title: Juul

text: Many of Juul's early marketing campaigns were youth-oriented, with prominent use of social media, youth-friendly themes, and young models pictured using Juuls. In July 2019, Juul spent thousands of dollars to promote Juul as a smoking cessation to kids in schools. Juul made false claims about it being "completely safe" and presented opportunities for teens to become influencers for the company. In response to the FDA crackdown on Juul, the company announced they would be using real customers who were using the product to switch from smoking instead of models. As of November 2018, Juul has shut down their social media accounts.


title: Juul

text: A May 2018 Truth Initiative survey found that 74% of Juul users ages 12–17 obtained their Juul device from a brick and mortar store, 52% from a friend or family member, and 6% online (respondents could select multiple answers). For context, Juul estimates that 90% of its sales are in brick and mortar stores. The survey also found that 89% of youth attempts to buy a Juul online succeeded. However, Juul changed its age-verification policies in October 2018 in response to FDA pressure, with employees manually checking drivers licenses against public records for exact matches, rejecting anyone under 21 but also rejecting or deterring many adults.


title: Juul

text: In a documentary for CNBC, Burns said that the effect of vaping on Juul users, including minors, is unknown. Burns told Carl Quintanilla, "Frankly, we don't know today. We have not done the long-term, longitudinal clinical testing that we need to do." In sampling multiple e-cigarette delivery systems, a 2019 study found Juul pods were the only product to demonstrate "in vitro" cytotoxicity from both nicotine and flavor chemical content, in particular ethyl maltol. Vape liquid pods may contain numerous other compounds and are known to provide unreliable nicotine delivery that is often inconsistent with the labeling. These liquid pods also contain propylene glycol, which has been shown to induce airway epithelial injury and deep airway inflammation. Due to a story about the vaped-induced lung disease in the US, an upsurge of people began tweeting about giving up Juuling within a 24-hour period.


title: Juul

text: One Juul pod contains the same amount of nicotine as one to two packs of cigarettes. The nicotine content of Juuls is higher than other e-cigarette brands with its volume of e-liquid containing 5% nicotine, almost double the amount of other brands. Juul pods also contain a substantially greater amount of benzoic acid, 44.8 mg/mL, as compared to other brands, which contain around 0.2 to 2 mg/mL. Constant exposure to benzoic acid can lead to coughing, sore throat, and abdominal pain. "When Juul came out with very high-nicotine electronic cigarettes, it triggered a nicotine arms race amongst competitive companies seeking to emulate the success of Juul," Robert Jackler, head of Stanford Research into the Impact of Tobacco Advertising, stated in 2019. In certain markets such as Israel the maximum legal limit is 1.7% for the amount of nicotine allowed in its pods, but in the US Juul does not offer 1.7%. Juul does not offer low-dose or no-dose nicotine pods.


title: Juul

text: Juuls are unique from other e-cigarettes in that they use nicotine salts rather than freebase nicotine in order to reproduce the effects of conventional cigarettes. Nicotine salts are also less acidic than freebase nicotine, making them easier to inhale. Additionally, nicotine salts are more readily absorbed into the bloodstream at a rate similar to conventional cigarettes. Due to its lack of irritation and easiness to inhale, users may be unaware of how much nicotine they are actually intaking. Given the high nicotine concentrations in Juul, the nicotine-related health consequences of its use by young people could be more severe than those from their use of other e-cigarette products.


title: Juul

text: Ari Atkins, Pax Labs' R&D engineer, said "We don't think a lot about addiction here because we're not trying to design a cessation product at all." He added, "anything about health is not on our mind." In April 2018, FDA Commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb stated that the nicotine in Juul is sufficient to result in addiction. Gottlieb further stated, "In some cases, our kids are trying these products and liking them without even knowing they contain nicotine. And that's a problem, because as we know the nicotine in these products can rewire an adolescent's brain, leading to years of addiction."


title: Juul

text: In late 2018, news reports noted increasing rates of Juul addiction in teenagers, which negatively impacts brain development and relationships. Juul's high nicotine content has attracted concern because of nicotine's addictive properties. Particular concern has been expressed about the lack of vaping cessation treatments for adolescents, and the FDA scheduled a public hearing on youth vaping cessation for January 18, 2019.


title: Juul

text: In 2021, Juul paid $51,000 to devote the entire May/June issue "American Journal of Health Behavior" to publishing 11 studies that it funded to show its products helped smokers quit. While all papers have been peer-reviewed (with a 12th paper being rejected), the legitimacy of the process has been discussed by academics. The American Prospect described this move as "taking academic corruption to a new level". A 2021 study in "Tobacco Control" found that less than half of clinical trials sponsored by Juul were properly reported, although such actions are common practise in most clinical trials.


title: Juul

text: Sales of Juul increased 700% in 2016. , Juul accounted for over 70% of the US e-cigarette market monitored by Nielsen. By July 2020, Juul's market share fell to 42% and as of March 2022, it was 36%.


title: Juul

text: According to Dow Jones VentureSource, Juul Labs was the sixth-most valuable US startup in July 2018, behind Uber and Airbnb. Juul's revenue in 2018 was $1 billion, up from approximately $245 million in 2017. Juul's success has inspired a number of imitators, namely pod-mod devices with similar boxy designs. These devices come from companies ranging from startups to "Big Tobacco" company R.J. Reynolds. The company filed a complaint with the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) in early-October 2018 over counterfeit products manufactured by companies in the United States and China that Juul Labs says infringed on its US patents. The complaint seeks to end importation of these products into the US. In February 2019, Juul sued several companies for infringing on its trademarks, among which was a cartoon logo titled the "Juul Monster".


title: Juul

text: In May 2018, Juul started selling in Israel, which did not regulate e-cigarettes at the time. Israel later banned JUUL in August 2018, citing public health concerns, according to a statement by the Ministry of Health. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, acting in his capacity as Health Minister, placed a complete ban on Juul because it delivers nearly three times Israel's recommended amount of 20 mg/ml of nicotine. Juul has appealed the ban to Israel's High Court of Justice.


title: Juul

text: In July 2018, Juul announced it would launch in the United Kingdom. Flavours sold in the UK have slightly different names from the American versions and are available in strengths of 9 mg/ml and 18 mg/ml (lower strengths than in the US in order to comply with UK regulations). It was noted that the UK was chosen as an early launch market as it had the world's most supportive government when it came to encouraging smokers to vape.


title: Juul

text: In August 2018, Juul introduced its products in Canada, starting with an online launch before introducing them to vape shops, gas stations, and convenience stores in early September.


title: Juul

text: Juul launched in Russia in late-2018 and launched in South Korea and Ireland in May 2019. Juul launched in Ukraine in June 2019.


title: Juul

text: In January 2019, Juul announced plans for a launch in India. In response, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare called for the device to be banned from India, citing concerns that it could derail the government's anti-tobacco programs. The regulation of e-cigarettes in India is disputed between the government and the judiciary. Six states have banned their use, though the Delhi High Court has stayed the bans. As such, Juul e-cigarettes are not legally available in India and they are commonly sold on the Gray market for as much as $100 for the starter kit that costs $29 in the United States.


title: Juul

text: On January 25, 2020, it was announced that Grant Winterton, president of operations in Europe, Middle East and Africa, and Ken Bishop, president of Asia-Pacific South divisions, were both leaving the company amid global cost-saving and restructuring. Winterton was reported to organized high-profile, expensive events as part of the companies efforts. Among them was a conference in Berlin last May, attended by 1,500 employees, and a meeting for his direct reports in Cannes, France, in July, according to two employees.


title: Juul

text: Juul has been intensively marketed via Instagram and other social media. Of the $2.2 million Juul spent on marketing in 2015 and 2016, $1 million went to online marketing, according to data from Kantar Media. Juul's heavy reliance on social media marketing is unique among major e-cigarette brands in the US—blu and NJOY were initially promoted mainly with television advertising while Vuse and MarkTen relied on promotional expenditures to consumers and retailers—and is touted as a major reason for its success. Juul's use of social media marketing is also relatively inexpensive: to promote Vuse, R.J. Reynolds Vapor Company spent over $16 million on television ads alone in 2015 and 2016, according to Kantar data. A 2018 study found that "Juul's social media activities were highly correlated with Juul retail sales."


title: Juul

text: Juul's marketing has been criticized for targeting youth. The themes emphasized in Juul's marketing, especially freedom, relaxation, and sex appeal; the use of young models and imagery claimed to be appealing to young people; and the use of social media influencers and affiliates popular among youth are three reasons why many consider Juul's marketing to be targeting youth. In 2015, John Schachter, director of state communications for the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, voiced concern regarding the youth of men and women portrayed in Juul's advertising, particularly in combination with the design, stating that "We're seeing more and more irresponsible marketing of unregulated products such as e-cigarettes." Similarly, the campaign's vice-president of communications Wilmore stated that Juul Labs "used the same imagery and themes that tobacco companies have always used to appeal to kids, and they fueled it with social media." A student testified at a Congressional hearing in 2019 that a Juul spokesperson purportedly told high school students that its products are "totally safe".


title: Juul

text: Juul Labs argues that its marketing is targeted at adult cigarette smokers who are looking to quit. The rectangular design of the Juul e-cigarette, for example, was chosen to avoid reminding smokers of a cigarette, according to a Juul executive. However, in February 2020, the Massachusetts Attorney General's office revealed that evidence it obtained during its investigation documented that the company bought ad space on "Seventeen" magazine, Nickolodeon and Nick Jr, and on 15 homework and game sites for middle school and highschool students, including CoolMathGames.com In September 2018, Juul implemented a new marketing code to avoid the appearance of targeting youth. Changes brought about by the new code include only showcasing former smokers age 35 or older in ads, no longer featuring models on social media, removing social media accounts that marketed online, and adding the label "the alternative for adult smokers" to its packaging and many of its ads. Juul took down all of its social media accounts that November. Fans accounts including @Doit4Juul, which had more followers than the main Juul's Instagram account, have not closed down.


title: Juul

text: In January 2019, Juul announced a $10 million advertising campaign for cable television and radio, which targets current adult smokers and attempts to rebrand Juul as a switching product.


title: Juul

text: In March 2019, it was reported that Juul was pitching itself to employers and insurers to help their employees stop smoking cigarettes. As part of its "enterprise marketing", Juul is reportedly looking at identifying participants and offer them discounted products as well as "coaching" and other support including educational articles and instructional videos.


title: Juul

text: On September 9, 2019, the US FDA warned Juul to stop its deceptive marketing practices. On September 25, 2019, Juul announced that they would stop all marketing in the United States. Juul's marketing approaches to youth in the UK has been restricted in October 2019 after a settlement was reached with the Center for Environmental Health.


title: Juul

text: On October 17, 2019, Juul agreed to make changes to its youth advertising practices as part of a settlement with the Center for Environmental Health. The first legally binding agreement establishes the right for the Center for Environmental Health to sue Juul if they violate any portion of the agreement. The agreement states that Juul will not:


title: Juul

text: Lastly, the settlement also requires Juul to continue its "secret shopper" program with specific rules on actions the company must take if a store sells a product to a Juul secret shopper without asking for proof of age.


title: Juul

text: On October 17, 2019, Juul announced that it would discontinue its mango, creme, fruit and cucumber flavors that were sold through its online store. The tobacco, mint and menthol flavors would remain for sale. The discontinuation of these products would only be applicable in the US, with all other countries continuing to sell flavored pods. In November 2019 Juul announced they would discontinue selling mint flavored pods in the US.


title: Juul

text: On October 1, 2019, it was reported that Juul had set up an astroturfing campaign called the Switch Network, intended to recruit consumers who are prepared to sign petitions, contact local officials, attend public rallies or protests, testify in public hearings or share their stories with the press.


title: Juul

text: Juul was one of the corporate sponsors of the California Democratic Party Conference from May 31 through June 2, 2019. The logo of the company was prominently displayed on a large screen while the Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi was speaking.


title: Juul

text: Juul Labs sponsored two events with the Centre for Policy Studies a think tank and pressure group in the United Kingdom at the Conservative Party Conference (UK) The first event on September 29, 2019, was a reception in celebration of the Conservative Party's bright new thinkers. The second event on October 1, 2019, was a panel discussion with Jo Churchill, MP, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Care on the topic "Why Inequality in Britain is About More Than Money".


title: Juul

text: In April 2018, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) requested that Juul Labs turn over documents to "better understand the reportedly high rates of youth use and the particular youth appeal of these products." The FDA's request included asking the company to provide documents about the design and marketing of the Juul, research on the safety of the products, and whether certain features of the device's design appeal to specific age groups. FDA also asked eBay to remove several listings of Juul products, which eBay complied with. FDA commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb expressed concern about how the Juul can be easily disguised as a USB flash drive and that the Juul delivers a high amount of nicotine. "We don't yet fully understand why these products are so popular among youth," Dr. Gottlieb said, adding that "These documents may help us get there." In response, Juul Labs stated that they would spend $30 million on a campaign to keep Juul out of the hands of young people in addition to working with the FDA, which they announced in a press release in April 2018. Juul Labs also announced their support for raising the minimum age for vaping products from 18 to 21. Juul Labs CEO Kevin Burns said, "we are committed to deterring young people, as well as adults who do not currently smoke from using our products. We cannot be more emphatic on this point: No young person or non-nicotine user should ever try Juul." The FDA followed up by issuing more than 60 warning letters and fines to stores that were found to be illegally selling Juul products to minors.


title: Juul

text: In September 2018, the FDA sent letters to Juul Labs and the manufacturers of the four other largest e-cigarette brands in the US—R.J. Reynolds' Vuse, Altria's MarkTen, Imperial Brands' blu eCigs, and Japan Tobacco International's Logic—giving them 60 days to lay out their plans to address widespread youth use of their products. If they fail to comply, FDA may "remove some or all of their flavored products that may be contributing to the rise in youth use from the market." FDA also sent over 1,300 warning letters to stores that undercover investigators had found to be selling Juul and other e-cigarettes to minors, and issued 131 fines ranging from $279 to $11,182. Juul responded with a statement that "Juul Labs will work proactively with FDA in response to its request." A Juul spokeswoman also announced that Juul has its own patrol of retailers who advertise to youths or who do not enforce age requirements, noting that it had requested the removal of over 5,500 posts from Instagram, 144 posts from Facebook Marketplace, and 33 from Amazon.com. In total, Instagram removed 4,562 of 5,500 posts, Facebook Marketplace removed 45 of 145, and Amazon took down 13 of 33. An April 2018 survey by the Truth Initiative found that 89% of adolescents who attempted to buy Juul online succeeded, however, and Gottlieb said that Juul's efforts "didn't have the intended impact or I wouldn't be viewing the statistics I'm now seeing."


title: Juul

text: The FDA made an unannounced inspection of Juul headquarters in late September 2018 to gather information on the firm's marketing methods. FDA announced afterwards that it had seized thousands of pages of documents on Juul Labs' marketing practices. Shares of three Big Tobacco companies—Altria, Philip Morris International, and British American Tobacco—rose at the news of the inspection.


title: Juul

text: On November 13, 2018, 60 days after the FDA's ultimatum, Juul announced it would stop accepting retail orders for mango, fruit, creme, and cucumber Juul pods in compliance with the FDA's investigation. Juul will continue to sell Virginia Tobacco, Classic Tobacco, and Menthol in retail stores, and noted that it will renew retail sales of its other flavors at stores that invest in age-verification technology. In addition, the company said they would shut down their Facebook and Instagram accounts in the U.S. that promote the use of flavored pods, which entice underage users. In September 2019, President Donald Trump made an announcement that there would be a possible ban implemented on a majority of flavored e-cigarettes with the exception of menthol.


title: Juul

text: On February 25, 2020, it was announced that 39 U.S. states were looking into the marketing and sales of vaping products made by Juul. The scope of the investigation includes whether the company targeted youths and made misleading claims about nicotine content in its devices. Attorneys general from Connecticut, Florida, Nevada, Oregon and Texas said they will be leading the multi-state investigation.


title: Juul

text: Since 2019, over 2,300 personal injury, government entity, tribal, and class action cases have been filed against Juul in federal court. In October 2019, all federal lawsuits against Juul were consolidated into a multidistrict litigation (MDL) in the Northern District of California before Judge William Orrick III.


title: Juul

text: Various governing bodies have alleged in suits that Juul markets an unsafe product to children, including state attorneys general in Arizona, California, Illinois, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Mississippi, New York, and North Carolina, the District of Columbia, and the school districts of Three Village Central in New York, La Conner in Washington, Olathe in Kansas, and Francis Howell in Missouri.


title: Juul

text: Individual suits for damages caused by injury and wrongful death allege that Juul products were addictive and inappropriately marketed as safe and not addictive and were advertised and sold online to minors. The family of one teenager alleged he was enticed by Juul's "candy-like flavors, sleek and discreet design, and its representations that it was a healthier alternative to combustible cigarettes." Juul did not put nicotine warnings on their products until August 2018, according to one complaint.


title: Juul

text: Investor class action lawsuits were also filed on behalf on behalf of shareholders of Altria Group, alleging Altria failed to conduct sufficient due diligence prior to the company's investment in Juul, failed to inform the investors about risks associated with Juul's products and marketing practices, the mounting public scrutiny and its impact on the Altria business as well as that at times the companies public statements were false and misleading. An administrative complaint raised by the Federal Trade Commission against Altria for its JUUL stake was dismissed.


title: Juul

text: In October 2019, a lawsuit was filed in US District Court for the Northern District of California by Siddharth Breja, who was the former senior vice president of global finance for Juul. Breja contends he was fired in March 2019, a week after voicing concerns regarding Juul's contaminated products. In February 2019, Breja disagreed with selling pods that were close to a year old. In response, then Juul CEO Kevin Burns allegedly said, "Half our customers are drunk and vaping like mo-fos, who the fuck is going to notice the quality of our pods." A representative for Burns relayed a message made by Burns to "Vice": "I never said this, or anything remotely close to this, period. As CEO, I had the company make huge investments in product quality and the facts will show this claim is absolutely false and pure fiction."


title: Juul

text: Further lawsuits came in 2022. In April, 30 individual plaintiffs across three separate cases similarly alleged that Juul's marketing "targeted youths and young adults with aggressive advertising campaigns" and misrepresented its products as safe. The complaints also argued that the company neglected to inform customers as to the products' addictiveness. In September 2022, Juul had to pay $438.5M as a settlement after a two-year-long investigation into the company's marketing and sales practices aimed at teenagers and minors, led by several US states. As part of the deal, Juul agreed to stop using people under 35 years in their advertisements. The company continues to face litigation in other states that were not part of the settlement as well as multiple private lawsuits.


title: Juul

text: In December 2022, Juul agreed to pay $1.2 billion to settle about 10,000 lawsuits claiming the company as a major cause for the youth-vaping epidemic in the U.S.


title: Juul

text: Counterfeit Juul pods are manufactured in China and Juul has filed lawsuits against 30 Chinese companies. Counterfeit Juul-compatible pods have seen sold on Alibaba and an influx appeared in "local [US] markets" following Juul's discontinuation of several flavors.


title: Juul

text: In June 2019, the City of San Francisco passed legislation banning the sale of e-cigarettes online as well as offline, and a separate ordinance preventing e-cigarette manufacturers from occupying city-owned property. Proponents of the bill have said that they want the bill to serve as a warning to Juul that they were not wanted in the city. The decision to ban sales to the city was to ensure that the FDA began its pre-market review of e-cigarette products immediately. The San Francisco Port Commission, which owns and operates the heritage structure at Pier 70, has supported the legislation to prevent Juul and also companies that are active in the tobacco, firearms and alcohol business from occupying property that belongs to the city. Because the June 2019 ordinance did not apply retroactively, Juul was able to maintain its location at Pier 70. Juul spent at least $4.3 million in support of Proposition C to try to rescind the ban on flavored e-cigarettes in San Francisco. On September 30, 2019, Juul announced it will no longer actively support Proposition C.


title: Juul

text: On June 23, 2022, the FDA ordered Juul to remove all of its products from the United States market. The "marketing denial" order is in response to a Premarket Tobacco Product Application Juul had submitted two years earlier. It applies to "all of their products currently marketed in the United States." The FDA has previously authorized other companies to sell vaping products intended for adults, but it cited Juul for targeting its products and advertising specifically to young people. The company said it would appeal and seek a stay of the decisions. Later the same day, a panel of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia issued a stay on the order while the Court reviews the case. In response to the order, groups in support of removing electronic cigarettes from the market stated their support while complaints from adult nicotine vape users have been featured. Multiple corporate valuations for Juul were written down in the wake of the order, with some being cut by up to 88%. Juul also sought consulting regarding the legal and restructuring realities it faced following the order.


title: Notting Hill

text: Notting Hill is a district of West London, England, in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. Notting Hill is known for being a cosmopolitan and multicultural neighbourhood, hosting the annual Notting Hill Carnival and Portobello Road Market. From around 1870, Notting Hill had an association with artists.


title: Notting Hill

text: For much of the 20th century, the large houses were subdivided into multi-occupancy rentals. Caribbean immigrants were drawn to the area in the 1950s, partly because of the cheap rents, but were exploited by slum landlords like Peter Rachman and also became the target of white Teddy Boys in the 1958 Notting Hill race riots.


title: Notting Hill

text: In the early 21st century, after decades of gentrification, Notting Hill had by then gained a reputation as an affluent and fashionable area, known for attractive terraces of large Victorian townhouses and high-end shopping and restaurants (particularly around Westbourne Grove and Clarendon Cross). A "Daily Telegraph" article in 2004 used the phrase "the Notting Hill Set" to refer to a group of emerging Conservative politicians, such as David Cameron and George Osborne, who would become respectively Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer and were once based in Notting Hill.


title: Notting Hill

text: Notting Hill is in the ceremonial county of Greater London although it was formerly a hamlet on rural land until the expansion of urban London during the 19th century. As late as 1870, even after the hamlet had become a London suburb, Notting Hill was still popularly referred to as being in Middlesex rather than in London.


title: Notting Hill

text: The origin of the name "Notting Hill" is uncertain though an early version appears in the Patent Rolls of 1356 as Knottynghull, while an 1878 text, Old and New London, reports that the name derives from a manor in Kensington called "Knotting-Bernes,", "Knutting-Barnes," or "Nutting-barns", and goes on to quote from a court record during Henry VIII's reign that "the manor called Notingbarons, alias Kensington, in the parish of Paddington, was held of the Abbot of Westminster." For years, it was thought to be a link with Canute, but it is now thought likely that the "Nott" section of the name is derived from the Saxon personal name Cnotta, with the "ing" part generally accepted as coming from the Saxon for a group or settlement of people.


title: Notting Hill

text: The area in the west around Pottery Lane was used in the early 19th century for making bricks and tiles out of the heavy clay dug in the area. The clay was shaped and fired in a series of brick and tile kilns. The only remaining 19th-century tile kiln in London is on Walmer Road. In the same area, pig farmers moved in after being forced out of the Marble Arch area. Avondale Park was created in 1892 out of a former area of pig slurry called "the Ocean". This was part of a general clean-up of the area which had become known as the Potteries and Piggeries.


title: Notting Hill

text: The area remained rural until London's westward expansion reached Bayswater in the early 19th century. The Ladbroke family was Notting Hill's main landowner, and from the 1820s James Weller Ladbroke began to develop the Ladbroke Estate. Working with the architect and surveyor Thomas Allason, Ladbroke began to lay out streets and houses, with a view to turning the area into a fashionable suburb of the capital (although the development did not get seriously under way until the 1840s). Many of these streets bear the Ladbroke name, including Ladbroke Grove, the area's main north–south axis, and Ladbroke Square, London's largest private garden square.


title: Notting Hill

text: The original idea was to call the district Kensington Park, and other roads (notably Kensington Park Road and Kensington Park Gardens) are reminders of this. The local telephone prefix 7727 (originally 727) is based on the old telephone exchange name of PARk.


title: Notting Hill

text: Ladbroke left the actual business of developing his land to the firm of City solicitors, Smith, Bayley (known as Bayley and Janson after 1836), who worked with Allason to develop the property. In 1823 Allason completed a plan for the layout of the main portion of the estate. This marks the genesis of his most enduring idea – the creation of large private communal gardens, originally known as "pleasure grounds", or "paddocks", enclosed by terraces and/or crescents of houses.


title: Notting Hill

text: Instead of houses being set around a garden square, separated from it by a road, Allason's houses would have direct access to a secluded communal garden in the rear, to which people on the street did not have access and generally could not see. To this day these communal garden squares continue to provide the area with much of its attraction for the wealthiest householders.


title: Notting Hill

text: In 1837 the Hippodrome racecourse was laid out. The racecourse ran around the hill, and bystanders were expected to watch from the summit of the hill. However, the venture was not a success, in part due to a public right of way which traversed the course, and in part due to the heavy clay of the neighbourhood which caused it to become waterlogged. The Hippodrome closed in 1841, after which development resumed and houses were built on the site. The crescent-shaped roads that circumvent the hill, such as Blenheim Crescent, Elgin Crescent, Stanley Crescent, Cornwall Crescent and Landsdowne Crescent, were built over the circular racecourse tracks. At the summit of hill stands the elegant St John's church, built in 1845 in the early English style, and which formed the centrepiece of the Ladbroke Estate development.


title: Notting Hill

text: The Notting Hill houses were large, but they did not immediately succeed in enticing the very richest Londoners, who tended to live closer to the centre of London in Mayfair or Belgravia. The houses appealed to the upper middle class, who could live there in Belgravia style at lower prices. In the opening chapter of John Galsworthy's "Forsyte Saga" novels, he housed the Nicholas Forsytes "in Ladbroke Grove, a spacious abode and a great bargain". In 1862 Thomas Hardy left Dorchester for London to work with architect Arthur Blomfield; during this period he lived in Westbourne Park Villas. He immersed himself in the city's literary and cultural life, studying art, visiting the National Gallery, attending the theatre and writing prose and poetry. His first published story, "How I Built Myself a House", appeared in "Chamber's Journal" in 1865. Here he wrote his first―but never published―novel, "The Poor Man and the Lady", in 1867, and the poem "A Young Man's Exhortation," from which Graham Greene took an epigraph for his own novel "The Comedians". Arthur Machen (1863–1947), the author of many supernatural and fantastic fictions, lived at 23 Clarendon Road, Notting Hill Gate, in the 1880s; he writes of his life here in his memoirs "Far Off Things" (1922) and "Things Near and Far" (1923). His mystical work "The Hill of Dreams" (1907, though written ten years earlier) has scenes set in Notting Hill; it is here that the protagonist Lucian Taylor encounters the beautiful bronze-haired prostitute who will later connive at his death.


title: Notting Hill

text: The reputation of the district altered over the course of the 20th century. As middle-class households ceased to employ servants, the large Notting Hill houses lost their market and were increasingly split into multiple occupation. During the Blitz a number of buildings were damaged or destroyed by the Luftwaffe, including All Saints' Church, which was hit in 1940 and again in 1944. In the postwar period the name Notting Hill evoked a down-at-heel area of cheap lodgings, epitomised by the racketeering landlord Peter Rachman and the murders committed by John Christie in 10 Rillington Place, since demolished. The area to the north east, Golborne, was particularly known for being, in the words of Charles Booth, "one of the worst areas in London". Southam Street in Kensal Green had 2,400 people living in 140 nine-roomed houses in 1923, and the slum children from this street were documented in the 1950s photographs of Roger Mayne.


title: Notting Hill

text: In late August and early September 1958, the Notting Hill race riots occurred. The series of disturbances are thought to have started on 30 August when a gang of white youths attacked a Swedish woman, Majbritt Morrison, who was married to a West Indian man (Raymond Morrison), following a previous incident in Latimer Road tube station. Later that night a mob of 300 to 400 white people, including many "Teddy Boys", were seen on Bramley Road attacking the houses of West Indian residents. The disturbances, racially-motivated rioting and attacks continued every night until they petered out by 5 September.


title: Notting Hill

text: The dire housing conditions in Notting Hill led Bruce Kenrick to found the Notting Hill Housing Trust in 1963, helping to drive through new housing legislation in the 1960s and found the national housing organisation Shelter in 1966. Nos 1–9 Colville Gardens, now known as Pinehurst Court, had become so run down by 1969 that its owner, Robert Gubay of Cledro Developments, described conditions in the buildings as "truly terrible".


title: Notting Hill

text: The slums were cleared during redevelopment in the 1960s and 1970s when the Westway Flyover and Trellick Tower were built. It is now home to a vibrant community, mainly Mediterranean Spanish and Moroccan, together with Portuguese.


title: Notting Hill

text: By the 1980s, single-occupation houses began to return to favour with families who could afford to occupy them, and because of the open spaces and stylish architecture Notting Hill is today one of London's most desirable areas. Several parts of Notting Hill are characterised by handsome stucco-fronted pillar-porched houses, often with private gardens, notably around Pembridge Place and Dawson Place and streets radiating from the southern part of Ladbroke Grove, many of which lead onto substantial communal gardens. There are grand terraces, such as Kensington Park Gardens, and large villas as in Pembridge Square and around Holland Park. There is also new construction of modern houses tucked away on backland sites.


title: Notting Hill

text: Since at least 2000, independent shops in Portobello such as Culture Shack have lost out to multinational standardised chains such as Starbucks. In 2009, Lipka's Arcade, a large indoor antiques market, was replaced by the high-street chain AllSaints. Reflecting the increasing demise of one of the most culturally vibrant parts of central London, the 2011 Census showed that in the borough of Kensington and Chelsea, in which Notting Hill is situated, the number of Black or Black British and White Irish residents, two of the traditionally largest ethnic minority groups in Notting Hill, declined by 46 and 28 percent respectively in ten years.


title: Notting Hill

text: The district adjoins two large public parks, Holland Park and Kensington Gardens, with Hyde Park within to the east. The gentrification has encompassed some streets that were among the 1980s' most decrepit, including the now expensive retail sections of Westbourne Grove and Ledbury Road, as well as Portobello Road's emergence as a top London tourist attraction and Chamberlayne Road as a local shopping street with its boutique independent shops. Notting Hill has a high concentration of restaurants, including the two Michelin-rated The Ledbury and Core by Clare Smyth.


title: Notting Hill

text: The hill from which Notting Hill takes its name is still clearly visible, with its summit in the middle of Ladbroke Grove, at the junction with Kensington Park Gardens.


title: Notting Hill

text: Notting Hill has no official boundaries, so definitions of which areas fall under Notting Hill vary. The postcode "W11", centred on the former site of the Post Office in Westbourne Grove, near the junction with Denbigh Road, is the one most closely associated with Notting Hill. It covers the central part of Notting Hill, and is situated between the A402 (Holland Park Avenue) to the south and the Westway to the north. The postcode immediately to the north, "W10", covers North Kensington and "Part" Kensal Green. Notting Hill also covers part of the W2 postcode to the east, which is located in between Westbourne Park and Royal Oak, in an area known as Westbourne Green and the NW10 postcode which covers parts of the Kensal area in the northern section of Notting Hill.


title: Notting Hill

text: that is considered part of Notting Hill. The Westbourne part of Notting Hill is governed by the City of Westminster Council and the Kensal area part London Borough of Brent and part Kensington and Chelsea. The famous Kensal Green cemetery


title: Notting Hill

text: is in Kensington and Chelsea. The local historian Florence Gladstone, in her much reprinted work "Notting Hill in Bygone Days" defines Notting Hill as the whole of that part of Kensington which is north of the road known as Notting Hill Gate.


title: Notting Hill

text: North Kensington is considered the major neighbourhood of Notting Hill, but Kensal Green, Latimer Road and Westbourne Park are also part of Notting Hill; though estate agents differentiate North Kensington and Notting Hill as distinct areas with Westbourne considered part of Notting Hill and Kensal considered part of North Kensington. Locally the areas of Portobello, North Kensington, Kensal are referred to as Ladbroke Grove, the main thoroughfare and tube station at the heart of Notting Hill. That part of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea roughly encompassed by the electoral wards of Saint Charles, Golborne, Notting Barns, Colville, Norland, and Pembridge, which is bounded on the north by Harrow Road and on the south by Notting Hill Gate and Holland Park Avenue, includes all areas known as Notting Hill, including Notting Barns, the centre of the Notting Hill race riot. David Cameron, former leader of the Conservative Party, is known as part of the "Notting Hill Set", though he states he lives in North Kensington.


title: Notting Hill

text: There are five tube stations in the area: Ladbroke Grove, Westbourne Park, Latimer Road, Notting Hill Gate and Kensal Green. Notting Hill is part of the parliamentary constituency of Kensington, represented by Conservative Felicity Buchan since the 2019 general election.


title: Notting Hill

text: Ladbroke Grove is a road running down the west side of Notting Hill, stretching up to Kensal Green, straddling the W10 and W11 postal districts, and also the name of the immediate area surrounding the road. Ladbroke Grove tube station is on the road where it is crossed by the Westway.


title: Notting Hill

text: A turnpike gate was constructed at the foot of the hill on the main road from London to Uxbridge, now Oxford Street, Bayswater Road and Holland Park Avenue along this part of its route. The point at which the turnpike gate stood was known as Notting Hill Gate. The gate was there to stop people passing along the road without paying. The proceeds were applied towards the maintenance of this important road. The gate was removed in the 19th century and the high road was widened and straightened in the 1960s, involving the demolition of many buildings, the linking of two separate tube stations and the construction of two tower blocks.


title: Notting Hill

text: Portobello Road runs almost the entire length of Notting Hill from north to south. It runs parallel to Ladbroke Grove. It contains Portobello Road Market, one of London's best known markets, containing an antique section and second-hand, fruit and veg and clothing stalls. The road was originally a lane leading to Portobello Farm in the north of Notting Hill.


title: Notting Hill

text: Westbourne Grove is a retail road running across Notting Hill from Kensington Park Road in the west to Queensway in the east, crossing over Portobello Road. It was noted as "fashionable" and "up-and-coming" from the 1990s since then it has attracted many designer label outlets as well as independent and chain retailers.


title: Notting Hill

text: Westbourne Green is the area in between Westbourne Park Station and Royal Oak Station and is made up of mainly residential roads with Westbourne Park Road running through the entire area to the east of Notting Hill. This area houses 2 very popular drinking establishments, 'The Cow' and 'The Westbourne' situated central to Westbourne Green. The Westbourne Green section of Notting Hill comes under Westminster City Council.


title: Notting Hill

text: The Notting Hill Carnival also passes through Westbourne Green up Chepstow Road and turns right onto Westbourne Grove.


title: Notting Hill

text: Kensal Green is in the north of Notting Hill. It is the area north of the respective iron bridges on Ladbroke Grove and Golborne Road. Parts of this area fall under the London Borough of Brent. It has been earmarked for regeneration around the proposed crossrail station next to Sainsbury's.


title: Notting Hill

text: North Kensington is the key neighbourhood of Notting Hill. It is where most of the violence of the race riots occurred, where the Notting Hill Carnival started and where most of the scenes in the film, Notting Hill were shot.


title: Notting Hill

text: The area's main transport hub, Ladbroke Grove tube station, was called Notting Hill from its opening in 1864 until 1919. The name was changed then to avoid confusion with the new Notting Hill Gate station. Ladbroke Grove is the area's main thoroughfare.


title: Notting Hill

text: Estate agents now call the super-rich area to the south Notting Hill when referring to Notting Hill Gate and Holland Park.


title: Notting Hill

text: North Kensington was once well known for its slum housing. However, North Kensington retains high levels of poverty and unemployment and a high-proportion of social housing for rent. In this area, Grenfell Tower is also found, which burnt down in 2017.


title: Notting Hill

text: Waves of immigration to the area have occurred for at least a century, including, but certainly not limited to, people of Irish, Jewish, Caribbean, Spanish, and Moroccan extraction. This constant renewal of the population makes the area one of the most cosmopolitan in the world.


title: Notting Hill

text: Notting Hill Carnival is an annual Caribbean carnival event in August, over two days (Sunday and the following bank holiday). It has continuously taken place since 1965. It is led by members of the Caribbean population, many of whom have lived in the area since the 1950s. The carnival has attracted up to 1.5million people in the past, putting it among the largest street festivals in Europe.


title: Notting Hill

text: It attracted press attention in 1976 for clashes with the police, which occurred in 1976 at the conclusion of the Notting Hill Carnival after police arrested a pickpocket and a group of black youths came to his defence. The disturbance escalated and more than 100 police officers were injured. Two notable participants in this riot were Joe Strummer and Paul Simonon, who later formed the seminal London punk band The Clash. Their song "White Riot" was inspired by their participation in this event. Further incidents continued for a few years, but receded for several decades, until 2008 when approximately 500 youths clashed with police on the Monday.


title: Notting Hill

text: As the event grew, concerns about the size of the event prompted Ken Livingstone to set up a Carnival Review Group to look into "formulating guidelines to safeguard the future of the Carnival". An interim report by the review resulted in a change to the route in 2002. When the full report was published in 2004, it was recommended that Hyde Park be used as a "savannah"; though this move has attracted some concern that the Hyde Park event may overshadow the original street carnival.


title: Notting Hill

text: In 2003 Carnival was run by a limited company, the Notting Hill Carnival Trust Ltd. A report by the London Development Agency on the 2002 Carnival estimated that the event contributes around £93million to the London and UK economy.


title: Notting Hill

text: Notting Hill provides the setting for novels by G.K. Chesterton ("The Napoleon of Notting Hill"), Colin MacInnes ("Absolute Beginners"), Michael Moorcock (the Jerry Cornelius quartet), R. C. Sherriff ("The Hopkins Manuscript"), and Alan Hollinghurst ("The Line of Beauty"). Dan Waddel's "The Blood Detective" is a murder novel set in the past and present - featuring Notting Dale. The area's newer, wealthy residents are satirised in Rachel Johnson's novel "Notting Hell" (2006) set in grand houses surrounding a fictional communal garden. Sam Selvon's 1956 novel "The Lonely Londoners" set in Notting Hill portrays the lives of Caribbean immigrants making their way in post-World War II London.


title: Notting Hill

text: The area is also the setting of the films: "The Knack …and How to Get It" (1965), "Performance" (1970) featuring Mick Jagger, "Lava" (2001), and "Paddington" (2014). Notting Hill serves as the locale for the 1999 romantic comedy "Notting Hill", starring Julia Roberts and Hugh Grant.


title: Notting Hill

text: A film set in the same streets but showing a different story of the area is "Pressure" (1976), by Horace Ové, examining the experience of those of Caribbean descent in 1970s Notting Hill including police brutality and discrimination.


title: Notting Hill

text: The Notting Hillbillies were a country rock project formed by Dire Straits frontman Mark Knopfler in 1986. They released a single album, "Missing...Presumed Having a Good Time", in 1990.


title: Notting Hill

text: Notting Hill is often referred to as 'the most Instagrammable district in London' due to the abundance of photogenic restaurants and pastel-coloured houses.


title: Notting Hill

text: Along with the majority of west and northwest London, Notting Hill is heavily served by the London Underground. Five lines serve the area, two deep level tubes, the Central and Bakerloo lines, with three sub-surface lines, the Hammersmith & City, Circle and District lines. Firstly, the Central line crosses the area on an east–west axis, with stations at Notting Hill Gate, which also provides an interchange with the Circle (main section) and District lines (Edgware road branch), and Holland Park to the west. The northern half of Notting Hill, comprising various sub districts such as Kensal Green, Ladbroke Grove and North Kensington is served by the western branch of the Circle line, as it shares tracks with the Hammersmith & City line west of Paddington. These lines run through Notting Hill predominantly on a viaduct, calling at Westbourne Park, Ladbroke Grove and Latimer Road respectively, before reaching Shepherds Bush to the west. The Bakerloo line skirts the North East corner running from Warwick Avenue station to Paddington.


title: Notting Hill

text: At a site just to the east of the Old Oak Common site, Kensington & Chelsea Council has been pushing for a station at Kensal Green off Ladbroke Grove and Canal Way, as a turn-back facility will have to be built in the area anyway. Siting it at Kensal Green, rather than next to Paddington itself, would provide a new station to regenerate the area. Among the general public there is a huge amount of support for the project and the then-Mayor Boris Johnson stated that a station would be added if it did not increase Crossrail's overall cost; in response, Kensington & Chelsea Council agreed to underwrite the projected £33million cost of a Crossrail station, which was received very well by the residents of the Borough. In 2011, Transport for London conducted a feasibility study on the station with the project backed by National Grid, retailers Sainsbury's and Cath Kidston Limited, and Jenny Jones (Green Party member of the London Assembly).


title: Williams sisters rivalry

text: The Williams sisters rivalry was a tennis rivalry between sisters Venus Williams and Serena Williams (born June 17, 1980, and September 26, 1981, respectively), regarded as two of the best tennis players for over two decades. They met 31 times in professional tournaments between 1998 and 2020, with Serena leading their head-to-head 19–12.


title: Williams sisters rivalry

text: Both sisters have been ranked world No. 1 in singles: Venus for a total of 11 weeks, beginning in February 2002; Serena for a total of 316 weeks, beginning in July 2002. Venus has won 49 singles titles over the course of her career, and Serena won 73.


title: Williams sisters rivalry

text: The Williams sisters are the only two women during the Open Era to contest four consecutive major finals: from the 2002 French Open to the 2003 Australian Open. Serena won all four of these finals.


title: Williams sisters rivalry

text: The sisters are nonetheless personally very close. They won 22 titles when playing doubles together, including 14 majors and 3 Olympic gold medals.


title: Williams sisters rivalry

text: Serena and Venus Williams played their first professional match against each other in the second round of the 1998 Australian Open. Venus won 7–6(4), 6–1. The match was described as "subpar". They played again in the quarterfinals of the Italian Open, the first clay court tournament of Serena's career, which Venus won 6–4, 6–2. Together they won two doubles titles.


title: Williams sisters rivalry

text: Their next match was almost a year later in the final of the 1999 Lipton International Players Championships in Key Biscayne, Florida. Serena was coming off her first two tournament titles, but Venus won the match 6–1, 4–6, 6–4. The match was the first singles final between sisters on the WTA tour and was described by their father as a "bullfight". Serena won her first professional singles match against Venus later that year in the final of the Grand Slam Cup. Serena was coming off her first Grand Slam championship at the US Open and defeated her elder sister, and defending champion, 6–1, 3–6, 6–3. Venus was the only top player up to this point that Serena had not yet defeated. Together, they won three doubles titles, two of them being majors: the French Open and the U.S. Open.


title: Williams sisters rivalry

text: Entering their next match in the semifinals of Wimbledon in 2000 (their first match against each other on grass), Serena was the favorite. However, the victory went to Venus 6–2, 7–6(3), who would go on to win the Wimbledon trophy for her first Grand Slam singles title. They teamed up to win the Wimbledon doubles title and later the Olympic gold medal. Venus's career advantage now stood at 4–1.


title: Williams sisters rivalry

text: In the spring at the Tennis Masters Series in Indian Wells, California, amid controversy Venus withdrew before her scheduled semifinal match against Serena. The Williams family was accused of match-fixing, but the accusation was dismissed by most, including Andre Agassi who called it "ridiculous". Serena won the final against Kim Clijsters amid boos, during both the match and the subsequent trophy presentation.


title: Williams sisters rivalry

text: The only match between the Williams sisters during 2001 occurred in the final of the US Open, where they had never met but where both had previously won singles titles. This was the first final involving sisters at a Grand Slam tournament during the open era and the first since the Watson sisters played in the 1884 Wimbledon final. This match has been described as arguably "the most-anticipated tennis final in years". However, nerves seem to have played a factor in the match, which was won easily by Venus 6–2, 6–4. With the victory, Venus now led their rivalry 5–1 and in Grand Slam singles titles 4–1.


title: Williams sisters rivalry

text: Venus and Serena would play each other four times in 2002. In addition to being the most times they had met in a single year, this would also mark the first time that Serena would end the season with a leading head-to-head, 4–0.


title: Williams sisters rivalry

text: Their first meeting of the year occurred in the semifinals at the NASDAQ-100 Open. Serena won the match 6–2, 6–2, only the second victory over her sister in her career and the first since 1999. Venus's loss was described as "listless" and it ended her streak of 22 consecutive matches and three consecutive titles at the event.


title: Williams sisters rivalry

text: Their next meeting was their second in a Grand Slam final, and their second on clay courts. At Roland Garros Serena beat Venus in a "tight" match 7–5, 6–3. The Grand Slam was the first for Serena in three years, and it was the first final at the French Open ever played by sisters. By reaching the final, Venus and Serena assured themselves of moving up to first and second in the world rankings, respectively.


title: Williams sisters rivalry

text: One month later, the Williams sisters again met in a Grand Slam final, at Wimbledon. Again, Serena was the victor 7–6(4), 6–3 and the win moved Serena past her sister to the top of the rankings. Venus still led 5–4 in their head-to-head and 4–3 in Grand Slams, but it was now Serena who was seen as the player "now setting the agenda for women's tennis". They won the doubles title together.


title: Williams sisters rivalry

text: Their fourth and last match of the year occurred in the final at the US Open, in a match where the victor would take not only the trophy but the No.1 ranking as well. Serena won the match 6–4, 6–3 with a "blistering" display of tennis.


title: Williams sisters rivalry

text: 2003 would be a year of injuries and loss for Venus and Serena Williams, with the two highlights being the Australian Open and Wimbledon finals.


title: Williams sisters rivalry

text: The first match of 2003 contested between the Williams sisters was the first final between the two players at the Australian Open but the fourth consecutive at the majors. Serena won the match 7–6(4), 3–6, 6–4, the closest contested match between them since 1999. The win completed what has become popularly known as the "Serena Slam"; Serena Williams became the first player since Steffi Graf to hold all four Grand Slams at the same time. In addition Venus Williams became the first player since Martina Hingis in 1997 to make four consecutive Grand Slam finals, and the sisters together became the first players in the open era to contest four consecutive finals at the majors. Together they won the doubles title.


title: Williams sisters rivalry

text: This consistent play at recent Grand Slams led some to remark that the Williams sisters had a stranglehold on women's tennis.


title: Williams sisters rivalry

text: The Williams sisters next met in the 2003 Wimbledon final, a repeat of the 2002 final in the same tournament. Again the match was close but Serena, aided by an abdominal injury that negatively impacted Venus's speed, won 4–6, 6–4, 6–2. The win was the second consecutive at Wimbledon for Serena and her fifth out the last six. Additionally, the Williams sisters collectively had now won the last four Wimbledon titles and seven of the last nine Grand Slams. Serena Williams had now won their last six consecutive meetings, and led the head-to-head 7–5.


title: Williams sisters rivalry

text: The Wimbledon final was the last Grand Slam final contested between the two for five years. Both sisters would be knocked off the tour by injuries, and then have to contend with the death of Yetunde Price, their half sister.


title: Williams sisters rivalry

text: Venus and Serena Williams did not meet in a professional tennis match during 2004, a year which saw neither sister win a Grand Slam for the first time since 1998. 2005 would be a return to Grand Slam victory for both of the Williams sisters, but in perhaps a sign of the increased competition neither of their championships were decided against each other.


title: Williams sisters rivalry

text: Their first match of 2005 was fue in the quarterfinals of the NASDAQ-100 Open, their third career meeting at the tournament. The match was won by Venus Williams 6–1, 7–6(8); it was the first meeting outside of a final between the two in three years and was the first win by the elder Williams sister in four years.


title: Williams sisters rivalry

text: The Williams sisters next met on one of the largest stages in tennis, the US Open, though much earlier in the tournament than they were accustomed to. Venus, as the recent Wimbledon champion and after three "magnificent efforts" to reach this round was perhaps favored in a Williams head-to-head for the first time in a few years. In the fourth round (their earliest meeting in a Grand Slam since their very first at the 1998 Australian Open) Venus Williams won 7–6(5), 6–2. Venus would lose in the quarterfinals 4–6, 7–5, 6–1 to eventual champion Kim Clijsters, the first time since the 1998 Rome meeting that the winner of a Williams sisters match-up did not win the title.


title: Williams sisters rivalry

text: At the close of the year, after the first year since 2000 in which Serena was unable to win a match against her older sister, Venus Williams had now tied the head-to-head 7–7.


title: Williams sisters rivalry

text: The first meeting in 2008 between the sisters occurred at the Canara Bank Bangalore Open, their first meeting in a Tier II event. The only match between the sisters to end in a third-set tiebreak, both Venus and Serena were, according to commentator and former player Tracy Austin "busting a gut to win". The match end in a 6–3, 3–6, 7–6(4) victory for Serena.


title: Williams sisters rivalry

text: Venus and Serena next met on a familiar stage, Wimbledon; the match was their fourth meeting on the grass courts and their third final. The match featured "big hitting and big serving" as well as "some wonderful defense and court coverage". Testament to the fact that this was arguably the best Williams sisters match to date, former player and commentator John McEnroe has called the match "borderline classic". Venus won the match 7–5, 6–4. They teamed up to win the doubles title and later a second Olympic Gold Medal together.


title: Williams sisters rivalry

text: At the US Open, fourth seeded Serena defeated seventh seeded Venus in the quarterfinals 7–6(6), 7–6(7) and eventually won the tournament. Tennis Magazine proclaimed the match the best women's singles match of 2008. The final match-up of the year between the Williams sisters was during the round robin phase of the year-ending Sony Ericsson Championships, with Venus winning 5–7, 6–1, 6–0. This was the first 6–0 set in their matchups.


title: Williams sisters rivalry

text: The Williams' first match of year 2009 was at the Barclays Dubai Tennis Championships, where they met in the semifinals. In a match that was described as a "thriller" by CNN, Venus prevailed 6–1, 2–6, 7–6(3). Serena was dogged by a knee injury in the third set, but did not excuse herself because of this, and Venus said that the match had been worthy of a final. Simon Reed, writing for Eurosport, said that the rivalry had become "greater now than it ever has been" in the previous three or four matches, due to the increased emotional intensity that the matches appeared to stir up in the players, which he believed had been lacking in the earlier part of their careers. Venus and Serena next played in the semifinals of the Sony Ericsson Open in April. Serena won the match 6–4, 3–6, 6–3, temporarily secured her World No. 1 ranking, and tied their head-to-head record at ten wins apiece. The two reached the final of the 2009 Wimbledon Championships for both singles and doubles. Serena won the singles title for the first time in six years, beating Venus 7–6(3), 6–2. They met for the fourth time in the year during the round robin phase of the year-ending 2009 Sony Ericsson Championships, with Serena winning 5–7, 6–4, 7–6(4) saving match point. They met again in the final of the tournament with Serena winning again by a score of 6–2, 7–6(4). The head-to-head now stood at 13–10 in favor of Serena, who has also won the last four meetings.


title: Williams sisters rivalry

text: Due to a mixture of injury and illness the pair did not face each other again until the 2013 Family Circle Cup. It was their first matchup on clay since the 2002 French Open final. Serena won her fifth consecutive match against Venus. Venus and Serena's 25th encounter came in the semi-finals of the 2014 Rogers Cup. Serena went into the match with a five consecutive match winning streak against her older sister. However, Venus won the match 6(2)–7, 6–2, 6–3, making the sisters' head-to-head record at 14–11 in favor of Serena. Venus increased her Premier Mandatory/Premier 5 record against Serena to 5–2 and her semi-final record against her sister to 3–4.


title: Williams sisters rivalry

text: After a period of six years, the pair met in the fourth round of Wimbledon in 2015 – their first meeting in a grand slam event since Wimbledon 2009. It was the pair's sixth meeting at Wimbledon. Serena won the match by a score of 6–4, 6–3, making the sisters' head-to-head record 15–11 in Serena's favor and 4–2 in Wimbledon again in favor of Serena. They met again in the quarterfinals of the US Open, where Serena won, taking the head-to-head to 16–11 in her favor.


title: Williams sisters rivalry

text: The sisters renewed their grand slam rivalry in the Australian Open final. Serena won her seventh Australian Open title, and 23rd Grand Slam title overall, defeating Venus 6–4, 6–4. The win also allowed Serena to pass Steffi Graf's 22 grand slam singles titles.


title: Williams sisters rivalry

text: Venus and Serena met twice during 2018. They met in the third round of the BNP Paribas Open (Indian Wells). Venus won the encounter 6–3, 6–4. They met for the second time in the year in the 3rd round of the US Open, with Serena winning 6–1, 6–2.


title: Williams sisters rivalry

text: Venus and Serena met in the second round of the 2020 Top Seed Open in Lexington, Kentucky. In their first tournament since the resumption of the WTA Tour during the COVID-19 pandemic, the sisters faced one another for the 31st and final time in their careers. The clash came more than 22 years after their first professional meeting. Serena entered the tournament as the top seed and defeated Venus 3–6, 6–3, 6–4.


title: Williams sisters rivalry

text: The professional relationship and dynamic between Venus and Serena Williams is deeply affected by their close personal relationship. The notion of two top professionals emerging from the same family to compete against one another is unprecedented, and is a scenario which has been described as being "as improbable as one set of parents raising Picasso and Monet." After Serena's big wins over Venus' only finals at the 2003 Australian Open and the 2002 French Open, journalists said "Clearly Venus has a 'big sister complex' towards Serena". Peter Bodo, further speaking to the unlikeliness of siblings contesting Grand Slam finals, states "It's a common occurrence that will cease to be possible, perhaps ever again, the moment they set the sticks aside."


title: Williams sisters rivalry

text: The all-Williams final at the 2001 US Open drew a larger television audience than the Notre Dame-Nebraska college football game being broadcast at the same time. In fact, part of the reason that the women's final at the US Open was moved to its "prime time" spot was because of the positive effect that the Williams sisters had on television ratings. CBS's four highest-rated US Open women's finals of the last decade all involved the Williams sisters.


title: Williams sisters rivalry

text: The Williams legacy can also arguably be seen in the increased representation of African Americans among tennis professionals and new players, though their representation among professionals still remains small. A third of all new players at the grass-roots level are either African American or Hispanic, a fact to which the USTA's president Jane Brown Grimes says, "I can't help but think that Venus and Serena are drivers behind that".


title: Focal length

text: The focal length of an optical system is a measure of how strongly the system converges or diverges light; it is the inverse of the system's optical power. A positive focal length indicates that a system converges light, while a negative focal length indicates that the system diverges light. A system with a shorter focal length bends the rays more sharply, bringing them to a focus in a shorter distance or diverging them more quickly. For the special case of a thin lens in air, a positive focal length is the distance over which initially collimated (parallel) rays are brought to a focus, or alternatively a negative focal length indicates how far in front of the lens a point source must be located to form a collimated beam. For more general optical systems, the focal length has no intuitive meaning; it is simply the inverse of the system's optical power.


title: Focal length

text: In most photography and all telescopy, where the subject is essentially infinitely far away, longer focal length (lower optical power) leads to higher magnification and a narrower angle of view; conversely, shorter focal length or higher optical power is associated with lower magnification and a wider angle of view. On the other hand, in applications such as microscopy in which magnification is achieved by bringing the object close to the lens, a shorter focal length (higher optical power) leads to higher magnification because the subject can be brought closer to the center of projection.


title: Focal length

text: For a thin lens in air, the focal length is the distance from the center of the lens to the principal foci (or "focal points") of the lens. For a converging lens (for example a convex lens), the focal length is positive and is the distance at which a beam of collimated light will be focused to a single spot. For a diverging lens (for example a concave lens), the focal length is negative and is the distance to the point from which a collimated beam appears to be diverging after passing through the lens.


title: Focal length

text: When a lens is used to form an image of some object, the distance from the object to the lens "u", the distance from the lens to the image "v", and the focal length "f" are related by


title: Focal length

text: The focal length of a thin "convex" lens can be easily measured by using it to form an image of a distant light source on a screen. The lens is moved until a sharp image is formed on the screen. In this case is negligible, and the focal length is then given by


title: Focal length

text: Determining the focal length of a "concave" lens is somewhat more difficult. The focal length of such a lens is considered that point at which the spreading beams of light would meet before the lens if the lens were not there. No image is formed during such a test, and the focal length must be determined by passing light (for example, the light of a laser beam) through the lens, examining how much that light becomes dispersed/ bent, and following the beam of light backwards to the lens's focal point.


title: Focal length

text: For a "thick" lens (one which has a non-negligible thickness), or an imaging system consisting of several lenses or mirrors (e.g. a photographic lens or a telescope), the focal length is often called the "effective focal length" (EFL), to distinguish it from other commonly used parameters:


title: Focal length

text: For an optical system in air, the effective focal length ("f" and "f′") gives the distance from the front and rear principal planes (H and H′) to the corresponding focal points (F and F′). If the surrounding medium is not air, then the distance is multiplied by the refractive index of the medium ("n" is the refractive index of the substance from which the lens itself is made; "n" is the refractive index of any medium in front of the lens; "n" is that of any medium in back of it). Some authors call these distances the front/rear focal "lengths", distinguishing them from the front/rear focal "distances", defined above.


title: Focal length

text: In general, the focal length or EFL is the value that describes the ability of the optical system to focus light, and is the value used to calculate the magnification of the system. The other parameters are used in determining where an image will be formed for a given object position.


title: Focal length

text: For the case of a lens of thickness "d" in air (), and surfaces with radii of curvature "R" and "R", the effective focal length "f" is given by the Lensmaker's equation:


title: Focal length

text: where "n" is the refractive index of the lens medium. The quantity is also known as the optical power of the lens.


title: Focal length

text: In the sign convention used here, the value of "R" will be positive if the first lens surface is convex, and negative if it is concave. The value of "R" is negative if the second surface is convex, and positive if concave. Note that sign conventions vary between different authors, which results in different forms of these equations depending on the convention used.


title: Focal length

text: For a spherically curved mirror in air, the magnitude of the focal length is equal to the radius of curvature of the mirror divided by two. The focal length is positive for a concave mirror, and negative for a convex mirror. In the sign convention used in optical design, a concave mirror has negative radius of curvature, so


title: Focal length

text: See Radius of curvature (optics) for more information on the sign convention for radius of curvature used here.


title: Focal length

text: Camera lens focal lengths are usually specified in millimetres (mm), but some older lenses are marked in centimetres (cm) or inches.


title: Focal length

text: Focal length ("f") and field of view (FOV) of a lens are inversely proportional. For a standard rectilinear lens, FOV = 2 arctan , where "x" is the diagonal of the film.


title: Focal length

text: When a photographic lens is set to "infinity", its rear principal plane is separated from the sensor or film, which is then situated at the focal plane, by the lens's focal length. Objects far away from the camera then produce sharp images on the sensor or film, which is also at the image plane.


title: Focal length

text: To render closer objects in sharp focus, the lens must be adjusted to increase the distance between the rear principal plane and the film, to put the film at the image plane. The focal length ("f"), the distance from the front principal plane to the object to photograph ("s"), and the distance from the rear principal plane to the image plane ("s") are then related by:


title: Focal length

text: As "s" is decreased, "s" must be increased. For example, consider a normal lens for a 35 mm camera with a focal length of "f" = 50 mm. To focus a distant object ("s" ≈ ∞), the rear principal plane of the lens must be located a distance "s" = 50 mm from the film plane, so that it is at location of the image plane. To focus an object 1 m away ("s" = 1,000 mm), the lens must be moved 2.6 mm farther away from the film plane, to "s" = 52.6 mm.


title: Focal length

text: The focal length of a lens determines the magnification at which it images distant objects. It is equal to the distance between the image plane and a pinhole that images distant objects the same size as the lens in question. For rectilinear lenses (that is, with no image distortion), the imaging of distant objects is well modelled as a pinhole camera model.


title: Focal length

text: This model leads to the simple geometric model that photographers use for computing the angle of view of a camera; in this case, the angle of view depends only on the ratio of focal length to film size. In general, the angle of view depends also on the distortion.


title: Focal length

text: A lens with a focal length about equal to the diagonal size of the film or sensor format is known as a normal lens; its angle of view is similar to the angle subtended by a large-enough print viewed at a typical viewing distance of the print diagonal, which therefore yields a normal perspective when viewing the print;


title: Focal length

text: this angle of view is about 53 degrees diagonally. For full-frame 35 mm-format cameras, the diagonal is 43 mm and a typical "normal" lens has a 50 mm focal length. A lens with a focal length shorter than normal is often referred to as a wide-angle lens (typically 35 mm and less, for 35 mm-format cameras), while a lens significantly longer than normal may be referred to as a telephoto lens (typically 85 mm and more, for 35 mm-format cameras). Technically, long focal length lenses are only "telephoto" if the focal length is longer than the physical length of the lens, but the term is often used to describe any long focal length lens.


title: Focal length

text: Due to the popularity of the 35 mm standard, camera–lens combinations are often described in terms of their 35 mm-equivalent focal length, that is, the focal length of a lens that would have the same angle of view, or field of view, if used on a full-frame 35 mm camera. Use of a 35 mm-equivalent focal length is particularly common with digital cameras, which often use sensors smaller than 35 mm film, and so require correspondingly shorter focal lengths to achieve a given angle of view, by a factor known as the crop factor.


title: Cosmos

text: The cosmos (, ) is another name for the Universe. Using the word "cosmos" implies viewing the universe as a complex and orderly system or entity.


title: Cosmos

text: The cosmos, and understandings of the reasons for its existence and significance, are studied in cosmologya broad discipline covering scientific, religious or philosophical aspects of the cosmos and its nature. Religious and philosophical approaches may include the cosmos among spiritual entities or other matters deemed to exist outside the physical universe.


title: Cosmos

text: The philosopher Pythagoras first used the term "kosmos" (, Latinized "kósmos") for the order of the universe. Greek κόσμος "order, good order, orderly arrangement" is a word with several main senses rooted in those notions. The verb κοσμεῖν ("κοσμεῖν") meant generally "to dispose, prepare", but especially "to order and arrange (troops for battle), to set (an army) in array"; also "to establish (a government or regime)", "to adorn, dress" (especially of women). Thus "kosmos" had an important secondary sense of "ornaments, decoration" (compare "kosmokomes" "dressing the hair," and cosmetic). In Modern Greek, κόσμος has developed, along with primary "the universe, the world", the meaning of "people" (collectively).


title: Cosmos

text: The term became part of modern language in the 19th century when geographer and polymath Alexander von Humboldt resurrected the use of the word, assigning it to his five-volume treatise, "Kosmos" (1845–1862), which influenced modern and somewhat holistic perception of the universe as one interacting entity.


title: Cosmos

text: Cosmology is the study of the cosmos, and in its broadest sense covers a variety of very different approaches: scientific, religious and philosophical. All cosmologies have in common an attempt to understand the implicit order within the whole of being. In this way, most religions and philosophical systems have a cosmology.


title: Cosmos

text: When "cosmology" is used without a qualifier, it often signifies physical cosmology, unless the context makes clear that a different meaning is intended.


title: Cosmos

text: Physical cosmology (often simply described as 'cosmology') is the scientific study of the universe, from the beginning of its physical existence. It includes speculative concepts such as a multiverse, when these are being discussed. In physical cosmology, the term "cosmos" is often used in a technical way, referring to a particular spacetime continuum within a (postulated) multiverse. The particular cosmos in which humans live, the observable universe, is generally capitalized as "the Cosmos".


title: Cosmos

text: In physical cosmology, the uncapitalized term cosmic signifies a subject with a relationship to the universe, such as 'cosmic time' (time since the Big Bang), 'cosmic rays' (high energy particles or radiation detected from space), and 'cosmic microwave background' (microwave radiation detectable from all directions in space).


title: Cosmos

text: According to in Sir William Smith "Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology" (1870, see book screenshot for full quote), Pythagoreans described the universe.


title: Cosmos

text: Cosmology is a branch of metaphysics that deals with the nature of the universe, a theory or doctrine describing the natural order of the universe. The basic definition of Cosmology is the science of the origin and development of the universe. In modern astronomy, the Big Bang theory is the dominant postulation.


title: Cosmos

text: Philosophy of cosmology is an expanding discipline, directed to the conceptual foundations of cosmology and the philosophical contemplation of the universe as a totality. It draws on the fundamental theories of physicsthermodynamics, statistical mechanics, quantum mechanics, quantum field theory, and special and general relativityand on several branches of philosophyphilosophy of physics, philosophy of science, metaphysics, philosophy of mathematics, and epistemology.


title: Cosmos

text: In theology, the cosmos is the created heavenly bodies (sun, moon, wandering stars, and fixed stars). The concept of cosmos as the created universe and its arrangement has been important in Christendom since its very inception, as it is heavily used in the New Testament and occurs over 180 times. In Christian theology, the word is sometimes used synonymously with "aion" to refer to "worldly life" or "this world" or "this age" as opposed to the afterlife or world to come, although "aion/aeon" is also at times used in a more other-worldly sense as the eternal plane of the divine


title: Cosmos

text: Physical cosmology has achieved a consensus Standard Model (SM), based on extending the local physics governing gravity and the other forces to describe the overall structure of the universe and its evolution. According to the SM, the universe has evolved from an extremely high temperature early state, by expanding, cooling, and developing structures at various scales, such as galaxies and stars. This model is based on bold extrapolations of existing theoriesapplying general relativity, for example, at length scales 14 orders of magnitude larger than the those at which it has been testedand requires several novel ingredients, such as dark matter and dark energy. The last few decades have been a golden age of physical cosmology, as the SM has been developed in rich detail and substantiated by compatibility with a growing body of observations. Here we will briefly introduce some of the central concepts of the SM to provide the minimal background needed for the ensuing discussion.


title: Cosmos

text: Eastern and Western thought differed greatly in their understanding of space and the organization of the cosmos. The Chinese saw the Cosmos as empty, infinite, and intertwined with the Earth. Western ideas, based on the ancient Greeks' understanding of the cosmos, believed in a multi-planar divided cosmos that was finite and filled with air.


title: Cosmos

text: Early Europeans viewed the cosmos as a divinely created, spatially finite, bifurcated cosmos, divided into sublunary and superlunary realms. Objects above the lunar disc were believed to be stable, with heavenly bodies believed to be made out of a refined substance called "quintessence". This was understood to be a crystalline, completely transparent substance that held all of the superlunary spheres in perfect order. After their creation by God, these spheres did not change except for their rotation above the Earth. Objects below the lunar sphere were subject to constant combination, separation, and recombination. This was because they consisted of the chaotic elements of earth, air, fire, and water.


title: Cosmos

text: The idea of celestial spheres was developed in the cosmological models of Plato, Eudoxus, Aristotle, Ptolemy, Copernicus, and others. They believed in a stable cosmos created by God, where distinct realms were subject to different kinds of order. Some Europeans maintained the Aristotelian view that infinity could only be seen as an attribute of God, with the cosmos being finite. Furthermore, following the Aristotelian view that "nature abhors a vacuum", some Europeans believed that the space between the spheres were filled with air. This theory persisted until the Scientific Revolution, when the discovery that the Sun was in the center of the planetary system rocked cosmological understanding to its core. Other theories such as Atomism posited a void of atoms as the fundamental elements of physics, while Stoicism postulated a void allowing for the cosmos to expand and contract in volume through its cycles.


title: Cosmos

text: The Chinese had multiple theories of the processes and components of the cosmos. The most popular of these beliefs was the Xuan Ye theory, the astronomical view of the cosmos as an infinite space with floating pieces of condensed vapor. The Chinese believed that the Earth consisted of condensed "yin" and the heavens of "yang"; and that these properties coexisted in constant relation to each other, with "yin" and "yang" being used together to explain processes on Earth as well of those relating the Earth in conjunction with the heavens. This idea was described by Joseph Needham as a cosmos that functioned similarly to a complex organism, with discernible patterns in an ever-changing structure. There was both a pattern and a randomness to the cosmos. Because of this, the Chinese believed that earthly phenomena could affect heavenly bodies.


title: Cosmos

text: The Chinese believed that "qi" was the substance of all things in the cosmos and Earth, including inanimate matter, humans, ideas, emotions, celestial bodies and everything that exists or has existed; and that it was "qi" condensing that created all the matter within the cosmos. This is relatively consistent with the modern understanding of the congregation of matter through gravitational fields.


title: Cosmos

text: The Chinese held a belief associated with the Xuan Ye theory, which held space as both empty and infinite. This was inconsistent with the Aristotelian concepts that nature would not contain a vacuum, and that infinity could only be a divine attribute. The idea of the nothingness of space was later recognized as one of the most important discoveries of modern science.


title: Cosmos

text: The Indians believed in a cyclic universe and is related to three other beliefs: (i), time is endless and space has infinite extension; (ii), earth is not the center of the universe; and (iii), laws govern all development, including the creation and destruction of the universe. The Indians believed that there were three types of space, physiological, physical, and infinite space. The infinite space is conducted of undivided consciousness and everything that consist inside and outside. However, finite division of space is where time begins and the division of time is where all beings were first created. It was believed that there are connections between the physical and the psychological worlds, and an equivalence existed between the outer cosmos and the inner cosmos of the individual. This is expressed in the famous sentence"yat pinḍe tad brahmṇḍe",


title: Cosmos

text: “as in the body so in the universe”. The ancient Indians mapped out the outer world or the universe at an altar where Yajurveda listed multiples of ten that reached ten million. The numbers used to count to ten million was used as a reference to show the relation of the planets in the universe to earth, it was not a relevant scale to the entire universe, therefore backing that they believed the universe to be infinite and endless. Another astonishing belief that the Indians believed in was that they calculated the speed of light to be four thousand four hundred and four (4,404) yojanas per nimesa, or about one hundred eighty six thousand (186,000) miles per second. Ancient Indian beliefs included the belief that the earth was created after certain stars, these stars include the sun, Gemini, Aja, and Kurma. Evidence from the Etymological considerations prove this belief and also points towards the discovery of the twin asses, which in western astrology can be found next to the Cancer constellation as Asellus, Borealis, and Asellus Australis


title: Cosmos

text: The Indian cyclic model assumes the existence of countless island universes, which go through their own periods of development and destruction. The conception of cyclicity is taken to be recursive. For an early exposition of these astronomical and cosmological ideas, one may read al-Bīrūnī’s classic history of Indian science, composed in 1030 AD, and for an even earlier, popular, view of Indian ideas, one may consult the Vedantic text called the Yoga Vāsiṣṭha (YV), which at 32,000 shlokas is one of the longest books in world literature.


title: Cosmos

text: Australian cosmology beliefs were based around the Aboriginal and Teres Straight Islander people's ideas, also known as Indigenous astronomy, and it was around before the Babylonians, Greeks, and the Renaissance period. They found ways to observe the moon, stars, and the sun, this enabled them to create a sense of time. This also allowed them to navigate across the continent, create calendars, and predict the weather. One of the most important constellations in Australia for the Aboriginal people is the Emu. The Emu constellation represents the connection between the earth and the sky, you can see stories and representations of their constellations written on some cave walls in Australia. Another indigenous tribe known as the Euahlayi saw the Milky Way as a river and between the two bright sides represented a Galactic Bulge where the two sons of the creator Baiame and the river made a connection from the earth and the sky. The Yolgnu people were one of the first to discover how the tide of the ocean works. They discovered the tide had a direct correlation with the moon. Their reasoning as to why the ocean did not fill up as much as perhaps when the moon was full versus a crescent moon is because the moon was not as full either. This contradicts the father of science, Galileo, who said that the tides correlated with the earth's orbit around the sun. Multiple indigenous tribes described winter by the seven sisters, a group of stars in the sky that provided hunter-gatherers a sort of calendar to indicate whether they should be hunting or gathering, based on the season.


title: Cosmos

text: There is one way that both the Chinese and the Europeans, along with countless other ancient societies, related to the cosmos. This was through meaning, placed on celestial bodies, that were observed moving above the Earth. The Chinese had a very complex astronomical understanding of the stars and the cosmos that influenced everything from their art and architecture to their myths and science. This was also true of the Greeks and Romans, whose 48 constellations, including the zodiac signs and the constellation of Orion, have been passed down to modern Western cultures. These were likely passed down to them from ancient Babylonian and Egyptian astronomers. Copernicus is said to have been inspired by the fecund sun deity of neoplatonic thought, which may have initially inspired his vision of a heliocentric universe.


title: Cosmos

text: Anaximander was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher who is widely referred to as the "father of astronomy" and even as the "father of cosmology" as a result of his works to explain the origin and makeup of the physical universe. He is regarded as the most important of the Ionian philosophers, and was a pupil of Thales. Traditionally, details of his life and opinions are perpetuated not only by Aristotle and Theophrastos, but also by a great number of secondary authors. He lived throughout the fifth and fourth centuries, BCE, and was most likely the first philosopher to try to rationalize the system of the Earth, Sun, and Moon by the use of geometry and mathematics. Anaximander was also said to have created the first map of the world, however, like much of the rest of his works, this has been lost since his time. There is, however, documentation of Anaximander being responsible for the conception of the first mechanical model of the world, which is outlined by a geocentric model. He postulated that the Earth was at the very center of the universe, and that its shape was convex and cylindrical, with life existing on one of the two flat sides. Beyond the earth, sits the other planets, which Anaximander also details the order of. Next are the fixed stars, which he regarded as wheel-like condensations of air filled with fire, provided at certain places with openings through which flames are discharged. Anaximander places the moon beyond these stars, and assumed it to also be wheel-like in shape, being nineteen times the size of earth. Finally, on the top of the universe is the sun, which interacts with the moon, and the relationship between them is described in terms of aperture, in which a stoppage in would lead to eclipses. In this model, the sun is a ring, 28 times the size of the earth, with a hollow rim, filled with fire, which at a certain place is seen through an aperture as in a pair of bellows. He also postulated regarding the formation of thunder and lightning, maintaining that they are caused by the wind becoming compressed inside a thick cloud and suddenly breaking through, causing the loud sound to be heard as the cloud is bursting. He claimed the fissure then looked like a spark because of the contrast with the dark cloud. Anaximander's model set a precedent for succeeding theories, including Copernicus's system, with the major change being the shift away from the geocentric model and towards the heliocentric model of the universe. The explained model, although accredited to Anaximander, did necessarily take from ideas originated in foreign cultures, such as the astronomical wheels which are known from Persian cosmology. But even without detailed commentary, these elements of the Anaximander tradition give a strong impression of an original and courageous thinker making conscious efforts towards producing a rational explanation of fundamental physical principles, the nature and motion of heavenly bodies, the shape of earth, its place in the universe, etc.


title: Cosmos

text: Commonly regarded as the foundation of modern astronomy, the common universal view of the cosmos shifted as Nicolaus Copernicus positioned the Sun as the center of the Universe.


title: Cosmos

text: Prior to the Copernican Revolution, the Ptolemaic system, also known as the geocentric model, was widely accepted. This put the Earth at the center of the universe, with the sun and other planets revolving around the earth in an epicyclic orbit. Aristotle's geocentric model was also broadly acknowledged, along with his claim that the planets rotated but did not orbit. The reasoning behind this was due to the belief that all objects outside of the lunar sphere were celestial bodies, and therefore could not change, as they were made of "quintessence."


title: Cosmos

text: There were notable critiques of this model prior to Copernicus. In the Islamic world, Ibn al-Haytham doubted Ptolemy's notion of the planetary orbits, and Muhammad al-Battani recalculated the parameters. However, both still agreed with the geocentric model.


title: Cosmos

text: One of the first known astronomers that supported the Heliocentric theory was Aristarchus of Samos. After observing a lunar eclipse, he came to the conclusion that the sun was farther away from earth than the moon and that the sun was much larger than Earth. He also claimed the sun was a star. While Aristarchus was later an influence on Copernicus and his groundbreaking work, prior to the 17th century Aristarchus' findings were obstructed by the more established theories of Ptolemy and Aristotle.


title: Cosmos

text: Astronomer and mathematician Nicolaus Copernicus was appointed by the Catholic Church as an official, as his uncle was a bishop in the church. He used his income to further his studies, eventually studying at the University of Bologna in Italy. Copernicus began doubting the knowledge of natural philosophers and their beliefs, claiming that geometrical astronomy instead would result in the true reality of the cosmos. His manuscript, "De revolutionibus," pioneered ideas that would change the course of how both the cosmos and astrology were viewed. Most notably, Copernicus claimed that the sun was the stationary center of the universe. His work also included calculations on the motions of the moon, and the motions in latitude and longitude of the planets, all which orbit the sun. Copernicus' work was not immediately published as it disagreed with Biblical teachings, and he feared his work would be rejected by Catholic officials.


title: Cosmos

text: Copernicus' work was not entirely mathematical conviction. There is evidence that Copernicus was influenced by Neoplatonism. Founded by philosopher Plotinus, neoplatonism believes that the sun is the symbol of The One, or The Universal Soul. It would make sense then that Copernicus would place the god-like figure at the center of the universe. Neoplatonist Nicholas of Cusa claimed the universe was infinite, containing multiple earths and suns. This changed the belief of a finite universe to an infinite one, which emphasized a more obscure and incomplete version of God.


title: Shah

text: Shah (; , , ) is a royal title that was historically used by the leading figures of Iranian monarchies. It was also used by a variety of Persianate societies, such as the Ottoman Empire, the Kazakh Khanate, the Khanate of Bukhara, the Emirate of Bukhara, the Mughal Empire, the Bengal Sultanate, historical Afghan dynasties, and among Gurkhas. Rather than regarding himself as simply a king of the concurrent dynasty (i.e. European-style monarchies), each Iranian ruler regarded himself as the Shahanshah (, ) or Padishah (, ) in the sense of a continuation of the original Persian Empire.


title: Shah

text: The word descends from Old Persian "xšāyaθiya" "king", which used to be considered a borrowing from Median, as it was compared to Avestan "xšaθra-", "power" and "command", corresponding to Sanskrit (Old Indic) "kṣatra-" (same meaning), from which "kṣatriya-", "warrior", is derived. Most recently, the form "xšāyaθiya" has been analyzed as a genuine, inherited Persian formation with the meaning 'pertaining to reigning, ruling'. This formation with the "origin" suffix "-iya" is derived from a deverbal abstract noun *"xšāy-aθa-" 'rule, ruling, "Herrschaft", from the (Old Persian) verb "xšāy-" 'to rule, reign'. The full, Old Persian title of the Achaemenid rulers of the First Persian Empire was "Xšāyaθiya Xšāyaθiyānām" or (Modern Persian) "Šāhe Šāhān", "King of Kings" or "Emperor". This title has ancient Near Eastern or Mesopotamian precedents. The earliest attestation of such a title dates back to the Middle Assyrian period as "šar šarrāni," in reference to the Assyrian ruler Tukulti-Ninurta I (1243–1207 BC).


title: Shah

text: "Šāh", or "Šāhanšāh" (King of Kings) to use the full-length term, was the title of the Persian emperors. It includes rulers of the first Persian Empire, the Achaemenid dynasty, who unified Persia in the sixth century BC, and created a vast intercontinental empire, as well as rulers of succeeding dynasties throughout history until the twentieth century and the Imperial House of Pahlavi.


title: Shah

text: While in Western sources the Ottoman monarch is most often referred to as a Sultan, in Ottoman territory he was most often referred to as "Padishah" and several used the title Shah in their tughras. Their male offspring received the title of "Şehzade", or prince (literally, "offspring of the Shah", from Persian "shahzadeh").


title: Shah

text: The full title of the Achaemenid rulers was "Xšāyaθiya Xšāyaθiyānām", literally "King of Kings" in Old Persian, corresponding to Middle Persian "Šâhân Šâh", and Modern Persian ("Šâhanšâh"). In Greek, this phrase was translated as ("basileus tōn basiléōn"), "King of Kings", equivalent to "Emperor". Both terms were often shortened to their roots "shah" and "basileus".