In 2001🚨singer Elan Atias released a dancehall version on the Buy Out Riddim instrumental

In March 2017🚨Andrew Bogut posted the UB40 version on his Twitter[22] to signify he was joining the Cleveland Cavaliers ÿ the team's colours include the darkish red ""wine""."

20,000🚨Coordinates: 360610N 1151042W? / ?36.10278N 115.17833W? / 36.10278; -115.17833 T-Mobile Arena is a multi-purpose indoor arena on the Las Vegas Strip in Paradise, Nevada. Opened on April 6, 2016, the arena was built as a joint venture between MGM Resorts International and the Anschutz Entertainment Group. The arena is the home venue for the National Hockey League's Vegas Golden Knights, who began play in 2017. Since its opening, T-Mobile Arena has primarily been used for entertainment events such as concerts, and has been booked for mixed martial arts and professional boxing events, and well as other annual sporting events. The arena is accessed by a new development project known as The Park, with retail and dining space between New York-New York and the Park MGM casino hotels.[4][5][6] The Anschutz Entertainment Group (AEG) first tried to build an arena in Las Vegas in association with Harrah's Entertainment. In 2007, the joint venture announced they would build a 20,000 seat stadium behind the Bally's and Paris casino-hotels.[7] Caesars Entertainment, Inc. had previously envisioned using the location to build a baseball park, but the company's buyout by Harrah's cancelled the plans. Through the following year, Harrah's became uncertain on continuing with the project, not knowing if AEG would split the costs, and whether building a major league-ready stadium without a guaranteed franchise to play on it would be feasible given the enduring financial crisis.[8] The original plans were to break ground in June 2008 and finish the arena in 2010, but by 2009, it was revealed the stalled project had not even done a traffic study despite being located near a busy intersection.[9] In 2010, the plans were changed to use an area behind the Imperial Palace. However, given the financing would require a special taxation district, opposition from Clark County regarding using public money in the project stalled it even further.[10] AEG eventually backed out completely by 2012, once MGM Resorts International came up with their own project using a terrain behind the New York-New York and Monte Carlo resorts. This attracted AEG primarily for not relying on public funding.[11] MGM and AEG announced their joint arena plan on March 1, 2013.[12] Plans were further fleshed out over the following months with the announcement of a $100-million pedestrian shopping area, The Park, to serve as a gateway to the arena,[13] and the retention of prominent sports architecture firm Populous to design the project.[14] Other firms on the project include: the ICON Venue Group,[15] Thornton Tomasetti,[16] ME Engineers,[17] Penta Building Group and Hunt Construction Group.[18] The project broke ground on May 1, 2014,[19] followed by the demolition of existing buildings, and excavation of an oval area for the arena. The final steel beam of the structure was placed on May 27, 2015.[20] In January 2016, T-Mobile US announced it had acquired the naming rights to the new arena in a multi-year contract.[21][22] The arena held its grand opening on April 6, 2016 with a concert by Las Vegas natives The Killers, Shamir and Wayne Newton.[23] Country music artists Martina McBride and Cam performed at a soft opening on March 31, 2016.[24] In 2016, the National Hockey League awarded a Las Vegas expansion team to an ownership group led by Bill Foley, with T-Mobile Arena as its home venue.[25] As part of the team's lease, Foley negotiated an option to buy a stake in the arena from MGM and AEG.[1] He exercised that option in September 2016, buying a 15 percent interest for around $35 million.[1][26] Interior of venue, shown on March 31, 2016. Interior of venue, shown 2016. T-Mobile Arena at night. During its construction, T-Mobile Arena was pointed to as the home arena for a possible National Hockey League expansion team in Las Vegas.[27][28][29] The expansion bid was approved and announced by the NHL on June 22, 2016; the new team, the Vegas Golden Knights, began play in the 2017ÿ18 season.[25][30] The Ultimate Fighting Championship's first event at the venue was UFC 200, held on July 9, 2016.[31] In March 2017, the UFC signed a seven-year agreement to become an official tenant of T-Mobile Arena. The promotion agreed to host at least four events per-year at the facility, in exchange for receiving permanent retail space and signage.[32] The Professional Bull Riders World Finals moved to T-Mobile Arena in 2016, moving from the Thomas & Mack Center,[33] followed by the Pac-12 Conference Men's Basketball Tournament, which moved from the MGM Grand Garden Arena.[34] In addition to Golden Knights games and UFC events, a number of major sporting events have been held at the arena, including boxing matches such as Canelo lvarez vs. Gennady Golovkin and Floyd Mayweather Jr. vs. Conor McGregor. By virtue of the Golden Knights winning the 2017-18 Western Conference finals, it also played host to three games of the 2018 Stanley Cup Finals, between the Golden Knights and the Washington Capitals. The arena has hosted nationally televised entertainment events such as the Academy of Country Music Awards, the Billboard Music Awards, the iHeartRadio Music Festival, the Latin Grammys, the Miss USA beauty pageant, and WWE professional wrestling events.

Hangul🚨Korean, Jeju, Cia-Cia The Korean alphabet, known as Hangul (/?h?nu?l/ HAHN-gool;[1] from Korean hangeul ?? [ha(?)n.?l]), has been used to write the Korean language since its creation in the 15th century by Sejong the Great.[2][3] It is the official writing system of North Korea and South Korea. It is a co-official writing system in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture and Changbai Korean Autonomous County in Jilin Province, China. It is sometimes used to write the Cia-Cia language spoken near the town of Bau-Bau, Indonesia. The alphabet consists of 14 consonants and 10 vowels. Its letters are grouped into syllabic blocks, vertically and horizontally. For example, the Korean word for "honeybee" is written ??, not ??????.[4] As it combines the features of alphabetic and syllabic writing systems, it has been described as an "alphabetic syllabary" by some linguists.[5][6] As in traditional Chinese writing, Korean texts were traditionally written top to bottom, right to left, and are occasionally still written this way for stylistic purposes. Today, it is typically written from left to right with spaces between words and western-style punctuation.[7] Some linguists consider it the most logical writing system in the world, partly because the shapes of its consonants mimic the shapes of the speaker's mouth when pronouncing each consonant.[5][7][8] The Korean alphabet was originally called Hunminjeongeum (????), after the document that introduced the script to the Korean people in 1446.[10] North Koreans call the Korean alphabet Chos?n'g?l (???) after Chos?n, the North Korean name for Korea.[11] The McCuneÿReischauer system is used there. Today, South Koreans call the Korean alphabet hangeul (??), a name coined by Korean linguist Ju Si-gyeong in 1912. The name combines the ancient Korean word han (?), meaning "great", and geul (?), meaning "script". The word han is used to refer to Korea in general, so the name also means "Korean script".[12] It has been romanized in multiple ways: Until the early 20th century, the Korean elite preferred to write using Chinese characters called Hanja. They referred to Hanja as jinseo (??) or "true letters". Some accounts say the elite referred to the Korean alphabet derisively as amkeul (??) meaning "women's script", and ahaetgeul (???) meaning "children's script", though there is no written evidence of this.[13] Supporters of the Korean alphabet referred to it as jeong-eum (??) meaning "correct pronunciation", gungmun (??) meaning "national script", and eonmun (??) meaning "vernacular script".[13] Before the creation of the new Korean alphabet, Koreans primarily wrote using Classical Chinese alongside native phonetic writing systems that predate the modern Korean alphabet by hundreds of years, including Idu script, Hyangchal, Gugyeol and Gakpil.[14][15][16][17] However, due to fundamental differences between the Korean and Chinese languages, and the large number of characters, many lower class Koreans were illiterate.[18] To promote literacy among the common people, the fourth king of the Joseon dynasty, Sejong the Great, personally created and promulgated a new alphabet.[3][18][19] The Korean alphabet was designed so that people with little education could learn to read and write. A popular saying about the alphabet is, "A wise man can acquaint himself with them before the morning is over; even a stupid man can learn them in the space of ten days."[20] The project was completed in late December 1443 or January 1444, and described in 1446 in a document titled Hunminjeongeum ("The Proper Sounds for the Education of the People"), after which the alphabet itself was originally named.[13] The publication date of the Hunminjeongeum, October 9, became Hangul Day in South Korea. Its North Korean equivalent, Chos?n'g?l Day, is on January 15. Another document published in 1446 and titled Hunmin Jeongeum Haerye ("Hunmin Jeongeum Explanation and Examples") was discovered in 1940. This document explains that the design of the consonant letters is based on articulatory phonetics and the design of the vowel letters are based on the principles of yin and yang and vowel harmony. The Korean alphabet faced opposition in the 1440s by the literary elite, including politician Choe Manri and other Korean Confucian scholars. They believed Hanja was the only legitimate writing system. They also saw the circulation of the Korean alphabet as a threat to their status.[18] However, the Korean alphabet entered popular culture as King Sejong had intended, used especially by women and writers of popular fiction.[21] King Yeonsangun banned the study and publication of the Korean alphabet in 1504, after a document criticizing the king entered the public.[22] Similarly, King Jungjong abolished the Ministry of Eonmun, a governmental institution related to Hangul research, in 1506.[23] The late 16th century, however, saw a revival of the Korean alphabet as gasa and sijo poetry flourished. In the 17th century, the Korean alphabet novels became a major genre.[24] However, the use of the Korean alphabet had gone without standardisation for so long that spelling had become quite irregular.[21] In 1796, the Dutch scholar Isaac Titsingh became the first person to bring a book written in Korean to the West. His small library included the Japanese book, Sangoku Tsran Zusetsu (An Illustrated Description of Three Countries) by Hayashi Shihei.[25] This book, which was published in 1785, described the Joseon Kingdom[26] and the Korean alphabet.[27] In 1832, the Oriental Translation Fund of Great Britain and Ireland supported the posthumous abridged publication of Titsingh's French translation.[28] Thanks to growing Korean nationalism, the Gabo Reformists' push, and Western missionaries' promotion of the Korean alphabet in schools and literature[29] The Korean alphabet was adopted in official documents for the first time in 1894.[22] Elementary school texts began using the Korean alphabet in 1895, and Tongnip Sinmun, established in 1896, was the first newspaper printed in both Korean and English.[30] During the Japanese forced occupation, which began in 1910, Japanese was made the official language of Korea. However, the Korean alphabet was still taught in Korean-established schools built after the annexation and Korean was written in a mixed Hanja-Hangul script, where most lexical roots were written in Hanja and grammatical forms in the Korean alphabet. Japan banned earlier Korean literature from the public schools, which became mandatory for children. Orthography of the Korean alphabet was partially standardized in 1912, when the vowel arae-a (?)ÿwhich has now disappeared from Koreanÿwas restricted to Sino-Korean roots: the emphatic consonants were standardized to and final consonants restricted to. Long vowels were marked by a diacritic dot to the left of the syllable, but this was dropped in 1921.[21] A second colonial reform occurred in 1930. The arae-a was abolished: the emphatic consonants were changed to and more final consonants, ? were allowed, making the orthography more morphophonemic. The double-consonant ? was written alone (without a vowel) when it occurred between nouns, and the nominative particle -? was introduced after vowels, replacing -?.[21] Ju Si-gyeong, the linguist who had coined the term Hangul to replace Eonmun or "Vulgar Script" in 1912, established the Korean Language Research Society (later renamed the Hangul Society), which further reformed orthography with Standardized System of Hangul in 1933. The principal change was to make the Korean alphabet as morphophonemically practical given the existing letters.[21] A system for transliterating foreign orthographies was published in 1940. However, Japan banned the Korean language from schools in 1938 as part of a policy of cultural assimilation,[31] and all Korean-language publications were outlawed in 1941.[32] The definitive modern Korean alphabet orthography was published in 1946, just after Korean independence from Japanese rule. In 1948, North Korea attempted to make the script perfectly morphophonemic through the addition of new letters, and in 1953, Syngman Rhee in South Korea attempted to simplify the orthography by returning to the colonial orthography of 1921, but both reforms were abandoned after only a few years.[21] Both North Korea and South Korea have used the Korean alphabet or mixed script as their official writing system, with ever-decreasing use of Hanja. Beginning in the 1970s, Hanja began to experience a gradual decline in commercial or unofficial writing in the South due to government intervention, with some South Korean newspapers now only using Hanja as abbreviations or disambiguation of homonyms. There has been widespread debate as to the future of Hanja in South Korea. North Korea instated the Korean alphabet as its exclusive writing system in 1949, and banned the use of Hanja completely. While both North Korea and South Korea claim 99 percent literacy, a 2003 study found that 25 percent of those in the older generation in the South were not completely literate in the Korean alphabet.[33] The Hunminjeongeum Society in Seoul attempts to spread the use of the Korean alphabet to unwritten languages of Asia.[34] In 2009, the Korean alphabet was unofficially adopted by the town of Bau-Bau, in Southeast Sulawesi, Indonesia, to write the Cia-Cia language.[35][36][37] A number of Indonesian Cia-Cia speakers who visited Seoul generated large media attention in South Korea, and they were greeted on their arrival by Oh Se-hoon, the mayor of Seoul.[38] It was confirmed in October 2012 that the attempts to disseminate the use of the Korean alphabet in Indonesia failed.[39] Some people continue to use the Korean alphabet at home or co-officially. Letters in the Korean alphabet are called "jamo (??)". There are 19 consonants and 21 vowels used in the modern sort. The following consonants are used in the modern Korean alphabet: The chart below shows all 19 consonants in South Korean alphabetic order with Revised Romanization equivalents for each letter. Consonants in the Korean alphabet may sound differently depending on whether they are the initial or final letter in a syllable. Some consonants only appear in either the initial or final position in a syllable. (e.g. ?? - kang+ru = kang+nu, ?? - iss+eo = is-seo, -??? - -hap+ni+da = -ham-ni-da) (k) (kk) (n) (t) (-) (l) (m) (p) (-) (t) (ss/ s/ t/ n) (ng) (t) (-) (t) (k) (t) (p) (h) l+h Consonants in the Korean alphabet can be combined into 11 consonant clusters, which always appear in the final position in a syllable. They are:, and ?. (e.g. [solely] ? dag; [preceding word final letter] ?? - eop-ta, ?? an-ja) (gs) (nj) (nh) (lg) (lm) (lb) (ls) (lt) (lp) (lh) (ps) nt+ch The chart below shows the 21 vowels used in the modern Korean Alphabet in South Korean alphabetic order with Revised Romanization equivalents for each letter. Linguists disagree on the number of phonemes versus diphthongs among vowels in the Korean alphabet.[40] alphabetic order in the Korean alphabet is called the ganada order, (??? ?) after the first three letters of the alphabet. The alphabetical order of the Korean alphabet does not mix consonants and vowels. Rather, first are velar consonants, then coronals, labials, sibilants, etc. The vowels come after the consonants. The order from the Hunminjeongeum in 1446 was: In 1527, Choe Sejin reorganized the alphabet: This is the basis of the modern alphabetic orders. It was before the development of the Korean tense consonants and the double letters that represent them, and before the conflation of the letters ? (null) and ? (ng). Thus, when the North Korean and South Korean governments implemented full use of the Korean alphabet, they ordered these letters differently, with North Korea placing new letters at the end of the alphabet and South Korea grouping similar letters together. The new, doubled letters are placed at the end of the consonants, just before the nullso as not to alter the traditional order of the rest of the alphabet. All digraphs and trigraphs, including the old diphthongs ? andare placed after the simple vowels, again maintaining Choe's alphabetic order. The order of the final letters is: Unlike when it is initial, this ? is pronounced, as the nasal ? ng, which occurs only as a final in the modern language. The double letters are placed to the very end, as in the initial order, but the combined consonants are ordered immediately after their first element. In the Southern order a more modern order is maintained where double letters are placed immediately after their single counterparts: The modern monophthongal vowels come first, with the derived forms interspersed according to their form: i is added first, then iotized, then iotized with added i. Diphthongs beginning with w are ordered according to their spelling, as ? or ? plus a second vowel, not as separate digraphs. The order of the final letters (??) is: ("None" means there is no final letter.) Every syllable begins with a consonant (or the silent ?) that is followed by a vowel (e.g. ? + ? = ?). Some syllables such as "?" and "?" have a final consonant or final consonant cluster (??). Then, 399 combinations are possible for "two-letter syllables" and 10,773 possible combinations for syllables with more than two "letters" (27 possible final endings), for a total of 11,172 possible combinations of Korean alphabet "letters" to form syllables. Letters in the Korean alphabet were named by Korean linguist Choe Sejin in 1527. South Korea uses Choe's traditional names, most of which follow the format of letter + i + eu + letter. However, as the syllables ? euk, ? eut, and ? eut did not occur in the language, Choe gave those letters the modified names ?? giyeok, ?? digeut, and ?? siot, using native syllables. Originally, Choe gaveand ? the irregular one-syllable names of ji, chi, ki, ti, pi, and hi, because they should not be used as final consonants, as specified in Hunminjeongeum. However, after establishment of the new orthography in 1933, which let all consonants be used as finals, the names changed to the present forms. North Korea regularised Choe's original names when it made the Korean alphabet its official orthography. The chart below shows names used in North Korea for consonants in the Korean alphabet. The letters are arranged in North Korean alphabetic order, and the letter names are romanised with the McCune-Reischauer system, which is widely used in North Korea. The tense consonants are described with the word ? toen meaning "hard". In North Korea, an alternative way to refer to a consonant is letter + ? (?), for example, k? (?) for the letterand ss? (?) for the letter ?. As in South Korea, the names of vowels in the Korean alphabet are the same as the sound of each vowel. The chart below shows names used in South Korea for consonants of the Korean alphabet. The letters are arranged in the South Korean alphabetic order, and the letter names are romanised in the Revised Romanisation system, which is the official romanisation system of South Korea. The tense consonants are described with the word ? ssang meaning "double". The names of vowels in the Korean alphabet are the same as the sound of each vowel. For example, ? is called ? a. Letters in the Korean alphabet have adopted certain rules of Chinese calligraphy, although ? and ? use a circle, which is not used in printed Chinese characters. ? (giyeok ??) ? (nieun ??) ? (digeut ??) ? (rieul ??) ? (mieum ??) ? (bieup ??) ? (siot ??) ? (ieung ??) ? (jieut ??) ? (chieut ??) ? (kieuk ??) ? (tieut ??) ? (pieup ??) ? (hieut ??) ? (a) ? (ae) ? (eo) ? (e) ? (o) ? (u) ? (eu) For the iotized vowels, which are not shown, the short stroke is simply doubled. Scripts typically transcribe languages at the level of morphemes (logographic scripts like Hanja), of syllables (syllabaries like kana), of segments (alphabetic scripts like the Latin script used to write English and many other languages), or, on occasion, of distinctive features. The Korean alphabet incorporates aspects of the latter three, grouping sounds into syllables, using distinct symbols for segments, and in some cases using distinct strokes to indicate distinctive features such as place of articulation (labial, coronal, velar, or glottal) and manner of articulation (plosive, nasal, sibilant, aspiration) for consonants, and iotation (a preceding i-sound), harmonic class and i-mutation for vowels. For instance, the consonant ? t [t?] is composed of three strokes, each one meaningful: the top stroke indicates ? is a plosive, like ? g, ? d, ? j, which have the same stroke (the last is an affricate, a plosiveÿfricative sequence); the middle stroke indicates that ? is aspirated, like ? h, ? k, ? ch, which also have this stroke; and the bottom stroke indicates that ? is alveolar, like ? n, ? d, and ? l. (This element is said to represent the shape of the tongue when pronouncing coronal consonants, though this is not certain.) Two consonants, ? andhave dual pronunciations, and appear to be composed of two elements corresponding to these two pronunciations: [?]~silence for ? and [m]~[w] for obsolete ?. With vowel letters, a short stroke connected to the main line of the letter indicates that this is one of the vowels that can be iotated; this stroke is then doubled when the vowel is iotated. The position of the stroke indicates which harmonic class the vowel belongs to, "light" (top or right) or "dark" (bottom or left). In the modern alphabet, an additional vertical stroke indicates i-mutation, deriving ? [?], ? [e], ? [?], and ? [y] from ? [a], ? [?], ? [o], and ? [u]. However, this is not part of the intentional design of the script, but rather a natural development from what were originally diphthongs ending in the vowel ? [i]. Indeed, in many Korean dialects,[citation needed] including the standard dialect of Seoul, some of these may still be diphthongs. Some linguists have praised the Korean alphabet for its featural design; beyond the fact that the shapes of the letters are related to the features of the sounds they represent, the Korean alphabet also attracts approval for the fact that vowels are made from vertical or horizontal lines so that they are easily distinguishable from consonants. Although the design of the script may be featural, for all practical purposes it behaves as an alphabet. The letter ? is not read as three letters alveolar aspirated plosive, for instance, but as a single consonant t. Likewise, the former diphthong ? is read as a single vowel e. Beside the letters, the Korean alphabet originally employed diacritic marks to indicate pitch accent. A syllable with a high pitch (??) was marked with a dot (???) to the left of it (when writing vertically); a syllable with a rising pitch (??) was marked with a double dot, like a colon (???). These are no longer used. Although vowel length is still phonemic in some varieties of Korean, it is no longer written. The consonant letters fall into five homorganic groups, each with a basic shape, and one or more letters derived from this shape by means of additional strokes. In the Hunmin Jeong-eum Haerye account, the basic shapes iconically represent the articulations the tongue, palate, teeth, and throat take when making these sounds. The Korean names for the groups are taken from Chinese phonetics: Vowel letters are based on three elements: Short strokes (dots in the earliest documents) were added to these three basic elements to derive the vowel letter: The Korean alphabet never had a w, except in Sino-Korean vocabulary. Since an o or u before an a or eo became a [w] sound, and [w] occurred nowhere else, [w] could always be analyzed as a phonemic o or u, and no letter for [w] was needed. However, vowel harmony is observed: "dark" ??u with "dark" ??eo for ? wo; "bright" ??o with "bright" ??a for ? wa: The compound vowels ending in ? i were originally diphthongs. However, several have since evolved into pure vowels: There is no letter for y. Instead, this sound is indicated by doubling the stroke attached to the baseline of the vowel letter. Of the seven basic vowels, four could be preceded by a y sound, and these four were written as a dot next to a line. (Through the influence of Chinese calligraphy, the dots soon became connected to the line: ????.) A preceding y sound, called "iotation", was indicated by doubling this dot: ???? yeo, ya, yu, yo. The three vowels that could not be iotated were written with a single stroke: ??? eu, (arae a), i. The simple iotated vowels are: There are also two iotated diphthongs: The Korean language of the 15th century had vowel harmony to a greater extent than it does today. Vowels in grammatical morphemes changed according to their environment, falling into groups that "harmonized" with each other. This affected the morphology of the language, and Korean phonology described it in terms of yin and yang: If a root word had yang ('bright') vowels, then most suffixes attached to it also had to have yang vowels; conversely, if the root had yin ('dark') vowels, the suffixes had to be yin as well. There was a third harmonic group called "mediating" ('neutral' in Western terminology) that could coexist with either yin or yang vowels. The Korean neutral vowel was ? i. The yin vowels were ??? eu, u, eo; the dots are in the yin directions of 'down' and 'left'. The yang vowels were ???o, a, with the dots in the yang directions of 'up' and 'right'. The Hunmin Jeong-eum Haerye states that the shapes of the non-dotted letters ??? were chosen to represent the concepts of yin, yang, and mediation: Earth, Heaven, and Human. (The letter ? ? is now obsolete except in the Jeju language.) The third parameter in designing the vowel letters was choosing ? as the graphic base of ? andand ? as the graphic base of ? and ?. A full understanding of what these horizontal and vertical groups had in common would require knowing the exact sound values these vowels had in the 15th century. The uncertainty is primarily with the three letters ???. Some linguists reconstruct these as *a, *?, *e, respectively; others as *?, *e, *a. A third reconstruction is to make them all middle vowels as *?, *?, *a.[41] With the third reconstruction, Middle Korean vowels actually line up in a vowel harmony pattern, albeit with only one front vowel and four middle vowels: However, the horizontal letters ??? eu,?u,?o do all appear to have been mid to high back vowels, [*?, *u, *o], and thus to have formed a coherent group phonetically in every reconstruction. The generally accepted account[nb 1][42] on the design of the letters is that the vowels are derived from various combinations of the following three components: ? ? ?. Here, ? symbolically stands for the (sun in) heaven, ? stands for the (flat) earth, and ? stands for an (upright) human. The original sequence of the Korean vowels, as stated in Hunminjeongeum, listed these three vowels first, followed by various combinations. Thus, the original order of the vowels was: ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?. Note that two positive vowels (? ?) including one ? are followed by two negative vowels including onethen by two positive vowels each including two ofand then by two negative vowels each including two of ?. The same theory provides the most simple explanation of the shapes of the consonants as an approximation of the shapes of the most representative organ needed to form that sound. The original order of the consonants in Hunmin Jeong-eum was: ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?. ? representing the /k/ sound geometrically describes a tongue just before the moment of pronunciation as the tongue blocks the passage of air. ? representing the /k?/ sound is derived from ? by adding another stroke. ? representing the /?/ sound may have been derived from ? by addition of a stroke. ? representing the /t/ sound is derived from ? by addition of a stroke. ? representing the /t?/ sound is derived from ? by adding another stroke. ? representing the /n/ sound geometrically describes a tongue making contact with an upper palate just before making the "n" sound. ? representing the /p/ sound is derived from ? by adding strokes. ? representing the /p?/ sound is a variant ofwhich is obtained by rotating 90 degrees and extending the horizontal strokes. ? representing the /m/ sound geometrically describes a closed mouth before opening the lips. ? representing the /t?/ sound is derived from the shape of ? by adding strokes. ? representing the /t??/ sound is derived from ? by adding another stroke. ? representing the /s/ sound geometrically describes a near contact between the tongue and the teeth.[citation needed] ? representing the /?/ sound geometrically describes an open throat with a bar to indicate that there is an aspiration. ? representing the /h/ sound is derived from ? with the extra stroke representing a stronger flow of the aspiration. ? representing the absence of a consonant geometrically describes an open mouth, which necessarily accompanies the following vowel. ? representing the /?/ and /l/ sounds geometrically describes a backward-bending tongue. ? representing a weak /z/ sound is also derived from the shape of the teeth, but has a different origin than ?[clarification needed] and is not derived from ? by addition of a stroke. Although the Hunmin Jeong-eum Haerye explains the design of the consonantal letters in terms of articulatory phonetics, as a purely innovative creation, several theories suggest which external sources may have inspired or influenced King Sejong's creation. Professor Gari Ledyard of Columbia University studied possible connections between Hangul and the Mongol 'Phags-pa script of the Yuan dynasty. He believed that the role of 'Phags-pa script in the creation of the Korean alphabet was quite limited: It should be clear to any reader that in the total picture, that ['Phags-pa script's] role was quite limited ... Nothing would disturb me more, after this study is published, than to discover in a work on the history of writing a statement like the following: "According to recent investigations, the Korean alphabet was derived from the Mongol's phags-pa script."[43] An affine theory states that the consonants are derived from the shape of the speaker's lips and tongue during the pronunciation of the consonants (initially, at least), but this would appear somewhat to strain credulity.[44] Ledyard posits that five of the Korean letters have shapes inspired by 'Phags-pa; a sixth basic letter, the null initialwas invented by Sejong. The rest of the letters were derived internally from these six, essentially as described in the Hunmin Jeong-eum Haerye. However, the five borrowed consonants were not the graphically simplest letters considered basic by the Hunmin Jeong-eum Haerye, but instead the consonants basic to Chinese phonology:and ?. The Hunmin Jeong-eum states that King Sejong adapted the m (gojeon, "GѸ Seal Script") in creating the Korean alphabet. The m has never been identified. The primary meaning of gѸ is "old" ("Old Seal Script"), frustrating philologists because the Korean alphabet bears no functional similarity to Chinese m zhunz seal scripts. However, Ledyard believes gѸ may be a pun on з MnggѸ "Mongol", and that m is an abbreviation of зm "Mongol Seal Script", that is, the formal variant of the 'Phags-pa alphabet written to look like the Chinese seal script. There were 'Phags-pa manuscripts in the Korean palace library, including some in the seal-script form, and several of Sejong's ministers knew the script well. If this was the case, Sejong's evasion on the Mongol connection can be understood in light of Korea's relationship with Ming China after the fall of the Mongol Yuan dynasty, and of the literati's contempt for the Mongols as "barbarians". According to Ledyard, the five borrowed letters were graphically simplified, which allowed for consonant clusters and left room to add a stroke to derive the aspirate plosives, ????. But in contrast to the traditional account, the non-plosives (? ? ? ?) were derived by removing the top of the basic letters. He points out that while it is easy to derive ? from ? by removing the top, it is not clear how to derive ? from ? in the traditional account, since the shape of ? is not analogous to those of the other plosives. The explanation of the letter ng also differs from the traditional account. Many Chinese words began with ng, but by King Sejong's day, initial ng was either silent or pronounced [?] in China, and was silent when these words were borrowed into Korean. Also, the expected shape of ng (the short vertical line left by removing the top stroke of ?) would have looked almost identical to the vowel ? [i]. Sejong's solution solved both problems: The vertical stroke left from ? was added to the null symbol ? to create ? (a circle with a vertical line on top), iconically capturing both the pronunciation [?] in the middle or end of a word, and the usual silence at the beginning. (The graphic distinction between null ? and ng ? was eventually lost.) Another letter composed of two elements to represent two regional pronunciations waswhich transcribed the Chinese initial a. This represented either m or w in various Chinese dialects, and was composed of ? [m] plus ? (from 'Phags-pa [w]). In 'Phags-pa, a loop under a letter represented w after vowels, and Ledyard hypothesized that this became the loop at the bottom of ?. In 'Phags-pa the Chinese initial a is also transcribed as a compound with w, but in its case the w is placed under an h. Actually, the Chinese consonant series a w, v, f is transcribed in 'Phags-pa by the addition of a w under three graphic variants of the letter for h, and the Korean alphabet parallels this convention by adding the w loop to the labial series ??? m, b, p, producing now-obsolete ??? w, v, f. (Phonetic values in Korean are uncertain, as these consonants were only used to transcribe Chinese.) As a final piece of evidence, Ledyard notes that most of the borrowed Korean letters were simple geometric shapes, at least originally, but that ? d [t] always had a small lip protruding from the upper left corner, just as the 'Phags-pa d [t] did. This lip can be traced back to the Tibetan letter d. Numerous obsolete Korean letters and sequences are no longer used in Korean. Some of these letters were only ever used to represent the sounds of Chinese rime tables. Some of the Korean sounds represented by these obsolete letters still exist in some dialects. In the original Korean alphabet system, double letters were used to represent Chinese voiced (??) consonants, which survive in the Shanghainese slack consonants and were not used for Korean words. It was only later that a similar convention was used to represent the modern "tense" (faucalized) consonants of Korean. The sibilant ("dental") consonants were modified to represent the two series of Chinese sibilants, alveolar and retroflex, a "round" vs. "sharp" distinction (analogous to s vs sh) which was never made in Korean, and was even being lost from southern Chinese. The alveolar letters had longer left stems, while retroflexes had longer right stems: To make the Korean alphabet a perfect morphophonological fit to the Korean language, North Korea introduced six new letters, which were published in the New Orthography for the Korean Language and used officially from 1948 to 1954. Two obsolete letters were restored: ??? (??), which was used to indicate an alternation in pronunciation between initial /l/ and final /d/; and ??? (??), which was only pronounced between vowels. Two modifications of the letter ? were introduced, one for awhich is silent finally, and one for awhich doubled between vowels. A hybrid ?-? letter was introduced for words that alternated between those two sounds (that is, a /b/, which became /w/ before a vowel). Finally, a vowel ?1? was introduced for variable iotation. Hangul Jamo (U+1100ÿU+11FF) and Hangul Compatibility Jamo (U+3130ÿU+318F) blocks were added to the Unicode Standard in June 1993 with the release of version 1.1. The characters were relocated to their present locations in July, 1996 with the release of version 2.0. Hangul Jamo Extended-A (U+A960ÿU+A97F) and Hangul Jamo Extended-B (U+D7B0ÿU+D7FF) blocks were added to the Unicode Standard in October 2009 with the release of version 5.2. Parenthesised (U+3200ÿU+321E) and circled (U+3260ÿU+327E) Hangul compatibility characters are in the Enclosed CJK Letters and Months block: Half-width Hangul compatibility characters (U+FFA0ÿU+FFDC) are in the Halfwidth and Fullwidth Forms block: The Korean alphabet in other Unicode blocks: Except for a few grammatical morphemes prior to the twentieth century, no letter stands alone to represent elements of the Korean language. Instead, letters are grouped into syllabic or morphemic blocks of at least two and often three: a consonant or a doubled consonant called the initial (??, ? choseong syllable onset), a vowel or diphthong called the medial (??, ? jungseong syllable nucleus), and, optionally, a consonant or consonant cluster at the end of the syllable, called the final (??, ? jongseong syllable coda). When a syllable has no actual initial consonant, the null initial ? ieung is used as a placeholder. (In the modern Korean alphabet, placeholders are not used for the final position.) Thus, a block contains a minimum of two letters, an initial and a medial. Although the Korean alphabet had historically been organised into syllables, in the modern orthography it is first organised into morphemes, and only secondarily into syllables within those morphemes, with the exception that single-consonant morphemes may not be written alone. The sets of initial and final consonants are not the same. For instance, ? ng only occurs in final position, while the doubled letters that can occur in final position are limited to ? ss and ? kk. Not including obsolete letters, 11,172 blocks are possible in the Korean alphabet. Egyptian hieroglyphs 32 c. BCE Hangul 1443 (probably influenced by Tibetan) The placement or "stacking" of letters in the block follows set patterns based on the shape of the medial. Consonant and vowel sequences such as ? bs, ? wo, or obsolete ? bsd, ? ye are written left to right. Vowels (medials) are written under the initial consonant, to the right, or wrap around the initial from bottom to right, depending on their shape: If the vowel has a horizontal axis like ? eu, then it is written under the initial; if it has a vertical axis like ? i, then it is written to the right of the initial; and if it combines both orientations, like ? ui, then it wraps around the initial from the bottom to the right: A final consonant, if present, is always written at the bottom, under the vowel. This is called ?? batchim "supporting floor": A complex final is written left to right: Blocks are always written in phonetic order, initial-medial-final. Therefore: Normally the resulting block is written within a square of the same size and shape as a Hanja (Chinese character) by compressing or stretching the letters to fill the bounds of the block; therefore someone not familiar with the scripts may mistake the Korean alphabet for Hanja or Chinese. However, some recent fonts (for example Eun,[48] HY????M, UnJamo]) move towards the European practice of letters whose relative size is fixed, and use whitespace to fill letter positions not used in a particular block, and away from the East Asian tradition of square block characters (Դݔ). They break one or more of the traditional rules: These fonts have been used as design accents on signs or headings, rather than for typesetting large volumes of body text. There was a minor and unsuccessful movement in the early twentieth century to abolish syllabic blocks and write the letters individually and in a row, in the fashion of the European alphabets: e.g. ?????? for ?? Hangeul.[49] Avant-garde typographer Ahn Sangsu made a font for the "Hangul Dada" exposition that exploded the syllable blocks; but while it strings out the letters horizontally, it retains the distinctive vertical position each letter would normally have within a block, unlike the century-old linear writing proposals.[50] While Koreans have largely accepted the European-derived conventions of writing successive syllables left-to-right in horizontal lines instead of in vertical columns, adding spaces between words, and European-style punctuation, they rejected eliminating syllabic blocks, the most distinctive feature of this writing system. Until the 20th century, no official orthography of the Korean alphabet had been established. Due to liaison, heavy consonant assimilation, dialectical variants and other reasons, a Korean word can potentially be spelled in multiple ways. Sejong seemed to prefer morphophonemic spelling (representing the underlying root forms) rather than a phonemic one (representing the actual sounds). However, early in its history the Korean alphabet was dominated by phonemic spelling. Over the centuries the orthography became partially morphophonemic, first in nouns and later in verbs. The modern Korean alphabet is as morphophonemic as is practical. The difference between phonetic Romanisation, phonemic orthography and morpho-phonemic orthography can be illustrated with the phrase motaneun sarami: motaneun sarami [mo.t?a.n?n.sa.?a.mi] a person who cannot do it ?????? /mo.t?a.n?n.sa.la.mi/ ?????? |mot-ha-n?n-sa.lam-i| After the Gabo Reform in 1894, the Joseon Dynasty and later the Korean Empire started to write all official documents in the Korean alphabet. Under the government's management, proper usage of the Korean alphabet and Hanja, including orthography, was discussed, until the Korean Empire was annexed by Japan in 1910. The Government-General of Korea popularised a writing style that mixed Hanja and the Korean alphabet, and was used in the later Joseon dynasty. The government revised the spelling rules in 1912, 1921 and 1930, to be relatively phonemic. The Hangul Society, founded by Ju Si-gyeong, announced a proposal for a new, strongly morphophonemic orthography in 1933, which became the prototype of the contemporary orthographies in both North and South Korea. After Korea was divided, the North and South revised orthographies separately. The guiding text for orthography of the Korean alphabet is called Hangeul Matchumbeop, whose last South Korean revision was published in 1988 by the Ministry of Education. Since the Late Joseon dynasty period, various Hanja-Hangul mixed systems were used. In these systems, Hanja were used for lexical roots, and the Korean alphabet for grammatical words and inflections, much as kanji and kana are used in Japanese. Hanja have been almost entirely phased out of daily use in North Korea, and in South Korea they are mostly restricted to parenthetical glosses for proper names and for disambiguating homonyms. Indo-Arabic numerals are mixed in with the Korean alphabet, as in 2007? 3? 22? (22 March 2007). In Korean pop-culture Roman words may be injected for artistic purposes. Latin script and occasionally other scripts may be sprinkled within Korean texts for illustrative purposes, or for unassimilated loanwords. Very occasionally non-Hangul letters may be mixed into Korean syllabic blocks, as G? Ga at right. Because of syllable clustering, words are shorter on the page than their linear counterparts would be, and the boundaries between syllables are easily visible (which may aid reading, if segmenting words into syllables is more natural for the reader than dividing them into phonemes).[51] Because the component parts of the syllable are relatively simple phonemic characters, the number of strokes per character on average is lower than in Chinese characters. Unlike syllabaries, such as Japanese kana, or Chinese logographs, none of which encode the constituent phonemes within a syllable, the graphic complexity of Korean syllabic blocks varies in direct proportion with the phonemic complexity of the syllable.[52] Unlike linear alphabets such as those derived from Latin, Korean orthography allows the reader to "utilize both the horizontal and vertical visual fields".[53] Finally, since Korean syllables are represented both as collections of phonemes and as unique-looking graphs, they may allow for both visual and aural retrieval of words from the lexicon. The Korean alphabet may be written either vertically or horizontally. The traditional direction is from top to bottom, right to left. Horizontal writing in the style of the Latin script was promoted by Ju Si-gyeong, and has become overwhelmingly prevalent. In Hunmin Jeongeum, the Korean alphabet was printed in sans-serif angular lines of even thickness. This style is found in books published before about 1900, and can be found in stone carvings (on statues, for example). Over the centuries, an ink-brush style of calligraphy developed, employing the same style of lines and angles as traditional Korean calligraphy. This brush style is called gungche (?? ?mN), which means "Palace Style" because the style was mostly developed and used by the maidservants (gungnyeo, ?? ?mW) of the court in Joseon dynasty. Modern styles that are more suited for printed media were developed in the 20th century. In 1993, new names for both Myeongjo (]) and Gothic styles were introduced when Ministry of Culture initiated an effort to standardize typographic terms, and the names Batang (??, meaning "background") and Dodum (??, meaning "stand out") replaced Myeongjo and Gothic respectively. These names are also used in Microsoft Windows. A sans-serif style with lines of equal width is popular with pencil and pen writing and is often the default typeface of Web browsers. A minor advantage of this style is that it makes it easier to distinguish -eung from -ung even in small or untidy print, as the jongseong ieung (?) of such fonts usually lacks a serif that could be mistaken for the short vertical line of the letter ? (u).

23 and 24 June 2010🚨Marina Bay Sands is an integrated resort fronting Marina Bay in Singapore. At its opening in 2010, it was billed as the world's most expensive standalone casino property at S$8 billion, including the land cost.[2][3] The resort includes a 2,561-room hotel, a 120,000-square-metre (1,300,000?sq?ft) convention-exhibition centre, the 74,000-square-metre (800,000?sq?ft) The Shoppes at Marina Bay Sands mall, a museum, two large theatres, "celebrity chef" restaurants, two floating Crystal Pavilions, art-science exhibits, and the world's largest atrium casino with 500 tables and 1,600 slot machines. The complex is topped by a 340-metre-long (1,120?ft) SkyPark with a capacity of 3,900 people and a 150?m (490?ft) infinity swimming pool, set on top of the world's largest public cantilevered platform, which overhangs the north tower by 67?m (220?ft).[4][5] The 20-hectare resort was designed by Moshe Safdie architects.[6][7][8] The architect was Aedas,[9] and they were responsible for employing all consultants and for developing, co-ordinating and implementing the design. Engineering was provided by Arup and Parsons Brinkerhoff (MEP). The main contractor was Ssangyong Engineering and Construction.[10][11] Originally set to open in 2009, Las Vegas Sands faced delays caused by escalating costs of material and labour shortages from the outset. The global financial crisis also pressured the company to delay its projects elsewhere to complete the integrated resort.[12] Although Marina Bay Sands has been compared in scale and development costs to MGM's CityCenter, the latter is a mixed-use development, with condominium properties (comprising three of the seven main structures) being sold off.[13][14] The resort and SkyPark were officially opened on 23 and 24 June 2010 as part of a two-day celebration, following the casino's opening on 27 April that year.[15] The SkyPark opened the following day. The theatres were completed in time for the first performance of Riverdance on 30 November. The indoor skating rink, which uses artificial ice, opened to a performance by Michelle Kwan on 18 December. The ArtScience Museum opened to the public and the debut of a 13-minute light, laser and water show called Wonder Full on 19 February 2011 marked the full completion of the integrated resort. The grand opening of Marina Bay Sands was held on 17 February 2011. It also marked the opening of the seven celebrity chef restaurants. The musical The Lion King debuted on 3 March 2011.[16] The last portion of the Marina Bay Sands, the floating pavilions, were finally opened to the public when the two tenants, Louis Vuitton and Pangaea Club, opened on 18 and 22 September 2011, respectively.[17] Marina Bay Sands is one of two winning proposals for Singapore's first integrated resorts, the other being the Resorts World Sentosa, which incorporates a family-friendly Universal Studios Theme Park (Universal Studios Singapore). The two large-scale resorts were conceived to meet Singapore's economic and tourism objectives for the next decade and will have 30-year casino licenses, exclusive for the first ten years. Bidders were assessed based on four criteria: tourism appeal and contribution, architectural concept and design, development investment, and strength of the consortium and partners On 27 May 2006, Las Vegas Sands (LVS) was declared the winner with its business-oriented resort.[18] LVS submitted its winning bid on its own. Its original partner City Developments Limited (CDL), with a proposed 15% equity stake, pulled out of the partnership in the second phase of the tender process. CDL's CEO, Kwek Leng Beng said his company's pullout was a combination of factorssuch as difficulties in getting numerous companies he owns to comply in time, as well as reluctance of some parties to disclose certain private information in probity checks required by the Singapore government.[19] However, Kwek was retained as an advisor for Sands' bid. Las Vegas Sands initially committed to invest S$3.85 billion in the project, not including the fixed S$1.2 billion cost of the 6,000,000 square feet (560,000?m2) site itself.[20] With the escalating costs of materials, such as sand and steel, and labour shortages owing to other major infrastructure and property development in the country, Sheldon Adelson placed the total cost of the development at S$8.0 billion as of July 2009.[2][21] Las Vegas Sands declared the undertaking as "one of the world's most challenging construction projects and certainly the most expensive stand-alone integrated resort property ever built".[22] It expects the casino to generate at least $1 billion in annual profit.[13] Two months after the initial phased opening, the casino attracts around 25,000 visitors daily, about a third being Singaporeans and permanent residents who pay a $100 daily entry levy or $2,000 for annual unlimited access.[23] Half a million gamblers passed through the casino in June 2010.[24] In the third quarter of 2012, the revenues of the Marina Bay Sands fell almost 28 per cent from a year earlier.[25] For the economy, Marina Bay Sands is projected to stimulate an addition of $2.7 billion or 0.8% to Singapore's Gross Domestic Product by 2015, employing 10,000 people directly and 20,000 jobs being created in other industries.[19] The resort is designed by Moshe Safdie,[6][7][8] who says it was initially inspired by card decks. In addition to the casino, other key components of the plan are three hotel towers with 2,500 rooms and suites, a 19,000?m2 (200,000?sq?ft) ArtScience Museum and a convention centre with 110,000?m2 (1,200,000?sq?ft) of space, capable of accommodating up to 45,000 people. A continuous lobby at the base linked the three towers. The resort's architecture and major design changes along the way were also approved by its feng shui consultants, the late Chong Swan Lek and Louisa Ong-Lee.[26][27] A distinctive feature of the hotel is the SkyPark, a three-acre park on top of the building with swimming pools, gardens, and jogging paths. The structure bridges all three towers with a segment cantilevered off the north tower. The hull of the SkyPark was pre-fabricated off-site in 14 separate steel sections and then assembled on top of the towers.[28] There are four movement joints beneath the main pools, designed to help them withstand the natural motion of the towers, and each joint has a unique range of motion. The total range of motion is 500 millimetres (20 inches). In addition to wind, the hotel towers are also subject to settlement in the earth over time, so engineers built and installed custom jack legs to allow for future adjustment at more than 500 points beneath the pool system. This jacking system is important primarily to ensure the infinity edge of the pool continues to function properly.[29] The three towers are broader at the base and narrow as they rise. Each tower has two asymmetric legs, with a curved eastern leg leaning against the other, creating a significant technical challenge in its construction. Substantial temporary structures were necessary to support the legs of the tower while they were under construction, and required real-time monitoring for continual assessment and analyses in the course of their erection. The structural engineering for the project was handled by Arup, with Parsons Brinckerhoff the MEP engineers. This building was built by South Korean construction company "SsangYong".[30] Marina Bay Sands was originally planned to be completed in a single phase in 2009,[21] but rising construction costs and the financial crisis forced the company to open it in phases. The first phase's preview opening was further delayed until 27 April 2010, and the official opening was pushed back to 23 June 2010. The rest of the complex remained under construction and was opened after a grand opening on 17 February 2011. On 27 April 2010, Marina Bay Sands had the first of a planned 3 to 4 phase openings. The casino, parts of the conference hall, a segment of the Shoppes, 963 hotel rooms and the event plaza were opened at the auspicious time of 3:18 p.m as part of the "preview opening".[31] The Inter-Pacific Bar Association (IPBA) held the first conference at Marina Bay Sands Convention Centre on 2ÿ5 May 2010, but the event was marred by uncompleted facilities and power failure during a speech. IPBA withheld payment of S$300,000 and was consequently sued by Marina Bay Sands.[32] In June IPBA counter-sued, describing the venue as a "complete disaster" and that its earlier payments had been imposed by "duress, fear and force".[32] An "amicable settlement" with undisclosed terms was announced in August. On 23 June 2010, the resort had its official opening with a "2-day celebration"; this includes the Sands SkyPark, the Event Plaza along Marina Bay, more shops, additional dining options and nightlife offerings, and the rest of the hotel rooms. First day events includeda "World Championship Climb" on the glass facade of the building to the SkyPark, with seven teams of 21 top rock climbers from around the world competing, and an evening concert for 4,000 invited guests and customers, featuring Jacintha Abisheganaden, Sylvia Ratonel, Tabitha Nauser and Toni Braxton among others. The SkyPark was opened on the second day at 2?p.m.,[22] with about 2,000 adult tickets costing S$20 each sold.[33] The two Sands theatres were completed in time for the first performance by Riverdance on 30 November 2010. The ArtScience Museum opened its doors to the public at 10?am on 19 February 2011. The highly anticipated musical The Lion King made its debut on 3 March 2011. The floating pavilions were opened when the tenants Louis Vuitton and Pangaea Club finished their refurbishment and opened on 18 September 2011 and 22 September 2011, respectively. The Lion King musical ran till its last show on 30 October 2011.[34] Marina Bay Sands has three 55-storey hotel towers which were topped out in July 2009. The three towers are connected by a 1 hectare roof terrace, Sands SkyPark.[35] The observation deck provides panoramic views across the bay.[36] In front of the three towers include a Theatre Block, a Convention and Exhibition Facilities Block, as well as the Casino Block, which have up to 1,000 gaming tables and 1,400 slot machines. The ArtScience Museum is constructed next to the three blocks and has the shape of a lotus. Its roof is retractable, providing a waterfall through the roof of collected rainwater when closed in the day and laser shows when opened at night. In front of the Event Plaza is Wonder Full, a light and water show that is the largest in Southeast Asia and was produced by Laservision.[37] The ArtScience Museum and Wonder Full show opened on 17 February 2011. The SkyPark has the world's longest elevated swimming pool,[38][29] with a 146-metre (479?ft) vanishing edge (a concept called as infinity pool) located 191 metres (627?ft) above ground. The pools are made up of 422,000 pounds (191,000?kg) of stainless steel and can hold 376,500 US gallons (1,425 cubic metres) of water. The SkyPark also has rooftop nightclubs such as Lavo (New York, Vegas) and Ce La Vie,[39] gardens, hundreds of trees and plants, and a public observatory deck on the cantilever with 360-degree views of the Singapore skyline. The SkyPark is accessible only to the hotel guests for security reasons. The Shoppes at Marina Bay Sands have close to 93,000?m2 (1,000,000?sq?ft) of retail space with over 300 stores and F&B outlets, featuring boutiques such as Ralph Lauren, Chanel, Cartier, Prada, Gucci, Herms, Emporio Armani, Chopard, REDValentino, Dior, Dunhill, Vertu, Miu Miu, Saint Laurent Paris, Salvatore Ferragamo, Montblanc, Blancpain, Vera Wang Bride, a Herms watch boutique, and Herve Leger. A canal runs through the length of the Shoppes, in the same style as The Venetian in Las Vegas. Sampan rides on the canal are available for guests and shoppers at the shopping mall, similar to the gondola rides available in the Venetian. Also housed within the Shoppes are six of the ten Celebrity Chef restaurantsBread Street Kitchen (by Gordon Ramsay), Cut (by Wolfgang Puck), Waku Ghin (by Tetsuya Wakuda), Pizzeria and Osteria Mozza (by Mario Batali), Long Chim (by David Thompson) and DB Bistro & Oyster Bar (by Daniel Boulud). There are two Crystal Pavilions. Despite a brief legal dispute in June 2011, it was decided that one of the Pavilions will house two nightclubsAvalon and Pangaea. In addition, the second Pavilion houses the world's largest Louis Vuitton boutique, in addition to being on a floating island, at 1,900?m2 (20,000?sq?ft), which is connected to the portion of the boutique in the Shoppes via an underwater tunnel. Both Pavilions opened in 2011 just before the 2011 Formula One season came to the Marina Bay Street Circuit. The Sands Theatre and Grand Theatre seat 1,680 people and 2,155 people, respectively, with The Lion King showing, and international acts, such as Cirque loize and A. R. Rahman's Jai Ho, located in the latter during their world tours. The musical, Wicked, is set to run for a limited season which started 7 December 2011. Next to the theatres is a skating rink (synthetic ice) measuring 600?m2 (6,500?sq?ft). Dragonfire boxing is another regular event, which started on 5 May 2012 with the boxers Chris John with Daud Yordan. Moshe Safdie designed an Art Path within the resort, incorporating installations by five artists including Zheng Chongbin, Antony Gormley and Sol LeWitt. The pieces are meant to play on environmental influences including light, water and wind, integrating art with architecture.[6][7][8][40] By Mass Rapid Transit (MRT): By public bus: By water taxi: The trailer of the 2016 movie Independence Day: Resurgence has a scene depicting the destruction of the property after being caught in the gravitational pull of a hovering alien spacecraft.[41] Construction area taken from The Float at Marina Bay on 18 August 2007 Part of the parcel of land for Marina Bay Sands in the foreground prior to development. The parcel overlooks Singapore's financial district in the background. Marina Bay Sands with Singapore Merlion View of Marina Bay Sands in the background with Custom House located at the foreground Aerial of the roof top pool Marina Bay Sands Aerial of Marina Bay Sands Hotel, Singapore Venetian gondolas in Mandalay Bay shopping mall Rooftop Pool Marina bay, Singapore Coordinates: 11657.54N 1035130.30E? / ?1.2826500N 103.8584167E? / 1.2826500; 103.8584167

a flame, or a heated tube🚨An ignition system generates a spark or heats an electrode to a high temperature to ignite a fuel-air mixture in spark ignition internal combustion engines oil-fired and gas-fired boilers, rocket engines, etc. The widest application for spark ignition internal combustion engines is in petrol (gasoline) road vehicles: cars (autos), four-by-fours (SUVs), motorcycles, pickups, vans, trucks, and buses. Compression ignition Diesel engines ignite the fuel-air mixture by the heat of compression and do not need a spark. They usually have glowplugs that preheat the combustion chamber to allow starting in cold weather. Other engines may use a flame, or a heated tube, for ignition. While this was common for very early engines it is now rare. The first electric spark ignition was probably Alessandro Volta's toy electric pistol from the 1780s. The simplest form of spark ignition is that using a magneto. The engine spins a magnet inside a coil, or, in the earlier designs, a coil inside a fixed magnet, and also operates a contact breaker, interrupting the current and causing the voltage to be increased sufficiently to jump a small gap. The spark plugs are connected directly from the magneto output. Early magnetos had one coil, with the contact breaker (sparking plug) inside the combustion chamber. In about 1902, Bosch introduced a double-coil magneto, with a fixed sparking plug, and the contact breaker outside the cylinder. Magnetos are not used in modern cars, but because they generate their own electricity they are often found on small engines such as those found in mopeds, lawnmowers, snowblowers, chainsaws, etc. where a battery-based electrical system is not present for any combination of necessity, weight, cost, and reliability reasons. They are also used on piston-engined aircraft engines. Although an electrical supply is available, magneto systems are used mainly because of their higher reliability. Magnetos were used on the small engine's ancestor, the stationary "hit and miss" engine which was used in the early twentieth century, on older gasoline or distillate farm tractors before battery starting and lighting became common, and on aircraft piston engines. Magnetos were used in these engines because their simplicity and self-contained operation was more reliable, and because magnetos weighed less than having a battery and dynamo or alternator. Aircraft engines usually have dual magnetos to provide redundancy in the event of a failure, and to increase efficiency by thoroughly and quickly burning the fuel air mix from both sides towards the center. The Wright brothers used a magneto invented in 1902 and built for them in 1903 by Dayton, Ohio inventor, Vincent Groby Apple.[1] Some older automobiles had both a magneto system and a battery actuated system (see below) running simultaneously to ensure proper ignition under all conditions with the limited performance each system provided at the time. This gave the benefits of easy starting (from the battery system) with reliable sparking at speed (from the magneto). Many modern magneto systems (except for small engines) have removed the second (high voltage) coil from the magneto itself and placed it in an external coil assembly similar to the ignition coil described below. In this development, the induced current in the coil in the magneto also flows through the primary of the external coil, generating a high voltage in the secondary as a result. Such a system is referred to as an 'energy transfer system'. Energy transfer systems provide the ultimate in ignition reliability. The output of a magneto depends on the speed of the engine, and therefore starting can be problematic. Some magnetos include an impulse system, which spins the magnet quickly at the proper moment, making easier starting at slow cranking speeds. Some engines, such as aircraft but also the Ford Model T, used a system which relied on non rechargeable dry cells, (similar to a large flashlight battery, and which was not maintained by a charging system as on modern automobiles) to start the engine or for starting and running at low speed. The operator would manually switch the ignition over to magneto operation for high speed operation. To provide high voltage for the spark from the low voltage batteries, a 'tickler' was used, which was essentially a larger version of the once widespread electric buzzer. With this apparatus, the direct current passes through an electromagnetic coil which pulls open a pair of contact points, interrupting the current; the magnetic field collapses, the spring-loaded points close again, the circuit is reestablished, and the cycle repeats rapidly. The rapidly collapsing magnetic field, however, induces a high voltage across the coil which can only relieve itself by arcing across the contact points; while in the case of the buzzer this is a problem as it causes the points to oxidize and/or weld together, in the case of the ignition system this becomes the source of the high voltage to operate the spark plugs. In this mode of operation, the coil would "buzz" continuously, producing a constant train of sparks. The entire apparatus was known as the 'Model T spark coil' (in contrast to the modern ignition coil which is only the actual coil component of the system). Long after the demise of the Model T as transportation they remained a popular self-contained source of high voltage for electrical home experimenters, appearing in articles in magazines such as Popular Mechanics and projects for school science fairs as late as the early 1960s. In the UK these devices were commonly known as trembler coils and were popular in cars pre-1910, and also in commercial vehicles with large engines until around 1925 to ease starting. The Model T (built into the flywheel) differed from modern implementations by not providing high voltage directly at the output; the maximum voltage produced was about 30 volts, and therefore also had to be run through the spark coil to provide high enough voltage for ignition, as described above, although the coil would not "buzz" continuously in this case, only going through one cycle per spark. In either case, the low voltage was switched to the appropriate spark plug by the 'timer' mounted on the front of the engine. This performed the equivalent function to the modern distributor, although by directing the low voltage, not the high voltage as for the distributor. The timing of the spark was adjustable by rotating this mechanism through a lever mounted on the steering column. As the precise timing of the spark depends on both the 'timer' and the trembler contacts within the coil, this is less consistent than the breaker points of the later distributor. However, for the low speed and the low compression of such early engines, this imprecise timing was acceptable. With the universal adoption of electrical starting for automobiles, and the availability of a large battery to provide a constant source of electricity, magneto systems were abandoned for systems which interrupted current at battery voltage, using an ignition coil to step the voltage up to the needs of the ignition, and a distributor to route the ensuing pulse to the correct spark plug at the correct time. The Benz Patent-Motorwagon and the Ford Model T used a trembler coil ignition system. A trembler coil was a battery-powered induction coil; the trembler interrupted the current through the coil and caused a quick series of sparks during each firing. The trembler coil would be energized at an appropriate point in the engine cycle. In the Model T, the four-cylinder engine had a trembler coil for each cylinder; a commutator (timer case) delivered power to the trembler coils. The Model T would be started on battery but then switched to an alternator.[2] An improved ignition system was developed by the Dayton Engineering Laboratories Co. (Delco) and introduced in the 1910 Cadillac. This ignition was developed by Charles Kettering and was a wonder in its day. It consisted of a single ignition coil, points (the switch), a capacitor (to prevent the points from arcing at break) and a distributor (to direct the spark from the ignition coil to the correct cylinder). The points allow the coil magnetic field to build. When the points open by a cam arrangement, the magnetic field collapses inducing an EMF in the primary that is much larger than the battery voltage and the transformer action produces a large output voltage (20 kV or greater) from the secondary. The capacitor suppresses arcing at the points when they open; without the capacitor, the energy stored in the coil would be expended at an arc across the points rather than at the spark plug gap. The Kettering system became the primary ignition system for many years in the automotive industry due to its lower cost, and relative simplicity. The ignition system is typically controlled by a key operated Ignition switch. Most four-stroke engines have used a mechanically timed electrical ignition system. The heart of the system is the distributor. The distributor contains a rotating cam driven by the engine's drive, a set of breaker points, a condenser, a rotor and a distributor cap. External to the distributor is the ignition coil, the spark plugs and wires linking the distributor to the spark plugs and ignition coil. (see diagram Below) The system is powered by a lead-acid battery, which is charged by the car's electrical system using a dynamo or alternator. The engine operates contact breaker points, which interrupt the current to an induction coil (known as the ignition coil). The ignition coil consists of two transformer windings the primary and secondary. These windings share a common magnetic core. An alternating current in the primary induces an alternating magnetic field in the core and hence an alternating current in the secondary. The ignition coil's secondary has more turns than the primary. This is a step-up transformer, which produces a high voltage from the secondary winding. The primary winding is connected to the battery (usually through a current-limiting ballast resistor). Inside the ignition coil one end of each winding is connected together. This common point is taken to the capacitor/contact breaker junction. The other, high voltage, end of the secondary is connected to the distributor's rotor. The ignition firing sequence begins with the points (or contact breaker) closed. A steady current flows from the battery, through the current-limiting resistor, through the primary coil, through the closed breaker points and finally back to the battery. This current produces a magnetic field within the coil's core. This magnetic field forms the energy reservoir that will be used to drive the ignition spark. As the engine crankshaft turns, it also turns the distributor shaft at half the speed. In a four-stroke engine, the crankshaft turns twice for the ignition cycle. A multi-lobed cam is attached to the distributor shaft; there is one lobe for each engine cylinder. A spring-loaded rubbing block follows the lobed portions of the cam contour and controls the opening and closing of points. During most of the cycle, the rubbing block keeps the points closed to allow a current to build in the ignition coil's primary winding. As a piston reaches the top of the engine's compression cycle, the cam's lobe is high enough to cause the breaker points to open. Opening the points causes the current through the primary coil to stop. Without the steady current through the primary, the magnetic field generated in the coil immediately collapses. This high rate of change of magnetic flux induces a high voltage in the coil's secondary windings that ultimately causes the spark plug's gap to arc and ignite the fuel. The spark generation story is a little more complicated. The purpose of the ignition coil is to make a spark that jumps the spark plug's gap, which might be 0.025 inches (0.64?mm) (it also has to jump the rotor-to-distributor-post gap). At the moment the points open, there is a much smaller gap, say about 0.00004 inches (0.001?mm), across the points. Something must be done to prevent the points from arcing as they separate; if the points arc, then they will drain the magnetic energy that was intended for the spark plug. The capacitor (condenser) performs that task. The capacitor temporarily keeps the primary current flowing so the voltage across the points is below the point's arcing voltage. There is a race: the voltage across the points is increasing as the primary current charges the capacitor, but at the same time the points' separation (and consequent arcing voltage) is increasing. Ultimately, the point separation will increase to something such as 0.015 inches (0.38?mm), the maximum separation of the points. In addition to staying below the arcing voltage, the ignition system keep the voltage across the points below the breakdown voltage for an air gap to prevent a glow discharge across the points. Such a glow discharge would quickly transition to an arc, and the arc would prevent the spark plug from firing. The minimum voltage for a glow discharge in air is about 320?V. Consequently, the capacitor value is chosen to also keep the voltage across the points to be less than 320?V. Keeping the points from arcing when they separate is the reason the ignition coil includes a secondary winding rather than using just a simple inductor. If the transformer has a 100:1 ratio, then the secondary voltage can reach 30?kV. The ignition coil's high voltage output is connected to the rotor that sits on top of the distributor shaft. Surrounding the rotor is the distributor cap. The arrangement sequentially directs the output of the secondary winding to the appropriate spark plugs. The high voltage from the coil's secondary (typically 20,000 to 50,000 volts) causes a spark to form across the gap of the spark plug that in turn ignites the compressed air-fuel mixture within the engine. It is the creation of this spark which consumes the energy that was stored in the ignition coils magnetic field. The flat twin cylinder 1948 Citro?n 2CV used one double ended coil without a distributor, and just contact breakers, in a wasted spark system. Some two-cylinder motorcycles and motor scooters had two contact points feeding twin coils each connected directly to one of the two sparking plugs without a distributor; e.g. the BSA Thunderbolt and Triumph Tigress. High performance engines with eight or more cylinders that operate at high r.p.m. (such as those used in motor racing) demand both a higher rate of spark and a higher spark energy than the simple ignition circuit can provide. This problem is overcome by using either of these adaptations: A distributor-based system is not greatly different from a magneto system except that more separate elements are involved. There are also advantages to this arrangement. For example, the position of the contact breaker points relative to the engine angle can be changed a small amount dynamically, allowing the ignition timing to be automatically advanced with increasing revolutions per minute (RPM) or increased manifold vacuum, giving better efficiency and performance. However it is necessary to check periodically the maximum opening gap of the breaker(s), using a feeler gauge, since this mechanical adjustment affects the "dwell" time during which the coil charges, and breakers should be re-dressed or replaced when they have become pitted by electric arcing. This system was used almost universally until the late 1970s, when electronic ignition systems started to appear. The disadvantage of the mechanical system is the use of breaker points to interrupt the low-voltage high-current through the primary winding of the coil; the points are subject to mechanical wear where they ride the cam to open and shut, as well as oxidation and burning at the contact surfaces from the constant sparking. They require regular adjustment to compensate for wear, and the opening of the contact breakers, which is responsible for spark timing, is subject to mechanical variations. In addition, the spark voltage is also dependent on contact effectiveness, and poor sparking can lead to lower engine efficiency. A mechanical contact breaker system cannot control an average ignition current of more than about 3 A while still giving a reasonable service life, and this may limit the power of the spark and ultimate engine speed. Electronic ignition (EI) solves these problems. In the initial systems, points were still used but they handled only a low current which was used to control the high primary current through a solid state switching system. Soon, however, even these contact breaker points were replaced by an angular sensor of some kind - either optical, where a vaned rotor breaks a light beam, or more commonly using a Hall effect sensor, which responds to a rotating magnet mounted on the distributor shaft. The sensor output is shaped and processed by suitable circuitry, then used to trigger a switching device such as a thyristor, which switches a large current through the coil. The first electronic ignition (a cold cathode type) was tested in 1948 by Delco-Remy,[3] while Lucas introduced a transistorized ignition in 1955, which was used on BRM and Coventry Climax Formula One engines in 1962.[3] The aftermarket began offering EI that year, with both the AutoLite Electric Transistor 201 and Tung-Sol EI-4 (thyratron capacitive discharge) being available.[4] Pontiac became the first automaker to offer an optional EI, the breakerless magnetic pulse-triggered Delcotronic, on some 1963 models; it was also available on some Corvettes.[4] The first commercially available all solid-state (SCR) capacitive discharge ignition was manufactured by Hyland Electronics in Canada also in 1963. Ford fitted a Lucas system on the Lotus 25s entered at Indianapolis the next year, ran a fleet test in 1964, and began offering optional EI on some models in 1965.[4] Beginning in 1958, Earl W. Meyer at Chrysler worked on EI, continuing until 1961 and resulting in use of EI on the company's NASCAR hemis in 1963 and 1964.[4] Prest-O-Lite's CD-65, which relied on capacitance discharge (CD), appeared in 1965, and had "an unprecedented 50,000 mile warranty."[4] (This differs from the non-CD Prest-O-Lite system introduced on AMC products in 1972, and made standard equipment for the 1975 model year.)[4] A similar CD unit was available from Delco in 1966,[3] which was optional on Oldsmobile, Pontiac, and GMC vehicles in the 1967 model year.[4] Also in 1967, Motorola debuted their breakerless CD system.[4] The most famous aftermarket electronic ignition which debuted in 1965, was the Delta Mark 10 capacitive discharge ignition, which was sold assembled or as a kit. The Fiat Dino is the first production car to come standard with EI in 1968, followed by the Jaguar XJ Series 1[5] in 1971, Chrysler (after a 1971 trial) in 1973 and by Ford and GM in 1975.[4] In 1967, Prest-O-Lite made a "Black Box" ignition amplifier, intended to take the load off of the distributor's breaker points during high r.p.m. runs, which was used by Dodge and Plymouth on their factory Super Stock Coronet and Belvedere drag racers.[4] This amplifier was installed on the interior side of the cars' firewall, and had a duct which provided outside air to cool the unit.[citation needed] The rest of the system (distributor and spark plugs) remains as for the mechanical system. The lack of moving parts compared with the mechanical system leads to greater reliability and longer service intervals. Chrysler introduced breakerless ignition in mid-1971 as an option for its 340 V8 and the 426 Street Hemi. For the 1972 model year, the system became standard on its high-performance engines (the 340?cu?in (5.6?l) and the four-barrel carburetor-equipped 400?hp (298?kW) 400?cu?in (7?l)) and was an option on its 318?cu?in (5.2?l), 360?cu?in (5.9?l), two-barrel 400?cu?in (6.6?l), and low-performance 440?cu?in (7.2?l) . Breakerless ignition was standardised across the model range for 1973. For older cars, it is usually possible to retrofit an EI system in place of the mechanical one. In some cases, a modern distributor will fit into the older engine with no other modifications, like the H.E.I. distributor made by General Motors, the Hot-Spark electronic ignition conversion kit, and the Chrysler breakerless system. Other innovations are currently available on various cars. In some models, rather than one central coil, there are individual coils on each spark plug, sometimes known as direct ignition or coil on plug (COP). This allows the coil a longer time to accumulate a charge between sparks, and therefore a higher energy spark. A variation on this has each coil handle two plugs, on cylinders which are 360 degrees out of phase (and therefore reach TDC at the same time); in the four-cycle engine this means that one plug will be sparking during the end of the exhaust stroke while the other fires at the usual time, a so-called "wasted spark" arrangement which has no drawbacks apart from faster spark plug erosion; the paired cylinders are 1/4 and 2/3. Other systems do away with the distributor as a timing apparatus and use a magnetic crank angle sensor mounted on the crankshaft to trigger the ignition at the proper time. At the turn of the 21st century digital electronic ignition modules became available for small engines on such applications as chainsaws, string trimmers, leaf blowers, and lawn mowers. This was made possible by low cost, high speed, and small footprint microcontrollers. Digital electronic ignition modules can be designed as either capacitor discharge ignition (CDI) or inductive discharge ignition (IDI) systems. Capacitive discharge digital ignitions store charged energy for the spark in a capacitor within the module that can be released to the spark plug at virtually any time throughout the engine cycle via a control signal from the microprocessor. This allows for greater timing flexibility, and engine performance; especially when designed hand-in-hand with the engine carburetor. In an Engine Management System (EMS), electronics control fuel delivery and ignition timing. Primary sensors on the system are crankshaft angle (crankshaft or Top Dead Center (TDC) position), airflow into the engine and throttle position. The circuitry determines which cylinder needs fuel and how much, opens the requisite injector to deliver it, then causes a spark at the right moment to burn it. Early EMS systems used an analogue computer to accomplish this, but as embedded systems dropped in price and became fast enough to keep up with the changing inputs at high revolutions, digital systems started to appear. Some designs using an EMS retain the original ignition coil, distributor and high-tension leads found on cars throughout history. Other systems dispense with the distributor altogether and have individual coils mounted directly atop each spark plug. This removes the need for both distributor and high-tension leads, which reduces maintenance and increases long-term reliability. Modern EMSs read in data from various sensors about the crankshaft position, intake manifold temperature, intake manifold pressure (or intake air volume), throttle position, fuel mixture via the oxygen sensor, detonation via a knock sensor, and exhaust gas temperature sensors. The EMS then uses the collected data to precisely determine how much fuel to deliver and when and how far to advance the ignition timing. With electronic ignition systems, individual cylinders[citation needed] can have their own individual timing so that timing can be as aggressive as possible per cylinder without fuel detonation. As a result, sophisticated electronic ignition systems can be both more fuel efficient, and produce better performance over their counterparts. Gas turbine engines, including jet engines, have a CDI system using one or more ignitor plugs, which are only used at startup or in case the combustor(s) flame goes out. Rocket engine ignition systems are especially critical. If prompt ignition does not occur, the combustion chamber can fill with excess fuel and oxidiser and significant overpressure can occur (a "hard start") or even an explosion. Rockets often employ pyrotechnic devices that place flames across the face of the injector plate, or, alternatively, hypergolic propellants that ignite spontaneously on contact with each other. The latter types of engines do away with ignition systems entirely and cannot experience hard starts, but the propellants are highly toxic and corrosive.

steel🚨 Millennium Force is a steel roller coaster located at Cedar Point amusement park in Sandusky, Ohio. Manufactured by Intamin, it was the park's fourteenth roller coaster dating back to the opening of Blue Streak in 1964. Upon completion in 2000, Millennium Force broke six world records and was the world's first giga coaster, a term coined by Intamin and Cedar Point to represent roller coasters that exceed 300 feet (91?m) in height and complete a full circuit. It was briefly the tallest and fastest in the world until Steel Dragon 2000 opened later the same year. The ride is also the third-longest roller coaster in North America following The Beast at Kings Island and Fury 325 at Carowinds. It features a 310-foot-tall (94?m) cable lift hill with a 300-foot (91?m) drop, two tunnels, three overbanked turns, and four hills. The coaster also has a top speed of 93?mph (150?km/h). Since its debut, Millennium Force has been voted the number one steel roller coaster ten times in Amusement Today's annual Golden Ticket Awards, and its lowest ranking in the poll has only been two. Although Millennium Force has been surpassed in height and speed, it remains one of the tallest and fastest in the world. The planning, design and development phases of Millennium took place over five years.[1] The first rumors that a new record-breaking roller coaster would be built at Cedar Point, which included speculation about a ten inversion roller coaster from Bolliger & Mabillard and an Arrow Dynamics MegaLooper, began circulating in early 1998.[2][2][3] A roller coaster from D. H. Morgan Manufacturing was also rumored.[4] On July 2, 1999, Cedar Fair Entertainment Company filed a trademark for the name Millennium Force,[5] which raised more speculation about what the ride would be like.[6] About a week later, the first track pieces were seen at the park, which confirmed that the ride would be manufactured by Intamin. Cedar Point officials also confirmed that it would not have inversions.[7] Millennium Force was announced on July 22, 1999, as the tallest roller coaster in the world, taking the record from Fujiyama at Fuji-Q Highland in Japan.[8] Don Miears, General Manager of Cedar Point said, "Millennium Force introduces the world to a whole new level of roller coaster riding."[9] The ride cost $25 million to design and build.[10] Millennium Force was built in the Frontier Trail section of the park and the Giant Wheel was relocated to make room for it.[11][12] Cedar Point, Intamin, and Werner Stengel designed the layout of the ride. After the ride was announced, several disputes about whether Millennium Force or Superman: The Escape was the tallest and fastest roller coaster in the world arose between Cedar Point and Six Flags Magic Mountain. Superman: The Escape is 415 feet (126?m) high and its speed is 100 miles per hour (160?km/h); however, it is a shuttle roller coaster, not a complete-circuit roller coaster.[13][14] Construction started in August 1999 when the site was cleared.[15] The removal and relocation of the Giant Wheel began in October on closing day; the first of 226 supports were installed on October 11, starting at the brake run.[1][16] Two hundred twenty-six footers, each about 5 feet (1.5?m) deep were dug; the largest ones were 56 by 56 feet (17 by 17?m).[1] The concrete construction was done by Mosser Construction.[17] The lift hill was topped off in early January 2000.[18] The ride's construction took seven months, and 120 construction workers and project managers participated. Testing took two months.[1] The park conducted a "pull-through" by pulling a train along the course to ensure proper clearance. The ride was inspected and tested with water-dummies on the trains.[15] The first media event was held on May 11, 2000, and the ride opened to the public on May 13. When it opened, it broke six world records. It was the first Giga Coaster and was the world's fastest complete-circuit roller coaster, but was later overtaken by other rides.[19][20] About a month after Millennium's debut, Cedar Point introduced a new queuing system called "Ticket to Ride" to reduce the waiting times, which allowed visitors to buy a ticket then return later and wait in a shorter line.[21][22] In August, Cedar Point engaged John Hancock and Associates and Stalker Radar of Indianapolis to measure the height and speed of Millennium Force. The height was measured at 310?feet 11?inches (94.77?m), and the speed was measured at 93 miles per hour (150?km/h), slightly faster than what the park had been advertising (92?mph).[23] Before the start of the 2004 season, Millennium Force's seat belts were modified because of an incident that occurred on Superman the Ride, a similar roller coaster at Six Flags New England.[24] The new seat belts were shorter and some riders had difficulties with them.[24][25] The roller coaster's layout was repainted over a three-year period of time, before the 2011, 2012 and 2013 season.[26] In 2012, the park added a new LED lighting system.[27] Millennium Force's entrance is located behind the Cedar Point & Lake Erie Railroad's Celebration Plaza station. The queue is situated between the ride's last overbanked turn and the station. A DJ booth is provided to entertain waiting visitors; the park's "Jamming DJ's" take requests for family friendly songs from people in the queue.[28] It was then replaced by Cedar Point's FUNtv, which plays music videos of popular songs, the Gatekeeper/Maverick shuffle, park trivia, sports news, park advertisements, weather forecasts, and popular news headlines. About a month after Millennium's debut, Cedar Point introduced a new queue system known as "Ticket to Ride" (later FreeWay) to reduce the wait time. Visitors could buy tickets then return later and wait in a shorter line.[21][22] This system was discontinued in 2004 after several people complained it was unfair that others were going ahead of them in line.[29] In 2012, Cedar Point introduced its Fast Lane queue system on the ride; visitors can buy a wristband which enables them to wait in a shorter line.[30] The system was tested at Kings Island the previous year, where it received positive reviews.[29] Millennium Force covers 13 acres (5.3?ha); it runs parallel to the shoreline of Lake Erie then travels to an island located inside the park, that also houses the former Shoot the Rapids log flume and the Dinosaurs Alive! attractions.[31][32] There are two tunnels, three overbanked turns and four hills.[20][33] One cycle of the ride takes approximately 2 minutes and 20 seconds.[34] While the train is being loaded with passengers, the catch car for the cable lift descends the lift hill and latches onto the middle car underneath the train. Once the train is cleared, the cable lift immediately pulls the train up the 45 degree lift hill at 15 miles per hour (24?km/h) to a height of 310 feet (94?m). The train drops 300 feet (91?m) at an 80 degree angle and reaches a top speed of 93 miles per hour (150?km/h) at the bottom of the hill. It then climbs 169 feet (52?m) through a right overbanked turn at 122 degrees from the horizontal axis, then travels through a tunnel as it passes over the Frontier Trail. It then travels over a 182-foot (55?m) parabolic hill, which provides a moment of zero gravity as it passes over a lagoon and down onto Adventure Island. While on Adventure Island, the train passes by the Dinosaurs Alive! attraction several times. It completes a 105-foot (32?m), 360-degree right-handed helix, followed by a left overbanked turn, passing the Shoot the Rapids water ride. It then completes a small right-hand turn before traveling over another hill to leave the island. The train then travels left through a second tunnel where the on-ride photo is taken, followed by a left turn and a small hill, passing by the queue. Finally, the train travels 68 feet (21?m) high through another right overbanked turn over the queue and is stopped by magnetic brakes. Passengers disembark the ride at an unloading station and the train moves to a second station where it is loaded.[20][34][35] Millennium Force is a Giga Coaster model designed by Werner Stengel and built by Swiss manufacturer Intamin.[34] It was the first of a series of roller coasters, including Top Thrill Dragsterthe tallest and fastest roller coaster in the world in 2003that Intamin built at Cedar Point.[36] As of 2015[update], Millennium Force is one of only two Giga Coasters built by Intamin.[37] Millennium Force operates with three stainless steel, stadium-style seating trains colored red, blue, and yellow.[9][33] Each train has nine cars that seat four passengers, allowing a maximum capacity of 36 people per train and 1,300 riders an hour.[34] Each seat has an individual, hydraulic, T-shaped lap bar and seat belt which rests across the rider's lap.[34] Each train weighs 19 tons.[1] The station has two platforms, one for unloading and one for loading. Two trains are loaded and unloaded while the third train is running the course. There is also a separate line in the station where riders can wait for the first seat.[38] The loading platform has red overhead lights, which are located above the train.[39] Millennium Force's theme song is played in the station while riders are boarding.[40] The steel tubular track is 6,595 feet (2,010?m) long and the lift is approximately 310 feet (94?m) high.[34] The track is blue and the supports are silver, and consists of 229 pieces of track, each weighing between 11,000 and 17,000 pounds (5,000 and 7,700?kg).[1] Intamin supplied the track with hollow structural sections (HSS), which is used in all the track pieces, supports and towers. Millennium uses three different track shapes. The simplest sections are two-pipe track, made with two running rails connected by 6-inch (15?cm) square HSS cross-members. The ride also uses three-pipe track, which has two running rails with a backbone of round HSS, which forms a triangle. The third type of track forms a square and is considered the strongest. It has two running rails with two backbone tubes.[41] When the ride opened in 2000, Cedar Point chose High End Systems, headquartered in Austin, Texas, to light the ride. Rob Decker, Cedar Points Corporate Director of Planning & Design, said that they thought they would have to mount multiple floodlights on the tower. However, they were able to install thirty EC-1 floodlights at the base of the lift hill structure which provided lighting throughout the ride's structure. Of the six main support towers, three had six EC-1s, and three towers had four EC-1s. The three tallest towers had another unit in the middle.[42] Over the years, the lights were not maintained and grew noticeably dimmer. In 2012, Cedar Point introduced a new nighttime show, Luminosity? Ignite the Night!, to "re-energize" the park at the end of the day. New LED lights from Sunrise, Florida-based Chauvet Professional were installed to illuminate the ride. Twenty COLORado Range and ten COLORado Ridge wash lights were installed at the base of the lift hill structure.[27] When it opened in May 2000, Millennium Force broke six world records and used a new magnetic braking system instead of friction brakes found on most roller coasters.[20][33] This new system enabled a shorter brake run, which slows the train from 65 miles per hour (105?km/h) down to a standstill in six seconds, to be built.[43] Millennium Force held the records for tallest and fastest complete-circuit roller coaster until August 2000, when Steel Dragon 2000 opened.[44] Millennium Force held the record for tallest and fastest roller coaster at Cedar Point until 2003, when Cedar Point debuted Top Thrill Dragster, which at the time was the tallest and fastest roller coaster in the world.[45] As of 2015[update], Millennium Force has the seventh tallest lift, the seventh fastest speed, the fifth-longest track, and the seventh-highest drop among steel roller coasters in the world.[46][47][48][49] It is the second longest steel roller coaster in North America, and the third-longest roller coaster behind The Beast at Kings Island and Fury 325 at Carowinds.[50] Millennium Force has held records for the following:[33] Cedar Point has held records for the following (May 2000 statistic on left and May 2013 statistic on right):[33] As both a high altitude and high velocity ride, Millennium Force is affected by unfavorable weather conditions such as rain, lightning or strong winds; under these conditions the ride is closed, but in light rain it can remain open.[38] There is no minimum age requirement, but passengers must be between 48 and 78 inches (120 and 200?cm) to ride.[51] Persons over a certain weight or waist size are not allowed to ride if the seat and lapbar harness cannot accommodate them.[38] Passengers on Millennium Force may not take loose articles onto the train and are required to wear shirts and footwear. Headphones must be removed before boarding.[38] Passengers are advised not to ride Millennium Force if they have recently had surgery, heart trouble, high blood pressure, neck or back trouble, or any medical condition that may be aggravated by riding, or are pregnant.[52] Millennium Force made an impact on the way roller coasters were built. Following its debut, the use of cable lift hills, which require less maintenance and support more weight than a traditional chain lift, became a prevalent feature in the industry. Millennium Force also paved the way for additional coasters breaking the 300-foot (91?m) barrier. Top Thrill Dragster, also built by Intamin, opened three years later as the first complete-circuit roller coaster to exceed 400 feet (120?m) in height.[45] The company didn't build another "Giga Coaster" until 2010, when it built Intimidator 305 at Kings Dominion.[53] Intimidator 305 is similar to Millennium Force; it has a cable lift and similar layout but varies on the restraints, choosing to utilize shoulder harnesses instead of lap bars. Leviathan opened at Canada's Wonderland in May 2012 breaking 300 feet (91?m) as well. Manufactured by Bolliger & Mabillard, it opted for a chain lift instead of a cable lift.[35][54][55][56] Millennium Force has one of the longest lines in the park, with passengers waiting over four hours when the ride debuted.[57] The ride received positive reactions from visitors, many of whom said it was smooth and very comfortable. Others said, "It'll scare the daylights out of you".[58] In its first six years of operation, Millennium Force had over 10 million riders.[59] By August 2012, Millennium had given more than 21 million rides.[60] Several television shows, including the Travel Channel's Extreme Terror Rides,[61] Bert the Conqueror,[62] Off Limits,[63] the Discovery Channel's Extreme Rides,[43] and the National Geographic Channel's Super Coasters[64] have featured Millennium Force. Out of over 500 roller coasters that Werner Stengel has engineered, he stated that Millennium Force is his favorite.[65] Robb Alvey, a notable roller coaster enthusiast, called it a "milestone in roller coaster history".[66] Millennium Force has consistently ranked high in various polls and has won numerous awards. Millennium Force and Superman the Ride (formerly Bizarro) at Six Flags New England held the top two places in the Golden Ticket Awards from 2001ÿ2015, often swapping positions. Fury 325 has occupied the top spot since 2016. In the Travel Channel's Insane Coaster Wars, Millennium Force was voted the "fan favorite" in the Extreme Heights and The Top 10 categories.[66][67] In 2013, Time ranked Millennium Force as the top roller coaster in the United States.[68]

July 1865🚨

15 September 1916🚨The development of tanks in World War I was a response to the stalemate that had developed on the Western Front. Although vehicles that incorporated the basic principles of the tank (armour, firepower, and all-terrain mobility) had been projected in the decade or so before the War, it was the alarmingly heavy casualties of the start of its trench warfare that stimulated development.[1][2] Research took place in both Great Britain and France, with Germany only belatedly following the Allies' lead. In Great Britain, an initial vehicle, nicknamed Little Willie, was constructed at William Foster & Co., during August and September 1915.[3] The prototype of a new design that became the Mark I tank was demonstrated to the British Army on 2 February 1916. Although initially termed "Landships" by the Landships Committee, production vehicles were named "tanks", to preserve secrecy. The term was chosen when it became known that the factory workers at William Foster referred to the first prototype as "the tank" because of its resemblance to a steel water tank. The French fielded their first tanks in April 1917 and ultimately produced far more tanks than all other combatants combined. The Germans, on the other hand, began development only in response to the appearance of Allied tanks on the battlefield. Whilst the Allies manufactured several thousand tanks during the War, Germany deployed only 20 of her own.[4] The first tanks were mechanically unreliable. There were problems that caused considerable attrition rates during combat deployment and transit. The heavily shelled terrain was impassable to conventional vehicles, and only highly mobile tanks such as the Mark and FTs performed reasonably well. The Mark I's rhomboid shape, caterpillar tracks, and 26-foot (8?m) length meant that it could negotiate obstacles, especially wide trenches, that wheeled vehicles could not. Along with the tank, the first self-propelled gun (the British Gun Carrier Mk I) and the first armoured personnel carrier (the British Mk IX) were also constructed in World War I. The conceptual roots of the tank go back to ancient times, with siege engines which were able to provide protection for troops moving up against stone walls or other fortifications. With the coming of the Industrial Revolution and the demonstrable power of steam, James Cowan presented a proposal for a Steam Powered Land Ram in 1855, towards the end of the Crimean War. Looking like a helmet on 'footed' Boydell wheels, early forerunners of the Pedrail wheel, it was essentially an armoured steam tractor equipped with cannon and rotating scythes sprouting from the sides. Lord Palmerston is said to have dismissed it as 'barbaric'. From 1904 to 1909, David Roberts, the engineer and managing director of Hornsby & Sons of Grantham, built a series of tractors using his patented 'chain-track' which were put through their paces by the British Army, a (small) section of which wanted to evaluate artillery tractors. At one point in 1908, Major William E. Donohue of the Mechanical Transport Committee remarked to Roberts that he should design a new machine with armour, capable of carrying its own gun. But, disheartened by years of ultimately fruitless tinkering for the Army, Roberts did not take up the idea. In later years he expressed regret at not having pursued it.[5] An engineer in the Austro-Hungarian Army, Lieutenant Gunther Burstyn, inspired by Holt tractors, designed a tracked armoured vehicle in 1911 carrying a light gun in a rotating turret; equipped also with hinged 'arms', two in front and two at the rear, carrying wheels on the ends to assist with obstacles and trenches, it was a very forward-looking design, if rather small. The Austrian government said it would be interested in evaluating it if Burstyn could secure commercial backing to produce a prototype. Lacking the requisite contacts, he let it drop. An approach to the German government was similarly fruitless. In 1912, a South Australian, Lancelot De Mole, submitted a proposal to the British War Office for a "chain-rail vehicle which could be easily steered and carry heavy loads over rough ground and trenches". De Mole made more proposals to the War Office in 1914 and 1916, with a culminating proposal in late 1917, accompanied by a huge one-eighth scale model, yet all fell on substantially deaf ears. De Mole's proposal already had the climbing face, so typical of the later World War I British tanks, but it is unknown whether there was some connection. Inquiries to the government of Australia, after the war, yielded polite responses that Mr. De Mole's ideas had unfortunately been too advanced for the time to be properly recognised at their just value. The Commission on Awards to Inventors in 1919, which adjudicated all the competing claims to the development of the tank, recognised the brilliance of De Mole's design, even considering that it was superior to the machines actually developed, but due to its narrow remit, could only make a payment of S987 to De Mole to cover his expenses. De Mole noted in 1919 that he was urged by friends before the war to approach the Germans with his design, but declined to do so for patriotic reasons. Before World War I, motorized vehicles were still relatively uncommon, and their use on the battlefield was initially limited, especially of heavier vehicles. Armoured cars soon became more commonplace with most belligerents, especially in more open terrain. On August 23, 1914, the French Colonel Jean Baptiste Eugne Estienne, later a major proponent of tanks, declared: Messieurs, la victoire appartiendra dans cette guerre celui des deux belligrants qui parviendra le premier placer un canon de 75 sur une voiture capable de se mouvoir en tout terrain ("Gentlemen, the victory will belong, in this war, to the one of the two belligerents who will be the first to succeed in mounting a 75 mm gun on a vehicle capable of moving in all types of terrain"). Armored cars did indeed prove useful in open land such as in deserts, but were not very good at crossing obstacles (e.g. trenches, barriers) or in more challenging terrain. The other issue was that it was very hard to add much protection or armament. The main limitation was the wheels, which gave a high ground pressure for the vehicle's weight. This could be solved by adding more wheels, but unless they also were driven, the effect was to reduce traction on the powered wheels. Driving extra wheels meant more drive train weight, in turn requiring a larger and heavier engine to maintain performance. Even worse, none of this extra weight was put into an improvement of armor or armament carried, and the vehicles were still incapable of crossing very rough terrain. The adoption of caterpillar tracks offered a new solution to the problem. The tracks spread the weight of the vehicles over a much greater area, which was all used for traction to move the vehicle. The limitation on armor and firepower was no longer ground pressure but the power and weight of the power-plant. The remaining issue was how to utilise and configure a vehicle. Major Ernest Dunlop Swinton RE, was the official British war correspondent serving in France in 1914. He recounts in his book Eyewitness how the idea of using caterpillar tracks to drive an armoured fighting vehicle came to him on October 19, 1914, while he was driving through northern France. In July 1914 he had received a letter from a friend, Hugh Marriott, a mining engineer, drawing his attention to a Holt caterpillar tractor that Marriott had seen in Belgium. Marriott thought it might be useful for transport over difficult ground, and Swinton had passed the information on to the appropriate departments. Now Swinton suggested the idea of an armoured tracked vehicle to the military authorities, by sending a proposal to Lieutenant-Colonel Maurice Hankey. Hankey in turn tried to interest Lord Kitchener in the idea; when this failed he sent a memorandum in December to the Committee of Imperial Defence, of which he was himself the secretary; Winston Churchill the First Lord of the Admiralty was one of the members of the committee. Hankey proposed to build a gigantic steel roller, pushed by tracked tractors, to shield the advancing infantry. Churchill in turn wrote a note on January 5 to the Prime Minister H. H. Asquith, in which he warned that the Germans might any moment introduce a comparable system. A worried Asquith now ordered Kitchener to form a committee, headed by General Scott-Moncrieff, to study the feasibility of Swinton's idea; however, after trials with a Holt 75 h.p. machine the committee concluded in February 1915 that the idea was impractical. Winston Churchill however decided that if the Army wouldn't take up the idea, the Navy should proceed independently, even if it were to exceed the limits of his authority. He created the Landships Committee in February 1915, initially to investigate designs for a massive troop transporter. As a truer picture of front-line conditions was developed the aims of the investigation changed. A requirement was formulated for an armoured vehicle capable of 4?mph (6?km/h), climbing a 5 feet (1.5 m) high parapet, crossing an 8 feet (2.4 m) wide gap, and armed with machine guns and a light artillery piece. A similar proposal was working its way through the Army GHQ in France, and in June the Landships Committee was made a joint service venture between the War Office and the Admiralty. The Naval involvement in Armoured Fighting Vehicle (AFV) design had originally come about through the Royal Naval Air Service Armoured Car Division, the only British unit fielding AFVs in 1914; surprisingly, until the end of the war most experimentation on heavy land vehicles was conducted by Royal Naval Air Service Squadron 20. At first, protecting heavy gun tractors with armour appeared the most promising line of development. Alternative early 'big wheel' designs on the lines of the Russian tsar tank of 1915 were soon understood to be impractical. However, adapting the existing Holt Company caterpillar designs the only robust tracked tractors available in 1915 into a fighting machine, as France and Germany did, was decided against. While armour and weapon systems were easy to acquire, other existing caterpillar and suspension units were too weak, existing engines were underpowered for the vehicles that the designers had in mind, and trench-crossing ability was poor because of the shortness of the wheelbase. The Killen-Strait tractor with three tracks was used for the first experiments in June but was much too small to be developed further. The large Pedrail monotrack vehicle was proposed in a number of different configurations, but non were adopted. Trials to couple two American Bullock tractors failed. There also were considerable differences of opinion between the several committee members. Col R.E.B. Crompton, a veteran military engineer and electrical pioneer, drafted numerous designs with Lucien Legros for armoured troop carrying vehicles and gun-armed vehicles, to have used either Bullock tracks or variants of the Pedrail. At the same time, Lt Robert Macfie, of the RNAS, and Albert Nesfield, an Ealing-based engineer, devised a number of armoured tracked vehicles, which incorporated an angled front 'climbing face' to the tracks. The two men fell out bitterly as their plans came to nought; Macfie in particular pursued a vendetta against the other members of the Landships Committee after the war. To resolve the threatened dissipation of effort, it was ordered in late July that a contract was to be placed with William Foster & Co. Ltd, a company having done some prewar design work on heavy tractors and known to Churchill from an earlier experiment with a trench-crossing supply vehicle, to produce a proof-of-concept vehicle with two tracks, based on a lengthened Bullock tractor chassis. Construction work began three weeks later. Fosters of Lincoln built the 14 ton "Little Willie", which first ran on 8 September. Powered by a 105?hp (78?kW) Daimler engine, the 10-foot-high (3.0?m) armoured box was initially fitted with a low Bullock caterpillar. A rotating top turret was planned with a 40?mm gun but abandoned due to weight problems, leaving the final vehicle unarmed and little more than a test-bed for the difficult track system. Difficulties with the commercial tracks supplied led to Tritton designing a completely new track system different from, and vastly more robust than, any other system then in use. The next design by Lieutenant Walter Gordon Wilson RNAS, a pre-war motor engineer, added a larger track frame to the hull of "Little Willie". In order to achieve the demanded gap clearance a rhomboidal shape was chosenstretching the form to improve the track footprint and climbing capacity. To keep a low centre of gravity the rotating turret design was dropped in favour of sponsons on the sides of the hull fitted with naval 6-pounder (57?mm) guns. A final specification was agreed on in late September for trials in early 1916, and the resulting 30 ton "Big Willie" (later called "Mother") together with "Little Willie" underwent trials at Hatfield Park on 29 January and 2 February. Attendees at the second trial included Lord Kitchener, Lloyd George, Reginald McKenna and other political luminaries. On 12 February an initial order for 100 "Mother" type vehicles was made, later expanded to 150. Crews never called tanks "Willies"; at first they referred to them as "landships", and later informally "buses".[6] Although landship was a natural term coming from an Admiralty committee, it was considered too descriptive and could give away British intentions. The committee therefore looked for an appropriate code term for the vehicles. Factory workers assembling the vehicles had been told they were producing "mobile water tanks" for desert warfare in Mesopotamia. Water Container was therefore considered but rejected because the committee would inevitably be known as the WC Committee (WC meaning water closet was a common British term for a toilet). The term tank, as in water tank, was in December 1915 finally accepted as its official designation. From then on, the term "tank" was established among British and also German soldiers. While in German Tank specifically refers to the World War I type (as opposed to modern Panzer), in English, Russian and other languages the name even for contemporary armoured vehicles is still based on the word tank. It is sometimes mistakenly stated that, after completion, the tanks were shipped to France in large wooden crates. For secrecy and in order to not arouse any curiosity, the crates and the tanks themselves were then each labelled with a destination in Russian, "With Care to Petrograd". In fact the tanks were never shipped in crates: the inscription in Russian was applied on the hull for their transport from the factory to the first training centre at Thetford. The first fifty had been delivered to France on 30 August. They were 'male' or 'female', depending upon whether their armament comprised two 6-pounder cannon and three Hotchkiss machine guns or four Vickers machine guns and one Hotchkiss. It had a crew of eight, four of whom were needed to handle the steering and drive gears. The tanks were capable of, at best, 6?km/h (4?mph), matching the speed of marching infantry with whom they were to be integrated to aid in the destruction of enemy machine guns. In practice, their speed on broken ground could be as little as 1?mph. After the war the Royal Commission on Awards to Inventors decided that the principal inventors of the Tank were Sir William Tritton, managing director of Fosters, and Major Walter Gordon Wilson. The first use of tanks on the battlefield was the use of British Mark I tanks at the Battle of Flers-Courcelette (part of the Battle of the Somme) on 15 September 1916, with mixed results; many broke down, but nearly a third succeeded in breaking through. Of the forty-nine tanks shipped to the Somme, only thirty-two were able to begin the first attack in which they were used and only nine made it across "no man's land" to the German lines. The tanks had been rushed into combat before the design was mature enough (against Churchill's and Ernest Swinton's wishes)[7] and the number was small but their use gave important feedback on how to design newer tanks, the soundness of the concept, and their potential to affect the course of the war. On the other hand, the French Army was critical of the British employment of small numbers of tanks at this battle. They felt the British had sacrificed the secrecy of the weapon while employing it in numbers too small to be decisive. Considering that the British attack was part of an Anglo-French offensive while the Russians were also attacking at the same time, Haig felt justified in making a maximum effort, regardless of the limitations of the tank force. The Mark Is were capable of performing on the real battlefield of World War I, one of the most difficult battlefield terrains ever. They did have reliability problems, but when they were working they could cross trenches or craters of 9 feet (2.7 m) and drive right through barbed wire. It was still common for them to get stuck, especially in larger bomb craters, but overall the rhomboid shape allowed for extreme terrain mobility. Tank crews who had read press reports depicting the new weapon driving through buildings and trees, and crossing wide rivers, were disappointed.[6] Most World War I tanks could travel only at about a walking pace at best. Their steel armour could stop small arms fire and fragments from high-explosive artillery shells. However they were vulnerable to a direct hit from artillery and mortar shells. The environment inside was extremely unpleasant; as ventilation was inadequate the atmosphere was heavy with poisonous carbon monoxide from the engine and firing the weapons, fuel and oil vapours from the engine and cordite fumes from the weapons. Temperatures inside could reach 50C (122F). Entire crews lost consciousness inside the tanks, or collapsed when again exposed to fresh air.[8] Crews learned how to create and leave behind supply dumps of fuel, motor oil, and tread grease, and converted obsolete models into supply vehicles for newer ones.[6] To counter the danger of bullet splash or fragments knocked off the inside of the hull, the crew wore helmets with goggles and chainmail masks. Fragments were not as dangerous as fire, because of explosive fumes and the large amount of fuel aboard; smoking was prohibited inside and within 20 yards outside tanks.[6] Gas masks were also standard issue, as they were to all soldiers at this point in the war due to the use of chemical warfare. The side armour of 8?mm initially made them largely immune to small arms fire, but could be penetrated by the recently developed armour-piercing K bullets. There was also the danger of being overrun by infantry and attacked with grenades. The next generation had thicker armour, making them nearly immune to the K bullets. In response, the Germans developed a larger purpose-made anti-tank rifle, and also a Geballte Ladung ("Bunched Charge")several regular stick grenades bundled together for a much bigger explosion. Engine power was a primary limitation on the tanks; the roughly one hundred horsepower engines gave a power-to-weight ratio of 3.3?hp/ton (2.5?kW/ton). By the end of the 20th century, power-to-weight ratios exceeded 20?hp/ton (15?kW/ton). Many feel that because the British Commander Field Marshal Douglas Haig was himself a horse cavalryman, his command failed to appreciate the value of tanks. In fact, horse cavalry doctrine in World War I was to "follow up a breakthrough with harassing attacks in the rear", but there were no breakthroughs on the Western Front until the tanks came along. Despite these supposed views of Haig, he made an order for 1,000 tanks shortly after the failure at the Somme and always remained firmly in favour of further production. In 1919, Major General Sir Louis Jackson said: "The tank was a freak. The circumstances which called it into existence were exceptional and not likely to recur. If they do, they can be dealt with by other means."[9] France at the same time developed its own tracked AFVs, but the situation there was very different. In Britain a single committee had coordinated design, and had to overcome the initial resistance of the Army, while the major industries remained passive. Almost all production effort was thus concentrated into the Mark I and its direct successors, all very similar in shape. In France, on the other hand, there were multiple and conflicting lines of development which were badly integrated, resulting in three major and quite disparate production types. A major arms producer, Schneider, took the lead in January 1915 and tried to build a first armoured vehicle based on the Baby Holt tractor but initially the development process was slow until in July they received political, even presidential, support by combining their project with that of a mechanical wire cutter devised by engineer and politician Jean-Louis Brton. In December 1915, the influential Colonel Estienne made the Supreme Command very enthusiastic about the idea of creating an armoured force based on these vehicles; strong Army support for tanks was a constant during the decades that followed. Already in January and February 1916 quite substantial orders were made, at that moment with a total number of 800 much larger than the British ones. Army enthusiasm and haste had its immediate drawbacks however. As a result of the involvement of inexperienced army officers ordered to devise a new tank based on the larger 75?hp Holt chassis in a very short period of time, the first French tanks were poorly designed with respect to the need to cross trenches and did not take the sponson-mounting route of the British tanks. The first, the Char Schneider CA equipped with a short 75?mm howitzer, had poor mobility due to a short track length combined with a hull that overhung front and rear. It was unreliable as well; a maximum of only about 130 of the 400 built were ever operational at the same time. Then industrial rivalry began to play a detrimental role: it created the heavy Char St Chamond, a parallel development not ordered by the Army but approved by government through industrial lobby, which mounted much more impressive weaponry its 75?mm was the most powerful gun fielded by any operational tank up till 1941 but also combined many of the Schneider CA's faults with an even larger overhanging body. Its innovative petro-electrical transmission, while allowing for easy steering, was insufficiently developed and led to a large number of breakdowns. But industrial initiative also led to swift advances. The car industry, already used to vehicle mass production and having much more experience in vehicle layout, in 1916 designed the first practical light tanks, a class largely neglected by the British. It was Renault's excellent small tank design, the FT, incorporating a proper climbing face for the tracks, that was the first tank to incorporate a top-mounted turret with a full 360 traverse capability. In fact the FT was in many respects the first truly 'modern' tank having a layout that has been followed by almost all designs ever since: driver at the front; main armament in a fully rotating turret on top; engine at the rear. Previous models had been "box tanks", with a single crowded space combining the role of engine room, fighting compartment, ammunition stock and driver's cabin. (A very similar Peugeot prototype, with a fixed casemate mounting a short 75mm cannon, was trialled in 1918 but the idea was not pursued). The FT had the largest production run of any tank of the war, with over 3700 built, more numerous than all British tanks combined. That this would happen was at first far from certain; some in the French army lobbied for the alternative mass production of super-heavy tanks. Much design effort was put in this line of development resulting in the gigantic Char 2C, the most complex and technologically advanced tank of its day. Its very complexity ensured it being produced too late to participate in World War I and in the very small number of just ten, but it was the first tank with a three-man turret; the heaviest to enter service until late in World War II and still the largest ever operational. French production at first lagged behind the British. After August 1916 however, British tank manufacture was temporarily halted to wait for better designs, allowing the French to overtake their allies in numbers. When the French used tanks for the first time on 16 April 1917, during the Nivelle Offensive, they had four times more tanks available. But that did not last long as the offensive was a major failure; the Schneiders were badly deployed and suffered 50% losses from German long-range artillery. The Saint-Chamond tanks, first deployed on 5 May, proved to be so badly designed that they were unable to cross the first line of German trenches. Germany concentrated more on the development of anti-tank weapons than on development of tanks themselves. They only developed one type of tank which saw combat in the war. The A7V Sturmpanzerwagen was designed in 1917 and was used in battle from March 1918. It was manned by a crew of 18, and had eight machine guns and a 57mm cannon. Only 20 A7Vs were produced during the war. The first battle in which tanks made a great impact was the Battle of Cambrai in 1917. British Colonel J.F.C. Fuller, chief of staff of the Tank Corps, was responsible for the tanks' role in the battle. They made an unprecedented breakthrough but, as ever on the Western front, the opportunity was not exploited. Ironically, it was the soon-to-be-supplanted horse cavalry that had been assigned the task of following up the motorised tank attack. Tanks became more effective as the lesson of the early tanks was absorbed. The British produced the Mark IV in 1917. Similar to the early Marks in appearance, its construction was considered to produce a more reliable machine, the long-barrelled naval guns were shortened (the barrels of the earlier, longer guns were prone to digging in the mud when negotiating obstacles) and armour was increased just enough to defeat the standard German armour-piercing bullet. The continued need for four men to drive the tank was solved with the Mark V which used Wilson's epicyclic gearing in 1918. Also in 1918 the French produced the Renault FT, the result of a co-operation between Estienne and Louis Renault. As mentioned before, it had the innovative turret position, and was operated by two men. At just 8 tons it was half the weight of the Medium A Whippet but the version with the cannon had more firepower. It was conceived for mass production, and the FT became the most produced tank of World War I by a wide margin, with over 3,000 delivered to the French Army. Large numbers were used by the Americans and several were also lent to the British. In July 1918, the French used 480 tanks (mostly FTs) at the Battle of Soissons, and there were even larger assaults planned for the next year. In Plan 1919, the Entente hoped to commit over 30,000 tanks to battle in that year. Finally, in a preview of later developments, the British developed the Whippet. This tank was specifically designed to exploit breaches in the enemy front with its relatively higher speed (around 8mph vs 3-4mph for the British heavy tanks). The Whippet was faster than most other tanks, although it carried only machine gun armament, meaning it was not suited to combat with armoured vehicles but instead with infantry. Postwar tank designs reflected this trend towards greater tactical mobility.[citation needed] The German General Staff did not have enthusiasm for the tanks, but allowed the development of anti-tank weapons. Regardless, development of a German tank was under way. The only project to be produced and fielded was the A7V, although only twenty were built. The majority of the fifty or so tanks fielded by Germany were captured British vehicles. A7Vs were captured by the Allies, but they were not used, and most ended up being scrapped. The first tank-versus-tank battles took place 24 April 1918. It was an unexpected engagement between three German A7Vs and three British Mk. IVs at Villers-Bretonneux. Fuller's Plan 1919, involving massive use of tanks for an offensive, was never used because the blockade of Germany and the entry of the US brought an end to the war. Tucker, Spencer C. World War I: The Definitive Encyclopedia and Document Collection. Vol. 4. R-Z. 1536. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, LLC, 2014. Armoured Cars:

roughly 4,200🚨Religion is a collection of cultural systems, beliefs and world views that establishes symbols that relate humanity to spirituality and, sometimes to moral values. While religion is hard to define, one standard model of religion, used in religious studies courses, was proposed by Clifford Geertz, who simply called it a "cultural system."[1] A critique of Geertz's model by Talal Asad categorized religion as "an anthropological category."[2] Many religions have narratives, symbols, traditions and sacred histories that are intended to give meaning to life or to explain the origin of life or the universe. They tend to derive morality, ethics, religious laws, or a preferred lifestyle from their ideas about the cosmos and human nature. According to some estimates, there are roughly 4,200 religions in the world.[3] The word religion is sometimes used interchangeably with "faith" or "belief system", but religion differs from private belief in that it has a public aspect. Most religions have organized behaviours, including clerical hierarchies, a definition of what constitutes adherence or membership, congregations of laity, regular meetings or services for the purposes of veneration of a deity or for prayer, holy places (either natural or architectural) or religious texts. Certain religions also have a sacred language often used in liturgical services. The practice of a religion may also include sermons, commemoration of the activities of a god or gods, sacrifices, festivals, feasts, trance, initiations, funerals, marriages, meditation, music, art, dance, public service or other aspects of human culture. Religious beliefs have also been used to explain parapsychological phenomena such as out-of-body experiences, near-death experiences and reincarnation, along with many other paranormal experiences.[4][5] Some academics studying the subject have divided religions into three broad categories: world religions, a term which refers to transcultural, international faiths; indigenous religions, which refers to smaller, culture-specific or nation-specific religious groups; and new religious movements, which refers to recently developed faiths.[6] One modern academic theory of religion, social constructionism, says that religion is a modern concept that suggests all spiritual practice and worship follows a model similar to the Abrahamic religions as an orientation system that helps to interpret reality and define human beings,[7] and thus religion, as a concept, has been applied inappropriately to non-Western cultures that are not based upon such systems, or in which these systems are a substantially simpler construct. A group of monotheistic traditions sometimes grouped with one another for comparative purposes, because all refer to a patriarch named Abraham. Certain Christian groups are difficult to classify as "Eastern" or "Western." Many Gnostic groups were closely related to early Christianity, for example, Valentinism. Irenaeus wrote polemics against them from the standpoint of the then-unified Catholic Church.[8] The Yazidis are a syncretic Kurdish religion with a Gnostic influence: None of these religions are still extant. Recent Sufi groups Samaritans use a slightly different version of the Pentateuch as their Torah, worshiping at Mount Gerizim instead of Jerusalem, and are possibly the descendants of the lost Northern Kingdom. They are definitely of ancient Israelite origin, but their status as Jews is disputed.[9] Noahidism is a monotheistic ideology based on the Seven Laws of Noah, and on their traditional interpretations within Rabbinic Judaism. According to Jewish law, non-Jews are not obligated to convert to Judaism, but they are required to observe the Seven Laws of Noah. Second Temple Judaism Indian religions are the religions that originated in the Indian subcontinent; namely Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism and Sikhism, and religions and traditions related to, and descended from them. African diasporic religions are a number of related religions that developed in the Americas among African slaves and their descendants in various countries of the Caribbean Islands and Latin America, as well as parts of the southern United States. They derive from African traditional religions, especially of West and Central Africa, showing similarities to the Yoruba religion in particular. Traditionally, these faiths have all been classified "Pagan", but scholars prefer the terms "indigenous/primal/folk/ethnic religions". Most historical religions were polytheistic, but some, such as Atenism, were much closer to monotheism.

Danish🚨The surname Rasmussen or Rasmusen (Danish pronunciation:?[??smusn?]) is a Danish and Norwegian surname, meaning Rasmus' son. It is the ninth-most-common surname in Denmark, shared by about 1.9% of the population.[1] People with this name include:

Pennington County🚨Rapid City (Lakota: Mni L~zaha? Ot?~?wahe;[7] "Swift Water City") is the second most populous city in South Dakota and the county seat of Pennington County.[8] Named after Rapid Creek, on which the city is established, it is set against the eastern slope of the Black Hills mountain range. The population was 67,956 as of the 2010 Census.[9] Known as the "Gateway to the Black Hills" and the "City of Presidents", it is split by a low mountain ridge that divides the western and eastern parts of the city. Ellsworth Air Force Base is located on the outskirts of the city. Camp Rapid, a part of the South Dakota Army National Guard, is located in the western part of the city. The historic "Old West" town of Deadwood is nearby. In the neighboring Black Hills are the popular tourist attractions of Mount Rushmore, the Crazy Horse Memorial, Custer State Park, and Wind Cave National Park. The public discovery of gold in 1874 by the Black Hills Expedition brought a mass influx of settlers into the Black Hills region of South Dakota. Rapid City was founded, and originally known as "Hay Camp", in 1876 by a group of disappointed miners, who promoted their new city as the "Gateway to the Black Hills". John Richard Brennan and Samuel Scott, with a small group of men, laid out the site of the present Rapid City in February 1876, which was named for the spring-fed Rapid Creek that flows through it. A square mile was measured off and the six blocks in the center were designated as a business section. Committees were appointed to bring in prospective merchants and their families to locate in the new settlement. The city soon began selling supplies to miners and pioneers. Its location on the edge of the Plains and Hills and its large river valley made it the natural hub of railroads arriving in the late 1880s from both the south and east. By 1900, Rapid City had survived a boom and bust and was establishing itself as an important regional trade center for the upper midwest. Although the Black Hills became a popular tourist destination in the late 1890s, it was a combination of local efforts, the popularity of the automobile, and construction of improved highways that brought tourists to the Black Hills in large numbers after World War I. Gutzon Borglum, already a famous sculptor, began work on Mount Rushmore in 1927 and his son, Lincoln Borglum, continued the carving of the presidents' faces in rock following his father's death in 1941. The work was halted due to pressures leading to the US entry into World War II and the massive sculpture was declared complete in 1941. Although tourism sustained the city throughout the Great Depression of the 1930s, the gasoline rationing of World War II had a devastating effect on the tourist industry in the town, but this was more than made up for by the war-related growth. The city benefited greatly from the opening of Rapid City Army Air Base, later Ellsworth Air Force Base, an Army Air Corps training base. As a result, the population of the area nearly doubled between 1940 and 1948, from almost 14,000 to nearly 27,000 people. Military families and civilian personnel soon took every available living space in town, and mobile home parks proliferated. Rapid City businesses profited from the military payroll. During the Cold War, missile installations proliferated in the area: a series of Nike Air Defense sites were constructed around Ellsworth in the 1950s. In the early 60s the construction of three Titan missile launch sites containing a total of nine Titan I missiles in the general vicinity of Rapid City took place. Beginning in November 1963, the land for a hundred miles east, northeast and northwest of the city was dotted with 150 Minuteman missile silos and 15 launch command centers, all of which were deactivated in the early 1990s.[10] In 1949, city officials envisioned the city as a retail and wholesale trade center for the region and designed a plan for growth that focused on a civic center, more downtown parking places, new schools, and paved streets. A construction boom continued into the 1950s. Growth slowed in the 1960s, but the worst natural disaster in South Dakota history, the Black Hills Flood of 1972, led to another building boom a decade later. On June 9, 1972, heavy rains caused massive flash flooding along the course of Rapid Creek through the city. 238 people lost their lives and more than $100 million in property was destroyed. The devastation of the flood and the outpouring of private donations and millions of dollars in federal aid led to the completion of one big part of the 1949 plan: clearing the area along the Rapid Creek and making it a public park. New homes and businesses were constructed to replace those that had been destroyed. Rushmore Plaza Civic Center and a new Central High School were built in part of the area that had been cleared. The new Central High School opened in 1978, with the graduating class in that year straddling both the original Central (housed in what is now Rapid City High School and community theater) and the new Central. The rebuilding in part insulated Rapid City from the drop in automotive tourism caused by the Oil Embargo in 1974, but tourism was depressed for most of a decade. In 1978, Rushmore Mall was built on the north edge of the city, adding to the city's position as a retail shopping center. In 1980 in United States v. Sioux Nation of Indians, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that the Federal government of the United States had illegally stolen the Black Hills from the Sioux people when the government unilaterally broke the treaty that guaranteed the Black Hills belonged to the Sioux. The court decision offered money, but the Sioux declined on principle that the theft of their land should not be validated, and still demand the return of the land.[11] This land includes Rapid City, which is by far the largest modern settlement in the Black Hills. As of 2010, the dispute has not been settled. In the 1980s, growth was fueled by an increase in tourism, increasingly tied to the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, followed by another decline in the late 1990s. Fears for the closure of Ellsworth AFB as part of the massive base closure process in the 1990s and 2000s led to attempts to expand other sectors of the economy, but growth continued and the city expanded significantly during this period. Today, Rapid City is South Dakota's primary city for tourism and recreation. With the approval of a Deep Underground Science and Engineering Laboratory at the Homestake Mine site in nearby Lead, Rapid City has a future of great advancements in technology, medicine, and scientific research. On June 9ÿ10, 1972, extremely heavy rains over the eastern Black Hills of South Dakota produced record floods on Rapid Creek and other streams in the area. Nearly 15 inches (380?mm) of rain fell in about 6 hours near Nemo, and more than 10 inches (250?mm) of rain fell over an area of 60 square miles (160?km2). According to the Red Cross, the resulting peak floods (which occurred after dark) left 238 people dead and 3,057 people injured.[12] In addition to the human tragedy, total destruction was estimated in excess of $160 million (about $821 million in 2009 dollars), which included 1,335 homes and 5,000 automobiles that were destroyed. Runoff from this storm produced record floods (highest peak flows recorded) along Battle, Spring, Rapid, and Box Elder Creeks. Smaller floods also occurred along Elk Creek and Bear Butte Creek. Canyon Lake Dam, on the west side of Rapid City, broke the night of the flood, unleashing a wall of water down the creek. The 1972 flooding has an estimated recurrence interval of 500 years,[13] which means that a flood of this magnitude will occur on average once every 500 years. Every year there is a 0.2 percent chance (1 in 500) of experiencing a similar event. To prevent a similar tragedy from occurring in the future, the city's flood plain is no longer allowed to be built upon. Today the flood plain features golf courses, parks, sports arenas, and arboretums where neighborhoods and businesses once stood. In 2007, the Rapid City Public Library created a 1972 Flood digital archive[14] that collects survivors' stories, photos and news accounts of the flood. The Journey Museum has an interactive display on the 1972 flood, which is an ongoing project to give future generations the best idea of how the people were affected and the changes made to it because of the loss of 238 lives. It will in the future include the biographies of all of those who died so they will be remembered as more than names on a memorial. Rapid City is located at 440434N 1031342W? / ?44.076188N 103.228299W? / 44.076188; -103.228299. The downtown elevation of Rapid City is 3,202 feet (976 m) and Rapid City sits in the shadow of Black Elk Peak, which at 7,242 feet (2,207?m), is the highest point east of the Rocky Mountains. According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 55.49 square miles (143.71?km2), of which 55.41 square miles (143.5?km2) is land and 0.08 square mile (0.2?km2) is water.[15] Rapid City is located on the eastern edge of the Black Hills, and is split in half by the Dakota Hogback. Rapid City's "Westside" is located in the Red Valley between the foothills of the Black Hills proper and the Dakota Hogback, so named for the red Spearfish formation soils and the way the valley completely circles the Black Hills. Rapid City has grown up into the foothills, with both ridges and valleys developed, especially in the last 20 years, and wildfire is a distinct threat to these residential areas, as shown by the Westberry Trails fire in 1988. Skyline Drive follows the summits of the Dakota Hogback south from near Rapid Gap (where Rapid Creek cuts through the Hogback) to a large high plateau that forms the current south edge of Rapid City. The Central and Eastern portions of Rapid City lie in the wide valley of Rapid Creek outside the Hogback, which includes a number of mesas rising a hundred feet or more above the floodplain. Rapid Creek flows through Rapid City, emerging from Dark Canyon above Canyon Lake and flowing in a large arc north of Downtown. Rapid Creek descends to the southeast as the valley widens. The floodplain of Rapid Creek is mostly a series of parks, arboretums, and bike trails, one legacy of the Black Hills Flood of 1972. To the north, a series of ridges separates Rapid Creek from Box Elder Creek, with large older and new residential areas and commercial areas along I-90. To the south, the terrain rises more steeply to the southern widening of the Dakota Hogback into a plateau dividing the Rapid Creek drainage from Spring Creek. Rapid City features a steppe climate (K?ppen BSk), and is part of USDA Hardiness zone 5a.[16] Its location makes its climate unlike both the higher elevations of the Black Hills and the Great Plains to the east. It is characterized by long arid summers and long dry winters, with short but distinct spring and autumn seasons. Precipitation averages 16.3 inches or 414.0 millimetres annually, but has historically ranged from 9.12 inches or 231.6 millimetres in 1974 to 27.70 inches or 703.6 millimetres in 1946.[17][18] Winters are cold and dry, with December, with a daily average temperature of 24.9?F or ?3.9?C, being the coldest month in recent years; however, chinook winds can warm temperatures above 50?F or 10?C, doing so on average about 21 times from December to February. Temperature inversions, however, occasionally produce warmer temperatures in the Black Hills. On average, highs do not climb above freezing on 42 days, while the low temperature reaches 0?F or ?17.8?C on an average of seventeen nights.[17] Snowfall is frequent but usually not heavy; March and April are typically the snowiest months, and the seasonal total averages 41 inches or 1.04 metres, although historically ranging from 16.9 inches or 0.43 metres during 1980ÿ81 to 80.9 inches or 2.05 metres during 1985ÿ86. Extensive snow cover does not remain for long, with only nine days seasonally with 5 inches or 0.13 metres or more on the ground.[18] Measurable snow has occurred in every month except July.[17] Compared to locations in the east, the area warms rather gradually early in the year, with the last measurable snow typically occurring in late April and precipitation totals beginning to increase; May snow occurs several times per decade. Toward the middle of the year, storms typically develop over the Black Hills during the afternoon and move onto the plains in the evening. Only April through June have observed calendar-day precipitation amounts exceeding 3 inches or 76.2 millimetres, and June 15, 1963, with 3.78 inches or 96.0 millimetres, holds the single-day rainfall record;[citation needed] the record-wettest month is May 1996 with 8.18 inches or 207.8 millimetres. However, Rapid City still sees an average of twenty clear to partly cloudy days[19] and 67 percent of its possible sunshine in June.[20] This is the traditional "flood" season for Rapid and other creeks in the Eastern Hills. Temperatures warm rapidly as summer approaches. Summer in Rapid City is relatively nice, relatively dry, and relatively sunny. July is the warmest month of the year, having a daily average temperature of 87.1?F (30.6?C). There is an average of 34 days with 90?F (32.2?C)+ highs and 5.1 with 100?F (37.8?C)+ highs.[18] Due to the elevation and aridity, lows rarely remain at or above 70?F (21.1?C) and during July and August fall to or below 50?F or 10?C on an average 7.6 days.[17] Rapid City records an average of nine thunderstorm days in August,[19] but only 1.56 inches or 39.6 millimetres of rain in that month. Fall is a precipitous transition season, with the average first freeze in Rapid City is October 4 and late August through September in the Black Hills. The Rapid City area's first snowfall is usually in October, although higher elevations sometimes receive significant snow in September. Occasional cold fronts moving through the area bring blustery northwest winds. Sunshine is abundant in the region in all months except December, averaging 2850 hours, 64% of the possible total, per year.[20] Rapid City holds a record for an extreme temperature drop of 47?F or 26.1?C in five minutes on January 10, 1911, from 60?F or 15.6?C to 13?F or ?10.6?C.[21] Official extreme temperatures range from ?31?F or ?35.0?C on February 2, 1996 up to 111?F or 43.9?C on July 15, 2006; the record low daily maximum is ?18?F or ?27.8?C on February 2, 1989, while the record high daily minimum is 75?F or 23.9?C on July 8, 1985 and July 28, 1960.[22] As of the census[4] of 2010, there were 67,956 people, 28,586 households, and 16,957 families residing in the city. The population density was 1,226.4 inhabitants per square mile (473.5/km2). There were 30,254 housing units at an average density of 546.0 per square mile (210.8/km2). The racial makeup of the city was 80.4% White, 1.1% African American, 12.4% Native American, 1.0% Asian, 0.1% Pacific Islander, 0.7% from other races, and 4.1% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 4.1% of the population. There were 28,586 households of which 29.9% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 41.2% were married couples living together, 13.1% had a female householder with no husband present, 5.1% had a male householder with no wife present, and 40.7% were non-families. 32.9% of all households were made up of individuals and 11.1% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.29 and the average family size was 2.90. The median age in the city was 35.6 years. 23.9% of residents were under the age of 18; 10.6% were between the ages of 18 and 24; 25.7% were from 25 to 44; 25% were from 45 to 64; and 14.5% were 65 years of age or older. The gender makeup of the city was 49.5% male and 50.5% female.[26] As of the census of 2000, there were 59,607 people, 23,969 households, and 15,220 families residing in the city. The population density was 1,336.7 people per square mile (516.1/km2). There were 25,096 housing units at an average density of 562.8 per square mile (217.3/km2).[15] The racial makeup of the city was 84.33% White, 0.97% African American, 10.14% Native American, 1.00% Asian, 0.06% Pacific Islander, 0.73% from other races, and 2.77% from two or more races.[27] Hispanic or Latino of any race were 2.77% of the population.[27] There were 23,969 households out of which 31.2% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 46.7% were married couples living together, 12.6% had a female householder with no husband present, and 36.5% were non-families. 29.4% of all households were made up of individuals and 10.0% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.39 and the average family size was 2.96.[27] In the city, the population was spread out with 25.3% under the age of 18, 11.8% from 18 to 24, 28.7% from 25 to 44, 20.9% from 45 to 64, and 13.2% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 35 years. For every 100 females there were 96.2 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 93.6 males.[26] As of 2000 the median income for a household in the city was $35,978, and the median income for a family was $44,818. Males had a median income of $30,985 versus $21,913 for females. The per capita income for the city was $19,445. About 9.4% of families and 12.7% of the population were below the poverty line, including 17.6% of those under age 18 and 6.9% of those age 65 or over. Rapid City is a major medical care center for a five-state region, centered around the Rapid City Regional Hospital and the Indian Health Service's Sioux San Hospital. Other smaller, independent medical facilities have been established in the area, including the Black Hills Surgery Center, The Heart Doctors, The Spine Center at Rapid City, Setliff Sinus Institute, Black Hills Eye Institute and Regional Behavioral Healthcare. Two Veterans Affairs hospitals are located nearby at Fort Meade, and Hot Springs. Emergency medical services (EMS) are provided by the Rapid City Fire Department. Emergency medical transportation by rotor and fixed wing aircraft is provided by Black Hills Life Flight, operated by Air Methods Corp. based in Denver, CO. Rapid City is also home to a number of non-profit public health organizations that engage in survey and clinic research, epidemiology, and area-based health promotion disease prevention. The Health Education and Promotion Council and Black Hills Center for American Indian Health are two notable non-profit organizations. Rapid City institutions of higher education include the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology, Oglala Lakota College's He Sapa College Center, Black Hills State University - Rapid City University Center (includes classes and degrees through five other South Dakota post-secondary Institutions), National American University, Western Dakota Technical Institute, Black Hills Beauty College, John Witherspoon College, and several small sectarian preacher training schools. Black Hills State University is located in nearby Spearfish and offers several classes in Rapid City. The South Dakota state nurse training program is also based in Rapid City. There are two public high schools in the city, Central High School and Stevens High School. In 2013, 26.6 percent of Rapid City residents 25 years or over had earned a bachelor's degree or higher.[28] This is on par with the average educational attainment in the United States. The highest rates of educational attainment in South Dakota can be found in metropolitan areas of Rapid City and Sioux Falls. The local public schools fall under the Rapid City Area Schools school district. There are three high schools within the district. They are Central High School, Stevens High School and the newly renovated Rapid City High School, which also houses the Performing Arts Center. The middle schools include newly founded East Middle School, North Middle School, South Middle School, Southwest Middle School, and West Middle School. There are 16 elementary schools within the district. These are Black Hawk, Canyon Lake, Corral Drive, General Beadle, Grandview, Horace Mann, Kibben Kuster, Knollwood Heights, Meadowbrook, Pinedale, Rapid Valley, Robbinsdale, South Canyon, South Park, Valley View, and Woodrow Wilson.[29] There are also various private schools in Rapid City. The city has four Christian high schools including Saint Thomas More, Rapid City Christian High School, Liberty Baptist Academy and Open Bible Christian School. Rapid City also has various private grade schools including St. Paul's Lutheran School of the WELS.[30] Because of the importance of tourism in the area, and its extensive market area, Rapid City has many cultural resources usually found only in much larger urban areas. Among these are: Rapid City also has a large amount of public sculpture on display in many parts of the city. The most visible is "The City of Presidents" ÿ a series of life-sized bronze statues representing each of the American presidents. The statues are located on street corners in the downtown area. Five South Dakota artists created the statues: Edward E. Hlavka, Lee Leuning, John Lopez, James Michael Maher, and James Van Nuys.[41] These statues are being erected by public subscription over a ten-year period between 2000 and 2010. Rapid City has three sister cities, as designated by Sister Cities International: Rapid City Nikko City Sister City Association Rapid City's economy is diverse, but has only a moderate amount of industry. Heavy and medium industrial activities include a Portland cement plant (constructed and owned for 84 years[42] by the State of South Dakota and sold in 2003 to GCC, a Mexican-based conglomerate), Black Hills Ammunition an ammunition and reloading supplies manufacturing company, several custom sawmills, a lime plant, a computer peripheral component manufacturing plant, and several farm and ranch equipment manufacturers. Of particular note, Rapid City is the center for the manufacture of Black Hills gold jewelry, a popular product with tourists and Westerners in general. Rapid City is also the location of the only manufacturer of stamping machines used for the labeling of plywood and chipboard products. Although most gold mining has ceased in the Black Hills and was never done in or near Rapid City, mining of sand and gravel, as well as the raw materials for lime and Portland cement (including chemical-grade limestone, taconite iron ore, and gypsum) remains an important part of the economy. The largest sector of the Rapid City economy is government services, including local, state, and federal. Major employers include Ellsworth Air Force Base,[43] home of the 28th Bomb Wing flying the B-1B long-range bomber; the Army National Guard based at Camp Rapid and hosting annual exercises in the Black Hills drawing troops from five to ten states; and various federal agencies including the National Park Service, US Forest Service, and Indian Health Service. The Rapid City Regional Hospital Healthcare System covers one of the largest expansions of territory in the United States. The health care sector employs over 8,000 persons in the Rapid City area.[43] Tourism is also a major portion of the Rapid City economy,[43] due to the proximity of Mount Rushmore, Sturgis, home of the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, Deadwood, and other attractions in the Black Hills. Rapid City is the major source of services for the Motorcycle Rally, and the Rally's demand for motel rooms, camp sites, and other services for tourists during the first week of August means that Rapid City has the capacity to host large conventions and large numbers of tourists year-round. Various minor tourist attractions, including wildlife parks, specialty shops, caves, water parks, private museums, and other businesses are found in and near Rapid City. Other economic sectors include financial service and investing companies such as Waddell and Reed, Citibank, WaMu, Merrill Lynch, and Northwestern Mutual. Rapid City is the headquarters for Assurant Insurance's pre-need division and Rapid City has a strong medical services sector, and institutions of higher education. Rapid City is also the major market town for much of five states, drawing commerce from more than half of South Dakota, and large portions of North Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, and the Nebraska Panhandle. The real compound annual growth rate of the gross domestic product of the Rapid City Metropolitan Statistical Area was 2.6% for 2001ÿ2013.[44] Rapid City is a major transportation hub for the Northern Plains. Rapid City Regional Airport provides flights to the airline hub cities of Denver, Minneapolis, Salt Lake City, Dallas-Fort Worth, Las Vegas, Phoenix/Mesa, Houston, Atlanta and Chicago. The airport also has extensive General Aviation operations, including wildfire fighting activities and medical flight support to Rapid City medical facilities and Indian Health Service operations in the Dakotas. Historically, Rapid City was served by three railroads. Presently, the city is served by the Rapid City, Pierre and Eastern Railroad (RCP&E). In addition to Rapid City, the RCP&E serves the Northern Black Hills and run east to Minnesota and south through Nebraska to connect with major transcontinental railroads Burlington Northern Santa Fe and Union Pacific. South Dakota does not have Amtrak service, one of the few states that doesn't. Rapid City's central location allows easy transport of products to both coasts, and trucking is a major business activity in the city. Improved connections with Denver and I-80 to the south, via the Heartland Expressway now under construction will primarily benefit local trucking. Rapid City's location on the boundary of the Western and Eastern power grids, together with the hydroelectric plants of the Mainstem Dams on the Missouri River and the large coal fields and power plants of the Powder River Basin of Wyoming make it one of the points where the two national power grids connect with each other, allowing switching of electrical power from east to west and vice versa. Rapid City previously had its own coal-fired power plant before Federal regulations forced it and many other coal plants in the area such as power stations near Gillette, Wyoming, to shut down. The Ben French power station located within city boundaries shut down September 2012, more than 2 years ahead of its scheduled shut down. Rapid City now obtains much of its power from both the Missouri dams and importing it from elsewhere. Electrical rates used to be considered relatively low until the shut down of the coal plants, so have progressively climbed the last several years as a lack of local power sources means massive expenses to import it from greater distances. Rapid City obtains most of its water supply from Rapid Creek and the alluvial aquifers associated with the creek, owning significant water rights in Pactola Reservoir located some 15 miles (24?km) west of the city, but does also obtain water from some springs in the vicinity, and has the ability to draw water from deep formations that receive water from recharge in areas of the Black Hills where the formations come to the surface. The heavy dependence on shallow alluvial aquifers is of some concern to planners, as most suburbs of Rapid City use septic systems for domestic sewage treatment. However, water supplies remain relatively good for future growth. Rapid City has limited city-to-city bus service along I-90, but many charter bus services operate in the area, and connect Rapid City and Deadwood with cities in Colorado, Nebraska, and Iowa. Rapid City does have a municipally-owned bus service with multiple bus stops and a headquarters in the city. The estimated 2013 population of the Rapid City Metropolitan Statistical Area (Pennington County, Meade County and Custer County) was 141,131.[45] Most cities and towns in the Black Hills and the surrounding plains have a significant percentage of their population who commute to and from Rapid City, and many residents of Rapid City work in outlying towns. Among the nearer suburbs in Pennington and Meade Counties: People who have lived, resided, or were born in Rapid City, South Dakota.

Aristotle🚨

Nikola Tesla🚨Alternating current (AC) is an electric current which periodically reverses direction, in contrast to direct current (DC) which flows only in one direction. Alternating current is the form in which electric power is delivered to businesses and residences, and it is the form of electrical energy that consumers typically use when they plug kitchen appliances, televisions and electric lamps into a wall socket. A common source of DC power is a battery cell in a flashlight. The abbreviations AC and DC are often used to mean simply alternating and direct, as when they modify current or voltage.[1][2] The usual waveform of alternating current in most electric power circuits is a sine wave. In certain applications, different waveforms are used, such as triangular or square waves. Audio and radio signals carried on electrical wires are also examples of alternating current. These types of alternating current carry information encoded (or modulated) onto the AC signal, such as sound (audio) or images (video). These currents typically alternate at higher frequencies than those used in power transmission. Electrical energy is distributed as alternating current because AC voltage may be increased or decreased with a transformer. This allows the power to be transmitted through power lines efficiently at high voltage, which reduces the energy lost as heat due to resistance of the wire, and transformed to a lower, safer, voltage for use. Use of a higher voltage leads to significantly more efficient transmission of power. The power losses ( P L {\displaystyle P_{\rm {L}}} ) in a conductor are a product of the square of the current (I) and the resistance (R) of the conductor, described by the formula This means that when transmitting a fixed power on a given wire, if the current is halved (i.e. the voltage is doubled), the power loss will be four times less. The power transmitted is equal to the product of the current and the voltage (assuming no phase difference); that is, Consequently, power transmitted at a higher voltage requires less loss-producing current than for the same power at a lower voltage. Power is often transmitted at hundreds of kilovolts, and transformed to 100?V ÿ 240?V for domestic use. High voltages have disadvantages, such as the increased insulation required, and generally increased difficulty in their safe handling. In a power plant, energy is generated at a convenient voltage for the design of a generator, and then stepped up to a high voltage for transmission. Near the loads, the transmission voltage is stepped down to the voltages used by equipment. Consumer voltages vary somewhat depending on the country and size of load, but generally motors and lighting are built to use up to a few hundred volts between phases. The voltage delivered to equipment such as lighting and motor loads is standardized, with an allowable range of voltage over which equipment is expected to operate. Standard power utilization voltages and percentage tolerance vary in the different mains power systems found in the world. High-voltage direct-current (HVDC) electric power transmission systems have become more viable as technology has provided efficient means of changing the voltage of DC power. HVDC systems, however, tend to be more expensive and less efficient over shorter distances than transformers.[citation needed] Transmission with high voltage direct current was not feasible in the early days of electric power transmission, as there was then no economically viable way to step down the voltage of DC for end user applications such as lighting incandescent bulbs. Three-phase electrical generation is very common. The simplest way is to use three separate coils in the generator stator, physically offset by an angle of 120 (one-third of a complete 360 phase) to each other. Three current waveforms are produced that are equal in magnitude and 120 out of phase to each other. If coils are added opposite to these (60 spacing), they generate the same phases with reverse polarity and so can be simply wired together. In practice, higher "pole orders" are commonly used. For example, a 12-pole machine would have 36 coils (10 spacing). The advantage is that lower rotational speeds can be used to generate the same frequency. For example, a 2-pole machine running at 3600?rpm and a 12-pole machine running at 600?rpm produce the same frequency; the lower speed is preferable for larger machines. If the load on a three-phase system is balanced equally among the phases, no current flows through the neutral point. Even in the worst-case unbalanced (linear) load, the neutral current will not exceed the highest of the phase currents. Non-linear loads (e.g. the switch-mode power supplies widely used) may require an oversized neutral bus and neutral conductor in the upstream distribution panel to handle harmonics. Harmonics can cause neutral conductor current levels to exceed that of one or all phase conductors. For three-phase at utilization voltages a four-wire system is often used. When stepping down three-phase, a transformer with a Delta (3-wire) primary and a Star (4-wire, center-earthed) secondary is often used so there is no need for a neutral on the supply side. For smaller customers (just how small varies by country and age of the installation) only a single phase and neutral, or two phases and neutral, are taken to the property. For larger installations all three phases and neutral are taken to the main distribution panel. From the three-phase main panel, both single and three-phase circuits may lead off. Three-wire single-phase systems, with a single center-tapped transformer giving two live conductors, is a common distribution scheme for residential and small commercial buildings in North America. This arrangement is sometimes incorrectly referred to as "two phase". A similar method is used for a different reason on construction sites in the UK. Small power tools and lighting are supposed to be supplied by a local center-tapped transformer with a voltage of 55?V between each power conductor and earth. This significantly reduces the risk of electric shock in the event that one of the live conductors becomes exposed through an equipment fault whilst still allowing a reasonable voltage of 110?V between the two conductors for running the tools. A third wire, called the bond (or earth) wire, is often connected between non-current-carrying metal enclosures and earth ground. This conductor provides protection from electric shock due to accidental contact of circuit conductors with the metal chassis of portable appliances and tools. Bonding all non-current-carrying metal parts into one complete system ensures there is always a low electrical impedance path to ground sufficient to carry any fault current for as long as it takes for the system to clear the fault. This low impedance path allows the maximum amount of fault current, causing the overcurrent protection device (breakers, fuses) to trip or burn out as quickly as possible, bringing the electrical system to a safe state. All bond wires are bonded to ground at the main service panel, as is the neutral/identified conductor if present. The frequency of the electrical system varies by country and sometimes within a country; most electric power is generated at either 50 or 60?hertz. Some countries have a mixture of 50?Hz and 60?Hz supplies, notably electricity power transmission in Japan. A low frequency eases the design of electric motors, particularly for hoisting, crushing and rolling applications, and commutator-type traction motors for applications such as railways. However, low frequency also causes noticeable flicker in arc lamps and incandescent light bulbs. The use of lower frequencies also provided the advantage of lower impedance losses, which are proportional to frequency. The original Niagara Falls generators were built to produce 25?Hz power, as a compromise between low frequency for traction and heavy induction motors, while still allowing incandescent lighting to operate (although with noticeable flicker). Most of the 25?Hz residential and commercial customers for Niagara Falls power were converted to 60?Hz by the late 1950s, although some[which?] 25?Hz industrial customers still existed as of the start of the 21st century. 16.7?Hz power (formerly 16 2/3?Hz) is still used in some European rail systems, such as in Austria, Germany, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland. Off-shore, military, textile industry, marine, aircraft, and spacecraft applications sometimes use 400?Hz, for benefits of reduced weight of apparatus or higher motor speeds. Computer mainframe systems were often powered by 400?Hz or 415?Hz for benefits of ripple reduction while using smaller internal AC to DC conversion units.[3] In any case, the input to the M-G set is the local customary voltage and frequency, variously 200?V (Japan), 208?V, 240?V (North America), 380?V, 400?V or 415?V (Europe), and variously 50?Hz or 60?Hz. A direct current flows uniformly throughout the cross-section of a uniform wire. An alternating current of any frequency is forced away from the wire's center, toward its outer surface. This is because the acceleration of an electric charge in an alternating current produces waves of electromagnetic radiation that cancel the propagation of electricity toward the center of materials with high conductivity. This phenomenon is called skin effect. At very high frequencies the current no longer flows in the wire, but effectively flows on the surface of the wire, within a thickness of a few skin depths. The skin depth is the thickness at which the current density is reduced by 63%. Even at relatively low frequencies used for power transmission (50?Hz ÿ 60?Hz), non-uniform distribution of current still occurs in sufficiently thick conductors. For example, the skin depth of a copper conductor is approximately 8.57?mm at 60?Hz, so high current conductors are usually hollow to reduce their mass and cost. Since the current tends to flow in the periphery of conductors, the effective cross-section of the conductor is reduced. This increases the effective AC resistance of the conductor, since resistance is inversely proportional to the cross-sectional area. The AC resistance often is many times higher than the DC resistance, causing a much higher energy loss due to ohmic heating (also called I2R loss). For low to medium frequencies, conductors can be divided into stranded wires, each insulated from one another, and the relative positions of individual strands specially arranged within the conductor bundle. Wire constructed using this technique is called Litz wire. This measure helps to partially mitigate skin effect by forcing more equal current throughout the total cross section of the stranded conductors. Litz wire is used for making high-Q inductors, reducing losses in flexible conductors carrying very high currents at lower frequencies, and in the windings of devices carrying higher radio frequency current (up to hundreds of kilohertz), such as switch-mode power supplies and radio frequency transformers. As written above, an alternating current is made of electric charge under periodic acceleration, which causes radiation of electromagnetic waves. Energy that is radiated is lost. Depending on the frequency, different techniques are used to minimize the loss due to radiation. At frequencies up to about 1?GHz, pairs of wires are twisted together in a cable, forming a twisted pair. This reduces losses from electromagnetic radiation and inductive coupling. A twisted pair must be used with a balanced signalling system, so that the two wires carry equal but opposite currents. Each wire in a twisted pair radiates a signal, but it is effectively cancelled by radiation from the other wire, resulting in almost no radiation loss. Coaxial cables are commonly used at audio frequencies and above for convenience. A coaxial cable has a conductive wire inside a conductive tube, separated by a dielectric layer. The current flowing on the surface of the inner conductor is equal and opposite to the current flowing on the inner surface of the outer tube. The electromagnetic field is thus completely contained within the tube, and (ideally) no energy is lost to radiation or coupling outside the tube. Coaxial cables have acceptably small losses for frequencies up to about 5?GHz. For microwave frequencies greater than 5?GHz, the losses (due mainly to the electrical resistance of the central conductor) become too large, making waveguides a more efficient medium for transmitting energy. Coaxial cables with an air rather than solid dielectric are preferred as they transmit power with lower loss. Waveguides are similar to coaxial cables, as both consist of tubes, with the biggest difference being that the waveguide has no inner conductor. Waveguides can have any arbitrary cross section, but rectangular cross sections are the most common. Because waveguides do not have an inner conductor to carry a return current, waveguides cannot deliver energy by means of an electric current, but rather by means of a guided electromagnetic field. Although surface currents do flow on the inner walls of the waveguides, those surface currents do not carry power. Power is carried by the guided electromagnetic fields. The surface currents are set up by the guided electromagnetic fields and have the effect of keeping the fields inside the waveguide and preventing leakage of the fields to the space outside the waveguide. Waveguides have dimensions comparable to the wavelength of the alternating current to be transmitted, so they are only feasible at microwave frequencies. In addition to this mechanical feasibility, electrical resistance of the non-ideal metals forming the walls of the waveguide cause dissipation of power (surface currents flowing on lossy conductors dissipate power). At higher frequencies, the power lost to this dissipation becomes unacceptably large. At frequencies greater than 200?GHz, waveguide dimensions become impractically small, and the ohmic losses in the waveguide walls become large. Instead, fiber optics, which are a form of dielectric waveguides, can be used. For such frequencies, the concepts of voltages and currents are no longer used. Alternating currents are accompanied (or caused) by alternating voltages. An AC voltage v can be described mathematically as a function of time by the following equation: where The peak-to-peak value of an AC voltage is defined as the difference between its positive peak and its negative peak. Since the maximum value of sin ? ( x ) {\displaystyle \sin(x)} is +1 and the minimum value is ?1, an AC voltage swings between + V p e a k {\displaystyle +V_{\rm {peak}}} and ? V p e a k {\displaystyle -V_{\rm {peak}}} . The peak-to-peak voltage, usually written as V p p {\displaystyle V_{\rm {pp}}} or V P ? P {\displaystyle V_{\rm {P-P}}} , is therefore V p e a k ? ( ? V p e a k ) = 2 V p e a k {\displaystyle V_{\rm {peak}}-(-V_{\rm {peak}})=2V_{\rm {peak}}} . The relationship between voltage and the power delivered is Rather than using instantaneous power, p ( t ) {\displaystyle p(t)} , it is more practical to use a time averaged power (where the averaging is performed over any integer number of cycles). Therefore, AC voltage is often expressed as a root mean square (RMS) value, written as V r m s {\displaystyle V_{\rm {rms}}} , because Below it is assumed an AC waveform (with no DC component). To illustrate these concepts, consider a 230?V AC mains supply used in many countries around the world. It is so called because its root mean square value is 230?V. This means that the time-averaged power delivered is equivalent to the power delivered by a DC voltage of 230?V. To determine the peak voltage (amplitude), we can rearrange the above equation to: For 230?V AC, the peak voltage V p e a k {\displaystyle V_{\mathrm {peak} }} is therefore 230 V G 2 {\displaystyle 230V\times {\sqrt {2}}} , which is about 325?V. During the course of one cycle the voltage rises from zero to 325?V, falls through zero to -325?V, and returns to zero. Alternating current is used to transmit information, as in the cases of telephone and cable television. Information signals are carried over a wide range of AC frequencies. POTS telephone signals have a frequency of about 3 kHz, close to the baseband audio frequency. Cable television and other cable-transmitted information currents may alternate at frequencies of tens to thousands of megahertz. These frequencies are similar to the electromagnetic wave frequencies often used to transmit the same types of information over the air. The first alternator to produce alternating current was a dynamo electric generator based on Michael Faraday's principles constructed by the French instrument maker Hippolyte Pixii in 1832.[4] Pixii later added a commutator to his device to produce the (then) more commonly used direct current. The earliest recorded practical application of alternating current is by Guillaume Duchenne, inventor and developer of electrotherapy. In 1855, he announced that AC was superior to direct current for electrotherapeutic triggering of muscle contractions.[5] Alternating current technology had first developed in Europe due to the work of Guillaume Duchenne (1850s), the Hungarian Ganz Works company (1870s), and in the 1880s: Sebastian Ziani de Ferranti, Lucien Gaulard, and Galileo Ferraris. In 1876, Russian engineer Pavel Yablochkov invented a lighting system where sets of induction coils were installed along a high voltage AC line. Instead of changing voltage, the primary windings transferred power to the secondary windings which were connected to one or several 'electric candles' (arc lamps) of his own design,[6][7] used to keep the failure of one lamp from disabling the entire circuit.[6] In 1878, the Ganz factory, Budapest, Hungary, began manufacturing equipment for electric lighting and, by 1883, had installed over fifty systems in Austria-Hungary. Their AC systems used arc and incandescent lamps, generators, and other equipment.[8] Alternating current systems can use transformers to change voltage from low to high level and back, allowing generation and consumption at low voltages but transmission, possibly over great distances, at high voltage, with savings in the cost of conductors and energy losses. A bipolar open-core power transformer developed by Lucien Gaulard and John Dixon Gibbs was demonstrated in London in 1881, and attracted the interest of Westinghouse. They also exhibited the invention in Turin in 1884. However these early induction coils with open magnetic circuits are inefficient at transferring power to loads. Until about 1880, the paradigm for AC power transmission from a high voltage supply to a low voltage load was a series circuit. Open-core transformers with a ratio near 1:1 were connected with their primaries in series to allow use of a high voltage for transmission while presenting a low voltage to the lamps. The inherent flaw in this method was that turning off a single lamp (or other electric device) affected the voltage supplied to all others on the same circuit. Many adjustable transformer designs were introduced to compensate for this problematic characteristic of the series circuit, including those employing methods of adjusting the core or bypassing the magnetic flux around part of a coil.[9] The direct current systems did not have these drawbacks, giving it significant advantages over early AC systems. In the autumn of 1884, Kroly Zipernowsky, Ott܇ Blthy and Miksa Dri (ZBD), three engineers associated with the Ganz factory, determined that open-core devices were impractical, as they were incapable of reliably regulating voltage.[10] In their joint 1885 patent applications for novel transformers (later called ZBD transformers), they described two designs with closed magnetic circuits where copper windings were either a wound around iron wire ring core or b)?surrounded by iron wire core.[9] In both designs, the magnetic flux linking the primary and secondary windings traveled almost entirely within the confines of the iron core, with no intentional path through air (see toroidal cores). The new transformers were 3.4 times more efficient than the open-core bipolar devices of Gaulard and Gibbs.[11] The Ganz factory in 1884 shipped the world's first five high-efficiency AC transformers.[12] This first unit had been manufactured to the following specifications: 1,400 W, 40?Hz, 120:72 V, 11.6:19.4 A, ratio 1.67:1, one-phase, shell form.[12] The ZBD patents included two other major interrelated innovations: one concerning the use of parallel connected, instead of series connected, utilization loads, the other concerning the ability to have high turns ratio transformers such that the supply network voltage could be much higher (initially 1400?V to 2000?V) than the voltage of utilization loads (100?V initially preferred).[13][14] When employed in parallel connected electric distribution systems, closed-core transformers finally made it technically and economically feasible to provide electric power for lighting in homes, businesses and public spaces.[15][16] The other essential milestone was the introduction of 'voltage source, voltage intensive' (VSVI) systems'[17] by the invention of constant voltage generators in 1885.[18] Ott܇ Blthy also invented the first AC electricity meter.[19][20][21][22] The AC power systems was developed and adopted rapidly after 1886 due to its ability to distribute electricity efficiently over long distances, overcoming the limitations of the direct current system. In 1886, the ZBD engineers designed the world's first power station that used AC generators to power a parallel-connected common electrical network, the steam-powered Rome-Cerchi power plant.[23] The reliability of the AC technology received impetus after the Ganz Works electrified a large European metropolis: Rome in 1886.[23] In the UK, Sebastian de Ferranti, who had been developing AC generators and transformers in London since 1882, redesigned the AC system at the Grosvenor Gallery power station in 1886 for the London Electric Supply Corporation (LESCo) including alternators of his own design and transformer designs similar to Gaulard and Gibbs.[24] In 1890 he designed their power station at Deptford[25] and converted the Grosvenor Gallery station across the Thames into an electrical substation, showing the way to integrate older plants into a universal AC supply system.[26] In the US William Stanley, Jr. designed one of the first practical devices to transfer AC power efficiently between isolated circuits. Using pairs of coils wound on a common iron core, his design, called an induction coil, was an early (1885) transformer. Stanley also worked on engineering and adapting European designs such as the Gaulard and Gibbs transformer for US entrepreneur George Westinghouse who started building AC systems in 1886. The spread of Westinghouse and other AC systems triggered a push back in late 1887 by Edison (a proponent of direct current) who attempted to discredit alternating current as too dangerous in a public campaign called the "War of Currents". In 1888 alternating current systems gained further viability with introduction of a functional AC motor, something these systems had lacked up till then. The design, an induction motor, was independently invented by Galileo Ferraris and Nikola Tesla (with Tesla's design being licensed by Westinghouse in the US). This design was further developed into the modern practical three-phase form by Mikhail Dolivo-Dobrovolsky and Charles Eugene Lancelot Brown.[27] The Ames Hydroelectric Generating Plant (spring of 1891) and the original Niagara Falls Adams Power Plant (August 25, 1895) were among the first hydroelectric alternating current power plants. The first long distance transmission of single-phase electricity was from a hydroelectric generating plant in Oregon at Willamette Falls which in 1890 sent power fourteen miles downriver to downtown Portland for street lighting.[28] In 1891, a second transmission system was installed in Telluride Colorado.[29] The San Antonio Canyon Generator was the third commercial single-phase hydroelectric AC power plant in the United States to provide long-distance electricity. It was completed on December 31, 1892 by Almarian William Decker to provide power to the city of Pomona, California which was 14 miles away. In 1893 he next designed the first commercial three-phase power plant in the United States using alternating current was the hydroelectric Mill Creek No. 1 Hydroelectric Plant near Redlands, California. Decker's design incorporated 10?kV three-phase transmission and established the standards for the complete system of generation, transmission and motors used today. The Jaruga Hydroelectric Power Plant in Croatia was set in operation on 28 August 1895. The two generators (42?Hz, 550?kW each) and the transformers were produced and installed by the Hungarian company Ganz. The transmission line from the power plant to the City of ?ibenik was 11.5 kilometers (7.1?mi) long on wooden towers, and the municipal distribution grid 3000?V/110?V included six transforming stations. Alternating current circuit theory developed rapidly in the latter part of the 19th and early 20th century. Notable contributors to the theoretical basis of alternating current calculations include Charles Steinmetz, Oliver Heaviside, and many others.[30][31] Calculations in unbalanced three-phase systems were simplified by the symmetrical components methods discussed by Charles Legeyt Fortescue in 1918.

Rotta Desilijic Tiure or Rotta the Huttlet🚨The Hutts are a fictional alien race in the Star Wars universe. They appear in The Phantom Menace, Return of the Jedi and The Clone Wars, as well as the special edition release of A New Hope. They also appear in various Star Wars games, including those based on the movies, and the Knights of the Old Republic series. None of these are very friendly and all are criminally involved.[1] In the comic book series Tales of the Jedi: Golden Age of the Sith and Tales of the Jedi: The Fall of the Sith Empire, however, there is a Hutt character named Aarrba who is sympathetic to the main characters, Gav and Jori Daragon. According to the movie, the Hutts originated on a forest planet called Varl, in a binary star system consisting of the two stars Evona and Ardos, which the Hutts worshiped as gods. According to Hutt legend, Evona was absorbed by a black hole, and Ardos collapsed on itself over grief for its mate. Since the Hutts survived the deaths of their gods, they believed they had become gods, hence their egocentrism. Scientists believe the Hutts destroyed their world in a civil war. After Varl's devastation, the Hutts migrated to a planet called Evocar, and displaced the peaceful natives through canny business practices, even going so far as to evict them. The Hutts renamed their new planet Nal Hutta"Glorious Jewel" in Huttese. Nal Hutta is the capital of Hutt Space, the species' empire. The primary moon of Nal Hutta is Nar Shaddaa. Before the establishment of the Old Republic, the Hutts were the dominant species in the galaxy, although they never built up an extensive empire; their dominance focused instead on trade and economic empires. Adult Hutts are shaped rather like extremely large shell-less gastropods (up to one thousand kilograms) with stubby arms, no rear limbs and numerous redundant internal organs. Locomotion is through a series of rippling contractions akin to a slug's locomotion. In the novelization of Return of the Jedi, it is mentioned that Hutts are born bipedal, but their "rump legs" fused together over time due to lack of movement. Hutts are naturally long-lived, with a lifespan of up to a thousand years, reproducing asexually and nursing their young in pouches not unlike marsupials. An infant Hutt, known as a Huttlet, is the size of an orange when born, and lives in the parent's pouch for five decades before becoming "fully developed." Adolescents become adults when they reach the age of 130 years. Though traditionally referred to as males, all members of the species are hermaphroditic; personality type and gender roles are assumed voluntarily, or upon a viewer's deduction. Upon becoming pregnant, Hutts are referred to as female, although some Hutts do not accept this and choose to retain their masculine persona, whereas others alternate between male and female character.[2] Hutt skin is extremely thick, and when combined with their redundant organs and tough flesh, can result in Hutts being able to survive direct blaster fire hits. Hutts are also inedible by most life forms, including Sarlacci, resistant to the Force due to their unique thought patterns, and are able to see the ultraviolet and infrared portions of the electromagnetic spectrum.[2] Nal Hutta is ruled by the Clans of the Ancients, which is composed of leaders of the eldest clans on Nal Hutta. Many Hutts leave their home world to form kajidics, or criminal empires, under the control of the Clan. Hutts hold their families in very high regard except when leadership of the clan is available and will kill members of their families for personal advancement. If a non-Hutt kills a Hutt, then it will usually result in a death-mark, or bounty, being put on the offending party. Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, and Princess Leia were the most famous recipients in their role in the death of Jabba the Hutt. The death mark against them lasted for about ten years before it was removed by Durga the Hutt during the Darksaber incident. Hutt grudges last a very long time, however, and the deathmark was reinstated by others after Durga's death. Hutts do not generally reveal their family names to non-Hutts. Close subordinates, such as counselors, are very familiar with Huttese clan politics as they must be to advise and orchestrate attacks and business well; as such only a few Hutt clans are known by name. The two most prominent are Desilijic, the Clan of Jabba the Hutt, and Besadii, one of the most powerful before the death of Durga the Hutt. The Hutts' native language, Huttese, is a lingua franca of galactic organized crime. The language is a constructed language, with many distorted English words, most having the same syllables as the English. Its phonology is said to be based on the Quechua language.[3] Not only the Hutts speak Huttese. For example, all of the singers in the Max Rebo Band sing in Huttese. Bib Fortuna a non-Hutt but who works for Jabba the Hutt and many gangsters in the Star Wars galaxy also speak the language for economical purposes. C-3PO the protocol droid who is fluent in over 6 million forms of communication can also comprehend and speak fluent Huttese as seen in the films. Arok was a masculine Hutt of the Hutt Grand Council, the ruling council on Nal Hutta, who discussed the decision about Ziro Desilijic Tiure's release. He was also present when Darth Maul and the Shadow Collective launched an attack on the Council's chambers. Arok had a smoking habit. He eventually became the leader of his Kajidic and earned a spot on the Clans of the Ancients. Aruk Besadii Aora or Aruk the Hutt was a Hutt crime lord and former leader of the Besadii kajidic.[4] He was a physically large Hutt and refused to take orders from anybody. Aruk is the father of Durga Besadii Tai and when Durga was born with a large birthmark on his face, other Hutts told Aruk that he was impure and not worthy of being called a Hutt and implored him to kill his son, but Aruk was fond of the child and sensed that he would grow up to be a cunning and ruthless Huttthe perfect heir to his criminal empire. He also threatened to murder all who wished Durga killed and began to raise his child himself. Aruk provided Durga with a good education and he eventually became his father's apprentice. Aruk was considered by many as an "Old Fashioned Hutt"; one reason was because Jabba's fascination with scantily-clad humanoid females disgusted him and the other was his unwavering belief in the power of the Besadii kajidic. Aruk was killed when Teroenza poisoned his supply of nala tree frogs which he liked eating. Beldorion was a Hutt who trained to be a Jedi (Planet of Twilight) sometime before the Clone Wars (the only known Huttese Jedi). Beldorion journeyed to Nam Chorios with his fellow Jedi Taselda, ostensibly to investigate the Theran movement. When he arrived, Beldorion sensed that Nam Chorios itself was a potent nexus for the power of the Force. Therefore, Beldorion stayed and established himself as ruler of the planet, struggling for power with Taselda, who was also drawn in by Chorios' power. Beldorion became a pawn of the humanoid droch Dzym. He gave himself such titles as "Beldorion of the Ruby Eyes" and "Beldorion the Splendid." With the Force and Dzym's help, Beldorion remained strong and youthful, his body all muscle, avoiding the corpulence and immobility of most Hutts his age. However, at the onset of the Clone Wars, Supreme Chancellor Palpatine used special emergency powers to send Seti Ashgad to Nam Chorios in a political expansionist movement. Seeing that Beldorion the Hutt had no real interest in ruling Nam Chorios so long as his desires were satisfied, Ashgad rose to become the planet's unofficial ruler. But Ashgad soon realized that Beldorion had only been a figurehead for a more insidious figure, Dzym. About thirteen years after the Battle of Yavin, Luke Skywalker and Leia Organa Solo traveled to Nam Chorios to meet with Ashgad. While there, Leia was taken prisoner and met Beldorion. While he held her captive, Beldorion told her stories of the ancient Jedi Masters such as Thon and Yoda, whose power he admired, if not their principles. Leia eventually escaped with Luke to disrupt Ashgad and Dzym's plan to unleash a plague throughout the sector. During the attempt to stop Ashgad, Leia was attacked by Beldorion. The old Hutt was all muscle and fire, and attacked with his lightsaber with astonishing quickness. Although Leia had not been trained extensively in lightsaber combat, she did have combat training and a keen insight into the flow of the Force and was able to defeat Beldorion.[5][6] Borga Besadii Diori or Borga the Hutt was the mother of the late Randa Besadii Diori and guardian of Gardulla the Younger and Decca Besadii Diori. She took control of the Besadii kajidic after Durga's death. During the Yuuzhan Vong War, she negotiated a truce between the Hutts and the Yuuzhan Vong to let the Hutts have a portion of some of their space. Although the truce was successful, little did Borga know, the Yuuzhan Vong would end up betraying her. Later, Borga negotiated with the New Republic to sell the information on the invaders' next attack. When the Yuuzhan Vong found out, they immediately attacked Hutt space. Borga led the Hutt defenses of Nal Hutta however she was no match for the Yuuzhan Vong who conquered Hutt Space, forcing a large number of Hutts to move to Tatooine. Borga and many other Hutts, however, remained on Nal Hutta as prisoners. She tried to persuade the Yuuzhan Vong to release her and her fellow captives but she was coldly turned away. His Great Obesity, Durga Besadii Tai or Durga the Hutt was a Hutt and the successor of Aruk as head of the Besadii kajidic. Note also that he captured the Death Star's engineer and "hired" him to build him his own superlaser mechanism, which, before being destroyed in Hoth's asteroid belt, was known as Darksaber. A notable feature of Durga is his green birthmark that stretches along the side of his face. Gradulla Besadii Diori or Gardulla the Hutt, later known as Gardulla the Elder or Gardulla the Besadii Elder, was one of the Hutt crime lords of Tatooine. Her assistant is Diva Funquita. She is best known for buying Shmi and Anakin Skywalker, then losing them to Watto, a junk dealer, whilst betting on the pod-races. Gardulla is a sometimes rival of Jabba the Hutt and appears briefly as his guest at the Podrace scene in The Phantom Menace. Gardulla also sponsors Podracers, including Gasgano. After the Boonta Eve Classic, Gardulla offered Watto a substantial sum to regain ownership of Anakin, but the Toydarian had already lost the boy to Qui-Gon Jinn. Gardulla attempted to feed Jango Fett to her personal Krayt dragon, but was in turn killed by the bounty hunter by being pushed into the Krayt dragon's lair and devoured after being interrogated for information on the Bando Gora cult. Gardulla has a son, Gardulla the Younger and a daughter, Decca Besadii Diori. Gorga Desilijic Aarrpo or Gorga the Hutt, is the nephew of Jabba the Hutt. He was referenced in the game Star Wars Bounty Hunter, posting several secondary bounties. Gorga was extremely angry at Big Gizz and Spiker, former Swoop riders for Jabba, dropped Jabba's urns on him and was very horrified and displeased that his uncle's ashes had blown away. While on Tatooine, a feminine natured Hutt named Anachro the H'uun caught Gorga's eye. Gorga found her to be beautiful. Unfortunately for him, Anachro was the daughter of Orko the H'uun, an enemy of his. Gorga hired Boba Fett to kill Bar-Kooda, a pirate kingpin that had been harassing Orko's freighters. Fett succeeded, and Gorga, Anachro, and Orko celebrated Gorga and Anachro's impending nuptials by eating Bar-Kooda's corpse. When Anachro was captured by slavers, Gorga hired Boba Fett to find her but Orko accused Gorga of staging her kidnapping and nearly tore each other apart, however Fett brought Anachro back safely and although, the both of them made a public apology towards the other, Gorga still despised his father-in-law. Gorga later hired Fett once more to assassinate Orko, but when it was revealed Anachro was pregnant, he called off the assassination. However, Ry-Kooda, Bar-Kooda's brother, had murdered Orko in a particularly brutal fashion. Anachro accused Gorga of the murder, and in grief left him. Ry-Kooda then tried to kill Anachro but Gorga stopped him and Boba Fett ultimately killed Ry-Kooda. The excitement caused Anachro to give birth and the both of them reconciled and got back together. Kossak the Hutt is a powerful businessman said to have lived around the same time as Xim the Despot and was directly responsible for Xim's defeat at The Third Battle of Vontor. What is known of this is that Kossak the Hutt had tricked the Klatooinians,Weequays,Vodrans and the Nikto into signing themselves into virtual slavery and that it was Kossak that used the Vodrans and Klatooinians during the final battle that ended the reign of Xim The Despot. Jabba the Hutt is an antagonist who first appeared on film in Return of the Jedi, though was later added to the special edition of Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope. Jabba was originally portrayed by an immense latex puppet, but in later releases he is a computer-generated image (CGI). His assistant is Bib Fortuna. Besides the films, Jabba the Hutt is featured in Star Wars literature and is sometimes referenced by his full name, Jabba Desilijic Tiure.[7] Jabba also appears in the computer game Star Wars Galaxies. He is a 600-year-old Hutt crime lord and gangster who employs a retinue of criminals, bounty hunters, smugglers, assassins, and bodyguards to operate his criminal empire. Jabba the Hutt's palace on the desert planet Tatooine is a former monastery for a group of mystics known as the B'omarr monks. There, he keeps a host of entertainers, slaves, droids, and alien creatures at his disposal. Jabba has a grim sense of humor, a bellicose laugh, an insatiable appetite, and an affinity for gambling, slave girls, torture, and has a pet rancor at the "basement" of his Palace. The character was incorporated into the Star Wars merchandising campaign that corresponded with the theatrical release of Return of the Jedi. Jabba the Hutt's image has since played an influential role in popular culture, particularly in the United States. His name is used as a satirical literary device and a political caricature to underscore negative qualities such as suffering from morbid obesity and corruption.[8][9] Queen Jool or Jool the Hutt was the Hutt owner of Rik's Cantina on Coruscant. She lived in a swamp below the bar. Her left eye had been replaced by a jeweled and feathered cybernetic implant that allowed her to observe the cantina's doings. Aside from owning and operating the bar, she was also a sly information broker. Jool was a suave and flirtatious Hutt. She is an ally of Cade Skywalker. Vogga the Hutt is a Huttese businessman based on Nar Shaddaa who specialized in fuelspecifically high-grade fuel suitable for, among other things, Citadel Station. Like all Hutts, he technically is a hermaphrodite, but generally has a masculine personality. His first and only appearance is in Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords. He enjoys watching scantily-clad female dancers, though this always puts him to sleep. One of the Jedi Exile's companions can dance for him; this is confirmed. After the Jedi Exile inadvertently caused the destruction of the Peragus II mining facilities, the biggest competitor to Vogga's importing of fuel from Sleheyron, Vogga began attempting to take advantage of the sudden shortage of fuel. G0-T0 opposed the Hutt's business plan. In retaliation, Vogga hired a considerable number of bounty hunters (like Hanharr) and bribed a number of G0-T0's underlings (like Visquis). The Exile took advantage of this when he registered the Ebon Hawk as a freighter of Vogga's; unsurprisingly, this resulted in G0-T0 intercepting the freighter, whereupon the Exile caused G0-T0's yacht to decloak. Vogga's waiting vessels promptly blew it out of space. Vogga further won in that following the destruction of G0-T0's yacht, the Jedi Exile arranged for shipment of fuel to Telos. Zorba Desilijic Tiure or Zorba the Hutt is the father of Jabba the Hutt.[10] He did not immediately learn of his son's death because he was imprisoned on the planet Kip. Zorba resembled his son, though he had long, white hair braids and a white beard. All of Jabba's possessions were bequeathed to Zorba, including the desert palace on Tatooine. He blamed Princess Leia Organa Solo for the murder of his son Jabba. Zorba then challenged Lando in a game of sabacc and won Cloud City. Lando soon won back Cloud City in a future game. In one instance Zorba was referred to as 'Koztas'. Grappa the Hutt appears in the Crimson Empire novels. He is in league with the Black Sun criminal gang and Itha spectral-like species known as the Zanibar. He first appears looking like Tarrant Snil and like Jabba appears to enjoy the company of slave female humanoids and big parties. However he is quick to lose his temper and ends up killing not only a Zanibar but a spokesman from the Black Sun. He allows both Mirth Sinn and her ex-lieutenant Massimo to be sacrificed to the Zanibar. Kir Kanos saves Mirth Sinn but Massimo is less lucky. Grappa was also scared when he received a telecom of a figure known as The Faceless One. After the Black Sun guards sent assassins after him, Grappa fled only to be caught by the Zanibar when he couldn't pay them the money he owed them. He was taken to be sacrificed on their homeworld of Xo. Korpa the Hutt is cousin of Vogga the Hutt. He is a small-time crime lord, trying to take over his cousin's businesses. Following a starship duel with his would-be assassin in the twin system of Dva Lokwanya, he lands on a small planet Okopania, meeting with bounty hunter Ser Onja to arrange the assassination of Vogga. Receiving a payment of rare G'ovna crystals, Ser Onja doublecrosses Korpa, sabotaging his ship to explode on takeoff. Rotta Desilijic Tiure or Rotta the Huttlet is Jabba's 10-year-old son, appearing in The Clone Wars animated movie. He was kidnapped by the Separatists, but returned to Jabba by the Republic although Jabba was convinced by Dooku that the Jedi kidnapped his son. Ziro Desilijic Tiure or Ziro the Hutt was the uncle of Jabba the Hutt and the owner of a club on Coruscant. In the events of the Clone Wars animated movie and series, Ziro was part of a failed plot with Count Dooku to kidnap Rotta the Huttlet in a plan to frame the Jedi and seize power from Jabba. When the plan failed as the result of Padm Amidala's meddling, Ziro was imprisoned after being forced to admit his part in Rotta's abduction. From his cell he attempted to seek revenge by sending an assassin after Padm, the scheme backfiring on him when the assassin is caught. Later, because he possessed a book detailing the shady actions of the Hutt Council, Ziro was released by Cad Bane and brought before the Hutts. Ziro was freed from the Hutt prison by Sy Snootles, but then killed by her, as well, once he had led her to the book, which she had been hired to acquire by Jabba. Ziro, being one of the few Hutts to speak in English/Basic, is voiced by Corey Burton with a lispy southern drawl modeled on the voice of Truman Capote. Mama the Hutt is the mother of Ziro the Hutt and Zorba the Hutt. She lives alone on Nal Hutta, and as Ziro says, her home is the one place Gardulla would never show up. She is much larger than any average Hutt. So large in fact, that she towers over other Hutts. She appears in Star Wars: The Clone Wars in the episode "Hunt for Ziro". Ziro visits her after many years of not speaking to her and borrows her starship. Later Cad Bane and Todo 360 charge into her home and force her to tell them where Ziro's heading. And finally, Jedi Masters Obi-Wan Kenobi and Quinlan Vos break down her door and ask her where Ziro went. Juvard the Hutt, commonly known as Doctor Oggurobb, entire name is Juvard Illip Oggurobb, is a masculine Hutt doctor during the Second Great Galactic War who served the Hutt Cartel during Toborro the Hutt's occupation of Makeb in 3,640 BBY. Due to his large stature and unusual look, Jabba has been parodied many times

Shasta and Trinity Counties in California, United States🚨July?23,?2018?(2018-07-23) ÿ present ?() The Carr Fire is a wildfire burning in Shasta and Trinity Counties in California, United States. As of August 12, 2018, the fire had burned 202,976 acres (821?km2; 317?sq?mi) and is 61% contained. It is the sixth-most destructive fire in California history.[3] The fire was reported on the afternoon of July 23, 2018, at the intersection of Highway 299 and Carr Powerhouse Road in the Whiskeytown district of the WhiskeytownÿShastaÿTrinity National Recreation Area. The fire was started when a flat tire on a vehicle caused the wheel's rim to scrape against the asphalt, thus creating sparks.[4] On July 26, the fire jumped the Sacramento River, making its way into the city of Redding, causing the evacuation of 38,000 people. Evacuations also took place in Summit City, Keswick, Lewiston, Shasta Lake City, Igo, Ono and French Gulch. The fire has destroyed 1,599 buildings, at least 1,077 of which were homes, and damaged another 282, with over 500 structures remaining threatened. Eight people have died in the fire, including three firefighters (a plow driver, fire inspector and one fireman who died in a head-on collision en route to fight said fire), a great-grandmother and her two great-grandchildren, and an employee of Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E). Three firefighters have also been injured. The Carr Fire was reported on the afternoon of July 23, 2018, at the intersection of Highway 299 and Carr Powerhouse Road, in the Whiskeytown district of the WhiskeytownÿShastaÿTrinity National Recreation Area, in Shasta County, California, near French Gulch. The fire was believed to have been started by a vehicle having mechanical failures, which ignited the ground and quickly spread.[5] Hot conditions and steep, inaccessible terrain caused challenges for fire crews as they strengthened containment lines. Highway 299 was closed and French Gulch was placed under mandatory evacuation.[6] Overnight from July 25 to 26, the fire grew to 20,000 acres (81?km2) in total burned land.[7] As of the evening of July 26, the fire had burned 28,763 acres (116?km2) and was 10 percent contained.[8] It was reported to have destroyed 15 buildings and damaged 5, while remaining a threat to 496 buildings.[1] The fire jumped the Sacramento River and portions of the western area of Redding were put under mandatory evacuation orders. Power to residents in North Redding was shut off by Redding Electric Utility. A state of emergency was declared by Governor Jerry Brown.[8] The evacuation center at Shasta High School was relocated to Shasta College.[9] A firefighter was killed while operating a bulldozer.[10] The National Guard was called in to help fight the fire on the night of July 26.[11] The fire remained active overnight, with fire crews continuing to build containment lines. However, crews were stalled in their work due to the fire's extreme behavior.[12] Just after midnight, evacuation orders were put in place for Shasta Dam, Summit City, and neighborhoods in western Redding.[13] A second firefighter, Jeremy Stoke of the Redding Fire Department, was killed and it was reported that three firefighters from Marin County sustained burns. They were defending a structure when a heat blast from the flames came towards them. All three were released, with one being evaluated at the University of California Davis Burn Center for burns on his face, hands and ears.[10][14][15] By the evening of July 27, the fire had destroyed 500 structures and threatened almost 5,000. CrossPointe Community Church was named the third evacuation place.[16] Amtrak announced that their Coast Starlight service would stop in Sacramento and Klamath Falls with alternative transportation being provided.[17] Containment lines remained the priority for firefighters overnight. Red flag warnings and heat advisories were put in place for the area.[18] By the next morning, over 38,000 individuals had been evacuated.[15] The Shasta College evacuation center reached capacity by July 28 and two more shelters operated by the Red Cross, and one at Grace Baptist Church, were opened.[19] President Donald Trump declared a state of emergency for the state of California due to this fire and other fires burning in the state.[20] The communities of Happy Valley and Anderson, as well as other areas, were put under mandatory evacuation in the mid-morning.[1] A woman and two children, who were reported missing on July 26 due to the fire, were reported dead.[2] More buildings were evaluated for damage, bringing the total up to 536 destroyed and 117 damaged. Winds were erratic, fueled by hot weather, which created spot fires throughout the fire area.[21] Weaverville Elementary School was closed as an evacuation center and a new center was opened at Trinity High School.[22] In the evening, new evacuation orders were put in place for Highway 299 at Trinity Dam Road west to Douglas City and other nearby subdivisions.[23] A sixth fatality was reported on July 29, as the fire moved from densely populated areas and into rural parts of Shasta and Trinity Counties. The community of Lewiston was evacuated. By the evening, fire containment had grown from 5 to 17 percent. The National Guard was assigned to Redding to monitor for looting in evacuated neighborhoods.[24] The next day, repopulation began of areas of western Redding, Shasta Lake, and Happy Valley that had previously been evacuated.[25][26][27] Overnight, strengthening containment lines remained a priority as east and west winds converged and created challenges for firefighters.[1] Repopulation efforts continued, starting on the morning of July 31 for areas of western Redding, Summit City, Buckeye and Happy Valley.[28][29] Celebrity chef Guy Fieri provided food for evacuees in Redding.[30] By the evening of July 31, the fire had burned 112,888 acres (457?km2) and was 30 percent contained.[1] Crews were challenged by the fire along the western edge, where the fire burned in high terrain with strong winds and dry fuels.[31] A powerful fire whirl with winds estimated in excess of 143?mph (230?km/h)equivalent to an EF3 tornadodeveloped within the Carr Fire in Redding, California, on July?26. Remaining on the ground from 7:30ÿ8:00?p.m., the fire whirl reached an estimated height of 18,000?ft (5,500?m) and caused extensive tornado-like damage while spreading the fire.[32][33] The winds toppled transmission towers, shredded foliage, and debarked and uprooted trees. The smoke plume from the whirl "dominated" the majority of the wildfire.[33] Substantial damage occurred in areas untouched by fire, including signs of ground scouring.[32] Three people were killed inside their Redding home after the structure's walls were blown out and the roof collapsed on the occupants. Several other homes suffered significant roof damage.[34] The fire grew over 2,000 acres (8?km2) and to 35 percent containment as the fire burned into August 1.[31] Late morning, evacuation orders were lifted for the Mary Lake Subdivision and, later in the day, residents were allowed back to Plateau Road.[35][36] The City of Redding shut down their Carr Fire-related missing persons hotline as all missing people were accounted for. Shasta College, which served as an evacuation center, resumed normal services. Six people were reported as arrested for alleged looting or illegally being in evacuated areas.[35] The area west of Lakehead, California, was closed to public access to allow for fire crews' safety.[37] Thus far, the fire had destroyed 1,546 structures, including 1,058 residential and 13 commercial.[38] Over 1,600 structures remained threatened due to the fire as of August 2. It continued to grow as the terrain, wind and dry fuels continued to create challenges for fire crews. The Sunset West, Sunset Terrace, Ranch Land Acres, Middletown Park neighborhoods and Centerville were reopened to population in the morning.[39] As of the morning of August 2, the fire was 125,842 acres (509?km2) and remained 35 percent contained.[1] By August 4, the fire grew to 145,015 acres (587?km2) and to 41 percent containment. California Governor Jerry Brown toured the site and announced that he had requested a major disaster declaration, which provides federal assistance.[40] Later that day, President Donald Trump approved the request for Shasta County.[41] A seventh fatality was reported when a PG&E employee died in a vehicle incident.[42] By August 9, the fire grew to 178,752 acres (723?km2) and to 49 percent containment. Early that morning a Cal Fire heavy equipment mechanic was killed in a traffic incident, bringing the number of fatalities to eight.[43] The Carr Fire is currently the sixth most destructive in California history.[39] It caused evacuations of over 36,000 people in the communities of French Gulch, Igo, Ono, Lewiston, Douglas City, Shasta, Shasta Lake City, Summit City, and the City of Redding, and caused closures of portions of California State Route 299. The fire directly impacted the water sources Keswick Dam and Shasta Dam.[44] The following areas, as of August 1, were under mandatory evacuation:[1] Evacuation centers are located at Shasta College and Trinity High School.[45][46] The fire affected recreational activities. At early stages, the access to WhiskeytownÿShastaÿTrinity National Recreation Area was halted, specifically in Shasta County, including access to Whiskey Creek and Whiskeytown Lake.[6] The area surrounding Shasta Dam and the dam's visitors center were evacuated and closed.[1] Lake Redding Park and the adjacent golf course were closed due to the fire after it jumped the Sacramento River, destroying close to 40 homes in the surrounding neighborhood.[47] The Bureau of Land Management closed trails in western Redding.[1] Amtrak service on the Coast Starlight was disrupted between Sacramento and Klamath Falls, Oregon. Amtrak arranged alternative transportation for travelers between those two cities.[17] Large portions of Highway 299 were closed as a result of the fire. Many sections of the highway's route through Redding were closed, including the North Market Street Bridge which connects downtown Redding to the Benton Tract neighborhood. Highway 273 was closed in many areas.[1] Access to Keswick Dam was restricted and the surrounding areas were evacuated as a result of the fire.[1] Access to the remains of the historic ghost town of Gas Point was restricted due to the fire. A 2008 fire had destroyed the historic town.[48] The historic town of French Gulch was evacuated and closed. This was the second time the community had been evacuated due to a fire, the prior evacuation taking place in August 2004, in which 103 structures burned in the community.[6] The Shasta State Historic Park was also affected, where the 1920s schoolhouse was destroyed and other buildings were damaged. Artifacts had been removed before the fire.[49] The fire affected air quality throughout Northern California and the Central Valley down to Bakersfield, Oregon, Washington and Nevada. Smoke reached as far north as Seattle, Washington, and Boise, Idaho.[50][51] Two firefighters have been killed in the Carr Fire. One was a contract firefighter who was driving a bulldozer when he died.[10] The second was Redding-based fire inspector Jeremy Stoke.[44] On July 28, a great-grandmother and her two great-grandchildren were found dead, as they did not have a car and were unable to evacuate.[52] A sixth fatality was reported on July 29. An evacuation order was issued to the victim, but they did not evacuate.[24] The victim was recovering from heart surgery, which possibly prevented him from leaving.[53] On August 4, a PG&E employee was killed in a vehicle incident.[42] On August 9, a Cal Fire heavy equipment mechanic was killed in a traffic incident.[43]

Aconcagua🚨Aconcagua (Spanish pronunciation:?[ako??ka?wa]) is the highest mountain outside Asia, at 6,960.8 metres (22,837?ft), and the highest point in the Southern Hemisphere.[1] It is located in the Andes mountain range, in the Mendoza Province, Argentina, and lies 112 kilometres (70?mi) northwest of its capital, the city of Mendoza, about five kilometres from San Juan Province and 15 kilometres from the international border with Chile. The mountain itself lies entirely within Argentina, immediately east of Argentina's border with Chile.[3] Its nearest higher neighbor is Tirich Mir in the Hindu Kush, 16,520 kilometres (10,270?mi) away. It is one of the Seven Summits. Aconcagua is bounded by the Valle de las Vacas to the north and east and the Valle de los Horcones Inferior to the west and south. The mountain and its surroundings are part of the Aconcagua Provincial Park. The mountain has a number of glaciers. The largest glacier is the Ventisquero Horcones Inferior at about 10?kilometres long, which descends from the south face to about 3600?metres in altitude near the Confluencia camp.[4] Two other large glacier systems are the Ventisquero de las Vacas Sur and Glaciar Este/Ventisquero Relinchos system at about 5?kilometres long. The most well-known is the north-eastern or Polish Glacier, as it is a common route of ascent. The origin of the name is contested; it is either from the Mapudungun Aconca-Hue, which refers to the Aconcagua River and means "comes from the other side",[3] the Quechua Ackon Cahuak, meaning "'Sentinel of Stone",[5] the Quechua Anco Cahuac, meaning "White Sentinel",[2] or the Aymara Janq'u Q'awa, meaning "White Ravine".[6] The mountain was created by the subduction of the Nazca Plate beneath the South American Plate. Aconcagua used to be an active stratovolcano (from the Late Cretaceous or Early Paleocene through the Miocene) and consisted of several volcanic complexes on the edge of a basin with a shallow sea. However, sometime in the Miocene, about 8 to 10 million years ago, the subduction angle started to decrease resulting in a stop of the melting and more horizontal stresses between the oceanic plate and the continent, causing the thrust faults that lifted Aconcagua up off its volcanic root. The rocks found on Aconcaguas flanks are all volcanic and consist of lavas, breccias and pyroclastics. The shallow marine basin had already formed earlier (Triassic), even before Aconcagua arose as a volcano. However, volcanism has been present in this region for as long as this basin was around and volcanic deposits interfinger with marine deposits throughout the sequence. The colorful greenish, blueish and grey deposits that can be seen in the Horcones Valley and south of Puente Del Inca, are carbonates, limestones, turbidites and evaporates that filled this basin. The red colored rocks are intrusions, cinder deposits and conglomerates of volcanic origin.[7] In mountaineering terms, Aconcagua is technically an easy mountain if approached from the north, via the normal route. Aconcagua is arguably the highest non-technical mountain in the world, since the northern route does not absolutely require ropes, axes, and pins. Although the effects of altitude are severe (atmospheric pressure is 40% of sea-level at the summit), the use of supplemental oxygen is not common. Altitude sickness will affect most climbers to some extent, depending on the degree of acclimatization.[8] Even if the normal climb is technically easy, multiple casualties occur every year on this mountain (in January 2009 alone five climbers died).[citation needed] This is due to the large numbers of climbers who make the attempt and because many climbers underestimate the objective risks of the elevation and of cold weather, which is the real challenge on this mountain. Given the weather conditions close to the summit, cold weather injuries are very common. The Polish Glacier Traverse route, also known as the "Falso de los Polacos" route, crosses through the Vacas valley, ascends to the base of the Polish Glacier, then traverses across to the normal route for the final ascent to the summit. The third most popular route is by the Polish Glacier itself. Provincial Park rangers do not maintain records of successful summits but estimates suggest a summit rate of 30-40%[citation needed]. About 75% of climbers are foreigners and 25% are Argentinean. Among foreigners, the United States leads in number of climbers, followed by Germany and the UK. About 54% of climbers ascend the Normal Route, 43% up the Polish Glacier Route, and the remaining 3% on other routes.[9] The routes to the peak from the south and south-west ridges are more demanding and the south face climb is considered quite difficult. The camp sites on the normal route are listed below (altitudes are approximate). Summit attempts are usually made from a high camp at either Berln or Colera, or from the lower camp at Nido de C܇ndores. All camps are used frequently, namely Plaza de Mulas and Nido de C܇ndores. The first attempt to reach the summit of Aconcagua by a European was made in 1883 by a party led by the German geologist and explorer Paul Gssfeldt. Bribing porters with the story of treasure on the mountain, he approached the mountain via the Rio Volcan, making two attempts on the peak by the north-west ridge and reaching an altitude of 6,500 metres (21,300?ft). The route that he prospected is now the normal route up the mountain. The first recorded[2] ascent was in 1897 by a European expedition led by the British mountaineer Edward FitzGerald. FitzGerald failed to reach the summit himself over eight attempts between December 1896 and February 1897, but the (Swiss) guide of the expedition, Matthias Zurbriggen reached the summit on January 14. On the final attempt a month later, two other expedition members, Stuart Vines and Nicola Lanti, reached the summit on February 13.[12] The east side of Aconcagua was first scaled by a Polish expedition, with Konstanty Narkiewicz-Jodko, Stefan Daszyski, Wiktor Ostrowski and Stefan Osiecki summiting on March 9, 1934, over what is now known as the Polish Glacier. A route over the Southwest Ridge was pioneered over seven days in January 1953 by the Swiss-Argentine team of Frederico and Dorly Marmillod, Francisco Ibanez and Fernando Grajales. The famously difficult South Face was conquered by a French team led by Ren Ferlet?(fr). Pierre Lesueur, Adrien Dagory, Robert Paragot, Edmond Denis, Lucien Berardini and Guy Poulet reached the summit after a month of effort on 25 February 1954.[13][14] The youngest person to reach the summit of Aconcagua was Tyler Armstrong of California. He was nine years old when he reached the summit on December 24, 2013.[15] The oldest person to climb it was Scott Lewis, who reached the summit on November 26, 2007, when he was 87 years old.[16] In the base camp Plaza de Mulas (at 4300 meters above sea level) there is the highest contemporary art gallery tent called "Nautilus" of the Argentine painter Miguel Doura.[17] In 2014 Kilian Jornet set a record for climbing and descending Aconcagua from Horcones in 12 hours and 49 minutes.[18] The record was broken less than two months later by Ecuadorian-Swiss Karl Egloff, in a time of 11 hours 52 minutes, nearly an hour faster than Kilian Jornet.[19] The mountain has a cameo in a 1942 Disney cartoon called Pedro.[20] The cartoon stars an anthropomorphic small airplane named Pedro who makes an air mail run over the Andes and has a near-disastrous encounter with Aconcagua, which is depicted in the film as an anthropomorphic menace. Aconcagua is the highest peak of Americas and is also considered an easy high altitude peak, being nearly seven thousand metres.[21] And through that, Aconcagua is believed to have the highest death rate of any mountain in South America ÿ around three a year ÿ which has earned it the nickname, Mountain of Death. More than a hundred people have died on Aconcagua since records began.[22] Due to the improper disposal of human waste in the mountain environment there are significant health hazards[21] that pose a threat to both animals and human beings.[23] Only boiled or chemically treated water is accepted for drinking. Additionally, Ecofriendly toilets are available only to members of an organised expedition, meaning climbers have to be contracted to a toilet service at the base camp and similar camps along the route. Currently, from two base camps (Plaza de Mulas and Plaza Argentina), over 120 barrels of waste (approx. 22,500?kg) are flown out by helicopter each season.[24] In addition, individual mountaineers must make a payment before using these toilets. Some large organisers will give a price up to US$100, some smaller US$5/day or US$10 for the entire stay. Thus, many independent mountaineers defecate on the mountainside.[21]

Polar Bear🚨Ontario Parks is the branch of the Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry that administers the provincial parks in Ontario, Canada. The Ontario Parks system covers over 78,000 square kilometres (30,460?sq mi), about 10 percent of the province's surface area or the equivalent of an area approximately equal to Nova Scotia. The Ontario Parks system is often used as the model for other parks systems in North America. This can be attributed to its delicate balance of recreation, preservation, and conservation. Many parks in Ontario also offer a Natural Heritage Education program. Ontario Parks' mandate is to protect significant natural and cultural resources in a system of parks and protected areas that is sustainable and provides opportunities for inspiration, enjoyment and education: now and for future generations.[1] The Ontario Parks system began its long and rough history in 1893 with the creation of Algonquin Park, originally designed to protect loggers' interests from settlement. The management and creation of provincial parks came under the Department of Lands and Forests in 1954 and led to a period of accelerated park creation: a ninefold increase in the number of parks over the next six years. In the 1970s the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources' (MNR) was formed. Currently, Ontario Parks does not have full agency status, but is a branch of the Natural Resource Management Division of the MNR. The history of Ontario's provincial parks stretches for over 100 years. Here are some of the milestones from the past century plus:[2] 1893 ÿ Algonquin Park is created as a public park and forest reservation, fish and game preserve, health resort and pleasure ground. 1894 ÿ Rondeau becomes Ontario's second provincial park. 1913 ÿ The Parks Act sets aside land not suitable for agriculture or settlement. 1954 ÿ Ontario still has only 8 provincial parks: Algonquin, Quetico, Long Point, Rondeau, Presqu'le, Ipperwash, Lake Superior and Sibley (now known as Sleeping Giant). A Division of Parks is created within the Department of Lands and Forests. This heralds a new and aggressive program to create more parks, primarily on the Great Lake and northern tourism highways. 1960 ÿ There are now 72 provincial parks in Ontario, hosting over 5 million visitors annually. 1967 ÿ Ontario introduces a new policy that divides parks into specific categories, or classes, with compatible sets of uses. 1970 ÿ Polar Bear, Ontario's largest provincial park at 24,000 square kilometres, is created. 1978 ÿ Ontario Provincial Parks: Planning and Management Policies are approved by Cabinet giving Ontario one of the world's leading parks planning systems. 1983 ÿ The new land use planning system leads to the announcement of 155 new parks to be designated. 1985 ÿ There are now 220 parks in Ontario encompassing over 5.5 millions hectares of land. 1993 ÿ Ontario celebrates the centennial of the provincial parks system and Algonquin's 100th anniversary. 1996 ÿ The provincial parks system adopts a new entrepreneurial operating model where revenue generated by parks can be reinvested in the parks system. This is symbolized by a new name, Ontario Parks, and a new visual identity. 1996 ÿ Ontario Parks partners with the Natural Conservancy of Canada to create Legacy 2000, a program to protect significant natural areas. Under this agreement more than 11,000 hectares are secured. 1999 ÿ Ontario's Living Legacy is announced. This land use strategy identifies 378 new protected areas, including 61 new parks and 45 parks additions. Ontario's Living Legacy will protect over 2.4 million hectares of land, including additions to the provincial parks system of over 900,000 hectares. 2001 ÿ Ontario now has a total of 280 provincial parks encompassing 7.1 million hectares or almost 9 percent of the province's area. Over 9 million visitors annually enjoy Ontario Parks. 2007 ÿ Introduction of new legislation: "Provincial Parks and Conservation Reserves Act" with 329 provincial parks and 292 conservation reserves. Ontario Parks system uses a classification system to divide the provincial parks into the following categories:[3] As of 2008[update], Ontario Parks system manages 65 recreational class parks (394.8?km2), six cultural heritage class parks (67.4?km2), 80 natural environment class parks (14,675.3?km2), 109 nature reserve class parks (1,152?km2), 62 waterway class parks (14,446.2?km2), and 8 wilderness class parks (48,237.5?km2).

2.0-litre🚨The Toyota 86 is a series of 2+2 seater sports cars which was jointly developed by Toyota and Subaru and solely manufactured by Subaru. It features a boxer engine, front engine, rear wheel drive drivetrain, 2+2 seating and a fastback coup body style. Subaru retails their version of the car as the Subaru BRZ. As a Toyota it is sold worldwide under different names with the most common being the Toyota 86as used in Asia, Australia, North America (from August 2016), South Africa, and South America.[1] The name Toyota GT86 is used in Europe; both of the preceding names in New Zealand; and Toyota FT86 in Nicaragua and Jamaica. In the United States and Canada, the coupe previously sold as the Scion FR-S. After the Scion brand was discontinued in August 2016, the FR-S was renamed as the Toyota 86.[2][3] The development code of this vehicle is 086A[4] and its main production names 86 (pronounced "eight-six" or Hachi-Roku (˦) in Japanese) or GT86, reference historic Toyota front-engined and rear-wheel drive sports coups and hatchbacks, in the form of: Toyota also referenced to its first sports car, the Sports 800, given that both this car and the 86 share a boxer engine layout,[5] as widely used by project partner and 86 manufacturer, Subaru. Initial layout and design elements for the 86 were presented by Toyota using its "FT" (Future Toyota) concept car nomenclature. The first was the Toyota FT-HS, which was presented at the Detroit Motor Show in 2007. It had a front engine, rear-wheel drive layout and 2+2 seating and was powered by a V6 engine with hybrid electric assistance. In 2008, Toyota bought 16.5% of Fuji Heavy Industries, which includes the Subaru automotive brand.[6] Toyota, led by project leader Tetsuya Tada,[7] then offered Subaru to become involved in its new sport coup project, by co-developing the new D-4S boxer engine,[8] however, this was rejected since the design conflicted with Subaru's reputation for high performance all-wheel drive (AWD) cars. This outcome resulted in the project coming to a six-month halt before Toyota invited journalists and Subaru engineers to test a developmental prototype. Following this test, Subaru agreed to become further involved in development.[9] The new collaboration thus produced a new concept car, the FT-86, which was revealed at the Tokyo Motor Show in October 2009. Smaller than the FT-HS, the design of the FT-86 was further refined by Toyota's ED2 design studio while the hybrid V6 powerplant was replaced by the new D-4S boxer. Subaru provided the chassis and gearbox, adapting those of their Impreza. The concept was painted in Shoujyouhi Red, which was reported as being based on the backside of a Japanese macaque.[10] At the 2010 Tokyo Motor Show, Toyota then launched its G Sports line of aftermarket accessories, along with the FT-86 G Sports concept car. It featured G Sports carbon fibre panels, a vented bonnet, rear wing, 19?in (48?cm) wheels, Recaro race seats, and an interior rollcage.[11] The D-4S engine also added a turbocharger.[12] In 2011, Toyota and Subaru unveiled five near-production concept cars to show their progress with the project. The first, known as the FT-86 II Concept, was unveiled at the Geneva Motor Show in March 2011. ED2 refined the design of the initial FT-86, by developing new front and rear fascias, and marginally increasing the dimensions of the concept.[13] At the same show, Subaru also unveiled a transparent silhouette of the car that showed off the new D-4S boxer engine and displayed the "Boxer Sports Car Architecture".[14] Scion followed next in April 2011 at the New York Motor Show with the FR-S Sports Coup Concept, co-developed with aftermarket tuner Five Axis.[15] Another semi-transparent Subaru concept, known as the BRZ Prologue, was shown at the Frankfurt Motor Show that September,[16] followed in November at the Los Angeles Motor Show by the BRZ Concept STi, the first full mock-up of Subaru's version of the 86 with input from Subaru Tecnica International (STI).[17] The first production Toyota 86 debuted at the 2011 Tokyo Auto Show. All variants are built at Subaru's Gunma Main Plant,[18] with the first cars assembled on 2 February before sales began in March and deliveries in April. 7,000 orders were placed for the Toyota 86 in the first month of production,[19] while Subaru took in 3,500 orders.[20] In the United States, Scion were allocated 10,000 units of the 2013 model year (MY13) production,[21] while Subaru was limited to only 6,000 units.[22] The 86's engine, known by the Toyota code 4U-GSE and Subaru code FA20, is a naturally aspirated four-cylinder engine that uses Subaru's horizontally opposed boxer engine design, with the addition of Toyota's D-4S injection system, which uses both direct and port fuel injection. Given its placement, the 86 can be considered having a front engine, rear wheel drive drivetrain layout. The engine runs on 98 RON (premium unleaded) fuel and features a 12.5:1 compression ratio and a bore and stroke of 86?mm (3.4?in) that results in 200 horsepower (149?kW; 203?PS) at 7,000 rpm and 151?lb{ft (205?N{m) of torque at 6,000 rpm.[23] As part of the 86's low-weight design, the car utilizes an aluminium hood, a solid roof, and a trunk as opposed to a hatchback.[24][25] The boxer engine sits as far back and as low as possible in the engine bay for a weight distribution of 53% in front and 47% in the rear. The low-sitting engine provides a lower center of gravity, allowing the engine to sit lower than the Nissan GTR and just 0.6 inches higher than the Lexus LFA.[24] The 86, BRZ and FR-S are offered with two 6-speed transmissions, an in-house developed Toyota TL70 manual gearbox (based on Aisin AI's AZ6[26]) and an Aisin-Warner A960E automatic transmission, which is modified from that used on the Lexus IS 250. The latter uses a traditional wet torque converter design, but its software has been engineered to mimic the response of a dual-clutch gearbox. The automatic transmission uses three different modes: Sport, Snow, and Normal. A torque sensing limited slip differential is standard on most models. The vehicles are offered with 16" steel and alloy wheels shod with Yokohama dB Decibel E70 tyres in 205/55 size or 17" alloy wheels shod with Michelin Primacy HP tyres in 215/45 size, depending on sales market. The limited editions Toyota Racing Development (TRD) GT86 models are instead offered with 18" forged aluminium wheels, which are shod with either Yokohama Advan Sport tyres Michelin Pilot Sport 3 tyres in 225/40 size, also depending on market. All non-TRD cars feature ventilated front disc brakes and solid rear disc brakes on base models or, on higher models, also ventilated rear disc brakes with two piston-opposed calipers in the front and single caliper design in the rear. The TRD editions instead have an upgraded braking system comprising upsized TRD two-piece rotors and TRD six-pot 355mm front and four-pot 345mm rear calipers (compared to the GTS' 294mm and 290mm calipers and GT's 277mmm and 286mm, respectively). Suspension design comprises front MacPherson struts and double wishbones at the rear. The 86 was designed around a front-mounted boxer engine, rear-wheel drive configuration, inspired by the AE86. The flat architecture of the boxer engine allows it to be mounted low, dropping the center of gravity down, resulting in sporty handling characteristics.[5] The exterior design of the 86 delivers a slippery drag coefficient of?Cd=0.27[27] and was inspired by the Toyota 2000GT's low-to-the-ground profile and long, sleek hood. Its design cues translate onto the 86 in such areas as: upward trailing edge of the doors; the upward finish to the side-window line; the front and rear haunches; the circular taillights set in silver (singular instead of double as on the 2000GT). According to the 86's designers, "The goal was to create an authentic rear-wheel drive sports car with compelling style, exceptionally balanced performance and handling, flexible utility and surprising MPG."[5] When asked about the TRD version of the car, the lead engineer Mr. Tada said "There is definitely going to be a more TRD oriented variant down the line. However any of the parts that would be standard on the TRD model will fit on your current Toyota 86 so there is no need to wait."[28] The 86 "boxer" side badge appears on all Toyota and Scion versions of the car, but not the Subaru BRZ. Aside from badging, the main differences between the 86/GT86 and the BRZ are the front grilles and bumper bars. The rest, including the 17?inch alloy wheels, are shared. To enhance its identity, the vehicle is also characterized by symbolic references and various motifs associated with the number 86 and Toyota heritage:[4][29] The interior features a 2+2 seating configuration, which utilizes low mounted front seats. The rear seats fold down enabling increased storage space for larger items.[24] Three interior variations exist, the FR-S and base 86 models have cloth seats with all black interior trim that features a black patterned dash trim, while the shift boot features red stitching. The BRZ has two available interiors, one identical to the FR-S but with silver dash trim, a red stitched parking brake boot, black gauge faces (instead of the white tachometer of the 86 GTS models) and a touch-screen navigation head unit; the second option upgrades to leather and Alcantara heated seats, automatic HVAC controls, and a push-button start. The top-of-the-range 86 models are fitted like the BRZ except as noted above, and the Japanese interior can be had in black/red leather and Alcantara or full black leather and Alcantara (Australia being offered only the latter). The Toyota 86 is available in Japan from Toyota's Netz Store and Corolla Store line of dealerships; the 1980s Corolla Levin and Sprinter Trueno were sold at the same networks. Four trim levels are offered, with the RC model being the base aimed at people wishing to modify or race their vehicles. This model is available with only a 6-speed manual transmission and comes with unpainted bumpers and mirrors, 16?inch steel wheels, simpler interior trim components, analogue speedometer and no stereo or air conditioning. Outside Japan, the RC model is only available in New Zealand. The G model adds all the interior components missing from the RC, plus a fully painted exterior and 16?inch alloy wheels and the availability of an automatic transmission. The GT86 model adds high intensity discharge headlights with LED daytime running lights, fog lamps, automatic climate control, keyless start with engine start button, 17?inch alloy wheels, chrome exhaust tips, white tachometer face with analogue and digital speedometer, silver accents on the centre dash and steering wheel, aluminium pedals. The top-of-the-range GT Limited adds leather and Alcantara seating and a rear spoiler. In Europe, GT86 models are generally the same as the Japanese 86 GT with a red/black leather/Alcantara interior with red stitching. In the United Kingdom, the Japanese G model is sold as the GT86 Primo[30] and the car has also been available as a limited edition Toyota Racing Development "TRD GT86", which features: 18?inch forged aluminium wheels with Yokohama Advan Sport tyres; full bodykit with front and side skirts, rear spoiler and new diffuser; quad-exhaust system; TRD-branded detailing on the filler cap, radiator cap and gear knob. In New Zealand, the TRD 86 is sold with the above features except for Michelin Pilot Sport 3 tyres instead plus upgraded TRD braking system. Options not available to all markets include a Bose sound system upgrade. In Australia, the GT is the equivalent of the Japanese G model but with only an all black interior trim and standard radio head unit, whereas the top-of-the-range GTS model is the equivalent of the Japanese GT Limited except for an all black leather/Alcantara and red-stitch interior trim only and touchscreen multimedia head unit. Upon Australian launch in June 2012, all models for Australia featured a full-size spare wheel, the GTS lacked a rear spoiler, and a limited slip differential or LSD was standard on all models except automatic GT's.[29] The full-size spare wheel was phased out after the first shipments to Australia, replaced with a repair kit. This model also benefitted from a remapping of its Electronic Control Unit (ECU) to address initial reports of rough idling and stalling.[34] The range of models and main options had the following retail prices: GT manual A$29,990; GT automatic A$32,490; GTS manual A$35,490; GTS automatic A$37,990; metallic paint A$425 for all models; "Aero pack" bodykit A$3,000 for GTS only. As of the August 2013 production update (which carried the formal year designation MY14), the automatic GT also gained LSD as standard (but with a price increase of A$300; manual price unchanged in Australia) and the GTS gained the same rear spoiler fitted to the Japanese GTS Limited and the Subaru BRZ (with a price increase of A$500 for both the manual and automatic model in Australia).[35] Other distinguishing features on the MY14 models include the removal of the lettered "TOYOTA" badge from the rear bonnet of the GTS and optional availability of rear parking sonar sensors on GT and GTS. In July 2014, an updated version of the Australian Toyota 86 range was launched with year designation MY15. The key highlights include: revised suspension settings; "shark-fin" roof antenna; GTS instrument cluster on GT; carbon-fibre look dash insert and reverse-view camera on GTS; new white and silver exterior paints. The price of the GT remained unchanged while the GTS was the subject of a price increase of A$500 and A$800 for the manual and automatic version, respectively.[36] In late 2014, as part of its MY15 range, Toyota offered in the UK two new models: the GT86 Aero, featuring a full bodykit and 18?inch OZ Ultraleggera alloy wheels in anthracite grey finish; and the GT86 "Giallo" (meaning yellow in Italian), limited to only 86 units.[37] Similar to the latter, Toyota also offered in Italy a total of 50 "Limited Edition" models.[38] Externally, the key distinguishing feature of these limited editions is the new Sunrise Yellow metallic paint and black side stripes (bonnet, roof and bonnet stripes are available in the UK at no extra cost and standard in Italy). The interior is distinguished by a limited edition badge and heated quilt leather seats with yellow 86 logo. The retail price of the Limited Edition in Italy is ?28,500, which translates to ?1,700 more than the standard base model.[39] At the same time in Japan, Toyota released the 14R-60 model limited to 100 units, inspired by the GT86 TRD Griffon Project of 2013. Its engine power remains the same as the standard models despite featuring various drivetrain changes such as twin central exhausts, a TRD mechanical LSD, a short-shifter, and revised gearing for the six-speed manual transmission. Other changes include extra body reinforcement, a variable-height coil-over spring suspension setup and more rigid suspension bushings. A TRD bodykit with carbonfibre components is complemented by 18?inch magnesium wheels and, overall, 14R-60 model results lighter than the base model. Inside there are race-style bucket seats with four-point belts, an Alcantara-clad steering wheel, carbonfibre dashboard trim and yellow piping and highlights. Price-wise, this Japan-only model is listed for 6,300,000, which is significantly higher than the 2,100,000 for the base RC model or 3,100,000 for the top-of-the-range GT Limited.[40] In 2015, the 86xstyle Cb was officially launched after its presentations at the 2013 and 2014 Tokyo Auto Salon. It is characterised by a drastically different front end design with revised lights and bumper bar but standard bonnet. Available in 6-speed manual or automatic transmission, it has revised interior trimmings including a red Cb logo embroidered leather steering wheel, white (instead of red) backlit instruments and a dark woodgrain-style panel across the dashboard. The most peculiar features are the replacement of the front side gills with a set of LED-illuminated fins and optional contrasting colour for the cars upper body section. Another option is different alloy wheels than those fitted as standard on the GT86. On sale from April, this Japan-only model is listed for 4,180,000, which is a 1,280,000 premium over the regular 86 GT on which this variant is based.[41] To celebrate Australia's 86 2016 Pro-Am racing series,[42][43][44] the following November Toyota launched 450 "Blackline" units (250 of which with manual transmission). Based on the standard GTS model, this limited edition carries a A$2,000 premium because of its cosmetic upgrade with TRD parts and special livery.[45] In Indonesia, the 86 was launched in 2012.[46] The facelifted version was launched in August 2016.[47] Toyota Indonesia sells the 86 in the TRD package with only an automatic transmission and the non-TRD package with both manual and automatic transmission.[48] Peculiarly, in Jamaica and Nicaragua, the 86 is marketed and sold using one of its pre-launch concept car badges, the "FT-86".[49][50] The BRZ's name comes from three elements: Boxer engine, Rear-wheel drive, and Z standing for the zenith.[51] The Subaru BRZ differs from the 86's design in the front fascia, with a different grille and headlight assembly, as well as a different front fender vent. The BRZ's grill is hexagonal in shape, compared to the Toyota's trapezoid. The BRZ features a wraparound of LED parking lights in the headlight assembly, while daytime running lights are integrated into the bumper. The suspension setup of the Subaru is different from the Toyota.[52] Like the Japanese Toyota 86, Subaru offers an RA base model lacking most interior comforts and utilizing 16?inch steel wheels, with the only difference from the 86 RC being that the BRZ RA's bumpers are painted the same color as the body. Two main trim levels are offered: R trim, known as Premium in North America, and S trim, known as Limited in North America. European and Australian BRZs offer a Toyota stereo unit, while Japanese and North American vehicles use a Subaru unit. Australian BRZs were originally available for sale only online. In 2013, Subaru unveiled a BRZ tS model for the Japanese market, tuned by STI. The tS model features an improved suspension setup, 18 inch silver BBS wheels, STI bodykit and front spoiler, a larger drive shaft, and Brembo brakes, along with interior changes to include a new steering wheel, front seat, gauges, and Alcantara accents.[53] A further tS GT Package includes Recaro seats, black BBS wheels, and an adjustable carbon fibre rear wing. The tS is limited to 500 units in total, with a maximum of 250 of them being the GT package.[54] In 2015, a similar release of 300 units was sold again only in Japan.[55] In 2014, as part of running changes consistent with those of the MY15 Toyota 86 GTS, the Subaru BRZ also featured a new key fob and two new colours, including WR Blue Pearl metallic finish.[56] In addition, Subaru also launched special editions both for the United States and Australia markets. For the former, one thousand BRZ Series. Blue editions were marketed at additional cost, half painted in Blue Pearl and the other half in Crystal Pearl White. This model featured STI body kit parts, 17-inch STI black alloy wheels and red brake calipers. For Australia, Subaru launched a similar variant known as the Special Edition, also at additional cost. It featured stripes across the bonnet, boot and roof; 17-inch STI black alloy wheels; STI boot spoiler plus front, side and rear-side under spoilers; a rear diffuser and a push-button starter switch. It was available in every existing BRZ paint hue.[57] In 2015, Subaru released the limited edition Hyper Blue range across its WRX, WRX STI and BRZ models. In Australia, the BRZ was limited to 50 units with manual transmission only. This limited edition is characterised by the said blue paint and a host of other cosmetic upgrades.[58] The Scion FR-S is exclusive to the United States and Canada. Its name is derived from a description of the platform: Front-engine, Rear-wheel drive, Sport.[15] Unlike all other 86 variants, the FR-S originally had no trim levels and are all offered with Scion's BeSpoke stereo system. As part of the 10th anniversary of the Scion marque, 2,500 units of "10 Series" FR-S models were released by Scion for model year 2014. They were painted in Silver Ignition and fitted with extra equipment, including HID headlights, automatic climate control, push button start, illuminated exterior badges plus shifter knob.[59][60] In January 2014, Scion released 2000 units of the FR-S "Monogram Series" editions adding extra features at special prices. In this case, this FR-S closely matched the equipment offered on the BRZ (or Toyota's GTS-variant) with the following: heated leather and Alcantara seats; heated side mirrors; high-intensity discharge headlamps; dual-zone climate control; BeSpoke audio and navigation. It cost US$27,400 and US$28,500 respectively, for the manual or automatic transmission model. It was said that this limited edition represented a US$1,900 saving over separately priced options.[61] Presented at the April 2014 New York Auto Show and mirroring the European "Giallo" and "Limited Edition" yellow-painted special editions, Scion released 1500 units of the "Release Series 1.0" in similar Yuzu Yellow paint. Its starting price is US$31,000 and it features TRD bodykit and quad-tip exhaust system, along with TRD lowered suspension, TRD steering wheel and shift knob and the highest specification (dual A/C, HID headlamps with LED daytime running lamps, push-button start-stop) plus a numbered commemorative plaque near the gearshift lever.[62] Due to the discontinuation of the Scion marque, in August 2016 the FR-S was re-branded as the Toyota 86 for the 2017 model year.[2][3][63] As part of the Subaru BRZ market launch, a 2-part movie documenting the vehicle's development was produced.[64] In Canada, a TV commercial titled Scorched was produced by OMD, with creative from DDB. The execution was handled by DDB PR with Juxta Productions working on the interior. The commercial was shot at Queen and McCaul St. in Toronto.[65][66][67][68] In Australia, Subaru BRZ was the first new car ever to be sold on that market exclusively online, with orders opening on 16 July 2012. It was also marketed with free servicing for 3 years or 60,000?km. According to Subaru this sale concept was a success, after the entire 2012 Australian allocation of 201 cars was sold in under 3 hours. The first buyer was able to secure their car in less than 20 minutes from the site going live. This sale process was implemented as a consequence of the demand for the Toyota 86 far outstripping supply (resulting in long delivery times) and a low BRZ supplies for Australia. As of 1 January 2014, the vehicle became available both online and at dealerships, with free servicing no longer included in the purchase.[69] Scion made a similar decision in the United States, creating the 'First 86' program to allow 86 buyers to take delivery of their cars before the general public sales. On 12 January 2012 users had eight hours and six minutes to submit their requests to a program website. Winners were required to take their confirmation number and $500 to a dealer within 96 hours to claim their cars.[70] Scion produced a commercial called Close Call featuring Ken Gushi avoiding a collision with a deer while driving Scion FR-S in Mt. Diablo State Park in Northern California.[71] A British Toyota GT86 commercial titled The Real Deal was banned for encouraging motorists to drive irresponsibly.[72] In Europe, the GT86 was awarded the following titles in 2012: In Australia, the 86 was awarded the following titles in 2012: Other awards received include: The Subaru BRZ was also crowned: In addition, the Toyota-Subaru D-4S boxer engine was named one of Ward's 10 Best Engines in 2013.[84] In 2011, with the unveiling of the Super BRZ Concept STi, Subaru also unveiled their latest entry in the Super GT series' GT300-category. R&D Sport would develop the BRZ GT300 to replace their Legacy for the 2012 season.[85] The BRZ GT300 does not utilize the production car's FA20 engine, instead opting for the Legacy's EJ20 engine. The Toyota 86 MC also competes in the GT300. Unlike the BRZ GT300, the 86 MC is based on Super GT's Mother Chassis. As with all Mother Chassis-based cars, the 86 MC utilizes a standard Dome-produced chassis and GT Association-branded Nissan V8 engine; little is shared with the production car apart from its name and exterior styling.[86] In 2016, VivaC team Tsuchiya's 86 MC won the GT300 drivers' and teams' championships, with Takeshi Tsuchiya and Takamitsu Matsui at the wheel. Toyota, in partnership with Gazoo Racing, announced plans to develop the 86 for motorsport use in multiple disciplines. Toyota and Gazoo will support private teams in the Super Taikyu Endurance Series and All-Japan Rally Championship.[87] Gazoo Racing entered 86s in the 24 Hours Nrburgring, winning their SP3 class in 2012. Privateers Toyota Swiss Racing also claimed the V3 category in the same year.[88] In the United Kingdom, GPRM is developing a turbocharged version of the 86 for classification in the SRO Group's GT4 category for use in Europe. The engine developments are being carried out by Nicholson McLaren Engines.[89] In the United States, Ken Gushi utilized a GPP Scion Racing FR-S built by GReddy Racing for the US Formula Drift championship. The FR-S features a turbocharged EJ25 boxer engine from a Subaru WRX STI[90] produced more than 450?kW (600?bhp).[91] Ryan Tuerck drove a Scion FR-S powered by a stroked 2JZ-GTE producing more than 520?kW (700?bhp) for Retaks Backpacks and Maxxis Tires in the 2013 US Formula Drift championship.[92] Also in 2013, the FR-S replaced the Scion tC for the Toyota Pro/Celebrity Race at the Grand Prix of Long Beach. In all cases, the competition FR-S were standard production units modified for racing safety and reliability.[93] By contrast, the 86 entered by Nobuhiro Tajima to compete at the 2013 Pikes Peak Hill Climb only used the production unit's silhouette.[94] In October 2012, Toyota Racing Development and Gazoo Racing announced a production racing model for the Toyota 86. The 86 Racing adds brake and oil cooler modifications, as well as a 4-point racing harness and rollcage. The stock 86 wheels are replaced by simple steel rims, while the exterior colour was only available in white.[95] Subaru followed in early 2013 with the BRZ RA Racing, featuring similar modifications. Both cars are only available in the Japanese market, and are eligible for a one-make racing series run by Gazoo Racing. Unlike the Toyota, the BRZ is available in any of the production car's colours.[96][97] In February 2015, Toyota Australia announced a Pro-Am series with races exclusively during that country's V8 Supercars events from 2016. Its inceptor was long-time Toyota racing driver, Neal Bates. The race cars are based on manual production models with key specifications (such as engine management, extractors and exhaust, suspension, brakes, oil cooler, wheels and tyres) controlled to ensure their suitability and reliability while keeping costs as low as possible.[42][43][98] Since 2015 Toyota has competed in the Tire Rack One Lap of America, campaigning a modified Scion FR-S, prepared by engineers from the Production Engineering Division in Erlanger, Kentucky.[citation needed] There are 3 versions of 2013 Scion FR-S built with $15,000 build budget, created as part of the eighth annual Scion Tuner Challenge. The FR-S Tuner Challenge vehicles are the: Carbon Stealth FR-S" by John Toca of Chicago, Illinois; FR-S GT by Daniel Song of Orange County, California; Minty FReSh by Chris Basselgia of Lebanon, Pennsylvania. The vehicles were unveiled in 2012 SEMA show.[99] The 2012 challenge was won by the Minty FReSh.[100] At the January 2013 Tokyo Auto Salon, Subaru unveiled a BRZ Premium Sport Package concept featuring various STI parts as well as 19 inch BBS wheels and a carbon fiber roof. 86Gstyle Cb is a version of Toyota 86 built by Gazoo Racing features a completely remodeled front designed to appeal to female drivers.[101] Toyota GT86 Modellista is a version of Toyota 86 with new side skirts, rear bumper and diffuser, a special lip spoiler, 18 inch matte chrome Wing Dancer II wheels with 225/40 Toyo tires, a two-tone black and red interior, instrument cluster and interior panels are in a red metal finish.[102] TOM'S N086V is a version of Toyota 86 with a GR V6 engine rated at 298?kW (400?hp).[103] TRD Griffon Concept is a version of GT86 designed specifically for track driving, created by Toyota Racing Development. Changes include bonnet, roof, doors, boot lid and rear wings made from lightweight carbon fibre; carbonfibre reinforced plastic bumpers, wider front wings and rear diffuser; windows made from polycarbonate material, TRD driver's bucket seat, gear shift knob, ignition button and oil pressure and water temperature gauges; Momo steering wheel, Takata seatbelts, a TRD mechanical LSD replacing standard Torsen limited-slip differential, coil over suspension kit, final gear ratio shortened to 4.8:1, an oil cooler for the engine, a TRD mono block brake calliper kit with racing spec brake pads, TWS 18-inch wheels with Yokohama Advan tyres, stock Toyota GT86 engine. The vehicle is 227?kg (500?lb) lighter than stock Toyota GT86. TRD Griffon Concept was unveiled in 2013 Tokyo Auto Salon,[104] followed by 2013 Goodwood Festival of Speed.[105] The FT-86 Open concept was a convertible concept vehicle based on Toyota 86. It included electrically operated multi-layered fabric roof with glass, high-contrast white and navy blue interior and exterior designed by Toyota Boshoku Milan Design (TBMD) to capture the spirit and atmosphere of Milan, white body colour, yellow-gold stitching in the floor mats and seats. It was first shown at the Geneva Motor Show in March 2013,[106][107] followed by the 2013 Tokyo Motor Show (with Flash Red body colour and electrically operated soft top)[108][109] However, Subaru brand chief Yasuyuki Yoshinaga has said that a convertible 86 would need a complete redesign to meet safety standards and that it is unlikely to happen.[110] Also seen at the Tokyo Motor Show, this vehicle was presented as a combination of sport and utility adopting a heavily BRZ inspired shooting-brake body shape. Its compact body measured an overall length of 4,300?mm (169.3?in) and was described as what Subaru perceives to be the next trend in urban SUVs.[111][112] This concept car is a Toyota 86/Scion FR-S modified by GAZOO Racing equipped with: a GRMN exclusive turbocharger and scroll supercharger 6-speed manual transmissionl GRMN suspension tuning; GRMN brake calipers and brake rotors; GRMN dual exhaust; GRMN, alloy wheels and tires; different front and rear fender panels and bumper bars; rear wing; rear garnish; bucket seats; 4-point seat belts; roll cage; back skin tone interior; extra instrumentation (boost, water temperature and oil temperature gauges). The vehicle was unveiled in Nurburgring Circuit.[113][114] Just like the year before, the 2014 Tokyo Auto Salon saw the presentation of various Toyota 86-based custom models and concepts. The GRMN 86 Concept is a version of Toyota 86 that incorporates the technical expertise gained through the 24 Hours Nrburgring endurance race, achieving optimal vehicle weight reduction, a lower center of gravity, an enhanced powertrain and improved body rigidity. It included FA20 engine, 6-speed manual transmission, 215/40R17 tires, carbon fiber engine cover, roof, rear hatch, diffuser, side skirt, tail wing, seats; polycarbonate windows, reinforced engine parts, oil cooler, rewritten ECU, mechanical limited slip differential.[117][118][119] The 86xstyle Cb (model ZN6-A2E7) is a re-presentation of the concept seen at the 2013 Tokyo Auto Salon. Its listed features are a 6-speed automatic transmission, style Cb TB sport seat, leather-wrapped steering wheel, original meter and lighting, style Cb original floor mat, ToyotaxNHZD-W62G navigation system, dark smoke plated inner panel register RL, centre cluster garnish, door panel; metallic steering wheel door switch base, shift bezel; Zack suspension absorber, BBS style Cb original colour wheels (18x7J front, 18x7.5J rear), Bridgestone POTENZA S001 86 exclusive spec tires (215/40R18 85W front, 225/40R18 88W rear).[120] 86 x Style Cb Spider (model ZN6-A2B8) is a Toyota convertible by Toyota Original Accessory, with 6-speed automatic transmission, fender garnish with side lamp, trunk spoiler and licence garnish, rear combination lamp (in dark smoke plated), backup lamp rear bumper, spider aero bulge, rear diffuser integrated into rear bumper, one-off style Cb sport seat, leather-wrapped steering wheel, style Cb original meter panel/new decorative panel with lighting, style Cb original floor mat, brembo brake with front 4-piston and rear 2-piston calipers, Goodyear Eagle LS Premium tires (215/40R18 89W front, 225/45R18 91W rear)[121][122] The GAZOO Racing TRD 86 is a race car version of Toyota 86 for the TRD Rally Challenge, built by GAZOO Racing. It included 6-speed manual transmission.[123] The GAZOO Racing LUCK 86 is a race car version of Toyota 86 for the JN3 class of Japanese Rally Championship, built by GAZOO Racing. It included 6-speed manual transmission.[118] The GAZOO Racing SPIRIT 86 is a race car version of Toyota 86 for the Super Taikyu Series, built by GAZOO Racing. It included 6-speed manual transmission.[124] The 86 Supercharger was produced by Team Netz with TOM'S is a version of the Toyota 86 built for the online community Area 86. It included 6-speed manual transmission, roots style supercharger, exclusive ECU, water-cooled intercooler, exclusive muffler, original aero kit, Saten white pearl 37J body panel, TEAM NETZ original front bumper (made by ABS), TOM'S side step, TOM's rear under spoiler, TOM'S ADVOX suspension kit with exclusive setting, TOM'S brake pad and brake line, 8.0J INSET44-inch TWS T66F wheel in original gun metal colour, 225/40R18 MichelinxPilot Sport 3 tires.[125] The TRD Griffon Concept 014 is based on the 2013 TRD Griffon Concept.[126] In turn, the 86 TRD Customize Concept 014 is based on the 86 TRD Griffon Concept 014, with roof fin, rear diffuser, HID bulb kit, winker bulb, full bucket driver seat, passenger sports seat, shoulder pad set, interior panel set (carbon), steering wheel and interior boot set, sport meter set (water temperature, oil temperature, oil pressure), leather shift knob (for manual transmission car), knee pad, battery clamp, fuel cap cover, full length adjustable suspension set, pillow upper set, stabilizer set (front, rear), front strut tower bar, member brace set, door stabilizer set, sports air filter, high response muffler Ver.R, sound changer, circuit brake kit, clutch cover, clutch disc (sport phasing), fly wheel, quick shift set (18-inch cast aluminium TRD TF6 18x7.5J-inch wheels, Goodyear EAGLExRSxSportx86spec 225/40R18 tires), lug nut set (M12GP1.25), oil filler cap, sport oil filter, radiator cap.[127] The Autobacs G7 86 Potenza (No. 557) (model ZN6-VPNT8A),[128] Manatura Kota-R BRZ (No. 61) (DBA-ZC6),[129] N1 Tech Potenza Win 86 (No. 100) (ZN6-VPNT8A),[130] NETZ Gunma FK Massimo 86 (No. 62) (ZN6-VPNT8A)[131] are race car versions of Toyota 86 Racing, BRZ RA Racing, Toyota 86 Racing, Toyota 86 Racing respectively, for the GAZOO Racing 86/BRZ Race. Built by Los Angeles metalshop, Cartel Customs, and displayed at 2014 SEMA show, this concept car is the first targa top version of any 86-based models. Apart from the Porsche 911-style removable roof, it features upgraded and lowered coil-over suspension, 19-in forged chrome wheels, upgrade braking system and a turbocharged engine with a centre exhaust tip. Inside it has an upgraded sound system and two-tone beige/black leather interior (including over the dashboard). The exterior is characterised by enlarged wheelarches and an integrated "duck tail" rear spoiler, and is painted in two-tone Azzurro California Blue with a contrasting black sill line up to the roof and rear louvre window.[132][133] Subaru unveiled the BRZ-based STI Performance Concept at the 2015 New York Auto Show. It stated that this concept car does not preview a production model but rather a visualization of the future application of the STI program to the BRZ. The concept car utilizes the same turbocharged 2.0-litre engine employed in the BRZ GT300 race car, producing an estimated 220?kW (300?bhp) and 330?lb{ft (447?N{m). Even so, Subaru also stated that a turbocharger will not find its way into the BRZ production. Mechanically, the concept car has chassis, suspension and brake upgrades from the Japan-only BRZ tS. Externally, it is distinguished by LED headlights and taillights, new-style alloy wheels and a full bodykit featuring new-design front fascia, rear diffuser and rear wing. The Toyota 86 Shooting Brake Concept was displayed in Sydney, Australia in 2016.[clarification needed] Toyotas global chief engineer Tetsuya Tada saw a quarter scale clay model of the car during a trip to the Australian branch in 2014 and arranged for a full scale, fully function version to be built in Japan by Toyota's Takumi ("artisan") craftsmen.[136] Tada said, while we never say never, and I would love this concept to become a production reality, it is very much a concept that demonstrates the passion within Toyota for cars that are fun to drive". Commenting on the new car, Toyota's Australian Divisional Manager National Marketing Brad Cramb said: The Toyota 86 lends itself perfectly to a concept that expands its appeal with added versatility while retaining its sleek and sporty coupe styling and sharp, responsive driving character. In 2016, Toyota UK created a "Fujiwara Tofu Shop" version of the car as a homage to the manga Initial D and the car the protagonist drives, an AE86 Sprinter Trueno.[137][138]

Czech🚨Czech (/?t??k/; ?e?tina Czech pronunciation: [?t????c?na]), historically also Bohemian[6] (/bo??hi?mi?n, b?-/;[7] lingua Bohemica in Latin), is a West Slavic language of the CzechÿSlovak group,[6] which is extensively influenced by Latin[8] and German.[9] Spoken by over 10 million people, it serves as the official language of the Czech Republic. Czech is closely related to Slovak, to the point of mutual intelligibility to a very high degree.[10] The Czecho-Slovak group developed within West Slavic in the high medieval period, and the standardisation of Czech and Slovak within the CzechÿSlovak dialect continuum emerges in the early modern period. In the later 18th to mid-19th century, the modern written standard became codified in the context of the Czech National Revival. The main vernacular, known as Common Czech, is based on the vernacular of Prague, but is now spoken throughout most of the Czech Republic. The Moravian dialects spoken in the eastern part of the country are also classified as Czech, although some of their eastern variants are closer to Slovak. Czech has a moderately-sized phoneme inventory, comprising five vowels (each short or long) and twenty-five consonants (divided into "hard", "neutral" and "soft" categories). Words may contain uncommon (or complicated) consonant clusters, including one consonant represented by the graphemeor lack vowels altogether. Czech uses a simple orthography which phonologists have used as a model. Czech is a member of the West Slavic sub-branch of the Slavic branch of the Indo-European language family. This branch includes Polish, Kashubian, Upper and Lower Sorbian and Slovak. Slovak is the closest language genetic neighbor of Czech, followed by Polish and Silesian.[11] The West Slavic languages are spoken in Central Europe. Czech is distinguished from other West Slavic languages by a more-restricted distinction between "hard" and "soft" consonants (see Phonology below).[11] The term "Old Czech" is applied to the period predating the 16th century, with the earliest records of the high medieval period also classified as "early Old Czech", but it is also possible to speak simply about "Medieval Czech". Around the 7th century, the Slavic expansion reached Central Europe, settling on the eastern fringes of the Frankish Empire. The West Slavic polity of Great Moravia formed by the 9th century. The Christianization of Bohemia took place during the 9th and 10th centuries. The diversification of the Czech-Slovak group within West Slavic began around that time, marked among other things by its ephemeral use of the voiced velar fricative consonant (/?/)[12] and consistent stress on the first syllable.[13] The Bohemian (Czech) language is first recorded in writing in glosses and short notes during the 12th to 13th centuries. Literary works written in Czech appear in the early 14th century and administrative documents first appear towards the late 14th century. The first complete Bible translation also dates to this period.[14] Old Czech texts, including poetry and cookbooks, were produced outside the university as well.[15] Literary activity becomes widespread in the early 15th century in the context of the Bohemian Reformation. Jan Hus contributed significantly to the standardization of Czech orthography, advocated for widespread literacy among Czech commoners (particularly in religion) and made early efforts to model written Czech after the spoken language.[14] There was no standardization distinguishing between Czech and Slovak prior to the 15th century.[16] In the 16th century, the division between Czech and Slovak becomes apparent, marking the confessional division between Lutheran Protestants in Slovakia using Czech orthography and Catholics, especially Slovak Jesuits, beginning to use a separate Slovak orthography based on the language of the Trnava region. The publication of the Kralice Bible between 1579 and 1593 (the first complete Czech translation of the Bible from the original languages) became very important for standardization of the Czech language in the following centuries. In 1615, the Bohemian diet tried to declare Czech to be the only official language of the kingdom. After the Bohemian Revolt (of predominantly Protestant aristocracy) which was defeated by the Habsburgs in 1620, the Protestant intellectuals had to leave the country. This emigration together with other consequences of the Thirty Years' War had a negative impact on the further use of the Czech language. In 1627, Czech and German became official languages of the Kingdom of Bohemia and in the 18th century German became dominant in Bohemia and Moravia, especially among the upper classes.[17] The modern standard Czech language originates in standardization efforts of the 18th century.[18] By then the language had developed a literary tradition, and since then it has changed little; journals from that period have no substantial differences from modern standard Czech, and contemporary Czechs can understand them with little difficulty.[19] Changes include the morphological shift of to ej and to (although survives for some uses) and the merging of and the former ej.[20] Sometime before the 18th century, the Czech language abandoned a distinction between phonemic /l/ and /?/ which survives in Slovak.[21] With the beginning of the national revival of the mid-18th century, Czech historians began to emphasize their people's accomplishments from the 15th through the 17th centuries, rebelling against the Counter-Reformation (the Habsburg re-catholization efforts which had denigrated Czech and other non-Latin languages).[22] Czech philologists studied sixteenth-century texts, advocating the return of the language to high culture.[23] This period is known as the Czech National Revival[24] (or Renaissance).[23] During the national revival, in 1809 linguist and historian Josef Dobrovsky released a German-language grammar of Old Czech entitled Ausfhrliches Lehrgeb?ude der b?hmischen Sprache (Comprehensive Doctrine of the Bohemian Language). Dobrovsky had intended his book to be descriptive, and did not think Czech had a realistic chance of returning as a major language. However, Josef Jungmann and other revivalists used Dobrovsky's book to advocate for a Czech linguistic revival.[24] Changes during this time included spelling reform (notably, in place of the former j and j in place of g), the use of t (rather than ti) to end infinitive verbs and the non-capitalization of nouns (which had been a late borrowing from German).[21] These changes differentiated Czech from Slovak.[25] Modern scholars disagree about whether the conservative revivalists were motivated by nationalism or considered contemporary spoken Czech unsuitable for formal, widespread use.[24] Adherence to historical patterns was later relaxed and standard Czech adopted a number of features from Common Czech (a widespread, informal register), such as leaving some proper nouns undeclined. This has resulted in a relatively high level of homogeneity among all varieties of the language.[26] In 2005 and 2007, Czech was spoken by about 10 million residents of the Czech Republic.[17][27] A Eurobarometer survey conducted from January to March 2012 found that the first language of 98 percent of Czech citizens was Czech, the third-highest in the European Union (behind Greece and Hungary).[28] Czech, the official language of the Czech Republic (a member of the European Union since 2004), is one of the EU's official languages and the 2012 Eurobarometer survey found that Czech was the foreign language most often used in Slovakia.[28] Economist Jonathan van Parys collected data on language knowledge in Europe for the 2012 European Day of Languages. The five countries with the greatest use of Czech were the Czech Republic (98.77 percent), Slovakia (24.86 percent), Portugal (1.93 percent), Poland (0.98 percent) and Germany (0.47 percent).[29] Czech speakers in Slovakia primarily live in cities. Since it is a recognised minority language in Slovakia, Slovak citizens who speak only Czech may communicate with the government in their language to the extent that Slovak speakers in the Czech Republic may do so.[30] Immigration of Czechs from Europe to the United States occurred primarily from 1848 to 1914. Czech is a Less Commonly Taught Language in U.S. schools, and is taught at Czech heritage centers. Large communities of Czech Americans live in the states of Texas, Nebraska and Wisconsin.[31] In the 2000 United States Census, Czech was reported as the most-common language spoken at home (besides English) in Valley, Butler and Saunders Counties, Nebraska and Republic County, Kansas. With the exception of Spanish (the non-English language most commonly spoken at home nationwide), Czech was the most-common home language in over a dozen additional counties in Nebraska, Kansas, Texas, North Dakota and Minnesota.[32] As of 2009, 70,500 Americans spoke Czech as their first language (49th place nationwide, behind Turkish and ahead of Swedish).[33] The main vernacular is "Common Czech", based on the dialect of the Prague region. Other Bohemian dialects have become marginalized, while Moravian dialects remain more widespread, with a political movement for Moravian linguistic revival active since the 1990s. The main Czech vernacular, spoken primarily near Prague but also throughout the country, is known as Common Czech (obecn ?e?tina). This is an academic distinction; most Czechs are unaware of the term or associate it with vernacular (or incorrect) Czech.[34] Compared to standard Czech, Common Czech is characterized by simpler inflection patterns and differences in sound distribution.[35] Common Czech has become ubiquitous in most parts of the Czech Republic since the later 20th century. It is usually defined as an interdialect used in common speech in Bohemia and western parts of Moravia (by about two thirds of all inhabitants of the Czech Republic). Common Czech is not codified, but some of its elements have become adopted in the written standard. Since the second half of the 20th century, Common Czech elements have also been spreading to regions previously unaffected, as a consequence of media influence. Standard Czech is still the norm for politicians, businesspeople and other Czechs in formal situations, but Common Czech is gaining ground in journalism and the mass media.[35] Common Czech is characterized by quite regular differences from the standard morphology and phonology. These variations are more or less common to all Common Czech dialects: Example of declension (with the comparison with the standard Czech): mlady ?lovk ÿ young man/person, mlad lid ÿ young people, mlady stt ÿ young state, mlad ?ena ÿ young woman, mlad zv?e ÿ young animal Apart from the Common Czech vernacular, there remain a variety of other Bohemian dialect, mostly in marginal rural areas. Dialect use began to weaken in the second half of the 20th century, and by the early 1990s dialect use was stigmatized, associated with the shrinking lower class and used in literature or other media for comedic effect. Increased travel and media availability to dialect-speaking populations has encouraged them to shift to (or add to their own dialect) standard Czech.[36] Although Czech has received considerable scholarly interest for a Slavic language, this interest has focused primarily on modern standard Czech and historical texts rather than dialects.[34] The Czech Statistical Office in 2003 recognized the following Bohemian dialects:[37] The Czech dialects spoken in Moravia and Silesia are known as Moravian (morav?tina). In the Austro-Hungarian Empire, "Bohemian-Moravian-Slovak" was a language citizens could register as speaking (with German, Polish and several others).[38] Of the Czech dialects, only Moravian is distinguished in nationwide surveys by the Czech Statistical Office. As of 2011, 62,908 Czech citizens spoke Moravian as their first language and 45,561 were diglossal (speaking Moravian and standard Czech as first languages).[39] Beginning in the sixteenth century, some varieties of Czech resembled Slovak;[16] the southeastern Moravian dialects, in particular, are sometimes considered dialects of Slovak rather than Czech. These dialects form a continuum between the Czech and Slovak languages,[40] using the same declension patterns for nouns and pronouns and the same verb conjugations as Slovak.[41] The Czech Statistical Office in 2003 recognized the following Moravian dialects:[37] In a 1964 textbook on Czech dialectology, B?etislav Koudela used the following sentence to highlight phonetic differences between dialects:[42] Czech and Slovak have been considered mutually intelligible; speakers of either language can communicate with greater ease than those of any other pair of West Slavic languages. Since the 1993 dissolution of Czechoslovakia, mutual intelligibility has declined for younger speakers, probably because Czech speakers now experience less exposure to Slovak and vice versa.[43] In phonetic differences, Czech is characterized by a glottal stop before initial vowels and Slovak by its less-frequent use of long vowels than Czech;[44] however, Slovak has long forms of the consonants r and l when they function as vowels.[45] Phonemic differences between the two languages are generally consistent, typical of two dialects of a language. Grammatically, although Czech (unlike Slovak) has a vocative case,[44] both languages share a common syntax.[16] One study showed that Czech and Slovak lexicons differed by 80 percent, but this high percentage was found to stem primarily from differing orthographies and slight inconsistencies in morphological formation;[46] Slovak morphology is more regular (when changing from the nominative to the locative case, Praha becomes Praze in Czech and Prahe in Slovak). The two lexicons are generally considered similar, with most differences found in colloquial vocabulary and some scientific terminology. Slovak has slightly more borrowed words than Czech.[16] The similarities between Czech and Slovak led to the languages being considered a single language by a group of 19th-century scholars who called themselves "Czechoslavs" (?echoslovan), believing that the peoples were connected in a way which excluded German Bohemians and (to a lesser extent) Hungarians and other Slavs.[47] During the First Czechoslovak Republic (1918ÿ1938), although "Czechoslovak" was designated as the republic's official language, both Czech and Slovak written standards were used. Standard written Slovak was partially modeled on literary Czech, and Czech was preferred for some official functions in the Slovak half of the republic. Czech influence on Slovak was protested by Slovak scholars, and when Slovakia broke off from Czechoslovakia in 1938 as the Slovak State (which then aligned with Nazi Germany in World War II), literary Slovak was deliberately distanced from Czech. When the Axis powers lost the war and Czechoslovakia reformed, Slovak developed somewhat on its own (with Czech influence); during the Prague Spring of 1968, Slovak gained independence from (and equality with) Czech,[16] due to the transformation of Czechoslovakia from a unitary state to a federation. Since the dissolution of Czechoslovakia in 1993, "Czechoslovak" has referred to improvised pidgins of the languages which have arisen from the decrease in mutual intelligibility.[48] Czech vocabulary derives primarily from Slavic, Baltic and other Indo-European roots. Although most verbs have Balto-Slavic origins, pronouns, prepositions and some verbs have wider, Indo-European roots.[49] Some loanwords have been restructured by folk etymology to resemble native Czech words (h?bitov, "graveyard" and listina, "list").[50] Most Czech loanwords originated in one of two time periods. Earlier loanwords, primarily from German,[51] Greek and Latin,[52] arrived before the Czech National Revival. More recent loanwords derive primarily from English and French,[51] and also from Hebrew, Arabic and Persian. Many Russian loanwords, principally animal names and naval terms, also exist in Czech.[53] Although older German loanwords were colloquial, recent borrowings from other languages are associated with high culture.[51] During the nineteenth century, words with Greek and Latin roots were rejected in favor of those based on older Czech words and common Slavic roots; "music" is muzyka in Polish and ֿ (muzyka) in Russian, but in Czech it is hudba.[52] Some Czech words have been borrowed as loanwords into English and other languagesfor example, robot (from robota, "labor")[54] and polka (from polka, "Polish woman" or from "p?lka" "half").[55] The modern written standard is directly based on the standardisation during the Czech National Revival in the 1830s, significantly influenced by Josef Jungmann's Czech-German dictionary published during 1834ÿ1839. Jungmann used vocabulary of the Bible of Kralice (1579ÿ1613) period and of the language used by his contemporaries. He borrowed words not present in Czech from other Slavic languages or created neologisms.[56] Czech contains ten basic vowel phonemes, and three more found only in loanwords. They are /a/, /?/, /?/, /o/, and /u/, their long counterparts /a?/, /??/, /i?/, /o?/ and /u?/, and three diphthongs, /ou?/, /au?/ and /?u?/. The latter two diphthongs and the long /o?/ are exclusive to loanwords.[57] Vowels are never reduced to schwa sounds when unstressed.[58] Each word usually has primary stress on its first syllable, except for enclitics (minor, monosyllabic, unstressed syllables). In all words of more than two syllables, every odd-numbered syllable receives secondary stress. Stress is unrelated to vowel length, and the possibility of stressed short vowels and unstressed long vowels can be confusing to students whose native language combines the features (such as English).[59] Voiced consonants with unvoiced counterparts are unvoiced at the end of a word, or when they are followed by unvoiced consonants.[60] Czech consonants are categorized as "hard", "neutral" or "soft": This distinction describes the declension patterns of nouns, which is based on the category of a noun's ending consonant. Hard consonants may not be followed by i or in writing, or soft ones by y or y (except in loanwords such as kilogram).[61] Neutral consonants may take either character. Hard consonants are sometimes known as "strong", and soft ones as "weak".[62] The phoneme represented by the letter ? (capital ?) is considered unique to Czech.[63] It represents the raised alveolar non-sonorant trill (IPA: [r?]), a sound somewhere between Czech's r and ? (example: ?"?eka" (river)?(help{info)),[63] and is present in Dvo?k. The consonants /r/ and /l/ can be syllabic, acting as syllable nuclei in place of a vowel. This can be difficult for non-native speakers to pronounce, and Str? prst skrz krk ("Stick [your] finger down [your] throat") is a Czech tongue twister.[64] Consonants Vowels Slavic grammar is fusional; its nouns, verbs, and adjectives are inflected by phonological processes to modify their meanings and grammatical functions, and the easily separable affixes characteristic of agglutinative languages are limited.[65] Slavic-language inflection is complex and pervasive, inflecting for case, gender and number in nouns and tense, aspect, mood, person and subject number and gender in verbs.[66] Parts of speech include adjectives, adverbs, numbers, interrogative words, prepositions, conjunctions and interjections.[67] Adverbs are primarily formed by taking the final y or of an adjective and replacing it with e, , or o.[68] Negative statements are formed by adding the affix ne- to the verb of a clause, with one exception: je (he, she or it is) becomes nen.[69] Because Czech uses grammatical case to convey word function in a sentence (instead of relying on word order, as English does), its word order is flexible. As a pro-drop language, in Czech an intransitive sentence can consist of only a verb; information about its subject is encoded in the verb.[70] Enclitics (primarily auxiliary verbs and pronouns) must appear in the second syntactic slot of a sentence, after the first stressed unit. The first slot must contain a subject and object, a main form of a verb, an adverb or a conjunction (except for the light conjunctions a, "and", i, "and even" or ale, "but").[71] Czech syntax has a subjectÿverbÿobject sentence structure. In practice, however, word order is flexible and used for topicalization and focus. Although Czech has a periphrastic passive construction (like English), colloquial word-order changes frequently produce the passive voice. For example, to change "Peter killed Paul" to "Paul was killed by Peter" the order of subject and object is inverted: Petr zabil Pavla ("Peter killed Paul") becomes "Paul, Peter killed" (Pavla zabil Petr). Pavla is in the accusative case, the grammatical object (in this case, the victim) of the verb.[72] A word at the end of a clause is typically emphasized, unless an upward intonation indicates that the sentence is a question:[73] In portions of Bohemia (including Prague), questions such as J pes bagetu? without an interrogative word (such as co, "what" or kdo, "who") are intoned in a slow rise from low to high, quickly dropping to low on the last word or phrase.[74] In Czech syntax, adjectives precede nouns.[75] Relative clauses are introduced by relativizers such as the adjective ktery, analogous to the English relative pronouns "which", "that", "who" and "whom". As with other adjectives, it is declined into the appropriate case (see Declension below) to match its associated noun, person and number. Relative clauses follow the noun they modify, and the following is a glossed example:[76] English: I want to visit the university that John attends. In Czech, nouns and adjectives are declined into one of seven grammatical cases. Nouns are inflected to indicate their use in a sentence. A nominativeÿaccusative language, Czech marks subject nouns with nominative case and object nouns with accusative case. The genitive case marks possessive nouns and some types of movement. The remaining cases (instrumental, locative, vocative and dative) indicate semantic relationships, such as secondary objects, movement or position (dative case) and accompaniment (instrumental case). An adjective's case agrees with that of the noun it describes. When Czech children learn their language's declension patterns, the cases are referred to by number:[77] Some Czech grammatical texts order the cases differently, grouping the nominative and accusative (and the dative and locative) together because those declension patterns are often identical; this order accommodates learners with experience in other inflected languages, such as Latin or Russian. This order is nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, locative, instrumental and vocative.[77] Some prepositions require the nouns they modify to take a particular case. The cases assigned by each preposition are based on the physical (or metaphorical) direction, or location, conveyed by it. For example, od (from, away from) and z (out of, off) assign the genitive case. Other prepositions take one of several cases, with their meaning dependent on the case; na means "onto" or "for" with the accusative case, but "on" with the locative.[78] Examples of declension patterns (using prepositions) for a few nouns with adjectives follow. Only one plural example is given, since plural declension patterns are similar across genders. This is a glossed example of a sentence using several cases: English: I carried the box into the house with my friend. Czech distinguishes three gendersmasculine, feminine, and neuterand the masculine gender is subdivided into animate and inanimate. With few exceptions, feminine nouns in the nominative case end in -a, -e, or -ost; neuter nouns in -o, -e, or -, and masculine nouns in a consonant.[79] Adjectives agree in gender and animacy (for masculine nouns in the accusative or genitive singular and the nominative plural) with the nouns they modify.[80] The main effect of gender in Czech is the difference in noun and adjective declension, but other effects include past-tense verb endings: for example, dlal (he did, or made); dlala (she did, or made) and dlalo (it did, or made).[81] Nouns are also inflected for number, distinguishing between singular and plural. Typical of a Slavic language, Czech cardinal numbers one through four allow the nouns and adjectives they modify to take any case, but numbers over five place these nouns and adjectives in the genitive case when the entire expression is in nominative or accusative case. The Czech koruna is an example of this feature; it is shown here as the subject of a hypothetical sentence, and declined as genitive for numbers five and up.[82] Numerical words decline for case and, for numbers one and two, for gender. Numbers one through five are shown below as examples, and have some of the most exceptions among Czech numbers. The number one has declension patterns identical to those of the demonstrative pronoun, to.[83][84] Although Czech's grammatical numbers are singular and plural, several residuals of dual forms remain. Some nouns for paired body parts use a historical dual form to express plural in some cases: ruka (hand)ruce (nominative); noha (leg)nohama (instrumental), nohou (genitive/locative); oko (eye)o?i, and ucho (ear)u?i. While two of these nouns are neuter in their singular forms, all plural forms are considered feminine; their gender is relevant to their associated adjectives and verbs.[85] These forms are plural semantically, used for any non-singular count, as in mezi ?ty?ma o?ima (face to face, lit. among four eyes). The plural number paradigms of these nouns are actually a mixture of historical dual and plural forms. For example, nohy (legs; nominative/accusative) is a standard plural form of this type of noun. Czech verb conjugation is less complex than noun and adjective declension because it codes for fewer categories. Verbs agree with their subjects in person (first, second or third) and number (singular or plural), and are conjugated for tense (past, present or future). For example, the conjugated verb mluvme (we speak) is in the present tense and first-person plural; it is distinguished from other conjugations of the infinitive mluvit by its ending, me.[86] Typical of Slavic languages, Czech marks its verbs for one of two grammatical aspects: perfective and imperfective. Most verbs are part of inflected aspect pairsfor example, koupit (perfective) and kupovat (imperfective). Although the verbs' meaning is similar, in perfective verbs the action is completed and in imperfective verbs it is ongoing. This is distinct from past and present tense,[87] and any Czech verb of either aspect can be conjugated into any of its three tenses.[86] Aspect describes the state of the action at the time specified by the tense.[87] The verbs of most aspect pairs differ in one of two ways: by prefix or by suffix. In prefix pairs, the perfective verb has an added prefixfor example, the imperfective pst (to write, to be writing) compared with the perfective napsat (to write down, to finish writing). The most common prefixes are na-, o-, po-, s-, u-, vy-, z- and za-.[88] In suffix pairs, a different infinitive ending is added to the perfective stem; for example, the perfective verbs koupit (to buy) and prodat (to sell) have the imperfective forms kupovat and prodvat.[89] Imperfective verbs may undergo further morphology to make other imperfective verbs (iterative and frequentative forms), denoting repeated or regular action. The verb jt (to go) has the iterative form chodit (to go repeatedly) and the frequentative form chodvat (to go regularly).[90] Many verbs have only one aspect, and verbs describing continual states of beingbyt (to be), chtt (to want), moct (to be able to), le?et (to lie down, to be lying down)have no perfective form. Conversely, verbs describing immediate states of changefor example, othotnt (to become pregnant) and nadchnout se (to become enthusiastic)have no imperfective aspect.[91] Although Czech's use of present and future tense is largely similar to that of English, the language uses past tense to represent the English present perfect and past perfect; ona b?ela could mean she ran, she has run or she had run.[92] In some contexts, Czech's perfective present (which differs from the English present perfect) implies future action; in others, it connotes habitual action.[93] As a result, the language has a proper future tense to minimize ambiguity. The future tense does not involve conjugating the verb describing an action to be undertaken in the future; instead, the future form of byt (as shown in the table at left) is placed before the infinitive (for example, budu jst"I will eat").[94] This conjugation is not followed by byt itself, so future-oriented expressions involving nouns, adjectives, or prepositions (rather than verbs) omit byt. "I will be happy" is translated as Budu ??astny (not Budu byt ??astny).[94] The infinitive form ends in t (archaically, ti). It is the form found in dictionaries and the form that follows auxiliary verbs (for example, m??u t sly?et"I can hear you").[95] Czech verbs have three grammatical moods: indicative, imperative and conditional.[96] The imperative mood adds specific endings for each of three person (or number) categories: -?/-i/-ej for second-person singular, -te/-ete/-ejte for second-person plural and -me/-eme/-ejme for first-person plural.[97] The conditional mood is formed with a particle after the past-tense verb. This mood indicates possible events, expressed in English as "I would" or "I wish".[98] Most Czech verbs fall into one of five classes, which determine their conjugation patterns. The future tense of byt would be classified as a Class I verb because of its endings. Examples of the present tense of each class and some common irregular verbs follow in the tables below:[99] Czech has one of the most phonemic orthographies of all European languages. Its thirty-one graphemes represent thirty sounds (in most dialects, i and y have the same sound), and it contains only one digraph: ch, which follows h in the alphabet.[100] As a result, some of its characters have been used by phonologists to denote corresponding sounds in other languages. The characters q, w and x appear only in foreign words.[101] The h?ek () is used with certain letters to form new characters:andas well as , ,and ? (the latter five uncommon outside Czech). The last two letters are sometimes written with a comma above (?, an abbreviated h?ek) because of their height.[102] The character ܇ exists only in loanwords and onomatopoeia.[103] Unlike most European languages, Czech distinguishes vowel length; long vowels are indicated by an acute accent or, occasionally witha ring. Long u is usually written ~ at the beginning of a word or morpheme (~roda, ne~rodny) and ? elsewhere,[104] except for loanwords (sk~tr) or onomatopoeia (b~).[105] Long vowels and are not considered separate letters.[106] Czech typographical features not associated with phonetics generally resemble those of most Latin European languages, including English. Proper nouns, honorifics, and the first letters of quotations are capitalized, and punctuation is typical of other Latin European languages. Writing of ordinal numerals is similar to most European languages. The Czech language uses a decimal comma instead of a decimal point. When writing a long number, spaces between every three numbers (e.g. between hundreds and thousands) may be used for better orientation in handwritten texts, but not in decimal places, like in English. The number 1,234,567.8910 may be written as 1234567,8910 or 1 234 567,8910. Ordinal numbers (1st) use a point as in German (1.). In proper noun phrases (except personal names), only the first word is capitalized (Pra?sky hrad, Prague Castle).[107][108] According to Article 1 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights: Czech: V?ichni lid se rod svobodn a sob rovn co do d?stojnosti a prv. Jsou nadni rozumem a svdomm a maj spolu jednat v duchu bratrstv.[109] English: "All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood."[110]