 ASEAN.svg)
.svg)
.svg)
.svg)
.svg)
.svg)
.svg)
.svg)
.svg)
.svg)
.svg)
.svg)
.svg)
.svg)
.svg)
A land mine (sometimes landmine) is usually a weight-triggered explosive device which is intended to damage a target—either human or inanimate—by means of a blast and/or fragment impact.
The name originates from the ancient practice of military mining, where tunnels were dug under enemy fortifications or troop formations by sappers. These tunnels ("mines") were at first collapsed to destroy targets located above, but they were later filled with explosives and detonated in order to cause greater devastation.
Nowadays, in common parlance, land mines generally refer to devices specifically manufactured as anti-personnel or anti-vehicle weapons and should be distinguished from improvised explosive devices ("IEDs").
The use of land mines is controversial because they are indiscriminate weapons, harming soldier and civilian alike.
They can remain dangerous many years after a conflict has ended, harming the economy of many developing nations. With pressure from a number of campaign groups to prohibit their use lead to a 1997 Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on their Destruction, known informally as the Ottawa Treaty. As of 2007, a total of 158 nations have agreed to the treaty.
The former purpose is the primary large-scale current use of land mines, and the reason for their widespread use in the demilitarized zones (DMZs) of likely flashpoints such as Cyprus, Afghanistan and Korea.
Explosive land mines were being used in 1277 AD by the Song Dynasty Chinese against an assault of the Mongols, who were besieging a city in southern China. The invention of this detonated "enormous bomb" was credited to one Lou Qianxia of the 13th century. The famous 14th century Chinese text of the Huolongjing, which was the first to describe hollow cast iron cannonball shells filled with gunpowder, was also the first to describe the invention of the land mine in greater detail than references found in texts written beforehand. The wad of the mine was made of hard wood, carrying three different fuses in case of defective connection to the touch hole. However, the Huolongjing also describes land mines that were set off by enemy movement, called the 'ground-thunder explosive camp', one of the 'self-trespassing' (zifan) types, as the text says:
The Huolongjing describes the trigger device used for this as a 'steel wheel', which directed sparks of flame onto the connection of fuses running to the multiple-laid land mines underneath the carefully-hidden trap. However, further description of how this flint device operated was not made until a Chinese text of 1606 AD revealed that a weight drive (common in medieval clockworks) had been used to work the 'steel wheel'. In terms of global significance, the first wheellock musket in Europe was sketched by Leonardo da Vinci around 1500 AD, although no use of metal flint for gunpowder weapons were known before that point in Europe. The Ming Dynasty (1368–1644) text of the Wubei Zhi (Treatise on Armament Technology), written by Mao Yuanyi in 1628, outlined the use of land mines that were triggered by the heat of a slow-burning incandescent material in an underground bowl placed directly above the train of fuses leading to the mines buried 3 ft beneath. The booby trap of this mine system had a mound where weapons of halberds, pikes, and lances were dug in, meant to entice the enemy to walk up the small mound and claim their stolen prize of war booty.
In Europe in the early eighteenth century, improvised land mines or booby traps were constructed in the form of bombs buried in shallow wells in the earth and covered with scrap metal and/or gravel to serve as shrapnel. Known in French as fougasse, the term is sometimes still used in the present day to describe such devices. This technique was used in several European wars of the eighteenth century, the American Revolution, and the American Civil War.
The first modern mechanically-fused high explosive anti-personnel land mines were created by Confederate troops of Brigadier General Gabriel J. Rains during the Battle of Yorktown in 1862. As a Captain, Rains had earlier employed explosive booby traps during the Seminole Wars in Florida in 1840. Both mechanically and electrically fused "land torpedoes" were employed, although by the end of the war mechanical fuses had been found to be generally more reliable. Many of these designs were improvised in the field, especially from explosive shells, but by the end of the war nearly 2,000 standard pattern "Rains mines" had been deployed.
Improved designs of mines were created in Imperial Germany, circa 1912, and were copied and manufactured by all major participants in the First World War. Both sides employed land mines (defensively) and tunnel mines (offensively).
Minefields may be laid by several means. The preferred, but most labour-intensive, way is to have engineers bury the mines, since this will make the mines practically invisible and reduce the number of mines needed to deny the enemy an area. Mines can be laid by specialized mine-laying vehicles. Mine-scattering shells may be fired by artillery from a distance of several tens of kilometers.
Mines may be dropped from helicopters or airplanes, or ejected from cluster bombs or cruise missiles.
Anti-tank minefields can be scattered with anti-personnel mines to make clearing them manually more time-consuming; and anti-personnel minefields are scattered with anti-tank mines to prevent the use of armored vehicles to clear them quickly. Some anti-tank mine types are also able to be triggered by infantry, giving them a dual purpose even though their main and official intention is to work as anti-tank weapons.
Some minefields are specifically booby-trapped to make clearing them more dangerous. Mixed anti-personnel and anti-tank minefields, anti-personnel mines under anti-tank mines, and fuses separated from mines have all been used for this purpose. Often, single mines are backed by a secondary device, designed to kill or maim personnel tasked with clearing the mine.
Multiple anti-tank mines have been buried in stacks of two or three with the bottom mine fuzed, in order to multiply the penetrating power. Since the mines are buried, the ground directs the energy of the blast in a single direction — through the bottom of the target vehicle or on the track.
Another specific use is to mine an aircraft runway immediately after it has been bombed in order to delay or discourage repair. Some cluster bombs combine these functions. One example is the British JP233 cluster bomb which includes munitions to damage (crater) the runway as well as anti-personnel mines in the same cluster bomb.
Metal detectors were first used for demining, after their invention by the Polish officer Józef Kosacki. His invention, known as the Polish mine detector, was used by the Allies alongside mechanical methods, to clear the German mine fields during the Second Battle of El Alamein when 500 units were shipped to Field Marshal Montgomery's Eighth Army.
Whereas the placing and arming of mines is relatively inexpensive and simple, the process of detecting and removing them is typically expensive, slow, and dangerous. This is especially true of irregular warfare where mines were used on an ad hoc basis in unmarked areas. Anti-personnel mines are most difficult to find, due to their small size and the fact that many are made almost entirely of non-metallic materials specifically to escape detection.
Manual clearing remains the most effective technique for clearing mine fields, although hybrid techniques involving the use of animals and robots are being developed. Animals are desirable due to their strong sense of smell, which is more than capable of detecting a land mine. Animals like rats and dogs can also differentiate between other metal objects and land mines because they can be trained to detect the explosive agent itself.
Other techniques involve the use of geo-location technologies. A joint team of researchers at the University of New South Wales and Ohio State University is working to develop a system based on multi-sensor integration.
Ironically, the laying of land mines inadvertently proved a positive development in the Falkland Islands. This is because the mine fields laid by the sea during the Falklands War have become favorite places for penguins, which are too light to detonate the mines, and are therefore able to breed safely in areas where humans do not enter. These odd sanctuaries have proven so popular and lucrative for ecotourism that there has been some effort to prevent having the mines removed.
Norwegian NGO Norwegian People's Aid is one organisation involved in the safe removal of land mines.
The use of land mines is controversial because they are indiscriminate weapons, harming soldier and civilian alike. They remain dangerous after the conflict in which they were deployed has ended, killing and injuring civilians and rendering land impassable and unusable for decades. To make matters worse, many factions have not kept accurate records (or any at all) of the exact locations of their minefields, making removal efforts painstakingly slow. These facts pose serious difficulties in many developing nations where the presence of mines hampers resettlement, agriculture, and tourism. The International Campaign to Ban Landmines campaigned successfully to prohibit their use, culminating in the 1997 Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on their Destruction, known informally as the Ottawa Treaty.
The Ottawa Treaty (Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on their Destruction) came into force on March 1, 1999. The treaty was the result of the leadership of the Government of Canada working with the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, launched in 1992. The campaign and its leader, Jody Williams, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1997 for its efforts.
The treaty does not include anti-tank mines, cluster bombs or claymore-type mines operated in command mode and focuses specifically on anti-personnel mines, because these pose the greatest long term (post-conflict) risk to humans and animals since they are typically designed to be triggered by any movement or pressure of only a few kilograms, whereas anti-tank mines require much more weight (or a combination of factors that would exclude humans). Existing stocks must be destroyed within four years of signing the treaty.
Signatories of the Ottawa Treaty agree that they will not use, develop, manufacture, stockpile or trade in anti-personnel land mines. There were originally 122 signatories in 1997; , it has been signed by 155 countries and ratified by 153. Another 40 have yet to sign on. The United States is not one of the signatories, based on lacking an exception for the DMZ of Korea.
There is a clause in the treaty, Article 3, which permits countries to retain land mines for use in training or development of countermeasures. 64 countries have taken this option.
As an alternative to an outright ban, 10 countries follow regulations that are contained in a 1996 amendment of Protocol II of the Convention on Conventional Weapons (CCW). The countries are China, Finland, India, Israel, Morocco, Pakistan, South Korea, Sri Lanka, and the United States.
Of other states which are thought to have manufactured mines recently: Egypt has unofficially stated that production ceased in 1988. South Korea has stated that no mines have been produced since 2000. An official from China stated in September 2003 that production has ceased there, since they have an ample stockpile. In March 2004, a Libyan official stated that the country has never produced anti-personnel mines, but is known to have laid land mines in the 1970s and 1980s. A United Nations assessment mission to Peru reported that production of land mines in the country ceased in January 1999. Peru was one of the original signatories and the treaty came into force for them in March 1999. Denmark had officially declared having 6 factories producing land mines in 1995 but production ceased since ratification of the Ottawa treaty. The United States stopped manufacturing land mines in 1997, but has one of the largest stockpiles.
;Mines
PPE]] ;Places
;Organisations
This text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
| Name | Benny Hill |
|---|---|
| Caption | Benny Hill |
| Birth name | Alfred Hawthorne Hill |
| Birth date | January 21, 1924 |
| Birth place | Southampton, Hampshire, England |
| Death date | April 20, 1992 |
| Death place | Teddington, Middlesex, England |
| Occupation | Actor, singer & comedian |
| Years active | 1940–1992 |
Benny Hill (21 January 1924 – 20 April 1992) was an English actor and comedian, notable for his long-running television programme The Benny Hill Show.
The most common running gag in Benny Hill's shows was the closing sequence, The 'run-off', which was literally a "running gag" in that it featured various members of the cast chasing Hill and usually featured scantily-clad women as part of the chase, along with other stock comedy characters, such as policemen, vicars, old ladies, and so on. This was commonly filmed using stop motion and time-lapse techniques for comic effect, and included other comic devices such as characters running off one side of the screen and reappearing running on from the other. The tune used in all the chases, "Yakety Sax", is commonly referred to as "The Benny Hill Theme". It has been used as a form of parody in many ways by television shows and a small number of films. The Wachowskis used the same style (and musical theme) in a scene in the film V for Vendetta (2006). It also appears in the cult movie The Gods Must Be Crazy.
Towards the start of the eighties the show featured a troupe of attractive young women, known collectively as 'Hills Angels' . They would appear either on their own in a dance sequence, or in character as foils against Hill. Sue Upton, one of the longest serving members of the Angels, said of Hill, "He was one of the nicest, kindest, most gentle of men to work with". But the sexual content of the routines contributed in the 1980s to feminist accusations of sexism.Reflecting such changing currents of opinions, the 1980s alternative comedian Ben Elton denounced Hill as a "dirty old man, tearing the clothes off nubile girls". But a writer in The Independent newspaper opined that Elton's assault was "like watching an elderly uncle being kicked to death by young thugs". Elton later claimed his comment was taken out of context, and he appeared in an affectionate parody for Harry Enfield and Chums, The Benny Elton Show, where Elton ends up being chased by angry women, accompanied by the Yakety Sax theme, after trying to force them to be more feminist rather than letting them make their own decisions.
In response to the accusations of sexism, defenders of Hill have said the show used traditional comic stereotypes to reflect universal human truths in a way that was unmalicious and fundamentally harmless. Hill's close friend and producer Dennis Kirkland said it was the women who chased Hill in anger for undressing them, all of which was done accidentally by some ridiculous means. An article on 27 May 2006 in The Independent quoted Hill and Dennis Kirkland as saying they believed this misrepresentation demonstrated critics could not have watched his programmes.
In a documentary on Benny Hill, John Howard Davies, the former head of entertainment at Thames Television who had canceled the show, stated there were three reasons why he did so: "...the audiences were going down, the programme was costing a vast amount of money, and he (Hill) was looking tired." The loss of his show totally devastated Hill (or, as one former supporting player put it, "He started to die from there"), and what followed was a self-inflicted decline in his health. in 1990 a new show was produced complete with Hill and his usual team, called Benny Hill's World Tour. In February 1992 Thames Television, which received a steady stream of requests from viewers for 'The Benny Hill Show' repeats, finally gave in and put together a number of re-edited shows. They tore straight into the top twenty. Hill died on 20 April 1992, the same day that a new contract arrived in the post from Central Independent Television, for which he was to have started making a series of specials. Hill turned down competing offers from Carlton and Thames.
Radio and TV show host Adam Carolla claimed that he was a fan of Benny Hill and that he considered Hill "as American as the Beatles." Indeed, during an episode of The Man Show, Carolla performed in what was billed as a tribute to "our favourite Englishman, Sir Benny Hill" in a more risqué takeoff of the sketches that Hill popularised. (Note: Hill was never knighted.) Carolla played a rude and lecherous waiter; a role Hill essayed numerous times in his shows—and the sketch featured many of the staples of Hill's shows, including a Jackie Wright-esque bald man, as well as the usual scantily-clad women.
Michael Jackson was a big Benny Hill fan: "I just love your Benny Hill!" the young Jackson told a bemused English music-press critic during a 1970s tour. "He's so funny!". During Benny Hill's decline in health he was visited by Michael Jackson who was in the UK at the time.
In Benny Hill: The World's Favourite Clown, filmed shortly before his death, celebrities such as Burt Reynolds, Michael Caine, John Mortimer, Mickey Rooney, and Walter Cronkite, among others, expressed their appreciation of and admiration for Hill and his humour (and in Reynolds' case, the appreciation extended to the "Hill's Angels" as well). More surprisingly, perhaps, the cerebral novelist Anthony Burgess made no secret of his admiration for Hill. Burgess, whose novels were often comic, relished language, wordplay and dialect, admired the verbal and comedic skill that underlay Hill's success. Reviewing a biography of Hill, Saucy Boy, in the Guardian in 1990, Burgess described Hill as "a comic genius steeped in the British music-hall tradition" and "one of the great artists of our age". A meeting between the two men was described in a newspaper article by Burgess and recalled in the Telegraph newspaper by the satirist Craig Brown.
In 2006, broadcaster and critic Garry Bushell launched a campaign to erect a statue of Hill in Southampton, with the support of Barbara Windsor, Brian Conley and other British comedy favourites. Those taking part in the first fundraising concert included Neville Staple, Right Said Fred and Rick Wakeman.
Hill was buried at Hollybrook Cemetery near his birthplace in Southampton on 26 April 1992. In October 1992, following rumours that he was buried with large amounts of gold jewellery, an attempt was made by thieves to exhume his body. However, when authorities looked into his open coffin the following morning, there was no treasure. Consequently, it is not generally known whether anything valuable was inside. Hill was reburied with a new coffin lid and a solid slab across the top of the grave.
Hill's fortune was estimated at £200 million. His only will, however, dated from 1961 and left his entire estate to his parents, both of whom had since died. Next in line were his brother Leonard and sister Diana, both of whom were also dead. This left his seven nieces and nephews, among whom the money was divided. Allegedly a note was found among his belongings assigning huge sums of money to his close friends and £60 million to his long time maid, it was signed, but because there was no witness the note had no legal standing.
In 1998 Channel 4 featured Hill in one of its "Heroes Of Comedy" programmes.
On 28 December 2006, Channel 4 broadcast the documentary Is Benny Hill Still Funny?. The programme featured an audience that comprised a cross-section of young adults who had little or no knowledge of Hill's comedy style, to discover whether or not the alternative comedians' criticism of Hill was valid to a generation that enjoyed the likes of Little Britain, The Catherine Tate Show and Borat. The participants were asked to watch a 30-minute compilation that included examples of Hill's humour from both his BBC and ITV shows. The responses and results demonstrated that none of the sample of viewers took offence at any of the sketches shown.
Hill's silent "Wishing Well" sketch was discovered to be the most popular. The alternative comedian Ben Elton, who had criticised Hill for sexism, was interviewed in the programme. Elton said he still had reservations about certain aspects of Hill's sketches, but claimed to be an admirer of Hill's talent and abilities as a comic performer.
On January 1st, 2011, "Antenna TV" was launched on digital channels in the United States which re-runs the Benny Hill Show along with other older sit-coms and movies. The schedule for Antenna TV can be found at http://antennatv.tv which shows at what times the Benny Hill show is aired.
Category:English comedians Category:English film actors Category:English comedy musicians Category:People from Southampton Category:1924 births Category:1992 deaths Category:Alumni of Bournemouth School Category:Pye Records artists
This text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
