title: British Museum

text: The Greek Revival façade facing Great Russell Street is a characteristic building of Sir Robert Smirke, with 44 columns in the Ionic order high, closely based on those of the temple of Athena Polias at Priene in Asia Minor. The pediment over the main entrance is decorated by sculptures by Sir Richard Westmacott depicting "The Progress of Civilisation", consisting of fifteen allegorical figures, installed in 1852.


title: British Museum

text: The construction commenced around the courtyard with the East Wing (The King's Library) in 1823–1828, followed by the North Wing in 1833–1838, which originally housed among other galleries a reading room, now the Wellcome Gallery. Work was also progressing on the northern half of the West Wing (The Egyptian Sculpture Gallery) 1826–1831, with Montagu House demolished in 1842 to make room for the final part of the West Wing, completed in 1846, and the South Wing with its great colonnade, initiated in 1843 and completed in 1847, when the Front Hall and Great Staircase were opened to the public. The museum is faced with Portland stone, but the perimeter walls and other parts of the building were built using Haytor granite from Dartmoor in South Devon, transported via the unique Haytor Granite Tramway.


title: British Museum

text: In 1846 Robert Smirke was replaced as the museum's architect by his brother Sydney Smirke, whose major addition was the Round Reading Room 1854–1857; at in diameter it was then the second widest dome in the world, the Pantheon in Rome being slightly wider.


title: British Museum

text: The next major addition was the White Wing 1882–1884 added behind the eastern end of the South Front, the architect being Sir John Taylor.


title: British Museum

text: In 1895, Parliament gave the museum trustees a loan of £200,000 to purchase from the Duke of Bedford all 69 houses which backed onto the museum building in the five surrounding streets – Great Russell Street, Montague Street, Montague Place, Bedford Square and Bloomsbury Street. The trustees planned to demolish these houses and to build around the west, north and east sides of the museum new galleries that would completely fill the block on which the museum stands. The architect Sir John James Burnet was petitioned to put forward ambitious long-term plans to extend the building on all three sides. Most of the houses in Montague Place were knocked down a few years after the sale. Of this grand plan only the Edward VII galleries in the centre of the North Front were ever constructed, these were built 1906–14 to the design by J.J. Burnet, and opened by King George V and Queen Mary in 1914. They now house the museum's collections of Prints and Drawings and Oriental Antiquities. There was not enough money to put up more new buildings, and so the houses in the other streets are nearly all still standing.


title: British Museum

text: The Duveen Gallery, sited to the west of the Egyptian, Greek & Assyrian sculpture galleries, was designed to house the Elgin Marbles by the American Beaux-Arts architect John Russell Pope. Although completed in 1938, it was hit by a bomb in 1940 and remained semi-derelict for 22 years, before reopening in 1962. Other areas damaged during World War II bombing included: in September 1940 two unexploded bombs hit the Edward VII galleries, the King's Library received a direct hit from a high explosive bomb, incendiaries fell on the dome of the Round Reading Room but did little damage; on the night of 10 to 11 May 1941 several incendiaries fell on the south-west corner of the museum, destroying the book stack and 150,000 books in the courtyard and the galleries around the top of the Great Staircase – this damage was not fully repaired until the early 1960s.


title: British Museum

text: The Queen Elizabeth II Great Court is a covered square at the centre of the British Museum designed by the engineers Buro Happold and the architects Foster and Partners. The Great Court opened in December 2000 and is the largest covered square in Europe. The roof is a glass and steel construction, built by an Austrian steelwork company, with 1,656 uniquely shaped panes of glass. At the centre of the Great Court is the Reading Room vacated by the British Library, its functions now moved to St Pancras. The Reading Room is open to any member of the public who wishes to read there.


title: British Museum

text: Today, the British Museum has grown to become one of the largest museums in the world, covering an area of over 92,000 m (990,000 sq. ft). In addition to 21,600 m (232,000 sq. ft) of on-site storage space, and 9,400 m (101,000 sq. ft) of external storage space. Altogether, the British Museum showcases on public display less than 1% of its entire collection, approximately 50,000 items.


title: British Museum

text: There are nearly one hundred galleries open to the public, representing of exhibition space, although the less popular ones have restricted opening times. However, the lack of a large temporary exhibition space led to the £135 million World Conservation and Exhibitions Centre to provide one and to concentrate all the museum's conservation facilities into one centre. This project was announced in July 2007, with the architects Rogers Stirk Harbour and Partners. It was granted planning permission in December 2009 and was completed in time for the Viking exhibition in March 2014. In 2017, the World Conservation and Exhibitions Centre was shortlisted for the Stirling Prize for excellence in architecture.


title: British Museum

text: Blythe House in West Kensington is used by the museum for off-site storage of small and medium-sized artefacts, and Franks House in East London is used for storage and work on the "Early Prehistory" – Palaeolithic and Mesolithic – and some other collections.


title: British Museum

text: The British Museum houses the world's largest and most comprehensive collection of Egyptian antiquities (with over 100,000 pieces) outside the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. A collection of immense importance for its range and quality, it includes objects of all periods from virtually every site of importance in Egypt and the Sudan. Together, they illustrate every aspect of the cultures of the Nile Valley (including Nubia), from the Predynastic Neolithic period (c. 10,000 BC) through Coptic (Christian) times (12th century AD), and up to the present day, a time-span over 11,000 years.


title: British Museum

text: Egyptian antiquities have formed part of the British Museum collection ever since its foundation in 1753 after receiving 160 Egyptian objects from Sir Hans Sloane. After the defeat of the French forces under Napoleon at the Battle of the Nile in 1801, the Egyptian antiquities collected were confiscated by the British army and presented to the British Museum in 1803. These works, which included the famed Rosetta Stone, were the first important group of large sculptures to be acquired by the museum. Thereafter, the UK appointed Henry Salt as consul in Egypt who amassed a huge collection of antiquities, some of which were assembled and transported with great ingenuity by the famous Italian explorer Giovanni Belzoni. Most of the antiquities Salt collected were purchased by the British Museum and the Musée du Louvre.


title: British Museum

text: By 1866 the collection consisted of some 10,000 objects. Antiquities from excavations started to come to the museum in the latter part of the 19th century as a result of the work of the Egypt Exploration Fund under the efforts of E.A. Wallis Budge. Over the years more than 11,000 objects came from this source, including pieces from Amarna, Bubastis and Deir el-Bahari. Other organisations and individuals also excavated and donated objects to the British Museum, including Flinders Petrie's Egypt Research Account and the British School of Archaeology in Egypt, as well as the University of Oxford Expedition to Kawa and Faras in Sudan.


title: British Museum

text: Active support by the museum for excavations in Egypt continued to result in important acquisitions throughout the 20th century until changes in antiquities laws in Egypt led to the suspension of policies allowing finds to be exported, although divisions still continue in Sudan. The British Museum conducted its own excavations in Egypt where it received divisions of finds, including Asyut (1907), Mostagedda and Matmar (1920s), Ashmunein (1980s) and sites in Sudan such as Soba, Kawa and the Northern Dongola Reach (1990s). The size of the Egyptian collections now stand at over 110,000 objects.


title: British Museum

text: In autumn 2001 the eight million objects forming the museum's permanent collection were further expanded by the addition of six million objects from the Wendorf Collection of Egyptian and Sudanese Prehistory. These were donated by Professor Fred Wendorf of Southern Methodist University in Texas, and comprise the entire collection of artefacts and environmental remains from his excavations at Prehistoric sites in the Sahara Desert between 1963 and 1997. Other fieldwork collections have recently come from Dietrich and Rosemarie Klemm (University of Munich) and William Adams (University of Kentucky).


title: British Museum

text: The seven permanent Egyptian galleries at the British Museum, which include its largest exhibition space (Room 4, for monumental sculpture), can display only 4% of its Egyptian holdings. The second-floor galleries have a selection of the museum's collection of 140 mummies and coffins, the largest outside Cairo. A high proportion of the collection comes from tombs or contexts associated with the cult of the dead, and it is these pieces, in particular the mummies, that remain among the most eagerly sought-after exhibits by visitors to the museum.


title: British Museum

text: The British Museum has one of the world's largest and most comprehensive collections of antiquities from the Classical world, with over 100,000 objects. These mostly range in date from the beginning of the Greek Bronze Age (about 3200 BC) to the establishment of Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire, with the Edict of Milan under the reign of the Roman emperor Constantine I in 313 AD. Archaeology was in its infancy during the nineteenth century and many pioneering individuals began excavating sites across the Classical world, chief among them for the museum were Charles Newton, John Turtle Wood, Robert Murdoch Smith and Charles Fellows.


title: British Museum

text: The Greek objects originate from across the Ancient Greek world, from the mainland of Greece and the Aegean Islands, to neighbouring lands in Asia Minor and Egypt in the eastern Mediterranean and as far as the western lands of Magna Graecia that include Sicily and southern Italy. The Cycladic, Minoan and Mycenaean cultures are represented, and the Greek collection includes important sculpture from the Parthenon in Athens, as well as elements of two of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus and the Temple of Artemis at Ephesos.


title: British Museum

text: Beginning from the early Bronze Age, the department also houses one of the widest-ranging collections of Italic and Etruscan antiquities outside Italy, as well as extensive groups of material from Cyprus and non-Greek colonies in Lycia and Caria on Asia Minor. There is some material from the Roman Republic, but the collection's strength is in its comprehensive array of objects from across the Roman Empire, with the exception of Britain (which is the mainstay of the Department of Prehistory and Europe).


title: British Museum

text: The collections of ancient jewellery and bronzes, Greek vases (many from graves in southern Italy that were once part of Sir William Hamilton's and Chevalier Durand's collections), Roman glass including the famous Cameo glass Portland Vase, Roman gold glass (the second largest collection after the Vatican Museums), Roman mosaics from Carthage and Utica in North Africa that were excavated by Nathan Davis, and silver hoards from Roman Gaul (some of which were bequeathed by the philanthropist and museum trustee Richard Payne Knight), are particularly important. Cypriot antiquities are strong too and have benefited from the purchase of Sir Robert Hamilton Lang's collection as well as the bequest of Emma Turner in 1892, which funded many excavations on the island. Roman sculptures (many of which are copies of Greek originals) are particularly well represented by the Townley collection as well as residual sculptures from the famous Farnese collection.


title: British Museum

text: Objects from the Department of Greece and Rome are located throughout the museum, although many of the architectural monuments are to be found on the ground floor, with connecting galleries from Gallery 5 to Gallery 23. On the upper floor, there are galleries devoted to smaller material from ancient Italy, Greece, Cyprus and the Roman Empire.


title: British Museum

text: The collection encompasses architectural, sculptural and epigraphic items from many other sites across the classical world including Amathus, Atripalda, Aphrodisias, Delos, Iasos, Idalion, Lindus, Kalymnos, Kerch, Rhamnous, Salamis, Sestos, Sounion, Tomis and Thessanoloki.


title: British Museum

text: With a collection numbering some 330,000 works, the British Museum possesses the world's largest and most important collection of Mesopotamian antiquities outside Iraq. A collection of immense importance, the holdings of Assyrian sculpture, Babylonian and Sumerian antiquities are among the most comprehensive in the world with entire suites of rooms panelled in alabaster Assyrian palace reliefs from Nimrud, Nineveh and Khorsabad.


title: British Museum

text: The collections represent the civilisations of the ancient Near East and its adjacent areas. These cover Mesopotamia, Persia, the Arabian Peninsula, Anatolia, the Caucasus, parts of Central Asia, Syria, the Holy Land and Phoenician settlements in the western Mediterranean from the prehistoric period and include objects from the 7th century.


title: British Museum

text: The first significant addition of Mesopotamian objects was from the collection of Claudius James Rich in 1825. The collection was later dramatically enlarged by the excavations of A. H. Layard at the Assyrian sites of Nimrud and Nineveh between 1845 and 1851. At Nimrud, Layard discovered the North-West Palace of Ashurnasirpal II, as well as three other palaces and various temples. He later uncovered the Palace of Sennacherib at Nineveh with 'no less than seventy-one halls'. As a result, a large numbers of Lamassus, palace reliefs, stelae, including the Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III, were brought to the British Museum.


title: British Museum

text: Layard's work was continued by his assistant, Hormuzd Rassam and in 1852–1854 he went on to discover the North Palace of Ashurbanipal at Nineveh with many magnificent reliefs, including the famous Lion Hunt of Ashurbanipal and Lachish reliefs. He also discovered the Royal Library of Ashurbanipal, a large collection of cuneiform tablets of enormous importance that today number around 130,000 pieces. W. K. Loftus excavated in Nimrud between 1850 and 1855 and found a remarkable hoard of ivories in the Burnt Palace. Between 1878 and 1882 Rassam greatly improved the museum's holdings with exquisite objects including the Cyrus Cylinder from Babylon, the bronze gates from Balawat, important objects from Sippar, and a fine collection of Urartian bronzes from Toprakkale including a copper figurine of a winged, human-headed bull.


title: British Museum

text: In the early 20th century excavations were carried out at Carchemish, Turkey by D. G. Hogarth and Leonard Woolley, the latter assisted by T. E. Lawrence. The Mesopotamian collections were greatly augmented by excavations in southern Iraq after the First World War. From Tell al-Ubaid came the bronze furnishings of a Sumerian temple, including life-sized lions and a panel featuring the lion-headed eagle Indugud found by H. R. Hall in 1919–24. Woolley went on to excavate Ur between 1922 and 1934, discovering the 'Royal Cemeteries' of the 3rd millennium BC. Some of the masterpieces include the 'Standard of Ur', the 'Ram in a Thicket', the 'Royal Game of Ur', and two bull-headed lyres. The department also has three diorite statues of the ruler Gudea from the ancient state of Lagash and a series of limestone kudurru or boundary stones from different locations across ancient Mesopotamia.


title: British Museum

text: Although the collections centre on Mesopotamia, most of the surrounding areas are well represented. The Achaemenid collection was enhanced with the addition of the Oxus Treasure in 1897 and objects excavated by the German scholar Ernst Herzfeld and the Hungarian-British explorer Sir Aurel Stein. Reliefs and sculptures from the site of Persepolis were donated by Sir Gore Ouseley in 1825 and the 5th Earl of Aberdeen in 1861 and the museum received part of a pot-hoard of jewellery from Pasargadae as the division of finds in 1963 and part of the Ziwiye hoard in 1971. A large column base from the One Hundred Column Hall at Persepolis was acquired in exchange from the Oriental Institute, Chicago. Moreover, the museum has been able to acquire one of the greatest assemblages of Achaemenid silverware in the world. The later Sasanian Empire is also well represented by ornate silver plates and cups, many representing ruling monarchs hunting lions and deer. Phoenician antiquities come from across the region, but the Tharros collection from Sardinia, the hoard of 16 metal bowls and hundreds of ivories from Nimrud and the large number of Phoenician stelae from Carthage and Maghrawa are outstanding. The number of Phoenician inscriptions from sites across Cyprus is also considerable, and include artefacts found at the Kition necropolis (with the two Kition Tariffs having the longest Phoenician inscription discovered on the island), the Idalion temple site and two bilingual pedestals found at Tamassos. Another often overlooked highlight is Yemeni antiquities, the finest collection outside that country. Furthermore, the museum has a representative collection of Dilmun and Parthian material excavated from various burial mounds at the ancient sites of A'ali and Shakhura (that included a Roman ribbed glass bowl) in Bahrain.


title: British Museum

text: From the modern state of Syria come almost forty funerary busts from Palmyra and a group of stone reliefs from the excavations of Max von Oppenheim at Tell Halaf that was purchased in 1920. More material followed from the excavations of Max Mallowan at Chagar Bazar and Tell Brak in 1935–1938 and from Woolley at Alalakh in the years just before and after the Second World War. Mallowan returned with his wife Agatha Christie to carry out further digs at Nimrud in the postwar period which secured many important artefacts for the museum. The collection of Palestinian material was strengthened by the work of Kathleen Kenyon at Tell es-Sultan (Jericho) in the 1950s and the acquisition in 1980 of around 17,000 objects found at Lachish by the Wellcome-Marston expedition of 1932–1938. Archaeological digs are still taking place where permitted in the Middle East, and, depending on the country, the museum continues to receive a share of the finds from sites such as in Jordan.


title: British Museum

text: The museum's collection of Islamic art, including archaeological material, numbers about 40,000 objects, one of the largest of its kind in the world. As such, it contains a broad range of pottery, paintings, tiles, metalwork, glass, seals, and inscriptions from across the Islamic world, from Spain in the west to India in the east. It is particularly famous for its collection of Iznik ceramics (the largest in the world), its large number of mosque lamps including one from the Dome of the Rock, mediaeval metalwork such as the Vaso Vescovali with its depictions of the Zodiac, a fine selection of astrolabes, and Mughal paintings and precious artwork including a large jade terrapin made for the emperor Jahangir. Thousands of objects were excavated after the war by professional archaeologists at Iranian sites such as Siraf by David Whitehouse and Alamut Castle by Peter Willey. The collection was augmented in 1983 by the Godman bequest of Iznik, Hispano-Moresque and early Iranian pottery. Artefacts from the Islamic world are on display in Gallery 34 of the museum.


title: British Museum

text: A representative selection from the Department of Middle East, including the most important pieces, are on display in 13 galleries throughout the museum and total some 4,500 objects. A whole suite of rooms on the ground floor display the sculptured reliefs from the Assyrian palaces at Nineveh, Nimrud and Khorsabad, while 8 galleries on the upper floor hold smaller material from ancient sites across the Middle East. The remainder form the study collection which ranges in size from beads to large sculptures. They include approximately 130,000 cuneiform tablets from Mesopotamia.


title: British Museum

text: The Department of Prints and Drawings holds the national collection of Western prints and drawings. It ranks as one of the largest and best print room collections in existence alongside the Albertina in Vienna, the Paris collections and the Hermitage. The holdings are easily accessible to the general public in the Study Room, unlike many such collections. The department also has its own exhibition gallery in Room 90, where the displays and exhibitions change several times a year.


title: British Museum

text: Since its foundation in 1808, the prints and drawings collection has grown to international renown as one of the richest and most representative collections in the world. There are approximately 50,000 drawings and over two million prints. The collection of drawings covers the period from the 14th century to the present, and includes many works of the highest quality by the leading artists of the European schools. The collection of prints covers the tradition of fine printmaking from its beginnings in the 15th century up to the present, with near complete holdings of most of the great names before the 19th century. Key benefactors to the department have been Clayton Mordaunt Cracherode, Richard Payne Knight, John Malcolm, Campbell Dodgson, César Mange de Hauke and Tomás Harris. Writer and author Louis Alexander Fagan, who worked in the department 1869-1894 made significant contributions to the department in form of his "Handbook to the Department", as well as various other books about the museum in general.


title: British Museum

text: There are groups of drawings by Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Michelangelo, (including his only surviving full-scale cartoon), Dürer (a collection of 138 drawings is one of the finest in existence), Peter Paul Rubens, Rembrandt, Claude and Watteau, and largely complete collections of the works of all the great printmakers including Dürer (99 engravings, 6 etchings and most of his 346 woodcuts), Rembrandt and Goya. More than 30,000 British drawings and watercolours include important examples of work by Hogarth, Sandby, Turner, Girtin, Constable, Cotman, Cox, Gillray, Rowlandson, Towne and Cruikshank, as well as all the great Victorians. The collection contains the unique set of watercolours by the pioneering colonist John White, the first British artist in America and first European to paint Native Americans. There are about a million British prints including more than 20,000 satires and outstanding collections of works by William Blake and Thomas Bewick.. The great eleven volume Catalogue of Political and Personal Satires Preserved in the Department of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum compiled between 1870 and 1954 is the definitive reference work for the study of British Satirical prints. Over 500,000 objects from the department are now on the online collection database, many with high-quality images. A 2011 donation of £1 million enabled the museum to acquire a complete set of Pablo Picasso's "Vollard Suite".


title: British Museum

text: The Department of Britain, Europe and Prehistory is responsible for collections that cover a vast expanse of time and geography. It includes some of the earliest objects made by humans in east Africa over 2 million years ago, as well as Prehistoric and neolithic objects from other parts of the world; and the art and archaeology of Europe from the earliest times to the present day. Archeological excavation of prehistoric material took off and expanded considerably in the twentieth century and the department now has literally millions of objects from the Paleolithic and Mesolithic periods throughout the world, as well as from the Neolithic, Bronze Age and Iron Age in Europe. Stone Age material from Africa has been donated by famous archaeologists such as Louis and Mary Leakey, and Gertrude Caton–Thompson. Paleolithic objects from the Sturge, Christy and Lartet collections include some of the earliest works of art from Europe. Many Bronze Age objects from across Europe were added during the nineteenth century, often from large collections built up by excavators and scholars such as Greenwell in Britain, Tobin and Cooke in Ireland, Lukis and de la Grancière in Brittany, Worsaae in Denmark, Siret at El Argar in Spain, and Klemm and Edelmann in Germany. A representative selection of Iron Age artefacts from Hallstatt were acquired as a result of the Evans/Lubbock excavations and from Giubiasco in Ticino through the Swiss National Museum.


title: British Museum

text: In addition, the British Museum's collections covering the period AD 300 to 1100 are among the largest and most comprehensive in the world, extending from Spain to the Black Sea and from North Africa to Scandinavia; a representative selection of these has recently been redisplayed in a newly refurbished gallery. Important collections include Latvian, Norwegian, Gotlandic and Merovingian material from Johann Karl Bähr, Alfred Heneage Cocks, Sir James Curle and Philippe Delamain respectively. However, the undoubted highlight from the early mediaeval period is the magnificent items from the Sutton Hoo royal grave, generously donated to the nation by the landowner Edith Pretty. The late mediaeval collection includes a large number of seal-dies from across Europe, the most famous of which include those from the Town of Boppard in Germany, Isabella of Hainault from her tomb in Notre Dame Cathedral, Paris, Inchaffray Abbey in Scotland and Robert Fitzwalter, one of the Barons who led the revolt against King John in England. There is also a large collection of medieval signet rings, prominent among them is the gold signet ring belonging to Jean III de Grailly who fought in the Hundred Years' War, as well as those of Mary, Queen of Scots and Richard I of England. Other groups of artefacts represented in the department include the national collection of (c.100) icon paintings, most of which originate from the Byzantine Empire and Russia, and over 40 mediaeval astrolabes from across Europe and the Middle East. The department also includes the national collection of horology with one of the most wide-ranging assemblage of clocks, watches and other timepieces in Europe, with masterpieces from every period in the development of time-keeping. Choice horological pieces came from the Morgan and Ilbert collections. The department is also responsible for the curation of Romano-British objects – the museum has by far the most extensive such collection in Britain and one of the most representative regional collections in Europe outside Italy. It is particularly famous for the large number of late Roman silver treasures, many of which were found in East Anglia, the most important of which is the Mildenhall Treasure. The museum purchased many Roman-British objects from the antiquarian Charles Roach Smith in 1856. These quickly formed the nucleus of the collection. The department also includes ethnographic material from across Europe including a collection of Bulgarian costumes and shadow puppets from Greece and Turkey. A particular highlight are the three Sámi drums from northern Sweden of which only about 70 are extant.


title: British Museum

text: Objects from the Department of Britain, Europe and Prehistory are mostly found on the upper floor of the museum, with a suite of galleries numbered from 38 to 51. Most of the collection is stored in its archive facilities, where it is available for research and study.


title: British Museum

text: The many hoards of treasure include those of Esquiline, Carthage, First Cyprus, Hockwold, Hoxne, Lampsacus, Mildenhall, Vale of York and Water Newton, (4th–10th centuries AD)


title: British Museum

text: The scope of the Department of Asia is extremely broad; its collections of over 75,000 objects cover the material culture of the whole Asian continent (from East, South, Central and South-East Asia) and from the Neolithic up to the present day. Until recently, this department concentrated on collecting Oriental antiquities from urban or semi-urban societies across the Asian continent. Many of those objects were collected by colonial officers and explorers in former parts of the British Empire, especially the Indian subcontinent. Examples include the collections made by individuals such as James Wilkinson Breeks, Sir Alexander Cunningham, Sir Harold Deane, Sir Walter Elliot, James Prinsep, Charles Masson, Sir John Marshall and Charles Stuart. A large number of Chinese antiquities were purchased from the Anglo-Greek banker George Eumorfopoulos in the 1930s. The large collection of some 1800 Japanese prints and paintings owned by Arthur Morrison was acquired in the early twentieth century. In the second half of the twentieth century, the museum greatly benefited from the bequest of the philanthropist PT Brooke Sewell, which allowed the department to purchase many objects and fill in gaps in the collection.


title: British Museum

text: In 2004, the ethnographic collections from Asia were transferred to the department. These reflect the diverse environment of the largest continent in the world and range from India to China, the Middle East to Japan. Much of the ethnographic material comes from objects originally owned by tribal cultures and hunter-gatherers, many of whose way of life has disappeared in the last century. Particularly valuable collections are from the Andaman and Nicobar Islands (much assembled by the British naval officer Maurice Portman), Sri Lanka (especially through the colonial administrator Hugh Nevill), Northern Thailand, south-west China, the Ainu of Hokaidu in Japan (chief among them the collection of the Scottish zoologist John Anderson), Siberia (with artefacts collected by the explorer Kate Marsden and Bassett Digby and is notable for its Sakha pieces, especially the ivory model of a summer festival at Yakutsk) and the islands of South-East Asia, especially Borneo. The latter benefited from the purchase in 1905 of the Sarawak collection put together by Dr Charles Hose, as well as from other colonial officers such as Edward A Jeffreys. In addition, a unique and valuable group of objects from Java, including shadow puppets and a gamelan musical set, was assembled by Sir Stamford Raffles.


title: British Museum

text: The principal gallery devoted to Asian art in the museum is Gallery 33 with its comprehensive display of Chinese, Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asian objects. An adjacent gallery showcases the Amaravati sculptures and monuments. Other galleries on the upper floors are devoted to its Japanese, Korean, painting and calligraphy, and Chinese ceramics collections.


title: British Museum

text: The British Museum houses one of the world's most comprehensive collections of Ethnographic material from Africa, Oceania and the Americas, representing the cultures of indigenous peoples throughout the world. Over 350,000 objects spanning thousands of years tells the history of mankind from three major continents and many rich and diverse cultures; the collecting of modern artefacts is ongoing. Many individuals have added to the department's collection over the years but those assembled by Henry Christy, Harry Beasley and William Oldman are outstanding. Objects from this department are mostly on display in several galleries on the ground and lower floors. Gallery 24 displays ethnographic from every continent while adjacent galleries focus on North America and Mexico. A long suite of rooms (Gallery 25) on the lower floor display African art. There are plans in place to develop permanent galleries for showcasing art from Oceania and South America.


title: British Museum

text: The Sainsbury African Galleries display 600 objects from the greatest permanent collection of African arts and culture in the world. The three permanent galleries provide a substantial exhibition space for the museum's African collection comprising over 200,000 objects. A curatorial scope that encompasses both archaeological and contemporary material, including both unique masterpieces of artistry and objects of everyday life. A great addition was material amassed by Sir Henry Wellcome, which was donated by the Wellcome Historical Medical Museum in 1954. Highlights of the African collection include objects found at megalithic circles in The Gambia, a dozen exquisite Afro-Portuguese ivories, a series of soapstone figures from the Kissi people in Sierra Leone and Liberia, hoard of bronze Kru currency rings from the Sinoe River in Liberia, Asante goldwork and regalia from Ghana including the Bowdich collection, the rare Akan Drum from the same region in west Africa, pair of door panels and lintel from the palace at Ikere-Ekiti in Yorubaland, the Benin and Igbo-Ukwu bronze sculptures, the beautiful Bronze Head of Queen Idia, a magnificent brass head of a Yoruba ruler and quartz throne from Ife, a similar terracotta head from Iwinrin Grove near Ife, the Apapa Hoard from Lagos and other mediaeval bronze hoards from Allabia and the Forçados River in southern Nigeria, an Ikom monolith from Cross River State, several ancestral screens from the Kalabari tribe in the Niger Delta, the Torday collection of central African sculpture, textiles and weaponry from the Kuba Kingdom including three royal figures, the unique Luzira Head from Uganda, processional crosses and other ecclesiastical and royal material from Gondar and Magdala, Ethiopia following the British Expedition to Abyssinia, excavated objects from Great Zimbabwe (that includes a unique soapstone, anthropomorphic figure) and satellite towns such as Mutare including a large hoard of Iron Age soapstone figures, a rare divining bowl from the Venda peoples and cave paintings and petroglyphs from South Africa.


title: British Museum

text: The British Museum's Oceanic collections originate from the vast area of the Pacific Ocean, stretching from Papua New Guinea to Easter Island, from New Zealand to Hawaii. The three main anthropological groups represented in the collection are Polynesia, Melanesia and Micronesia – Aboriginal art from Australia is considered separately in its own right. Metal working was not indigenous to Oceania before Europeans arrived, so many of the artefacts from the collection are made from stone, shell, bone and bamboo. Prehistoric objects from the region include a bird-shaped pestle and a group of stone mortars from Papua New Guinea. The British Museum is fortunate in having some of the earliest Oceanic and Pacific collections, many of which were put together by members of Cook's and Vancouver's expeditions or by colonial administrators and explorers such as Sir George Grey, Sir Frederick Broome, Joseph Bradshaw, Robert Christison, Gregory Mathews, Frederick Meinertzhagen, Thomas Mitchell and Arthur Gordon, before Western culture significantly impacted on indigenous cultures. The department has also benefited greatly from the legacy of pioneering anthropologists such as AC Haddon, Bronisław Malinowski and Katherine Routledge. A poignant artefact is the wooden Aboriginal shield probably dating from the late eighteenth century. There is some debate as to whether this shield was found at Botany Bay or, given the nature of the wood being red mangrove which grows abundantly only 500 km north of Botany Bay, possibly obtained through trade networks or at an entirely different location. The Wilson cabinet of curiosities from Palau is an example of pre-contact ware. Another outstanding exemplar is the mourner's dress from Tahiti given to Cook on his second voyage, one of only ten in existence. In the collection is a large war canoe from the island of Vella Lavella in the Solomon Islands, one of the last ever to be built in the archipelago. In addition, the Māori collection is the finest outside New Zealand with many intricately carved wooden and jade objects and the Aboriginal art collection is distinguished by its wide range of bark paintings, including two very early bark etchings collected by John Hunter Kerr. A particularly important group of objects was purchased from the London Missionary Society in 1911, that includes the unique statue of A'a from Rurutu Island, the rare idol from the isle of Mangareva and the Cook Islands deity figure. Other highlights include the huge Hawaiian statue of Kū-ka-ili-moku or god of war (one of three extant in the world) and the famous Easter Island statues Hoa Hakananai'a and Moai Hava.


title: British Museum

text: The Americas collection mainly consists of 19th and 20th century items although the Paracas, Moche, Inca, Maya, Aztec, Taino and other early cultures are well represented. The Kayung totem pole, which was made in the late nineteenth century on Haida Gwaii, dominates the Great Court and provides a fitting introduction to this very wide-ranging collection that stretches from the very north of the North American continent where the Inuit population has lived for centuries, to the tip of South America where indigenous tribes have long thrived in Patagonia. Highlights of the collection include Aboriginal Canadian and Native American objects from North America collected by the 5th Earl of Lonsdale, the Marquis of Lorne, the explorer David Haig-Thomas and Bryan Mullanphy, Mayor of St. Louis, the Squier and Davis collection of prehistoric mound relics from North America, two carved stone bowls in the form of a seated human figure made by ancient North West Coast peoples from British Columbia, the headdress of Chief Yellow Calf from the Arapaho tribe in Wyoming, a lidded rivercane basket from South Carolina and the earliest historic example of Cherokee basketery, a selection of pottery vessels found in prehistoric dwellings at Mesa Verde and Casas Grandes, one of the enigmatic crystal skulls of unknown origin, a collection of nine turquoise Aztec mosaics from Mexico (the largest in Europe), important artefacts from Teotihuacan and Isla de Sacrificios, several rare pre-Columbian manuscripts including the Codex Zouche-Nuttall and Codex Waecker-Gotter and post-colonial ones such as the Codex Aubin and Codex Kingsborough, a spectacular series of Mayan lintels from Yaxchilan excavated by the British Mayanist Alfred Maudslay, a very high quality Mayan collection that includes sculptures from Copan, Tikal, Tulum, Pusilha, Naranjo and Nebaj (including the celebrated Fenton Vase), an ornate calcite vase with jaguar handles from the Ulua Valley in Honduras, the Lord Moyne collection from the Bay Islands, Honduras and Boyle collection from Nicarugua, over 20 stone metates with zoomorphic and anthropomorphic ornamentation from Costa Rica, a group of Zemi Figures from Vere, Jamaica, wooden duhos from the Dominican Republic and The Bahamas, a collection of Pre-Columbian human mummies from sites across South America including Ancon, Acari, Arica and Leyva, a number of prestigious pre-Columbian gold and votive objects from Colombia, three axe-shaped gold diadems found near Camaná from the Siguas culture in Peru, unique collection of Moche wooden figures and staffs from the off Peru, ethnographic objects from across the Amazon region including the Schomburgk and Maybury Lewis collections and part of the von Martius and von Spix collection, two rare Tiwanaku pottery vessels from Lake Titicaca and important items from Tierra del Fuego donated by Commander Phillip Parker King.


title: British Museum

text: The British Museum is home to one of the world's finest numismatic collections, comprising about a million objects, including coins, medals, tokens and paper money. The collection spans the entire history of coinage from its origins in the 7th century BC to the present day and is representative of both the East and West. The Department of Coins and Medals was created in 1861 and celebrated its 150th anniversary in 2011.


title: British Museum

text: This department was founded in 1920. Conservation has six specialist areas: ceramics & glass; metals; organic material (including textiles); stone, wall paintings and mosaics; Eastern pictorial art and Western pictorial art. The science department has and continues to develop techniques to date artefacts, analyse and identify the materials used in their manufacture, to identify the place an artefact originated and the techniques used in their creation. The department also publishes its findings and discoveries.


title: British Museum

text: This department covers all levels of education, from casual visitors, schools, degree level and beyond. The museum's various libraries hold in excess of 350,000 books, journals and pamphlets covering all areas of the museum's collection. Also the general museum archives which date from its foundation in 1753 are overseen by this department; the individual departments have their own separate archives and libraries covering their various areas of responsibility, which can be consulted by the public on application. The Anthropology Library is especially large, with 120,000 volumes. However, the Paul Hamlyn Library, which had become the central reference library of the British Museum and the only library there freely open to the general public, closed permanently in August 2011. The website and online database of the collection also provide increasing amounts of information.


title: British Museum

text: The British Museum Press (BMP) is the publishing business and a division of the British Museum Company Ltd., a company and a charity (established in 1973) wholly owned by the trustees of the British Museum.


title: British Museum

text: The BMP publishes both popular and scholarly illustrated books to accompany the exhibition programme and explore aspects of the general collection. Profits from their sales goes to support the British Museum.


title: British Museum

text: Scholarly titles are published in the Research Publications series, all of which are peer-reviewed. This series was started in 1978 and was originally called Occasional Papers. The series is designed to disseminate research on items in the collection. Between six and eight titles are published each year in this series.


title: British Museum

text: It is a point of controversy whether museums should be allowed to possess artefacts taken from other countries, and the British Museum is a notable target for criticism. The Elgin Marbles, Benin Bronzes, Ethiopian Tabots and the Rosetta Stone are among the most disputed objects in its collections, and organisations have been formed demanding the return of these artefacts to their native countries. The Parthenon Marbles (Elgin Marbles) claimed by Greece were also cited by UNESCO, among others, for restitution. From 1801 to 1812, Elgin's agents removed about half of the surviving sculptures from the Parthenon, as well as sculptures from the Propylaea and Erechtheum. The former director of the museum has stated, "We are indebted to Elgin for having rescued the Parthenon sculptures and others from the Acropolis from the destruction they were suffering, as well as from the damage that the Acropolis monuments, including the sculptures that he did not remove, have suffered since."


title: British Museum

text: There is also controversy over artefacts taken during the destruction of the Old Summer Palace in Beijing by an Anglo-French expeditionary force during the Second Opium War in 1860, an event which drew a protest from Victor Hugo. The British Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum, among others, have been asked since 2009 to open their archives for investigation by a team of Chinese investigators as a part of an international mission to document Chinese national treasures in foreign collections. In 2010 Neil MacGregor, the former Director of the British Museum, said he hoped that both British and Chinese investigators would work together on the controversial collection. In 2020 the museum appointed a curator to research the history of its collections, including disputed items.


title: British Museum

text: The British Museum has stated that the "restitutionist premise, that whatever was made in a country must return to an original geographical site, would empty both the British Museum and the other great museums of the world". The museum has also argued that the British Museum Act of 1963 prevents any object from leaving its collection once it has entered it. "The Museum owns its collections, but its Trustees are not empowered to dispose of them". Nevertheless, it has returned items such as Tasmanian Aboriginal burial remains when this was consistent with legislation regarding the disposal of items in the collections.


title: British Museum

text: In recent years there have been several protests against the British Museum's relationship with the oil company BP. In May 2016, the British Museum was temporarily closed after a Greenpeace protest. In February 2019, hundreds of people occupied the museum in protest against the BP sponsorship. In July 2019, Ahdaf Soueif resigned from the British Museum's board of trustees in protest against the sponsorship. In February 2020, 1,500 demonstrators, including British Museum staff, took part in a day of protest over the issue, occupying 11 of the museum's rooms. The PCS union said the museum had a duty to recognise the escalating climate crisis and cut its ties with BP. In reply the museum said: “We are aware of the comments from the PCS union and will continue to liaise with the British Museum PCS branch and our staff more generally.”


title: British Museum

text: The Chairman's Advisory Group is an informal group of business leaders who provide advice to the chairman on various issues including the museum's relationship with the British government and policy on the museum's collections. Its existence was made public after a freedom of information request by a group campaigning against the museum's links with the fossil fuel industry. The museum has declined to name the members of the advisory group as they are acting in their personal capacity.


title: British Museum

text: From January to April 2012 the museum presented "", the first major exhibition on the topic of the Hajj, the pilgrimage that is one of the five pillars of Islam.


title: Gary Plauché

text: Leon Gary Plauché (November 10, 1945 – October 23, 2014) was an American man known for publicly killing Jeff Doucet, who had kidnapped, raped, and molested Plauché's prepubescent son, Jody. The killing occurred on Friday, March 16, 1984, and was captured on camera by a local news crew. For the fatal shooting, Plauché was given a seven-year suspended sentence with five years' probation and 300 hours of community service and received no prison time. The case received wide publicity because some people questioned whether Plauché should have been charged with murder or let off. Plauché contended that he was in the right, and that anyone in a similar position would have taken the same action.


title: Gary Plauché

text: Gary Plauché lived in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. He was separated from his wife, June, at the time of the shooting. During 1983 and 1984, his 11-year-old son, Jody Plauché, was taking karate lessons with an instructor, 25-year-old Jeffrey Doucet, who had been sexually abusing the boy for at least a year. In February 1984, Doucet kidnapped Jody and took him to a motel in Anaheim, California where he sexually assaulted and molested him. Police searched the country for Jody, and he was eventually found after Doucet allowed the boy to place a collect call to his mother from the motel. California police raided the motel and arrested Doucet without incident.


title: Gary Plauché

text: On March 1, 1984, Jody was returned to his family in Louisiana, but Gary, who was 38 years old at the time, heard reports that Doucet had sexually assaulted his son. In an interview with a news television crew, Gary stated that he felt a sense of helplessness upon hearing of these reports.


title: Gary Plauché

text: On March 16, 1984, Doucet was flown back to Louisiana to face trial. Doucet arrived at Baton Rouge Metropolitan Airport, also known as Ryan Field, and was led in handcuffs by police officers through the airport at around 9:30 p.m., where Plauché was waiting for Doucet with a handgun.


title: Gary Plauché

text: An employee of the local ABC affiliate, WBRZ-TV, told Plauché when Doucet would be arriving at the airport. A news crew from WBRZ was waiting for Doucet and had set up their cameras to record his arrival. Opposite the news crew was a bank of pay telephones, where Plauché waited while talking to his best friend on a telephone. He wore a baseball cap and sunglasses, so no one would recognize him.


title: Gary Plauché

text: As Doucet was escorted through the airport, he passed the news crew who were taping the scene. He then walked past Plauché, who took out his handgun and fired a single shot, directly at the right side of Doucet's head, at point-blank range. Doucet immediately fell to the floor, bleeding from a wound close to his right ear. As depicted in the video of the incident, Plauché placed the telephone receiver down before officers restrained him and removed the gun from his other hand and then attended to Doucet. The officers who grabbed hold of Plauché recognized him. They kept him pinned against the bank of telephones, asking him (as captured on the video), "Gary, why? Why, Gary?" The entire incident was captured on ENG videotape.


title: Gary Plauché

text: Plauché was initially charged with second-degree murder, but agreed to a plea bargain in which he pleaded no contest to manslaughter. He was sentenced to seven years' suspended sentence, with five years' probation and 300 hours of community service, which he completed in 1989.


title: Gary Plauché

text: Psychological reports helped Plauché's case after it was learned that Doucet had abused Jody months prior to the kidnapping. Edward P. Uzee examined Plauché and determined that he could not tell the difference between right and wrong when he killed Doucet. Plauché's defense team argued that he was driven to a temporarily psychotic state after learning of the abuse of his son. Uzee also determined that Doucet had the ability to manipulate others and took advantage of the fact that Plauché was separated from his wife at the time, and had managed to wedge his way into the Plauché family. Judge Frank Saia ruled that sending Plauché to prison would not help anyone, and that there was virtually no risk of him committing another crime.


title: Gary Plauché

text: The video of Plauché killing Doucet has been featured on many television programs and documentaries, including the 2002 Michael Moore documentary "Bowling for Columbine" and the 1994 shockumentary "Traces of Death II". The footage has also been uploaded to YouTube, where the video has received more than 20 million views. In March 2020, some of the uncensored copies of the video were taken down and re-uploaded in the censored version, but plenty of copies of the original still exist on YouTube and elsewhere. One video featured on YouTube was taken from the television series "Anatomy of Crime", which aired in 2000 on Court TV and was produced by John Langley, the creator of "Cops".


title: Gary Plauché

text: At age 67, Plauché gave an interview where he stated that he did not regret killing Doucet and would do so again.


title: Gary Plauché

text: Plauché suffered a stroke in 2011 and died in 2014 at a nursing home after another stroke, a month before his 69th birthday.


title: Bumpy Johnson

text: Ellsworth Raymond "Bumpy" Johnson (October 31, 1905 – July 7, 1968) was an American crime boss in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City.


title: Bumpy Johnson

text: Ellsworth Raymond "Bumpy" Johnson was born in Charleston, South Carolina, on October 31, 1905, to Margaret Moultrie and William Johnson. When he was 10, his older brother Willie was accused of killing a white man. Afraid of a possible lynch mob, his parents mortgaged their tiny home to raise money to send Willie up north to live with relatives. Johnson's nickname "Bumpy" is derived from a bump on the back of his head. As Johnson grew older, his parents worried about his short temper and insolence towards whites, and in 1919 he was sent to live with his older sister Mabel in Harlem. Johnson dropped out of high school and began working unruly jobs. Gangster William Hewett started to notice him. Johnson then began working for him, beginning his life of crime.


title: Bumpy Johnson

text: Johnson was an associate of numbers queen Madame Stephanie St. Clair. He became St Clair's principal lieutenant in the 1930s. Johnson and St. Clair aimed to start a war against New York mob boss Dutch Schultz. The fight resulted in more than 40 murders and several kidnappings. Eventually the fight on their end was lost, ending with a deal for Johnson.


title: Bumpy Johnson

text: In 1952, Johnson's activities were reported in the celebrity people section of "Jet". That same year, Johnson was sentenced to 15 years in prison for a drug conspiracy conviction related to heroin. Two years later, "Jet" reported in its crime section that Johnson began his sentence after losing an appeal. He served the majority of that sentence at Alcatraz Prison in San Francisco Bay, California as inmate No. 1117, and was released in 1963 on parole.


title: Bumpy Johnson

text: Johnson was arrested more than 40 times and served two prison terms for narcotics-related charges. In December 1965, Johnson staged a sit-down strike in a police station, refusing to leave, as a protest against their continued surveillance. He was charged with "refusal to leave a police station" but was acquitted by a judge.


title: Bumpy Johnson

text: Johnson was under a federal indictment for drug conspiracy when he died of congestive heart failure on July 7, 1968, at the age of 62. He was at Wells Restaurant in Harlem shortly before 2 a.m., and the waitress had just served him coffee, a chicken leg, and hominy grits, when he fell over clutching his chest. He is buried in Woodlawn Cemetery in The Bronx, New York City.


title: Bumpy Johnson

text: Bumpy Johnson married Mayme Hatcher in October 1948, just six months after their first meeting. Johnson had two daughters, Ruthie and Elease, the latter of whom was from another relationship. His wife died in May 2009 at the age of 94.


title: Google Stadia

text: Stadia is a cloud gaming service developed and operated by Google. Known in development as Project Stream, the service debuted through a closed beta in October 2018, and publicly launched in November 2019. The service was to compete with Sony's PlayStation Plus cloud streaming, Nvidia's GeForce Now, Amazon's Luna, and Microsoft's Xbox Cloud Gaming. Stadia initially received a mixed reception from reviewers, with most criticism headed towards its content library and lack of promised features. Google had initially intended to develop in-house games in addition to other third-party titles but began scaling back on these plans in February 2021 by shutting down its studios. The service continued to offer games by creating partnerships to use the technology as a white-label product to deliver game content over the cloud. Google announced in September 2022 that it would be shutting down Stadia in January 2023.


title: Google Stadia

text: Stadia is accessible through Chromecast Ultra and Android TV devices, on personal computers via the Google Chrome web browser and other Chromium-based browsers, Chromebooks and tablets running ChromeOS, and the Stadia mobile app on supported Android smartphones as long as the latest version of the Chrome browser and the latest version of the Stadia app are installed. There is also an experimental mode with support for all Android devices capable of installing the Stadia mobile app. In December 2020, Google released an iOS browser-based progressive web application for Stadia, enabling gameplay in the Safari browser.


title: Google Stadia

text: Stadia is capable of streaming video games to players at up to 4K resolution at 60 frames per second with support for high-dynamic-range (HDR) via the company's numerous data centers. It offers the option to purchase games from its store in order to stream them or to play a selection of free-to-play games. While the base service is free and lets users stream at resolutions of up to 1080p, a Stadia Pro monthly subscription allows for a maximum resolution of 4K, 5.1 surround sound, HDR and offers a growing collection of free games that—once claimed—remain in the user's library whenever they are subscribed. Both tiers allow users to play online multiplayer without any additional costs. Stadia is integrated with YouTube, and its "state share" feature allows players to launch a supported game from a save state shared by another player via permalink. The service supports Google's proprietary Stadia game controller, along with various non-Stadia controllers through USB and Bluetooth connections.


title: Google Stadia

text: Stadia is a cloud gaming service, and only requires the device to have an Internet connection and either Chromium support or a dedicated application. Stadia works atop YouTube's functionality in streaming media to the user, as game streaming is seen as an extension of watching video game live streams, according to Google's Phil Harrison; the name "Stadia", the Latin plural of "stadium", is meant to reflect that it is a collection of entertainment, which the viewer can choose to sit back and watch, or take an active part in. As Google had built out a large number of data centers across the globe, the company believes that Stadia is in a better position for cloud gaming compared to past endeavors like OnLive, PlayStation Now, and Gaikai, as most players would be geographically close to a data center. Stadia supports the streaming of games in HDR at 60 frames per second with 4K resolution, and anticipates eventually reaching 120 frames per second at 8K resolution. Players can start games without having to download new content to their personal device. Players can opt to record or stream their sessions onto YouTube through Stadia. Viewers of such streams can launch the games directly from the stream with the same save state that they were just watching.


title: Google Stadia

text: The streaming technology enables new features on Stadia. Stream Connect allows Stadia players, cooperatively playing the same game with friends, to have picture-in-picture inserts on their display of their friends' point-of-view in the game. This feature was first launched with the release of "Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Breakpoint". The streaming technology allows for larger number of concurrent players on a game server; for example, servers for "Grid" are normally limited to 16 players, while the Stadia version allows up to 40.


title: Google Stadia

text: While Stadia can use any HID-class USB controller, Google developed its own controller which connects via Wi-Fi directly to the Google data center in which the game is running, to reduce input latency. Google is also exploring further ways to reduce latency, using an idea called "negative latency" which involves the prediction of user input through various means so that any apparent network lag between controller and game response is minimized. During its GDC 2019 keynote reveal, Google confirmed that the controller would also feature Google Assistant, which will automatically search YouTube for relevant, helpful videos related to the game they are currently playing at the touch of a key.


title: Google Stadia

text: Stadia offers two tiers of service, a free level (initially at launch known as "Stadia Base" but after April 2020, simply "Stadia") and a monthly subscription Stadia Pro level. The free Stadia level limits streaming to 1080p resolutions. The Pro tier costs approximately per month, but allows users to access higher streaming rates up to 4K resolution, access a library of free games over time, and get discounts on other games offered for Stadia. Harrison stated they are also looking into offering publisher subscriptions and other models in the future; for example, Ubisoft announced its Uplay Plus (now renamed to Ubisoft+) subscription service will be available to Stadia users. Since April 2020, new users to Stadia are offered a limited period of free access to Stadia Pro features, and retain any games purchased this period to their account if they fall back to the free Stadia level; initially, new users received two months of Pro access, which was reduced to one month starting on June 3, 2020.


title: Google Stadia

text: The internet speed requirements for the different types of picture quality from Stadia's service is as follows:


title: Google Stadia

text: Stadia requires users to purchase games to use on the service, though it also offers a selection of fully free-to-play titles. Pro subscribers also get the option to claim a growing catalog of free games that, once claimed, remain available to the user as long as they are currently subscribed. At the time of the platform's full reveal in June 2019, Google announced that "Gylt" by Tequila Works and "Get Packed" by Moonshine Studios would be timed exclusives to Stadia. The service launched with 22 games, added 4 more in December 2019, and by the end of 2020 the service had over 130 games.


title: Google Stadia

text: In January 2020, Google announced that it planned to release over 120 games for Stadia during that year, of which 10 were timed-exclusives set to release in the first half of the year. Further Stadia announced more than a 100 games would arrive in 2021. In December 2020, Ubisoft's gaming subscription, Ubisoft+ arrived on Stadia letting users play all Ubisoft games available on Stadia through the subscription. The subscription consisted of 18 Ubisoft games at launch with later titles added as they released.


title: Google Stadia

text: Upon launch, Stadia's cloud hardware used a custom Intel x86 processor clocked at 2.7 GHz, with AVX2 and 9.5 megabytes of L2+L3 cache. It also uses a custom AMD GPU based on the Vega architecture with HBM2 memory, 56 compute units, and 10.7 teraFLOPS. The service also has solid-state drive storage, and 16 GB of RAM (supporting up to 484 GB/s bandwidth) shared between the GPU and the CPU.


title: Google Stadia

text: Google developed its own controller for Stadia. It has two thumbsticks, a directional pad, four main face buttons, two sets of shoulder buttons, and five additional controller face buttons. To use the controller, players can either plug it into a compatible device with a USB cable, or connect it over Wi-Fi to a local network for a direct connection to Google's Stadia servers, which reduces input lag. The controller has been available since launch in three color schemes, "Clearly White", "Just Black", and "Wasabi"; the "Founder's Edition" bundle included a limited-edition "Midnight Blue" controller.


title: Google Stadia

text: A progressive web application-based version of Stadia for iOS devices was announced by Google in November 2020 and released on December 16, 2020. This version runs through Chrome or Safari web browsers as to avoid restrictions Apple had in place for apps that directly stream libraries of games; the browser-based method had been similarly adapted by GeForce Now.


title: Google Stadia

text: At the Consumer Electronic Show 2021, Google announced that several upcoming LG smart televisions will include a Stadia Smart TV app.


title: Google Stadia

text: Project Stream was Google's first announced sign of interest in video gaming products. The company had previously been rumored as working on a service called Project Yeti since at least 2016. Google had also hired gaming industry executive Phil Harrison and was seen recruiting developers during industry events in 2018. Project Stream's main differentiator from past services, such as OnLive, GeForce Now, and PlayStation Now, is its ability to run in any desktop Chrome browser, so no additional software needs to be installed. The service uses AMD Radeon graphics hardware. Internally, the service was developed around 2016's "Doom" to show that the proof-of-concept worked in realistic settings across the public internet.


title: Google Stadia

text: Google announced the service in October 2018 and soon after, opened invitations to beta testers with access to "Assassin's Creed Odyssey". Players could apply for access and those who met an Internet speed minimum could run the game in their Chrome browsers. Those who participated received a free copy of the game when the beta expired. Stadia was formally announced during Google's keynote address at the 2019 Game Developers Conference in March 2019.


title: Google Stadia

text: Alongside Stadia, Google established the Stadia Games and Entertainment division in March 2019, with industry veteran Jade Raymond as its head. This division focused on internal development of games for Stadia in addition to those they have obtained from third parties. The first studio was established in Montreal on October 24, 2019. In December 2019, the Stadia Games and Entertainment division acquired Typhoon Studios to develop additional content for the platform. A second Stadia studio, located in Playa Vista, Los Angeles, was opened in March 2020, led by former Santa Monica Studio head Shannon Studstill.


title: Google Stadia

text: Google shut down Stadia Games and Entertainment on February 1, 2021. This decision would also cause the closure of Typhoon Studios. The announcement came after decisions were made about Stadia's priorities for game development and delivery. Harrison stated that the decision would focus on making the platform more amenable as a publishing platform for third-party developers, stating "We believe this is the best path to building Stadia into a long-term, sustainable business that helps grow the industry." The shutdown affected about 150 employees, including Raymond who left Google that day. Sean Hollister of "The Verge" suggested that the shutdown may have been triggered following the release of "Cyberpunk 2077" on Stadia, which he described as a "make-or-break moment for the service", while "Kotaku" writers reported that Google's decision to close the studio followed after Microsoft announced their intended acquisition of ZeniMax Media for Xbox Game Studios in September 2020.


title: Google Stadia

text: Reports from "Bloomberg News" and "Wired", based on information from those that worked on Stadia, said that the concept of game development within Google was an unusual concept in contrast to building out the technology to operate Stadia, and never had the full support of the company. Further, under Harrison's leadership, Google had spent millions of dollars to get major titles on the service like "Red Dead Redemption 2" as well as drawing in Jade Raymond to develop exclusive content for Google. Despite the investment at the launch, Stadia had failed to meet target user counts or revenues by significant differences, which contributed to Google's decision to close down the studios. The founders of Typhoon Studio agreed that Google did not have either the financial or corporate backing to bring the "level of investment required to reach scale" expected for high-end game development, with Google seeing that area as too much of a risk. "Video Games Chronicle" also reported that several planned games for the service were cancelled leading up to the closure of the studio. These included a sequel to Typhoon Studios's "Journey to the Savage Planet", planned projects led by Hideo Kojima and Yu Suzuki, and a large multiplayer title led by Francois Pelland, a former "Assassin's Creed" developer, and left in limbo a near-finalized game from Harmonix which Harmonix says may still be released. "Axios" later reported that "The Quarry" by Supermassive Games and "High on Life" by Squanch Games were also both originally being developed for the service prior to the shutdown of the studio, with former eventually picked up by publisher 2K for release, and the latter eventually being self-published by Squanch. With the shutdown, Hollister suggested this may be a change of direction for Stadia into a white-label platform that Google could license out to game publishers for things like instant game demos, in the same manner that Nvidia had done with its GeForce streaming solutions.


title: Google Stadia

text: In May 2021, at least six lead people for Stadia left Google, including John Justice, the vice-president of Stadia for Google, Sebastien Puel, Stadia's general manager, and Corey May, Stadia's head of creative services and publishing, the latter two joining Raymond at her new studio, further putting the viability of the platform in question. Several of these departures joined Raymond in her new studio, Haven Studios, that she founded after her departure. During the "Epic Games v. Apple" trial, Epic's CEO Tim Sweeney stated that Stadia had been "very significantly scaled back" since its launch. Google stated in wake of these events that Stadia is "alive and well" with significant plans for expansion in 2021.


title: Google Stadia

text: To draw more developers to the platform, Stadia announced new revenue sharing programs in July 2021. Through 2023, Stadia will take only a 15% cut of a game's revenue on the platform, up to , after which their cut returns to their standard rate; this standard rate is not published, though believed to be near the industry-wide 30% average and which Google called as "competitive revenue share terms". Further, Stadia will share 70% of Stadia Pro membership fees to games that entered the service starting in July 2021, the share split based on hours played by Stadia users. Additionally, Stadia will contribute the first month of a new Stadia Pro membership to any developer who draws a new user to the service through affliate links on their game pages. The former members of Typhoon Games were able to secure funding, including some from Tencent, to launch a new studio Raccoon Logic, and were also able to negotiate to retain the intellectual property of "Journey to the Savage Planet" and its in-progress sequel from Google.


title: Google Stadia

text: Google began licensing out Stadia's technology as a white-label product in October 2021, with one of the first instances being an offer for AT&T customers to play a Stadia-enabled version of "" for free. Another early example was Capcom's use of the Stadia technology to offer a free demo of "Resident Evil Village" in June 2022 through any web browser. In December 2021, it was announced that Stadia has been ported to LG televisions running WebOS 5.0 or later. On February 4, 2022, "Business Insider" reported that Google intended to shift its focus on Stadia from video games to playable experiences and online demos, as Stadia will be demoted within Google. That same day, Google announced on its Twitter that Stadia will have 100 more games coming to the platform in 2022 and that they are working on new features not yet announced.


title: Google Stadia

text: In February 2021, Chromebooks started to launch with Stadia pre-installed. During a developer summit in March 2022, Google announced that it would be extending the technology for Stadia into a business product called "Immersive Stream for Games" as part of its Google Cloud product offerings. This is a continuation of the white-label approach from October 2021.


title: Google Stadia

text: On September 29, 2022, Google announced that it would shut down Stadia, citing its lack of traction with users. The service will shut down on January 18, 2023, and Google will refund all purchases for hardware and games made through the Google and Stadia stores. All storefront features were disabled with the announcement. The technology behind Stadia will be utilized in other parts of Google, including with its partners. Both Stadia employees and game developers were not made aware of these plans until the announcement, which caused concern for developers that had plans for new games to be released on the service. Ubisoft stated that Stadia players will be able to transfer their purchased games to personal computer versions via their Ubisoft Connect platform for free. Other studios said they were evaluating methods to transfer save game progress from Stadia to other platforms ahead of the shutdown. For example, Bethesda Softworks confirmed that players of "Elder Scrolls Online" will be able to transfer their Stadia accounts to other platforms. For some games that were Stadia-exclusive, this allowed the developers to release them as multiplatform titles, such as Tequila Works' "Gylt". Not all Stadia-exclusive games will be available elsewhere after its closure. For example, "Outcasters" from Splash Damage was reliant on Stadia technology so the developers have no plans to port the game to other systems.


title: Google Stadia

text: Shortly after announcing the end of Stadia in October 2022, Google unveiled new Chromebooks designed around cloud gaming, with GeForce Now preinstalled and direct support for Xbox Cloud Gaming, Amazon Luna, and Google Play.


title: Google Stadia

text: Stadia initially launched on November 19, 2019, in 14 countries: Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The "Founder's Edition" bundle, which was available for pre-order for US$129 prior to the service's launch, included: a Chromecast Ultra; a limited-edition "Midnight Blue" Stadia controller; three months of Pro service; an additional three months of Pro service to gift to a friend; a Founder's badge next to their user name; and first access to register a user name. After "Founder's Edition" pre-orders sold out, Google announced a "Premiere Edition" bundle for US$129, with a Chromecast Ultra, a "Clearly White" Stadia controller, and a three-month subscription to the Pro tier included. At launch, Stadia was limited to the subscription-only Pro tier.


title: Google Stadia

text: The service was expanded to several Samsung Galaxy, Razer Phone, and ASUS ROG Phone devices in February 2020, after being only available on Google Pixel devices for months since its launch.


title: Google Stadia

text: In March 2020, Google sent promotional emails to owners of Chromecast Ultra devices offering three months of Stadia Pro at no cost for redemption. The following month, while many people were quarantining at home during the COVID-19 pandemic, Google launched a free version of Stadia, making it available to anyone in eligible countries with a valid Google account. Two-month Pro subscriptions were given at no cost to all new and existing platform users.


title: Google Stadia

text: Starting in June 2020, Stadia became accessible on OnePlus's 5, 6, and 7 series phones, and access can be enabled on other Android phones and tablets with Android 6 and above as an "experimental" feature. At the same time, touch controls were made available as an alternative to using a supported controller for touchscreen Android devices. That same month, the "Premiere Edition" bundle received a price reduction to US$99.


title: Google Stadia

text: In November 2020, Google ran two promotions through which they gave away complimentary "Premiere Edition" bundles. The first, which began on November 10, offered bundles at no cost to YouTube Premium subscribers in the US and the UK who had subscribed before November 6. The promotion ended two days later in the US after Google exhausted all available supply. The second promotion coincided with Stadia's first anniversary on November 19, and offered complimentary bundles to users who purchased a copy of "Cyberpunk 2077" on Stadia. Google ended the promotion early on December 10 in Canada and on December 13 in all other regions after exhausting their supply. In March 2021, Google announced a Stadia promotion in anticipation for the release of Resident Evil Village. The promotion offered a free Stadia Premiere kit after the purchase of either the Standard or Deluxe Editions of the game. All Stadia Pro members were given access to a free edition of "Resident Evil 7 Gold Edition".


title: Google Stadia

text: In December 2020, Stadia expanded to eight new European markets: Austria, Czechia, Hungary, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia and Switzerland. In June 2021, Stadia launched on most Android TV devices including the Chromecast with Google TV, the Nvidia Shield TV and other smart TVs with Android TV support.


title: Google Stadia

text: During its beta, the service received generally positive initial impressions from reviewers, who felt it met and in some instances, exceeded expectations and could make game streaming appear as a potentially viable alternative to PC gaming. Some minor discrepancies and technical issues were nonetheless noted.


title: Google Stadia

text: Reviewers reported that the streaming service had low latency and felt as if the game was being played locally. Despite this, depending on Wi-Fi speeds, the game sometimes compressed its screen resolution or lagged. A test by "The Verge" found no lag issues over a wired Ethernet connection, and occasional stuttering on a shared Wi-Fi connection. However, even on a wired connection, the stream did not output at 4K resolution and occasionally went fuzzy with compression artifacting. The reviewer reported the best experience on Google's Pixelbook. "Polygon" found the service's audio compression noticeable. "Ars Technica" remarked that Project Stream's login sequence was far simpler than that of other services. Digital Foundry performed a hands-on with "Assassin's Creed Odyssey" on a Pixelbook on the service in Beta, and found that on the testing environment, latency seemed acceptable, but there was a noticeable visual hit. They also remarked that "Assassin's Creed Odyssey" was not the best example for testing, as it did not operate at 60 frames per second.


title: Google Stadia

text: Stadia received mixed reviews upon its release according to review aggregator Metacritic. "Wired Magazine" described the image quality as "drab", but admitted to preferring to play "Destiny 2" on a Chromebook instead of a larger gaming laptop. VentureBeat criticized the service's pricing model, comparing it unfavorably to subscription services such as Xbox Game Pass and claiming that Stadia "doesn't matter". "Digital Foundry" found that the service was not playing all games at 4K resolutions: "Red Dead Redemption 2" was found to only run at 1440p, and "Destiny 2" ran at only 1080p (albeit at a frame rate higher than that of the console versions). Digital Foundry also discovered that games like "Red Dead Redemption 2" also struggled to maintain a consistent 60 frames per second, claiming that their test of the game on Chromecast only outputted a solid 30 FPS, while a test on the Chrome browser was an unstable 60 FPS that dropped frequently. "The Guardian" gave Stadia three stars out of five, praising the service's technical performance, while criticising its game selection for being too old and only featuring one exclusive. "Ars Technica" concluded: "Early adopters feel like they're getting a beta product here. Wait until next year to see if Google can work out the kinks and prove the service's longevity." "S&P Global Market Intelligence" reported that: "Stadia met with tepid enthusiasm from analysts and early adopters who criticized the service's slate of launch titles and lack of promoted features". Dieter Bohn from "The Verge" has stated that "I have put in enough hours in enough conditions to say that this is a beta product, and Google should have labeled it as such and launched it differently. Because even in the best conditions, this ain’t the best."


title: Google Stadia

text: Towards the end of January 2020, Stadia users expressed concern about Google's non-communicative stance on Stadia, outside of its monthly free game additions; these users were concerned about planned features that were to be available in the next few months from Google's initial timeline but yet have been discussed further, such as 4K streaming resolution support. A Google community manager had been following these discussions and expressed sympathy that users have been waiting for information, and stated that there is news that they could not yet discuss but will be able to soon. Google responded by pointing users to its Stadia community site where it was providing weekly updates on the progress on Stadia's features, and that in terms of future games, they mostly had left it to publishers to announce when these games would be available on Stadia.


title: Google Stadia

text: "Cyberpunk 2077" experienced a tumultuous launch on eighth-generation consoles such as the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One as they struggled to run the game without major performance issues, and in some cases, saw a delayed ability to download the game. Players who ran the game through Stadia saw far fewer instances of crashes and an overall smoother experience.


title: Derek Chisora

text: As of October 2022, Chisora is ranked as the world's ninth-best active heavyweight by BoxRec. At the conclusion of a year, he has been ranked as BoxRec's top 10 heavyweight ten times, and has been ranked as among the world's top 10 heavyweights since 2013, reaching his highest ranking at No. 5 in 2013 and 2020. Chisora's knockout-to-win percentage stands at 70%.


title: Derek Chisora

text: Derek Chisora was born on 29 December 1983 in Mbare, a suburb of the Zimbabwean capital Harare, the son of Viola and Paul Chisora. Following his parents' divorce when he was 4, Chisora spent his early years in Hatfield, in the care of his maternal grandmother and step-grandfather. As a teenager he attended Churchill School, where he became a paramedic for the school's sports team. Chisora and his family moved to the United Kingdom in 1999 when he was 16 and lived in Finchley, London.


title: Derek Chisora

text: A late starter in the sport, Chisora began boxing aged 19. His club, Finchley ABC in Barnet, North London, was also home to heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua. Chisora had around 20 amateur fights, which included winning the 2006 ABA super heavyweight title, after defeating Tom Dallas in the final, and a gold medal at the Four Nations Championships.


title: Derek Chisora

text: Chisora turned professional under Frank Warren's Queensberry Promotions banner and was trained by Don Charles, alongside Dean Powell in his corner. Chisora made his professional debut on 17 February 2007 at the Wembley Arena in London, beating Hungarian István Kecskés by a technical knockout (TKO) in the second round. Chisora's second fight was against English heavyweight Tony Booth at the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff on 7 April 2007, on the undercard of Joe Calzaghe's successful WBO super-middleweight title defence against Peter Manfredo Jr., winning a points decision (PTS), by 40–36. Chisora's third fight was at the York Hall in London against Welshman Darren Morgan (5–1, 3 KOs) on 13 October 2007, winning on points after four rounds. Chisora stated in 2022 that Morgan was the hardest puncher he has ever faced in his career.


title: Derek Chisora

text: In January 2008, Chisora scored a four-round PTS victory over Paul Butlin at the York Hall, achieving his third points victory in a row, to take his record to 4–0. In June that year, in his first fight over six rounds, Chisora came up against the toughest test of his career in fellow undefeated British heavyweight prospect, Sam Sexton (7–0, 2 KOs). The bout was stopped in the final 30 seconds of the last round, when the referee decided Sexton was taking too much punishment and declared Chisora the winner by TKO. In Chisora's sixth fight, on 12 September 2008 at the Grosvenor House, in his first fight over eight rounds, he defeated American Shawn McLean via sixth-round stoppage. In Chisora's seventh fight, on 26 September 2008, against Lee Swaby, Chisora took his undefeated record to 7–0 with a third-round stoppage victory. In his eighth professional appearance, on 6 December 2008, Chisora defeated Neil Simpson at the ExCeL via a second-round corner retirement, leaving him with an 8–0 record at the end of his second year as a professional.


title: Derek Chisora

text: In Chisora's ninth bout, on 30 January 2009, he defeated Russian Daniil Peretyatko by PTS over eight rounds. In Chisora's tenth fight, on 22 May 2009, he defeated Paul Butlin for the second time, to extend his record to ten wins. Chisora was suspended for four months for biting Butlin's ear during the fifth round of their contest while in a clinch. The incident was missed by referee Dave Parris but TV replays proved conclusive, and as a result Chisora missed out on his fight for the British heavyweight title against Danny Williams. He was also fined £2,500.


title: Derek Chisora

text: On 9 October 2009, in his eleventh bout, Chisora defeated Georgian Zurab Noniashvili, knocking Noniashvili down and winning by TKO in three rounds at York Hall.


title: Derek Chisora

text: He was supposed to face Matt Skelton for the vacant Southern Area heavyweight title at the Wembley Arena in London, but the bout was cancelled. On 20 January 2010, it was announced that Chisora would get a second chance to face Danny Williams on 13 February 2010 after Sam Sexton was forced to withdraw through injury from his match with Williams. Chisora welcomed the chance, saying, "It was my own fault the fight with Williams didn't go ahead, and I've been kicking myself ever since." Williams pulled out of the bout. Chisora instead fought Carl Baker in a British title eliminator, with the winner to face Williams. Baker entered with a unanimous decision win four months prior over Williams in the Prizefighter Series. Chisora grabbed and kissed Baker at the weigh-in for the fight. Chisora stopped Baker in the second round.


title: Derek Chisora

text: On 2 May 2010, it was once again announced that Chisora would get yet another chance to face Danny Williams on 15 May 2010, at the Boleyn Ground in London, after Sam Sexton was forced to withdraw a second time from his rescheduled match with Williams, following his mother falling seriously ill. Chisora defeated former world title challenger Williams, winning the British title by stoppage. Chisora set the pace in the opening round and put Williams under pressure, Williams was warned twice for holding in the first round. In the second round, Chisora hurt Williams with a right uppercut before sending him to the canvas with a left hook. Williams beat the count but was met with a flurry of punches, resulting in Williams falling backwards towards the ropes, forcing referee Howard Foster to end the fight. After the fight, Williams announced his retirement, although he made a comeback in March 2011.


title: Derek Chisora

text: On 18 September 2010, at the LG Arena, in Birmingham, Chisora, defending his title for the first time, defeated Sam Sexton, who was defending his title for the second time, in a rematch. Adding the Commonwealth title to his British title via ninth-round stoppage on the undercard of Kell Brook vs. Michael Jennings on Sky Box Office. Chisora and Sexton both started fast in the opening round, exchanging punches early, with Chisora landing a series of body shots inside, and Sexton working behind the jab. In the second, Chisora began setting the pace, leading with the jab, Sexton responded, sending Chisora back against the ropes with a flurry of punches. With Chisora landing combinations to the body as the round progressed. In the third, Chisora and Sexton continued trading punches, Chisora fighting aggressively, and Sexton countering on the back foot. In the fourth, Sexton went on the offensive, and was able to land a left hook, which momentarily slowed Chisora's output. With Chisora landing punches on the front foot, taking control for the remainder of the round. In the fifth round, Chisora and Sexton began to tire, as both men kept applying pressure up close. In the sixth, Chisora landed a number of clean punches on Sexton as his work rate decreased. In the seventh, Sexton began working behind the jab once again, boxing at range. In the eighth, Chisora began trying to close the distance, with Sexton on the defensive. The bell sounding to start the ninth marked the first time Chisora and Sexton had been past eight rounds. Chisora threw a barrage of unanswered left and right hands flush on the chin, backing Sexton against the ropes, prompting referee John Keane to stop the fight.


title: Derek Chisora

text: Chisora was scheduled to face unified IBF, WBO, IBO, and "Ring" magazine heavyweight champion, Wladimir Klitschko on 11 December 2010, at the SAP Arena, in Mannheim, but Klitschko pulled out of the fight three days prior, after suffering a torn abdominal muscle. The fight was postponed, and later rescheduled for 30 April 2011, with Klitschko once again pulling out of the fight due to not being fully recovered from his injury, and the bout was cancelled so Klitschko could fight a unification match against WBA heavyweight champion David Haye on 2 July.


title: Derek Chisora

text: On 11 February 2011, the BBBofC installed English heavyweight champion, and undefeated prospect Tyson Fury as mandatory challenger for Chisora's British title. On 13 April 2011, Fury's promotional company, Hennessy Sports, won the purse bid to stage the contest. On 23 May 2011, it was announced that Chisora would defend his British and Commonwealth heavyweight titles against Fury on July 23 2011, at the Wembley Arena in London, both men went into the fight with a record of 14–0. It was also announced the fight would be televised live in the United States on pay-per-view. American outlet Integrated Sports picked up the fight charging $24.95 for a live airing at 3 p.m. EDT. At the weigh-in, Chisora weighed a career-heavy 261 pounds, while Fury came in a 255.5 pounds. On the night, Fury won by unanimous decision, with scores of 117–112, 117–112, and 118–111, handing Chisora the first professional loss of his career, and gaining his two titles. Promoter Mick Hennessy revealed the fight peaked at around 3 million viewers on Channel 5.


title: Derek Chisora

text: He was supposed to face Larry Olubamiwo (10–2, 9 KOs) on 5 November 2011, at the Wembley Arena in London, but the bout was cancelled, following Olubamiwo withdrawing due to illness. Chisora defeated Lithuanian Remigijus Ziausys on 11 November in a six-round points decision at the North Bridge Leisure Centre in Halifax. Referee John Latham scored the fight 60–54 in favour of Chisora.


title: Derek Chisora

text: Chisora faced undefeated contender Robert Helenius (16–0, 11 KOs) on 3 December 2011, at the Hartwall Arena in Helsinki for the WBA and WBO Intercontinental, and vacant European heavyweight titles. At the time of the fight, Helenius was ranked number 1 by the WBO, 3 by the WBA, 4 by the IBF, and 8 by the WBC. Chisora lost the bout in a controversial split decision, after two judges scored the fight 115–113 twice, in favour of Helenius, and the third scored 115–113 in favour of Chisora. The decision was highly criticised as most pundits and observers scored the fight in favor of Chisora. "The Ring" considered the outcome of the match "a gift", dropping Helenius' ranking from fifth to sixth challenger in their ratings. Chisora complained afterwards, demanding an immediate rematch on a neutral territory.


title: Derek Chisora

text: Sources in Germany reported that Chisora was likely to fight WBC heavyweight champion Vitali Klitschko on 18 February 2012, at the Olympiahalle in Munich. On 12 December 2011, it was confirmed that Chisora would challenge Klitschko for the WBC heavyweight title. At the weigh-in, Chisora slapped Klitschko across the face when the two went head-to-head during the staredown. Chisora was quoted as saying after the slap "I ain't come here to play games I come here to fight". Moments before the fight, Chisora spat water in the face of Wladimir Klitschko whilst in the ring before the pre-fight introductions.


title: Derek Chisora

text: Klitschko boxed a disciplined fight with changing angles and superior footwork, and was able to keep the aggressive and offensive Chisora at range for the majority of the rounds. Despite bobbing and weaving, and constant pressure applied by Chisora, Klitschko was able to use his height and reach advantage to land clean straight right hands and power shots from a distance to outland Chisora, and control the pace as the bout progressed. At times, Chisora was able to deliver some punishment of his own, with most of his work coming with body shots and hooks to Klitschko's head, forcing Klitschko onto the back foot, and his best rounds being the eighth and twelfth round. All three judges unanimously scored the fight in favour of Klitschko, with scores of 118–110, 118–110 and 119–111. Despite being a decisive victory for Klitschko, Chisora earned credit for his chin and heart, and also for giving Klitschko his most competitive fight since his defeat to Lennox Lewis in 2003. Chisora also became only the fourth man (after Tino Hoffmann, Kevin Johnson and Shannon Briggs), to take Klitschko the twelve round distance.


title: Derek Chisora

text: During the Klitschko vs Chisora post-fight press conference, David Haye was present amongst the media in attendance. Haye began a verbal confrontation with both Klitschko, and his manager Bernd Bonte, challenging the WBC champion to a fight. Boente claimed Haye had turned down an opportunity to fight Klitschko, and that he would not get a second opportunity. Chisora then intervened, calling Haye an "embarrassment", and challenged Haye to a fight, to which Haye responded that Chisora had lost "three fights in a row". Haye continued his verbal assault. Chisora taunted Haye, asking him "how's your toe?", and then left the stage to confront Haye face to face and, in front of the assembled media, the two British fighters and several bystanders became involved in a mass brawl. Haye threw punches at Chisora whilst holding a bottle in one hand, leading to Chisora accusing Haye of glassing him. Chisora's trainer Don Charles was also involved in the brawl and Haye's long-time trainer Adam Booth received a cut to the forehead whilst trying to break things up;


title: Derek Chisora

text: Booth would later accuse one of Chisora's entourage of striking him with a bottle during the confrontation, though the cause turned out to be a camera tripod that had been picked up and brandished by Haye at the end of the melee, whilst in the aftermath, Chisora was caught on video threatening to "shoot Haye".


title: Derek Chisora

text: German authorities sought both Haye and Chisora following their involvement in the brawl. On 19 February 2012, Chisora and Charles were arrested by German police at Munich Airport. Police detained Chisora, but released him without charge following questioning, whilst urging Haye to turn himself in. On 21 February 2012, Haye and Chisora both released formal statements about the incident. While Chisora "wholeheartedly" apologised for his involvement, Haye was less contrite, refusing to issue a direct apology for his involvement, claiming he had acted in self-defence.


title: Derek Chisora

text: Subsequent to a hearing in March the following year regarding the incident, Chisora had his British boxing license withdrawn, and the WBC initiated a motion to ban Chisora indefinitely and fine him for his involvement.


title: Derek Chisora

text: On 8 May 2012, it was announced Haye would come out of retirement to fight Chisora, and the bout would take place on 14 July 2012, at the Boleyn Ground Stadium. It was also announced that BoxNation would promote the event in association with Team Sauerland and Hayemaker Promotions, and Alexander Povetkin would defend his WBA (Regular) heavyweight title against Hasim Rahman on the undercard. Additional security were present at the press conference and a steel fence was put in place to keep Haye and Chisora separated during the announcement.


title: Derek Chisora

text: On 9 May 2012, tickets went on sale, with 17,000 being sold on the first day of sale. On 18 May 2012, it was announced that the fight had been sanctioned by both the WBA and WBO, and Chisora and Haye would be licensed by the Luxembourg Boxing Federation.


title: Derek Chisora

text: In front of a crowd of 30,000 in attendance. Chisora entered the stadium, hooded and masked to the theme from "Gladiator", and Haye to his entry music "Ain't No Stoppin' Us Now" by McFadden & Whitehead. In the opening two rounds, Chisora applied constant pressure, with Haye landing scoring shots at range. The bout heated up at the end of the third round, as Chisora closed the distance and caught Haye with a flush left hook after the bell had gone, which appeared to hurt Haye. Chisora emerged at the start of the fourth round aggressively, exchanging punches with Haye. Towards the end of the fifth round, Haye landed with a quick, hard left hook, followed by a right hand, which knocked down Chisora for the first time in his career. At the eighth count, Chisora made it to his feet, Haye connected with a series of punches, knocking Chisora down for a second time, and though he regained his feet again, the referee waved the fight off, therefore giving Haye the win by TKO in the fifth round.


title: Derek Chisora

text: In March 2013, Chisora was issued a new British Boxing Board of Control licence. Chisora said, "I'm glad that this whole episode is finally behind me and I can carry on with my boxing career in my own country and with a British Boxing Board of Control licence."


title: Derek Chisora

text: Chisora made his ring return on 20 April 2013 at the Wembley Arena in London. He fought Argentinian Hector Alfredo Avila. Chisora told ESPN that he would dedicate his victory to late former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who was an MP for Chisora's hometown of Finchley. Avila had one point deducted in the 6th round for holding and another in the 9th for use of the elbow, but was eventually stopped in the ninth round. When asked whom he would like to fight next, Chisora mentioned British rival David Price.