Björn Ironside was a Norse Viking chief and legendary king of Sweden. According to the 12th- and 13th-century Scandinavian histories, he was the son of the notorious and dubious Viking king Ragnar Lodbrok, he lived in the 9th century, being securely dated between 855 and 858. Björn Ironside is said to have been the first ruler of the Swedish Munsö dynasty. In the early 18th century, a barrow on the island of Munsö was claimed by antiquarians to be Björn Järnsidas hög or Björn Ironside's barrow. Medieval sources refer to Björn Ironside's sons and grandsons, including Erik Björnsson and Björn at Haugi, his descendants in the male line ruled over the Swedes until c. 1060. "Berno" was naval commander. He appears in contemporary sources such as the Chronicon Fontanellense, he is first mentioned in the summer of 855. The oldest text that details his origins is the Norman history of William of Jumièges. According to William, the Danish kings had the custom to expel the younger sons from the kingdom to have them out of the way.

After King Lodbrok succeeded his father, he remembered this regulation and ordered his junior son Björn to leave his realm. Björn thus started to ravage in West Francia; the contemporary annals show that he cooperated with another Viking called Sigtrygg and sailed up the Seine in 855, from which his and Sigtrygg's forces raided the inland. Their combined forces were beaten in Champagne by Charles the Bald of West Francia in the same year, but not decisively. Sigtrygg withdrew in the next year, but Björn received reinforcement from another Viking army and could not be expelled from the Seine area, he and his men took up winter quarters at the so-called Givold's Grave, which served as base for an assault against Paris, plundered around the new year 856-857. Björn constructed a fortification on the island Oissel above Rouen which he kept as his stronghold for years, he swore fealty to Charles the Bald in Verberie in 858 but it is not clear if he kept his pledge. King Charles resolved to meet the unruly Seine Vikings with all his available forces and besieged Oissel in July.

The siege failed badly. Moreover, Charles's brother Louis the German of East Francia invaded his lands and many vassals fell from him, thus the siege was broken off in September. After Björn's meeting with Charles in Verberie we don't find his name in contemporary sources. However, the Viking warriors in the Seine continued their raids during the following years and plundered Paris again in 861. In his despair Charles the Bald tried to use another Viking chief, whose men operated in the Somme region, to attack the Seine Vikings at Oissel. However, this scheme backfired since the two Viking armies united their forces; the Norsemen were encamped by the lower Seine in 861-862, but split again. Veland joined royal service, while the Seine Vikings went at sea; some of them joined the fighting between the ruler of some Frankish counts. A number of Frankish, Arab and Irish sources mention a large Viking raid into the Mediterranean in 859–861, co-led by Hastein, Björn Ironside and one or more of his brothers.

After raiding down the Iberian coast and fighting their way through Gibraltar, the Norsemen pillaged the south of France, where the fleet stayed over winter, before landing in Italy where they captured the city of Pisa. Flush with this victory and others around the Mediterranean during the Mediterranean expedition, the Vikings are recorded to have lost 40 ships to a storm, they returned to the Straits of Gibraltar and, at the coast of Medina-Sidonia, lost 2 ships to fire catapults in a surprise raid by Andalusian forces, leaving only 20 ships intact. The remnants of the fleet came back to French waters in 862. Björn Ironside was the leader of the expedition according to the chronicle of William of Jumièges; the early 11th century Fragmentary Annals of Ireland say that two sons of Ragnall mac Albdan, a chief, expelled from Lochlann by his brothers and stayed in the Orkney Islands, headed the enterprise. William of Jumièges refers to Björn as Bier Costae ferreae, Lotbroci regis filio. William's account of the Mediterranean expedition centers around Björn's foster-father Hastein.

The two Vikings conducted many raids in France. On Hastein got the idea to make Björn the new Roman Emperor and led a large Viking raid into the Mediterranean together with his protegée, they proceeded inland to the town of Luni, which they believed to be Rome at the time, but were unable to breach the town walls. To gain entry a tricky plan was devised: Hastein sent messengers to the bishop to say that, being deathly ill, he had a deathbed conversion and wished to receive Christian sacraments and/or to be buried on consecrated ground within their church, he was brought into the chapel with a small honor guard surprised the dismayed clerics by leaping from his stretcher. The Viking party hacked its way to the town gates, which were promptly opened letting the rest of the army in; when they realised that Luni was not Rome, Björn and Hastein wished to investigate this city but changed their minds when they heard that the Romans were well prepared for defense. After returning to West Europe, the two men parted company.

Björn was shipwrecked at the English coast and survived. He went to Frisia where William says he died. There are some

Richard Wilhelm Jarecki was a German-born American physician who won more than $1 million from a string of European casinos after cracking a pattern in roulette wheels. Jarecki was born on December 1931, in Stettin, Germany, he emigrated to the United States in the late 1930s. He was raised in New Jersey and attended Asbury Park High School, he attended Duke University and earned a medical degree at Heidelberg University in his native Germany. He married Carol Fuhse, a nursing student at Jersey Shore Medical Center, while he was completing his residency there; the couple moved to Germany where he continued his studies at the University of Heidelberg and began gambling at casinos. In the 1960s and 1970s, Jarecki started visiting casinos across Europe and began working with his wife and other to keep track of tens of thousands of spins of roulette wheels over the course of a month. After analyzing the results, Jarecki was able to determine that some wheels had a subtle bias that made it more to land on certain numbers due to imperfections and wear, though he created a cover story that he had used a computer at the University of London to crack the games.

He preferred to target European casinos, as they used wheels with 37 numbers and the casinos there were less than their American counterparts to cut off a gambler on a winning streak. On occasion, casinos attempted to ban Jarecki from gambling on their premises. After several profitable streaks at the Sanremo Casino in the late 1960s, its managing director described him as "a menace to every casino in Europe" and hoped that Jarecki "never returned to my casino"; when wheels were changed, Jarecki was able to recognize the unique characteristics of each wheel by sight. The casinos caught on to Jarecki's methods and began switching roulette wheels more and worked with manufacturers to make wheels with finer tolerances that were less to have the types of imperfections that could lead to exploitable circumstances for Jarecki. After winning more than $1.2 million using his technique, he returned to the United States in the mid-1970s to become a commodities trader trading in gold and silver, as well as dabbling in blackjack and roulette in casinos in Atlantic City, New Jersey and Las Vegas.

A resident of Manila, for more than 20 years, Jarecki died there of pneumonia at the age of 86 on July 25, 2018. He was survived by his wife, as well as by a son and six grandchildren, his brother, Henry Jarecki, was a physician. The professor who beat roulette. How a renowned researcher beat the odds, stumped casino owners around the world, walked away with a fortune. By Zachary Crockett May 11, 2019 The Hustle

Freaky Friday is a comedic children's novel written by Mary Rodgers, first published by Harper & Row in 1972. It has been adapted for the screen, as well as the stage; the story features one day that 13-year-old Annabel Andrews and her mother spend in each other's bodies. Thus it may be considered a modern retelling of Vice Versa: A Lesson to Fathers, the 1882 novel by F. Anstey in which the protagonists are a father and son, though in the Mary Rodgers version the lesson is to daughters and mothers. A willful, disorganized teenage girl, Annabel Andrews, awakens one Friday morning to find herself in the body of her mother, with whom she had argued the previous night. In charge of taking care of the New York family's affairs and her younger brother Ben, growing worried about the disappearance of "Annabel", who appeared to be herself in the morning but has gone missing after leaving the Andrews' home, she enlists the help of her neighbor and childhood friend, though without telling him about her identity crisis.

As the day wears on and Annabel has a series of bizarre and frustrating adventures, she becomes more appreciative of how difficult her mother's life is, learns, to her surprise, that Ben idolizes her, Boris is named Morris, but has a problem with chronic congestion leading him to nasally pronounce ms and ns as bs and ds. The novel races towards its climax and Ben disappears having gone off with a pretty girl whom Boris did not recognize, but Ben appeared to trust without hesitation. In the climax and dénouement, Annabel becomes overwhelmed by the difficulties of her situation, apparent disappearance of her mother, loss of the children, the question of how her odd situation came about and when/whether it will be resolved, it is revealed that Annabel's mother herself caused them to switch bodies through some unspecified means, the mysterious teen beauty who took Ben was Mrs. Andrews in Annabel's body made much more attractive by a makeover Mrs. Andrews gave the body while using it, including the removal of Annabel's braces, an appointment Annabel had forgotten about.

Annabel Andrews Disorganized and something of a tomboy, 13-year-old Annabel is a typical teen who believes that adults have it easy and finds herself out of her depth when faced with real adult responsibilities and concerns. She wants to be free because of her mother bossing her around and is serious about doing some things she wants to do, but she can not because of her mother. Ben Andrews, a.k.a. Ape Face A typical pre-adolescent younger sibling, 6-year-old Ben delights in creating conflict with Annabel, torturing her and driving her crazy, which has led to her nicknaming him Ape Face. Unknown to Annabel, he and his friends think she is the epitome of cool, he wears the nickname as a badge of honor; the truth comes out when she slips up and calls him Ape Face while her mind is in Mrs. Andrews' body. After she apologizes, he admits that he likes the name – but wants to keep this secret from Annabel. Morris/Boris A childhood playmate of Annabel, he has been somewhat afraid of her since a sandbox incident in which she cut his head open with a shovel.

Deciding she played too rough, he and his mother have made a point of him avoiding Annabel since. He is a cheerful and handsome young gentleman, does his best to help "Mrs. Andrews" as she struggles through a tough day, he has some occasional breathing trouble, attributed to his adenoids and a psychosomatic reaction to his own mother, which renders his voice nasal, making him unable to pronounce the letters m and n clearly. Because of this, Annabel has always believed his name to be Boris, she suffers the exact opposite misunderstanding when he offers to prepare a "beetloaf" for a dinner party with the limited assortment of culinary ingredients available, she believes he is going to save dinner by providing a much more sensible meatloaf, but she is won over when she samples the new dish and finds it tasty. Ellen Jean Benjamin Andrews Despite setting the events in motion and ending them deus ex machina-style, Mrs. Andrews remains an unseen character for much of the book, only revealing herself and what she has done at the end of the day.

Mary Rodgers wrote two sequels featuring the Andrews family. In A Billion for Boris and her friend Morris/Boris discover a TV set that tunes into future broadcasts and begin betting on horse races. In Summer Switch, Annabel's little brother Ben and their father Bill inadvertently switch bodies as both are leaving for the summer, leaving the boy to negotiate Hollywood and Dad to attend summer camp, thus Summer Switch, may be considered a modern retelling of Vice Versa. All three Andrews family novels were soon published in Harper Trophy trade paperback editions. In HarperTrophy editions, the second story has been titled ESP TV and A Billion for Boris: Also known as ESP TV, OCLC 55622482. A thematic sequel by Rodgers and Heather Hach was published by The Bowen Press, HarperCollins, in May 2009: Freaky Monday, in which 13-year-old schoolgirl Hadley and a teacher she dislikes "switch bodies". Freaky Friday has been adapted four times by The Walt Disney Company into films with similar plots; the first adaptation was Freaky Friday, written b

The Sacred Heart Cathedral called Yangdok-dong Cathedral of the Sacred Heart is a religious building, affiliated with the Catholic Church and is located in the city of Changwon in South Gyeongsang Province, in the South part of the Asian country of South Korea. The colored brick clad building is adorned with 2 two identical towers topped by crosses; the temple follows the Roman or Latin rite and is the principal church of the Diocese of Masan, created by Pope Paul VI in 1966 by bull "siquidem catholicae". The church is under the pastoral responsibility of the Bishop Constantine Bae Ki-hyen. Roman Catholicism in South Korea Sacred Heart Cathedral

Hubert Thieblot is a French businessman who founded Curse, Inc. in 2005 and has operated as the CEO since then. During his tenure, he has overseen the expansion of the Curse network into wikis, video content, desktop applications including Curse Client and Curse Voice. In 2013, his network of sites was estimated to have garnered in excess of 30 million unique visitors per month. In addition to his work with Curse, Thieblot speaks at industry related events as a guest speaker, has spoken at the 2011 Montgomery Technology Conference and the Login 2011 Conference; as a teenager, Thieblot was a fan of World of Warcraft, a popular massively multiplayer online roleplaying game. His interest in the game led to him creating a website to organize and share World of Warcraft modifications, add-ons, plugins to change player experience via the user interface; as traffic rose, Thieblot decided to turn his hobby into a business, dropping out of his Swiss information technology program to incorporate in 2006 as Curse, Inc.

The name "Curse" derives from the name of his World of Warcraft guild, which at the time was one of the largest guilds in Europe. As the company began to increase in traffic and revenue, Thieblot hired his brother as the first Curse employee, after relocating to Germany, hired a third developer to aid in the site development. During this time, the site grew both in number of hosted modifications. In 2007, Thieblot began development on the Curse Client, a comprehensive solution to add-on management and distribution; as the client matured into beta status, its feature set became more comprehensive, supporting connections to various Curse modification databases. In 2008, with over 2/3rds of his traffic coming from the United States, Thieblot moved Curse to San Francisco and began to expand Curse into community sites, forums and original content. After seeking venture capital financing in 2007 and 2009, Thieblot began to expand the services and scope of coverage provided by Curse. In 2010, Curse became a Microsoft Bizspark One company, in 2011, Curse became an Inc. 500 company.

Thieblot was invited to speak at the 2011 Montgomery Technology Conference and the Login 2011 Conference, has since sponsored international roundtable discussions between industry leaders and top executives concerning challenges and the future of the video game industry. Since launching in 2006, Thieblot has overseen the expansion of Curse content and traffic, with viewership and revenue doubling each year. In April 2012, Ernst & Young named Thieblot as a semifinalist in their "Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year" program for Northern California, recognizing his entrepreneurial efforts and successes with Curse. Thieblot has overseen the expansion of Curse from wikis and community sites into the desktop application realm through several projects. Curse Client, a desktop application allowing for the unified browsing and management of plugins, was developed as a means to simplify the databases of game modifications first offered by Curse; the Client has expanded from World of Warcraft, Thieblot's initial inspiration for the Curse network, into several other titles, including Runes of Magic, World of Tanks, Minecraft.

In 2014, Thieblot announced the beta version of Curse Voice, a desktop Voice over IP application designed for games such as League of Legends, integrating voice chat and auto-match making with several titles

The Moldavian Democratic Republic known as the Moldavian Republic, was a state proclaimed on December 15 1917 by the Sfatul Țării of Bessarabia, elected in October–November 1917 following the February Revolution and the start of the disintegration of the Russian Empire. The Sfatul Țării was its legislative body, while the "Council of Directors General", renamed the "Council of Ministers" after the Declaration of Independence, was its government; the Republic was proclaimed on 2/15 December 1917, as a member with equal rights within the Russian Democratic Federative Republic. The brief history of the 1917-1918 Moldavian Democratic Republic can be divided into three periods: the period of autonomy within Russia, the period of independence, the period of federation with Romania. On 2/15 December, Moldavia proclaimed itself a constituent republic of the Russian Federative Democratic Republic. On 1/14 January 1918, the Front Section of the Rumcherod Bolsheviks entered Chișinău, the capital of the nascent republic.

After the nationalist faction of the Sfatul Țării requested military assistance from Romania, the Romanian Army crossed the republic's border on 10/23 January, taking the capital within days. With the Romanian Army in full control, on 24 January/6 February, the Moldavian Democratic Republic proclaimed its independence. On 27 March/9 April, Moldavia entered a conditioned union with the Kingdom of Romania, retaining its provincial autonomy as well as its legislative body. On 27 November/10 December, after the end of World War I, a secret meeting of Sfatul Țării members renounced all conditions and proclaimed the unconditional union of Bessarabia with Romania amounting to an annexation by the latter; this was its last act, as it was subsequently dissolved and prominent unionists were invited to Bucharest. During its 1-year existence, the Moldavian Democratic Republic had three Prime Ministers: Pantelimon Erhan, Daniel Ciugureanu and Petru Cazacu; when the February Revolution occurred in Petrograd in 1917, the governor of the Bessarabia Governorate stepped down and passed his legal powers to Constantin Mimi, the President of the Gubernial Zemstvo, named the Commissar of the Provisional Government in Bessarabia, with Vladimir Criste his deputy.

Similar procedures took place in all regions of the Russian Empire: the chiefs of the Tsarist administrations passed their legal powers to the chiefs of the County and Governorate Zemstvos, which were called County/Governorate Commissars. The Peasants' Congress, which took place in October 1917, voted Mimi out and Ion Inculeț in as the new Commissar; this move was planned by Alexander Kerensky, who sent Inculeț, an associate professor at the University of Petrograd, to Bessarabia to take hold of the situation. As soon as the Peasants' Congress, which had no legal power, Kerenski formally replaced Mimi with Inculeț; when Inculeț arrived in Chișinău to take power, he faced the quiet opposition of the nobility, so he agreed to take the position of deputy commissar to Vladimir Criste. When the republic was proclaimed, Criste stepped down and passed his legal powers to Inculeț; the Sfatul Țării of Bessarabia was elected in October–November 1917, started to work in December 1917. It proclaimed the Moldavian Democratic Republic as a federal subject of the Russian Democratic Federative Republic.

In the context of the October Revolution, the Russian Army on the Romanian Front disintegrated. The large number of retreating soldiers increased the level of anarchy in Bessarabia, leaving the National Council with only minimal authority over the territory. To further complicate matters, as the Council was delaying a decision on the agrarian question, peasants across the region started to break up the estates of the large landowners and divide them among themselves; as the General Staff of the Romanian Front was unable to send any troops, attempts were made to organize a Moldavian National Guard, but the results were far from expectations. Furthermore, most of the army corps nominally subjected to the National Council came under Bolshevik influence. However, in mid-January Romanians entered the country, engaged in battles with the Moldavian and Bolshevik troops and within a couple of weeks controlled much of the country. Among the leaders of Moldavian troops that offered resistance were figures loyal to the National Council, such as captain Anatolie Popa.

Following the signing of separate peace armistices by Imperial Germany with Romania and Bolshevik Russia the Sfatul Țării, with 86 votes in favour, 3 against and 36 abstentions, proclaimed the Union of Bessarabia with the Kingdom of Romania on April 9 1918, with the condition of local autonomy and the continuation of Bessarabian legislative and executive bodies ending the Moldavian Democratic Republic. Discouraged by the fact that the Romanian troops were present in Chișinău, many minority deputies abstained from voting; the union was confirmed in the Treaty of Paris. The leadership of the Moldavian Republic was composed of Ion Inculeț, the president of the Sfatul Țării and President of the Republic; the new leadership and Council was put in place after the country was declared independence by Daniel Ciugureanu, as President of the Council of Ministers. The Sfatul Țării was composed of 120 elected members, although member numbers were increased to 135 and 150. For example, on 9 April, there were 138 legislators, of which 125 took part in the vote, 13 were absent.

On December 21 1917, the Sfatul Țării elected the governmen