title: Norman Vincent Peale

text: Peale was invited to attend a strategy conference of about 30 Evangelicals in Montreux, Switzerland, by its host, the well-known evangelist Billy Graham, in mid-August 1960. There they agreed to kick off a group called The National Conference of Citizens for Religious Freedom in Washington the following month. On September 7, Peale served as its chairman and spoke for 150 Protestant clergymen, opposing the election of John F. Kennedy as president. "Faced with the election of a Catholic," Peale declared, "our culture is at stake."


title: Norman Vincent Peale

text: In a written manifesto, Peale and his group also declared that Kennedy would serve the interests of the Catholic Church before he would serve the interests of the United States: "It is inconceivable that a Roman Catholic president would not be under extreme pressure by the hierarchy of his church to accede to its policies with respect to foreign interests," and the election of a Catholic might even end free speech in America.


title: Norman Vincent Peale

text: Protestant theologian Reinhold Niebuhr responded, "Dr. Peale and his associates ... show blind prejudice." Protestant Episcopal Bishop James Pike echoed Niebuhr: "Any argument which would rule out a Roman Catholic just because he is Roman Catholic is both bigotry and a violation of the constitutional guarantee of no religious test for public office." Peale's statement was also condemned by former President Harry Truman, the Board of Rabbis, and other leading Protestants such as Paul Tillich and John C. Bennett. Peale recanted his statements and he was later fired by his own committee. As conservative William F. Buckley described the fallout: "When ... The Norman Vincent Peale Committee was organized, on the program that a vote for Kennedy was a vote to repeal the First Amendment to the Constitution, the Jesuits fired their Big Bertha, and Dr. Peale fled from the field, mortally wounded." Peale subsequently went into hiding and threatened to resign from his church. The fallout continued as Peale was condemned in a statement by one hundred religious leaders and dropped as a syndicated columnist by a dozen newspapers.


title: Norman Vincent Peale

text: Five U.S, presidents (Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and George H. W. Bush) spoke well of Peale in the documentary about his life, "Positive Thinking: The Norman Vincent Peale Story".


title: Norman Vincent Peale

text: The Reverend Billy Graham said at the National Council of Churches on June 12, 1966, that "I don't know of anyone who had done more for the kingdom of God than Norman and Ruth Peale or have meant any more in my life for the encouragement they have given me." Mary L. Trump in "Too Much and Never Enough" wrote that Donald Trump's father, Fred Trump, was heavily influenced by Peale.


title: Norman Vincent Peale

text: As a child, Donald Trump attended Marble Collegiate Church with his parents, Fred and Mary. Both he and his two sisters, Maryanne and Elizabeth, were married there. Trump has repeatedly praised Peale and cited him as a formative influence.


title: Norman Vincent Peale

text: At the invitation of Robert R. Spitzer, former under-secretary in the Ford administration, Peale, accompanied by his wife, Ruth, spoke several times to the student leaders at MSOE University prior to passing in 1993, influencing engineers, technical writers, managers, and architects for decades who today serve as executives in companies like GE, Nvidia, and many others.


title: Santa Rosa, California

text: Santa Rosa (Spanish for "Saint Rose") is a city and the county seat of Sonoma County, in the North Bay region of the Bay Area in California. Its estimated 2019 population was 178,127. It is the largest city in California's Wine Country and Redwood Coast. It is the fifth most populous city in the Bay Area after San Jose, San Francisco, Oakland, and Fremont; and the 25th most populous city in California.


title: Santa Rosa, California

text: Before the arrival of Europeans, what became known as the Santa Rosa Plain was occupied by a strong and populous tribe of Pomo natives known as the Bitakomtara. The Bitakomtara controlled the area closely, barring passage to others until permission was arranged. Those who entered without permission were subject to harsh penalties. The tribe gathered at ceremonial times on Santa Rosa Creek near present-day Spring Lake Regional Park.


title: Santa Rosa, California

text: Following the arrival of Europeans, initially Spanish explorers and colonists, the Pomos were decimated by smallpox brought from Europe. Social displacement and disruption followed. By 1900, the Pomo population had decreased by 95%.


title: Santa Rosa, California

text: Santa Rosa was founded in 1833 and named by Mexican colonists after Saint Rose of Lima. The first known permanent European settlement here was the homestead of the Carrillo family of California, in-laws to Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo, who settled the Sonoma pueblo and Petaluma area. In the 1830s, during the Mexican period, the family of María López de Carrillo built an adobe house on their Rancho Cabeza de Santa Rosa land grant, just east of what later became downtown Santa Rosa. By the 1820s, before the Carrillos built their adobe in the 1830s, Spanish and Mexican settlers from nearby Sonoma and other settlements to the south were known to raise livestock in the area.


title: Santa Rosa, California

text: They slaughtered animals at the fork of the Santa Rosa Creek and Matanzas Creek, near the intersection of modern-day Santa Rosa and Sonoma avenues. This is thought to have been the origin of the name of Matanzas Creek; because it was a slaughtering place, the confluence came to be called "La Matanza."


title: Santa Rosa, California

text: By the 1850s, after the United States annexed California following its victory in the Mexican-American War, a Wells Fargo post and general store were established in what is now downtown Santa Rosa. In the mid-1850s, several prominent locals, including Julio Carrillo, son of Maria Carrillo, laid out the grid street pattern for Santa Rosa with a public square in the center. This pattern has been largely maintained in downtown to this day, despite changes to the central square, now called Old Courthouse Square.


title: Santa Rosa, California

text: In 1867, the county recognized Santa Rosa as an incorporated city; in 1868 the state officially confirmed the incorporation, making it the third incorporated city in Sonoma County after Petaluma, incorporated in 1858, and Healdsburg, incorporated in 1867.


title: Santa Rosa, California

text: U.S. Census records show that after California became a state, Santa Rosa grew steadily, though it lagged behind nearby Petaluma in the 1850s and early 1860s. According to the U.S. Census, in 1870 Santa Rosa was the eighth-largest city in California, and county seat of one of the most populous counties in the state. Growth and development after that was steady but never rapid. The city continued to grow when other early population centers declined or stagnated, but by 1900 it was being overtaken by many other newer population centers in the San Francisco Bay Area and Southern California. According to a 1905 article in the "Press Democrat" newspaper reporting on the "Battle of the Trains", the city had just over 10,000 people at the time.


title: Santa Rosa, California

text: The 1906 San Francisco earthquake essentially destroyed the entire downtown, but the city's population did not greatly suffer. However, after that period the population growth of Santa Rosa, as with most of the area, was very slow.


title: Santa Rosa, California

text: Santa Rosa grew following World War II because it was the location for Naval Auxiliary Landing Field Santa Rosa, the remnants of which are now located in southwest Santa Rosa. The city was a convenient location for San Francisco travelers bound for the Russian River.


title: Santa Rosa, California

text: The population increased by two-thirds between 1950 and 1970, an average of 1,000 new residents a year over the 20-year period. Some of the increase was from immigration, and some from annexation of portions of the surrounding area.


title: Santa Rosa, California

text: In 1958 the United States Office of Civil and Defense Mobilization designated Santa Rosa as one of its eight regional headquarters, with jurisdiction over Region 7, which included American Samoa, Arizona, California, Guam, Hawaii, Nevada, and Utah. Santa Rosa continued as a major center for civil defense activity (under the Office of Emergency Planning and the Office of Emergency Preparedness) until 1979 when the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was created in its place, ending the civil defense's 69-year history.


title: Santa Rosa, California

text: When the City Council adopted the city's first modern General Plan in 1991, the population was about 113,000. In the 21 years following 1970, Santa Rosa grew by about 3,000 residents a year—triple the average growth during the previous twenty years.


title: Santa Rosa, California

text: "Santa Rosa 2010", the 1991 General Plan, called for a population of 175,000 in 2010. The Council expanded the city's urban boundary to include all the land then planned for future annexation, and declared it would be Santa Rosa's "ultimate" boundary. The rapid growth that was being criticized as urban sprawl became routine infill development.


title: Santa Rosa, California

text: At the first five-year update of the plan, in 1996, the Council extended the planning period by ten years, renaming it "Vision 2020" (updated to "Santa Rosa 2020", and then again to "Santa Rosa 2030 Vision"), and added more land and population. Now the City projects a population of 195,000 in 2020.


title: Santa Rosa, California

text: Beginning on the night of October 8, 2017, five percent of the city's homes were destroyed in the Tubbs Fire, a 45,000-acre wildfire that claimed the lives of at least 19 people in Sonoma County. Named after its origin near Tubbs Lane and Highway 128 in adjacent Napa County, the fire became a major section of the most destructive and third deadliest firestorm in California history. Most homes in the Coffey Park, Larkfield-Wikiup, and Fountain Grove neighborhoods were destroyed.


title: Santa Rosa, California

text: A notable exception to the destruction in the area was the protection of more than 1,000 animals at the renowned Safari West Wildlife Preserve northeast of Santa Rosa. All of the preserve's animals were saved by owner Peter Lang. At age 76, he single-handedly and successfully fought back the flames for more than 10 hours using garden hoses.


title: Santa Rosa, California

text: According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of . Of that area, is land and , comprising 0.49%, is water.


title: Santa Rosa, California

text: The city is part of the North Bay region, which includes such cities as Petaluma, Rohnert Park, Windsor, and smaller cities as Sonoma, Healdsburg, Sebastopol. It lies along the US Route 101 corridor, approximately north of San Francisco, via the Golden Gate Bridge.


title: Santa Rosa, California

text: Santa Rosa lies on the Santa Rosa Plain. The city's eastern extremities stretch into the Valley of the Moon, and the Sonoma Creek watershed known as the Sonoma Valley. The city's western edge lies in the Laguna de Santa Rosa catchment basin.


title: Santa Rosa, California

text: The city is in the watershed of Santa Rosa Creek, which rises on Hood Mountain and discharges to the Laguna de Santa Rosa. Tributary basins to Santa Rosa Creek lying significantly in the city are Brush Creek, Matanzas Creek, and Piner Creek. Other water bodies within the city include Fountaingrove Lake, Lake Ralphine, and Santa Rosa Creek Reservoir.


title: Santa Rosa, California

text: The prominent visual features east of the city include Bennett Peak, Mount Hood, and Sonoma and Taylor mountains.


title: Santa Rosa, California

text: Santa Rosa has a warm-summer Mediterranean climate (Köppen "Csb") with cool, wet winters and warm, dry summers. In the summer, fog and low overcast often move in from the Pacific Ocean during the evenings and mornings. They usually clear up to warm, sunny weather by late morning or noon before returning in the later evening but will occasionally linger all day. Average annual rainfall is , falling on 74 days annually. The wettest year was 1983 with and the driest year was 1976 with . The most rainfall in one month was in February 1998 and the most rainfall in 24 hours was on December 19, 1981. Measurable snowfall is rare in the lowlands, but light amounts sometimes fall in the nearby mountains.


title: Santa Rosa, California

text: There are an average of 28.9 days with highs of or more and an average of 30.2 days with lows reaching the freezing mark. The record high was on September 6, 2022, and the record low was on December 25, 1924.


title: Santa Rosa, California

text: Santa Rosa lies atop the Healdsburg-Rodgers Creek segment of the Hayward-Rodgers Creek Fault System. The Working Group on California Earthquake Probabilities estimated a minimum 27 percent chance of a magnitude 6.7 or greater earthquake on this segment by 2037.


title: Santa Rosa, California

text: On November 21, 2005, the United States Geological Survey released a map detailing the results of a new tool that measures ground shaking during an earthquake. The map determined that the 1906 San Francisco earthquake was most powerful in an area between Santa Rosa and what is now Sebastopol, causing more damage in Santa Rosa (for its size) than any other city affected.


title: Santa Rosa, California

text: On October 1, 1969, two earthquakes of magnitudes 5.6 and 5.7 shook Santa Rosa, damaging about 100 structures. They were the strongest quakes to affect the city since 1906. The epicenters were about north of Santa Rosa.


title: Santa Rosa, California

text: Due to its population, much of Santa Rosa's remaining undisturbed area is on its urban fringe. However, the principal wildlife corridors of Santa Rosa Creek and its tributaries flow right through the heart of the town. Great blue herons, great egrets, snowy egrets and black-crowned herons nest in the trees of the median strip on West Ninth Street as well as along Santa Rosa Creek and downtown. Deer often are spotted roaming the neighborhoods nearer the eastern hills, as deep into town as Franklin Avenue and the McDonald area; rafters of wild turkeys are relatively common in some areas; and mountain lions are occasionally observed within city limits. Raccoons and opossums are a common sight throughout the city, while foxes, and rabbits may be regularly seen in the more rural areas. In addition, the city borders and then wraps around the northern end of Trione Annadel State Park, which itself extends into the Sonoma Mountains and Sonoma Valley. Trione-Annadel State Park also adjoins Spring Lake County Park and Howarth Park, forming one contiguous park system that enables visitors to venture into wild native habitats.


title: Santa Rosa, California

text: Santa Rosa can be seen as divided into four quadrants: Northeast, Southeast, Southwest, and Northwest. U.S. Route 101 runs roughly north–south through the city, and divides it into east and west sides. State Route 12 runs roughly east–west, and divides the city into north and south sides.


title: Santa Rosa, California

text: The 2010 United States Census reported that Santa Rosa had a population of 167,815. The population density was . The racial makeup of Santa Rosa was: 119,158 White (59.7% non-Hispanic white), 4,079 (2.4%) African American, 2,808 (1.7%) Native American, 8,746 (5.2%) Asian (1.0% Filipino, 1.0% Chinese, 0.8% Vietnamese, 0.6% Indian, 0.5% Cambodian, 0.5% Laotian, 0.3% Japanese, 0.3% Korean, 0.1% Thai, 0.1% Nepalese), 810 (0.5%) Pacific Islander (0.2% Fijian, 0.1% Samoan, 0.1% Hawaiian, 0.1% Guamanian), 23,723 (14.1%) from other races, 8,491 (5.1%) from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 47,970 persons (28.6%). Among the Hispanic population, 98% of Santa Rosa is Mexican, 0.8% Salvadoran, and 0.4% Puerto Rican.


title: Santa Rosa, California

text: The Census reported that 164,405 people (98.0% of the population) lived in households, 1,697 (1.0%) lived in non-institutionalized group quarters, and 1,713 (1.0%) were institutionalized.


title: Santa Rosa, California

text: There were 63,590 households, out of which 20,633 (32.4%) had children under the age of 18 living in them, 27,953 (44.0%) were opposite-sex married couples living together, 7,663 (12.1%) had a female householder with no husband present, 3,615 (5.7%) had a male householder with no wife present. There were 5,020 (7.9%) unmarried opposite-sex partnerships, and 757 (1.2%) same-sex married couples or partnerships. 18,021 households (28.3%) were made up of individuals, and 7,474 (11.8%) had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.59. There were 39,231 families (61.7% of all households); the average family size was 3.18.


title: Santa Rosa, California

text: In terms of age cohorts, there were 39,217 people (23.4%) under the age of 18, 15,982 people (9.5%) aged 18 to 24, 46,605 people (27.8%) aged 25 to 44, 43,331 people (25.8%) aged 45 to 64, and 22,680 people (13.5%) who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 36.7 years. For every 100 females, there were 95.2 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 92.2 males.


title: Santa Rosa, California

text: There were 67,396 housing units at an average density of , of which 34,427 (54.1%) were owner-occupied, and 29,163 (45.9%) were occupied by renters. The homeowner vacancy rate was 2.0%; the rental vacancy rate was 5.0%. 87,244 people (52.0% of the population) lived in owner-occupied housing units and 77,161 people (46.0%) lived in rental housing units.


title: Santa Rosa, California

text: , there are an estimated 4,539 homeless people living in Sonoma County, many of whom live in Santa Rosa.


title: Santa Rosa, California

text: Santa Rosa's Hispanic population, mainly of Mexican descent, while spread out through the city, is concentrated within the western part of Santa Rosa. The highest percentage of Hispanic residents in Santa Rosa is in the Apple Valley Lane/Papago Court neighborhood, at 87%.


title: Santa Rosa, California

text: The Southeast Asian communities, mainly Vietnamese, Laotian, and Cambodian, are concentrated within the western Santa Rosa neighborhoods of Bellevue Ranch, Roseland, and West Steele areas. The northeast neighborhoods of Skyhawk and Fountaingrove have the most populous Chinese communities.


title: Santa Rosa, California

text: As of the census of 2000, there were 63,153 households, of which 30.9% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 46.9% were married couples living together, 11.0% had a female householder with no husband present, and 37.3% were non-families. 27.8% of all households were made up of individuals, and 11.9% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.57 and the average family size was 3.14.


title: Santa Rosa, California

text: In terms of age cohorts, 24.3% of the population was under the age of 18, 9.5% was from 18 to 24, 30.0% from 25 to 44, 22.3% from 45 to 64, and 13.9% were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 36 years. For every 100 females, there were 95.4 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 91.8 males.


title: Santa Rosa, California

text: The median income for a household in the city was $50,931, and the median income for a family was $59,659. Males had a median income of $40,420 versus $30,597 for females. The per capita income for the city was $24,495. 8.5% of the population and 5.1% of families were below the poverty line. Out of the total population, 9.5% of those under the age of 18 and 4.7% of those 65 and older were living below the poverty line.


title: Santa Rosa, California

text: Neighborhoods such as South Park in south Santa Rosa, Corby Avenue, and Roseland, West Ninth District, and Apple Valley in west Santa Rosa, are most vulnerable to criminal activity. Acts of crime in these neighborhoods are commonly burglaries, graffiti, and violent gang activity. Street gangs such as Sureños and Norteños have large concentrations throughout Santa Rosa. There are multiple other gangs, including mostly racially based gangs or racially mixed that commit theft, street and violent crimes, motorcycle gangs, white supremacist gangs, and prison gangs. In 2011, there were 5 homicides, 58 rapes, 134 robberies, 485 aggravated assaults, and 637 burglaries. The violent crime rate for Santa Rosa (401.7 per 100,000 people) is slightly lower than the rate of California (411.1 per 100,000 people) and higher than that of the entire U.S. (386.3 per 100,000 people).


title: Santa Rosa, California

text: 2021 and especially its late spring and summer saw an increase in shootings, violence, homicides, drug, gang, and homeless-related crimes. The increase was up to double for some crimes and problems, compared to the past several years.


title: Santa Rosa, California

text: There are at least 2,700 homeless people in Sonoma County. Around 1,500 are in Santa Rosa, about one percent of the city. Downtown Santa Rosa, including its outskirts and the area south of the Santa Rosa Mall (Wilson and Morgan Street) and Mendocino Avenue area, South Park/Fairgrounds area, Santa Rosa Avenue, West Steele Lane, and the Joe Rodota Trail/Stony Point districts and neighborhoods have been concentrations of homeless people since the 2000s. Homeless services can be found in the Wilson Street area.


title: Santa Rosa, California

text: "Forbes" Magazine ranked the Santa Rosa metropolitan area 185th out of 200 on its 2007 list of Best Places For Business And Careers. It was second on the list five years earlier. It was downgraded because of an increase in the cost of doing business, and reduced job growth—both blamed on increases in the cost of housing.


title: Santa Rosa, California

text: Santa Rosa is also home to notable smaller businesses such as Moonlight Brewing Company, Russian River Brewing Company and ATIV Software.


title: Santa Rosa, California

text: As of 2014, Santa Rosa has 12 neighborhood shopping centers and 17 commercial districts, including three sizeable shopping malls: Santa Rosa Plaza, with more than 100 merchants; Coddingtown Mall, with over 40; and Montgomery Village, an open-air mall with more than 70 shops, a supermarket, five banks, and a satellite U.S. Post Office.


title: Santa Rosa, California

text: The Sonoma County Library offers a Central Library in downtown Santa Rosa, a Roseland branch on Sebastopol Road, a Northwest branch at Coddingtown Mall, and a Rincon Valley branch in east Santa Rosa. It is a member of the North Bay Cooperative Library System. The Santa Rosa Central Library, the largest branch of the Sonoma County Library system, has a Local History and Genealogy Annex behind it.


title: Santa Rosa, California

text: At Santa Rosa Junior College, the four-story Frank P. Doyle Library houses the Library, Media Services, and Academic Computing Departments, as well as the college art gallery, tutorial center and Center for New Media, a multimedia production facility for SRJC faculty.


title: Santa Rosa, California

text: Santa Rosa sits at the northwestern gateway to the Sonoma and Napa Valleys of California's famed Wine Country. Many wineries and vineyards are nearby, as well as the Russian River resort area, the Sonoma Coast along the Pacific Ocean, Jack London State Historic Park, and the redwood trees of Armstrong Redwoods State Reserve.


title: Santa Rosa, California

text: The City Council pays the Santa Rosa Chamber of Commerce to operate the Santa Rosa Convention & Visitors Bureau. The Chamber's visitors center is in the city-owned old railroad depot at the bottom of Fourth Street, in Historic Railroad Square. The SRC&VB has been a California Welcome Center since 2003.


title: Santa Rosa, California

text: Downtown Santa Rosa, including the central Old Courthouse Square and historic Railroad Square, is an area of shopping, restaurants, nightclubs, and theaters. Downtown also includes City Hall, state and federal office buildings, many banks, and professional offices. The Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital medical center is just to the east of downtown.


title: Santa Rosa, California

text: Although there are co-op network atms and several credit unions, there is no shared branching for credit unions in Santa Rosa.


title: Santa Rosa, California

text: The city council funds a private booster group, Santa Rosa Main Street, which lobbies the city to revitalize the traditional business district. Three new mixed-use, high-rise buildings, and a new city parking garage, are under development. (WHEN?) The council and downtown business boosters hope condos atop the new buildings will house a population to keep the area active 24 hours a day.


title: Santa Rosa, California

text: The nearby cities and towns of Bodega Bay, Calistoga, Guerneville, Healdsburg, Petaluma, Sebastopol, Sonoma, and Windsor are popular with tourists and readily accessible from Santa Rosa.


title: Santa Rosa, California

text: Railroad Square is the portion of downtown that is on the west side of U.S. Route 101 and has the highest concentration of historic commercial buildings. Of particular note are the four rough-hewn stone buildings at its core, two of which are rare in that they predate the 1906 earthquake. They include the old Northwestern Pacific Railroad depot, prominently seen in the beginning and the end of the Alfred Hitchcock film "Shadow of a Doubt", and the still-functioning Hotel La Rose, built in 1907 and registered as one of the National Trust for Historic Preservation's Historic Hotels of America. The area contains numerous other historic buildings, such as the former Petaluma and Santa Rosa Railroad depot, and the Lee Bros. Building, both at the corner of 4th and Wilson Streets. Near it in the West End district are numerous other old buildings, including not only many old houses but the masonry DeTurk Winery complex, dating to the 1880s–1890s, and the DeTurk round barn. Also of note nearby is the former Del Monte Cannery Building, built in 1894. One of the oldest surviving commercial buildings in town, it was renovated into the 6th Street Playhouse in 2005.


title: Santa Rosa, California

text: The performing arts in Santa Rosa are represented by Luther Burbank Center for the Arts, the Sonoma County Philharmonic, the Summer Repertory Theatre, the Santa Rosa Symphony, and the 6th Street Playhouse. Santa Rosa is the home of the North Bay Theater Group, an alliance of some 40 theater companies, theater departments and individual performance companies from five North Bay counties.


title: Santa Rosa, California

text: The Luther Burbank Center for the Arts (LBC) is a performance venue, that opened in 1981 and serves as the North Bay's premier arts and events center, presenting world-class performances, nationally recognized education programs, contemporary visual arts, and many popular community events. The center's mission of connecting the Santa Rosa community through the arts across schools, homes, and stages serves over 500,000 people annually including 50,000 students throughout the county.


title: Santa Rosa, California

text: The Sonoma County Philharmonic performs at the Santa Rosa High School Performing Arts Auditorium. It is a 65-member all-volunteer orchestra that has presented hundreds of free and low-cost concerts throughout Sonoma County over the past 15 years. The orchestra is made up of professional-level local musicians who volunteer their time.


title: Santa Rosa, California

text: Summer Repertory Theater (SRT) is a complete and extensive practicum in all aspects of stage production. The program combines professional directing, design, and production staff with outstanding students in acting, design, technical theater, dance, music, and management. The ensemble mounts five productions, which are performed in full rotating Repertory six days a week beginning in mid-June. Company members put theory to the test and learn to work in a professional system.


title: Santa Rosa, California

text: The Santa Rosa Symphony, an award-winning regional orchestra founded in 1928, performs at the Green Music Center in Rohnert Park, a new venue with traditional "shoebox" acoustics. The Symphony's Institute for Music Education supports four youth ensembles and provides classical music education to students across Sonoma County, serving 30,000 elementary students per year. Francesco Lecce-Chong has served as music director since 2018, replacing Bruno Ferrandis, who held the post for twelve years.


title: Santa Rosa, California

text: In 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Jessica Rasmussen, Anna Wiziarde, and Julian Billotte set up a mailbox painted gold with Dutch metal, for queries concerning the past or the future to be collected and answered by the "United States Portal Service" as part of the city's Open & Out project, with the aims of supporting the US Post Office and alleviating loneliness.


title: Santa Rosa, California

text: In the United States House of Representatives, Santa Rosa is in . It was moved to the district beginning with the 2013 Congress. In the 1980s, future U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer was Santa Rosa's representative.


title: Santa Rosa, California

text: In the California State Legislature, the city is in California's 2nd State Senate district. The city is split between California's 2nd and 10th State Assembly districts.


title: Santa Rosa, California

text: The city's Mayor is Chris Rogers, its Vice Mayor is Natalie Rogers, and the other five council members are Eddie Alvarez, Victoria Fleming, Jack Tibbits, John Sawyer, and Tom Schwedhelm.


title: Santa Rosa, California

text: The city council in 2013 adopted a set of "Goals and Strategic Objectives" through 2015 comprising six main goals. A "strong, sustainable" economy topped the list; other goals include showing leadership in environmental and cultural issues, and promoting "partnerships between neighborhoods, community organizations, schools, and the City".


title: Santa Rosa, California

text: According to the California Secretary of State, as of February 10, 2019, Santa Rosa has 91,998 registered voters. Of those, 47,905 (52.1%) are registered Democrats, 15,260 (16.6%) are registered Republicans, and 24,012 (26.1%) have declined to state a political party.


title: Santa Rosa, California

text: "The" "Press Democrat" is published in Santa Rosa and is the largest daily newspaper in the North Bay. It is descended from the "Sonoma Democrat", founded in 1857. Local business papers include the "North Bay Business Journal" and "NorthBay biz". "The" "North Bay Bohemian" is a free weekly alternative. The "Sonoma County Gazette" is a free monthly paper.


title: Santa Rosa, California

text: Sonoma Media Investments is a significant regional presence: besides the "Press Democrat" and the "North Bay Business Journal" as well as the "Sonoma County Gazette", it owns important newspapers in the nearby cities of Sonoma and Petaluma.


title: Santa Rosa, California

text: The Santa Rosa Police Department currently has 259 employees, of which 172 are sworn peace officers. Its budget is more than $40 million, comprising more than one third of the city's General Fund budget. Police shootings in 2007 led to calls for an independent civilian police review board.


title: Santa Rosa, California

text: The Santa Rosa Fire Department, like many departments across the United States, made its start as a volunteer organization on February 12, 1861. Decades later in 1894 the department made its transition to a paid organization. In 1906 a massive 7.8 magnitude earthquake destroyed most of Santa Rosa. The department grew to 100 firefighters in 1983 with the addition of the city of Roseland to the SRFD responsibility area. Many members of the department serve as part of the California Task Force 4, one of the eight FEMA Urban Search and Rescue Task Forces throughout the state. The team, which is deployed as part of the nation's response to disasters both within and outside of the United States, specializes in dealing with large-scale disasters.


title: Santa Rosa, California

text: The city sprawls along U.S. Route 101, about an hour north of San Francisco and the Golden Gate Bridge. Sonoma County Transit provides local bus service in the city. Into the 1950s, the Southern Pacific Railroad offered substitute bus service from Crockett in the northwestern edge of the San Francisco Bay.


title: Santa Rosa, California

text: Sonoma–Marin Area Rail Transit (SMART) brought passenger railway back to Santa Rosa for the first time in 59 years, in 2017. It operates two railway stations within the city limits: Guerneville Road and Railroad Square. Trains serve locations as far south as Larkspur; SMART opened on August 25, 2017, Into the 1950s, the Northwestern Pacific Railroad operated a passenger train from Eureka, through Santa Rosa, to San Rafael at the north edge of the Bay.


title: Santa Rosa, California

text: Charles M. Schulz–Sonoma County Airport located just north of Santa Rosa is served by United, American, Alaska, and Avelo Airlines. Nonstop flights are available to San Francisco, Los Angeles, Burbank, San Diego, Santa Ana, Portland, Seattle, Las Vegas, Denver, Dallas, and Phoenix. Sonoma County Airport Express buses also connect Santa Rosa with Oakland International Airport and San Francisco International Airport.


title: Santa Rosa, California

text: The Prince Memorial Greenway is a developed bicycle and pedestrian path along Santa Rosa Creek through downtown and out to the west of town. Near Railroad Square, it connects directly to the Joe Rodota Trail, a paved path which goes to Sebastopol. Santa Rosa is on the path of the partially-developed Great Redwood Trail which will run "from San Francisco Bay in Marin County to Humboldt Bay in the north."


title: Santa Rosa, California

text: Director Alfred Hitchcock filmed his thriller "Shadow of a Doubt" in Santa Rosa in 1943; the film gives glimpses of Santa Rosa in the 1940s. Many of the downtown buildings seen in the film no longer exist, as there was major reconstruction in the late 20th century following the strong earthquakes in October 1969. But the rough-stone Northwestern Pacific Railroad depot and the prominent Empire Building (built in 1910 with a gold-topped clock tower) still survive. A scene at the bank was filmed at the corner of Fourth Street and Mendocino Avenue (at present-day Old Courthouse square); the Kress building on Fourth Street is also visible. The courthouse and bank are now gone. The Coen brothers' film "The Man Who Wasn't There" (2001) is set in Santa Rosa c. 1949.


title: Baalbek

text: Baalbek (; , Syriac-Aramaic: ܒܥܠܒܟ) is a city located east of the Litani River in Lebanon's Beqaa Valley, about northeast of Beirut. It is the capital of Baalbek-Hermel Governorate. In Greek and Roman times Baalbek was also known as Heliopolis (, Greek for "Sun City"). In 1998 Baalbek had a population of 82,608, mostly Shia Muslims, followed by Sunni Muslims and Christians.


title: Baalbek

text: It is home to the Baalbek temple complex which includes two of the largest and grandest Roman temple ruins: the Temple of Bacchus and the Temple of Jupiter. It was inscribed in 1984 as an UNESCO World Heritage site.


title: Baalbek

text: A few miles from the swamp from which the Litani (the classical Leontes) and the Asi (the upper Orontes) flow, Baalbek may be the same as the "manbaa al-nahrayn" ("Source of the Two Rivers"), the abode of El in the Ugaritic Baal Cycle discovered in the 1920s and a separate serpent incantation.


title: Baalbek

text: Baalbek was called Heliopolis during the Roman Empire, a latinisation of the Greek "Hēlioúpolis" () used during the Hellenistic Period,


title: Baalbek

text: The name is first attested in the Mishnah, a second-century rabbinic text, as a geographic epithet for a kind of garlic, "shum ba'albeki" (שום בעלבכי). Two early 5th-century Syriac manuscripts, a translation of Eusebius's "Theophania" and a life of Rabbula, bishop of Edessa. It was pronounced as "Baʿlabakk" () in Classical Arabic. In Modern Standard Arabic, its vowels are marked as "Baʿlabak" () or "Baʿlabekk". It is "Bʿalbik" (, is ) in Lebanese Arabic.


title: Baalbek

text: The etymology of Baalbek has been debated indecisively since the 18th century. Cook took it to mean "Baʿal (Lord) of the Beka" and Donne as "City of the Sun". Lendering asserts that it is probably a contraction of "Baʿal Nebeq" ("Lord of the Source" of the Litani River). Steiner proposes a Semitic adaption of "Lord Bacchus", from the classical temple complex.


title: Baalbek

text: On the basis of its similar name, several 19th-century Biblical archaeologists attempted to connect Baalbek to the "Baalgad" mentioned in the Hebrew Scripture's Book of Joshua, the Baalath listed among Solomon's cities in the First Book of Kings, the Baal-hamon where he had a vineyard, and the "Plain of Aven" in Amos.


title: Baalbek

text: The hilltop of Tell Baalbek, part of a valley to the east of the northern Beqaa Valley (), shows signs of almost continual habitation over the last 8–9000 years. It was well-watered both from a stream running from the "Rās-el-ʿAin" spring SE of the citadel and, during the spring, from numerous rills formed by meltwater from the Anti-Lebanons. Macrobius later credited the site's foundation to a colony of Egyptian or Assyrian priests. The settlement's religious, commercial, and strategic importance was minor enough, however, that it is never mentioned in any known Assyrian or Egyptian record, unless under another name. Its enviable position in a fertile valley, major watershed, and along the route from Tyre to Palmyra should have made it a wealthy and splendid site from an early age. During the Canaanite period, the local temples were largely devoted to the Heliopolitan Triad: a male god (Baʿal), his consort (Astarte), and their son (Adon). The site of the present Temple of Jupiter was probably the focus of earlier worship, as its altar was located at the hill's precise summit and the rest of the sanctuary raised to its level.


title: Baalbek

text: In Islamic mythology, the temple complex was said to have been a palace of Solomon's which was put together by "djinn" and given as a wedding gift to the Queen of Sheba; its actual Roman origin remained obscured by the citadel's medieval fortifications as late as the 16th-century visit of the Polish prince Radziwiłł.


title: Baalbek

text: After Alexander the Great's conquest of Persia in the 330s BC, Baalbek (under its Hellenic name Heliopolis) formed part of the Diadochi kingdoms of Egypt & Syria. It was annexed by the Romans during their eastern wars. The settlers of the Roman colony Colonia Julia Augusta Felix Heliopolitana may have arrived as early as the time of Caesar but were more probably the veterans of the 5th and 8th Legions under Augustus, during which time it hosted a Roman garrison. From 15 BC to AD 193, it formed part of the territory of Berytus. It is mentioned in Josephus, Pliny, Strabo, and Ptolemy and on coins of nearly every emperor from Nerva to Gallienus. The 1st-century Pliny did not number it among the Decapolis, the "Ten Cities" of Coelesyria, while the 2nd-century Ptolemy did. The population likely varied seasonally with market fairs and the schedules of the Indian monsoon and caravans to the coast and interior.


title: Baalbek

text: During Classical Antiquity, the city's temple to Baʿal Haddu was conflated first with the worship of the Greek sun god Helios and then with the Greek and Roman sky god under the name "Heliopolitan Zeus" or "Jupiter". The present Temple of Jupiter presumably replaced an earlier one using the same foundation; it was constructed during the mid-1st century and probably completed around AD 60. His idol was a beardless golden god in the pose of a charioteer, with a whip raised in his right hand and a thunderbolt and stalks of grain in his left; its image appeared on local coinage and it was borne through the streets during several festivals throughout the year. Macrobius compared the rituals to those for Diva Fortuna at Antium and says the bearers were the principal citizens of the town, who prepared for their role with abstinence, chastity, and shaved heads. In bronze statuary attested from Byblos in Phoenicia and Tortosa in Spain, he was encased in a pillarlike term and surrounded (like the Greco-Persian Mithras) by busts representing the sun, moon, and five known planets. In these statues, the bust of Mercury is made particularly prominent; a marble stela at Massilia in Transalpine Gaul shows a similar arrangement but enlarges Mercury into a full figure. Local cults also revered the Baetylia, black conical stones considered sacred to Baʿal. One of these was taken to Rome by the emperor Elagabalus, a former priest "of the sun" at nearby Emesa, who erected a temple for it on the Palatine Hill. Heliopolis was a noted oracle and pilgrimage site, whence the cult spread far afield, with inscriptions to the Heliopolitan god discovered in Athens, Rome, Pannonia, Venetia, Gaul, and near the Wall in Britain. The Roman temple complex grew up from the early part of the reign of Augustus in the late 1st century BC until the rise of Christianity in the 4th century. (The 6th-century chronicles of John Malalas of Antioch, which claimed Baalbek as a "wonder of the world", credited most of the complex to the 2nd-century Antoninus Pius, but it is uncertain how reliable his account is on the point.) By that time, the complex housed three temples on Tell Baalbek: one to Jupiter Heliopolitanus (Baʿal), one to Venus Heliopolitana (Ashtart), and a third to Bacchus. On a nearby hill, a fourth temple was dedicated to the third figure of the Heliopolitan Triad, Mercury (Adon or Seimios). Ultimately, the site vied with Praeneste in Italy as the two largest sanctuaries in the Western world.


title: Baalbek

text: The emperor Trajan consulted the site's oracle twice. The first time, he requested a written reply to his sealed and unopened question; he was favorably impressed by the god's blank reply as his own paper had been empty. He then inquired whether he would return alive from his wars against Parthia and received in reply a centurion's vine staff, broken to pieces. In AD 193, Septimius Severus granted the city "ius Italicum" rights. His wife Julia Domna and son Caracalla toured Egypt and Syria in AD 215; inscriptions in their honour at the site may date from that occasion; Julia was a Syrian native whose father had been an Emesan priest "of the sun" like Elagabalus.


title: Baalbek

text: The town became a battleground upon the rise of Christianity. Early Christian writers such as Eusebius (from nearby Caesarea) repeatedly execrated the practices of the local pagans in their worship of the Heliopolitan Venus. In AD 297, the actor Gelasinus converted in the middle of a scene mocking baptism; his public profession of faith provoked the audience to drag him from the theater and stone him to death. In the early 4th century, the deacon Cyril defaced many of the idols in Heliopolis; he was killed and (allegedly) cannibalised. Around the same time, Constantine, though not yet a Christian, demolished the goddess' temple, raised a basilica in its place, and outlawed the locals' ancient custom of prostituting women before marriage. Bar Hebraeus also credited him with ending the locals' continued practice of polygamy. The enraged locals responded by raping and torturing Christian virgins. They reacted violently again under the freedom permitted to them by Julian the Apostate. The city was so noted for its hostility to the Christians that Alexandrians were banished to it as a special punishment. The Temple of Jupiter, already greatly damaged by earthquakes, was demolished under Theodosius in 379 and replaced by another basilica (now lost), using stones scavenged from the pagan complex. The "Easter Chronicle" states he was also responsible for destroying all the lesser temples and shrines of the city. Around the year 400, Rabbula, the future bishop of Edessa, attempted to have himself martyred by disrupting the pagans of Baalbek but was only thrown down the temple stairs along with his companion. It became the seat of its own bishop as well. Under the reign of Justinian, eight of the complex's Corinthian columns were disassembled and shipped to Constantinople for incorporation in the rebuilt Hagia Sophia sometime between 532 and 537. Michael the Syrian claimed the golden idol of Heliopolitan Jupiter was still to be seen during the reign of Justin II (560s & 570s), and, up to the time of its conquest by the Muslims, it was renowned for its palaces, monuments, and gardens.


title: Baalbek

text: Baalbek was occupied by the Muslim army in AD 634 ( 13), in 636, or under Abu ʿUbaidah following the Byzantine defeat at Yarmouk in 637 ( 16), either peacefully and by agreement or following a heroic defense and yielding of gold, of silver, 2000 silk vests, and 1000 swords. The ruined temple complex was fortified under the name ( "The Fortress") but was sacked with great violence by the Damascene caliph Marwan II in 748, at which time it was dismantled and largely depopulated. It formed part of the district of Damascus under the Umayyads and Abbasids before being conquered by Fatimid Egypt in 942. In the mid-10th century, it was said to have "gates of palaces sculptured in marble and lofty columns also of marble" and that it was the most "stupendous" and "considerable" location in the whole of Syria. It was sacked and razed by the Byzantines under John I in 974, raided by Basil II in 1000, and occupied by Salih ibn Mirdas, emir of Aleppo, in 1025.


title: Baalbek

text: In 1075, it was finally lost to the Fatimids on its conquest by Tutush I, Seljuk emir of Damascus. It was briefly held by Muslim ibn Quraysh, emir of Aleppo, in 1083; after its recovery, it was ruled in the Seljuks' name by the eunuch Gümüshtegin until he was deposed for conspiring against the usurper Toghtekin in 1110. Toghtekin then gave the town to his son Buri. Upon Buri's succession to Damascus on his father's death in 1128, he granted the area to his son Muhammad. After Buri's murder, Muhammad successfully defended himself against the attacks of his brothers Ismaʿil and Mahmud and gave Baalbek to his vizier Unur. In July 1139, Zengi, atabeg of Aleppo and stepfather of Mahmud, besieged Baalbek with 14 catapults. The outer city held until 10 October and the citadel until the 21st, when Unur surrendered upon a promise of safe passage. In December, Zengi negotiated with Muhammad, offering to trade Baalbek or Homs for Damascus, but Unur convinced the atabeg to refuse. Zengi strengthened its fortifications and bestowed the territory on his lieutenant Ayyub, father of Saladin. Upon Zengi's assassination in 1146, Ayyub surrendered the territory to Unur, who was acting as regent for Muhammad's son Abaq. It was granted to the eunuch Ata al-Khadim, who also served as viceroy of Damascus.


title: Baalbek

text: In December 1151, it was raided by the garrison of Banyas as a reprisal for its role in a Turcoman raid on Banyas. Following Ata's murder, his nephew Dahhak, emir of the Wadi al-Taym, ruled Baalbek. He was forced to relinquish it to Nur ad-Din in 1154 after Ayyub had successfully intrigued against Abaq from his estates near Baalbek. Ayyub then administered the area from Damascus on Nur ad-Din's behalf. In the mid-12th century, Idrisi mentioned Baalbek's two temples and the legend of their origin under Solomon; it was visited by the Jewish traveler Benjamin of Tudela in 1170.


title: Baalbek

text: Baalbek's citadel served as a jail for Crusaders taken by the Zengids as prisoners of war. In 1171, these captives successfully overpowered their guards and took possession of the castle from its garrison. Muslims from the surrounding area gathered, however, and entered the castle through a secret passageway shown to them by a local. The Crusaders were then massacred.


title: Baalbek

text: Three major earthquakes occurred in the 12th century, in 1139, 1157, and 1170. The one in 1170 ruined Baalbek's walls and, though Nur ad-Din repaired them, his young heir Ismaʿil was made to yield it to Saladin by a 4-month siege in 1174. Having taken control of Damascus on the invitation of its governor Ibn al-Muqaddam, Saladin rewarded him with the following the Ayyubid victory at the Horns of Hama in 1175. Baldwin, the young leper king of Jerusalem, came of age the next year, ending the Crusaders' treaty with Saladin. His former regent, Raymond of Tripoli, raided the Beqaa Valley from the west in the summer, suffering a slight defeat at Ibn al-Muqaddam's hands. He was then joined by the main army, riding north under Baldwin and Humphrey of Toron; they defeated Saladin's elder brother Turan Shah in August at Ayn al-Jarr and plundered Baalbek. Upon the deposition of Turan Shah for neglecting his duties in Damascus, however, he demanded his childhood home of Baalbek as compensation. Ibn al-Muqaddam did not consent and Saladin opted to invest the city in late 1178 to maintain peace within his own family. An attempt to pledge fealty to the Christians at Jerusalem was ignored on behalf of an existing treaty with Saladin. The siege was maintained peacefully through the snows of winter, with Saladin waiting for the "foolish" commander and his garrison of "ignorant scum" to come to terms. Sometime in spring, Ibn al-Muqaddam yielded and Saladin accepted his terms, granting him Baʿrin, Kafr Tab, and al-Maʿarra. The generosity quieted unrest among Saladin's vassals through the rest of his reign but led his enemies to attempt to take advantage of his presumed weakness. He did not permit Turan Shah to retain Baalbek very long, though, instructing him to lead the Egyptian troops returning home in 1179 and appointing him to a sinecure in Alexandria. Baalbek was then granted to his nephew Farrukh Shah, whose family ruled it for the next half-century. When Farrukh Shah died three years later, his son Bahram Shah was only a child but he was permitted his inheritance and ruled til 1230. He was followed by al-Ashraf Musa, who was succeeded by his brother as-Salih Ismail, who received it in 1237 as compensation for being deprived of Damascus by their brother al-Kamil. It was seized in 1246 after a year of assaults by as-Salih Ayyub, who bestowed it upon Saʿd al-Din al-Humaidi. When as-Salih Ayyub's successor Turan Shah was murdered in 1250, al-Nasir Yusuf, the sultan of Aleppo, seized Damascus and demanded Baalbek's surrender. Instead, its emir did homage and agreed to regular payments of tribute.


title: Baalbek

text: The Mongolian general Kitbuqa took Baalbek in 1260 and dismantled its fortifications. Later in the same year, however, Qutuz, the sultan of Egypt, defeated the Mongols and placed Baalbek under the rule of their emir in Damascus. Most of the city's still-extant fine mosque and fortress architecture dates to the reign of the sultan Qalawun in the 1280s. By the early 14th century, Abulfeda the Hamathite was describing the city's "large and strong fortress". The revived settlement was again destroyed by a flood on 10 May 1318, when water from the east and northeast made holes wide in walls thick. 194 people were killed and 1500 houses, 131 shops, 44 orchards, 17 ovens, 11 mills, and 4 aqueducts were ruined, along with the town's mosque and 13 other religious and educational buildings. In 1400, Timur pillaged the town, and there was further destruction from a 1459 earthquake.


title: Baalbek

text: In 1516, Baalbek was conquered with the rest of Syria by the Ottoman sultan Selim the Grim. In recognition of their prominence among the Shiites of the Beqaa Valley, the Ottomans awarded the sanjak of Homs and local "iltizam" concessions to Baalbek's Harfush family. Like the Hamadas, the Harfush emirs were involved on more than one occasion in the selection of Church officials and the running of local monasteries. Tradition holds that many Christians quit the Baalbek region in the eighteenth century for the newer, more secure town of Zahlé on account of the Harfushes' oppression and rapacity, but more critical studies have questioned this interpretation, pointing out that the Harfushes were closely allied to the Orthodox Ma'luf family of Zahlé (where indeed Mustafa Harfush took refuge some years later) and showing that depredations from various quarters as well as Zahlé's growing commercial attractiveness accounted for Baalbek's decline in the eighteenth century. What repression there was did not always target the Christian community per se. The Shiite 'Usayran family, for example, is also said to have left Baalbek in this period to avoid expropriation by the Harfushes, establishing itself as one of the premier commercial households of Sidon and later even serving as consuls of Iran.


title: Baalbek

text: From the 16th century, European tourists began to visit the colossal and picturesque ruins. Donne hyperbolised "No ruins of antiquity have attracted more attention than those of Heliopolis, or been more frequently or accurately measured and described." Misunderstanding the temple of Bacchus as the "Temple of the Sun", they considered it the best-preserved Roman temple in the world. The Englishman Robert Wood's 1757 "Ruins of Balbec" included carefully measured engravings that proved influential on British and Continental Neoclassical architects. For example, details of the Temple of Bacchus's ceiling inspired a bed and ceiling by Robert Adam and its portico inspired that of St George's in Bloomsbury.


title: Baalbek

text: During the 18th century, the western approaches were covered with attractive groves of walnut trees, but the town itself suffered badly during the 1759 earthquakes, after which it was held by the Metawali, who again feuded with other Lebanese tribes. Their power was broken by Jezzar Pasha, the rebel governor of Acre, in the last half of the 18th century. All the same, Baalbek remained no destination for a traveller unaccompanied by an armed guard. Upon the pasha's death in 1804, chaos ensued until Ibrahim Pasha of Egypt occupied the area in 1831, after which it again passed into the hands of the Harfushes. In 1835, the town's population was barely 200 people. In 1850, the Ottomans finally began direct administration of the area, making Baalbek a kaza under the Damascus Eyalet and its governor a kaymakam.


title: Baalbek

text: Emperor Wilhelm II of Germany and his wife passed through Baalbek on 1 November 1898, on their way to Jerusalem. He noted both the magnificence of the Roman remains and the drab condition of the modern settlement. It was expected at the time that natural disasters, winter frosts, and the raiding of building materials by the city's residents would shortly ruin the remaining ruins. The archaeological team he dispatched began work within a month. Despite finding nothing they could date prior to Baalbek's Roman occupation, Otto Puchstein and his associates worked until 1904 and produced a meticulously researched and thoroughly illustrated series of volumes. Later excavations under the Roman flagstones in the Great Court unearthed three skeletons and a fragment of Persian pottery dated to the 6th–4th centuries BC. The sherd featured cuneiform letters.


title: Baalbek

text: In 1977, Jean-Pierre Adam made a brief study suggesting most of the large blocks could have been moved on rollers with machines using capstans and pulley blocks, a process which he theorised could use 512 workers to move a block. "Baalbek, with its colossal structures, is one of the finest examples of Imperial Roman architecture at its apogee", UNESCO reported in making Baalbek a World Heritage Site in 1984. When the committee inscribed the site, it expressed the wish that the protected area include the entire town within the Arab walls, as well as the southwestern extramural quarter between Bastan-al-Khan, the Roman site and the Mameluk mosque of Ras-al-Ain. Lebanon's representative gave assurances that the committee's wish would be honoured. Recent cleaning operations at the Temple of Jupiter discovered the deep trench at its edge, whose study pushed back the date of Tell Baalbek's settlement to the PPNB Neolithic. Finds included pottery sherds including a spout dating to the early Bronze Age. In the summer of 2014, a team from the German Archaeological Institute led by Jeanine Abdul Massih of the Lebanese University discovered a sixth, much larger stone suggested to be the world's largest ancient block. The stone was found underneath and next to the Stone of the Pregnant Woman ("Hajjar al-Hibla") and measures around . It is estimated to weigh .


title: Baalbek

text: Baalbek was connected to the DHP, the French-owned railway concession in Ottoman Syria, on 19 June 1902. It formed a station on the standard-gauge line between Riyaq to its south and Aleppo (now in Syria) to its north. This Aleppo Railway connected to the Beirut–Damascus Railway but—because that line was built to a 1.05-meter gauge—all traffic had to be unloaded and reloaded at Riyaq. Just before the First World War, the population was still around 5000, about 2000 each of Sunnis and Shia Mutawalis and 1000 Orthodox and Maronites. The French general Georges Catroux proclaimed the independence of Lebanon in 1941 but colonial rule continued until 1943. Baalbek still has its railway station but service has been discontinued since the 1970s, originally owing to the Lebanese Civil War.


title: Baalbek

text: In March 1974, Musa al-Sadr announced the launching of the "Movement of the Deprived" in front of a large rally in Baalbek. Its objective was to stand up for Lebanon's neglected Shia community. He also announced the setting up of military training camps to train villagers in southern Lebanon to protect their homes from Israeli attacks. These camps led to the creation of the Amal Militia. In 1982, at the height of the Israeli invasion, Amal split into two factions over Nabih Berri's acceptance of the American plan to evacuate Palestinians from West Beirut. A large number of dissidents, led by Amal's military commander Hussein Musawi moved to Baalbek. Once established in the town the group, which was to evolve into Hizbollah, began to work with Iranian Revolutionary Guards, veterans of the Iran Iraq War. The following year the Iranians established their headquarters in the Sheikh Abdullah barracks in Baalbek. Ultimately there were between 1,500 to 2,000 Revolutionary Guards in Lebanon, with outposts further south in the Shia villages, such as Jebchit.


title: Baalbek

text: On the evening of 1 August 2006, hundreds of Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers raided Baalbek and the Dar al-Hikma or Hikmeh Hospital in Jamaliyeh to its north ("Operation Sharp and Smooth"). Their mission was to rescue two captured soldiers, Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, who were abducted by Hezbollah on 12 July 2006. They were transported by helicopter and supported by Apache helicopters and unmanned drones, The IDF was acting on information that Goldwasser and Regev were at the hospital. al-Jazeera and other sources claimed the IDF was attempting to capture senior Hezbollah officials, particularly Sheikh Mohammad Yazbek. The hospital had been empty for four days, the most unwell patients having been transferred and the rest sent home. No Israelis were killed; Five civilians were abducted and interrogated by the Israelis, presumably because one shared his name with Hassan Nasrallah, the secretary general of Hezbollah; they were released on August 21. Another 9 civilians were killed on 7 August by a strike in the middle of Brital, just south of Baalbek, and by the subsequent attack on the car leaving the scene for the hospital. On 14 August just before the ceasefire took effect, two Lebanese police and five Lebanese soldiers were killed by a drone strike while driving their van around the still-damaged road through Jamaliyeh.


title: Baalbek

text: Conservation work at Lebanon's historic sites began in October. The ruins at Baalbek were not directly hit but the effects of blasts during the conflict toppled a block of stones at the Roman ruins and existing cracks in the temples of Jupiter and Bacchus were feared to have widened. Frederique Husseini, director-general of Lebanon's Department of Antiquities, requested $550,000 from Europeans to restore Baalbek's souk and another $900,000 for repairs to other damaged structures.


title: Baalbek

text: The Tell Baalbek temple complex, fortified as the town's citadel during the Middle Ages, was constructed from local stone, mostly white granite and a rough white marble. Over the years, it has suffered from the region's numerous earthquakes, the iconoclasm of Christian and Muslim lords, and the reuse of the temples' stone for fortification and other construction. The nearby Qubbat Duris, a 13th-century Muslim shrine on the old road to Damascus, is built out of granite columns, apparently removed from Baalbek. Further, the jointed columns were once banded together with iron; many were gouged open or toppled by the emirs of Damascus to get at the metal. As late as the 16th century, the Temple of Jupiter still held 27 standing columns out of an original 58; there were only nine before the 1759 earthquakes and six today.


title: Baalbek

text: The complex is located on an immense raised plaza erected over an earlier T-shaped base consisting of a podium, staircase, and foundation walls. These walls were built from about 24 monoliths, at their lowest level weighing approximately each. The tallest retaining wall, on the west, has a second course of monoliths containing the famous "Three Stones" (, "Trílithon"): a row of three stones, each over long, high, and broad, cut from limestone. They weigh approximately each. A fourth, still larger stone is called the Stone of the Pregnant Woman: it lies unused in a nearby quarry from the town. Its weight, often exaggerated, is estimated at . A fifth, still larger stone weighing approximately lies in the same quarry. This quarry was slightly higher than the temple complex, so no lifting was required to move the stones. Through the foundation there run three enormous passages the size of railway tunnels.


title: Baalbek

text: The temple complex was entered from the east through the Propylaea (, "propýlaion") or Portico, consisting of a broad staircase rising to an arcade of 12 columns flanked by 2 towers. Most of the columns have been toppled and the stairs were entirely dismantled for use in the nearby later wall, but a Latin inscription remains on several of their bases stating that Longinus, a lifeguard of the 1st Parthian Legion, and Septimius, a freedman, gilded their capitals with bronze in gratitude for the safety of Septimius Severus's son Antoninus Caracalla and empress Julia Domna.


title: Baalbek

text: Immediately behind the Propylaeum is a hexagonal forecourt reached through a threefold entrance that was added in the mid-3rd century by the emperor Philip the Arab. Traces remain of the two series of columns which once encircled it, but its original function remains uncertain. Donne reckoned it as the town's forum. Badly preserved coins of the era led some to believe this was a sacred cypress grove, but better specimens show that the coins displayed a single stalk of grain instead.


title: Baalbek

text: The rectangular Great Court to its west covers around and included the main altar for burnt offering, with mosaic-floored lustration basins to its north and south, a subterranean chamber, and three underground passageways wide by high, two of which run east and west and the third connecting them north and south, all bearing inscriptions suggesting their occupation by Roman soldiers. These were surrounded by Corinthian porticoes, one of which was never completed. The columns' bases and capitals were of limestone; the shafts were monoliths of highly polished red Egyptian granite high. Six remain standing, out of an original 128. Inscriptions attest that the court was once adorned by portraits of Marcus Aurelius's daughter Sabina, Septimius Severus, Gordian, and Velius Rufus, dedicated by the city's Roman colonists. The entablature was richly decorated but is now mostly ruined. A westward-facing basilica was constructed over the altar during the reign of Theodosius; it was later altered to make it eastward-facing like most Christian churches.


title: Baalbek

text: The Temple of Jupiter—once wrongly credited to Helios—lay at the western end of the Great Court, raised another on a platform reached by a wide staircase. Under the Byzantines, it was also known as the "Trilithon" from the three massive stones in its foundation and, when taken together with the forecourt and Great Court, it is also known as the Great Temple. The Temple of Jupiter proper was circled by a peristyle of 54 unfluted Corinthian columns: 10 in front and back and 19 along each side. The temple was ruined by earthquakes, destroyed and pillaged for stone under Theodosius, and 8 columns were taken to Constantinople (Istanbul) under Justinian for incorporation into the Hagia Sophia. Three fell during the late 18th century. 6 columns, however, remain standing along its south side with their entablature. Their capitals remain nearly perfect on the south side, while the Beqaa's winter winds have worn the northern faces almost bare. The architrave and frieze blocks weigh up to each, and one corner block over , all of them raised to a height of above the ground. Individual Roman cranes were not capable of lifting stones this heavy. They may have simply been rolled into position along temporary earthen banks from the quarry or multiple cranes may have been used in combination. They may also have alternated sides a little at a time, filling in supports underneath each time. The Julio-Claudian emperors enriched its sanctuary in turn. In the mid-1st century, Nero built the tower-altar opposite the temple. In the early 2nd century, Trajan added the temple's forecourt, with porticos of pink granite shipped from Aswan at the southern end of Egypt.


title: Baalbek

text: The Temple of Bacchus—once wrongly credited to Jupiter—may have been completed under Septimius Severus in the 190s, as his coins are the first to show it beside the Temple of Jupiter. It is the best preserved of the sanctuary's structures, as the other rubble from its ruins protected it. It is enriched by some of the most refined reliefs and sculpture to survive from antiquity. The temple is surrounded by forty-two columns—8 along each end and 15 along each side—nearly in height. These were probably erected in a rough state and then rounded, polished, and decorated in position. The entrance was preserved as late as Pococke and Wood, but the keystone of the lintel had slid following the 1759 earthquakes; a column of rough masonry was erected in the 1860s or '70s to support it. The 1759 earthquakes also damaged the area around the soffit's famed inscription of an eagle, which was entirely covered by the keystone's supporting column. The area around the inscription of the eagle was greatly damaged by the 1759 earthquake. The interior of the temple is divided into a nave and a adytum or sanctuary on a platform raised above it and fronted by 13 steps. The screen between the two sections once held reliefs of Neptune, Triton, Arion and his dolphin, and other marine figures but these have been lost. The temple was used as a kind of donjon for the medieval Arab and Turkish fortifications, although its eastern steps were lost sometime after 1688. Much of the portico was incorporated into a huge wall directly before its gate, but this was demolished in July 1870 by Barker on orders from Syria's governor Rashid Pasha. Two spiral staircases in columns on either side of the entrance lead to the roof.


title: Baalbek

text: The Temple of Venus—also known as the Circular Temple or Nymphaeum—was added under Septimius Severus in the early 3rd century but destroyed under Constantine, who raised a basilica in its place. Jessup considered it the "gem of Baalbek". It lies about from the southeast corner of the Temple of Bacchus. It was known in the 19th century as "El Barbara" or "Barbarat el-Atikah" (St Barbara's), having been used as a Greek Orthodox church into the 18th century.


title: Baalbek

text: The ancient walls of Heliopolis had a circumference of a little less than . Much of the extant fortifications around the complex date to the 13th century reconstruction undertaken by the Mamluk sultan Qalawun following the devastation of the earlier defenses by the Mongol army under Kitbuqa. This includes the great southeast tower. The earliest round of fortifications were two walls to the southwest of the Temples of Jupiter and Bacchus. The original southern gateway with two small towers was filled in and replaced by a new large tower flanked by curtains, probably under Buri or Zengi. Bahramshah replaced that era's southwest tower with one of his own in 1213 and built another in the northwest in 1224; the west tower was probably strengthened around the same time. An inscription dates the barbican-like strengthening of the southern entrance to around 1240. Qalawun relocated the two western curtains nearer to the western tower, which was rebuilt with great blocks of stone. The barbican was repaired and more turns added to its approach. From around 1300, no alterations were made to the fortifications apart from repairs such as Sultan Barkuk's restoration of the moat in preparation for Timur's arrival.


title: Baalbek

text: Material from the ruins is incorporated into a ruined mosque north of downtown and probably also in the Qubbat Duris on the road to Damascus. In the 19th century, a "shell-topped canopy" from the ruins was used nearby as a mihrab, propped up to show locals the direction of Mecca for their daily prayers.


title: Baalbek

text: Under a white dome further towards town is the tomb of Khawla, daughter of Hussein and granddaughter of Ali, who died in Baalbek while Husayn's family was being transported as prisoners to Damascus.


title: Baalbek

text: Heliopolis (in Phoenicia; not to be confused with the Egyptian bishopric Heliopolis in Augustamnica) was a bishopric under Roman and Byzantine rule, but it disappeared due to the Islamic rule.


title: Baalbek

text: In 1701, Eastern Catholics (Byzantine Rite) established anew an Eparchy of Baalbek, which in 1964 was promoted to the present Melkite Greek Catholic Archeparchy of Baalbek.


title: Baalbek

text: In the Latin rite, the Ancient diocese was only nominally restored (no later than 1876) as Titular archbishopric of Heliopolis (Latin) / Eliopoli (Curiate Italian), demoted in 1925 to Episcopal Titular bishopric, promoted back in 1932, with its name changed (avoiding Egyptian confusion) in 1933 to (non-Metropolitan) Titular archbishopric of Heliopolis in Phoenicia.


title: Baalbek

text: Baalbek has a mediterranean climate (Köppen climate classification: "Csa") with significant continental influences. It is located in one of the drier regions of the country, giving it an average of 450mm of precipitation (compared with 800-850mm in coastal areas) annually, overwhelmingly concentrated in the months from November to April. Baalbek has hot rainless summers with cool (and occasionally snowy) winters. Autumn and spring are mild and fairly rainy.


title: Beyond Good and Evil

text: Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future () is a book by philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche that covers ideas in his previous work "Thus Spoke Zarathustra" but with a more polemical approach. It was first published in 1886 under the publishing house C. G. Naumann of Leipzig at the author's own expense and first translated into English by Helen Zimmern, who was two years younger than Nietzsche and knew the author.


title: Beyond Good and Evil

text: According to translator Walter Kaufman, the title refers to the need for moral philosophy to go beyond simplistic black and white moralizing, as contained in statements such as "X is good" or "X is evil". At the beginning of the book (§ 2), Nietzsche attacks the very idea of using strictly opposite terms such as "Good versus Evil".


title: Beyond Good and Evil

text: In "Beyond Good and Evil", Nietzsche accuses past philosophers of lacking critical sense and blindly accepting dogmatic premises in their consideration of morality. Specifically, he accuses them of founding grand metaphysical systems upon the faith that the good man is the opposite of the evil man, rather than just a different expression of the same basic impulses that find more direct expression in the evil man. The work moves into the realm "beyond good and evil" in the sense of leaving behind the traditional morality which Nietzsche subjects to a destructive critique in favour of what he regards as an affirmative approach that fearlessly confronts the perspectival nature of knowledge and the perilous condition of the modern individual.


title: Beyond Good and Evil

text: Of the four "late-period" writings of Nietzsche, "Beyond Good and Evil" most closely resembles the aphoristic style of his middle period. In it he exposes the deficiencies of those usually called "philosophers" and identifies the qualities of the "new philosophers": imagination, self-assertion, danger, originality, and the "creation of values". He then contests some of the key presuppositions of the old philosophic tradition like "self-consciousness", "knowledge", "truth", and "free will", explaining them as inventions of the moral consciousness. In their place, he offers the "will to power" as an explanation of all behavior; this ties into his "perspective of life", which he regards as "beyond good and evil", denying a universal morality for all human beings. Religion and the master and slave moralities feature prominently as Nietzsche re-evaluates deeply held humanistic beliefs, portraying even domination, appropriation and injury to the weak as not universally objectionable.


title: Beyond Good and Evil

text: In several places of the book, Nietzsche drops hints, and even explicit statements as to what the philosophies of the future must deal with.


title: Beyond Good and Evil

text: The work consists of a short preface dated to 1885, 296 numbered sections, and an "epode" (or "aftersong") entitled "From High Mountains". Not counting the preface or epode, the main sections are organized into nine parts:


title: Beyond Good and Evil

text: In the opening two parts of the book, Nietzsche discusses, in turn, the philosophers of the past, whom he accuses of a blind dogmatism plagued by moral prejudice masquerading as a search for objective truth; and the "free spirits", like himself, who are to replace them.


title: Beyond Good and Evil

text: He casts doubt on the project of past philosophy by asking why we should want the "truth" rather than recognizing untruth "as a condition of life." He offers an entirely psychological explanation of every past philosophy: each has been an "involuntary and unconscious memoir" on the part of its author (§ 6) and exists to justify his moral prejudices, which he solemnly baptizes as "truths".


title: Beyond Good and Evil

text: In one passage (§ 34), Nietzsche writes that "from every point of view the "erroneousness" of the world in which we believe we live is the surest and firmest thing we can get our eyes on." Philosophers are wrong to rail violently against the risk of being deceived. "It is no more than a moral prejudice that truth is worth more than appearance." Life is nothing without appearances; it appears to Nietzsche that it follows from this that the abolition of appearances would imply the abolition of "truth" as well. Nietzsche asks the question, "what compels us to assume there exists any essential antithesis between 'true' and 'false'?"


title: Beyond Good and Evil

text: Nietzsche singles out the Stoic precept of "living according to nature" (§ 9) as showing how philosophy "creates the world in its own image" by trying to regiment nature "according to the Stoa." But nature, as something uncontrollable and "prodigal beyond measure," cannot be tyrannized over in the way Stoics tyrannize over themselves. Further, there are forceful attacks on several individual philosophers. Descartes' "cogito" presupposes that there is an I, that there is such an activity as thinking, and that I know what thinking is (§ 16). Spinoza masks his "personal timidity and vulnerability" by hiding behind his geometrical method (§ 5), and inconsistently makes self-preservation a fundamental drive while rejecting teleology (§ 13). Kant, "the great Chinaman of Königsberg" (§ 210), reverts to the prejudice of an old moralist with his categorical imperative, the dialectical grounding of which is a mere smokescreen (§ 5). His "faculty" to explain the possibility of synthetic "a priori" judgements is pejoratively compared to a passage from Molière's comedy "Le Malade imaginaire" in which the narcotic quality of opium is described in terms of a "sleepy faculty" – according to Nietzsche, both Kant's explanation of synthetic "a priori" judgments and Moliére's comedic description of opium are examples of redundant self-referring statements which do not explain anything. Schopenhauer is mistaken in thinking that the nature of the will is self-evident (§ 19), which is, in fact, a highly complex instrument of control over those who must obey, not transparent to those who command.


title: Beyond Good and Evil

text: "Free spirits", by contrast to the philosophers of the past, are "investigators to the point of cruelty, with rash fingers for the ungraspable, with teeth and stomach for the most indigestible" (§ 44). Nietzsche warns against those who would suffer for the sake of truth and exhorts his readers to shun these indignant sufferers for truth and lend their ears instead to "cynics"—those who "speak 'badly' of man—but do not speak ill of him" (§ 26).


title: Beyond Good and Evil

text: There are kinds of fearless scholars who are truly independent of prejudice (§ 6), but these "philosophical labourers and men of science in general" should not be confused with philosophers, who are "commanders and law-givers" (§ 211).


title: Beyond Good and Evil

text: Nietzsche also subjects physics to critique. "Nature's conformity to law" is merely one interpretation of the phenomena which natural science observes; Nietzsche suggests that the same phenomena could equally be interpreted as demonstrating "the tyrannically ruthless and inexorable enforcement of power-demands" (§ 22). Nietzsche appears to espouse a strong brand of scientific anti-realism when he asserts that "It is "we" alone who have fabricated causes, succession, reciprocity, relativity, compulsion, number, law, freedom, motive, purpose" (§ 21).


title: Beyond Good and Evil

text: In the "pre-moral" period of mankind, actions were judged by their consequences. Over the past 10,000 years, however, a morality has developed where actions are judged by their origins (their motivations) not their consequences. This morality of intentions is, according to Nietzsche, a "prejudice" and "something provisional [...] that must be overcome" (§ 32).


title: Beyond Good and Evil

text: Nietzsche criticizes "unegoistic morality" and demands that "Moralities must first of all be forced to bow before "order of rank"" (§ 221). Every "high culture" begins by recognizing "the "pathos of distance"" (§ 257).


title: Beyond Good and Evil

text: Nietzsche contrasts southern (Catholic) and northern (Protestant) Christianity; northern Europeans have much less "talent for religion" (§ 48) and lack "southern "delicatezza"" (§ 50). As elsewhere, Nietzsche praises the Old Testament while disparaging the New Testament (§ 52).


title: Beyond Good and Evil

text: Religion has always been connected to "three dangerous dietary prescriptions: solitude, fasting and sexual abstinence" (§ 47), and has exerted cruelty through demanding sacrifice according to a "ladder" with different rungs of cruelty, which has ultimately caused God himself to be sacrificed (§ 55). Christianity, "the most fatal kind of self-presumption ever", has beaten everything joyful, assertive and autocratic out of man and turned him into a "sublime abortion" (§ 62). If, unlike past philosophers such as Schopenhauer, we really want to tackle the problems of morality, we must "compare "many" moralities" and "prepare a "typology" of morals" (§ 186). In a discussion that anticipates "On the Genealogy of Morality", Nietzsche claims that "Morality is in Europe today herd-animal morality" (§ 202)—i.e., it emanates from the "ressentiment" of the slave for the master (see also § 260, which leads into the discussion in "Genealogy", I).


title: Beyond Good and Evil

text: Nietzsche argues that more than what they value as "good" distinguishes noble and base. Even where agreement exists over what is good, what men consider a sufficient sign of possessing what is good differs (§ 194). Nietzsche describes love as the desire to possess a woman. The most unrefined form of the desire is also the most readily identifiable as a desire to possess another: control over the woman's body. A subtler desire to possess her also wants her soul, and thus wants her to be willing to sacrifice herself for her lover. Nietzsche describes this as a more complete possession. A still more refined desire to possess her prompts a concern that she might be willing to sacrifice what she desires for a mistaken image of her lover. This leads some lovers to want their women to know them deep down so that their sacrifice really is a sacrifice for "them". A similar rank-ordering applies to statesmen, the less refined not caring whether they attain power by fraud, the more refined not taking pleasure in the people's love unless they love the statesman for who he really is. In both cases, the more spiritualized form of the desire to possess also demands one possess what is good more completely.


title: Beyond Good and Evil

text: In § 259, Nietzsche states that to not injure, exploit or be violent to others as a general principle of society is "a Will to the "denial" of life, a principle of dissolution and decay." He goes on to argue that life is "essentially appropriation, injury, conquest of the strange and weak."


title: Beyond Good and Evil

text: Nietzsche discusses the complexities of the German soul (§ 244), praises the Jews and heavily criticizes the trend of German antisemitism (§ 251). He praises France as "the seat of Europe's most spiritual and refined culture and the leading school of taste" (§ 254). He finds the English coarse, gloomy, more brutal than the Germans, and declares that "they are no philosophical race", singling out Bacon, Hobbes, Hume and Locke as representing a "debasement and devaluation of the concept 'philosopher' for more than a century" (§ 252). Nietzsche also touches on problems of translation and the leaden quality of the German language (§ 28).


title: Beyond Good and Evil

text: In a prophetic statement, Nietzsche proclaims that "The time for petty politics is past: the very next century will bring with it the struggle for mastery over the whole earth" (§ 208).


title: Beyond Good and Evil

text: Between § 62 and § 186 Nietzsche inserts a collection of mostly single-sentence aphorisms, modelled on French aphorists such as La Rochefoucauld. Twelve of these (§§ 84, 85, 86, 114, 115, 127, 131, 139, 144, 145, 147, 148) concern women or the distinction between men and women. Other subjects touched on include his doctrine of the eternal recurrence (§ 70), music (§ 106) and utilitarianism (§ 174), among more general attempts at trenchant observations about human nature.


title: Beyond Good and Evil

text: The work concludes with a short ode to friendship in verse form (continuing Nietzsche's use of poetry in "The Gay Science" and "Thus Spoke Zarathustra").


title: Yucatán

text: Yucatán (, , , ; ), officially the Free and Sovereign State of Yucatán, is one of the 31 states which comprise the federal entities of Mexico. It comprises 106 separate municipalities, and its capital city is Mérida.


title: Yucatán

text: It is located on the northern part of the Yucatán Peninsula. It is bordered by the states of Campeche to the southwest and Quintana Roo to the southeast, with the Gulf of Mexico off its northern coast.


title: Yucatán

text: Before the arrival of Spaniards in the Yucatán Peninsula, the name of this region was "Mayab". In the Yucatec Maya language, "mayab" means "flat", and is the source of the word "Maya" itself. The peninsula was a very important region for the Maya civilization, which reached the peak of its development here, where the Mayans founded the cities of Chichen Itza, Izamal, Motul, Mayapan, Ek' Balam and Ichcaanzihóo (also called Ti'ho), now Mérida.


title: Yucatán

text: After the Spanish conquest of Yucatán (early 16th to late 17th centuries), the Yucatán peninsula became a single administrative and political entity, the Captaincy General of Yucatán. Following Mexican independence in 1821 the local Governor proclaimed independence. Yucatán became part of the Mexican Empire in December 1821. After the collapse of the first Mexican Empire in March 1823, the first Republic of Yucatán (founded in May 1823) voluntarily negotiated annexation to the Federal Republic of United Mexican States on December 21, 1823. On March 16, 1841, as a result of cultural and political conflicts around the federal pact, Yucatán declared its independence from Mexico. forming a second Republic of Yucatán. Eventually on July 14, 1848, Yucatán was forced to rejoin Mexico. In 1858, in the middle of the Caste War of Yucatán, the state of Yucatán was divided for the first time, establishing Campeche as a separate state (officially in 1863). During the Porfiriato, in 1902, the state of Yucatán was divided again to form the Federal territory that later became the present state of Quintana Roo.


title: Yucatán

text: The name Yucatán, also assigned to the peninsula, came from early explorations of the Conquistadors from Europe. Three different explanations for the origin of the name have been proposed.


title: Yucatán

text: The first is that the name resulted from confusion between the Mayan inhabitants and the first Spanish explorers around 1517:


title: Yucatán

text: Probably the first person to propose the "I do not understand" version was the friar Toribio de Benavente Motolinia. In his book "Historia de los indios de la Nueva España" ("History of the Indians of New Spain") he says


title: Yucatán

text: because talking with those Indians of the coast, whatever the Spanish asked the Indians responded: "Tectetán, Tectetán" which means "I don't understand you, I don't understand you"; they corrupted the word, and not understanding what the Indians said, they said: "Yucatán is the name of this land"; and the same happened in a place, a cape, which they also called Cape Cotoch; and "Cotoch" in that language means "house".


title: Yucatán

text: The second proposed explanation comes from Bernal Díaz del Castillo. In his book Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva España ("True History of the Conquest of New Spain"), he says "Yucatá" means "land of yucas", a plant that was cultivated by the Maya and was an important food source for them.


title: Yucatán

text: The origin of the first settlements has not been scientifically confirmed, although the presence of first humans in the area dates from the late Pleistocene or ice age (about 10,000–12,000 years), according to the findings in the Loltún caves and caverns of Tulum (Women of the Palms).


title: Yucatán

text: The first Maya moved to the Peninsula circa 250 CE, from the Petén (today northern Guatemala), to settle the southeastern peninsula in the modern Bacalar, Quintana Roo. In 525, the Chanés (Mayan tribe that preceded the Itza), moved to the east of the peninsula, founding Chichén Itzá, Izamal, Motul, Ek' Balam, Ichcaanzihó (modern Mérida) and Champotón. Later, Tutul Xiúes, Toltec descent, who came from the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, settled in the region causing displacement of the Itza and Cocomes—a diversified branch of Itzá—and finally, after years and many battles, the League of Mayapan (composed of the Itza, the Xiús and Cocomes) was formed, which eventually disintegrated circa 1194, giving way to a period of anarchy and fragmentation into small domains which the Spanish conquistadors found in the 16th century.


title: Yucatán

text: In 1513, Juan Ponce de León had already conquered the island of Borinquén (now Puerto Rico) and had discovered Florida. Antón de Alaminos, who was with Ponce de León on this latest discovery, suspected that west of Cuba they could find new land. Under their influence, Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar, supported by the governor of Cuba, organized an expedition commanded by Francisco Hernández de Córdoba to explore the seas west of the island.


title: Yucatán

text: This expedition sailed from port of Ajaruco on February 8, 1517, to La Habana and after circling the island and sailing southwest by what is now known as the Yucatán Channel, the expedition made landfall at the Yucatán Peninsula on March 1. There are discrepancies about where the first explorers arrived. Some say it was in Isla Mujeres. Bernal Díaz del Castillo places it at Cabo Catoche where they saw a great city which they named the «Gran Cairo».


title: Yucatán

text: The conquest of Yucatán was completed two decades after the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire; by Francisco de Montejo "el Adelantado", his son Francisco de Montejo y León "el Mozo" and his nephew, Francisco de Montejo "el Sobrino". "El Adelantado" was in the expedition of Juan de Grijalva and was with Hernán Cortés in the third expedition that eventually became the Conquest of the Aztec Empire. He was subsequently appointed for the conquest of the Maya of Yucatán, but failed in his first attempt in 1527–28. In 1529 he was appointed Governor of Tabasco, with the order to pacify Tabasco and conquer Yucatán and Cozumel.


title: Yucatán

text: From Tabasco, Montejo led a new campaign to Yucatán from the west (1531–35) and failed again in his attempt for conquest. Circa 1535, after many bloody battles with the natives, he reached the complete pacification of the Province of Tabasco and began planning his new foray to Yucatán.


title: Yucatán

text: "El Adelantado" was appointed governor of Honduras and then of Chiapas. Therefore, he gave his son "El Mozo", the mission to consummate the conquest of Yucatán. Francisco de Montejo y León "el Mozo" founded the cities of San Francisco de Campeche on October 4, 1540, and Mérida on January 6, 1542 (in honor of Mérida, Extremadura). The city of Mérida was founded over the ruins of the Mayan city of Ichkanzihóo (T'ho) and the stones of old Mayan pyramids were used for the new buildings. Later, government powers were changed from "Santa María de la Victoria", Tabasco, to Mérida on June 11, 1542. The newly founded Mérida was besieged by the Mayan troops of Nachi Cocom (overlord or 'Halach uinik' in Mayan language). It was a definitive battle for the Conquest of Yucatán. With that victory, the Spaniards consolidated their control of the western part of the peninsula.


title: Yucatán

text: Francisco de Montejo "El Adelantado" appointed his nephew, Francisco de Montejo "el Sobrino", to head the conquest of the eastern Yucatán, which was achieved after many bloody battles, ending with the foundation of the city of Valladolid on May 28, 1543.


title: Yucatán

text: Oppressive policies of inequality and prejudice were imposed on the native Mayans by the Spanish colonial government. In November 1761, Jacinto Canek, a Mayan from the town of Cisteil (now located in Yaxcabá Municipality), led an armed uprising against the government, which was quickly put down. Captured insurgents were taken to Mérida, where they were tried and tortured. As a warning to the population against rebellion, Cisteil was burned and covered with salt.


title: Yucatán

text: This abortive rebellion was not of great consequence to the colonial regime, but it marked the history of the peninsula and clearly delineated anti-colonial tensions in the region. The uprising was a precursor to the social upheaval that would explode less than a century later, as the Caste War. The Canek rebellion is remembered today as a symbol of the racial and social conflict that predominated for centuries in the Spanish colonies.


title: Yucatán

text: Because of its geographical remoteness from the center of New Spain, especially from Mexico City, Yucatán was not militarily affected by the Mexican War of Independence, though the influence was felt in other ways. In 1820 Lorenzo de Zavala, member of Sanjuanistas (a group of creoles who met at the church of San Juan in downtown Mérida), created the "Patriotic Confederation", which eventually divided into two groups: the supporters of the Spanish government under the Cádiz Constitution and another led by Zavala, which sought outright independence from Spain. Mariano Carrillo Albornoz then Governor of Yucatán, sent Zavala and Manuel García Sosa as deputies of the Cortes of Cádiz to Madrid, while the other liberals were imprisoned. While this was happening in Yucatán, the Plan of Iguala was proclaimed in the current state of Guerrero (at that time part of the Intendency of Mexico).


title: Yucatán

text: On September 15, 1821, in the Hall of Councils of the City of Mérida, Yucatán declared its independence from Spain. Almost immediately, Governor Juan María Echeverri sent two representatives to negotiate the incorporation of Yucatán into the Mexican Empire. The incorporation into the Mexican Empire took place on November 2, 1821.


title: Yucatán

text: The Mexican Empire was quickly overthrown (1823) under the Plan of Casa Mata, and the provinces of the erstwhile empire became independent states. The first Republic of Yucatán, declared on May 29, 1823, joined the Federal Republic of the United Mexican States as the Federated Republic of Yucatán on December 23, 1823.


title: Yucatán

text: The second Republic of Yucatán emerged when the federal pact signed by Yucatán and endorsed in the Constitution of Yucatán of 1825 was broken by the centralist government of Mexico from 1835. In 1841 the state of Tabasco decreed its separation from Mexico and Miguel Barbachano, then governor of Yucatán, sent a commission headed by Justo Sierra O'Reilly to meet with Tabasco authorities to propose the creation of an independent federal republic from Mexico formed by the two states. The idea failed when Tabasco rejoined Mexico in 1842.


title: Yucatán

text: On August 22, 1846, Mexican interim president José Mariano Salas restored the 1824 constitution and federalism. Two years later, during the government of president José Joaquín de Herrera, Miguel Barbachano ordered the reinstatement of Yucatán to Mexico under the Constitution of Yucatán of 1825. A decisive factor for the reinstatement was the Caste War, which forced Yucatán to seek outside help. In 1852 due to internal struggles between opposing political factions, the "Territory of Campeche" was created. On April 29, 1863, during the government of Mexican President Benito Juárez, Campeche gained its current status as an independent state.


title: Yucatán

text: The flag of Yucatán was raised on March 16, 1841. The period of the Republic of Yucatán was the only one in which the banner was officially used by the authorities of Yucatán.


title: Yucatán

text: Rodolfo Menéndez de la Peña, historian, describes the flag of Yucatán: "The flag of Yucatán was divided into two parts: green on left, the right, with three divisions, red up and down and white in the middle. In the green field highlighted, five stars, symbolizing the five departments that Yucatan was divided by decree of November 30, 1840: Mérida, Izamal, Valladolid, Tekax and Campeche."


title: Yucatán

text: The flag does not have official recognition in the state, however, it has a strong recognition among the people of the state. "De facto" state flag, in any case, according to a convention led by former president Ernesto Zedillo, is a white flag with the shield of the state in the middle.


title: Yucatán

text: The Caste War of Yucatán was a conflict that lasted from 1847 to 1901. It began with the revolt of native Maya people led by Maya chiefs Jacinto Pat and Cecilio Chi, against the population of European descent called "Yucatecos", who had political and economic control. A lengthy war ensued between the Yucateco forces in the north-west of the Yucatán and the independent Maya in the south-east. It officially ended with the occupation of the Maya capital of Chan Santa Cruz by the Mexican army in 1901, although skirmishes with villages and small settlements that refused to acknowledge Mexican control continued for over another decade.


title: Yucatán

text: Adam Jones wrote: "This ferocious race war featured genocidal atrocities on both sides, with up to 200,000 killed."


title: Yucatán

text: Because of the conflict, on November 24, 1902, Yucatán had a second territorial division when Porfirio Díaz decreed the creation of the Federal Territory of Quintana Roo, with capital in the port of "Payo Obispo" (today Chetumal). In little more than half a century, Yucatán lost more than two thirds of its original territory.


title: Yucatán

text: In the late 19th century, the henequen industry grew to unprecedented power in the Yucatan. The henequen grown in the Yucatan was used around the world for rope and twine, and became known as sisal rope, named after the seaside town of Sisal, from where the rope was shipped. Today Sisal is a sleepy fishing village, being rediscovered by locals and visitors as a beach location for vacation homes. The henequen industry provided financial autonomy to the isolated Yucatán. The fiber of the henequén plant (known as "sosquil" (maya: "sos kí")) was manufactured into twine and rope, used in riggings, string, sacks, rugs, and many other items. It became the chief export item of the Yucatán, making many local families very wealthy. That wealth is today evident in the architecture of the colonial city of Mérida, as well as in the more than 150 haciendas that are spread throughout the Yucatán Peninsula.