1.
Author
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An author is narrowly defined as the originator of any written work and can thus also be described as a writer. More broadly defined, an author is the person who originated or gave existence to anything, in the copyright laws of various jurisdictions, there is a necessity for little flexibility regarding what constitutes authorship. The United States Copyright Office, for example, defines copyright as a form of protection provided by the laws of the United States to authors of works of authorship. After a fixed amount of time, the copyright expires on intellectual work and it enters the public domain, however, copyright is merely the legal reassurance that one owns his/her work. Technically, someone owns their work from the time its created, an interesting aspect of authorship emerges with copyright in that, in many jurisdictions, it can be passed down to another upon ones death. The person who inherits the copyright is not the author, questions arise as to the application of copyright law. How does it, for example, apply to the issue of fan fiction. If the media responsible for the authorized production allows material from fans, what is the limit before legal constraints from actors, music. Additionally, how does copyright apply to fan-generated stories for books, what powers do the original authors, as well as the publishers, have in regulating or even stopping the fan fiction. In literary theory, critics find complications in the term author beyond what constitutes authorship in a legal setting, in the wake of postmodern literature, critics such as Roland Barthes and Michel Foucault have examined the role and relevance of authorship to the meaning or interpretation of a text. Barthes challenges the idea that a text can be attributed to any single author and he writes, in his essay Death of the Author, that it is language which speaks, not the author. The words and language of a text itself determine and expose meaning for Barthes, with this, the perspective of the author is removed from the text, and the limits formerly imposed by the idea of one authorial voice, one ultimate and universal meaning, are destroyed. The psyche, culture, fanaticism of an author can be disregarded when interpreting a text, because the words are rich enough themselves with all of the traditions of language. To expose meanings in a work without appealing to the celebrity of an author, their tastes, passions, vices, is, to Barthes, to allow language to speak. Michel Foucault argues in his essay What is an author and that all authors are writers, but not all writers are authors. He states that a letter may have a signatory—it does not have an author. For a reader to assign the title of author upon any written work is to certain standards upon the text which. Foucaults author function is the idea that an author exists only as a function of a work, a part of its structure
2.
Hal Foster
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Harold Rudolf Foster, better known as Hal Foster, was a Canadian-American comic book artist and writer best known as the creator of the comic strip Prince Valiant. His drawing style is noted for a level of draftsmanship. Born in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, Foster rode his bike to the United States in 1919 and began to study in Chicago, in 1928, he began one of the earliest adventure comic strips, an adaptation of Edgar Rice Burroughss Tarzan. In 1937, he created his signature strip, the weekly Prince Valiant, the strip featured Fosters dextrous, detailed artwork, Foster eschewed word balloons, preferring to have narration and dialogue in captions. Leyendecker was an influence on Foster. Fosters Tarzan comic strip, adapted from Edgar Rice Burroughss novels, Foster returned to do the Tarzan Sunday strip beginning September 27,1931, continuing until Burne Hogarth took over the Sunday Tarzan on May 9,1937. He soon grew tired of working on an adaptation and began planning his own creation, Prince Valiant premiered on February 13,1937, continuing for decades. In 1944, Foster and his wife Helen moved from Topeka to Redding Ridge, in 1954, the couple was seen on televisions This Is Your Life. In 1971, the Fosters retired to Spring Hill, Florida, in 1967, Woody Gelman revived some of Fosters earlier work for his Nostalgia Press. In 1970, Foster was suffering from arthritis and began planning his retirement and he had several artists draw Sunday pages before choosing John Cullen Murphy as his collaborator and permanent replacement in 1971. Murphy drew the strip from Foster scripts and pencil sketches, Foster stopped illustrating the Prince Valiant pages in 1975. Foster attended the Comic Art Convention in 1969, and the OrlandoCon in 1974 and 1975, Foster was 73 when he was elected to membership in Great Britains Royal Society of Arts, an honor given to very few Americans. Foster died in Spring Hill in 1982, Foster is a seminal figure in the history of comics, especially action-adventure strips. Harvey argues that Foster and Flash Gordon artist Alex Raymond created the standard by which all such comic strips would henceforth be measured. Foster was an influence on this generation, many of whom went on to become iconic. Joe Kubert called Foster, Raymond and Milton Caniff the “three saints” of comic art in the 1930s and 40s. Several sources have identified early work by Joe Simon, Jack Kirby and Bob Kane as swipes from Foster, Kirby also stated that the character design for Etrigan the Demon was an homage to Foster, taken from a Prince Valiant strip. Wally Wood was obsessed with Fosters work, and began copying his newspaper strips at the age of two, frank Frazetta called Fosters work on Tarzan “perfection, a landmark in American twentieth-century art that will never be surpassed
3.
John Cullen Murphy
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John Cullen Murphy was an American illustrator best known for his three decades of work on the Prince Valiant comic strip. Born in New York City, Murphy spent his childhood in Chicago and in New Rochelle, New York and he started art classes at the age of 9, but aspired to be a baseball player. He received supervision from artists like George Bridgman, Norman Rockwell, Charles Chapman and he was playing baseball one afternoon when he got attention of Norman Rockwell, his New Rochelle neighbor and asked the 15-year-old if he would like to pose for some magazine ads. Rockwell discovered Johns keen interest in art after doing few illustrations with him, rockwells Starstruck, showing a forlorn Murphy gazing at pictures of movie starlets, was the September 22,1934 cover of The Saturday Evening Post. The experience inspired the young Murphy to become an illustrator, Rockwell became one of his good friends and mentors. Murphy started his early, selling his first illustrations while he was still in high school. After high school, he studied in New York City at the Phoenix Art Institute and the Art Students League, Murphy entered the U. S. Army in 1940, joining the 7th Regiment. He became an officer during World War II, rising to the rank of major. He spent several years in the Pacific, beginning in Australia and he was an aide to General William F. Marquat, who was on General Douglas MacArthurs staff. During the war, Murphy continued to illustrate, sending work to the Chicago Tribune, Murphys first professional work at the age of seventeen was for Madison Square Gardens publicity department drawing boxing cartoons. On average two of his cartoons a week were published by magazines in Chicago. Murphy resumed his art career upon his return from military service, during the 1940s, Murphy was a popular magazine illustrator, regularly seen in Colliers, Look, Esquire, Liberty, Sport, Holiday and Columbia, published by the Knights of Columbus. Murphys art often depicted sports subjects and his boxing material unexpectedly led him into the comic strip field, something he had never previously considered. In 1950, writer Elliot Caplin of King Features Syndicate asked Murphy to illustrate a boxing comic strip he was planning to write, the resulting daily comic strip, Big Ben Bolt, was launched in 1950 and ran until 1978. Murphy was the artist for the strip for its entire run, Murphys strong interest in boxing and sports background made the strip a real knockout with his fans. His vast experience as an illustrator and cinematic approach made any possible situation or local seem realistic, Murphy began his collaboration on Prince Valiant with creator Hal Foster in 1970 when Foster decided to lessen his workload at age 78. From the fall of 1970 until early 1980 Foster would give a nicely penciled layout for Murphy to complete, with Fosters retirement in 1979, Murphys son Cullen took over the writing. Cullen Murphy began contributing stories to Foster while studying at Amherst College, bill Crouch also contributed six story lines over the next four years to the historic strip
4.
Gray Morrow
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Dwight Graydon Gray Morrow was an American illustrator of comics and paperback books. He is co-creator of the Marvel Comics muck-monster the Man-Thing and of DC Comics Old West vigilante El Diablo, Gray Morrow was born in Fort Wayne, Indiana, where he attended North Side High School. He recalled in 1973 that, Comic art was certainly the first artform I remember being impressed with and his first formal commission was something like a bank ad or a tie design when I was still in my teens. He joined the citys Feldkamp-Malloy art studio, later being fired, feeling encouraged by a meeting with comic-strip artist Allen Saunders, Morrow submitted strip samples to various syndicates with no luck. Undaunted, he moved to New York City in winter 1955 and by the spring had met fellow young comics artists Al Williamson, Angelo Torres. He sold his first comic-book story, a tale, to Toby Press. Gray illustrated several stories for EC Comics in the 1950s, including horror, suspense and he later did covers and stories for the companys New Trend comics and Picto-Fiction magazines. In late 1956, Morrow was drafted into the U. S. Army, stationed at Incheon and Wolmido Island, South Korea, with Fox Company, he did illustrations and paintings for the officers club, day rooms, insignias on helmets for their parades. After being discharged in 1958, My friend Angelo Torres took me around to a couple of his clients, one being Classics, one thing led to another and I was soon working on a regular basis. As fast as Ive ever been able to go since Id moved to California, Morrow also supplied drawings for chapters in Classics Illustrated Special Issue #159A, Rockets, Jets and Missiles, and in 13 World Around Us issues ranging from Prehistoric Animals to Famous Teens. Roberta and Len Cole were demanding but genial editors, something about whaling, got me in dutch with Roberta. My research indicated that many of the whalers were black — so thats what I drew and she had a fit and insisted they all be redrawn to avoid controversy. In the end, the chapter, The Long Voyage. Morrow, however, recalled, hey had me make them all white, I had to change their features. Concurrently, Morrow also illustrated entries in the Bobbs-Merrill juvenile book series Childhood of Famous Americans, morrows art appears in Henry Clay, Young Kentucky Orator, Douglas MacArthur, Young Protector and other entries. Morrow next began an association with Warren Publishings line of black-and-white horror-comics magazines in 1964. Written by Larry Ivie, in Creepy #1, and contributed over a dozen stories to that magazine and its sister publication Eerie, as well as to the war-comics magazine Blazing Combat and he also painted four horror covers for Warren. By 1970, Morrow was married to Betty Morrow, who wrote a story he drew, The Journey and he also drew Western stories, and with writer Robert Kanigher co-created the Old West vigilante El Diablo in All-Star Western #2
5.
Wally Wood
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Wallace Allan Wood was an American comic book writer, artist and independent publisher, best known for his work on EC Comicss Mad and Marvels Daredevil. He was one of Mads founding cartoonists in 1952, although much of his early professional artwork is signed Wallace Wood, he became known as Wally Wood, a name he claimed to dislike. Within the comics community, he was known as Woody. EC publisher William Gaines once stated, Wally may have been our most troubled artist, im not suggesting any connection, but he may have been our most brilliant. He was the inductee into the comic book industrys Jack Kirby Hall of Fame in 1989. Wally Wood was born in Menahga, Minnesota, and he began reading and drawing comics at an early age, recalling his childhood, Wood said that his dream at age six, about finding a magic pencil that could draw anything, foretold his future as an artist. Wood graduated from school in 1944, signed on with the United States Merchant Marine at the close of World War II. He went from training at Fort Benning, Georgia, to occupied Japan, in 1947, at age 20, Wood enrolled in the Minneapolis School of Art but only lasted one term. Arriving in New York City with his brother Glenn and mother Alma, after his discharge in July 1948. During his time off he carried his thick portfolio of all over midtown Manhattan. He briefly attended the Hogarth School of Art but dropped out one semester. By October, after being rejected by every company he visited, at this studio Wood learned that Will Eisner was looking for a Spirit background artist. He immediately visited Eisner and was hired on the spot, over the next year, Wood also became an assistant to George Wunder, who had taken over the Milton Caniff strip Terry and the Pirates. Wood cited his first job on my own as Chief Ob-stacle and he entered the comic book field by lettering, as he recalled in 1981, The first professional job was lettering for Fox romance comics in 1948. I also started doing backgrounds, then inking, most of it was the romance stuff. For complete pages, it was $5 a page, twice a week, I would ink ten pages in one day. Woods next known comic-book art did not appear until Foxs My Confession No,7, at which time he began working almost continuously on the companys similar My Experience, My Secret Life, My Love Story and My True Love, Thrilling Confession Stories. His first signed work is believed to be in My Confession #8 and he penciled and inked two stories in that issue, I Was Unwanted and My Tarnished Reputation
6.
Gary Gianni
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Gary Gianni is an American comics artist best known for his eight years illustrating the syndicated newspaper comic Prince Valiant. After Gianni graduated from the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts in 1976, he worked for the Chicago Tribune as an illustrator and he also illustrated numerous magazines, childrens books and paperbacks. He made his comic debut in 1990 with illustrated adaptations of The Tales of O. Henry and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea for the Classics Illustrated series. He went on to work for Dark Horse Comics he contributed to Indiana Jones and he illustrated Wandering Star Press’s Savage Tales of Solomon Kane and Bran Mak Morn, The Last King by Robert E. Howard. After John Cullen Murphy retired from Prince Valiant in 2004, Gianni began drawing the strip, continuing until March 25,2012, when Thomas Yeates became the strips illustrator on April 1,2012. On October 6,2015, the book A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms—a prequel to George R. R. Martins A Song of Ice and Fire series—was released, which included illustrations by Gianni. Gianni won the 1997 Best Short Story Eisner Award for his collaborating with Archie Goodwin on Heroes in DC Comics Batman, the Savage Tales of Solomon Kane. Official website Gary Gianni at the Comic Book DB
7.
Thomas Yeates
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Thomas Yeates is an American comic book and comic strip artist best known for illustrating the comic strips Prince Valiant and Zorro as well as work on characters created by Edgar Rice Burroughs. Thomas Yeates was part of the first graduating class from The Kubert School and his first published comics work was Preacher a five-page backup feature in Sgt. He provided spot illustrations for a Batman prose story in Detective Comics #500 written by Walter B, gibson, longtime writer of The Shadow. Yeates and Jack C. Harris briefly revived Claw the Unconquered as a feature in The Warlord #48-49. Dragonsword was a feature by Paul Levitz and Yeates which appeared in The Warlord #51-54. In 1982, Yeates and writer Martin Pasko revived Swamp Thing in a new series titled Saga of the Swamp Thing, timespirits was created by Stephen Perry and Yeates for the Epic Comics line. He drew the Universe X, Beasts and Universe X, Cap one-shots for Marvel in 2001, on April 1,2012, Yeates began drawing the Prince Valiant comic strip, replacing Gary Gianni. Yeates collaborated with Sergio Aragonés and Mark Evanier on the Groo vs. Conan crossover for Dark Horse Comics in 2014, Yeates received an Inkpot Award in 2012. Thomas Yeates official site Thomas Yeates at the Comic Book DB Thomas Yeates at Mikes Amazing World of Comics Thomas Yeates at the Unofficial Handbook of Marvel Comics Creators
8.
King Features Syndicate
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King Features affiliate syndicates are North America Syndicate and Cowles Syndicate. Each week, Reed Brennan Media Associates, a unit of Hearst, edits, william Randolph Hearsts newspapers began syndicating material in 1895 after receiving requests from other newspapers. In 1914, Hearst and his manager Moses Koenigsberg consolidated all of Hearsts syndication enterprises under one banner, Koenigsberg gave it his own name when he launched King Features Syndicate. Production escalated in 1916 with King Features buying and selling its own staff-created feature material, a trade publication — Circulation — was published by King Features between 1916 and 1933. Syndication peaked in the mid-1930s with 130 syndicates offering 1,600 features to more than 13,700 newspapers, in 1941, Koenigsberg wrote an autobiographical history of the company entitled King News. D. Gortatowsky, I have had numerous suggestions for incorporating some American history of a kind in the adventure strips of the comic section. The difficulty is to something that will sufficiently interest the kids… Perhaps a title — Trained by Fate — would be general enough. Take Paul Revere and show him as a boy making as much of his life as possible. Take Betsy Ross for a heroine, or Barbara Fritchie… for the girls, King Features editor Ward Greene to Hearst, There is another way to do it, which is somewhat fantastic, but which I submit for your consideration. That is to devise a new comic… a dream idea revolving around a boy we might call Dick. Dick, or his equivalent, would go in his dream with Mad Anthony Wayne at the storming of Stony Point or with Decatur at Tripoli… provide a constant character… who would become known to the kids. Hearst to Greene, The dream idea for the American history series is splendid and it gives continuity and personal interest, and you can make more than one page of each series… You are right about the importance of the artist. Greene to Hearst, We employed the device, building the comic around a small boy. Hearst to Greene, I think the drawing of Dick and His Dad is amazingly good, I do not suggest this, as it would probably add further complications, but it might give a spiritual tie to all the dreams. The main thing, however, is to get more realism, Hearst to Greene, If we find is not a success, of course we can brief it, but if it is a success it should be a long series. Greene to Hearst, I am sending you two sample pages of Dicks Adventures in Dreamland which start a series about Christopher Columbus, Hearst to Greene, In January, I am told, we are going to 16 pages regularly on Puck, the Comic Weekly. That would be a time to introduce the Columbus series. In the 1940s, Ward Greene was King Features editor, having worked his way up through the ranks
9.
Comic strip
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A comic strip is a sequence of drawings arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often serialized, with text in balloons and captions. With the development of the internet, they began to online as web comics. There were more than 200 different comic strips and daily cartoon panels in American newspapers alone each day for most of the 20th century, Strips are written and drawn by a comics artist or cartoonist. As the name implies, comic strips can be humorous, starting in the late 1920s, comic strips expanded from their mirthful origins to feature adventure stories, as seen in Popeye, Captain Easy, Buck Rogers, Tarzan, and The Adventures of Tintin. Soap-opera continuity strips such as Judge Parker and Mary Worth gained popularity in the 1940s, all are called, generically, comic strips, though cartoonist Will Eisner has suggested that sequential art would be a better genre-neutral name. In the UK and the rest of Europe, comic strips are also serialized in comic book magazines, storytelling using a sequence of pictures has existed through history. One medieval European example in textile form is the Bayeux Tapestry, printed examples emerged in 19th-century Germany and in 18th-century England, where some of the first satirical or humorous sequential narrative drawings were produced. William Hogarths 18th century English cartoons include both narrative sequences, such as A Rakes Progress, and single panels, in China, with its traditions of block printing and of the incorporation of text with image, experiments with what became lianhuanhua date back to 1884. The first newspaper comic strips appeared in North America in the late 19th century, the Yellow Kid is usually credited as one of the first newspaper strips. However, the art form combining words and pictures developed gradually, swiss author and caricature artist Rodolphe Töpffer is considered the father of the modern comic strips. In 1865, German painter, author, and caricaturist Wilhelm Busch created the strip Max and Moritz, Max and Moritz provided an inspiration for German immigrant Rudolph Dirks, who created the Katzenjammer Kids in 1897. Familiar comic-strip iconography such as stars for pain, sawing logs for snoring, speech balloons, hugely popular, Katzenjammer Kids occasioned one of the first comic-strip copyright ownership suits in the history of the medium. When Dirks left William Randolph Hearst for the promise of a better salary under Joseph Pulitzer, it was an unusual move, in a highly unusual court decision, Hearst retained the rights to the name Katzenjammer Kids, while creator Dirks retained the rights to the characters. Hearst promptly hired Harold Knerr to draw his own version of the strip, Dirks renamed his version Hans and Fritz. Thus, two versions distributed by rival syndicates graced the pages for decades. Dirks version, eventually distributed by United Feature Syndicate, ran until 1979, in the United States, the great popularity of comics sprang from the newspaper war between Pulitzer and Hearst. On January 31,1912, Hearst introduced the nations first full daily comic page in his New York Evening Journal, the history of this newspaper rivalry and the rapid appearance of comic strips in most major American newspapers is discussed by Ian Gordon. The longest running American comic strips are,1, barney Google and Snuffy Smith 5
10.
Sunday strip
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A Sunday strip is a newspaper comic strip format, where comic strips are printed in the Sunday newspaper, usually in a special section called the Sunday comics, and virtually always in color. Some readers called these sections the Sunday funnies, some newspapers, such as Grit, published Sunday strips in black-and-white, and some print their Sunday strips on Saturday. Subject matter and genres have ranged from adventure, detective and humor strips to dramatic strips with soap opera situations, a continuity strip employs a narrative in an ongoing storyline. Other strips offer a gag complete in an episode, such as Little Iodine and Mutt. The Sunday strip is contrasted with the comic strip, published Monday through Saturday, usually in black. Some strips, such as Prince Valiant appear only on Sunday, others, such as Rip Kirby, are daily only and have never appeared on Sunday. In some cases, such as Buz Sawyer, the Sunday strip is a spin-off, early Sunday strips usually filled a full newspaper page, but over decades they shrank in size, becoming smaller and smaller. Currently, no Sunday strips stand alone on a page, the last full-page Sunday strip was Prince Valiant, which was published as a full page in some newspapers until 1970. Shortly after the full-page Prince Valiant was discontinued, Hal Foster retired from drawing the strip, manuscript Press published a print of his last Prince Valiant strip in full-page format, this was the last full-page comic strip, though it did not appear in that format in newspapers. Other formats for Sunday strips include the half-page, the third of a page, the page, the tabloid page or tab. Today, with the size of Sunday strips, many other smaller formats abound. Usually, only the largest format is complete, with the other formats dropping or cropping one or more panels, such throwaway panels often contain material that is not vital to the main part of the strip. Most cartoonists fill the first two panels of their strips with a gag, knowing that the public may not see them. Exceptions to this rule include Steve Canyon and, until its last few years, On Stage, half-page Sunday strips have at least two different styles. The King Features, the Creators and the Chicago Tribune syndicates use nine panels, while United Features, currently, the largest and most complete format for most Sunday strips, such as Peanuts, is the half page. A few strips have been enough for the artist to insist on the Sunday strip being run in a half-page format. Calvin and Hobbes was the first strip to do this, followed by Outland, the Reading Eagle is one of the few newspapers that still run half-page Sunday strips. In some cases today, the strip and Sunday strip dimensions are almost the same
11.
Edward VIII
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Edward VIII was King of the United Kingdom and the Dominions of the British Empire, and Emperor of India, from 20 January 1936 until his abdication on 11 December the same year. Edward was the eldest son of George V and Mary of Teck and he was named Prince of Wales on his sixteenth birthday, nine weeks after his father succeeded as king. As a young man, he served in the British Army during the First World War, Edward became king on his fathers death in early 1936. However, he showed impatience with court protocol, and caused concern among politicians by his apparent disregard for established constitutional conventions. Only months into his reign, he caused a crisis by proposing marriage to Wallis Simpson. When it became apparent that he could not marry Wallis and remain on the throne and he was succeeded by his younger brother, George VI. With a reign of 326 days, Edward was one of the monarchs in British history. After his abdication, he was created Duke of Windsor and he married Wallis in France on 3 June 1937, after her second divorce became final. Later that year, the couple toured Germany, after the war, Edward spent the rest of his life in retirement in France. Edward was born on 23 June 1894 at White Lodge, Richmond Park and he was the eldest son of the Duke and Duchess of York. His father was the son of the Prince and Princess of Wales and his mother was the eldest daughter of Francis and Mary Adelaide, Duke and Duchess of Teck. At the time of his birth, he was third in the line of succession to the throne and he was baptised Edward Albert Christian George Andrew Patrick David in the Green Drawing Room of White Lodge on 16 July 1894 by Edward White Benson, Archbishop of Canterbury. The names were chosen in honour of Edwards late uncle, who was known to his family as Eddy or Edward and he was always known to his family and close friends by his last given name, David. As was common practice with children of the time, Edward. One of Edwards early nannies often abused him by pinching him before he was due to be presented to his parents and his subsequent crying and wailing would lead the Duke and Duchess to send him and the nanny away. The nanny was discharged after her mistreatment of the children was discovered, Edwards father, though a harsh disciplinarian, was demonstrably affectionate, and his mother displayed a frolicsome side with her children that belied her austere public image. She was amused by the children making tadpoles on toast for their French master, initially Edward was tutored at home by Helen Bricka. Upon his parents return, Edward was placed under the care of two men, Frederick Finch and Henry Hansell, who brought up Edward and his brothers
12.
Duke of Windsor
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Duke of Windsor was a title in the Peerage of the United Kingdom. It was created on 8 March 1937, for the Prince Edward, former King Edward VIII, the dukedom takes its name from the town where Windsor Castle, a residence of English monarchs since the time of Henry I, following the Norman Conquest, is situated. Windsor has been the name of the Royal Family since 1917. Edward had abdicated on 11 December 1936, so that he could marry the American divorcée Wallis Simpson, at the time of the abdication, there was controversy as to how the ex-King should be titled. The new King George VI apparently brought up the idea of a title just after the instrument was signed. That declaration is recorded in the London Gazette, the Dukedom of Windsor became extinct on the death of its first and sole holder in 1972. The Duchess of Windsor died in 1986, as the Royal Arms go hand-in-hand with the crown, the undifferentiated Royal Arms passed to George VI. This was done by means of a label argent of three points, bearing on the point an imperial crown proper
13.
Speech balloon
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In Western graphic art, labels that reveal what a pictured figure is saying have appeared since at least the 13th century. These were in common European use by the early 16th century, word balloons began appearing in 18th-century printed broadsides, and political cartoons from the American Revolution often used them. They later fell out of fashion, but by 1904 had regained their popularity, richard F. Outcaults Yellow Kid is generally credited as the first American comic strip character. His words initially appeared on his shirt, but word balloons very much like those in use today were added almost immediately. For many years, word balloons were less common in Europe than in the USA, the most common is the speech bubble. It comes in two forms for two circumstances, An in-panel character and an off-panel character, an in-panel character uses a bubble with a pointer, called a tail, directed towards the speaker. When one character has multiple balloons within a panel, often only the balloon nearest to the head has a tail. This style is used in Mad Magazine, due to its call-and-response dialogue-based humor. An off-panel character has several options, some of them rather unconventional, the first is a standard speech bubble with a tail pointing toward the speakers position. The second option, which originated in manga, has the tail pointing into the bubble, the third option replaces the tail with a sort of bottleneck that connects with the side of the panel. It can be seen in the works of Marjane Satrapi, in American comics, a bubble without a tail means that the speaker is not merely outside the readers field of view but invisible to the viewpoint character, often as an unspecified member of a crowd. Thought bubbles come in two forms, the chain thought bubble and the fuzzy bubble, the chain thought bubble is the almost universal symbol for thinking in cartoons. It consists of a large, cloud-like bubble containing the text of the thought, some artists use an elliptical bubble instead of a cloud-shaped one. Often animal characters like Snoopy and Garfield talk using thought bubbles, thought bubbles may also be used in circumstances when a character is gagged or otherwise unable to speak. Another, less conventional thought bubble has emerged, the fuzzy thought bubble. Used in manga, the bubble is roughly circular in shape. Fuzzy thought bubbles do not use tails, and are placed near the character who is thinking and this has the advantage of reflecting the TV equivalent effect, something said with an echo. However, they are restricted to the current viewpoint character, the shape of a speech balloon can be used to convey further information
14.
Roman Empire
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Civil wars and executions continued, culminating in the victory of Octavian, Caesars adopted son, over Mark Antony and Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium in 31 BC and the annexation of Egypt. Octavians power was then unassailable and in 27 BC the Roman Senate formally granted him overarching power, the imperial period of Rome lasted approximately 1,500 years compared to the 500 years of the Republican era. The first two centuries of the empires existence were a period of unprecedented political stability and prosperity known as the Pax Romana, following Octavians victory, the size of the empire was dramatically increased. After the assassination of Caligula in 41, the senate briefly considered restoring the republic, under Claudius, the empire invaded Britannia, its first major expansion since Augustus. Vespasian emerged triumphant in 69, establishing the Flavian dynasty, before being succeeded by his son Titus and his short reign was followed by the long reign of his brother Domitian, who was eventually assassinated. The senate then appointed the first of the Five Good Emperors, the empire reached its greatest extent under Trajan, the second in this line. A period of increasing trouble and decline began with the reign of Commodus, Commodus assassination in 192 triggered the Year of the Five Emperors, of which Septimius Severus emerged victorious. The assassination of Alexander Severus in 235 led to the Crisis of the Third Century in which 26 men were declared emperor by the Roman Senate over a time span. It was not until the reign of Diocletian that the empire was fully stabilized with the introduction of the Tetrarchy, which saw four emperors rule the empire at once. This arrangement was unsuccessful, leading to a civil war that was finally ended by Constantine I. Constantine subsequently shifted the capital to Byzantium, which was renamed Constantinople in his honour and it remained the capital of the east until its demise. Constantine also adopted Christianity which later became the state religion of the empire. However, Augustulus was never recognized by his Eastern colleague, and separate rule in the Western part of the empire ceased to exist upon the death of Julius Nepos. The Eastern Roman Empire endured for another millennium, eventually falling to the Ottoman Turks in 1453, the Roman Empire was among the most powerful economic, cultural, political and military forces in the world of its time. It was one of the largest empires in world history, at its height under Trajan, it covered 5 million square kilometres. It held sway over an estimated 70 million people, at that time 21% of the entire population. Throughout the European medieval period, attempts were made to establish successors to the Roman Empire, including the Empire of Romania, a Crusader state. Rome had begun expanding shortly after the founding of the republic in the 6th century BC, then, it was an empire long before it had an emperor
15.
High Middle Ages
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The High Middle Ages or High Medieval Period was the period of European history around the 11th, 12th, and 13th centuries. The High Middle Ages were preceded by the Early Middle Ages and followed by the Late Middle Ages, by 1250 the robust population increase greatly benefited the European economy, reaching levels that would not be seen again in some areas until the 19th century. This trend was checked in the Late Middle Ages by a series of calamities, notably the Black Death but also including numerous wars, from about the year 780 onwards, Europe saw the last of the barbarian invasions and became more socially and politically organized. The Carolingian Renaissance led to scientific and philosophical revival of Europe, the first universities were established in Bologna, Paris, Oxford and Modena. The Vikings had settled in the British Isles, France and elsewhere, the Magyars had ceased their expansion in the 10th century, and by the year 1000, a Christian Kingdom of Hungary was recognized in Central Europe, forming alliances with regional powers. With the brief exception of the Mongol invasions in the 13th century, in the 11th century, populations north of the Alps began to settle new lands, some of which had reverted to wilderness after the end of the Roman Empire. In what is known as the clearances, vast forests. At the same time settlements moved beyond the boundaries of the Frankish Empire to new frontiers in Europe, beyond the Elbe River. The High Middle Ages produced many different forms of intellectual, spiritual, the rediscovery of the works of Aristotle led Thomas Aquinas and other thinkers of the period to develop Scholasticism, a combination of Catholicism and ancient philosophy. For much of the time period Constantinople remained Europes most populous city, in architecture, many of the most notable Gothic cathedrals were built or completed during this era. The Crisis of the Late Middle Ages, beginning at the start of the 14th century, in England, the Norman Conquest of 1066 resulted in a kingdom ruled by a Francophone nobility. The Normans invaded Ireland by force in 1169 and soon established throughout most of the country. Likewise, Scotland and Wales were subdued to vassalage at about the same time, the Exchequer was founded in the 12th century under King Henry I, and the first parliaments were convened. In 1215, after the loss of Normandy, King John signed the Magna Carta into law, from the mid-tenth to the mid-11th centuries, the Scandinavian kingdoms were unified and Christianized, resulting in an end of Viking raids, and greater involvement in European politics. King Cnut of Denmark ruled over both England and Norway, after Cnuts death in 1035, England and Norway were lost, and with the defeat of Valdemar II in 1227, Danish predominance in the region came to an end. Meanwhile, Norway extended its Atlantic possessions, ranging from Greenland to the Isle of Man, while Sweden, under Birger Jarl, however, the Norwegian influence started to decline already in the same period, marked by the Treaty of Perth of 1266. Also, civil wars raged in Norway between 1130 and 1240, by the time of the High Middle Ages, the Carolingian Empire had been divided and replaced by separate successor kingdoms called France and Germany, although not with their modern boundaries. Germany was under the banner of the Holy Roman Empire, which reached its mark of unity
16.
Tarzan in comics
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Tarzan, a fictional character created by Edgar Rice Burroughs, first appeared in the 1912 novel Tarzan of the Apes, and then in 23 sequels. The character proved popular and quickly made the jump to other media. Tarzan of the Apes was adapted into newspaper strip form, first published January 7,1929, a full page Sunday strip began on March 15,1931, with artwork by Rex Maxon. United Feature Syndicate distributed the strip, over the years, many artists have drawn the Tarzan comic strip, notably Burne Hogarth, Ruben Moreira, Dan Barry, Bob Lubbers, John Celardo, Russ Manning, Gil Kane, Mike Grell, and Gray Morrow. The daily strip began to reprint old dailies after the last Russ Manning daily, the Sunday strip also turned to reprints circa 2000. Both strips continue as reprints today in a few newspapers and in Comics Revue magazine, NBM Publishing did a quality reprint series of the Foster and Hogarth work on Tarzan in a series of hardback and paperback reprints in the 1990s. In 2014, Dark Horse Books began to reprint the Hal Foster, the comic strip has often borrowed plots and characters from the Burroughs Tarzan books. Writer Don Kraar, who wrote the strip from 1982 to 1995, included in his stories characters from books by Edger Rice Burroughs, including David Innes of Pellucidar. Tarzan has appeared in comic books from numerous publishers over the years, notably Western Publishing, Charlton Comics, DC Comics, Marvel Comics. The characters earliest comic book appearances were in comic strip published in several titles, such as Sparkler, Tip Top Comics. This series featured artwork by Jesse Marsh, Russ Manning, and it included adaptions of most of Edgar Rice Burroughss original Tarzan books, as well as original stories and other features. Almost all of the Dell and Gold Key Tarzan stories were written by Gaylord DuBois, Western also published a companion series, Korak, Son of Tarzan for 45 issues from 1964 to 1972. This decision was motivated by the lucrative overseas reprint rights, which Edgar Rice Burroughs, DC Comics took over the series in 1972, publishing Tarzan #207–258 from April 1972 to February 1977. DC continued the numbering from the Gold Key series, rather than starting over at #1, publishers believed at the time that a series would sell less if people perceived it as new. This version initially showcased artist Joe Kuberts depiction of the character, Comics historian Les Daniels noted that Kuberts scripts and artwork ranked among the most authentic and effective ever seen. DC Comics writer and executive Paul Levitz stated in 2010 that Joe Kubert produced an adaptation that Burroughs aficionados could respect, issues #230 to #235 of the series were in the 100 Page Super Spectacular format. Initially the series featured adaptions of other Burroughs creations, and had the companion titles Korak, Son of Tarzan, the Korak series was later renamed The Tarzan Family, into which all the non-Tarzan Burroughs adaptations were consolidated. During this period, the British arm of Warner Bros. the corporate parent of DC Comics, published Tarzan, two issues of Limited Collectors Edition featured reprints of Kuberts Tarzan stories
17.
William Randolph Hearst
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Hearst entered the publishing business in 1887 after being given control of The San Francisco Examiner by his wealthy father. Acquiring more newspapers, Hearst created a chain that numbered nearly 30 papers in major American cities at its peak and he later expanded to magazines, creating the largest newspaper and magazine business in the world. Politically he espoused the Progressive Movement, speaking on behalf of the working class and he controlled the editorial positions and coverage of political news in all his papers and magazines and thereby exercised enormous political influence. He also called for war in 1898 against Spain—as did many other newspaper editors—but he did it in sensational fashion, after 1918, he called for an isolationist foreign policy to avoid any more entanglement in what he regarded as corrupt European affairs. He was at once a militant nationalist, a fierce anti-communist, and deeply suspicious of the League of Nations and of the British, French, Japanese, and Russians. He was a supporter of Franklin Roosevelt in 1932–34, but then broke with FDR. His life story was the inspiration for Charles Foster Kane. His famous mansion, Hearst Castle, on a hill overlooking the Pacific Ocean near San Simeon, is now a State Historical Monument and a National Historic Landmark. William R. Hearst was born in San Francisco, to mining engineer, goldmine owner and U. S. senator George Hearst. His paternal great-grandfather was John Hearst, of Ulster Protestant origin and he migrated to America from Ballybay, County Monaghan as part of the Cahans Exodus with his wife and six children in 1766 and settled in South Carolina. Their immigration to South Carolina was spurred in part by the governments policy that encouraged the immigration of Irish Protestants. The names John Hearse and John Hearse Jr, the Hearse spelling of the family name never was used afterward by the family members themselves, or any family of any size. Hearsts mother, née Phoebe Elizabeth Apperson, was also of Irish ancestry and she was the first woman regent of University of California, Berkeley, funded many anthropological expeditions and founded the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology. Following preparation at St. Pauls School in Concord, New Hampshire, while there he was a member of Delta Kappa Epsilon, the A. D. Searching for an occupation, in 1887, Hearst took over management of a newspaper, the San Francisco Examiner, a self-proclaimed populist, Hearst went on to publish stories of municipal and financial corruption, often attacking companies in which his own family held an interest. Within a few years, his paper dominated the San Francisco market, outcault, the inventor of color comics, and all of Pulitzers Sunday staff as well. Another prominent hire was James J. Montague, who came from the Portland Oregonian, Hearst imported his best managers from the San Francisco Examiner and quickly established himself as the most attractive employer among New York newspapers. Hearsts activist approach to journalism can be summarized by the motto, While others Talk, the New York Journal and its chief rival, the New York World, mastered a style of popular journalism that came to be derided as yellow journalism, after Outcaults Yellow Kid comic
18.
Tabloid (newspaper format)
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A tabloid is a newspaper with a compact page size smaller than broadsheet. There is no standard size for this newspaper format, the term tabloid journalism refers to an emphasis on such topics as sensational crime stories, astrology, celebrity gossip and television, and is not a reference to newspapers printed in this format. Some small-format papers with a standard of journalism refer to themselves as compact newspapers. Larger newspapers, traditionally associated with higher-quality journalism, are called broadsheets, in common usage, tabloid and broadsheet are frequently more descriptive of a newspapers market position than physical format. The Berliner format used by many prominent European newspapers is sized between the tabloid and the broadsheet, in a newspaper context, the term Berliner is generally used only to describe size, not to refer to other qualities of the publication. The word tabloid comes from the name given by the London-based pharmaceutical company Burroughs Wellcome & Co. to the compressed tablets they marketed as Tabloid pills in the late 1880s, the connotation of tabloid was soon applied to other small compressed items. A1902 item in Londons Westminister Gazette noted, The proprietor intends to give in tabloid form all the news printed by other journals, thus tabloid journalism in 1901 originally meant a paper that condensed stories into a simplified, easily absorbed format. The term preceded the 1918 reference to smaller sheet newspapers that contained the condensed stories, a tabloid is defined as roughly 17 by 11 inches and commonly half the size of a broadsheet. Tabloid newspapers, especially in the United Kingdom, boast a very high degree of variation as far as target market, political alignment, editorial style, thus, various terms have been coined to describe the subtypes of this versatile paper format. There are, broadly, two types of tabloid newspaper, red top and compact. The distinction is largely of editorial style, both red top and compact tabloids span the width of the spectrum from socialism to capitalist conservatism. The red top tabloid is, for many, the example of the format. Red tops tend to be written with a simplistic, straightforward vocabulary and grammar, their layout, more often than not, in the extreme case, red top tabloids have been accused of lying or misrepresenting the truth to increase circulation. Poll results are often predicted by red top papers, examples of British red top newspapers include The Sun, the Daily Star, the Daily Mirror and the Daily Sport. In contrast to red top tabloids, compacts use a style more closely associated with broadsheet newspapers. In fact, most compact tabloids formerly used the paper size. The term compact was coined in the 1970s by the Daily Mail, one of the newspapers to make the change. The purpose behind this was to avoid the association of the word tabloid with the flamboyant, the early converts from broadsheet format made the change in the 1970s, two notable British papers that took this step at the time were the Daily Mail and the Daily Express
19.
Comic strip formats
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The first distinction in comic strips formats is between the daily comic strip and the Sunday strip. A daily strip is carried on a standard newspaper page, often alongside other strips. There is a greater variety in Sunday strip formats. Sunday strips are usually in color, published in a special newspaper section, Comics sections usually come in one of two sizes, full page or tabloid. A single comic strip may appear in numerous variations, there is a version, to appear at a given size. Expendable parts may include a topper, throwaway panels, or a title panel or tier. Due to the desire to re-arrange, comics may use a layout of the panels to allow them to be cut up. Full page is a format roughly 20 inches high and 14 inches wide, the Reading Eagle Sunday comics section is full-page size, though today no individual strips are still printed to take up a full page. When Sunday strips first appeared in newspapers, near the beginning of the 20th Century, leading full-page Sundays included Thimble Theater, Little Orphan Annie, Dick Tracy and Bringing Up Father. Many full-page comic strips had a topper, a strip that ran above or occasionally below the main strip. The topper on Thimble Theater was Sappo, the topper on Little Orphan Annie was Maw Green, Dick Tracy never had a topper while it was still a full page, but much later it had a topper, Sawdust, which ran at the bottom of the tabloid page. In the 1940s, comic strips were reduced in size because newspapers wanted to cram in more comics per page, paper rationing during World War II also contributed to this, but was not the primary cause. Many strips were reduced in size to half of a page or one-third of a page, collectors call these formats halfs and thirds. Only a few strips, notably Prince Valiant, were published in full-page format after World War II. In the mid-1950s, there were a few attempts to revive the full-page Sunday comic strip, notably Lance and Johnny Reb and these were an artistic but not a commercial success and were reduced to half-page format after a short full-page run. The last full-page Sunday strip was Prince Valiant, which continued in full-page format in newspapers until 1970. New Prince Valiant stories still appear in newspapers today, but in half-page or smaller formats, only a few books have been published reprinting full-page Sunday strips in their original size, The Golden Age of Tarzan, Prince Valiant, An American Epic and Little Nemo. The format was short-lived, as by 1957-58 these were printed in this format
20.
The Times-Picayune
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The Times-Picayune is an American newspaper published in New Orleans, Louisiana, since January 25,1837. However, under pressure from a new New Orleans edition of The Advocate. The paper and the NOLA. com website, form the NOLA Media Group division of Advance Publications, the paper was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service in 2006 for its coverage of Hurricane Katrina. Four of The Times-Picayune’s staff reporters also received Pulitzers for breaking-news reporting for their coverage of the storm, the paper funds the Edgar A. Poe Award for journalistic excellence, which is presented annually by the White House Correspondents Association. Established as The Picayune in 1837 by Francis Lumsden and George Wilkins Kendall, the initial price was one picayune. Between 1880 and 1890, the more than tripled its circulation. The paper became The Times-Picayune after merging in 1914 with its rival, in 1962, Samuel Irving Newhouse, Sr. bought the morning daily The Times-Picayune and the other remaining New Orleans daily, the afternoon States-Item. The papers were merged on June 2,1980 and were known as The Times-Picayune/States-Item until September 30,1986. In addition to the paper, specific community editions of the newspaper are also circulated and retain the Picayune name. The paper is a part of Advance Publications, which is owned by the Newhouse family, in the vernacular of its circulation area, the newspaper is often called the T-P. Hurricane Katrina became a significant part of the history of The Times-Picayune, not only during the storm and its immediate aftermath, with electrical outages leaving the presses out of commission after the storm, newspaper and web staffers produced a newspaper in electronic PDF format. On NOLA. com, meanwhile, tens of thousands of evacuated New Orleans and Gulf Coast residents began using the forums and blogs, posting pleas for help, offering aid. A small team of reporters and photographers volunteered to stay behind in New Orleans to report from the inside on the struggle, looting. They armed themselves for security and worked out of a private residence, the storm flooded huge swaths of the city, as well as Slidell on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain, in a process that appeared to be spreading even as night fell. Being a part of the plot is both riveting and deeply unsettling and we dont yet know the end of this story. Its the story of our lives, and we must both live and chronicle it, on May 24,2012, the papers owner, Advance Publications, announced that the print edition of the Times-Picayune would be published three days a week beginning that fall. News of the change was first revealed the night before in a blog post by New York Times media writer David Carr, a new company, NOLA Media Group, was created to oversee both the paper and its website, NOLA. com. Along with the change in its schedule, Advance also announced that significant cuts would be coming to the newsroom
21.
Norsemen
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Norsemen are the group of people who spoke what is now called the Old Norse language between the 8th and 11th centuries. The language belongs to the North Germanic branch of the Indo-European languages, Norseman means man from the North and applied primarily to Old Norse-speaking tribes living in southern and central Scandinavia. In history, Norse or Norseman could be any person from Scandinavia, even though Norway, Denmark, in some other historical references, the term may also refer to the East Norse, meaning mainly Danes and Swedes, for instance, Cnuts Empire and Swedes adventures East. In the early Medieval period, as today, Vikings was a term for attacking Norsemen, especially in connection with raids and monastic plundering by Norsemen in the British Isles. The Norse were also known as Ascomanni, ashmen, by the Germans, Lochlanach by the Gaels, the Gaelic terms Finn-Gall, Dubh-Gall and Gall Goidel were used for the people of Norse descent in Ireland and Scotland, who assimilated into the Gaelic culture. Dubliners called them Ostmen, or East-people, and the name Oxmanstown comes from one of their settlements, they were known as Lochlannaigh. However, British conceptions of the Vikings origins were not quite correct and those who plundered Britain lived in what is today Denmark, Scania, the western coast of Sweden and Norway and along the Swedish Baltic coast up to around the 60th latitude and Lake Mälaren. They also settled on the island of Gotland, the border between the Norsemen and more southerly Germanic tribes, the Danevirke, today is located about 50 kilometres south of the Danish-German border. The southernmost living Vikings lived no further north than Newcastle upon Tyne, archaeologists and historians of today believe that these Scandinavian settlements in the Slavic lands formed the names of the countries of Russia and Belarus. The Slavs and the Byzantines also called them Varangians, and the Scandinavian bodyguards of the Byzantine emperors were known as the Varangian Guard. In the Old Norse language, the term norrœnir menn, was used correspondingly to the modern English name Norsemen, referring to Swedes, Danes, Norwegians, Faroe Islanders, Icelanders, etc. The modern people of Norway, Sweden and Denmark never identify themselves as skandinaver, as they are Norwegians, Swedes, the Vikings were simply people partaking in the raid. On occasions Finland is also mentioned as a Scandinavian country, Iceland, Greenland, and the Faroe Islands are also geographically separate from the Scandinavian peninsula. The term Nordic countries is used to encompass the Scandinavian countries, Iceland, Greenland
22.
Thule
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Thule was a far-northern location in classical European literature and cartography. Though often considered to be an island in antiquity, modern interpretations of what was meant by Thule often identify it as Norway, other interpretations include Orkney, Shetland, and Scandinavia. In the Late Middle Ages and Renaissance, Thule was often identified as Iceland or Greenland, another suggested location is Saaremaa in the Baltic Sea. The term ultima Thule in medieval geographies denotes any distant place located beyond the borders of the known world, sometimes it is used as a proper noun as the Latin name for Greenland when Thule is used for Iceland. The British surveyor Charles Vallancey was one of many antiquarians who argued that Ireland was Thule, the Greek explorer Pytheas is the first to have written of Thule, doing so in his now lost work, On the Ocean, after his travels between 330-320 BC. He supposedly was sent out by the Greek city of Massalia to see where their trade-goods were coming from, descriptions of some of his discoveries have survived in the works of later, often sceptical, authors. Nearly a half later, in 77, Pliny the Elder published his Natural History in which he also cites Pytheas claim that Thule is a six-day sail north of Britain. The Roman geographer Pomponius Mela placed Thule north of Scythia, after correcting for the mistakes, the scientists mapped Ptolemys Thule to the Norwegian island of Smøla. Other late classical writers and post-classical writers such as Orosius and the Irish monk Dicuil, describe Thule as being north, Dicuil described Thule as being beyond islands that seem to be the Faroe Islands, strongly suggesting Iceland. In the writings of the historian Procopius, from the first half of the sixth century and it is believed that Procopius is really talking about a part of Scandinavia, since several tribes are easily identified, including the Geats in present-day Sweden and the Sami people. He also writes that when the Herules returned, they passed the Warini and the Danes and then crossed the sea to Thule, virgil coined the term Ultima Thule meaning furthest land as a symbolic reference to denote a far-off land or an unattainable goal. The 1st century BC Greek astronomer Geminus of Rhodes claimed that the name Thule went back to a word for the polar night phenomenon – the place where the sun goes to rest. Dionysius Periegetes in his De situ habitabilis orbis also touched upon this subject as did Martianus Capella, avienus in his Ora Maritima added that during the summer on Thule night lasted only two hours, a clear reference to the midnight sun. Cleomedes referenced Pytheas journey to Thule, but added no new information, a novel in Greek by Antonius Diogenes entitled The Wonders Beyond Thule appeared c. Gerald N. Sandy, in the introduction to his translation of Photius ninth-century summary of the work, the Latin grammarian Gaius Julius Solinus in the 3rd century AD, wrote in his Polyhistor that Thule was a 5 days sail from Orkney. Ab Orcadibus Thylen usque quinque dierum ac noctium navigatio est, sed Thyle larga et diutina Pomona copiosa est, Thyle, which was distant from Orkney by a voyage of five days and nights, was fruitful and abundant in the lasting yield of its crops. The 4th century Virgilian commentator Servius also believed that Thule sat close to Orkney, Thule, insula est Oceani inter septemtrionalem et occidentalem plagam, ultra Britanniam, iuxta Orcades et Hiberniam, in hac Thule cum sol in Cancro est, perpetui dies sine noctibus dicuntur. This implies that Thule was Scotland, but in Against Rufinias, the Second Poem, Claudian writes of Thule lying icebound beneath the pole-star
23.
Trondheim
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Trondheim, historically Kaupangen, Nidaros and Trondhjem, is a city and municipality in Sør-Trøndelag county, Norway. It has a population of 187,353, and is the third most populous municipality in Norway and it is the third largest city in the country, with a population of 169,972 inhabitants within the city borders. The city functions as the centre of Sør-Trøndelag county. Trondheim lies on the shore of Trondheim Fjord at the mouth of the river Nidelva. The settlement was founded in 997 as a trading post, from 1152 to 1537, the city was the seat of the Catholic Archdiocese of Nidaros, since then, it has remained the seat of the Lutheran Diocese of Nidaros and the Nidaros Cathedral. The current municipality dates from 1964, when Trondheim merged with Byneset, Leinstrand, Strinda, for the ecclesiastical history, see Archiepiscopate of Nidaros Trondheim was named Kaupangen by Viking King Olav Tryggvason in 997. Shortly thereafter it came to be called Nidaros, in the beginning it was frequently used as a military retainer of King Olav I. It was frequently used as the seat of the king, and was the capital of Norway until 1217, people have been living in the region for thousands of years as evidenced by the rock carvings in central Norway, the Nøstvet and Lihult cultures and the Corded Ware culture. In ancient times, the Kings of Norway were hailed at Øretinget in Trondheim, Harald Fairhair was hailed as the king here, as was his son, Haakon I, called the Good. The battle of Kalvskinnet took place in Trondheim in 1179, King Sverre Sigurdsson, some scholars believe that the famous Lewis chessmen, 12th-century chess pieces carved from walrus ivory found in the Hebrides and now at the British Museum, may have been made in Trondheim. Trondheim was the seat of the Archdiocese of Nidaros for Norway from 1152, due to the introduction of Lutheran Protestantism in 1537, the last Archbishop, Olav Engelbrektsson, had to flee from the city to the Netherlands, where he died in present-day Lier, Belgium. The city has experienced major fires. Since much of the city was made of wooden buildings, many of the fires caused severe damage. Great fires ravaged the city in 1598,1651,1681,1708, twice in 1717,1742,1788,1841 and 1842, however, the 1651 fire destroyed 90% of all buildings within the city limits. The fire in 1681 led to an almost total reconstruction of the city, overseen by General Johan Caspar von Cicignon, broad avenues like Munkegaten were created, with no regard for property rights, in order to stop the next fire. At the time, the city had a population of roughly 8000 inhabitants, after the Treaty of Roskilde on 26 February 1658, Trondheim and the rest of Trøndelag, became Swedish territory for a brief period, but the area was reconquered 10 months later. The conflict was settled by the Treaty of Copenhagen on 27 May 1660. During World War II, Trondheim was occupied by Nazi Germany from 9 April 1940, the home of the most notorious Norwegian Gestapo agent, Henry Rinnan, was in Trondheim
24.
Norway
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The Antarctic Peter I Island and the sub-Antarctic Bouvet Island are dependent territories and thus not considered part of the Kingdom. Norway also lays claim to a section of Antarctica known as Queen Maud Land, until 1814, the kingdom included the Faroe Islands, Greenland, and Iceland. It also included Isle of Man until 1266, Shetland and Orkney until 1468, Norway has a total area of 385,252 square kilometres and a population of 5,258,317. The country shares a long border with Sweden. Norway is bordered by Finland and Russia to the north-east, Norway has an extensive coastline, facing the North Atlantic Ocean and the Barents Sea. King Harald V of the Dano-German House of Glücksburg is the current King of Norway, erna Solberg became Prime Minister in 2013, replacing Jens Stoltenberg. A constitutional monarchy, Norway divides state power between the Parliament, the Cabinet and the Supreme Court, as determined by the 1814 Constitution, the kingdom is established as a merger of several petty kingdoms. By the traditional count from the year 872, the kingdom has existed continuously for 1,144 years, Norway has both administrative and political subdivisions on two levels, counties and municipalities. The Sámi people have an amount of self-determination and influence over traditional territories through the Sámi Parliament. Norway maintains close ties with the European Union and the United States, the country maintains a combination of market economy and a Nordic welfare model with universal health care and a comprehensive social security system. Norway has extensive reserves of petroleum, natural gas, minerals, lumber, seafood, the petroleum industry accounts for around a quarter of the countrys gross domestic product. On a per-capita basis, Norway is the worlds largest producer of oil, the country has the fourth-highest per capita income in the world on the World Bank and IMF lists. On the CIAs GDP per capita list which includes territories and some regions, from 2001 to 2006, and then again from 2009 to 2017, Norway had the highest Human Development Index ranking in the world. It also has the highest inequality-adjusted ranking, Norway ranks first on the World Happiness Report, the OECD Better Life Index, the Index of Public Integrity and the Democracy Index. Norway has two names, Noreg in Nynorsk and Norge in Bokmål. The name Norway comes from the Old English word Norðrveg mentioned in 880, meaning way or way leading to the north. In contrasting with suðrvegar southern way for Germany, and austrvegr eastern way for the Baltic, the Anglo-Saxon of Britain also referred to the kingdom of Norway in 880 as Norðmanna land. This was the area of Harald Fairhair, the first king of Norway, and because of him
25.
Camelot
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Camelot is a castle and court associated with the legendary King Arthur. The stories locate it somewhere in Great Britain and sometimes associate it with real cities, nevertheless, arguments about the location of the real Camelot have occurred since the 15th century and continue to rage today in popular works and for tourism purposes. The castle is mentioned for the first time in Chrétien de Troyes poem Lancelot, the Knight of the Cart, dating to the 1170s, though it does not appear in all the manuscripts. It is mentioned in passing, and is not described, A un jor dune Acenssion / Fu venuz de vers Carlion / Li rois Artus et tenu ot / Cort molt riche a Camaalot / Si riche com au jor estut. Upon a certain Ascension Day King Arthur had come from Caerleon, nothing in Chrétiens poem suggests the level of importance Camelot would have in later romances. For Chrétien, Arthurs chief court was in Caerleon in Wales, Chrétien depicts Arthur, like a typical medieval monarch, holding court at a number of cities and castles. Most Arthurian romances of this produced in English or Welsh did not follow this trend, Camelot was referred to infrequently. However, in the late 15th century, Thomas Malory created the image of Camelot most familiar to English speakers today in his Le Morte dArthur, a work based mostly on the French romances. He firmly identifies Camelot with Winchester, an identification that remained popular over the centuries, though it was rejected by Malorys own editor, William Caxton, who preferred a Welsh location. Renowned Arthurian scholar Ernst Brugger suggested that it was a corruption of the site of Arthurs final battle, roger Sherman Loomis believed it was derived from Cavalon, a place name that he suggested was a corruption of Avalon. He further suggested that Cavalon/Camelot became Arthurs capital due to confusion with Arthurs other traditional court at Carlion, the Lancelot-Grail Cycle and the texts it influenced depict the city of Camelot as standing along a river, downstream from Astolat. It is surrounded by plains and forests, and its magnificent cathedral, there, Arthur and Guinevere are married and there are the tombs of many kings and knights. In a mighty castle stands the Round Table, it is here that Galahad conquers the Siege Perilous, jousts are held in a meadow outside the city. In the Palamedes and other works, the castle is destroyed by King Mark of Cornwall after the loss of Arthur at the Battle of Camlann. It should be noted, too, that there is a Kamaalot featured as the home of Percevals mother in the romance Perlesvaus, the romancers versions of Camelot drew on earlier descriptions of Arthurs fabulous court. From Geoffreys grand description of Caerleon, Camelot gains its impressive architecture, its many churches, Geoffreys description in turn drew on an already established tradition in Welsh oral tradition of the grandeur of Arthurs court. Even at this stage Arthur could not be tied to one location, many other places are listed as a location where Arthur holds court in the later romances, Carlisle and London perhaps being the most prominent. The romancers versions of Camelot draw on traditions of Arthurs fabulous court
26.
Gawain
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Gawain is King Arthurs nephew and a Knight of the Round Table in the Arthurian legend. Under the name Gwalchmei, he very early in the legends development. He is one of a number of Round Table members to be referred to as one of the greatest knights, most notably in Sir Gawain. He is almost always portrayed as the son of Arthurs sister Morgause and King Lot of Orkney and Lothian, and his brothers are Agravain, Gaheris, Gareth and he was well known to be the most trustworthy friend of Sir Lancelot. In some works, Sir Gawain has sisters as well, according to some legends, he would have been the true and rightful heir to the throne of Camelot, after the reign of King Arthur. Gawain is often portrayed as a formidable, courteous, and also a warrior, fiercely loyal to his king. He is a friend to young knights, a defender of the poor, and as the Maidens Knight, a defender of women as well. In some works, his strength waxes and wanes with the sun, in the most common form of this motif, his might triples by noon, but fades as the sun sets. Gawain appears in English, French and Celtic literature as well as in Italy where he appears in the architecture of the portal in the cathedral of Modena. Gawain is known by different names and variants in different languages, the character corresponds to the Welsh Gwalchmei ap Gwyar, and is known in Latin as Walwen, Gualguanus, Waluanus, etc. in French as Gauvain, and in English as Gawain. The later forms are generally assumed to derive from the Welsh Gwalchmei, the element Gwalch means hawk, and is a typical epithet in medieval Welsh poetry. The meaning of mei is uncertain and it has been suggested that it refers to the month of May, rendering Hawk of May, though scholar Rachel Bromwich considers this unlikely. Kenneth Jackson suggests the name evolved from an early Common Brittonic name *Ualcos Magesos, not all scholars accept the gwalch derivation. Celticist John Koch suggests the name could be derived from a Brythonic original *Wolcos Magesos, others argue that the continental forms do not ultimately derive from Gwalchmei. Medievalist Roger Sherman Loomis suggests a derivation from the epithet Gwallt Avwyn, found in the list of heroes in Culhwch and Olwen, which he translates as hair like reins or bright hair. Dutch scholar Lauran Toorians proposes that the Dutch name Walewein was earliest, however, most scholarship supports a derivation from Gwalchmei, variants of which are well attested in Wales and Brittany. Scholars such as Bromwich, Joseph Loth, and Heinrich Zimmer trace the etymology of the versions to a corruption of the Breton form of the name. Unlike the other helpers he takes no part in the action, suggesting he was added to the romance later
27.
Tristan
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Tristan, also known as Tristram, is the hero of the Arthurian Tristan and Iseult story. He was a Cornish knight of the Round Table and he is the son of Blancheflor and Rivalen, and the nephew of King Mark of Cornwall, sent to fetch Iseult back from Ireland to wed the king. However, he and Iseult accidentally consume a love potion while en route, the pair undergo numerous trials that test their secret affair. Although the oldest stories concerning Tristan are lost, some of the derivatives still exist, the name Tristan is also known as Trischin in the Maltese culture. Arthurian romancier Chrétien de Troyes mentioned in his poem Cligès that he composed his own account of the story, however, there are no surviving copies or records of any such text. In the thirteenth century, during the period of prose romances. This long, sprawling, and often lyrical work follows Tristan from the legend into the realm of King Arthur where Tristan participates in the Quest for the Holy Grail. In the fifteenth century, Sir Thomas Malory shortened this French version into his own take, The Book of Sir Tristram de Lyones, in addition, there was a Tristan who bore witness to a legal document at the Swabian Abbey of Saint Gall in 807 AD. Another strange aspect is his kingdom, Lyonesse, for whose existence there is no evidence, however, there were two places called Leonais, one in Brittany, the other the Old French transcription of Lothian. However, the Isles of Scilly have also proposed to be this place, since they were possibly one island until Roman times. Regardless, Tristan being a prince of Lothian would make his name more sensible, there are also records of a Turstan Crectune, whose name gave the Lothian village of Crichton its name. He was granted lands in 1128 by King David of Scotland, one other suggestion is that he could have been adopted into the family of Mark of Cornwall, a historical practice attested in Roman law. Possible evidence for his Cornish roots is the 5th century inscribed Tristan Stone and it measures some 7 feet in height and has been set in a modern concrete base. Until the 1980s it was in its original position some yards from the road in a field near the turn down to the small harbour of Polkerris. It was then closer to Castle Dore and may have been the origin of the association of this site with the story of the love of Tristan. Cynvawr, in turn, is said by the ninth-century author Nennius, eisner concludes that the author of the Tristan story used the names and some of the local traditions of his own recent past. To these figures he attached adventures which had handed down from Roman. He lived in the north of Britain, was associated with a monastery, from 1857 to 1859, Richard Wagner composed the opera Tristan and Isolde, now considered one of the most influential pieces of music of the 19th century
28.
King Arthur
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King Arthur is a legendary British leader who, according to medieval histories and romances, led the defence of Britain against Saxon invaders in the late 5th and early 6th centuries AD. The details of Arthurs story are mainly composed of folklore and literary invention, the sparse historical background of Arthur is gleaned from various sources, including the Annales Cambriae, the Historia Brittonum, and the writings of Gildas. Arthurs name also occurs in early sources such as Y Gododdin. Arthur is a figure in the legends making up the so-called Matter of Britain. The legendary Arthur developed as a figure of international interest largely through the popularity of Geoffrey of Monmouths fanciful, how much of Geoffreys Historia was adapted from such earlier sources, rather than invented by Geoffrey himself, is unknown. Geoffrey depicted Arthur as a king of Britain who defeated the Saxons and established an empire over Britain, Ireland, Iceland, Norway and Gaul. The 12th-century French writer Chrétien de Troyes, who added Lancelot, in these French stories, the narrative focus often shifts from King Arthur himself to other characters, such as various Knights of the Round Table. Arthurian literature thrived during the Middle Ages but waned in the centuries that followed until it experienced a resurgence in the 19th century. In the 21st century, the lives on, not only in literature but also in adaptations for theatre, film, television, comics. The historical basis for the King Arthur legend has long debated by scholars. These culminate in the Battle of Badon, where he is said to have single-handedly killed 960 men, recent studies, however, question the reliability of the Historia Brittonum. The other text that seems to support the case for Arthurs historical existence is the 10th-century Annales Cambriae, the Annales date this battle to 516–518, and also mention the Battle of Camlann, in which Arthur and Medraut were both killed, dated to 537–539. These details have often used to bolster confidence in the Historias account. Problems have been identified, however, with using this source to support the Historia Brittonums account, the latest research shows that the Annales Cambriae was based on a chronicle begun in the late 8th century in Wales. Additionally, the textual history of the Annales Cambriae precludes any certainty that the Arthurian annals were added to it even that early. They were more likely added at point in the 10th century. The Badon entry probably derived from the Historia Brittonum and this lack of convincing early evidence is the reason many recent historians exclude Arthur from their accounts of sub-Roman Britain. These modern admissions of ignorance are a recent trend, earlier generations of historians were less sceptical
29.
Merlin
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Merlin is a legendary figure best known as the wizard featured in Arthurian legend and medieval Welsh poetry. The standard depiction of the character first appears in Geoffrey of Monmouths Historia Regum Britanniae,1136, and is based on an amalgamation of previous historical and legendary figures. He is allegedly buried in the Broceliande forest, near Paimpont in Brittany, Geoffreys rendering of the character was immediately popular, especially in Wales. Later writers expanded the account to produce an image of the wizard. Merlins traditional biography casts him as a cambion, born of a woman, sired by an incubus. The name of Merlins mother is not usually stated, but is given as Adhan in the oldest version of the Prose Brut, Merlin matures to an ascendant sagehood and engineers the birth of Arthur through magic and intrigue. Later authors have Merlin serve as the kings advisor until he is bewitched and imprisoned by the Lady of the Lake, the name Merlin is derived from the Welsh Myrddin, the name of the bard Myrddin Wyllt, one of the chief sources for the later legendary figure. Geoffrey of Monmouth Latinised the name to Merlinus in his works, medievalist Gaston Paris suggests that Geoffrey chose the form Merlinus rather than the regular Merdinus to avoid a resemblance to the Anglo-Norman word merde for feces. Clas Myrddin or Merlins Enclosure is a name for Great Britain stated in the Third Series of Welsh Triads. Celticist A. O. H. Jarman suggests that the Welsh name Myrddin was derived from the toponym Caerfyrddin and this contrasts with the popular folk etymology that the town was named for the bard. The name Carmarthen is derived from the towns previous Roman name Moridunum, itself derived from Celtic Brittonic *moridunon, sea fortress. The former had nothing to do with Arthur, in British poetry he was a bard driven mad after witnessing the horrors of war, who fled civilization to become a wild man of the wood in the 6th century. Geoffrey had this individual in mind when he wrote his earliest surviving work, the Prophetiae Merlini, Geoffreys Prophetiae do not reveal much about Merlins background. He included the prophet in his next work Historia Regum Britanniae, supplementing the characterisation by attributing to him stories about Aurelius Ambrosius, according to Nennius, Ambrosius was discovered when the British king Vortigern was trying to erect a tower. The tower always collapsed before completion, and his men told him that the only solution was to sprinkle the foundation with the blood of a child born without a father. Geoffrey retells this story in Historia Regum Britanniæ with some embellishments and he goes on to add new episodes that tie Merlin into the story of King Arthur and his predecessors, such as bringing the stones for Stonehenge from Preseli Hills in south-west Wales and Ireland. Geoffrey dealt with Merlin again in his third work Vita Merlini and he based the Vita on stories of the original 6th-century Myrddin, set long after his time frame for the life of Merlin Ambrosius. He tries to assert that the characters are the same references to King Arthur and his death
30.
Round Table
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The Round Table is King Arthurs famed table in the Arthurian legend, around which he and his Knights congregate. As its name suggests, it has no head, implying that everyone who sits there has equal status, the table was first described in 1155 by Wace, who relied on previous depictions of Arthurs fabulous retinue. The symbolism of the Round Table developed over time, by the close of the 12th century it had come to represent the order associated with Arthurs court. The Round Table first appears in Waces Roman de Brut, a Norman language adaptation of Geoffrey of Monmouths Historia Regum Britanniae finished in 1155, Wace says Arthur created the Round Table to prevent quarrels among his barons, none of whom would accept a lower place than the others. Layamon added to the story when he adapted Waces work into the Middle English Brut in the early 13th century, in response a Cornish carpenter built an enormous but easily transportable Round Table to prevent further dispute. Wace claims he was not the source of the Round Table, some scholars have doubted this claim, while others believe it may be true. Though the Round Table itself is not mentioned until Wace, the concept of Arthur having a court made up of many prominent warriors is much older. Geoffrey of Monmouth says that after establishing peace throughout Britain, Arthur increased his personal entourage by inviting very distinguished men from far-distant kingdoms to join it, though no Round Table appears in the early Welsh texts, Arthur is associated with various items of household furniture. A henge at Eamont Bridge near Penrith, Cumbria is known as King Arthurs Round Table, the still-visible Roman amphitheatre at Caerleon has been associated with the Round Table. and has been suggested as a possible source for the legend. The Round Table takes on new dimensions in the romances of the late 12th and early 13th century, where it becomes a symbol of the famed order of chivalry which flourishes under Arthur. In Robert de Borons Merlin, written around the 1190s, the wizard Merlin creates the Round Table in imitation of the table of the Last Supper and of Joseph of Arimatheas Holy Grail table. This table, here made for Arthurs father Uther Pendragon rather than Arthur himself, has twelve seats and this seat must remain empty until the coming of the knight who will achieve the Grail. The Didot Perceval, a continuation of Roberts work, takes up the story. The prose cycles of the 13th century, the Lancelot-Grail cycle, here it is the perfect knight Galahad, rather than Percival, who assumes the empty seat, now called the Siege Perilous. Galahads arrival marks the start of the Grail quest as well as the end of the Arthurian era, in these works the Round Table is kept by King Leodegrance of Cameliard after Uthers death, Arthur inherits it when he marries Leodegrances daughter Guinevere. Other versions treat the Round Table differently, for instance Italian Arthurian works often distinguish between the Old Table of Uthers time and Arthurs New Table, during the Middle Ages, festivals called Round Tables were celebrated throughout Europe in imitation of Arthurs court. These events featured jousting, dancing, and feasting, and in some cases attending knights assumed the identities of Arthurs entourage, the earliest of these was held in Cyprus in 1223 to celebrate a knighting. Round Tables were popular in various European countries through the rest of the Middle Ages and were at times very elaborate, René of Anjou even erected an Arthurian castle for his 1446 Round Table
31.
Huns
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The Huns were a nomadic people who lived in Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, and Central Asia between the 1st century AD and the 7th century AD. In 91 AD, the Huns were said to be living near the Caspian Sea, by 370, the Huns had established a vast, if short-lived, dominion in Europe. In the 18th century, the French scholar Joseph de Guignes became the first to propose a link between the Huns and the Xiongnu people, who were neighbours of China in the 3rd century BC. Since Guignes time, considerable effort has been devoted to investigating such a connection. However, there is no consensus on a direct connection between the dominant element of the Xiongnu and that of the Huns. Numerous other ethnic groups were included under Attilas rule, including very many speakers of Gothic and their main military technique was mounted archery. The Huns may have stimulated the Great Migration, a factor in the collapse of the Western Roman Empire. They formed an empire under Attila the Hun, who died in 453. Variants of the Hun name are recorded in the Caucasus until the early 8th century, the Huns were a confederation of warrior bands, ready to integrate other groups to increase their military power, in the Eurasian Steppe in the 4th to 6th centuries AD. Most aspects of their ethnogenesis are uncertain, walter Pohl explicitly states, All we can say safely is that the name Huns, in late antiquity, described prestigious ruling groups of steppe warriors. Jerome associated them with the Scythians in a letter, written four years after the Huns invaded the eastern provinces in 395. The equation of the Huns with the Scythians, together with a fear of the coming of the Antichrist in the late 4th century. This demonization of the Huns is also reflected in Jordaness Getica, written in the 6th century, otto J. Maenchen-Helfen was the first to challenge the traditional approach, based primarily on the study of written sources, and to emphasize the importance of archaeological research. Thereafter the identification of the Xiongnu as the Huns ancestors became controversial among some, the similarity of their ethnonyms is one of the most important links between the two peoples. A Sogdian merchant described the invasion of northern China by the Xwn people in a letter, Étienne de la Vaissière asserts both documents prove that Huna or Xwn were the exact transcriptions of the Chinese Xiongnu name. Christopher P. Atwood rejects that identification because of the very poor match between the three words. For instance, Xiongnu begins with a velar fricative, Huna with a voiceless glottal fricative, Xiongnu is a two-syllable word. However, according to Zhengzhang Shangfang, Xiongnu was pronounced in Late Old Chinese, the Chinese Book of Wei contain references to the remains of the descendants of the Xiongnu who lived in the region of the Altai Mountains in the early 5th century AD
32.
Singing Sword
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The Singing Swords first appearance in Prince Valiant lore came in the Ilene Abducted story, first published in 1938. In this story, the owner of the sword is Prince Arn of Ord. The two men put aside their differences when their beloved is kidnapped by Viking raiders, Arn lends Valiant the charmed sword so that he can hold off their pursuers while Arn rides ahead to free Ilene. The pairs efforts prove futile, they discover she was killed in a shipwreck, Arn gives the Singing Sword to Valiant following this adventure, and the two part as friends. Later in the series, the Singing Sword is established as a sister to King Arthurs Excalibur, on October 20,1991, the animated television series The Legend of Prince Valiant offered its own telling of the Singing Swords origins. In an episode entitled The Singing Sword, Valiant follows his best friends Arn and Rowanne to Bridgeford and they are sentenced to death as part of the Barons plot to keep Camelot a secret from his subjects. Rowannes father Cedric lends Valiant the Singing Sword to aid him in overthrowing the Baron, according to Cedric, the sword was forged from the same metal as Excalibur and will be safeguarded by his family until its true owner appears. The sword sings during Valiants duel with Draconarius, indicating that Valiant is a just, pure-hearted man and it sings a second time when Arn wields it while liberating a monastery. Valiant sees this as a sign that Arn is ready for knighthood, Singing Swords, Dragon Drums, the first episode of the 38th volume, in which the Singing Swords were the swords which Mu Guiying, Seth Chan and his friends use
33.
Excalibur
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Excalibur or Caliburn is the legendary sword of King Arthur, sometimes attributed with magical powers or associated with the rightful sovereignty of Great Britain. Sometimes Excalibur and the Sword in the Stone are said to be the same weapon, the sword was associated with the Arthurian legend very early. In Welsh, the sword is called Caledfwlch, in Cornish, the sword is called Calesvol, in Breton, Kaledvoulch, the name Excalibur ultimately comes from the Welsh Caledfwlch which is a compound of caled hard and bwlch breach, cleft. Caledfwlch appears in several early Welsh works, including the poem Preiddeu Annwfn and the prose tale Culhwch and Olwen, the name was later used in Welsh adaptations of foreign material such as the Bruts, which were based on Geoffrey of Monmouth. They suggest instead that both names may have arisen at a very early date as generic names for a sword. Geoffrey of Monmouth, in his Historia Regum Britanniae, Latinised the name of Arthurs sword as Caliburnus, most Celticists consider Geoffreys Caliburnus to be derivative of a lost Old Welsh text in which bwlch had not yet been lenited to fwlch. In Old French sources this then became Escalibor, Excalibor and finally the familiar Excalibur, Geoffrey Gaimar, in his Old French LEstoire des Engles, mentions Arthur and his sword, this Constantine was the nephew of Arthur, who had the sword Caliburc. In Waces Roman de Brut, an Old French translation and versification of Geoffrey of Monmouths Historia Regum Britanniae, the sword is called Calabrum, Callibourc, Chalabrun and it is from this fanciful etymological musing that Thomas Malory got the notion that Excalibur meant cut steel. In Arthurian romance, a number of explanations are given for Arthurs possession of Excalibur, in Robert de Borons Merlin, Arthur obtained the British throne by pulling a sword from a stone. In this account, the act could not be performed except by the king, meaning the divinely appointed king or true heir of Uther Pendragon. This sword is thought by many to be the famous Excalibur and this version also appears in the 1938 Arthurian novel The Sword in the Stone by British author T. H. White, and the Disney adaptation. They both quote the line from Thomas Malory in the 15th century, Whoso Pulleth Out This Sword of this Stone and Anvil, is Rightwise King Born of all England. The challenge of drawing a sword from a stone also appears in the Arthurian legends of Galahad, however, in what is called the Post-Vulgate Cycle, Excalibur was given to Arthur by the Lady of the Lake sometime after he began to reign. She calls the sword Excalibur, that is as to say as Cut-steel, in the Vulgate Mort Artu, Arthur orders Griflet to throw the sword into the enchanted lake. Malory records both versions of the legend in his Le Morte dArthur, naming both swords as Excalibur, in Welsh legend, Arthurs sword is known as Caledfwlch. In Culhwch and Olwen, it is one of Arthurs most valuable possessions and is used by Arthurs warrior Llenlleawg the Irishman to kill the Irish king Diwrnach while stealing his magical cauldron, Irish mythology mentions a weapon Caladbolg, the sword of Fergus mac Róich. Caladbolg was also known for its power and was carried by some of Irelands greatest heroes. The name, which can also mean hard cleft in Irish, appears in the plural, caladbuilc, as a term for great swords in Togail Troi
34.
Cimmeria (Conan)
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Cimmeria is a fictional land of barbarians in the Hyborian Age, and the homeland of Conan the Barbarian in the works of Robert E. Howard. The origins of the Cimmerians stretch back to the Thurian Age, the Cimmerians are the descendants of colonists from Atlantis. Living on the main Thurian continent, the colonists survived the cataclysm which submerged Atlantis. The survivors, at this point reduced to a level of sophistication. This prolonged conflict caused the Atlanteans to further devolve into more than ape-men. With no memory of their history or even of language and civilization itself, cimmeria was undoubtedly a rugged wilderness, hilly, probably mountainous, heavily forested, and often cold and overcast. Based on the Hyborian map as it overlaps a modern map of Europe, according to Howard, the Cimmerians are tall and powerful, with dark hair and blue or grey eyes. They are a proto-Celtic or proto-Gaelic people, from the evidence in the stories, they appear to be partly or completely tribal hunter-gatherers, with no central government. The Cimmerians are a people forged by the harsh conditions of their land. Howard often makes reference to the Cimmerian peoples hardiness and martial prowess and they can climb seemingly unscalable cliffs, track humans and animals with ease, and stalk their prey without making a sound. The apparent primitiveness of the Cimmerians and their sense of justice is often juxtaposed with the corruption of the races in Hyboria. Conan swears often by Crom but also mentions Lir and Manannan mac Lir by name
35.
Conan the Barbarian
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The character was created by writer Robert E. Howard in 1932 via a series of fantasy stories published in Weird Tales magazine. Conan the Barbarian was created by Robert E. Howard in a series of stories published in Weird Tales magazine in 1932. For months, Howard had been in search of a new character to market to the burgeoning pulp outlets of the early 1930s, in October 1931, he submitted the short story People of the Dark to Clayton Publications new magazine, Strange Tales of Mystery and Terror. Some Howard scholars believe this Conan to be a forerunner of the famous character. In February 1932, Howard vacationed at a town on the lower Rio Grande. During this trip, he conceived the character of Conan and also wrote the poem Cimmeria. Having digested these prior influences after he returned from his trip, Howard rewrote a rejected story, replacing his existing character Kull of Atlantis with his new hero, and retitling it The Phoenix on the Sword. Howard also wrote The Frost-Giants Daughter, inspired by the Greek myth of Daphne, although The Frost-Giants Daughter was rejected, the magazine accepted The Phoenix on the Sword after it received the requested polishing. The Phoenix on the Sword appeared in Weird Tales cover-dated December 1932, editor Farnsworth Wright subsequently prompted Howard to write an 8, 000-word essay for personal use detailing the Hyborian Age, the fictional setting for Conan. Using this essay as his guideline, Howard began plotting The Tower of the Elephant, the publication and success of The Tower of the Elephant would spur Howard to write many more Conan stories for Weird Tales. By the time of Howards suicide in 1936, he had written 21 complete stories,17 of which had been published, following Howards death, the copyright of the Conan stories passed through several hands. Eventually, under the guidance of L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter, the stories were edited, revised, for roughly forty years, the original versions of Howards Conan stories remained out of print. In 1977 the publisher Berkley Books issued three volumes using the earliest published form of the texts from Weird Tales, but these failed to displace the edited versions. In the 1980s and 1990s, the holders of the Conan franchise permitted Howards stories to go out of print entirely. The Gollancz edition mostly used the versions of the stories as published in Weird Tales, in 2003, another British publisher, Wandering Star Books, made an effort both to restore Howards original manuscripts and to provide a more scholarly and historical view of the Conan stories. It published hardcover editions in England, which were republished in the United States by the Del Rey imprint of Ballantine Books. The first book, Conan of Cimmeria, Volume One includes Howards notes on his fictional setting, as well as letters and this was followed by Conan of Cimmeria, Volume Two and Conan of Cimmeria, Volume Three. These three volumes combined include all of the original, unedited Conan stories, the various stories of Conan the Barbarian occur in the fictional Hyborian Age, set after the destruction of Atlantis and before the rise of the known ancient civilizations
36.
Ice resurfacer
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An ice resurfacer is a vehicle or hand-pushed device used to clean and smooth the surface of an ice sheet, usually in an ice rink. The first ice resurfacer was pioneered and developed by American inventor and engineer Frank Zamboni in 1949 in the city of Paramount, Zamboni /zæmˈboʊni/ is an internationally registered trademark. The first ice-resurfacer was the brainchild of Frank J. Zamboni and he provided services to businesses such as dairy farms and produce vendors. Zamboni created a plant for making ice blocks that could be used in refrigeration techniques, as the demand for ice blocks waned, he looked for another way to capitalize on his expertise with ice. His idea of the Zamboni however didnt come to him right away, in 1939, Zamboni created the Iceland Skating Rink in Paramount, California. In order to resurface the skating rink,3 or 4 workers had to scrape, wash, a thin layer of water was then added for the fresh ice. This process was time consuming, and Zamboni wanted to find a more efficient way to resurface the ice. From 1942 to 1947, he tried, fruitlessly, to develop a vehicle that could cut down on resurfacing time, in 1947, he decided on a machine that would shave, wash and squeegee the ice. This machine was mounted on an army surplus vehicle chassis, a blade was mounted on the machine, which would shave the ice, the ice would then receive a thin layer of water creating a smooth sheet of ice. The prototype had a tank that held the ice shavings, which were carried to the tank via a conveyor belt and this machine was powered by a Jeep engine and transmission. Zamboni abandoned this model in late 1947 because of deficiencies with the blade, a new machine was developed using another army surplus vehicle chassis. This machine had four-wheel drive as well as front and back wheel steering, by 1949, The Model A Zamboni Ice-Resurfacer became a working reality. Further modification to the Model A included the addition of a water tank. The front and back steering feature was removed in favor of front-wheel steering because the machine constantly got wedged against the boards, the Model A did not have the visual appeal of many of the ice-resurfacers of today. A journalist from the Brantford Expositor observed that he looks like the offspring of a field tractor. The Zamboni ice-resurfacer was patented in 1953, the Model B was the next ice resurfacer made by Zamboni. This Machine differed significantly from the Model A, instead of using a Jeep engine and transmission, Zamboni decided to build the necessary parts directly onto a Jeep frame. Zamboni model C was also built on a Jeep frame but more changes were applied
37.
Shetland
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Shetland /ˈʃɛtlənd/, also called the Shetland Islands, is a subarctic archipelago that lies northeast of the island of Great Britain and forms part of Scotland, United Kingdom. The islands lie some 80 km to the northeast of Orkney and 280 km southeast of the Faroe Islands, the total area is 1,466 km2 and the population totalled 23,210 in 2012. The largest island, known simply as Mainland, has an area of 967 km2, making it the third-largest Scottish island, there are an additional 15 inhabited islands. The archipelago has a climate, a complex geology, a rugged coastline and many low. Humans have lived in Shetland since the Mesolithic period, and the earliest written references to the date back to Roman times. The early historic period was dominated by Scandinavian influences, especially Norway, when Scotland became part of the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707, trade with northern Europe decreased. Fishing has continued to be an important aspect of the economy up to the present day, the discovery of North Sea oil in the 1970s significantly boosted Shetland economy, employment and public sector revenues. The local way of life reflects the Scots and Norse heritage of the isles including the Up Helly Aa fire festival, the islands have produced a variety of writers of prose and poetry, often in Shetland dialect. There are numerous areas set aside to protect the fauna and flora. The Shetland pony and Shetland Sheepdog are two well known Shetland animal breeds, other distinguished local breeds include the Shetland sheep, cow, goose, and duck. The Shetland pig, or grice, has been extinct since approximately 1930, the islands motto, which appears on the Councils coat of arms, is Með lögum skal land byggja. This Icelandic phrase is taken from the Danish 1241 Basic Law, Codex Holmiensis, and is mentioned in Njáls saga. The name of Shetland is derived from the Old Norse words, hjalt, in AD43 and 77 the Roman authors Pomponius Mela and Pliny the Elder referred to the seven islands they call Haemodae and Acmodae respectively, both of which are assumed to be Shetland. Another possible early reference to the islands is Tacitus report in AD98, after describing the discovery and conquest of Orkney. In early Irish literature, Shetland is referred to as Inse Catt—the Isles of Cats, the Cat tribe also occupied parts of the northern Scottish mainland and their name can be found in Caithness, and in the Gaelic name for Sutherland. It is possible that the Pictish cat sound forms part of this Norse name and it then became Hjaltland in the 16th century. As Norn was gradually replaced by English in the form of the Shetland dialect which shares similarities with Scots English. The initial letter is the Middle Scots letter, yogh, the pronunciation of which is almost identical to the original Norn sound, /hj/
38.
Faroe Islands
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The Faroe Islands, also spelled the Faeroes, is an archipelago between the Norwegian Sea and the North Atlantic, about halfway between Norway and Iceland,320 kilometres north-northwest of Scotland. Its area is about 1,400 square kilometres with a population of 49,188 in 2016, the Faeroe Islands is an autonomous country within the Danish Realm. The land of the Faeroes is rugged, and these islands have an oceanic climate, windy, wet, cloudy. Despite this island groups northerly latitude, temperatures average above freezing throughout the year because of the Gulf Stream, between 1035 and 1814, the Faeroes were part of the Hereditary Kingdom of Norway. In 1814, the Treaty of Kiel granted Denmark control over the islands, the Faroe Islands have been a self-governing country within the Kingdom of Denmark since 1948. The Faroese have control of most domestic matters, areas that remain the responsibility of Denmark include military defence, the police department, the justice department, currency, and foreign affairs. However, as they are not part of the customs area as Denmark, the Faroe Islands have an independent trade policy. The islands also have representation in the Nordic Council as members of the Danish delegation, the people of the Faroe Islands also compete as national team in certain sports. In Danish, the name Færøerne may reflect an Old Norse word fær, the morpheme øerne represents a plural of ø in Danish. The Danish name thus translates as the islands of sheep, in Faroese, the name appears as Føroyar. Oyar represents the plural of oy, older Faroese for island, the modern Faeroese word for island is oyggj. In the English language, their name is sometimes spelled Faeroe, archaeological evidence shows settlers living on the Faroe Islands in two successive periods prior to the arrival of the Norse, the first between 400 and 600 and the second between 600 and 800. Scientists from the University of Aberdeen have also found early cereal pollen from domesticated plants, archaeologist Mike Church noted that Dicuil mentioned what may have been the Faroes. He also suggested that the living there might have been from Ireland, Scotland or Scandinavia. A Latin account of a made by Brendan, an Irish monastic saint who lived around 484–578. This association, however, is far from conclusive in its description, Dicuil, an Irish monk of the early 9th century, wrote a more definite account. 800, bringing Old West Norse, which evolved into the modern Faroese language, according to Icelandic sagas such as Færeyjar Saga, one of the best known men in the island was Tróndur í Gøtu, a descendant of Scandinavian chiefs who had settled in Dublin, Ireland. Tróndur led the battle against Sigmund Brestursson, the Norwegian monarchy, a traditional name for the islands in Irish, Na Scigirí, possibly refers to the Skeggjar Beards, a nickname given to island dwellers
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Iceland
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Iceland is a Nordic island country in the North Atlantic Ocean. It has a population of 332,529 and an area of 103,000 km2, the capital and largest city is Reykjavík. Reykjavík and the areas in the southwest of the country are home to over two-thirds of the population. Iceland is volcanically and geologically active, the interior consists of a plateau characterised by sand and lava fields, mountains and glaciers, while many glacial rivers flow to the sea through the lowlands. Iceland is warmed by the Gulf Stream and has a climate, despite a high latitude just outside the Arctic Circle. Its high latitude and marine influence still keeps summers chilly, with most of the archipelago having a tundra climate. According to the ancient manuscript Landnámabók, the settlement of Iceland began in the year 874 AD when the Norwegian chieftain Ingólfr Arnarson became the first permanent settler on the island. In the following centuries, Norwegians, and to a lesser extent other Scandinavians, emigrated to Iceland, the island was governed as an independent commonwealth under the Althing, one of the worlds oldest functioning legislative assemblies. Following a period of strife, Iceland acceded to Norwegian rule in the 13th century. The establishment of the Kalmar Union in 1397 united the kingdoms of Norway, Denmark, Iceland thus followed Norways integration to that Union and came under Danish rule after Swedens secession from that union in 1523. In the wake of the French revolution and the Napoleonic wars, Icelands struggle for independence took form and culminated in independence in 1918, until the 20th century, Iceland relied largely on subsistence fishing and agriculture, and was among the poorest in Europe. Industrialisation of the fisheries and Marshall Plan aid following World War II brought prosperity, in 1994, it became a part of the European Economic Area, which further diversified the economy into sectors such as finance, biotechnology, and manufacturing. Iceland has an economy with relatively low taxes compared to other OECD countries. It maintains a Nordic social welfare system that provides health care. Iceland ranks high in economic, political and social stability and equality, in 2013, it was ranked as the 13th most-developed country in the world by the United Nations Human Development Index. Iceland runs almost completely on renewable energy, some bankers were jailed, and the economy has made a significant recovery, in large part due to a surge in tourism. Icelandic culture is founded upon the nations Scandinavian heritage, most Icelanders are descendants of Germanic and Gaelic settlers. Icelandic, a North Germanic language, is descended from Old Norse and is related to Faroese
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Greenland
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Greenland is an autonomous constituent country within the Danish Realm between the Arctic and Atlantic Oceans, east of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. Though physiographically a part of the continent of North America, Greenland has been politically and culturally associated with Europe for more than a millennium. The majority of its residents are Inuit, whose ancestors began migrating from the Canadian mainland in the 13th century, Greenland is the worlds largest island. Three-quarters of Greenland is covered by the permanent ice sheet outside Antarctica. With a population of about 56,480, it is the least densely populated country in the world, the Arctic Umiaq Line ferry acts as a lifeline for western Greenland, connecting the various cities and settlements. Greenland has been inhabited off and on for at least the last 4,500 years by Arctic peoples whose forebears migrated there from what is now Canada, Norsemen settled the uninhabited southern part of Greenland beginning in the 10th century, and Inuit peoples arrived in the 13th century. The Norse colonies disappeared in the late 15th century, soon after their demise, beginning in 1499, the Portuguese briefly explored and claimed the island, naming it Terra do Lavrador. In the early 18th century, Scandinavian explorers reached Greenland again, to strengthen trading and power, Denmark-Norway affirmed sovereignty over the island. Greenland was settled by Vikings more than a thousand years ago, Vikings set sail from Greenland and Iceland, discovering North America nearly 500 years before Columbus reached Caribbean islands. Though under continuous influence of Norway and Norwegians, Greenland was not formally under the Norwegian crown until 1262, the Kingdom of Norway was extensive and a military power until the mid-14th century. Thus, the two kingdoms resources were directed at creating Copenhagen, Norway became the weaker part and lost sovereignty over Greenland in 1814 when the union was dissolved. Greenland became a Danish colony in 1814, and was made a part of the Danish Realm in 1953 under the Constitution of Denmark, in 1973, Greenland joined the European Economic Community with Denmark. However, in a referendum in 1982, a majority of the population voted for Greenland to withdraw from the EEC which was effected in 1985, Greenland contains the worlds largest and most northernly national park, Northeast Greenland National Park. Greenland is divided into four municipalities - Sermersooq, Kujalleq, Qaasuitsup and it also retains control of monetary policy, providing an initial annual subsidy of DKK3.4 billion, which is planned to diminish gradually over time. Greenland expects to grow its economy based on increased income from the extraction of natural resources, the capital, Nuuk, held the 2016 Arctic Winter Games. At 70%, Greenland has one of the highest shares of renewable energy in the world, the early Viking settlers named the island as Greenland. In the Icelandic sagas, the Norwegian-born Icelander Erik the Red was said to be exiled from Iceland for manslaughter, along with his extended family and his thralls, he set out in ships to explore an icy land known to lie to the northwest. After finding an area and settling there, he named it Grœnland
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Newfoundland (island)
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Newfoundland is a large Canadian island off the east coast of the North American mainland, and the most populous part of the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador. It has 29 percent of the land area. The island is separated from the Labrador Peninsula by the Strait of Belle Isle and it blocks the mouth of the Saint Lawrence River, creating the Gulf of Saint Lawrence, the worlds largest estuary. Newfoundlands nearest neighbour is the French overseas community of Saint-Pierre and Miquelon, with an area of 108,860 square kilometres, Newfoundland is the worlds 16th-largest island, Canadas fourth-largest island, and the largest Canadian island outside the North. The provincial capital, St. Johns, is located on the southeastern coast of the island, Cape Spear, just south of the capital, is the easternmost point of North America, excluding Greenland. It is common to consider all directly neighbouring islands such as New World, Twillingate, Fogo, by that classification, Newfoundland and its associated small islands have a total area of 111,390 square kilometres. Additionally 6. 1% claimed at least one parent of French ancestry, the islands total population as of the 2006 census was 479,105. Long settled by peoples of the Dorset culture, the island was visited by the Icelandic Viking Leif Eriksson in the 11th century. The next European visitors to Newfoundland were Portuguese, Basque, Spanish, French, the island was visited by the Genoese navigator John Cabot, working under contract to King Henry VII of England on his expedition from Bristol in 1497. In 1501, Portuguese explorers Gaspar Corte-Real and his brother Miguel Corte-Real charted part of the coast of Newfoundland in a attempt to find the Northwest Passage. Newfoundland is considered Britains oldest colony, at the time of English settlement, the Beothuk inhabited the island. While there is evidence of ancient indigenous peoples on the island. LAnse aux Meadows was a Norse settlement near the northernmost tip of Newfoundland, the site is considered the only undisputed evidence of Pre-Columbian contact between the Old and New Worlds, if the Norse-Inuit contact on Greenland is not counted. There is a second suspected Norse site in Point Rosee, the island is a likely location of Vinland, mentioned in the Viking Chronicles, although this has been disputed. The indigenous people on the island at the time of European settlement were the Beothuk, later immigrants developed a variety of dialects associated with settlement on the island, Newfoundland English, Newfoundland French. In the 19th century, it also had a dialect of Irish known as Newfoundland Irish, Scottish Gaelic was spoken on the island during the 19th and early 20th centuries, particularly in the Codroy Valley area, chiefly by settlers from Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia. The Gaelic names reflected the association with fishing, in Scottish Gaelic, it was called Eilean a Trosg, or literally, similarly, the Irish Gaelic name Talamh an Éisc means Land of the Fish. The first inhabitants of Newfoundland were the Paleo-Eskimo, who have no link to other groups in Newfoundland history
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Saint Lawrence River
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The Saint Lawrence River is a large river in the middle latitudes of North America. The Saint Lawrence River flows in a roughly north-easterly direction, connecting the Great Lakes with the Atlantic Ocean and forming the primary drainage outflow of the Great Lakes Basin. It traverses the Canadian provinces of Quebec and Ontario, and is part of the boundary between Ontario, Canada, and the U. S. state of New York. This river also provides the basis of the commercial Saint Lawrence Seaway, the estuary begins at the eastern tip of Île dOrléans, just downstream from Quebec City. The river becomes tidal around Quebec City, the St. Lawrence River runs 3,058 kilometres from the farthest headwater to the mouth and 1,197 km from the outflow of Lake Ontario. The farthest headwater is the North River in the Mesabi Range at Hibbing, the average discharge below the Saguenay River is 16,800 cubic metres per second. At Quebec City, it is 12,101 m3/s, the average discharge at the rivers source, the outflow of Lake Ontario, is 7,410 m3/s. The St. Lawrence River includes Lake Saint-Louis south of Montreal, Lake Saint Francis at Salaberry-de-Valleyfield, pierre Archipelago and the smaller Mingan Archipelago. Other islands include Île dOrléans near Quebec City and Anticosti Island north of the Gaspé and it is the second longest river in Canada. Lake Champlain and the Ottawa, Richelieu, Saguenay, and Saint-François rivers drain into the St. Lawrence. The St. Lawrence River is in an active zone where fault reactivation is believed to occur along late Proterozoic to early Paleozoic normal faults related to the opening of Iapetus Ocean. The faults in the area are related and are called the Saint Lawrence rift system. According to the United States Geological Survey, the St. Lawrence Valley is a province of the larger Appalachian division, containing the Champlain. However, in Canada, where most of the valley is, it is considered part of a distinct Saint Lawrence Lowlands physiographic division. Lawrence River itself was Jacques Cartier, at that time, the land along the river was inhabited by the St. Lawrence Iroquoians, at the time of Cartiers second voyage in 1535. Because Cartier arrived in the estuary on St. Lawrences feast day, the St. Lawrence River is partly within the U. S. and as such is that countrys sixth oldest surviving European place-name. The earliest regular Europeans in the area were the Basques, who came to the St Lawrence Gulf, the Basque whalers and fishermen traded with indigenous Americans and set up settlements, leaving vestiges all over the coast of eastern Canada and deep into the Saint Lawrence River. Basque commercial and fishing activity reached its peak before the Armada Invencibles disaster, initially, the whaling galleons from Labourd were not affected by the Spanish defeat
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Niagara Falls
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They form the southern end of the Niagara Gorge. From largest to smallest, the three waterfalls are the Horseshoe Falls, the American Falls and the Bridal Veil Falls, the Horseshoe Falls lies on the border of the United States and Canada with the American Falls entirely on the American side, separated by Goat Island. The smaller Bridal Veil Falls are also on the American side, the international boundary line was originally drawn through Horseshoe Falls in 1819, but the boundary has long been in dispute due to natural erosion and construction. Located on the Niagara River, which drains Lake Erie into Lake Ontario, Horseshoe Falls is the most powerful waterfall in North America, as measured by vertical height and flow rate. The falls are 17 miles north-northwest of Buffalo, New York, while not exceptionally high, the Niagara Falls are very wide. More than six cubic feet of water falls over the crest line every minute in high flow. The Niagara Falls are famed both for their beauty and as a source of hydroelectric power. Balancing recreational, commercial, and industrial uses has been a challenge for the stewards of the falls since the 19th century. The Horseshoe Falls drop about 188 feet, while the height of the American Falls varies between 70 and 100 feet because of the presence of giant boulders at its base. The larger Horseshoe Falls are about 2,600 feet wide, the distance between the American extremity of the Niagara Falls and the Canadian extremity is 3,409 feet. The volume of water approaching the falls during peak season may sometimes be as much as 225,000 cubic feet per second. The average annual rate is 85,000 cubic feet per second. Since the flow is a function of the Lake Erie water elevation. This is accomplished by employing a weir – the International Control Dam – with movable gates upstream from the Horseshoe Falls. The falls flow is further halved at night, and, during the low tourist season in the winter, water diversion is regulated by the 1950 Niagara Treaty and is administered by the International Niagara Board of Control. The current rate of erosion is approximately 1 foot per year and it is estimated that 50,000 years from now, even at this reduced rate of erosion, the remaining 20 miles to Lake Erie will have been undermined and the falls will cease to exist. The features that became Niagara Falls were created by the Wisconsin glaciation about 10,000 years ago, the same forces also created the North American Great Lakes and the Niagara River. All were dug by an ice sheet that drove through the area, deepening some river channels to form lakes
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Native Americans in the United States
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In the United States, Native Americans are people descended from the Pre-Columbian indigenous population of the land within the countrys modern boundaries. These peoples were composed of distinct tribes, bands, and ethnic groups. Most Native American groups had historically preserved their histories by oral traditions and artwork, at the time of first contact, the indigenous cultures were quite different from those of the proto-industrial and mostly Christian immigrants. Some of the Northeastern and Southwestern cultures in particular were matrilineal, the majority of Indigenous American tribes maintained their hunting grounds and agricultural lands for use of the entire tribe. Europeans at that time had patriarchal cultures and had developed concepts of property rights with respect to land that were extremely different. Assimilation became a consistent policy through American administrations, during the 19th century, the ideology of manifest destiny became integral to the American nationalist movement. Expansion of European-American populations to the west after the American Revolution resulted in increasing pressure on Native American lands and this resulted in the ethnic cleansing of many tribes, with the brutal, forced marches coming to be known as The Trail of Tears. As American expansion reached into the West, settler and miner migrants came into increasing conflict with the Great Basin, Great Plains and these were complex nomadic cultures based on horse culture and seasonal bison hunting. Over time, the United States forced a series of treaties and land cessions by the tribes, in 1924, Native Americans who were not already U. S. citizens were granted citizenship by Congress. Contemporary Native Americans have a relationship with the United States because they may be members of nations, tribes. The terms used to refer to Native Americans have at times been controversial, by comparison, the indigenous peoples of Canada are generally known as First Nations. It is not definitively known how or when the Native Americans first settled the Americas and these early inhabitants, called Paleoamericans, soon diversified into many hundreds of culturally distinct nations and tribes. The archaeological periods used are the classifications of archaeological periods and cultures established in Gordon Willey and Philip Phillips 1958 book Method and they divided the archaeological record in the Americas into five phases, see Archaeology of the Americas. The Clovis culture, a hunting culture, is primarily identified by use of fluted spear points. Artifacts from this culture were first excavated in 1932 near Clovis, the Clovis culture ranged over much of North America and also appeared in South America. The culture is identified by the distinctive Clovis point, a flaked flint spear-point with a notched flute, dating of Clovis materials has been by association with animal bones and by the use of carbon dating methods. Recent reexaminations of Clovis materials using improved carbon-dating methods produced results of 11,050 and 10,800 radiocarbon years B. P, other tribes have stories that recount migrations across long tracts of land and a great river, believed to be the Mississippi River. Genetic and linguistic data connect the people of this continent with ancient northeast Asians
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Byzantine Empire
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It survived the fragmentation and fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century AD and continued to exist for an additional thousand years until it fell to the Ottoman Turks in 1453. During most of its existence, the empire was the most powerful economic, cultural, several signal events from the 4th to 6th centuries mark the period of transition during which the Roman Empires Greek East and Latin West divided. Constantine I reorganised the empire, made Constantinople the new capital, under Theodosius I, Christianity became the Empires official state religion and other religious practices were proscribed. Finally, under the reign of Heraclius, the Empires military, the borders of the Empire evolved significantly over its existence, as it went through several cycles of decline and recovery. During the reign of Maurice, the Empires eastern frontier was expanded, in a matter of years the Empire lost its richest provinces, Egypt and Syria, to the Arabs. This battle opened the way for the Turks to settle in Anatolia, the Empire recovered again during the Komnenian restoration, such that by the 12th century Constantinople was the largest and wealthiest European city. Despite the eventual recovery of Constantinople in 1261, the Byzantine Empire remained only one of several small states in the area for the final two centuries of its existence. Its remaining territories were annexed by the Ottomans over the 15th century. The Fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Empire in 1453 finally ended the Byzantine Empire, the term comes from Byzantium, the name of the city of Constantinople before it became Constantines capital. This older name of the city would rarely be used from this point onward except in historical or poetic contexts. The publication in 1648 of the Byzantine du Louvre, and in 1680 of Du Canges Historia Byzantina further popularised the use of Byzantine among French authors, however, it was not until the mid-19th century that the term came into general use in the Western world. The Byzantine Empire was known to its inhabitants as the Roman Empire, the Empire of the Romans, Romania, the Roman Republic, Graikia, and also as Rhōmais. The inhabitants called themselves Romaioi and Graikoi, and even as late as the 19th century Greeks typically referred to modern Greek as Romaika and Graikika. The authority of the Byzantine emperor as the legitimate Roman emperor was challenged by the coronation of Charlemagne as Imperator Augustus by Pope Leo III in the year 800. No such distinction existed in the Islamic and Slavic worlds, where the Empire was more seen as the continuation of the Roman Empire. In the Islamic world, the Roman Empire was known primarily as Rûm, the Roman army succeeded in conquering many territories covering the entire Mediterranean region and coastal regions in southwestern Europe and north Africa. These territories were home to different cultural groups, both urban populations and rural populations. The West also suffered heavily from the instability of the 3rd century AD
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Justinian I
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Justinian I, traditionally known as Justinian the Great and also Saint Justinian the Great in the Eastern Orthodox Church, was a Byzantine emperor from 527 to 565. During his reign, Justinian sought to revive the empires greatness, because of his restoration activities, Justinian has sometimes been called the last Roman in modern historiography. This ambition was expressed by the recovery of the territories of the defunct western Roman Empire. His general, Belisarius, swiftly conquered the Vandal kingdom in North Africa, the prefect Liberius reclaimed the south of the Iberian peninsula, establishing the province of Spania. These campaigns re-established Roman control over the western Mediterranean, increasing the Empires annual revenue by over a million solidi, during his reign Justinian also subdued the Tzani, a people on the east coast of the Black Sea that had never been under Roman rule before. A still more resonant aspect of his legacy was the rewriting of Roman law, the Corpus Juris Civilis. His reign also marked a blossoming of Byzantine culture, and his building program yielded such masterpieces as the church of Hagia Sophia, a devastating outbreak of bubonic plague in the early 540s marked the end of an age of splendour. Justinian was born in Tauresium around 482, a native speaker of Latin, he came from a peasant family believed to have been of Illyro-Roman or Thraco-Roman origins. The cognomen Iustinianus, which he later, is indicative of adoption by his uncle Justin. During his reign, he founded Justiniana Prima not far from his birthplace and his mother was Vigilantia, the sister of Justin. Justin, who was in the guard before he became emperor, adopted Justinian, brought him to Constantinople. As a result, Justinian was well educated in jurisprudence, theology, Justinian served for some time with the Excubitors but the details of his early career are unknown. Chronicler John Malalas, who lived during the reign of Justinian, tells of his appearance that he was short, fair skinned, curly haired, round faced, another contemporary chronicler, Procopius, compares Justinians appearance to that of tyrannical Emperor Domitian, although this is probably slander. When Emperor Anastasius died in 518, Justin was proclaimed the new emperor, during Justins reign, Justinian was the emperors close confidant. As Justin became senile near the end of his reign, Justinian became the de facto ruler, Justinian was appointed consul in 521 and later commander of the army of the east. Upon Justins death on 1 August 527, Justinian became the sole sovereign, as a ruler, Justinian showed great energy. He was known as the emperor who never sleeps on account of his work habits, nevertheless, he seems to have been amiable and easy to approach. Around 525, he married his mistress, Theodora, in Constantinople and she was by profession a courtesan and some twenty years his junior
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Mordred
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Mordred or Modred is a character in the Arthurian legend, known as a notorious traitor who fought King Arthur at the Battle of Camlann, where he was killed and Arthur fatally wounded. In earlier literature, he was considered the son of Morgause, also known as Anna. His brothers or half-brothers are Gawain, Agravain, Gaheris, the name is ultimately derived from Latin Moderātus. The first surviving mention of Mordred, occurs in the Annales Cambriae entry for the year 537, the strife of Camlann, in which Arthur and Medraut fell. The Annales themselves were completed between 960 and 970, though their authors drew on older material, the earliest full account of Mordred is found in Geoffrey of Monmouths Historia Regum Britanniae, where he, for the first time in literature, plays the role of traitor to Arthur. During Arthurs absence Mordred crowns himself king and marries Guinevere, forcing Arthur to return to Britain, the Battle of Camlann is fought, and Mordred dies while Arthur is taken to Avalon. A number of Welsh sources also refer to Medraut, usually in relation to Camlann, Medraut is never considered Arthurs son in Welsh texts, only his nephew, though The Dream of Rhonabwy mentions that the king had been his foster father. However, Mordreds later characterization as the kings villainous son has a precedent in the figure of Amr, what connection exists between the stories of Amr and Mordred, if there is one, has never been satisfactorily explained. In Geoffrey and certain other sources such as the Alliterative Morte Arthure, Mordred marries Guinevere, seemingly consensually, after he steals the throne. However, in later writings like the Lancelot-Grail Cycle and Thomas Malorys Le Morte dArthur, Guinevere is not treated as a traitor and she flees Mordreds proposal, adultery is still tied to her role in these later romances, however, but Mordred has been replaced with Lancelot. Geoffrey and the Lancelot-Grail Cycle have Mordred being succeeded by his sons, stories always number them as two, though they are usually not named, nor is their mother. The 18th century Welsh antiquarian Lewis Morris, based on statements made by the Scottish chronicler Hector Boece, suggested that Medrawd had a wife, Cwyllog, another late Welsh tradition was that Medrawds wife was Gwenhwyach, sister of Gwenhwyfar. In Geoffreys version, after the Battle of Camlann, Constantine is appointed Arthurs successor, however, Mordreds two sons and their Saxon allies rise against him. He defeats them, and one of them flees to sanctuary in the Church of Amphibalus in Winchester while the other hides in a London friary, Constantine tracks them down, and kills them before the altars in their respective hiding places. This act invokes the vengeance of God, and three years later Constantine is killed by his nephew Aurelius Conanus, Geoffreys account of the episode may be based on Constantines murder of two royal youths as mentioned by the 6th-century writer Gildas. The elder of Mordreds sons is named Melehan or some derivation in the Lancelot-Grail, in these texts, Lancelot and his men return to Britain to dispatch Melehan and his brother after receiving a letter from the dying Gawain. In the ensuing battle Melehan slays Sir Lionel, son of King Bors the Elder and brother to Sir Bors the Younger, Bors kills him to avenge his brothers death, while Lancelot slays the unnamed younger brother. Virtually everywhere Mordred appears, his name is synonymous with treachery and he appears in Dantes Inferno in the lowest circle of Hell, set apart for traitors, him who, at one blow, had chest and shadow / shattered by Arthurs hand
