title: Lenin's Mausoleum

text: The basement under the sarcophagus weighed 20 tons, it was installed on a thick layer of sand, and around the slab were driven guarding piles - it protected the tomb from vibration even during the passage of heavy tanks over the area. Other monoliths weighed from 1 to 10 tons. Altogether 2900 m of polished granite was required for the construction, each square metre of which was processed for three days on average. The upper slab of red Karelian quartzite was placed on columns of granite, whose different species were specially brought to Moscow from all the republics of the USSR.


title: Lenin's Mausoleum

text: The stone mausoleum was erected in 16 months - by October 1930. Compared to the wooden one, the new building was built three metres higher, the outer volume was increased 4.5 times - 5800 m³, and the inner volume 12 times, up to 2400 m³. Its total weight was about 10,000 tonnes. The mausoleum occupied the highest point on Red Square.


title: Lenin's Mausoleum

text: During construction, the mausoleum and the necropolis were brought to a unified architectural design: differently characterised tombstones and monuments were removed, individual and collective burials at Nikolskaya and Spasskaya Towers were united, and the fence was redesigned and installed. Guest stands for ten thousand seats were installed on either side of the mausoleum.


title: Lenin's Mausoleum

text: The mausoleum contains a vestibule, Mourning Hall and two staircases. Opposite the entrance is a huge granite block was carved the coat of arms of the USSR of 1923.


title: Lenin's Mausoleum

text: Two stairs are leading down from the vestibule. The left staircase is three meters wide and takes visitors down to the Funeral Hall. The walls of the descent are of grey labradorite with a ledged panel of labradorite and black labradorite. The Funeral Hall is a ten-meter cube with a stepped ceiling. A black labradorite band runs across the entire room, on which pilasters of red porphyry are placed. Next to the pilasters are bands of bright red smalt and to the right of the smalt are bands of black labradorite. This combination creates the effect of flames and banners flying in the wind.  In the centre of the hall is a black pedestal with a sarcophagus.


title: Lenin's Mausoleum

text: The upper stepped slab of the sarcophagus is supported by four inconspicuous metal columns, which gives the impression that the slab is hanging in the air. The lower slab is covered in reddish jasper. The sarcophagus is made up of two inclined conical glasses, which are held together by a bronze frame. Illuminators and light filters are embedded in the upper part of the frame - they give an animating pink coloring and reduce heating. On either side of the sarcophagus are the battle and labour bronze banners, which appear satiny due to the special illumination. In the headboard is the coat of arms of the USSR framed by oak and laurel branches. At the foot, there are branches twisted with ribbon.


title: Lenin's Mausoleum

text: One of the main problems the embalmers faced was the appearance of dark spots on the skin, especially on the face and hands. They managed to solve the problem by the use of a variety of different reagents. While working on ways to preserve Lenin's body, Boris Zbarsky invented a new way to purify medical chloroform used for preservation. For example, if a patch of wrinkling or discoloration occurred it was treated with a solution of acetic acid and ethyl alcohol diluted with water. Hydrogen peroxide could be used to restore the tissues' original coloring. Damp spots were removed by means of disinfectants such as quinine or phenol. Lenin's remains are soaked in a solution of glycerol and potassium acetate on a yearly basis. Synthetic eyeballs were placed in Lenin's orbital cavities to prevent his eye sockets from collapsing.


title: Lenin's Mausoleum

text: Until the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, the continued preservation work was funded by the Soviet government. At that point the government discontinued financial support and private donations then supported the preservation staff. In 2016 the Russian government reversed its earlier decision and said it planned to spend 13 million rubles to preserve the body.


title: Lenin's Mausoleum

text: The Mausoleum is open to the public on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays, and Sundays from 10:00–13:00. Visitors still queue to see Lenin's body although queues are not as long as they once were. Entrance is free of charge. Before visitors are allowed to enter the mausoleum, armed police or military guards search them. Visitors are required to show respect whilst inside the tomb: photography and filming inside the mausoleum are forbidden, as is talking, smoking, keeping hands in pockets, or wearing hats (unless female).


title: Lenin's Mausoleum

text: Since 1991, there has been some discussion about removing Lenin's body to the Kremlin Wall Necropolis and burying it there. President Boris Yeltsin, with the support of the Russian Orthodox Church, intended to close the tomb and bury Lenin next to his mother, Maria Alexandrovna Ulyanova, at the Volkov Cemetery in St. Petersburg. His successor, Vladimir Putin, opposed this, stating that a reburial of Lenin would imply that generations of citizens had observed false values during seventy years of Soviet rule.


title: Lenin's Mausoleum

text: The mausoleum has undergone several changes in appearance since the collapse of the Soviet Union. One of the first noticeable changes was the placement of gates at the staircases leading to the central tribune. After the removal of the guard, this was necessary to prevent unauthorised usage of the tribune. Beginning in 2012, the mausoleum underwent foundation reconstruction caused by the construction of a building attached to the mausoleum in 1983. The building houses an escalator once used by members of the Politburo to ascend the tribune. In 1995–96, when Boris Yeltsin used the tribune, he used stairs and not the escalator. Now the tribune is no longer used, therefore it became acceptable to remove the escalator. The building was closed in 2013 for renovations. It was finally opened on April 30, 2013, in time for the May 1 celebration of "The Day of Spring and Labour". In 2018, RIA Novosti reported that Vladimir Petrov, a member of the legislative assembly of the Leningrad Oblast, proposed creating a special commission in order to examine the question of the removal of Lenin's body from the Mausoleum. Petrov seemed to be willing to replace the corpse with a copy made of synthetic resin. The deputy Dmitry Novikov, a member of the Communist Party, has strongly opposed Petrov's proposition.


title: Ranjit Singh

text: Ranjit Singh (13 November 1780 – 27 June 1839), popularly known as Sher-e-Punjab or "Lion of Punjab", was the first Maharaja of the Sikh Empire, which ruled the northwest Indian subcontinent in the early half of the 19th century. He survived smallpox in infancy but lost sight in his left eye. He fought his first battle alongside his father at age 10. After his father died, he fought several wars to expel the Afghans in his teenage years and was proclaimed as the "Maharaja of Punjab" at age 21. His empire grew in the Punjab region under his leadership through 1839.


title: Ranjit Singh

text: Prior to his rise, the Punjab region had numerous warring misls (confederacies), twelve of which were under Sikh rulers and one Muslim. Ranjit Singh successfully absorbed and united the Sikh misls and took over other local kingdoms to create the Sikh Empire. He repeatedly defeated invasions by outside armies, particularly those arriving from Afghanistan, and established friendly relations with the British.


title: Ranjit Singh

text: Ranjit Singh's reign introduced reforms, modernisation, investment into infrastructure and general prosperity. His Khalsa army and government included Sikhs, Hindus, Muslims and Europeans. His legacy includes a period of Sikh cultural and artistic renaissance, including the rebuilding of the Harmandir Sahib in Amritsar as well as other major gurudwaras, including Takht Sri Patna Sahib, Bihar and Hazur Sahib Nanded, Maharashtra under his sponsorship. Ranjit Singh was succeeded by his son Kharak Singh.


title: Ranjit Singh

text: In 2020, Ranjit Singh was named as "Greatest Leader of All Time" in a poll conducted by ‘BBC World Histories Magazine'.


title: Ranjit Singh

text: Ranjit Singh was born on 13 November 1780 to Maha Singh and Raj Kaur in Gujranwala, Punjab region (present-day Punjab, Pakistan). His mother Raj Kaur was the daughter of Sikh Raja Gajpat Singh of Jind. Upon his birth, he was named Buddh Singh after his ancestor who was first in line to take Amrit Sanchaar. The child's name was changed to Ranjit (literally, "victor in battle") Singh ("lion") by his father to commemorate his army's victory over the Chatha chieftain Pir Muhammad.


title: Ranjit Singh

text: Ranjit Singh contracted smallpox as an infant, which resulted in the loss of sight in his left eye and a pockmarked face. He was short in stature, never schooled, and did not learn to read or write anything beyond the Gurmukhi alphabet. However, he was trained at home in horse riding, musketry and other martial arts.


title: Ranjit Singh

text: At age 12, his father died. He then inherited his father's Sukerchakia Misl estates and was raised by his mother Raj Kaur, who, along with Lakhpat Rai, also managed the estates. The first attempt on his life was made when he was 13, by Hashmat Khan, but Ranjit Singh prevailed and killed the assailant instead. At age 18, his mother died and Lakhpat Rai was assassinated, and thereon he was helped by his mother-in-law from his first marriage.


title: Ranjit Singh

text: According to the chronicles of Ranjit Singh's court historians and the Europeans who visited him, Ranjit Singh took to alcohol and opium, habits that intensified in the later decades of his life. However, he neither smoked nor ate beef, and required all officials in his court, regardless of their religion, to adhere to these restrictions as part of their employment contract.


title: Ranjit Singh

text: In 1789, Ranjit Singh married his first wife Mehtab Kaur, the muklawa happened in 1796. She was the only daughter of Gurbaksh Singh Kanhaiya and his wife Sada Kaur, and the granddaughter of Jai Singh Kanhaiya, the founder of the Kanhaiya Misl. This marriage was pre-arranged in an attempt to reconcile warring Sikh "misls", wherein Mehtab Kaur was betrothed to Ranjit Singh in 1786. However, the marriage failed, with Mehtab Kaur never forgiving the fact that her father had been killed in battle with Ranjit Singh's father and she mainly lived with her mother after marriage. The separation became complete when Ranjit Singh married Datar Kaur of the Nakai Misl in 1797 and she turned into Ranjit's most beloved wife. Mehtab Kaur had three sons, Ishar Singh who was born in 1804 and twins Sher Singh and Tara Singh born in 1807. According to historian Jean-Marie Lafont, she was the only one to bear the title of Maharani. She died in 1813, after suffering from a failing health.


title: Ranjit Singh

text: His second marriage was to, Datar Kaur (Born "Raj Kaur") the youngest child and only daughter of Ran Singh Nakai, the third ruler of the Nakai Misl and his wife Karmo Kaur. They were betrothed in childhood by Datar Kaur's eldest brother, "Sardar Bhagwan Singh," who briefly became the chief of the Nakai Misl, and Ranjit Singh's father Maha Singh. The "anand karaj" took place in 1792 and the muklawa happened in 1797; this marriage was a happy one. Ranjit Singh always treated Raj Kaur with love and respect. Since Raj Kaur was also the name of Ranjit Singh's mother, she was renamed Datar Kaur. In 1801, she gave birth to their son and heir apparent, Kharak Singh. Datar Kaur bore Ranjit Singh two other sons, Rattan Singh and Fateh Singh. Like his first marriage, the second marriage also brought him strategic military alliance. She was exceptionally intelligent and assisted him in affairs of the State. During the expedition to Multan in 1818, she was given command alongside her son, Kharak Singh. Throughout her life she remained Ranjit Singh's favorite and for no other did he have greater respect for than Datar Kaur, who he affectionately called "Mai Nakain." Even though she was his second wife she became his principal wife and chief consort. During a hunting trip with Ranjit Singh, she fell ill and died on 20 June 1838.


title: Ranjit Singh

text: Ratan Kaur and Daya Kaur were wives of Sahib Singh Bhangi of Gujrat (a "misl" north of Lahore, not to be confused the state of Gujarat). After Sahib Singh's death, Ranjit Singh took them under his protection in 1811 by marrying them via the rite of "chādar andāzī", in which a cloth sheet was unfurled over each of their heads. The same with Roop Kaur, Gulab Kaur, Saman Kaur, and Lakshmi Kaur, looked after Duleep Singh when his mother Jind Kaur was exiled. Ratan Kaur had a son Multana Singh in 1819, and Daya Kaur had two sons Kashmira Singh and Pashaura Singh in 1821.


title: Ranjit Singh

text: Jind Kaur, the final spouse of Ranjit Singh. Her father, Manna Singh Aulakh, extolled her virtues to Ranjit Singh, who was concerned about the frail health of his only heir Kharak Singh. The Maharaja married her in 1835 by 'sending his arrow and sword to her village'. On 6 September 1838 she gave birth to Duleep Singh, who became the last Maharaja of the Sikh Empire.


title: Ranjit Singh

text: His other wives included, Mehtab Devi of Kangara also called Guddan or Katochan and Raj Banso, daughters of Raja Sansar Chand of Kangra.


title: Ranjit Singh

text: He was also married to Rani Har Devi of Atalgarh, Rani Aso Sircar and Rani Jag Deo According to the diaries, that Duleep Singh kept towards the end of his life, that these women presented the Maharaja with four daughters. Dr. Priya Atwal notes that the daughters could be adopted. Ranjit Singh was also married to Jind Bani or Jind Kulan, daughter of Muhammad Pathan from Mankera and Gul Bano, daughter of Malik Akhtar from Amritsar.


title: Ranjit Singh

text: Ranjit Singh married many times, in various ceremonies, and had twenty wives. Sir Lepel Griffin, however, provides a list of just sixteen wives and their pension list. Most of his marriages were performed through chādar andāz. Some scholars note that the information on Ranjit Singh's marriages is unclear, and there is evidence that he had many concubines. Dr. Priya Atwal presents an official list of Ranjit Singh's thirty wives. The women married through chādar andāzī were noted as concubines and were known as the lesser title of Rani (queen). While Mehtab Kaur and Datar Kaur officially bore the title of Maharani (high queen), Datar Kaur officially became the Maharani after the death of Mehtab Kaur in 1813. Throughout her life was referred to as Sarkar Rani. After her death, the title was held by Ranjit's youngest widow Jind Kaur. According to Khushwant Singh in an 1889 interview with the French journal "", his son Dalip (Duleep) Singh remarked, "I am the son of one of my father's forty-six wives." Dr. Priya Atwal notes that Ranjit Singh and his heirs entered a total of 46 marriages. But Ranjit Singh was known not be a "rash sensualist" and commanded unusual respect in the eyes of others. Faqir Sayyid Vaḥiduddin states: "If there was one thing in which Ranjit Singh failed to excel or even equal the average monarch of oriental history, it was the size of his harem." George Keene noted, “In hundreds and in thousands the orderly crowds stream on. Not a bough is broken of a wayside tree, not a rude remark to a woman”.


title: Ranjit Singh

text: In 1802, Ranjit Singh married Moran Sarkar, a Muslim nautch girl. This action, and other non-Sikh activities of the Maharaja, upset orthodox Sikhs, including the Nihangs, whose leader Akali Phula Singh was the Jathedar of the Akal Takht. When Ranjit Singh visited Amritsar, he was called outside the Akal Takht, where he was made to apologise for his mistakes. Akali Phula Singh took Ranjit Singh to a tamarind tree in front of the Akal Takht and prepared to punish him by flogging. Then Akali Phula Singh asked the nearby Sikh pilgrims whether they approved of Ranjit Singh's apology. The pilgrims responded with "Sat Sri Akal" and Ranjit Singh was released and forgiven. An alternative holds that Ranjit went to visit Moran on his arrival in Amritsar before paying his respects at Harmandir Sahib Gurdwara, which upset orthodox Sikhs and hence was punished by Akali Phula Singh. Iqbal Qaiser and Manveen Sandhu make alternative accounts on the relationship between Moran and the Maharaja; the former stating they never married, while the latter state that they married. Court chronicler, Sohan Lal Suri makes no mention Moran's marriage to the Maharaja or coins being struck in her name. Bibi Moran spent the rest of life in Pathankot. Duleep Singh makes a list of his father's queens which also does not mention Bibi Moran.


title: Ranjit Singh

text: According to the pedigree table and Duleep Singh's diaries that he kept towards the end of his life mention another son Fateh Singh was born to Mai Nakain, who died in infancy. According to Henry Edward only Datar Kaur and Jind Kaur's sons are Ranjit Singh's biological sons.


title: Ranjit Singh

text: After the death of Aurangzeb in 1707, the Mughal Empire fell apart and declined in its ability to tax or govern most of the Indian subcontinent. In the northwestern region, particularly the Punjab, the creation of the Khalsa community of Sikh warriors by Guru Gobind Singh accelerated the decay and fragmentation of the Mughal power in the region. Raiding Afghans attacked the Indus river valleys but met resistance from both organised armies of the Khalsa Sikhs as well as irregular Khalsa militias based in villages. The Sikhs had appointed their own "zamindars", replacing the previous Muslim revenue collectors, which provided resources to feed and strengthen the warriors aligned with Sikh interests. Meanwhile, colonial traders and the East India Company had begun operations in India on its eastern and western coasts.


title: Ranjit Singh

text: By the second half of the 18th century, the northwestern parts of the Indian subcontinent (now Pakistan and parts of north India) were a collection of fourteen small warring regions. Of the fourteen, twelve were Sikh-controlled "misls" (confederacies), one named Kasur (near Lahore) was Muslim controlled, and one in the southeast was led by an Englishman named George Thomas. This region constituted the fertile and productive valleys of the five rivers – Jhelum, Chenab, Ravi, Bias and Sutlej. The Sikh "misls" were all under the control of the Khalsa fraternity of Sikh warriors, but they were not united and constantly warred with each other over revenue collection, disagreements, and local priorities; however, in the event of external invasion such as from the Muslim armies of Ahmed Shah Abdali from Afghanistan, they would usually unite.


title: Ranjit Singh

text: Towards the end of 18th century, the five most powerful "misls" were those of Sukkarchakkia, Kanhayas, Nakkais, Ahluwalias and Bhangi Sikhs. Ranjit Singh belonged to the first, and through marriage had a reliable alliance with Kanhayas and Nakkais. Among the smaller misls, some such as the Phulkias "misl" had switched loyalties in the late 18th century and supported the Afghan army invasion against their Khalsa brethren. The Kasur region, ruled by Muslim, always supported the Afghan invasion forces and joined them in plundering Sikh "misls" during the war.


title: Ranjit Singh

text: Ranjit Singh's fame grew in 1797, at age 17, when the Afghan Muslim ruler Shah Zaman, of the Ahmad Shah Abdali dynasty, attempted to annex Panjab region into his control through his general Shahanchi Khan and 12,000 soldiers. The battle was fought in the territory that fell in Ranjit Singh controlled misl, whose regional knowledge and warrior expertise helped resist the invading army. This victory gained him recognition. In 1798, the Afghan ruler sent in another army, which Ranjit Singh did not resist. He let them enter Lahore, then encircled them with his army, blocked off all food and supplies, burnt all crops and food sources that could have supported the Afghan army. Much of the Afghan army retreated back to Afghanistan.


title: Ranjit Singh

text: In 1799, Raja Ranjit Singh's army of 25,000 Khalsa, supported by another 25,000 Khalsa led by his mother-in-law Rani Sada Kaur of Kanhaiya "misl", in a joint operation attacked the region controlled by Bhangi Sikhs centered around Lahore. The rulers escaped, marking Lahore as the first major conquest of Ranjit Singh. The Sufi Muslim and Hindu population of Lahore welcomed the rule of Ranjit Singh. In 1800, the ruler of Jammu region ceded control of his region to Ranjit Singh.


title: Ranjit Singh

text: In 1801, Ranjit Singh proclaimed himself as the "Maharaja of Punjab", and agreed to a formal investiture ceremony, which was carried out by Baba Sahib Singh Bedi – a descendant of Guru Nanak. On the day of his coronation, prayers were performed across mosques, temples and gurudwaras in his territories for his long life. Ranjit Singh called his rule as "Sarkar Khalsa", and his court as "Darbar Khalsa". He ordered new coins to be issued in the name of Guru Nanak named the "NanakShahi" ("of the Emperor Nanak").


title: Ranjit Singh

text: In 1802, Ranjit Singh, aged 22, took Amritsar from the Bhangi Sikh "misl", paid homage at the Harmandir Sahib temple, which had previously been attacked and desecrated by the invading Afghan army, and announced that he would renovate and rebuild it with marble and gold.


title: Ranjit Singh

text: On 1 January 1806, Ranjit Singh signed a treaty with the British officials of the East India Company, in which he agreed that his Sikh forces would not attempt to expand south of the Sutlej river, and the Company agreed that it would not attempt to militarily cross the Sutlej river into the Sikh territory.


title: Ranjit Singh

text: In 1807, Ranjit Singh's forces attacked the Muslim ruled Kasur and, after a month of fierce fighting in the Battle of Kasur defeated the Afghan chief Qutb-ud-Din, thus expanding his empire northwest towards Afghanistan. He took Multan in 1818, and the whole Bari Doab came under his rule with that conquest. In 1819, he successfully defeated the Afghan Sunni Muslim rulers and annexed Srinagar and Kashmir, stretching his rule into the north and the Jhelum valley, beyond the foothills of the Himalayas.


title: Ranjit Singh

text: The most significant encounters between the Sikhs in the command of the Maharaja and the Afghans were in 1813, 1823, 1834 and in 1837. In 1813, Ranjit Singh's general Dewan Mokham Chand led the Sikh forces against the Afghan forces of Shah Mahmud led by Dost Mohammad Khan. The Afghans lost their stronghold at Attock in that battle.


title: Ranjit Singh

text: In 1813–14, Ranjit Singh's first attempt to expand into Kashmir was foiled by Afghan forces led by General Azim Khan, due to a heavy downpour, the spread of cholera, and poor food supply to his troops.


title: Ranjit Singh

text: In 1818, Darbar's forces led by Kharak Singh and Misr Dewan Chand occupied Multan, killing Muzaffar Khan and defeating his forces, leading to the end of Afghan influence in the Punjab.


title: Ranjit Singh

text: In July 1818, an army from the Punjab defeated Jabbar Khan, a younger brother of governor of Kashmir Azim Khan, and acquired Kashmir, along with a yearly revenue of Rs seventy lacs. Dewan Moti Ram was appointed governor of Kashmir.


title: Ranjit Singh

text: In November 1819, Dost Mohammed accepted the sovereignty of the Maharaja over Peshawar, along with a revenue payment of Rs one lac a year. The Maharaja specifically ordered his forces not to harass or molest any civilian. In 1820 and 1821, Dera Ghazi Khan, Hazara and Mankera, with huge tracts of land between Jhelum and Indus, Singh Sagar Daob, were also annexed. The victories of Kashmir, Peshwar and Multan were celebrated by naming three newborns after them. Prince Kashmira Singh, Peshaura Singh and Prince Multana Singh were born to Daya Kaur and Ratan Kaur, wives of Ranjit Singh.


title: Ranjit Singh

text: In 1834, Mohammed Azim Khan once again marched towards Peshawar with an army of 25,000 Khattak and Yasufzai tribesmen in the name of jihad, to fight against infidels. The Maharaja defeated the forces. Yar Mohammad was pardoned and was reinvested as governor of Peshawar with an annual revenue of Rs one lac ten thousand to Lahore Darbar.


title: Ranjit Singh

text: In 1837, the Battle of Jamrud, became the last confrontation between the Sikhs led by him and the Afghans, which displayed the extent of the western boundaries of the Sikh Empire.


title: Ranjit Singh

text: On 25 November 1838, the two most powerful armies on the Indian subcontinent assembled in a grand review at Ferozepore as Ranjit Singh, the Maharajah of the Punjab brought out the "Dal Khalsa" to march alongside the sepoy troops of the East India Company and the British troops in India. In 1838, he agreed to a treaty with the British viceroy Lord Auckland to restore Shah Shoja to the Afghan throne in Kabul. In pursuance of this agreement, the British army of the Indus entered Afghanistan from the south, while Ranjit Singh’s troops went through the Khyber Pass and took part in the victory parade in Kabul.


title: Ranjit Singh

text: The Sikh Empire, also known as the Sikh Raj and Sarkar-a-Khalsa, was in the Punjab region, the name of which means "the land of the five rivers". The five rivers are the Beas, Ravi, Sutlej, Chenab and Jhelum, all of which are tributaries of the river Indus.


title: Ranjit Singh

text: The geographical reach of the Sikh Empire under Singh included all lands north of Sutlej river, and south of the high valleys of the northwestern Himalayas. The major towns at time included Srinagar, Attock, Peshawar, Bannu, Rawalpindi, Jammu, Gujrat, Sialkot, Kangra, Amritsar, Lahore and Multan.


title: Ranjit Singh

text: Muslims formed around 70%, Hindus formed around 24%, and Sikhs formed around 6–7% of the total population living in Singh's kingdom.


title: Ranjit Singh

text: Ranjit Singh allowed men from different religions and races to serve in his army and his government in various positions of authority. His army included a few Europeans, such as the Frenchman Jean-François Allard, though Singh maintained a policy of refraining from recruiting Britons into his service, aware of British designs on the Indian subcontinent. Despite his recruitment policies, he did maintain a diplomatic channel with the British; in 1828, he sent gifts to George IV and in 1831, he sent a mission to Simla to confer with the British Governor General, William Bentinck; while in 1838, he cooperated with them in removing the hostile Islamic Emir in Afghanistan.


title: Ranjit Singh

text: As consistent with many Punjabis of that time, Ranjit Singh was a secular king and followed the Sikh path. His policies were based on respect for all communities, Hindu, Sikh and Muslim. A devoted Sikh, Ranjit Singh restored and built historic Sikh Gurdwaras – most famously, the Harmandir Sahib, and used to celebrate his victories by offering thanks at the Harmandir. He also joined the Hindus in their temples out of respect for their sentiments. The veneration of cows was promoted and cow slaughter was punishable by death under his rule. He ordered his soldiers to neither loot nor molest civilians.


title: Ranjit Singh

text: He built several gurdwaras, Hindu temples and even mosques, and one in particular was Mai Moran Masjid, built on the behest of his beloved Muslim wife, Moran Sarkar. The Sikhs led by Singh never razed places of worship to the ground belonging to the enemy. However, he did convert Muslim mosques into other uses. For example, Ranjit Singh's army desecrated Lahore's Badshahi Mosque and converted it into an ammunition store, and horse stables. Lahore's Moti Masjid (Pearl Mosque) was converted into "Moti Mandir" (Pearl Temple) by the Sikh army, and Sonehri Mosque were converted into a Sikh Gurdwara, but upon the request of Sufi Fakir (Satar Shah Bukhari), Ranjit Singh restored the latter back to a mosque. Lahore's Begum Shahi Mosque was also used as a gunpowder factory, earning it the nickname "Barudkhana Wali Masjid", or "Gunpowder Mosque."


title: Ranjit Singh

text: Singh's sovereignty was accepted by Afghan and Punjabi Muslims, who fought under his banner against the Afghan forces of Nadir Shah and later of Azim Khan. His court was ecumenical in composition: his prime minister, Dhian Singh, was a Dogra; his foreign minister, Fakir Azizuddin, was a Muslim; and his finance minister, Dina Nath, was a Brahmin. Artillery commanders such as Mian Ghausa were also Muslims. There were no forced conversions in his time. His wives Bibi Mohran, Gilbahar Begum retained their faith and so did his Hindu wives. He also employed and surrounded himself with astrologers and soothsayers in his court.


title: Ranjit Singh

text: Ranjit Singh had also abolished the gurmata and provided significant patronage to the Udasi and Nirmala sect, leading to their prominence and control of Sikh religious affairs.


title: Ranjit Singh

text: The army under Ranjit Singh was not limited to the Sikh community. The soldiers and troop officers included Sikhs, but also included Hindus, Muslims and Europeans. Hindu Brahmins and people of all creeds and castes served his army, while the composition in his government also reflected a religious diversity. His army included Polish, Russian, Spanish, Prussian and French officers. In 1835, as his relationship with the British warmed up, he hired a British officer named Foulkes.


title: Ranjit Singh

text: However, the Khalsa army of Ranjit Singh reflected regional population, and as he grew his army, he dramatically increased the Rajput and Jat Sikhs who became the predominant members of his army. In the Doaba region his army was composed of the Jat Sikhs, in Jammu and northern Indian hills it was Hindu Rajputs, while relatively more Muslims served his army in the Jhelum river area closer to Afghanistan than other major Panjab rivers.


title: Ranjit Singh

text: Ranjit Singh changed and improved the training and organisation of his army. He reorganised responsibility and set performance standards in logistical efficiency in troop deployment, manoeuvre, and marksmanship. He reformed the staffing to emphasise steady fire over cavalry and guerrilla warfare, improved the equipment and methods of war. The military system of Ranjit Singh combined the best of both old and new ideas. He strengthened the infantry and the artillery. He paid the members of the standing army from treasury, instead of the Mughal method of paying an army with local feudal levies.


title: Ranjit Singh

text: While Ranjit Singh introduced reforms in terms of training and equipment of his military, he failed to reform the old "Jagirs" ("Ijra") system of Mughal middlemen. The "Jagirs" system of state revenue collection involved certain individuals with political connections or inheritance promising a tribute ("nazarana") to the ruler and thereby gaining administrative control over certain villages, with the right to force collect customs, excise and land tax at inconsistent and subjective rates from the peasants and merchants; they would keep a part of collected revenue and deliver the promised tribute value to the state. These "Jagirs" maintained independent armed militia to extort taxes from the peasants and merchants, and the militia prone to violence. This system of inconsistent taxation with arbitrary extortion by militia, continued the Mughal tradition of ill treatment of peasants and merchants throughout the Sikh Empire, and is evidenced by the complaints filed to Ranjit Singh by East India Company officials attempting to trade within different parts of the Sikh Empire.


title: Ranjit Singh

text: According to historical records, states Sunit Singh, Ranjit Singh's reforms focused on military that would allow new conquests, but not towards taxation system to end abuse, nor about introducing uniform laws in his state or improving internal trade and empowering the peasants and merchants. This failure to reform the "Jagirs"-based taxation system and economy, in part led to a succession power struggle and a series of threats, internal divisions among Sikhs, major assassinations and coups in the Sikh Empire in the years immediately after the death of Ranjit Singh; an easy annexation of the remains of the Sikh Empire into British India followed, with the colonial officials offering the "Jagirs" better terms and the right to keep the system intact.


title: Ranjit Singh

text: Ranjit Singh ensured that Panjab manufactured and was self-sufficient in all weapons, equipment and munitions his army needed. His government invested in infrastructure in the 1800s and thereafter, established raw materials mines, cannon foundries, gunpowder and arm factories. Some of these operations were owned by the state, others operated by private Sikh operatives.


title: Ranjit Singh

text: However, Ranjit Singh did not make major investments in other infrastructure such as irrigation canals to improve the productivity of land and roads. The prosperity in his Empire, in contrast to the Mughal-Sikh wars era, largely came from the improvement in the security situation, reduction in violence, reopened trade routes and greater freedom to conduct commerce.


title: Ranjit Singh

text: The mid 19th-century Muslim historians, such as Shahamat Ali who experienced the Sikh Empire first hand, presented a different view on Ranjit Singh's Empire and governance. According to Ali, Ranjit Singh's government was despotic, and he was a mean monarch in contrast to the Mughals. The initial momentum for the Empire building in these accounts is stated to be Ranjit Singh led Khalsa army's "insatiable appetite for plunder", their desire for "fresh cities to pillage", and eliminating the Mughal era "revenue intercepting intermediaries between the peasant-cultivator and the treasury".


title: Ranjit Singh

text: According to Ishtiaq Ahmed, Ranjit Singh's rule led to further persecution of Muslims in Kashmir, expanding the previously selective persecution of Shia Muslims and Hindus by Afghan Sunni Muslim rulers between 1752 and 1819 before Kashmir became part of his Sikh Empire. Bikramjit Hasrat describes Ranjit Singh as a "benevolent despot".


title: Ranjit Singh

text: The Muslim accounts of Ranjit Singh's rule were questioned by Sikh historians of the same era. For example, Ratan Singh Bhangu in 1841 wrote that these accounts were not accurate, and according to Anne Murphy, he remarked, "when would a Musalman praise the Sikhs?" In contrast, the colonial era British military officer Hugh Pearse in 1898 criticised Ranjit Singh's rule, as one founded on "violence, treachery and blood". Sohan Seetal disagrees with this account and states that Ranjit Singh had encouraged his army to respond with a "tit for tat" against the enemy, violence for violence, blood for blood, plunder for plunder.


title: Ranjit Singh

text: Singh made his empire and the Sikhs a strong political force, for which he is deeply admired and revered in Sikhism. After his death, empire failed to establish a lasting structure for Sikh government or stable succession, and the Sikh Empire began to decline. The British and Sikh Empire fought two Anglo-Sikh wars with the second ending the reign of Sikh Empire. Sikhism itself did not decline.


title: Ranjit Singh

text: Clive Dewey has argued that the decline of the empire after Singh's death owes much to the jagir-based economic and taxation system which he inherited from the Mughals and retained. After his death, a fight to control the tax spoils emerged, leading to a power struggle among the nobles and his family from different wives. This struggle ended with a rapid series of palace coups and assassinations of his descendants, and eventually the annexation of the Sikh Empire by the British.


title: Ranjit Singh

text: In the 1830s, Ranjit Singh suffered from numerous health complications as well as a stroke, which some historical records attribute to alcoholism and a failing liver. He died in his sleep on 27 June 1839. Four of his Hindu wives- Mehtab Devi (Guddan Sahiba), daughter of Raja Sansar Chand, Rani Har Devi, the daughter of Chaudhri Ram, a Saleria rajput, Rani Raj Devi, daughter of Padma Rajput and Rani Rajno Kanwar, daughter of Sand Bhari along with seven Hindu concubines with royal titles committed sati by voluntarily placing themselves onto his funeral pyre as an act of devotion.


title: Ranjit Singh

text: Singh is remembered for uniting Sikhs and founding the prosperous Sikh Empire. He is also remembered for his conquests and building a well-trained, self-sufficient Khalsa army to protect the empire. He amassed considerable wealth, including gaining the possession of the Koh-i-Noor diamond from Shuja Shah Durrani of Afghanistan, which he left to Jagannath Temple in Puri, Odisha in 1839.


title: Ranjit Singh

text: Perhaps Singh's most lasting legacy was the restoration and expansion of the Harmandir Sahib, the most revered Gurudwara of the Sikhs, which is now known popularly as the "Golden Temple". Much of the present decoration at the Harmandir Sahib, in the form of gilding and marblework, was introduced under the patronage of Singh, who also sponsored protective walls and water supply system to strengthen security and operations related to the temple. He also directed construction of two of the most sacred Sikh temples, being the birthplace and place of assassination of Guru Gobind Singh – Takht Sri Patna Sahib and Takht Sri Hazur Sahib, respectively – whom he much admired.


title: Ranjit Singh

text: In 1783, Ranjit Singh established a crafts colony of Thatheras near Amritsar and encouraged skilled metal crafters from Kashmir to settle in Jandiala Guru. In the year 2014, this traditional craft of making brass and copper products got enlisted on the List of Intangible Cultural Heritage by UNESCO. The Government of Punjab is now working under Project Virasat to revive this craft.


title: Santa Barbara, California

text: Santa Barbara (, meaning "Saint Barbara") is a coastal city in Santa Barbara County, California, of which it is also the county seat. Situated on a south-facing section of coastline, the longest such section on the West Coast of the United States, the city lies between the steeply rising Santa Ynez Mountains and the Pacific Ocean. Santa Barbara's climate is often described as Mediterranean, and the city has been dubbed "The American Riviera". According to the 2020 U.S. Census, the city's population was 88,665.


title: Santa Barbara, California

text: In addition to being a popular tourist and resort destination, the city has a diverse economy that includes a large service sector, education, technology, health care, finance, agriculture, manufacturing, and local government. In 2004, the service sector accounted for 35% of local employment. Education in particular is well represented, with four institutions of higher learning nearby: the University of California, Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara City College, Westmont College, and Antioch University. The city is served by Santa Barbara Airport and train service is provided by Amtrak, which operates the Pacific Surfliner, which runs from San Diego to San Luis Obispo. The Santa Barbara area is connected via U.S. Highway 101 to Los Angeles to the southeast and San Francisco to the northwest. Behind the city, in and beyond the Santa Ynez Mountains, is the Los Padres National Forest, which contains several remote wilderness areas. Channel Islands National Park and Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary are located approximately offshore.


title: Santa Barbara, California

text: Evidence of human habitation of the area begins at least 13,000 years ago. Evidence for a Paleoindian presence includes a fluted Clovis-like point found in the 1980s along the western Santa Barbara County coast, as well as the remains of Arlington Springs Man, found on Santa Rosa Island in the 1960s. At least 25,000 Chumash natives lived in the region prior to Spanish contact. Five Chumash villages flourished in the area. The present-day area of Santa Barbara City College was the village of "Mispu"; the site of the Los Baños pool (along west beach) was the village of "Syukhtun", chief Yanonalit's large village located between Bath and Chapala streets; "Amolomol" was at the mouth of Mission Creek; and "Swetete", above the bird refuge.


title: Santa Barbara, California

text: Spanish explorer Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo, sailing for the Kingdom of Spain, sailed through what is now called the Santa Barbara Channel in 1542, anchoring briefly in the area. In 1602, Spanish maritime explorer Sebastián Vizcaíno gave the name "Santa Barbara" to the channel and also to one of the Channel Islands.


title: Santa Barbara, California

text: A land expedition led by Gaspar de Portolà visited around 1769, and Franciscan missionary Juan Crespi, who accompanied the expedition, named a large native town "Laguna de la Concepcion". Cabrillo's earlier name, however, is the one that has survived.


title: Santa Barbara, California

text: The first permanent European residents were Spanish missionaries and soldiers under Felipe de Neve, who arrived in 1782 and constructed the Presidio. They were sent to both secure the Spanish claim to the region and to convert the indigenous peoples to Catholicism. Many of the Spaniards brought their families with them, and those formed the nucleus of the small town – at first just a cluster of adobes – that surrounded the Presidio of Santa Barbara. The Santa Barbara Mission was established on the Feast of Saint Barbara, December 4, 1786. It was the tenth of the California Missions to be founded by the Spanish Franciscans. It was dedicated by Padre Fermín Lasuén, who succeeded Padre Junipero Serra as the second president and founder of the California Franciscan Mission Chain. The Chumash laborers built a connection between the canyon creek and the Santa Barbara Mission water system through the use of a dam and an aqueduct. During the following decades, many of the natives died of diseases such as smallpox, against which they had no natural immunity.


title: Santa Barbara, California

text: The most dramatic event of the Spanish period was the powerful 1812 earthquake, and tsunami, with an estimated magnitude of 7.1, which destroyed the Mission as well as the rest of the town; water reached as high as present-day Anapamu street, and carried a ship half a mile up Refugio Canyon. The Mission was rebuilt by 1820 after the earthquake. Following the earthquake, the Mission fathers chose to rebuild in a grander manner, and it is this construction that survives to the present day, the best-preserved of the California Missions, and still functioning as an active church by the Franciscans. After the Mexican government secularized the missions in the 1830s, the baptismal, marriage, and burial records of other missions were transferred to Santa Barbara, and now found in the Santa Barbara Mission Archive-Library.


title: Santa Barbara, California

text: The Spanish period ended in 1822 with the conclusion of the Mexican War of Independence, which terminated 300 years of Spanish colonial rule and transferred control to the newly independent Mexican government.


title: Santa Barbara, California

text: Santa Barbara street names reflect the influence of the Spanish period. The names "de le Guerra" and "Carrillo" come from the Guerra family of California and Carrillo family of California. They were instrumental in building up the town, so they were honored by having streets named after them.


title: Santa Barbara, California

text: After the forced secularization of the Missions in 1833, successive Mexican Governors distributed the large land tracts formerly held by the Franciscan Order to various families in order to reward service or build alliances. These land grants to local notable families mark the beginning of the "Rancho Period" in California and Santa Barbara history. Fernando Tico was one of the first settlers who received land grants for the local area. Fernando led the Native Americans against the Argentinian pirates in the 1800s. The population remained sparse, with enormous cattle operations run by wealthy families. It was during this period that Richard Henry Dana, Jr. first visited Santa Barbara and wrote about the culture and people of Santa Barbara in his book "Two Years Before the Mast".


title: Santa Barbara, California

text: Santa Barbara fell bloodlessly to a battalion of American soldiers under John C. Frémont on December 27, 1846, during the Mexican–American War, and after the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848 it became part of the expanding United States.


title: Santa Barbara, California

text: Change came quickly in Santa Barbara following the American Conquest of California. The population doubled between 1850 and 1860. In 1851, land surveyor Salisbury Haley designed the street grid, famously botching the block measurements, misaligning the streets, thereby creating doglegs at certain intersections. Wood construction replaced adobe as American settlers moved in; during the Gold Rush years and following, the town became a haven for bandits and gamblers, and a dangerous and lawless place. Charismatic gambler and highwayman Jack Powers had virtual control of the town in the early 1850s, until driven out by a posse organized in San Luis Obispo. English gradually supplanted Spanish as the language of daily life, becoming the language of official record in 1870. The first newspaper, the "Santa Barbara Gazette", was founded in 1855.


title: Santa Barbara, California

text: While the Civil War had little effect on Santa Barbara, the disastrous drought of 1863 ended the Rancho Period, as most of the cattle died and ranchos were broken up and sold. Mortimer Cook, a wealthy entrepreneur, arrived in 1871 and opened the city's first bank. Cook later served two terms as mayor. Cook founded the first National Gold Bank of Santa Barbara in 1873. The building of Stearns Wharf in 1872 enhanced Santa Barbara's commercial and tourist accessibility; previously goods and visitors had to transfer from steamboats to smaller craft to row ashore. During the 1870s, writer Charles Nordhoff promoted the town as a health resort and destination for well-to-do travelers from other parts of the U.S.; many of them came, and many stayed. The luxurious Arlington Hotel dated from this period. In 1887 the railroad finally went through to Los Angeles, and in 1901 to San Francisco: Santa Barbara was now easily accessible by land and by sea, and subsequent development was brisk. Santa Barbara had a system of street railways that operated from 1875 through 1929. Begun as a single mule-drawn line from the waterfront pier to the Arlington Hotel, over the decades it was incrementally expanded, later electrified, and operated until its closure in June 1929.


title: Santa Barbara, California

text: Peter J. Barber, an architect, designed many Late Victorian style residences, and served twice as mayor, in 1880 and again in 1890. A year after Barber's term as mayor, President Benjamin Harrison became the first of five presidents to visit Santa Barbara.


title: Santa Barbara, California

text: Just before the turn of the 20th century, oil was discovered at the Summerland Oil Field, and the region along the beach east of Santa Barbara sprouted numerous oil derricks and piers for drilling offshore. This was the first offshore oil development in the world; oil drilling offshore would become a contentious practice in the Santa Barbara area, which continues to the present day.


title: Santa Barbara, California

text: Santa Barbara housed the world's largest movie studio during the era of silent film. Flying A Studios, a division of the American Film Manufacturing Company, operated on two city blocks centered at State and Mission between 1910 and 1922, with the industry shutting down locally and moving to Hollywood once it outgrew the area, needing the resources of a larger city. Flying A and the other smaller local studios produced approximately 1,200 films during their tenure in Santa Barbara, of which approximately 100 survive.


title: Santa Barbara, California

text: During this period, the Loughead Aircraft Company was established on lower State Street, and regularly tested seaplanes off of East Beach. This was the genesis of what would later become Lockheed.


title: Santa Barbara, California

text: The magnitude 6.3 earthquake of June 29, 1925, the first destructive earthquake in California since the 1906 San Francisco quake, destroyed much of downtown Santa Barbara and killed 13 people. The earthquake caused infrastructure to collapse including the Sheffield Dam. The low death toll is attributed to the early hour (6:44 a.m., before most people were out on the streets, vulnerable to falling masonry). While this quake, like the one in 1812, was centered in the Santa Barbara Channel, it caused no tsunami. It came at an opportune time for rebuilding, since a movement for architectural reform and unification around a Spanish Colonial style was already underway. Under the leadership of Pearl Chase, many of the city's famous buildings rose as part of the rebuilding process, including the Santa Barbara County Courthouse, sometimes praised as the "most beautiful public building in the United States." In 1907 in northern Santa Barbara county a horrific train accident claimed the lives of 37, the exact cause of which is still unknown. It is still the deadliest disaster in the Santa Barbara history.


title: Santa Barbara, California

text: During World War II, Santa Barbara was home to Marine Corps Air Station Santa Barbara, and Naval Reserve Center Santa Barbara at the harbor. Up the coast, west of the city, was the Army's Camp Cooke (the present-day Vandenberg Space Force Base). In the city,


title: Santa Barbara, California

text: Hoff General Hospital treated servicemen wounded in the Pacific Theatre. On February 23, 1942, not long after the outbreak of war in the Pacific, the Japanese submarine "I-17" surfaced offshore and lobbed 16 shells at the Ellwood Oil Field, about west of Santa Barbara, in the first shelling attack by an enemy power on the continental U.S. since the bombardment of Orleans in World War I. Although the shelling was inaccurate and only caused about $500 damage to a catwalk, panic was immediate. Many Santa Barbara residents fled, and land values plummeted to historic lows.


title: Santa Barbara, California

text: After the war many of the servicemen who had seen Santa Barbara returned to stay. The population surged by 10,000 people between the end of the war and 1950. This burst of growth had dramatic consequences for the local economy and infrastructure. Highway 101 was built through town during this period, and newly built Lake Cachuma began supplying water via a tunnel dug through the mountains between 1950 and 1956.


title: Santa Barbara, California

text: Local relations with the oil industry gradually soured through the period. Production at Summerland had ended, Elwood was winding down, and to find new fields oil companies carried out seismic exploration of the Channel using explosives, a controversial practice that local fishermen claimed harmed their catch. The culminating disaster, and one of the formative events in the modern environmental movement, was the blowout at Union Oil's Platform A on the Dos Cuadras Field, about eight miles (13 km) southeast of Santa Barbara in the Santa Barbara Channel, on January 28, 1969. Approximately of oil surged out of a huge undersea break, fouling hundreds of square miles of ocean and all the coastline from Ventura to Goleta, as well north facing beaches on the Channel Islands. Two legislative consequences of the spill in the next year were the passages of the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) and the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA); locally, outraged citizens formed GOO (Get Oil Out).


title: Santa Barbara, California

text: Santa Barbara's business community strove to attract development until the surge in the anti-growth movement in the 1970s. Many "clean" industries, especially aerospace firms such as Raytheon and Delco Electronics, moved to town in the 1950s and 1960s, bringing employees from other parts of the U.S. UCSB itself became a major employer. In 1975, the city passed an ordinance restricting growth to a maximum of 85,000 residents, through zoning. Growth in the adjacent Goleta Valley could be shut down by denying water meters to developers seeking permits. As a result of these changes, growth slowed down, but prices rose sharply.


title: Santa Barbara, California

text: When voters approved connection to State water supplies in 1991, parts of the city, especially outlying areas, resumed growth, but more slowly than during the boom period of the 1950s and 1960s. While the slower growth preserved the quality of life for most residents and prevented the urban sprawl notorious in the Los Angeles basin, housing in the Santa Barbara area was in short supply, and prices soared: in 2006, only six percent of residents could afford a median-value house. As a result, many people who work in Santa Barbara commute from adjacent, more affordable areas, such as Santa Maria, Lompoc, and Ventura. The resultant traffic on incoming arteries, in particular the stretch of Highway 101 between Ventura and Santa Barbara, is another problem being addressed by long-range planners.


title: Santa Barbara, California

text: Since the middle of the twentieth century, several destructive fires have affected Santa Barbara: the 1964 Coyote Fire, which burned of backcountry along with 106 homes; the smaller, but quickly moving, Sycamore Fire in 1977, which burned 200 homes; the disastrous 1990 Painted Cave Fire, which incinerated over 500 homes in only several hours, during an intense Sundowner wind event; the November 2008 Tea Fire, which destroyed 210 homes in the foothills of Santa Barbara and Montecito; and the 2009 Jesusita Fire that burned and destroyed 160 homes above the San Roque region of Santa Barbara.


title: Santa Barbara, California

text: The Thomas Fire burned from its origins in Santa Paula to the east of Santa Barbara and consumed in Santa Barbara and Ventura counties, most of which consisted of rural land and wilderness areas. The fire started December 4, 2017, and was 100% contained by January 12, 2018. 1,050 structures were lost in the Thomas Fire, mostly east of Santa Barbara in Ventura County. The Thomas Fire has been the largest Santa Barbara County fire ever recorded to date.


title: Santa Barbara, California

text: Santa Barbara is located about west-northwest of Los Angeles, along the Pacific coast. This stretch of coast along southern Santa Barbara County is sometimes referred to as "The American Riviera", presumably because its geography and climate are similar to that of areas along the northern Mediterranean Sea coast (especially in southern France) known as the Riviera. The Santa Ynez Mountains, an east–west trending range, rise dramatically behind the city, with several peaks exceeding . Covered with chaparral, oaks and sandstone outcrops, they make a scenic backdrop to the town. Sometimes, perhaps once every three years, snow falls on the mountains, but it rarely stays for more than a few days. Nearer to town, directly east and adjacent to Mission Santa Barbara, is an east–west ridge known locally as "the Riviera," traversed by a road called "Alameda Padre Serra" (shortened APS, which translates to "Father Serra's pathway").


title: Santa Barbara, California

text: According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of , of which of it is land and of it (53.61%) is water. The high official figures for water is due to the extension of the city limit into the ocean, including a strip of city reaching out into the sea and inland again to keep the Santa Barbara Airport (SBA) within the city boundary.


title: Santa Barbara, California

text: Santa Barbara experiences a warm-summer Mediterranean climate (Köppen: Csb) characteristic of coastal California. Santa Barbara's weather was ranked number 1 in the United States in 2018 by U.S. News & World Report. Because the city lies along the ocean and parallel to the predominant westerly winds, sideshore and light onshore breezes moderate temperatures resulting in warmer winters and cooler summers compared with places farther inland.


title: Santa Barbara, California

text: In the winter, storms reach California, some of which bring heavy rainfall but the rainshadow effect of the coastal mountains can at times moderate or enhance the rainfall depending on local storm wind flows. Local rainfall totals can be enhanced by orographic lift when storms are accompanied by southerly flow pushing moist air over the Santa Ynez mountains, producing greater rainfall than in other coastal areas. Diurnal temperature variation reaches a maximum in winter due to lower humidity and the absence of summer fog. On average, only 1.7 nights have freezing lows.


title: Santa Barbara, California

text: Summers in Santa Barbara are mostly rainless due to the presence of a high-pressure area over the eastern Pacific, but summer showers can happen due to tropical hurricane/Monsoonal flows that rarely reach the region; thunderstorms can also occur during the North American Monsoon. In the fall, afternoon or evening downslope winds, locally called "Sundowners", can raise temperatures into the high 90s °F (high 30s °C) and drop humidities into the single digits, increasing the chance due to downed power lines, etc., and severity of wildfires in the foothills north of the city.


title: Santa Barbara, California

text: Annual rainfall totals are highly variable and in exceptional years like 1940–1941 and 1997–1998 over of rain have fallen in a year, but in dry seasons less than is not unheard of. Snow sometimes covers higher elevations of the Santa Ynez Mountains but is extremely rare in the city itself. The most recent accumulating snow to fall near sea level was in January 1949, when approximately fell in the city.


title: Santa Barbara, California

text: The city of Santa Barbara is situated on a coastal plain between the Santa Ynez Mountains and the sea. This coastal plain consists of a complex array of Holocene and Pleistocene alluvial and colluvial deposits, marine terraces, debris flows, and estuarine deposits. Soils are mostly well drained brown fine sandy loam of the Milpitas series. Rapid geologic uplift is characteristic of the entire region, as evidenced by the coastal bluffs and narrow beaches that are present along most of the coastline.


title: Santa Barbara, California

text: Downtown Santa Barbara occupies a floodplain between two major geologic faults, the Mission Ridge Fault Zone to the north and the Mesa Fault to the south. The Mission Ridge Fault Zone runs along the range of hills known locally as the "Riviera", and the Mesa Fault defines the northern boundary of the band of hills called the "Mesa". These two faults converge near the Five Points Shopping Center at Los Positas and State Streets. Neither is well-exposed, with their locations being inferred from topography, springs, seeps, and well logs. The Mesa Fault continues southeast offshore into the Santa Barbara Channel; the portion of the fault offshore is believed to have been responsible for the destructive earthquake of 1925. The Mission Ridge Fault trends east–west, being named the More Ranch Fault west of Santa Barbara, and forms the northern boundary of the uplands which include Isla Vista, More Mesa, and the Hope Ranch Hills.


title: Santa Barbara, California

text: Three major sedimentary bedrock units underlie the coastal plain: the Monterey Formation, the Sisquoc Formation, and the Santa Barbara Formation. The Santa Barbara Formation is one of the main units in the aquifer underlying the city. Its coarse-grained freshwater-bearing portion, much of which is below sea level, is protected from seawater intrusion by the More Ranch Fault, which has shielded it by uplifting less-permeable rocks between it and the sea. The majority of water wells in the Santa Barbara-Goleta area pull from this geologic unit.


title: Santa Barbara, California

text: The Santa Ynez Mountains to the north of the city consist of multiple layers of sandstone and conglomerate units dating from the Jurassic Age to the present, uplifted rapidly since the Pliocene, upended, and in some areas completely overturned. Rapid uplift has given these mountains their craggy, scenic character, and numerous landslides and debris flows, which form some of the urban and suburban lowland area, are testament to their geologically active nature.


title: Santa Barbara, California

text: The first Monterey-style adobe in California was built on State Street of Santa Barbara by the wealthy merchant Alpheus Thompson. The dominant architectural themes of Santa Barbara are the Mediterranean Revival, Spanish Colonial Revival and the related Mission Revival style, encouraged through design guidelines adopted by city leaders after the 1925 earthquake destroyed much of the downtown commercial district. Residential architectural styles in Santa Barbara reflect the era of their construction. Many late-1800s Victorian homes remain downtown and in the "Upper East" neighborhood. California bungalows are common, built in the early decades of the 20th century. Spanish Colonial Revival-style homes built after 1925 are common all over the city, especially in newer upscale residential areas like Montecito and Hope Ranch. Notable modernist and contemporary homes can be found as well.


title: Santa Barbara, California

text: Santa Barbara has a range of neighborhoods with distinctive histories, architecture, and culture. While considerable consensus exists as to the identification of neighborhood names and boundaries, variations exist between observers. For example, real estate agents may use different names than those used by public utilities or municipal service providers, such as police, fire, or water services. The following is a list of neighborhoods with descriptions and comments on each.


title: Santa Barbara, California

text: According to the 2010 United States Census the racial makeup of Santa Barbara was 66,411 (75.1%) White; 1,420 (1.6%) African American; 892 (1.0%) Native American; 3,062 (3.5%); Asian (1.0% Chinese, 0.6% Filipino, 0.5% Japanese, 0.4% Korean, 0.4% Indian, 0.2% Vietnamese, 0.4% other); 116 (0.1%) Pacific Islander; 13,032 (14.7%) from other races; 3,477 (3.9%) from two or more races. Hispanics or Latinos of any race were 33,591 persons (38.0%). Non-Hispanic Whites were 45,852 persons (52.2%)


title: Santa Barbara, California

text: The Census reported that 86,783 people (98.2% of the population) lived in households, 1,172 (1.3%) lived in non-institutionalized group quarters, and 455 (0.5%) were institutionalized.


title: Santa Barbara, California

text: Of the 35,449 households, 8,768 (24.7%) had children under the age of 18 living in them, 13,240 (37.3%) were opposite-sex married couples living together, 3,454 (9.7%) had a female householder with no husband present, and 1,539 (4.3%) had a male householder with no wife present. There were 2,420 (6.8%) unmarried opposite-sex partnerships, and 339 (1.0%) same-sex married couples or partnerships; 11,937 households (33.7%) were made up of individuals, and 4,340 (12.2%) had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.45. There were 18,233 families (51.4% of all households); the average family size was 3.13.


title: Santa Barbara, California

text: The population was spread out, with 16,468 people (18.6%) under the age of 18, 10,823 people (12.2%) aged 18 to 24, 26,241 people (29.7%) aged 25 to 44, 22,305 people (25.2%) aged 45 to 64, and 12,573 people (14.2%) who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 36.8 years. For every 100 females, there were 98.5 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 97.7 males.


title: Santa Barbara, California

text: There were 37,820 housing units at an average density of , of which 13,784 (38.9%) were owner-occupied, and 21,665 (61.1%) were occupied by renters. The homeowner vacancy rate was 1.3%; the rental vacancy rate was 4.1%; 34,056 people (38.5% of the population) lived in owner-occupied housing units and 52,727 people (59.6%) lived in rental housing units.


title: Santa Barbara, California

text: As of the census of 2000, 92,325 people*, 35,605 households, and 18,941 families resided in the city. The population density was . There were 37,076 housing units at an average density of . The racial makeup of the city was 74.0% White, 1.8% African American, 1.1% Native American, 2.8% Asian, 0.1% Pacific Islander, 16.4% from other races, and 3.9% from two or more races. People of Hispanic or Latino background, of any race, were 35.0% of the population.


title: Santa Barbara, California

text: Of the 35,605 households, 24.3% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 39.8% were married couples living together, 9.5% had a female householder with no husband present, and 46.8% were not families. About 32.9% of all households were made up of individuals, and 11.4% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.47 and the average family size was 3.17.


title: Santa Barbara, California

text: In the city, the population was distributed as 19.8% under the age of 18, 13.8% from 18 to 24, 32.3% from 25 to 44, 20.4% from 45 to 64, and 13.8% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 35 years. For every 100 females, there were 97.0 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 95.0 males.


title: Santa Barbara, California

text: The median income for a household in the city was $47,498, and for a family was $57,880. Males had a median income of $37,116 versus $31,911 for females. The per capita income for the city was $26,466. About 7.7% of families and 13.4% of the population were below the poverty line, including 16.8% of those under age 18 and 7.4% of those age 65 or over. If one compares the per capita income to the actual cost of living, the number of people living below the poverty line is considerably higher.


title: Santa Barbara, California

text: Aerospace and defense companies such as Alliant Techsystems, Channel Technologies Group, FLIR Systems, and Raytheon have major operations in the area. As a tourist destination, the hospitality industry has a significant presence in the regional economy. Among notable business ventures and innovations, Motel 6 was started in Santa Barbara in 1962. The Egg McMuffin was invented by Herb Peterson at the upper State Street McDonald's. The Habit Burger Grill restaurant chain began in Old Town Goleta. Kinko's (now owned by FedEx and known as FedEx Office) was founded by Paul Orfalea Isla Vista, near UC Santa Barbara, in 1970.


title: Santa Barbara, California

text: , southern Santa Barbara County employed more than half the county's total workers. The County's largest employers are:


title: Santa Barbara, California

text: Other major employers include Mission Linen Supply, Jordano's, Marborg Industries, the Santa Barbara Biltmore and San Ysidro Ranch, Westmont College, Mentor, CJ Affiliate, Beachfront Hilton Resort, Belmond El Encanto and QAD.


title: Santa Barbara, California

text: Retail centers include the traditional downtown area along lower State Street, where the Paseo Nuevo shopping center is located, and La Cumbre Plaza on upper State Street.


title: Santa Barbara, California

text: Santa Barbara contains numerous performing art venues, including the 2,000 seat Arlington Theatre, which is the largest indoor performance venue in Santa Barbara and site of the annual Santa Barbara International Film Festival. Other major venues include the Lobero Theatre, a historic building and favorite venue for small concerts; the Granada Theater, the tallest building downtown, originally built by contractor C.B. Urton in 1924, but with the theatre remodeled and reopened in March 2008; and the Santa Barbara Bowl, a 4,562 seat outdoor amphitheater in a canyon at the base of the Riviera.


title: Santa Barbara, California

text: The city is considered a haven for classical music lovers with a symphony orchestra, a professional opera company, and many non-profit classical music groups (such as CAMA). The Music Academy of the West, located in Montecito, hosts an annual music festival in the summer, drawing renowned students and professionals.


title: Santa Barbara, California

text: Santa Barbara is a year-round tourist destination renowned for its fair weather, downtown beaches, and Spanish architecture. Tourism brings more than one billion dollars per year into the local economy, including $80 million in tax revenue. Mission Santa Barbara, "The Queen of the Missions," is located on a rise about two miles (3 km) inland from the harbor, and is an active Franciscan mission and place of worship, sightseeing stop, and national historic landmark. Annually over the Memorial Day weekend, there is a chalk-art festival known as "I Madonnari", with ephemeral works of art created on the asphalt in front of the mission, and food stalls set up and music.


title: Santa Barbara, California

text: The Santa Barbara County Courthouse, a red tiled Spanish-Moorish structure, provides a view of the downtown area from its open air tower. The Presidio of Santa Barbara, a Spanish military installation and chapel built in 1782, was central to the town's early development and colonial roots. In 1855, the Presidio Chapel, being in decay, grew into the Apostolic College of Our Lady of Sorrows, now Our Lady of Sorrows Church.


title: Santa Barbara, California

text: The annual Fiesta (originally called "Old Spanish Days") is celebrated every year in August. The Fiesta is hosted by the Native Daughters of the Golden West and the Native Sons of the Golden West in a joint committee called the Fiesta Board. Fiesta was originally started as a tourist attraction, like the Rose Bowl, to draw business into the town in the 1920s. Flower Girls and Las Señoritas march and participate in both Fiesta Pequeña (the kickoff of Fiesta) and the various parades. Flower Girls is for girls under 13. They throw roses and other flowers into the crowds. Las Señoritas are their older escorts. Many Señoritas join the Native Daughters at the age of 16.


title: Santa Barbara, California

text: The annual Santa Barbara French Festival takes place on Bastille Day weekend in July and is the largest French Festival in the western United States.


title: Santa Barbara, California

text: New Noise Music Conference and Festival, established in 2009, is a four-day event with the main party in the Funk Zone, a small art and wine tasting section of the city near the beach, and other small bands to local venues around the city. New Noise brings in over 75 bands and 50 speakers to the festival each year.


title: Santa Barbara, California

text: For over 40 years, the Santa Barbara Arts and Crafts Show has been held on Cabrillo Boulevard, east of Stearns Wharf and along the beach, attracting thousands of people to see artwork made by artists and crafts people that live in Santa Barbara county. By the rules of the show, all the works displayed must have been made by the artists and craftspeople themselves, who sell their own goods. The show started in the early 1960s, and now has over 200 booths on Sundays. The show is also held on some Saturdays that are national holidays, but not during inclement weather.


title: Santa Barbara, California

text: The Santa Barbara International Film Festival, another local non-profit, draws over 50,000 attendees during what is usually Santa Barbara's slow season in late January. SBIFF hosts a wide variety of celebrities, premieres, panels and movies from around the world and runs for 10 days.


title: Santa Barbara, California

text: The annual Summer Solstice Parade draws up to 100,000 people. It is a colorful themed parade put on by local residents, and follows a route along State Street for approximately one mile, ending at Alameda Park. Its main rule is that no written messages or banners with words are allowed. Floats and costumes vary from the whimsical to the outrageous; parties and street events take place throughout the weekend of the parade, the first weekend after the solstice.


title: Santa Barbara, California

text: Surfing is a part of Santa Barbara culture. The late Bruce Brown's cult classic documentary, "The Endless Summer", put surfing on the map, and he was often seen around town prior to his passing in December 2017. Surfing legend Pat Curren and his son, three time world champion Tom Curren, as well as ten time world champion Kelly Slater, and other popular surfers such as Shaun Tompson, Jack Johnson and Chris Brown call Santa Barbara home. The Channel Islands block summer surf swells that come from the tropics or further south, the southern hemisphere. For these reasons Santa Barbara is viewed as a winter surf location.


title: Santa Barbara, California

text: The Santa Barbara Museum of Art (SBMA), located on State Street, features nationally recognized collections and special exhibitions of international importance. Highlights of the Museum's permanent collection include antiquities; 19th-century French, British, and American art; 20th-century and contemporary European, North American, and Latin American art; Asian art; photography; and works on paper. It has an education program that serves local and surrounding communities through extensive on-site programming and curriculum resources.


title: Santa Barbara, California

text: Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara (MCASB), located on the top floor of Paseo Nuevo shopping mall, is a non-profit, non-collecting museum dedicated to the exhibition, education, and cultivation of the arts of our time. It offers free admission to its exhibitions and public programming.


title: Santa Barbara, California

text: Other art venues include the University Art Museum on the University of California at Santa Barbara Campus, various private galleries, and a wide variety of art and photography shows. The Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History is located immediately behind the Santa Barbara Mission in a complex of Mission-style buildings set in a park-like campus. The Museum offers indoor and outdoor exhibits and a state-of-the-art planetarium.


title: Santa Barbara, California

text: The Santa Barbara Historical Museum is located on De La Guerra Street. The Santa Barbara Maritime Museum is located at 113 Harbor Way (the former Naval Reserve Center Santa Barbara) on the waterfront. The Karpeles Manuscript Library Museum (free admission) houses a collection of historical documents and manuscripts. Two open air museums here are Lotusland and Casa del Herrero, exemplifying the American Country Place era in Santa Barbara. Casa Dolores, center for the popular arts of Mexico, is devoted to the collection, preservation, study, and exhibition of an extensive variety of objects of the popular arts of Mexico.


title: Santa Barbara, California

text: The Reagan Ranch Center is a three-story museum and gallery operated by Young America's Foundation, next to the Amtrak Station on Lower State Street. Its focus is the history of the Rancho del Cielo and the role it played in Ronald Reagan's life.


title: Santa Barbara, California

text: Athletics teams wearing the UC Santa Barbara Gauchos uniform are some of the most popular spectator sports locally. The Gauchos field 20 varsity teams in NCAA Division I, most of which play in the Big West Conference. Popular teams include the men's soccer team, which averages over 3,800 fans per game, and the men's basketball team, which averages over 2,300 fans per game.


title: Santa Barbara, California

text: Santa Barbara annually hosts the "Semana Nautica" Summer Sports Festival. One of the main events of the festival is the Semana Nautica 15K, the oldest continuously running race on California's central coast. Nite Moves is a popular local 5k race, with an optional ocean swim portion, open to all ages and held on Wednesday evenings from May to the end of August.


title: Santa Barbara, California

text: Santa Barbara has many parks, ranging from small spaces within the urban environment to large, semi-wilderness areas that remain within the city limits. Some notable parks within the city limits are as follows:


title: Santa Barbara, California

text: In addition to these parks, there are other hiking trails in Santa Barbara. A 6–7 mile hike from Gaviota State Park traverses the mountains with an ocean view.


title: Santa Barbara, California

text: In 2015, the city council voted to change from at-large elections to district elections for city council seats.


title: Santa Barbara, California

text: All of Santa Barbara County falls into California's 24th congressional district. The district leans towards the Democratic Party, with a PVI of D+10, making it politically aligned with the rest of California overall. The current Representative is Salud Carbajal.


title: Santa Barbara, California

text: Secondary and Primary School students go to the Santa Barbara and Hope district schools. There are also a variety of private schools in the area. The following schools are on the south coast of Santa Barbara County, including the cities of Santa Barbara, Goleta, Carpinteria, and contiguous unincorporated areas.


title: Santa Barbara, California

text: In addition, the business journal "Pacific Coast Business Times" covers Ventura, Santa Barbara, and San Luis Obispo counties.


title: Santa Barbara, California

text: Some Los Angeles radio stations can be heard, although somewhat faintly due to the distance. Santa Monica-based NPR radio station KCRW can be heard in Santa Barbara at 106.9 MHz, and San Luis Obispo-based NPR station KCBX at 89.5 FM and 90.9 FM. The California Lutheran University operated NPR station KCLU (102.3 FM, 1340 AM) based in Thousand Oaks in Ventura County also serves Santa Barbara and has reporters covering the city. The only non-commercial radio station based in Santa Barbara is KCSB-FM (91.9 FM), owned by the University of California, Santa Barbara, which uses it as part of its educational mission.


title: Santa Barbara, California

text: Santa Barbara is bisected by U.S. Route 101, an automotive transportation corridor that links the city to the rest of the Central Coast region, San Francisco to the north, and Los Angeles to the southeast. Santa Barbara Municipal Airport offers commercial air service. Santa Barbara Aviation provides locally based private jet charter aircraft. Amtrak offers rail service through the "Coast Starlight" and "Pacific Surfliner" trains at the Santa Barbara station on State Street, and another stop at Goleta Station.


title: Santa Barbara, California

text: The Santa Barbara Metropolitan Transit District (MTD) provides local bus service across the city. Greyhound bus lines provide service to downtown Santa Barbara. Electric shuttles operated by MTD ferry tourists and shoppers up and down lower State Street and to the wharf. The Clean Air Express bus offers connections to Lompoc and Santa Maria. Ventura Intercity Service Transit Authority (VISTA) bus service offers connections south to Ventura and west to Goleta. Santa Barbara Airbus offers daily service to/from LAX from downtown Santa Barbara, Carpinteria and Goleta.


title: Santa Barbara, California

text: Santa Barbara has an extensive network of bike trails and other resources for cyclists, and the League of American Bicyclists recognizes Santa Barbara as a Silver Level city. Santa Barbara Car Free promotes visiting and exploring the area without use of a car.


title: Santa Barbara, California

text: Often chosen as a winter training location for professional cycling teams and snowbirds, Santa Barbara has cycling routes and several climbs, including Gibraltar Road and Old San Marcos/Painted Cave. A bike path and route connects the University of California, Santa Barbara to the downtown area, passing through Goleta and Hope Ranch. Bike rentals are a way for tourists to view Santa Barbara and the surrounding area. In 2009, the Santa Barbara-Santa Maria-Goleta metropolitan statistical area (MSA) ranked as the sixth highest in the United States for percentage of commuters who biked to work (4 percent).


title: Santa Barbara, California

text: In 2020, Santa Barbara ceased being sister cities with Dingle, Ireland. In 2006, Santa Barbara ceased being sister cities with Yalta, Crimea.


title: Santa Barbara, California

text: "Psych" was set in Santa Barbara, though White Rock, British Columbia, Canada, was used as the filming location.


title: Santa Barbara, California

text: "An American Family", which is known as the first American reality television show, chronicled the daily lives of a family living in Santa Barbara.


title: Santa Barbara, California

text: In 2022, shooting began on season 4 of the reality TV series "Love Island," which is set at Dos Pueblos Ranch, a 214-acre ranch west of Goleta.


title: V8 engine

text: A V8 engine is an eight-cylinder piston engine in which two banks of four cylinders share a common crankshaft and are arranged in a V configuration.


title: V8 engine

text: The first V8 engine was produced by the French Antoinette company in 1904, developed and used in cars and speedboats but primarily aircraft; while the American 1914–1935 "Cadillac L-Head" engine is considered the first road going V8 engine to be mass produced in significant quantities. The popularity of V8 engines in cars was greatly increased following the 1932 introduction of the "Ford Flathead V8".


title: V8 engine

text: In the early 21st century, use of V8 engines in passenger vehicles declined as automobile manufacturers opted for more fuel efficient, lower capacity engines, or hybrid and electric drivetrains.


title: V8 engine

text: The majority of V8 engines use a V-angle (the angle between the two banks of cylinders) of 90 degrees. This angle results in good engine balance, which results in low vibrations; however, the downside is a larger width than V8 engines that use a smaller V-angle.


title: V8 engine

text: V8 engines with a 60 degree V-angle were used in the 1996–1999 Ford Taurus SHO, the 2005–2011 Volvo XC90, and the 2006–2009 Volvo S80. The Ford engine used a 60 degree V-angle because it was based on a V6 engine with a 60 degree V-angle. Both the Ford and Volvo engines were used in transverse engine chassis, which were designed for a front-wheel-drive layout (with on-demand all-wheel drive system in the case of the Volvos). To reduce the vibrations caused by the unbalanced 60 degree V-angle, the Volvo engines used a balance shaft and offset split crankpins. The Rolls-Royce Meteorite tank engine also used a 60 degree V-angle, since it was derived from the 60 degree V12 Rolls-Royce Meteor which in turn was based on the famous Rolls-Royce Merlin V12 engine.


title: V8 engine

text: Other V-angles have been used occasionally. The Lancia Trikappa, Lancia Dilambda, and Lancia Astura, produced 1922–1939, used narrow angle V8 engines (based on the "Lancia V4 engine") with V-angles of 14—24 degrees. The 1932 Miller four-wheel drive racing cars used a V8 engine with a V-angle of 45 degrees. The 8-cylinder versions of the 1945–1966 EMD 567 diesel locomotive engine also used a V-angle of 45 degrees.


title: V8 engine

text: Most V8 engines fitted to road cars use a cross-plane crankshaft, since this configuration produces less vibration due to the perfect primary balance and secondary balance. The cross-plane crankshaft has the four crank pins (numbered from the front) at angles of 0, 90, 180, and 270 degrees, which results in a cross shape for the crankshaft when it is viewed from one end.


title: V8 engine

text: The iconic rumbling exhaust sound produced by a typical cross-plane V8 engine is partly due to the uneven firing order within each of the two banks of four cylinders. A typical firing order of L-R-L-L-R-L-R-R (or R-L-R-R-L-R-L-L) results in uneven intake and exhaust pulse spacing for each bank. When separate exhaust systems are used for each bank of cylinders, this uneven pulsing results in the rumbling sound that is typically associated with V8 engines. However, racing engines seek to avoid these uneven exhaust pressure pulses, to maximize the power output. The 1960s cross-plane V8 racing engines used long primary exhaust pipes (such as the Ford GT40 endurance racing car) or located the exhaust ports on the inside of the V-angle (such as the Lotus 38 IndyCar) to link the exhaust systems from each bank and provide even exhaust gas pulses).


title: V8 engine

text: This configuration provides two benefits. Mechanically, the crankshaft can be machined from a flat billet and does not require counterweights so it is lighter. However, it produces more vibration due to a secondary imbalance.


title: V8 engine

text: From the gas dynamics aspect, the flat-plane crankshaft allows for even exhaust gas pulsing to be achieved with a simple exhaust system. The design was popularized in motor racing by the 1961–1965 Coventry Climax FWMV Formula One engine, and the 1967–1985 Cosworth DFV engine was highly successful in Formula One. Several production sports cars have used flat-plane V8 engines, such as every Ferrari V8 model (from the 1973 Ferrari 308 GT4 to the 2019-present Ferrari F8 Tributo), the Lotus Esprit V8, the Porsche 918 Spyder, and the McLaren MP4-12C.


title: V8 engine

text: Most early V8 road car engines also used a flat-plane crankshaft, since this was simpler to design and build than a cross-plane crankshaft. Early flat-plane V8 engines included the 1910 De Dion-Bouton engine, the 1915 Peerless engine, and the 1915 engine.


title: V8 engine

text: The first known V8 engine was the Antoinette engine, designed by Léon Levavasseur, which was first built in 1904. The Antoinette was built in France for use in speedboat racing and, later, airplanes. A 1905 version of the Antoinette engine produced with of weight (including cooling water), resulting in a power-to-weight ratio that was not surpassed for 25 years. Also in 1904, V8 engines began small-scale production by Renault and Buchet for use in race cars.


title: V8 engine

text: In 1905, the first V8 engine used in a road-going car was the Rolls-Royce V-8 built in the United Kingdom. This model was initially produced with a V8 engine, however only three cars were produced before Rolls-Royce reverted to using straight-six engines. In 1907, the "Hewitt Touring Car" became the first car built in the United States with a V8 engine. The 1910 De Dion-Bouton— built in France— is considered to be the first V8 engine produced in significant quantities.


title: V8 engine

text: The 1914 Cadillac L-head V8 engine is considered to be the first mass-production V8 engine. This engine was built in the United States and was greatly assisted by Cadillac's pioneering use of electric starter motors.


title: V8 engine

text: Early airplanes continued to use V8 engines, such as the 1915 Hispano-Suiza 8 SOHC engine designed in Switzerland. This engine was used by American, French, and British military aircraft in World War One. It is estimated that approximately half of all Allied aircraft were powered by the Hispano-Suiza 8 engine.


title: V8 engine

text: The V8 engine with a cross-plane crankshaft is a common configuration for large automobile engines. The displacement of modern V8 engines is typically between , though larger and smaller examples have been produced, such as the V8 engine used in the 1971–1978 Cadillac Eldorado.


title: V8 engine

text: Due to its large external dimensions, V8 engines are typically used in cars that use a longitudinal engine layout and rear-wheel drive (or all-wheel drive). However, V8 engines have also occasionally been used in transverse engine front-wheel drive vehicles, sometimes using closer cylinder bore spacings and narrower cylinder bank angles to reduce their space requirements.


title: V8 engine

text: The first Australian designed car to use a V8 engine was the 1965 Chrysler Valiant (AP6), which was available with an American-built Chrysler engine. The first locally designed V8 Ford was the 1966 Ford Falcon (XR) and the first V8 Holden was the 1968 Holden HK, both using engines supplied by their parent companies in the United States.


title: V8 engine

text: The first V8 engine to be mass-produced in Australia was the 1969–2000 Holden V8 engine. This cast-iron overhead valve engine used a V-angle of 90 degrees and was built in displacements of and , the latter being de-stroked to in 1985. The Holden V8 engine was used in various models including the Kingswood, Monaro, Torana, Commodore, and Statesman. Versions tuned for higher performance were sold by Holden Dealer Team and Holden Special Vehicles, including versions stroked to up to . The Holden V8 engine was also used in touring car racing and formed the basis of the Repco-Holden engined used in Formula 5000 racing. In 1999, the Holden V8 engine began to be replaced by the imported General Motors LS1 V8 engine.


title: V8 engine

text: In 1971, Ford Australia began local production of the Ford 'Cleveland' V8, an overhead valve cast-iron engine. The engine was produced in displacements of and for use in the Australian Ford Falcon and Ford Fairlane models. It was also used in several low-volume DeTomaso sports cars and luxury sedans built in Italy. Australian production ceased in 1982 when Ford Australia temporarily ceased production of V8 cars. From 1991 to 2016, the Ford Falcon was available with the imported Ford Windsor, Ford Barra or Ford Modular V8 engines; the latter were marketed as "Boss" and locally assembled from a mix of imported and local parts.


title: V8 engine

text: A version of the Rover V8 engine was produced in Australia for the ill-fated 1973–1975 Leyland P76 sedan. The engine was an overhead valve design and the only all-aluminium engine produced in Australia.


title: V8 engine

text: The 1958–1965 Hongqi CA72 was a luxury car, of which approximately 200 were built for government officials. It was powered by a Chrysler LA engine and built on the chassis of a 1950s Chrysler Imperial.


title: V8 engine

text: The 1934–1938 Tatra 77 rear-engined sedan was initially powered by petrol V8, which was air-cooled and used an overhead camshaft that operated the valves using a 'walking beam' rocker arrangement. This model line continued until 1999 when the Tatra 700 ended production.


title: V8 engine

text: French manufacturers were pioneering in their use of V8 engines in the early 1900s with the 1904 Antoinette aircraft engine (the first known V8 engine) and the 1910 De Dion-Bouton. However, there were few French automotive V8 engines in the following decades, with manufacturers such as Delage, Delahaye, Talbot-Lago, Bugatti, and Hotchkiss instead using six-cylinder or straight-eight engines.


title: V8 engine

text: From 1935 to 1954, Matford (Ford's French subsidiary, later renamed to 'Ford SAF') produced cars with V8 engines, closely based on contemporary American Ford models. Simca purchased the Ford SAF in 1954 and continued to produce various models powered by the Ford Flathead V8 until 1969.


title: V8 engine

text: After WW2, France imposed very steep tax horsepower charges - the owners of cars with engines above 2 L were financially penalized, so France had a very small domestic market for larger-engined cars, such as the V8. Despite this, Facel Vega produced luxury and sports cars powered by Chrysler V8 engines from 1954 to 1964.


title: V8 engine

text: One of the first German V8 engines was the 1928–1945 Argus As 10 aircraft engine. This engine was air-cooled, used an 'inverted V' design, and was used in several training, reconnaissance, and communications airplanes.


title: V8 engine

text: From 1933 to 1940, the Horch 830 luxury cars were powered by V8 engines (sold alongside Horch's larger straight-eight engines). Shortly after, the 1934–1937 Stoewer Greif V8 was powered by a V8 engine.


title: V8 engine

text: BMW's first V8 engine was the 1954–1965 BMW OHV V8 engine, a petrol engine with overhead valves and all-aluminium construction. The company resumed production of V8 engines in 1992 with the BMW M60 aluminium double overhead camshaft engine, and V8 engines have remained in production until the present day. BMW's first turbocharged V8 engine was the 1998-2009 M67 twin-turbocharged diesel engine. The first turbocharged V8 petrol engine from BMW was the 2008–present BMW N63 engine.


title: V8 engine

text: Their first eight-cylinder engine since passenger car and motorsport straight-eight engine production stopped in 1944 and 1955 respectively, Mercedes-Benz began production of the Mercedes-Benz M100 petrol V8 engine in 1963 and has continued production of V8 engines to the present day. The M100 had a single overhead camshaft, a cast-iron block and an aluminium head. Supercharging was first used on the Mercedes-Benz M113 engine in 2002 and turbocharging was first used on non-commercial diesel V8 engines in 1999 with the OM628 and on petrol engines with the M278 engine in 2010.


title: V8 engine

text: Porsche's first road car to use a V8 engine was the 1978 Porsche 928 coupe. Its first to use a V8 diesel engine was the second-generation Cayenne S Diesel in 2014.


title: V8 engine

text: Audi's first road car to use a V8 engine was the 1988 Audi V8 luxury sedan. Its first model to use a V8 diesel engine was the D2 A8 3.3 TDI in 2000.


title: V8 engine

text: The first V8-engined Alfa Romeo road car was the 1967–1969 Alfa Romeo 33 Stradale mid-engined sports car, of which 18 cars were produced. This was followed by the 1970–1977 Alfa Romeo Montreal front-engined sports car. The engines for both cars are based on the 90-degree V8 engine from the Alfa Romeo Tipo 33 racing car, and have double overhead camshafts and a dry sump. The 33 Stradale engine has a displacement of and a flat-plane crankshaft, while the Montreal uses an engine enlarged to and uses a cross-plane crankshaft.


title: V8 engine

text: The 2007–2010 Alfa Romeo 8C Competizione / Spider sports cars are powered by a version of the Ferrari F136 engine with a cross-plane crankshaft.


title: V8 engine

text: Ferrari's first contact with V8 engines was the Vittorio Jano-designed 1955 Lancia-Ferrari D50, a Formula One racing car that the company acquired as part of its purchase of Lancia's Formula One racing department. The first Ferrari-developed V8 engines were used in the 1962 Ferrari 248 SP and Ferrari 268 SP sports prototype racing cars, designed by Carlo Chiti. This engine had a single overhead camshaft and was rear-mounted in the cars.


title: V8 engine

text: The company's first V8 road car was the 1973–1974 Dino 308 GT4 mid-engined sports car. The engine is a 90-degree all-aluminium V8 with double overhead camshafts. In 1975, the engine in the Ferrari 208 GT4 became the smallest production V8 engine ever produced. The model lineage of mid-engined V8 road cars continues to the 2019–present Ferrari F8 Tributo.


title: V8 engine

text: Five-valve-per-cylinder versions were used 1994–2005 in the Ferrari F355 and Ferrari 360. Turbocharging was introduced on the 1984–1987 Ferrari 288 GTO flagship car and the range of entry-level mid-engined sports cars switched to turbocharging with the 2015 Ferrari 488.


title: V8 engine

text: The Formula One team resumed usage of V8 engines for the 2006–2013 seasons, beginning with the Ferrari 248 F1.


title: V8 engine

text: The first Maserati V8 road car was the 1959–1965 Maserati 5000 GT luxury coupe, of which only 34 cars were produced. The 5000 GT used a overhead camshaft engine derived from the "Maserati 450S" racing car. Developments of this engine were used in the 1963–1969 Maserati Quattroporte I luxury sedan, the 1967–1973 Maserati Ghibli, the 1971–1978 Maserati Bora 2-seat coupe, and several other models.


title: V8 engine

text: The 1990–1996 Maserati Shamal 2+2 coupe introduced a turbocharged V8 engine based on the existing "Maserati Biturbo V6". This engine was later replaced by the naturally aspirated Ferrari F136 V8 engine, beginning with the 2001 "Maserati Coupé / Spyder".


title: V8 engine

text: During the 1920s and 1930s, Lancia produced a line of range-topping luxury cars powered by V8 engines: the 1922–1925 Lancia Trikappa, the 1928–1935 Lancia Dilambda, and the 1931–1939 Lancia Astura. The engines ranged in displacement from and used unusually narrow V-angles of 14 to 24 degrees with a single overhead camshaft. In the 1980s, an engine derived from Ferrari's V8 engine was transverse-mounted in the Lancia Thema 8.32.


title: V8 engine

text: The only Fiat car to use a V8 engine was the Fiat 8V, of which approximately 100 were produced 1952–1954. The pushrod engine used an all-aluminium construction and an unusual V-angle of 70 degrees. Fiat also began production of V8 diesel truck engines for the 1975 "Des-8280", initially in naturally aspirated form before switching to turbocharging in the mid-1980s.


title: V8 engine

text: Lamborghini's V8 powered models are the 1972–1979 Lamborghini Urraco 2+2 coupe, 1976–1979 Lamborghini Silhouette 2-seat convertible, and 1981–1988 Lamborghini Jalpa 2-seat convertible. The 2018–present Lamborghini Urus SUV uses a Volkswagen Group turbocharged V8 engine.


title: V8 engine

text: Japanese manufacturers have not been large producers of V8 engines for passenger cars, due to Japanese government road tax regulations that impose higher charges for engines that exceed . However several passenger cars have been produced with V8 engines to meet the needs of consumers, as well as for use in motor racing.


title: V8 engine

text: Honda has never produced V8 engines for passenger vehicles. In the late 1990s, the company resisted considerable pressure from its American dealers for a V8 engine with American Honda reportedly sending one dealer a shipment of "V8" vegetable juice to silence them. The only Honda car sold with a V8 engine was the 1993–1998 Honda Crossroad SUV, which was a rebadged Land Rover Discovery Series I fitted with the Rover V8 engine.


title: V8 engine

text: In motor racing, the Honda Indy V8 was produced for the 2003–2011 IndyCar racing series and was the control engine for the 2006–2011 seasons. The engine was a all-aluminium V8 with double-overhead camshafts, with a power output of 650-700 hp, and a 10,300 rpm redline. The 2006–2008 Honda Racing F1 Team used 2.4 L V8 engines, which produced around at 19,000 rpm, as mandated by Formula One regulations.