title: Giacomo Casanova

text: In Rome, Casanova had to prepare a way for his return to Venice. While waiting for supporters to gain him legal entry into Venice, Casanova began his modern Tuscan-Italian translation of the "Iliad", his "History of the Troubles in Poland", and a comic play. To ingratiate himself with the Venetian authorities, Casanova did some commercial spying for them. After months without a recall, however, he wrote a letter of appeal directly to the Inquisitors. At last, he received his long-sought permission and burst into tears upon reading "We, Inquisitors of State, for reasons known to us, give Giacomo Casanova a free safe-conduct ... empowering him to come, go, stop, and return, hold communication wheresoever he pleases without let or hindrance. So is our will." Casanova was permitted to return to Venice in September 1774 after 18 years of exile.


title: Giacomo Casanova

text: At first, his return to Venice was a cordial one and he was a celebrity. Even the Inquisitors wanted to hear how he had escaped from their prison. Of his three bachelor patrons, however, only Dandolo was still alive and Casanova was invited back to live with him. He received a small stipend from Dandolo and hoped to live from his writings, but that was not enough. He reluctantly became a spy again for Venice, paid by piece work, reporting on religion, morals, and commerce, most of it based on gossip and rumor he picked up from social contacts. He was disappointed. No financial opportunities of interest came about and few doors opened for him in society as in the past.


title: Giacomo Casanova

text: At age 49, the years of reckless living and the thousands of miles of travel had taken their toll. Casanova's smallpox scars, sunken cheeks, and hook nose became all the more noticeable. His easygoing manner was now more guarded. Prince Charles de Ligne, a friend (and uncle of his future employer), described him around 1784:


title: Giacomo Casanova

text: Venice had changed for him. Casanova now had little money for gambling, few willing females worth pursuing, and few acquaintances to enliven his dull days. He heard of the death of his mother and, more paining, visited the deathbed of Bettina Gozzi, who had first introduced him to sex and who died in his arms. His "Iliad" was published in three volumes, but to limited subscribers and yielding little money. He got into a published dispute with Voltaire over religion. When he asked, "Suppose that you succeed in destroying superstition. With what will you replace it?" Voltaire shot back, "I like that. When I deliver humanity from a ferocious beast which devours it, can I be asked what I shall put in its place." From Casanova's point of view, if Voltaire had "been a proper philosopher, he would have kept silent on that subject ... the people need to live in ignorance for the general peace of the nation".


title: Giacomo Casanova

text: In 1779, Casanova found Francesca, an uneducated seamstress, who became his live-in lover and housekeeper, and who loved him devotedly. Later that year, the Inquisitors put him on the payroll and sent him to investigate commerce between the papal states and Venice. Other publishing and theater ventures failed, primarily from lack of capital. In a downward spiral, Casanova was expelled again from Venice in 1783, after writing a vicious satire poking fun at Venetian nobility. In it, he made his only public statement that Grimani was his true father.


title: Giacomo Casanova

text: Forced to resume his travels again, Casanova arrived in Paris, and in November 1783 met Benjamin Franklin while attending a presentation on aeronautics and the future of balloon transport. For a while, Casanova served as secretary and pamphleteer to Sebastian Foscarini, Venetian ambassador in Vienna. He also became acquainted with Lorenzo Da Ponte, Mozart's librettist, who noted about Casanova, "This singular man never liked to be in the wrong." Notes by Casanova indicate that he may have made suggestions to Da Ponte concerning the libretto for Mozart's "Don Giovanni".


title: Giacomo Casanova

text: In 1785, after Foscarini died, Casanova began searching for another position. A few months later, he became the librarian to Count Joseph Karl von Waldstein, a chamberlain of the emperor, in the Castle of Dux, Bohemia (now the Czech Republic). The count—himself a Freemason, cabalist, and frequent traveler—had taken to Casanova when they had met a year earlier at Foscarini's residence. Although the job offered security and good pay, Casanova describes his last years as boring and frustrating, though it was the most productive time for writing. His health had deteriorated dramatically, and he found life among peasants to be less than stimulating. He was only able to make occasional visits to Vienna and Dresden for relief. Although Casanova got on well with the count, his employer was a much younger man with his own eccentricities. The count often ignored him at meals and failed to introduce him to important visiting guests. Moreover, Casanova, the testy outsider, was thoroughly disliked by most of the other inhabitants of the Castle of Dux. Casanova's only friends seemed to be his fox terriers. In despair, Casanova considered suicide, but instead decided that he must live on to record his memoirs, which he did until his death.


title: Giacomo Casanova

text: He visited Prague, the capital city and principal cultural center of Bohemia, on many occasions. In October 1787, he met Lorenzo da Ponte, the librettist of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's opera "Don Giovanni", in Prague at the time of the opera's first production and likely met the composer, as well, at the same time. There is reason to believe that he was also in Prague in 1791 for the coronation of Holy Roman Emperor Leopold II as king of Bohemia, an event that included the first production of Mozart's opera . Casanova is known to have drafted dialogue suitable for a Don Juan drama at the time of his visit to Prague in 1787, but none of his verses were ever incorporated into Mozart's "Don Giovanni". His reaction to seeing licentious behavior similar to his own held up to moral scrutiny as it is in Mozart's opera is not recorded.


title: Giacomo Casanova

text: In 1797, word arrived that the Republic of Venice had ceased to exist and that Napoleon Bonaparte had seized Casanova's home city. It was too late to return home. Casanova died on 4 June 1798 at the age of 73. His last words are said to have been "I have lived as a philosopher and I die as a Christian". Casanova was buried at Dux (nowadays Duchcov in the Czech Republic), but the exact place of his grave was forgotten over the years, and remains unknown today.


title: Giacomo Casanova

text: The isolation and boredom of Casanova's last years enabled him to focus without distractions on his "Histoire de ma vie", without which his fame would have been considerably diminished, if not blotted out entirely. He began to think about writing his memoirs around 1780 and began in earnest by 1789, as "the only remedy to keep from going mad or dying of grief". The first draft was completed by July 1792, and he spent the next six years revising it. He puts a happy face on his days of loneliness, writing in his work, "I can find no pleasanter pastime than to converse with myself about my own affairs and to provide a most worthy subject for laughter to my well-bred audience." His memoirs were still being compiled at the time of his death, his account having reached only the summer of 1774. A letter by him in 1792 states that he was reconsidering his decision to publish them, believing that his story was despicable and he would make enemies by writing the truth about his affairs, but he decided to proceed, using initials instead of actual names and toning down the strongest passages. He wrote in French instead of Italian because "the French language is more widely known than mine".


title: Giacomo Casanova

text: He also advises his readers that they "will not find all my adventures. I have left out those which would have offended the people who played a part in them, for they would cut a sorry figure in them. Even so, there are those who will sometimes think me too indiscreet; I am sorry for it." In the final chapter, the text abruptly breaks off with hints at adventures unrecorded: "Three years later I saw her in Padua, where I resumed my acquaintance with her daughter on far more tender terms."


title: Giacomo Casanova

text: In their original publication, the memoirs were divided into twelve volumes, and the unabridged English translation by Willard R. Trask runs to more than 3,500 pages. Though his chronology is at times confusing and inaccurate, and many of his tales exaggerated, much of his narrative and many details are corroborated by contemporary writings. He has a good ear for dialogue and writes at length about all classes of society. Casanova, for the most part, is candid about his faults, intentions, and motivations, and shares his successes and failures with good humor. The confession is largely devoid of repentance or remorse. He celebrates the senses with his readers, especially regarding music, food, and women. "I have always liked highly seasoned food. ... As for women, I have always found that the one I was in love with smelled good, and the more copious her sweat the sweeter I found it." He mentions over 120 adventures with women and girls, with several veiled references to male lovers as well. He describes his duels and conflicts with scoundrels and officials, his entrapments and his escapes, his schemes and plots, his anguish and his sighs of pleasure. He demonstrates convincingly, "I can say "vixi" ('I have lived')."


title: Giacomo Casanova

text: The manuscript of Casanova's memoirs was held by his relatives until it was sold to F. A. Brockhaus publishers, and first published in heavily abridged versions in German around 1822, then in French. During World War II, the manuscript survived the allied bombing of Leipzig. The memoirs were heavily pirated through the ages and have been translated into some twenty languages. But not until 1960 was the entire text published in its original language of French. In 2010 the manuscript was acquired by the National Library of France, which has started digitizing it.


title: Giacomo Casanova

text: For Casanova, as well as his contemporary sybarites of the upper class, love and sex tended to be casual and not endowed with the seriousness characteristic of the Romanticism of the 19th century. Flirtations, bedroom games, and short-term liaisons were common among nobles who married for social connections rather than love.


title: Giacomo Casanova

text: Although multi-faceted and complex, Casanova's personality, as he described it, was dominated by his sensual urges: "Cultivating whatever gave pleasure to my senses was always the chief business of my life; I never found any occupation more important. Feeling that I was born for the sex opposite of mine, I have always loved it and done all that I could to make myself loved by it." He noted that he sometimes used "assurance caps" to prevent impregnating his mistresses.


title: Giacomo Casanova

text: Casanova's ideal liaison had elements beyond sex, including complicated plots, heroes and villains, and gallant outcomes. In a pattern he often repeated, he would discover an attractive woman in trouble with a brutish or jealous lover (Act I); he would ameliorate her difficulty (Act II); she would show her gratitude; he would seduce her; a short exciting affair would ensue (Act III); feeling a loss of ardor or boredom setting in, he would plead his unworthiness and arrange for her marriage or pairing with a worthy man, then exit the scene (Act IV). As William Bolitho points out in "Twelve Against the Gods", the secret of Casanova's success with women "had nothing more esoteric in it than [offering] what every woman who respects herself must demand: all that he had, all that he was, with (to set off the lack of legality) the dazzling attraction of the lump sum over what is more regularly doled out in a lifetime of installments."


title: Giacomo Casanova

text: Casanova advises, "There is no honest woman with an uncorrupted heart whom a man is not sure of conquering by dint of gratitude. It is one of the surest and shortest means." Alcohol and violence, for him, were not proper tools of seduction. Instead, attentiveness and small favors should be employed to soften a woman's heart, but "a man who makes known his love by words is a fool". Verbal communication is essential—"without speech, the pleasure of love is diminished by at least two-thirds"—but words of love must be implied, not boldly proclaimed.


title: Giacomo Casanova

text: Casanova claimed to value intelligence in a woman: "After all, a beautiful woman without a mind of her own leaves her lover with no resource after he had physically enjoyed her charms." His attitude towards educated women, however, was an unfavorable one: "In a woman learning is out of place; it compromises the essential qualities of her sex ... no scientific discoveries have been made by women ... (which) requires a vigor which the female sex cannot have. But in simple reasoning and in delicacy of feeling we must yield to women."


title: Giacomo Casanova

text: Casanova's actions are considered by many in modern times to be predatory, despite his claims to contrary ("my guiding principle has been never to direct my attack against novices or those whose prejudices were likely to prove an obstacle"); he frequently targeted young, insecure or emotionally exposed women.


title: Giacomo Casanova

text: Casanova writes that he stopped short of intercourse with a 13-year-old named Helene: "little Helene, whom I enjoyed, while leaving her intact." In 1765, when he was 40, he purchased a 12-year-old girl in St. Petersburg as a sexual slave. In the memoirs, he described the Russian girl as emphatically prepubescent: "Her breasts had still not finished budding. She was in her thirteenth year. She had nowhere the definitive mark of puberty." (III, 196–7; X, 116–17). In 1774, when he was almost 50, Casanova encountered in Trieste a former lover, the actress Irene, now accompanied by her nine-year-old daughter. "A few days later she came, with her daughter, who pleased me ("qui me plut") and who did not reject my caresses. One fine day, she met with Baron Pittoni, who loved little girls as much as I did ("aimant autant que moi les petites filles"), and took a liking to Irene’s girl, and asked the mother to do him the same honor some time that she had done to me. I encouraged her to receive the offer, and the baron fell in love. This was lucky for Irene." (XII, 238).


title: Giacomo Casanova

text: Gambling was a common recreation in the social and political circles in which Casanova moved. In his memoirs, Casanova discusses many forms of 18th-century gambling—including lotteries, faro, basset, piquet, biribi, primero, quinze, and whist—and the passion for it among the nobility and the high clergy. Cheats (known as "correctors of fortune") were somewhat more tolerated than today in public casinos and in private games for invited players, and seldom caused affront. Most gamblers were on guard against cheaters and their tricks. Scams of all sorts were common, and Casanova was amused by them.


title: Giacomo Casanova

text: Casanova gambled throughout his adult life, winning and losing large sums. He was tutored by professionals, and he was "instructed in those wise maxims without which games of chance ruin those who participate in them". He was not above occasionally cheating and at times even teamed with professional gamblers for his own profit. Casanova claims that he was "relaxed and smiling when I lost, and I won without covetousness". However, when outrageously duped himself, he could act violently, sometimes calling for a duel. Casanova admits that he was not disciplined enough to be a professional gambler: "I had neither prudence enough to leave off when fortune was adverse, nor sufficient control over myself when I had won." Nor did he like being considered as a professional gambler: "Nothing could ever be adduced by professional gamblers that I was of their infernal clique." Although Casanova at times used gambling tactically and shrewdly—for making quick money, for flirting, making connections, acting gallantly, or proving himself a gentleman among his social superiors—his practice also could be compulsive and reckless, especially during the euphoria of a new sexual affair. "Why did I gamble when I felt the losses so keenly? What made me gamble was avarice. I loved to spend, and my heart bled when I could not do it with money won at cards."


title: Giacomo Casanova

text: Casanova was recognized by his contemporaries as an extraordinary person and a man of far-ranging intellect and curiosity. Casanova has been recognized by posterity as one of the foremost chroniclers of his age. He was a true adventurer, traveling across Europe from end to end in search of fortune, seeking out the most prominent people of his time to help his cause. He was a servant of the establishment and equally decadent as his times, but also a participant in secret societies and a seeker of answers beyond the conventional. He was religious, a devout Catholic, and believed in prayer: "Despair kills; prayer dissipates it; and after praying man trusts and acts." Along with prayer he also believed in free will and reason, but clearly did not subscribe to the notion that pleasure-seeking would keep him from heaven.


title: Giacomo Casanova

text: He was, by vocation and avocation, a lawyer, clergyman, military officer, violinist, con man, pimp, gourmand, dancer, businessman, diplomat, spy, politician, medic, mathematician, social philosopher, cabalist, playwright, and writer. He wrote over twenty works, including plays and essays, and many letters. His novel "Icosameron" is an early work of science fiction.


title: Giacomo Casanova

text: Born of actors, he had a passion for the theater and for an improvised, theatrical life, but with all his talents he frequently succumbed to the quest for pleasure and sex, often avoiding sustained work and established plans, and got himself into trouble when prudent action would have served him better. His true occupation was living largely on his quick wits, steely nerves, luck, social charm, and the money given to him in gratitude and by trickery.


title: Giacomo Casanova

text: Prince Charles de Ligne, who understood Casanova well, and who knew most of the prominent individuals of the age, thought Casanova the most interesting man he had ever met: "there is nothing in the world of which he is not capable." Rounding out the portrait, the Prince also stated:


title: Giacomo Casanova

text: "Casanova", like "Don Juan", is a long established term in the English language. According to "Merriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary", 11th ed., the noun "Casanova" means "Lover; "esp": a man who is a promiscuous and unscrupulous lover". The first usage of the term in written English was around 1852. References in culture to Casanova are numerous—in books, films, theater, and music.


Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld (17 August 1786 – 16 March 1861), later Princess of Leiningen and subsequently Duchess of Kent and Strathearn, was a German princess and the mother of Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom. As the widow of Charles, Prince of Leiningen (1763–1814), from 1814, she served as regent of the Principality during the minority of her son from her first marriage, Carl, until her second wedding in 1818 to Prince Edward, fourth son of King George III.


title: Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld

text: Victoria was born in Coburg on 17 August 1786 in the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation and was named "Marie Louise Victoire". She was the fourth daughter and seventh child of Franz Frederick Anton, Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, and Countess Augusta of Reuss-Ebersdorf.


text: One of her brothers was Ernest I, Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, and another brother, Leopold, future king of the Belgians, married, in 1816, Princess Charlotte of Wales, the only legitimate daughter of the future King George IV, and heiress presumptive to the British throne.


text: On 21 December 1803 at Coburg, a young Victoria married (as his second wife) Charles, Prince of Leiningen (1763–1814), whose first wife, Countess Henrietta Sophie of Reuss-Ebersdorf (1767–1801), had been her aunt. The couple had two children, Prince Carl, born on 12 September 1804, and Princess Feodora of Leiningen, born on 7 December 1807.


text: Through her first marriage, she is a direct matrilineal ancestor to various members of royalty in Europe, including Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden, Felipe VI of Spain, and Constantine II of Greece.


text: After the death of her first spouse, she served as regent of the Principality of Leiningen during the minority of their son, Carl.


text: The death of Princess Charlotte of Wales, the wife of Victoria's brother Leopold, in 1817, prompted a succession crisis. With Parliament offering them a financial incentive, three of Charlotte's uncles, sons of George III, were prepared to marry. One of them, Prince Edward, Duke of Kent and Strathearn (1767–1820) proposed to Victoria and she accepted. The couple were married on 29 May 1818 at Amorbach and on 11 July 1818 at Kew, a joint ceremony at which Edward's brother, the Duke of Clarence, later King William IV, married Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen. Shortly after their marriage, the Kents moved to Germany, where the cost of living would be cheaper. Soon after, Victoria became pregnant, and the Duke and Duchess, determined to have their child born in England, raced back. Arriving at Dover on 23 April 1819, they moved into Kensington Palace, where Victoria gave birth to a daughter on 24 May 1819, Princess Alexandrina Victoria of Kent, later Queen Victoria. An efficient organiser, Sir John Conroy, ensured the Kents' speedy return to England in time for the birth of their first child.


text: The Duke of Kent died suddenly of pneumonia in January 1820, six days before his father, King George III. His widow the Duchess had little cause to remain in the United Kingdom, since she did not speak the language and had a palace at home in Coburg where she could live cheaply on the revenues of her first husband. However, the British succession at this time was far from assured – of the three brothers older than Edward, the new king, George IV, and the Duke of York were both estranged from their wives, who were in any case past childbearing age. The third brother, the Duke of Clarence, had yet to produce any surviving children with his wife. The Duchess of Kent decided that she would do better by gambling on her daughter's accession than by living quietly in Coburg and, having inherited her second husband's debts, sought support from the British government. After the death of Edward and his father, the young Princess Victoria was still only third in line for the throne, and Parliament was not inclined to support yet more impoverished royalty.


text: The provision made for the Duchess of Kent was mean: she resided in a suite of rooms in the dilapidated Kensington Palace, along with several other impoverished members of the royal family, and received little financial support from the Civil List, since Parliament had vivid memories of the late Duke's extravagance. In practice, a main source of support for her was her brother, Leopold. The latter had a huge income of fifty thousand pounds per annum for life, representing an annuity allotted to him by the British Parliament on his marriage to Princess Charlotte, which had made him seem likely to become in due course the consort of the monarch. Even after Charlotte's death, Leopold's annuity was not revoked by Parliament.


text: In 1831, with George IV dead and the new king William IV (formerly the Duke of Clarence) being over 60 without any surviving legitimate issue, and whose nearly 40-year-old wife was considered to be at the end of childbearing age, the young princess's status as heir presumptive and the Duchess's prospective place as regent led to major increases in British state income for the Kents. Parliament agreed an annuity for the Duchess and her daughter in August 1831. A contributing factor was Leopold's designation as King of the Belgians, upon which he surrendered his British income.


text: Together in a hostile environment, John Conroy's relationship with the Duchess was very close, with him serving as her comptroller and private secretary for the next nineteen years, as well as holding the unofficial roles of public relations officer, counsellor, confidant and political agent. While it is not clear which of the two was more responsible for devising the Kensington System, it was created to govern young Victoria's upbringing. The intention was for the Duchess to be appointed regent upon Victoria's (assumed youthful) succession and for Conroy to be created Victoria's private secretary and given a peerage. The Duchess and Conroy continued to be unpopular with the royal family and, in 1829, the Duke of Cumberland spread rumours that they were lovers in an attempt to discredit them. The Duke of Clarence referred to Conroy as "King John", while the Duchess of Clarence wrote to the Duchess of Kent to advise that she was increasingly isolating herself from the royal family and that she must not grant Conroy too much power.


text: The Duchess of Kent was extremely protective, and raised Victoria largely isolated from other children under the so-called "Kensington System". The system prevented the princess from meeting people whom her mother and Conroy deemed undesirable (including most of her father's family), and was designed to render her weak and dependent upon them. The Duchess avoided the court because she was scandalised by the presence of King William's illegitimate children, and perhaps prompted the emergence of Victorian morality by insisting that her daughter avoid any appearance of sexual impropriety. Victoria shared a bedroom with her mother every night, studied with private tutors to a regular timetable, and spent her play-hours with her dolls and her King Charles Spaniel, Dash.


text: Perhaps because of Conroy's influence, the relationship between the Duchess's household and King William IV soon soured, with the Duchess regarding the King as an oversexed oaf. As far as she dared, the Duchess denied the King access to his niece. She prevented her daughter from attending William's coronation out of a disagreement of precedence, a decision attributed by the Duke of Wellington to Conroy. In 1831, the year of William's coronation, Conroy and the Duchess embarked on a series of royal tours with Victoria to expose her to the people and solidify their status as potential regents. Their efforts were ultimately successful and, in November 1831, it was declared that the Duchess would be sole regent in the event of Victoria's young queenship. The Duchess further offended the King by taking rooms in Kensington Palace that the King had reserved for himself, and she snubbed his illegitimate children, the FitzClarences, before and during his reign.


text: Both the King and Queen Adelaide were fond of their niece, but their attempts to forge a close relationship with the girl were frustrated by the conflict with the Duchess of Kent. The King, angered at what he took to be disrespect from the Duchess to his wife, took the opportunity at what proved to be his final birthday banquet in August 1836 to settle the score. Speaking to those assembled at the banquet, who included the Duchess and Princess Victoria, William expressed his hope that he would survive until Princess Victoria was 18 so that the Duchess of Kent would never be regent. He said,


text: I trust to God that my life may be spared for nine months longer ... I should then have the satisfaction of leaving the exercise of the Royal authority to the personal authority of that young lady, heiress presumptive to the Crown, and not in the hands of a person now near me, who is surrounded by evil advisers and is herself incompetent to act with propriety in the situation in which she would be placed.


text: The breach between the Duchess and the King and Queen was never fully healed, but Victoria always viewed both of them with kindness.


text: Conroy had high hopes for his patroness and himself: he envisaged Victoria succeeding the throne at a young age, thus needing a regency government, which, following the Regency Act 1830, would be headed by the princess's mother (who had already served in that capacity in Germany following the death of her first husband). As the personal secretary of the Duchess, Conroy would be the veritable "power behind the throne". He had not counted on William IV surviving long enough for Victoria to come of age and be able to succeed to the throne as an adult and consequently, while cultivating her mother, had shown little consideration for Victoria. When the latter succeeded, Conroy risked having no influence over her. He tried to force Victoria to agree to make him her personal secretary once she succeeded, but this plan, too, backfired. Victoria resented her mother's support for Conroy's schemes and being pressured by her to sign a paper declaring Conroy her personal secretary. The result was that when Victoria became queen, she relegated the Duchess to separate accommodations, away from her own.


text: When the Queen's first child, the Princess Royal, was born, the Duchess of Kent unexpectedly found herself welcomed back into Victoria's inner circle. It is likely that this came about as a result of the dismissal of Baroness Lehzen at the behest of Victoria's husband (and the Duchess's nephew), Prince Albert. Firstly, this removed Lehzen's influence, and Lehzen had long despised the Duchess and Conroy, suspecting them of an illicit affair. Secondly, it left the Queen wholly open to Albert's influence, and he likely prevailed upon her to reconcile with her mother. Thirdly, Conroy by now lived in exile on the Continent and so his divisive influence was removed. The Duchess's finances, which had been left in shambles by Conroy, were restored thanks to Victoria and her advisors. By all accounts, the Duchess became a doting grandmother and was closer to her daughter than she ever had been.


text: Some historians, including A. N. Wilson, suggested that Victoria's father could not have been the Duke of Kent. Those who promote this position point to the absence of porphyria in the British royal family among the descendants of Queen Victoria – it had been widespread before her; and haemophilia, unknown in either the Duke's or Duchess's family, had arisen among the best documented families in history.


text: In practice, this would have required the Duchess's lover to be haemophiliac – an extremely unlikely survival, given the poor state of medicine at the time, or the Duchess herself to be a carrier of haemophilia, since haemophilia is X-linked, meaning that her mother would have been a carrier, if haemophilia was not otherwise previously expressed in the Duchess's parents. Actual evidence to support this theory has not arisen, and haemophilia occurs spontaneously through mutation in at least 30% of cases.


text: John Röhl's book, "Purple Secret", documents evidence of porphyria in Victoria, Princess Royal's daughter Charlotte, and her granddaughter, Feodora. It goes on to say that Prince William of Gloucester was diagnosed with porphyria shortly before he died in a flying accident.


text: The Duchess died at 09:30 on 16 March 1861, aged 74 years, with her daughter Victoria at her side. The Queen was much affected by her mother's death. Through reading her mother's papers, Victoria discovered that her mother had loved her deeply; she was heart-broken, and blamed Conroy and Lehzen for "wickedly" estranging her from her mother. She is buried in the Duchess of Kent's Mausoleum at Frogmore, Windsor Home Park, near to the royal residence Windsor Castle.


text: Queen Victoria and Albert dedicated a window in the Royal Chapel of All Saints in Windsor Great Park to her memory.


text: Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld was portrayed by Alison Leggatt in the ATV drama "Edward the Seventh", by Penelope Wilton in the 2001 television serial "Victoria and Albert", by Miranda Richardson in the 2009 film "The Young Victoria", and by Catherine Flemming in the 2016 ITV series "Victoria".


title: DragonForce

text: DragonForce are a British power metal band from London, England. The band was formed in 1999 by guitarists Herman Li and Sam Totman, and are known for their long and fast guitar solos, fantasy-themed lyrics and retro video game-influenced sound. DragonForce's current lineup comprises Li, Totman, vocalist Marc Hudson, drummer Gee Anzalone and bassist Alicia Vigil. The band have been through several lineup changes throughout their career; longtime members in vocalist ZP Theart, keyboardist Vadim Pruzhanov, drummer Dave Mackintosh and bassist Frédéric Leclercq are among the former members of the band.


title: DragonForce

text: DragonForce has released eight studio albums, two live albums, one compilation album, one live DVD and one demo. Their third album, "Inhuman Rampage" (2005), was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the British Phonographic Industry (BPI); its lead single, "Through the Fire and Flames", is their best-known song, and was featured in several video games, including "". The lead single from their fourth album, "Heroes of Our Time", was nominated for a Grammy Award in 2009. DragonForce has been referred to as one of the "big four" bands of power metal, along with Helloween, Blind Guardian, and Sabaton.


title: DragonForce

text: DragonForce was founded in 1999 by guitarists Herman Li and Sam Totman, under the name of DragonHeart. Totman and Li had both experienced being in a band previously, with both having come from the New Zealand heavy metal band Demoniac. The two later found vocalist ZP Theart through an advertisement, and soon acquired former Demoniac drummer Matej Setinc, bassist Steve Scott and keyboardist Steve Williams. Setinc left the band in December 1999 to continue his studies in Slovenia, so the band hired Peter Hunt to record the drums for their demo album before finding Didier Almouzni. The band also parted ways with Scott, who left to join Shadowkeep, in 2000. Williams took a small break and then later rejoined the band as they recorded their first demo with Clive Nolan as a session member on the keyboards later that year, but left once again in December 2000, days ahead of the band's tour with Halford and Stratovarius to promote the demo, and formed his own band, Power Quest. Bassist Diccon Harper joined the band in November of that year, with keyboardist Vadim Pruzhanov joining in February 2001 to complete the lineup for recording their debut studio album.


title: DragonForce

text: Although it was an independent release, their demo was enough to make them one of the UK's most popular independent power metal bands at the time. Their song "Valley of the Damned" was released as their debut single shortly after they changed their name permanently to DragonForce in 2002 (after finding out another power metal band already had the name DragonHeart). A promotional video featuring live footage from their tour around Europe was released along with the song. The song was also hugely successful on MP3.com, which charted as the most downloaded song at No. 1 for 2 weeks. In 2002, the band signed to Noise Records and began recording their debut album, "Valley of the Damned". Harper performed the bass tracks for the album but left the band in 2002 because of a tendon problem that required surgery. The title track, re-released in promotion of the album, is one of the best-known DragonForce songs to date and is a staple of their live performances to this day. The band's tour for "Valley of the Damned" lasted until 2004, with the tour ending in Tokyo, Japan.


title: DragonForce

text: DragonForce's second studio album, "Sonic Firestorm", proved to be even more successful than their previous album, with the help of the album's lead single, "Fury of the Storm". "Sonic Firestorm" was the first DragonForce album to feature new bassist Adrian Lambert and drummer Dave Mackintosh. When Mackintosh entered the band in 2004, they began referring to their style of music as "extreme power metal" due to his fast blast beats and double bass rhythms. The tour was longer than the band's previous tour for "Valley of the Damned" and featured many more headlining shows. The band toured with many well-known metal bands such as W.A.S.P. and Iron Maiden. On the album, they also added a video commentary focusing on the making of "Sonic Firestorm".


title: DragonForce

text: The band went mainstream with their third album, "Inhuman Rampage", which was released on 28 December 2005 after signing with Roadrunner Records. The first song on the album, "Through the Fire and Flames", is perhaps their most famous song to date and is featured on the video games "", "" and "Brütal Legend", and as downloadable content for the "Rock Band" franchise. Former Demoniac frontman Lindsay Dawson appeared as a backing vocalist for the album. In November 2005, before the album's release, Lambert left the band to raise his newborn son, and the band enlisted Frédéric Leclercq for the remainder of the "Sonic Firestorm" tour. Leclercq later became an official member of the band in January 2006 following the release of "Inhuman Rampage", and was also featured in the band's music video for their second single from the album, "Operation Ground and Pound". The "Through the Fire and Flames" single later reached gold status in the USA and Canada.


title: DragonForce

text: DragonForce toured with Disturbed and Slipknot during the inaugural Mayhem Festival in 2008; the band then returned in autumn with the release of their fourth studio album, "Ultra Beatdown". The album's lead single, "Heroes of Our Time", was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Metal Performance on 3 December 2008, eventually losing out to Metallica with their song "My Apocalypse". A short version of "Heroes Of Our Time" is also featured in the video game "Skate 2", and the full version in "NHL 10". On 22 January 2009, the music video for their song "The Last Journey Home" was released to the Xbox Live Community a week before it was released online.


title: DragonForce

text: The band carried out the "Ultra Beatdown" world tour in Europe, North America and South America. They were supposed to play in South America in May, but the tour was postponed due to the swine flu outbreak. They performed at the Two Days a Week Festival in Wiesen, Austria on 4 September, before performing in the United States and Canada from 15 September to 11 October, with special guests Sonata Arctica and Taking Dawn. The next leg of the tour was in Germany, from 16 to 30 October, followed by a single live performance in Luxembourg on 31 October. They then travelled to South America to perform in Curitiba, Porto Alegre, São Paulo, Mexico City, Santiago, Buenos Aires and Bogotá from 6–14 November. The final part of the tour was carried out entirely in the UK from 19 November to 12 December.


title: DragonForce

text: Li stated in late 2009 that DragonForce would stop touring in December and spend Christmas at home before beginning to write and record their next studio album in January. On 22 February 2010, the band re-released their first two albums, "Valley of the Damned" and "Sonic Firestorm". "Valley of the Damned" included newly remixed and remastered tracks, while both albums included bonus tracks, updated packaging and DVDs featuring live footage, commentary and more. Both albums were also released in a box set which featured a T-shirt, a card of guitar picks, and an inflatable guitar.


title: DragonForce

text: On 8 March 2010, it was announced via the band's record label at the time, Roadrunner, that Theart had parted ways with DragonForce due to "insurmountable differences of musical opinion" and that the band would be seeking a new frontman. The next day, the band released a press statement confirming the news and containing a link to request an audition.


title: DragonForce

text: The band released their first live album, "Twilight Dementia", on 13 September 2010, in Europe and 14 September 2010 in US and Canada. The album art, title, and release date were revealed on the band's official website on 22 June 2010. The performances were recorded on the final leg of the "Ultra Beatdown" world tour. Regarding the album, Li stated:


title: DragonForce

text: The band began working on their new studio album in early 2010, recording in various studios in California, London and the South of France. The band later confirmed that they would be the opening act for Iron Maiden in two UK shows in August 2011, with the first at Odyssey Arena in Belfast on 3 August and the second at The O Arena in London on 5 August. On 2 March 2011, DragonForce announced their new vocalist, Marc Hudson. Hudson had previous experience performing in a band but was not a professional musician before joining DragonForce. His first show with DragonForce was the band's opening for Iron Maiden in August 2011, where they debuted a new song titled "Cry Thunder".


title: DragonForce

text: DragonForce released their fifth studio album, "The Power Within", on 15 April 2012. Mediæval Bæbes and Pythia vocalist Emily Ovenden contributed backing vocals on the album. During their North American tour, the band performed a new song titled "Fallen World", along with "Cry Thunder". Starting from late September 2012, the band embarked on a UK and Ireland tour, and were supported by The Defiled, Cavorts and Alestorm.


title: DragonForce

text: On 12 April 2013, the band announced that writing for a follow-up to "The Power Within" had been completed, and on 19 May 2013, DragonForce entered Fascination Street Studios in Sweden with Jens Bogren as the producer of the band's sixth album, "Maximum Overload". On 31 March 2014, it was revealed that Trivium vocalist/guitarist Matt Heafy would appear as a backing vocalist for the album, and that Ovenden would return after providing backing vocals for "The Power Within". On 3 June 2014, DragonForce announced that they had parted ways with Mackintosh and had enlisted former Braindamage and Kill Ritual drummer Gee Anzalone. "Maximum Overload" was released in the UK on 18 August, in North America on 19 August and in Australia on 22 August. A special edition which included five bonus songs was released in Japan on 19 August (the same date as the normal edition's release in North America) and in Australia on 22 August, at the same time as the release of the normal edition. To promote the album, the band embarked on their second world tour, beginning in Edinburgh on 17 September and ending in Brussels, Belgium, on 1 February 2015.


title: DragonForce

text: On 12 February, DragonForce announced that they would release their first live DVD, a recording of their performance at Loud Park Festival 2014 titled "In the Line of Fire... Larger than Live". The band performed at Download Festival in June 2015, with a surprise guest appearance by Babymetal during the set., DragonForce would then act as Babymetal's backing band at the 2015 Metal Hammer Golden Gods (Li and Totman had previously collaborated on the track "Road of Resistance" for Babymetal).


title: DragonForce

text: In April 2016, the band released the compilation "", featuring a double CD of the band's greatest hits, with a DVD that contained the videos released by the band. The band also embarked on the "Killer Elite World Tour" to support the release. In July 2016 DragonForce issued a statement on the health status of Marc Hudson revealing he had been signed off by doctors and was unable to perform at the Metal Days Festival in Slovenia and the Benatska! Festival in the Czech Republic and replaced by Per Fredrik Åsly for the two shows. This was than further followed up by former Power Quest vocalist Alessio Garavello filling in for the Leyendas del Rock Festival concert in Spain, and the More//Than concert in Slovakia. DragonForce concluded their "Killer Elite World Tour" at a free show in Uncasville, Connecticut on 11 September. On 11 November, DragonForce was confirmed for the 2017 edition of Pulp Summer Slam in the Philippines.


title: DragonForce

text: During an interview with "Alto Music" at the NAMM 2017 Winter Show, Li revealed that the band were putting the "finishing touches" on their upcoming seventh album. In February 2017, the band revealed pieces of the album cover on their Instagram account, and the album title was revealed to be "Reaching into Infinity". On 9 February, the band released details of the new album on their official website, including the release date, format and a release party show date. Leclercq also gave insight into the recording process of the album. "We were flying out, playing a festival, then back into the studio, then back out again," said Leclercq, who handled the majority of songwriting on the album. "It was very intense and very tiring... [I] lost my temper a few times – I think we all did at some point, because we wanted to deliver nothing but the best. I think we have proven that playing fast was something we were good at, so this time I wanted to bring even more diversity into our music. It's great to challenge ourselves instead of staying in a comfort zone". "Reaching into Infinity" was released on 19 May 2017.


title: DragonForce

text: A music video for "Ashes of the Dawn" was released on 15 May 2017. Keyboardist Vadim Pruzhanov was not featured in the clip nor in any of the shows happening by the time of the album's recording. In a video published on his official YouTube channel, he explained he wanted to have more time for his daughter and that he had to choose between performing in all or none of the shows due to contractual limitations. He chose the second option and was absent from the album's promotional tour as well. Power Quest supported DragonForce as special guests on the UK leg for the Reaching Into Infinity World Tour while supporting their own new album, "Sixth Dimension". On 13 July, the band announced that Swedish act Twilight Force would support the band during the European leg of the "Reaching Into Infinity World Tour" A music video for "Midnight Madness" was released on 21 September 2017, which documented the making of that song at Fascination Street Studios. On 15 October, they were announced to appear as a headlining band at Vagos Open Air in 2018, however on 20 January 2018, they issued a statement saying that they will not be attending due to "circumstances beyond their control". On 20 December, the band were announced to appear at Skogsröjet Festival in Rejmyre, Sweden in August 2018.


title: DragonForce

text: In January 2018, the band were announced to appear at Area 53 Festival in Leoben, Austria in July, and at Download Festival's main stage for the first time since 2009 in June. In April 2018, the band announced a remastered version of "The Power Within" called "Re-Powered Within". Li stated: "I love how "Re-Powered Within" has turned out. We remixed and remastered the original music with a more modern production in the vein of our last two releases. The result is a clearer, more powerful sound. The fans will get to hear the music in better detail, bringing out parts they couldn't hear so well before, and injecting new excitement into the songs we love even more now." "Re-Powered Within" was released on 4 May 2018. In October, DragonForce announced that they had entered the studio with Damien Rainaud, who had previously mixed and mastered for the band, to work on their eighth studio album, and that the band would be joining Megadeth on their MEGACruise in October 2019.


title: DragonForce

text: On 10 June 2019, after more than two years of not being involved with DragonForce, Pruzhanov posted on his Facebook page stating that he had officially left the band in May 2018. In July 2019, the band's eighth studio album, "Extreme Power Metal", was announced and given a release date of 27 September 2019, and a music video for "Highway to Oblivion" was released. Epica keyboardist Coen Janssen recorded keyboards for the new album. In August 2019, Frédéric Leclercq announced that he would be leaving the band to pursue other projects; the band later confirmed Leclercq's departure, and that YouTube personality and musician Steve Terreberry would fill in on bass for the band's US tour dates. Terreberry eventually pulled out of the tour before playing a show due to his anxiety, and he released a video on his YouTube channel explaining his decision. Once Human bassist Damien Rainaud, who also produced "Extreme Power Metal", took over bass duties as a result.


title: DragonForce

text: In January 2020, Alicia Vigil took over as the band's new touring bassist, beginning with their European tour. In March, Anzalone was admitted to hospital with myocarditis and was forced to skip DragonForce's United States tour, with Aquiles Priester replacing him for the tour until it was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In April, Li said that the band had decided to use the lockdown time to write new music for "a new album which isn't going to be out for ages", while also saying that they were considering recruiting Vigil as their next permanent bassist. Vigil was later confirmed to be the new full-time bassist in one of Li's Twitch streams in February 2022.


title: DragonForce

text: While in quarantine, DragonForce have written and recorded parody songs in the style of bands like Rammstein, Amon Amarth, Blink-182, and Nightwish, along with a collaboration with Jaret Reddick from Bowling For Soup. In February 2021, the band announced that they would professionally record those songs and release them in an album later this year before writing their next proper album. However, it is currently unknown if the band is still moving forward with their "parody album" plan.


title: DragonForce

text: In March 2022, Li revealed that the band has written "a lot of music" for their next album, but they are currently in search for a new record deal. He added that the music they have written is "gonna be epic, triumphant, fun and catchy and uplifting. We're gonna carry on sounding like DRAGONFORCE." The band is currently on tour in North America with Firewind, Visions of Atlantis, and Seven Spires.


title: DragonForce

text: Much of DragonForce's idiosyncratic style comes from the high-speed dual guitar sounds of Herman Li and Sam Totman. By playing at a high tempo within the upper registers of their instruments, their sound becomes similar to the "bleepy" arpeggios and quick pitch-bends normally associated with chiptune, usually heard in the third generation of video game music. The band often pays homage to this influence in their music videos.


title: DragonForce

text: Although the band has frequently referred to their style as power metal, Li commented on descriptions of the band's style in an interview with "Guitar World": Nintendo metal', 'extreme power metal', 'Bon Jovi on speed', 'Journey meets Slayer', ... people are always coming up with weird labels for us." The band has also been labelled as a speed metal or progressive metal band.


title: 2012 phenomenon

text: Various astronomical alignments and numerological formulae were proposed for this date. A New Age interpretation held that the date marked the start of a period during which Earth and its inhabitants would undergo a positive physical or spiritual transformation, and that 21 December 2012 would mark the beginning of a new era. Others suggested that the date marked the end of the world or a similar catastrophe. Scenarios suggested for the end of the world included the arrival of the next solar maximum, an interaction between Earth and the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy, Earth's collision with a mythical planet called Nibiru, or even the heating of Earth's core.


title: 2012 phenomenon

text: Scholars from various disciplines quickly dismissed predictions of cataclysmic events as they arose. Mayan scholars stated that no classic Mayan accounts forecast impending doom, and the idea that the Long Count calendar ends in 2012 misrepresented Mayan history and culture. Astronomers rejected the various proposed doomsday scenarios as pseudoscience refuted by elementary astronomical observations.


title: 2012 phenomenon

text: December 2012 marked the conclusion of a "bʼakʼtun"—a time period in the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar, used in Central America prior to the arrival of Europeans. Although the Long Count was most likely invented by the Olmec, it has become closely associated with the Maya civilization, whose classic period lasted from 250 to 900 AD. The writing system of the classic Maya has been substantially deciphered, meaning that a corpus of their written and inscribed material has survived from before the European conquest.


title: 2012 phenomenon

text: Unlike the 260-day "tzolkʼin" still used today among the Maya, the Long Count was linear rather than cyclical, and kept time roughly in units of 20: 20 days made a "uinal", 18 uinals (360 days) made a "tun", 20 tuns made a "kʼatun", and 20 kʼatuns (144,000 days or roughly 394 years) made up a "bʼakʼtun". Thus, the Maya date of 8.3.2.10.15 represents 8 bʼakʼtuns, 3 kʼatuns, 2 tuns, 10 uinals and 15 days.


title: 2012 phenomenon

text: There is a strong tradition of "world ages" in Maya literature, but the record has been distorted, leaving several possibilities open to interpretation. According to the "Popol Vuh", a compilation of the creation accounts of the Kʼicheʼ Maya of the Colonial-era highlands, we are living in the fourth world. The "Popol Vuh" describes the gods first creating three failed worlds, followed by a successful fourth world in which humanity was placed. In the Maya Long Count, the previous world ended after 13 bʼakʼtuns, or roughly 5,125 years. The Long Count's "zero date" was set at a point in the past marking the end of the third world and the beginning of the current one, which corresponds to 11 August 3114 BC in the proleptic Gregorian calendar. This means that the fourth world reached the end of its 13th bʼakʼtun, or Maya date 13.0.0.0.0, on 21 December 2012. In 1957, Mayanist and astronomer Maud Worcester Makemson wrote that "the completion of a Great Period of 13 bʼakʼtuns would have been of the utmost significance to the Maya." In 1966, Michael D. Coe wrote in "The Maya" that "there is a suggestion ... that Armageddon would overtake the degenerate peoples of the world and all creation on the final day of the 13th [bʼakʼtun]. Thus ... our present universe [would] be annihilated ... when the Great Cycle of the Long Count reaches completion."


title: 2012 phenomenon

text: Coe's interpretation was repeated by other scholars through the early 1990s. In contrast, later researchers said that, while the end of the 13th bʼakʼtun would perhaps be a cause for celebration, it did not mark the end of the calendar. "There is nothing in the Maya or Aztec or ancient Mesoamerican prophecy to suggest that they prophesied a sudden or major change of any sort in 2012," said Mayanist scholar Mark Van Stone. "The notion of a 'Great Cycle' coming to an end is completely a modern invention." In 1990, Mayanist scholars Linda Schele and David Freidel argued that the Maya "did not conceive this to be the end of creation, as many have suggested". Susan Milbrath, curator of Latin American Art and Archaeology at the Florida Museum of Natural History, stated that, "We have no record or knowledge that [the Maya] would think the world would come to an end" in 2012. Sandra Noble, executive director of the Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies, said, "For the ancient Maya, it was a huge celebration to make it to the end of a whole cycle," and, "The 2012 phenomenon is a complete fabrication and a chance for a lot of people to cash in." "There will be another cycle," said E. Wyllys Andrews V, director of the Tulane University Middle American Research Institute. "We know the Maya thought there was one before this, and that implies they were comfortable with the idea of another one after this." Commenting on the new calendar found at Xultún, one archaeologist said "The ancient Maya predicted the world would continue—that 7,000 years from now, things would be exactly like this. We keep looking for endings. The Maya were looking for a guarantee that nothing would change. It's an entirely different mindset."


title: 2012 phenomenon

text: Several prominent individuals representing Maya of Guatemala decried the suggestion that the world would end with the 13th bʼakʼtun. Ricardo Cajas, president of the "Colectivo de Organizaciones Indígenas de Guatemala", said the date did not represent an end of humanity but that the new cycle "supposes changes in human consciousness". Martín Sacalxot, of the office of Guatemala's Human Rights Ombudsman ("Procurador de los Derechos Humanos"), said that the end of the calendar has nothing to do with the end of the world or the year 2012.


title: 2012 phenomenon

text: The European association of the Maya with eschatology dates back to the time of Christopher Columbus, who was compiling a work called "Libro de las profecías" during the voyage in 1502 when he first heard about the "Maia" on Guanaja, an island off the north coast of Honduras. Influenced by the writings of Bishop Pierre d'Ailly, Columbus believed that his discovery of "most distant" lands (and, by extension, the Maya themselves) was prophesied and would bring about the Apocalypse. End-times fears were widespread during the early years of the Spanish Conquest as the result of popular astrological predictions in Europe of a second Great Flood for the year 1524.


title: 2012 phenomenon

text: In the 1900s, German scholar Ernst Förstemann interpreted the last page of the Dresden Codex as a representation of the end of the world in a cataclysmic flood. He made reference to the destruction of the world and an apocalypse, though he made no reference to the 13th bʼakʼtun or 2012 and it was not clear that he was referring to a future event. His ideas were repeated by archaeologist Sylvanus Morley, who directly paraphrased Förstemann and added his own embellishments, writing, "Finally, on the last page of the manuscript, is depicted the Destruction of the World ... Here, indeed, is portrayed with a graphic touch the final all-engulfing cataclysm" in the form of a great flood. These comments were later repeated in Morley's book, "The Ancient Maya", the first edition of which was published in 1946.


title: 2012 phenomenon

text: It is not certain what significance the classic Maya gave to the 13th bʼakʼtun. Most classic Maya inscriptions are strictly historical and do not make any prophetic declarations. Two items in the Maya classical corpus, however, do mention the end of the 13th bʼakʼtun: Tortuguero Monument 6 and La Corona Hieroglyphic Stairway 12.


title: 2012 phenomenon

text: The Tortuguero site, which lies in southernmost Tabasco, Mexico, dates from the 7th century AD and consists of a series of inscriptions mostly in honor of the contemporary ruler Bahlam Ahau. One inscription, known as Tortuguero Monument 6, is the only inscription known to refer to bʼakʼtun 13 in any detail. It has been partially defaced; Sven Gronemeyer and Barbara MacLeod have given this translation:


title: 2012 phenomenon

text: Very little is known about the god Bʼolon Yokteʼ. According to an article by Mayanists Markus Eberl and Christian Prager in "British Anthropological Reports", his name is composed of the elements "nine", ʼOK-teʼ (the meaning of which is unknown), and "god". Confusion in classical period inscriptions suggests that the name was already ancient and unfamiliar to contemporary scribes. He also appears in inscriptions from Palenque, Usumacinta, and La Mar as a god of war, conflict, and the underworld. In one stele he is portrayed with a rope tied around his neck, and in another with an incense bag, together signifying a sacrifice to end a cycle of years.


title: 2012 phenomenon

text: Based on observations of modern Maya rituals, Gronemeyer and MacLeod claim that the stela refers to a celebration in which a person portraying Bolon Yokteʼ Kʼuh was wrapped in ceremonial garments and paraded around the site. They note that the association of Bolon Yokteʼ Kʼuh with bʼakʼtun 13 appears to be so important on this inscription that it supersedes more typical celebrations such as "erection of stelae, scattering of incense" and so forth. Furthermore, they assert that this event was indeed planned for 2012 and not the 7th century. Mayanist scholar Stephen Houston contests this view by arguing that future dates on Maya inscriptions were simply meant to draw parallels with contemporary events, and that the words on the stela describe a contemporary rather than a future scene.


title: 2012 phenomenon

text: In April–May 2012, a team of archaeologists unearthed a previously unknown inscription on a stairway at the La Corona site in Guatemala. The inscription, on what is known as Hieroglyphic Stairway 12, describes the establishment of a royal court in Calakmul in 635 AD, and compares the then-recent completion of 13 kʼatuns with the future completion of the 13th bʼakʼtun. It contains no speculation or prophecy as to what the scribes believed would happen at that time.


title: 2012 phenomenon

text: Maya inscriptions occasionally mention predicted future events or commemorations that would occur on dates far beyond the completion of the 13th bʼakʼtun. Most of these are in the form of "distance dates"; Long Count dates together with an additional number, known as a Distance Number, which when added to them makes a future date. On the west panel at the Temple of Inscriptions in Palenque, a section of text projects forward to the 80th 52-year Calendar Round from the coronation of the ruler Kʼinich Janaabʼ Pakal. Pakal's accession occurred on 9.9.2.4.8, equivalent to 27 July 615 AD in the proleptic Gregorian calendar. The inscription begins with Pakal's birthdate of 9.8.9.13.0 (24 March, ) and then adds the Distance Number 10.11.10.5.8 to it, arriving at a date of 21 October 4772 AD, more than 4,000 years after Pakal's time.


title: 2012 phenomenon

text: Another example is Stela 1 at Coba which marks the date of creation as , or nineteen units above the bʼakʼtun. According to Linda Schele, these 13s represent "the starting point of a huge odometer of time", with each acting as a zero and resetting to 1 as the numbers increase. Thus this inscription anticipates the current universe lasting at least 20×13×360 days, or roughly 2.687×10 years; a time span equal to 2 quintillion times the age of the universe as determined by cosmologists. Others have suggested, however, that this date marks creation as having occurred after that time span.


title: 2012 phenomenon

text: In 2012, researchers announced the discovery of a series of Maya astronomical tables in Xultún, Guatemala which plot the movements of the Moon and other astronomical bodies over the course of 17 bʼakʼtuns.


title: 2012 phenomenon

text: Many assertions about the year 2012 form part of Mayanism, a non-codified collection of New Age beliefs about ancient Maya wisdom and spirituality. The term is distinct from "Mayanist," used to refer to an academic scholar of the Maya. Archaeoastronomer Anthony Aveni says that while the idea of "balancing the cosmos" was prominent in ancient Maya literature, the 2012 phenomenon did not draw from those traditions. Instead, it was bound up with American concepts such as the New Age movement, 2012 millenarianism, and the belief in secret knowledge from distant times and places. Themes found in 2012 literature included "suspicion towards mainstream Western culture", the idea of spiritual evolution, and the possibility of leading the world into the New Age by individual example or by a group's joined consciousness. The general intent of this literature was not to warn of impending doom but "to foster counter-cultural sympathies and eventually socio-political and 'spiritual' activism". Aveni, who has studied New Age and search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) communities, describes 2012 narratives as the product of a "disconnected" society: "Unable to find spiritual answers to life's big questions within ourselves, we turn outward to imagined entities that lie far off in space or time—entities that just might be in possession of superior knowledge."


title: 2012 phenomenon

text: In 1975, the ending of bʼakʼtun 13 became the subject of speculation by several New Age authors, who asserted it would correspond with a global "transformation of consciousness". In "Mexico Mystique: The Coming Sixth Age of Consciousness", Frank Waters tied Coe's original date of 24 December 2011 to astrology and the prophecies of the Hopi, while both José Argüelles (in "The Transformative Vision") and Terence McKenna (in "The Invisible Landscape") discussed the significance of the year 2012 without mentioning a specific day. Some research suggests that both Argüelles and McKenna were heavily influenced in this regard by the Mayanism of American author William S. Burroughs, who first portrayed the end of the Mayan Long Count as an apocalyptic shift of human consciousness in 1960's "The Exterminator".


title: 2012 phenomenon

text: In 1983, with the publication of Robert J. Sharer's revised table of date correlations in the 4th edition of Morley's "The Ancient Maya," each became convinced that 21 December 2012 had significant meaning. By 1987, the year in which he organized the Harmonic Convergence event, Argüelles was using the date 21 December 2012 in "The Mayan Factor: Path Beyond Technology". He claimed that on 13 August 3113 BC the Earth began a passage through a "galactic synchronization beam" that emanated from the center of our galaxy, that it would pass through this beam during a period of 5200 "tuns" (Maya cycles of 360 days each), and that this beam would result in "total synchronization" and "galactic entrainment" of individuals "plugged into the Earth's electromagnetic battery" by 13.0.0.0.0 (21 December 2012). He believed that the Maya aligned their calendar to correspond to this phenomenon. Anthony Aveni has dismissed all of these ideas.


title: 2012 phenomenon

text: In 2001, Robert Bast wrote the first online articles regarding the possibility of a doomsday in 2012. In 2006, author Daniel Pinchbeck popularized New Age concepts about this date in his book "2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl", linking bʼakʼtun 13 to beliefs in crop circles, alien abduction, and personal revelations based on the use of hallucinogenic drugs and mediumship. Pinchbeck claims to discern a "growing realization that materialism and the rational, empirical worldview that comes with it has reached its expiration date ... [w]e're on the verge of transitioning to a dispensation of consciousness that's more intuitive, mystical and shamanic".


title: 2012 phenomenon

text: There is no significant astronomical event tied to the Long Count's start date. However, its supposed end date was tied to astronomical phenomena by esoteric, fringe, and New Age literature that placed great significance on astrology, especially astrological interpretations associated with the phenomenon of axial precession. Chief among these ideas is the astrological concept of a "galactic alignment".


title: 2012 phenomenon

text: In the Solar System, the planets and the Sun lie roughly within the same flat plane, known as the plane of the ecliptic. From our perspective on Earth, the ecliptic is the path taken by the Sun across the sky over the course of the year. The twelve constellations that line the ecliptic are known as the zodiacal constellations, and, annually, the Sun passes through all of them in turn. Additionally, over time, the Sun's annual cycle appears to recede very slowly backward by one degree every 72 years, or by one constellation approximately every 2,160 years. This backward movement, called "precession", is due to a slight wobble in the Earth's axis as it spins, and can be compared to the way a spinning top wobbles as it slows down. Over the course of 25,800 years, a period often called a Great Year, the Sun's path completes a full, 360-degree backward rotation through the zodiac. In Western astrological traditions, precession is measured from the March equinox, one of the two annual points at which the Sun is exactly halfway between its lowest and highest points in the sky. At the end of the 20th century and beginning of the 21st, the Sun's March equinox position was in the constellation Pisces moving back into Aquarius. This signaled the end of one astrological age (the Age of Pisces) and the beginning of another (the Age of Aquarius).


title: 2012 phenomenon

text: Similarly, the Sun's December solstice position (in the northern hemisphere, the lowest point on its annual path; in the southern hemisphere, the highest) was in the constellation of Sagittarius, one of two constellations in which the zodiac intersects with the Milky Way. Every year, on the December solstice, the Sun and the Milky Way, appear (from the surface of the Earth) to come into alignment, and every year precession caused a slight shift in the Sun's position in the Milky Way. Given that the Milky Way is between 10° and 20° wide, it takes between 700 and 1,400 years for the Sun's December solstice position to precess through it. In 2012 it was about halfway through the Milky Way, crossing the galactic equator. In 2012, the Sun's December solstice fell on 21 December.


title: 2012 phenomenon

text: Mystical speculations about the precession of the equinoxes and the Sun's proximity to the center of the Milky Way appeared in "Hamlet's Mill" (1969) by Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Deschend. These were quoted and expanded upon by Terence and Dennis McKenna in "The Invisible Landscape" (1975).


title: 2012 phenomenon

text: Adherents to the idea, following a theory first proposed by Munro Edmonson, alleged that the Maya based their calendar on observations of the Great Rift or Dark Rift, a band of dark dust clouds in the Milky Way, which, according to some scholars, the Maya called the "Xibalba be" or "Black Road". John Major Jenkins claims that the Maya were aware of where the ecliptic intersected the Black Road and gave this position in the sky a special significance in their cosmology. Jenkins said that precession would align the Sun precisely with the galactic equator at the 2012 winter solstice. Jenkins claimed that the classical Maya anticipated this conjunction and celebrated it as the harbinger of a profound spiritual transition for mankind. New Age proponents of the galactic alignment hypothesis argued that, just as astrology uses the positions of stars and planets to make claims of future events, the Maya plotted their calendars with the objective of preparing for significant world events. Jenkins attributed the insights of ancient Maya shamans about the Galactic Center to their use of psilocybin mushrooms, psychoactive toads, and other psychedelics. Jenkins also associated the "Xibalba be" with a "world tree", drawing on studies of contemporary (not ancient) Maya cosmology.


title: 2012 phenomenon

text: Astronomers such as David Morrison argue that the galactic equator is an entirely arbitrary line and can never be precisely drawn, because it is impossible to determine the Milky Way's exact boundaries, which vary depending on clarity of view. Jenkins claimed he drew his conclusions about the location of the galactic equator from observations taken at above , an altitude that gives a clearer image of the Milky Way than the Maya had access to. Furthermore, since the Sun is half a degree wide, its solstice position takes 36 years to precess its full width. Jenkins himself noted that even given his determined location for the line of the galactic equator, its most precise convergence with the center of the Sun already occurred in 1998, and so asserts that, rather than 2012, the galactic alignment instead focuses on a multi-year period centered in 1998.


title: 2012 phenomenon

text: There is no clear evidence that the classic Maya were aware of precession. Some Maya scholars, such as Barbara MacLeod, Michael Grofe, Eva Hunt, Gordon Brotherston, and Anthony Aveni, have suggested that some Mayan holy dates were timed to precessional cycles, but scholarly opinion on the subject remains divided. There is also little evidence, archaeological or historical, that the Maya placed any importance on solstices or equinoxes. It is possible that only the earliest among Mesoamericans observed solstices, but this is also a disputed issue among Mayanists. There is also no evidence that the classic Maya attached any importance to the Milky Way; there is no glyph in their writing system to represent it, and no astronomical or chronological table tied to it.


title: 2012 phenomenon

text: "Timewave zero" is a numerological formula that purports to calculate the ebb and flow of "novelty", defined as increase over time in the universe's interconnectedness, or organized complexity. Terence McKenna claimed that the universe has a teleological attractor at the end of time that increases interconnectedness. He believed this which would eventually reach a singularity of infinite complexity in 2012, at which point anything and everything imaginable would occur simultaneously. He conceived this idea over several years in the early to mid-1970s whilst using psilocybin mushrooms and DMT. The scientific community considers novelty theory to be pseudoscience.


title: 2012 phenomenon

text: McKenna expressed "novelty" in a computer program which produces a waveform known as "timewave zero" or the "timewave". Based on McKenna's interpretation of the King Wen sequence of the "I Ching", an ancient Chinese book on divination, the graph purports to show great periods of novelty corresponding with major shifts in humanity's biological and sociocultural evolution. He believed that the events of any given time are resonantly related to the events of other times, and chose the atomic bombing of Hiroshima as the basis for calculating his end date of November 2012. When he later discovered this date's proximity to the end of the 13th bʼakʼtun of the Maya calendar, he revised his hypothesis so that the two dates matched.


title: 2012 phenomenon

text: The 1975 first edition of "The Invisible Landscape" referred to 2012 (but no specific day during the year) only twice. In the 1993 second edition, McKenna employed Sharer's date of 21 December 2012 throughout.


title: 2012 phenomenon

text: Novelty theory has been criticized for "rejecting countless ideas presumed as factual by the scientific community", depending "solely on numerous controversial deductions that contradict empirical logic", and encompassing "no suitable indication of truth", with the conclusion that novelty theory is a pseudoscience.


title: 2012 phenomenon

text: The idea that the year 2012 presaged a world cataclysm, the end of the world, or the end of human civilization, became a subject of popular media speculation as the date of 21 December 2012 approached. This idea was promulgated by many pages on the Internet, particularly on YouTube. The Discovery Channel was criticized for its "quasi-documentaries" about the subject that "sacrifice[d] accuracy for entertainment".


title: 2012 phenomenon

text: Some people interpreted the galactic alignment apocalyptically, claiming that its occurrence would somehow create a combined gravitational effect between the Sun and the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy (known as Sagittarius A*), creating havoc on Earth. Apart from the "galactic alignment" already having happened in 1998, the Sun's apparent path through the zodiac as seen from Earth did not take it near the true galactic center, but rather several degrees above it. Even were this not the case, Sagittarius A* is 30,000 light years from Earth; it would have to have been more than 6 million times closer to cause any gravitational disruption to Earth's Solar System. This reading of the alignment was included on the History Channel documentary "Decoding the Past". John Major Jenkins complained that a science fiction writer co-authored the documentary, and he went on to characterize it as "45 minutes of unabashed doomsday hype and the worst kind of inane sensationalism".


title: 2012 phenomenon

text: Some believers in a 2012 doomsday used the term "galactic alignment" to describe a different phenomenon proposed by some scientists to explain a pattern in mass extinctions supposedly observed in the fossil record. According to the Shiva Hypothesis, mass extinctions are not random, but recur every 26 million years. To account for this, it was suggested that vertical oscillations made by the Sun on its 250-million-year orbit of the galactic center cause it to regularly pass through the galactic plane. When the Sun's orbit takes it outside the galactic plane which bisects the galactic disc, the influence of the galactic tide is weaker. However, when re-entering the galactic disc—as it does every 20–25 million years—it comes under the influence of the far stronger "disc tides", which, according to mathematical models, increase the flux of Oort cloud comets into the inner Solar System by a factor of 4, thus leading to a massive increase in the likelihood of a devastating comet impact. However, this "alignment" takes place over tens of millions of years, and could never be timed to an exact date. Evidence shows that the Sun passed through the plane bisecting the galactic disc three million years ago and in 2012 was moving farther above it.


title: 2012 phenomenon

text: A third suggested alignment was some sort of planetary conjunction occurring on 21 December 2012; however, there was no conjunction on that date. Multi-planet alignments did occur in both 2000 and 2010, each with no ill result for the Earth. Jupiter is the largest planet in the Solar System; larger than all other planets combined. When Jupiter is near opposition, the difference in gravitational force that the Earth experiences is less than 1% of the force that the Earth feels daily from the Moon.


title: 2012 phenomenon

text: Another idea tied to 2012 involved a geomagnetic reversal (often referred to as a pole shift by proponents), possibly triggered by a massive solar flare, that would release an energy equal to 100 billion atomic bombs. This belief was supposedly supported by observations that the Earth's magnetic field was weakening, which could precede a reversal of the north and south magnetic poles, and the arrival of the next solar maximum, which was expected sometime around 2012.


title: 2012 phenomenon

text: Most scientific estimates, however, say that geomagnetic reversals take between 1,000 and 10,000 years to complete, and do not start on any particular date. The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicted that the solar maximum would peak in late 2013 or 2014, and that it would be fairly weak, with a below-average number of sunspots. There was no scientific evidence linking a solar maximum to a geomagnetic reversal, which is driven by forces entirely within the Earth.


title: 2012 phenomenon

text: A solar maximum does affect satellite and cellular phone communications. David Morrison attributed the rise of the solar storm idea to physicist and science popularizer Michio Kaku, who claimed in an interview with Fox News that a solar peak in 2012 could be disastrous for orbiting satellites, and to NASA's headlining a 2006 webpage as "Solar Storm Warning", a term later repeated on several doomsday pages.


title: 2012 phenomenon

text: On 23 July 2012, a massive, potentially damaging, solar storm came within nine days of striking Earth.


title: 2012 phenomenon

text: Some believers in a 2012 doomsday claimed that a planet called Planet X, or Nibiru, would collide with or pass by the Earth. This idea, which appeared in various forms since 1995, initially predicted Doomsday in May 2003, but proponents abandoned that date after it passed without incident. The idea originated from claims of channeling alien beings and is widely ridiculed. Astronomers calculated that such an object so close to Earth would be visible to anyone looking up at the night sky.


title: 2012 phenomenon

text: Author Graham Hancock, in his book "Fingerprints of the Gods", interpreted Coe's remarks in "Breaking the Maya Code" as evidence for the prophecy of a global cataclysm. Filmmaker Roland Emmerich later credited the book with inspiring his 2009 disaster film "2012".


title: 2012 phenomenon

text: Other speculations regarding doomsday in 2012 included predictions by the Web Bot project, a computer program that purports to predict the future by analyzing Internet chatter. However, commentators have rejected claims that the bot is able to predict natural disasters, as opposed to human-caused disasters like stock market crashes.


title: 2012 phenomenon

text: The 2012 date was also loosely tied to the long-running concept of the Photon Belt, which predicted a form of interaction between Earth and Alcyone, the largest star of the Pleiades cluster. Critics argued that photons cannot form belts, that the Pleiades, located more than 400 light years away, could have no effect on Earth, and that the Solar System, rather than getting closer to the Pleiades, was in fact moving farther away from it.


title: 2012 phenomenon

text: Some media outlets tied the fact that the red supergiant star Betelgeuse would undergo a supernova at some point in the future to the 2012 phenomenon. However, while Betelgeuse was certainly in the final stages of its life, and would die as a supernova, there was no way to predict the timing of the event to within 100,000 years. To be a threat to Earth, a supernova would need to be no further than 25 light years from the Solar System. Betelgeuse is roughly 600 light years away, and so its supernova would not affect Earth. In December 2011, NASA's Francis Reddy issued a press release debunking the possibility of a supernova occurring in 2012.


title: 2012 phenomenon

text: Another claim involved alien invasion. In December 2010, an article, first published in examiner.com and later referenced in the English-language edition of "Pravda" claimed, citing a Second Digitized Sky Survey photograph as evidence, that SETI had detected three large spacecraft due to arrive at Earth in 2012. Astronomer and debunker Phil Plait noted that by using the small-angle formula, one could determine that if the object in the photo were as large as claimed, it would have had to be closer to Earth than the Moon, which would mean it would already have arrived. In January 2011, Seth Shostak, chief astronomer of SETI, issued a press release debunking the claims.


title: 2012 phenomenon

text: The phenomenon spread widely after coming to public notice, particularly on the Internet. Hundreds of thousands of websites were posted on the subject. "Ask an Astrobiologist", a NASA public outreach website, received over 5,000 questions from the public on the subject from 2007, some asking whether they should kill themselves, their children or their pets. In May 2012, an Ipsos poll of 16,000 adults in 21 countries found that 8 percent had experienced fear or anxiety over the possibility of the world ending in December 2012, while an average of 10 percent agreed with the statement "the Mayan calendar, which some say 'ends' in 2012, marks the end of the world", with responses as high as 20 percent in China, 13 percent in Russia, Turkey, Japan and Korea, and 12 percent in the United States. At least one suicide was directly linked to fear of a 2012 apocalypse, with others anecdotally reported. Jared Lee Loughner, the perpetrator of the 2011 Tucson shooting, followed 2012-related predictions. A panel of scientists questioned on the topic at a plenary session at the Astronomical Society of the Pacific contended that the Internet played a substantial role in allowing this doomsday date to gain more traction than previous similar panics.


title: 2012 phenomenon

text: Beginning in 2000, the small French village of Bugarach, population 189, began receiving visits from "esoterics"—mystic believers who had concluded that the local mountain, Pic de Bugarach, was the ideal location to weather the transformative events of 2012. In 2011, the local mayor, Jean-Pierre Delord, began voicing fears to the international press that the small town would be overwhelmed by an influx of thousands of visitors in 2012, even suggesting he might call in the army. "We've seen a huge rise in visitors", Delord told "The Independent" in March 2012. "Already this year more than 20,000 people have climbed right to the top, and last year we had 10,000 hikers, which was a significant rise on the previous 12 months. They think Pic de Bugarach is 'un garage à ovnis' [a garage for UFOs]. The villagers are exasperated: the exaggerated importance of something which they see as completely removed from reality is bewildering. After 21 December, this will surely return to normal." In December 2012, the French government placed 100 police and firefighters around both Bugarach and Pic de Bugarach, limiting access to potential visitors. Ultimately, only about 1,000 visitors appeared at the height of the "event". Two raves were foiled, 12 people had to be turned away from the peak, and 5 people were arrested for carrying weapons. Jean-Pierre Delord was criticised by members of the community for failing to take advantage of the media attention and promote the region.


title: 2012 phenomenon

text: The Turkish village of Şirince, near Ephesus, expected to receive over 60,000 visitors on 21 December 2012, as New Age mystics believed its "positive energy" would aid in weathering the catastrophe. Only a fraction of that number actually arrived, with a substantial component being police and journalists, and the expected windfall failed to materialise.


title: 2012 phenomenon

text: Similarly, the pyramid-like mountain of Rtanj, in the Serbian Carpathians, attracted attention, due to rumors that it would emit a powerful force shield on the day, protecting those in the vicinity. Hotels around the base were full.


title: 2012 phenomenon

text: In Russia, inmates of a women's prison experienced "a collective mass psychosis" in the weeks leading up to the supposed doomsday, while residents of a factory town near Moscow reportedly emptied a supermarket of matches, candles, food and other supplies. The Minister of Emergency Situations declared in response that according to "methods of monitoring what is occurring on the planet Earth", there would be no apocalypse in December. When asked when the world would end in a press conference, Russian President Vladimir Putin said, "In about 4.5 billion years."


title: 2012 phenomenon

text: In December 2012, Vatican astronomer Rev. José Funes wrote in the Vatican newspaper "L'Osservatore Romano" that apocalyptic theories around 2012 were "not even worth discussing".


title: 2012 phenomenon

text: In China, up to a thousand members of the Christian cult Almighty God were arrested after claiming that the end of bʼakʼtun 13 marked the end of the world, and that it was time to overthrow Communism. Shoppers were reported to be hoarding supplies of candles in anticipation of coming darkness, while online retailer Taobao sold tickets to board Noah's Ark to customers. Bookings for wedding ceremonies on 21 December 2012 were saturated in several cities. On 14 December 2012, a man in Henan province attacked and wounded twenty-three children with a knife. Authorities suspected the man had been "influenced" by the prediction of the upcoming apocalypse. Academics in China attributed the widespread belief in the 2012 doomsday in their country to a lack of scientific literacy and a mistrust of the government-controlled media.


title: 2012 phenomenon

text: On 6 December 2012, Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard delivered a hoax speech for the radio station triple J in which she declared "My dear remaining fellow Australians; the end of the world is coming. Whether the final blow comes from flesh-eating zombies, demonic hell-beasts or from the total triumph of K-Pop, if you know one thing about me it is this—I will always fight for you to the very end." Radio announcer Neil Mitchell described the hoax as "immature" and pondered whether it demeaned her office.


title: 2012 phenomenon

text: Those Mesoamerican countries that once formed part of the Maya civilization—Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador—all organized festivities to commemorate the end of bʼakʼtun 13 at the largest Maya sites. On 21 December 2011, the Maya town of Tapachula in Chiapas activated an eight-foot digital clock counting down the days until the end of bʼakʼtun 13. On 21 December 2012, major events took place at Chichén Itzá in Mexico and Tikal in Guatemala. In El Salvador, the largest event was held at Tazumal, and in Honduras, at Copán. In all of these archaeological sites, Maya rituals were held at dawn led by shamans and Maya priests.


title: 2012 phenomenon

text: On the final day of bʼakʼtun 13, residents of Yucatán and other regions formerly dominated by the ancient Maya celebrated what they saw as the dawn of a new, better era. According to official figures from Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH), about 50,000 people visited Mexican archaeological sites on 21 December 2012. Of those, 10,000 visited Chichén Itzá in Yucatán, 9,900 visited Tulum in Quintana Roo, and 8,000 visited Palenque in Chiapas. An additional 10,000 people visited Teotihuacan near Mexico City, which is not a Maya site. The main ceremony in Chichén Itzá was held at dawn in the plaza of the Temple of Kukulkán, one of the principal symbols of Maya culture. The archaeological site was opened two hours early to receive thousands of tourists, mostly foreigners who came to participate in events scheduled for the end of bʼakʼtun 13.


title: 2012 phenomenon

text: The fire ceremony at Tikal was held at dawn in the main plaza of the Temple of the Great Jaguar. The ceremony was led by Guatemalan and foreign priests. The President of Guatemala, Otto Pérez, and of Costa Rica, Laura Chinchilla, participated in the event as special guests. During the ceremony the priests asked for unity, peace and the end of discrimination and racism, with the hope that the start of a new cycle will be a "new dawn". About 3,000 people participated in the event.


title: 2012 phenomenon

text: Most of these events were organized by agencies of the Mexican and Central American governments, and their respective tourism industries expected to attract thousands of visitors. Mexico is visited by about 22 million foreigners in a typical year. However, in 2012, the national tourism agency expected to attract 52 million visitors just to the regions of Chiapas, Yucatán, Quintana Roo, Tabasco and Campeche. A Maya activist group in Guatemala, Oxlaljuj Ajpop, objected to the commercialization of the date. A spokesman from the Conference of Maya Ministers commented that for them the Tikal ceremony is not a show for tourists but something spiritual and personal. The secretary of the Great Council of Ancestral Authorities commented that living Maya felt they were excluded from the activities in Tikal. This group held a parallel ceremony, and complained that the date has been used for commercial gain. In addition, before the main Tikal ceremony, about 200 Maya protested the celebration because they felt excluded. Most modern Maya were indifferent to the ceremonies, and the small number of people still practising ancient rites held solemn, more private ceremonies.


title: 2012 phenomenon

text: Osvaldo Gomez, a technical advisor to the Tikal site, complained that many visitors during the celebration had illegally climbed the stairs of the Temple of the Masks, causing "irreparable" damage.


title: 2012 phenomenon

text: In Brazil, Décio Colla, the Mayor of the City of São Francisco de Paula, Rio Grande do Sul, mobilized the population to prepare for the end of the world by stocking up on food and supplies. In the city of Corguinho, in the Mato Grosso do Sul, a colony was built for survivors of the expected tragedy. In Alto Paraíso de Goiás, the hotels also made specific reservations for prophetic dates.


title: 2012 phenomenon

text: In Bolivia, President Evo Morales participated in Quechua and Aymara rituals, organized with government support, to commemorate the Southern solstice that took place in Isla del Sol, in the southern part of Lake Titicaca. During the event, Morales proclaimed the beginning of ""Pachakuti"", meaning the world's wake up to a culture of life and the beginning of the end to world capitalism, and he proposed to dismantle the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.


title: 2012 phenomenon

text: On 21 December 2012, the Uritorco in Córdoba, Argentina was closed, as a mass suicide there had been proposed on Facebook.


title: 2012 phenomenon

text: In the United States, sales of private underground blast shelters increased noticeably after 2009, with many construction companies' advertisements calling attention to the 2012 apocalypse. In Michigan, schools were closed for the Christmas holidays two days early, in part because rumours of the 2012 apocalypse were raising fears of repeat shootings similar to that at Sandy Hook. American reality TV stars Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt revealed that they had spent most of their $10 million of accumulated earnings by 2010 because they believed the world would end in 2012.


title: 2012 phenomenon

text: The 2012 phenomenon was discussed or referenced in several media. Several TV documentaries, as well as some contemporary fictional references to the year 2012, referred to 21 December as the day of a cataclysmic event.


title: 2012 phenomenon

text: The UFO conspiracy TV series "The X-Files" cited 22 December 2012 as the date for an alien colonization of the Earth, and mentioned the Mayan calendar "stopping" on this date. The History Channel aired a handful of special series on doomsday that included analysis of 2012 theories, such as "Decoding the Past" (2005–2007), "2012, End of Days" (2006), "Last Days on Earth" (2006), "Seven Signs of the Apocalypse" (2009), and "Nostradamus 2012" (2008). The Discovery Channel also aired "2012 Apocalypse" in 2009, suggesting that massive solar storms, magnetic pole reversal, earthquakes, supervolcanoes, and other drastic natural events could occur in 2012. In 2012, the National Geographic Channel launched a show called "Doomsday Preppers", a documentary series about survivalists preparing for various cataclysms, including the 2012 doomsday.


title: 2012 phenomenon

text: Hundreds of books were published on the topic. The bestselling book of 2009, Dan Brown's "The Lost Symbol", featured a coded mock email number (2456282.5) that decoded to the Julian date for 21 December 2012.


title: 2012 phenomenon

text: In cinema, Roland Emmerich's 2009 science fiction disaster film "2012" was inspired by the phenomenon, and advance promotion prior to its release included a stealth marketing campaign in which TV spots and websites from the fictional "Institute for Human Continuity" called on people to prepare for the end of the world. As these promotions did not mention the film itself, many viewers believed them to be real and contacted astronomers in panic. Although the campaign was heavily criticized, the film became one of the most successful of its year, grossing nearly $770 million worldwide. An article in "The Daily Telegraph" attributed the widespread fear of the phenomenon in China to the film, which was a smash hit in that country because it depicted the Chinese building "survival arks". Lars von Trier's 2011 film "Melancholia" featured a plot in which a planet emerges from behind the Sun on a collision course with Earth.


title: 2012 phenomenon

text: The phenomenon also inspired several rock and pop music hits. As early as 1997, "A Certain Shade of Green" by Incubus referred to the mystical belief that a shift in perception would arrive in 2012 ("Are you gonna stand around till 2012 A.D.? / What are you waiting for, a certain shade of green?"). More recent hits include "2012 (It Ain't the End)" (2010) performed by Jay Sean featuring Nicki Minaj, "Till the World Ends" (2011) performed by Britney Spears and "2012 (If The World Would End)" (2012) performed by Mike Candys featuring Evelyn & Patrick Miller. Towards mid-December 2012, an internet hoax related to South Korean singer Psy being one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse was widely circulated around social media platforms. The hoax purported that once Psy's "Gangnam Style" YouTube video amassed a billion views, the world would end. Indian composer A. R. Rahman, known for "Slumdog Millionaire", released his single "Infinite Love" to "instill faith and optimism in people" prior to the hypothesised doomsday. The artwork for All Time Low's 2012 album "Don't Panic" satirizes various cataclysmic events associated with the phenomenon.


title: 2012 phenomenon

text: A number of brands ran commercials tied to the phenomenon in the days and months leading to the date. In February 2012, American automotive company General Motors aired an advertisement during the annual Super Bowl football game in which a group of friends drove Chevrolet Silverados through the ruins of human civilization following the 2012 apocalypse. On 17 December 2012, Jell-O ran an ad saying that offering Jell-O to the Mayan gods would appease them into sparing the world. John Verret, Professor of Advertising at Boston University, questioned the utility of tying large sums of money to such a unique and short-term event.


title: Marco Asensio

text: Marco Asensio Willemsen (; born 21 January 1996) is a Spanish professional footballer who plays as a winger and attacking midfielder for La Liga club Real Madrid and the Spain national team.


title: Marco Asensio

text: After starting out at Mallorca, Asensio signed with Real Madrid in November 2014, being consecutively loaned to his former club as well as Espanyol. Upon his return, he has gone on to win several honours, including three Champions League and three La Liga trophies.


title: Marco Asensio

text: Asensio made his senior debut for Spain in 2016, representing them at the 2018 and 2022 FIFA World Cup.


title: Marco Asensio

text: Born in Palma, Majorca, Balearic Islands to a Dutch mother and a Spanish father, Asensio joined RCD Mallorca in 2006 from CF Platges de Calvià. His mother, Maria Willemsen, died of cancer when he was 15.


title: Marco Asensio

text: Asensio struggled with growth deficiencies in his knees during his youth, which only subsided when he was a teenager.