History.

Wireless networks.

The first professional wireless network was developed under the brand ALOHAnet in 1969 at the University of Hawaii and became operational in June 1971. The first commercial wireless network was the WaveLAN product family, developed by NCR in 1986.

Underlying technology.

Advances in MOSFET (MOS transistor) wireless technology enabled the development of digital wireless networks. The wide adoption of RF CMOS (radio frequency CMOS), power MOSFET and LDMOS (lateral diffused MOS) devices led to the development and proliferation of digital wireless networks by the 1990s, with further advances in MOSFET technology leading to increasing bandwidth in the 2000s (Edholm's law). Most of the essential elements of wireless networks are built from MOSFETs, including the mobile transceivers, base station modules, routers, RF power amplifiers, telecommunication circuits, RF circuits, and radio transceivers, in networks such as 2G, 3G, and 4G.

Types of wireless networks.

Wireless PAN.

Wireless personal area networks (WPANs) connect devices within a relatively small area, that is generally within a person's reach. For example, both Bluetooth radio and invisible infrared light provides a WPAN for interconnecting a headset to a laptop. ZigBee also supports WPAN applications. Wi-Fi PANs are becoming commonplace (2010) as equipment designers start to integrate Wi-Fi into a variety of consumer electronic devices. Intel "My WiFi" and Windows 7 "virtual Wi-Fi" capabilities have made Wi-Fi PANs simpler and easier to set up and configure.

Wireless LAN.

A wireless local area network (WLAN) links two or more devices over a short distance using a wireless distribution method, usually providing a connection through an access point for internet access. The use of spread-spectrum or OFDM technologies may allow users to move around within a local coverage area, and still remain connected to the network.  Products using the IEEE 802.11 WLAN standards are marketed under the Wi-Fi brand name. Fixed wireless technology implements point-to-point links between computers or networks at two distant locations, often using dedicated microwave or modulated laser light beams over line of sight paths. It is often used in cities to connect networks in two or more buildings without installing a wired link. To connect to Wi-Fi, sometimes are used devices like a router or connecting HotSpot using mobile smartphones.

Wireless ad hoc network.

A wireless ad hoc network, also known as a wireless mesh network or mobile ad hoc network (MANET), is a wireless network made up of radio nodes organized in a mesh topology. Each node forwards messages on behalf of the other nodes and each node performs routing. Ad hoc networks can "self-heal", automatically re-routing around a node that has lost power. Various network layer protocols are needed to realize ad hoc mobile networks, such as Distance Sequenced Distance Vector routing, Associativity-Based Routing, Ad hoc on-demand Distance Vector routing, and Dynamic source routing.

Wireless MAN.

Wireless metropolitan area networks are a type of wireless network that connects several wireless LANs.

Wireless WAN.

Wireless wide area networks are wireless networks that typically cover large areas, such as between neighbouring towns and cities, or city and suburb. These networks can be used to connect branch offices of business or as a public Internet access system. The wireless connections between access points are usually point to point microwave links using parabolic dishes on the 2.4 GHz and 5.8Ghz band, rather than omnidirectional antennas used with smaller networks. A typical system contains base station gateways, access points and wireless bridging relays. Other configurations are mesh systems where each access point acts as a relay also. When combined with renewable energy systems such as photovoltaic solar panels or wind systems they can be stand alone systems.

Cellular network.

A cellular network or mobile network is a radio network distributed over land areas called cells, each served by at least one fixed-location transceiver, known as a cell site or base station. In a cellular network, each cell characteristically uses a different set of radio frequencies from all their immediate neighbouring cells to avoid any interference.  When joined together these cells provide radio coverage over a wide geographic area. This enables a large number of portable transceivers (e.g., mobile phones, pagers, etc.) to communicate with each other and with fixed transceivers and telephones anywhere in the network, via base stations, even if some of the transceivers are moving through more than one cell during transmission.  Although originally intended for cell phones, with the development of smartphones, cellular telephone networks routinely carry data in addition to telephone conversations:

Global area network.

A global area network (GAN) is a network used for supporting mobile across an arbitrary number of wireless LANs, satellite coverage areas, etc. The key challenge in mobile communications is handing off user communications from one local coverage area to the next. In IEEE Project 802, this involves a succession of terrestrial wireless LANs.

Space network.

Space networks are networks used for communication between spacecraft, usually in the vicinity of the Earth. The example of this is NASA's Space Network.

Uses.

Some examples of usage include cellular phones which are part of everyday wireless networks, allowing easy personal communications. Another example, Intercontinental network systems, use radio satellites to communicate across the world. Emergency services such as the police utilize wireless networks to communicate effectively as well. Individuals and businesses use wireless networks to send and share data rapidly, whether it be in a small office building or across the world.

Properties.

General.

In a general sense, wireless networks offer a vast variety of uses by both business and home users. "Now, the industry accepts a handful of different wireless technologies. Each wireless technology is defined by a standard that describes unique functions at both the Physical and the Data Link layers of the OSI model. These standards differ in their specified signaling methods, geographic ranges, and frequency usages, among other things. Such differences can make certain technologies better suited to home networks and others better suited to network larger organizations."

Performance.

Each standard varies in geographical range, thus making one standard more ideal than the next depending on what it is one is trying to accomplish with a wireless network. The performance of wireless networks satisfies a variety of applications such as voice and video. The use of this technology also gives room for expansions, such as from 2G to 3G and, 4G and 5G technologies, which stand for the fourth and fifth generation of cell phone mobile communications standards. As wireless networking has become commonplace, sophistication increases through configuration of network hardware and software, and greater capacity to send and receive larger amounts of data, faster, is achieved. Now the wireless network has been running on LTE, which is a 4G mobile communication standard. Users of an LTE network should have data speeds that are 10x faster than a 3G network.

Space.

Space is another characteristic of wireless networking. Wireless networks offer many advantages when it comes to difficult-to-wire areas trying to communicate such as across a street or river, a warehouse on the other side of the premises or buildings that are physically separated but operate as one. Wireless networks allow for users to designate a certain space which the network will be able to communicate with other devices through that network.  Space is also created in homes as a result of eliminating clutters of wiring. This technology allows for an alternative to installing physical network mediums such as TPs, coaxes, or fiber-optics, which can also be expensive.

Home.

For homeowners, wireless technology is an effective option compared to Ethernet for sharing printers, scanners, and high-speed Internet connections. WLANs help save the cost of installation of cable mediums, save time from physical installation, and also creates mobility for devices connected to the network. Wireless networks are simple and require as few as one single wireless access point connected directly to the Internet via a router.

Wireless network elements.

The telecommunications network at the physical layer also consists of many interconnected wireline network elements (NEs). These NEs can be stand-alone systems or products that are either supplied by a single manufacturer or are assembled by the service provider (user) or system integrator with parts from several different manufacturers.  Wireless NEs are the products and devices used by a wireless carrier to provide support for the backhaul network as well as a mobile switching center (MSC).  Reliable wireless service depends on the network elements at the physical layer to be protected against all operational environments and applications (see GR-3171, "Generic Requirements for Network Elements Used in Wireless Networks – Physical Layer Criteria").  What are especially important are the NEs that are located on the cell tower to the base station (BS) cabinet. The attachment hardware and the positioning of the antenna and associated closures and cables are required to have adequate strength, robustness, corrosion resistance, and resistance against wind, storms, icing, and other weather conditions. Requirements for individual components, such as hardware, cables, connectors, and closures, shall take into consideration the structure to which they are attached.

Difficulties.

Interference.

Compared to wired systems, wireless networks are frequently subject to electromagnetic interference. This can be caused by other networks or other types of equipment that generate radio waves that are within, or close, to the radio bands used for communication. Interference can degrade the signal or cause the system to fail.

Absorption and reflection.

Some materials cause absorption of electromagnetic waves, preventing it from reaching the receiver, in other cases, particularly with metallic or conductive materials reflection occurs. This can cause dead zones where no reception is available. Aluminium foiled thermal isolation in modern homes can easily reduce indoor mobile signals by 10 dB frequently leading to complaints about the bad reception of long-distance rural cell signals.

Multipath fading.

In multipath fading two or more different routes taken by the signal, due to reflections, can cause the signal to cancel out at certain locations, and to be stronger in other places (upfade).

Hidden node problem.

The hidden node problem occurs in some types of network when a node is visible from a wireless access point (AP), but not from other nodes communicating with that AP. This leads to difficulties in media access control (collisions).

Exposed terminal node problem.

The exposed terminal problem is when a node on one network is unable to send because of co-channel interference from a node that is on a different network.

Shared resource problem.

The wireless spectrum is a limited resource and shared by all nodes in the range of its transmitters. Bandwidth allocation becomes complex with multiple participating users. Often users are not aware that advertised numbers (e.g., for IEEE 802.11 equipment or LTE networks) are not their capacity, but shared with all other users and thus the individual user rate is far lower. With increasing demand, the capacity crunch is more and more likely to happen. User-in-the-loop (UIL) may be an alternative solution to ever upgrading to newer technologies for over-provisioning.

Capacity.

Channel.

Shannon's theorem can describe the maximum data rate of any single wireless link, which relates to the bandwidth in hertz and to the noise on the channel.  One can greatly increase channel capacity by using MIMO techniques, where multiple aerials or multiple frequencies can exploit multiple paths to the receiver to achieve much higher throughput – by a factor of the product of the frequency and aerial diversity at each end.  Under Linux, the Central Regulatory Domain Agent (CRDA) controls the setting of channels.

Network.

The total network bandwidth depends on how dispersive the medium is (more dispersive medium generally has better total bandwidth because it minimises interference), how many frequencies are available, how noisy those frequencies are, how many aerials are used and whether a directional antenna is in use, whether nodes employ power control and so on.  Cellular wireless networks generally have good capacity, due to their use of directional aerials, and their ability to reuse radio channels in non-adjacent cells. Additionally, cells can be made very small using low power transmitters this is used in cities to give network capacity that scales linearly with population density.

Safety.

Wireless access points are also often close to humans, but the drop off in power over distance is fast, following the inverse-square law. The position of the United Kingdom's Health Protection Agency (HPA) is that “...radio frequency (RF) exposures from WiFi are likely to be lower than those from mobile phones.” It also saw “...no reason why schools and others should not use WiFi equipment.” In October 2007, the HPA launched a new “systematic” study into the effects of WiFi networks on behalf of the UK government, in order to calm fears that had appeared in the media in a recent period up to that time". Dr Michael Clark, of the HPA, says published research on mobile phones and masts does not add up to an indictment of WiFi.

A wireless network is a computer network that uses wireless data connections between network nodes. Wireless networking is a method by which homes, telecommunications networks and business installations avoid the costly process of introducing cables into a building, or as a connection between various equipment locations. admin telecommunications networks are generally implemented and administered using radio communication. This implementation takes place at the physical level (layer) of the OSI model network structure.

Bezdrátová síť je typ počítačové sítě, ve které je spojení mezi jednotlivými účastníky sítě uskutečňováno pomocí bezdrátové komunikace, nejčastěji elektromagnetických vln. Tato implementace se nachází na fyzickém vrstvě síťové struktury. Bezdrátová síť se používá v domácnostech, telekomunikačních sítích a ve společnostech, kde by zavádění kabelů do budovy a spojování jednotlivých místností bylo příliš drahé.


Biography.

Born in Milan, in what is now northern Italy, he was the son of Prince Emanuel of Liechtenstein and Maria Anna Antonia, Countess of Dietrichstein-Weichselstädt, Baroness zu Hollenburg und Finkenstein (10 September 1706 – 7 June 1777). Franz Josef was the eldest of their thirteen children. He was a nephew of Joseph Wenzel I, whom he succeeded on 10 February 1772.  Franz Joseph had been recognised heir to Liechtenstein since 1723, when his uncle's only son had died. Joseph Wenzel took Franz Joseph under his wing and Franz Joseph accompanied him in a campaign in Northern Italy, fighting with Wenzel at the Battle of Piacenza. The battle was a victory for the Holy Roman Empire, of which Liechtenstein was a part.  He was the 802nd Knight of the Order of the Golden Fleece in Austria.  In 1763, Franz Josef traveled on behalf of the Emperor to Spain, to bring the bride of Archduke Leopold a picture of the Archduke. In 1767, he became Privy Councillor, and in 1771, he received the Order of the Golden Fleece.  Once Franz Joseph became Prince of Liechtenstein, he showed great interest in its economic problems and the ever-increasing Liechtenstein art collection. He died in Metz in 1781.

Marriage and issue.

Franz Josef married Marie Leopoldine Gräfin von Sternberg (Vienna, 11 December 1733 – Feldsberg, 27 June 1809), a member of the Bohemian nobility, on 6 July 1750 in Valtice or Feldsberg. The couple had 8 children:

Franz Joseph I, Prince of Liechtenstein, born "Franz de Paula Josef Johann Nepomuk Andreas" (19 November 1726 – 18 August 1781), was the Prince of Liechtenstein from 1772 until his death.

František Josef I. z Lichtenštejna ( "Franz Josef I.", 19. listopad 1726, Milano, Itálie - 18. srpen 1781, Mety, Francie) byl lichtenštejnský kníže od roku 1772 až do své smrti. Byl synovcem knížete Josefa Wenzela.


The law.

The three broad provisions in the Golan Heights Law are the following:  1. "The Law, jurisdiction and administration of the State will take effect in the Golan Heights, as described in the Schedule."  2. "This Law will begin taking effect on the day of its acceptance in the Knesset."  3. "The Minister of the Interior is placed in-charge of the implementation of this Law, and is entitled, in consultation with the Minister of Justice, to enact regulations for its implementation and to formulate regulations on interim provisions regarding the continued application of regulations, directives, administrative directives, and rights and duties that were in effect in the Golan Heights prior to the acceptance of this Law."  Signed:  Passed in the Knesset with a majority of 63 in favour, 21 against.

Controversies.

The law was not recognised internationally and determined null and void by United Nations Security Council Resolution 497.  On March 25, 2019, the United States recognized the Golan Heights as sovereign Israeli territory. Following the U.S. announcement, the UN said that United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is "clear that the status of Golan has not changed."  Unusually, all three readings took place on the same day. This procedure was heavily criticized by the centre-left opposition. Substantially, the law has mainly been criticized for potentially hindering future negotiations with Syria.  While the Israeli public at large, and especially the law's critics, viewed it as an annexation, the law avoids the use of the word. Prime Minister Menachem Begin responded to Amnon Rubinstein's criticism by saying, "You use the word 'annexation.' I do not use it," and noting that similar wording was used in a 1967 law authorizing the government to apply Israeli law to any part of the Land of Israel.

The Golan Heights Law is the Israeli law which applies Israel's government and laws to the Golan Heights. It was ratified by the Knesset by a vote of 63―21, on December 14, 1981. Although the law did not use the term, it was considered by the international community and some members of the Israeli opposition as an "annexation" of the Golan Heights.

Zákon o Golanských výšinách je izraelský zákon, který aplikuje izraelskou vládu a zákony na Golanské výšiny. Zákon ratifikoval Kneset 14. prosince 1981.


Types of Cable Shielding.

There are many types of cable shields available commercially, and usage depends on the application.

Signal cables.

The best way to wire shielded cables for screening is to ground the shield at both ends of the cable. Traditionally there existed a rule of thumb to ground the shield at one end only to avoid ground loops. Best practice is to ground at both ends, but there is a possibility of ground loops. In airplanes, special cable is used with both an outer shield to protect against lightning and an inner shield grounded at one end to eliminate hum from the 400 Hz power system.

Applications.

The use of shielded cables in security systems provides some protection from power frequency and radio frequency interference, reducing the number of false alarms being generated. The best practice is to keep data or signal cables physically separated by at least 3 inches (75mm) from 'heavy' power circuits which are in parallel.  Microphone or "signal" cable used in setting up PA and recording studios is usually shielded twisted pair cable, terminated in XLR connectors. The twisted pair carries the signal in a balanced audio configuration.  The cable laid from the stage to the mixer is often multicore cable carrying several pairs of conductors.  Consumer use screened copper wire with one central conductor in an unbalanced configuration.  Also see: High-end audio cables

Power cables.

Medium and high-voltage power cables, in circuits over 2000 volts, usually have a shield layer of copper or aluminium tape or conducting polymer. If an unshielded insulated cable is in contact with earth or a grounded object, the electrostatic field around the conductor will be concentrated at the contact point, resulting in corona discharge, and eventual destruction of the insulation. Leakage current and capacitive current through the insulation presents a danger of electrical shock. The grounded shield equalizes electrical stress around the conductor, diverts any leakage current to ground. Stress relief cones should be applied at the shield ends, especially for cables operating at more than 2 kV to earth.  Shields on power cables may be connected to earth ground at each shield end and at splices for redundancy to prevent shock even though induced current will flow in the shield. This current will produce losses and heating and will reduce the maximum current rating of the circuit. Tests show that having a bare grounding conductor adjacent to the insulated wires will conduct the fault current to earth more quickly. On high-current circuits the shields might be connected only at one end. On very long high-voltage circuits, the shield may be broken into several sections since a long shield run may rise to dangerous voltages during a circuit fault. There is a risk of shock hazard from having only one end of the shield grounded. The maximum recommended shield potential rise is 25 volts. IEEE 422 and 525 lists the cable lengths that would limit shield potential to 25 volts for a single point ground application.

A shielded cable or screened cable is an electrical cable of one or more insulated conductors enclosed by a common conductive layer. The shield may be composed of braided strands of copper (or other metal, such as aluminium), a non-braided spiral winding of copper tape, or a layer of conducting polymer. Usually this shield is covered with a jacket.

Stíněný kabel je elektrický kabel složený z jednoho nebo více izolovaných vodičů, který je obalený společnou vodivou vrstvou pro "stínění", pro ochranu před "rušením". Stínění může být vyrobeno ze spletených měděných (nebo jiného kovu) drátků nebo složeno z měděných pásků, případně pokovené fólie nebo z vrstvy vodivého polymeru. Obvykle bývá tato vrstva zakryta další izolační vrstvou.


Construction.

"Konzentrationslager Lublin" was established in October 1941 on the orders of "Reichsführer-SS" Heinrich Himmler, forwarded to Odilo Globocnik soon after his visit to Lublin on 17–20 July 1941 in the course of Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union. The original plan drafted by Himmler was for the camp to hold at least 25,000 POWs.<ref name="majdanek.eu/2006"></ref>  Following the large numbers of Soviet prisoners-of-war captured during the Battle of Kiev, the projected capacity was subsequently increased to 50,000 and construction for that many began on October 1, 1941 (as it did also in Auschwitz-Birkenau, which had received the same order). In early November, the plans were extended to allow for 125,000 inmates and in December to 150,000. It was further increased in March 1942 to allow for 250,000 Soviet prisoners of war.  Construction began with 150 Jewish forced laborers from one of Globocnik's Lublin camps, to which the prisoners returned each night. Later the workforce included 2,000 Red Army POWs, who had to survive extreme conditions, including sleeping out in the open. By mid-November, only 500 of them were still alive, of whom at least 30% were incapable of further labor. In mid-December, barracks for 20,000 were ready when a typhus epidemic broke out, and by January 1942 all the slave laborers – POWs as well as Polish Jews – were dead. All work ceased until March 1942, when new prisoners arrived. Although the camp did eventually have the capacity to hold approximately 50,000 prisoners, it did not grow significantly beyond that size.

In operation.

In July 1942, Himmler visited Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka; the three secret extermination camps built specifically for the Nazi German Operation Reinhard purposed to eliminate Polish Jewry. These camps had begun operations in March, May and July 1942 respectively. Subsequently, Himmler issued an order that the deportations of Jews to the camps from the five districts of occupied Poland, which constituted the Nazi "Generalgouvernement", be completed by the end of 1942.  Majdanek was made into a secondary sorting and storage depot at the onset of Operation Reinhard, for property and valuables taken from the victims at the killing centers in Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka. However, due to large Jewish populations in south-eastern Poland including Kraków, Lwów, Zamość and Warsaw which were not yet "processed", Majdanek was refurbished as a killing center around March 1942. The gassing was performed in plain view of other inmates, without as much as a fence around the buildings. Another frequent killing method was shootings by the squads of Trawnikis. According to the Majdanek Museum, the gas chambers began operation in September 1942. There are two identical buildings at Majdanek, where Zyklon-B was used. Executions were carried out in barrack 41 with the use of crystalline hydrogen cyanide released by the Zyklon B. The same poison gas pellets were used to disinfect prisoner clothing in barrack 42.  Due to the pressing need for foreign manpower in the war industry, the Jewish laborers from Poland were originally spared, and were (for a time) either kept in the ghettos such as the one in Warsaw (which became a concentration camp after the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising), or sent to labor camps such as Majdanek where they worked primarily at the Steyr-Daimler-Puch weapons/munitions factory. By mid-October 1942 the camp held 9,519 registered prisoners, of which 7,468 (or 78.45%) were Jews, and another 1,884 (19.79%) were non-Jewish Poles. By August 1943, there were 16,206 prisoners in the main camp, of which 9,105 (56.18%) were Jews and 3,893 (24.02%) were non-Jewish Poles. Minority contingents included Belarusians, Ukrainians, Russians, Germans, Austrians, Slovenes, Italians, and French and Dutch nationals. According to the data from the official Majdanek State Museum, 300,000 persons were inmates of the camp at one time or another. The prisoner population at any given time was much lower.  From October 1942 onwards, Majdanek also had female overseers. These SS guards, who had been trained at the Ravensbrück concentration camp, included the convicted war criminals Elsa Ehrich, Hermine Boettcher-Brueckner, Hermine Braunsteiner, Hildegard Lächert, Rosy Suess (Süss) Elisabeth Knoblich-Ernst, Charlotte Karla Mayer-Woellert, and Gertrud Heise (1942–1944).  Majdanek did not initially have subcamps. These were incorporated in early autumn 1943 when the remaining forced labor camps around Lublin including Budzyn, Trawniki, Poniatowa, Krasnik, Pulawy, as well as the "Airstrip" ("Airfield"), and "Lipowa 7") concentration camps became sub-camps of Majdanek.  From 1 September 1941 to 28 May 1942, Alfons Bentele headed the Administration in the camp. Alois Kurz, SS Untersturmführer, was a German staff member at Majdanek, Auschwitz-Birkenau, and at Mittelbau-Dora. He was not charged. On 18 June 1943 Fritz Ritterbusch moved to KL Lublin to become aide-de-camp to the Commandant.  Due to the camp's proximity to Lublin, prisoners were able to communicate with the outside world through letters smuggled out by civilian workers who entered the camp. Many of these surviving letters have been donated by their recipients to the camp museum. In 2008 the museum held a special exhibition displaying a selection of those letters.  From February 1943 onwards the Germans allowed the Polish Red Cross and Central Welfare Council to bring in food items to the camp. Prisoners could receive food packages addressed to them by name via the Polish Red Cross. The Majdanek Museum archives document 10,300 such itemized deliveries.

Aktion Erntefest.

Operation Reinhard continued until early November 1943, when the last Jewish prisoners of the Majdanek system of subcamps from the District Lublin in the General Government were massacred by the firing squads of Trawniki men during Operation "Harvest Festival." With respect to main camp at Majdanek, the most notorious executions occurred on November 3, 1943, when 18,400 Jews were killed on a single day. The next morning, 25 Jews who had succeeded in hiding were found and shot. Meanwhile, 611 other prisoners, 311 women and 300 men, were commanded to sort through the clothes of the dead and cover the burial trenches. The men were later assigned to "Sonderkommando 1005", where they had to exhume the same bodies for cremation. These men were then themselves executed. The 311 women were subsequently sent to Auschwitz where they were gassed. By the end of Operation "Harvest Festival," Majdanek had only 71 Jews left out of the total number of 6,562 prisoners still alive. Executions of the remaining prisoners continued at Majdanek in the following months. Between December 1943 and March 1944, Majdanek received approximately 18,000 so-called "invalids," many of whom where subsequently gassed with Zyklon B. Executions by firing squad continued as well, with 600 shot on January 21, 1944, 180 shot on January 23, 1944, and 200 shot on March 24, 1944.  Adjutant Karl Höcker's trial reveals his culpability in mass murders committed at this camp. "On 3 May 1989 a district court in the German city of Bielefeld sentenced Höcker to four years imprisonment for his involvement in gassing to death prisoners, primarily Polish Jews, in the concentration camp Majdanek in Poland. Camp records showed that between May 1943 and May 1944 Höcker had acquired at least of Zyklon B poisonous gas for use in Majdanek from the Hamburg firm of Tesch & Stabenow." In addition, Commandant Rudolf Höss of Auschwitz wrote in his memoirs, penned while awaiting trial in Poland, that one method of murder used at Majdanek (KZ Lublin) was Zyklon-B.

Evacuation.

In late July 1944, with Soviet forces rapidly approaching Lublin, the Germans hastily evacuated the camp. However, the staff had only succeeded in partially destroying the crematoria before Soviet Red Army troops arrived on July 24, 1944, making Majdanek the best-preserved camp of the Holocaust due to the incompetence of its deputy commander, Anton Thernes. It was the first major concentration camp liberated by Allied forces, and the horrors found there were widely publicised.  Although 1,000 inmates had previously been forcibly marched to Auschwitz (of whom only half arrived alive), the Red Army still found thousands of inmates, mainly POWs, still in the camp and ample evidence of the mass murder that had occurred there.

Death toll.

The official estimate of 78,000 victims, of those 59,000 Jews, was determined in 2005 by Tomasz Kranz, director of the Research Department of the State Museum at Majdanek, calculated following the discovery of the Höfle Telegram in 2000. That number is close to the one currently indicated on the museum's website. The total number of victims has been a controversial topic of study, beginning with the research of Judge Zdzisław Łukaszkiewicz in 1948, who approximated a figure of 360,000 victims. It was followed by an estimation of around 235,000 victims by (1992) of the Majdanek Museum, which was cited by the museum for years. The current figure is considered "incredibly low" by Rajca, nevertheless it has been accepted by the Museum Board of Directors "with a certain caution", pending further research into the number of prisoners who were not entered into the Holocaust train records by German camp administration. For now, the Museum informs that based on new research, some 150,000 prisoners arrived at Majdanek during the 34 months of its existence. Of the more than 2,000,000 Jewish people killed in the course of Operation Reinhard, some 60,000 Jews (56,000 known by name) were most certainly exterminated at Majdanek, amongst its almost 80,000 victims accounted for, altogether.  The Soviets initially grossly overestimated the number of deaths, claiming at the Nuremberg Trials in July 1944 that there were no fewer than 400,000 Jewish victims, and the official Soviet count was of 1.5 million victims of different nationalities, Independent Canadian journalist Raymond Arthur Davies, who was based in Moscow and on the payroll of the Canadian Jewish Congress, visited Majdanek on August 28, 1944. The following day he sent a telegram to Saul Hayes, the executive director of the Canadian Jewish Congress. It states: ""I do wish [to] stress that Majdanek where one million Jews and half a million others [were] killed"" and ""You can tell America that at least three million [Polish] Jews [were] killed of whom at least a third were killed in Majdanek"," and though widely reported in this way, the estimate was never taken seriously by scholars.  In 1961, Raul Hilberg estimated that 50,000 Jewish victims died in the camp. In 1992, Czesław Rajca gave his own estimate of 235,000; it was displayed at the camp museum. The 2005 research by the Head of Scientific Department at Majdanek Museum, historian Tomasz Kranz indicated that there were 79,000 victims, 59,000 of whom were Jews.  The differences in estimates stem from different methods used for estimating and the amounts of evidence available to the researchers. The Soviet figures relied on the most crude methodology, also used to make Auschwitz estimates—it was assumed that the number of victims more or less corresponded to the crematoria capacities. Later researchers tried to take much more evidence into account, using records of deportations, contemporaneous population censuses, and recovered Nazi records. Hilberg's 1961 estimate, using these records, aligns closely with Kranz's report.  The well-preserved original ovens in the second Crematorium at Majdanek were built in 1943 by Heinrich Kori. They replaced the ovens brought to Majdanek from Sachsenhausen concentration camp in 1942.

Aftermath.

After the camp takeover, in August 1944 the Soviets protected the camp area and convened a special Polish-Soviet commission, to investigate and document the crimes against humanity committed at Majdanek. This effort constitutes one of the first attempts to document the Nazi war crimes in Eastern Europe. In the fall of 1944 the Majdanek State Museum was founded on the grounds of the Majdanek concentration camp. In 1947 the actual camp became the monument of martyrology by the decree of Polish Parliament. In the same year, some 1,300 m3 of surface soil mixed with human ashes and fragments of bones was collected and turned into a large mound. Majdanek received the status of the national museum in 1965. Some Nazi personnel of the camp were prosecuted immediately after the war, and some in the decades afterward. In November and December 1944, four SS Men and two kapos were placed on trial; one committed suicide and the rest were hanged on December 3, 1944. The last major, widely publicized prosecution of 16 SS members from Majdanek ( in German) took place from 1975 to 1981 in West Germany. However, of the 1,037 SS members who worked at Majdanek and are known by name, only 170 were prosecuted. This was due to a rule applied by the West German justice system that only those directly involved in the murder process could be charged.

Soviet NKVD use of the Majdanek camp.

After the capture of the camp by the Soviet Army, the NKVD retained the ready-made facility as a prison for soldiers of the "Armia Krajowa" (AK, the Home Army resistance) loyal to the Polish Government-in-Exile and the "Narodowe Siły Zbrojne" (National Armed Forces) opposed to both German and Soviet occupation. The NKVD like the SS before them used the same facilities to imprison and torture Polish patriots.  On August 19, 1944, in a report to the Polish government-in-exile, the Lublin District of the Home Army (AK) wrote: "Mass arrests of the AK soldiers are being carried out by the NKVD all over the region. These arrests are tolerated by the Polish Committee of National Liberation, and AK soldiers are incarcerated in the Majdanek Camp. Losses of our nation and the Home Army are equal to the losses which we suffered during the German occupation. We are paying with our blood."  Among the prisoners at the Majdanek NKVD Camp were Volhynian members of the AK, and soldiers of the AK units which had been moving toward Warsaw to join in the Warsaw Uprising. On August 23, 1944, some 250 inmates from Majdanek were transported to the rail station Lublin Tatary. There, all victims were placed in cattle cars and taken to camps in Siberia and other parts of the Soviet Union.

Commemoration.

In July 1969, on the 25th anniversary of its liberation, a large monument designed by Wiktor Tołkin (a.k.a. Victor Tolkin) was constructed at the site. It consists of two parts: a large gate monument at the camp's entrance and a large mausoleum holding ashes of the victims at its opposite end.  In October 2005, in cooperation with the Majdanek museum, four Majdanek survivors returned to the site and enabled archaeologists to find some 50 objects which had been buried by inmates, including watches, earrings, and wedding rings. According to the documentary film "Buried Prayers", this was the largest reported recovery of valuables in a death camp to date. Interviews between government historians and Jewish survivors were not frequent before 2005.  The camp today occupies about half of its original 2.7 km (ca. 670 acres), and—but for the former buildings—is mostly bare. A fire in August 2010 destroyed one of the wooden buildings that was being used as a museum to house seven thousand pairs of prisoners' shoes. The city of Lublin has tripled in size since the end of World War II, and even the main camp is today within the boundaries of the city of Lublin. It is clearly visible to many inhabitants of the city's high-rises, a fact that many visitors remark upon. The gardens of houses and flats border on and overlook the camp.  In 2016, Majdanek State Museum and its branches, Sobibór and Bełżec, had about 210,000 visitors. This was an increase of 10,000 visitors from the previous year. Visitors include Jews, Poles, and others that wish to learn more about the harsh crimes against humanity.

Majdanek (or Lublin) was a Nazi concentration and extermination camp built and operated by the SS on the outskirts of the city of Lublin during the German occupation of Poland in World War II. It had seven gas chambers, two wooden gallows, and some 227 structures in all, placing it among the largest of Nazi-run concentration camps. Although initially purposed for forced labor rather than extermination, the camp was used to kill people on an industrial scale during Operation Reinhard, the German plan to murder all Jews within their own General Government territory of Poland. The camp, which operated from October 1, 1941, until July 22, 1944, was captured nearly intact, because the rapid advance of the Soviet Red Army during Operation Bagration prevented the SS from destroying most of its infrastructure, and the inept Deputy Camp Commandant Anton Thernes failed in his task of removing incriminating evidence of war crimes.

Majdanek (oficiálně ) byl německý koncentrační a vyhlazovací tábor na předměstí Lublinu v Polsku. Původně se jednalo o tábor pro válečné zajatce zřízený roku 1941, ale v únoru 1943 byl jeho status změněn na koncentrační tábor.


Early life and education.

Paul Rivet was born in Wasigny, Ardennes in 1876. He attended local schools and university, studying to be a doctor.

Career.

Trained as a physician, in 1901 he took part in the Second French Geodesic Mission for survey measurements of the length of a meridian arc to Ecuador. He remained for five years in South America, where he was mentored by Federico González Suárez, an Ecuadorian bishop, historian and archaeologist. Rivet became interested in the indigenous peoples, beginning an ethnographic study of the Huaorani people of the Ecuadorian Amazon, then known as the Jívaro. While in Ecuador he collected specimens of amphibians and reptiles. Returning to France, Rivet went to work with the Muséum national d'histoire naturelle, directed by René Verneau.  He published several papers on his Ecuadorian research, before publishing an extended volume co-authored with René Verneau, titled "Ancient Ethnography of Ecuador" (1921-1922). In 1926, Rivet participated in founding the Institut d'ethnologie in Paris, together with Marcel Mauss, Emile Durkheim, and Lucien Lévy-Bruhl. They intended it as a collaboration among the fields of philosophy, ethnology and sociology. He taught many French ethnologists, including George Devereux. In 1928, he succeeded René Verneau as director of the National Museum of Natural History.  He continued to develop institutions for the study of mankind. In 1937 he founded the Musée de l'Homme in Paris, which became renowned for its ethnographic research and collections. In 1942, Rivet went to Colombia, where he founded the Anthropological Institute and Museum. Returning to Paris in 1945, he continued teaching while carrying on his research. His linguistic research introduced several new perspectives on the Aymara and Quechua languages of South America.

Politics.

Rivet also became involved in politics, alarmed at the rise of Fascism in Europe during the 1930s. During the 6 February 1934 crisis, he was one of the founders of the "Comité de vigilance des intellectuels antifascistes", an antifascist organization created in the wake of massive riots in Paris.Rivet was a leader in the French Resistance to Nazi occupation. He narrowly escaped arrest and execution by the Nazis. Several of his colleagues, including Anatole Lewitsky and Boris Vilde were shot.

Linguistic classification.

Rivet is well known for his classification of South American languages. He proposed 77 language families and about 1240 languages and dialects. Much of his work on language classification was later incorporated by John Alden Mason and his former student Čestmír Loukotka.

Migration theory.

Rivet's theory asserts that Asia was the origin of the Indigenous people of the Americas. However, he also suggested that migrations to South America were made from Australia some 6,000 years before, and from Melanesia somewhat later. "Les Origines de l'Homme Américain" ("The Origins of the American Man") was published in 1943, and contains linguistic and anthropological arguments to support his thesis.

Honors.

Rivet is commemorated in the scientific name of a species of South American snake, "Leptophis riveti".

Paul Rivet (7 May 1876, Wasigny, Ardennes – 21 March 1958) was a French ethnologist; he founded the Musée de l'Homme in 1937. In his professional work, Rivet is known for his theory that South America was originally populated in part by migrants who sailed there from Australia and Melanesia. He married Mercedes Andrade Chiriboga, a woman born in Cuenca, Ecuador.

Paul Rivet (7. května 1876 – 21. března 1958) byl francouzský etnolog, v roce 1937 zakladatel francouzského Musée de l'Homme. Byl také jedním ze zakladatelů "Comité de vigilance des intellectuels antifascistes", antifašistické organizace, založené po krajně pravicových nepokojích ve Francii 6. února 1934.


Background.

Early European exploration.

Diogo Cão traveled around the mouth of the Congo River in 1482, leading Portugal to claim the region as England did with River Victoria. Until the middle of the 19th century, the Congo was at the

Stanley's exploration.

In 1876 Leopold II of Belgium hosted a geographic conference in Brussels, inviting famous explorers, philanthropists, and members of geographic societies to stir up interest in a "humanitarian" endeavor for Europeans to take in central Africa to "improve" and "civilize" the lives of the indigenous peoples. At the conference, Leopold organized the International African Association with the cooperation of European and American explorers and the support of several European governments, and was himself elected chairman. Leopold used the association to promote plans to seize independent central Africa under this philanthropic guise.  Henry Morton Stanley, famous for making contact with British missionary David Livingstone in Africa in 1871, later explored the region during a journey that ended in 1877 and was described in Stanley's 1878 book "Through the Dark Continent". Failing to enlist British interest in developing the Congo region, Stanley took up service

King Leopold's campaign.

Leopold began to create a plan to convince other European powers of the legitimacy of his claim to the region, all the while maintaining the guise that his work was for the benefit of the native peoples under the name of a philanthropic "association".  The king launched a publicity campaign in Britain to distract critics, drawing attention to Portugal's record of slavery, and offering to drive slave traders from the Congo basin. He also secretly told British merchant houses

Lobbying and claiming the region.

Leopold was able to attract scientific and humanitarian backing for the International African Association (, or AIA), which he formed during a Brussels Geographic Conference of geographic societies, explorers, and dignitaries he hosted in 1876. At the conference, Leopold proposed establishing an international benevolent committee for the propagation of civilization among the peoples of central Africa (the Congo region). The AIA was originally conceived as a multi-national, scientific, and humanitarian assembly, and even invited Gustave Moynier as member of the International Law Institute and president of the International Committee of the Red Cross to attend their 1877 conference. The International Law Institute was supportive of the project under the belief that it was aimed to abolish the Congo Basin slave trade. Nevertheless, the AIA eventually became a development company controlled by Leopold.  After 1879 and the crumbling of the International African Association, Leopold's work was done under the auspices of the "Committee for Studies of the Upper Congo" (). The committee, supposedly an international commercial, scientific, and humanitarian group, was in fact made of a group of businessmen who had

Berlin Conference.

In November 1884, Otto von Bismarck convened a 14-nation conference to submit the Congo question to international control and to finalize the colonial partitioning of the African continent. Most major powers (including Austria-Hungary, Belgium, France, Germany, Portugal, Italy, the United Kingdom, Russia, the Ottoman Empire, and the United States) attended the Berlin Conference, and drafted an international code governing the way that European countries should behave as they acquired African territory. The conference officially recognized the

International recognition.

Following the United States's recognition of Leopold's colony, other European powers deliberated on the news. Portugal flirted with the French at first, but the British offered to support Portugal's claim to the entire Congo in return for a free trade agreement and to spite their French rivals. Britain was uneasy at French expansion and had a technical claim on the Congo via Lieutenant Cameron's 1873 expedition from Zanzibar to bring home Livingstone's body, but was reluctant to take on yet another expensive, unproductive

Government.

Leopold used the title Sovereign King as ruler of the Congo Free State. He appointed the heads of the three departments of state: interior, foreign affairs and finances. Each was headed by an administrator-general ("administrateur-général"), later a secretary-general ("secrétaire-général"), who was obligated to enact the policies of the sovereign or else resign. Below the secretaries-general were a series of bureaucrats of decreasing rank: directors general ("directeurs généraux"), directors ("directeurs"), "chefs de divisions" (division chiefs) and "chefs de bureaux" (bureau chiefs). The departments were headquartered in Brussels.  Finance was in charge of accounting for income and expenditure and tracking the public debt. Besides diplomacy, foreign affairs was in charge of shipping, education, religion and commerce. The department of the interior was responsible for defence, police, public health and public works. It was also charged with overseeing the exploitation of the Congo's natural resources and plantations. In 1904, the secretary-general of the interior set up a propaganda office, the "Bureau central

Leopold's rule.

Leopold no longer needed the façade of the "association", and replaced it with an appointed cabinet of Belgians who would do his bidding. To the temporary new capital of Boma, he sent a governor-general and a chief of police. The vast Congo basin was split up into 14 administrative districts, each district into zones, each zone into sectors, and each sector into posts. From the district commissioners down to post level, every appointed head was European. However, with little financial means the Free State mainly relied on local elites to rule and tax the vast and hard-to-reach Congolese interior.  In the Free State, Leopold exercised total personal control without much delegation to subordinates. African chiefs played an important role in the administration by implementing government orders within their communities. Throughout much of its existence, however, Free State presence in the territory that it claimed was patchy, with its few officials concentrated in a number of small and widely dispersed "stations" which controlled only small amounts of hinterland. In 1900, there were just 3,000 white people in the Congo, of whom only half were Belgian. The colony was perpetually short of administrative staff and officials, who numbered between 700 and 1,500 during the period.  Leopold pledged to suppress the east African slave trade; promote humanitarian policies; guarantee free trade within the colony; impose no import duties for twenty years; and encourage philanthropic and scientific enterprises. Beginning in the mid-1880s, Leopold first decreed that the state asserted rights of proprietorship over all vacant lands throughout the Congo territory. In three successive decrees, Leopold promised the rights of the Congolese in their land to native villages and farms, essentially making nearly all of the CFS "terres domainales" (state-owned land). Leopold further decreed that merchants should limit their commercial operations in rubber trade with the natives. Additionally, the colonial administration liberated thousands of slaves.  Four main problems presented themselves over the next few years.

Early economics and concessions.

Leopold could not meet the costs of running the Congo Free State. Desperately, he set in motion a system to maximize revenue. The first change was the introduction of the concept of "terres vacantes", "vacant" land, which was any land that did not contain a habitation or a cultivated garden plot. All of this land (i.e., most of the country) was therefore deemed to belong to the state. Servants of the state (namely any men in Leopold's employ) were encouraged to exploit it.  Shortly after the anti-slavery conference he held in Brussels in 1889, Leopold issued a new decree which

Scramble for Katanga.

Early in Leopold's rule, the second problem—the British South Africa Company's expansionism into the southern Congo Basin—was addressed. The distant Yeke Kingdom, in Katanga on the upper Lualaba River, had signed no treaties, was known to be rich in copper and thought to have much gold from its slave-trading activities. Its powerful "mwami" (big chief), Msiri, had already rejected a treaty brought by Alfred Sharpe on behalf of Cecil Rhodes. In 1891 a Free State expedition extracted a letter from Msiri agreeing to their agents coming to Katanga

War with Arab slavers.

In the short term, the third problem, that of the African and Arab slavers like Zanzibari/Swahili strongman Tippu Tip (nom de guerre)—his real name was Hamad bin Muhammad bin Juma bin Rajab el Murjebi—was temporarily solved. Initially the authority of the Congo Free State was relatively weak in the eastern regions of the Congo.  In early 1887, Henry Morton Stanley arrived in Zanzibar and proposed that "Tippu Tip" be made governor (wali) of the Stanley Falls District. Both Leopold II and Barghash bin Said agreed and on February 24, 1887, Tippu Tip accepted.  In the longer term

The Lado Enclave.

In 1894, King Leopold II signed a treaty with Great Britain which conceded a strip of land on the Free State's eastern border in exchange for the Lado Enclave, which provided access to the navigable Nile and extended the Free State's sphere of influence northwards into Sudan. After rubber profits soared in 1895, Leopold ordered the organization of an expedition into the Lado Enclave, which had been overrun by Mahdist rebels since the outbreak of the Mahdist War in 1881. The expedition was composed of two columns: the first, under Belgian war hero Baron Dhanis, consisted of a sizable force, numbering around three-thousand, and was to strike north through the jungle and attack the rebels at their base at Rejaf. The second, a much smaller force of only eight-hundred, was led by

Economy during Leopold's rule.

While the war against African powers was ending, the quest for income was increasing, fueled by the aire policy. By 1890, Leopold was facing considerable financial difficulty. District officials' salaries were reduced to a bare minimum, and made up with a commission payment based on the profit that their area returned to Leopold. After widespread criticism, this "primes system" was substituted for the "allocation de retraite" in which a large part of the payment was granted, at the end of the service, only to those territorial agents and magistrates whose conduct was judged "satisfactory" by their superiors. This meant in practice that nothing changed. Congolese communities in the "Domaine Privé" were not merely forbidden by law to sell items to anyone but the state; they were required to provide state officials with set quotas of rubber and ivory at a fixed, government-mandated price and to provide food to the local post.  In direct violation of his promises of free trade within the CFS under the terms of the Berlin Treaty, not only had the state become a commercial entity directly or indirectly trading within its dominion, but also, Leopold had been slowly monopolizing a considerable amount of the ivory and rubber trade by imposing export duties on the resources traded by other merchants within the CFS. In terms of infrastructure, Leopold's regime began construction of the railway that ran from the coast to the capital of Leopoldville (now Kinshasa). This project, known today as the Matadi–Kinshasa Railway, took years to complete.  By the final decade of the 19th century, John Boyd Dunlop’s 1887 invention of inflatable, rubber bicycle tubes and the growing popularity of the automobile dramatically increased global demand for rubber. To monopolize the resources of the entire Congo Free State, Leopold issued three decrees in 1891 and 1892 that reduced the native population to serfs. Collectively, these forced the natives to deliver all

Humanitarian disaster.

Mutilation.

Failure to meet the rubber collection quotas was punishable by death. Meanwhile, the Force Publique were required to provide the hand of their victims as proof when they had shot and killed someone, as it was believed that they would otherwise use the munitions (imported from Europe at considerable cost) for hunting. As a consequence, the rubber quotas were in part paid off in chopped-off hands. Sometimes the hands were collected by the soldiers of the Force Publique, sometimes by the villages themselves. There were even small wars where

Death toll.

A reduction of the population of the Congo is noted by all who have compared the country at the beginning of Leopold's control with the beginning of Belgian state rule in 1908, but estimates of the death toll vary considerably. Estimates of some contemporary observers suggest that the population decreased by half during this period. According to Edmund D. Morel, the Congo Free State counted "20 million souls". Hence, Mark Twain mentioned the number of ten million deaths. According to British diplomat Roger Casement, this depopulation had four main causes: "indiscriminate war", starvation, reduction of births, and disease. Sleeping sickness was also a major cause of fatality at the time. Opponents of Leopold's rule stated, however, that the administration itself was to be considered responsible for the spreading of the epidemic.  In the absence of a census providing even an initial idea of the size of population of the region at the inception of the Congo Free State (the first was taken in 1924), it is impossible to quantify population changes in the period. Despite this, Forbath more recently claimed the loss was at least

International criticism.

Leopold ran up high debts with his Congo investments before the beginning of the worldwide rubber boom in the 1890s. Prices increased throughout the decade as industries discovered new uses for rubber in tires, hoses, tubing, insulation for telegraph and telephone cables and wiring. By the late-1890s, wild rubber had far surpassed ivory as the main source of revenue from the Congo Free State. The peak year was 1903, with rubber fetching the highest price and concessionary companies raking in the highest profits.  However, the boom sparked efforts to find lower-cost producers. Congolese concessionary companies started facing competition from rubber cultivation in Southeast Asia and Latin America. As plantations were begun in other tropical areas—mostly under the ownership of the rival British firms—world rubber prices started to dip. Competition heightened the drive to exploit forced labour in the Congo in order to lower production costs. Meanwhile, the cost of enforcement was eating away at profit margins, along with the toll taken by the increasingly unsustainable harvesting methods. As competition from other areas of rubber cultivation mounted, Leopold's private rule was left increasingly vulnerable to international scrutiny.  Missionaries carefully documented and exposed atrocities. Eye-witness reports from missionaries portrayed actions by the State that broke laws set by the European nations. As rumours circulated Leopold attempted to discredit them, even creating a Commission for the Protection of the Natives. In January 1908, William Henry Sheppard published a report on colonial abuses in the American Presbyterian Congo Mission (APCM) newsletter, and both he and William Morrison were sued for libel against the Kasai Rubber Company (Compagnie de Kasai), a prominent Belgian rubber contractor in the area. When the case went to court in September 1909, the two missionaries had support from the CRA, American Progressives, and their lawyer Emile Vandervelde. The judge acquitted Sheppard (Morrison had been acquitted earlier on a technicality) on the premise that his editorial had not named the major company, but smaller charter companies instead. However, it is likely that the case was decided in favor of Sheppard as a result of international politics; the U.S., socially in support of the missionaries, had questioned the validity of King Leopold II's rule over the Congo.  Sheppard's documented cases of cruelty or violence were in direct violation of the Berlin Act of 1885, which gave Leopold II control over the Congo as long as he "care[d] for the improvements of their conditions of their moral and material well-being" and "help[ed] in suppressing slavery." However, historians have noted that he and other missionaries have traditionally received little recognition for their contributions and reports.

Belgian annexation of the Congo Free State as the Belgian Congo.

Leopold II offered to reform his Congo Free State regime, but international opinion supported an end to the king's rule, and no nation was willing to accept this responsibility. Belgium was the obvious European candidate to annex the Congo Free State. For two years, it debated the question and held new elections on the issue.  Yielding to international pressure, the parliament of Belgium annexed the Congo Free State and took over its administration on November 15, 1908, as the colony of the Belgian Congo. The governance of the Belgian Congo was outlined in

Legacy.

The Order of the Crown, originally created in 1897, rewarded heroic deeds and service achieved while serving in the Congo Free State. The Order was made a decoration of the Belgian state with the abolition of the Congo Free State in 1908 and is still awarded today.  Between 1886 and 1908 the Free State issued a number of postage stamps. These typically showed scenes of wildlife, landscapes, and natives.  Coins were minted from 1887 to 1908, using the Belgian standard. They ranged from a copper 1 Centime through a silver 5 Francs. The lower values showed a star on the obverse and were holed, the higher ones had a bust of Leopold II.

Genocide question.

In the aftermath of the 1998 publication of "King Leopold's Ghost" by Adam Hochschild, where he had written "the killing in the Congo was of genocidal proportions", but "it was not strictly speaking a genocide", "The Guardian" reported that the Royal Museum for Central Africa in Brussels would finance an investigation into some of the claims made by Hochschild. An investigatory panel announced in 2002, likely to be headed by Professor Jean-Luc Vellut, was scheduled to report its findings in 2004. Robert G. Weisbord stated in the 2003 "Journal of Genocide Research" that attempting to eliminate a portion of

The Congo Free State, also known as the Independent State of the Congo (, ), was a large state in Central Africa from 1885 to 1908. It was privately ruled by king Leopold II (not by the government of Belgium, of which he was the constitutional monarch). Leopold was able to procure the region by convincing other Eurasian states at the Berlin Conference on Africa that he was involved in humanitarian and philanthropic work and would not tax trade. Via the International Association of the Congo, he was able to lay claim to most of the Congo basin. On 29 May 1885, after the closure of the Berlin Conference, the king announced that he planned to name his possessions "the Congo Free State", an appellation which was not yet used at the Berlin Conference and which officially replaced "International Association of the Congo" on 1 August 1885. The Congo Free State operated as a corporate state privately controlled by Leopold II, although he never personally visited the state.

Svobodný stát Kongo, či též Svobodný konžský stát, byla první kolonie na území dnešního Konga, existovala v letech 1885 - 1908.


History.

Kevin, a descendant of one of the ruling families in Leinster, studied as a boy under the care of three holy men, Eoghan, Lochan, and Eanna. During this time, he went to Glendalough. He was to return later, with a small group of monks to found a monastery where the 'two rivers form a confluence'. Kevin's writings discuss his fighting "knights" at Glendalough; scholars today believe this refers to his process of self-examination and his personal temptations. His fame as a holy man spread and he attracted numerous followers. He died in about 618, traditionally on 3 June. For the next six centuries, Glendalough flourished and the Irish Annals contain references to the deaths of abbots and raids on the settlement.  Circa 1042, oak timber from Glendalough was used to build the second-longest Viking longship recorded (circa 30 m). A modern replica of that ship was built in 2004 and is currently located in Roskilde, Denmark. At the Synod of Rath Breasail in 1111, Glendalough was designated as one of the two dioceses of North Leinster. The Book of Glendalough was written there about 1131. St. Laurence O'Toole, born in 1128, became Abbot of Glendalough and was well known for his sanctity and hospitality. Even after his appointment as Archbishop of Dublin in 1162, he returned occasionally to Glendalough, to the solitude of St. Kevin's Bed. He died in Eu, in Normandy in 1180. In 1176, the Annals of Tigernach report that Glendalough was 'plundered by the foreigners'. In 1214, the dioceses of Glendalough and Dublin were united. From that time onwards, the cultural and ecclesiastical status of Glendalough diminished. The destruction of the settlement by English forces in 1398 left it a ruin but it continued as a church of local importance and a place of pilgrimage.  Glendalough is on the 1598 map "A Modern Depiction of Ireland, One of the British Isles" by Abraham Ortelius as "Glandalag". Descriptions of Glendalough from the 18th and 19th centuries include references to occasions of "riotous assembly" on the feast of St. Kevin on 3 June.  The present remains in Glendalough tell only a small part of its story. The monastery in its heyday included workshops, areas for manuscript writing and copying, guest houses, an infirmary, farm buildings and dwellings for both the monks and a large lay population. The buildings which survive probably date from between the 10th and 12th centuries.

Titular see.

Glendalough is a titular see within the Catholic Church, and is used for bishops who hold no ordinary power of their own, and thus are titular bishops.

Annalistic references.

See Annals of Inisfallen (AI)

Monuments in the Lower Glen.

The Gateway.

The Gateway to the monastic city of Glendalough is one of the most important monuments, now totally unique in Ireland. It was originally two-storeyed with two fine, granite arches. The antae or projecting walls at each end suggest that it had a timber roof. Inside the gateway, in the west wall, is a cross-inscribed stone. This denoted sanctuary, the boundary of the area of refuge. The paving of the causeway in the monastic city is still preserved in part but very little remains of the enclosure wall.

The Round Tower.

This fine tower, built of mica-slate interspersed with granite is about 30 metres high, with an entrance 3.5 metres from the base. The conical roof was rebuilt in 1876 using the original stones. The tower originally had six timber floors, connected by ladders. The four storeys above entrance level are each lit by a small window; while the top storey has four windows facing the cardinal compass points. Round towers, landmarks for approaching visitors, were built as bell towers, but also served on occasion as store-houses and as places of refuge in times of attack.

The Cathedral.

The largest and most imposing of the buildings at Glendalough, the cathedral had several phases of construction, the earliest, consisting of the present nave with its antae. The large mica-schist stones which can be seen up to the height of the square-headed west doorway were re-used from an earlier smaller church. The chancel and sacristy date from the late 12th and early 13th centuries. The chancel arch and east window were finely decorated, though many of the stones are now missing. The north doorway to the nave also dates from this period. Under the southern window of the chancel, there is an ambry or wall cupboard and a piscina, a basin used for washing the sacred vessels. A few metres south of the cathedral an early cross of local granite, with an unpierced ring, is commonly known as St. Kevin's Cross.

The Priests' House.

Almost totally reconstructed from the original stones, based on a 1779 sketch made by Beranger, the Priests' House is a small Romanesque building, with a decorative arch at the east end. It gets its name from the practice of interring priests there in the 18th and 19th centuries. Its original purpose is unknown although it may have been used to house relics of St. Kevin.

St. Kevin's Church or "Kitchen".

This stone-roofed building originally had a nave only, with an entrance at the west end and a small round-headed window in the east gable. The upper part of the window can be seen above what became the chancel arch when the chancel (now missing) and the sacristy were added later. The steep roof, formed of overlapping stones, is supported internally by a semi-circular vault. Access to the croft or roof chamber was through a rectangular opening towards the western end of the vault. The church also had a timber first floor. The belfry with its conical cap and four small windows rises from the west end of the stone roof in the form of a miniature round tower. It is commonly known as St. Kevin's Kitchen as the bell tower resembles a kitchen chimney. However, food was not cooked here.

St. Ciarán's Church.

The remains of this nave-and-chancel church were uncovered in 1875. The church probably commemorates St. Ciarán, the founder of Clonmacnoise, a monastic settlement that had associations with Glendalough during the 10th century.

St. Mary's or Our Lady's Church.

One of the earliest and best constructed of the churches, St. Mary's or Our Lady's Church consists of a nave with a later chancel. Its granite west doorway with an architrave, has inclined jambs and a massive lintel. The underside of the lintel is inscribed with an unusual saltire or x-shaped cross. The East window is round-headed, with a hood moulding and two very worn carved heads on the outside.

Trinity Church.

A simple nave-and-chancel church, with a fine chancel arch. Trinity Church is beside the main road. A square-headed doorway in the west gable leads into a later annexe, possibly a sacristy. A round tower or belfry was constructed over a vault in this chamber. This fell in a storm in 1818. The doorway inserted in the south wall of the nave also dates from this period. Projecting corbels at the gables would have carried the verge timbers of the roof.

St. Saviour's Church.

The most recent of the Glendalough churches, St. Saviour's was built in the 12th century, probably at the time of St. Laurence O'Toole. The nave and chancel with their fine decorate stones were restored in the 1870s using stones found on the site. The Romanesque chancel arch has three orders, with highly ornamented capitals. The east window has two round-headed lights. Its decorated features include a serpent, a lion, and two birds holding a human head between their beaks. A staircase in the eastern wall leading from an adjoining domestic building would have given access to a room over the chancel.

Monuments near the Upper Lough.

Reefert Church.

Situated in a grove of trees, this nave-and-chancel church dates from around 1100. Most of the surrounding walls are modern. The name derives from "Righ Fearta", the burial place of the kings. The church, built in a simple style, has a granite doorway with sloping jambs and flat lintel and a granite chancel arch. The projecting corbels at each gable carried verge timbers for the roof. East of the church there are two crosses of note, one with an elaborate interlace pattern. On the other side of the Poulanass River, close to Reefert are the remains of another small church.

St. Kevin's Cell.

Built on a rocky spur over the lake, this stone structure was 3.6 metres in diameter with walls 0.9 metres thick and a doorway on the east side. Only the foundations survive today and it is possible that the cell had a stone-corbelled roof, similar to the beehive huts on Skellig Michael, County Kerry.

St. Kevin's Bed.

St. Kevin's Bed is a cave in the rock face about 8 metres above the level of the Upper Lake on its southerly side (with The Spinc cliffs above it). It was reputedly a retreat for St. Kevin and later for St. Laurence O'Toole. Partly man-made, it runs back 2 metres into the rock.

The "Caher".

This stone-walled circular enclosure on the level ground between the two lakes is 20 metres in diameter and is of unknown date. Close by, are several crosses, apparently used as stations on the pilgrim's route.

Temple-na-Skellig.

This small rectangular church on the southern shore of the Upper Lake is accessible only by boat, via a series of steps from the landing stage. West of the church is a raised platform with stone enclosure walls, where dwelling huts probably stood. The church, partly rebuilt in the 12th century, has a granite doorway with inclined jambs. At the east gable is an inscribed Latin Cross together with several plain grave slabs and three small crosses.

Miner's Village.

Camaderry Mountain which overlooks the upper Glendalough lake from the north shore, contains the "Luganure mineral vein" which is a source of lead in the form of galena (PbS), and also contains traces of silver. While the main Camaderry mines was in the neighboring Glendasan Valley, a second Miner's Village and processing facilities were constructed at the head of the Glendalough valley, which was nick-named "Van Diemen's Land" by the miners.  In 1859 the Glendasan and Glendalough mines were connected with each other by a series of tunnels called adits, which are now mostly flooded, through the Camaderry mountain. These tunnels helped drain the mineral vein and made it easier to transport ore to Glendalough where it could be more easily processed. The rusted remains of ore crushers can still be seen at the Miner's Village, however, the tramway and inclined rails system are gone.  Mining in Glendalough/Glendasan took place in three phases. The first phase from 1825 to 1890 by the "Mining Company of Ireland". A second phase took place between 1890 and 1925 by the local Wynne family. The mines were re-opened briefly from 1948 to 1957 after which mining ceased completely.

Nature.

Geography.

The valley of Glendalough was formed during the last ice age by a glacier which left a moraine across the valley mouth. The Poulanass River, which plunges into the valley from the south, via the Poulanass Waterfall, created a delta, which eventually divided the original lake in two. Surrounding Glendalough are the mountains of Camaderry, the hydroelectric station at Turlough Hill, and large massif of Conavalla which dominates the head of the valley, and the peaks of Lugduff, and Mullacor.

Vegetation.

Glendalough is surrounded by semi-natural oak woodland. Much of this was formerly coppiced (cut to the base at regular intervals) to produce wood, charcoal and bark. In the springtime, the oakwood floor is carpeted with a display of bluebells, wood sorrel and wood anemones. Other common plants are woodrush, bracken, polypody fern and various species of mosses. The understorey is largely of holly, hazel and mountain ash.

Wildlife.

Glendalough is a good place to look for some of Ireland's newest breeding species, such as the goosander and the great spotted woodpecker, and some of the rarest, such as the common redstart and the wood warbler; peregrine, white-throated dipper, common cuckoo, eurasian jay and common buzzard can also be seen.

Recreation.

Walking trails.

There are nine way-marked trails of varying difficulty around Glendalough that are maintained by the Wicklow Mountains National Park (and who provide a map of all trails). Some of the trails stay on mostly flat-ground pathways around the two lakes of Glendalough ("The Miner's Road Walk", "Green Road Walk"), others lead up the Poolanass Waterfall area with options beyond into a network of forest paths (e.g. "Derrybawn Woodland Trail"). The most notable trails take the steep 600–step boarded path (using railway sleepers), from the Poolanass Waterfall up to vantage platform of The Spinc (from the Irish "An Spinc"; meaning "pointed hill"), which overlooks the upper lake and the Glendalough valley below.  The most noted Spinc trail is the "White Route" which follows a further scenic boarded path westwards along the cliffs of the upper lake to the Glenealo Valley (home to herds of red deer), and down on stone paths to the Miner's Village, and back along the Miner's Road on the north shore of the upper lake, to finish at the upper lake car-park. As the entire "White Route" loop is on paths (either stone/sand paths or boarded railway sleepers), it can be completed in running shoes and does not require climbing footwear; the entire 9-kilometre loop of the "White Route", starting and ending at the upper lake car-park, takes circa 2–3 hours.  The Wicklow Way, a long distance waymarked walking trail, also passes through Glendalough.  The 30-kilometre medieval pilgrimage tail, Saint Kevin's Way, starts in Hollywood, and ends in Glendalough.

Rock climbing.

Glendalough's south-facing granite cliffs, situated on slopes of Camaderry above the north-western end of the valley (just above the Miner's Village), have been a rock-climbing location since 1948. The north-facing cliffs on the other side of the upper lake are not considered suitable for rock-climbing.  The 2009 Mountaineering Ireland climbing guidebook for Wicklow, as well as the online guidebooks for Glendalough, list about 144 routes at all grades up to E5 6b ("Bathsheba" and "The Wake"); the cliffs are particularly noted for their long, and multi-pitch, VS/HVS routes.  The climbs vary between one and four pitches, and up to over 100 metres in length. There are several sectors:  The Irish Mountaineering Club has operated a climbing hut since the 1950s.  Below the crag is an extensive boulder field which is also used for bouldering activities.

Glendalough (; ) is a glacial valley in County Wicklow, Ireland, renowned for an Early Medieval monastic settlement founded in the 6th century by St Kevin. From 1825 to 1957, the head of the Glendalough Valley was the site of a galena lead mine. Glendalough is also a recreational area for picnics, for walking along networks of maintained trails of varying difficulty, and also for rock-climbing.

Glendalough (,, což znamená Údolí dvou jezer) je vesnice s klášterem v hrabství Wicklow v Irsku. Klášter byl založen v 6. století sv. Kevinem, poustevníkem a knězem, zničen byl v roce 1398 anglickým vojskem.


Towns and villages.

Total list of Settlements:

Physical geography.

Geology.

The Wicklow Mountains form the largest continuous upland region in Ireland. The highest mountain in the range, Lugnaquilla, rises to, giving Wicklow the second-highest county peak after Kerry.

Hydrodrology.

The River Liffey, chief river of Dublin, rises in the county, and is a major source of water for Greater Dublin. The Liffey's leading tributary, the River Dodder, rises just across the border in southern County Dublin, and receives some minor flows from extreme northern Wicklow. The River Dargle runs to the Irish Sea at Bray. The River Avoca forms from the confluence of the Avonmore and Avonbeg at the Meeting of the Waters, before discharging into the Irish Sea at Arklow. The River Aughrim is a tributary of the Avoca. The River Slaney is in the western part of the county, bordering County Carlow. One of the smaller rivers of the county, the River Vartry is important to Dublin's water supply.  Lakes are small but numerous, located mainly in mountain valleys or glacial corries. They include Lough Dan, Lough Tay, Lough Brae, the lakes of Glendalough, and the Poulaphouca reservoir (the largest by volume).

Built environment.

Wicklow is home to several major water supply and hydroelectric facilities. The Turlough Hill pumped-storage scheme, a significant civil engineering project, was carried out in the mountains in the 1960s and 1970s.

Leisure and tourism.

Wicklow, often called "The Garden of Ireland", has been a popular tourist destination for many years, due to its scenery, beaches, walking, hiking and climbing options, and attractions including the ruins of the monastic city of Glendalough, Wicklow Gaol and water-based activities on reservoirs and the coast.  The Wicklow Way is the oldest waymarked long-distance walking trail in Ireland.  The popular annual mass participation bike ride Wicklow 200 has taken place in the county every year since 1982.

History.

County Wicklow was the last of the traditional counties of Ireland to be shired in 1606 from land previously part of counties Dublin and Carlow. Established as a distinct county, it was aimed at controlling local groups such as the O'Byrnes. "The Military Road", stretching from Rathfarnham to Aghavannagh crosses the mountains, north to south, was built by the British Army to assist them in defeating the rebels still active in the Wicklow Mountains following the failed 1798 rebellion. It provided them with access to an area that had been a hotbed of Irish rebellion for centuries. Several barracks to house the soldiers were built along the route and the Glencree Centre for Peace and Reconciliation was built alongside the remains of barracks there. Battalions of the Irish Army use firing ranges in County Wicklow for tactical exercises, especially the largest one in the Glen of Imaal which was previously used by the British Army prior to independence.  The ancient monastery of Glendalough is located in County Wicklow. During the Cromwellian invasion of Ireland, local authorities immediately surrendered without a fight. During the 1798 rebellion, some of the insurgents took refuge in the Wicklow Mountains, resulting in clashes between British troops and the troops commanded by General Joseph Holt (1756–1826) near Aughrim and later at Arklow.  The boundaries of the county were extended in 1957 by the Local Government Act which "detached lands from the County of Dublin and from the jurisdiction and powers of the Council of the County of Dublin" near Bray and added them to the County of Wicklow.

Local government and politics.

The local government authority is Wicklow County Council which returns 32 councillors from five municipal districts (Arklow, Baltinglass, Bray, Greystones, Wicklow). All of the previous Town Councils (Arklow, Bray, Greystones, Wicklow) were abolished under a new Local Government Act at the 2014 Local Elections. For elections to Dáil Éireann, the entire county in included in the Wicklow constituency along with some eastern parts of County Carlow. The constituency returns five TDs to the Dáil.

Culture.

Mermaid, County Wicklow Arts Centre is based in Bray. Mermaid is the county's hub of artistic activity and creation, offering a programme in many art forms: visual arts, theatre productions, opera, dance performances, arthouse cinema, comedy and a music programme. Two of the county's festivals take place in Arklow, the Arklow Music Festival and the Arklow Seabreeze Festival.  The county is a popular film-making location in Ireland. Bray is home to Ardmore Studios, where many of Ireland's best known feature films, including "Rawhead Rex" John Boorman's "Excalibur" and "Zardoz", Jim Sheridan's Oscar-winning "In the Name of the Father", and several Neil Jordan films, have been shot. The BBC series "Ballykissangel" was also filmed in County Wicklow. Scenes from the movie "P.S. I Love You" were shot in the Wicklow Mountains National Park while several scenes from other movies, from "Barry Lyndon" to "Haywire", have been filmed in the county.

Media.

Filming locations.

Much of the television series "Vikings", (Amazon Prime), was filmed at Ashford Studios in the county, particularly scenes that required a green screen for subsequent CGI work. Some on-location filming was done elsewhere in the County. For example, certain scenes for Vikings (season 6) were filmed at and Powerscourt Waterfall and Powerscourt Estate and in Lough Tay. Ashford Studios was also the base for production of this final season. The spinoff from the series, "Vikings: Valhalla" (Netflix), will also be based at the Studios.  From 2016 to 2018, most of Into the Badlands (TV series) was filmed in County Wicklow. Another series,, announced by Netflix in 2019, was also scheduled to shoot in the County, and would also be based at Ashford Studios.

Twinning.

County Wicklow is twinned with Würzburg, Germany and Seminole County, Florida, USA.

County Wicklow ( ; ) is a county in Ireland. The last of the traditional 32 counties to be formed, as late as 1606, it is part of the Mid-East Region and also part of the traditional province of Leinster. It is named after the town of Wicklow, which derives from the Old Norse name "Víkingaló", meaning "Vikings' Meadow". Wicklow County Council is the local authority for the county. The county had a population of 142,425.

Hrabství Wicklow (, ; Karel Havlíček Borovský uvádí v Králi Lávrovi také počeštěnou podobu "Viklov") je hrabství na východě Irska, v bývalé irské provincii Leinster. Sousedí s hrabstvím Dublin (Dún Laoghaire – Rathdown a Jižní Dublin) na severu, s hrabstvím Limerick na jihu a hrabstvím Tipperary na východě. Východní pobřeží omývá Irské moře.


Biography.

Shelley was born in Midland, Michigan, played in several mid-Michigan bands, including Faith and Morals and Strange Fruit, and was among the original lineup of the punk band The Crucifucks. Since 1985, he has performed with the noise rock band Sonic Youth, when he replaced Bob Bert.  After leaving the Crucifucks, he moved to Manhattan with a friend, living in the apartment of Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon for dogsitting purposes while the band was in Europe. When the band returned, former drummer Bob Bert had left the band, and they hired Shelley as their drummer without an audition.  In 1992 he founded the independent record label Smells Like Records, based in Hoboken, New Jersey, where he also resides. Along with friend and Two Dollar Guitar musician Tim Foljahn, he helped advance Cat Power's musical career, serving as drummer on her first three albums. He also produced Blonde Redhead's debut self-titled album in 1993 and Cat Power's "What Would the Community Think?" in 1996. Steve was able to track down Lee Hazlewood in 1997 and secure permission to reissue five of the finest titles of the Hazlewood back catalog. Smells Like Records also released a collection of standards recorded in 1997, which was the first new recording from Hazlewood released domestically in nearly two decades. In 1998 Shelley played on the soundtrack of the film "Velvet Goldmine" as a member of Wylde Ratttz, along with The Stooges' Ron Asheton, Thurston Moore, Mike Watt, Don Fleming, Mark Arm of Mudhoney and Jim Dunbar.  Other significant work away from Sonic Youth includes recording and performing with an array of artists such as Christina Rosenvinge, Chris Lee, John Wolfington, Michael Powers, Michael Rother, Howe Gelb, and Enrique Morente. In 2007, Shelley recorded a number of tracks for the I'm Not There soundtrack with a supergroup called The Million Dollar Bashers, featuring Lee Ranaldo, Wilco guitarist Nels Cline, Television guitarist Tom Verlaine, Dylan bassist Tony Garnier, guitarist Smokey Hormel and keyboardist John Medeski.  In February 2009, Shelley spent a weekend in Chicago recording with Chris Connelly, Sanford Parker, and Jeremy Lemos. The results of this collaboration were released under the moniker The High Confessions by Relapse Records on July 20, 2010.  In 2010, Michael Rother played shows in Europe with Shelley and Tall Firs guitarist Aaron Mullan as Halogallo 2010. This group performs music "in the spirit of" NEU! including some tracks by Harmonia and from Michael Rother's solo albums. Other 2010 concert dates included the ATP New York 2010 music festival in Monticello, New York and Incubate 2010 in Tilburg, Netherlands.  His enthusiasm for the music of Daniel Johnston and Townes Van Zandt led to his appearances in the documentaries "The Devil and Daniel Johnston" and "Be Here to Love Me".  Shelley is also in charge of operating Sonic Youth's own record labels, SYR and Goofin'. In 2010, he started a new label called Vampire Blues whose inaugural release was a 7" by Hallogallo 2010.  In 2011 he joined Disappears. In 2012, he left the band due to scheduling conflicts.  In 2015 he toured with Sun Kil Moon and played on the album "Universal Themes".

Steven Jay Shelley (born June 23, 1962) is an American drummer. He is best known as a member of the alternative rock band Sonic Youth. Shelley is the current recording drummer for the indie folk act Sun Kil Moon, with whom he makes occasional live appearances.

Steve Shelley (* 23. června 1963, Minland, Michigan, USA) je americký bubeník, známý díky svému působení v rockové kapele Sonic Youth. Nejdříve hrál v několika málo Michiganských kapelách, než definitivně zakotvil v Sonic Youth, kde nahradil dosavadního bubeníka skupiny Boba Berta. V roce 1993 založil malé nezávislé hudební vydavatelství Smells Like Records. Po rozpadu Sonic Youth vystupoval ve skupině kytaristy této skupiny Lee Ranalda nazvané The Dust a následně hrál s dalším členem této skupiny, Thurstonem Moorem, s nímž nahrál album "The Best Day". V roce 1989 hrál spolu s dalšími členy Sonic Youth na albu "Life in Exile After Abdication" hudebnice Maureen Tuckerové. Během své kariéry spolupracoval s mnoha dalšími hudebníky, mezi které patří například Israel Nash Gripka, Sun Kil Moon, Samara Lubelski a Cat Power.