The hangman's knot or hangman's noose is a knot most associated with its use in hanging a person. For a hanging, the knot of the rope is placed under or just behind the left ear, although the most effective position is just ahead of the ear, beneath the angle of the left lower jaw; the pull on the knot at the end of the drop levers the jaw and head violently up and to the right, which combines with the jerk of the rope becoming taut to wrench the upper neck vertebrae apart. This produces rapid death, whereas the traditional position beneath the ear was intended to result in the mass of the knot crushing closed the neck arteries, causing cessation of brain circulation; the knot tends to resist attempts to loosen it. Surviving nooses in the United Kingdom show simple slipknots that were superseded in the late 19th century with a metal eye spliced into one end of the rope, the noose being formed by passing the other end through it; the classic hangman's knot was developed in the United States, the heavy mass of the knot intended to crush blood vessels in the neck and if tightened beneath the jaw, to lever the head to one side.

Filmed hangings of war criminals in Europe after World War II, conducted under US jurisdiction, show such knots placed in various places, including at the back of the neck. Each additional coil adds friction to the knot, which makes the noose harder to pull open; when Grover Cleveland was the sheriff of Erie County, he performed two hangings. Cleveland was advised by a more experienced Sheriff to grease the rope with tallow and run it through the knot a few times to ensure rapid closure with the drop; the number of coils should therefore be adjusted depending on the intended use, the type and thickness of rope, environmental conditions such as wet or greasy rope. Six to eight loops are normal. One coil makes it equivalent to the simple running knot; the number thirteen was thought to be unlucky. In myth, if not in actual practice, thirteen coils were found in a hangman’s noose, a foreboding sign for those convicted to be hanged. Woody Guthrie sings of the hangman using thirteen coils: A variation of this knot is used in fishing and is called the Uni-knot.

It is used to tie fishing line to terminal tackle, or for snelling hooks. It is useful when used with slick braided line as more coils can be added to increase the friction of the knot and will not let the knot pull out, it is useful in that the knot can be pulled down tight to the lure or it can be left with a larger loop that gives the lure more freedom of movement. The hangman's noose can be used in boating to secure an eyelet on a rope or sheet without splicing it; this knot was used for hauling lines on gaff rigging in sailing applications made with three or more wraps depending on the weight to be lifted. It is still a trusted knot for overhead sailing to this day. List of knots The Ashley Book of Knots discusses this knot in the entry for drawing #1119 Media related to Hangman's nooses at Wikimedia Commons

St. Michael's School is an independent boarding and day school for children aged from 3 to 18 years old in Llanelli, Wales; the school is divided into four sections, comprising the Pre-Preparatory School, Preparatory School, Senior School and Sixth Form. The current head teacher is Benson Ferrari; the school was first established in 1923 and has been situated in the east Llanelli village of Bryn since 1928. The school was established by the Rees brothers, with Percy Rees as the founding Headmaster. Upon retirement of the Rees' brothers, former head boy Mr Vaughan-Evans was appointed Headmaster in 1962; the school's main building, St. David's House, dates back to the 19th century and was a large house belonging to a local industrialist; the school's Pre-Preparatory School is housed in a converted former public house, The Royal Oak, purchased by the school in 2012 The school was acquired in 2019 by Chinese company Bright Scholar, as part of a £150m purchase of colleges in the UK. Bright Scholar is the largest operator of international and bilingual schools in China.

The deal for St Michael's, along with Bosworth Independent College cost the company a sum of £38m. The school offers GCSE and A-Level qualifications, with 60.9% of all A-Level entries graded A* or A in 2018, winning the Sunday Times 2018 Welsh Independent Secondary School of the Year award. In 2012 the school appeared in national headlines after accusations arose that education officers at Cognita UK, a rival education company, had posed as parents at St Michael's in order to obtain commercial information. Cognita deny all of the allegations. In 2016 the school was twice the victim of hoax calls warning of a bomb on the school estate; the school twice evacuated its premises, a heavy police presence was required to confirm the communications were both in fact a hoax. The threat was linked to a number of other hoaxes around that time including threats to schools in Kent and Newcastle. Notable former pupils of St Michaels' include: Robert Buckland MP Cerys Matthews Kirsty Williams Ivor Richard Siân Gwenllian AMSt Michael's alumna and singer Cerys Matthews has acknowledged in interviews that her career benefited from attending St. Michael's, because "through the public school system, you've had so many leg ups", avoids playing music by privately-educated acts on her 6 Music show.

She is subsequently an advocate for state educated acts in the music industry. Official website

Ni Nengah Widiasih is an Indonesian powerlifter. She competed in 2016 Summer Paralympics. Widiasih was raised in Karangasem, Bali, she began using a wheelchair. When she was in the sixth grade she began living at the dormitory run by the Disabled Children's Counselling Foundation, her daily expenses were handled by the foundation, beginning in middle school, her education was paid for through scholarships. As of 2012, she is in the second year of senior high school. At the suggestion of her brother, fellow weightlifter I Gede Suantaka, Widiasih took up weightlifting, she began practising four to five times weekly. In 2008, she won a bronze medal at the ASEAN ParaGames in Nakhon Ratchasima, while the following year she received a silver medal at the Games in Kuala Lumpur, she medaled at national level competitions in Surakarta and Bali. She competes in the 40 kilogram class. Widiasih competed at the 2011 ASEAN ParaGames, held in Surakarta in December, after her class was nearly cut by a referee as "illegitimate".

She set a record for the 40 kilogram class, lifting 87 kilograms after failing to lift 80 kilograms in an earlier attempt. This effort won her a gold medal. For the games she was coached by Agus Sugiharto. In February 2012 she won a bronze medal at the Malaysia Open Powerlifting Championship in Kuala Lumpur. Widiasih was on the six-member shortlist to compete in the 2012 Summer Paralympics in London, she is the only one from the country. Footnotes Bibliography

Premier Inn is a British hotel chain and the UK's largest hotel brand, with more than 72,000 rooms and 800 hotels. It operates hotels in a variety of locations including city centres and airports competing with the likes of Travelodge and Ibis hotels; the company was established by Whitbread as Travel Inn in 1987. Whitbread bought Premier Lodge in 2004 and merged it with Travel Inn to form the current business under the name "Premier Travel Inn", shortened to "Premier Inn". Premier Inn accounts for 70% of Whitbread's earnings; the chain started trading in 1987 as Travel Inn. The first site to open was next to "The Watermill" Beefeater restaurant in Basildon. In 2004, Whitbread acquired Premier Lodge, for £ 536 million; this added 141 hotels to the portfolio. Whitbread renamed every hotel "Premier Travel Inn". In 2005, Premier Travel Inn opened its 500th hotel in Hemel Hempstead. In early 2006, Premier Travel Inn purchased 11 Holiday Inn hotels in Wales; these sites kept their leisure facilities such as a swimming pool and gym, except the hotel situated at Norman Cross.

Premier Travel Inn started to launch a new bedroom design during this year to move away from the differences of "Travel Inn" and "Premier Lodge". Until rooms had remained as they had been before and new hotels were designed as "Travel Inns". Whitbread shortened the name to "Premier Inn" in 2007. In September 2007, Whitbread announced the purchase of Golden Tulip UK including six hotels trading in the UK under the Tulip Inn and Golden Tulip brands; the hotels were converted to Premier Inns. In April 2008, Whitbread announced a £100 million expansion of Premier Inn in London over the following three years. In July 2008, Whitbread bought 21 Express by Holiday Inn hotels in exchange for 44 Beefeater & Brewers Fayre restaurants where it was not possible to build a Premier Inn. In 2011, the 600th hotel was opened in Stratford-upon-Avon. Premier Inn have sold off some of their smaller hotels to Good Night Inns. Most of these were Premier Lodge sites in less prominent locations. In July 2015, the 700th Premier Inn was opened in London.

The company plans to operate 85,000 bedrooms in the UK by 2020. The Premier Inn chain can be found from Inverness in the north of Scotland to Helston, Cornwall in south-west England. Hotels are found either on the outskirts near to major A roads and motorways. In October 2010, the Premier Inn hotels located at Roadchef and Moto motorway service stations were sold to Days Inn after the franchise agreement was terminated. Hotels vary with many smaller inns and large purpose-built city centre hotels. Most Premier Inn hotels are newly built, although many of the chain's inner city locations in the UK are housed within redeveloped office buildings which would otherwise have been demolished; some hotels such as "Bristol Airport" in Sidcot are housed in older buildings. In the wake of the Grenfell Tower fire, Premier Inn said three of their hotels in Maidenhead and Tottenham were built with cladding. In 2007, Premier Inn entered Ireland. Premier Inn offer bus transfers to and from Dublin Airport, nearby.

As of 2019, Premier Inn is pursuing an expansion in Dublin and has bought four sites in the city centre and Docklands area including at Aungiers Street, Castleforbes Business Park, Gloucester Street South and Jervis Street. In 2006, Premier Inn announced that it had entered into a joint venture agreement with Emirates Group to launch in the Gulf Cooperation Council region; this was the first move to expand the brand beyond the UK. The joint venture identified three sites in Dubai; the first Premier Inn in Dubai to open was a 300-room hotel at Dubai Investment Park. A similar size hotel at Dubai Airport, a 220-room hotel at Dubai Silicon Oasis on Emirates Road, were opened. Dubai Ibn Battuta Mall Hotel has been opened, connected to Ibn Battuta Mall. There is a Premier Inn located in the Abu Dhabi Capital Centre, another Premier Inn located in Abu Dhabi International Airport which opened on 19 November 2013. Next to Qatar National Convention Centre, there is Doha Education City Hotel. In 2007, Premier Inn announced that it has entered into a 50:50 joint venture agreement with Emaar-MGF – one of India's leading real estate developers, to develop Premier Inn in India.

This will be Premier Inn's third international market following the joint venture with Emirates announced in 2006. A total equity investment of up to £300m was to be invested in the joint venture over the following 10 years of which Whitbread's share was to be 50%. Over the 10-year period, the venture was to create some 80 hotels and over 12,000 rooms; the sites were targeted in the Delhi Region, Goa and Chandigarh. In 2016, Premier Inn launched its first hotel in the German market – Frankfurt Messe. Since two further sites have been secured in Essen and Freiburg, with plans to launch hotels across the principal German cities; as well as the standard Premier Inns, there are two sub-brands. Hub by Premier Inn is a city centre format with in-room technology such as tablets. Zip by Premier Inn is lower-priced; some rooms do not have windows and there is a simplified food and drink service. The first Zip hotel opened in Roath, Cardiff in 2019. All Premier Inns have an on-site restaurant, with the exception of hotels which were Holiday Inn Express, where kitchen facilities were added to the hotel for breakfasts only.

Most hotels are accompanied by a Whitbread restaurant such as Whitbread Inns, Table Table, Brewers Fayre or Beef

Theodore Leopold Friedman, known as Ted Lewis, was an American entertainer, bandleader and musician. He fronted a band and touring stage show that presented a combination of jazz and nostalgia, a hit with the American public before and after World War II, he was known by the moniker "Mr. Entertainment" or Ted "Is Everybody Happy?" Lewis. Lewis died of lung failure in August 1971. Born in Circleville, Lewis was one of the first Northern musicians to start imitating the New Orleans jazz musicians who came up to New York in the teens, he first recorded in 1917 with Earl Fuller's Jazz Band, who were attempting to copy the sound of the city's newest sensation, the Original Dixieland Jass Band. At the time, Lewis did not seem to be able to do much on the clarinet other than trill, he improved a bit forming his style from the influences of the first New Orleans clarinetists to reside in New York, Larry Shields, Alcide Nunez, Achille Baquet. By 1919, Lewis was leading his own band, had a recording contract with Columbia Records, which marketed him as their answer to the Original Dixieland Jass Band who recorded for Victor records.

For a time Columbia gave him a special record label featuring his picture. At the start of the 1920s, he was considered by many people without previous knowledge of jazz to be one of the leading lights of hot jazz. Lewis's clarinet playing evolved beyond his style of 1919 which in years would sound corny, but Lewis knew what good clarinet playing sounded like, for he hired musicians like Benny Goodman, Jimmy Dorsey, Frank Teschemacher, Don Murray to play clarinet in his band. Lewis could play well without missed notes, as exemplified by his earliest records. For years, his band included jazz greats Muggsy Spanier on trumpet and George Brunies on trombone. Ted Lewis' band was second only to the Paul Whiteman band in popularity during the 1920s, arguably played more real jazz with less pretension than Whiteman in his recordings of the late 1920s. Lewis recorded for Columbia from 1919–1933, he was on Decca 1934 into the 1940s. In 1932, Lewis recorded "In a Shanty in Old Shanty Town", which he had performed in the film "The Crooner" with his orchestra.

It was reached number one on the charts where it stayed for 10 weeks. One of Lewis' most memorable songs was "Me and My Shadow" with which he closed his act. Around 1928, Lewis noticed, he hired Chester to follow him on stage as his shadow during "Me and My Shadow". Eddie was followed by four other African-American shadows, the most famous being Charles "Snowball" Whittier, making Ted one of the first prominent white entertainers to showcase African-American performers. Ted Lewis and His Orchestra were one of the featured entertainers at the 1939 Golden Gate International Exposition – Pageant of the Pacific on Treasure Island; the Sunday, August 13, 1939 Program of Special Attractions and Events indicates that the Ted Lewis Orchestra performed from 2:45 to 3:45 p.m. and from 5:00 to 6:00 p.m. in the Temple Compound and from 8:30 to 11:30 p.m. in the Treasure Island Music Hall for a free dance. Lewis' band became cornier and schmaltzier as the Great Depression wore on, but this seemed to match the general public's taste, as he remained commercially successful during an era when many bands broke up.

Through it all he retained his famous catchphrase "Is everybody happy?", along with "yessir!". Lewis adopted a battered top hat for hard-luck tunes, he would stray from song lyrics, improvising chatter around them. This gave the effect of Lewis "speaking" the song spontaneously: "When ma' baby... when ma' baby smiles at me... gee, what a wonderful, wonderful light that comes to her eyes... look at that light, folks..." Lewis kept his band together through the 1950s, continued to make appearances in Las Vegas and on television into the 1960s. True to his vaudeville beginnings, he created a visual as well as a musical act, his physical presence with props like his top hat combined with bits of visual humor and dancing were as important to him as his music. Lewis and his band appeared in a few early-talkie movie musicals in 1929, notably the Warner Brothers revue The Show of Shows; the first of several films titled with Lewis' catchphrase, Is Everybody Happy? premiered in 1929, while 1935 saw Lewis and his band performing several numbers in the film Here Comes the Band.

In 1941 the band was recruited at the last minute, along with the Andrews Sisters, to furnish musical numbers for the Abbott and Costello comedy Hold That Ghost, released by Universal Studios on August 6, 1941. Musical numbers cut from the feature were released by Universal separately on September 3, 1941, in a short subject entitled Is Everybody Happy? In 1943 Columbia Pictures mounted a feature-length biographical film of Lewis—yet again titled Is Everybody Happy?—with actor Michael Duane portraying the bandleader and lip synching to Lewis's recordings. There is an extended caricature of Lewis in the Warner Brothers short Speaking of the Weather, playing Plenty of Money and You. Lewis married Adah Becker in 1915, she was a ballerina. Only six weeks they were married in three separate ceremonies on the same day, first by a justice of the peace, next by a

The Republican Party of India is a political party in India. It has its roots in the Scheduled Castes Federation led by B. R. Ambedkar. The'Training School for Entrance to Politics' was established by Ambedkar in 1956, to serve as an entry point to the Republican Party of India; the first batch of the school consisted of 15 students. Its first batch turned out to be last batch as the school was closed after Ambedkar's death in 1956; the Independent Labour Party was a political organisation formed under the leadership of B. R. Ambedkar on 15 August 1936, it opposed the brahmanical and capitalist structures in India, supported the Indian working class and sought to dismantle the caste system. The formation of the ILP was not welcomed or supported by the communist leaders, who argued that it would lead to a split in the working-class votes. Ambedkar replied that communist leaders were working for the rights for the worker but not for the human rights of Dalit workers. In his work Annihilation of Caste, Ambedkar put forth the idea that caste is not the'division of labour' but'division of labourers' based upon graded inequality.

In the 1937 Provincial elections, the ILP secured 14 of the 17 seats. This included 11 of the 13 contested seats that were reserved for traditionally oppressed communities. In 1938, the ILP, with the support of the Congress Socialist Party, organised a march of 20,000 tenants from the Konkan region to Bombay, marked the largest pre-independence peasant mobilisation in the region. In the same year, it joined with Communists to organise Bombay textile labourers in opposition to a bill intended to control strike actions by the labourers. ILP opposed the bill in the Bombay Legislative Assembly. Scheduled Castes Federation was an organisation in India founded by B. R. Ambedkar in 1942 to campaign for the rights of the Dalit community. An executive body of All India SCF was elected in the convention. N. Sivaraj from Madras State was elected as President and P. N. Rajbhoj from Bombay State was elected as general secretary. Ambedkar had founded the Depressed Classes Federation in 1930 and the Independent Labour Party in 1935.

Sources vary regarding which of these two bodies was succeeded by the SCF. SCF evolved into the Republican Party of India. There was a party called Scheduled Caste Federation in Pakistan after Partition. Ramnarayan Rawat stated that the SCF "created the space for an alternative to Congress-type'nationalist' politics in post- 1947 Uttar Pradesh". On 30 September 1956, B. R. Ambedkar had announced the establishment of the "Republican Party of India" by dismissing the "Scheduled Castes Federation", but before the formation of the party, he died on 6 December 1956. After that, his followers and activists planned to form this party. A meeting of the Presidency was held at Nagpur on 1 1957 to establish the party. At this meeting, N. Sivaraj, Yashwant Ambedkar, P. T. Borale, A. G. Pawar, Datta Katti, D. A. Rupavate were present; the Republican Party of India was formed on 3 October 1957. N. Sivaraj was elected as the President of the party. During the recent years RPI suffered severe internal strife. Several distinct parties claim the name of RPI.

There are more than 50 factions of RPI. In 2009, all factions of RPI except Prakash Ambedkar's Bharipa Bahujan Mahasangh reunited to form a united "Republican Party of India". Republican Party of India and Republican Party of India led by Ramdas Athawale split again from the united party. Splinter groups of RPI include: Republican Party of India of Ramdas Athawale Republican Party of India Republican Party of India of R. S. Gavai and Rajendra Gavai Bharipa Bahujan Mahasangh of Prakash Ambedkar Rashtriya Republican Party of Annasaheb Katare Bahujan Samaj Party founder Kanshi Ram worked with RPI for eight years