title: Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore

text: Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore is a United States National Lakeshore located along the northwest coast of the Lower Peninsula of Michigan in Leelanau and Benzie counties near Empire, Michigan. The park covers a stretch of Lake Michigan's eastern coastline, as well as North and South Manitou islands. This Northern Michigan park was established primarily because of its outstanding natural features, including forests, beaches, dune formations, and ancient glacial phenomena. The lakeshore also contains many cultural features including the 1871 South Manitou Island Lighthouse, three former stations of the Coast Guard (formerly the Life-Saving Service) and an extensive rural historic farm district. In 2011, the area won the title of "The Most Beautiful Place in America" from Good Morning America. In 2014, a section of the park was named the Sleeping Bear Dunes Wilderness by the United States Congress.


title: Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore

text: The park was authorized on October 21, 1970. The park's creation was controversial because it involved the transfer of private property to public ownership. The federal government's stance at the time was that the Great Lakes were the "third coast" and had to be preserved much like Cape Hatteras or Point Reyes, which are National Seashores. The residents living in what is now Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore believed themselves to be stewards of the land and did not want it to be overrun by tourists. The government eventually won out, in part by supporting the local schools to offset the lost property tax revenue and by including North Manitou Island in the national lakeshore area.


title: Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore

text: In 2014, of the park were formally designated as the Sleeping Bear Dunes Wilderness by the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore Conservation and Recreation Act. This was the first wilderness protection bill to be passed by the United States Congress in five years.


title: Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore

text: The park is named after an Ojibwe legend of the sleeping bear. According to the legend, an enormous forest fire on the western shore of Lake Michigan drove a mother bear and her two cubs into the lake for shelter, determined to reach the opposite shore. After many miles of swimming, the two cubs lagged behind. When the mother bear reached the shore, she waited on the top of a high bluff. The exhausted cubs drowned in the lake, but the mother bear stayed and waited in hopes that her cubs would finally appear. Impressed by the mother bear's determination and faith, the Great Spirit created two islands (North and South Manitou islands) to commemorate the cubs, and the winds buried the sleeping bear under the sands of the dunes where she waits to this day. The "bear" was a small tree-covered knoll at the top edge of the bluff that, from the water, had the appearance of a sleeping bear. Wind and erosion have caused the "bear" to be greatly reduced in size over the years.


title: Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore

text: Glen Haven existed as a company town from 1865 to 1931. Originally a dock for Glen Arbor (1855-date), the site soon became a fuel supply point for ships traveling up and down the lake. Here, Charles McCarty decided to open his own business and built a dock to supply the ships with wood. In 1863, McCarty built the Sleeping Bear House. It was expanded a few years later to accommodate travelers. In 1928, it was remodeled into the inn for summer vacationers. The General Store was established to supply the workers. Like most company towns, the workers were paid in company coupons, redeemable only at the company store. The Blacksmith Shop is where tools were repaired. In 1878, David Henry Day arrived in the community. By this time, coal from the Appalachian coal fields was replacing wood on the steamships. Day was looking for another future to this small community.


title: Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore

text: In 1860, Port Oneida had a population of 87 people. Thomas Kelderhouse had built a dock to sell wood to the passing steamships. He was also able to sell fresh produce and maple sugar in season. A local story says that the name comes from the first ship to stop, the SS "Oneida" of New York State. The area covers and includes 16 historic farms. The farming community was gradually abandoned due to hard farming conditions and declining timber sales.


title: Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore

text: Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore is one of Michigan's most popular destinations for camping vacations, possibly the most popular. This popularity may be due to the fact it was named the "Most Beautiful Place in America" by Good Morning America in 2011. There are a few campgrounds in the national lakeshore and they are grouped into D.H. Day Campground, Platte River Campground, a few camping areas on the Manitou Islands within, and some other sites for backcountry or group camping.


title: Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore

text: D.H. Day Campground is part of Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore and offers a moderate level of privacy and a beach on Lake Michigan. Campsites are rustic, wooded, and more far apart than campsites at most campgrounds. Nearby points of interest include Empire Bluffs, the "dune climb", and North Bar Lake. Campsites 1–31 allow the use of a generator, the remaining sites forbid generator use.


title: Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore

text: Platte River Campground is part of Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore and offers a variety of campsites. Some campsites are modern (with electrical hookups), some are "hike-in," and others are more rustic. Nearby points of interest include Platte River Point, the Platte River, and Big Platte Lake. The north section of Sleeping Bear Dunes National Park is a short drive from Platte River Campground. Kayaking is a popular activity at the campground, especially the kayak trail leading from the campground to Platte River Point


title: Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore

text: Sleeping Bear Dunes also has three main campgrounds on South Manitou Island, including the Weather Station Campground located on the south side of the island, the Bay Campground on the west shore of the island and the Popple Campground on the north shore.


title: Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore

text: In addition to federal campgrounds within the national lakeshore itself, there are many other camping areas nearby, which cater to the large number of tourists visiting Sleeping Bear Dunes each year. There are at least 20 distinct camping areas in the region immediately surrounding Sleeping Bear Dunes.


title: Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore

text: The piping plover, a federally registered endangered species, nests at Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore.


title: Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore

text: The main dune climb is located across from Glen Lake. Visitors who travel by car will be required to buy a day pass or annual pass from the National Park Service. The dune climb is also accessible by foot or by bike. Water stations are located along the base of the main dune, along with a restroom and gift shop. Hikers can hike all the way to Lake Michigan.


title: Bob Roberts

text: Bob Roberts is a 1992 American satirical mockumentary film written, directed by, and starring Tim Robbins. It depicts the rise of Robert "Bob" Roberts Jr., a right-wing politician who is a candidate for an upcoming United States Senate election. Roberts is well financed, due mainly to past business dealings, and is well known for his folk music, which presents conservative ideas with gusto.


title: Bob Roberts

text: The film is Robbins' directorial debut and is based on a short segment of the same title and featuring the same character that Robbins portrayed on "Saturday Night Live."


title: Bob Roberts

text: "Bob Roberts" takes place in Pennsylvania in 1990. It depicts a fictitious senatorial race between a conservative Republican folk singer, Bob Roberts, and the incumbent Democrat, Brickley Paiste. The film is shot through the perspective of Terry Manchester, a British documentary filmmaker who is following the Roberts campaign. Through his lens we see Roberts travel across the state, performing songs about drug users, lazy people and the triumph of traditional family values over the rebelliousness of the 1960s. As the campaign continues, Paiste remains in the lead until a scandal arises involving him and a young woman who was seen emerging from a car with him. Paiste claims that she was a friend of his granddaughter whom he was driving home, but he cannot shake the accusations.


title: Bob Roberts

text: Throughout the campaign, reporter Bugs Raplin attempts to use the documentary being made about Roberts as a way to expose him to the public as a fraud. Raplin believes that Roberts' anti-drug charity, Broken Dove, is connected to an old CIA drug trafficking scheme. As the election approaches, Roberts is asked to appear on a network's sketch comedy show. When Roberts announces that he will not be playing the song he had originally proposed, a dispute breaks out between the cast and producers of the show. This new song turns out to be nothing more than a thinly veiled campaign endorsement, and an angry staff member of the network pulls the plug mid-performance. As Roberts is leaving the studio, he is seemingly shot by a would-be assassin. Raplin, who has been causing problems for the campaign, is initially linked to the shooting, but he is later cleared when it is found that due to constrictive palsy in his right hand he physically could not have fired the gun. Following the incident, Raplin contends that Roberts was never actually shot and that the gun was fired into the ground.


title: Bob Roberts

text: The campaign is boosted by public support following the assassination attempt, and Roberts wins the election with 52 percent of the vote. Although Roberts claims that his wounds have left him paralyzed from the waist down, he is seen tapping his feet at a celebration party. While Terry Manchester is interviewing Roberts' supporters outside the new senator's hotel, a boy runs up shouting, "He's dead, he's dead, they got him!" When Manchester asks him what he is talking about, the boy shouts, "Bugs Raplin! He's dead! They got him!" A joyful celebration breaks out among Roberts' supporters, the shot changes to an image of his hotel room, and an upright walking shadow suggesting Roberts' profile passes the window before the lights go out. The film ends with a radio news report about Raplin's death at the hands of a right-wing fanatic and a shot of Manchester standing in the Jefferson Memorial, looking at the words, "I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man", inscribed there.


title: Bob Roberts

text: The film's style is drawn from a number of real and mock documentaries, and its shots are crafted to create this effect, in many cases through the use of hand-held cameras. Not only does Roberts' character draw from 1960s-era iconography of Bob Dylan, it also contains scenes inspired by the 1967 documentary, "Dont Look Back", made about the singer, employing a similar cinema verité style. "Bob Roberts" also draws from Rob Reiner's 1984 mockumentary "This Is Spinal Tap" which Robbins states is one of his favorite films, and directly references this during the scene in which Roberts gets lost in an auditorium attempting to find the stage before his performance. In the case of Gore Vidal's character, the majority of the lines were not scripted, and instead Vidal based his role upon his own political beliefs, and his real-life positions on many of the fictional election topics.


title: Bob Roberts

text: On Rotten Tomatoes the film has a score of 95% based on 43 reviews, with an average rating of 7.48/10. Its consensus reads "Behind and in front of the camera, Tim Robbins delivers a landslide comedic victory with "Bob Roberts" – a shrewdly crackling lampoon of modern politics." On Metacritic the film has a weighted average score of 70% based on reviews from 26 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film a grade B+ on scale of A to F.


title: Bob Roberts

text: Roger Ebert gave the film three out of four stars, stating, "I like 'Bob Roberts' – I like its audacity, its freedom to say the obvious things about how our political process has been debased." However, Ebert also stated that the thread about the investigative journalism doesn't work, commenting "if [the film] had been only about campaign tactics and techniques, I would have liked it more."


title: Bob Roberts

text: While critics and audiences responded to this film by connecting Roberts’ character to various political figures, such as George H. W. Bush and Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum, Robbins has said that the film related more to the political system in general than any specific politician. Much of Robbins' commentary addresses the role of the media in election campaigns. Some have critiqued Robbins for his approach toward political satire, stating that his references to Reagan Era politics and the rebelliousness of the 1960s are simply too anachronistic in the context of the 1990s, but others have praised it for framing political commentary as a Hollywood comedy. In 2018, Robbins said Bob Roberts' came true", referring to President Donald Trump.


title: Marcus Forss

text: Marcus Forss (born 18 June 1999) is a Finnish professional footballer who plays as a forward for club Middlesbrough and the Finland national team.


title: Marcus Forss

text: Forss is a graduate of the West Bromwich Albion academy and after transferring to Brentford B in 2017, he was promoted into the first team squad in 2018. Following four seasons with Brentford, Forss transferred to Middlesbrough in 2022. Forss made his international debut for Finland in November 2020, at the age of 20.


title: Marcus Forss

text: A forward, Forss began his career in his native Finland with spells at FC Ruskon Pallo, TuWe and the FDS-Suomi football school. At age 13, he moved to England to join the academy at Premier League club West Bromwich Albion and progressed to sign a two-year scholarship deal in 2015. He was called into the U21 squad for two EFL Trophy matches in the first half of the 2016–17 season and made one appearance, with a start in a 2–0 group stage defeat to Gillingham on 8 November 2016. Forss was released when his scholarship ended in May 2017.


title: Marcus Forss

text: On 22 June 2017, Forss joined the B team at Championship club Brentford on a two-year contract. After scoring 11 goals in his first 23 B team appearances, he signed a new -year contract in February 2018. He finished the 2017–18 season as the B team's top scorer with 21 goals and won the team's Player of the Year award. Forss was promoted into the first team squad for the 2018–19 season and despite missing five months of the campaign with a back injury, he was a regular inclusion in matchday squads when fit and finished the season with 9 appearances and two goals.


title: Marcus Forss

text: After one goal in three early-2019–20 season appearances, Forss signed a new four-year contract and joined League One club AFC Wimbledon on loan until the end of the 2019–20 season. He scored seven goals in his first seven appearances for the club and scored the first senior hat-trick of his career in a 4–1 victory over Southend United on 12 October. Four goals in five appearances in October 2019 won Forss the EFL Young Player of the Month award. Four further goals in December 2019 saw him nominated for the League One Player of the Month award. By the time his spell was ended early by a season-ending torn hamstring on 14 January 2020, he had scored 11 goals in 19 appearances. Forss' performances during the season were recognised with the AFC Wimbledon Young Player of the Year award.


title: Marcus Forss

text: Following surgery on his torn hamstring, Forss returned fit for the 2020–21 season and the departures of Ollie Watkins and Saïd Benrahma elevated him to second-choice behind incoming forward Ivan Toney. For two-thirds of the season he served predominantly as a substitute, playing forward and wing roles. Off the back of a spell of seven goals in 13 appearances, Forss signed a new -year contract in December 2020. In April 2021, a change in formation allowed Forss to break into the starting lineup, as one of two forwards alongside Ivan Toney. His first appearance as part of the new formation saw him score his first goal for over five months, in a 5–0 win over Preston North End. Brentford qualified for the end-of-season promotion playoffs and playing as a substitute in the semi-final second leg versus Bournemouth, Forss scored the 81st-minute goal which secured a 3–2 aggregate victory and sent the Bees to a second consecutive playoff Final. Forss' 2020–21 season ended with 50 appearances, 10 goals and promotion to the Premier League after a 2–0 victory over Swansea City in the playoff Final.


title: Marcus Forss

text: Forss began the 2021–22 season principally involved in Brentford's EFL Cup campaign, with his starting performances in second and third round matches versus Forest Green Rovers and Oldham Athletic yielding five goals. His four-goal haul in the latter match was recognised with a place in the EFL Cup Team of the Round and a nomination for Player of the Round. Forss' 2021–22 EFL Cup performances were later recognised with a place in the Team of the Tournament and his five goals scored in the tournament tied him with Eddie Nketiah as top-scorer. By the final day of the winter transfer window, Forss had scored six goals in 12 appearances, but with no goals in seven Premier League appearances. In need of "more consistent game time", Forss joined Championship club Hull City on loan until the end of the 2021–22 season. Deployed in a mix of starting and substitute roles, Forss made 11 appearances during his spell and scored one goal, in a 1–1 draw with Queens Park Rangers on 19 February 2022.


title: Marcus Forss

text: Ahead of the 2022–23 season, Forss was not called into Brentford's pre-season training camp in Germany and transferred out of the club in July 2022. He scored 19 goals in 74 appearances during four seasons with the club. His 9 EFL Cup goals tied the club record.


title: Marcus Forss

text: On 28 July 2022, Forss transferred to Championship club Middlesbrough and signed a four-year contract for an undisclosed fee. He scored his first goal for the club on his second appearance, in a 3–2 defeat to Queens Park Rangers on 6 August 2022.


title: Marcus Forss

text: Forss was capped by Finland at U17, U18, U19 and U21 level. He captained the U19 team, but was not included in the squad for the 2018 European U19 Championship on home soil due to club commitments. Good goalscoring form at club level saw Forss receive his maiden call up to the senior team for a series of three matches in November 2020. He made his debut with a start in a friendly versus France and scored the opening goal in the 2–0 victory. Forss was named in Finland's Euro 2020 squad and made two substitute appearances prior to the team's group stage exit. He made two appearances during Finland's failed 2022 World Cup qualification campaign, scoring one goal, which came in a 3–1 victory over Bosnia and Herzegovina in the penultimate group stage match.


title: Marcus Forss

text: Forss hails from a football family. His father Tero Forss and brother Niclas are both involved in football, and his grandfather is former Finland international Rainer Forss. Growing up he was a Manchester United supporter.


title: Happily Ever After (2004 film)

text: Happily Ever After (; Translation: "They married and had many children") is a 2004 French comedy drama film. The film is written and directed by Yvan Attal, produced by Claude Berri, and starring Charlotte Gainsbourg and Yvan Attal.


title: Happily Ever After (2004 film)

text: It was released in English in North America. For English-speaking audiences, the film is highly recognizable for the lengthy cameo appearance of Johnny Depp, who speaks fluent French.


title: Happily Ever After (2004 film)

text: "Happily Ever After" dissects the viability of fidelity via the story of three buddies and their tumultuous relationships with the opposite sex.


title: Happily Ever After (2004 film)

text: The film opens with the central characters, Vincent (Yvan Attal) and Gabrielle (Charlotte Gainsbourg) capriciously flirting in a bar. Vincent appears to win the affection of Gabrielle over many other potential courters, but the entire exercise is a ruse; they are actually married with a child.


title: Happily Ever After (2004 film)

text: The rest of the film explores the nature of romance, marriage, happiness, expectations in life, how love and sex interrelate, and ultimately, why no one can feel fulfilled.


title: Happily Ever After (2004 film)

text: Review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a 57% approval rating based on 42 reviews, with an average rating of 6.01/10. The site's critics consensus reads: "Though this French film features good acting, it lacks the wit and charm one would expect to see."


title: No One Is Talking About This

text: No One Is Talking About This is the debut novel by American poet Patricia Lockwood, published in 2021. It was a finalist for the 2021 Booker Prize, was one of the "New York Times"' 10 best books of 2021, and won the 2022 Dylan Thomas Prize.


title: No One Is Talking About This

text: The novel focuses on a woman who is always online. Her life changes focus after her family experiences an unexpected tragedy.


title: No One Is Talking About This

text: Riverhead Books published "No One Is Talking About This" in February 2021. It was simultaneously released by Bloomsbury in the UK, where it was the subject of a 10-way auction, and was commissioned for translation in more than a dozen languages. Lockwood composed the novel from 2017, after the publication of her memoir, "Priestdaddy", through early 2020, working mostly on an iPhone. The book began as a diary written in the third person. Excerpts appeared in "The New Yorker" and the "London Review of Books".


title: No One Is Talking About This

text: In 2018 Lockwood delivered a lecture titled “How Do We Write Now?” for Oregon-based publisher Tin House. The essay addressed the effect of internet exposure on the creative process. "No One Is Talking About This" fleshes out some of the thinking of that essay.


title: No One Is Talking About This

text: The book is in two parts. It follows an unnamed protagonist's interactions with a virtual platform called "the portal” and uses stream of consciousness and other modernist, poetic, and experimental techniques. Its first half does not have a traditional plot. In "Harper's", the critic Christian Lorentzen referred to the novel's style as "virtual realism." The second half, which Lockwood said is autofictional, presents a family tragedy and explores concepts of grief, perception, consciousness, and permanence.


title: No One Is Talking About This

text: The novel was released to acclaim and spawned numerous critical and cultural discussions. It was one of the most widely reviewed English-language books of 2021, according to review aggregator Book Marks.


title: No One Is Talking About This

text: Writing for "The New York Review of Books", Clair Wills praised the novel as "an arch descendant of Austen's socio-literary style — a novel of observation, crossed with a memoir of a family crisis, and written as a prose poem, steeped in metaphor." In "The Seattle Times" Emma Levy compared its structure and narrative style to William Faulkner's "The Sound and the Fury", while Molly Young of "New York" magazine drew parallels to Vladimir Nabokov, "less in style than in attitude, one of extraordinary receptivity to the gifts, sorrows, and bloopers of existence."


title: No One Is Talking About This

text: "Lockwood has set out to portray not merely a mind through language, as Joyce did," wrote Alexandra Schwartz of "The New Yorker", "but what she calls 'the mind,' the molting collective consciousness that has melded with her protagonist's singular one." For "The Chicago Tribune", John Warner observed: “She has made a novel out of life, just as Joyce did over a century ago,” likening the book favorably to "Ulysses".


title: No One Is Talking About This

text: In a mixed review for the "Los Angeles Times", Hillary Kelly wrote that "No One Is Talking About This" is "either a work of genius or an exasperating endurance trial," comparing it to the novels of Virginia Woolf: ""The Waves" is masterful, but there's a reason we read "Mrs. Dalloway" far more." Lockwood's book itself makes direct reference to Woolf's "To the Lighthouse", with which it shares a number of aesthetic and ontological concerns.


title: No One Is Talking About This

text: Charlotte Goddu of "Vanity Fair" said: "The feeling one gets from reading "No One Is Talking About This" is that Lockwood has paid attention more closely than perhaps any other human on earth to what it's like to be alive right now." NPR's Heller McAlpin called it "a tour de force that recalls Joan Didion's ... "Slouching Towards Bethlehem"."


title: No One Is Talking About This

text: Ron Charles of "The Washington Post" dubbed Lockwood "a master of startling concision when highlighting the absurdities we've grown too lazy to notice" and the book "a vertiginous experience, gorgeously rendered but utterly devastating." In the "New York Times", Joumana Khatib wrote that "No One Is Talking About This" "explores the kind of tumult and grief that almost defies language," while Merve Emre for "The New York Times Book Review" observed it "transforms all that is ugly and cheap about online culture ... into an experience of sublimity." "The Wall Street Journal"'s Emily Bobrow called the novel "artful" and "an intimate and moving portrait of love and grief." "The Boston Globe" praised the book's "sublime emotional power."


title: No One Is Talking About This

text: For "The Atlantic", Jordan Kisner found "No One Is Talking About This" "electric with tenderness" and "a grand success." In "Bookforum", Audrey Wollen called it "a stunning record of the hollows and wonders of language itself." "The Guardian", "The Telegraph", and "The New Statesman" all heralded the book as a "masterpiece."


title: No One Is Talking About This

text: The Booker Prizes called it a "sincere and delightfully profane love letter to the infinite scroll, and a meditation on love, language and human connection."


title: No One Is Talking About This

text: "The book’s triumph is in evoking so full a range of emotional discovery and maturing within the unpromising medium of online prattle," said Booker judge Rowan Williams. "We’re left wondering about the processes by which language expands to cope with the expansiveness of changing human relations and perceptions at the edge of extremity."


title: No One Is Talking About This

text: "No One Is Talking About This" won the 2022 Dylan Thomas Prize and was a finalist for other major awards, including the Booker Prize and the Women's Prize for Fiction. The "New York Times" named it one of the 10 Best Books of 2021, and it appeared on more books of the year lists than any other novel of 2021, including for the "Washington Post", "TIME", "NPR", the "Telegraph", "the Times", and the "Guardian", among others.


title: Arum maculatum

text: Arum maculatum is a woodland flowering plant species in the family Araceae. It is native across most of Europe, as well as Turkey and the Caucasus.


title: Arum maculatum

text: The leaves of "A. maculatum" appear in the spring (April–May) and are 7 to 20 cm long. These are followed by the flowers borne on a poker-shaped inflorescence called a "spadix", which is partially enclosed in a pale green spathe or leaf-like hood. The spathe can be up to 25 cm high and the fruiting spike which follows later in the season may be up to 5 cm. The flowers are hidden from sight, clustered at the base of the spadix with a ring of female flowers at the bottom and a ring of male flowers above them. The leaves may be either purple-spotted (var. "maculatum") or unspotted (var. "immaculatum").


title: Arum maculatum

text: Above the male flowers is a ring of hairs forming an insect trap. Insects, especially owl-midges "Psychoda phalaenoides", are attracted to the spadix by its faecal odour and a temperature up to 15 °C warmer than the ambient temperature. The insects are trapped beneath the ring of hairs and are dusted with pollen by the male flowers before escaping and carrying the pollen to the spadices of other plants, where they pollinate the female flowers. The spadix may also be yellow, but purple is the more common.


title: Arum maculatum

text: In autumn, the lower ring of (female) flowers forms a cluster of bright red, berries up to 5 cm long which remain after the spathe and other leaves have withered away. These attractive red to orange berries are extremely poisonous.


title: Arum maculatum

text: The root-tuber may be very big and is used to store starch. In mature specimens, the tuber may be as much as 400 mm below ground level.


title: Arum maculatum

text: Many small rodents appear to find the spadix particularly attractive; finding examples of the plant with much of the spadix eaten away is common. The spadix produces heat and probably scent as the flowers mature, and this may attract the rodents.


title: Arum maculatum

text: "Arum maculatum" is also known as cuckoo pint or cuckoo-pint in the British Isles and is named thus in Nicholas Culpepers' famous 17th-century herbal. This is a name it shares with "Arum italicum" (Italian lords-and-ladies) - the other native British "Arum". "Pint" is a shortening of the word "pintle", meaning penis, derived from the shape of the spadix. The euphemistic shortening has been traced to Turner in 1551.


title: Arum maculatum

text: The plant is propagated by birds dispersing the seeds by eating the berries. As a seedling the plant has small light green leaves that are not glossy like the mature leaves. At about 5 months its leaves grow larger and glossier. At one year old all of the leaves become glossy and die back. The next year the plant flowers during summer.


title: Arum maculatum

text: "A. maculatum" is known by an abundance of common names including Adam and Eve, adder's meat, adder's root, arum, wild arum, arum lily, bobbins, cows and bulls, cuckoopint, cuckoo-plant, devils and angels, friar's cowl, jack in the pulpit, lamb-in-a-pulpit, lords-and-ladies, naked boys, snakeshead, starch-root, and wake-robin. Many names refer to the plant's appearance; "lords-and-ladies" and many other names liken the plant to male and female genitalia symbolising copulation. Starch-root is a simple description – the plant's root was used to make laundry starch.


title: Arum maculatum

text: It grows in woodland areas and riversides. It can occasionally grow as a weed in partly shaded spots.


title: Arum maculatum

text: All parts of the plant can produce allergic reactions in many people and the plant should be handled with care.


title: Arum maculatum

text: The attractive berries are extremely poisonous to many animals, including humans, but harmless to birds, which eat them and propagate the seeds. They contain oxalates of saponins which have needle-shaped crystals that irritate the skin, mouth, tongue, and throat, and result in swelling of throat, difficulty breathing, burning pain, and upset stomach. However, their acrid taste, coupled with the almost immediate tingling sensation in the mouth when consumed, means that large amounts are rarely taken and serious harm is unusual. It is one of the most common causes of accidental plant poisoning based on attendance at hospital emergency departments.


title: Arum maculatum

text: There is no known antidote to "A. maculatum" poisoning. Airway management may reduce the mortality, and aggressive fluid administration may prevent renal injury.


title: Arum maculatum

text: The root of the cuckoo-pint, when roasted well, is edible and when ground was once traded under the name of Portland sago. It was used like salep (orchid flour) to make saloop, a drink popular before the introduction of tea or coffee. It was also used as a substitute for arrowroot. It can be highly toxic if not prepared correctly.


title: Arum maculatum

text: "Arum maculatum" is also used to make soup in the Andırın region of Turkey where the leaves are leavened with yogurt and boiled for long hours which eliminates toxicity. This process results in a sour soup which is called Tirşik.


title: Arum maculatum

text: "Arum maculatum" is cultivated as an ornamental plant in traditional and woodland shade gardens. The cluster of bright red berries standing alone without foliage can be a striking landscape accent. The mottled and variegated leaf patterns can add bright interest in darker habitats.


title: Arum maculatum

text: The roots were a traditional source of starch for stiffening clothes. In 1440, the nuns of Syon Abbey in England used the roots of the cuckoo-pint flower to make starch for church linens; only starch "made of herbes" could be used for communion linen.


title: Shah Rukh

text: Shah Rukh or Shahrukh (, "Šāhrokh") (20 August 1377 – 13 March 1447) was the ruler of the Timurid Empire between 1405 and 1447.


title: Shah Rukh

text: He was the son of the Central Asian conqueror Timur (Tamerlane), who founded the Timurid dynasty in 1370. However, Shah Rukh ruled only over the eastern portion of the empire established by his father, comprising most of Persia and Transoxiana, the western territories having been lost to invaders in the aftermath of Timur's death. In spite of this, Shah Rukh's empire remained a cohesive dominion of considerable extent throughout his reign, as well as a dominant power in Asia.


title: Shah Rukh

text: Shah Rukh controlled the main trade routes between Asia and Europe, including the legendary Silk Road, and became immensely wealthy as a result. He chose to have his capital not in Samarqand as his father had done, but in Herat. This was to become the political centre of the Timurid empire and residence of his principal successors, though both cities benefited from the wealth and privilege of Shah Rukh's court.


title: Shah Rukh

text: Shah Rukh was a great patron of the arts and sciences, which flourished under his rule. He spent his reign focusing on the stability of his lands, as well as maintaining political and economic relations with neighbouring kingdoms. In the view of historians Thomas W. Lentz and Glenn D. Lowry, "unlike his father, Shahrukh ruled the Timurid empire, not as a Turco-Mongol warlord-conqueror, but as an Islamic sultan. In dynastic chronicles he is exalted as a man of great piety, diplomacy, and modesty—a model Islamic ruler who repaired much of the physical and psychological damage caused by his father."


title: Shah Rukh

text: Shah Rukh was born on 20 August 1377, the youngest of Timur's four sons. In Persian, his name's elements have multiple meanings: شاه "shah" means "a king, a sovereign. [specifically], shah, title of the ruler of Persia", "the king" in chess, "used as a prefix meaning 'the best, greatest, main', etc. Ex. شاهکار "shahkar", masterpiece" or "a bridegroom" (synonymous with داماد "dâmâd"); رخ "rokh" means "the face or figure; also, the cheek; the countenance", "the castle or rook" in chess; and the roc,"a fabulous bird; perhaps the condor". This is also the Persian term for the chess move "castling". According to Ibn 'Arabshah, Timur, who was a talented chess player, was involved in a match when he received the news of Shah Rukh's birth, using this chess move as a name for the newborn child.


title: Shah Rukh

text: Some sources suggest that his mother was the Empress Saray Mulk Khanum, formerly a Chaghatai princess and Timur's chief consort; she had been captured by Timur from the harem of Amir Husayn Qara'unas several years prior to Shah Rukh's birth. However, it was stated by the 15th-century historian Khwandamir that Shah Rukh's mother was a certain Taghay Tarkhan Agha of the Qara Khitai, a Tajik concubine of Timur's. Khwandamir used a genealogical record written during Shah Rukh's reign as his source for this assertion. Regardless of his maternal origins, the prince was personally raised by Saray Mulk, alongside Timur's grandson Khalil Sultan.


title: Shah Rukh

text: Timur appears not to have had particularly close relations with Shah Rukh, despite the latter never having incurred his displeasure. In 1397, Shah Rukh was appointed governor of Khorasan by his father, with his viceregal capital being Herat. Although this was a significant region, this was also the same post that had been awarded to Shah Rukh's brother Miran Shah when the latter had been thirteen years old. Shah Rukh was never promoted beyond this position during his father's lifetime. Further to this, during Timur's campaign to China, Shah Rukh's young sons took pride of place in the procession while he himself was passed over.


title: Shah Rukh

text: Historical sources give no explanation for their relationship, though there is some evidence which suggests that it was Shah Rukh's ancestry which had affected Timur's lack of favour, being the son of a concubine as opposed to a freeborn wife. Alternatively, there have been suggestions that Timur believed Shah Rukh did not possess the personal qualities required for ruling; the prince by this point had acquired a reputation for excessive modesty as well as personal piety. It might also have been this Islamic adherence and subsequent rejection of the laws of Genghis Khan, which had always been so strongly revered by Timur, that had resulted in the alienation of Shah Rukh from his father.


title: Shah Rukh

text: Shah Rukh, alongside most of the royal family, accompanied Timur west in his campaign against the Ottoman Empire, which culminated in the Battle of Ankara in 1402. Shah Rukh commanded the left wing of the army, Miran Shah the right and Timur himself in the centre. The vanguard was headed by two of Shah Rukh's nephews. The battle resulted in a Timurid victory, as well as the capture and subjugation of the Ottoman Sultan, Bayezid I.


title: Shah Rukh

text: Timur died in 1405, whilst leading his army east in a campaign against the Ming Dynasty. He was reported to have said on his deathbed that he "had no other desire than to see the Mirza Shah Rukh once more" and had lamented the fact that he did not have time to do so.


title: Shah Rukh

text: Timur had no unambiguously appointed heir at the time of his death; as a result, a succession dispute erupted among his surviving sons and grandsons. Khalil Sultan proclaimed himself emperor at Tashkent soon after his grandfather's death and seized the royal treasury, as well as Timur's imperial capital Samarqand. Shah Rukh marched his army out of Herat to the Oxus river but made no offensive move against his nephew at this point. This was likely due to Miran Shah, Khalil Sultan's father, who posed a serious threat as he, along with his other son Abu Bakr, had led an army out of Azerbaijan in support of the younger prince. They were both forced to withdraw prior to joining with Khalil Sultan however, due to invasions to their rear by the Jalayirids and the Qara Qoyunlu, who took advantage of the death of the old emperor to seize territory. Miran Shah was killed in battle in 1408 whilst attempting to repel the invaders, with Abu Bakr dying similarly the year after.


title: Shah Rukh

text: In the years following Timur's death, Shah Rukh and Khalil Sultan had a series of unproductive negotiations as well as many military encounters, with Khalil Sultan frequently emerging victorious. During this time, other pretenders also pursued their own claims to the throne. Among these was Sultan Husayn Tayichiud, a maternal grandson of Timur who later aligned himself with Khalil Sultan, before betraying him in order to reassert his own claim. Sultan Husayn was defeated by his former ally and fled to Shah Rukh, who had him executed, with his body parts being displayed in the bazaars of Herat. Two more of Timur's grandsons, Iskandar and Pir Muhammad, also made bids for the throne. They were defeated by Shah Rukh and Khalil Sultan respectively, with each being spared by their subjugator. Pir Muhammad was later assassinated by one of his nobles in 1407, while Iskandar was executed in 1415 following a failed rebellion.


title: Shah Rukh

text: It was not until 1409 that the war started to turn in Shah Rukh's favour. During this time, Khalil Sultan began to lose support among his emirs in Samarqand. His wife Shadi Mulk had been given a large amount of authority in court. Under her influence, low-ranking individuals were given high positions instead of Timur's old nobles. Additionally, several of the old emperor's widows and concubines were remarried (somewhat forcefully) to men of undistinguished backgrounds.


title: Shah Rukh

text: Following a famine which further spread discontent among the populace, Khalil Sultan was eventually taken captive by the powerful emir Khudaidad Hussain, leader of the Dughlat tribe and a former mentor of the prince. Hussain took Khalil Sultan to Ferghana and had him proclaimed ruler in Andijan. Samarqand, having been left abandoned, was taken unopposed by Shah Rukh. When he later captured Shadi Mulk, Khalil Sultan was forced to go to his uncle in Samarqand and submit to him. The prince had his wife returned to him and was appointed governor of Rayy, but died in 1411, with Shadi Mulk committing suicide soon after.


title: Shah Rukh

text: Following the deaths of Khalil Sultan, Sultan Husayn and Pir Muhammad, Shah Rukh had no immediate Timurid rivals to contest his rule and he began his reign as Timur's successor. However, rather than ruling from Samarqand as his father had done, Shah Rukh held court in Herat, which had formerly been his viceregal capital. Samarqand was instead bestowed on his eldest son Ulugh Beg, who was appointed governor of Transoxiana.


title: Shah Rukh

text: The new emperor began his reign by launching expeditions against regions which had begun to break away during the war of succession. Fars, which was held by Shah Rukh's nephew Bayqara, was taken in 1414. Two years later Kirman, which had been ruled as an independent kingdom by Sultan Uwais Barlas since 1408, was also subdued. The area under Shah Rukh's rule continued to be extended and consolidated over the following years, either through voluntary subjugation by minor rulers or through alliances. By 1420, the eastern portion of Timur's empire, as well as central and southern Persia, had been brought under Shah Rukh's rule.


title: Shah Rukh

text: However, despite Shah Rukh's successes, the western portion of the empire, including Azerbaijan and Mesopotamia, remained out of his control. These were held by Qara Yusuf of the Qara Qoyunlu (Black Sheep Turkoman), who had defeated and killed Shah Rukh's brother Miran Shah several years previously. With the conquests of several prominent cities such as Baghdad, Qazvin and Diyarbakır, the Qara Qoyunlu had established themselves as dangerous neighbours to the Timurids.


title: Shah Rukh

text: This threat was one which remained unresolved for decades. Shah Rukh made many attempts to pacify his western border, both through political and military means (having launched three campaigns against Azerbaijan), none of which proved entirely successful.


title: Shah Rukh

text: Qara Yusuf died during the first of the campaigns in November 1420, which ended in the Timurid capture of Azerbaijan and Armenia. However, less than a year later Shah Rukh was forced to face off a rebellion by the late Turkoman prince's sons. One of these sons, Qara Iskander, continued his attempts to reassert Turkoman authority over the following years, necessitating the second campaign in 1429. This too resulted in a Timurid victory and the installation of a Qara Qoyunlu prince, Abu Said, as a puppet ruler. However, Qara Iskander reoccupied the city of Tabriz two years later and had Abu Said executed.


title: Shah Rukh

text: This action prompted the third and final campaign in 1434, in which Qara Iskander was once more forced to flee. He was later assassinated by his son Qubad in the fortress of Alinja. Although this campaign did not result in a final resolution of the Turkoman issue, it did achieve stability in the region for the remainder of Shah Rukh's reign with the installation of Qara Iskander's less bellicose brother Jahan Shah as the Turkoman ruler.


title: Shah Rukh

text: The Hurufis were a Sufi sect who based their doctrine on the mysticism of letters. In the late 14th century, the group was accused of heresy by traditional Islamic scholars. As a result, in 1394 the founder of the movement, Fazlallah Astarabadi, had been arrested and executed on Timur's orders by his son Miran Shah. The death of their leader led Astarabadi's followers to have a specific hatred against the Timurids.


title: Shah Rukh

text: While leaving a mosque in 1426, Shah Rukh became the victim of an assassination attempt. The attacker, Ahmed Lur, approached the emperor under the pretence of presenting a petition, before stabbing him in the stomach. Lur however, failed to give a fatal blow and was quickly killed by Shah Rukh's servant. Shah Rukh recovered within a few days and an investigation was launched, which linked Lur to the Hurufis as well as to the family of Astarabadi.


title: Shah Rukh

text: There was an immediate backlash against the sect, which resulted in the execution of Astarabadi's grandson, Azud. High-ranking members of the group were subject to extensive interrogations. These eventually extended beyond the sect, with many intellectuals residing in Herat having to defend themselves against accusations of blasphemy. These included the Persian historian Sharaf-ud-din Ali Yazdi, author of the "Zafarnama", and his teacher Sain-ud-din Turka. The prominent poet and Sufi, Qasem-e Anvar was expelled from the capital on Shah Rukh's orders. These accusations even went beyond Shah Rukh's court in Herat, with Ma'ruf-i Khattat, a prominent calligrapher under the patronage of Prince Baysunghur, also being arrested and interrogated.


title: Shah Rukh

text: The extent to which the Hurufis were involved in the assassination attempt has not yet been clearly established. However, the subsequent purges served to worsen the already strained relations between the Timurid court and the intellectuals of the empire.


title: Shah Rukh

text: In the early part of his reign, in what was likely an attempt to stave off rebellion amongst his relations, Shah Rukh regularly made transfers between the governorships they held. For example, Khalil Sultan was moved from Samarqand to Rayy, Umar Mirza from Azerbaijan to Astrabad, Iskandar Mirza from Ferghana to Hamadan to Shiraz etc.


title: Shah Rukh

text: These attempts did not prove to be entirely successful, as Shah Rukh had to repeatedly suppress rebellions by his various family members. Iskandar Mirza, after encouraging his brother to revolt in 1413, himself rebelled and devastated the cities of Isfahan and Kerman. Bayqara, after his initial defeat in Fars, rebelled once more soon after in Shiraz. These insurrections even continued into Shah Rukh's old age. In 1446, at nearly seventy years old, he had to march against his grandson Sultan Muhammad, who had revolted in the empire's western provinces.


title: Shah Rukh

text: Shah Rukh's reign saw a marked improvement in economic standards and cultural achievements in many areas of the empire. Although this may partly be accredited to Shah Rukh's more diplomatic character in contrast to the ruthlessness of Timur, evidence does not assign Shah Rukh with superior skill as a statesman. It is instead believed that other influences on his government led to the relative success of his rule. These include his empress, Gawhar Shad, who along with her sons and some state officials, maintained orderly continuity of state affairs. Some of the highest state officials appear to have been unusually talented individuals who were able to endure in their positions for several decades. These include Jalal-ud-din Firuz Shah, who was supreme commander of the army for thirty-five years, Ghiyath al-Din Pir Ahmad Khvafi, supreme secretary for thirty-one years and Amir Alika Kokultash, head of state finance for forty-three years.


title: Shah Rukh

text: In regards to his policies, Shah Rukh distanced himself from Timur, with less importance being placed on Mongol concepts of authority. He abandoned the institution of a figurehead Khan and replaced the Mongol tribunals with Sharia courts. Like his father, Shah Rukh was married to a Mongol princess; Malikat Agha, daughter of Khizr Khoja and widow of his brother Umar Shaikh Mirza I. He did not however, claim the title of Küregen (son-in-law) which had been enjoyed by Timur. He similarly did not employ Timur's title of "Amir", instead adopting the Islamic and Persian styles of "Sultan" and "Padshah".


title: Shah Rukh

text: Shah Rukh's religious advisor Jalal-Din al-Qayini, described the abolishment of the Mongol tribunals in 1411: "His Majesty’s correct thinking on the subject of giving currency to the Sharia and reviving the customs of the Sunna has progressed so far at this time that, in Dhul-Qada 813 ("i.e., February–March 1411"), he abolished the "yarghu" court of investigation and the customs of the "törä" which had been observed by Turko-Mongolian rulers since ancient times."


title: Shah Rukh

text: The Timurid author Sain ad-Din Ali Turka Isfahani praised Shah Rukh for ruling by Islamic Law in the following words: “Absolutely everyone with a legal case has it heard in accordance with the Sharia, and thanks to the felicity of the favour of this Faith-promoting padshah (i.e. Shahrukh), not a trace has remained anywhere of the Yarghu Tribunal which (God preserve us!) had for a long time exercised its tyranny over the minds of rulers and polluted the lands of Islam, and no creature has the power [to conduct] this type of interrogation except in secret."


title: Shah Rukh

text: Shah Rukh's wife, Gawhar Shad, funded the construction of two mosques and theological colleges in Mashhad and Herat. The Gawhar Shad Mosque was finished in 1418. The mixed ethnic origins of the ruling dynasty led to a distinctive character in its cultural outlook, which was a combination of Persian civilization and art, with borrowings from China, and literature written in Persian as well as Chagatay and Arabic.


title: Shah Rukh

text: Shah Rukh commissioned the production of a number of historical and geographic works by Hafiz-i Abru. Among them is "Tāriḵ-e Šāhroḵ(i)", the history of Shah Rukh's reign through 1413-14 (816 AH). It was later incorporated by its author into larger "universal history" compilations, "Majmuʿa-ye Ḥāfeẓ-e Abru" (a universal history work) and "Majmaʿ al-tawāriḵ [al-solṭāni(ya)]" (section "Zobdat al-tawāriḵ-e Bāysonḡori").


title: Shah Rukh

text: During Shah Rukh's reign, relations between the Timurid state and Ming China, under the rule of the Yongle Emperor and his descendants, were normalised. This was contrasted by the preceding era of Timur and the Hongwu Emperor (the first emperor of Ming China) who almost started a war with each other (which was only averted by the death of Timur). Chinese embassies, led by Chen Cheng, visited Samarqand and Herat several times in 1414–1420, while a large embassy sent by Shah Rukh (and immortalized by its diarist, Ghiyāth-ud-dīn Naqqāsh) travelled to Beijing in 1419–22 and were hosted with lavish banquets and the exchange of gifts. Shah Rukh sent two letters in Arabic & Persian to the Yongle emperor inviting him to Islam & praising the virtues of Islamic Law (as opposed to the Yasa). The letters were also meant to assert Shah Rukh's independence & to clarify that the Timurids were not the vassals of the Ming dynasty.


title: Shah Rukh

text: Through his promotion of commercial and political relations with neighbouring kingdoms, Shah Rukh also maintained contact with several other contemporary rulers. Monarchs of the Aq Qoyunlu, India, Hurmuz and (in the early part of his reign) the Ottoman Empire made homage to him. Successive Sultans of Delhi, starting with Khizr Khan, exchanged embassies with the Timurid court and swore their loyalty to the emperor, while the Sultan of Bengal, Shamsuddin Ahmad Shah, had sought his military support. Relations with the Mamluks of Egypt, however, were increasingly tense due to Shah Rukh's attempts to assert dominance. They eventually normalised on the ascension of Sultan Jaqmaq, under whom the two rulers were amicable, but equal.


title: Shah Rukh

text: Soon after suppressing Sultan Muhammad's revolt, Shah Rukh, by this point weakened by ill-health, died in his winter quarters in Rayy in March 1447. Despite initial attempts to conceal it, news of the emperor's death quickly spread. Chaos erupted in the military camp, rendering transport of Shah Rukh's body to the capital for burial impossible. It was only on the third day following his death that the body, accompanied by the now-dowager empress Gawhar Shad and Shah Rukh's grandson Abdal-Latif, began its journey east. However, within a few days Abdal-Latif took both his grandmother and the corpse hostage, possibly in the hopes of launching his own bid for the vacant throne, or to support that of his father, Shah Rukh's last surviving son Ulugh Beg. Ala al-Dawla, another grandson, defeated his cousin's troops and liberated Gawhar Shad, and afterwards had Shah Rukh interred in the Gawhar Shad Mausoleum in Herat. When Ulugh Beg captured the city the following year, he ordered his father's body to be exhumed before reburying it with Timur's in the Gur-e-Amir in Samarqand.


title: Shah Rukh

text: The succession struggle among Shah Rukh's family continued for several years, initially between Ulugh Beg and Ala al-Dawla, in which the former emerged victorious. However, he was murdered by his son Abdal-Latif in 1449, and in the subsequent civil wars, control of the Timurid Empire passed from Shah Rukh's descendants.


title: Shah Rukh

text: Soviet anthropologist Mikhail Mikhaylovich Gerasimov reconstructed the facial features of Timur, his son Shah Rukh and grandson Ulugh Beg. Relative to the others, Timur appears to have been phenotypically East Asian, while Shah Rukh, the son of a Tajik woman, had more Europoid features. Shah Rukh appeared more similar to brachycephalic Europoids. Shah Rukh's son Ulugh Beg, however, had predominantly Mongoloid features, and no obvious Caucasoid influence.


title: Peter and Paul Fortress

text: The Peter and Paul Fortress is the original citadel of St. Petersburg, Russia, founded by Peter the Great in 1703 and built to Domenico Trezzini's designs from 1706 to 1740 as a star fortress. Between the first half of the 1700s and early 1920s it served as a prison for political criminals. It has been a museum since 1924.


title: Peter and Paul Fortress

text: Today it has been adapted as the central and most important part of the State Museum of Saint Petersburg History. The museum has gradually become virtually the sole owner of the fortress building, except the structure occupied by the Saint Petersburg Mint (Monetniy Dvor).


title: Peter and Paul Fortress

text: The fortress was established by Peter the Great on May 16 (Old Style; henceforth "(O.S.)"; May 27 by the Gregorian Calendar) 1703 on small Hare Island by the north bank of the Neva River, the last upstream island of the Neva delta.


title: Peter and Paul Fortress

text: From around 1720, the fort served as a base for the city garrison and also as a prison for high-ranking or political prisoners. The Trubetskoy Bastion, rebuilt in the 1870s, became the main prison block. The first person to escape from the fortress prison was the anarchist Prince Peter Kropotkin in 1876.


title: Peter and Paul Fortress

text: During the February Revolution of 1917, it was attacked by mutinous soldiers of the Pavlovsky Regiment on February 27 (O.S.) and the prisoners were freed. Under the Provisional Government, hundreds of Tsarist officials were held in the Fortress.


title: Peter and Paul Fortress

text: The Tsar was threatened with being incarcerated at the Fortress on his return from Mogilev to Tsarskoe Selo on March 8 (O.S.); but he was placed under house arrest. On July 4 (O.S.) during the July Days demonstrations, the Fortress garrison of 8,000 men declared for the Bolsheviks. They surrendered to government forces without a struggle on July 6 (O.S.).


title: Peter and Paul Fortress

text: On October 25 (O.S.), the fortress quickly fell into Bolshevik hands. Following the ultimatum from the Petrograd Soviet to the Provisional Government ministers in the Winter Palace, after the blank salvo of the Cruiser "Aurora" at 21.00, the guns of the Fortress fired 30 or so shells at the Winter Palace. Just two hit, inflicting only minor damage, and the defenders refused to surrender at that time. At 02.10 on the morning of October 26 (O.S.), the Winter Palace was taken by forces under Vladimir Antonov-Ovseenko; the captured ministers were taken to the Fortress as prisoners. On 28 January 1919, four Grand Dukes from the House of Romanov were shot within the walls of the fortress on the orders of the Presidium of the Cheka under Felix Dzerzhinsky, Yakov Peters, Martin Latsis, and Ivan Ksenofontov.


title: Peter and Paul Fortress

text: In 1924, most of the site was converted to a museum. In 1931, the Gas Dynamics Laboratory was added to the site. The structure suffered heavy damage during the bombardment of the city during World War II by the Luftwaffe who were laying siege to the city. It has been faithfully restored post-war and is a prime tourist attraction.


title: Peter and Paul Fortress

text: In the years before and after the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, Peter and Paul Fortress was portrayed by Bolshevik propaganda as a hellish, torturous place, where thousands of prisoners suffered endlessly in filthy, cramped, and grossly overcrowded dungeons amid frequent torture and malnutrition. Such legends had the effect of turning the prison into a symbol of government oppression in the minds of the common folk. In reality, conditions in the fortress were far less brutal than believed; no more than one hundred prisoners were ever kept in the prison at a time, and most prisoners had access to such luxuries as tobacco, writing paper, and literature (including subversive books such as Karl Marx's "").


title: Peter and Paul Fortress

text: Despite their ultimate falsehood, stories about the prison were vital to the spread of Bolshevik revolutionary sentiment. The legends served to portray the government as cruel and indiscriminate in the administration of justice, helping to turn the common mind against Tsarist rule. Many inmates, after being released, wrote chilling and increasingly exaggerated accounts of life there that solidified the structure's horrible image in the public mind and pushed the people further towards dissent. Writers often purposely exaggerated their experiences to garner more hatred for the government; as writer and former Peter and Paul inmate Maksim Gorky would later state, "Every Russian who had ever sat in jail as a 'political' prisoner considered it his holy duty to bestow on Russia his memoirs of how he had suffered."


title: Peter and Paul Fortress

text: The fortress contains several notable buildings clustered around the Peter and Paul Cathedral (1712–1733), which has a bell-tower (the tallest in the city centre) and a gilded angel-topped cupola.


title: Peter and Paul Fortress

text: Other structures inside the fortress include the still functioning Saint Petersburg Mint building (constructed to Antonio Porta's designs under Emperor Paul), the Trubetskoy Bastion with its grim prison cells, and the city museum.


title: Peter and Paul Fortress

text: During the time of Peter the Great, a shot from the cannon of the Peter and Paul Fortress was heard in honor of military victories, on holidays, and also to warn residents about the rise in the water level of the Neva. Initially, the cannon stood on the «Gosudarev» bastion, but later it was moved to the «Naryshkin» bastion.


title: Peter and Paul Fortress

text: Since 1873, a new tradition has appeared in St. Petersburg - a shot from a cannon at exactly noon. Residents of the city even checked their watches by the shot. The gun was silent only in times of revolutions and wars. However, nowadays the gunshot can be heard every day at 12 noon.


title: Irish Catholics

text: Irish Roman Catholics are an ethnoreligious group native to Ireland whose members are both Catholic and Irish. Irish Catholics have a large diaspora, which includes more than 20 million Americans.


title: Irish Catholics

text: Divisions between Irish Roman Catholics and Irish Protestants played a major role in the history of Ireland from the 16th century to the 20th century, especially during the Home Rule Crisis and the Troubles. While religion broadly marks the delineation of these divisions, the contentions were primarily political and they were also related to access to power. For example, while the majority of Irish Catholics had an identity which was independent from Britain's identity and were excluded from power because they were Catholic, a number of the instigators of rebellions against British rule were actually Protestant Irish nationalists, although most Irish Protestants opposed separatism. In the Irish Rebellion of 1798, Catholics and Presbyterians, who were not part of the established Church of Ireland, found common cause.


title: Irish Catholics

text: Irish Catholics are found in many countries around the world, especially in the Anglosphere. Emigration exponentially increased due to the Great Famine which lasted from 1845 to 1852. In the United States, anti-Irish sentiment and anti-Catholicism was espoused by the Know Nothing movement of the 1850s and other 19th-century anti-Catholic and anti-Irish organizations. By the 20th century, Irish Catholics were well established in the United States and today they are fully-integrated into mainstream American society.


title: Ottoman Syria

text: Ottoman Syria () refers to divisions of the Ottoman Empire within the region of Syria, usually defined as being east of the Mediterranean Sea, west of the Euphrates River, north of the Arabian Desert and south of the Taurus Mountains.


title: Ottoman Syria

text: Ottoman Syria became organized by the Ottomans upon conquest from the Mamluk Sultanate in the early 16th century as a single eyalet (province) of Damascus Eyalet. In 1534, the Aleppo Eyalet was split into a separate administration. The Tripoli Eyalet was formed out of Damascus province in 1579 and later the Adana Eyalet was split from Aleppo. In 1660, the Eyalet of Safed was established and shortly afterwards renamed Sidon Eyalet; in 1667, the Mount Lebanon Emirate was given special autonomous status within the Sidon province, but was abolished in 1841 and reconfigured in 1861 as the Mount Lebanon Mutasarrifate. The Syrian eyalets were later transformed into the Syria Vilayet, the Aleppo Vilayet and the Beirut Vilayet, following the 1864 Tanzimat reforms. Finally, in 1872, the Mutasarrifate of Jerusalem was split from the Syria Vilayet into an autonomous administration with special status.


title: Ottoman Syria

text: Before 1516, Syria (region) was part of the Mamluk Empire centered in Lower Egypt. The Ottoman Sultan Selim I conquered Syria in 1516 after defeating the Mamlukes at the Battle of Marj Dabiq near Aleppo in northern Syria. Selim carried on his victorious campaign against the Mamlukes and conquered Egypt in 1517 following the Battle of Ridanieh, bringing an end to the Mamluk Sultanate.


title: Ottoman Syria

text: When he first seized Syria in 1516, Selim I kept the administrative subdivisions of the Mamluk period unchanged. After he came back from Egypt in July 1517, he reorganized Syria into one large province or eyalet named "Şam" (Arabic/Turkish for "Syria"). The eyalet was subdivided into several districts or sanjaks.


title: Ottoman Syria

text: In 1549, Syria was reorganized into two eyalets. The northern Sanjak of Aleppo became the center of the new Eyalet of Aleppo. At this time, the two Syrian Eyalets were subdivided as follows:


title: Ottoman Syria

text: In 1579, the Eyalet of Tripoli was established under the name of "Tripoli of Syria" (; ). At this time, the eyalets became as follows:


title: Ottoman Syria

text: The Eyalet of Damascus included the Sanjaks of Damascus, Beirut, Sidon (Sidon-Beirut), Acre, Safad, Nablus, Jerusalem, Gaza, Hauran and Ma'an.


title: Ottoman Syria

text: In 1660, the Eyalet of Safad was established. It was later renamed the Eyalet of Sidon, and later, the Eyalet of Beirut.


title: Ottoman Syria

text: In 1833, the Syrian provinces were ceded to Muhammed Ali of Egypt in the Convention of Kutahya. The firman stated that


title: Ottoman Syria

text: "The governments of Candia and Egypt are continued to Mahomet Ali. And in reference to his special claim, I have granted him the provinces of Damascus, Tripoli-in-Syria, Sidon, Saphet, Aleppo, the districts of Jerusalem and Nablous, with the conduct of pilgrims and the commandment of the Tcherde (the yearly offering to the tomb of the Prophet). His son, Ibrahim Pacha, has again the title of Sheikh and Harem of Mekka, and the district of Jedda; and farther, I have acquiesced in his request to have the district of Adana ruled by the Treasury of Taurus, with the title of Mohassil."


title: Ottoman Syria

text: In this period, the Sublime Porte's firmans (decrees) of 1839 and, more decisively, of 1856 – equalizing the status of Muslim and non-Muslim subjects – produced a


title: Ottoman Syria

text: "dramatic alienation of Muslims from Christians. The former resented the implied loss of superiority and recurrently assaulted and massacred Christian communities – in Aleppo in 1850, in Nablus in 1856, and in Damascus and Lebanon in 1860. Among the long-term consequences of these bitter internecine conflicts were the emergence of a Christian-dominated Lebanon in the 1920s – 40s and the deep fissure between Christian and Muslim Palestinian Arabs as they confronted the Zionist influx after World War I. "


title: Ottoman Syria

text: Following the massacre of thousands of Christian civilians during the 1860 Lebanon conflict, and under growing European pressure, mainly from France, an Ottoman edict issued in 1861 transformed "Al Kaimaqumyateen" or the Twin/Double Qaymakamate, the former regime based on religious rule that led to civil war, into the Mount Lebanon Mutasarrifate, governed by a "mutasarrıf" who, according to law, had to be a non-Lebanese Christian.


title: Ottoman Syria

text: As part of the Tanzimat reforms, an Ottoman law passed in 1864 provided for a standard provincial administration throughout the empire with the eyalets becoming smaller "vilayets", governed by a "vali" (governor) still appointed by the imperial Porte but with new provincial assemblies participating in administration.


title: Ottoman Syria

text: In 1872 Jerusalem and the surrounding towns became the Mutasarrifate of Jerusalem, gaining a special administrative status.


title: Ottoman Syria

text: The sanjak Zor and the major part of the vilayet Aleppo may or may not be included in Ottoman Syria. "The Geographical Dictionary of the World," published in 1906, describes Syria as:


title: Ottoman Syria

text: "a country in the [south-west] part of Asia, forming part of the Turkish Empire. It extends eastward from the Mediterranean Sea to the river Euphrates and the Syrian Desert (the prolongation northward of the Arabian Desert), and southward from the Alma-Dagh (ancient Amanus), one of the ranges of the Taurus, to the frontiers of Egypt (Isthmus of Suez) It lies between the parallels of 31° and 37° [north latitude]. It comprises the vilayet of Syria (Suria), or of Damascus, the vilayet of Beirut, the [south-west] part of the vilayet of Aleppo, and the mutessarrifliks of Jerusalem and the Lebanon.


title: Ottoman Syria

text: Palestine is included in [the country] Syria, comprising the mutessarriflik of Jerusalem and part of the vilayets of Beirut and Syria.


title: Ottoman Syria

text: The designation Syria is sometimes used in wider sense so as to include the whole of the vilayet of Aleppo and the Zor Sanjak, a large part of Mesopotamia being thus added."


title: Ottoman Syria

text: "The term Syria in those days was generally used to denote the whole of geographical and historic Syria, that is to say the whole of the country lying between the Taurus Mountains and the Sinai Peninsula, which was made up of part of the Vilayet of Aleppo, the Vilayet of Bairut, the Vilayet of Syria, the Sanjaq of the Lebanon, and the Sanjaq of Jerusalem. It included that part of the country which was afterwards detached from it to form the mandated territory of Palestine."


title: Colion Noir

text: Collins Iyare Idehen Jr. (born 1983), better known as Colion Noir, is an American gun rights activist, lawyer, and host of the web series "NOIR".


title: Colion Noir

text: In 2013, the National Rifle Association (NRA) recruited him to appear in NRA News videos in subsequent months. Later that year, he appeared at its convention in Houston. Since then, he has become the NRA's "most prominent black commentator," as "The Guardian" described him in 2017.


title: Colion Noir

text: Noir was born Collins Iyare Idehen, Jr. in Houston, Texas, to immigrants from Nigeria, the son of an executive chef father and a registered nurse mother. As an only child, Noir spent his formative years in Houston, Texas.


title: Colion Noir

text: Noir graduated from high school in Houston. He earned a political science degree from the University of Houston and a J.D. degree from the Thurgood Marshall School of Law at Texas Southern University, also in Houston. He first became interested in firearms while a student at the Thurgood Marshall School of Law.


title: Ridhima Pandit

text: Ridhima Pandit (born 25 June 1990) is an Indian actress and model who works in Hindi television. She is known for her role of Rajni in Life OK's "Bahu Hamari Rajni Kant". In 2019, she participated in "" and became the 2nd runner-up. In 2021, she participated in "Bigg Boss OTT".


title: Ridhima Pandit

text: Pandit was born on 25 June 1990 in Mumbai, Maharashtra, India to her Gujarati mother Jayshree and Maharashtrian father Pandit. Her father language is Marathi while her mother language is Gujarati.


title: Ridhima Pandit

text: She started her career as a model and did modeling projects like Sunsilk, Fair & Lovely, Dove, Harpic, Veet, Luminous, Set Wet and many more.


title: Ridhima Pandit

text: In February 2016, Ridhima made her acting debut into Hindi television industry with Life OK's sitcom "Bahu Hamari Rajni Kant". The show garnered her immense appreciation for the main role of Rajni, a super humanoid robot and ended in February 2017.


title: Ridhima Pandit

text: After doing a cameo role in Big Magic's "Deewane Anjane", she starred as the simple and sweet Devina Kapoor in ALT Balaji romantic web series "Hum - I'm Because of Us" created by Ekta Kapoor in 2018.


title: Ridhima Pandit

text: Collaborating with the channel consecutively for the second time, she appeared in the game comical show "Khatra Khatra Khatra".


title: Ridhima Pandit

text: From August 2019 to February 2020, Ridhima portrayed Amrita Sharma in Zee TV's science fiction drama "" produced by Kapoor. In 2021, she participated in "Bigg Boss OTT" and got evicted on Day 18 along with her connection Karan Nath.


title: Great Australian Bight

text: The Great Australian Bight is a large oceanic bight, or open bay, off the central and western portions of the southern coastline of mainland Australia.


title: Great Australian Bight

text: Two definitions of the extent are in use – one used by the International Hydrographic Organization (IHO) and the other used by the Australian Hydrographic Service (AHS).


title: Great Australian Bight

text: "On the East." A line from Cape Otway, Victoria to King Island and thence to Cape Grim, the northwest extreme of Tasmania.


title: Great Australian Bight

text: The AHS defines the bight with a smaller area, from Cape Pasley, Western Australia, to Cape Carnot, South Australia - a distance of .


title: Great Australian Bight

text: Much of the bight lies due south of the expansive Nullarbor Plain, which straddles South Australia and Western Australia. The Eyre Highway passes close to the cliffs of the bight between the Head of the Bight and Eucla.


title: Great Australian Bight

text: Outside of Australia, the Great Australian Bight is generally considered part of the Indian Ocean. The AHS considers it to be part of the Southern Ocean, using the expanded Australian definition used for this ocean. The IHO in its Limits of Oceans and Seas (both the currently in-force 1953 edition and the 2002 never-approved draft) includes the bight with the Indian Ocean, while Bass Strait and the Tasman Sea are included by IHO with the South Pacific Ocean in the 2002 draft. In the 1953 edition, IHO includes Bass Strait as part of the Indian Ocean.


title: Great Australian Bight

text: The area around Cape Pasley is an eastern outcrop of the ancient crystalline rocks of the Yilgarn Craton. From there the coast curves north-eastwards, with an escarpment parallel to the coast. The Israelite Plain lies between the escarpment, here called the Wylie Scarp, and the shore, with a chain of coastal lagoons behind coastal dunes. As the coast turns eastwards the escarpment meets the shore, creating the Baxter Cliffs which extend for 200 km. Near Cocklebiddy the escarpment curves inland again. Here the Roe Plains extends for about 300 km along the coast, reaching about 35 km inland at their widest point. There are extensive dunefields near the shore, some bare of vegetation, and others stabilized by coastal strand vegetation, shrubland, and mallee woodland. Near Eucla and the Western Australia–South Australia border the escarpment reaches the coast again, and the Bunda Cliffs or Nullarbor Cliffs extend for 220 km to Head of the Bight.


title: Great Australian Bight

text: At Head of the Bight the escarpment turns inland to the northeast. The coastline of the western Eyre Peninsula is characterised by rocky capes, bays, and islands, including Fowlers Bay, Smoky Bay, Streaky Bay, and the Nuyts Archipelago. The coastline is formed from aeolianite limestone. Waves and currents have formed beaches and dunes from eroded aeolianite sand. The southern Eyre peninsula is an outcrop of the granitic Gawler Craton.


title: Great Australian Bight

text: The Great Australian Bight was first encountered by European explorers in 1627 when Dutch navigator François Thijssen sailed along its western margins. The coast was later first accurately charted by the English navigator Matthew Flinders in 1802, during his circumnavigation of the Australian continent. A later land-based survey was accomplished by the English explorer Edward John Eyre.


title: Great Australian Bight

text: The bight came into existence when Gondwana broke apart and separated Antarctica from Australia around 50 million years ago.


title: Great Australian Bight

text: The coastline of the Great Australian Bight is characterised by cliff faces (up to high), surfing beaches and rock platforms, ideal for whale-watching. This is a popular activity during the southern hemisphere winter, when increasing numbers of southern right whales migrate to the region from their summer feeding grounds in the Antarctic. The whales come to the Bight region, especially to the Head of Bight, to calve and breed, and do not feed until they return to the Antarctic. Their numbers were severely depleted by whaling, particularly during the 19th century, but have since recovered to some extent.


title: Great Australian Bight

text: The Nullarbor Plain, which borders much of the length of the Bight's coastline, is a former seabed, uplifted during the Miocene. Consisting of limestone, it is very flat, and has an arid or semi-arid climate with very little rainfall, and high summer temperatures and high evaporation rates. It has no surface drainage, but has a karst drainage system through cave formation in the underlying limestone. North of the Nullarbor lies the Great Victoria Desert, which has an internal drainage system terminating in numerous small salt lakes.


title: Great Australian Bight

text: The lack of surface runoff and terrestrial nutrients results in the relatively shallow waters of the Great Australian Bight being generally low in nutrients, and therefore oligotrophic, compared with many other continental shelves which support major fisheries. Seasonal upwelling of deep ocean water along the coast of the Eyre Peninsula in the eastern part of the Bight brings nutrients to the surface waters, with the resulting fertility creating an important marine hotspot.


title: Great Australian Bight

text: The waters of the Great Australian Bight are highly biodiverse, particularly in zooplankton, due to a particular series of ocean currents. A literature review undertaken by SARDI (South Australian Research and Development Institute) on the Benthic Protection Zone of the Great Australian Bight Marine Park in 2003 states: "Upwelling events during summer and autumn produce cool patches of surface water along the coast of the southern Eyre Peninsula. These patches contain elevated nutrient concentrations and support enhanced levels of primary productivity. High densities of zooplankton to the northwest of the patches indicate that the prevailing southeasterly winds transport the products of this enhanced biological production into the central GAB. These plankton communities support the highest densities of small planktivorous fishes, including sardine and anchovy, in Australian waters. Juvenile southern bluefin tuna (SBT) migrate into the GAB annually to feed on these rich pelagic resources."


title: Great Australian Bight

text: As the nutrients are swept up from the deep water ocean floor and pushed in towards the coast, the food chain is injected with a massive influx of the bottom rung.


title: Great Australian Bight

text: There is not enough known about the full scope of species that dwell in or migrate to the Great Australian Bight, so more studies are required. "The Interim Marine and Coastal Regionalisation of Australia (IMCRA) classification suggests that high biodiversity in the GAB may be explained by the presence of temperate species with eastern and western affinities, as well as “tropical stragglers” from northern regions. However, patterns of diversity vary between taxa. Mangroves are poorly represented due to the lack of estuaries. Seagrasses are confined mainly to sheltered bays and the lees of reefs and islands due to the frequent disturbance of inshore habitats by large swells. In contrast, the macroalgal assemblage of the GAB is one of the world's most diverse and includes >1200 species. Over 90% of species in most invertebrate groups are endemic to southern Australia, but the proportion that is confined to the GAB is unknown."


title: Great Australian Bight

text: There is still much research needed to fully understand the complex ecosystems of the Great Australian Bight and how any resource extraction or other human activity may affect them. The Literature review also states: "Approximately 370 of the 600 fish species that occur in southern Australia have been recorded in SA. Several species, including the coastal stingaree ("Urolophus orarius") and crested threefin ("Trinorfolkia cristata"), are restricted to South Australia and occur in the GAB. The patterns of distribution and abundance of fishes in the GAB are poorly understood."


title: Great Australian Bight

text: There are some clear findings from the review, "The GAB provides critical habitat for two species of marine mammals that are recognised internationally as being priorities for conservation. The southern right whale ("Eubalaena australis"), which is listed as ‘endangered’ under the Commonwealth Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999, breeds at the Head of Bight during winter. The Australian sea lion ("Neophoca cinerea"), which is endemic to Australia and is currently listed as “near threatened”, breeds in small colonies along the cliffs of the GAB." These marine mammals require this habitat to remain in existence, which has been recognised by Australian law.


title: Great Australian Bight

text: One location on the bight that is specifically oriented towards the understanding of the natural history on its coastline is the Eyre Bird Observatory.


title: Great Australian Bight

text: Economically, the Bight has been exploited over many years as part of the fishing, whaling and shellfish industries. Southern bluefin tuna have been a favoured target of fishing in the Bight.


title: Great Australian Bight

text: Exploration for oil and gas in the Great Australian Bight first began in the late 1960s. Several oil majors — BP, Statoil/Equinor, and Chevron — proposed plans to drill exploration wells in the southern part of the area from 2017 onwards. On 11 October 2016, BP withdrew its plans to explore the area stating that it was not competitive and did not align with BP's strategic goals. The proposal to explore in the bight was the focus of community opposition. The Wilderness Society showed that a worst-case scenario leak of oil could have a catastrophic effect on the southern coastline of Australia. The Australian Senate commenced an inquiry into oil or gas production in the Great Australian Bight on 22 February 2016. The committee was reestablished on 13 September 2016 following the Australian Federal Election. In October 2017, Chevron withdrew from the project, but it returned alongside BP in 2019. Though the National Offshore Petroleum Safety and Environmental Management Authority approved exploration plans in late 2019, Equinor withdrew from the project in February 2020, citing profitability reasons.


title: Great Australian Bight

text: The settlements existing along the coastline of the bight, such as Ceduna and Eucla have facilities to access the bight. Some other locations on the Eyre Highway or located on the Nullarbor do not have facilities or easy access.


title: Harvey Vale

text: Harvey James Vale (born 11 September 2003) is an English footballer who plays as a midfielder for Hull City, on loan from club Chelsea.


title: Harvey Vale

text: Born in Haywards Heath, West Sussex, Vale started his career at local side Crowborough FC, before joining West London side Fulham. Initially a left-back, Vale played a number of positions at youth level, including covering for an injured goalkeeper for Fulham, before settling as a midfielder.


title: Harvey Vale

text: Vale left Fulham to join West London rivals Chelsea at under-13 level, and signed his first professional contract in September 2020.


title: Harvey Vale

text: Vale made his Chelsea debut on 22 December 2021 in the quarter-final of the EFL Cup, starting in a 2–0 win against Brentford. On March 19 2022, he featured in an FA Cup quarter-final match against Middlesbrough, coming on as a substitute for Romelu Lukaku in the 84th minute as Chelsea went on to win the game 2–0.


title: Harvey Vale

text: On 1 September 2022, he moved on loan to Hull City for the season after signing a three-year contract with Chelsea. On 17 September 2022, Vale started in the 3–0 loss away to Swansea City.


title: Harvey Vale

text: On 17 June 2022, Vale was included in the England U19 squad for the 2022 UEFA European Under-19 Championship. On 1 July 2022, Vale captained the England U19 side and provided an assist for Carney Chukwuemeka to score in a 3–1 victory against Israel in the final. His performances during the competition led to his inclusion in the UEFA team of the tournament.


title: Michael Martin, Baron Martin of Springburn

text: Michael John Martin, Baron Martin of Springburn, (3 July 1945 – 29 April 2018) was a British politician who served as Speaker of the House of Commons between 2000 and 2009. A member of the Labour Party, he was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Glasgow Springburn from 1979 to 2005 and for Glasgow North East until 2009. He was elected as Speaker of the House of Commons in 2000, remaining in the office for nine years until his involuntary resignation in 2009.


text: On his election to the post of Speaker in 2000, he was the first Catholic to serve in the role since the Reformation. He resigned from the position on 21 June 2009 as a result of diminishing parliamentary and public confidence owing to his role in the expenses scandal. He stood down from the House of Commons on the following day.


text: Martin was born on 3 July 1945 in William Street in Glasgow, the son of a merchant seaman and a school cleaner. He was one of five children, and was brought up in a tenement community in Anderston. The family later moved to Springburn when Michael was fourteen years old. He attended St Patrick's Boys' School, leaving a few days before his fifteenth birthday to become an apprentice sheet metal worker at a factory called Heatovent. He worked at a railway yard in Springburn for the train engine makers North British Caledonian Railways and became involved in the National Union of Sheet Metal Workers and Coppersmiths. He joined the Labour Party when aged 21. He worked as a sheet-metal worker with Rolls-Royce from 1960 to 1976, and worked at the plant at Hillington. By his mid-twenties, he was a full-time shop steward with the Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers.


text: At the age of 26, in 1973, Martin was elected as a Labour councillor of the Glasgow Corporation, representing Firfield ward. In 1974, he was elected to the City of Glasgow District Council, representing Balornock ward. He was a trade union organiser with the National Union of Public Employees (NUPE) between 1976 and 1979.


text: In 1978, Martin was selected by the Labour Party out of five prospective candidates to replace Richard Buchanan. He was elected as the Member of Parliament for Glasgow Springburn at the 1979 general election. He was a supporter of Roy Hattersley and Denis Healey, who were ideologically on the right-wing of the party and with whom he served as a Parliamentary Private Secretary from 1980 to 1983. He was re-elected in 1983, 1987, 1992 and 1997. Associated with the right wing of the Labour Party, he was socially conservative on issues such as abortion and homosexuality. In 1994, he was one of thirteen Labour MPs who voted against the reduction of the age of consent for homosexuals from 21 to 18.


text: He served as Chairman of the Scottish Grand Committee from 1987 to 1997. He sat on the Speaker's Panel of Chairmen 1987–2000. He was appointed as First Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means (one of three Deputy Speakers) in May 1997.


text: In 2000, Betty Boothroyd retired as Speaker. An election was held in October of that year and twelve MPs put their names forward as potential successors. Many observers had considered the Conservative MP George Young to be the favourite as he had support from both the Conservative and Labour leadership, who viewed it as the Conservatives' 'turn' to have a Speaker elected from their benches. However, many backbench MPs, particularly those from the Labour Party (who held a large majority in the House at the time), viewed Young as being not sufficiently in touch with ordinary MPs because he had very recently been a member of his party's front bench team. (Young had stepped down from the Shadow Cabinet just before the election for a new Speaker and had been a member of the Cabinet in the Conservative government during the previous parliament.) In the end, the contest was determined by a series of votes that were held during a process that lasted more than six hours on 23 October 2000. Martin's rivals were eliminated one by one and Young's candidacy was rejected by the House.


text: Martin was elected as the 156th Speaker on 23 October 2000, becoming the first Catholic to serve in the role since the Reformation. In accordance with a long-standing convention, Martin resigned from the Labour Party. He eschewed some of the traditional clothing associated with the Speaker's role, appearing without wig, silk stockings and knee breeches. His Glaswegian accent led to his being nicknamed "Gorbals Mick" by Quentin Letts, after the working-class district of Glasgow, although he was actually born on the other side of the river from the Gorbals and represented a constituency a few miles away.


text: Martin's initial appointment as Speaker occurred against a recent pattern in the House where the post of Speaker had alternated between the two main political parties (the Conservative Party and the Labour Party). As his predecessor, Betty Boothroyd, had been a Labour MP, the new Speaker had been expected to emerge from the Conservative benches.


text: Martin was re-elected as an MP in the 2001 general election, with the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats not challenging him but the Scottish National Party (SNP) achieving a small swing towards its candidate. After being returned in the general election, he did not face a contest for the chair—no previous speakers that were returned to the Commons after a general election have. He was re-elected as Speaker, with Young nominating him.


text: Although the House of Commons has long held a yearly hannukiah lighting ceremony at the official residence of the Speaker, it never had its own hannukiah and had to borrow one from the local Jewish community every year; despite being a Catholic, Martin arranged in 2003 for the House to have its own hannukiah, which is still used every year. Coincidentally, his successor John Bercow would become the first Jewish Speaker of the House six years later.


text: In the 2005 general election, he stood in the new constituency of Glasgow North East, with the SNP again fielding a candidate against him. He was returned to Parliament. He was unopposed in the election to be Speaker. Shortly after the 2005 election, when the Liberal Democrat MP Patsy Calton entered the Commons for the last time to affirm her allegiance from a wheelchair and sign the register, Martin broke with tradition and left the Speaker's Chair to shake her hand and kiss her on the cheek, saying "Welcome home Patsy." Calton, who had just been re-elected, had terminal breast cancer and died three days later.


text: On 17 February 2006, Martin had angioplasty at the Glasgow Royal Infirmary for blocked coronary arteries. His office confirmed this on 26 February and indicated that he would be absent from his duties for several weeks. He returned to the chair on 18 April.


text: On 1 November 2006, during Prime Minister's Questions, Martin caused uproar in the House of Commons by ruling out of order a question from Opposition Leader David Cameron in which he challenged Prime Minister Tony Blair over the future leadership of the Labour Party. Martin stated that the purpose of Prime Minister's Questions was for the House to question the Prime Minister on the actions of the government. This caused such dissent amongst MPs that Martin threatened to suspend the session. Cameron re-worded the question to ask about Blair's future as prime minister rather than leader of the Labour Party, which Martin allowed. Conservative MPs threatened to walk out if a similar event occurred in the future.


text: In 2007, Martin used public money to employ lawyers in challenging negative press stories; media law firm Carter-Ruck was engaged for three months at a cost of more than £20,000. The Liberal Democrat MP Norman Baker criticised the use of taxpayers' money as a "very expensive" way to issue press releases; the Taxpayers' Alliance also expressed disapproval. Martin was also criticised at the same time for trying to block the publication of details of MPs' £5 million-a-year travel expenses under the Freedom of Information Act.


text: On 24 February 2008, John Lyon, the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, was asked by the Taxpayers' Alliance to investigate whether Martin had abused parliamentary expenses and allowances. Lyon was obliged to examine all such complaints although the Commissioner could have ruled that the complaint was unfounded. This followed a week in which Martin's spokesman, the veteran Whitehall communications chief Mike Granatt of PR agency Luther Pendragon, resigned after admitting that he had unwittingly misled "The Mail on Sunday" over more than £4,000 in taxi expenses incurred by the Speaker's wife, Mary Martin. Granatt blamed unnamed officials, but not the Speaker, for falsely informing him that the expenses were legitimate because Martin's wife had been accompanied by an official on shopping trips to buy food for receptions. In fact, her housekeeper had accompanied her; catering for such receptions is the responsibility of the parliamentary caterers.


text: On 29 March 2008, "The Daily Telegraph" revealed that refurbishment of Michael Martin's official residence, Speaker's House, had amounted to £1.7 million over seven years. The house is inside the Palace of Westminster. On 14 May 2009, "The Daily Telegraph" reported that Martin had claimed £1,400 for using chauffeur-driven cars that included visits to Celtic Park, home of Celtic Football Club, and his local Job Centre.


text: In November 2008, Conservative immigration spokesman Damian Green was arrested, in connection with a police investigation into alleged leaks from the Home Office. The MP was detained for nine hours, and his homes and office in the House of Commons office were searched. Green was never charged with any crime. The raid on Commons premises angered many MPs, who viewed it as infringement on the democratic prerogatives of parliament.


text: Martin's spokesperson was asked if he had approved the Metropolitan Police searching Green's Commons office without a search warrant, and replied: "There is a process to be followed and that was followed." When Parliament reconvened a few days later, Martin read a statement to MPs, stating that "I have been told that the police did not explain, as they are required to do, that (House serjeant at arms Jill Pay) was not obliged to consent or that a warrant could have been insisted on." Martin also said that Pay had given consent for the search without consulting the clerk of the house. The Metropolitan Police questioned Martin's account of events, writing in a letter to Home Secretary Jacqui Smith that police "explained the nature of the investigation and the purpose of the search" to Pay "and were satisfied that the serjeant at arms understood that police had no power to search in the absence of a warrant and therefore could only do so with her written consent or that of the Speaker."


text: Martin later testified that Pay had informed him of the police plans to raid a Commons office and arrest an MP, but was told that the arrest was related to terrorism. In a subsequent statement to a Commons committee investigating the incident, Martin said Pay failed to tell him that the search was being conducted on the basis of a consent form she had signed, rather than on the basis of a search warrant. Martin criticised Pay's actions and those of the Commons clerk, Malcolm Jack, related to the affair. A report on the investigation, published in 2010, criticized Martin, writing that as speaker he "failed to exercise the ultimate responsibility, which was his alone, to take control and not merely expect to be informed" and that he "should have been asking the right questions and ... should have taken more responsibility for exercising the authority of his high office." The report also criticized "failings" by multiple parties, including other Commons officials, civil servants, and the police, determining that they had made a "quite unnecessary" and "poorly executed" arrest of Green.


text: In 2009, Martin was involved in a row over expenses incurred by MPs on taxpayer-funded British Council trips. In 2008 Conservative MP Mark Lancaster flew business class to Bangkok with the British Council for a two-day conference, at a cost of £5,018. Labour MP Sally Keeble flew out economy class and returned business class at a cost of £2,452. MPs must normally declare any hospitality they receive from outside organisations, and the British Council does not appear on a list of bodies whose gifts are exempt from the requirement. Martin signed a special certificate preventing the release of information about these trips, citing "Parliamentary privilege".


text: On 12 May 2009, the BBC reported that Michael Martin was under pressure to resign. On 17 May, Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg said that Michael Martin should stand down, saying he had become an obstacle to much-needed reform of Parliament. On 19 May, Douglas Carswell tabled a motion of no confidence, which 22 MPs signed. Later that day, Martin announced his intention to resign effective as of 21 June 2009. If the motion had been successful in a vote, Martin would have been the first Speaker to be forced out of office by a motion of no confidence since John Trevor in 1695. Martin said of his decision to resign:


text: He was made the Steward and Bailiff of the Manor of Northstead to be able to stand down as an MP on the same date, forcing a by-election in his constituency of Glasgow North East. An election for Speaker was held on 22 June, which was won by John Bercow.


text: Speakers are normally elevated to the House of Lords when they retire, and the government said it considered this a "formality". A vetting panel for the House of Lords pointed out to Prime Minister Gordon Brown that nominees had to "enhance rather than diminish" the standing of the house, which some Labour MPs interpreted as a slur against Martin. Sixteen MPs signed a Commons motion requesting that the peer responsible, Lord Jay, withdraw his comment. In accordance with tradition, as soon as Martin's successor as Speaker was installed, the first motion passed by the House of Commons was a resolution directing that a humble Address be presented to The Queen, asking her "to confer some signal mark of Her Royal favour" (i.e., a peerage) upon Martin "for his eminent services during the important period in which he presided with such distinguished ability and dignity in the Chair of this House".


text: Martin was made a life peer on 25 August 2009 as Baron Martin of Springburn, "of Port Dundas in the City of Glasgow". He was introduced in the House of Lords on 13 October 2009. Like previous Speakers elevated to the Lords, he sat as a Crossbench peer.