title: The Tales of Beedle the Bard

text: "The Tales of Beedle the Bard" first appeared as a fictional book in J. K. Rowling's 2007 "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows", the seventh and final novel of the "Harry Potter" series. The book is bequeathed to Hermione Granger by Albus Dumbledore, former headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. It is described as a popular collection of Wizarding children's fairy tales, so that while Ron Weasley is familiar with the stories, Harry Potter and Hermione Granger had not previously heard of them due to their non-magical upbringing.


title: The Tales of Beedle the Bard

text: The book Hermione receives in Dumbledore's will is a copy of the original edition of the fictional book. It is described as an ancient-looking small book with its binding "stained and peeling in places". In the novel it is also said the book has a title on its cover, written in embossed runic symbols.


title: The Tales of Beedle the Bard

text: The book acts as the vehicle for introducing the Deathly Hallows to the trio. Above the story "The Tale of the Three Brothers", Hermione Granger finds a strange symbol which later is revealed by Xenophilius Lovegood to be the symbol of the Hallows. The triangle from the symbol represents the Invisibility Cloak, the circle inside the triangle symbolises the Resurrection Stone, and the vertical line represents the Elder Wand.


title: The Tales of Beedle the Bard

text: These three objects are also mentioned in the story itself, and are said to belong to the Peverell brothers, who are later revealed as being both Voldemort's and Harry Potter's ancestors. Towards the end of the novel, Albus Dumbledore also confirms Harry's connection to the Peverells, and states that the three brothers might in fact have been the creators of the Hallows.


title: The Tales of Beedle the Bard

text: The introduction (written by Rowling) to the publications released in December 2008 mentions that the fictional character Beedle the Bard was born in Yorkshire, lived in the 15th century, and had "an exceptionally luxuriant beard".


title: The Tales of Beedle the Bard

text: Rowling started writing the book soon after finishing work on the seventh "Harry Potter" novel. During an interview with her fandom she also stated that she used other books as a source of inspiration for the tales. More specifically, "The Tale of the Three Brothers", the only story included entirely in "The Deathly Hallows", was inspired by Geoffrey Chaucer's "The Pardoner's Tale" from "The Canterbury Tales".


title: The Tales of Beedle the Bard

text: Originally "The Tales of Beedle the Bard" had only been produced in a limited number of seven handmade copies, all handwritten and illustrated by the author herself. The books were bound in brown morocco leather, and decorated with hand-chased silver ornaments and mounted semiprecious stones by silversmith and jeweller Hamilton & Inches of Edinburgh. Each of the silver pieces represents one of the five stories in the book. Rowling also asked that each of the seven copies be embellished using a different semiprecious stone.


title: The Tales of Beedle the Bard

text: Six of these original handwritten copies were uniquely dedicated and given by Rowling to six people who were most involved with the "Harry Potter" series. The recipients of these copies were not initially identified. Since then, two of these people have been named. One is Barry Cunningham, Rowling's very first editor. Another is Arthur A. Levine, editor for Scholastic, the U.S. publisher of the "Harry Potter" books. Cunningham and Levine had lent their personal copies as part of "Beedle the Bard" exhibits in December 2008.


title: The Tales of Beedle the Bard

text: Rowling also decided to create a seventh handwritten copy (distinguished from the others by its moonstone jewelling) to sell at auction in order to raise funds for The Children's Voice charity campaign.


title: The Tales of Beedle the Bard

text: The 157-page "Moonstone edition" of the book was first put on display prior to bidding on 26 November in New York and on 9 December in London. The book was auctioned 13 December 2007, at Sotheby's in London. The starting price was £30,000 ($62,000, €46,000), and originally it was expected to sell for approximately £50,000 ($103,000, €80,000). The closing bid far exceeded all prior projections, as ultimately the book was purchased by a representative from London fine art dealers Hazlitt Gooden and Fox on behalf of Amazon, for a total of £1.95 million ($3.98 million, €2.28 million). This was the highest purchase price for a modern literary manuscript at that date. The money earned at auction later was donated by Rowling to The Children's Voice charity campaign.


title: The Tales of Beedle the Bard

text: Sotheby's printed a forty-eight-page promotional catalogue for the auction. The catalogue featured illustrations from the book, as well as comments from J. K. Rowling on "The Tales of Beedle the Bard". The catalogue was sold as a collector's item, and the money from that sale also has been donated to The Children's Voice.


title: The Tales of Beedle the Bard

text: Cunningham's copy of the book was put up for auction in November 2016. It was auctioned for £368,750 on 12 December 2016. The book was auctioned by Sotheby's in London. The book is a leather bound manuscript decorated with rhodochrosite gemstones, and a silver skull. This copy features an author's note addressed to Cunningham which reads “To Barry, the man who thought an overlong novel about a boy wizard in glasses might just sell … THANK YOU.” She has also added a note describing the gemstones as being “traditionally associated with love, balance and joy in daily life”.


title: The Tales of Beedle the Bard

text: On 31 July 2008, it was announced "The Tales of Beedle the Bard" would also be made available for the public, in both standard and collector's editions. The book was published by Children's High Level Group and printed and distributed by Bloomsbury, Scholastic, and Amazon.com. The decision was taken due to disappointment among "Harry Potter" fans after it had initially been announced a wide public release was not intended.


title: The Tales of Beedle the Bard

text: Similarly to "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them" and "Quidditch Through the Ages" (two other books mentioned in the "Harry Potter" novels that have also been printed) the standard and collector's editions of "The Tales of Beedle the Bard" feature commentary and footnotes from Albus Dumbledore, headmaster of Hogwarts and one of the main characters of the series. The standard edition also includes illustrations reproduced from the handwritten edition auctioned in December 2007 and the introduction by the author. The limited collector's edition features ten illustrations by J.K. Rowling not included in the standard edition or the original handcrafted edition, as well as an exclusive reproduction of J.K. Rowling's handwritten introduction, and other miscellaneous objects such as replica gemstones and an emerald ribbon.


title: The Tales of Beedle the Bard

text: The book, released on 4 December 2008, was published in the United Kingdom and Canada by Bloomsbury, while the US edition was published by Scholastic, and the limited collector's edition of the book, available in all three countries, by Amazon. The limited edition retailed for £50 ($100, €100), and around 100,000 copies have been printed. The book has been translated into 28 languages. Profits from the sale of the book were offered to the Children's High Level Group. Initial sale estimates were roughly £4 million ($7.6 million, €4.7 million); as of January 2010 an estimated £11 million ($17 million, €13 million) were generated from sales for the charity.


title: The Tales of Beedle the Bard

text: Rowling wrote five stories for the book. One, "The Warlock's Hairy Heart", is not mentioned in "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows"; three others, "The Wizard and the Hopping Pot", "The Fountain of Fair Fortune", and "Babbitty Rabbitty and her Cackling Stump", receive cursory attention. "The Tale of the Three Brothers" is the only story which is included entirely in "The Deathly Hallows".


title: The Tales of Beedle the Bard

text: This story is about the legacy of an old man who, in his generosity, used his pot to brew magical potions and antidotes for other people when they needed his help. Upon his death, he leaves all his belongings to his only son, who has none of the virtues his father had. After his father's death, the son finds the pot and a single slipper inside it together with a note from his father that reads, "In the fond hope, my son, that you will never need it".


title: The Tales of Beedle the Bard

text: Bitter for having nothing left but a pot, the son closes the door on every person who asks for his help. He does not help over five people, so each time he does so, the pot takes on the symptoms of the ones who ask for help; it starts disturbing the son and prevents him from having any peace of mind. This continues until the son finally gives up and provides aid to the town. Upon doing this, the pot's ailments are removed one by one and the son's ordeal finally ends one day when the slipper he received from his father falls out of the pot; he puts the slipper on the pot's foot and the two walk off into the sunset.


title: The Tales of Beedle the Bard

text: In this story, there is a fountain where once per year, one person may bathe to have his or her problems answered. This is how three witches meet. The first witch, Asha, suffers from an incurable disease. The second, Altheda, endures poverty and powerlessness due to a robbery. The third, Amata, is distraught after being left by her beloved. The three witches decide to try to reach the fountain together but along the way, a luckless Muggle knight, Sir Luckless, also joins them.


title: The Tales of Beedle the Bard

text: On their path to the fountain, they face three challenges. The first involves a giant worm that demands "proof of [their] pain". Asha passes this challenge from shedding tears from frustration after several failed attempts. The second, a steep slope where they have to bring the "fruit of their labours". Altheda passes this challenge with her hard-earned effort and the sweat of her brow. The third challenge, crossing a river, requires them to pay with "the treasure of [their] past". Amata passes the challenge by using a Pensieve to withdraw the memories of her ex-lover and drop them into the water.


title: The Tales of Beedle the Bard

text: At the fountain, Asha collapses from exhaustion. To save her, Altheda brews an invigorating potion that also cures Asha of her disease and need of the fountain. Altheda realises that her skills are a means to earn money, so she also no longer needs the fountain. Amata realises that washing away her regret for her cruel and false lover removed her need as well. Sir Luckless bathes in the water, after which he flings himself at Amata's feet and asks for "her hand and her heart" which she happily gives. Everyone gets an answer to his or her problem, unaware that the fountain held no magical power at all.


title: The Tales of Beedle the Bard

text: The story is about a young and handsome warlock who decides to never fall in love, so he uses Dark Arts to prevent himself from doing so. His family, hoping he will change, does nothing. However, one day, he hears two servants whispering about him not having a wife, so he decides to find a talented, rich, and beautiful witch and marry her to gain everyone's envy.


title: The Tales of Beedle the Bard

text: He meets that girl the next day. Though the girl is both "fascinated and repelled", the warlock persuades her to come to a dinner feast at his castle. During the feast, she tells him that she needs to know he has a heart. The warlock shows her his beating hairy heart inside a crystal casket in his dungeon. The witch begs him to put it back inside himself. After the warlock does so, she embraces him. However, being disconnected from its body for so long, his heart has developed savage tastes as it has degenerated into an animalistic state. And so he is driven to take by force a truly human heart. He tears out the witch's heart to replace his own, but finding that he cannot magic the hairy heart back out of his chest, he cuts it out with a dagger. Thus he and the maiden both die, with him holding both hearts in his hands.


title: The Tales of Beedle the Bard

text: This story is about a king who wants to keep all magic to himself. To do this he needs to solve two problems: he must capture and imprison all of the sorcerers in the kingdom and he has to learn magic. He creates a "Brigade of Witch Hunters" and calls for an instructor in magic. Only a "cunning charlatan" with no magical ability responds. The charlatan proves himself with a few simple tricks and begins to ask for jewellery and money to continue teaching. However, Babbitty, the king's washerwoman, laughs at the king one day as he attempts to do magic with an ordinary twig. This causes the king to demand the charlatan join him in a public demonstration of magic and warns that the charlatan will be beheaded if anyone laughs. The charlatan later witnesses Babbitty performing magic in her house. He threatens to expose her if she does not assist him. She agrees to hide and help the demonstration.


title: The Tales of Beedle the Bard

text: During the performance, the brigade captain asks the king to bring his dead hound back to life. Because Babbitty cannot use magic to raise the dead, the crowd thinks the previous acts were tricks. The charlatan exposes Babbitty, accusing her of blocking the spells. Babbitty flees into a forest and disappears at the base of an old tree. In desperation, the charlatan states that she has turned "into a crab apple" and has the tree cut down.


title: The Tales of Beedle the Bard

text: As the crowd departs, the stump starts cackling and makes the charlatan confess. The stump cackles again, demanding the king never hurt a wizard again, and build a statue of Babbitty on the stump to remind him of his foolishness. The king agrees and heads back to the palace. Afterwards, a "stout old rabbit" with a wand in its teeth hops out from a hole beneath the stump and leaves the kingdom.


title: The Tales of Beedle the Bard

text: The story is about three brothers who, while traveling together, reach a treacherous river. They make a magical bridge over the river wherein just as they cross, they meet the personification of Death, who is angry for losing three potential victims. He pretends to be impressed by them and grants each a gift as a reward, hoping to use each gift to bring about their eventual demises. The oldest brother asks for an unbeatable dueling wand, so Death gives him the Elder Wand. The middle brother asks for the ability to resurrect the dead to humiliate Death further, so Death gives him the Resurrection Stone. The youngest brother, a humbler man, does not trust Death and asks for a way to stop Death from following him, so Death reluctantly gives him his Cloak of Invisibility. Afterward, the brothers go their separate ways.


title: The Tales of Beedle the Bard

text: The oldest brother resolves a previous qualm by using the wand to kill the man with whom he quarreled, but his bragging about the wand's incredible power results in him getting robbed of it and murdered in his sleep, allowing Death to claim him. The middle brother resolves a previous loss by using the stone to bring back the woman to whom he wanted to be married, but she is revealed to be non-corporeal and full of sorrow for being back in the mortal world; in grief, he commits suicide, allowing Death to claim him. However, Death never manages to find the youngest brother, as he stays hidden under the invisibility cloak. Many years later, the brother removes his cloak and gives it to his son. Content with the life he has lived, he greets Death as an old friend and equal, thereby dying of natural causes.


title: The Tales of Beedle the Bard

text: "The Tales of Beedle the Bard" received generally positive critical reception. Sotheby's deputy director Philip W. Errington described the handmade edition as "one of the most exciting pieces of children's literature" to have passed through the auction house. After buying the book, Amazon also released a review, describing it as "an artifact pulled straight out of a novel".


title: The Tales of Beedle the Bard

text: "The Times" reviewed the published book favourably, calling the tales "funny, sinister, wise and captivating" and likening them to the tales collected by the Brothers Grimm. "The Telegraph" reviewed it unfavourably, noting that they "would be unremarkable were it not for the body of work that lies behind it" and that there was "an element of padding to make it a respectable length".


title: The Tales of Beedle the Bard

text: A live puppet show of "The Fountain of Fair Fortune" and "The Tale of the Three Brothers" is presented daily at the Diagon Alley expansion of The Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Studios Florida.


title: The Tales of Beedle the Bard

text: Due to "The Tale of the Three Brothers" originally being in the novel "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows", the story was also adapted as an animated short in the novel's first film adaptation, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 1". The sequence was directed by Ben Hibon and animated at Framestore; like in the novel, it is also narrated in-universe by Hermione Granger (Emma Watson).


title: David Trone

text: David John Trone (born September 21, 1955) is an American politician and businessman. A Democrat, he is a member of the United States House of Representatives from Maryland's 6th congressional district. The district includes most of the western third of the state, but the bulk of its population is located in the outer northern suburbs of Washington, D.C. He founded and co-owns Total Wine & More, along with his brother, and served as the company's president until December 2016.


title: David Trone

text: In 2016, Trone spent more than $13 million of his own money on his unsuccessful Democratic primary campaign to succeed Chris Van Hollen in Maryland's 8th congressional district, setting a record for the most expensive self-funded House campaign. In 2018, Trone was the Democratic nominee for the 6th district and won the general election to succeed John Delaney beginning in 2019.


title: David Trone

text: Trone was born in Maryland and raised on a farm in East Berlin, Pennsylvania, where his father Thomas ran a chicken and hog operation. Thomas also owned a soda and beer store. When Trone's parents separated, his father kept the farm and his mother took over the store. Thomas and his farm went into bankruptcy, but Trone kept working at his mother's store.


title: David Trone

text: Trone graduated magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, from Furman University in 1977, and earned a Master of Business Administration in 1985 from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.


title: David Trone

text: Having seen the potential of the beer sales at his mother's store, Trone began his career by founding the beer-only retailer Beer World in Pennsylvania in 1984, during his second semester of graduate school. Months before graduating from Wharton, in 1985, Trone expanded into the Pittsburgh metropolitan area. Over time, he opened additional stores, called Beer and Pop Warehouse and, later, Beer World, which were owned by friends and family members because Pennsylvania state law prohibited individuals from owning more than one beer retail outlet.


title: David Trone

text: Trone, with the assistance of his brother Robert, then opened two stores in Delaware in 1991, adding wine and spirits to the company's offerings. Using knowledge acquired at Wharton, the brothers chose to replicate the family store's model across Pennsylvania. The beverage company had slim margins, but was immediately profitable and allowed the brothers to focus on operations. The brothers familiarized themselves with regulators and industry leaders, and began changing laws that restrict wholesalers from offering retailers discounts in exchange for large volume purchases, among others in their attempt to promote beverage consumption.


title: David Trone

text: The business has since expanded into what is known today as Total Wine & More, the largest privately owned beer, wine, and spirits retailer in the United States. In December 2016, Trone gave up his title of president to chief executive Kevin Peters.


title: David Trone

text: Beginning in 1989 and for the following three years, Pennsylvania authorities arrested Trone three times following complaints from an association of smaller, individually owned stores. One arrest was for negotiating volume discounts on behalf of multiple stores and illegally advertising beer prices, and another was for circumventing state transportation regulations. These charges were later dismissed.


title: David Trone

text: In 1992, Trone, his wife, June, and brother were indicted by a grand jury in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, for owning multiple stores through Trone's consulting company, among other charges, all of which were later dropped and expunged. In 1994, a state judge dismissed 19 of the 23 counts based on "prosecutorial overreaching", and the remaining counts were withdrawn after Trone paid a $40,000 fee to cover investigation costs.


title: David Trone

text: During these legal proceedings, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) broke the law by providing records of his consulting firm to government officials, prompting Trone to sue the agency in federal court. Trone won and was awarded $400,000. The lawyer who had represented Trone also served as a national board member of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which would begin the start of a long-term relationship between Trone and the organization. The Trones' difficulties in Pennsylvania prompted them to leave the state; Total Wine & More grew from the remaining two stores in Delaware and an additional retail outlet in New Jersey, which had been opened by Trone during the early 1990s.


title: David Trone

text: In 2016, Total Wine was served with a license suspension by the Massachusetts Alcoholic Beverages Control Commission for selling liquor below its costs. The company appealed the commission's decision, and in mid-2017 the Suffolk Superior Court sided with Total Wine.


title: David Trone

text: Trone has been active in Democratic politics and hosted fundraisers for the party. In 2014, he hosted a fundraiser for gubernatorial candidate Anthony Brown, which was attended by former President Bill Clinton, and in November 2015, he held a fundraiser at his home for the Democratic National Committee, which was attended by President Obama. Trone had also contributed to Republican politicians; according to a database operated by OpenSecrets, he donated more than $150,000 to Republicans in multiple U.S. states between 2000 and 2015. "The Washington Post" reported that Trone contributed more than $90,000 to Democratic state officials during the same period, and said the donations made to Republicans were to support "legislation or regulatory changes favorable to his company". Trone said the donations "represented the cost of doing business, especially in states with Republican-controlled state houses and governor's mansions".


title: David Trone

text: In January 2016, Trone entered the Democratic primary campaign to succeed Chris Van Hollen in Maryland's 8th congressional district; this was the real contest in the heavily Democratic district. He ran on reducing unemployment and gun violence, criminal justice reform, environmental protection, and education and foreign policy. Trone pledged to support early education, work with the National Institutes of Health to reduce health care costs, improve infrastructure, and forgive more student loans for government employees.


title: David Trone

text: Trone spent more than $13 million on his unsuccessful campaign, which became the most expensive self-funded House campaign ever. The first-time candidate said a large personal investment was necessary in order to stand out in a crowded race which included recognizable competitors, including news anchor and Marriott International executive Kathleen Matthews and election winner State Senator Jamie Raskin. Following the election, Trone told NPR, "We knew it would be very expensive. We're not surprised by what it cost at all. We anticipated that, and it was a thoughtful choice my wife and I made... It was the right decision to take no money from anybody."


title: David Trone

text: On August 2, 2017, Trone announced his candidacy for the Democratic nomination for Maryland's 6th district, an open seat being vacated by John Delaney, who chose not to seek reelection and retire from Congress to focus on his 2020 presidential campaign. Trone had endorsed Delaney for president several days prior. Trone told "Washington Jewish Week" in early 2018 that lessons learned from his prior run include not entering the race early enough and not raising money.


title: David Trone

text: Trone toured throughout Maryland in late 2017, and filed his candidacy in January 2018. His filing was accompanied by a press release expressing his support for education, environmental protections, health care, Social Security, and women's rights. Trone also made combating the opioid epidemic a central focus of his platform, releasing an action plan and hosting a series of town hall meetings to address the crisis. In March 2018, Trone, gubernatorial candidate Rushern Baker, and John Delaney organized free bus trips from Maryland to Washington, D.C., in support of the March for Our Lives demonstration.


title: David Trone

text: On June 26, 2018, Trone won the Democratic primary election for Maryland's 6th district against seven challengers, with 40 percent of the vote.


title: David Trone

text: In the general election, Trone faced Republican Amie Hoeber and candidates from other parties. He received an endorsement from the "Washington Post". On election day on November 6, 2018, Trone won the U.S. House seat with 57.5 percent of the vote.


title: David Trone

text: On January 23, 2020, Trone announced his intention to run for re-election to Congress to serve a second term.


title: David Trone

text: In the general election, Trone faced Republican Neil Parrott and candidates from other parties, winning re-election with 58.8% of the vote.


title: David Trone

text: Trone again defeated Republican Neil Parrott in 2022, but it was a very close race in the redrawn district, with the winner unknown until three days after the election.


title: David Trone

text: Trone was rated the 15th most bipartisan member of Congress by the Common Ground Committee and The Lugar Center rated Trone as the 23rd most bipartisan member of the U.S. House. As of October 2022, Trone had voted in line with Joe Biden's stated position 100% of the time.


title: David Trone

text: Trone co-chairs the Bipartisan Addiction and Mental Health Task Force with Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, a Republican congressman from Pennsylvania. According to "The Washington Post", Trone “is at the center of bipartisan efforts in Congress to make a major investment in putting a dent in the opioid epidemic.” Driven by the loss of his nephew, Trone has made fighting against the opioid epidemic one of his top priorities and drew praise from Fitzpatrick who said that Trone "is the hardest-working person on the floor on this issue.” The majority of bills that Trone has passed on the issue have been bipartisan.


title: David Trone

text: On President Biden’s first day in office, Trone introduced a bill titled the “Preventing Mental Health and Substance Use Crises During Emergencies Act”, which Trone said was needed because “we will never have a vaccine to cure the mental health [...] epidemic that [has] been exacerbated by this pandemic.” After a police officer from his district died by suicide, Trone wrote the Confidentiality Opportunities for Peer Support (COPS) Counseling Act, which ensured confidential counseling for law enforcement officers. Biden signed the COPS Act into law in late 2021.


title: David Trone

text: Trone is a co-sponsor of H.R. 40, the Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans Act. The bill would support identification of ways the government can address disparities between African Americans and other ethnic groups.


title: David Trone

text: In addition to political contributions, Trone and his wife have supported a number of philanthropic efforts. They have been major contributors to the ACLU since 1994. Their $15 million donation in 2015 supported the organization's efforts to promote criminal justice reform and improve employment opportunities for former prisoners, and established the Trone Center for Justice and Equality at the organization's national headquarters. In 2016, the couple pledged $5 million to establish the Trone Family Public Policy Initiative Fund at their alma mater, the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.


title: David Trone

text: In mid-2017, the Trones donated $2.5 million to Bethesda, Maryland's Suburban Hospital to support mental and behavioral health services and make improvements to the Old Georgetown Road campus. The couple's donation was inspired by their nephew's death from an opioid overdose in late 2016. The David and June Trone Family Foundation contributed $100,000 to the Catholic Legal Immigration Network in mid-2017 to support locals affected by Trump's travel ban, which the couple called "outrageously egregious". The Trones also donated to the ACLU's Montgomery County affiliate, the Latino immigrant organization CASA, and Interfaith Works.


title: David Trone

text: Trone's contributions to Furman University include a $5 million grant for a student center and to create men's and women's lacrosse teams, and the lead $500,000 gift for the Riley Foundation's endowment to support disadvantaged South Carolina students. The Trone Student Center was dedicated in 2013 and named for Trone and his wife, in honor of their $3.5 million contribution.


title: David Trone

text: In 2021, Trone and his wife donated $5 million to American University to help support research on addiction and behavioral health.


title: David Trone

text: In 2022, Trone and his wife donated $10 million to his alma mater, Furman University, targeting mental health. Officials at Furman University said $8.5 million of the Trones' donation would be dedicated to renovating Furman's counseling center, creating the Trone Family Fund for Student Mental Health and Well-Being, and expanding the school's mental health services. Trone also donated $1.5 million to create the Hillel Endowment Fund to support Furman's Hillel, the Jewish Student Association.


title: David Trone

text: Trone serves as chair of the Trone Private Sector and Education Advisory Council at the ACLU Trone Center. He has served on the Bullis School's board of trustees since 2006.


title: David Trone

text: In 2012, Kids Enjoy Exercise Now (KEEN) Greater DC gave Trone the "Distinguished Service Award" for his many contributions to the organization, which provides recreational programs for children with developmental and physical disabilities. He was honored at the 2014 Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Awards Greater Washington, in the "large company" category. In 2015, Trone was invited by the American University's Kennedy Political Union and the Kogod School of Business to speak to students and faculty about entrepreneurship and business leadership. He was awarded the Anti-Defamation League's annual achievement award in 2016. In 2016, Trone joined the boards of American University and the Montgomery County Chamber of Commerce.


title: David Trone

text: In 2017, Trone received Furman University's Carl F. Kohrt Distinguished Alumni Award, which is presented "to an alumnus in recognition of significant professional or personal accomplishments and in gratitude for continued loyalty". He served on Furman University's board of trustees from 2010 to 2016.


title: David Trone

text: During his 2018 campaign, Trone was diagnosed with cancer and underwent chemotherapy and surgery to remove a kidney; he was declared cancer-free by October.


title: David Trone

text: , the Trones live in Potomac, a suburb of Washington. His home is just outside the 6th's borders. Members of the House are only required to live in the state they represent, and not the particular district.


title: David Trone

text: Trone was raised Lutheran. His wife and all four children are Jewish and attend Temple Beth Ami in Rockville.


title: ASN.1

text: Abstract Syntax Notation One (ASN.1) is a standard interface description language for defining data structures that can be serialized and deserialized in a cross-platform way. It is broadly used in telecommunications and computer networking, and especially in cryptography.


title: ASN.1

text: Protocol developers define data structures in ASN.1 modules, which are generally a section of a broader standards document written in the ASN.1 language. The advantage is that the ASN.1 description of the data encoding is independent of a particular computer or programming language. Because ASN.1 is both human-readable and machine-readable, an ASN.1 compiler can compile modules into libraries of code, codecs, that decode or encode the data structures. Some ASN.1 compilers can produce code to encode or decode several encodings, e.g. packed, BER or XML.


title: ASN.1

text: ASN.1 is a joint standard of the International Telecommunication Union Telecommunication Standardization Sector (ITU-T) in ITU-T Study Group 17 and ISO/IEC, originally defined in 1984 as part of CCITT X.409:1984. In 1988, ASN.1 moved to its own standard, "X.208", due to wide applicability. The substantially revised 1995 version is covered by the "X.680" series. The latest revision of the X.680 series of recommendations is the 6.0 Edition, published in 2021.


title: ASN.1

text: ASN.1 is a data type declaration notation. It does not define how to manipulate a variable of such a type. Manipulation of variables is defined in other languages such as SDL (Specification and Description Language) for executable modeling or TTCN-3 (Testing and Test Control Notation) for conformance testing. Both these languages natively support ASN.1 declarations. It is possible to import an ASN.1 module and declare a variable of any of the ASN.1 types declared in the module.


title: ASN.1

text: ASN.1 is used to define a large number of protocols. Its most extensive uses continue to be telecommunications, cryptography, and biometrics.


title: ASN.1

text: ASN.1 is closely associated with a set of encoding rules that specify how to represent a data structure as a series of bytes. The standard ASN.1 encoding rules include:


title: ASN.1

text: ASN.1 recommendations provide a number of predefined encoding rules. If none of the existing encoding rules are suitable, the Encoding Control Notation (ECN) provides a way for a user to define his or her own customized encoding rules.


title: ASN.1

text: Privacy-Enhanced Mail (PEM) encoding is entirely unrelated to ASN.1 and its codecs, but encoded ASN.1 data, which is often binary, is often PEM-encoded so that it can be transmitted as textual data, e.g. over SMTP relays, or through copy/paste buffers.


title: ASN.1

text: This is an example ASN.1 module defining the messages (data structures) of a fictitious Foo Protocol:


title: ASN.1

text: This could be a specification published by creators of Foo Protocol. Conversation flows, transaction interchanges, and states are not defined in ASN.1, but are left to other notations and textual description of the protocol.


title: ASN.1

text: Assuming a message that complies with the Foo Protocol and that will be sent to the receiving party, this particular message (protocol data unit (PDU)) is:


title: ASN.1

text: ASN.1 supports constraints on values and sizes, and extensibility. The above specification can be changed to


title: ASN.1

text: This change constrains trackingNumbers to have a value between 0 and 199 inclusive, and questionNumbers to have a value between 10 and 20 inclusive. The size of the questions array can be between 0 and 10 elements, with the answers array between 1 and 10 elements. The anArray field is a fixed length 100 element array of integers that must be in the range 0 to 1000. The '...' extensibility marker means that the FooHistory message specification may have additional fields in future versions of the specification; systems compliant with one version should be able to receive and transmit transactions from a later version, though able to process only the fields specified in the earlier version. Good ASN.1 compilers will generate (in C, C++, Java, etc.) source code that will automatically check that transactions fall within these constraints. Transactions that violate the constraints should not be accepted from, or presented to, the application. Constraint management in this layer significantly simplifies protocol specification because the applications will be protected from constraint violations, reducing risk and cost.


title: ASN.1

text: To send the myQuestion message through the network, the message is serialized (encoded) as a series of bytes using one of the encoding rules. The Foo protocol specification should explicitly name one set of encoding rules to use, so that users of the Foo protocol know which one they should use and expect.


title: ASN.1

text: Below is the data structure shown above as myQuestion encoded in DER format (all numbers are in hexadecimal):


title: ASN.1

text: DER is a type–length–value encoding, so the sequence above can be interpreted, with reference to the standard SEQUENCE, INTEGER, and IA5String types, as follows:


title: ASN.1

text: Alternatively, it is possible to encode the same ASN.1 data structure with XML Encoding Rules (XER) to achieve greater human readability "over the wire". It would then appear as the following 108 octets, (space count includes the spaces used for indentation):


title: ASN.1

text: Alternatively, if Packed Encoding Rules are employed, the following 122 bits (16 octets amount to 128 bits, but here only 122 bits carry information and the last 6 bits are merely padding) will be produced:


title: ASN.1

text: In this format, type tags for the required elements are not encoded, so it cannot be parsed without knowing the expected schemas used to encode. Additionally, the bytes for the value of the IA5String are packed using 7-bit units instead of 8-bit units, because the encoder knows that encoding an IA5String byte value requires only 7 bits. However the length bytes are still encoded here, even for the first integer tag 01 (but a PER packer could also omit it if it knows that the allowed value range fits on 8 bits, and it could even compact the single value byte 05 with less than 8 bits, if it knows that allowed values can only fit in a smaller range).


title: ASN.1

text: The last 6 bits in the encoded PER are padded with null bits in the 6 least significant bits of the last byte c0 : these extra bits may not be transmitted or used for encoding something else if this sequence is inserted as a part of a longer unaligned PER sequence.


title: ASN.1

text: This means that unaligned PER data is essentially an ordered stream of bits, and not an ordered stream of bytes like with aligned PER, and that it will be a bit more complex to decode by software on usual processors because it will require additional contextual bit-shifting and masking and not direct byte addressing (but the same remark would be true with modern processors and memory/storage units whose minimum addressable unit is larger than 1 octet). However modern processors and signal processors include hardware support for fast internal decoding of bit streams with automatic handling of computing units that are crossing the boundaries of addressable storage units (this is needed for efficient processing in data codecs for compression/decompression or with some encryption/decryption algorithms).


title: ASN.1

text: (in this case, each octet is padded individually with null bits on their unused most significant bits).


title: ASN.1

text: ASN.1 is similar in purpose and use to protocol buffers and Apache Thrift, which are also interface description languages for cross-platform data serialization. Like those languages, it has a schema (in ASN.1, called a "module"), and a set of encodings, typically type–length–value encodings. Unlike them, ASN.1 does not provide a single and readily usable open-source implementation, and is published as a specification to be implemented by third-party vendors. However, ASN.1, defined in 1984, predates them by many years. It also includes a wider variety of basic data types, some of which are obsolete, and has more options for extensibility. A single ASN.1 message can include data from multiple modules defined in multiple standards, even standards defined years apart.


title: ASN.1

text: ASN.1 also includes built-in support for constraints on values and sizes. For instance, a module can specify an integer field that must be in the range 0 to 100. The length of a sequence of values (an array) can also be specified, either as a fixed length or a range of permitted lengths. Constraints can also be specified as logical combinations of sets of basic constraints.


title: ASN.1

text: Values used as constraints can either be literals used in the PDU specification, or ASN.1 values specified elsewhere in the schema file. Some ASN.1 tools will make these ASN.1 values available to programmers in the generated source code. Used as constants for the protocol being defined, developers can use these in the protocol's logic implementation. Thus all the PDUs and protocol constants can be defined in the schema, and all implementations of the protocol in any supported language draw upon those values. This avoids the need for developers to hand code protocol constants in their implementation's source code. This significantly aids protocol development; the protocol's constants can be altered in the ASN.1 schema and all implementations are updated simply by recompiling, promoting a rapid and low risk development cycle.


title: ASN.1

text: If the ASN.1 tools properly implement constraints checking in the generated source code, this acts to automatically validate protocol data during program operation. Generally ASN.1 tools will include constraints checking into the generated serialization / deserialization routines, raising errors or exceptions if out-of-bounds data is encountered. It is complex to implement all aspects of ASN.1 constraints in an ASN.1 compiler. Not all tools support the full range of possible constraints expressions. XML schema and JSON schema both support similar constraints concepts. Tool support for constraints varies. Microsoft's xsd.exe compiler ignores them.


title: ASN.1

text: ASN.1 is visually similar to Augmented Backus-Naur form (ABNF), which is used to define many Internet protocols like HTTP and SMTP. However, in practice they are quite different: ASN.1 defines a data structure, which can be encoded in various ways (e.g. JSON, XML, binary). ABNF, on the other hand, defines the encoding ("syntax") at the same time it defines the data structure ("semantics"). ABNF tends to be used more frequently for defining textual, human-readable protocols, and generally is not used to define type–length–value encodings.


title: ASN.1

text: Many programming languages define language-specific serialization formats. For instance, Python's "pickle" module and Ruby's "Marshal" module. These formats are generally language specific. They also don't require a schema, which makes them easier to use in ad hoc storage scenarios, but inappropriate for communications protocols.


title: ASN.1

text: JSON and XML similarly do not require a schema, making them easy to use. They are also both cross-platform standards that are broadly popular for communications protocols, particularly when combined with a JSON schema or XML schema.


title: ASN.1

text: Some ASN.1 tools are able to translate between ASN.1 and XML schema (XSD). The translation is standardised by the ITU. This makes it possible for a protocol to be defined in ASN.1, and also automatically in XSD. Thus it is possible (though perhaps ill-advised) to have in a project an XSD schema being compiled by ASN.1 tools producing source code that serializes objects to/from JSON wireformat. A more practical use is to permit other sub-projects to consume an XSD schema instead of an ASN.1 schema, perhaps suiting tools availability for the sub-projects language of choice, with XER used as the protocol wireformat.


title: Trajan's Dacian Wars

text: The Dacian Wars (101–102, 105–106) were two military campaigns fought between the Roman Empire and Dacia during Emperor Trajan's rule. The conflicts were triggered by the constant Dacian threat on the Danubian province of Moesia and also by the increasing need for resources of the economy of the Empire.


title: Trajan's Dacian Wars

text: Trajan turned his attention to Dacia, an area north of Macedon and Greece and east of the Danube that had been on the Roman agenda since before the days of Caesar when the Dacians defeated a Roman army at the Battle of Histria. In AD 85, the Dacians swarmed over the Danube and pillaged Moesia and initially defeated the army that Emperor Domitian sent against them. The Romans were defeated in the Battle of Tapae in 88 and a truce was established.


title: Trajan's Dacian Wars

text: Emperor Trajan recommenced hostilities against Dacia and, following an uncertain number of battles, defeated the Dacian king Decebalus in the Second Battle of Tapae in 101. With Trajan's troops pressing towards the Dacian capital Sarmizegetusa Regia, Decebalus once more sought terms. Decebalus rebuilt his power over the following years and attacked Roman garrisons again in 105. In response Trajan again marched into Dacia, besieging the Dacian capital in the siege of Sarmizegetusa, and razing it. With Dacia quelled, Trajan subsequently invaded the Parthian empire to the east, his conquests expanding the Roman Empire to its greatest extent. Rome's borders in the east were indirectly governed through a system of client states for some time, leading to less direct campaigning than in the west in this period.


title: Trajan's Dacian Wars

text: Since the reign of Burebista, widely considered to be the greatest Dacian king—who ruled between 82 BC and 44 BC—the Dacians had represented a threat for the Roman Empire. Caesar himself had drawn up a plan to launch a campaign against Dacia. The threat was reduced when dynastic struggles in Dacia led to a division into four (or five, depending on the source) separately governed tribal states after Burebista's death in 44 BC. Augustus later came into conflict with Dacia after it sent envoys offering its support against Mark Antony in exchange for "requests", the nature of which has not been recorded. Augustus rejected the offer and Dacia gave its support to Antony. In 29 BC, Augustus sent several punitive expeditions into Dacia led by Marcus Licinius Crassus Dives, the consul of the prior year, that inflicted heavy casualties and apparently killed three of their five kings. Although Dacian raids into Pannonia and Moesia continued for several years despite the defeat, the threat of Dacia had effectively ended.


title: Trajan's Dacian Wars

text: Then, after 116 years of relative peace along the Roman frontier, in the winter of 85 AD to 86 AD the army of King Duras led by general Diurpaneus attacked the Roman province of Moesia, killing its governor, Oppius Sabinus, a former consul.


title: Trajan's Dacian Wars

text: The emperor Domitian led legions into the ravaged province and reorganized the possession into Moesia Inferior and Moesia Superior, planning an attack into Dacia for the next campaign season. The next year, with the arrival of fresh legions in 87 AD, Domitian began what became the First Dacian War. General Diurpaneus sent an envoy to Domitian offering peace. He was rejected and the praetorian prefect Cornelius Fuscus crossed the Danube into Dacia with 5 or 6 legions on a bridge built on boats. The Roman army was ambushed and defeated at the First Battle of Tapae by Diurpaneus, who was subsequently renamed Decebalus (Dacian for ""the Brave""), and who, as a consequence, was chosen to be the new king. Fuscus was killed and the legions lost their banners, adding to the humiliation. In 88, the Roman offensive continued, and the Roman army, this time under the command of Tettius Julianus, defeated the Dacians at their outlying fortress of Sarmizegetusa, also at Tapae, near the current village of Bucova. Diurpaneus's main advisor Vezinas survived by hiding under the dead bodies. After this battle, the king retreated, and supposedly dressed the surrounding forest in armor, so that Julianus thought that it's an army and turned back. Decebalus, now ruling the four reunited arms of the Dacians, asked for peace, which was again refused. Domitian later accepted the offer, mainly because his legions were needed along the Rhine to put down the revolt of Lucius Antonius Saturninus, the Roman governor of Germania Superior who had allied with the Marcomanni, Quadi and Sarmatian Yazgulyams against Domitian.


title: Trajan's Dacian Wars

text: Throughout the 1st century, Roman policy dictated that threats from neighbouring nations and provinces were to be contained promptly. The peace treaty following the First Battle of Tapae, followed by an indecisive and costly Roman victory on the same ground a year later, was unfavorable for the Empire. Following the peace of 89 AD, Decebalus became a client of Rome, with acceptance of Decebalus as king ("rex amicus"). He received a lump sum of money, annual financial stipends, craftsmen in trades devoted to both peace and war, and war machines to defend the empire's borders. The craftsmen were used by the Dacians to upgrade their own defences. Some historians believe this was an unfavorable peace and that it might have led to Domitian's assassination in September 96. Despite some co-operation on the diplomatic front with Domitian, Decebalus continued to oppose Rome.


title: Trajan's Dacian Wars

text: At the time, Rome was suffering from economic difficulties largely brought on by military invasions throughout Europe and in part due to a low gold content in Roman money as directed by Emperor Nero. Confirmed rumors of Dacian gold and other valuable trade resources inflamed the conflict, as did the Dacians' defiant behavior, as they were "unbowed and unbroken".


title: Trajan's Dacian Wars

text: However, other pressing reasons motivated them to action. Researchers estimate that only ten percent of barbarians such as Spanish and Gallic warriors had access to swords, usually the nobility. By contrast Dacia had rich resources of iron and copper and were prolific metal workers. A large percentage of Dacians owned swords, greatly reducing Rome's military advantage. Dacia sported 250,000 potential combatants, enough to enable an invasion. It was allied to several of its neighbors and on friendly terms with others that Rome considered enemies. Rome had no concrete defense policy and would not have been able to sustain a war of defense. As such, the new Emperor Trajan, himself an experienced soldier and tactician, began preparing for war. That Dacia was considered a substantial threat can be seen by the fact that Trajan withdrew troops from other borders leaving them dangerously undermanned.


title: Trajan's Dacian Wars

text: After gaining the Senate's blessing for war, by 101 Trajan was ready to advance on Dacia. This was a war in which the Roman military's ingenuity and engineering were well demonstrated. The Roman offensive was spearheaded by two legionary columns, marching straight to the heart of Dacia, burning towns and villages en route. Trajan defeated a Dacian army at the Second Battle of Tapae.


title: Trajan's Dacian Wars

text: In the winter of 101-2, the Roman army under Trajan had been amassed near the later city of Nicopolis ad Istrum at the junction of the Iatrus (Yantra) and the Rositsa rivers in readiness for the attack by the Sarmatian Roxolani tribe from north of the Danube (who were allied to the Dacians), and resulted in a Roman victory for which the city was named.


title: Trajan's Dacian Wars

text: In 102 Decebalus chose to make peace once it became clear that the Roman advance towards Sarmizegetusa was unstoppable. The war had concluded with an important Roman victory and with the establishment of a garrison and an acting governor at Sarmizegetusa. A bridge later known as Trajan's bridge was constructed across the Danube at Drobeta to assist with the legionaries' advance. This bridge, probably the biggest at that time and for centuries to come, was designed by Apollodorus of Damascus and was meant to help the Roman army advance faster in Dacia in case of a future war. According to the peace terms, Decebalus got technical and military reinforcement from the Romans in order to create a powerful allied zone against the dangerous possible expeditions from the northern and eastern territories by hostile migrating peoples. The resources were instead used to rebuild Dacian fortresses and strengthen the army. Soon thereafter Decebalus turned against the Romans once again.


title: Trajan's Dacian Wars

text: Following the first war, Decebalus complied with Rome for a time, but was soon inciting revolt among tribes against them and pillaging Roman colonies across the Danube. True to his intrepid and optimistic nature, Trajan rallied his forces in AD 105 for a second war.


title: Trajan's Dacian Wars

text: Like the first conflict, the second war involved several skirmishes that proved costly to the Roman military. Faced with large numbers of allied tribes, the legions struggled to attain a decisive victory, resulting in a second temporary peace. Eventually, goaded by the behavior of Decebalus and his repeated violations of the treaty, Rome again brought in reinforcements, took the offensive and prevailed in 105. The next year they gradually conquered the mountain fortress system that surrounded the Dacian capital, Sarmizegetusa. The final decisive battle took place near the walls of Sarmizegetusa, presumably during the summer of 106, with the participation of the legions II "Adiutrix" and IV "Flavia Felix" and a detachment ("vexillatio") from VI "Ferrata".


title: Trajan's Dacian Wars

text: The Dacians repelled the first attack, but the Romans, helped by a treacherous local nobleman, found and destroyed the water pipes of the Dacian capital. Running out of water and food the city fell and was razed. Decebalus fled, but was followed by the Roman cavalry and committed suicide rather than submit. Nevertheless, the war went on. Thanks to the treason of a confidant of the Dacian king, Bicilis, the Romans found Decebalus's treasure in the river of Sargesia/Sargetia - a fortune estimated by Carcopino at 165,500 kg of gold and 331,000 kg of silver. The last battle took place at Porolissum (Moigrad).


title: Trajan's Dacian Wars

text: The conclusion of the Dacian Wars marked a triumph for Rome and its armies. Trajan announced 123 days of celebrations throughout the Empire. Dacia's rich gold mines were secured and it is estimated that Dacia then contributed 700 million Denarii per annum to the Roman economy, providing finance for Rome's future campaigns and assisting with the rapid expansion of Roman towns throughout Europe. The remains of the mining activities are still visible, especially at Roșia Montană. One hundred thousand male slaves were sent back to Rome; and to discourage future revolts, legions XIII "Gemina" and V "Macedonica" were permanently posted in Dacia. The conquered half (southern) of Dacia was annexed, becoming a province while the northern part remained free but never formed a state.


title: Trajan's Dacian Wars

text: The two wars were notable victories in Rome's extensive expansionist campaigns, gaining Trajan the people's admiration and support. The conclusion of the Dacian Wars marked the beginning of a period of sustained growth and relative peace in Rome. Trajan began extensive building projects and was so prolific in claiming credit that he was given the nickname "Ivy". Trajan became an honorable civil leader, improving Rome's civic infrastructure, thereby paving the way for internal growth and reinforcement of the Empire as a whole.


title: Trajan's Dacian Wars

text: As a consequence of the war, Dacia went through a huge demographic change. In the province of Dacia, out of 3000 identified personal names only 60 were of Dacian, while 2200 were of Roman origin.


title: Trajan's Dacian Wars

text: Most of the Dacian population was from now outside Transylvania, known as the Free Dacians, who continuously raided the province allying themselves with the Sarmatians, while the insiders (who were divided up by the Romans to tribes) made at least two rebellions against Roman authority.


title: Ramon Airport

text: Ramon Airport (, Arabic: مطار رامون) , named after Ilan and Asaf Ramon and unofficially also known as Eilat-Ramon Airport, is an international airport located in the Timna Valley in southern Israel. Ramon Airport is the second busiest in Israel (after Ben Gurion Airport) and has replaced the former Eilat Airport and Ovda Airport for civilian traffic. It also serves as the primary diversion airport in Israel.


title: Ramon Airport

text: The airport is located north of Eilat, next to Be'er Ora. Unlike the previous airport in Eilat, it has ample ramp space and a longer runway, which allows large aircraft to land and park. The airport was originally due to open in April 2017, but the opening was pushed back and the airport opened on January 21, 2019. The Irish low-cost carrier Ryanair inaugurated the first international flight service with a Boeing 737–800 from Poznan, Poland, on March 4, 2019.


title: Ramon Airport

text: Eilat Airport was established in 1949, when most of what would later be Eilat was empty. As the city developed, much of it was built around the airport. In the 1994 Peace Agreement between Israel and Jordan it was decided that operations would be transferred from Eilat Airport to Aqaba Airport in Jordan. The original plan was to rename Aqaba Airport as Aqaba–Eilat Peace International Airport. The agreement was never carried out, and an agreement between the two countries in March 1997, stipulated that domestic flights would continue to use Eilat Airport, whilst no further action to move international flights took place. Nonetheless, the construction of Ramon Airport angered Jordan, as this was seen by the Jordanian side as reneging on the promise of a joint airport made in the 1990s.


title: Ramon Airport

text: Removing the Eilat Airport from the city center was considered necessary for further development of Eilat, as it would allow, among other things, the construction of additional hotels close to the shoreline. It would also reduce noise pollution. The project is part of a larger plan to develop the city, which includes mega-projects such as moving the Port of Eilat to a location near the Jordanian border (for which removing the original airport is necessary), the Railway to Eilat, and upgrading the Arava Road.


title: Ramon Airport

text: The airport is named in memory of the first Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon, who perished in the Space Shuttle "Columbia" disaster, and his son Assaf Ramon who died six years later when his F-16 fighter jet crashed in a training accident.


title: Ramon Airport

text: The South District Planning and Construction Committee gave its approval for the project in 2003, and advanced planning was approved by the Israeli government in July 2010.


title: Ramon Airport

text: Construction was authorized on July 24, 2011, before advanced planning had been completed. The project's projected cost was ₪1.95 billion and it was funded partly by real estate revenue from selling the Eilat Airport's land. The planning budget, approved on May 6, 2010, was ₪56 million. There was a plan to make the airport a build-operate-transfer (BOT) project, but the Israel Airports Authority (IAA) objected, and the government authorized it to plan and oversee the project. Despite this, it was estimated that if the IAA took on the funding completely on its own, it would go bankrupt and default on its debts. Danya Cebus was selected to build the passenger terminal. The terminal was planned to feature a duty-free shop, a feature which was not present in Eilat Airport as Eilat Airport virtually only saw domestic flights. Mer Group was selected to provide command and control for the airport, including CCTV and perimeter protection.


title: Ramon Airport

text: In May 2013, the cornerstone was laid in a ceremony attended by government officials and members of the Ramon family. Construction began two weeks later.


title: Ramon Airport

text: The first test flight and landing in the airport took place on September 5, 2017. In January 2019, Jordan objected to Israel's opening of the airport, arguing that operation of the airport threatens the kingdom's airspace.


title: Ramon Airport

text: Ovda Airport which was built as a military airbase and is still used for that purpose had become the main airport for international flights to Southern Israel in the 2010s, as the facilities at Eilat Airport did not allow for the operation of larger and heavier planes. After Eilat Ramon Airport opened, Ovda was closed to civilian traffic.


title: Ramon Airport

text: The airport is located north of Eilat. Aside from Highway 90, it may also someday be reachable from the center of the country and Eilat via a proposed high-speed rail line and a light rail line that will connect it to the city. A bus terminal and a park and ride facility was built next to the airport at a cost ₪400 million. The bus terminal will replace the Eilat Central Bus Station. When the airport opened in 2019, the new bus station was not completed, and shuttle services are available for passengers to connect from the airport to the city of Eilat. All in all, the airport will be able to handle 2 million passengers a year.


title: Ramon Airport

text: The airport features a runway and has eight remote-parking stands for large aircraft and nine for turboprop airplanes. The land area of the airport covers , and the main terminal building is . It has the world's tallest anti-missile fence tall and long.


title: Frederick Spencer, 4th Earl Spencer

text: Frederick Spencer, 4th Earl Spencer, KG, CB, PC (14 April 1798 – 27 December 1857), styled The Honourable Frederick Spencer until 1845, was a British naval commander, courtier, and Whig politician. He initially served in the Royal Navy and fought in the Napoleonic Wars and the Greek War of Independence, eventually rising to the rank of Vice-Admiral. He succeeded his elder brother as Earl Spencer in 1845 and held political office as Lord Chamberlain of the Household between 1846 and 1848 and as Lord Steward of the Household between 1854 and 1857. In 1849 he was made a Knight of the Garter.


title: Frederick Spencer, 4th Earl Spencer

text: Spencer was born on 14 April 1798 at the Admiralty Building, London, and was baptised in St Martin-in-the-Fields. He was the fifth child born to George Spencer, 2nd Earl Spencer, and Lady Lavinia Bingham. Among his siblings was older brothers John Spencer, 3rd Earl Spencer (whose wife died in childbirth) and Sir Robert Cavendish Spencer, who died unmarried at sea. His older sister Lady Sarah Spencer was the wife of William Lyttelton, 3rd Baron Lyttelton.


title: Frederick Spencer, 4th Earl Spencer

text: His paternal grandparents were Home Secretary John Spencer, 1st Earl Spencer, and his wife Margaret Georgiana Poyntz, daughter of the diplomat and courtier Stephen Poyntz. His maternal grandparents were Irish peer Charles Bingham, 1st Earl of Lucan, and his wife, the portrait miniature painter Margaret Smyth.


title: Frederick Spencer, 4th Earl Spencer

text: Spencer then joined the Royal Navy as a midshipman on 18 September 1811, and fought in the Napoleonic Wars in the Mediterranean between 1811 and 1815. He served for a time under his brother, Captain the Hon. Robert Cavendish Spencer as a lieutenant aboard his ship , before receiving his own command, that of the brig on the South America Station. He was promoted to the rank of post-captain on 26 August 1822.


title: Frederick Spencer, 4th Earl Spencer

text: During the Greek War of Independence he commanded at the Battle of Navarino on 20 October 1827 and was appointed a Companion of the Order of the Bath in November of that year. The following year he fought with the Naval Brigade in the Morea expedition. For his actions he was made a Knight of the Order of St Louis of France and awarded the Order of St Anne of Russia and the Order of the Redeemer of Greece.


title: Frederick Spencer, 4th Earl Spencer

text: Spencer then retired from naval life and was elected Whig Member of Parliament for Worcestershire in 1831. He held this seat until 1832 and then represented Midhurst between 1832 and 1834 and again between 1837 and 1841. He was later an equerry in the household of the Duchess of Kent (Queen Victoria's mother) from 1840 to 1845. The latter year he succeeded his elder brother in the earldom and took his seat in the House of Lords.


title: Frederick Spencer, 4th Earl Spencer

text: When the Whigs came to power under Lord John Russell in 1846, Lord Spencer was appointed Lord Chamberlain of the Household. He was sworn of the Privy Council the same year. He resigned as Lord Chamberlain in 1848 but returned to the government as Lord Steward of the Household in early 1854 under Lord Aberdeen, a post he held until shortly before his death in 1857, the last two years under the premiership of Lord Palmerston. He was made a Knight of the Garter in 1849.


title: Frederick Spencer, 4th Earl Spencer

text: Lord Spencer was twice married. He married firstly his second cousin, Georgiana Poyntz (1799–1851), daughter of William Stephen Poyntz on 23 February 1830. They had three children:


title: Frederick Spencer, 4th Earl Spencer

text: After Georgiana's death in 1851 he married, secondly, Adelaide Horatia Seymour (1825–1877), daughter of Sir Horace Seymour and a great-granddaughter of Francis Seymour-Conway, 1st Marquess of Hertford, on 9 August 1854. They had two children:


title: Frederick Spencer, 4th Earl Spencer

text: Lord Spencer died at the family seat at Althorp, Brington, Northamptonshire, in December 1857, aged 59, and was succeeded in the earldom by his only son from his first marriage, John, who became a Liberal politician. Spencer's son from his second marriage, Charles, who succeeded in the earldom in 1910, was also a Liberal politician. The Countess Spencer died at Guilsborough, Northamptonshire, in October 1877, aged 52.


title: The Spy (TV miniseries)

text: The Spy is an English-language French espionage streaming television miniseries, created and directed by Gideon Raff, based on the life of Israel's top Mossad spy Eli Cohen, who is portrayed by Sacha Baron Cohen. The series is a production by French company Légende Entreprises for Canal+ and Netflix. OCS is airing the show in France and Netflix is streaming the show internationally outside France. The six-episode miniseries, released on September 6, 2019, on Netflix, was inspired by real-life events. It is based on the book "L'espion qui venait d'Israël" (English: "The Spy Who Came from Israel"), written by Uri Dan and Yeshayahu Ben Porat.


title: The Spy (TV miniseries)

text: The series has received "generally favorable reviews" according to Metacritic, with Baron Cohen's performance being praised. However, the series has been criticized for lapses in historical accuracy. There is no independent verification about whom Cohen met with in the Syrian elite while working undercover in Buenos Aires or Damascus. At the 77th Golden Globe Awards, Baron Cohen received a nomination for Best Actor – Miniseries or Television Film.


title: The Spy (TV miniseries)

text: The miniseries follows the exploits of Eli Cohen, a Mossad spy. The story takes place during the years leading to the 1967 Six-Day War between Israel and Syria. It follows Cohen's past in Egypt as an army reject, to his infiltration of the Syrian Ministry of Defense. He assumes the identity of Kamel Amin Thaabet and establishes himself in Syrian high society. After having befriended people who would eventually take over Syria, Cohen is appointed as the country's Deputy Defense Minister and becomes a close confidant to the future president Amin al-Hafiz.


title: The Spy (TV miniseries)

text: The show was filmed in Morocco, Hungary, and the UK. Filming was said to not be possible in Syria due to the Syrian Civil War.


title: The Spy (TV miniseries)

text: On Rotten Tomatoes, the series holds an 86% approval rating based on 43 reviews, with an average rating of 6.97/10. The site's critics consensus reads, "Though at times stodgy, "The Spy" exploration of a real-life spy remains engaging thanks to a moving performance from Sacha Baron Cohen." On Metacritic, it has a weighted average score of 68 out of 100 based on 16 critic reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews".


title: The Spy (TV miniseries)

text: Nick Allen of rogerebert.com gave the series 3 out of 4 stars, largely praising the excitement the series builds and that it adds a new dimension to the spy genre. Allen writes, "...by the end of episode one, “The Spy” takes off as Eli transforms into Kamel while delivering a monologue to the camera—Kamel's life story—and the series casts a spell, showing a chameleonic actor playing a chameleonic character."


title: The Spy (TV miniseries)

text: Sacha Baron Cohen's performance has been well received. "Rolling Stone"s Alan Sepinwall writes, "But Baron Cohen couldn’t have found a role more well suited to his gifts and career to date. "The Spy" is a thriller played entirely straight, but it also feels like Baron Cohen’s persona with vastly higher stakes."


title: The Spy (TV miniseries)

text: Analysts have noted questions of historical accuracy of some of the events presented, as is the case with most historical dramas. According to former Syrian President Amin al-Hafiz, he never met Cohen in Argentina, much less befriended him, and the office of "Deputy Defense Minister" did not even exist in Syria at the time. The position of Chief Advisor to the defense minister did exist – a position in which Cohen claimed to have served.


title: Jaheim

text: Jaheim H. Hoagland (born May 26, 1978), known mononymously as Jaheim, is an American R&B singer. He was signed by Naughty by Nature's Kaygee to Divine Mill Records in 2000, and released his debut album "Ghetto Love" in 2001. His second effort, "Still Ghetto" (2002), contains the hit singles "Put That Woman First" (2003) and "Fabulous" (2003), both of which achieved platinum success.


title: Jaheim

text: Jaheim's third album, "Ghetto Classics", was released on February 14, 2006, debuting at number one on the U.S. "Billboard" 200, and selling over 153,000 copies in its first week.


title: Jaheim

text: Four years after he recorded a tape that led to a deal with Divine Mill Records (a division of Warner Bros. Records). Hoagland received good reactions from two singles "Could It Be" and "Lil' Nigga Ain't Mine" on BET video shows. Appearing with Hoagland on his first album was RL (from Next), Blackstreet, and Darren and Cliff Lighty.


title: Jaheim

text: His second album, "Still Ghetto", was released on November 5, 2002. Another Top Ten hit, it placed two singles in the Top 40, "Fabulous" and "Anything" (released November 13, 2001). "Ghetto Classics" followed in early 2006 and became his first number one album. In 2007 Jaheim signed to Atlantic Records and released his fourth album "The Makings of a Man" in December 2007.


title: Jaheim

text: In late 2009 the single "Ain't Leavin Without You" preceded his 2010 album "Another Round". In 2013 Jaheim returned to the music industry with a new single titled "Age Ain't a Factor" and a new album. His sixth album, "Appreciation Day", was released on September 3, 2013. In 2014, Jaheim restarted his own label called "Julie's Dream Music Group", which had first been started in 1997, then restarted in 2002.


title: Jaheim

text: Following the relaunch of his label, in February 2015, Jaheim signed a new record deal with BMG Records after parting ways with Atlantic Records in conjunction with his Julie's Dream label. In June 2015, Jaheim released a new single called "Back in My Arms" and revealed that his seventh album, titled "Struggle Love", is to be released. "Struggle Love" was released on March 18, 2016. To date Jaheim has sold 5 million records worldwide and received three Grammy nominations.


title: Jaheim

text: Jaheim is a resident of Hillsborough Township, New Jersey. Jaheim is the grandson of the late 1960s soul singer Hoagy Lands.


title: Jaheim

text: In September 2021, he was arrested on animal cruelty charges after police discovered 15 dogs living in deplorable conditions at his New Jersey home. One of the dogs had to be euthanized.


title: Universal Wrestling Federation (Bill Watts)

text: The Universal Wrestling Federation was a 1986 re-branding of wrestler-turned-owner Bill Watts' Mid-South Wrestling promotion. Watts' goal was to elevate his promotion from a relatively smaller, regional-level business, to a national-level rival of the World Wrestling Federation (WWF, now known as WWE). However, Watts' business strategy quickly swung from "overnight" success to catastrophic failure, resulting in the 1987 sale of the UWF to another rival: Jim Crockett Promotions (owner of Mid-Atlantic Wrestling, Georgia Championship Wrestling, the National Wrestling Alliance (NWA)'s most important championships, and the predecessor of World Championship Wrestling). The promotion began as an NWA territory, NWA Tri-State, founded by Leroy McGuirk in the 1950s. Tri-State/Mid-South/UWF promoted in Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi until 1987.


text: Because Watts did not register the "Universal Wrestling Federation" name with the United States Patent and Trademark Office, businessman Herb Abrams was able to use it to launch an unrelated wrestling promotion of the same name in 1990.


text: A former territory wrestler who was blinded in a 1950 auto accident, Leroy McGuirk eventually took over promoting a wrestling circuit covering Oklahoma, Louisiana and Mississippi. Until 1973, "Cowboy" Bill Watts had been one of Tri-State's most popular wrestlers. After leaving Tri-State for Eddie Graham's Championship Wrestling from Florida, Watts returned to Tri-State in 1975.


text: In 1979, Bill Watts bought the Tri-State Wrestling territory from Leroy McGuirk, and re-branded it Mid-South Wrestling (MSW; officially, the Mid-South Wrestling Association). One of Watts' first acts as owner was to withdraw the company from the National Wrestling Alliance (NWA). However, MSW would remain loosely aligned with the NWA, continuing to have the NWA World Heavyweight Champion defend the title on MSW shows, which spiked live event sales. (During the "territory" system [1940s-1980s], the NWA World Heavyweight Champion would travel to each NWA-affiliated territory to defend the title against its top-drawing local star.) MSW then added Arkansas to its circuit. In 1982, MSW expanded to Oklahoma when McGuirk closed his personal, Oklahoma-based promotion. McGuirk also formed an alliance with Houston promoter Paul Boesch to feature Mid-South talent on shows at the Sam Houston Coliseum (one of the most famous arenas in professional wrestling), and other parts of southeastern Texas. Mid-South used Shreveport, Louisiana as the base for its television tapings, which were first housed in the studios of KTBS-TV until they were moved around 1982 to the Irish McNeel Sports for Boys club, located on the Louisiana State Fairgrounds.


text: Instead of the cartoon-ish characters and interviews common to the Hulkamania-era WWF, Mid-South Wrestling's content focused on: energetic matches performed before raucous and packed crowds; characters whose personas blurred the line between good and evil; an intensely physical, athletic wrestling style; and an episodic TV show format. The promotion ran shows in a mix of small venues and gigantic arenas. In 1980, a card pitting a "blinded" Junkyard Dog against Freebird Michael Hayes in the main event drew nearly 30,000 fans for a show presented by a promotion less than one year old. In 1984, Watts came out of retirement to team with a masked Junkyard Dog (under the name Stagger Lee) to face the Midnight Express to cap an angle in which the Express and manager Jim Cornette beat Watts on TV. Its undercard featured a showdown between Magnum T.A. and Mr. Wrestling II. The 1984 show drew 22,000 fans—an unimaginably large crowd for a regional territory show.


text: In the mid-1980s, MSW began to expand nationally. In 1985, longtime wrestling fan Ted Turner invited Watts to air MSW's weekly TV show on Turner's SuperStation TBS network. Turner wanted an alternative to the World Wrestling Federation show airing in the coveted 2-hour, Saturday-evening timeslot, which the WWF had acquired when it bought out the majority ownership of Georgia Championship Wrestling. (see: Black Saturday) Turner was angered by the WWF show because McMahon had promised him it would feature matches and promos taped in TBS' Atlanta studios (as Georgia Championship Wrestling had done for years). But instead of fresh, locally-produced content, the WWF's TBS show only presented clips and highlights from "other" WWF TV shows – some, depending on TV market, airing at the same time the TBS show did. (Eventually, the WWF would shoot local, in-studio matches, but only infrequently, and they were usually predictable squash matches.) MSW quickly became TBS' highest-rated show, so Watts positioned MSW to take over once Turner could force the WWF off his network. Watts' luck ran out, however, when former Georgia Championship Wrestling co-owner Jim Barnett helped broker a deal enabling North Carolina-based Jim Crockett Promotions' (led by Jim Crockett, Jr.) to buy the Saturday timeslot from McMahon, and become TBS' sole pro wrestling show. Watts made one more attempt at going national the following year. As part of that plan, Watts replaced Mid-South Wrestling's parochial brandname with a more corporate, ambitious (and WWF-like) one: the Universal Wrestling Federation.


text: In March 1986, MSW "went national" (the goal of the most ambitious regional promotions of this era), re-launching as the Universal Wrestling Federation, and securing a syndication deal airing their two one-hour, weekly TV programs (the lesser show, "Power Pro Wrestling" debuted in 1984) in major markets across the United States. The TV tapings were also taken out of Shreveport and moved on location at various live shows throughout the Mid-South/UWF territory. New wrestlers, mostly from World Class Championship Wrestling (WCCW), joined the company, as did former WCCW co-promoter Ken Mantell. Despite the UWF's strong early ratings and critical praise, it could not compete nationally with Jim Crockett Promotions (JCP) and the WWF, as both had stronger TV distribution and larger live event, pay-per-view (and, in the WWF's case, merchandise licensing) revenue streams. The UWF was further hurt when the oil-based economy of its richest local market—Oklahoma—fell into a severe recession in fall, 1986. This left the blue collar core of the UWF's fanbase with far less disposable income to spend on things like attending wrestling shows.


text: Watts sold the UWF to JCP on April 9, 1987, and many of the UWF's top stars were either retained by JCP, or immediately left for the WWF or WCCW. Unlike the other NWA-affiliated promotions JCP had bought out in the mid-1980s, the UWF did not immediately end; JCP kept its brand—and its three championships—alive in TV storylines until December 1987, when JCP's NWA-affiliated characters defeated all of the UWF characters in a series of "title vs. title" unification matches, among others. Only a few UWF wrestlers were well-received by JCP's fanbase; they included: the Fabulous Freebirds, Shane Douglas, Rick Steiner, Eddie Gilbert, and UWF centerpiece "Dr. Death" Steve Williams. Most UWF imports were gone from JCP's roster within a year; however, one wrestler would go from UWF midcarder/tag team act, to breakout star in JCP, and the wrestling industry as a whole: Sting. Sting's UWF tag team (as The Blade Runners) partner would later become a WWF wrestling legend, too: The Ultimate Warrior.


text: In April 1988, JCP, one of the biggest and late stage casualties of the "going national" war with the WWF, sold its collection of territories and titles to Ted Turner's TBS. Turner re-branded JCP "World Championship Wrestling," naming the new company after its TBS TV show. Ironically, "Cowboy" Bill Watts ended up running the same business that had swallowed his own: In spring of 1992, WCW hired Watts was as its latest Executive Vice President; he held the role less than a year.


text: World Wrestling Entertainment acquired most of the Mid-South/UWF video archive, absorbing it into its WWE Libraries collection in 2012 -- with a notable exception: Mid-South/UWF matches taped for "Houston Wrestling" which aired on KHTV in Houston. Those rights are held by the estate of Paul Boesch, who was the Houston territory's promoter. Select episodes of Mid-South are available for viewing on the WWE Network.


text: The "Battle of New Orleans" was a long-playing brawl between Eddie Gilbert, Terry Taylor, Chris Adams and Sting, which began in the ring and spilled out into the concession area. Beer kegs, chairs, tables, popcorn machine and anything the four wrestlers could get their hands on were used in the brawl which lasted nearly 15 minutes. Sting and Gilbert fought outside the ring, when Rick Steiner came in and piledrived Shane Douglas. With Taylor on top, referee Randy Anderson made the pinfall. Later, Adams came out and told Anderson what had happened, which prompted Gilbert and Taylor to gang-up on Adams. Sting came in to even the sides, and that resulted in an all-out brawl outside the ring. Gilbert was the mastermind of this famous angle and received huge praise from fellow promoters and wrestlers.


text: Adams was engaged in a storyline involving Iceman King Parsons and Taylor, which evolved out of the UWF Tag Team Championship tournament in February 1987. Originally, Adams and Iceman were one of the eight teams participating, and Taylor was teamed with Sam Houston. In a semi-finals match, Adams and Iceman wrestled against "Dr Death" Steve Williams and Ted DiBiase until Skandor Akbar's Devastation Inc. charged the ring to attack Williams and DiBiase. The match ended when Williams and DiBiase were counted out, and Adams and Parsons won the match. Adams, who was helping Williams and DiBiase fight off Akbar and his army, wanted the match to continue, but Parsons wanted the win. After a lengthy argument, Adams and Parsons split, and Chris chose Savannah Jack as his new tag team partner. Iceman sucker-punched Savannah during a match and injured him, thus Adams had to choose another tag partner. He chose Terry Taylor, whose team lost a semi-final match to Rick Steiner and Sting. Taylor and Adams eventually won the UWF tag team titles, and held the belts for two months.


text: Meanwhile, Adams and Parsons engaged in a lengthy feud, which lasted for more than a decade (the two had feuded earlier in WCCW when Adams was the heel and Parsons was the babyface), with Parsons frequently referring to Adams as "Jailbird," a reference to Adams serving jail time in 1986 on an assault conviction. Taylor and Adams, who dominated the UWF tag team scene, lost a match to Steiner and Sting when Taylor kicked Adams foot off the rope as he was being pinned by Sting. A face-vs-face bout between Adams and Taylor marked Taylor's heel turn as he piledrived Adams on the floor. The Taylor-Adams war proved to be one of the most violent feuds in the UWF, with an equal intensity to the feud Adams had with the Von Erichs in World Class. The feud did have a short interruption when Taylor was injured in an automobile accident, but picked up again by the summer and carried over to World Class by 1988. Taylor and Adams promoted a famous angle in August which involved a press conference, where Taylor spoke about his situation with Adams and then left. Chris later took questions, which prompted Taylor to attack Adams with a chair. The following week, Adams conducted an interview vowing revenge against both Taylor and Eddie Gilbert.


text: Other famous UWF angles included promoter Bill Watts being attacked and having the flag of the Soviet Union draped on him by Eddie Gilbert, Missy Hyatt cold-cocking John Tatum after joining forces with Gilbert, Skandor Akbar throwing a fireball at Hacksaw Jim Duggan ("blinding" him temporarily), and the Freebirds breaking Steve Williams' arm. Williams recruited Oklahoma Sooners (and future Dallas Cowboys head coach) Barry Switzer into training and getting back into the ring. It paid off on July 11, 1987 when Dr. Death defeated Big Bubba Rogers (Ray Traylor) to win the UWF Heavyweight Championship. The Freebirds became faces around that time, as they began feuding with Skandor Akbar's army as well as The Angel of Death.


text: A prelim wrestler, Mike Boyette, wrestled in the UWF and is believed to be one of the very few wrestlers to never win a match. Video editors for the show even put together a music video of his various losses in the ring, set to the Little River Band song "Lonesome Loser". "Gorgeous" Gary Young also competed in the UWF, claiming that he was a rookie. He actually had five years experience under his belt. Young's claims prompted Jim Ross to begin referring to him as a "five-time rookie of the year."


text: As the UWF's merge with "the NWA" was taking place, Terry Taylor, who held the UWF Television Championship, began an angle with the NWA World Television Champion, Nikita Koloff. Taylor stole the NWA TV title belt during an NWA show, but Koloff (with help from Dusty Rhodes) reclaimed it before their official in-ring encounter. They met at Starrcade 1987, and Nikita unified the two titles as the final leg of the NWA-UWF merger was finished. Williams would successfully defend the UWF Heavyweight Title on the same show versus Barry Windham. Williams immediately left to do a series of lucrative performances in Japan; the title was retired while he was in Asia.


text: Sting, Rick Steiner, Eddie Gilbert, Missy Hyatt, announcer Jim Ross, Brad Armstrong and the aforementioned Taylor became permanent NWA roster members, among others. The Freebirds, Savannah Jack, Iceman King Parsons, matchmaker Frank Dusek, and promoter Ken Mantell joined the new Wild West Wrestling promotion, which later merged with World Class Championship Wrestling. "Gentleman" Chris Adams, who initially stayed with Jim Crockett Promotions post-UWF, left due to a money dispute and returned to World Class in November 1987. DiBiase, Big Bubba Rogers, One Man Gang, and Sam Houston joined the WWF, joining fellow UWF alumnus "Hacksaw Jim Duggan", who the WWF had signed in February 1987. The Sheepherders, who originally joined Crockett after the merger, left in mid-1988 for the WWF, where they were renamed the Bushwhackers. Terry Taylor also departed, appearing in World Class for a few months (feuding with Chris Adams and Kevin Von Erich), then the WWF in mid-1988 as "The Red Rooster". Taylor would go on to have a long WWF/WWE career behind-the-scenes, holding various management and creative team roles.


text: Mid-South's main television broadcasting team included Bill Watts and Boyd Pierce, with KTBS-TV staff announcer Reisor Bowden serving as ring announcer. Jim Ross joined Mid-South after the closure of Leroy McGuirk's Tri-State promotion in Oklahoma, and remained through the transition to UWF. Bill Watts's son Joel Watts was later added to the Mid-South/UWF broadcasting team, and also worked behind-the-scenes as a producer of the TV program.


text: Following Jim Crockett Promotions' purchase of the UWF, both Bill and Joel Watts exited the promotion and Jim Ross was joined by various partners including Magnum T. A., Michael P.S. Hayes and Missy Hyatt. Veteran JCP announcer Bob Caudle became Ross's permanent partner near the closure of UWF. Frank Dusek and Toni Adams also served as ringside commentators during the course of its UWF tenure; both of whom moved on to World Class.


title: Putamen

text: The putamen (; from Latin, meaning "nutshell") is a round structure located at the base of the forebrain (telencephalon). The putamen and caudate nucleus together form the dorsal striatum. It is also one of the structures that compose the basal nuclei. Through various pathways, the putamen is connected to the substantia nigra, the globus pallidus, the claustrum, and the thalamus, in addition to many regions of the cerebral cortex. A primary function of the putamen is to regulate movements at various stages (e.g. preparation and execution) and influence various types of learning. It employs GABA, acetylcholine, and enkephalin to perform its functions. The putamen also plays a role in degenerative neurological disorders, such as Parkinson's disease.


title: Putamen

text: The word "putamen" is from Latin, referring to that which "falls off in pruning", from "putare", meaning "to prune, to think, or to consider".


title: Putamen

text: Until recently, most MRI research focused broadly on the basal ganglia as a whole, for various reasons (e.g. image resolution, rarity of isolated infarct or hemorrhage within the putamen, etc.). However, many studies have been done on the basal ganglia and relevant brain-behavior relationships. In the 1970s, the first single unit recordings were done with monkeys monitoring pallidal neuron activity related to movement. Since then, more extensive neuronal tracing, stimulation, and imaging research methods (e.g. fMRI, DWI) that allow for investigation of the putamen have been developed.


title: Putamen

text: The putamen is a structure in the forebrain. Along with the caudate nucleus it forms the dorsal striatum. The caudate and putamen contain the same types of neurons and circuits – many neuroanatomists consider the dorsal striatum to be a single structure, divided into two parts by a large fiber tract, the internal capsule, passing through the middle. The putamen, together with the globus pallidus, makes up the lentiform nucleus. The putamen is the outermost portion of the basal ganglia. These are a group of nuclei in the brain that are interconnected with the cerebral cortex, thalamus, and brainstem. Basal ganglia include the dorsal striatum, substantia nigra, nucleus accumbens, and the subthalamic nucleus.


title: Putamen

text: In mammals, the basal ganglia are associated with motor control, cognition, emotions, learning, and domain-general functions important for executive functioning as well as support for domain-specific languages. The basal ganglia are located bilaterally, and have rostral and caudal divisions. The putamen is located in the rostral division as part of the striatum. The basal ganglia receive input from the cerebral cortex, via the striatum.


title: Putamen

text: This description is rudimentary and does not nearly exhaust even the basic established circuitry of the putamen. The cortico-subcortico-cortical circuits with putaminal involvement are dense and complicated, consisting of a wide range of axonal, dendritic, chemical, afferent, and efferent substrates. The putamen's outputs are highly arborized across output structures, and cortical efferents arise from layers III-VI of the cortex, dependent on gyri and location within the putamen. Topographical organization of the putamen combines the following elements: anterior-to-posterior functional and somatotopic gradients, lateral-to-medial functional and somatotopic gradients, diffuse terminal output, patchy localized terminal output, segregated terminals from adjacent regions, finely interdigitated terminals from distal cortical regions in a seemingly overlapping fashion.


title: Putamen

text: The caudate works with the putamen to receive the input from cerebral cortex. Collectively, they can be considered the "entrance" to the basal ganglia. Projections from the putamen reach the caudate directly via the caudolenticular grey bridges. The putamen and caudate are jointly connected with the substantia nigra, however the caudate outputs more densely to the substantia nigra pars reticulata while the putamen sends more afferents to the internal globus pallidus.


title: Putamen

text: The substantia nigra contains two parts: the substantia nigra pars compacta (SNpc) and the substantia nigra pars reticulata (SNpr). The SNpc obtains input from the putamen and caudate, and sends information back. The SNpr also obtains input from the putamen and caudate. However, it sends the input outside the basal ganglia to control head and eye movements. The SNpc produces dopamine, which is crucial for movements. The SNpc is the part that degenerates during Parkinson's disease.


title: Putamen

text: The globus pallidus contains two parts: the globus pallidus pars externa (GPe) and the globus pallidus pars interna (GPi). Both regions acquire input from the putamen and caudate and communicate with the subthalamic nucleus. However, mostly the GPi sends GABAergic inhibitory output to the thalamus. The GPi also sends projections to parts of the midbrain, which have been assumed to affect posture control.


title: Putamen

text: The putamen (and striatum in general) has numerous, parallel circuits that allow for cortico-subcortico-cortico communication loops. These have been described, broadly, as the direct, indirect, and hyper direct pathways. GABAergic projections of the putamen have an inhibitory effect on the thalamus. Thalamic projections from the centromedian and parafascicular nuclei have an excitatory effect on the putamen. Unlike the thalamus, which has broad reciprocal connectivity, cortical projections with the putamen are afferent, thus sending information as opposed to receiving it. Cortical communication is accomplished via multi-fiber pathways as outlined previously (i.e. via other subcortical structures).


title: Putamen

text: Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that has a dominant role in the putamen, most of it is supplied from the substantia nigra. When a cell body of a neuron (in the putamen or caudate nuclei) fires an action potential, dopamine is released from the presynaptic terminal. Since projections from the putamen and caudate nuclei modulate the dendrites of the substantia nigra, the dopamine influences the substantia nigra, which affects motor planning. This same mechanism is involved in drug addiction. In order to control the amount of dopamine in the synaptic cleft, and the amount of dopamine binding to post synaptic terminals, presynaptic dopaminergic neurons function to reuptake the excess dopamine.


title: Putamen

text: The putamen also plays a role in modulation of other neurotransmitters. It releases GABA, enkephalin, substance P, and acetylcholine. It receives serotonin and glutamate.


title: Putamen

text: The putamen is interconnected with many other structures, and works in conjunction with them to influence many types of motor behaviors. These include motor planning, learning, and execution, motor preparation, specifying amplitudes of movement, and movement sequences.


title: Putamen

text: Some neurologists hypothesize that the putamen also plays a role in the selection of movement (e.g. Tourette syndrome) and the "automatic" performance of previously learned movements (e.g. Parkinson's disease).


title: Putamen

text: In one study it was found that the putamen controls limb movement. The goal of this study was to determine whether particular cell activity in the putamen of primates was related to the direction of limb movement or to the underlying pattern of muscular activity. Two monkeys were trained to perform tasks that involved the movement of loads. The tasks were created so that movement could be distinguished from muscle activity. Neurons in the putamen were selected for monitoring only if they were related both to the task and to arm movements outside the task. It was shown that 50% of the neurons that were monitored were related to the direction of movement, independent of the load.


title: Putamen

text: Another study was done to investigate movement extent and speed using PET mapping of regional cerebral blood flow in 13 humans. Movement tasks were performed with a joystick-controlled cursor. Statistical tests were done to calculate the extent of movements and what regions of the brain the movements correlate to. It was found that "increasing movement extent was associated with parallel increases of rCBF in bilateral basal ganglia (BG; putamen and globus pallidus) and ipsilateral cerebellum." This not only shows that the putamen affects movement but it also shows that the putamen integrates with other structures in order to perform tasks.


title: Putamen

text: One study was done in order to specifically investigate how the basal ganglia influences the learning of sequential movements. Two monkeys were trained to press a series of buttons in sequence. The methods used were designed to be able to monitor the well-learned tasks versus the new tasks. Muscimol was injected into various parts of the basal ganglia, and it was found that "the learning of new sequences became deficient after injections in the anterior caudate and putamen, but not the middle-posterior putamen". This shows that different areas of the striatum are utilized when performing various aspects of the learning of sequential movements.


title: Putamen

text: In many studies, it has become apparent that the putamen plays a role in many types of learning. Some examples are listed below:


title: Putamen

text: Along with various types of movement, the putamen also affects reinforcement learning and implicit learning.


title: Putamen

text: Reinforcement learning is interacting with the environment and catering actions to maximize the outcome. Implicit learning is a passive process where people are exposed to information and acquire knowledge through exposure. Although the exact mechanisms are not known, it is clear that dopamine and tonically active neurons play a key role here. Tonically active neurons are cholinergic interneurons that fire during the entire duration of the stimulus and fire at about 0.5–3 impulses per second. Phasic neurons are the opposite and only fire an action potential when movement occurs.