions in the future in order to become an exciting science-fiction mystery show. Joly Herman of "Common Sense Media" rated the series 4 out of 5 stars, praised the show for promoting values such as love, loyalty, and persistence, complimented the positive role models, and found agreeable that the series has diversity among its cast members.


title: Don Heck

text: Donald L. Heck (January 2, 1929 – February 23, 1995) was an American comics artist best known for co-creating the Marvel Comics characters Iron Man, the Wasp, Black Widow, Hawkeye and Wonder Man and for his long run penciling the Marvel superhero-team series "The Avengers" during the 1960s Silver Age of comic books.


title: Don Heck

text: Heck was born in the Jamaica neighborhood of Queens, New York City, the son of Bertha and John Heck, of German descent. Heck learned art through correspondence courses as well as at Woodrow Wilson Vocational High School in Jamaica and at a community college in Brooklyn. He continued with an impromptu art education in December 1949 when at the recommendation of a college friend he landed a job at Harvey Comics. There he repurposed newspaper comic strip Photostats into comic-book form — including the work of Heck's idol, famed cartoonist Milton Caniff.


title: Don Heck

text: Heck remained at Harvey, where one co-worker in the production department was future comics artist Pete Morisi, for two-and-a-half years. When a Harvey employee, Allen Hardy, broke off “to start his own line, Media Comics [sic; actually Comic Media<nowiki>]</nowiki>, in 1952," Heck recalled in 1993, Hardy “called me up and asked me to join." Heck's first known comics work appeared in two Comic Media titles both cover-dated September 1952: the war comic "War Fury" #1, for which he penciled and inked the cover and the eight-page story "The Unconquered", by an unknown writer; and the cover and the six-page story "Hitler's Head", also by an unknown writer, in the horror comic "Weird Terror" #1. Heck's work continued to appear in those titles and in the horror anthology "Horrific", for which he designed the logo; the adventure-drama anthology "Danger"; the Western anthology "Death Valley"; and other titles through the company's demise in late 1954.