Ford Madox Brown was a British painter of moral and historical subjects, notable for his distinctively graphic and Hogarthian version of the Pre-Raphaelite style. Arguably, his most notable painting was Work. Brown spent the latter years of his life painting the twelve works known as The Manchester Murals, depicting Mancunian history, for Manchester Town Hall. Brown was the grandson of the medical theorist John Brown, founder of the Brunonian system of medicine, his great grandfather was a Scottish labourer. His father Ford Brown served as a purser in the Royal Navy, including a period serving under Sir Isaac Coffin and a period on HMS Arethusa, he left the Navy after the end of the Napoleonic Wars. In 1818, Ford Brown married Caroline Madox, of an old Kentish family, from which his middle name was taken. Brown's parents had limited financial resources, they moved to Calais to seek cheaper lodgings, where their daughter Elizabeth Coffin was born in 1819 and their son Ford Madox Brown in 1821. Brown's education was limited, as the family moved between lodgings in the Pas-de-Calais and relatives in Kent, but he showed artistic talent in copying of old master prints.

His father sought a naval career for his son, writing to his former captain Sir Isaac Coffin. The family moved to Bruges in 1835. Brown moved to Ghent in 1836 to continue his studies under Pieter van Hanselaere, he moved to Antwerp in 1837 to study under Gustaf Wappers. He continued to study in Antwerp after his mother's death in 1839, his sister died in 1840, his father in 1842. The Tate Gallery holds an early example of a portrait of his father, he first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1840, a work inspired by Lord Byron's poem The Giaour and completed a version of The Execution of Mary, Queen of Scots, with his cousin and future wife Elisabeth Bromley as one of his models. He lived in Montmartre with his new wife and aging father in 1841, he painted Manfred on the Jungfrau, inspired by Lord Byron's poem Manfred. In 1843 he submitted work to the Westminster Cartoon Competition, for compositions to decorate the new Palace of Westminster, his entry, The Body of Harold Brought before William, was not successful.

His early works were, however admired by the young Dante Gabriel Rossetti, who asked him to become his tutor. Through Rossetti, Brown came into contact with the artists who went on to form the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Though linked to them, he was never a member of the brotherhood itself, but adopted the bright colours and realistic style of William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais, he was influenced by the works of Holbein that he saw in Basel in 1845, by Friedrich Overbeck and Peter Cornelius, whom he met in Rome in 1845-46. Brown struggled to make his mark in the 1850s, with his paintings failing to find buyers, he considered emigrating to India. In 1852 he started work on two of his most significant works. One of his most famous images is The Last of England, painted from 1852 to 1855, sold in March 1859 for 325 Guineas, it depicts a pair of stricken emigrants as they sail away on the ship that will take them from England forever. It was inspired by the departure of the Pre-Raphaelite sculptor Thomas Woolner, who had left for Australia.

In an unusual tondo format, the painting is structured with Brown's characteristic linear energy, emphasis on grotesque and banal details, such as the cabbages hanging from the ship's side. The husband and wife are portraits of his second wife Emma. Brown's most important painting was Work, begun in Hampstead in 1852 and which he showed at his retrospective exhibition in 1865. Thomas Plint advanced funds to enable Brown to complete the work, in anticipation of obtaining the finished painting, but died in 1861 before the painting had been completed. In this painting, Brown attempted to depict the totality of the mid-Victorian social experience in a single image, depicting'navvies' digging up a road and disrupting the old social hierarchies as they did so; the image erupts into proliferating details from the dynamic centre of the action, as the workers tear a hole in the road – and, symbolically, in the social fabric. Each character represents a particular social role in the modern urban environment.

Brown wrote a catalogue to accompany the special exhibition of Work. This publication included an extensive explanation of Work that leaves many questions unanswered. Brown's concern with the social issues addressed in Work prompted him to open a soup kitchen for Manchester's hungry, to attempt to aid the city's unemployed to find work by founding a labour exchange. Brown found patrons in the north of England, including Plint, George Rae from Birkenhead, John Miller from Liverpool, James Leathart from Newcastle. By the late 1850s he had lost patience with the poor reception he received at the Royal Academy and ceased to show his works there, rejecting an offer from Millais to support his becoming an associate member, he founded the Hogarth Club in 1858, with William Morris, Edward Burne-Jones, his former pupil Rossetti. After a successful period of a few years, the club reached over 80 members, including several prominent members of the Royal Academy, but Brown resigned in 1860, the club collapsed in 1861.

From the 1860s, Brown designed furniture and stained glass. He was a founder partner of William Morris's design company, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. in 1861, which dissolved in 1874 with Morris continuing on his own. He was a close friend of the landscape artist Henry Mark Anthony

The following is a list of operas by Giacomo Meyerbeer. Notes SourcesBecker, Heinz. "Meyerbeer, Giacomo ". In Sadie, The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, vol. 12, 246–256. London: Macmillan Becker and Gudrun, tr. Mark Violette. Giacomo Meyerbeer, a Life in Letters. London: Christopher Helm. ISBN 0-7470-0230-4. Huebner, Steven. "Meyerbeer, Giacomo". In Sadie, The New Grove Dictionary of Opera, 4: 366–371. London: Macmillan. ISBN 978-1-56159-228-9. Letellier, Robert Ignatius; the Operas of Giacomo Meyerbeer. Cranbury: Associated University Presses. ISBN 978-0-8386-4093-7 Meyerbeer, Giacomo. Briefwechsel und Tagebücher. Berlin and New York: de Gruyter

The Deacon John Symmes House is a historic house at 212 Main Street in Winchester, Massachusetts. Built about 1807, it is a fine local example of Federal period architecture, is significant for its association with the Symmes family, who were among Winchester's earliest settlers; the house was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1989. The Deacon Symmes House is located at the southern junction of Grove and Main Streets, at a five-way interchange involving those two streets, Bacon Street, Everell Road; this area is known as Symmes Corner for its association with that family, which began settling the area about 1650. This house is a two-story wood frame structure, five bays wide, with a hip roof, twin rear wall chimneys, clapboard siding; the entrance is centered and flanked by sidelight windows, with a sheltering shallow hip-roof portico. Rev. Zechariah Symmes, pastor of the Charlestown church, was granted land in this area, settled by his sons about 1650. One son Deacon John Symmes, a blacksmith, built this house about 1807, making it the oldest surviving house of the Symmes family.

The house was fitted with a balustrade around the roof, removed at an unknown date. Standing nearby are the Marshall Symmes House, built c. 1817 by John Symmes' brother, the Marshall Symmes Tenant House. Marshall Symmes House National Register of Historic Places listings in Winchester, Massachusetts

In category theory, a branch of mathematics, the cone of a functor is an abstract notion used to define the limit of that functor. Cones make other appearances in category theory as well. Let F: J → C be a diagram in C. Formally, a diagram is nothing more than a functor from J to C; the change in terminology reflects the fact that we think of F as indexing a family of objects and morphisms in C. The category J is thought of as an "index category". One should consider this in analogy with the concept of an indexed family of objects in set theory; the primary difference is. Thus, for example, when J is a discrete category, it corresponds most to the idea of an indexed family in set theory. Another common and more interesting example takes J to be a span. J can be taken to be the empty category, leading to the simplest cones. Let N be an object of C. A cone from N to F is a family of morphisms ψ X: N → F for each object X of J, such that for every morphism f: X → Y in J the following diagram commutes: The collection of all these triangles can be depicted in the shape of a cone with the apex N.

The cone ψ is sometimes said to have vertex N and base F. One can define the dual notion of a cone from F to N by reversing all the arrows above. Explicitly, a co-cone from F to N is a family of morphisms ψ X: F → N for each object X of J, such that for every morphism f: X → Y in J the following diagram commutes: At first glance cones seem to be abnormal constructions in category theory, they are maps from an object to a functor. In keeping with the spirit of category theory we would like to define them as morphisms or objects in some suitable category. In fact, we can do both. Let J be a small category and let CJ be the category of diagrams of type J in C. Define the diagonal functor Δ: C → CJ as follows: Δ: J → C is the constant functor to N for all N in C. If F is a diagram of type J in C, the following statements are equivalent: ψ is a cone from N to F ψ is a natural transformation from Δ to F is an object in the comma category The dual statements are equivalent: ψ is a co-cone from F to N ψ is a natural transformation from F to Δ is an object in the comma category These statements can all be verified by a straightforward application of the definitions.

Thinking of cones as natural transformations we see that they are just morphisms in CJ with source a constant functor. By the above, we can define the category of cones to F as the comma category. Morphisms of cones are just morphisms in this category; this equivalence is rooted in the observation that a natural map between constant functors Δ, Δ corresponds to a morphism between N and M. In this sense, the diagonal functor acts trivially on arrows. In similar vein, writing down the definition of a natural map from a constant functor Δ to F yields the same diagram as the above; as one might expect, a morphism from a cone to a cone is just a morphism N → L such that all the "obvious" diagrams commute. The category of co-cones from F is the comma category. Limits and colimits are defined as universal cones; that is, cones. A cone φ from L to F is a universal cone if for any other cone ψ from N to F there is a unique morphism from ψ to φ. Equivalently, a universal cone to F is a universal morphism from Δ to F.

Dually, a cone φ from F to L is a universal cone if for any other cone ψ from F to N there is a unique morphism from φ to ψ. Equivalently, a universal cone from F is an initial object in; the limit of F is a universal cone to F, the colimit is a universal cone from F. As with all universal constructions, universal cones are not guaranteed to exist for all diagrams F, but if they do exist they are unique up to a unique isomorphism. Mac Lane, Saunders. Categories for the Working Mathematician. New York: Springer. ISBN 0-387-98403-8. Borceux, Francis. "Limits". Handbook of categorical algebra. Encyclopedia of mathematics and its applications 50-51, 53. Volume 1. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-44178-1. Cone in nLab

The Merciless is a 2017 South Korean crime-action film based on fictional character comic book from PLUSMAKER Comics, directed by Byun Sung-hyun, starring Sol Kyung-gu and Im Si-wan. The film was released in South Korea on May 17, 2017, it was shown out of competition in the Midnight Screenings section at the 70th Cannes Film Festival on May 24, 2017. The story about the loyalty and betrayal between an inmate leader and an undercover cop/prisoner, who team to take over a gang, it centers around the main character Hyun soo, the undercover cop, Han Jaeho the inmate leader. Sol Kyung-gu as Jae-ho Im Si-wan as Hyun-soo Kim Hee-won as Byung-gab Jeon Hye-jin as Chun In-sook Lee Geung-young as Byung-chul Jang In-sub as Min-chul Kim Ji-hoon as Jung-sik Lee Ji-hoon as Public prosecutor Oh Choi Byung-mo as Captain Choi Moon Ji-yoon as Young-geun Nam Gi-ae as Hyun-soo's mother Heo Joon-ho as Kim Sung-han Shin So-yul as Osean Trading advertisement beauty 1 Kim Bo-mi as Osean Trading advertisement beauty 2 Lee Mi-so as Osean Trading advertisement beauty 3 Kim Sung-oh as Jung Seung-pil Prior to its local release, the film has been pre-sold to 85 countries including France, the Netherlands, Japan, India, the Philippines and Singapore at the 2017 Hong Kong Film Mart.

According to the distributor CJ Entertainment the film was sold to additional territories, reaching a total of 117 countries worldwide. The film was released in French cinemas on June 2017, by ARP Distributors; the film received a seven-minute standing ovation at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival. Michele Halberstadt from ARP Films praised the film for its screenwriting and characters. According to the Korean Film Council, the film topped the Korean box office on the first day of release and sold 95,261 tickets. On December 28, 2017, CJ E&M, the production company of The Merciless, announced a television adaptation of the film. According to the company, the script will be written in 2018, the drama would be produced in 2019; the Merciless at HanCinema The Merciless on IMDb

The Maxim gun was a weapon invented by American-born British inventor Hiram Stevens Maxim in 1884: it was the first recoil-operated machine gun in production. It has been called "the weapon most associated with the British imperial conquest", was used in colonial wars by other countries between 1886 and 1914; the mechanism of the Maxim gun employed one of the earliest recoil-operated firing systems in history. The idea is that the energy from recoil acting on the breech block is used to eject each spent cartridge and insert the next one, instead of a hand-operated mechanism. Maxim's earliest designs used a 360-degree rotating cam to reverse the movement of the block, but this was simplified to a toggle lock; this made it vastly more efficient and less labor-intensive than previous rapid-firing guns, such as the Mitrailleuse, Gardner, or Nordenfelt, that relied on actual mechanical cranking. The Maxim gun design was provided with water cooling, giving it the ability to maintain its rate of fire for far longer than air-cooled guns.

The disadvantage of this was that it made the gun less flexible in attack than the lighter air-cooled weapons, being heavier and more complex, requiring a supply of water. Trials demonstrated. Compared to modern machine guns, the Maxim was heavy and awkward. A lone soldier could fire the weapon, but it was operated by a team of men 4 to 6. Apart from the gunner, other crew were needed to speed reload, spot targets, carry and ready ammunition and water. Several men were needed to mount the heavy weapon. Maxim established the Maxim Gun Company with financing from Albert Vickers, son of steel entrepreneur Edward Vickers. A blue plaque on the Factory where Maxim invented and produced the gun is to be found in Hatton Garden at the junction with Clerkenwell Road in London. Albert Vickers became the company's chairman, it joined hands with a Swedish competitor, Nordenfelt, to become Maxim Nordenfelt Guns and Ammunition Company; the Post Office Directory of trades in London of 1895 lists its office at 32 Victoria Street SW on page 1579.

The company was absorbed into the mother Vickers company, leading first to the Maxim-Vickers gun and after Vickers' redesign, the Vickers machine gun. Maxim's first patents related to the development of the Maxim were registered in June and July 1883; the first prototype was demonstrated to invited guests in October 1884. A prototype of the Maxim gun was given by Hiram Maxim to the Emin Pasha Relief Expedition in 1886–1890, under the leadership of Henry Morton Stanley. More a publicity stunt than a serious military contribution, in view of the main financier of the expedition, William Mackinnon, "merely exhibiting" the gun was to "prove a great peace-preserver". In fact the gun was used on several occasions during the expedition's retreat from central Africa, not because of its devastating effects, but as an effective means to scare off native attackers; the same prototype was brought back to central Africa by Frederick Lugard, where it played an instrumental role in the establishment of a British protectorate over present-day Uganda, a strong testament to the sturdiness and reliability of the weapon and its prototype.

The first unit in the world to receive the Maxim was the Wissmann force, sent in 1888 by the German Empire to East Africa to put down the Abushiri Revolt. Wissmann was issued one of the first Maxim guns which had reached Germany and used it in his attack on Pangani; the Singapore Volunteer Corps received a Maxim gun in 1889. This was a civilian volunteer defence unit on the then-British island; the Maxim gun was first used by Britain's colonial forces in 1893–1894 First Matabele War in Rhodesia. During the Battle of the Shangani, 700 soldiers fought off 5,000 warriors with just five Maxim guns, it played an important role in the swift European colonization of Africa in the late 19th century. The extreme lethality was employed to devastating effect against obsolete charging tactics, when native opponents could be lured into pitched battles in open terrain; as it was put by Hilaire Belloc, in the words of the figure "Blood" in his poem "The Modern Traveller": However, the destructive power of the Maxim gun in colonial warfare has been embellished by popular myth.

Modern historical accounts suggest that, while it was effective in pitched battles, as in the Matabele war or the 1898 Battle of Omdurman, its significance owed much to its psychological impact. A larger-calibre version of the Maxim, firing a one-pound shell, was built by Maxim-Nordenfeldt; this was known in the Second Boer War as the Pom-Pom from its sound. The Boers' "one-pounder" Maxim-Nordenfeldt was a large caliber, belt-fed, water-cooled "auto cannon" that fired explosive rounds at 450 rounds per minute; the Maxim gun was used in the Anglo-Aro War of 1901–1902. National and military authorities were reluctant to adopt the weapon, Maxim's company had some trouble convincing European governments of the weapon's efficiency. Soldiers held a great mistrust of machine guns due to their tendency to jam. In the 1906 version of his book Small Wars, Charles Callwell says of machine guns: "The older forms are not suitable as a rule... they jammed at Ulundi, they jammed at Dogali, they jammed at Abu Klea and Tofrek, in some cases with unfortunate results."

However, the Maxim was far more reliable than its contemporaries. A more immediate problem was that its position was given away by the clouds of smoke that the gun produced (although the same was true of artillery pieces and units of troops that the machine gun was intended to r