Ulam spiral
The Ulam spiral or prime spiral is a graphical depiction of the set of prime numbers, devised by mathematician Stanislaw Ulam in 1963 and popularized in Martin Gardner's Mathematical Games column in Scientific American a short time later. It is constructed by writing the positive integers in a square spiral and specially marking the prime numbers. Ulam and Gardner emphasized the striking appearance in the spiral of prominent diagonal and vertical lines containing large numbers of primes. Both Ulam and Gardner noted that the existence of such prominent lines is not unexpected, as lines in the spiral correspond to quadratic polynomials, certain such polynomials, such as Euler's prime-generating polynomial x2 − x + 41, are believed to produce a high density of prime numbers; the Ulam spiral is connected with major unsolved problems in number theory such as Landau's problems. In particular, no quadratic polynomial has been proved to generate infinitely many primes, much less to have a high asymptotic density of them, although there is a well-supported conjecture as to what that asymptotic density should be.
In 1932, more than thirty years prior to Ulam's discovery, the herpetologist Laurence M. Klauber constructed a triangular, non-spiral array containing vertical and diagonal lines exhibiting a similar concentration of prime numbers. Like Ulam, Klauber noted the connection with prime-generating polynomials, such as Euler's; the Ulam spiral is constructed by writing the positive integers in a spiral arrangement on a square lattice: and marking the prime numbers: In the figure, primes appear to concentrate along certain diagonal lines. In the 200×200 Ulam spiral shown above, diagonal lines are visible, confirming that the pattern continues. Horizontal and vertical lines with a high density of primes, while less prominent, are evident. Most the number spiral is started with the number 1 at the center, but it is possible to start with any number, the same concentration of primes along diagonal and vertical lines is observed. Starting with 41 at the center gives a diagonal containing an unbroken string of 40 primes, the longest example of its kind.
Part of this diagonal is shown in the spiral below, with blue background corresponding to primes, green to squares of prime numbers, red to numbers with 25 or more divisors. According to Gardner, Ulam discovered the spiral in 1963 while doodling during the presentation of "a long and boring paper" at a scientific meeting; these hand calculations amounted to "a few hundred points". Shortly afterwards, with collaborators Myron Stein and Mark Wells, used MANIAC II at Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory to extend the calculation to about 100,000 points; the group computed the density of primes among numbers up to 10,000,000 along some of the prime-rich lines as well as along some of the prime-poor lines. Images of the spiral up to 65,000 points were displayed on "a scope attached to the machine" and photographed; the Ulam spiral was described in Martin Gardner's March 1964 Mathematical Games column in Scientific American and featured on the front cover of that issue. Some of the photographs of Stein and Wells were reproduced in the column.
In an addendum to the Scientific American column, Gardner mentioned the earlier paper of Klauber. Klauber describes his construction as follows, "The integers are arranged in triangular order with 1 at the apex, the second line containing numbers 2 to 4, the third 5 to 9, so forth; when the primes have been indicated, it is found that there are concentrations in certain vertical and diagonal lines, amongst these the so-called Euler sequences with high concentrations of primes are discovered." Diagonal and vertical lines in the number spiral correspond to polynomials of the form f = 4 n 2 + b n + c where b and c are integer constants. When b is the lines are diagonal, either all numbers are odd, or all are depending on the value of c, it is therefore no surprise that all primes other than 2 lie in alternate diagonals of the Ulam spiral. Some polynomials, such as 4 n 2 + 8 n + 3, while producing only odd values, factorize over the integers and are therefore never prime except when one of the factors equals 1.
Such examples correspond to diagonals that are nearly so. To gain insight into why some of the remaining odd diagonals may have a higher concentration of primes than others, consider 4 n 2 + 6 n + 1 and 4 n 2 + 6 n + 5. Compute remainders upon division by 3 as n takes successive values 0, 1, 2, …. For the first of these polynomials, the sequence of remainders is 1, 2, 2, 1, 2, 2, …, while for the second, it is 2, 0, 0, 2, 0, 0, …; this implies that in the sequence of values taken by the second polynomial, two out of every three are divisible by 3, hence not prime, while in the sequence of values taken by the first polynomial, none are divisible by 3. Thus it seems plausible that the first polynomial will produce values with a higher density of pri
Yuri Norstein
PAR Yuri Norstein, is a Soviet and Russian animator best known for his animated shorts, Hedgehog in the Fog and Tale of Tales. Since 1981 he has been working on a feature film called The Overcoat, based on the short story by Nikolai Gogol of the same name. According to the Washington Post, "He is considered by many to be not just the best animator of his era, but the best of all time". Yuri Norstein was born to a Jewish family in the village of Andreyevka, Penza Oblast, during his parents' World War II evacuation, he grew up in the Maryina Roshcha suburb of Moscow. After studying at an art school, Norstein found work at a furniture factory, he finished a two-year animation course and found employment at studio Soyuzmultfilm in 1961. The first film that he participated in as an animator was Who Said "Meow"?. After working as an animation artist in some fifty films, Norstein got the chance to direct his own. In 1968 he debuted with the First Day, sharing directorial credit with Arkadiy Tyurin; the film used the artwork of 1920s-era Soviet artists Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin.
The next film in which he had a major role was The Battle of Kerzhenets, a co-production with Russian animation director Ivan Ivanov-Vano under whose direction Norstein had earlier worked on 1969's Times of the Year. Throughout the 1970s Norstein continued to work as an animator in many films (a more complete list can be found at IMDb, directed several; as the decade progressed his animation style became more sophisticated, looking less like flat cut-outs and more like smoothly-moving paintings or sophisticated pencil sketches. His most famous film is Tale of Tales, a non-linear, autobiographical film about growing up in the postwar Soviet world. Norstein uses a special technique in his animation, involving multiple glass planes to give his animation a three-dimensional look; the camera is placed at the top looking down on a series of glass planes about a meter deep. The individual glass planes can move horizontally as well as toward and away from the camera. For many years he has collaborated with his wife, the artist Franchesca Yarbusova, the cinematographer Aleksandr Zhukovskiy.
Throughout the late 1970s and early 1980s, Norstein's animations were showered with both state and international awards. In a bitter twist of irony, he was fired from Soyuzmultfilm in 1985 for working too on his latest film, a feature-length adaptation of Gogol's Overcoat. By that time he had been working on it with his usual small team of three people for two years and had finished ten minutes. In April 1993, Norstein and three other leading animators founded the Animation School and Studio in Russia; the Russian Cinema Committee is among the share-holders of the studio. To this day, Norstein is still working on The Overcoat – his ardent perfectionism has earned him the nickname "The Golden Snail"; the project has met numerous financial troubles and false starts, but Norstein has said that it has reliable funding from several sources, both from within and outside of Russia. At least 25 minutes have been completed to date. A couple of short, low-resolution clips have been made available to the public.
The first 20 minutes of the film have toured among various exhibits of Norstein's work in Russian museums. The full film is expected to be 65 minutes long. Norstein wrote an essay for a book by Giannalberto Bendazzi about the pinscreen animator Alexander Alexeïeff titled Alexeïeff: Itinerary of a Master. In 2005, he released a Russian-language book titled Snow on the Grass. Fragments of a Book. Lectures about the Art of Animation, featuring a number of lectures that he gave about the art of animation; that same year, he was invited as "guest animator" to work on Kihachiro Kawamoto's puppet-animated feature film, The Book of the Dead. On 10 August 2008, the full version of the book Snow on the Grass was released; the book, printed in the Czech Republic and funded by Sberbank, consists of two volumes, 620 pages, 1700 color illustrations. The studio stopped working on The Overcoat for nearly a year while Norstein worked to release the book; the 25th, the First Day, in collaboration with Arkadiy Tyurin.
The Battle of Kerzhenets, in collaboration with Ivan Ivanov-Vano. The Fox and the Hare; the Heron and the Crane. Hedgehog in the Fog. Tale of Tales. Participated in Winter Days; the Overcoat. 2K resolution transfers of the six theatrical shorts directed by Norstein by were made by the Japanese film laboratory Imagica. A touring programme of them was played in cinemas in Japan beginning in December 2016 and they were released on Blu-ray Disc there on May 26, 2017. 1971 – Karlovy Vary International Film Festival: The Battle of Kerzhenets named Best Animated Film 1972 – Zagreb World Festival of Animated Films: Grand Prize for The Battle of Kerzhenets 1972 – Tbilisi: The Battle of Kerzhenets named Best Animated Film 1972 – Bombay Film Festival: "Diplom" for The Battle of Kerzhenets 1975 – Annecy International Animated Film Festival: Special Jury Prize for Heron and Crane 1975 – New York: First Prize for Heron and Crane 1976 – Frunze All-Union Film Festival: Hedgehog in the Fog "best animated film" 1976 – Teheran Children's and Youth Film Festival: Hedgeh
University of Plymouth
The University of Plymouth is a public university based predominantly in Plymouth, England where the main campus is located, but the university has campuses and affiliated colleges across South West England. With 21,645 students, it is the 38th largest in the United Kingdom by total number of students, it has 2,915 staff. The university was a Polytechnic Institute, with its constituent bodies being Plymouth Polytechnic, Rolle College, the Exeter College of Art and Design and Seale-Hayne College, it was renamed Polytechnic South West in 1989 and remained as this until gaining university status in 1992 along with the other polytechnics. The new university absorbed the Plymouth School of Maritime Studies. In 2006 part of the remains of the World War II Portland Square air-raid shelter were rediscovered on the Plymouth campus. On the night of 22 April 1941, during the Blitz, a bomb fell here killing over 70 civilians, including a mother and her six children; the bomb blast was so violent. Only three people escaped alive.
The university's first Vice-Chancellor was John Bull. He was succeeded by Roland Levinsky until his death on 1 January 2007, when he walked into live electrical cables brought down during a storm, he was temporarily replaced by Mark Cleary, by Steve Newstead. Wendy Purcell became VC on 1 December 2007, she was placed on leave on 2 July 2014 by the University's governors while an internal review is conducted. A month the Higher Education Funding Council for England requested an independent external review of the university's governance. In August 2014, the university was instructed by HEFCE to undertake an external review of its governance after vice-chancellor, Wendy Purcell was placed on leave. Judith Petts, CBE, was appointed the University of Plymouth’s Vice-Chancellor and Chief Executive in February 2016, she joined Plymouth from the University of Southampton where she had been Pro-Vice-Chancellor Research and Enterprise and the inaugural Dean of the Faculty of Social and Human Sciences. The university was selected by the Royal Statistical Society in October 2008 to be the home of its Centre for Statistical Education.
It runs courses in maritime business, marine engineering, marine biology, Earth, ocean & environmental sciences. When university status was gained in 1992, the university was based in various locations. Under Vice-Chancellor Levinsky the university began a policy of centralising its campus activities in Plymouth; the Exmouth campus – Rolle College – housed the Faculty of Education and relocated to the new Rolle Building in August 2008. The decision was unpopular with students and the town of Exmouth itself. There were a campaign to keep the campus open. Completed developments include Portland Square, a library extension and new laboratory and teaching facilities in many of the campus buildings, halls of residence near the Business School and a new £16 million Peninsula Medical School headquarters at Derriford, in the north of the city. A Marine Building has been constructed behind the Babbage Building to house civil engineering, coastal engineering and marine sciences. An exception to the trend of centralising activities are the university's extensive activities in education for the health professions.
In addition many of its students are taught at Further Education Colleges throughout Devon and Somerset, such as South Devon College. A building which opened in 2008 is shared between the Peninsula Medical School and the Faculty of Health and Human Sciences; the Roland Levinsky Building, designed by architects Henning Larsen with Building Design Partnership, is clad with copper sheets in a seamed-cladding technique, is nine storeys high and has 13,000 square metres of floor space. The Faculty of Arts based in Exmouth and Exeter moved here in August 2007; the building contains two large lecture theatres, the Jill Craigie Cinema, used by the film students to display their films and for showing of films to the public. University-managed or approved accommodation in the first year of study is guaranteed for all applicants who choose Plymouth as their first choice institution; the university provides an approved accommodation database, available to all continuing students. Special accommodation arrangements can be made for students with medical conditions.
Plymouth is a modern university that has undergone a great deal of development, including several new buildings. There are five faculties. Arts and Humanities Business Health and Human Sciences Medicine and Dentistry Science and Engineering The Arms, Crest and Supporters forming the university’s Coat of Arms were granted on 10 April 2008, in Grant 173/189, by the College of Arms; the books represent the university's focus on scholarship. The scattering of small stars, represent navigation, which has played a key role in the history of the city and the university; the scallop shells in gold, represents pilgrimage, a sign of the importance of the departure of the Pilgrim Fathers from a site near the Mayflower Steps in the Barbican aboard the Mayflower in 1620. A Pelican and a Golden Hind support the shield and reflect both the original and better known, name of Sir Francis Drake’s ship; the crest contains the Latin motto, "Indagate Fingite Invenite" which translates as "Explore Dream Discover"
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson was an American statesman, lawyer and Founding Father who served as the third president of the United States from 1801 to 1809. He had served as the second vice president of the United States from 1797 to 1801; the principal author of the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson was a proponent of democracy and individual rights motivating American colonists to break from the Kingdom of Great Britain and form a new nation. Jefferson was of English ancestry and educated in colonial Virginia, he graduated from the College of William & Mary and practiced law, with the largest number of his cases concerning land ownership claims. During the American Revolution, he represented Virginia in the Continental Congress that adopted the Declaration, drafted the law for religious freedom as a Virginia legislator, served as the 2nd Governor of Virginia from 1779 to 1781, during the American Revolutionary War, he became the United States Minister to France in May 1785, subsequently the nation's first secretary of state under President George Washington from 1790 to 1793.
Jefferson and James Madison organized the Democratic-Republican Party to oppose the Federalist Party during the formation of the First Party System. With Madison, he anonymously wrote the controversial Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions in 1798 and 1799, which sought to strengthen states' rights by nullifying the federal Alien and Sedition Acts; as president, Jefferson pursued the nation's shipping and trade interests against Barbary pirates and aggressive British trade policies. He organized the Louisiana Purchase doubling the country's territory; as a result of peace negotiations with France, his administration reduced military forces. He was reelected in 1804. Jefferson's second term was beset with difficulties at home, including the trial of former vice president Aaron Burr. American foreign trade was diminished when Jefferson implemented the Embargo Act of 1807, responding to British threats to U. S. shipping. In 1803, Jefferson began a controversial process of Indian tribe removal to the newly organized Louisiana Territory, he signed the Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves in 1807.
Jefferson, while a planter and politician, mastered many disciplines, which ranged from surveying and mathematics to horticulture and mechanics. He was an architect in the classical tradition. Jefferson's keen interest in religion and philosophy led to his presidency of the American Philosophical Society. A philologist, Jefferson knew several languages, he corresponded with many prominent people. His only full-length book is Notes on the State of Virginia, considered the most important American book published before 1800. After retiring from public office, Jefferson founded the University of Virginia. Although regarded as a leading spokesman for democracy and republicanism in the era of the Enlightenment, Jefferson's historical legacy is mixed; some modern scholarship has been critical of Jefferson's private life, pointing out the contradiction between his ownership of the large numbers of slaves that worked his plantations and his famous declaration that "all men are created equal." Another point of controversy stems from the evidence that after his wife Martha died in 1782, Jefferson fathered children with Martha's half-sister, Sally Hemings, his slave.
Despite this, presidential scholars and historians praise his public achievements, including his advocacy of religious freedom and tolerance in Virginia. Jefferson continues to rank among U. S. presidents. Thomas Jefferson was born on April 13, 1743, at the family home in Shadwell in the Colony of Virginia, the third of ten children, he was of English, Welsh and was born a British subject. His father Peter Jefferson was a surveyor who died when Jefferson was fourteen. Peter Jefferson moved his family to Tuckahoe Plantation in 1745 upon the death of William Randolph, the plantation's owner and Jefferson's friend, who in his will had named him guardian of his children; the Jeffersons returned to Shadwell in 1752, where Peter died in 1757. Thomas inherited 5,000 acres of land, including Monticello, he assumed full authority over his property at age 21. Jefferson began his childhood education beside the Randolph children with tutors at Tuckahoe. Thomas' father, was self-taught, regretting not having a formal education, he entered Thomas into an English school early, at age five.
In 1752, at age nine, he began attending a local school run by a Scottish Presbyterian minister and began studying the natural world, for which he grew to love. At this time he began studying Latin and French, while learning to ride horses. Thomas read books from his father's modest library, he was taught from 1758 to 1760 by Reverend James Maury near Gordonsville, where he studied history and the classics while boarding with Maury's family. During this period Jefferson came to know and befriended various American Indians, including the famous Cherokee chief, who stopped at Shadwell to visit, on their way to Williamsburg to trade. During the two years Jefferson was with the Maury family, he traveled to Williamsburg and was a guest of Colonel Dandridge, father of Martha Washington. In Williamsburg the young Jefferson met and came to admire Patrick Henry, eight ye
John Keats
John Keats was an English Romantic poet. He was one of the main figures of the second generation of Romantic poets, along with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, despite his works having been in publication for only four years before his death from tuberculosis at the age of 25. Although his poems were not well received by critics during his lifetime, his reputation grew after his death, by the end of the 19th century, he had become one of the most beloved of all English poets, he had a significant influence on a diverse range of writers. Jorge Luis Borges stated that his first encounter with Keats' work was the most significant literary experience of his life; the poetry of Keats is characterised by sensual imagery, most notably in the series of odes. This is typical of romantic poets, as they aimed to accentuate extreme emotion through an emphasis on natural imagery. Today his letters are some of the most popular and most analysed in English literature; some of the most acclaimed works of Keats are "Ode to a Nightingale", "Sleep and Poetry", the famous sonnet "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer".
John Keats was born in Moorgate, London, on 31 October 1795 to Thomas Keats and his wife, Frances Jennings. There is little evidence of his exact birthplace. Although Keats and his family seem to have marked his birthday on 29 October, baptism records give the date as the 31st, he was the eldest of four surviving children. Another son was lost in infancy, his father first worked as a hostler at the stables attached to the Swan and Hoop Inn, an establishment he managed, where the growing family lived for some years. Keats believed that he was born at the inn, a birthplace of humble origins, but there is no evidence to support his belief; the Globe pub now occupies the site, a few yards from the modern-day Moorgate station. He was baptised at St Botolph-without-Bishopsgate, sent to a local dame school as a child, his parents were unable to afford Eton or Harrow, so in the summer of 1803, he was sent to board at John Clarke's school in Enfield, close to his grandparents' house. The small school had a liberal outlook and a progressive curriculum more modern than the larger, more prestigious schools.
In the family atmosphere at Clarke's, Keats developed an interest in classics and history, which would stay with him throughout his short life. The headmaster's son, Charles Cowden Clarke became an important mentor and friend, introducing Keats to Renaissance literature, including Tasso and Chapman's translations; the young Keats was described by his friend Edward Holmes as a volatile character, "always in extremes", given to indolence and fighting. However, at 13 he began focusing his energy on reading and study, winning his first academic prize in midsummer 1809. In April 1804, when Keats was eight, his father died from a skull fracture, suffered when he fell from his horse while returning from a visit to Keats and his brother George at school. Thomas Keats died intestate. Frances remarried two months but left her new husband soon afterwards, the four children went to live with their grandmother, Alice Jennings, in the village of Edmonton. In March 1810, when Keats was 14, his mother died of tuberculosis, leaving the children in the custody of their grandmother.
She appointed Richard Abbey and John Sandell, to take care of them. That autumn, Keats left Clarke's school to apprentice with Thomas Hammond, a surgeon and apothecary, a neighbour and the doctor of the Jennings family. Keats lodged in the attic above the surgery at 7 Church Street until 1813. Cowden Clarke, who remained a close friend of Keats, described this period as "the most placid time in Keats' life." From 1814, Keats had two bequests, held in trust for him until his 21st birthday: £800 willed by his grandfather John Jennings and a portion of his mother's legacy, £8000, to be divided between her living children. It seems. Blame has been laid on Abbey as legal guardian, but he may have been unaware. William Walton, solicitor for Keats' mother and grandmother did know and had a duty of care to relay the information to Keats, it seems. The money would have made a critical difference to the poet's expectations. Money was always a great concern and difficulty for him, as he struggled to stay out of debt and make his way in the world independently.
Having finished his apprenticeship with Hammond, Keats registered as a medical student at Guy's Hospital and began studying there in October 1815. Within a month of starting, he was accepted as a dresser at the hospital, assisting surgeons during operations, the equivalent of a junior house surgeon today, it was a significant promotion. Keats' long and expensive medical training with Hammond and at Guy's Hospital led his family to assume he would pursue a lifelong career in medicine, assuring financial security, it seems that at this point Keats had a genuine desire to become a doctor, he lodged near the hospital, at 28 St Thomas's Street in Southwark, with other medical students, including Henry Stephens who became a famous inventor and ink magnate. However, Keats' training took up increasing amounts of his writing time, he was ambivalent about his medical career, he felt. He had written his first extant poem, "An Imitati
Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plath was an American poet and short-story writer. Born in Boston, she studied at Smith College and Newnham College at the University of Cambridge before receiving acclaim as a poet and writer, she married fellow poet Ted Hughes in 1956, they lived together in the United States and in England. They had two children and Nicholas, before separating in 1962. Plath was clinically depressed for most of her adult life, was treated multiple times with electroconvulsive therapy, she died by suicide in 1963. Plath is credited with advancing the genre of confessional poetry and is best known for two of her published collections, The Colossus and Other Poems and Ariel, The Bell Jar, a semi-autobiographical novel published shortly before her death. In 1982, she won a posthumous Pulitzer Prize for The Collected Poems. Sylvia Plath was born on October 1932, in Boston, Massachusetts, her mother, Aurelia Schober Plath, was a second-generation American of Austrian descent, her father, Otto Plath, was from Grabow, Germany.
Plath's father was an entomologist and a professor of biology at Boston University who authored a book about bumblebees. On April 27, 1935, Plath's brother Warren was born, in 1936 the family moved from 24 Prince Street in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, to 92 Johnson Avenue, Massachusetts. Plath's mother, had grown up in Winthrop, her maternal grandparents, the Schobers, had lived in a section of the town called Point Shirley, a location mentioned in Plath's poetry. While living in Winthrop, eight-year-old Plath published her first poem in the Boston Herald's children's section. Over the next few years, Plath published multiple poems in regional newspapers. At age 11, Plath began keeping a journal. In addition to writing, she showed early promise as an artist, winning an award for her paintings from the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards in 1947. "Even in her youth, Plath was ambitiously driven to succeed". Plath had an IQ of around 160. Otto Plath died on November 5, 1940, a week and a half after Plath's eighth birthday, of complications following the amputation of a foot due to untreated diabetes.
He had become ill shortly. Comparing the similarities between his friend's symptoms and his own, Otto became convinced that he, had lung cancer and did not seek treatment until his diabetes had progressed too far. Raised as a Unitarian, Plath experienced a loss of faith after her father's death and remained ambivalent about religion throughout her life, her father was buried in Massachusetts. A visit to her father's grave prompted Plath to write the poem "Electra on Azalea Path". After Otto's death, Aurelia moved her children and her parents to 26 Elmwood Road, Massachusetts in 1942. In one of her last prose pieces, Plath commented that her first nine years "sealed themselves off like a ship in a bottle—beautiful inaccessible, obsolete, a fine, white flying myth". Plath attended Bradford Senior High School in Wellesley, graduating in 1950. Just after graduating from high school, she had her first national publication in the Christian Science Monitor. In 1950, Plath attended a private woman's liberal arts college in Massachusetts.
She excelled academically, wrote to her mother, "The world is splitting open at my feet like a ripe, juicy watermelon". While at Smith, she lived in Lawrence House, a plaque can be found outside of her old room, she edited The Smith Review. After her third year of college, Plath was awarded a coveted position as a guest editor at Mademoiselle magazine, during which she spent a month in New York City; the experience was not what she had hoped it would be, many of the events that took place during that summer were used as inspiration for her novel The Bell Jar. She was furious at not being at a meeting the editor had arranged with Welsh poet Dylan Thomas—a writer whom she loved, said one of her boyfriends, "more than life itself." She hung around the White Horse Tavern and the Chelsea Hotel for two days, hoping to meet Thomas, but he was on his way home. A few weeks she slashed her legs to see if she had enough "courage" to commit suicide. During this time she was refused admission to the Harvard writing seminar.
Following electroconvulsive therapy for depression, Plath made her first medically documented suicide attempt on August 24, 1953 by crawling under her house and taking her mother's sleeping pills. She survived this first suicide attempt after lying in a crawl space for three days writing that she "blissfully succumbed to the whirling blackness that I believed was eternal oblivion." She spent the next six months in psychiatric care, receiving more electric and insulin shock treatment under the care of Dr. Ruth Beuscher, her stay at McLean Hospital and her Smith Scholarship were paid for by Olive Higgins Prouty, who had recovered from a mental breakdown herself. Plath returned to college. In January 1955, she submitted her thesis, The Magic Mirror: A Study of the Double in Two of Dostoyevsky's Novels, in June graduated from Smith with highest honors, she obtained a Fulbright Scholarship to study at Newnham College, one of the two women-only colleges of the University of Cambridge in England, where she continued writing poetry and publishing her work in the student newspaper Varsity.
At Newnham, she studied with Dorothea Krook. She spent her first year spring holidays traveling around Europe. Plath first met poet Ted Hughes on February 1956, at a party in Cambridge. In a 1961 BBC interview (now held by the Brit
American Revolutionary War
The American Revolutionary War known as the American War of Independence, was an 18th-century war between Great Britain and its Thirteen Colonies which declared independence as the United States of America. After 1765, growing philosophical and political differences strained the relationship between Great Britain and its colonies. Patriot protests against taxation without representation followed the Stamp Act and escalated into boycotts, which culminated in 1773 with the Sons of Liberty destroying a shipment of tea in Boston Harbor. Britain responded by closing Boston Harbor and passing a series of punitive measures against Massachusetts Bay Colony. Massachusetts colonists responded with the Suffolk Resolves, they established a shadow government which wrested control of the countryside from the Crown. Twelve colonies formed a Continental Congress to coordinate their resistance, establishing committees and conventions that seized power. British attempts to disarm the Massachusetts militia in Concord led to open combat on April 19, 1775.
Militia forces besieged Boston, forcing a British evacuation in March 1776, Congress appointed George Washington to command the Continental Army. Concurrently, the Americans failed decisively in an attempt to invade Quebec and raise insurrection against the British. On July 2, 1776, the Second Continental Congress voted for independence, issuing its declaration on July 4. Sir William Howe launched a British counter-offensive, capturing New York City and leaving American morale at a low ebb. However, victories at Trenton and Princeton restored American confidence. In 1777, the British launched an invasion from Quebec under John Burgoyne, intending to isolate the New England Colonies. Instead of assisting this effort, Howe took his army on a separate campaign against Philadelphia, Burgoyne was decisively defeated at Saratoga in October 1777. Burgoyne's defeat had drastic consequences. France formally allied with the Americans and entered the war in 1778, Spain joined the war the following year as an ally of France but not as an ally of the United States.
In 1780, the Kingdom of Mysore attacked the British in India, tensions between Great Britain and the Netherlands erupted into open war. In North America, the British mounted a "Southern strategy" led by Charles Cornwallis which hinged upon a Loyalist uprising, but too few came forward. Cornwallis Cowpens, he retreated to Yorktown, intending an evacuation, but a decisive French naval victory deprived him of an escape. A Franco-American army led by the Comte de Rochambeau and Washington besieged Cornwallis' army and, with no sign of relief, he surrendered in October 1781. Whigs in Britain had long opposed the pro-war Tories in Parliament, the surrender gave them the upper hand. In early 1782, Parliament voted to end all offensive operations in America, but the war continued overseas. Britain scored a major victory over the French navy. On September 3, 1783, the belligerent parties signed the Treaty of Paris in which Great Britain agreed to recognize the sovereignty of the United States and formally end the war.
French involvement had proven decisive. Spain failed in its primary aim of recovering Gibraltar; the Dutch were compelled to cede territory to Great Britain. In India, the war against Mysore and its allies concluded in 1784 without any territorial changes. Parliament passed the Stamp Act in 1765 to pay for British military troops stationed in the American colonies after the French and Indian War. Parliament had passed legislation to regulate trade, but the Stamp Act introduced a new principle of a direct internal tax. Americans began to question the extent of the British Parliament's power in America, the colonial legislatures argued that they had exclusive right to impose taxes within their jurisdictions. Colonists condemned the tax because their rights as Englishmen protected them from being taxed by a Parliament in which they had no elected representatives. Parliament argued that the colonies were "represented virtually", an idea, criticized throughout the Empire. Parliament did repeal the act in 1766, but it affirmed its right to pass laws that were binding on the colonies.
From 1767, Parliament began passing legislation to raise revenue for the salaries of civil officials, ensuring their loyalty while inadvertently increasing resentment among the colonists, opposition soon became widespread. Enforcing the acts proved difficult; the seizure of the sloop Liberty in 1768 on suspicions of smuggling triggered a riot. In response, British troops occupied Boston, Parliament threatened to extradite colonists to face trial in England. Tensions rose after the murder of Christopher Seider by a customs official in 1770 and escalated into outrage after British troops fired on civilians in the Boston Massacre. In 1772, colonists in Rhode Island burned a customs schooner. Parliament repealed all taxes except the one on tea, passing the Tea Act in 1773, attempting to force colonists to buy East India Company tea on which the Townshend duties were paid, thus implicitly agreeing to Parliamentary supremacy; the landing of the tea was resisted in all colonies, but the governor of Massachusetts permitted British tea ships to remain in Boston Harbor, so the Sons of Liberty destroyed the tea chests in what became known as the "Boston Tea Party".
Parliament passed punitive legislation. It closed Boston Harbor until the tea was paid for and revoked the Massachusetts Charter, taking upon themselves the right to directly appoint the Massachusetts Governor's Council. Additionally, t
