title: Portulaca grandiflora

text: Portulaca grandiflora is a succulent flowering plant in the family Portulacaceae, native to southern Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay and often cultivated in gardens. It has many common names, including rose moss, eleven o'clock, Mexican rose, moss rose, sun rose, rock rose, and moss-rose purslane.


title: Portulaca grandiflora

text: It is also seen in South Asia and widely spread in most of the cities with old 18th- and 19th-century architecture in the Balkans.


title: Portulaca grandiflora

text: It is a small, but fast-growing annual plant growing to 30 cm tall, though usually less. However, if it is cultivated properly, it can easily reach this height. The leaves are thick and fleshy, up to 2.5 cm long, arranged alternately or in small clusters. The flowers are 2.5–3 cm diameter with five petals, variably red, orange, pink, white, and yellow. Their upright, or ascending, long shoots branch usually near the base. The spreading 20-to-25-millimeters-long and 2-to-3-millimeters-wide leaves are almost or completely stalk-shaped, and taper towards the tip.


title: Portulaca grandiflora

text: The axillary leaves have few to numerous whitish, woolly hairs which are usually shorter than the sheets. The compressed inflorescences are surrounded by eight to ten leaves. The large flowers reach a diameter of up to 4 centimetres. The five bright magenta-coloured petals are obovate and 15 to 26 millimeters long. Around the ovary with four to nine whitish scars are about 50 stamens. Capsules and seeds are not visible.


title: Portulaca grandiflora

text: "P. grandiflora" is one of the few plants that is a /CAM intermediate, utilizing both carbon fixation and Crassulacean acid metabolism pathways in different cells for photosynthesis.


title: Portulaca grandiflora

text: Numerous cultivars have been selected for double flowers with additional petals, and for variation in flower colour, plain or variegated. It is widely grown in temperate climates as an ornamental plant for annual bedding or as a container plant. It requires ample sunlight and well-drained soils. It requires almost no attention and spreads itself very easily. In places with old architecture it can grow between the stones of the road or sidewalk. Seeds are often sold as mixtures, such as "Double Flowering Mixture" (see illustrations). It grows on sandy soils. In countries with a frost-free climate, it is wild.


title: Portulaca grandiflora

text: Unlike "P. oleracea" and "P. umbraticola" , it is not edible because of its bitter taste. There are hybrids of "P. grandiflora" with "P. oleracea", "umbraticola" and "villosa".


title: Works of Rabindranath Tagore

text: The works of Rabindranath Tagore consist of poems, novels, short stories, dramas, paintings, drawings, and music that Bengali poet and Brahmo philosopher Rabindranath Tagore created over his lifetime.


title: Works of Rabindranath Tagore

text: Tagore's literary reputation is disproportionately influenced very much by regard for his poetry; however, he also wrote novels, essays, short stories, travelogues, dramas, a thousands of songs. Of Tagore's prose, his short stories are perhaps most highly regarded; indeed, he is credited with originating the Bengali-language version of the genre. His works are frequently noted for their rhythmic, optimistic, and lyrical nature. However, such stories mostly borrow from deceptively simple subject matter — the lives of ordinary people and children.


title: Works of Rabindranath Tagore

text: At sixteen, Tagore led his brother Jyotirindranath's adaptation of Molière's "Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme". At twenty he wrote his first drama-opera: "Valmiki Pratibha" ("The Genius of Valmiki"). In it the pandit Valmiki overcomes his sins, is blessed by Saraswati, and compiles the "Rāmāyana". Through it Tagore explores a wide range of dramatic styles and emotions, including usage of revamped "kirtans" and adaptation of traditional English and Irish folk melodies as drinking songs. Another play, written in 1912, "Dak Ghar" ("The Post Office"), describes the child Amal defying his stuffy and puerile confines by ultimately "fall[ing] asleep", hinting his physical death. A story with borderless appeal—gleaning rave reviews in Europe—"Dak Ghar" dealt with death as, in Tagore's words, "spiritual freedom" from "the world of hoarded wealth and certified creeds". In the Nazi-besieged Warsaw Ghetto, Polish doctor-educator Janusz Korczak had orphans in his care stage "The Post Office" in July 1942. In "The King of Children", biographer Betty Jean Lifton suspected that Korczak, agonising over whether one should determine when and how to die, was easing the children into accepting death. In mid-October, the Nazis sent them to Treblinka.


title: Works of Rabindranath Tagore

text: His other works fuse lyrical flow and emotional rhythm into a tight focus on a core idea, a break from prior Bengali drama. Tagore sought "the play of feeling and not of action". In 1890 he released what is regarded as his finest drama: "Visarjan" ("Sacrifice"). It is an adaptation of "Rajarshi", an earlier novella of his. "A forthright denunciation of a meaningless [and] cruel superstitious rite[s]", the Bengali originals feature intricate subplots and prolonged monologues that give play to historical events in seventeenth-century Udaipur. The devout Maharaja of Tripura is pitted against the wicked head priest Raghupati. His latter dramas were more philosophical and allegorical in nature; these included "Dak Ghar". Another is Tagore's "Chandalika" ("Untouchable Girl"), which was modelled on an ancient Buddhist legend describing how Ananda, the Gautama Buddha's disciple, asks a tribal girl for water.


title: Works of Rabindranath Tagore

text: In "Raktakarabi" ("Red" or "Blood Oleanders"), a kleptocrat king rules over the residents of "Yaksha puri". He and his retainers exploit his subjects—who are benumbed by alcohol and numbered like inventory—by forcing them to mine gold for him. The naive maiden-heroine Nandini rallies her subject-compatriots to defeat the greed of the realm's "sardar" class—with the morally roused king's belated help. Skirting the "good-vs-evil" trope, the work pits a vital and joyous lèse majesté against the monotonous fealty of the king's varletry, giving rise to an allegorical struggle akin to that found in "Animal Farm" or "Gulliver's Travels". The original, though prized in Bengal, long failed to spawn a "free and comprehensible" translation, and its archaic and sonorous didacticism failed to attract interest from abroad.


title: Works of Rabindranath Tagore

text: "Chitrangada", "Chandalika", and "Shyama" are other key plays that have dance-drama adaptations, which together are known as "Rabindra Nritya Natya".


title: Works of Rabindranath Tagore

text: Tagore began his career in short stories in 1877—when he was only sixteen—with "Bhikharini" ("The Beggar Woman"). With this, Tagore effectively invented the Bengali-language short story genre. The four years from 1891 to 1895 are known as Tagore's "Sadhana" period (named for one of Tagore's magazines). This period was among Tagore's most fecund, yielding more than half the stories contained in the three-volume "Galpaguchchha" (or "Golpoguchchho"; "Bunch of Stories"), which itself is a collection of eighty-four stories. Such stories usually showcase Tagore's reflections upon his surroundings, on modern and fashionable ideas, and on interesting mind puzzles (which Tagore was fond of testing his intellect with). Tagore typically associated his earliest stories (such as those of the ""Sadhana"" period) with an exuberance of vitality and spontaneity; these characteristics were intimately connected with Tagore's life in the common villages of, among others, Patisar, Shajadpur, and Shilaida while managing the Tagore family's vast landholdings. There, he beheld the lives of India's poor and common people; Tagore thereby took to examining their lives with a penetrative depth and feeling that was singular in Indian literature up to that point. In particular, such stories as "Kabuliwala" ("The Fruitseller from Kabul", published in 1892), "Kshudita Pashan" ("The Hungry Stones") (August 1895), and "Atottju"("The Runaway", 1895) typified this analytic focus on the downtrodden.


title: Works of Rabindranath Tagore

text: In "Kabuliwala", Tagore speaks in first person as town-dweller and novelist who chances upon the Afghani seller. He attempts to distill the sense of longing felt by those long trapped in the mundane and hardscrabble confines of Indian urban life, giving play to dreams of a different existence in the distant and wild mountains: "There were autumn mornings, the time of year when kings of old went forth to conquest; and I, never stirring from my little corner in Calcutta, would let my mind wander over the whole world. At the very name of another country, my heart would go out to it ... I would fall to weaving a network of dreams: the mountains, the glens, the forest ... ".


title: Works of Rabindranath Tagore

text: Many of the other "Galpaguchchha" stories were written in Tagore's "Sabuj Patra" period from 1914 to 1917, also named after one of the magazines that Tagore edited and heavily contributed to.


title: Works of Rabindranath Tagore

text: Tagore's "Galpaguchchha" remains among the most popular fictional works in Bengali literature. Its continuing influence on Bengali art and culture cannot be overstated; to this day, it remains a point of cultural reference, and has furnished subject matter for numerous successful films and theatrical plays, and its characters are among the most well known to Bengalis.


title: Works of Rabindranath Tagore

text: The acclaimed film director Satyajit Ray based his film "Charulata" ("The Lonely Wife") on "Nastanirh" ("The Broken Nest"). This famous story has an autobiographical element to it, modelled to some extent on the relationship between Tagore and his sister-in-law, Kadambari Devi. Ray has also made memorable films of other stories from "Galpaguchchha", including "Samapti", "Postmaster" and "Monihara", bundling them together as "Teen Kanya" ("Three Daughters").


title: Works of Rabindranath Tagore

text: "Atithi" is another poignantly lyrical Tagore story which was made into a film of the same name by another noted Indian film director Tapan Sinha. Tarapada, a young Brahmin boy, catches a boat ride with a village zamindar. It turns out that he has run away from his home and has been wandering around ever since. The zamindar adopts him, and finally arranges a marriage to his own daughter. The night before the wedding Tarapada runs away again.


title: Works of Rabindranath Tagore

text: "Strir Patra" (The letter from the wife) was one of the earliest depictions in Bengali literature of bold emancipation of women. Mrinal is the wife of a typical Bengali middle-class man. The letter, written while she is traveling (which constitutes the whole story), describes her petty life and struggles. She finally declares that she will not return to her patriarchical home, stating "Amio bachbo. Ei bachlum" ("And I shall live. Here, I live").


title: Works of Rabindranath Tagore

text: In "Haimanti", Tagore takes on the institution of Hindu marriage. He describes the dismal lifelessness of Bengali women after they are married off, hypocrisies plaguing the Indian middle class, and how Haimanti, a sensitive young woman, must — due to her sensitiveness and free spirit — sacrifice her life. In the last passage, Tagore directly attacks the Hindu custom of glorifying Sita's attempted self-immolation as a means of appeasing her husband Rama's doubts (as depicted in the epic "Ramayana").


title: Works of Rabindranath Tagore

text: In "Musalmanir Golpo", Tagore also examines Hindu-Muslim tensions, which in many ways embodies the essence of Tagore's humanism. On the other hand, "Darpaharan" exhibits Tagore's self-consciousness, describing a young man harboring literary ambitions. Though he loves his wife, he wishes to stifle her literary career, deeming it unfeminine. Tagore himself, in his youth, seems to have harbored similar ideas about women. "Darpaharan" depicts the final humbling of the man via his acceptance of his wife's talents.


title: Works of Rabindranath Tagore

text: "Jibito o Mrito", as with many other Tagore stories, provides the Bengalis with one of their more widely used epigrams: "Kadombini moriya proman korilo she more nai" ("Kadombini died, thereby proved that she hadn't").


title: Works of Rabindranath Tagore

text: Among Tagore's works, his novels are among the least-acknowledged. These include "Chokher Bali " (1903), "Noukadubi" (1906), "Gora" (1910), "Chaturanga" (1916), "Ghare Baire" (1916), "Shesher Kobita" (1929), "Jogajog" (1929) and "Char Odhyay" (1934).


title: Works of Rabindranath Tagore

text: "Ghare Baire" or "The Home and the World", which was also released as the film by Satyajit Ray ("Ghare Baire", 1984) examines rising nationalistic feeling among Indians while warning of its dangers, clearly displaying Tagore's distrust of nationalism — especially when associated with a religious element.


title: Works of Rabindranath Tagore

text: In some sense, "Gora" shares the same theme, raising questions regarding the Indian identity. As with "Ghare Baire", matters of self-identity, personal freedom, and religious belief are developed in the context of an involving family story and a love triangle.


title: Works of Rabindranath Tagore

text: "Shesher Kobita" (translated twice, as "Last Poem" and as "Farewell Song") is his most lyrical novel, containing as it does poems and rhythmic passages written by the main character (a poet).


title: Works of Rabindranath Tagore

text: Though his novels remain under-appreciated, they have recently been given new attention through many movie adaptations by such film directors as Satyajit Ray, Tapan Sinha and Tarun Majumdar. The recent among these is a version of "Chokher Bali" and "Noukadubi (2011 film)" directed by Lt. Rituparno Ghosh, which features Aishwariya Rai (in "Chokher Bali"). A favorite trope of these directors is to employ "Rabindra Sangeet" in the film adaptations' soundtracks.


title: Works of Rabindranath Tagore

text: Among Tagore's notable non-fiction books are "Europe Jatrir Patro" ("Letters from Europe") and "Manusher Dhormo" ("The Religion of Man").


title: Works of Rabindranath Tagore

text: Internationally, "Gitanjali" () is Tagore's best-known collection of poetry, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1913. Tagore was the first person (excepting Roosevelt) outside Europe to get the Nobel Prize.


title: Works of Rabindranath Tagore

text: Besides "Gitanjali", other notable works include "Manasi", "Sonar Tori" ("Golden Boat"), "Balaka" ("Wild Geese" — the title being a metaphor for migrating souls)


title: Works of Rabindranath Tagore

text: Tagore's poetic style, which proceeds from a lineage established by 15th- and 16th-century Vaishnava poets, ranges from classical formalism to the comic, visionary, and ecstatic. He was influenced by the atavistic mysticism of Vyasa and other "rishi"-authors of the Upanishads, the Bhakti-Sufi mystic Kabir, and Ramprasad Sen. Tagore's most innovative and mature poetry embodies his exposure to Bengali rural folk music, which included mystic Baul ballads such as those of the bard Lalon. These, rediscovered and repopularised by Tagore, resemble 19th-century Kartābhajā hymns that emphasise inward divinity and rebellion against bourgeois "bhadralok" religious and social orthodoxy. During his Shelaidaha years, his poems took on a lyrical voice of the "moner manush", the Bāuls' "man within the heart" and Tagore's "life force of his deep recesses", or meditating upon the "jeevan devata"—the demiurge or the "living God within". This figure connected with divinity through appeal to nature and the emotional interplay of human drama. Such tools saw use in his Bhānusiṃha poems chronicling the Radha-Krishna romance, which were repeatedly revised over the course of seventy years.


title: Works of Rabindranath Tagore

text: Tagore reacted to the halfhearted uptake of modernist and realist techniques in Bengali literature by writing matching experimental works in the 1930s. These include "Africa" and "Camalia", among the better known of his latter poems. He occasionally wrote poems using "Shadhu Bhasha", a Sanskritised dialect of Bengali; he later adopted a more popular dialect known as "Cholti Bhasha". Other works include "Manasi", "Sonar Tori" ("Golden Boat"), "Balaka" ("Wild Geese", a name redolent of migrating souls), and "Purobi". "Sonar Tori"'s most famous poem, dealing with the fleeting endurance of life and achievement, goes by the same name; hauntingly it ends: "Shunno nodir tire rohinu poŗi / Jaha chhilo loe gêlo shonar tori"—"all I had achieved was carried off on the golden boat—only I was left behind." "Gitanjali" () is Tagore's best-known collection internationally, earning him his Nobel.


title: Works of Rabindranath Tagore

text: The year 1893 AD was the turn of the century in the Bangla calendar. It was the Bangla year 1300. Tagore wrote a poem then. Its name was ‘The year 1400’. In that poem, Tagore was appealing to a new future poet, yet to be born. He urged in that poem to remember Tagore while he was reading it. He addressed it to that unknown poet who was reading it a century later.


title: Works of Rabindranath Tagore

text: Tagore's poetry has been set to music by composers: Arthur Shepherd's triptych for soprano and string quartet, Alexander Zemlinsky's famous Lyric Symphony, Josef Bohuslav Foerster's cycle of love songs, Gertrude Price Wollner's song "Poem," Leoš Janáček's famous chorus "Potulný šílenec" ("The Wandering Madman") for soprano, tenor, baritone, and male chorus—JW 4/43—inspired by Tagore's 1922 lecture in Czechoslovakia which Janáček attended, and Garry Schyman's "Praan", an adaptation of Tagore's poem "Stream of Life" from "Gitanjali". The latter was composed and recorded with vocals by Palbasha Siddique to accompany Internet celebrity Matt Harding's 2008 viral video. In 1917 his words were translated adeptly and set to music by Anglo-Dutch composer Richard Hageman to produce a highly regarded art song: "Do Not Go, My Love". The second movement of Jonathan Harvey's "One Evening" (1994) sets an excerpt beginning "As I was watching the sunrise ..." from a letter of Tagore's, this composer having previously chosen a text by the poet for his piece "Song Offerings" (1985).


title: Works of Rabindranath Tagore

text: At the time of his death, Tagore was both the most prolific composer and songwriter in history, with 2,230 songs to his credit. His songs are known as "rabindrasangit" ("Tagore Song"), which merges fluidly into his literature, most of which—poems or parts of novels, stories, or plays alike—were lyricised. Influenced by the "thumri" style of Hindustani music, they ran the entire gamut of human emotion, ranging from his early dirge-like Brahmo devotional hymns to quasi-erotic compositions. They emulated the tonal colour of classical "ragas" to varying extents. Some songs mimicked a given raga's melody and rhythm faithfully; others newly blended elements of different "ragas". Yet about nine-tenths of his work was not "bhanga gaan", the body of tunes revamped with "fresh value" from select Western, Hindustani, Bengali folk and other regional flavours "external" to Tagore's own ancestral culture. Scholars have attempted to gauge the emotive force and range of Hindustani "ragas":


title: Works of Rabindranath Tagore

text: In 1971, "Amar Shonar Bangla" became the national anthem of Bangladesh. It was written — ironically — to protest the 1905 Partition of Bengal along communal lines: cutting off the Muslim-majority East Bengal from Hindu-dominated West Bengal was to avert a regional bloodbath. Tagore saw the partition as a cunning plan to stop the independence movement, and he aimed to rekindle Bengali unity and tar communalism. "Jana Gana Mana" was written in "shadhu-bhasha", a Sanskritised register of Bengali, and is the first of five stanzas of a Brahmo hymn "Bharot Bhagyo Bidhata" that Tagore composed. It was first sung in 1911 at a Calcutta session of the Indian National Congress and was adopted in 1950 by the Constituent Assembly of the Republic of India as its national anthem. Tagore thus became the only person ever to have written the national anthems of two nations.


title: Works of Rabindranath Tagore

text: For Bengalis, the songs' appeal, stemming from the combination of emotive strength and beauty described as surpassing even Tagore's poetry, was such that the "Modern Review" observed that "[t]here is in Bengal no cultured home where Rabindranath's songs are not sung or at least attempted to be sung ... Even illiterate villagers sing his songs". A. H. Fox Strangways of "The Observer" introduced non-Bengalis to "rabindrasangit" in "The Music of Hindostan", calling it a "vehicle of a personality ... [that] go behind this or that system of music to that beauty of sound which all systems put out their hands to seize."


title: Works of Rabindranath Tagore

text: Tagore influenced "sitar" maestro Vilayat Khan and "sarodiyas" Buddhadev Dasgupta and Amjad Ali Khan. His songs are widely popular and undergird the Bengali ethos to an extent perhaps rivalling Shakespeare's impact on the English-speaking world. It is said that his songs are the outcome of five centuries of Bengali literary churning and communal yearning. Dhan Gopal Mukerji has said that these songs transcend the mundane to the aesthetic and express all ranges and categories of human emotion. The poet gave voice to all—big or small, rich or poor. The poor Ganges boatman and the rich landlord air their emotions in them. They birthed a distinctive school of music whose practitioners can be fiercely traditional: novel interpretations have drawn severe censure in both West Bengal and Bangladesh.


title: Works of Rabindranath Tagore

text: At age sixty, Tagore took up drawing and painting; successful exhibitions of his many works — which made a debut appearance in Paris upon encouragement by artists he met in the south of France — were held throughout Europe. Tagore — who likely exhibited protanopia ("color blindness"), or partial lack of (red-green, in Tagore's case) colour discernment — painted in a style characterised by peculiarities in aesthetic and colouring style. Nevertheless, Tagore took to emulating numerous styles, including scrimshaw by the Malanggan people of northern New Ireland, Papua New Guinea, Haida carvings from the Pacific Northwest region of North America, and woodcuts by the German Max Pechstein.


title: Works of Rabindranath Tagore

text: Tagore also had an artist's eye for his own handwriting, embellishing the cross-outs and word layouts in his manuscripts with simple artistic leitmotifs.


title: Works of Rabindranath Tagore

text: "Rabindra Chitravali", a 2011 four-volume book set edited by noted art historian R. Siva Kumar, for the first time makes the paintings of Tagore accessible to art historians and scholars of Rabindranth with critical annotations and comments It also brings together a selection of Rabindranath's own statements and documents relating to the presentation and reception of his paintings during his lifetime.


title: Works of Rabindranath Tagore

text: Within the 150th birth anniversary year it was conceived as three separate but similar exhibitions, and travelled simultaneously in three circuits. The first selection was shown at Museum of Asian Art, Berlin, Asia Society, New York, National Museum of Korea, Seoul, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Petit Palais, Paris, Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna, Rome, National Visual Arts Gallery (Malaysia), Kuala Lumpur, McMichael Canadian Art Collection, Ontario, National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi.


title: Spin (aerodynamics)

text: In flight dynamics a spin is a special category of stall resulting in autorotation (uncommanded roll) about the aircraft's longitudinal axis and a shallow, rotating, downward path approximately centred on a vertical axis. Spins can be entered intentionally or unintentionally, from any flight attitude if the aircraft has sufficient yaw while at the stall point.


title: Spin (aerodynamics)

text: In a normal spin, the wing on the inside of the turn stalls while the outside wing remains flying. It is possible for both wings to stall, but the angle of attack of each wing, and consequently its lift and drag, are different.


title: Spin (aerodynamics)

text: Either situation causes the aircraft to autorotate toward the stalled wing due to its higher drag and loss of lift. Spins are characterized by high angle of attack, an airspeed below the stall on at least one wing and a shallow descent. Recovery and avoiding a crash may require a specific and counter-intuitive set of actions.


title: Spin (aerodynamics)

text: A spin differs from a spiral dive, in which neither wing is stalled and which is characterized by a low angle of attack and high airspeed. A spiral dive is not a type of spin because neither wing is stalled. In a spiral dive, the aircraft responds conventionally to the pilot's inputs to the flight controls, and recovery from a spiral dive requires a different set of actions from those required to recover from a spin.


title: Spin (aerodynamics)

text: Many types of airplanes spin only if the pilot simultaneously yaws and stalls the airplane (intentionally or unintentionally). Under these circumstances, one wing stalls, or stalls more deeply than the other. The wing that stalls first drops, increasing its angle of attack and deepening the stall. At least one wing must be stalled for a spin to occur. The other wing rises, decreasing its angle of attack, and the aircraft yaws towards the more deeply stalled wing. The difference in lift between the two wings causes the aircraft to roll, and the difference in drag causes the aircraft to continue yawing.


title: Spin (aerodynamics)

text: The spin characteristics diagram shown in this section is typical of an aircraft with moderate or high aspect ratio and little or no sweepback which leads to spin motion which is primarily rolling with moderate yaw. For a low aspect ratio swept wing with relatively large yaw and pitch inertia the diagram will be different and illustrates a predominance of yaw.


title: Spin (aerodynamics)

text: One common scenario that can lead to an unintentional spin is a skidding uncoordinated turn toward the runway during the landing sequence. A pilot who is overshooting the turn to final approach may be tempted to apply more rudder to increase the rate of turn. The result is twofold: the nose of the airplane drops below the horizon, and the bank angle increases due to rudder roll. Reacting to these unintended changes, the pilot then begins to pull the elevator control aft (thus increasing the angle of attack and load factor) while applying opposite aileron to decrease bank angle.


title: Spin (aerodynamics)

text: Taken to its extreme, this can result in an uncoordinated turn with sufficient angle of attack to cause the aircraft to stall. This is called a "cross-control stall", and is very dangerous if it happens at low altitude where the pilot has little time to recover. To avoid this scenario, pilots learn the importance of always making coordinated turns. They may simply choose to make the final turn earlier and shallower to prevent an overshoot of the runway center line and provide a larger margin of safety. Certificated, light, single-engine airplanes must meet specific criteria regarding stall and spin behavior. Spins are often entered intentionally for training, flight testing, or aerobatics.


title: Spin (aerodynamics)

text: In aircraft that are capable of recovering from a spin, the spin has four phases. Some aircraft are difficult or impossible to recover from a spin, especially a flat spin. At low altitude, spin recovery may also be impossible before impacting terrain, making low and slow aircraft especially vulnerable to spin-related accidents.


title: Spin (aerodynamics)

text: The U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has defined four different modes of spinning. These four modes are defined by the angle of attack of the airflow on the wing.


title: Spin (aerodynamics)

text: During the 1970s NASA used its spin tunnel at the Langley Research Center to investigate the spinning characteristics of single-engine general aviation airplane designs. A 1/11-scale model was used with nine different tail designs.


title: Spin (aerodynamics)

text: Some tail designs that caused inappropriate spin characteristics had two stable spin modes—one steep or moderately steep; and another that was either moderately flat or flat. Recovery from the flatter of the two modes was usually less reliable or impossible. The further aft that the center of gravity was located the flatter the spin and the less reliable the recovery. For all tests, the center of gravity of the model was at either 14.5% of mean aerodynamic chord (MAC) or 25.5% of MAC.


title: Spin (aerodynamics)

text: Single-engine airplane types certified in the normal category must be demonstrated to recover from a spin of at least one turn, while single-engine aircraft certified in the utility category must demonstrate a six turn spin that cannot be unrecoverable at any time during the spin due to pilot action or aerodynamic characteristic. NASA recommends various tail configurations and other strategies to eliminate the flatter of the two spin modes and make recovery from the steeper mode more reliable.


title: Spin (aerodynamics)

text: In aviation's early days, spins were poorly understood and often fatal. Proper recovery procedures were unknown, and a pilot's instinct to pull back on the stick served only to make a spin worse. Because of this, the spin earned a reputation as an unpredictable danger that might snatch an aviator's life at any time, and against which there was no defense. In early aviation, individual pilots explored spins by performing ad-hoc experiments (often accidentally), and aerodynamicists examined the phenomenon. Lincoln Beachey was able to exit spins at will, according to Harry Bruno in "Wings over America" (1944).


title: Spin (aerodynamics)

text: In August 1912, Lieutenant Wilfred Parke RN became the first aviator to recover from an accidental spin when his Avro Type G biplane entered a spin at AGL in the traffic pattern at Larkhill. Parke attempted to recover from the spin by increasing engine speed, pulling back on the stick, and turning into the spin, with no effect. The aircraft descended , and horrified observers expected a fatal crash. Though disabled by centrifugal forces, Parke still sought an escape. In an effort to neutralize the forces pinning him against the right side of the cockpit, he applied full right rudder, and the aircraft leveled out above the ground. With the aircraft now under control, Parke climbed, made another approach, and landed safely.


title: Spin (aerodynamics)

text: In spite of the discovery of "Parke's technique", spin-recovery procedures were not a routine part of pilot training until well into World War I. The first documented case of an intentional spin and recovery is that of Harry Hawker. In the summer of 1914, Hawker recovered from an intentional spin over Brooklands, England, by centralizing the controls. Russian aviator Konstantin Artseulov, having independently discovered a recovery technique, somewhat different from Parke's and Hawker's, on the frontlines, demonstrated it in a dramatic display over the Kacha flight school's airfield on September 24, 1916, intentionally driving his Nieuport 21 into a spin and recovering from it twice. Later, Artseulov, at the time an instructor at the school, went on to teach this technique to all of his students, quickly disseminating it among the Russian aviators and beyond.


title: Spin (aerodynamics)

text: In 1917, the English physicist Frederick Lindemann conducted a series of experiments in a B.E.2E that led to the first understanding of the aerodynamics of the spin. In Britain, starting in 1917, spin recovery procedures were routinely taught by flight instructors at the Gosport School of Special Flying, while in France, at the School of Acrobacy and Combat, Americans who had volunteered to serve in the famous Lafayette Escadrille were by July 1917 learning how to do what the French called a "vrille".


title: Spin (aerodynamics)

text: During the 1920s and 1930s, before night-flying instruments were commonly available on small aircraft, pilots were often instructed to enter a spin deliberately to avoid the much more dangerous graveyard spiral when they suddenly found themselves enveloped in clouds, hence losing visual reference to the ground. In almost every circumstance, the cloud deck ends above ground level, giving the pilot a reasonable chance to recover from the spin before crashing.


title: Spin (aerodynamics)

text: Today, spin training is not required for private pilot certification in the United States; added to this, most training type aircraft are placarded "intentional spins prohibited". Some model Cessna 172's are certified for spinning, although they can be difficult to actually get into a spin. Generally, though, spin training is undertaken in an "Unusual attitude recovery course" or as a part of an aerobatics endorsement (though not all countries actually require training for aerobatics). However, understanding and being able to recover from spins is certainly a skill that a fixed-wing pilot could learn for safety. It is routinely given as part of the training in sailplanes, since gliders often operate slowly enough to be in near-stall conditions while turning. Because of this, in the U.S. demonstration of spin entry and recovery is still expected of glider instructor certification. Also, before their initial certifications both airplane and glider instructors need a logbook endorsement of proficiency in spin training which, under Federal Aviation Regulations 61.183(i), may be given by another instructor. In Canada, spins are a mandatory exercise to get the private and commercial pilot licenses; Canadian recreational pilot permit candidates (1 level below private pilot license) must do a stall and wing drop (the very beginning of the entry to a spin) and must recover from a stall and wing drop as part of training.


title: Spin (aerodynamics)

text: Some aircraft cannot be recovered from a spin using only their own flight control surfaces and must not be allowed to enter a spin under any circumstances. If an aircraft has not been certified for spin recovery, it should be assumed that spins are not recoverable and are unsafe in that aircraft. Important safety equipment, such as stall/spin recovery parachutes, which generally are not installed on production aircraft, are used during testing and certification of aircraft for spins and spin recovery.


title: Spin (aerodynamics)

text: Spin-entry procedures vary with the type and model of aircraft being flown but there are general procedures applicable to most aircraft. These include reducing power to idle and simultaneously raising the nose to induce an upright stall. Then, as the aircraft approaches stall, apply full rudder in the desired spin direction while holding full back-elevator pressure for an upright spin. Sometimes a roll input is applied in the direction opposite of the rudder (i.e., a cross-control).


title: Spin (aerodynamics)

text: If the aircraft manufacturer provides a specific procedure for spin recovery, that procedure must be used. Otherwise, to recover from an upright spin, the following generic procedure may be used: Power is first reduced to idle and the ailerons are neutralized. Then, full opposite rudder (that is, against the yaw) is added and held to counteract the spin rotation, and the elevator control is moved briskly forward to reduce the angle of attack below the critical angle. Depending on the airplane and type of spin, the elevator action could be a minimal input before rotation ceases, or in other cases the pilot may have to move the elevator control to its full forward position to effect recovery from the upright spin. Once the rotation has stopped, the rudder must be neutralized and the airplane returned to level flight. This procedure is sometimes called PARE, for "P"ower idle, "A"ilerons neutral, "R"udder opposite the spin and held, and "E"levator through neutral.


title: Spin (aerodynamics)

text: The mnemonic "PARE" simply reinforces the tried-and-true NASA standard spin recovery actions—the very same actions first prescribed by NACA in 1936, verified by NASA during an intensive, decade-long spin test program overlapping the 1970s and '80s, and repeatedly recommended by the FAA and implemented by the majority of test pilots during certification spin-testing of light airplanes.


title: Spin (aerodynamics)

text: Inverted spinning and erect or upright spinning are dynamically very similar and require essentially the same recovery process but use opposite elevator control. In an upright spin, both roll and yaw are in the same direction, but an inverted spin is composed of opposing roll and yaw. It is crucial that the yaw be countered to effect recovery. The visual field in a typical spin (as opposed to a flat spin) is heavily dominated by the perception of roll over yaw, which can lead to an incorrect and dangerous conclusion that a given inverted spin is actually an erect spin in the reverse yaw direction (leading to a recovery attempt in which pro-spin rudder is mistakenly applied and then further exacerbated by holding the incorrect elevator input).


title: Spin (aerodynamics)

text: In some aircraft that spin readily upright and inverted, such as Pitts- and Christen Eagle-type high-performance aerobatic aircraft, an alternative spin-recovery technique may effect recovery as well, namely: Power off, Hands off the stick/yoke, Rudder full opposite to the spin (or more simply "push the rudder pedal that is hardest to push") and held (aka the Mueller/Beggs technique). An advantage of the Mueller/Beggs technique is that no knowledge of whether the spin is erect or inverted is required during what can be a very stressful and disorienting time. Even though this method does work in a specific subset of spin-approved airplanes, the NASA Standard/PARE procedure can also be effective provided that care must be taken to ensure the spin does not simply cross from positive to negative (or vice versa) and that a too-rapid application of elevator control is avoided as it may cause aerodynamic blanketing of the rudder rendering the control ineffective and simply accelerate the spin. The converse, however, may not be true at all—many cases exist where Beggs/Mueller fails to recover the airplane from the spin, but NASA Standard/PARE terminates the spin. Before spinning any aircraft, a pilot should consult the flight manual to establish if the particular aircraft type has any specific spin recovery techniques that differ from standard practice.


title: Spin (aerodynamics)

text: A pilot can induce a flat spin once the spin is established by applying full opposite aileron to the direction of rotation—hence, the requirement to neutralize ailerons in the normal spin recovery technique. The aileron application creates a differential induced drag that raises the nose toward a level pitch attitude. As the nose comes up the tail moves out farther from the center of rotation increasing lateral airflow over the empennage. The increase in lateral flow across the vertical stabilizer/rudder brings it to its critical angle of attack stalling it. The normal recovery input of opposite rudder further increases angle of attack, deepening the tail stall and so rudder input is ineffective to slow/stop rotation. Recovery is initiated by maintaining pro-spin elevator and rudder and applying full aileron into the spin. Differential drag now lowers the nose returning the plane to a normal spin from which the PARE technique is used to exit the maneuver. **


title: Spin (aerodynamics)

text: Although entry techniques are similar, modern military fighter aircraft often tend to require yet another variation on spin recovery techniques. While power is still typically reduced to idle thrust and pitch control neutralized, opposite rudder is almost never used. Adverse yaw created by the rolling surfaces (ailerons, differential horizontal tails, etc.) of such aircraft is often more effective in arresting the spin rotation than the rudder(s), which usually become blanked by the wing and fuselage due to the geometric arrangement of fighters. Hence, the preferred recover technique has a pilot applying full roll control in the direction of the rotation ("i.e.", a right-hand spin requires a right stick input), generally remembered as "stick into the spin". Likewise, this control application is reversed for inverted spins.


title: Spin (aerodynamics)

text: The characteristics of an airplane with respect to spinning are significantly influenced by the position of the center of gravity. In general terms, the further forward the center of gravity the less readily the airplane will spin, and the more readily it can recover from a spin. Conversely, the further aft the center of gravity the more readily the airplane will spin, and the less readily it can recover from a spin. In any airplane, the forward and aft limits on center of gravity are carefully defined. In some airplanes that are approved for intentional spinning, the aft limit at which spins may be attempted is not as far aft as the aft limit for general flying. Intentional spinning should not be attempted casually, and the most important pre-flight precaution is to determine that the airplane's center of gravity is within the range approved for intentional spinning. For this reason, pilots should first determine what "tendency" the airplane has before it stalls. If the tendency is to pitch down (nose-heavy) when it stalls, then the aircraft is likely to recover on its own. However, if the tendency is to pitch up (tail-heavy) when it stalls, the aircraft will likely transition into a "flat-spin" where stall recovery would be delayed, or it may not be recoverable at all.


title: Spin (aerodynamics)

text: One method recommended before practicing spins, is to determine the aircraft's stall tendency by doing a "pitch test." To do this, slowly reduce power to idle and see which way the nose pitches. If it pitches down, then the aircraft is stall recoverable. If the nose pitches up, then the stall would be difficult to recover or altogether unrecoverable. The "pitch test" should be done just prior to performing a spin maneuver.


title: Spin (aerodynamics)

text: If the center of gravity of the airplane is behind the aft limit approved for spinning, any spin may prove unrecoverable except by using some special spin-recovery device such as a spin-recovery parachute specially installed in the tail of the airplane; or by jettisoning specially installed ballast at the tail of the airplane.


title: Spin (aerodynamics)

text: Some World War II airplanes were notoriously prone to spins when loaded erroneously; for example, the Bell P-39 Airacobra. The P-39 was an unusual design with the engine behind the pilot's seat and a large cannon in the front. Without ammunition or a counterbalance load in the nose compartment, the P-39's center of gravity was too far aft to recover from a spin. Soviet pilots did numerous tests of the P-39 and were able to demonstrate its dangerous spinning characteristics.


title: Spin (aerodynamics)

text: Modern fighter aircraft are not immune to the phenomenon of unrecoverable spin characteristics. Another example of a nonrecoverable spin occurred in 1963, with Chuck Yeager at the controls of the NF-104A rocket-jet hybrid: during his fourth attempt at setting an altitude record, Yeager lost control and entered a spin, then ejected and survived. On the other hand, the Cornfield Bomber was a case where the ejection of the pilot shifted the center of gravity enough to let the now-empty aircraft self-recover from a spin and land itself.


title: Spin (aerodynamics)

text: In purpose-built aerobatic aircraft, spins may be intentionally flattened through the application of power and aileron within a normal spin. Rotation rates experienced are dramatic and can exceed 400 degrees per second in an attitude that may even have the nose above the horizon. Such maneuvers must be performed with the center of gravity in the normal range and with appropriate training, and consideration should be given to the extreme gyroscopic forces generated by the propeller and exerted on the crankshaft. The current Guinness world record for the number of consecutive inverted flat spins is 98, set by Spencer Suderman on March 20, 2016 flying an experimental variant of the Pitts S-1 designated the Sunbird S-1x. Suderman started from an altitude of and recovered at .


title: Spin (aerodynamics)

text: For safety, all certificated, single-engine fixed-wing aircraft, including certificated gliders, must meet specified criteria regarding stall and spin behavior. Complying designs typically have a wing with greater angle of attack at the wing root than at the wing tip, so that the wing root stalls first, reducing the severity of the wing drop at the stall and possibly also allowing the ailerons to remain somewhat effective until the stall migrates outward toward the wing tip. One method of tailoring such stall behavior is known as washout. Some designers of recreational aircraft seek to develop an aircraft that is characteristically incapable of spinning, even in an uncoordinated stall.


title: Spin (aerodynamics)

text: Some airplanes have been designed with fixed leading edge slots. Where the slots are located ahead of the ailerons, they provide strong resistance to stalling and may even leave the airplane incapable of spinning.


title: Spin (aerodynamics)

text: The flight control systems of some gliders and recreational aircraft are designed so that when the pilot moves the elevator control close to its fully aft position, as in low speed flight and flight at high angle of attack, the trailing edges of both ailerons are automatically raised slightly so that the angle of attack is reduced at the outboard regions of both wings. This necessitates an increase in angle of attack at the inboard (center) regions of the wing, and promotes stalling of the inboard regions well before the wing tips.


title: Spin (aerodynamics)

text: A US certification standard for civil airplanes up to maximum takeoff weight is Part 23 of the Federal Aviation Regulations, applicable to airplanes in the normal, utility and acrobatic categories. Part 23, §23.221 requires that single-engine airplanes must demonstrate recovery from either a one-turn spin if intentional spins are prohibited or six-turn spins if intentional spins are approved. Even large, passenger-carrying single-engine airplanes like the Cessna Caravan must be subjected to one-turn spins by a test pilot and repeatedly demonstrated to recover within no more than one additional turn. With a small number of airplane types the FAA has made a finding of equivalent level of safety (ELOS) so that demonstration of a one-turn spin is not necessary. For example, this has been done with the Cessna Corvalis and the Cirrus SR20/22. Successful demonstration of the one-turn spin does not get an airplane approved for intentional spinning. To get an airplane approved for intentional spinning, a test pilot must repeatedly subject it to a spin of six turns and then demonstrate recovery within one and a half additional turns. Spin testing is a potentially hazardous exercise, and the test aircraft must be equipped with some spin-recovery device such as a tail parachute, jettisonable ballast, or some method of rapidly moving the center of gravity forward.


title: Spin (aerodynamics)

text: Agricultural airplanes are typically certificated in the normal category at a moderate weight. For single-engine airplanes this requires successful demonstration of the one-turn spin. However, with the agriculture hopper full these airplanes are not intended to be spun, and recovery is unlikely. For this reason, at weights above the maximum for the normal category, these airplanes are not subjected to spin testing and, as a consequence, can only be type certificated in the restricted category. As an example of an agricultural airplane, see the Cessna AG series.


title: Spin (aerodynamics)

text: To make some sailplanes spin easily for training purposes or demonstrations, a spin kit is available from the manufacturer.


title: Spin (aerodynamics)

text: Many training aircraft may appear resistant to entering a spin, even though some are intentionally designed and certified for spins. A well-known example of an aircraft designed to spin readily is the Piper Tomahawk, which is certified for spins, though the Piper Tomahawk's spin characteristics remain controversial. Aircraft that are not certified for spins may be difficult or impossible to recover once the spin exceeds the one-turn certification standard.


title: Spin (aerodynamics)

text: Though spinning has been removed from most flight training courses, some countries still require flight training on spin recovery. The U.S. requires spin training for civilian flight instructor candidates and military pilots. A spin occurs only after a stall, so the FAA emphasizes training pilots in stall recognition, prevention, and recovery as a means to reduce accidents due to unintentional stalls or spins.


title: Spin (aerodynamics)

text: A spin is often intimidating to the uninitiated, however many pilots trained in spin entry and recovery find that the experience builds awareness and confidence. In a spin, the occupants of the airplane only feel reduced gravity during the entry phase and then experience normal gravity, except that the extreme nose-down attitude presses the occupants forward against their restraint harnesses. The rapid rotation, combined with the nose-down attitude, results in a visual effect called "ground flow" that can be disorienting.


title: Spin (aerodynamics)

text: The recovery procedure from a spin requires using rudder to stop the rotation, then elevator to reduce angle of attack to stop the stall, then pulling out of the dive without exceeding the maximum permitted airspeed (VNE) or maximum G loading. The maximum G loading for a light airplane in the normal category is usually 3.8 G. For a light airplane in the acrobatic category it is usually at least 6 G.


title: Variability hypothesis

text: The variability hypothesis, also known as the greater male variability hypothesis, is the hypothesis that males generally display greater variability in traits than females do.


title: Variability hypothesis

text: It has often been discussed in relation to human cognitive ability, where some studies appear to show that males are more likely than females to have either very high or very low IQ test scores. In this context, there is controversy over whether such sex-based differences in the variability of intelligence exist, and if so, whether they are caused by genetic differences, environmental conditioning, or a mixture of both.


title: Variability hypothesis

text: Sex-differences in variability have been observed in many abilities and traits –– including physical, psychological and genetic ones –– across a wide range of sexually dimorphic species.


title: Variability hypothesis

text: The notion of greater male variability — at least in respect to physical characteristics — can be traced back to the writings of Charles Darwin. When he expounded his theory of sexual selection in "The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex," Darwin cites some observations made by his contemporaries. For example, he highlights findings from the Novara Expedition of 1861–67 where "a vast number of measurements of various parts of the body in different races were made, and the men were found in almost every case to present a greater range of variation than the women" (p. 275). To Darwin, the evidence from the medical community at the time, which suggested a greater prevalence of physical abnormalities among men than women, was also indicative of men's greater physical variability.


title: Variability hypothesis

text: Although Darwin was curious about sex differences in variability throughout the animal kingdom, variability in humans was not a chief concern of his research. The first scholar to carry out a detailed empirical investigation on the question of human sex differences in variability in both physical and mental faculties, was the sexologist Havelock Ellis. In his 1894 publication "Man and Woman: A Study of Human Secondary Sexual Characters", Ellis dedicated an entire chapter to the subject, entitled “"The Variational Tendency of Men"”. In this chapter he posits that "“both the physical and mental characters of men show wider limits of variation than do the physical and mental characters of women”" (p. 358). Ellis documents several studies that support this assertion (see pp. 360–367), and


title: Variability hypothesis

text: The publication of Ellis's "Man and Woman" led to an intellectual dispute about the variability hypothesis between Ellis and the renowned statistician Karl Pearson, whose critique of Ellis's work was both theoretical and methodological. After Pearson dismissed Ellis's conclusions, he then "presented his own data to show that it was the female who was more variable than the male" Ellis wrote a letter to Pearson thanking him for the criticisms which would allow him to present his arguments "more clearly & precisely than before", but did not yield his position regarding greater male variability.


title: Variability hypothesis

text: Support for the greater male variability hypothesis grew during the early part of the 20th century. During this period, the attention of researchers shifted towards studying variability in mental abilities partly due to the advent of standardised mental tests (see the history of the Intelligence quotient), which made it possible to examine intelligence with greater objectivity and precision.


title: Variability hypothesis

text: One advocate of greater male variability during this time was the American psychologist Edward Thorndike, one of the leading exponents of mental testing who played an instrumental role in the development of today's Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery ASVAB. In his 1906 publication "Sex in Education", Thorndike argued that while mean level sex differences in intellectual ability appeared to be negligible, sex differences in variability were clear. Other influential proponents of the hypothesis at this time were psychologists G. Stanley Hall and James McKeen Cattell. Thorndike believed that variability in intelligence could have a biological basis and suggested that this could have important implications for achievement and pedagogy. For example, he postulated that greater male variation could mean "eminence and leadership of the world's affairs of whatever sort will inevitably belong oftener to men." In addition, since the number of women that fall within the extreme top-end of the intelligence distribution would be inherently smaller, he suggested that educational resources should be invested in preparing women for roles and occupations that require only a mediocre level of cognitive ability.


title: Variability hypothesis

text: By examining the case records of 1,000 patients at the Clearing House for Mental Defectives, Leta Hollingworth determined that, although men outnumbered women in the clearing house, the ratio of men to women decreased with age. Hollingworth explained this to be the result of men facing greater societal expectations than women. Consequently, deficiencies in men were often detected at an earlier age, while similar deficiencies in women might not be detected because less was expected of them. Therefore, deficiencies in women would be required to be more pronounced than those in men in order to be detected at similar ages.


title: Variability hypothesis

text: Hollingworth also attacked the variability hypothesis theoretically, criticizing the underlying logic of the hypothesis. Hollingworth argued that the variability hypothesis was flawed because: (1) it had not been empirically established that men were more anatomically variable than women, (2) even if greater anatomical variability in men were established this would not necessarily mean that men were also more variable in mental traits, (3) even if it were established that men were more variable in mental traits this would not automatically mean that men were innately more variable, (4) variability is not significant in and of itself, but rather depends on what the variability consists of, and (5) that any possible differences in variability between men and women must also be understood with reference to the fact that women lack the opportunity to achieve eminence because of their prescribed societal and cultural roles. Additionally, the argument that great variability automatically meant greater range was criticized by Hollingworth.


title: Variability hypothesis

text: In an attempt to examine the validity of the variability hypothesis, while avoiding intervening social and cultural factors, Hollingworth gathered data on birth weight and length of 1,000 male and 1,000 female newborns. This research found virtually no difference in the variability of male and female infants, and it was concluded that if variability "favoured" any sex it was the female sex. Additionally, along with the anthropologist Robert Lowie, Hollingworth published a review of literature from anatomical, physiological, and cross-cultural studies, in which no objective evidence was found to support the idea of innate female inferiority.


title: Variability hypothesis

text: The 21st century has witnessed a resurgence of research on gender differences in variability, with most of the emphasis on humans. The results vary based on the type of problem, but some recent studies have found that the variability hypothesis is true for parts of IQ tests, with more men falling at the extremes of the distribution. Publications differ as to the extent and distribution of male variability, including on whether variability can be shown across various cultural and social factors.


title: Variability hypothesis

text: A 2007 meta-analysis found that males are more variable on most measures of quantitative and visuospatial ability, making no conclusions of its causation.


title: Variability hypothesis

text: A 2008 analysis of test scores across 41 countries published in "Science" concluded that "data shows a higher variance in boys' than girls' results on mathematics and reading tests in most OECD countries", the results implying that "gender differences in the variance of test scores are an international phenomenon". However, it also found that several countries failed to exhibit a gender difference in variance.


title: Variability hypothesis

text: A 2009 study in developmental psychology examined non-cognitive traits including blood parameters and birth weight as well as certain cognitive traits, and concluded that “greater intrasex phenotype variability in males than in females is a fundamental aspect of the gender differences in humans”.


title: Variability hypothesis

text: Recent studies indicate that greater male variability in mathematics persists in the U.S., although the ratio of boys to girls at the top end of the distribution is reversed in Asian Americans. A 2010 meta-analysis of 242 studies found that males have an 8% greater variance in mathematical abilities than females, which the authors indicate is not meaningfully different from an equal variance. Additionally, they find several datasets indicate no or a reversed variance ratio.


title: Variability hypothesis

text: A 2014 review found that males tend to have higher variance on mathematical and verbal abilities but females tend to have higher variance on fear and emotionality; however, the differences in variance are small and without much practical significance and the causes remain unknown. A 2005 meta-analyses found greater female variability on the standard Raven's Progressive Matrices, and no difference in variability on the advanced progressive matrices, but also found that males had a higher average general intelligence. This meta analysis, however, was criticized for bias by the authors and for poor methodology.


title: Variability hypothesis

text: A 2016 study by Baye and Monseur examining twelve databases from the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement and the Program for International Student Assessment, were used to analyse gender differences within an international perspective from 1995 to 2015, and concluded, "The 'greater male variability hypothesis' is confirmed." This study found that on average, boys showed 14% greater variance than girls in science, reading, and math test scores. In reading, boys were significantly represented at the bottom of score distribution, whereas for maths and science they featured more at the top.


title: Variability hypothesis

text: The results of Baye and Monseur have been both replicated and criticized in a 2019 meta-analytical extension published by Helen Gray and her associates, which broadly confirmed that variability is greater for males internationally but that there is significant heterogeneity between countries. They also found that policies leading to greater female participation in the workforce tended to increase female variability and, therefore, decrease the variability gap. They also point out that Baye and Monseur had themselves observed a lack of international consistency, leading more support to a cultural hypothesis.


title: Variability hypothesis

text: A 2018 meta analysis of over 1 million individuals failed to find consistent evidence for greater male variability, concluding that "Simulations of these differences suggest the top 10% of a class contains equal numbers of girls and boys in STEM, but more girls in non-STEM subjects." However, in the analysis the datasets from universities were discarded as they were considered possibly biased and insufficient. Instead only data from schools was used for the analysis.


title: Variability hypothesis

text: In October 2020, with respect to brain morphometry, researchers reported "the largest-ever mega-analysis of sex differences in variability of brain structure"; they stated that they "observed significant patterns of greater male than female between-subject variance for all subcortical volumetric measures, all cortical surface area measures, and 60% of cortical thickness measures. This pattern was stable across the lifespan for 50% of the subcortical structures, 70% of the regional area measures, and nearly all regions for thickness." The authors emphasize, however, that this has of yet no practical interpretive meaning, says nothing on causation, and requires further examination and replication.


title: Variability hypothesis

text: In 2021, two meta-analyses on preference measurement in experimental economics find strong evidence for greater male variability for cooperation (variance ratio: 1.30, 95% CI [1.22, 1.38]), time preferences (1.15, [1.08, 1.22]), risk preferences (1.25 [1.13, 1.37]), dictator game offers (1.18 [1.12, 1.25]) and transfers in the trust game (1.28 [1.18, 1.39]).


title: Variability hypothesis

text: The variability hypothesis has continued to spur controversy within academic circles. One of the most prominent incidents occurred in 2005 when then Harvard President, Larry Summers, addressed the National Bureau of Economic Research Conference on the subject of gender diversity in the science and engineering professions, saying: "It does appear that on many, many different human attributes –– height, weight, propensity for criminality, overall IQ, mathematical ability, scientific ability –– there is relatively clear evidence that whatever the difference in means –– which can be debated –– there is a difference in the standard deviation, and variability of a male and a female population." His remarks caused a backlash; Summers faced a non-confidence vote from the Harvard faculty, prompting his resignation as President.


title: Levitation (paranormal)

text: Levitation or transvection in the paranormal context is the rising of a human body and other objects into the air by mystical means. While believed by some in certain religious and New Age communities to occur as a result of supernatural, psychic or "energetic" phenomena, there is no scientific evidence of levitation ever occurring, and alleged cases of levitation can usually be explained by natural causes such as trickery, illusion, and hallucination.


title: Levitation (paranormal)

text: Various religions have claimed examples of levitation amongst their followers. This is generally used either as a demonstration of the validity or power of the religion, or as evidence of the holiness or adherence to the religion of the particular levitator.


title: Levitation (paranormal)

text: Many mediums have claimed to have levitated during séances, especially in the 19th century in Britain and America. Many have been shown to be frauds, using wires and stage magic tricks. Daniel Dunglas Home, a prolific and well-documented levitator of himself and other objects, was said by spiritualists to levitate outside of a window. Skeptics have disputed such claims. The researchers Joseph McCabe and Trevor H. Hall exposed the "levitation" of Home as nothing more than him moving across a connecting ledge between two iron balconies.


title: Levitation (paranormal)

text: The magician Joseph Rinn gave a full account of fraudulent behavior observed in a séance of Eusapia Palladino and explained how her levitation trick had been performed. Milbourne Christopher summarized the exposure:


title: Levitation (paranormal)

text: The levitation trick of the medium Jack Webber was exposed by the magician Julien Proskauer. According to Proskauer he would use a telescopic reaching rod attached to a trumpet to levitate objects in the séance room. The physicist Edmund Edward Fournier d'Albe investigated the medium Kathleen Goligher at many sittings and concluded that no paranormal phenomena such as levitation had occurred with Goligher and stated he had found evidence of fraud. D'Albe had claimed the ectoplasm substance in the photographs of Goligher from her séances were made from muslin.


title: Levitation (paranormal)

text: A person photographed while bouncing may appear to be levitating. This optical illusion is used by religious groups and by spiritualist mediums, claiming that their meditation techniques allow them to levitate in the air. Usually telltale signs can be found in the photography indicating that the subject was in the act of bouncing, like blurry body parts, a flailing scarf, hair being suspended in the air, etc.


title: Semantic change

text: Semantic change (also semantic shift, semantic progression, semantic development, or semantic drift) is a form of language change regarding the evolution of word usage—usually to the point that the modern meaning is radically different from the original usage. In diachronic (or historical) linguistics, semantic change is a change in one of the meanings of a word. Every word has a variety of senses and connotations, which can be added, removed, or altered over time, often to the extent that cognates across space and time have very different meanings. The study of semantic change can be seen as part of etymology, onomasiology, semasiology, and semantics.


title: Semantic change

text: Recent overviews have been presented by Blank and . Semantic change has attracted academic discussions since ancient times, although the first major works emerged in the 19th century with , , and . Studies beyond the analysis of single words have been started with the word-field analyses of , who claimed that every semantic change of a word would also affect all other words in a lexical field. His approach was later refined by . introduced Generative semantics. More recent works including pragmatic and cognitive theories are those in , Dirk Geeraerts, and .


title: Semantic change

text: A chronological list of typologies is presented below. Today, the most currently used typologies are those by and .


title: Semantic change

text: Reisig's ideas for a classification were published posthumously. He resorts to classical rhetorics and distinguishes between


title: Semantic change

text: The last two are defined as change between whole and part, which would today be rendered as "synecdoche".


title: Semantic change

text: This classification does not neatly distinguish between processes and forces/causes of semantic change.


title: Semantic change

text: Blank considered it problematic to include amelioration and pejoration of meaning (as in Ullman) as well as strengthening and weakening of meaning (as in Bloomfield). According to Blank, these are not objectively classifiable phenomena; moreover, Blank has argued that all of the examples listed under these headings can be grouped under other phenomena, rendering the categories redundant.


title: Semantic change

text: Blank has tried to create a complete list of motivations for semantic change. They can be summarized as:


title: Semantic change

text: A specific case of semantic change is reappropriation, a cultural process by which a group reclaims words or artifacts that were previously used in a way disparaging of that group, for example like with the word queer. Other related processes include pejoration and amelioration.


title: Semantic change

text: Apart from many individual studies, etymological dictionaries are prominent reference books for finding out about semantic changes. A recent survey lists practical tools and online systems for investigating semantic change of words over time. WordEvolutionStudy is an academic platform that takes arbitrary words as input to generate summary views of their evolution based on Google Books ngram dataset and the Corpus of Historical American English.


title: Cities of London and Westminster (UK Parliament constituency)

text: Cities of London and Westminster (also known as City of London and Westminster South from 1974 to 1997) is a constituency returning a single Member of Parliament (MP) to the House of Commons in the United Kingdom Parliament. It is a borough constituency for the purposes of election expenses and type of returning officer. As with all constituencies, the election is decided using the first past the post system of election. Since its creation at the 1950 general election, the constituency has always elected the candidate nominated by the Conservative Party.


text: Before 1950 the City of London formed a two-member constituency on its own. The Boundary Commission for England began reviewing constituencies in January 1946 using rules defined under the Representation of the People Act 1944, which excluded the City of London from the redistribution procedure; the Commission recommended that the borough of Chelsea and the City of Westminster form a single Parliamentary Borough of Chelsea and Westminster with two divisions.


text: In February 1948 the Government brought forward a new Representation of the People Bill which removed the right of owners of business premises to a second vote; this would have had the effect of reducing the electorate of the City of London from 12,500 to 4,600. The Bill proposed also to end the City of London as a separate constituency and to merge it with the adjacent boroughs of Finsbury and Shoreditch. During debates on the Bill, the Government amended it to substitute a link between the City of London and the City of Westminster. In introducing the amendment the Home Secretary James Chuter Ede noted that the alterations to the constituencies in Westminster, Chelsea and Kensington had been agreed unanimously at a conference between the Members of Parliament and representatives of the boroughs affected.


text: No alteration was made by the First Periodical Report on constituency boundaries in 1954. In the Second Periodical Report in 1969, the Boundary Commission wrote that their initial feelings were that "except for a minor alteration to follow a new ward boundary" they felt that there was "no reason to disturb" the constituency, and they received no objections to this proposal. Westminster City Council later suggested that the constituency could be more accurately named as 'The City of London and Westminster South'; the Boundary Commission found opinion divided and left the name unchanged when it published revised proposals for two other constituencies within the city. Subsequent representations on the name were received and the Commission decided that, although justified on historical grounds, the name was "not now entirely accurate" and so proposed the renaming as suggested by the City Council.


text: In initial proposals during the Third Periodical Review (1983), the Boundary Commission proposed to abolish the St Marylebone constituency and add four wards from it (Cavendish, Baker Street, Bryanston and Regents Park) to the previous City of London and Westminster South constituency; they provisionally named the result 'The City of London and Westminster'. After a local inquiry, the Regents Park ward was removed, and Hyde Park ward (from the Paddington constituency) was added; unanimous opinion at the inquiry favoured naming the result 'The City of London and Westminster South'.


text: For the Fourth Periodical Review (1995), the Boundary Commission paired the City of Westminster with the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea for consideration. The commission's initial proposals, to expand the constituency by two wards (Bayswater and Lancaster Gate) formerly in Westminster North and to return to the name 'Cities of London and Westminster', were upheld after a local inquiry, despite multiple counter-proposals.


text: At the Fifth Periodical Review (in 2007), the initial proposals of the Boundary Commission paired the City of Westminster with the London Borough of Brent although they involved only minor changes to the Cities of London and Westminster constituency to take account of new ward boundaries. Widespread objections ("almost universal hostility") to the pairing led to a local inquiry, which decided that Westminster and the City of London should be reviewed separately and not paired with any other borough. The Commission proposed a new Cities of London and Westminster constituency in which the revised Bayswater and Lancaster Gate wards were removed.


text: Early proposals made during the initial stages of the postponed Sixth Periodic Review of Westminster constituencies proposed linking the City of London to the southern wards of Islington in a constituency to be known as "The City of London and Islington South". Most of the Westminster wards were proposed to form part of a Westminster and Kensington constituency. This proposal was the first to suggest a split between the two Cities in Parliamentary elections since they were joined and proved unpopular in consultation; the Boundary Commission revised them to return the link between the City of London and the City of Westminster, although the review was subsequently placed on hiatus.


text: In 2016, the Boundary Commission produced a second attempt at the Sixth Periodic Review. Its proposed Cities of London and Westminster comprises the City attached to Regent's Park and Abbey Road to the north-west, Knightsbridge/Belgravia to the west, and Holborn/Covent Garden to the north.


text: Although united for Parliamentary elections, in the London Assembly, the City of London is covered by the City and East constituency, and the area in Westminster by the West Central constituency. The Local Government Commission for England argued that "combining the City of London with areas to its east could assist in focussing regeneration eastwards" and linked it with the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, the London Borough of Newham, and the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham.


text: 1950–1974: From the Metropolitan Borough of Westminster: Charing Cross, Covent Garden, Great Marlborough Conduit, Grosvenor, Hamlet of Knightsbridge, Knightsbridge St. George, Pall Mall, Regent, St. Anne, St. John, St. Margaret, Strand.


text: In 1959, the boundaries changed, and the wards used instead were Abbey, Alderney, Aldwych, Berkeley, Cathedral, Churchill, Covent Garden, Dolphin, Eaton, Ebury, Grosvenor, Knightsbridge, Millbank, Regent Street, St. James's, Soho, Tachbrook, Victoria, Warwick and Wilton. In 1964, the City of Westminster was created to replace the old Metropolitan Borough of Westminster, which kept the same wards.


text: The City of London consisted of Aldersgate, Aldgate, Bassishaw, Bassishaw, Billingsgate, Bishopsgate, Bread Street, Bridge Within, Bridge Without, Broad Street, Candlewick, Castle Baynard, Cheap, Coleman Street, Cordwainer, Cornhill, Cripplegate, Dowgate, Farringdon Within, Farringdon Without, Langbourn, Lime Street, Portsoken, Queenhithe, Tower, Vintry and Walbrook.


text: In 1968, the City of Westminster ward boundaries changed, with the following used for this seat: Charing Cross, Churchill, Knightsbridge, Millbank, Regent Street, Victoria Street and Warwick.


text: New boundaries from 1978 meant the following wards from the City of Westminster were used: Baker Street, Belgrave, Bryanston, Cavendish, Churchill, Hyde Park, Knightsbridge, Millbank, St George's, St James's, Victoria, and West End.


text: 1997–2010: The City of Westminster wards as above, plus, Bayswater and Lancaster Gate, and the City of London as above.


text: In 2002, a Local Government Boundary Commission for England review abolished the Baker Street, Belgrave, Bryanston, Cavendish, Knightsbridge, Millbank, St James's and Victoria wards.


text: For the 2005 general election, the Westminster electoral wards used in this constituency were Bayswater (part), Bryanston and Dorset Square (part), Churchill, Hyde Park, Knightsbridge and Belgravia, Lancaster Gate, Marylebone High Street, St James's, Tachbrook, Vincent Square, Warwick and West End.


text: 2010–present: The City of Westminster wards of Bryanston and Dorset Square, Churchill, Hyde Park, Knightsbridge and Belgravia, Marylebone High Street, St James's, Tachbrook, Vincent Square, Warwick, and West End, and the City of London wards, as above.


text: The seat covers the entire City of London and most of the City of Westminster lying South of the Marylebone Road and the Westway. In the latter, more residential, city it covers Westminster, Pimlico, Victoria, Belgravia, Knightsbridge, St. James's, Soho, most of Covent Garden, alongside parts of Fitzrovia, Marylebone, Edgware Road, Paddington and Bayswater.


text: The Cities of London and Westminster seat contains the two historical centres of the capital. The City of London is an international financial centre - while Westminster, home to the Buckingham Palace, Houses of Parliament, Whitehall and 10 Downing Street, represents Britain's political centre.


text: The seat includes iconic landmarks such as Buckingham Palace and St Paul's Cathedral, the West End's Theatreland and Soho. Some of the country's wealthiest residents live in exclusive Mayfair, Belgravia and Knightsbridge. Less than half the population was born in the UK - a fifth hail from elsewhere in Europe, while one in twenty is American, according to the 2011 Census.


text: Around half of the electorate are in the more socially mixed areas of Paddington and Pimlico, which includes some large council estates (Churchill Gardens


text: The constituency also incorporates the City of London Corporation. This includes some of the lowest populated wards in the United Kingdom, such as the Coleman Street ward, which has a total electorate of 2, and the Aldgate ward, which has a total electorate of 27.


title: Bundaberg

text: Bundaberg is a city in the Bundaberg Region, Queensland, Australia, and is the tenth largest city in the state. Bundaberg's regional area has a population of 70,921, and is a major centre of the Wide Bay–Burnett geographical region. The Bundaberg central business district is situated along the southern bank of the Burnett River, about from its mouth at Burnett Heads, and flows into the Coral Sea. The city is sited on a rich coastal plain, supporting one of the nation's most productive agricultural regions. The area of Bundaberg is the home of the Taribelang-Bunda peoples. Popular nicknames for Bundaberg include "Bundy" and "Rum city". The demonym of Bundaberg is Bundabergian.


title: Bundaberg

text: The district surveyor, John Thompson Charlton designed the city layout in 1868, which planned for uniform square blocks with wide main streets, and named it ‘Bundaberg’. An early influence on the development of Bundaberg came with the 1868 Land Act, which was a famous Queensland via media, that aimed to create a class of Australian yeoman. Large sugarcane plantations were established throughout the 1880s, with industries of sugar mills, refineries, and rum distilleries that delivered prosperity to Bundaberg. These plantations used South Sea Islanders as indentured labourers, many of whom were blackbirded, a practice considered of form of slavery. The trade was outlawed in 1904, with most South Sea Islanders deported by 1906. Major floods in 1942 and 1954 damaged the river, ending Bundaberg's role as a river port and led to a new port at the mouth of the Burnett river. In the post-war era, Bundaberg continued to grow with its wealth tied to its sugar industry. In 2013, Bundaberg experienced record flooding from Cyclone Oswald, which was the worst disaster in the city's history.


title: Bundaberg

text: The economy of Bundaberg is based primarily on agricultural, forestry, fishing and tourism, with a gross regional product at about $4.51 billion. Bundaberg also has a major distillery and brewery industry that exports to international markets. The city is served by the Port of Bundaberg and the Bundaberg Airport.


title: Bundaberg

text: Bundaberg has a rich history and culture, along with its humid subtropical climate it is known for its weeping fig trees, dry stone walls, and historic plantations, including the Fairymead Plantation and the Sunnyside Sugar Plantation, the latter of which is the site of a mass grave. Other sites of South Sea Islander cultural significance include Sir Anthony's Rest atop the Bundaberg Hummock and the South Sea Islander Church. Bundaberg is also considered a paranormal hotspot, and is known for its ghost tours. Major cultural institutions include the Hinkler Hall of Aviation and the Bundaberg Regional Art Gallery. The city's culinary culture is highlighted by its annual 'Banquet on the Bridge', and an iconic rum and gin culture with Bundaberg Rum originating in the city.


title: Bundaberg

text: Bundaberg is a popular tourism destination, the city's hinterland includes the historic towns of Childers and Gin Gin, Lake Monduran, Cania Gorge National Park and the Promisedland mountain bike trails. Bundaberg's coastal areas include Bargara and Mon Repos, Deepwater National Park, and the southernmost reaches of the Great Barrier Reef alongside the islands of Lady Musgrave and Lady Elliot.


title: Bundaberg

text: The city is about north of the state capital, Brisbane. It is inland from the Coral Sea coast and situated on the Burnett River.


title: Bundaberg

text: The name was coined by surveyor John Charlton Thompson and his assistant Alfred Dale Edwards. "Bunda" is derived from the name of one of the kinship groups of the local Taribelang people, to which was added the Saxon suffix "berg", meaning "town". Colloquially the city is known as "Bundy".


title: Bundaberg

text: Bourbong Street is the main street of the city and there is some controversy in regards to its spelling and meaning; Bourbong was alternatively spelled Bourbon or Boorbong, which was a local Aboriginal title given to a large waterhole in the area. The main street was historically also gazetted in the Bundaberg Mail as "Bourbon" street, but by 1941 there is no reference to "Bourbon" street. Robert Strathdee's farming selection in the vicinity of the watering holes was recorded on early survey maps as 'Boorbung'.


title: Bundaberg

text: A pioneer pastoralist of the region, Nicholas Tooth, wrote that "Bourbong" was derived from the local Aboriginal phrase "bier rabong", meaning "plenty dead". Tooth, who took up land in the area in the early 1860s, found that Aboriginal people resolutely avoided the "bier rabong" vicinity. He later found the skeletal remains there of around twenty Aboriginal people who were apparently massacred in a raid by the Native Police.


title: Bundaberg

text: The Traditional owner Aboriginal group are the Taribelang people. They are the original inhabitants of the region.


title: Bundaberg

text: The first non-indigenous man to visit the area was James Davis in the 1830s. He was an escaped convict from the Moreton Bay Penal settlement who lived with the Kabi people to the south of the region. He resided mostly around the Mary River and was referred to as "Durrumboi". The Burnett River was surveyed by John Charles Burnett, after whom it was named during his exploration mission of the Wide Bay and Burnett regions in 1847.


title: Bundaberg

text: British occupation of the land in the region began in 1848 when pastoral squatters Gregory Blaxland Jnr and William Forster established a sheep station. Blaxland was a son of the Blue Mountains explorer, Gregory Blaxland, and Forster was later to become a Premier of New South Wales. They selected a very large area of land which encompassed most of the western part of the modern day Bundaberg Region along the Burnett River. They named this pastoral lease Tirroan. Blaxland and Forster had previously set up sheep stations near the Clarence River and had a notable history of conflict with Aboriginal people. This continued at Tirroan when two of their shepherds were killed by Aboriginal people in 1849. Forster and Blaxland led a punitive expedition causing multiple Aboriginal deaths. Further conflict occurred the following year when Blaxland was clubbed to death. Forster and a number of other squatters conducted another reprisal, resulting in a large massacre of Aboriginal people in scrubland toward the coastal part of Tirroan. In the early 1850s, Forster sold the property to Alfred Henry Brown who changed the name of the pastoral lease to Gin Gin. At the same time, Native Police officer, Richard Purvis Marshall, took up the Bingera leasehold in the rainforest scrubland downstream from Tirroan. Three towns in the Bundaberg region, Tirroan, South Bingera and Gin Gin, commemorate these massive initial leaseholds.


title: Bundaberg

text: Before colonisation, much of the land around the lower reaches of the Burnett River consisted of either the Woongarra Scrub, a subtropical rainforest that stood where most of the Bundaberg canefields now grow, or the Barolin Plains, a lightly timbered grassland that stretched along the coastal fringe. Neither of these areas were suitable for sheep farming but the British soon found that raising cattle was possible. In the early 1860s the first cattle stations in the area were established; Branyan on the south side of the Burnett River and Tantitha on the north side.


title: Bundaberg

text: Timber companies, such as that owned by William Pettigrew, started the logging of the Woongarra Scrub in 1867.


title: Bundaberg

text: In 1868, Samuel Johnston erected a sawmill in Waterview, on the north bank of the Burnett River. The Waterview sawmill became a prominent supplier of timber until its closure in 1903 after being damaged by flood.


title: Bundaberg

text: In 1867, timber-getters and farmers, John and Gavin Steuart, established the Woondooma property which consisted of a few houses and a wharf on the northern banks of the Burnett River where Bundaberg North now stands. An official survey of the area was undertaken in 1869 by John Charlton Thompson, assisted by James Ellwood and Alfred Dale Edwards, and the town of Bundaberg was gazetted across the river on the higher, southern banks. The first Bundaberg land sale was held in Maryborough on 11 May 1870 where hotelier John Foley bought the original lots.


title: Bundaberg

text: Most of the early settlers exploited the timber and grew maize on their selections but as a result of the incentives of the Sugar and Coffee Regulations of 1864, sugar became a major component in Bundaberg's development from the 1870s. Experimental sugar cane cultivation in the district was first grown at John Charlton Thompson's Rubyanna property in 1870 and the first sugar mill was built by Richard Elliot Palmer at his Millbank plantation in 1872. Bundaberg rapidly became an important sugar production region after the construction of the Millaquin Sugar Refinery at East Bundaberg by Robert Cran and his sons in 1882. The Fairymead sugar processing plant owned by the Young Brothers (Arthur, Horace and Ernest Young) opened in 1884 which further augmented Bundaberg's sugar producing capacity.


title: Bundaberg

text: The initial 35 years of the sugar industry in Bundaberg was reliant on South Sea Islander workers, who were often blackbirded and kept in a status close to slavery. The first significant shipload of Kanaka labour, as it was called, to arrive on the Burnett River came in January 1872 aboard the "Petrel". Allegations of kidnapping and wounding immediately arose concerning the recruitment of the Islanders on this vessel. Influential Bundaberg plantation owners were able to purchase recruiting ships in order to obtain labour directly from areas such as the Solomon Islands and the New Hebrides. The Young Brothers owned the "Lochiel" and the "May" vessels, the Cran family and Frederic Buss were the major investors in the "Helena" while the "Ariel" was co-owned by a number of local planters. While some of the recruitment was voluntary, violence and deception toward Islanders often took place. For example, the crew of the "Helena" fought a battle with the locals of Ambrym while taking Islanders from there.


title: Bundaberg

text: These labourers had to work for three years and were only paid at the end of this time period. Instead of cash, they usually received substandard goods and trinkets of minimal value as payment. Excessive mortality of the Islanders while serving their term of labour in the Bundaberg region was frequent. Overwork, poor housing, inadequate food, contaminated water supplies and a lack of medical care all contributed to the high death rate. Penalties for the plantation owners whose neglect resulted in these fatalities were rare and did not exceed a £10 fine. Importing South Sea Islander labour was made illegal in 1904 and enforced repatriation of these workers out of Bundaberg and other locations in Queensland occurred from 1906 to 1908.


title: Bundaberg

text: The 1911 Queensland sugar strike occurred after the phasing out of South Sea Islander labour, with workers claiming that many plantation owners had substituted black indentured labourers (sometimes referred to as slaves) with white ones. Workers sought better accommodation, wages and conditions, including an eight-hour day and a minimum weekly wage of 30 shillings, including food. The mobilisation of unionists from Bundaberg to Mossman was a major achievement, with the 1911 strike lasting over seven weeks in Bundaberg where the town's economy was largely based on the sugar industry. The end result of the strike was a Commonwealth Royal Commission into the sugar industry in 1911–12, which had been initially requested by Harry Hall, a Bundaberg AWA organiser in 1908 with a petition signed by 1500 Bundaberg sugar workers. The Royal Commission, with ALF Secretary Albert Hinchcliffe as secretary, concluded the AWA demands had been justified. The union victory was a watershed in organised labour in Queensland and Australia.


title: Bundaberg

text: With the passage of the "Local Authorities Act 1902", Barolin Division became the Shire of Barolin and the Borough of Bundaberg became the Town of Bundaberg on 31 March 1903. On 22 November 1913, Bundaberg was proclaimed a City.


title: Bundaberg

text: In 1912 Bundaberg pioneering aviator Bert Hinkler built and successfully flew his own glider on Mon Repos beach. He also completed a noteworthy non-stop flight from London to Turin in 1920. The following year in 1921 Hinkler flew from Sydney to Bundaberg, non-stop, in a record breaking flight of 8 and a half hours, in the process beating a telegram he had sent to his mother, to warn her of his arrival.


title: Bundaberg

text: The Bundaberg War Memorial commemorating those who died in the Anglo-Boer War and World War I was unveiled by Major-General Charles Brand on 30 July 1921. The Bundaberg digger was imported from Italy and is constructed of Italian marble. The completed memorial, at a cost of £1,650, was the third most costly to be erected in Queensland. It is a major regional memorial and one of the two most intact digger memorials that remain in their original settings of intersections.


title: Bundaberg

text: In 1941 the Sisters of Mercy purchased the house "Brabourne" (originally owned by prominent citizen Frederick Buss) and established St Mary's Hostel, for women and girls working in or visiting Bundaberg. After World War II, doctors were calling for modern hospital facilities in Bundaberg, so the Sisters converted the hostel into the Mater Private Hospital, a 24-bed hospital with an operating theatre, chapel, and accommodation for the nurses and maids, officially opening on 28 July 1946. The nurses were initially all nuns, but they established a training school for other women to become nurses. The hospital expanded over the years with additional beds, operating theatres, X-ray, pathology and a dedicated children's ward. It was the first hospital in Queensland to use the Zeiss ophthalmic microscope, the first regional hospital in Queensland to have a lymphoedema clinic, and to use facial recognition technology for endoscopic sinus surgery.


title: Bundaberg

text: In the 1960s the township was completely flooded by the Burnett river. In 1967 Bundaberg celebrated its centenerary by producing a coin and opening The Bundaberg and District Historical Museum in the Bundaberg Botanical Gardens in Bundaberg North.


title: Bundaberg

text: In December 2010, Bundaberg suffered its worst floods in 60 years, when floodwaters from the Burnett River inundated hundreds of homes.


title: Bundaberg

text: Two years later, in January 2013, Bundaberg experienced its worst flooding in recorded history as a result of Cyclone Oswald. Floodwaters from the Burnett River peaked at 9.53 metres. Over 4,000 properties and 600 businesses had been affected by floodwaters, which moved in excess of 70 km/h. Two defence force Blackhawk helicopters were brought in from Townsville as part of the evacuation operation, which ultimately used an additional 14 aircraft.


title: Bundaberg

text: On 6 April 2018, Prince Charles visited Bundaberg Rum Distillery He stated, "“I'm thrilled that this Distillery's proving to be the one that produces some of the most famous and special of all rums around the world.""


title: Bundaberg

text: In 2018, the Australian Bureau of Statistics estimated the population of Bundaberg's significant urban area was 70,921 people.


title: Bundaberg

text: Bundaberg has a humid subtropical climate ("Cfa") with hot, wet summers and mild, dry winters. The mean daily maximum temperature is highest in January at , and the mean daily minimum is lowest in July at . The coldest temperature recorded in Bundaberg is , and some inland areas of Bundaberg sometimes experience frosts. The mean annual rainfall is .


title: Bundaberg

text: Increasing population in Bundaberg is extending residential development into rural localities, such as Ashfield.


title: Bundaberg

text: Subtropical Bundaberg is dependent to a large extent on the local sugar industry. Extensive sugar cane fields have been developed throughout the district. Value-adding operations, such as the milling and refinement of sugar, and its packaging and distribution, are located around the city. A local factory that manufactured sugar-cane harvesters was closed down after it was taken over by the US multinational corporation Case New Holland. Most of the raw sugar is exported. A bulk terminal for the export of sugar is located on the Burnett River east of Bundaberg.


title: Bundaberg

text: Another of the city's exports is Bundaberg Rum, made from the sugar cane by-product molasses. Bundaberg is also home to beverage producer Bundaberg Brewed Drinks Vintage Soda, Craft Brewery Ballistic Brewing Company and Craft Distillery's Waterview Distillery and Kalki Moon.


title: Bundaberg

text: Commercial fruit and vegetable production is also significant: avocado, banana, bean, button squash, capsicum, chilli, citrus, cucumber, custard apple, egg fruit, honeydew melon, lychee, mango, passionfruit, potato, pumpkin, rockmelon, snow peas, stone fruit, sweet corn, sweet potato, tomato, watermelon, zucchini. Macadamia nuts are also grown. Due to the year-round farm work available in Bundaberg, the city has a high number of working hostels for backpackers looking to extend their working holiday visa in Australia. The hostels provide backpackers with work on farms across the Bundaberg area. However, the hostels and farms have received huge criticism in the press and on social media due to the treatment some backpackers have faced. The Courier-Mail have reported claims of poor living conditions, underpayment and allegations of sexual abuse which they say has led to backpackers warning others about working hostels in Bundaberg.


title: Bundaberg

text: Because of its high rate of unemployment, Bundaberg has been referred to as the "dole capital of Australia".


title: Bundaberg

text: Tourism is an important industry in Queensland, and Bundaberg is known as the 'Southern Gateway to the Great Barrier Reef'. The city lies near the southern end of the reef in proximity to Lady Elliot and Lady Musgrave Islands. The nearby town of Bargara is an increasingly popular holiday and retirement destination.


title: Bundaberg

text: Nearby beaches are popular with both locals and tourists. Moore Park Beach, to the city's north, has of golden sandy beach. Beaches on the southern side of the Burnett River are (from north to south) the Oaks Beach, Mon Repos, Nielson Park, Bargara Beach, Kellys Beach, Innes Park and Elliott Heads.


title: Bundaberg

text: Cania Gorge National Park, Deepwater National Park, Eurimbula National Park and Kinkuna National Park, located in the Bundaberg region are popular with campers and bush-lovers.