Hwicce was a tribal kingdom in Anglo-Saxon England. According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, the kingdom was established in 577, after the Battle of Deorham. After 628, the kingdom became a client or sub-kingdom of Mercia as a result of the Battle of Cirencester; the Tribal Hidage assessed Hwicce at 7000 hides, which would give it a similar sized economy to the kingdoms of Essex and Sussex. The exact boundaries of the kingdom remain uncertain, though it is that they coincided with those of the old Diocese of Worcester, founded in 679–80, the early bishops of which bore the title Episcopus Hwicciorum; the kingdom would therefore have included Worcestershire except the northwestern tip, Gloucestershire except the Forest of Dean, the southwestern half of Warwickshire, the neighbourhood of Bath north of the Avon, plus small parts of Herefordshire, Shropshire and north-west Wiltshire. The etymology of the name Hwicce, it is the plural of a masculine i-stem. It may be from a tribal name of "the Hwiccians".

One etymology comes from the common noun hwicce "ark, locker", in reference to the appearance of the territory as a flat-bottomed valley bordered by the Cotswolds and the Malvern Hills. A second possibility would be a derivation from a given name, "the people of the man called Hwicce", but no such name has been recorded. Eilert Ekwall connected the name, on linguistic grounds, with that of the Gewisse, the predecessors of the West Saxons. Suggested by Smith is a tribal name, in origin pejorative, meaning "the cowards", cognate to quake, Old Norse hvikari "coward", it is likely that "Hwicce" referred to the native tribes living along the banks of the River Severn, in the area of today's'Worcester', who were weavers using rushes and reeds growing profusely to create baskets. The modern word'wicker', thought to be of Scandinavian origin, describes the type of baskets produced by these early people. However, there are potential objections to many of these possible explanations. For instance, Coates argues that the essence of an ark is that it is closed, rather than open like a valley or plain.

Stephen Yeates has interpreted the name as meaning "cauldron. However, his interpretation has been dismissed by academics. Coates on the other hand believes that the name has a Brythonic origin, related to the modern Welsh gwych meaning'excellent'; the prefix hy is an emphatic giving something similar to hywych. Similar known constructions in Welsh include "hydda ‘ good’, hynaws ‘good-natured’, hylwydd ‘successful’, hywiw ‘ worthy’ and hywlydd ‘ generous’". Coates notes that the meaning would be "comparable with bombastic British tribal names of the Roman period, such as Ancalites ‘the hard ones’, Catuvellauni ‘the battle-excellent ones’ or Brigantes ‘the high ones’". Coates does, admit that his explanation can raise objections, not least that hywych is not a recorded and known early or Welsh word; the toponym Hwicce survives in Wychwood in Oxfordshire, Whichford in Warwickshire, Wychbury Hill and Droitwich in Worcestershire.. In addition, the local government district of Wychavon derived the first element of its name from the old kingdom.

The territory of the Hwicce may have corresponded to the Roman civitas of the Dobunni. The area appears to have remained British in the first century or so after Britain left the Roman Empire, but pagan burials and place names in its north-eastern sector suggest an inflow of Angles along the Warwickshire Avon and by other routes. According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, there was a Battle at Dyrham in 577 in which the Gewisse under Ceawlin killed three British kings and captured Gloucester and Bath. West Saxon occupation of the area did not last long and may have ended as early as 584, the date according to the Chronicle of the battle of Fethanleag in which Cutha was killed and Ceawlin returned home in anger, by 603 when, according to Bede, Saint Augustine attended a conference of Welsh bishops "at St. Augustine's Oak on the borders of the Hwicce and the West Saxons"; the Angles strengthened their influence over the area in 628, when the West Saxons fought Penda of Mercia at Cirencester and afterwards came to terms.

Penda had evidently won but had forged an alliance with local leaders since the former Dobunnic polity did not become part of Mercia but instead became an allied or client kingdom of the Hwicce. The Hwicce sub-kingdom included a number of distinct tribal groups, including the Husmerae, the Stoppingas and the Weorgoran; the first probable kings of whom we read were two brothers and Eanfrith. Bede notes that Queen Eafe "had been baptised in the kingdom of the Hwicce, she was the daughter of Eanfrith, Eanhere's brother, both of whom were Christians, as were their people." From this, we deduce that Eanfrith and Eanhere were of the royal family and that theirs was a Christian kingdom. It is that the Hwicce were converted to Christianity by Celtic Christians rather than by the mission from Pope Gregory I, si

Vladimir Mikhailovich Andreyev is a retired Soviet alpine skier. He raced in the Alpine Skiing World Cup from 1979 to 1984, his highest placing in a single race was second, in the January 1981 slalom race in Kitzbühel. In the overall standings he placed 20th in 1981, he competed twice at the FIS World Ski Championships, placing fourth in combined in Garmisch-Partenkirchen 1978 and tenth in slalom in Schladming 1982. He competed in the slalom and giant slalom at the 1976, 1980 and 1984 Winter Olympics with the best achievement of ninth place in the slalom in 1980. At the 1976 Games he and Alla Askarova were the sole representatives of the Soviet Union in alpine skiing, he retired after the 1984 Olympics to become the head coach of the national team. He is married to a fellow Olympian and coach, they live in Moscow Oblast and have a son, a daughter, Maria. Vladimir Andreev at the International Ski Federation Vladimir Andreev at the International Olympic Committee

Milburn G. "Mel" Apt was a US test pilot, the first man to attain speeds faster than Mach 3. He was killed after separating from the Bell X-2 in his escape capsule during the record-setting flight that exceeded Mach 3. Apt was born April 9, 1924, in Buffalo, Wilson County, Kansas, to parents Oley Glen Apt and Ada Willoughby Apt, he graduated from Buffalo High School in 1942. He joined the U. S. Army Air Forces was sent to flight school, was commissioned in February 1944, he served with the Caribbean Defense Command until June 1946. In 1951 he received a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Kansas as well as a bachelor's degree in Aeronautical Engineering from the U. S. Air Force Institute of Technology, he graduated from the Experimental Flight Test Pilot School at Edwards Air Force Base in September 1954. After launching from a B-50 bomber over the Mojave Desert in California, flying an X-2 rocket-powered plane on its 13th powered flight, set a record speed of 3,377 km/h, or Mach 3.196 at 19,977 m.

Subsequent loss of control from inertia coupling led to Apt's death. The X-2 an Air Force program, was scheduled to be transferred to the civilian National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics for scientific research; the Air Force delayed turning the aircraft over to the NACA in the hope of attaining Mach 3. The service requested and received a two-month extension to qualify another Air Force test pilot, Apt, in the X-2, attempt to exceed Mach 3. In the run-up to his first rocket-plane flight, Apt had several ground briefings in the simulator, his simulator training had indicated control difficulties in high-speed flight, possible techniques for handling them. On September 27, 1956, Apt made his first X-2 flight, he launched from the B-50 outdistancing the F-100 chase planes. At high altitude, he nosed over. At 65,000 feet, the X-2 reached Mach 3.2, making Apt the first man to fly more than three times the speed of sound. Upon rocket burnout, Apt found himself further from home than anticipated; the planned flight profile called for slowing to Mach 2.4 before turning back to base.

The additional time to slow before turning may have put him beyond safe gliding range of his planned runway. Still above Mach 3, he turned back to Edwards; the X-2 tumbled out of control. Apt tried to regain control of the aircraft. Unable to do so, he separated the escape capsule; the capsule's drogue parachute opened, but not its larger parachute. Too late, Apt was killed when the capsule hit the Edwards bombing range; the rest of the X-2 landed unmanned, with minimal damage, five miles away. Prospective X-15 pilots were subsequently shown the on-board film of Apt's fatal crash, taken by a stop-frame camera mounted behind Apt in the cockpit. Apt was survived by two daughters. One of Apt's daughters, Sharman Apt Russell, two years old when her father died, grew up to become a writer. Essay by Apt's daughter, Sharman Apt Russell