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HMS Neptune was a dreadnought battleship built for the Royal Navy in the first decade of the 20th century, the sole ship of her class. She was the first British battleship to be built with superfiring guns. Shortly after her completion in 1911, she carried out trials of an experimental fire-control director and then became the flagship of the Home Fleet. Neptune became a private ship in early 1914 and was assigned to the 1st Battle Squadron.

The ship became part of the Grand Fleet when it was formed shortly after the beginning of the First World War in August 1914. Aside from participating in the Battle of Jutland in May 1916, and the inconclusive action of 19 August several months later, her service during the war generally consisted of routine patrols and training in the North Sea. Neptune was deemed obsolete after the war and was reduced to reserve before being sold for scrap in 1922 and subsequently broken up.

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The Orphic Hymns are a collection of eighty-seven ancient Greek hymns addressed to various deities, which were attributed in antiquity to the mythical poet Orpheus. They were composed in Asia Minor (located in modern-day Turkey), most likely around the 2nd or 3rd centuries AD, and were used in the rites of a religious community which existed in the region. The Hymns are among the few extant works of Orphic literature (the tradition of texts attributed to Orpheus in antiquity), and recent scholars have observed parallels between the collection and other Orphic works.

The collection is preceded by a proem (or prologue), in which Orpheus addresses the legendary poet Musaeus, and calls upon around seventy deities to be present. The individual hymns in the collection, all of which are brief, typically call for the attention of the deity they address, before describing them and highlighting aspects of their divinity, and then appealing to them with a request. The descriptions of deities consist primarily of strings of epithets (titles or adjectives applied to gods), which make up a substantial portion of the hymns' content, and are designed to summon the powers of the god. The deity featured most prominently in the collection is Dionysus, who is the recipient of eight hymns, and is mentioned throughout the collection under various names. Most of the deities featured in the Hymns are derived from mainstream Greek mythology, and a number are assimilated with one another.

The Orphic Hymns seem to have belonged to a cult community from Asia Minor which used the collection in ritual, and probably held Dionysus as their central god. The rite in which the Orphic Hymns featured was the teletḗ (τελετή, a term which usually refers to a rite of initiation into mysteries), and this ceremony appears to have taken place at night-time. Most hymns specify an offering to be made to the deity, which was probably burned during the performance of the hymn. Scholars have noted the apparent lack of Orphic doctrines in the Hymns, though certain themes and references have been interpreted as pointing to the presence of Orphic thought in the collection.

No external references to the Orphic Hymns survive from antiquity, and they are first mentioned by the Byzantine writer John Diaconus Galenus (who has been dated to the 12th century AD). From perhaps as early as the 5th century AD, the Orphic Hymns were preserved in a codex which also included works such as the Orphic Argonautica and the Homeric Hymns. The first codex containing the Orphic Hymns to reach Western Europe arrived in Italy in the first half of the 15th century, and in 1500 the first printed edition of the Hymns was published in Florence. During the Renaissance, a number of scholars believed that the collection was a genuine work of Orpheus, while in the late 18th century a more sceptical wave of scholarship argued for a dating in late antiquity. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a number of inscriptions were discovered in Asia Minor, leading to the ritual function of the collection being established among classicists and historians of religion.

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Pari Khan Khanum (Persian: پریخان خانم, romanized: Pariḵān Ḵānom; August 1548 – 12 February 1578) was a Safavid princess, daughter of the second Safavid shah, Tahmasp I, and his Circassian consort, Sultan-Agha Khanum. She was her father's favourite child and allowed to partake in court activities, gradually becoming an influential figure who attracted the attentions of the prominent leaders of the Qizilbash tribes.

Pari Khan played a central role in the succession crisis after her father's death in 1576. She thwarted the attempt of her brother Haydar Mirza and his supporters at securing his ascention and enthroned her favoured candidate and brother, Ismail Mirza, as Ismail II. Whereas she expected gratitude from her brother, Ismail curtailed her power and put her under house arrest. Pari Khan may have been the mastermind behind his assassination in 1577. She endorsed the enthronement of her elder brother Mohammad Khodabanda, who was almost blind. Pari Khan expected to rule while Mohammad remained a figurehead but his wife, Khayr al-Nisa Begum, emerged as an opponent to Pari Khan and engineered Pari Khan's strangulation at the age of around thirty.

Regarded by some as the most powerful woman in Safavid history, Pari Khan was able to dominate for a short period the ineffective Safavid court in a society that imposed harsh restrictions on high-class women. She was praised by her contemporaries for her intelligence and competence, though in later chronicles she was portrayed as a villain who murdered two of her brothers and aspired to usurp the throne. She was a patron of poets, among them Mohtasham Kashani who wrote five eulogies for her. Writers of the time dedicated works to her, like Abdi Beg Shirazi's Takmelat al-akhbar, and she was compared to Fatima, the daughter of Muhammad, prophet of Islam.

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Maple syrup is a sweet syrup made from the sap of maple trees. In cold climates these trees store starch in their trunks and roots before winter; the starch is then converted to sugar that rises in the sap in late winter and early spring. Maple trees are tapped by drilling holes into their trunks and collecting the sap, which is heated to evaporate much of the water, leaving the concentrated syrup.

Maple syrup was first made by the Indigenous peoples of Northeastern North America. The practice was adopted by European settlers, who gradually changed production methods. Technological improvements in the 1970s further refined syrup processing. Almost all of the world's maple syrup is produced in Canada and the United States.

Maple syrup is graded based on its colour and taste. Sucrose is the most prevalent sugar in maple syrup. In Canada syrups must be made exclusively from maple sap to qualify as maple syrup and must also be at least 66 per cent sugar.[1] In the United States a syrup must be made almost entirely from maple sap to be labelled as "maple", though states such as Vermont and New York have more restrictive definitions.

Maple syrup is often used as a condiment for pancakes, waffles, French toast, oatmeal, or porridge. It is also used as an ingredient in baking and as a sweetener or flavouring agent.[2]