title: Montpellier

text: In the Early Middle Ages, the nearby episcopal town of Maguelone was the major settlement in the area, but raids by pirates encouraged settlement a little farther inland. Montpellier, first mentioned in a document of 985, was founded under a local feudal dynasty, the Guilhem, who combined two hamlets and built a castle and walls around the united settlement. The name is from medieval Latin "mons pisleri", "Woad Mountain" referring to the woad (Latin "pastellus, pestellus") used for dyeing locally. There is no real "mountain" in the area, with the "mons" referring to a pile of stones. The two surviving towers of the city walls, the "Tour des Pins" and the "Tour de la Babotte", were built later, around the year 1200. Montpellier came to prominence in the 12th century—as a trading centre, with trading links across the Mediterranean world, and a rich Jewish cultural life that flourished within traditions of tolerance of Muslims, Jews and Cathars—and later of its Protestants. William VIII of Montpellier gave freedom for all to teach medicine in Montpellier in 1180. The city's faculties of law and medicine were established in 1220 by Cardinal Conrad of Urach, legate of Pope Honorius III; the medical faculty has, over the centuries, been one of the major centres for the teaching of medicine in Europe. This era marked the high point of Montpellier's prominence. The city became a possession of the Kings of Aragon in 1204 by the marriage of Peter II of Aragon with Marie of Montpellier, who was given the city and its dependencies as part of her dowry.Montpellier gained a charter in 1204 when Peter and Marie confirmed the city's traditional freedoms and granted the city the right to choose twelve governing consuls annually. Under the Kings of Aragon, Montpellier became a very important city, a major economic centre and the primary centre for the spice trade in the Kingdom of France. It was the second or third most important city of France at that time, with some 40,000 inhabitants before the Black Death. Montpellier remained a possession of the crown of Aragon until it passed to James III of Majorca, who sold the city to the French king Philip VI in 1349, to raise funds for his ongoing struggle with Peter IV of Aragon. In the 14th century, Pope Urban VIII gave Montpellier a new monastery dedicated to Saint Peter, noteworthy for the very unusual porch of its chapel, supported by two high, somewhat rocket-like towers. With its importance steadily increasing, the city finally gained a bishop, who moved from Maguelone in 1536, and the huge monastery chapel became a cathedral. In 1432, Jacques Cœur established himself in the city and it became an important economic centre, until 1481 when Marseilles overshadowed it in this role.


title: Montpellier

text: From the middle of the 14th century until the French Revolution (1789), Montpellier was part of the province of Languedoc.


title: Montpellier

text: At the time of the Reformation in the 16th century, many of the inhabitants of Montpellier became Protestants (or Huguenots as they were known in France) and the city became a stronghold of Protestant resistance to the Catholic French crown. In 1622, King Louis XIII besieged the city which surrendered after a two-month siege (Siege of Montpellier), afterwards building the Citadel of Montpellier to secure it. Louis XIV made Montpellier capital of Bas Languedoc, and the town started to embellish itself, by building the Promenade du Peyrou, the Esplanade and a large number of houses in the historic centre. After the French Revolution, the city became the capital of the much smaller Hérault.


title: Montpellier

text: During the 19th century the city thrived on the wine culture that it was able to produce due to the abundance of sun throughout the year. The wine consumption in France allowed Montpellier's citizens to become very wealthy until in the 1890s the phylloxera induced fungal disease had spread amongst the vineyards and the people were no longer able to grow the grapes needed for wine. After this the city had grown because it welcomed immigrants from Algeria and other parts of northern Africa after Algeria's independence from France. In the 21st century Montpellier is between France's number seventh and eighth largest city. The city had another influx in population more recently, largely due to the student population, who make up about one-third of Montpellier's population. The school of medicine kickstarted the city's thriving university culture, though many other universities have been well established there. The coastal city also benefited in the past 40 years from major construction programs such as Antigone, Port Marianne and Odysseum districts.


title: Montpellier

text: The city is situated on hilly ground inland from the Mediterranean coast, on the river Lez. The name of the city, which was originally "Monspessulanus", is said to have stood for "mont pelé" (the naked hill, because the vegetation was poor), or "le mont de la colline" (the mount of the hill).


title: Montpellier

text: Montpellier's highest point is the Place du Peyrou, at an altitude of . The city is built on two hills, Montpellier and Montpelliéret, thus some of its streets have great differences of altitude. Some of its streets are also very narrow and old, which gives it a more intimate feel.


title: Montpellier

text: Montpellier has a Mediterranean climate (Köppen "Csa"), with cool, damp winters, and hot, rather dry summers. The monthly mean ranges from in January to in July. Precipitation is around , and is greatest in fall and winter, but not absent in summer, either. Extreme temperatures have ranged from recorded on 5 February 1963 and up to on 28 June 2019.


title: Montpellier

text: Since 2001, Montpellier has been divided into seven official neighbourhoods, themselves divided into sub-neighbourhoods. Each of them possesses a neighbourhood council.


title: Montpellier

text: The whole metropolitan area had a population of 510,400 in 2006. And in a study made by INSEE from 2007 to 2012 Montpellier saw the strongest population growth of France's main communes (+1.1%), ahead of Paris and Lyon. In 2018, the estimated population of the metropolitan area was 787,705. For most of its history, and even today, Montpellier is known for its significant Spanish population, heritage and influence. Montpellier also houses significant Occitan, Moroccan, Algerian, and Italian communities.


title: Montpellier

text: The University of Montpellier is one of the oldest in the world, founded in 1160, and having been granted a charter in 1220 by Cardinal Conrad von Urach and confirmed by Pope Nicholas IV in a papal bull of 1289. It was suppressed during the French Revolution but was


title: Montpellier

text: It is not known exactly at what date the schools of literature were founded which developed into the Montpellier faculty of arts; it may be that they were a direct continuation of the Gallo-Roman schools. The school of law was founded by Placentinus, a doctor from Bologna University, who came to Montpellier in 1160, taught there during two different periods, and died there in 1192. With regard to the school of medicine, there were excellent physicians at Montpellier. The statutes given in 1220 by Cardinal Conrad, legate of Honorius III, which were completed in 1240 by Pierre de Conques, placed this school under the direction of the Bishop of Maguelonne. Pope Nicholas IV issued a Bull in 1289, combining all the schools into a university, which was placed under the direction of the bishop, but which in fact enjoyed a large measure of autonomy.


title: Montpellier

text: Theology was at first taught in the convents, in which St. Anthony of Padua, Raymond Lullus, and the Dominican Bernard de la Treille lectured. Two letters of King John prove that a faculty of theology existed at Montpellier independently of the convents, in January 1350. By a Bull of 17 December 1421, Martin V granted canonical institution to this faculty and united it closely with the faculty of law. In the 16th century the faculty of theology disappeared for a time, when Calvinism, in the reign of Henry II of France, held complete possession of the city. It resumed its functions after Louis XIII had reestablished the royal power at Montpellier in 1622; but the rivalries of Dominicans and Jesuits interfered seriously with the prosperity of the faculty, which disappeared at the Revolution. The faculty numbered among its illustrious pupils of law Petrarch, who spent four years at Montpellier, and among its lecturers Guillaume de Nogaret, chancellor to Philip the Fair, Guillaume de Grimoard, afterwards pope under the name of Urban V, and Pedro de Luna, antipope as Benedict XIII. But after the 15th century this faculty fell into decay, as did also the faculty of arts, although for a time, under Henry IV of France, the latter faculty had among its lecturers Casaubon.


title: Montpellier

text: The Montpellier school of medicine owed its success to the ruling of the Guilhems, lords of the town, by which any licensed physician might lecture there; there was no fixed limit to the number of teachers, lectures were multiplied, and there was a great wealth of teaching. Rabelais took his medical degrees at Montpellier. It was in this school that the biological theory of vitalism, elaborated by Barthez (1734–1806), had its origin. The French Revolution did not interrupt the existence of the faculty of medicine.


title: Montpellier

text: The faculties of science and of letters were re-established in 1810; that of law in 1880. It was on the occasion of the sixth centenary of the university, celebrated in 1889, that the Government of France announced its intention—which has since been realized—of reorganizing the provincial universities in France.


title: Montpellier

text: University of Montpellier 1 and University of Montpellier 2 reunified in January 2015 to form the University of Montpellier. Paul Valéry University Montpellier, remains a separate entity.


title: Montpellier

text: Moreover, Montpellier was ranked 119th best student city in the world for 2013, according to QS Best Student Cities 2023 ranking.


title: Montpellier

text: Montpellier is served by railway, including TGV highspeed trains. Montpellier's main railway station is Saint-Roch. Since 2018, there is also a station on the high-speed railway linking Nîmes and Montpellier with the LGV Méditerranée, called Montpellier-Sud de France.


title: Montpellier

text: The Montpellier – Méditerranée Airport is located in the area of Fréjorgues, in the town of Mauguio, southeast of Montpellier.


title: Montpellier

text: The "Transports de l'agglomération de Montpellier" (TaM) manages the city's public transportation, including its tramway network consisting of four lines and several parking facilities. Line 1 runs from Mosson in the west to Odysseum in the east. Line 2 runs from Jacou in the northeast to St. Jean-de-Vedas in the southwest. Line 3 and Line 4 opened in April 2012. Line 3, which is long, links Juvignac and Pérols with a branch to Lattes and serves 32 stations. Line 4 circles the centre and serves as a connector line between the various arms of tram system. They intersect at Gare St. Roch station, Rives du Lez and Corum.


title: Montpellier

text: The TaM also manages the large bike sharing scheme Vélomagg', started in June 2007, comprising 1200 bicycles and 50 stations.


title: Montpellier

text: Montpellier was the finish of Stage 11 and the departure of Stage 12 in the 2007 Tour de France. It was also the finish of Stage 11 and the departure of Stage 12 in the 2016 edition. The city is home to a variety of professional sports teams:


title: Montpellier

text: The city is home to the Open Sud de France tennis tournament since 2010, and will host the XXXI World Rhythmic Gymnastics Championship.


title: Montpellier

text: The main athletics stadium is the Philippidès Stadium, which is owned by the University of Montpellier.


title: Montpellier

text: The city is a centre for cultural events as there are many students. Montpellier has two large concert venues: Le Zenith Sud (7.000 seats) and L'Arena (14.000 seats). Le Corum cultural and conference centre contains three auditoriums.


title: Montpellier

text: "Montpellier" is used as the name of other towns and streets in as many as four continents. Many places in England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland carry the name Montpellier. Often they are in resort locations claiming some of the healthy attributes for which the French city was renowned in earlier centuries. The variant spelling "Montpelier" is common, and is of quite early provenance. Brewer uses that spelling. The first example was the early 19th-century suburb of Montpelier in Brighton.


title: Montpellier

text: The capital of the American state of Vermont was named Montpelier because of the high regard in which the Americans held the French who had aided their Revolutionary War against the British. Several other American cities are also named Montpelier.


title: Montpellier

text: Places named Montpellier/Montpelier are also found in Australia, Canada, South Africa, and the Caribbean.


title: Montpellier

text: James Madison, the United States fourth president, named his plantation Montpelier (Orange, Virginia), after the resort-like properties associated with the city at the time.


title: Mayday (Canadian TV series)

text: Mayday, entitled Air Crash Investigation in Canada (alternatively known as Air Crash Investigations on Seven Network), New Zealand, South Africa, the United Kingdom (alternatively known as Air Crash: Disaster Revealed on 5Select), India, other Asian countries, and some European countries, and Air Emergency, Air Disasters, and Mayday: Air Disaster in the United States, is a Canadian documentary television program examining air crashes, near-crashes, hijackings, bombings, and other disasters. "Mayday" uses re-enactments and computer-generated imagery to reconstruct the sequence of events leading up to each disaster. In addition, survivors, aviation experts, retired pilots, and crash investigators are interviewed, to explain how the emergencies came about, how they were investigated, and how they might have been prevented.


title: Mayday (Canadian TV series)

text: Cineflix started production on , with a budget. In Canada itself, the program premiered on Discovery Channel Canada on 3 September 2003. Cineflix also secured deals with France 5, Discovery Channel, Canal D, TVNZ, Seven Network, Holland Media Group, and National Geographic Channel to take "Mayday" in 144 countries and 26 languages. The series was received well by critics and nominated for a number of awards. In 2010, Sharon Zupancic won a Gemini Award for her work on the season-seven episode, "Lockerbie Disaster", that depicts the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 in 1988. A University of New South Wales senior lecturer, Raymond Lewis, conducted a study on teaching strategy loosely based on the series. Lewis's results indicated using the strategy had "a positive effect on learning outcomes" for prospective pilots.


title: Mayday (Canadian TV series)

text: The series features re-enactments, interviews, eyewitness testimony, computer-generated imagery, and in nearly all of the episodes, voice-actor readings of cockpit voice recorder (CVR) transcripts to reconstruct the sequence of events for the audience. Several passengers and crew members (whether they survived the incident or not) are picked and actors/actresses play the roles of those passengers and crew throughout the flight, usually starting from boarding of the flight. The flight routines in the air traffic control, cockpit, and cabin are recreated on screen starting from departure up to the moment of the emergency. At the moment of the emergency, external views of the aircraft from different angles are recreated to show the effect and what had happened to the aircraft. The responses and reactions of the passengers, crews, and air traffic control personnel leading up to the eventual crash or emergency landing are then recreated. Scenes in the cockpit and air traffic control centres are recreated using the transcript obtained from the CVR of the aircraft and other recordings made at the time.


title: Mayday (Canadian TV series)

text: Throughout the episodes, the victims (or the relatives and friends of the victims) are interviewed, adding further information about a case as it relates to them personally. In addition, aviation experts, retired pilots, and investigators are interviewed on the evidence and explain how these emergencies came about and how they could have been prevented.


title: Mayday (Canadian TV series)

text: Cineflix started production for "Mayday" on , with a C$2.5 million budget, after Channel Five commissioned the six-part, one-hour series. To keep the costs down, most of the production was kept at Cineflix's offices in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. While in production, the series was sold to France 5, Discovery Channel, and Canal D. On , Cineflix announced that it had sold the series to TVNZ, Seven Network, and Holland Media Group. Later that year on , a month before the airing of the first season, Cineflix announced that it had secured a major international deal with National Geographic Channel to air "Mayday" in 144 countries and 26 languages.


title: Mayday (Canadian TV series)

text: In 2011, Smithsonian Networks aired season five, renamed "Air Disasters", making it the first time in the United States that "Mayday" had aired on a channel other than National Geographic. On 25 January 2012, Cineflix Rights announced that it would be selling seasons 8, 9, and 11 (23 episodes) to Smithsonian Networks. On 28 March 2014, Cineflix Rights announced a deal with Smithsonian Networks to air seasons three, four, and 13 (34 episodes).


title: Mayday (Canadian TV series)

text: In 2020, The Weather Channel in the United States began airing several episodes of the series under the title "Mayday: Air Disaster".


title: Mayday (Canadian TV series)

text: Starting in 2021 and continuting to this day, the Wonder and On the Move YouTube channels (owned by Little Dot Studios, a subsidiary of All3Media) uploaded the first nine seasons of "Mayday" and the "Crash of the Century" special with the episodes in their full uncut versions and are available in all countries, with the exception of the United Kingdom, where they are geoblocked.


title: Mayday (Canadian TV series)

text: In the United States, the show's tenth and twelfth seasons are available for streaming online on free, advertiser-supported streaming services Tubi and Freevee under the title "Mayday: Air Disasters", while the show's first season is also made available for streaming online on Amazon Prime Video, provided by MagellanTV, under the title "MayDay: Air Disaster Investigations".


title: Mayday (Canadian TV series)

text: In the United Kingdom, from August 2022, 5Select began rebroadcasting Seasons 2 and 3 under the alternative name "Air Crash: Disaster Revealed". These series had previously been owned by Channel 5 in the initial runs. From 7 October 2022, Sky History 2 will rebroadcast Season 1 using a slightly modified version of the name used by 5Select: "Air Crash: Disaster Uncovered". In the Sky History 2 rebroadcasts, the episodes were edited to remove content in order to keep the episodes to 45 minutes in length (including advertising breaks), meaning some minor inconsequential scenes which would have no impact on the episode had been taken out. Some other notable changes occurred in the versions aired on 5Select, including:


title: Mayday (Canadian TV series)

text: As of February 2022, a total of 230 episodes of "Mayday" had been aired, including five "Science of Disaster" specials, three "Crash Scene Investigation" spin-offs, which do not examine aircraft crashes, and a sub-series labelled "The Accident Files" that aired four seasons.


title: Mayday (Canadian TV series)

text: The series has been well received by critics. Franck Tabouring from DVD Verdict said, "It's a well-produced show with plenty of compelling information about tragic accidents, telling how some people survived and others didn't."


title: Mayday (Canadian TV series)

text: The senior lecturer at the University of New South Wales, Raymond Lewis, conducted a study on teaching strategy loosely based on the series. The study was done with prospective pilots studying the "Aircraft Systems for Aviators" undergraduate course by including "study of air accidents and incidents associated with aircraft systems." The results of the study showed "the use of air accidents and incident scenarios had a positive effect on learning outcomes."


title: Mayday (Canadian TV series)

text: In 2009, Entertainment One released the complete first season of the show on DVD in Region 1 in Canada.


title: Fight Club (novel)

text: Fight Club is a 1996 novel by Chuck Palahniuk. It follows the experiences of an unnamed protagonist struggling with insomnia. Inspired by his doctor's exasperated remark that insomnia is not suffering, the protagonist finds relief by impersonating a seriously ill person in several support groups. Then he meets a mysterious man named Tyler Durden and establishes an underground fighting club as radical psychotherapy.


title: Fight Club (novel)

text: In 1999, director David Fincher adapted the novel into a film of the same name, starring Brad Pitt and Edward Norton. The film acquired a cult following despite underperforming financially. The film's prominence heightened the profile of the novel and that of Palahniuk. The sequel "Fight Club 2" was released in comic book form in May 2015.


title: Fight Club (novel)

text: "Fight Club" centers on an anonymous narrator, who works as a product recall specialist for an unnamed car company. Because of the stress of his job and the jet lag brought upon by frequent business trips, he begins to suffer from recurring insomnia. When he seeks treatment, his doctor advises him to visit a support group for testicular cancer victims to "see what real suffering is like". He finds that sharing the problems of others—despite not having testicular cancer himself—alleviates his insomnia.


title: Fight Club (novel)

text: The narrator's unique treatment works until he meets Marla Singer, another "tourist" who visits the support group under false pretenses. The possibly disturbed Marla reminds the narrator that he is a faker who does not belong there. He begins to hate Marla for keeping him from crying, and, therefore, from sleeping. After a confrontation, the two agree to attend separate support group meetings to avoid each other. The truce is uneasy, and the narrator's insomnia returns.


title: Fight Club (novel)

text: While on a nude beach, the narrator meets Tyler Durden, a charismatic extremist of mysterious means. After an explosion destroys the narrator's condominium, he asks to stay at Tyler's house. Tyler agrees, but asks for something in return: "I want you to hit me as hard as you can." Both men find that they enjoy the ensuing fistfight. They subsequently move in together and establish a "fight club", drawing numerous men with similar temperaments into bare-knuckle fighting matches, set to the following rules:


title: Fight Club (novel)

text: Later in the book, a mechanic tells the narrator about two new rules of the fight club: nobody is the center of the fight club except for the two men fighting, and the fight club will always be free.


title: Fight Club (novel)

text: Marla, noticing that the narrator has not recently attended his support groups, calls him to claim that she has overdosed on Xanax in a half-hearted suicide attempt. Tyler returns from work, picks up the phone to Marla's drug-induced rambling, and rescues her. Tyler and Marla embark on an uneasy affair that confounds the narrator and confuses Marla. Throughout this affair, Marla is unaware both of fight club's existence and the interaction between Tyler and the narrator. Because Tyler and Marla are never seen at the same time, the narrator wonders whether Tyler and Marla are the same person.


title: Fight Club (novel)

text: As fight club attains a nationwide presence, Tyler uses it to spread his anti-consumerist ideas, recruiting fight club's members to participate in increasingly elaborate pranks on corporate America. He eventually gathers the most devoted fight club members and forms "Project Mayhem", a cult-like organization that trains itself as an army to bring down modern civilization. This organization, like fight club, is controlled by a set of rules:


title: Fight Club (novel)

text: While initially a loyal participant in Project Mayhem, the narrator becomes uncomfortable with the increasing destructiveness of its activities. He resolves to stop Tyler and his followers when Bob, a friend from the testicular cancer support group, is killed during one of Project Mayhem's sabotage operations.


title: Fight Club (novel)

text: As the narrator's mental state deteriorated, his mind formed a new personality that was able to escape from the problems of his life. Marla inadvertently reveals to the narrator that he and Tyler are the same person. Tyler's affair with Marla—whom the narrator professes to dislike—was the narrator's own affair with Marla. The narrator's bouts of insomnia had been Tyler's personality surfacing; Tyler was active whenever the narrator was "sleeping". The Tyler personality not only created fight club, he also blew up the Narrator's condo.


title: Fight Club (novel)

text: Tyler plans to blow up a skyscraper using homemade bombs created by Project Mayhem; the target of the explosion is the nearby national museum. Tyler plans to die as a martyr during this event, taking the narrator's life as well. Realizing this, the narrator sets out to stop Tyler, although Tyler is always thinking ahead of him. The narrator makes his way to the roof of the building, where Tyler holds him at gunpoint. When Marla comes to the roof with one of the support groups, Tyler vanishes, as Tyler "was his hallucination, not hers".


title: Fight Club (novel)

text: With Tyler gone, the narrator waits for the bomb to explode and kill him. The bomb malfunctions because Tyler mixed paraffin into the explosives. Still alive and holding Tyler's gun, the narrator makes the first decision that is truly his own: he puts the gun in his mouth and shoots himself. Some time later, he awakens in a mental hospital, believing he is in Heaven, and imagines an argument with God over human nature. The book ends with the narrator being approached by hospital employees who reveal themselves to be Project members. They tell him their plans still continue, and that they are expecting Tyler to come back.


title: Fight Club (novel)

text: Palahniuk once had an altercation while camping, and though he returned to work bruised and swollen, his co-workers avoided asking him what had happened on the camping trip. Their reluctance to know what happened in his private life inspired him to write "Fight Club".


title: Fight Club (novel)

text: In 1995, Palahniuk joined a Portland-based writing group that practiced a technique called "dangerous writing". This technique, developed by American author Tom Spanbauer, emphasizes the use of minimalist prose, and the use of painful, personal experiences for inspiration. Under Spanbauer's influence, Palahniuk produced an early draft of what would later become his novel "Invisible Monsters" (1999), but it was rejected by all publishers he submitted it to. Palahniuk then wrote a second novel, expanding on his short story, "Fight Club". Initially "Fight Club" was published as a seven-page short story in the compilation "Pursuit of Happiness" (1995), but Palahniuk expanded it to novel length (in which the original short story became chapter six); "Fight Club: A Novel" was published in 1996.


title: Fight Club (novel)

text: "Fight Club: A Novel" was re-issued in 1999 and 2004; the latter edition includes the author's introduction about the conception and popularity of the novel and movie, in which Palahniuk states:


title: Fight Club (novel)

text: ...bookstores were full of books like "The Joy Luck Club" and "The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood" and "How to Make an American Quilt". These were all novels that presented a social model for women to be together. But there was no novel that presented a new social model for men to share their lives.


title: Fight Club (novel)

text: Really, what I was writing was just "The Great Gatsby" updated a little. It was 'apostolic' fiction—where a surviving apostle tells the story of his hero. There are two men and a woman. And one man, the hero, is shot to death.


title: Fight Club (novel)

text: One critic has noted that this essay can be seen as Palahniuk's way of interpreting his own novel. According to this critic, Palahniuk's essay emphasizes the communicative and romantic elements of the novel while it deemphasizes its transgressive elements.


title: Fight Club (novel)

text: In interviews, the writer has said he is still approached by people wanting to know the location of the nearest fight club. Palahniuk insists there is no such real organization. He has heard of real fight clubs, some said to have existed before the novel. Project Mayhem is lightly based on The Cacophony Society, of which Palahniuk is a member, and other events derived from stories told to him.


title: Fight Club (novel)

text: "Fight Club"s cultural impact is evidenced by the establishment of fight clubs by teenagers and "techies" in the United States. Pranks, such as food-tampering, have been repeated by fans of the book, documented in Palahniuk's essay "Monkey Think, Monkey Do", in the book "" (2004) and in the introduction to the 2004 re-issue of "Fight Club." Other fans have been inspired to undertake prosocial activity, and told Palahniuk that the novel had encouraged them to return to college.


title: Fight Club (novel)

text: In addition to the feature film, a stage adaptation by Dylan Yates has been performed in Seattle and in Charlotte, North Carolina. In 2004, work began on a musical theater adaptation by Palahniuk, Fincher, and Trent Reznor, to premiere on the film's 10th anniversary. In 2015 the project was still in development, with Julie Taymor having been added to the creative team.


title: Fight Club (novel)

text: A modern-day everyman figure as well as an employee specializing in recalls for an unnamed car company, the Narrator—who remains unnamed throughout the novel—is extremely depressed and suffers from insomnia. Some readers call him "Joe", because of his constant use of the name in such statements as, "I am Joe's boiling point". The quotes, "I am Joe's [blank]", refer to the Narrator's reading old "Reader's Digest" articles in which human organs write about themselves in the first person, with titles such as "I Am Joe's Liver". The film adaptation replaces "Joe" with "Jack", inspiring some fans to call the Narrator "Jack". In the novel and film, the Narrator uses various aliases in the support groups. His subconscious is in need of a sense of freedom, he inevitably feels trapped within his own body, and when introduced to Tyler Durden, he begins to see all of the qualities he lacks in himself: "I love everything about Tyler Durden, his courage, his smarts, and his nerve. Tyler is funny and forceful and independent, and men look up to him and expect him to change their world. Tyler is capable and free, and I am not." In the official sequel comic book series also penned by Palahniuk (with art by Cameron Stewart), "Fight Club 2", it is revealed that the Narrator has chosen to be identified by the name of Sebastian.


title: Fight Club (novel)

text: "Because of his nature", Tyler works night jobs where he sabotages companies and harms clients. He also steals left-over drained human fat from liposuction clinics to supplement his income through soap making and to create the ingredients for bomb manufacturing, which will be put to work later with his underground brawling circuit famously known as "Fight Club" in which he is the co-founder of, as it was his idea to instigate the fight that led to it. He later launches Project Mayhem, from which he and the members commit various attacks on consumerism. Tyler is blond, according to the Narrator's comment "in his everything-blond way". The unhinged but magnetic Tyler becomes the "villain" of the novel later in the story. The Narrator refers to Tyler as a free spirit who says, "Let that which does not matter truly slide." After the comic book "Fight Club 2" was released, Tyler's creator Chuck Palahniuk said of the depiction: "So Tyler, for example, has kind of shoulder-length-Jesus blond hair, because he's based on a friend of mine." This is different to Brad Pitt's scruff goatee and short, messy, spiked brown hair with icy-tips as shown in the film version. Cameron Stewart, the comic artist of "Fight Club 2" and "3", described Tyler's visual appearance in the novel as looking sort of like Chris Hemsworth as Thor (2011).


title: Fight Club (novel)

text: A woman whom the Narrator meets during a support group. The Narrator no longer receives the same relief from the groups when he realizes Marla is faking her problems just as he is. After he leaves the groups, he meets her again when she becomes Tyler's lover. Marla is shown to be extremely unkempt, uncaring, and sometimes even suicidal. At times, she shows a softer, more caring side. Coinciding with the novel's neo-noir themes, Marla plays the role of the femme fatale, not only in her appearance but also in her role, serving firstly as a source of problems for the Narrator.


title: Fight Club (novel)

text: The Narrator meets Bob at a support group for testicular cancer. A former bodybuilder, Bob lost his testicles to cancer caused by the steroids he used to bulk up his muscles. He had to undergo testosterone injections, resulting in increased estrogen. The increased estrogen levels caused him to grow large breasts and to develop a softer voice. Because of his "bitch tits", Bob is the only known member who is allowed to wear a shirt. The Narrator befriends Bob and, after leaving the groups, meets him again in fight club. Bob's death later in the story, while carrying out an assignment for Project Mayhem, causes the Narrator to turn against Tyler because the members of Project Mayhem treat it as a trivial matter instead of a tragedy.


title: Fight Club (novel)

text: Bob was the only member of Project Mayhem that didn't fully complete the 3-day initiation phase. The Narrator goes and convinces him to stay. He's also the only one to get killed. He didn't follow Tyler's direct orders.


title: Fight Club (novel)

text: A man who joins Fight Club. He is very loyal to Project Mayhem, laughing at the vandalism he and a group of "space monkeys" have caused as their crimes appear on the evening news. Angel Face is considered very beautiful, hence his name. The blond-haired beauty suffers a savage beating at the Narrator's hands during a Fight Club session; the Narrator states that he "wanted to destroy something beautiful." The next time Angel Face is heard of in the novel, he is described as not being quite as beautiful anymore. Whereas in the book it is that excessive beating which triggers the foundation of Project Mayhem (Fight Club no longer being a sufficient outlet), in the movie the beating seems to be caused primarily by the Narrator's jealousy.


title: Fight Club (novel)

text: At two points in the novel, the Narrator claims he wants to "wipe [his] ass with the Mona Lisa"; a mechanic who joins fight club repeats this to him in one scene. This motif shows his desire for chaos, later expressed by the Narrator as an urge to "destroy something beautiful". Additionally, he mentions at one point that "Nothing is static. Even the Mona Lisa is falling apart." This is most explicitly stated in the scene the mechanic appears in:


title: Fight Club (novel)

text: Kennett further argues that Tyler wants to use this chaos to change history so that "God's middle children" will have some historical significance, whether or not this significance results in "damnation or redemption". These endeavours will figuratively return to them their absent fathers, as judgment by future generations will replace judgment by their fathers.


title: Fight Club (novel)

text: After seeing "Reader's Digest" articles written from the perspective of the organs of a man named Joe, the Narrator begins using similar quotations to describe his feelings. He often replaces organs with feelings and things involved in his life (such as "I am Joe's smirking revenge").


title: Fight Club (novel)

text: Cornflower blue is a color associated with the Narrator's boss; it is revealed that he chose that particular shade of blue to highlight an icon. It is also mentioned later on that the Narrator's boss has eyes which are exactly the same color. All of Palahniuk's subsequent novels have featured references to cornflower blue.


title: Fight Club (novel)

text: Isolationism, specifically directed towards material items and possessions, is a common theme throughout the novel. Tyler acts as the major catalyst behind the destruction of our vanities, which he claims is the path to finding our inner selves. "I'm breaking my attachment to physical power and possessions," Tyler whispered, "because only through destroying myself can I discover the greater power of my spirit."


title: Fight Club (novel)

text: Jesse Kavadlo, a professor at Maryville University of St. Louis, argues that the Narrator's opposition to emasculation is a form of projection, and the problem that he fights is himself. He also argues that Palahniuk uses existentialism in the novel to conceal subtexts of feminism and romance, in order to convey these concepts in a novel that is mainly aimed at a male audience. In an essay titled ""Fight Club" and the Disneyfication of Manhood," Cameron White and Trenia Walker suggest that Project Mayhem's ultimate goal, through the destruction of financial institutions, is to shatter what society deems "real" manhood, reducing manhood to survival instincts. Paul Skinner has also echoed this sentiment, stating, "the anger and dissatisfaction of the male characters is against one type of masculinity being suppressed by post-industrial consumerist society". Palahniuk gives a simpler assertion about the theme of the novel, stating "all my books are about a lonely person looking for some way to connect with other people."


title: Fight Club (novel)

text: Paul Kennett argues that because the Narrator's fights with Tyler are fights with himself, and because he fights himself in front of his boss at the hotel, the Narrator is using the fights as a way of asserting himself as his own boss. These fights are a representation of the struggle of the proletarian at the hands of a higher capitalist power; by asserting himself as capable of having the same power he thus becomes his own master. Later when fight club is formed, the participants are all dressed and groomed similarly, allowing them to symbolically fight themselves at the club and gain the same power.


title: Fight Club (novel)

text: Tyler becomes nostalgic for patriarchal power giving him control and creates Project Mayhem to achieve this. Through this proto-fascist power structure, the Narrator seeks to learn "what, or rather, who, he might have been under a firm patriarchy." Through his position as leader of Project Mayhem, Tyler uses his power to become a "God/Father" to the "space monkeys" (the other members of Project Mayhem), although by the end of the novel his words hold more power than he does, as is evident in the space monkeys' threat to castrate the Narrator when he contradicts Tyler's rule. According to Kennett, this creates a paradox in that Tyler pushes the idea that men who wish to be free from a controlling father-figure are only self-actualized once they have children and become a father themselves, thus becoming controllers themselves in an endless cycle of patriarchal repression.


title: Fight Club (novel)

text: Johannes Hell argues that Palahniuk's use of the Narrator's somnambulism is a simple attempt at emphasizing the dangerous yet daring possibilities of life. Hell enforces the importance of the Narrator's sleepwalking and intense deprivation, for they have a firm influence on suffering readers," from a twisted perspective this is solace for everybody who suffers from somnambulism in a sense, that things could be worse, much worse in fact.


title: Fight Club (novel)

text: Project Mayhem's terrorism in "Fight Club" has been analyzed within the context of the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001. In 2007, Ruth Quiney examined this link, stating that "Fight Club"'s depiction of disaffected Western men joining a homegrown terrorist group anticipated some aspects of the War on Terror"." Jesse Kavadlo, in his essay "With Us or Against Us: Chuck Palahniuk's 9/11," claims that Palahniuk was almost prophetic in predicting future acts of terror. He writes, "Palahniuk's work demonstrates the disturbing intersections between the multiple meanings of the word "plot": narrative, conspiratorial, and funereal, the word reminding us of the linguistic connections between our stories, our secrets, and our entombment."


title: Fight Club (novel)

text: At the time of its publication, "Fight Club" was well-received critically. It was called "brilliantly creepy" by "The Washington Post," and "unsettling and nerve-chafing" by "The Seattle Times. The Baltimore Sun" commended its very publication, stating, "bravo to Norton for having the courage to publish it." For many critics, "Fight Club" is considered the embodiment of Palahniuk's writing style and thematic concerns.


title: Fight Club (novel)

text: Writing in an iconic deadpan and including something to offend everyone, Palahniuk is a risky writer who takes chances galore, especially with a particularly bizarre plot twist he throws in late in the book. Caustic, outrageous, bleakly funny, violent, and always unsettling, Palahniuk's utterly original creation will make even the most jaded reader sit up and take notice.


title: Fight Club (novel)

text: Some critics have condemned "Fight Club" because of its violent, heteronormative themes and cult philosophy. Peter Matthews, however, argues that these critics often overlook the novel's ironic critique of its characters' violent worldview.


title: Fight Club (novel)

text: The book received critical interest and eventually generated cinematic-adaptation interest. In 1999, screenwriters Jim Uhls, August Olsen, and co-producers Conor Strait and Aaron Curry joined director David Fincher. The film "failed" at the box office, but a cult following emerged with the DVD edition and as a result, an original, hardcover edition of the novel is now a collector's item.


title: Fight Club (novel)

text: Following its film adaptation, the novel gained popularity among young, male American readers. Critics have attributed "Fight Club"'s popularity with this audience to its critique of an emasculating consumerist culture, and to the implied message that modern men need revert to their primal, aggressive nature. "The Evening Standard" said the novel was the origin of the term "snowflake". "I coined 'snowflake' and I stand by it", Palahniuk said in 2017. "Every generation gets offended by different things but my friends who teach in high school tell me that their students are very easily offended ... The modern Left is always reacting to things. Once they get their show on the road culturally they will stop being so offended."


title: Fight Club (novel)

text: Palahniuk was convinced to continue "Fight Club" in comics form by fellow novelist Chelsea Cain and comic writers Brian Michael Bendis, Matt Fraction and Kelly Sue DeConnick.


title: Fight Club (novel)

text: At the 2013 San Diego Comic-Con International, Palahniuk announced that a sequel to "Fight Club" is in the works and will take the form of a serialized graphic novel. According to Palahniuk, "It will likely be a series of books that update the story ten years after the seeming end of Tyler Durden. Nowadays, Tyler is telling the story, lurking inside Sebastian, and ready to launch a come-back. Sebastian is oblivious. Marla is bored. Their marriage has run aground on the rocky coastline of middle-aged suburban boredom. It's only when their little boy disappears, kidnapped by Tyler, that Sebastian is dragged back into the world of Mayhem." Dark Horse Comics published this new story in a 10-issue maxi series, written by Palahniuk and illustrated by Cameron Stewart, starting in 2015. Artist David W. Mack, who is friends with Palahniuk, illustrated the covers for the series and has said of the material, "The twists and turns are just primo artifacts of Chuck Palahniuk's brain material."


title: Fight Club (novel)

text: A teaser was released by Dark Horse Comics for Free Comic Book Day 2015, with "Fight Club 2" #1 following in late May of that year. The series explores Joseph Campbell's concept of the 'second father' as being vital to the hero's journey, which is something that has always fascinated Palahniuk.


title: Fight Club (novel)

text: On the "Orbital In Conversation" podcast, Chuck stated that he is already working on "Fight Club 3", which will also be in comic form. He also confirmed that he is working on a series of original short stories for comics which will appear as one-shots before eventually being collected into a single book.


title: Fight Club (novel)

text: "Expedition" is a short-story prequel to "Fight Club", released in Palahniuk's "Make Something Up: Stories You Can't Unread".


title: Invictus (film)

text: Invictus is a 2009 biographical sports film directed by Clint Eastwood and starring Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon, making it the third collaboration between Eastwood and Freeman after "Unforgiven" (1992) and "Million Dollar Baby" (2004). The story is based on the 2008 John Carlin book "Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game That Made a Nation" about the events in South Africa before and during the 1995 Rugby World Cup. The Springboks were not expected to perform well, the team having only recently returned to high-level international competition following the dismantling of apartheid—the country was hosting the World Cup, thus earning an automatic entry. Freeman portrays South African President Nelson Mandela while Damon played François Pienaar, the captain of the Springboks, the South Africa rugby union team.


title: Invictus (film)

text: "Invictus" was released in the United States on December 11, 2009. The title refers to the Roman divine epithet Invictus and may be translated from the Latin as "undefeated" or "unconquered". "Invictus" is also the title of a poem, referred to in the film, by British poet William Ernest Henley (1849–1903). The film was met with positive critical reviews and earned Academy Award nominations for Freeman (Best Actor) and Damon (Best Supporting Actor). The film grossed $122.2 million on a budget of $50–60 million.


title: Invictus (film)

text: On 11 February 1990, Nelson Mandela is released from Victor Verster Prison after having spent 27 years in captivity. Four years later, Mandela is elected the first black President of South Africa. His presidency faces enormous challenges in the post-Apartheid era, including rampant poverty and crime, and Mandela is particularly concerned about racial divisions between black and white South Africans, which would lead to violence. The ill will which both groups hold towards each other is seen even in his own security detail where relations between the established white officers, who had guarded Mandela's predecessors, and the black ANC additions to the security detail, are frosty and marked by mutual distrust.


title: Invictus (film)

text: While attending a game between the Springboks, the country's rugby union team, and England, Mandela recognises that some black people in the stadium are cheering for England, and not their own country, as the mostly-white Springboks represent prejudice and apartheid in their minds; he remarks that he did the same while imprisoned on Robben Island. Knowing that South Africa is set to host the 1995 Rugby World Cup in one year's time, Mandela persuades a meeting of the newly black-dominated South African Sports Committee to support the Springboks. He then meets with the captain of the Springboks rugby team, François Pienaar (Matt Damon), and implies that a Springboks victory in the World Cup will unite and inspire the nation. Mandela also shares with François a British poem, "Invictus", that had inspired him during his time in prison.


title: Invictus (film)

text: François and his teammates train. Many South Africans, both black and white, doubt that rugby will unite a nation torn apart by nearly 50 years of racial tensions, as for many black people, especially the radicals, the Springboks symbolise white supremacy. Both Mandela and Pienaar, however, stand firmly behind their theory that the game can successfully unite the South African country.


title: Invictus (film)

text: Things begin to change as the players interact with the fans and begin a friendship with them. During the opening games, support for the Springboks begins to grow among the black population. By the second game, the whole country comes together to support the Springboks and Mandela's efforts. Mandela's security team also grows closer as the racially diverse officers come to respect their comrades' professionalism and dedication.


title: Invictus (film)

text: As Mandela watches, the Springboks defeat one of their arch-rivals—Australia, the defending champions and known as the Wallabies—in their opening match. They then continue to defy all expectations and, as Mandela conducts trade negotiations in Taiwan, defeat France in heavy rain to advance to the final against their other arch-rival: New Zealand, known as the All Blacks. New Zealand and South Africa were universally regarded as the two greatest rugby nations, with the Springboks then the only side to have a winning record (20–19–2) against the All Blacks, since their first meeting in 1921.


title: Invictus (film)

text: Meanwhile one day during the tournament, the Springbok team visited Robben Island, where Mandela spent the first 18 of his 27 years in jail. There, Pienaar is inspired by Mandela's will and his idea of self-mastery in "Invictus". François mentions his amazement that Mandela "could spend thirty years in a tiny cell, and come out ready to forgive the people who put him there".


title: Invictus (film)

text: Supported by a large home crowd of all races at Ellis Park Stadium in Johannesburg, Pienaar motivates his teammates for the final. Mandela's security detail receives a scare when, just before the match, a South African Airways Boeing 747-200 jetliner flies in low over the stadium. However, it is not an assassination attempt, but a demonstration of patriotism, with the message "Good Luck, Bokke"—the Springboks' Afrikaans nickname—painted on the undersides of the plane's wings. Mandela also famously arrives onto the field before the match wearing a Springbok cap and a replica of Pienaar's #6 jersey.


title: Invictus (film)

text: The Springboks complete their run by beating the All Blacks 15–12 in extra time, thanks to a drop goal from fly-half Joel Stransky. Mandela and Pienaar meet on the field together to celebrate the improbable and unexpected victory, and Mandela hands Pienaar the William Webb Ellis Cup, as the Springboks are now indeed rugby union's world champions. Mandela's car then drives away in the traffic-jammed streets leaving the stadium. He insists that there is no hurry as his security team wanted to change the route due to the cheering crowd. As Mandela watches South Africans celebrating together in the street from his car, his voice is heard reciting "Invictus" again.


title: Invictus (film)

text: The film is based on the book "Playing the Enemy: Mandela and the Game that Made a Nation" by John Carlin. The filmmakers met with Carlin for a week in his Barcelona home, discussing how to transform the book into a screenplay. Filming began in March 2009 in Cape Town. Primary filming in South Africa was completed in May 2009.


title: Invictus (film)

text: Morgan Freeman was the first actor to be cast, as Mandela. Matt Damon was then cast as team captain François, despite being significantly smaller than him and much smaller than members of the current Springbok squad.


title: Invictus (film)

text: He was given intensive coaching by Chester Williams, another star of the 1995 team, at the Gardens Rugby League Club. "In terms of stature and stars, this certainly is one of the biggest films ever to be made in South Africa," said Laurence Mitchell, the head of the Cape Film Commission. On March 18, 2009, Scott Eastwood was cast as flyhalf Joel Stransky (whose drop goal provided the Springboks' winning margin in the 1995 final).


title: Invictus (film)

text: Over Christmas 2008, auditions had taken place in London to try to find a well-known British actor to play Pienaar's father, but in March it was decided to cast a lesser-known South African actor instead.


title: Invictus (film)

text: Zak Fe'aunati, who had previously played professionally for Bath, was cast as Jonah Lomu, while Grant L. Roberts was cast as Ruben Kruger, who was the Springboks' other starting flanker in 1995. Chester Williams was also involved with the project to teach rugby to those of the cast playing players who had not played it before, while Freeman and Williams also became involved with the ESPN 30 For 30 film "The 16th Man". Filming of the final also took place on location at Ellis Park Stadium, the actual venue for the 1995 final.


title: Invictus (film)

text: "Invictus" opened in 2,125 theaters in North America at #3 with US$8,611,147 and was the largest opening for a rugby-themed film. The film held well and ultimately earned $37,491,364 domestically and $84,742,607 internationally for a total of $122,233,971, above its $60 million budget.


title: Invictus (film)

text: The film was met with generally positive reviews. Review aggregate Rotten Tomatoes reports that 76% of critics have given the film a positive review based on 246 reviews, with an average score of 6.60/10. The website's critical consensus is: "Delivered with typically stately precision from director Clint Eastwood, "Invictus" may not be rousing enough for some viewers, but Matt Damon and Morgan Freeman inhabit their real-life characters with admirable conviction." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 74 out of 100, based on 34 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".


title: Invictus (film)

text: Anthony Peckham's sturdy, functional screenplay, based on John Carlin's book "Playing the Enemy", can be a bit on the nose (and the message songs Eastwood adds are overkill). Yet the lapses fade in the face of such a soul-stirring story—one that would be hard to believe if it were fiction. The wonder of "Invictus" is that it actually went down this way.


title: Invictus (film)

text: It is a very good film. It has moments evoking great emotion, as when the black and white members of the presidential security detail (hard-line ANC activists and Afrikaner cops) agree with excruciating difficulty to serve together. And when Damon's character—François Pienaar, as the team captain—is shown the cell where Mandela was held for those long years on Robben Island. My wife, Chaz, and I were taken to the island early one morning by Ahmed Kathrada, one of Mandela's fellow prisoners, and yes, the movie shows his very cell, with the thin blankets on the floor. You regard that cell and you think, here a great man waited in faith for his rendezvous with history.


title: Invictus (film)

text: Eastwood's film shows how sport can unify people, a straightforward and moving message that leaves audiences cheering. The sports, accurate portrayal and the solid storyline earn this movie a manliness rating of 3/5. However, the entertainment value, historical accuracy and strong message this movie delivers earn it an overall rating of 4.5 stars. Definitely, worth seeing.


title: Invictus (film)

text: Inspirational on the face of it, Clint Eastwood's film has a predictable trajectory, but every scene brims with surprising details that accumulate into a rich fabric of history, cultural impressions and emotion.


title: Heights of presidents and presidential candidates of the United States

text: A record of the heights of the presidents of the United States and presidential candidates is useful for evaluating what role, if any, height plays in presidential elections. Some observers have noted that the taller of the two major-party candidates tends to prevail, and argue this is due to the public's preference for taller candidates.


text: Folk wisdom about U.S. presidential politics holds that the taller of the two major-party candidates always wins or almost always wins since the advent of the televised presidential debate.


text: There are more data if the relationship of electoral success to height difference starts from the year 1900, rather than from the beginning of televised debates. In the thirty-one presidential elections between 1900 and 2020, twenty-one of the winning candidates have been taller than their opponents, while nine have been shorter, and one was the same height. On average the winner was taller than the loser.


text: However, it may be argued that drawing the line at any date ignores the fact that pictorial depictions of presidential hopefuls have been available to the American public at large well before debates were televised. Stereographs were widely used as a form of photojournalism for historical events (including political events) by the 1870s. Cutting off the date at 1900 excludes the seven presidential elections immediately preceding where the taller candidate won only "once" (which, when included, partially equalizes the ratio to 22 taller vs 14 shorter winners between 1872 and 2020). Considering that political cartoons and text-based descriptions of candidates have been a staple of American politics since the beginning, one could argue that Americans have always been able to compare candidates by height. Thus, upon including all elections until 2020 where the heights of each candidate are known, the average height of the winner above the loser drops to a mere ; this average height difference becomes little more than a round-off error—a mere —when excluding the 2016 election, in which gender not only accounted for the height difference, but was likely the greater physical distinction between the two main candidates than height.


text: The claims about taller candidates winning almost all modern presidential elections is still pervasive, however. Examples of such views include:


text: A comparison of the heights of the winning presidential candidate with the losing candidate from each election since 1788 is provided below to evaluate such views.


text: <nowiki>**</nowiki> Lost the House of Representatives vote, but received the most popular votes and a plurality of electoral votes; however, not the majority needed to win.


text: The tallest president elected to office was Abraham Lincoln (). Portrait artist Francis Bicknell Carpenter supplies the information for Lincoln:


text: Mr. Lincoln's height was six feet three and three-quarter inches "in his stocking-feet." He stood up one day, at the right of my large canvas, while I marked his exact height upon it.


text: A disputed theory holds that Lincoln's height is the result of the genetic condition multiple endocrine neoplasia type 2b (MEN2B); see medical and mental health of Abraham Lincoln.


text: Only slightly shorter than Lincoln was Lyndon B. Johnson (), the tallest president who originally entered office without being elected directly.


text: The shortest president elected to office was James Madison (); the shortest president to originally enter the office by means other than election is tied between Millard Fillmore and Harry S. Truman (both were ).


text: The tallest unsuccessful presidential candidate (who is also the tallest of all presidential candidates) is Winfield Scott, who stood at and lost the 1852 election to Franklin Pierce, who stood at . The second tallest unsuccessful candidate is John Kerry, at . The shortest unsuccessful presidential candidate is Stephen A. Douglas, at . The next shortest is Hillary Clinton, who lost the 2016 election and is .


text: The largest height difference between two presidential candidates (out of the candidates whose heights are known) was in the 1860 election, when Abraham Lincoln stood taller than opponent Stephen A. Douglas. The second-largest difference was in the 1812 election, with DeWitt Clinton standing taller than incumbent James Madison. The 2016 election between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton has the third largest difference at .


title: Bradford

text: Bradford is a city and the administrative centre of the City of Bradford district in West Yorkshire, England. The city is in the Pennines' eastern foothills on the banks of the Bradford Beck. Bradford had a population of 349,561 at the 2011 census; the second-largest population centre in the county after Leeds, which is to the east of the city. It shares a continuous built-up area with the towns of Shipley, Silsden, Bingley and Keighley in the district as well as with the metropolitan county's other districts. Its name is also given to Bradford Beck.


title: Bradford

text: It became a West Riding of Yorkshire municipal borough in 1847 and received its city charter in 1897. Since local government reform in 1974, the city is the administrative centre of a wider metropolitan district, city hall is the meeting place of Bradford City Council. The district has civil parishes and unparished areas and had a population of , making it the most populous district in England.


title: Bradford

text: In the century leading up its city status, the 19th century, it was boomtown in international textile manufacture. It was one of the earliest industrialised settlements, rapidly becoming the "wool capital of the world"; this in turn gave rise to the nicknames "Woolopolis" and "Wool City". The area's access to supplies of coal, iron ore and soft water set off the growth of manufacturing which led to an explosion in population. From the mid-20th century, deindustrialisation lead to the textile sector and industrial base to decline (including poverty, unemployment and social unrest). The city's economy is the third largest in the Yorkshire and the Humber region, at around £10 billion, based on finance and manufacturing.


title: Bradford

text: Tourism and media is also a part of the economy: it was the first UNESCO City of Film with attractions such as the National Science and Media Museum, Bradford City Park, the Alhambra theatre and Cartwright Hall. It is the UK City of Culture for 2025 having won the designation on 31 May 2022.


title: Bradford

text: The name Bradford is derived from the Old English "brad" and "ford" the broad ford which referred to a crossing of the Bradford Beck at Church Bank below the site of Bradford Cathedral, around which a settlement grew in Anglo-Saxon times. It was recorded as "Bradeford" in 1086.


title: Bradford

text: After an uprising in 1070, during William the Conqueror's Harrying of the North, the manor of Bradford was laid waste, and is described as such in the "Domesday Book" of 1086. It then became part of the "Honour of Pontefract" given to Ilbert de Lacy for service to the Conqueror, in whose family the manor remained until 1311. There is evidence of a castle in the time of the Lacys. The manor then passed to the Earl of Lincoln, John of Gaunt, The Crown and, ultimately, private ownership in 1620.


title: Bradford

text: By the middle ages Bradford, had become a small town centred on Kirkgate, Westgate and Ivegate. In 1316 there is mention of a fulling mill, a soke mill where all the manor corn was milled and a market. During the Wars of the Roses the inhabitants sided with House of Lancaster. Edward IV granted the right to hold two annual fairs and from this time the town began to prosper. In the reign of Henry VIII Bradford exceeded Leeds as a manufacturing centre. Bradford grew slowly over the next two-hundred years as the woollen trade gained in prominence.


title: Bradford

text: During the Civil War the town was garrisoned for the Parliamentarians and in 1642 was unsuccessfully attacked by Royalist forces from Leeds. Sir Thomas Fairfax took the command of the garrison and marched to meet the Duke of Newcastle but was defeated. The Parliamentarians retreated to Bradford and the Royalists set up headquarters at Bolling Hall from where the town was besieged leading to its surrender. The Civil War caused a decline in industry but after the accession of William III and Mary II in 1689 prosperity began to return. The launch of manufacturing in the early 18th century marked the start of the town's development while new canal and turnpike road links encouraged trade.


title: Bradford

text: In 1801, Bradford was a rural market town of 6,393 people, where wool spinning and cloth weaving was carried out in local cottages and farms. Bradford was thus not much bigger than nearby Keighley (5,745) and was significantly smaller than Halifax (8,866) and Huddersfield (7,268). This small town acted as a hub for three nearby townships – Manningham, Bowling and Great and Little Horton, which were separated from the town by countryside.


title: Bradford

text: Blast furnaces were established in about 1788 by Hird, Dawson Hardy at Low Moor and iron was worked by the Bowling Iron Company until about 1900. Yorkshire iron was used for shackles, hooks and piston rods for locomotives, colliery cages and other mining appliances where toughness was required. The Low Moor Company also made pig iron and the company employed 1,500 men in 1929. when the municipal borough of Bradford was created in 1847 there were 46 coal mines within its boundaries. Coal output continued to expand, reaching a peak in 1868 when Bradford contributed a quarter of all the coal and iron produced in Yorkshire.


title: Bradford

text: In 1825 the wool-combers union called a strike that lasted five-months but workers were forced to return to work through hardship leading to the introduction of machine-combing. This Industrial Revolution led to rapid growth, with wool imported in vast quantities for the manufacture of worsted cloth in which Bradford specialised, and the town soon became known as the wool capital of the world.


title: Bradford

text: A permanent military presence was established in the city with the completion of Bradford Moor Barracks in 1844.


title: Bradford

text: Bradford had ample supplies of locally mined coal to provide the power that the industry needed. Local sandstone was an excellent resource for building the mills, and with a population of 182,000 by 1850, the town grew rapidly as workers were attracted by jobs in the textile mills. A desperate shortage of water in Bradford Dale was a serious limitation on industrial expansion and improvement in urban sanitary conditions. In 1854 Bradford Corporation bought the Bradford Water Company and embarked on a huge engineering programme to bring supplies of soft water from Airedale, Wharfedale and Nidderdale. By 1882 water supply had radically improved. Meanwhile, urban expansion took place along the routes out of the city towards the Hortons and Bowling and the townships had become part of a continuous urban area by the late 19th century.


title: Bradford

text: A major employer was Titus Salt who in 1833 took over the running of his father's woollen business specialising in fabrics combining alpaca, mohair, cotton and silk. By 1850 he had five mills. However, because of the polluted environment and squalid conditions for his workers Salt left Bradford and transferred his business to Salts Mill in Saltaire in 1850, where in 1853 he began to build the workers' village which has become a UNESCO World Heritage Site.


title: Bradford

text: Henry Ripley was a younger contemporary of Titus Salt. He was managing partner of Edward Ripley & Son Ltd, which owned the Bowling Dye Works. In 1880 the dye works employed over 1000 people and was said to be the biggest dye works in Europe. Like Salt he was a councillor, JP and Bradford MP who was deeply concerned to improve working class housing conditions. He built the industrial Model village of Ripley Ville on a site in Broomfields, East Bowling close to the dye works.


title: Bradford

text: Other major employers were Samuel Lister and his brother who were worsted spinners and manufacturers at Lister's Mill (Manningham Mills). Lister epitomised Victorian enterprise but it has been suggested that his capitalist attitude made trade unions necessary.


title: Bradford

text: Unprecedented growth created problems with over 200 factory chimneys continually churning out black, sulphurous smoke, Bradford gained the reputation of being the most polluted town in England. There were frequent outbreaks of cholera and typhoid, and only 30% of children born to textile workers reached the age of fifteen. This extreme level of infant and youth mortality contributed to a life expectancy for Bradford residents of just over eighteen years, which was one of the lowest in the country.


title: Bradford

text: Like many major cities Bradford has been a destination for immigrants. In the 1840s Bradford's population was significantly increased by migrants from Ireland, particularly rural Mayo and Sligo, and by 1851 about 10% of the population were born in Ireland, the largest proportion in Yorkshire.


title: Bradford

text: Around the middle decades of the 19th century the Irish were concentrated in eight densely settled areas situated near the town centre. One of these was the Bedford Street area of Broomfields which in 1861 contained 1,162 persons of Irish birth—19% of all Irish born persons in the Borough.


title: Bradford

text: During the 1820s and 1830s, there was immigration from Germany. Many were Jewish merchants and they became active in the life of the town. The Jewish community mostly living in the Manningham area of the town, numbered about 100 families but was influential in the development of Bradford as a major exporter of woollen goods from their textile export houses predominately based in Little Germany and the civic life of Bradford. Charles Semon (1814–1877) was a textile merchant and philanthropist who developed a productive textile export house in the town, he became the first foreign and Jewish mayor of Bradford in 1864. Jacob Behrens (1806–1889) was the first foreign textile merchant to export woollen goods from the town, his company developed into an international multimillion-pound business. Behrens was a philanthropist, he also helped to establish the Bradford chamber of commerce in 1851. Jacob Moser (1839 – 1922) was a textile merchant who was a partner in the firm Edelstein, Moser and Co, which developed into a successful Bradford textile export house. Moser was a philanthropist, he founded the Bradford Charity Organisation Society and the City Guild of Help. In 1910 Moser became the first Jewish Lord Mayor of Bradford.


title: Bradford

text: To support the textile mills, a large manufacturing base grew up in the town providing textile machinery, and this led to diversification with different industries thriving side by side. The Jowett Motor Company founded in the early 20th century by Benjamin and William Jowett and Arthur V Lamb, manufactured cars and vans in Bradford for 50 years. The Scott Motorcycle Company was a well known producer of motorcycles and light engines for industry. Founded by Alfred Angas Scott in 1908 as the Scott Engineering Company in Bradford, Scott motorcycles were produced until 1978.


title: Bradford

text: The city played an important part in the early history of the Labour Party. A mural on the back of the Bradford Playhouse in Little Germany commemorates the centenary of the founding of the Independent Labour Party in Bradford in 1893.


title: Bradford

text: The Bradford Pals were three First World War Pals battalions of Kitchener's Army raised in the city. When the three battalions were taken over by the British Army they were officially named the 16th (1st Bradford), 18th (2nd Bradford), and 20th (Reserve) Battalions, The Prince of Wales's Own (West Yorkshire Regiment).


title: Bradford

text: On the morning of 1 July 1916, the 16th and 18th Battalions left their trenches in Northern France to advance across no man's land. It was the first hour of the first day of the Battle of the Somme. Of the estimated 1,394 men from Bradford and District in the two battalions, 1,060 were either killed or injured during the ill-fated attack on the village of Serre-lès-Puisieux.


title: Bradford

text: Other Bradford Battalions of The Prince of Wales's Own (West Yorkshire Regiment) involved in the Battle of the Somme were the 1st/6th Battalion (the former Bradford Rifle Volunteers), part of the Territorial Force, based at Belle Vue Barracks in Manningham, and the 10th Battalion (another Kitchener battalion). The 1/6th Battalion first saw action in 1915 at the Battle of Aubers Ridge before moving north to the Yser Canal near Ypres. On the first day of the Somme they took heavy casualties while trying to support the 36th (Ulster) Division. The 10th Battalion was involved in the attack on Fricourt, where it suffered the highest casualty rate of any battalion on the Somme on 1 July and perhaps the highest battalion casualty list for a single day during the entire war. Nearly 60% of the battalion's casualties were deaths.


title: Bradford

text: The 1/2nd and 2/2nd West Riding Brigades, Royal Field Artillery (TF), had their headquarters at Valley Parade in Manningham, with batteries at Bradford, Halifax and Heckmondwike. The 1/2nd Brigade crossed to France with the 1/6th Battalion West Yorks in April 1915. These Territorial Force units were to remain close to each other throughout the war, serving in the 49th (West Riding) Division. They were joined in 1917 by the 2/6th Battalion, West Yorks, and 2/2nd West Riding Brigade, RFA, serving in the 62nd (2nd West Riding) Division.


title: Bradford

text: Bradford's "Telegraph and Argus" newspaper was involved in spearheading the news of the 1936 Abdication Crisis, after the Bishop of Bradford publicly expressed doubts about Edward VIII's religious beliefs (see: Telegraph & Argus#1936 Abdication Crisis).


title: Bradford

text: After the Second World War migrants came from Poland and Ukraine and since the 1950s from Bangladesh, India and particularly Pakistan.


title: Bradford

text: The textile industry has been in decline throughout the latter part of the 20th century. A culture of innovation had been fundamental to Bradford's dominance, with new textile technologies being invented in the city; a prime example being the work of Samuel Lister. This innovation culture continues today throughout Bradford's economy, from automotive (Kahn Design) to electronics (Pace Micro Technology).


title: Bradford

text: Wm Morrison Supermarkets was founded by William Morrison in 1899, initially as an egg and butter merchant in Rawson Market, operating under the name of "Wm Morrison (Provisions) Limited".


title: Bradford

text: The grandest of the mills no longer used for textile production is Lister's Mill, the chimney of which can be seen from most places in Bradford. It has become a beacon of regeneration after a £100 million conversion to apartment blocks by property developer Urban Splash.


title: Bradford

text: In 1989, copies of Salman Rushdie's "The Satanic Verses" were burnt in the city, and a section of the Muslim community led a campaign against the book. In July 2001, ethnic tensions led to rioting, and a report described Bradford as fragmented and a city of segregated ethnic communities.


title: Bradford

text: In 2006 Wm Morrison Supermarkets opened its new headquarters in the city, the firm employs more than 5,000 people in Bradford.


title: Bradford

text: In June 2009 Bradford became the world's first UNESCO City of Film and became part of the Creative Cities Network since then. The city has a long history of producing both films and the technology that produces moving film which includes the invention of the Cieroscope, which took place in Manningham in 1896.


title: Bradford

text: In 2010 Provident Financial opened its new headquarters in the city. The company has been based in the city since 1880.


title: Bradford

text: In 2012 the British Wool Marketing Board opened its new headquarters in the city. Also in 2012 Bradford City Park opened, the park which cost £24.5 million to construct is a public space in the city centre which features numerous fountains and a mirror pool surrounded by benches and a walk way.


title: Bradford

text: In 2015 The Broadway opened, the shopping and leisure complex in the centre of Bradford cost £260 million to build and is owned by Meyer Bergman.


title: Bradford

text: Bradford is represented by three MPs: for the constituencies of Bradford East (Imran Hussain, Labour Party), Bradford South (Judith Cummins, Labour), and Bradford West (Naz Shah, Labour Party).


title: Bradford

text: Bradford was part of the Yorkshire and the Humber European constituency, which elected six Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) using the D'Hondt method of party-list proportional representation, until the UK exit from the European Union on 31 January 2020.


title: Bradford

text: In the final European Parliament election, in 2019, 29.9% of voters in Bradford chose the Brexit Party, with 28.8% voting Labour and 14.1% voting Liberal Democrat. The Conservatives only polled 6.7% and UKIP 3.7%.


title: Bradford

text: The city played an important part in the early history of the Labour Party. A mural on the back of the Bradford Playhouse (visible from Leeds Road) commemorates the centenary of the founding of the Independent Labour Party in 1893, and quotes its motto "There is no weal save commonweal".


title: Bradford

text: The original Bradford Coat of Arms had the Latin words Labor omnia vincit below it, meaning "Work conquers all". A new coat of arms was emblazoned in 1976, after local government reorganisation in 1974, with the English motto "Progress, Industry, Humanity".


title: Bradford

text: Bradford is located at (53.7500, -1.8333). Topographically, it is located in the eastern moorland region of the South Pennines.


title: Bradford

text: Bradford is not built on any substantial body of water but is situated at the junction of three valleys, one of them, that of the Bradford Beck which rises in moorland to the west, and is swelled by its tributaries, the Horton Beck, Westbrook, Bowling Beck and Eastbrook. At the site of the original ford, the beck turns north, and flows towards the River Aire at Shipley. Bradfordale (or Bradforddale) is a name given to this valley (see for example Firth 1997). It can be regarded as one of the Yorkshire Dales, though as it passes through the city, it is often not recognised as such. The beck's course through the city centre is culverted and has been since the mid 19th century. On the 1852 Ordnance Survey map it is visible as far as Sun Bridge, at the end of Tyrrell Street, and then from beside Bradford Forster Square railway station on Kirkgate. On the 1906 Ordnance Survey, it disappears at Tumbling Hill Street, off Thornton Road, and appears north of Cape Street, off Valley Road, though there are culverts as far as Queens Road.


title: Bradford

text: The Bradford Canal, built in 1774, linking the city to the Leeds and Liverpool Canal took its water from Bradford Beck and its tributaries. The supply was often inadequate to feed the locks, and the polluted state of the canal led to its temporary closure in 1866: the canal was closed in the early 20th century as uneconomic.


title: Bradford

text: The underlying geology of the city is primarily carboniferous sandstones. These vary in quality from rough rock to fine, honey-coloured stone of building quality. Access to this material has had a pronounced effect on the architecture of the city. The city also lies within the north western parts of the Yorkshire Coalfield which is mostly composed of carboniferous coal measures.


title: Bradford

text: As with the vast majority of the UK, Bradford experiences a maritime climate (Köppen: "Cfb"), with limited seasonal temperature ranges, and generally moderate rainfall throughout the year. Records have been collected since 1908 from the Met Office's weather station at Lister Park, a short distance north of the city centre. This constitutes one of the nation's longest unbroken records of daily data. The full record can be found on the council's website.


title: Bradford

text: The absolute maximum temperature recorded was in July 2022. In an 'average' year, the warmest day should attain a temperature of , with a total of 6 days rising to a maximum of or above.


title: Bradford

text: The absolute minimum temperature recorded was during January 1940. The weather station's elevated suburban location means exceptionally low temperatures are unknown. Typically, 41.4 nights of the year will record an air frost.


title: Bradford

text: Sunshine, at little in excess of 1,250 hours per year is low, as one would expect of an inland location in Northern England located amongst upland areas. All averages refer to the 1981–2010 observation period.


title: Bradford

text: Bradford is within a green belt region that extends into the borough and wider surrounding counties. It is in place to reduce urban sprawl, prevent the towns in the West Yorkshire Urban Area conurbation from further convergence, protect the identity of outlying communities, encourage brownfield reuse, and preserve nearby countryside. This is achieved by restricting inappropriate development within the designated areas, and imposing stricter conditions on permitted building.


title: Bradford

text: The green belt surrounds the Bradford built-up area, separating towns and villages throughout the borough. Larger outlying communities such as Bingley, Wilsden, Cottingley, and Thornton are also exempt from the green belt area. However, nearby smaller villages, hamlets and rural areas such as Brunthwaite, Keelham, Denholme Gate, Laycock Esholt, Micklethwaite, Goose Eye, Stanbury, Hainworth, Tong, and Harecroft are 'washed over' by the designation. Much semi-rural land on the fringes is also included. The area in 2017 amounted to some .


title: Bradford

text: A subsidiary aim of the green belt is to encourage recreation and leisure interests, with rural landscape features, greenfield areas and facilities including Park Wood; Northcliffe park and woods; Heaton Woods; Chellow Dene woods and reservoirs; Horton Bank country park; Norr Hill; Gilstead recreation park; Stone Circle remains by Shipley Glen; Bracken Hall; River Aire valley; Leeds and Liverpool canal; and the Leeds Country Way.


title: Bradford

text: At the 2011 UK census, Bradford had a population of 522,452. There were 106,680 households in Bradford, and the population density was 4,560 inhabitants per square kilometre (11,820/sq mi). For every 100 females, there were 92.9 males. Bradford has the youngest, fastest growing population outside London.


title: Bradford

text: The census showed that of Bradford's total population, 67.44% (352,317) was White, 26.83% (140,149) Asian, 2.48% (12,979) Mixed Race, 1.77% (9,267) Black and 1.48% (7,740) from other races.


title: Bradford

text: 22.1% of the population are British South Asian (included in the 26.83% Asian figure above) the second-highest percentage of South Asians in a single settlement in England and Wales (behind the city of Leicester at 29.9%).


title: Bradford

text: Nearly half of all Asians living in Yorkshire and the Humber live in Bradford, with the central wards of Bradford Moor, City, Little Horton, Manningham and Toller having large majority Asian populations, whereas outlying wards of Bradford such as Thornton and Allerton, Idle and Thackley, Eccleshill, Wibsey, Wyke, Clayton, Wrose, Tong and Royds have predominantly white populations.


title: Bradford

text: The Office for National Statistics Regional Trends report, published in June 2009, showed that some parts of Bradford suffer from the highest levels of deprivation in the country, while other areas of Bradford are some of the least deprived in the country. Infant mortality is double the national average, and life expectancy is slightly lower than in other parts of the district.


title: Bradford

text: The long-term health study "Born in Bradford" studied more than 11,300 births in the city between 2007-2011 and found that the rate of birth defects was 3%, nearly twice the national average of 1.7%. The study found the leading cause was the rate of consanguineous marriage among British Pakistanis, which had become more common than a generation earlier. In total, of 5,127 children of Pakistani origin, 37% had been born to married first cousins. The study also identified an increased risk for babies born to older women. Among the white British group 19% of birth defects were associated with women over the age of 34.


title: Bradford

text: Bradford's textile industry has been in decline for many years and the city has suffered from de-industrialisation. Some areas of Bradford are among the worst levels of social deprivation in the UK, with widespread pockets of exclusion, and rates of unemployment in some wards exceeding 25%, though other areas of Bradford are among the least deprived in the UK. The economy is worth around £9.5 billion, making Bradford's economy a major powerhouse in the region and is forecast to grow to more than £10 billion by 2018, contributing around 8.4% of the region's output, and making the district the third largest (after Leeds and Sheffield) in Yorkshire & Humber. The economy has diversified and the city is home to several major companies, notably in finance (Yorkshire Building Society, Provident Financial, Santander UK), textiles (British Wool Marketing Board, Bulmer and Lumb Group), chemicals (BASF, Nufarm UK), electronics (Arris International, Filtronic), engineering (NG Bailey, Powell Switchgear), and manufacturing, (Denso Marston, Bailey Offsite, Hallmark Cards UK and Seabrook Potato Crisps). Supermarket chain Morrisons has its head office in Bradford as does water utility company Yorkshire Water.


title: Bradford

text: One of the city's biggest employers is Provident Financial plc, a financial services group that specialises in Home Collected Credit (HCC) and owns Vanquis Bank which offers credit cards. It is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index. The company was established in 1880 by Joshua Kelley Waddilove to provide affordable credit to families in West Yorkshire. It has moved into a , £45 million, flagship headquarters building in the city centre creating hundreds of jobs for the city. The building also houses a 200-bed Jurys Inn hotel.


title: Bradford

text: In October 2011 Plans to regenerate Bradford city centre, including the long-delayed Broadway shopping centre, was given a boost as Bradford Council secured £17.6 million of regional growth funding from the government, which it will match to create a £35 million "growth zone" in which companies would get business rate relief in exchange for helping people get training and jobs.


title: Bradford

text: In April 2012 retail giant Freeman Grattan Holdings secured a deal to open a new head office and house around 300 staff in the centre of Bradford. The mail order and online retailer will transfer office staff from its Lidget Green base, where Grattan has had a presence since 1934, to a Grade II-listed former wool warehouse on the edge of Little Germany.


title: Bradford

text: The Broadway is the main retail shopping facility in Bradford. It includes Marks and Spencer, Next, Superdry, Schuh, H&M, Khaadi, Kiko (brand), Menkind among its over 70 units.


title: Bradford

text: Kirkgate Shopping Centre is located in Bradford city centre. It includes Primark, New Look, Bank, W H Smith, Boots, Boyes, SportsDirect.com, Deichmann and F. Hinds in its 65 shops, as well as an indoor market and 550 car parking spaces. The centre has undergone a multimillion-pound refurbishment recently, and plans to upgrade the facade of the 1960s building have been submitted as it anticipates competition from the long-awaited £260 million Westfield development which opened on 5 November 2015. In 2022 it was announced that the centre would eventually be demolished for the "City Village" development and that Primark would move to The Broadway replacing the old Debenhams unit.


title: Bradford

text: Forster Square Shopping Park opened in 1995 and is adjacent to the Forster Square Railway Station. It includes over 20 large retail and food units including Next, TK Maxx, Harveys, Asda Living, Outfit, Peacocks, Clarks, JD Sports, Currys, DFS, Subway, McDonald's and Costa Coffee.


title: Bradford

text: Sunbridge Wells is an underground retail complex, it incorporates restaurants, bars and retail units. The complex is built in a series of Victorian tunnels situated in the centre of Bradford.


title: Bradford

text: Bradford's oldest building is the cathedral, which for most of its life was a parish church. Few other Medieval buildings have survived apart from Bolling Hall, which has been preserved as a museum.


title: Bradford

text: There are some fine Victorian buildings: apart from the abundance of mills, there is the City Hall (with statues of rulers of England unusually including Oliver Cromwell), the former Wool Exchange, and a large Victorian cemetery at Undercliffe. Little Germany is a splendid Victorian commercial district just east of the city centre which takes its name from 19th-century German Jewish immigrants who ran businesses from some of the many listed buildings. Following decades of decay there have been successful conversions to office and residential use. Paper Hall was saved from demolition and renovated in the 1990s and in mid-2005 renovation began on the prominent Eastbrook Hall in Little Germany. This was opened as luxury apartments by Prince Charles in Autumn 2008. Bradford also has a number of architecturally historic hotels that date back to the establishment of the two railway lines into the city centre, back in Victorian times. The Victoria Hotel and the Midland Hotel were built to accommodate business travellers to the city during the height of the woollen trade.


title: Bradford

text: In addition to Undercliffe Cemetery, there are seven other cemeteries in Bradford, located in Bowling, Clayton, North Bierley Thornton, Queensbury, Scholemoor, Thornton and Tong, as well as a number of Council-operated cemeteries in Keighley, Wharfedale and other parts of the district.


title: Bradford

text: Like many cities, Bradford lost a number of notable buildings to developers in the 1960s and 1970s: particularly mourned at the time were the Swan Arcade and the old Kirkgate Market. In recent years some buildings from that era have themselves been demolished and replaced: Provincial House, next to Centenary Square, was demolished by controlled explosion in 2002, and Forster House was pulled down in 2005 as part of the Broadway development.


title: Bradford

text: The high rise High Point was built as the headquarters of the Yorkshire Building Society and completed in 1972. It is a prominent example of Brutalist architecture. It has been empty for several decades and various schemes have been proposed to bring it back into use.


title: Bradford

text: Bradford's main art gallery is housed in the grand Edwardian Cartwright Hall in Lister Park. The National Science and Media Museum celebrates cinema and movies, and is the most visited museum outside London. It contains an Imax cinema, the Cubby Broccoli Cinema, and the "Pictureville" Cinema — described by David Puttnam as the best cinema in Britain.


title: Bradford

text: Also in the city is The St George's Hall—a grand concert hall dating from 1853 making it the oldest concert hall in Britain and the third oldest in the whole of Europe. The Alhambra theatre, built in 1914 for theatre impresario Frank Laidler, and later owned by the Moss Empire group (Oswald Stoll and Edward Moss). The theatre was refurbished in 1986.


title: Bradford

text: Within the city district there are 37 parks and gardens. Lister Park, with its boating lake and Mughal Water Gardens, was voted Britain's Best Park for 2006. Bowling Park in East Bowling is the site of the annual Bradford Carnival celebrating local African and Caribbean culture.


title: Bradford

text: Bradford City Park, now home to the Bradford Festival which includes the Mela, is a public space in the heart of Bradford which contains the largest man-made water feature in any UK city—a mirror pool featuring more than 100 fountains, including the tallest in any UK city at 30 m (100 ft). When the mirror pool is drained City Park is capable of holding events such as carnivals, markets, theatre productions, screenings and community festivals. Work started on the £24 million project in February 2010 and City Park officially opened in March 2012, with thousands of people turning out for the grand opening event.


title: Bradford

text: The Bradford Odeon, formerly the Gaumont and New Victoria Theatre, was built in 1930 as a music venue and cinema with a capacity of over 3,000, and was the largest UK cinema outside London at the time. (Another Odeon, always part of the Odeon Cinemas chain, was built in the city in 1938 and demolished in 1969.) Standing in a conservation area adjacent to the listed Alhambra Theatre, it closed in 2000 and was sold to developer Langtree with the intention it would be demolished and replaced with an apartment and office block. The Odeon was the subject of much controversy over these proposals, with public support in the form of a 10,000-signature petition and campaigns for its renovation. In his successful by-election campaign for Bradford West in March 2012, George Galloway cited the restoration of the Odeon as his number one priority, later asking Prime Minister David Cameron to intervene. The architectural historian Jonathan Foyle, actresses Imelda Staunton and Jenny Agutter, and director Michael Winner all lent their support to the campaign.


title: Bradford

text: In past centuries Bradford's location in Bradfordale made transport difficult, except from the north; this is no longer a problem.


title: Bradford

text: Bradford was first connected to the developing turnpike network in 1734, when the first Yorkshire turnpike was built between Manchester and Leeds via Halifax and the city.


title: Bradford

text: It is now accessed by trunk roads; the A647 between Leeds and Halifax via Queensbury, the A650 between Wakefield and Keighley, the A658 to Harrogate and the A6036 to Halifax via Shelf.


title: Bradford

text: The M606, a spur of the M62 motorway, connects Bradford with the national motorway network. Although originally planned to go directly into the city centre it ends at the city's ring road.


title: Bradford

text: On 20 June 1911, Britain's first trolleybus systems opened simultaneously in Bradford, between Laisterdyke and Dudley Hill, and in Leeds. The last service in Bradford—and Britain—ceased operation on 26 March 1972. Ten Bradford trolleybuses are preserved at the Sandtoft Trolleybus Museum. In 1974 Bradford's municipal buses were taken over by West Yorkshire Metro. First Bradford and Arriva Yorkshire are the chief operators of buses in Bradford, with some routes using guided buses.


title: Bradford

text: The Bradford Canal was a spur from the Leeds and Liverpool Canal at Shipley. It was built to connect Bradford with the North Riding's limestone quarries, the industrial towns on both sides of the Pennines and the ports of Liverpool and Goole. The canal opened from 1774 until 1866 and 1871 until 1922, plans to rebuild it have existed.


title: Bradford

text: The Leeds and Bradford Railway opened Forster Square railway station on 1 July 1846 with a service via Shipley to Leeds. The station was rebuilt in the early 1850s and again, in 1890 and 1990.


title: Bradford

text: The Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway opened a station at Drake Street on 9 May 1850, between Manchester and Leeds. The Great Northern Railway opened a third terminus at Adolphus Street in 1854, but the station was too far from the centre, and the two companies built a joint station, Bradford Exchange which opened in 1867. Adolphus Street remained as a goods terminal. In 1973, Exchange station was rebuilt on a different site and in 1983 renamed Bradford Interchange and a bus station built alongside.


title: Bradford

text: Forster Square and Bradford Interchange stations are part of the West Yorkshire Metro. There have been many schemes to link between Bradford's railway terminals. The major redevelopment of the city centre in the 1960s provided an opportunity to connect the termini, this did not happen with large buildings constructed in the 1990s along the proposed line of route. There is the great difference in elevation: Bradford Interchange is at the end of a long steep slope and is much higher than Forster Square. This gradient is not unprecedented in railway construction and the relocation of Forster Square further from the city centre provided additional space in which the transition could be accomplished.


title: Bradford

text: A tram system was inaugurated by Bradford Corporation in 1882. At first the vehicles were horse-drawn but were replaced by steam-driven trams in 1883, and by electric vehicles in 1898. The system ran until 1950.


title: Bradford

text: Leeds Bradford Airport is to the north east of the city. Bradford and Leeds councils jointly opened the airport in 1931. It is the home base of Jet2.com airlines. In May 2007 the joint councils sold the airport to Bridgepoint Capital for £145.5 million, £70 million would be invested in airport improvements by the company and expected to increase passenger usage to over 7 million by 2015.


title: Bradford

text: Bradford Grammar School was in existence near the parish church in the mid-16th century and re-established by Royal Charter as the Free Grammar School of Charles II in 1662.


title: Bradford

text: The University of Bradford, which has over 10,000 students, received its Royal Charter in 1966, but traces its history to the 1860s when it was founded as the "Bradford Schools of Weaving, Design and Building". The university now covers a wide range of subjects including technology and management science, optometry, pharmacy, medical sciences, nursing studies, archaeology and modern languages. Its Peace Studies department, founded with Quaker support in 1973, was for a long time the only such institution in the UK.