Highwayman

A highwayman was a robber who stole from travelers. This type of thief usually travelled and robbed by horse, as compared to a footpad who travelled and robbed on foot; mounted highwaymen were widely considered to be socially superior to footpads. Such robbers operated in Great Britain from the Elizabethan era until the early 19th century. In many other countries, they persisted for a few decades longer, until the mid or late 19th century.

The word highwayman is first known to be used in the year 1617; other euphemisms included "knights of the road" and "gentlemen of the road". In the 19th-century American West, highwaymen were known as road agents. In the same time period in Australia, they were known as bushrangers.

Robbing

Some robbed individually, but others worked in pairs or in small gangs. They often attacked coaches for their lack of protection, including public stagecoaches; the postboys who carried the mail were also frequently held up. The famous demand to "Stand and deliver!" (sometimes in forms such as "Stand and deliver your purse!" "Stand and deliver your money!") was in use from the 17th century.

Highway Robbery (song)

"Highway Robbery" is a song written by Tom Shapiro, Michael Garvin and Bucky Jones, and recorded by American country music artist Tanya Tucker. It was released in December 1988 as the second single from the album Strong Enough to Bend. The song reached #2 on the Billboard Hot Country Singles & Tracks chart.

Chart performance

Year-end charts

References

Highway

A highway is any public road or other public way on land. It is used for major roads, but also includes other public roads and public tracks: It is not an equivalent term to freeway (motorway), or a translation for autobahn, autoroute, etc.

In North American and Australian English, major roads such as controlled-access highways or arterial roads are often state highways (Canada: provincial highways). Other roads may be designated "county highways" in the US and Ontario. These classifications refer to the level of government (state, provincial, county) that maintains the roadway.

In British English, "highway" is primarily a legal term. Everyday use normally implies roads, while the legal use covers any route or path with a public right of access, including footpaths etc.

The term has led to several related derived terms, including highway system, highway code, highway patrol and highwayman.

The term highway exists in distinction to "waterway".

Overview

Major highways are often named and numbered by the governments that typically develop and maintain them. Australia's Highway 1 is the longest national highway in the world at over 14,500 km or 9,000 mi and runs almost the entire way around the continent. China has the world's largest network of highways followed closely by the United States of America. Some highways, like the Pan-American Highway or the European routes, span multiple countries. Some major highway routes include ferry services, such as U.S. Route 10, which crosses Lake Michigan.

Russian mafia

The Russian Mafia (Russian: русская мафия; russkaya mafiya) or Bratva (brothers, brotherhood), is a term used to refer to the collective of various organized crime elements originating in the former Soviet Union. Although not a singular criminal organization, most of the individual groups share similar goals and organizational structures that define them as part of the loose overall association.

Organized crime in Russia began in the imperial period of the Tsars, but it was not until the Soviet era that vory v zakone ("thieves-in-law") emerged as leaders of prison groups in gulags (Soviet prison labor camps), and their honor code became more defined. After World War II, the death of Joseph Stalin, and the fall of the Soviet Union, more gangs emerged in a flourishing black market, exploiting the unstable governments of the former Republics, and at its highest point, even controlling as much as two-thirds of the Russian economy. Louis Freeh, former director of the FBI, once said that the Russian mafia posed the greatest threat to U.S. national security in the mid-1990s.