Amos Bronson Alcott was an American teacher, writer and reformer. As an educator, Alcott pioneered new ways of interacting with young students, focusing on a conversational style, avoided traditional punishment, he hoped to perfect the human spirit and, to that end, advocated a vegan diet before the term was coined. He was an abolitionist and an advocate for women's rights. Born in Wolcott, Connecticut in 1799, Alcott had only minimal formal schooling before attempting a career as a traveling salesman. Worried about how the itinerant life might have a negative impact on his soul, he turned to teaching, his innovative methods, were controversial, he stayed in one place long. His most well-known teaching position was at the Temple School in Boston, his experience there was turned into two books: Records of a School and Conversations with Children on the Gospels. Alcott became a major figure in transcendentalism, his writings on behalf of that movement, are criticized for being incoherent. Based on his ideas for human perfection, Alcott founded Fruitlands, a transcendentalist experiment in community living.

The project failed after seven months. Alcott continued to struggle financially for most of his life, he continued focusing on educational projects and opened a new school at the end of his life in 1879. He died in 1888. Alcott married Abby May in 1830 and they had four surviving children, all daughters, their second was Louisa May, who fictionalized her experience with the family in her novel Little Women in 1868. A native New Englander, Amos Bronson Alcott was born in Wolcott, Connecticut on November 29, 1799, his parents were Anna Bronson Alcott. The family home was in an area known as Spindle Hill, his father, Joseph Alcox, traced his ancestry to colonial-era settlers in eastern Massachusetts; the family spelled their name "Alcock" changed to "Alcocke" "Alcox". Amos Bronson, the oldest of eight children changed the spelling to "Alcott" and dropped his first name. At age six, young Bronson began his formal education in a one-room schoolhouse in the center of town but learned how to read at home with the help of his mother.

The school taught only reading and spelling and he left this school at the age of 10. At age 13, his uncle, Reverend Tillotson Bronson, invited Alcott into his home in Cheshire, Connecticut, to be educated and prepared for college. Bronson gave it up after only a month and was self-educated from on, he was not social and his only close friend was his neighbor and second cousin William Alcott, with whom he shared books and ideas. Bronson Alcott reflected on his childhood at Spindle Hill: "It kept me pure... I dwelt amidst the hills... God spoke to me while I walked the fields." Starting at age 15, he took a job working for clockmaker Seth Thomas in the nearby town of Plymouth. At age 17, Alcott passed the exam for a teaching certificate but had trouble finding work as a teacher. Instead, he left home and became a traveling salesman in the American South, peddling books and merchandise, he hoped the job would earn him enough money to support his parents, "to make their cares, burdens less... and get them free from debt", though he soon spent most of his earnings on a new suit.

At first, he thought it an acceptable occupation but soon worried about his spiritual well-being. In March 1823, Alcott wrote to his brother: "Peddling is a hard place to serve God, but a capital one to serve Mammon." Near the end of his life, he fictionalized this experience in his book, New Connecticut circulated only among friends before its publication in 1881. By the summer of 1823, Alcott returned to Connecticut in debt to his father, who bailed him out after his last two unsuccessful sales trips, he took a job as a schoolteacher in Cheshire with the help of his Uncle Tillotson. He set about reforming the school, he added backs to the benches on which students sat, improved lighting and heating, de-emphasized rote learning, provided individual slates to each student—paid for by himself. Alcott had been influenced by educational philosophy of the Swiss pedagogue Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi and renamed his school "The Cheshire Pestalozzi School", his style attracted the attention of Samuel Joseph May, who introduced Alcott to his sister Abby May.

She called him, "an intelligent, modest man" and found his views on education "very attractive". Locals in Cheshire became suspicious of his methods. Many students left and were enrolled in the local common school or a re-opened private school for boys. On November 6, 1827, Alcott started teaching in Bristol, still using the same methods he used in Cheshire, but opposition from the community surfaced quickly, he moved to Boston on April 24, 1828, was impressed, referring to the city as a place "where the light of the sun of righteousness has risen". He opened the Salem Street Infant School two months on June 23. Abby May applied as his teaching assistant, they were married at King's Chapel on May 22, 1830. Her brother conducted a modest reception followed at her father's house. After their marriage the Alcotts moved to 12 Franklin Street in Boston, a boarding house run by a Mrs. Newall. Around this time, Alcott first expressed his public disdain for slavery. In November 1830, he and William Lloyd Garrison founded what he called a "preliminary Anti-Slaver

Franz Niklaus König was a Swiss painter of genre art and portraits. After studying under Tiberius and Marquard Wocher, Sigmund Freudenberger and Balthasar Anton Dunker, he made a name for himself through dress pictures, rural genre scenes and landscapes, he found success with his Diaphanies, which were exhibited in Switzerland and France, were seen by Johann Heinrich Meyer and Goethe. in 1797 moved he and his family into the Bernese Oberland and in 1798 he took over as captain of artillery in the battle against the French invasion of Switzerland. He was a participant in the Unspunnenfest celebrations of 1805 and 1808. T. Bhattacharya: Franz Niklaus König in German and Italian in the online Historical Dictionary of Switzerland, 2015

Lancaster Arts at Lancaster University is Lancaster University's public arts organisation. The organisation presents performances, for the public and students, through its campus venues the Nuffield Theatre, Lancaster Concerts Series and the Peter Scott Gallery. Lancaster Arts at Lancaster University serves as the University's arts provider, with its venues and events open to the general public and staff, it programmes a wide range of concerts, visual arts and spoken word events and exhibitions via an autumn and spring programme. The Nuffield Theatre and the Peter Scott Gallery have brought artists to perform that align with the teaching of academic courses within the Lancaster Institute for the Contemporary Arts. Lancaster Arts serves as part of the University's 2020 Strategy to engage locally and internationally with issues and debates of the day and future. Lancaster Arts is an Arts Council England'National Portfolio Organisation' and as such is committed to supporting cultural and artistic engagement through its programme of contemporary theatre, visual art and music.

Lancaster Arts states that its mission: "is to support the many colours of art in the 21st Century and to foster social, cultural and economic impact within this context, as an organization based in the North of England."Lancaster Arts shares its venues and supports work with other University departments and societies. The organisation facilitates the presentation of external commercial and community based events and student groups who wish to use the Great Hall Complex and its facilities. In 2015 Lancaster Arts launched its 2015–17 Associate Artists Programme; these associates receive assistance. Artists receive a bespoke package based on a set of collaborative projects; the three Associate Artists are currently: Andy Smith imitating the dog Quarantine Lancaster Arts has a history of commissioning new artistic work, is supported to do this as an Arts Council England'National Portfolio Organisation'. The Nuffield Theatre, Lancaster plays. Examples include the 2010 outdoor performance entitled "Jack Scout" which took place in Silverdale, Lancashire.

In 2014 the organisation commissioned and produced the theatrical show ‘Sea Breeze’ exploring the history of Morecambe Winter Gardens. The performance went on to become Alfred Hickling's top pick for 2014; the organisation commissions new music. Examples include a work by Canadian composer, Nicole Lizée, for British Percussionist, Joby Burgess: Pioneers of Percussion, a new piece of music by Graham Fitkin for Ockham's Razor's aerial production entitled "Not Until We Are Lost" and Retorica's Live at LICA-commissioned piece by Sergei Prokofiev's great-grandson Gabriel Prokofiev in 2014. In 2011 the organisation commissioned a new film and photographic work by Mel Brimfield entitled "This is Performance Art: Part Two - Experimental Theatre and Cabaret" The Exhibition was accompanied by a new book with a foreword by the Director Matt Fenton. In 2014, the organisation commissioned a large-format video installation by British artists Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard entitled Jumpers. Lancaster Arts as its constituent parts have existed for nearly 50 years.

Prior to their merger in 2007 the Lancaster International Concert Series, Peter Scott Gallery, Nuffield Theatre were operated separately. These were overseen by academic departments as the public arts were established concurrently with the setting up of academic departments in the arts, all of which rested on a foundation of performance and practice in the relevant disciplines; the public arts provision and the departmental curricula were therefore able to support and reinforce each other. The theatre opened in the 1968–69 academic year with one of the first performances being Jonson's Bartholomew Fair; the theatre was funded in part by a donation of £80,000 from the Nuffield Foundation. Professor Tom E Lawrenson, first head of department for French in 1964, played a significant role in establishing the theatre as a place of practical experimentation - Integral to the theatres original concept was its flexibility which allowed for a life-size replica of a 17th-century Parisian public theatre to be built with original specifications.

The Nuffield's designed featured flexible flooring and seating, no windows and a griddled ceiling to allow for this kind of research into theatre history, as well making it perfect for contemporary experimental theatre and for training students in a range of technical skills. The project architects and Epstein drew on theatre designer Stephen Joseph for inspiration. At its opening the theatre was one of the largest black box theatres in the UK; the Department of Theatre Studies grew out of the founding Department of English in 1972, its founding head was Kenneth Parrott, director of the Nuffield Theatre Studio. The Nuffield's'public' performances began as the Nuffield Theatre Club and it developed a reputation for experimental theatre and dance; the Nuffield was granted its public performance licence in 1992. Since the opening of The Great Hall at Lancaster University in 1969, there have been regular concerts on campus. Lancaster University's international subscription series of concerts was directed by Sir John Manduell from 1969 to 1971 with Professor Denis McCaldin taking over as Director of Music in 1971 leading to the creation of Lancaster Concerts.

Professor McCaldin helped set up the University's new music depa

The Smelting House ruins on Kawau Island, New Zealand, belong to the copper mine established in 1844. As there were problems with combustion of the copper ore during the sea voyage to Wales or Australia, tenders were called in 1848 for the erection of a copper mine smelter; the Auckland architect Walter Robertson designed a simple building built of Waitematā sandstone. Opened in July 1849, it was New Zealand's first smelting house; the smelter was no longer functioning in September 1855, shortly after that, the mine closed altogether. After the Battle of Rangiriri, part of the Invasion of the Waikato, the building housed the 183 Māori prisoners taken in that battle. Guarded by just six wardens, they escaped in September 1864 and returned to the Waikato; the smelter site was purchased as a reserve in 1977. The ruins were registered by the New Zealand Historic Places Trust on 24 November 1983 with registration number 10; the ruins have a category I listing. As of 2015, about 50% of the walls remain standing on three sides of the building.

The site can be visited by boat only

The Martyr Saints of China, or Augustine Zhao Rong and his 119 companions, are saints of the Catholic Church. The 87 Chinese Catholics and 33 Western missionaries, from the mid-17th century to 1930, were martyred because of their ministry and, in some cases, for their refusal to apostatize. Many died in the Boxer Rebellion, in which anti-colonial peasant rebels slaughtered 30,000 Chinese converts to Christianity along with missionaries and other foreigners. In the ordinary form of the Latin Rite they are remembered with an optional memorial on July 9. On January 15, 1648, the Manchus, having invaded the region of Fujian and shown themselves hostile to the Christian religion, killed Saint Francisco Fernández de Capillas, a Dominican priest aged 40. After having imprisoned and tortured him, they beheaded him while he recited with others the Sorrowful Mysteries of the Rosary. Father de Capillas has since been recognised by the Holy See as the protomartyr of China. After the first wave of missionary activities in China during the late Ming to early Qing dynasties, the Qing government banned Catholicism in 1724 and lumped it together with other'perverse sects and sinister doctrines' in Chinese folk religion.

While Catholicism continued to exist and increase many-fold in areas beyond the government's control, many Chinese Christians fled the persecution to go to port cities in Guangdong or to Indonesia, where many translations of Christian works into Chinese occurred during this period, there were many missionaries who broke the law and secretly entered the forbidden mainland territory. They eluded Chinese patrol boats on the coasts. Towards the middle of the 18th century five Spanish missionaries, who had carried out their activity between 1715–1747, were put to death as a result of a new wave of persecution that started in 1729 and broke out again in 1746; this was of his successor, the Qianlong Emperor. Saint Peter Sanz, O. P. bishop, was martyred on May 1747, in Fuzhou. All four of the following were killed on October 28, 1748: 1. Saint Francis Serrano, O. P. vicar apostolic and bishop-elect 2. Saint Joachim Royo, O. P. priest 3. Saint John Alcober, O. P. priest 4. Saint Francis Diaz, O. P. priest. A new period of persecution in regard to the Christian religion occurred in the 19th century.

While Catholicism had been authorised by some Chinese emperors in the preceding centuries, the Jiaqing Emperor published, instead and severe decrees against it. The first was issued in 1805. Two edicts of 1811 were directed against those among the Chinese who were studying to receive sacred orders, against priests who were propagating the Christian religion. A decree of 1813 exonerated voluntary apostates from every chastisement – that is, Christians who spontaneously declared that they would abandon their faith – but all others were to be dealt with harshly. In this period the following underwent martyrdom: 5. Saint Peter Wu, a Chinese lay catechist. Born of a pagan family, he received baptism in 1796 and passed the rest of his life proclaiming the truth of the Christian religion. All attempts to make; the sentence having been pronounced against him, he was strangled on November 7, 1814. 6. Saint Joseph Zhang Dapeng, a lay catechist, a merchant. Baptised in 1800, he had become the heart of the mission in the city of Kony-Yang.

He was imprisoned, strangled to death on March 12, 1815. In the same year, there came two other decrees, with which approval was given to the conduct of the Viceroy of Sichuan who had beheaded Monsignor Dufresse, of the Paris Foreign Missions Society, some Chinese Christians; as a result, there was a worsening of the persecution. The following martyrs belong to this period: 7. Saint Gabriel-Taurin Dufresse, M. E. P. Bishop, he was arrested on May 18, 1815, taken to Chengdu and executed on September 14, 1815. 8. Saint Augustine Zhao Rong, a Chinese diocesan priest. Having first been one of the soldiers who had escorted Monsignor Dufresse from Chengdu to Beijing, he was moved by his patience and had asked to be numbered among the neophytes. Once baptised, he was sent to the seminary and ordained a priest. Arrested, he was tortured and died in 1815.9. Saint John da Triora, O. F. M. Priest. Put in prison together with others in the summer of 1815, he was condemned to death, strangled on February 7, 1816. 10.

Saint Joseph Yuan, a Chinese diocesan priest. Having heard Monsignor Dufresse speak of the Christian faith, he was overcome by its beauty and became an exemplary neophyte, he was ordained a priest and, as such, was dedicated to evangelisation in various districts. He was arrested in August 1816, condemned to be strangled, was killed in this way on June 24, 1817. 11. Saint Paul Liu Hanzuo, a Chinese diocesan priest, killed in 1819. 12. Saint Francis Regis Clet of the Congregation of the Mission. After obtaining permission to go to the missions in China, he embarked for the Orient in 1791. Having reached there, for 30 years he spent a life of missionary sacrifice. Upheld by an untiring zeal, he evangelised three immense Chinese provinces: Jiangxi, Hunan. Betrayed by a Christian, he was arrested and thrown into prison where he underwent atrocious tortures. Following sentence by the Jiaqing Emperor he was killed by strangling on February 17, 1820. 13. Saint Thaddeus Liu, a Chinese diocesan priest, he refused to apostatize, saying that he was a priest and wanted to be faithful to the religion that he had preached.

Condemned to death, he was strangled on November 30, 1823. 14. Saint Peter Liu, a Chinese lay catechist, he was

Reginald Waldie Blinker is a former professional footballer who played as a left winger. During his 17-year senior career, he amassed Eredivisie totals of 307 games and 57 goals over 12 seasons with Feyenoord, he played three years in Scotland with Celtic. Born in Suriname, he represented the Netherlands at international level. Born in Paramaribo, Blinker began his career with Feyenoord in 1986, he stayed at De Kuip for ten seasons, including one on loan at FC Den Bosch, formed an efficient winger partnership with Gaston Taument. On 4 March 1996, Blinker joined Sheffield Wednesday for £275,000, scoring a brace on his debut, a 2–3 away defeat against Aston Villa, he was suspended by FIFA for a time at the end of the year, after it was discovered that he had signed for Udinese Calcio without telling the management at Feyenoord and subsequently signing for the English club. In August 1997, Blinker moved to Celtic in part exchange for Paolo di Canio as part of the club general manager Jock Brown's infamous'trade' deal with Sheffield Wednesday.

He re-joined former Feyenoord coach Wim Jansen, appointed the previous month, going on to win the Scottish Premier Division and the Scottish League Cup in his first season and scoring 12 goals in 70 competitive games. Blinker returned to the Netherlands in the summer of 2000. After suffering top flight relegation as last, he joined Sparta Rotterdam. Blinker won three caps for the Dutch national team, he made his debut on 24 March 1993 in a 6–0 home win against San Marino for the 1994 FIFA World Cup qualifiers where he featured 70 minutes, in Utrecht. Blinker made his last appearance nearly one year in a friendly with Tunisia. Upon retiring, Blinker became a publisher of lifestyle magazines for the professional football world in the Netherlands, the company being named Life After Football. Beijen profile Regi Blinker at Soccerbase Regi Blinker at Wereld van Oranje Regi Blinker at National-Football-Teams.com