Mace

Mace may refer to:

Personal names

Fiction

Mace (weapon)

A mace is a blunt weapon, a type of club or virge that uses a heavy head on the end of a handle to deliver powerful blows. A mace typically consists of a strong, heavy, wooden or metal shaft, often reinforced with metal, featuring a head made of stone, copper, bronze, iron, or steel.

The head of a military mace can be shaped with flanges or knobs to allow greater penetration of plate armour. The length of maces can vary considerably. The maces of foot soldiers were usually quite short (two or three feet, or seventy to ninety centimetres). The maces of cavalrymen were longer and thus better suited for blows delivered from horseback. Two-handed maces could be even larger.

Maces are rarely used today for actual combat, but a large number of government bodies (for instance, the British House of Commons and the U.S. Congress), universities and other institutions have ceremonial maces and continue to display them as symbols of authority. They are often paraded in academic, parliamentary or civic rituals and processions.

MGM-13 Mace

The Martin Mace (designated as TM-76 tactical missile until 1963, then as MGM-13 for mobile-launched and CGM-13 for container-launched versions) is a tactical cruise missile developed from the MGM-1 Matador. It was replaced by the MGM-31 Pershing missile by Robert McNamara, and later in its role as a cruise missile for West Germany, by the BGM-109G Ground Launched Cruise Missile.

History

Development began in 1954 as an improved version of the MGM-1 Matador. Like the Matador, the Mace was a tactical surface-launched missile designed to destroy ground targets. It was first designed as the TM-76 and later the MGM-13.

Mace was launched from a transporter erector launcher or a hardened bunker using a solid rocket booster for initial acceleration and an Allison J33-A-41 turbojet for flight. The Goodyear Aircraft Corporation developed ATRAN (Automatic Terrain Recognition And Navigation, a radar map-matching system) in which the return from a radar scanning antenna was matched with a series of "maps" carried on board the missile which corrected the flight path if it deviated from the film map. In August 1952, Air Materiel Command initiated the mating of the Goodyear ATRAN with the MGM-1 Matador. This mating resulted in a production contract in June 1954. ATRAN was difficult to jam and was not range-limited by line-of sight, but its range was restricted by the availability of radar maps. In time, it became possible to construct radar maps from topographic maps.

Blur

Blur may refer to:

Optics and images

Arts

Music

Other uses

Circus (Britney Spears album)

Circus is the sixth studio album by American recording artist Britney Spears. It was released on November 28, 2008, by JIVE Records. Looking to transition from her "darker and more urban" fifth studio album Blackout (2007), Spears wanted to make her next project "a little bit lighter", incorporating electropop and dance-pop styles. Spears recorded the record during the summer of 2008, after her much-publicized personal struggles saw her placement under a temporary conservatorship earlier that year. As executive producers, Larry Rudolph and Teresa LaBarbera Whites enlisted collaborators including Spears' longtime colleague Max Martin and Nate "Danja" Hills.

Upon its release, Circus received generally favorable reviews from music critics, who complimented its production but were ambivalent towards its lyrical content. It debuted at number one on the US Billboard 200 with first-week sales of over 505,000 copies, making it her fifth album to reach the top of the chart. The album topped charts in nine additional countries. The record eventually exceeded sales of 3.5 million copies and 15 million digital tracks, in doing so it became Spears' best-selling album since her fourth studio album In the Zone (2003). The project was promoted through a series of television performances and Spears' fifth concert tour The Circus Starring Britney Spears. The latter generated controversy during the Australian leg after accusations of lip-syncing surfaced.

Whizzer (comics)

Whizzer is the name of several fictional characters appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. The first character debuted during the Golden Age in USA Comics #1 (Aug. 1941), and was reintroduced in Giant-Size Avengers #1 (Aug. 1974). A second villainous version debuts during the Silver Age in The Avengers #69 (Oct. 1969), and a second heroic version debuting in The Avengers #85 (Feb. 1971).

Publication history

The first character named the Whizzer first appeared during the Golden Age of comics, and later appeared briefly during the Silver Age. The second, villainous version appears in the final panel of The Avengers #69 (Oct. 1969), the first chapter of a three-issue storyline by writer Roy Thomas and penciller Sal Buscema. The story arc introduced the supervillain team the Squadron Sinister, whose four members were loosely based on heroes in DC Comics' Justice League of America, with the Whizzer based on the Flash.

Fictional character biographies

Golden Age