A misdemeanor is any "lesser" criminal act in some common law legal systems. Misdemeanors are punished less than felonies, but theoretically more so than administrative infractions and regulatory offences. Many misdemeanors are punished with monetary fines. A misdemeanor is considered a crime of low seriousness, a felony one of high seriousness. A principle of the rationale for the degree of punishment meted out is that the punishment should fit the crime. One standard for measurement is the degree. Measurements of the degree of seriousness of a crime have been developed. In the United States, the federal government considers a crime punishable with incarceration for one year or less to be a misdemeanor. All other crimes are considered felonies. Many states employ the same or a similar distinction; the distinction between felonies and misdemeanors has been abolished by several common law jurisdictions. These jurisdictions have adopted some other classification: in the Commonwealth nations of Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, the crimes are divided into summary offences and indictable offences.

The Republic of Ireland, a former member of the Commonwealth uses these divisions. In the United States if a criminal charge for the defendant's conduct is a misdemeanor, sometimes a repeat offender will be charged with a felony offense. For example, the first time a person commits certain crimes, such as spousal assault, it is a misdemeanor, but the second time it may become a felony. Other misdemeanors may be upgraded to felonies based on context. For example, in some jurisdictions the crime of indecent exposure might be classified as a misdemeanor, but be charged as a felony when committed in front of a minor. In some jurisdictions, those who are convicted of a misdemeanor are known as misdemeanants. Depending on the jurisdiction, examples of misdemeanors may include: petty theft, public intoxication, simple assault, disorderly conduct, vandalism, reckless driving, discharging a firearm within city limits, possession of cannabis and in some jurisdictions first-time possession of certain other drugs, other similar crimes.

Misdemeanors do not result in the loss of civil rights, but may result in loss of privileges, such as professional licenses, public offices, or public employment. Such effects are known as the collateral consequences of criminal charges; this is more common when the misdemeanor is related to the privilege in question, or when the misdemeanor involves moral turpitude—and in general is evaluated on a case-by-case basis. In the United States, misdemeanors are crimes with a maximum punishment of 12 months of incarceration in a local jail as contrasted with felons, who are incarcerated in a prison. Jurisdictions such as Massachusetts are a notable exception where the maximum punishment of some misdemeanors is up to 2.5 years. People who are convicted of misdemeanors are punished with probation, community service, short jail term, or part-time incarceration such as a sentence that may be served on the weekends; the United States Constitution provides that the President may be impeached and subsequently removed from office if found guilty by Congress for "high crimes and misdemeanors".

As used in the Constitution, the term misdemeanor refers broadly to criminal acts as opposed to employing the felony-misdemeanor distinction used in modern criminal codes. The definition of what constitutes "high crimes and misdemeanors" for purposes of impeachment is left to the judgment of Congress. In Singapore, misdemeanors are sentenced to months of jail sentence but with individual crimes suspects are sentenced to a harsher sentence; the penalty of vandalism is a fine not exceeding S$2,000 or imprisonment not exceeding three years, corporal punishment of not less than three strokes and not more than eight strokes of the cane. Depending on the jurisdiction, several classes of misdemeanors may exist. For example, the federal and some state governments in the United States divide misdemeanors into several classes, with certain classes punishable by jail time and others carrying only a fine. In New York law, a Class A Misdemeanor carries a maximum sentence of one year of imprisonment, while a Class B Misdemeanor "shall not exceed three months".

In the United States, when a statute does not specify the class of a misdemeanor, it may be referred to as an unclassified misdemeanor. Legislators enact such laws when they wish to impose penalties that fall outside the framework specified by each class. For example, Virginia has four classes of misdemeanors, with Class 1 and Class 2 misdemeanors being punishable by twelve-month and six-month jail sentences and Class 3 and Class 4 misdemeanors being non-jail offenses payable by fines. First-time cannabis possession is an unclassified misdemeanor in Virginia punishable by up to 30 days in jail rather than the normal fines and jail sentences of the four classes. New York has three classes of misdemeanor: A, B, Unclassified. All distinctions between felony and misdemeanour were abolished by section 1 of the Criminal Law Act 1967. Prior to this, a person prosecuted for misdemeanour was called a defendant. Convicted felon Federal crime Felony Indictable

The Cantino planisphere or Cantino world map is a manuscript Portuguese world map preserved at the Biblioteca Estense in Modena, Italy. It is named after Alberto Cantino, an agent for the Duke of Ferrara, who smuggled it from Portugal to Italy in 1502, it measures 220 x 105 cm. This planisphere is the earliest surviving map showing Portuguese geographic discoveries in the east and west, is notable for portraying a fragmentary record of the Brazilian coast, which the Portuguese explorer Pedro Álvares Cabral explored in 1500, for depicting the African coast of the Atlantic and Indian Oceans with a remarkable accuracy and detail. In the beginning of the 16th century, Lisbon was a buzzing metropolis where people from diverse backgrounds came in search of work, glory or fortune. There were many undercover agents looking for the secrets brought by the Portuguese voyages to remote lands. Among them was Alberto Cantino, sent to Portugal by Ercole I d'Este, Duke of Ferrara, with the formal intention of horse trading, while secretly collecting information on Portuguese Discoveries.

Cantino's diligence is shown in one of his five remaining letters to the Duke, dated 17 October 1501, where he describes, amongst other things, hearing Portuguese explorer Gaspar Corte-Real detailing his latest voyage to Newfoundland to King Manuel I. A popular theory, introduced in the earliest studies of the map, suggests that the Cantino Planisphere was ordered to an official Portuguese mapmaker, who made a copy of the royal cartographic pattern, the so-called Padrão Real, kept in the Armazéns da Índia. However, there is no historical evidence that such order was made and the theory is weakened by the presence of numerous mistakes. One would expect a made copy of an official standard, if it existed in Portugal at that time, would be accurate. A more plausible explanation is that the map was surreptitiously acquired shortly after it was made for some nobleman or official client. From a letter sent by Cantino to his patron, the Duke of Ferrara, on 19 November 1502, we know that he paid 12 golden ducats for it, a considerable amount for the time.

An Italian inscription in the back of the map reads: Carta de navigar per le Isole nouam trovate in le parte de India: dono Alberto Cantino al S. Duca Hercole, which translates as'Navigational chart of the islands recently... in part of the Indies: from Alberto Cantino to Duke Hercole'. While it enlightened the Italians to many new territories yet unknown to them, it was obsolete within months due to subsequent mapping voyages by the Portuguese, its importance to the Portuguese–Italian trade relations should not be understated. It supplied great details of the Indian Ocean. A peninsula to the northeast of Cuba has been identified by some others as Florida while others argue that it was intended to represent part of China, Cuba itself, or the Yucatan Peninsula; the geographical information given on the Cantino map was copied into the Italian-made Canerio map shortly after the Cantino map arrived in Italy and the Canerio, in turn, became the primary source for the design of the newly discovered western lands on the influential wall map of the world produced by Martin Waldseemüller in 1507 under the auspices of Rene, Duke of Lorraine.

This old map, made-up by 6 glued parchment sheets, was kept in the Ducal Library, for about 90 years, until Pope Clement VIII transferred it to another palace in Modena, Italy. More than two centuries in 1859, the palace was ransacked and the Cantino Map lost, it was found by Giuseppe Boni, Director of the Biblioteca Estense, in that same year, in a butcher's store in Modena. The Cantino world map can be found in Modena, Italy, at the Biblioteca Estense; the Cantino planisphere is the earliest extant example of the so-called latitude chart, developed following the introduction of astronomical navigation, during the second half of the fifteenth century. Contrarily to the portolan charts of the Mediterranean, which were constructed on the basis of magnetic courses and estimated distances between places, in the latitude chart places were represented according to their latitudes. In the Cantino planisphere, latitudes were incorporated only in the coasts of Africa and India, while Europe and the Caribbean Sea continued to be represented according to the portolan-chart model ).

The construction of the rhumb line system in the Cantino planisphere uses two circles: the western circle is centered on the Cape Vert Islands, the eastern circle is centered in India. The circumference of each circle is marked with sixteen spaced points, from which radiate the 32 classic rhumbs: 0°, 11 1/4°, 22 1/2°, 33 3/4°, etc; the western and eastern outer circles are tangent to each other at a large wind-rose in central Africa, with a fleur-de-lis indicating North. This dense rhumb-line mesh was used in navigation as a reference, for reading and marking directions between places. Six scale bars graduated in Iberian leagues, with a variable number of sections, are distributed over the chart's area; these were used to measure distances between places. Illustrations elaborate. Two cities are grandly depicted - Venice and Jerusalem. There is an elaborate depiction of the Portuguese castle of São Jorge da Mina, flanked by two African towns. Other illustrations include a lion-shaped mountain representing the Sierra Leone mountain

Their Finest Hour: The Battle of Britain is a World War II combat flight simulator video game by Lawrence Holland, released in October 1989 for the Amiga, Atari ST and DOS systems. It was the second game in the trilogy of World War II titles by LucasFilm Games, the others being Battlehawks 1942 and Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe; the game was released with a 192-page manual written by Victor Cross, that provided a detailed historical overview of the battle and pilots' perspectives. Their Finest Hour was a simulation of the Royal Air Force and German Luftwaffe aircraft during the Battle of Britain from July to September 1940, it offered two RAF and six Luftwaffe. The game pioneered gameplay elements featured in Lucasfilm releases, such as a mission builder and combat film recorder, the ability to man all the crew positions in a bomber, a Campaign mode where the historical outcome is decided by the success or failure of the missions flown by the player, their Finest Hour received 5 out of 5 stars from Dragon.

STart described it as "a great sequel" to Battlehawks 1942. Stating that "Flying'Finest Hour' is pure pleasure", the magazine concluded that "for the aviation buff, it's a'must have.'"Computer Gaming World stated that the game was "even more amazing" than Battlehawks 1942. It praised the graphics, sound card audio, documentation, while mildly criticizing the controls when not using a mouse, concluded that the game would appeal to both action and wargame players; the magazine named it as Action Game of the Year in 1990. In 1991 the magazine named the game to its Hall of Fame for games readers rated over time, a survey of strategy and war games gave it four and a half stars out of five. Another survey in 1993 gave the game four stars out of five. In 1996, the magazine ranked it as the 21st best game of all time, adding that it "reminds us that the great sim can be a great game." Their Finest Hour at MobyGames Their Finest Hour at GameSpot