There are 15 counties in the U. S. state of Arizona. Four counties were created in 1864 following the organization of the Arizona Territory in 1862; the now defunct Pah-Ute County was split from Mohave County in 1865, but merged back in 1871. All but La Paz County were created by the time Arizona was granted statehood in 1912. Eight of Arizona's fifteen counties are named after various Native American groups that are resident in parts of what is now Arizona, with another being named after a native leader. Four other counties, Gila County, Santa Cruz County, Pinal County, Graham County, are named for physical features of Arizona's landscape: the Gila River, the Santa Cruz River, Pinal Peak, Mount Graham, respectively. Another county, La Paz County, is named after a former settlement, while the final county, Greenlee County, is named after one of the state's early pioneers. Under Arizona laws, a county shall not be formed or divided by county initiative unless each proposed county would have all of the following characteristics: at least three-fourths of one percent of the total state assessed valuation and at least the statewide per capita assessed valuation.

A county formation commission is required to be formed to evaluate the feasibility of the proposed county. A proposal to divide a county must be approved by a majority of the votes cast in each proposed new county. Under the Arizona Constitution, counties are politically and creatures of the state, do not have charters of their own. Counties are governed by boards of supervisors which act in the capacity of executive authority for the county within the statutes and powers prescribed by Arizona state law; the state legislature devotes considerable time to local matters, with limited discretion granted to the Board of Supervisors on minor ordinance and revenue collection issues. Arizona's postal abbreviation is AZ and its FIPS code is 04. Pah-Ute County, now part of Clark County and Mohave County, Arizona Butte County: In 1897, James C. Goodwin, with the support of Charles T. Hayden and others, introduced a bill at the Territorial Legislature to split Maricopa County into two, with Tempe being the county seat.

There have been proposals, introduced in 1900 and 1913, to divide Maricopa County, with Mesa as the new county's seat. Sierra Bonita County: proposed at the 13th Arizona Territorial Legislature in 1885, with Willcox proposed as the county seat; the proposal died by one vote. Bannon County, a fictional county in Arizona, was the site of the UFO crash in the film Hangar 18. Arizona Association of Counties

DirectDraw is a deprecated API that used to be a part of Microsoft's DirectX API. DirectDraw is used to accelerate rendering of 2D graphics in applications. DirectDraw allows applications to run fullscreen or embedded in a window such as most other MS Windows applications. DirectDraw uses hardware acceleration. DirectDraw allows direct access to video memory, hardware overlays, hardware blitters, page flipping, its video memory manager can manipulate video memory with ease, taking full advantage of the blitting and color decompression capabilities of different types of display adapters. DirectDraw is a 2D API; that is, it contains commands for 2D rendering and does not support 3D hardware acceleration. A programmer could use DirectDraw to draw 3D graphics, but the rendering would be slow compared to an API such as Direct3D which does support 3D hardware acceleration. DirectDraw was introduced for Windows Mobile in Windows Mobile 5.0, replacing the graphics component of GAPI, deprecated. DirectDraw has been deprecated since version 7.

As of DirectX version 8.0, DirectDraw was merged into a new package called DirectX Graphics, which extended Direct3D with a few DirectDraw API additions. DirectDraw can still be used by programmers; as of the release of the June 2010 DirectX SDK package, the DirectDraw header file and library are no longer included. Concurrent with the deprecation of DirectDraw was the deterioration of Windows compatibility with old games that relied on this old API, with Command & Conquer, Warcraft 2, Theme Hospital among those affected. In newer Windows versions, some games will refuse to run under a 32-bit bit depth, others showing a black screen or glitching when switched out. Re-implementation of DDraw is, as a result, vital to many communities still hosting these games. Used replacements include: WineD3D from Wine, which translates into OpenGL. Cnc-ddraw and ts-ddraw from CnCNet, a Command & Conquer multiplayer network. Translates into GDI, OpenGL, or Direct3D 9. DDrawCompat, a wrapper for the vanilla ddraw that corrects problematic calls.

Ddwrapper is an earlier, unrelated wrapper. DirectDraw Surface Direct2D Direct3D DirectX Microsoft API Reference for DirectDraw Microsoft API Overview for DirectDraw

Sheelagh Mary Murnaghan was an Ulster Liberal Party Member of Parliament in the House of Commons of Northern Ireland at Stormont. Sheelagh Mary Murnaghan was born on 24 May 1924 to Josephine Mary Morrogh and Vincent Hugh Murnaghan, she was the eldest of their six children. Her grandfather, George Murnaghan was a well-known nationalist politician in Northern Ireland, she was educated at Loreto Grammar School in Omagh, Loreto Abbey in Rathfarnham and studied law in Queen's University Belfast, graduating in 1947. While studying in Queen's University, Murnaghan captained the hockey team from 1955 to 1956 and was the first female president of the Literary and Scientific Debating Society. After graduating from college, Murnaghan became " of only nine women elected to the fifty-two-seat Stormont House of Commons during its fifty-year existence", she became a member of the Ulster Liberal Association in 1959 and finished her political career in November 1968 when the seat for Queen's University Belfast was abolished.

"Sheelagh was seen as a eccentric figure", according to Ruth Illingworth, during her time as a politician. While an MP, Murnaghan campaigned to abolish the death penalty and for a bill of human rights; when her seat was abolished, she failed to win North Down at the 1969 Northern Ireland general election, was unsuccessful in Belfast South at the 1973 Northern Ireland Assembly election. During the 1970s, she sat on various quangos, including the Industrial Relations Tribunal and the Equal Opportunities Commission, she continued specialising in harassment cases. She died in 1993, aged 69, from undisclosed causes. Biographies of Members of the Northern Ireland House of Commons