title: Mindaugas

text: Because written sources covering the era are scarce, Mindaugas's origins and family tree have not been conclusively established. The Bychowiec Chronicles, dating from the 16th and 17th centuries, have been discredited in this regard, since they assert an ancestry from the Palemonids, a noble family said to have originated within the Roman Empire. His year of birth, sometimes given as c. 1200, is at other times left as a question mark. His father is mentioned in the Livonian Rhymed Chronicle as a powerful duke ("ein kunic grôß"), but is not named; later chronicles give his name as Ryngold. Dausprungas, mentioned in the text of a 1219 treaty, is presumed to have been his brother, and Dausprungas' sons Tautvilas and Gedvydas his nephews. He is thought to have had two sisters, one married to Vykintas and another to Daniel of Halych. Vykintas and his son Treniota played major roles in later power struggles. Mindaugas had at least two wives, Morta and Morta's sister, whose name is unknown, and possibly an earlier wife; her existence is presumed because two children – a son named Vaišvilkas and an unnamed daughter married to Svarn in 1255 – were already leading independent lives when Morta's children were still young. In addition to Vaišvilkas and his sister, two sons, Ruklys and Rupeikis, are mentioned in written sources. The latter two were assassinated along with Mindaugas. Information on his sons is limited and historians continue to discuss their number. He may have had two other sons whose names were later conflated by scribes into Ruklys and Rupeikis.


title: Mindaugas

text: In the 13th century Lithuania had little contact with foreign lands. Lithuanian names sounded obscure and unfamiliar to various chroniclers, who altered them to sound more like names in their native language. Mindaugas's name in historic texts was recorded in various distorted forms: Mindowe in Latin; Mindouwe, Myndow, Myndawe, and Mindaw in German; Mendog, Mondog, Mendoch, and Mindovg in Polish; and Mindovg, Mindog, and Mindowh in Rus', among others. Since Rus' sources provide the most information about Mindaugas's life, they were judged the most reliable by linguists reconstructing his original Lithuanian name. The most popular Rus' rendition was "Mindovg", which can quite easily and naturally be reconstructed as "Mindaugas" or "Mindaugis". In 1909 the Lithuanian linguist Kazimieras Būga published a research paper supporting the suffix "-as", which has since been widely accepted. "Mindaugas" is an archaic disyllabic Lithuanian name, used before the Christianization of Lithuania, and consists of two components: "min" and "daug". Its etymology may be traced to "daug menąs" (much wisdom) or "daugio minimas" (much fame).


title: Mindaugas

text: Lithuania was ruled during the early 13th century by a number of dukes and princes presiding over various fiefdoms and tribes. They were loosely bonded by commonalities of religion and tradition, trade, kinship, joint military campaigns, and the presence of captured prisoners from neighboring areas. Western merchants and missionaries began seeking control of the area during the 12th century, establishing the city of Riga, Latvia in 1201. Their efforts in Lithuania were temporarily halted by defeat at the Battle of Saule in 1236, but armed Christian orders continued to pose a threat. The country had also undergone incursions by the Mongol Empire.


title: Mindaugas

text: A treaty with Galicia–Volhynia, signed in 1219, is usually considered the first conclusive evidence that the Baltic tribes in the area were uniting in response to these threats. The treaty's signatories include twenty Lithuanian dukes and one dowager duchess; it specifies that five of these were elder and thus took precedence over the remaining sixteen. Mindaugas, despite his youth, as well as his brother Dausprungas are listed among the elder dukes, implying that they had inherited their titles. The Livonian Rhymed Chronicle describes him as the ruler of all Lithuania in 1236. His path to this title is not clear. Ruthenian chronicles mention that he murdered or expelled several dukes, including his relatives. Historian S.C. Rowell has described his rise to power as taking place through "the familiar processes of marriage, murder and military conquest."


title: Mindaugas

text: During the 1230s and 1240s, Mindaugas strengthened and established his power in various Baltic and Slavic lands. Warfare in the region intensified; he battled German forces in Kurland, while the Mongols destroyed Kiev in 1240 and entered Poland in 1241, defeating two Polish armies and burning Kraków. The Lithuanian victory in the Battle of Saule temporarily stabilized the northern front, but the Christian orders continued to make gains along the Baltic coast, founding the city of Klaipėda (Memel). Constrained in the north and west, Mindaugas moved to the east and southeast, conquering Navahrudak, Hrodna, Vawkavysk, and the Principality of Polotsk, but there is no information about any battles for those cities. In about 1239 he appointed his son Vaišvilkas to govern these areas, then known as Black Ruthenia. In 1248, he sent his nephews Tautvilas and Edivydas, the sons of his brother Dausprungas, along with Vykintas, the Duke of Samogitia, to conquer Smolensk, but they were unsuccessful. His attempts to consolidate his rule in Lithuania met with mixed success; in 1249, an internal war erupted when he sought to seize his nephews' and Vykintas' lands.


title: Mindaugas

text: Tautvilas, Edivydas, and Vykintas formed a powerful coalition in opposition to Mindaugas, along with the Samogitians of western Lithuania, the Livonian Order, Daniel of Galicia (Tautvilas and Edivydas' brother-in-law), and Vasilko of Volhynia. The princes of Galicia and Volhynia managed to gain control over Black Ruthenia, disrupting Vaišvilkas' supremacy. Tautvilas strengthened his position by traveling to Riga and accepting baptism by the Archbishop. In 1250, the Order organized a major raid through the lands of Nalšia into the domains of Mindaugas in Lithuania proper, and a raid into those parts of Samogitia that still supported him. Attacked from the north and south and facing the possibility of unrest elsewhere, Mindaugas was placed in an extremely difficult position, but managed to use the conflicts between the Livonian Order and the Archbishop of Riga to further his own interests. He succeeded in bribing Order Master Andreas von Stierland, who was still angry at Vykintas for the defeat at the Battle of Saule in 1236, by sending him "many gifts".


title: Mindaugas

text: In 1250 or 1251, Mindaugas agreed to receive baptism and relinquish control over some lands in western Lithuania, in return for an acknowledgment by Pope Innocent IV as king. The Pope welcomed a Christian Lithuania as a bulwark against Mongol threats; in turn, Mindaugas sought papal intervention in the ongoing Lithuanian conflicts with the Christian orders. On 17 July 1251, the pope signed two crucial papal bulls. One ordered the Bishop of Chełmno to crown Mindaugas as King of Lithuania, appoint a bishop for Lithuania, and build a cathedral. The other bull specified that the new bishop was to be directly subordinate to the Holy See, rather than to the Archbishop of Riga. This autonomy was a welcome development. The precise date of Mindaugas's baptism is not known. His wife, two sons, and members of his court were baptized; Pope Innocent wrote later that a multitude of Mindaugas's subjects also received Christianity.


title: Mindaugas

text: The process of coronation and the establishment of Christian institutions would take two years. Internal conflicts persisted; during the spring or summer of 1251, Tautvilas and his remaining allies attacked Mindaugas's warriors and the Livonian Order's crossbow-men in Voruta Castle. The attack failed, and Tautvilas' forces retreated to defend themselves in Tviremet Castle (presumed to be Tverai in Samogitia). Vykintas died in 1251 or 1252, and Tautvilas was forced to rejoin Daniel of Galicia.


title: Mindaugas

text: Mindaugas and his wife Morta were crowned during the summer of 1253. Bishop Henry Heidenreich of Kulm presided over the ecclesiastical ceremonies and Andreas Stirland conferred the crown. 6 July is now celebrated as Statehood Day (Lithuanian: "Valstybės diena"); it is an official holiday in modern Lithuania. The exact date of the coronation is not known; the scholarship of historian Edvardas Gudavičius, who promulgated this precise date, is sometimes challenged. The location of the coronation also remains unknown.


title: Mindaugas

text: Relative peace and stability prevailed for about eight years. Mindaugas used this opportunity to concentrate on the expansion to the east, and to establish and organize state institutions. He strengthened his influence in Black Ruthenia, in Polatsk, a major center of commerce in the Daugava River basin, and in Pinsk. He also negotiated a peace with Galicia–Volhynia, and married his daughter to Svarn, the son of Daniel of Galicia, who would later become Grand Duke of Lithuania. Lithuanian relationships with western Europe and the Holy See were reinforced. In 1255, Mindaugas received permission from Pope Alexander IV to crown his son as King of Lithuania. A noble court, an administrative system, and a diplomatic service were initiated. Silver long coins, an index of statehood, were issued. He sponsored the construction of a cathedral in Vilnius, possibly on the site of today's Vilnius Cathedral.


title: Mindaugas

text: Immediately after his coronation, Mindaugas transferred some lands to the Livonian Order – portions of Samogitia, Nadruva, and Dainava—although his control over these western lands was tenuous. There has been much discussion among historians as to whether in later years (1255–1261) Mindaugas gave even more lands to the order. The deeds might have been falsified by the order; the case for this scenario is bolstered by the fact that some of the documents mention lands that were not actually under the control of Mindaugas and by various irregularities in treaty witnesses and seals.


title: Mindaugas

text: Mindaugas and his antagonist Daniel reached a reconciliation in 1255; the Black Ruthenian lands were transferred to Roman, Daniel's son. Afterwards Mindaugas's son Vaišvilkas received baptism as a member of the Orthodox faith, becoming a monk and later founding a convent and monastery. Tautvilas's antagonism was temporarily resolved when he recognized Mindaugas's superiority and received Polatsk as a fiefdom. A direct confrontation with the Mongols occurred in 1258 or 1259, when Berke Khan sent his general Burundai to challenge Lithuanian rule, ordering Daniel and other regional princes to participate. The Novgorod Chronicle describes the following action as a defeat of the Lithuanians, but it has also been seen as a net gain for Mindaugas.


title: Mindaugas

text: A single sentence in the Hypatian Chronicle mentions Mindaugas defending himself in Voruta against his nephews and Duke Vykintas; two other sources mention "his castle". The location of Voruta is not specified, and this has led to considerable speculation, along with archeological research, concerning the seat of his court. At least fourteen locations have been proposed, including Kernavė and Vilnius. The ongoing formal archeological digs at Kernavė began in 1979 after a portion of the site named "Mindaugas Throne hill-fort" collapsed. The town now hosts a major celebration on Statehood Day.


title: Mindaugas

text: The Livonian Order used their alliance with Mindaugas to gain control over Samogitian lands. In 1252 he approved the Order's construction of Klaipeda Castle. Their governance, however, was seen as oppressive. Local merchants could only conduct transactions via Order-approved intermediaries; inheritance laws were changed; and the choices among marriage partners and residencies were restricted. Several pitched battles ensued. In 1259 the Order lost the Battle of Skuodas, and in 1260 it lost the Battle of Durbe. The first defeat encouraged a rebellion by the Semigalians, and the defeat at Durbe spurred the Prussians into the Great Prussian Rebellion, which lasted for 14 years. Encouraged by these developments and by his nephew Treniota, Mindaugas broke peace with the Order. The gains he had expected from Christianization had proven to be minor.


title: Mindaugas

text: Mindaugas may have reverted to paganism afterwards. His motivation for conversion is often described by modern historians as merely strategic. The case for his apostasy rests largely on two near-contemporary sources: a 1324 assertion by Pope John XXII that Mindaugas had returned to error, and the Galician–Volhynian Chronicle. The chronicler writes that Mindaugas continued to practice paganism, making sacrifices to his gods, burning corpses, and conducting pagan rites in public. Historians have pointed to the possibility of bias in this account, since Mindaugas had been at war with Volhynia. Pope Clement IV, on the other hand, wrote in 1268 of "Mindaugas of happy memory" ("clare memorie Mindota"), expressing regret at his murder.


title: Mindaugas

text: In any event, the Lithuanians were not prepared to accept Christianity, and Mindaugas's baptism had little impact on further developments. The majority of the population and the nobility remained pagan; his subjects were not required to convert. The cathedral he had built in Vilnius was superseded by a pagan temple, and all the diplomatic achievements made after his coronation were lost, although the practice of Christianity and intermarriage were well tolerated.


title: Mindaugas

text: Regional conflicts with the Order escalated. Alexander Nevsky of Novgorod, Tautvilas, and Tautvilas's son Constantine agreed to form a coalition in opposition to Mindaugas, but their plans were unsuccessful. Treniota emerged as the leader of the Samogitian resistance; he led an army to Cēsis (now in Latvia), reaching the Estonian coast, and battled Masovia (now in Poland). His goal was to encourage all the conquered Baltic tribes to rise up against the Christian orders and unite under Lithuanian leadership. His personal influence grew while Mindaugas was concentrating on the conquest of Ruthenian lands, dispatching a large army to Bryansk. Treniota and Mindaugas began to pursue different priorities. The Rhymed Chronicle mentions Mindaugas's displeasure at the fact that Treniota did not create any alliances in Latvia or Estonia; he may have come to prefer diplomacy. In the midst of these events his wife Morta died, and Mindaugas took her sister as his new wife. The only problem was that the sister was already married to Daumantas. In retaliation, Daumantas and Treniota assassinated Mindaugas and two of his sons in fall 1263. According to a late medieval tradition, the assassination took place in Aglona. He was buried along with his horses, in accordance with ancestral tradition. After Mindaugas's death, Lithuania lapsed into internal disorder. Three of his successors—Treniota, his son-in-law Svarn, and his son Vaišvilkas—were assassinated during the next seven years. Stability did not return until the reign of Traidenis, designated Grand Duke c. 1270.


title: Mindaugas

text: Mindaugas held a dubious position in Lithuanian historiography until the Lithuanian national revival of the 19th century. While pagan sympathizers held him in disregard for betraying his religion, Christians saw his support as lukewarm. He received only passing references from Grand Duke Gediminas and was not mentioned at all by Vytautas the Great. His known family relations end with his children; no historic records note any connections between his descendants and the Gediminids dynasty that ruled Lithuania and Poland until 1572. A 17th-century rector of Vilnius University held him responsible for the troubles then being experienced by the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth ("the seed of internal discord among the Lithuanians had been sown".) A 20th-century historian charged him with the "destruction of the organization of the Lithuanian state". The first academic study of his life by a Lithuanian scholar, Jonas Totoraitis ("Die Litauer unter dem König Mindowe bis zum Jahre 1263") was not published until 1905. In the 1990s historian Edvardas Gudavičius published his findings pinpointing a coronation date, which became a national holiday. The 750th anniversary of his coronation was marked in 2003 by the dedication of the Mindaugas Bridge in Vilnius, numerous festivals and concerts, and visits from other heads of state. In Belarus, there is the legendary in Navahrudak, mentioned by Adam Mickiewicz in his 1828 poem "Konrad Wallenrod". A memorial stone on the Mindaugas's hill was installed in 1993 and a metal sculpture of Mindaugas in 2014.


title: Mindaugas

text: Mindaugas is the primary subject of the 1829 drama "Mindowe", by Juliusz Słowacki, one of the Three Bards. He has been portrayed in several 20th-century literary works: the Latvian author Mārtiņš Zīverts' tragedy "Vara" (Power, 1944), Justinas Marcinkevičius' drama-poem "Mindaugas" (1968), Romualdas Granauskas' "Jaučio aukojimas" (The Offering of the Bull, 1975), and Juozas Kralikauskas' "Mindaugas" (1995). Coronation of Mindaugas and creation of the Grand Duchy is the main topic of the 2002 Belarusian novel "Alhierd's Lance" by dedicated to the 750th anniversary of the coronation.


title: Josh Dasilva

text: Pelenda Joshua Tunga Dasilva (born 23 October 1998) is an English professional footballer who plays as a midfielder for club Brentford. He is a graduate of the Arsenal Hale End Academy and was capped by England at youth level.


title: Josh Dasilva

text: Dasilva began his career with Arsenal and joined the club's Hale End academy at the age of eight. He progressed through the ranks and moved from left wing to forward, before settling into a box-to-box midfield role, under the guidance of Thierry Henry and Kwame Ampadu. After scoring 28 goals during the first year of his scholarship, he signed his first professional contract in August 2015 and was an unused substitute for the first team on two occasions during the 2016–17 season. Dasilva was an unused substitute on seven occasions during the first half of the 2017–18 season and made three appearances, all in EFL Cup matches. Despite progressing into the U23 team, Dasilva failed to see a pathway into the first team squad turned down a new contract at the end of the 2017–18 season. He was released on 30 June 2018.


title: Josh Dasilva

text: On 21 August 2018, Dasilva joined Championship club Brentford on a four-year contract, with the option of an further year, on a free transfer. After overcoming some fitness issues, he made his debut as a substitute for Josh McEachran late in a 2–0 win over Millwall on 3 November 2018. Either side of the New Year, Dasilva made sporadic substitute appearances in league matches and made two FA Cup starts, before breaking into the starting lineup in March 2019. On 19 April 2019, he scored the first senior goal of his career in the return match versus Millwall, with "an unstoppable curling effort into the top corner from 30 yards", which saved a 1–1 draw. Dasilva finished the 2018–19 season with 21 appearances and one goal.


title: Josh Dasilva

text: After beginning the 2019–20 season in a substitute role, Dasilva heeded head coach Thomas Frank's call to up his workrate and intensity. He subsequently broke into the starting lineup in early October 2019 and came into form, scoring six goals in a 10-match spell, which included the first hat-trick of his career in a 7–0 win over Luton Town on 30 November. His November 2019 performances saw him nominated for the EFL Championship Player of the Month award. By the time Brentford's season ended with defeat in the 2020 Championship play-off Final, Dasilva had made 47 appearances and scored 10 goals.


title: Josh Dasilva

text: During the 2020–21 season, after seven appearances and two goals, Dasilva signed a new four-year contract on 4 October 2020. His performance and goal in a 1–0 EFL Cup quarter-final victory over Premier League club Newcastle United on 22 December was recognised with a place in the EFL Cup Team of the Round. In the following round versus Tottenham Hotspur, Dasilva was sent off for the first time in his senior career after receiving a straight red card for a challenge on Pierre-Emile Højbjerg. By the time his season was ended by a hip injury in late February 2021, Dasilva had made 35 appearances and scored seven goals. In his absence, Brentford were promoted to the Premier League after victory in the 2021 Championship play-off Final.


title: Josh Dasilva

text: Having spent four of the previous six months on crutches, Dasilva was left off Brentford's 25-man Premier League squad for the first half of the 2021–22 season. After the window transfer window closed, he was named in the club's updated 25-man Premier League squad. Following two behind closed doors friendly appearances, Dasilva made his first competitive appearance of the season as a substitute for Mads Roerslev after 72 minutes of a 4–1 FA Cup fourth round defeat to Everton on 5 February 2022. Dasilva was sent off on his fourth league appearance on 26 February and a hamstring injury suffered while suspended saw him miss a further seven weeks. He played the remainder of the season in a substitute role and ended the campaign with 10 appearances.


title: Josh Dasilva

text: Following off-season training with a personal coach, alongside former Arsenal teammate Marcus McGuane, Dasilva returned fully fit for the 2022–23 season and scored in each of his first two appearances of the regular season.


title: Josh Dasilva

text: Dasilva was a part of the England U19 squad which won the 2017 UEFA European U19 Championship and made three appearances in the tournament. He appeared in each match of the U20 team's 2017–18 Under 20 Elite League campaign and was a late inclusion in the squad for the 2019 Toulon Tournament. Dasilva won five caps and scored one goal for England at U21 level, all in 2021 UEFA European U21 Championship qualifying matches. In February 2020, Dasilva stated that he would be open to playing for Angola.


title: 1992 NFL season

text: Due to the damage caused by Hurricane Andrew, the New England Patriots at Miami Dolphins game that was scheduled for September 6 at Joe Robbie Stadium was rescheduled to October 18. Both teams originally had that weekend off. This marked the first time since the 1966 NFL season and the AFL seasons of 1966 and 1967 that there were byes in week 1; in those years, byes were necessary every week since there were an odd number of teams, which would happen again between 1999 and 2001. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Dolphins also had their 2017 season opener postponed due to Hurricane Irma.


title: 1992 NFL season

text: The season ended with Super Bowl XXVII when the Dallas Cowboys defeated the Buffalo Bills 52–17 at the Rose Bowl. This would be the third of the Bills' four consecutive Super Bowl losses; as of 2021, no team has ever lost three "or" four Super Bowls in a row (the earliest possible date that these figures could be matched would be either February 2024 and 2025, and that would only happen if the Cincinnati Bengals, who lost Super Bowl LVI in February 2022, lost in the Super Bowl for the next 2–3 seasons). Buffalo would join the Miami Dolphins of the early 1970s as the only team to reach three straight Super Bowls and not until the New England Patriots of the late 2010s would another team reach three in a row.


title: 1992 NFL season

text: The 1992 NFL Draft was held from April 26 to 27, 1992 at New York City's Marriott Marquis. With the first pick, the Indianapolis Colts selected defensive tackle Steve Emtman from the University of Washington.


title: 1992 NFL season

text: After one season as referee, Stan Kemp stepped down after he was diagnosed with Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Tom Dooley also retired during the off-season. Gary Lane and Ed Hochuli were then promoted to referee.


title: 1992 NFL season

text: A series of National Football League pre-season exhibition games that were held at sites outside the United States, a total of three games were contested.


title: 1992 NFL season

text: There was an unusual deviation between good teams and bad teams in the NFL in 1992. Only one team, the Denver Broncos; finished with eight wins and eight losses, nine teams had at least 11 wins, and eight teams had at least 11 losses. Only six teams had between seven, eight or nine wins in 1992.


title: 1992 NFL season

text: The Atlanta Falcons played their first season in the new Georgia Dome, replacing Atlanta–Fulton County Stadium. The Falcons would play at the Georgia Dome until 2016.


title: 1992 NFL season

text: This was the third year under the league's four-year broadcast contracts with ABC, CBS, NBC, TNT, and ESPN. ABC, CBS, and NBC continued to televise "Monday Night Football", the NFC package, the AFC package, respectively. Sunday night games aired on TNT during the first half of the season, and ESPN during the second half of the season. With Bill Walsh leaving NBC to become head coach of the Stanford Cardinal college football team, Bob Trumpy was named to replace him as the network's lead color commentator, alongside Dick Enberg. Gary Bender replaced Skip Caray as TNT's play-by-play announcer.


title: Mummers Parade

text: The Mummers Parade is held each New Year's Day in Philadelphia. Local clubs (usually called "New Years Associations" or "New Years Brigades") compete in one of five categories (Comics, Wench Brigades, Fancies, String Bands, and Fancy Brigades). They prepare elaborate costumes, performance routines, and movable scenery, which take months to complete. This is done in clubhousesmany of which are on or near 2nd Street (called "Two Street" by some local residents) in the Pennsport neighborhood of the city's South Philadelphia sectionwhich also serve as social gathering places for members.


title: Mummers Parade

text: The parade has been broadcast since 1993 on WPHL-TV, which has also live streamed the event on its website since 2011. After a national campaign to get the parade nationally televised, an edited two-hour broadcast of the parade was picked up by WGN America and WGN-TV; the broadcast debuted January 3, 2009.


title: Mummers Parade

text: The parade traces back to mid-17th-century roots, blending elements from Swedish, Finnish, Irish, English, German, and other European heritages, as well as African heritage. The parade is related to the Mummers Play tradition from Britain and Ireland. Revivals of this tradition are still celebrated annually in South Gloucestershire, England on Boxing Day along with other locations in England and in parts of Ireland on St. Stephen's Day and also in the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador around Christmas.


title: Mummers Parade

text: Swedes and Finns, the first European colonists in the Philadelphia area, brought the custom of visiting neighbors on "Second Day Christmas" (December 26) with them to Tinicum. This was soon extended through New Year's Day with costumed celebrants loudly parading through the city. They appointed a "speech director", who performed a special dance with a traditional rhyme:


title: Mummers Parade

text: The Mummers derive their name from the Mummers' plays performed in Philadelphia in the 18th century as part of a wide variety of working class street celebrations around Christmas. By the early 19th century, these coalesced with earlier Swedish customs, including the Christmas neighbor visits and possibly shooting firearms on New Year's Day (although this was common in other countries as well) as well as the Pennsylvania German custom of "belsnickling," where adults in disguise questioned children about their behavior during the previous year.


title: Mummers Parade

text: U.S. President George Washington carried on the official custom of New Year's Day calls during the seven years he occupied President's House in Philadelphia. The Mummers continued their traditions of comic verse in exchange for cakes and ale. Small groups of up to twenty mummers, their faces blackened, went door to door, shooting and shouting, and adapting the English Mummer's play by replacing the character of "King George" with that of "General Washington."


title: Mummers Parade

text: Through the 19th century, large groups of disguised (often in blackface) working class young men roamed the streets on New Year's Day, organizing "riotous" processions, firing weapons into the air, demanding free drinks in taverns, and generally challenging middle and upper-class notions of order and decorum.


title: Mummers Parade

text: An 1808 law decreed that "masquerades" and "masquerade halls" were "common nuisances" and that anyone participating would be subject to a fine and imprisonment. It was apparently never successfully enforced and was repealed in 1859. Henry Muhlenberg, writing in 1839, reported, "Men met on the roads in Tinicum and Kingsessing, who were disguised as clowns, shouting at the top of their voices and shooting guns.


title: Mummers Parade

text: Unable to suppress the custom, by the 1880s the city government began to pursue a policy of co-option, requiring participants to join organized groups with designated leaders who had to apply for permits and were responsible for their groups actions. The earliest documented club, the Chain Gang, had formed in 1840 and Golden Crown first marched in 1876 with cross-town rivals Silver Crown forming soon after. By 1881, a local report said "Parties of paraders" made the street "almost like a masked Ball." By 1900, these groups formed part of an organized, city-sanctioned parade with cash prizes for the best performances.


title: Mummers Parade

text: Southern plantation life's contributions include the parade's theme song, James A. Bland's "Oh, Dem Golden Slippers" (introduced in 1903), as well as the 19th-century cakewalk, dubbed the "Mummers' Strut" or the "2 Street Strut".


title: Mummers Parade

text: The first official parade was held January 1, 1901. The first string band, Trilby, was organized in 1898, first paraded in 1902, and last paraded in 2014. In the early years of the official parade, the makeshift costumes of most celebrants were gradually replaced by more elaborate outfits funded by associations' fund-raising efforts.


title: Mummers Parade

text: The official parade has been cancelled only thrice during its history. One happened in 1919 as a result of the Spanish Flu epidemic when many public events were cancelled; another occurred in 1934 due to the effects of the Great Depression and a lack of prize money; and 2021 on grounds of the COVID-19 pandemic.


title: Mummers Parade

text: As they assimilated to Philadelphia, many immigrant groups have joined the tradition. Numerous Irish immigrants and Irish-Americans from South Philadelphia became involved in the Mummers Parade as both Mummers performers and parade goers. Other ethnic groups were soon integrated into the parade through the years. Italian-Americans and Italian immigrants to South Philadelphia began to participate in the Mummers Parade in large numbers after World War II. While South Philadelphia (especially Pennsport) remains one of the most important centers for Mummers traditions and Mummers members, more recent immigrants to the neighborhood from Asia and Latin America generally have fewer ties to the parade and tradition.


title: Mummers Parade

text: While almost all parade participants are currently white, African American mummers existed in the past. The all African American Golden Eagle Club, formed in 1866, had 300 members in the 1906 parade, for example. Judges systematically discriminated against black clubs, however, and the last, the Octavius Catto Club, withdrew after receiving last place in the 1929 parade. The brass bands hired to accompany the Comic Brigades often include black musicians, but do not dress in costume and consider themselves session musicians rather than Mummers. By 1964, only one African American mummer, Willis Fluelling, remained. As of 2007, a few of the less traditional clubs, such as Spiral Q Puppet Theater's West Philadelphia Mummers Brigade, were integrated.


title: Mummers Parade

text: The comic "wenches" and other female roles in most skits are typically performed by men in drag. Women were not officially allowed in the parade until the 1970s.


title: Mummers Parade

text: As of 2008, the parade cost the city over $1 million each year, including $750,000 for police and parade services and $360,000 in prize money. The 2008 budget crisis led the city to propose closing numerous libraries and firehouses and the scaling back of expenditures for the parade, offering $300,000 for the 2009 parade and nothing for 2010.


title: Mummers Parade

text: After the end of city funding for the parade, the Mummers created the "Save the Mummers Fund" to help cover the additional city fees to paying expenses for police and sanitation services during the event.


title: Mummers Parade

text: Funding for the parade during the first decade of the 2000s was provided for several years by Southwest Airlines, which also took naming rights of the parade, which was called "Southwest Airlines Mummers Parade." Funding for the 2012 parade was provided by SugarHouse Casino, which renamed the parade to "Sugar House Mummers Parade."


title: Mummers Parade

text: In September 2009, The Bacon Brothers musical duo (comprising Philadelphia natives Michael and Kevin Bacon) recorded a special version of their song "New Year's Day" with members of the All-Star String Band. Proceeds from the sale of the CD went to the Save the Mummers Fund. Additionally, the duo performed a benefit concert for the parade in December 2009.


title: Mummers Parade

text: The parade traveled northward on Broad Street in Philadelphia for decades until the 1995 parade when the parade was moved to Market Street due to construction work on Broad Street (notably the "Avenue of the Arts" between Washington Avenue and Philadelphia City Hall). After construction was completed, the parade returned to Broad Street from 1996 to 1999. For various reasons, the parade was moved again to Market Street in 2000. In 2004, the parade was moved back to Broad Street. In 1997, the Fancy Brigades were moved to the Pennsylvania Convention Center, allowing for larger sets, but limiting audience size. In 2011, the Fancy Brigades returned to the parade.


title: Mummers Parade

text: Each year, thousands of people participate in the parade, many wearing elaborate costumes costing tens of thousands of dollars to make and weighing well over 100 pounds. $395,000 in prizes is awarded to the various winners. The costs for making the outfits plus fees to choreographers and prop designers often far exceed the prizes available. While club fund-raisers, hall rentals, and bank loans often cover much of the expense, individual members frequently spend hundreds or thousands of dollars of their own money. To raise funds, many string bands and their members seek paying gigs, particularly in area Fourth of July parades, the annual "Show of Shows" (held in Atlantic City, New Jersey, each winter), weddings, and other events. Many clubs hold "beef and beers" or 50/50 raffles. Most charge annual dues for membership.


title: Mummers Parade

text: As of 2008, the parade began at 9:00 am and ended sometime before 8:00 pm. fancy brigades performed at the nearby convention center at noon and, in a second, judged show, at 5:00 pm. An individual Mummers' struta weaving, comical dance/walk with pumping arms held out to the sidemay last two or three hours from South Philadelphia to City Hall. The whole parade, at close to eleven hours, may have been the longest parade in the U.S. Due to budget cuts, the 2009 parade was shorter, scheduled to begin at 10:00 am and last six and a half hours.


title: Mummers Parade

text: On January 1, 2015, the Mummers began their parade route at Philadelphia's City Hall and headed south along Broad Street to Washington Avenue. The Mummers used the Benjamin Franklin Parkway as a staging area prior to moving to City Hall to be judged. After the judging, the mummers joined the parade heading south on Broad St. The parade ended at Washington Ave, with some clubs still heading east to Second Street for the unofficial “Two Street Parade”.


title: Mummers Parade

text: If an all-day postponement is required for foul weather, the parade is usually held the following Saturday (or Sunday, if Saturday is inclement), as the expensive and fancy costumes are easily harmed by precipitation or high winds.


title: Mummers Parade

text: Each year, there is a festival leading up to the parade called MummersFest. It allows fans to tour the Pennsylvania Convention Center to watch the Fancy Brigades build their props and practice for their New Year's Day reveal.


title: Mummers Parade

text: Comics are clowns, many of them well-liquored, in colorful outfits, often with multi-level umbrellas who dance to recordings such as "Golden Slippers". The comics typically start the parade. Themes often gently parody current events and traditional life. Prizes are awarded for floats, groups, brigades, couples, original costume, original character, and juvenile.


title: Mummers Parade

text: Wench brigades, an offshoot of comics, pride themselves on continuing traditions such as the dress-and-bloomers "suits", painted faces, decorated umbrellas, and live brass bands to accompany the brigade.


title: Mummers Parade

text: Members with some small floats strut in elaborate costumes to music provided by a live band. Prizes are awarded to individuals, trios, juveniles and captains.


title: Mummers Parade

text: String bands provide elaborate performances. Limited to unamplified strings, reeds, and percussion, string bands feature banjos, saxophones (alto, tenor, baritone and bass), accordions, double basses, drums, glockenspiels and occasionally violins in musical arrangements tied to a theme presented by the captain, beautiful costumes and props (some people call them floats). Historically, string bands performed mostly in military-drill formations. Harrowgate (now Uptown) String Band's first-prize-winning railroad tunes with Broadway-style dance in 1976 changed that. String-band performances are now the most elaborate of the parade, outdone only by the fancy brigades indoor performances. These bands come from all over Philadelphia and the surrounding areas.


title: Mummers Parade

text: The largest category with the largest crews, the fancy brigades march the southernmost portion of the parade route, before heading to the convention center for a ticketed show and judging. Until the late 1970s, the fancy brigades were simply larger presentations within the Fancies. As the props grew larger, more cumbersome and more vulnerable to wind, rain and snow, the decision was made to move the Brigades indoors, making them a separate event away from the parade providing the finale to a day of citywide celebrations. These brigades have two shows slated in the center, with the late afternoon show, with the judges present for the scoring of the performances, being televised live.


title: Mummers Parade

text: Because of the large number of clubhouses there, South 2nd Street (Two Street) often serves as a party location after the parade, with the center of activity being South 2nd Street and Mifflin Street. Local residents and others in the area for the parade crowd the local bars, clubhouses and sidewalks, sometimes joining in the unofficial parade. With the parade they spent months preparing for finished, the Mummers let loose and celebrate. This multi-block party continues well into the night or early morning, with some Mummers not sleeping for twenty-four hours straight.


title: Mummers Parade

text: In 2009, the city declined to pay for any post-parade celebrations on Two Street. However, Rep. Bob Brady helped secure funding for the event in the final hours.


title: Mummers Parade

text: The parade has been accused of including hate speech, racist, sexist, anti-LGBT, and culturally insensitive costumes, makeup, and images.


title: Mummers Parade

text: The wearing of blackface carried over from minstrel shows in the early 20th century. Growing dissent from civil-rights groups and the objections of the black community led to most clubs phasing out blackface in the early 1960s.


title: Mummers Parade

text: In 1963, one week before the parade, concerned about their image for a nationwide broadcast, the Mummers banned blackface for the parade. Angry Mummers picketed the parade magistrate's home, leading to a reversal of the decision. Concerned about a possible riot, the city called in extra police for the parade. A 1964 city policy officially banned blackface, but some groups have continued to wear blackface into the 21st century over growing protests. 's parade, the use of blackface is uncommon, but the use of redface and brownface continues, along with other types of racial and ethnic mimicry.


title: Mummers Parade

text: In 1987, mayor Wilson Goode had Mummers photos removed from City Hall because the Mummers appeared to be wearing blackface. Saying the Mummers were not in blackface, a petition resulted in the photos being restored, though not near the mayor's office.


title: Mummers Parade

text: In 1996, half of the string bands reported having female members. The bands' captains, though, made it clear to reporters that they did not want to let women in the bands, but felt they had to, due to declining membership.


title: Mummers Parade

text: In 2003, word spread that Slick Duck Comic Brigade was working on a skit involving priests chasing altar boys. Protests from the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, the Diocese of Camden and the Catholic League, and WPHL-TV announcing they would not air the skit led to the group's cancelling of the skit and claiming it was just a prank.


title: Mummers Parade

text: Goodtimers Comic Brigade's 2003 entry highlighted the Mummers' continued use of blackface, skirting of the rules with brown, red, purple and blue makeup and strong references to minstrel shows. Mummers have declared the alternate color choices as a direct protest of the longstanding and frequently flouted ban. The Goodtimers' stand in for Al Jolson wore dark blue makeup with kinky hair, backed by "a minstrel in blackface on a large poster with 'Gone Yes — Forgotten Never'".


title: Mummers Parade

text: 2009's B. Love Strutters Brigade referenced Joey Vento of Geno's Steaks 2008 charges of discrimination filed by the city's Commission on Human Relations. In the skit, "'Aliens of an Illegal Kind,' Arabs had long beards and turbans, Mexicans wore sombreros, and Asian women were depicted as geishas."


title: Mummers Parade

text: In 2013, Venetian NYA club presented "Indi-sourcing", showing a call center with members dressed as Indians being raided by members dressed as Native Americans and moving the call center to New Jersey.


title: Mummers Parade

text: The 2015 parade again featured blackface, along with a satire of the Black Lives Matter titled "Wench Lives Matter".


title: Mummers Parade

text: In 2016 a group presented a Mexican-themed skit, with all of the performers wearing brownface. Parodies of Black Lives Matter continued.


title: Mummers Parade

text: The same year, Finnegan New Years Brigade presented a Caitlyn Jenner skit showing her pre-transition on the cover of Wheaties box and after transitioning on the cover of a Froot Loops box. A male Mummer, dressed as Jenner, appeared, mocking her "Vanity Fair" cover announcing she was transgender. News reports showed a Mummer with the Wheaties/Froot Loops sign screaming "fuck the gays!" Social media posts led to two of the Mummers being fired from their day-to-day jobs and ousted from the club.


title: Mummers Parade

text: In 2020, two Mummers were banned from future parades after wearing blackface. In response, mayor Jim Kenney said the city would end the parade "if Mummers leadership does not make immediate changes to better control the parade". City Councilmember Cindy Bass introduced a bill that Mummers who wore blackface risk a $75 fine and a five-year banishment.


title: Cracked Rear View

text: Cracked Rear View is the debut studio album by Hootie & the Blowfish, released on July 5, 1994, by Atlantic Records. Released to positive critical reviews, it eventually sold 10.2 million copies in the United States, becoming one of the best-selling albums of all time.


title: Cracked Rear View

text: Don Gehman was chosen by A&R man Tim Sommer as a producer because of his previous work with John Mellencamp and R.E.M.


title: Cracked Rear View

text: "Cracked Rear View" is Hootie & the Blowfish's most successful album. "Cracked Rear View" reached number one on the "Billboard" 200 five times over the course of 1995. It was the best-selling album of 1995 in the United States, selling 7 million copies. It has sold 10.2 million copies in the United States per Nielsen SoundScan as of 2012. An additional three million copies were sold through CD clubs, which are not included in SoundScan's total. The album has been certified 21x platinum (double diamond) as of 2018. It is the joint 19th-best-selling album of all time in the United States. The album also reached number one in Canada and New Zealand.


title: Cracked Rear View

text: Critical reviews of "Cracked Rear View" were mostly positive. AllMusic's Stephen Thomas Erlewine crowned the album as "the success story of 1994/1995." He also stated "Although Hootie & the Blowfish aren't innovative, they deliver the goods, turning out an album of solid, rootsy folk-rock songs that have simple, powerful hooks."


title: Cracked Rear View

text: All songs written by Mark Bryan, Dean Felber, Darius Rucker and Jim "Soni" Sonefeld, except where noted.


title: Cracked Rear View

text: In 2001, the album was re-released on DVD-Audio with the disc featuring a discography, photo gallery, and video of a live performance of "Drowning".


title: Characters and races of The Dark Crystal

text: The characters from the 1982 cult fantasy film "The Dark Crystal" series were created by puppeteer Jim Henson and concept artist Brian Froud, most of the information about specific characters and species names that were not mentioned in the film come from supplementary materials such as Froud's book "The World of the Dark Crystal". The series expanded into books, comics, artwork, games, and the 2019 prequel series "".


text: The Gelfling are the central protagonists of "The Dark Crystal" franchise. They are slender, elvish humanoids with protracted facial structures who originally populated most of Thra, having three long fingers and a thumb on each hand. Female Gelfling have fairy-like wings that can be folded to fit easily under their clothing, allowing them to safely glide down from high places, even with the added weight of a second Gelfling holding onto them. The Marvel Comics adaptation of the film states that in the past, females could fly, but the wings have become vestigial. Gelfling also possess an ability called ""dreamfasting"" that allows them to psychically share thoughts, memories, and emotions through touch. The name "Gelfling" is a transliteration of "Ghel-lflainnk", which means "those who live without knowledge of the future". This is due to their innocence and naïvety.


text: The Gelfling once had a flourishing civilization with a writing system similar to hieroglyphics, having relied on Aughra during the Age of Innocence before the urSkeks' arrival, which hastened their development while they venerated the aliens for their advancement. Initially, the Gelfling coexisted with the Skeksis before learning of their malevolent actions in using the Dark Crystal to drain the surrounding lands of their life essence to prolong their lives while using the extracted essence of their enslaved kinsmen for rejuvenation purposes.


text: This started the events of "", which reveals that the Gelfling were organized as seven matriarchal clans who made their homes in areas of Thra consisting of the Stonewood Clan, the Spriton Clan, the Vapra Clan, the Grottan Clan, the Drenchen Clan, the Sifa Clan, and the Dousan Clan. Each of the Gelfling Clans is led by a leader called a "Maudra" and the ruler of all the clans is named "All-Maudra". Eventually, the Gelfling learned that one among them was destined to find the Shard and restore the Crystal to its natural state alongside the urSkeks during an upcoming Great Conjunction. When the Skeksis learned of this, they attempted using fabrications to deter the Gelfling before resorting to genocide with the newly-created Garthim. By time of the events of the first film, only Jen and Kira had survived one such massacre as the former seeks to fulfill the prophecy. At the end of the first film, the two are entrusted with the Crystal by the urSkeks.


text: In the original film, it required four puppeteers to operate the Gelfling. In "The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance", the Gelfling puppets require only two puppeteers thus permitting greater freedom of movement. Also, while the animatronic components of the original film's Gelfling puppets were controlled via cables, the mechanical parts of the new Gelfling were remotely operated via a modified Wii controller.


text: Jen is a young male Gelfling and the protagonist of the film, having been raised by the urRu Master urSu from infancy when his family was slaughtered by the Garthim. His upbringing by the lax urRu made him both deliberate and impatient. Jen wears a pale, cream-colored tunic. His skin has a brown complexion and his hair is dark with fair (almost silver) streaks, and grows to shoulder-length. He carries a flute around his neck, which he is shown playing at intervals, and an urRu token known as a "firca".


text: His creature and costume design were provided by Brian Froud and his designer and fabrication supervisor was Wendy Midener.


text: Having escaped the slaughter of her people when hidden by her mother in a hollow tree trunk, Kira ended up wandering into a Podling village and was adopted by them. Taught by the Podlings, Kira learned to converse with wild animals and is given to wandering the swamps outside the Podling village, accompanied by Fizzgig. She is soft-spoken and gentle as a rule. Kira wears a golden-brown dress and a brown cloak. She has a fair complexion; her hair is long and fair, almost white; and she is always barefoot. As a female Gelfling, Kira has segmented fairy or butterfly-like wings that unfold from her shoulders on command: a physical feature not shared by male Gelflings. Although not shown in flight, she is twice seen using these wings to slow a fall.


text: Kira was designed by Wendy Froud (Nee Midener) and her design and fabrication supervisor was also Wendy Midener.


text: The Vapra Clan are a Gelfling clan that reside in the city of Ha'rar within the snowy high mountains and appear in "The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance", having ruled the other Gelfling tribes for ages. The Vapra Clan are experts on camouflage where they can blend into the background. Among the known members are:


text: The Stonewood clan are a Gelfling clan that reside in the village of Stone-in-the-Wood within the Dark Wood and appear in "The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance". They are strong and proud and most of them are employed as Crystal Guards at the Castle of the Crystal. The Stonewood Clan are also expert cobblers and farmers. Originally they were called the Woodland Clan or Woodland Folk. Among the known members are:


text: The Grottan Clan, named after the Caves of Grot, are a secretive Gelfling clan that reside in the Cave of Obscurity, their tribe long thought to be extinct due to their isolation from most of Thra. The Grottan Clan have large ears and big eyes to help them move around in the dark, but are sensitive to sunlight causing them to wear special blindfolds to filter the light. They appear in "The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance". Among the known members are:


text: The Drenchen Clan are an amphibious Gelfling Clan that live in the Swamps of Sog. They appear in "The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance" where their town of Great Smerth is named after the enormous tree that is in the center. The Drenchen Clan have gills that enable them to survive underwater and the females use their wings like fish fins to swim. They are also powerful in combat and take pride in it. The Skeksis could not keep track of the Drenchen Clan's location in their consensus. Among the known members are:


text: The Sifa Clan are a sea-faring Gelfling Clan that appear in "The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance". They reside in coastal villages along the Silver Sea where they work as fishermen and sailors. Among the known members are:


text: The Dousan Clan are an elusive Gelfling Clan that reside on the Crystal Sea desert. They appear in "The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance". The Dousan Clan navigate the sands of the Crystal Sea by riding Crystal Skimmers, gather at an oasis in the Crystal Sea called the Wellspring, and hold ancient rituals that involve music. Dousan shamans are known to eat hallucinogenic berries in order to glimpse into the future and talk to Thra. Among the known members are:


text: The Spriton Clan are a war-like Gelfling clan that appear in "The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance". They are a farming community that live on the southern plains of Thra and are a rival of the Stonewood Clan. The Spriton Clan reside in Sami Thicket, but mostly are in other parts of Thra trading items with its other inhabitants. Agriculture and creature husbandry are also part of their lives. Among the known members are:


text: Described as "a friendly monster" in the initial draft of the screenplay, the character of Fizzgig is the pet of Kira: resembling a dog in voice and manners, but unlike a dog in that his facial features are tiny and his entire body is represented by a brown/red/gray ball of fur. Fizzgig moves by rolling, though he does appear to have at least two legs. His mouth, when open, appears to encompass most of his size and possesses two sets of sharp teeth. He is fiercely loyal to Kira, has an aggressive temper, and is wary of unfamiliar things. Fizzgig is at first wary of Jen, but becomes his friend.


text: Fizzgig later made a cameo in the "Fraggle Rock" episode "Gobo's Discovery", as one of the background cave creatures.


text: In relating media and prequels, Fizzgig is the name of the species as well. As why Kira's pet Fizzgig does not have an individual name is unknown. Fizzgig is the only major character represented in the film by a puppet with immobile eyes. "The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance" featured a named Fizzgig.


text: Aughra, Keeper of Secrets and revered by the Gelflings as Mother Aughra, is an oracle who is actually an emanation of the planet Thra created long ago with the task of observing for the planet until she is reabsorbed back into it, having the ability to command plants and remove her eyes for an extended view of her surroundings. Aughra served in guiding the early Gelflings before the first Great Conjunction. While intersexed, Aughra is mostly female as her masculine side was burned along with her right eye as the result of directly witnessing the Great Conjunction up close. But she was saved from death by the urSkeks with their member TekTih teaching her of the inner workings of the universe while creating her observatory home on top of a mountain known as High Hill, Aughra providing information on Thra in return. Present at the second Great Conjunction that splintered the urSkeks, Aughra attempted to calm down the nascent Skeksis before they cracked the Crystal of Truth and tricked her into entering a deep slumber to see the universe before she reawakens during the events of "Age of Resistance". Upon learning what the Skeksis have done, Aughra regrets leaving Thra to them as she allies herself with the Gelflings during their rebellion. In the aftermath of the Garthim War, Aughra keeps the Shard safe in her observatory until Jen arrived to obtain it, but the Garthim destroy Aughra's home while attempting to capture Jen, bringing her to the Castle where she rebukes the Skeksis before being locked away in skekTek's Chamber of Life until she is freed and witnesses the urSkeks' restoration. Aughra makes a return appearance in the comic book sequel to "The Dark Crystal", titled "The Power of the Dark Crystal".


text: In the film, Aughra is portrayed primarily by Frank Oz in costume. Oz also voiced Aughra originally (similar to a combination of Fozzie Bear, Yoda, and Miss Piggy); but her lines were redubbed by Billie Whitelaw.


text: Aughra appears in "The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance". She awakens from her journey to find that the Skeksis have corrupted Thra. She gave up her life essence to help the Skeksis heal skekMal. When urVa jumps to his death, skekMal dies and Aughra is reconstituted.


text: Her designer was Brian Froud and her design and fabrication supervisor was Lyle Conway. The fabrication team for Aughra included: David Barclay, Jeremy Hunt, Paul Jiggins, Graeme Galvin, and Steve Court.


text: The Skeksis are the central antagonists of "The Dark Crystal" franchise: the ten dark versions of the ten "good" urRu/Mystics (see below). The word "Skeksis" serves as both singular and plural form for this species, with the singular pronounced and the plural . They are described by concept artist Brian Froud as "part reptile, part vulture, part dragon". Like their urRu counterparts, they have four arms; but in the Skeksis the two lower arms have become weak and atrophied, and are rarely seen. The Skeksis have kept themselves from dying of old age by draining the vitality from other beings. In the film, the Skeksis are represented by full-bodied puppets engineered under the direction of Jim Henson. Henson has said that in the development of the Skeksis, the creators drew inspiration from the Seven deadly sins, in that each Skeksis represents a different kind of evil, such as cruelty, selfishness, greed, unchecked ambition, treachery, and wrath. The Skeksis were full-bodied puppets operated in a very similar way to Big Bird. The puppeteer's secondary arm was in the arm of the Skeksis and the puppeteer's primary arm was held up over the puppeteer's head and the hand operates the jaw. A monitor inside the suit allowed the puppeteer to see.


text: The series prequel "The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance" introduced new Skeksis characters who appeared in other media.


text: In the "Dark Crystal Author Quest" novels, two more Skeksis appeared. Both were referenced in the ninth episode of "Age of Resistance":


text: In Tokyopop's OEL manga "Legends of the Dark Crystal" vol. 1 and 2, two more Skeksis are introduced. Since later novels and the TV series, these characters are no longer canon:


text: More commonly known as the "Mystics", the urRu are benign counterparts of the Skeksis and embody the urSkeks' redeeming qualities yet are mostly indifferent and rarely act. After two of their own are killed by a rogue Skeksis, they learn that they are still linked with their counterparts, and most of the urRu take refuge in the Valley of the Standing Stones, leaving the Skeksis to their devices. While initially lean and fairly agile creatures, nearly identical to the Skeksis, the urRu aged differently from their counterparts as they began using walking sticks to move around while gradually losing their memories. During the course of the film, after urSu allowed himself to die to place the remaining nine Skeksis into disarray, urZah leads the urRu towards the Castle to fulfill the prophecy and merge with their Skeksis counterparts back into the urSkeks. The urRu have four arms, elongated heads, white hair, and tails, in a manner that concept artist Brian Froud described as being "... between a dog and a dinosaur".


text: In Archaia Comics "The Dark Crystal: Creation Myth Volumes 2 and 3", four new Mystics were introduced:


text: In the "Dark Crystal Author Quest" series by J.M. Lee, three new canonical urRu are introduced and one appearing in the Netflix series "The Dark Crystal Age of Resistance".


text: The urSkeks are the beings from which the urRu and the Skeksis are derived, depicted as tall, luminescent beings of vaguely Gelfling-like shape. They sported large craniums and slim bodies. As revealed in "The World of the Dark Crystal", their people considering both their moral imperfections and attempt of manipulating their homeworld's Crystal intolerable, the eighteen urSkeks were banished to Thra through the Crystal of Truth until they have learned to master their dark aspects. Once on Thra, presenting themselves as "light bringers", the urSkeks spend the next thousand years hastening the development of the planet's people while exploiting Aughra's interest in the universe to acquire the Crystal of Truth from her. By the time of the second Great Conjunction, the urSkeks created a mirror network around the Great Crystal to trap the light of the next Great Conjunction for their use in returning to their world while purging their imperfections. But the attempt failed and resulted in the Crystal of Truth becoming the Dark Crystal and splintered the urSkeks into the urRu and the Skeksis, each member being spiritually linked to his counterpart. If any member of either species is wounded or killed, an equivalent suffers the same in the other. By the events of the film, the others having died of various causes, only eight of the urSkeks are reformed before they depart Thra soon after. In between TokyoPop's "Legends of the Dark Crystal", Archaia Comics "The Dark Crystal: Creation Myths" and "Dark Crystal Author Quest", various Skeksis and Mystics were introduced which provides the identities of some of the deceased urSkeks (Skeksis/urRu), but thanks to "The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance", alongside the J.M. Lee novels, these are the canon 18 UrSkeks:


text: The Podlings, also known as the Pod People, are a species of gentle "earth-people" native to Thra and affiliated with the Gelflings, named for the giant seed-pods in which they live. In their own language, they referred to themselves as "apopiapoiopidiappididiapipob", which translated as "master gardeners who live in bulging plants." The Podlings are dwarf-like in stature yet with very rounded, circular-shaped, bulbous potato-like heads and small round eyes. They have a love of music and parties. In tune with nature, they can speak to Thra's wildlife and Kira was taught this skill by her adoptive mother Ydra. With "The World of the Dark Crystal" revealing that many were initially lured to the Castle, the Podlings were abducted from their homes by the Garthim so that skeTek can extract their vital essence for a youth serum reserved for the Emperor. While the serum's effects are temporary compared to the essence extracted from Gelflings, the process turns the Podlings into aged and mindless slaves who submit to the Skeksis' commands. At the end of the film, the enslaved Podlings are restored to their original selves.


text: The unnamed Podlings in the film are performed by Dave Goelz, Jim Henson, and Frank Oz and voiced by Barry Dennen, Patrick Monckton, and Sue Weatherby.


text: The creature and costume designs for the Podlings were done by Brian Froud and the design and fabrication supervisor was Sherry Amont. The design and fabrication team for the Podlings consisted of Bob Payne, Amy Van Gilder, Mike Quinn, Cheryl Henson, Marianne Harms, Nick Forder, Sarah Monzani, Peter Saunders, and Debbie Coda. Polly Smith, Barbara Davis, and Ellis Duncan were associate costume designers.


text: "The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance" also features some unnamed Podling servants (performed by Warrick Brownlow-Pike and Louise Gold) that work for the Skeksis.


text: The Garthim are crustacean-like creatures that skekTek animated with the Dark Crystal to serve the Skeksis as their enforcers following the Gelfings' war declaration, each pieced together from the corpses of the spider-like Arathim and the humanoid Gruenaks in a form resembling sea creatures native to the urSkeks' world. The creation of the Garthim, as depicted in the first-season finale of "Age of Resistance", led to the massacre of the Gelflings in the event referred to as the Garthim War. In the film, some are sent to capture Jen and end up bringing Aughra instead. The Garthim are instantly destroyed when Jen restored the Crystal, causing them to crumble along with the Skeksis architecture covering the Castle.


text: In "The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance", their origins are shown at the end of the first season as skekTek reveals the first Garthim (performed by Daniel Dewhirst) following the fight at Stone-in-the-Wood.


text: The conceptual designer for the Garthim was Brian Froud, who claimed to have had a fascination with lobsters, and Fred Nihda as the design and fabrication supervisor. As the suits were so heavy and prone to overheating, special harnesses were constructed to lift the performers in the Garthim suits and give them time to recover in between takes.


text: Known as the "Son of Aughra", Raunip was born from the organic material of a meteorite that landed on Thra which Aughra brought to life. Unlike the more reserved Aughra, Raunip is more outgoing and with an adventurous curiosity, allowing him befriend Gelfings and other members of Thra's races. But Raunip earned the urSkeks' ire, his distrust of them playing a factor in the events that splintered the urSkeks into the Skeksis and the urRu/Mystics. Helping Aughra search for the lost shard, fruitlessly gathering similar shards, Raunip learned the Skeksis have enlisted the Gelflings to repel the invading Makrak horde in his absence.


text: Raunip attempted to convince the Gelfling elder Carn of not trusting the Skeksis, only to be rebuffed and accused of abandoning the Gelflings in their time of need. Raunip left Carn's village with her daughter Thall, who shared his suspicion over the Skeksis' motives. Taken to Valley of the urRu by urGoh where he is reunited with Kotha, Raunip tried convincing the urRu to stop the Skeksis from taking the Gelfling to war. When the Makraks reached the Valley the following day, Kotha's translation of their language allows Raunip to understand that Makraks were forced from their underground home with the destruction they caused motivated by fear of the surface world. While the urRu convinced the Skeksis to not exterminate the Makraks, Raunip participated in the peace talks and suggested their relocation to the region known as the Field of Fire. Raunip offered himself to guide the Makraks, knowing that he would never return or survive the journey despite receiving protective clothing and amulets from Thall. After bidding farewell to Aughra, who wept silently after he left, Raunip succeeds in his mission despite half of his face burnt and on the verge of death. He was last seen with a Fizzgig whom he recounting his tale to, resolving to live as long as he can while hoping to be remembered by those he left behind.


text: The Firelings, also known as the U-Mun, are an offshoot of the Gelfling race that reside in the underground region of Mithra where they are ruled by a council of three Ember Queens. Descended from Gelfling exiles that came to Mithra during the Age of Division, resembling Gelflings enveloped in flame, the Firelings adapted to their environment with their physiology altered to the point that they are unable to survive on Thra's surface without assistance and with exposure to water weakening them. While they resemble Gelflings, the female Firelings lack wings and the older members of the race had fin-like ears and sported a pair of antennae on their foreheads. Firelings also possess an ability similar to dreamfasting called "firefasting", that enabled them to learn of events and emotions from the past through flame.


text: Thurma was a female Fireling who lived during the Age of Power. She was the heir of one of Mithra's Ember Queens and the first Fireling to leave her homeland since the race's creation, heading to Thra's surface world in a misguided quest to retrieve a shard from the Crystal in order to stop the Great Dim. Her efforts resulted in a brief return of the Skeksis and Mystics while learning her race's true origins through her relationship with the Gelfling Kensho.


text: Her return home after the crisis saw her confront Nita, a rival claimant to her position as Ember Queen, though the two eventually joined forces in order to stop the Fire That Stays from finishing what the Great Dim had started. She subsequently ruled Mithra jointly with Nita and Fiola.


text: The Myth-Speaker (voiced by Sigourney Weaver) is the narrator of "The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance".


text: Vliste-Staba (voiced by Theo Ogundipe) is a Sanctuary Tree that appears in "The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance" and makes it home in Grot, being one of the many Great Trees that held the Darkening at bay for a millennia before it became too strong for them to subdue thanks to the Skeksis' experiments with the Dark Crystal. When the tree's death occurs, Vliste-Staba gives Deet the ability to absorb the Darkening into herself to purify the infected.


text: Lore (performed by Damian Farrell) is a sentient rock construct created by skekGra and urGoh. Debuting in "The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance", skekGra and urGoh placed him in a chamber beneath the Vapra Clan's throne room to await the Gefling that would revive him. Lore is awakened by Brea in "The First Thing I Remember is Fire," playing skekGra's recording to explain himself as her guide and protector in her journey to Circle of the Suns. Once Lore accomplishes his mission, Lore is deactivated by skekGra and remains in the Circle of the Suns for the duration of the first season.


text: The Arathim are a spider-like race that appear in "The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance", all connected by a hivemind known as the Ascendency. The Arathim initially lived in the Caves of Grot until the Skeksis drove them into the wilds for refusing to submit and fought the Gelflings in many conflicts. The Arathim eventually become the Gelflings' allies in their rebellion against the Skeksis, who respond by having skekTek graft some Arathim corpses with the remains of one of his Gruenak slaves to create the first Garthim.


text: The Crystal Bats are winged bat-like creatures with stick-like bodies which serve as spies for the Skeksis. Two are seen spying on Jen and Kira.


text: According to "The World of the Dark Crystal" by Brian Froud, the Crystal Bats were bred by the Skeksis to carry lenses of artificial Crystal that relay whatever they see to the Dark Crystal.


text: Landstriders are quadrupeds native to the forests of Thra, having white skin, vaguely anteater-like faces, long rabbit ear-like appendages, and extremely long and powerful limbs with which they move very fast over vast distances. They are ridden by Jen and Kira in the film, and identified by Froud as regular mounts of Gelflings. Landstriders are very tough and their limbs can be used as formidable weapons as seen when they, Jen, Kira, and Fizzgig are attacked by the Garthim. One Landstrider is taken down while another falls off the cliff with a Garthim. As a result, Landstriders are perhaps the only natives of Thra able to oppose the Garthim. A dead Landstrider's flesh is highly prized for the Skeksis.


text: In the production of "The Dark Crystal", the Landstriders were performed by professional stiltwalkers operating on four stilts like Robbie Barnett, Swee Lim, and Hugh Spight. A digitally-erased safety wire, pulley system, and the associated crane were used to help perform the Landstriders so that the performer will not accidentally fall and hurt their necks. "The World of The Dark Crystal" revealed that Robbie Barnett helped to conceive the Landstriders due to him being an expert at stiltwalking as well as the safety information that Jim Henson revealed to make sure the Landstrider performers do not get hurt.


text: The Landstriders appear in "The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance". Ordon and some Crystal Guard members rode some Landstriders when escorting skekOk and skekLach to Ha'rar. The Landstriders also took the brunt of the Darkening.


text: The Nebrie are large amphibians apparent in marshes and swamps. Although they appear menacing, the Nebries are not especially aggressive and appear to be vegetarian. A Nebrie infant is seen roasted on the dining table of the Skeksis in the Castle of the Crystal, and the novel depicts Nebries as the Skeksis' food of choice.


text: The Nebrie was designed by Brian Froud and the design and fabrication supervisors were Tim Miller and John Coppinger.


text: The Gruenaks are a race of Gelfling-size brutes with superhuman strength and mechanical minds that have been driven to near extinction. In the first season of "Age of Resistance", skekSil provided two known Gruenak survivors (performed by Kevin Clash and Neil Sterenberg) with stitched mouths to assist skekTek in repairing his essence extraction machine and improve on it. The two Gruenaks were also manipulated by skekSil with the promise of their freedom, openly rebelling when skekSil revealed to them he had no intention of setting them free in the immediate future. This resulted with the Gruenaks being killed by skekTek, who threw one down the Crystal Shaft and then used the other's corpse after beating him to death in the creation of the Garthim.


text: Both the film and "Age of Resistance" depict the wildlife of Thra. Among these creatures are plants able to fly; flowers able to retract their petals; thick tree-like stalks that expand and compress; mobile vine-like or grass-like creatures; rodent-like animals; and birds with a large horn instead of a beak.


title: All I Have to Do Is Dream

text: "All I Have to Do Is Dream" is a song made famous by the Everly Brothers, written by Boudleaux Bryant of the husband-and-wife songwriting team Felice and Boudleaux Bryant, and published in 1958. The song is ranked No. 141 on the "Rolling Stone" magazine's list of The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. The song is in AABA form.


title: All I Have to Do Is Dream

text: The best-known version was recorded by the Everly Brothers at RCA Studio Nashville and released as a single in April 1958. It had been recorded by the Everly Brothers live in just two takes on March 6, 1958, and features Chet Atkins on guitar. It was the only single ever to be at No. 1 on all of the "Billboard" singles charts simultaneously, on June 2, 1958. It first reached No. 1 on the "Most played by Jockeys" and "Top 100" charts on May 19, 1958, and remained there for five and three weeks, respectively; with the August 1958 introduction of the "Billboard" Hot 100 chart, the song ended the year at No. 2. "All I Have to Do Is Dream" also hit No. 1 on the R&B chart as well as becoming the Everly Brothers' third chart topper on the country chart. The Everly Brothers briefly returned to the Hot 100 in 1961 with this song.


title: All I Have to Do Is Dream

text: Outside the United States, "All I Have to Do Is Dream" saw massive success in various countries, most notably the United Kingdom, where it topped the UK's "New Musical Express" chart in June 1958 and remained there for seven weeks (including one week as a joint number one with Vic Damone's "On the Street Where You Live"), spending 21 weeks on the chart in Britain. The song has also featured on several notable lists of the best songs or singles of all time, including British music magazine "Q"s 1001 best songs ever in 2003.


title: All I Have to Do Is Dream

text: It was named one of the "500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll" by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and received the Grammy Hall of Fame Award in 2004.


title: All I Have to Do Is Dream

text: The B-side, "Claudette", was the first major song writing success for Roy Orbison (who also recorded his own version of the song) and was named after his first wife. As a result of this success Orbison terminated his contract with Sun Records and affiliated himself with the Everly's publisher, Acuff-Rose Music.


title: All I Have to Do Is Dream

text: Richard Chamberlain covered the song on his 1962 album "Richard Chamberlain Sings". Released as a single in 1963, it peaked at No. 14 on the "Billboard" Hot 100 chart, and No. 6 on "Billboard"s Middle-Road Singles chart.


title: All I Have to Do Is Dream

text: Bobbie Gentry and Glen Campbell released a duet version in 1969. Their version reached No. 27 on the "Billboard" Hot 100, No. 6 on "Billboard"s Hot Country Singles chart, No. 4 on "Billboard"s Easy Listening chart, No. 3 on the UK Singles Chart, No. 6 in Sweden (Radio Sweden), and No. 3 in South Africa (Springbok Radio).


title: All I Have to Do Is Dream

text: The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band's version, from their 1975 album "Symphonion Dream", reached No. 66 on the "Billboard" Hot 100, No. 30 on "Billboard"s Easy Listening chart, and No. 79 on "Billboard"s Hot Country Singles chart.


title: All I Have to Do Is Dream

text: Andy Gibb and Victoria Principal peaked at no. 51 on the "Billboard" Hot 100 in 1981 with their remake.


title: All I Have to Do Is Dream

text: R.E.M. contributed their rendition titled "(All I've Got To Do Is) Dream" to the "" soundtrack in 1987.


title: All I Have to Do Is Dream

text: British singer Cliff Richard, singing with Phil Everly, recorded a version of the song that peaked at No. 14 on the UK Singles Chart in 1994.


title: All I Have to Do Is Dream

text: The Dandy Warhols recorded a cover version for the covers compilation soundtrack released in support of video game Stubbs the Zombie in 2005.


title: All I Have to Do Is Dream

text: French singer Laurent Voulzy recorded a version of the song in a duet with Andrea Corr. It was featured on his album "La Septième Vague", recorded in 2006 and on the Corrs album "", also recorded in 2006.


title: All I Have to Do Is Dream

text: At the 1994 AFI Life Achievement Award, which was awarded to Jack Nicholson, Harry Dean Stanton and Art Garfunkel performed a rendition of the song for Nicholson.


title: Human shield

text: A human shield is a non-combatant (or a group of non-combatants) who either volunteers or is forced to shield a legitimate military target in order to deter the enemy from attacking it. The use of human shields as a resistance measure was popularized by Mahatma Gandhi as a weapon of peace. On the other hand, the weaponization of civilians has also developed as a tactic by some non-state actors like ISIS.


title: Human shield

text: Forcing non-combatants to serve as human shields is a war crime according to the 1949 Geneva Conventions, the 1977 Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions, and the 1998 Rome Statute.


title: Human shield

text: According to law professor Eliav Lieblich, "Armed groups might be responsible for harm that they occasion to civilians under their control. But to argue that this absolves the other party from responsibility is to get both law and morality wrong."


title: Human shield

text: Law professor Adil Ahmad Haque states that involuntary shields "retain their legal and moral protection from intentional, unnecessary, and disproportionate harm." He argues against the position of the United States Department of Defense (as well as the United Kingdom and some scholars) that attackers may discount or disregard collateral harm in determining proportionality and states that these views are "legally baseless and morally unsound".


title: Human shield

text: Authors Neve Gordon and Nicola Perugini, elaborating on their book, "Human Shields: A History of People in the Line of Fire", discuss "proximate shields", humans as shields merely due to proximity to belligerents and assert that this type has become "by far the most prominent type of shield in contemporary discourse". They say that the proximate shielding accusation has been used by States to cover-up war crimes against civilian populations and that human rights organizations frequently fail to question this charge which they claim is being improperly used to justify civilian deaths.


title: Human shield

text: Article 23 of the 1907 Hague Convention states that "A belligerent is forbidden to compel the nationals of the hostile party to take part in the operations of war directed against their own country". The 1915 report says "If it be not permissible to compel a man to fire on his fellow citizens, neither can he be forced to protect the enemy and to serve as a living screen".


title: Human shield

text: In the British mandate of Palestine, Arab civilians and insurgents who were captured by the British as prisoners of war during the Great Palestinian Revolt were frequently taken and placed on "pony trucks", "on which hostages could be made to sit"; these were placed at the front of trains to deter other insurgents from detonating explosives on the railways. A soldier with the Manchester Regiment described the technique:


title: Human shield

text: They would "go down to Acre jail and borrow say five rebels, three rebels, and you'd sit them on the bonnet, so the guy up in the hill could see an Arab on the truck so he wouldn't blow it… If [the rebel] was unlucky the truck coming up behind would hit him. But nobody bothered to pick the bits up. They were left."


title: Human shield

text: The practice began on 24 September 1936 when Brigadier J. F. Evetts reacted to Palestinian rebel attacks against British positions in Nablus by forcing the city mayor, Suleiman Abdul Razzaq Tuqan, to sit exposed on the roof of a garrison building under fire, as a 'high-value human shield'. Tuqan returned his Order of the British Empire commendation in protest.


title: Human shield

text: On August 14, 1937, in what would become the first major battle of World War II in Asia between China and the occupying forces of the Empire of Japan at the Battle of Shanghai, the Imperial Japanese Navy berthed their flagship "Izumo" in front of the Shanghai International Settlement; it is believed in what would become known as "Black Saturday", Chinese Air Force Gamma 2E bomber pilots targeted the Japanese warship, but had to release the bombs at a much lower altitude than they usually trained for due to low cloud ceiling, and did not properly reset their bomb sights, which resulted in two of the 1,100 lb bombs falling short and landing on the adjacent International Settlement (one failing to explode) and killing at least 950 Chinese civilians, foreigners and refugees.


title: Human shield

text: After World War II, it was claimed by SS general Gottlob Berger that there was a plan, proposed by the Luftwaffe and approved by Adolf Hitler, to set up special POW camps for captured airmen of the Royal Air Force and the United States Army Air Forces in large German cities, to act as human shields against their bombing raids. Berger realized that this would contravene the 1929 Geneva Convention and argued that there was not enough barbed wire—as a result, this plan was not implemented.


title: Human shield

text: Wehrmacht and later SS forces extensively used Polish civilians as human shields during Warsaw Uprising when attacking the insurgents' positions. In the Wola massacre in Poland on August 7, 1944, the Nazis forced civilian women onto the armored vehicles as human shields to enhance their effectiveness.


title: Human shield

text: In Belgium in May 1940, at least 86 civilians were killed by the German Wehrmacht in an event known as the Vinkt Massacre, when the Germans took 140 civilians and used them as shields to cross a bridge while under fire by Belgian forces. As the battle progressed, German soldiers began executing hostages.


title: Human shield

text: During the Battle of Okinawa and the Battle of Manila, Japanese soldiers often used civilians as human shields against American troops.


title: Human shield

text: When the Japanese were concerned about the incoming Allied air raids on their home islands as they were losing their controlled Pacific islands one by one to the Allies in the Pacific War, they scattered major military installations and factories throughout urban areas. Historians argued that this meant Japan was using its civilians as human shields to protect their legitimate military targets against Allied bombardment. As a result, the U.S. Army Air Forces (USAAF) was unable to strike purely military targets due to the limitations of their bombsight, the mixing of military installations and factories with urban areas, and the widespread cottage industry in Japan's cities. This led the USAAF in early 1945 to switch from precision bombing to carpet bombing, which destroyed 67 Japanese cities with incendiary bombs, and ultimately led to the use of atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.


title: Human shield

text: In 1960s Algeria, during the Algerian War, France used civilians as hostages and human shields in its fight against the National Liberation Army.


title: Human shield

text: In 1963, a Ba'athist tank unit in Kirkuk covered its assault on a Kurdish suburb with a human shield of Kurdish women and children.


title: Human shield

text: In the Battle of the Notch, North Korean forces were claimed to have used captured U.S. soldiers as human shields while advancing.


title: Human shield

text: In August 1976, at the Siege of Tel al-Zaatar, Christian Lebanese militias alleged that the Palestinians at Tel al-Zaatar were using Lebanese families inside the camp as human shields.


title: Human shield

text: During the 1982 Lebanon War, the Palestinian refugee camp of Ain al-Hilweh was surrounded by Israeli forces as the last stronghold of Palestinian militants in southern Lebanon, but "Soldiers of Allah" militants commanded by the Muslim fundamentalist Haj Ibrahim refused to surrender: Their motto was "Victory or death!" Over a two-day period, Israeli forces under the leadership of Brigadier General Yitzhak Mordechai repeatedly announced "Whoever does not bear arms will not be harmed" and urged civilians in the camp to evacuate, but few did. Three delegations of prominent Sidon figures were sent to persuade Haj Ibrahim's fighters that "their cause was hopeless, and whoever was willing to lay down his arms would be allowed to leave the camp unharmed." None of the delegations were successful; the first was prevented from approaching the fighters by "a spray of bullets", while the third "returned with the most harrowing tale of all": "Militiamen were shooting civilians who tried to escape. In one particularly grisly incident, three children were shot because their father had suggested calling an end to the fighting." After a delegation of Palestinian POWs—"headed by a PLO officer who was prepared to give the defenders his professional assessment of Ein Hilweh's grave military situation"—and an offer by Mordechai to "meet personally with" Haj Ibrahim were also rebuffed, "a team of psychologists ... was flown to Sidon to advise the command on how to deal with such irrational behavior." However, "the best advice the psychologists could offer was to organize yet another but considerably larger delegation comprising some forty or so people and including women and children"; Haj Ibrahim responded to the fifth delegation with "exactly the same three words"—triggering a bloody battle in which Israeli troops finally took the camp.


title: Human shield

text: According to 1982 Newsweek photo, Israeli soldiers were attacked by PLO fighters disguised as hospital patients.


title: Human shield

text: During the Chittagong Hill Tracts conflict in the 1970s, an account tells that throughout the conflict, the military burned the homes of the Jummas, carried out mass killings and rape of Jumma women, and placed Bengali settlers as human shields on the land of the Jummas near the military camps.


title: Human shield

text: Saddam Hussein systematically used human shields in Iraq. According to a CIA report, he used the tactics at least since 1988.


title: Human shield

text: One of the most famous uses of human shields occurred in Iraq in 1990, following the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait that precipitated the Gulf War of 1990–1991. Saddam Hussein's government detained hundreds of citizens of Western countries who were in Iraq for use as human shields in an attempt to deter nations from participating in military operations against the country. A number of these hostages were filmed meeting Hussein, and kept with him to deter any targeted attacks, whilst others were held in or near military and industrial targets. He used both Westerners and Iraqi civilians.


title: Human shield

text: In 1991, during the operations in the Gulf War, the U.S. submitted a report to the UN Security Council denouncing Iraq for having "intentionally placed civilians at risk through its behavior". The report cited the following examples of such behavior:


title: Human shield

text: In the aftermath of the 1998 United States embassy bombings, Osama bin Laden stressed that he would have committed the attacks even if his own children were being used as human shields.


title: Human shield

text: Shortly after the cease-fire between Croat and Serb forces, the Army of Republika Srpska launched an assault against the safe area of Goražde, heavily shelling the town and surrounding villages. Protests and exhortations from the UN Security Council were ineffective, and on April 10 and 11, 1994, NATO launched air strikes against Bosnian Serb positions. In retaliation, Bosnian Serb forces captured UN personnel within their areas of operation and used them as human shields at sites expected to be bombed. In a similar situation to what had happened in Sarajevo, an ultimatum was issued, and by the 24th, most of the Serb troops had complied.


title: Human shield

text: According to various accounts, including that of the American ambassador to the U.N., the Taliban used women and children from their own population as human shields against coalition forces in 2006, 2007, and 2008, during the war in Afghanistan.


title: Human shield

text: According to Human Rights Watch 2004 report, the Lord's Resistance Army used children as human shields, porters, and laborers.


title: Human shield

text: In 2018, several Abu Sayyaf militants were arrested in the Philippines, among them being a "key man" of the group. The arrests occurred after clashes in Sabah and Putrajaya, where Abu Sayyaf allegedly used children as human shields against the Philippine army.


title: Human shield

text: In the aftermath of Iran's shoot down of Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 in January 2020, Iran and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps were accused of using civilian aircraft and their passengers and crew as human shields.


title: Human shield

text: They also hoped that the presence of passenger jets could act as a deterrent against an American attack on the airport or the nearby military base, effectively turning planeloads of unsuspecting travelers into human shields.


title: Human shield

text: Canada's Minister of Transport Marc Garneau also questioned why Iran let civilian aircraft in its airspace, and suggested Iran intended to use the civilian aircraft as human shields.


title: Human shield

text: In 2015, the Islamist group Boko Haram has abducted some 500 women and children to serve as human shields.


title: Human shield

text: Houthis have been known to use human shields in their war in Yemen at least since 2016, as from a UN report at the time.


title: Human shield

text: In 2018, the Houthis were accused by the Yemenite government of use of human shields Amnesty International warned that the Houthis are "militarising" hospitals.


title: Human shield

text: In September 2019, UAE media reported that Houthi rebels blocked food from reaching civilians used as human shields.


title: Human shield

text: As a continuing use of human shields, in 2014, a report says that Myanmar's army still abducts civilians and forces them to act as guides and human shields.


title: Human shield

text: In August 2017, Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro has been accused of turning to civilians for "human shields" against the US. Freddy Guevara, an opposition deputy, branded cowardly the actions of adding civilian personnel and the reserve to carry out military exercises and face a possible US attack.


title: Human shield

text: In April 2020 it was reported that Nicolas Maduro had imprisoned hundreds of opposition members to use as human shields in a potential US invasion.


title: Human shield

text: Both Israeli and Palestinian militant groups have been consistently accused of using human shields for military purposes. The charge has been leveled against Palestinian groups frequently by numerous observers. Israel has used the charge, in what has been termed its 'infowar' on social media, to explain the high ratio of civilian vs military casualties in its conflict with Gaza. In Operation Cast Lead 100 Gazans died for every Israeli, and the civilian ratio was 400 Gazans to 1 Israeli. Israeli spokesmen explained the difference by alleging that Hamas used civilians as shields. It has been argued that no evidence has come to light proving these claims. In September 2004, Justice Aharon Barak presiding over the Israeli Supreme Court, issued a demand that the IDF desist from the practice of using Palestinians as human shields, and in October outlawed the procedure. The independent human rights NGOs B'tselem and Amnesty International have stated that ample evidence exists in conflicts after that date that Israel has employed Palestinians as human shields. According to B'tselem, the practice goes back to 1967.


title: Human shield

text: As early as 2004 Amos Harel in Haaretz wrote that during the Second Intifada (2000–2005) Palestinian gunmen routinely used civilians and children as human shields and added that there is photographic evidence.


title: Human shield

text: On November 22, 2006, Human Rights Watch (HRW) accused Muhammad Wail Baroud, a military commander in the Popular Resistance Committee, of using civilians for shielding homes against military attacks but later stated that they erred. There was no evidence that the house was being used for military purposes at the time of the planned attack, nor did the IDF explain what military objective it could have had. They considered the destruction in light of Israel's longstanding policy of destroying homes as punitive measures instead of as legitimate military targets. HRW acknowledged they did not consider the motives of the civilians, such as whether they willingly assembled or not, and emphasized that it did not want to criticize non-violent resistance or any other form of peaceful protest, including civilians defending their homes.


title: Human shield

text: The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated Hamas now regularly uses human shields to protect the homes of Hamas officials. The Israeli Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center accused Hamas and other armed groups of making extensive use of human shields as integral part of their war doctrine, in order to prevent the IDF from targeting them, during the Gaza War (2008–2009). The IDF released footage showing Palestinian fighters using ambulances for military purposes. Magen David Adom, the Israeli ambulance and medical emergency service, submitted to the UN a report concluding the accusation was unfounded.


title: Human shield

text: The United Nations Fact-Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict ("UNFFMG") that took place in 2008–2009 accepted the possibility that Hamas launched mortar attacks from the vicinity of a school and from residential homes, sometimes by the threat of force against residents. The report was unable to find specific evidence that civilians whose homes were used for rocket launches were "forced to remain in their houses" but the report repeatedly noted that Gaza residents were "reluctant" to discuss the conduct of Palestinian armed forces due to fear of reprisals.


title: Human shield

text: In a post-invasion analysis of the conflict, Amnesty International stated that "Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups also violated international humanitarian law in their conduct within Gaza. They launched rockets and located military equipment and positions near civilian homes, endangering the lives of the inhabitants by exposing them to the risk of Israeli attacks. They also used empty homes and properties as combat positions during armed confrontations with Israeli forces, exposing the inhabitants of nearby houses to the danger of attacks or of being caught in the crossfire."


title: Human shield

text: Amnesty further stated "However, contrary to repeated allegations by Israeli officials of the use of “human shields”, Amnesty International found no evidence that Hamas or other Palestinian fighters directed the movement of civilians to shield military objectives from attacks. It found no evidence that Hamas or other armed groups forced residents to stay in or around buildings used by fighters, nor that fighters prevented residents from leaving buildings or areas which had been commandeered by militants."


title: Human shield

text: A review article in "Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law" stated that Israel warned residents to leave by using warnings such as roof knocking and phone calls, and that "Israel asserted that Palestinian civilians who did not abide by the warnings were acting as 'voluntary human shields', and were thus taking part in hostilities and could be targeted as combatants." The article determined this assertion to be unsupportable in international law.


title: Human shield

text: Numerous reports during the war stated that Hamas used human shields. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay accused Hamas militants of violating international humanitarian law by "locating rockets within schools and hospitals, or even launching these rockets from densely populated areas". The European Union condemned Hamas, and in particular condemned "calls on the civilian population of Gaza to provide themselves as human shields". In a September 2014 interview, a Hamas official acknowledged to Associated Press that the group fired at Israel from civilian areas. He ascribed the practice to "mistakes", but said the group had little option due to the crowded landscape of the Strip, with its dearth of open zones. He denied accusations that rockets were launched "from schools or hospitals when in fact they were fired 200 or 300 meters (yards) away". In a 2014 interview, a Hamas political leader Khaled Meshaal said to a CNN interviewer that the group did not use its people as human shields.