title: Cooling tower

text: In the adjacent diagram, water pumped from the tower basin is the cooling water routed through the process coolers and condensers in an industrial facility. The cool water absorbs heat from the hot process streams which need to be cooled or condensed, and the absorbed heat warms the circulating water (C). The warm water returns to the top of the cooling tower and trickles downward over the fill material inside the tower. As it trickles down, it contacts ambient air rising up through the tower either by natural draft or by forced draft using large fans in the tower. That contact causes a small amount of the water to be lost as windage or drift (W) and some of the water (E) to evaporate. The heat required to evaporate the water is derived from the water itself, which cools the water back to the original basin water temperature and the water is then ready to recirculate. The evaporated water leaves its dissolved salts behind in the bulk of the water which has not been evaporated, thus raising the salt concentration in the circulating cooling water. To prevent the salt concentration of the water from becoming too high, a portion of the water is drawn off or blown down (D) for disposal. Fresh water make-up (M) is supplied to the tower basin to compensate for the loss of evaporated water, the windage loss water and the draw-off water.


title: Cooling tower

text: Windage (or drift) losses (W) is the amount of total tower water flow that is entrained in the flow of air to the atmosphere. From large-scale industrial cooling towers, in the absence of manufacturer's data, it may be assumed to be:


title: Cooling tower

text: Cycle of concentration represents the accumulation of dissolved minerals in the recirculating cooling water. Discharge of draw-off (or blowdown) is used principally to control the buildup of these minerals.


title: Cooling tower

text: The chemistry of the make-up water, including the amount of dissolved minerals, can vary widely. Make-up waters low in dissolved minerals such as those from surface water supplies (lakes, rivers etc.) tend to be aggressive to metals (corrosive). Make-up waters from ground water supplies (such as wells) are usually higher in minerals, and tend to be scaling (deposit minerals). Increasing the amount of minerals present in the water by cycling can make water less aggressive to piping; however, excessive levels of minerals can cause scaling problems.


title: Cooling tower

text: Concentration cycles in the majority of cooling towers usually range from 3 to 7. In the United States, many water supplies use well water which has significant levels of dissolved solids. On the other hand, one of the largest water supplies, for New York City, has a surface rainwater source quite low in minerals; thus cooling towers in that city are often allowed to concentrate to 7 or more cycles of concentration.


title: Cooling tower

text: Since higher cycles of concentration represent less make-up water, water conservation efforts may focus on increasing cycles of concentration. Highly treated recycled water may be an effective means of reducing cooling tower consumption of potable water, in regions where potable water is scarce.


title: Cooling tower

text: Clean visible dirt & debris from the cold water basin and surfaces with any visible biofilm (i.e., slime).


title: Cooling tower

text: Disinfectant and other chemical levels in cooling towers and hot tubs should be continuously maintained and regularly monitored.


title: Cooling tower

text: Regular checks of water quality (specifically the aerobic bacteria levels) using dipslides should be taken as the presence of other organisms can support legionella by producing the organic nutrients that it needs to thrive.


title: Cooling tower

text: Besides treating the circulating cooling water in large industrial cooling tower systems to minimize scaling and fouling, the water should be filtered to remove particulates, and also be dosed with biocides and algaecides to prevent growths that could interfere with the continuous flow of the water. Under certain conditions, a biofilm of micro-organisms such as bacteria, fungi and algae can grow very rapidly in the cooling water, and can reduce the heat transfer efficiency of the cooling tower. Biofilm can be reduced or prevented by using chlorine or other chemicals. A normal industrial practice is to use two biocides, such as oxidizing and non-oxidizing types to complement each other's strengths and weaknesses, and to ensure a broader spectrum of attack. In most cases, a continual low level oxidizing biocide is used, then alternating to a periodic shock dose of non-oxidizing biocides.


title: Cooling tower

text: Algaecides, as their name might suggest, is intended to kill algae and other related plant-like microbes in the water. Biocides can reduce other living matter that remains, improving the system and keeping clean and efficient water usage in a cooling tower. One of the most common options when it comes to biocides for your water is bromine.


title: Cooling tower

text: Among the issues that cause the most damage and strain to a water tower’s systems is scaling. When an unwanted material or contaminant in the water builds up in a certain area, it can create deposits that grow over time. This can cause issues ranging from the narrowing of pipes to total blockages and equipment failures.


title: Cooling tower

text: The water consumption of the cooling tower comes from Drift, Bleed-off, Evaporation loss, The water that is immediately replenished into the cooling tower due to loss is called Make-up Water. The function of make-up water is to make machinery and equipment run safely and stably.


title: Cooling tower

text: Another very important reason for using biocides in cooling towers is to prevent the growth of "Legionella", including species that cause legionellosis or Legionnaires' disease, most notably "L. pneumophila", or "Mycobacterium avium". The various "Legionella" species are the cause of Legionnaires' disease in humans and transmission is via exposure to aerosols—the inhalation of mist droplets containing the bacteria. Common sources of "Legionella" include cooling towers used in open recirculating evaporative cooling water systems, domestic hot water systems, fountains, and similar disseminators that tap into a public water supply. Natural sources include freshwater ponds and creeks.


title: Cooling tower

text: French researchers found that "Legionella" bacteria travelled up to through the air from a large contaminated cooling tower at a petrochemical plant in Pas-de-Calais, France. That outbreak killed 21 of the 86 people who had a laboratory-confirmed infection.


title: Cooling tower

text: Drift (or windage) is the term for water droplets of the process flow allowed to escape in the cooling tower discharge. Drift eliminators are used in order to hold drift rates typically to 0.001–0.005% of the circulating flow rate. A typical drift eliminator provides multiple directional changes of airflow to prevent the escape of water droplets. A well-designed and well-fitted drift eliminator can greatly reduce water loss and potential for "Legionella" or water treatment chemical exposure. Also, about every six months, inspect the conditions of the drift eliminators making sure there are no gaps to allow the free flow of dirt.


title: Cooling tower

text: The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) does not recommend that health-care facilities regularly test for the "Legionella pneumophila" bacteria. Scheduled microbiologic monitoring for "Legionella" remains controversial because its presence is not necessarily evidence of a potential for causing disease. The CDC recommends aggressive disinfection measures for cleaning and maintaining devices known to transmit "Legionella", but does not recommend regularly-scheduled microbiologic assays for the bacteria. However, scheduled monitoring of potable water within a hospital might be considered in certain settings where persons are highly susceptible to illness and mortality from "Legionella" infection (e.g. hematopoietic stem cell transplantation units, or solid organ transplant units). Also, after an outbreak of legionellosis, health officials agree that monitoring is necessary to identify the source and to evaluate the efficacy of biocides or other prevention measures.


title: Cooling tower

text: Under certain ambient conditions, plumes of water vapor can be seen rising out of the discharge from a cooling tower, and can be mistaken as smoke from a fire. If the outdoor air is at or near saturation, and the tower adds more water to the air, saturated air with liquid water droplets can be discharged, which is seen as fog. This phenomenon typically occurs on cool, humid days, but is rare in many climates. Fog and clouds associated with cooling towers can be described as homogenitus, as with other clouds of man-made origin, such as contrails and ship tracks.


title: Cooling tower

text: This phenomenon can be prevented by decreasing the relative humidity of the saturated discharge air. For that purpose, in hybrid towers, saturated discharge air is mixed with heated low relative humidity air. Some air enters the tower above drift eliminator level, passing through heat exchangers. The relative humidity of the dry air is even more decreased instantly as being heated while entering the tower. The discharged mixture has a relatively lower relative humidity and the fog is invisible.


title: Cooling tower

text: When wet cooling towers with seawater make-up are installed in various industries located in or near coastal areas, the drift of fine droplets emitted from the cooling towers contain nearly 6% sodium chloride which deposits on the nearby land areas. This deposition of sodium salts on the nearby agriculture/vegetative lands can convert them into sodic saline or sodic alkaline soils depending on the nature of the soil and enhance the sodicity of ground and surface water. The salt deposition problem from such cooling towers aggravates where national pollution control standards are not imposed or not implemented to minimize the drift emissions from wet cooling towers using seawater make-up.


title: Cooling tower

text: Respirable suspended particulate matter, of less than 10 micrometers (µm) in size, can be present in the drift from cooling towers. Larger particles above 10 µm in size are generally filtered out in the nose and throat via cilia and mucus but particulate matter smaller than 10 µm, referred to as PM, can settle in the bronchi and lungs and cause health problems. Similarly, particles smaller than 2.5 µm, (PM), tend to penetrate into the gas exchange regions of the lung, and very small particles (less than 100 nanometers) may pass through the lungs to affect other organs. Though the total particulate emissions from wet cooling towers with fresh water make-up is much less, they contain more PM and PM than the total emissions from wet cooling towers with sea water make-up. This is due to lesser salt content in fresh water drift (below 2,000 ppm) compared to the salt content of sea water drift (60,000 ppm).


title: Cooling tower

text: At some modern power stations equipped with flue gas purification, such as the Großkrotzenburg Power Station and the Rostock Power Station, the cooling tower is also used as a flue-gas stack (industrial chimney), thus saving the cost of a separate chimney structure. At plants without flue gas purification, problems with corrosion may occur, due to reactions of raw flue gas with water to form acids.


title: Cooling tower

text: Sometimes, natural draft cooling towers are constructed with structural steel in place of concrete (RCC) when the construction time of natural draft cooling tower is exceeding the construction time of the rest of the plant or the local soil is of poor strength to bear the heavy weight of RCC cooling towers or cement prices are higher at a site to opt for cheaper natural draft cooling towers made of structural steel.


title: Cooling tower

text: Some cooling towers (such as smaller building air conditioning systems) are shut down seasonally, drained, and winterized to prevent freeze damage.


title: Cooling tower

text: During the winter, other sites continuously operate cooling towers with water leaving the tower. Basin heaters, tower draindown, and other freeze protection methods are often employed in cold climates. Operational cooling towers with malfunctions can freeze during very cold weather. Typically, freezing starts at the corners of a cooling tower with a reduced or absent heat load. Severe freezing conditions can create growing volumes of ice, resulting in increased structural loads which can cause structural damage or collapse.


title: Cooling tower

text: Cooling towers constructed in whole or in part of combustible materials can support internal fire propagation. Such fires can become very intense, due to the high surface-volume ratio of the towers, and fires can be further intensified by natural convection or fan-assisted draft. The resulting damage can be sufficiently severe to require the replacement of the entire cell or tower structure. For this reason, some codes and standards recommend that combustible cooling towers be provided with an automatic fire sprinkler system. Fires can propagate internally within the tower structure when the cell is not in operation (such as for maintenance or construction), and even while the tower is in operation, especially those of the induced-draft type, because of the existence of relatively dry areas within the towers.


title: Cooling tower

text: Being very large structures, cooling towers are susceptible to wind damage, and several spectacular failures have occurred in the past. At Ferrybridge power station on 1 November 1965, the station was the site of a major structural failure, when three of the cooling towers collapsed owing to vibrations in winds. Although the structures had been built to withstand higher wind speeds, the shape of the cooling towers caused westerly winds to be funneled into the towers themselves, creating a vortex. Three out of the original eight cooling towers were destroyed, and the remaining five were severely damaged. The towers were later rebuilt and all eight cooling towers were strengthened to tolerate adverse weather conditions. Building codes were changed to include improved structural support, and wind tunnel tests were introduced to check tower structures and configuration.


title: The O'Jays

text: The O'Jays are an American R&B group from Canton, Ohio, formed in 1958 and originally consisting of Eddie Levert, Walter Lee Williams, William Powell, Bobby Massey, and Bill Isles. The O'Jays made their first chart appearance with the minor hit "Lonely Drifter" in 1963, but reached their greatest level of success once Gamble & Huff, a team of producers and songwriters, signed them to their Philadelphia International label in 1972. With Gamble & Huff, the O'Jays (now a trio after the departure of Isles and Massey) emerged at the forefront of Philadelphia soul with "Back Stabbers" (1972), and topped the US "Billboard" Hot 100 the following year with "Love Train". Several other US R&B hits followed, and the O'Jays were inducted into the Vocal Group Hall of Fame in 2004, The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2005, and the Rhythm and Blues Music Hall of Fame in 2013.


title: The O'Jays

text: The group was formed in Canton, Ohio, in 1958 while its members were attending Canton McKinley High School. Originally known as The Mascots, and then The Triumphs, the friends began recording with "Miracles" in 1961, which was a moderate hit in the Cleveland area. In 1963, they took the name 'The O'Jays', in tribute to Cleveland radio disc jockey Eddie O'Jay, who was part of the powerful management team of Frankie Crocker, Herb Hamlett and O'Jay. In 1963, the O'Jays released "Lonely Drifter", their first national chart hit on the " Billboard" Hot 100, peaking at number 93. Their debut album, released shortly thereafter was "Comin' Through".


title: The O'Jays

text: In the early 1960s, member Frank "Frankie" Little, Jr. joined the group as a guitarist and songwriter. He worked with lead vocalist Eddie Levert, assisting with some of the writing for the group, including 1964’s “Do the Jerk,” 1966’s “Pretty Words,” and 1967’s “Oh, How You Hurt Me”. He is also credited with vocals on 1962’s “Down at the Corner”. According to Walter Williams, “Frankie was a guitarist and songwriter in the very early O’Jays. He came with us when we first ventured out of Cleveland and traveled to Los Angeles, but he also was in love with a woman in Cleveland that he missed so much that he soon returned back to Cleveland after a short amount of time." In 2021, human remains discovered in 1982 at Twinsburg, Ohio, were identified as those of Frankie Little.


title: The O'Jays

text: Throughout the 1960s, the group continued to chart with minor hits such as "Lipstick Traces" (which they performed nationally on the ABC television program "Shivaree"), "Stand In for Love", "Stand Tall", "Let It All Out", "I'll Be Sweeter Tomorrow", "Look Over Your Shoulder", "Deeper in Love with You", and "One Night Affair". However, while they issued dozens of singles throughout the decade, they never hit the US top 40 (although "Lipstick Traces" made it to number 19 in Canada). On the R&B chart, the O'Jays were somewhat more prominent, but their only top 10 R&B single prior to 1972 was 1968's "I'll Be Sweeter Tomorrow".


title: The O'Jays

text: In spite of their success as a touring group and on the R&B chart, the group had been considering quitting the music industry in 1972. Around that time, original members Bill Isles and Bobby Massey departed, leaving the group a trio. The remaining three original members, Eddie Levert, William Powell, and Walter Williams continued recording together, and Gamble & Huff, a team of producers and songwriters with whom the O'Jays had been working for several years, signed them to their Philadelphia International label. Suddenly, the O'Jays released their first million-seller, "Back Stabbers", from the album of the same name. This album produced several more hit singles, including "992 Arguments", "Sunshine", "Time to Get Down", and the number 1 pop smash, "Love Train".


title: The O'Jays

text: During the remainder of the 1970s, the O'Jays continued releasing hit singles, including "Put Your Hands Together" (Pop number 10), "For the Love of Money" (Pop number 9), "Give the People What They Want", "Let Me Make Love to You", "I Love Music" (Pop number 5), "Livin' for the Weekend", "Message in Our Music", and "Darlin' Darlin' Baby (Sweet Tender Love)". Original member William Powell died of cancer in 1977 at age 35.


title: The O'Jays

text: After adding Sammy Strain (of Little Anthony and the Imperials), the O'Jays continued recording, though with limited success. In 1978, the group released "Use ta Be My Girl", which was their final top-five hit, though they continued placing songs on the R&B charts throughout the 1980s. The O'Jays' success was not confined to the United States, as they also logged nine hit singles in the United Kingdom between 1972 and 1983, including four tracks that reached the top 20 on the UK Singles Chart. Their 1987 album, "Let Me Touch You", was a breakthrough of sorts, and included the number 1 R&B hit "Lovin' You". Though they continued charting on the R&B charts in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the O'Jays never again achieved pop success. In 1992, Sammy Strain left the group and returned to the Imperials. Strain's departure was filled by Nathaniel Best (born December 13, 1960), who was later replaced by Eric Grant. Later in the 1990s, the group did little recording, though they remained a popular live draw. Their latest album was "Imagination", released in 2004.


title: The O'Jays

text: In 2003, the trio co-starred in the film "The Fighting Temptations", which starred Cuba Gooding Jr. and Beyoncé Knowles. In the film, they played three barbers with incredible vocal harmony who joined the local church choir to help out the film's protagonists: Darrin (Gooding) and Lilly (Knowles), who were the choir director and lead singer, respectively.


title: The O'Jays

text: In 2005, the O'Jays were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Original members Eddie Levert, Walter Williams, Bobby Massey and, posthumously, William Powell, were inducted. In a note of controversy, Sammy Strain was also inducted with the group, while original member Bill Isles was not. (Strain is one of the few artists in popular music history who is a double RRHOF inductee: with the O'Jays in 2005, and Little Anthony and the Imperials in 2009). In 2006, the O'Jays performed at the ESPY awards, hosted by Lance Armstrong. "For the Love of Money" was the theme song to the hit reality TV show "The Apprentice," starring Donald Trump, and the group once performed the song live on the show.


title: The O'Jays

text: On February 23, 2007, Radio-Canada's website reported that Canadian Industry Minister Jim Prentice had used the song "For the Love of Money" without the group's permission during a political event, a faux pas since Prentice is responsible for the application of the Copyright Act in Canada. Radio-Canada also reported that Prentice has since been contacted by the attorneys for both the O'Jays and Warner/Chappell Music.


title: The O'Jays

text: On June 28, 2009, at the 2009 BET Award Show in the Shrine Auditorium, the O'Jays were honored with BET's 2009 Life Time Achievement Award. Tevin Campbell, Trey Songz, Tyrese Gibson and Johnny Gill performed a medley of the group's songs, followed by the presentation of the award by Don Cornelius. The group reminisced, joked with the audience, and accepted their award before performing renditions of their hit songs.


title: The O'Jays

text: On October 30, 2010, the group performed at Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert's Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear in Washington, D.C. In Cleveland, Ohio, on August 17, 2013, the O'Jays were inducted into the National Rhythm & Blues Hall of Fame The O'Jays are also two-time Grammy Hall of Fame Inductees for their songs "Love Train" (inducted 2006) and "For the Love of Money" (inducted 2016).


title: The O'Jays

text: Bill Isles (born William Carvan Isles II in McAdenville, North Carolina) died on March 25, 2019, at the age of 78.


title: The O'Jays

text: The following singles reached the top twenty on either the United States "Billboard" Hot 100 pop singles chart or the United Kingdom's UK Singles Chart.


title: The O'Jays

text: Gold discs, signifying sales in excess of five hundred thousand copies (USA), were awarded by the RIAA for their singles "Back Stabbers," "Love Train," "For the Love of Money," "I Love Music," and "Use ta Be My Girl;" plus for the albums "Back Stabbers," "Ship Ahoy," "The O'Jays Live in London," "Survival," "Travelin' at the Speed of Thought," "Message in the Music," "Emotionally Yours," and "Family Reunion." "For the Love of Money" was used as the theme for the two reality shows "The Apprentice" and "The Celebrity Apprentice" on NBC-TV.


title: The O'Jays

text: The following albums by the O'Jays have received RIAA platinum status indicating sales in excess of one million copies: "Ship Ahoy," "Family Reunion," "Identify Yourself," and "So Full of Love".


title: Leo Penn

text: Leonard Francis Penn (August 27, 1921 – September 5, 1998) was an American actor and director and the father of musician Michael Penn and actors Sean Penn and Chris Penn.


title: Leo Penn

text: Penn was born in Lawrence, Massachusetts, the son of Russian-Jewish immigrants Elizabeth (née Melnicoff) and Maurice Daniel Penn (Lithuanian-Jewish family).


title: Leo Penn

text: Penn served in the United States Army Air Forces during World War II as a B-24 Liberator bombardier with the 755th Bomb Squadron, 458th Bomb Group, stationed in England as part of the Eighth Air Force.


title: Leo Penn

text: A life member of The Actors Studio, Penn won the Theatre World Award in 1954 for his performance in the play "The Girl on the Via Flaminia". He acted in numerous roles in the early years of television. In 1956, he was cast as Mr. Rico in the episode "Ringside Padre" of the religion anthology series, "Crossroads". In 1957, he appeared in the episode "One If by Sea" of the military drama series, "Navy Log". He was also cast in an episode of Beverly Garland's 1957-1958 groundbreaking crime drama, "Decoy". In 1960, he played Cavage in "The Poker Fiend" on Richard Boone's CBS western series, "Have Gun – Will Travel." In 1961, he was cast as Tiko in the episode "The World Is Her Oyster" of the ABC adventure series, "The Islanders", set in the South Pacific, and appeared in an episode of the ABC crime drama "The Asphalt Jungle". He also appeared in another ABC adventure series, "Straightaway", which focuses on automobile racing. On March 3, 1961, he co-starred with Peter Falk and Joyce Van Patten in the episode "Cold Turkey" of the ABC legal drama series, "The Law and Mr. Jones" starring James Whitmore. About this time, he also appeared on Pat O'Brien's ABC sitcom, "Harrigan and Son". In the 1961-1962 television season, Penn acted in the CBS crime drama "Checkmate" in the episode "The Button-Down Break" and starred as Jerry Green in Gertrude Berg's CBS's sitcom "Mrs. G. Goes to College" renamed at mid-season as "The Gertrude Berg Show".


title: Leo Penn

text: "Cannon"," ", "Blue Light", "Custer", the 1976 western "Sara", "St. Elsewhere", "Kojak", "Starsky and Hutch", "Cagney & Lacey", "Little House on the Prairie", "Columbo", "Hawaii Five-O", "Trapper John, M.D.", Hart To Hart, "Magnum, P.I." and "Father Murphy". In 1983, Penn was nominated for an Emmy Award for Outstanding Directing in a Drama Series for "The Mississippi".


title: Leo Penn

text: Penn supported the Hollywood trade unions and refused to accuse others to the House Un-American Activities Committee in their investigation of suspected Communist infiltration of the film industry. Penn was subsequently blacklisted, and Paramount refused to renew his contract. As a result, Penn was not able to work as a movie actor. He found acting work in television, but CBS ousted him after receiving an anonymous accusation that he had addressed a Communist political meeting. Barred from acting in film or TV, he became a director.


title: Leo Penn

text: His first marriage, to Olive Deering, was dissolved in 1952. He was married in 1957 to actress Eileen Ryan, with whom he had three sons: singer Michael Penn, and actors Sean Penn and Chris Penn. His granddaughter (his son Sean's daughter) is actress Dylan Penn. He was the father-in-law of the American singer Madonna during Sean's first marriage from 1985 to 1989, and later became the father-in-law of American actress Robin Wright when Sean married her in 1996.


title: Leo Penn

text: Leo Penn died of lung cancer in Santa Monica, California, on September 5, 1998, at the age of 77, and was interred at the Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City, California.


title: Disco Demolition Night

text: Disco Demolition Night was a Major League Baseball (MLB) promotion on Thursday, July 12, 1979, at Comiskey Park in Chicago, Illinois, that ended in a riot. At the climax of the event, a crate filled with disco records was blown up on the field between games of the twi-night doubleheader between the Chicago White Sox and the Detroit Tigers. Many of those in attendance had come to see the explosion rather than the games and rushed onto the field after the detonation. The playing field was so damaged by the explosion and by the fans that the White Sox were required to forfeit the second game to the Tigers.


title: Disco Demolition Night

text: In the late 1970s, dance-oriented disco was the most popular music genre in the United States, particularly after being featured in hit films such as "Saturday Night Fever" (1977). However, disco sparked a major backlash from rock music fans—an opposition prominent enough that the White Sox, seeking to fill seats at Comiskey Park during a lackluster season, engaged Chicago shock jock and anti-disco campaigner Steve Dahl for the promotion at the July 12 doubleheader. Dahl's sponsoring radio station was WLUP (97.9 FM, now WCKL), so admission was discounted to 98 cents for attendees who turned in a disco record; between games, Dahl was to destroy the collected vinyl in an explosion.


title: Disco Demolition Night

text: White Sox officials had hoped for a crowd of 20,000, about 5,000 more than usual. Instead, at least 50,000—including tens of thousands of Dahl's adherents—packed the stadium, and thousands more continued to sneak in after gates were closed. Many of the records were not collected by staff and were thrown like flying discs from the stands. After Dahl blew up the collected records, thousands of fans stormed the field and remained there until dispersed by riot police.


title: Disco Demolition Night

text: The second game was initially postponed but was forfeited by the White Sox the next day by order of American League president Lee MacPhail. Disco Demolition Night preceded, and may have helped precipitate, the decline of disco in late 1979; some scholars and disco artists have debated whether the event was expressive of racism and homophobia. Disco Demolition Night remains well-known as one of the most extreme promotions in MLB history.


title: Disco Demolition Night

text: Disco evolved in the late 1960s in inner-city New York City nightclubs, where disc jockeys played imported dance music. Although its roots were in African-American and Latin American music, and in gay culture, it eventually became mainstream; even white artists better known for more sedate music had disco-influenced hits, such as Barry Manilow's "Copacabana". The release of the hit movie "Saturday Night Fever" in 1977, whose star (John Travolta) and musical performers (the Bee Gees) presented a heterosexual image, helped popularize disco in the United States. As Al Coury, president of RSO Records (which had released the bestselling soundtrack album for the film) put it, "Saturday Night Fever" "took disco out of the closet".


title: Disco Demolition Night

text: Some felt disco was too mechanical; "Time" magazine deemed it a "diabolical thump-and-shriek". Others hated it for the associated scene, with its emphasis on personal appearance and style of dress. The media emphasized its roots in gay culture. According to historian Gillian Frank, "by the time of the Disco Demolition in Comiskey Park, the media ... cultivated a widespread perception that disco was taking over". Performers who cultivated a gay image, such as the Village People (described by "Rolling Stone" as "the face of disco"), did nothing to efface these perceptions, and fears that rock music would die out increased after disco albums dominated the 21st Grammy Awards in February 1979.


title: Disco Demolition Night

text: In 1978 WKTU (now WINS-FM) in New York, a low-rated rock station, switched to disco and became the most popular station in the country; this led other stations to try to emulate its success. In Chicago, 24-year-old Steve Dahl was working as a disc jockey for ABC-owned radio station WDAI (now WLS-FM) when he was fired on Christmas Eve 1978 as part of the station's switch from rock to disco. He was hired by rival album-rock station WLUP. Sensing an incipient anti-disco backlash and playing off the publicity surrounding his firing (he frequently mocked WDAI's "Disco DAI" slogan on the air as "Disco DIE"), Dahl created a mock organization, the "Insane Coho Lips", an anti-disco army consisting of his listeners. According to Andy Behrens of ESPN, Dahl and his broadcast partner Garry Meier "organized the Cohos around a simple and surprisingly powerful idea: Disco Sucks".


title: Disco Demolition Night

text: According to Dahl, in 1979, the Cohos were locked in a war "dedicated to the eradication of the dreaded musical disease known as DISCO". In the weeks leading up to Disco Demolition Night, Dahl promoted a number of anti-disco public events, several of which became unruly. When a in Lynwood, Illinois, switched from disco to rock in June, Dahl arrived, as did several thousand Cohos, and the police were called. Later that month, Dahl and several thousand Cohos occupied a teen disco in the Chicago suburbs. At the end of June, Dahl urged his listeners to throw marshmallows at a WDAI promotional van at a shopping mall where a teen disco had been built. The Cohos chased the van and driver and cornered them in a local park, though the situation ended without violence. On July 1, a near-riot occurred in Hanover Park, Illinois, when hundreds of Cohos could not enter a sold-out promotional event, and fights broke out. Some 50 police officers were needed to control the situation. When disco star Van McCoy died suddenly on July 6, Dahl marked the occasion by destroying one of his records, "The Hustle", on the air.


title: Disco Demolition Night

text: Dahl and Meier regularly mocked disco records on the radio. Dahl also recorded his own song, "Do Ya Think I'm Disco?", a parody of Rod Stewart's disco-oriented hit "Da Ya Think I'm Sexy?". The song characterized as populated by effeminate men and frigid women. The protagonist, named Tony after Travolta's character in "Saturday Night Fever", is unable to attract a woman until he abandons the disco scene, selling his white three-piece suit at a garage sale and melting down his gold chains for a Led Zeppelin belt buckle.


title: Disco Demolition Night

text: A number of anti-disco incidents took place elsewhere in the first half of 1979, showing that "the Disco Demolition was not an isolated incident or an aberration." In Seattle, hundreds of rock fans attacked a mobile dance floor, while in Portland, Oregon, a disc jockey destroyed a stack of disco records with a chainsaw as thousands cheered. In New York, a rock DJ played Donna Summer's disco hit "Hot Stuff" and received protests from listeners.


title: Disco Demolition Night

text: Since the 1940s, Chicago White Sox owner Bill Veeck had been noted for using promotions to attract fan interest; he stated "you can draw more people with a losing team plus bread and circuses than with a losing team and a long, still silence". His son, Mike, was the promotions director for the White Sox in 1979. Mike Veeck wrote in a letter to a fan before the season that team management intended to make sure that whether the White Sox won or lost, the fans would have fun.


title: Disco Demolition Night

text: Early in the 1979 season, a game between the White Sox and the visiting Tigers scheduled for Wednesday, May 2, was rained out. Officials rescheduled it as part of a twi-night doubleheader on Thursday, July 12. Already scheduled for the evening of July 12 was a promotion aimed at teenagers, who could purchase tickets at half the regular price.


title: Disco Demolition Night

text: The White Sox had a "Disco Night" at Comiskey Park in 1977; Mike Veeck and WLUP sales manager Jeff Schwartz discussed the possibility of an anti-disco night promotion after Schwartz mentioned that the White Sox were looking to do a promotion with the station. The matter had also been brought up early in the 1979 season when Schwartz told Mike Veeck of Dahl and his plans to blow up a crate of disco records while live on the air from a shopping mall. During a meeting at WLUP, Dahl was asked if he would be interested in blowing up records at Comiskey Park on July 12. Since the radio frequency of WLUP was 97.9, the promotion for July 12, "Disco Demolition Night" (in addition to the offer for teenagers) was that anyone who brought a disco record to the ballpark would be admitted for 98 cents. Dahl was to blow up the collected records between games of the doubleheader.


title: Disco Demolition Night

text: In the weeks before the event, Dahl invited his listeners to bring records they wanted to see destroyed to Comiskey Park. He feared that the promotion would fail to draw people to the ballpark and that he would be humiliated. The previous night's attendance had been 15,520, and Comiskey Park had a capacity of 44,492. The White Sox were not having a good year, and were  going into the July 12 doubleheader. The White Sox and WLUP hoped for a crowd of 20,000, and Mike Veeck hired enough security for 35,000.


title: Disco Demolition Night

text: Owner Bill Veeck was concerned the promotion might become a disaster and checked himself out of the hospital, where he had been undergoing tests. His fears were substantiated when he saw the people walking towards the ballpark that afternoon; many carried signs that described disco in profane terms.


title: Disco Demolition Night

text: The doubleheader sold out, leaving at least 20,000 people outside the ballpark. Some leapt turnstiles, climbed fences, and entered through open windows. The attendance was officially reported as 47,795, though Bill Veeck estimated that there were anywhere from 50,000 to 55,000 in the park—easily the largest crowd of his second stint as White Sox owner. The Chicago Police Department closed off-ramps from the Dan Ryan Expressway near the stadium. Attendees were supposed to deposit their records into a large box, some tall; once the box was overflowing, many people brought their discs to their seats.


title: Disco Demolition Night

text: The first game was to begin at 6:00 pm CDT, with the second game to follow. Lorelei, a model who did public appearances for WLUP and who was popular in Chicago that summer for her sexually provocative poses in the station's advertisements, threw out the first pitch. As the first game began, Mike Veeck received word that thousands of people were trying to get into the park without tickets and sent his security personnel to the stadium gates to stop them. This left the field unattended, and fans began throwing the uncollected disco LPs and singles from the stands. Tigers designated hitter Rusty Staub remembered that the records would slice through the air, and land sticking out of the ground. He urged teammates to wear batting helmets when playing their positions, "It wasn't just one, it was many. Oh, God almighty, I've never seen anything so dangerous in my life." Attendees also threw firecrackers, empty liquor bottles, and lighters onto the field. The game was stopped several times because of the rain of foreign objects.


title: Disco Demolition Night

text: Dozens of hand-painted banners with such slogans as "Disco sucks" were hung from the ballpark's seating decks. White Sox broadcaster Harry Caray saw groups of music fans wandering the stands. Others sat intently in their seats, awaiting the explosion. Mike Veeck recalled an odor of marijuana in the grandstand and said of the attendees, "This is the Woodstock they never had." The odor permeated the press box, which Caray and his broadcast partner, Jimmy Piersall, commented on over the air. The crowds outside the stadium also threw records, or gathered them and burned them in bonfires.


title: Disco Demolition Night

text: The first game ended at 8:16 p.m.; Detroit won the game, 4–1. At 8:40, Dahl, dressed in army fatigues and a helmet, emerged onto the playing surface together with Meier and Lorelei. They circled the field in a Jeep, showered (according to Dahl, lovingly) by his troops with firecrackers and beer, then proceeded to center field where the box containing the records awaited, rigged with explosives. Dahl and Meier warmed up the crowd, leading attendees in a chant of "disco sucks". Lorelei recalled that the view from center field was surreal. On the mound, White Sox pitcher Ken Kravec, scheduled to start the second game, began to warm up. Other White Sox, in the dugout and wearing batting helmets, looked out upon the scene. Fans who felt events were getting out of control and who wished to leave the ballpark had difficulty doing so; in an effort to deny the intruders entry, security had padlocked all but one gate.


title: Disco Demolition Night

text: Dahl set off the explosives, destroying the records and tearing a large hole in the outfield grass. With most of the security personnel still watching the gates per Mike Veeck's orders, there was almost no one guarding the playing surface. Soon, the first of 5,000 to 7,000 attendees rushed onto the field, causing Kravec to flee the mound and join his teammates in a barricaded clubhouse. Some climbed the foul poles, while others set records on fire or ripped up the grass. The batting cage was destroyed, and the bases were pulled up and stolen. Among those taking to the field was 21-year-old aspiring actor Michael Clarke Duncan; during the melee, Duncan slid into third base, had a silver belt buckle stolen, and went home with a bat from the dugout. As Bill Veeck stood with a microphone near where home plate had been, begging people to return to the stands, a bonfire raged in center field.


title: Disco Demolition Night

text: Years later, Lorelei remembered that she had been waving to the crowd when she was grabbed by two of the bodyguards who had accompanied the Jeep, who placed her back in the vehicle. The party was unable to return to home plate because of the rowdy fans, so the Jeep was driven out of the stadium and through the surrounding streets, to the delight of the many Cohos outside the stadium, who recognized the occupants. They were driven to the front of the stadium, ushered back inside, and taken up to the press room where they had spent most of the first game.


title: Disco Demolition Night

text: Caray unsuccessfully attempted to restore order via the public address system. The scoreboard, flashing "PLEASE RETURN TO YOUR SEATS", was ignored, as was the playing of "Take Me Out to the Ball Game". Some attendees danced in circles around the burning vinyl shards. Dahl offered his help to get the rowdy fans to leave, but it was declined.


title: Disco Demolition Night

text: At 9:08 p.m., Chicago police in riot gear arrived, to the applause of the baseball fans remaining in the stands. Those on the field hastily dispersed upon seeing the police. Thirty-nine people were arrested for disorderly conduct; estimates of injuries to those at the event range from none to over thirty.


title: Disco Demolition Night

text: Veeck wanted the teams to play the second game once order was restored. However, the field was so badly torn up that umpiring crew chief Dave Phillips felt that it was still not playable, even after White Sox groundskeepers spent an hour clearing away debris. Tigers manager Sparky Anderson refused to allow his players to take the field in any event due to safety concerns. Phillips called American League president Lee MacPhail, who postponed the second game to Sunday after hearing a report on conditions. Anderson, however, demanded that the game be forfeited to the Tigers. He argued that under baseball's rules, a game can only be postponed due to an act of God, and that, as the home team, the White Sox were responsible for field conditions. The next day, MacPhail forfeited the second game to the Tigers 9–0. In a ruling that largely upheld Anderson's arguments, MacPhail stated that the White Sox had failed to provide acceptable playing conditions.


title: Disco Demolition Night

text: The day after the event, Dahl began his regular morning broadcast by reading the indignant headlines in the local papers. He mocked the coverage, saying: "I think for the most part everything was wonderful. Some maniac Cohos got wild, went down on the field. Which you shouldn't have done. Bad little Cohos." Tigers manager Anderson said of the events: "Beer and baseball go together, they have for years. But I think those kids were doing things other than beer." Columnist David Israel of the "Chicago Tribune" said on July 12 that he was not surprised by the events, writing: "It would have happened any place 50,000 teenagers got together on a sultry summer night with beer and reefer." White Sox pitcher Rich Wortham, a Texan, said: "This wouldn't have happened if they had country and western night."


title: Disco Demolition Night

text: Although Bill Veeck took much of the public criticism for the fiasco, his son Mike suffered repercussions as the front-office promoter. Mike Veeck remained with the White Sox until late 1980 when he resigned; his father sold the team to Jerry Reinsdorf soon afterward. He was unable to find another job in baseball for some time and claimed that he had been blackballed. For several years, he worked for a jai-alai fronton in Florida, battling alcoholism. As Mike Veeck said: "The second that first guy shimmied down the outfield wall, I knew my life was over!" Mike Veeck has since become the owner of minor league baseball teams. In July 2014, the Charleston RiverDogs, of whom Veeck is president, held a promotion involving the destruction of Justin Bieber and Miley Cyrus merchandise. Dahl is still a radio personality in Chicago and also releases podcasts.


title: Disco Demolition Night

text: The popularity of disco declined significantly in late 1979 and 1980. Many disco artists carried on, but record companies began labeling their recordings as dance music. Dahl stated in a 2004 interview that by 1979 disco was "probably on its way out. But I think [Disco Demolition Night] hastened its demise." According to Frank, "the Disco Demolition triggered a nationwide expression of anger against disco that caused disco to recede quickly from the American cultural landscape".


title: Disco Demolition Night

text: "Rolling Stone" critic Dave Marsh described Disco Demolition Night as "your most paranoid fantasy about where the ethnic cleansing of the rock radio could ultimately lead". Marsh was one who, at the time, deemed the event an expression of bigotry, writing in a year-end 1979 feature that "white males, eighteen to thirty-four are the most likely to see disco as the product of homosexuals, blacks, and Latins, and therefore they're the most likely to respond to appeals to wipe out such threats to their security. It goes almost without saying that such appeals are racist and sexist, but broadcasting has never been an especially civil-libertarian medium."


title: Disco Demolition Night

text: Nile Rodgers, producer and guitarist for the disco-era band Chic, likened the event to Nazi book burning. Gloria Gaynor, who had a huge disco hit with "I Will Survive", stated, "I've always believed it was an economic decision—an idea created by someone whose economic bottom line was being adversely affected by the popularity of disco music. So they got a mob mentality going." Harry Wayne Casey, singer for the disco act KC and the Sunshine Band, did not believe Disco Demolition Night was discriminatory and felt that Dahl was simply an "idiot".


title: Disco Demolition Night

text: University of East London professor Tim Lawrence wrote that the event was the culmination of the overproduction of disco, the investment by major record companies in music their heterosexual white executives did not like, and the "disco sucks" campaign, which he argued was homophobic, sexist and racist. Dahl denies that prejudice was his motivation for the event: "The worst thing is people calling Disco Demolition homophobic or racist. It just wasn't ... We weren't thinking like that." In a 2014 op-ed for "Crain's Chicago Business", Dahl defended the event as "a romp, not of major cultural significance". He wrote that it had been "reframed" as prejudiced by a 1996 VH1 documentary about the 1970s, in a move he described as "a cheap shot made without exploration".


title: Disco Demolition Night

text: In response to Dahl's op-ed, WMAQ-TV political journalist Mark W. Anderson, who attended Disco Demolition at the age of 15, described the fear that white neighborhoods would be taken over by blacks and the anxiety around shifting pop culture trends. He wrote:


title: Disco Demolition Night

text: Historian Joshua M. Zeitz noted that the demographic group attending the riots swung wildly in the 1980 presidential primaries and election, first supporting liberal Edward M. Kennedy in the Democratic primary, then the conservative Republican nominee Ronald Reagan in the general election, both times opposing President Jimmy Carter. Zeitz argued: "Viewed in this light, Disco Demolition Night supports an altogether different interpretation of the 1970s as a decade that saw ordinary Americans gravitate to radical grassroots alternatives, both left and right, out of frustration with the political center."


title: Disco Demolition Night

text: The unplayed second game remains the last American League game to be forfeited. The last National League game to be forfeited was on August 10, 1995, when a baseball giveaway promotion at Dodger Stadium went awry, forcing the Los Angeles Dodgers to concede the game to the St. Louis Cardinals. According to baseball analyst Jeremiah Graves, "To this day Disco Demolition Night stands in infamy as one of the most ill-advised promotions of all time, but arguably one of the most successful as 30 years later we're all still talking about it."


title: Vatsal Sheth

text: Vatsal Sheth (born 5 August 1980) is an Indian actor, model and entrepreneur. He has acted in many Indian television shows and numerous Hindi films, and is known for his portrayal of Raj Chaudhary in the 2004 film "", Shaurya Goenka in the 2014 thriller series "Ek Hasina Thi", and Kabir Raichand in the 2017 love-saga series "Haasil".


title: Vatsal Sheth

text: He studied at Utpal Shanghvi Global School, did his Junior College at Gokalibai Punamchand Pitambar High School, Vile Parle and received his degree in mathematics from Mithibai College, Vile Parle. He also wrote a few games in GW-BASIC and Pascal. He intended to become a software engineer which he later dropped after receiving his first significant role as Jai in "Just Mohabbat".


title: Vatsal Sheth

text: Sheth is a vegetarian. He is a fitness enthusiast and follows teetotalism. He is a part of the Celebrity Cricket Team Mumbai Heroes. He also plays badminton and supports Mumbai Magicians in the Indian Badminton League.


title: Vatsal Sheth

text: In "Just Mohabbat", Sheth portrayed the role of Jai through his teenage years. In 2003, director duo Abbas–Mustan announced their film "" with Sheth playing the character Raj Choudary. In 2007, Sheth appeared as Vikram Singh/ Older Jaisalmer in "Nanhe Jaisalmer". A year later he starred in "Heroes" as Ali . In the same year he appeared in a cameo for Disney’s "". In 2009, he was part of the star-cast in "Paying Guests" produced by Subhash Ghai. In 2011, Vatsal played Karan in "Hostel". He had a cameo role in "Jai Ho". In 2014 Vatsal returned to television in a grey role of Shaurya Goenka in "Ek Hasina Thi".


title: David James Elliott

text: David James Elliott (born September 21, 1960) is a Canadian actor who was the star of the series "JAG", playing lead character Harmon Rabb Jr. from 1995 to 2005.


title: David James Elliott

text: Elliott was born David William Smith on September 21, 1960, in Milton, Ontario, Canada, the son of Patricia Smith (née Farrow), an office manager, and Arnold Smith, a heating and plumbing wholesale contractor. He was born the second of three boys. During his teenaged years, he was part of a band, quitting Milton District High School in his final year to pursue his dream of becoming a rock star. However, at age 19, he realized this would not happen and returned to finish high school.


title: David James Elliott

text: After graduating from high school, he attended Ryerson University in Toronto, graduating in 1982. He joined the Stratford Shakespearean Festival in Ontario as a member of its Young Company.


title: David James Elliott

text: Subsequently moving to Los Angeles, he took the stage name David James Elliott, having found an actor was already named David Smith. He appeared in the film "" in 1986, and subsequently in the television series "Street Legal", "Knots Landing" as Bill Nolan, and in 1993's "The Untouchables" as Agent Paul Robbins. The following year, Elliott landed a recurring role on the hit series "Melrose Place", playing Terry Parsons, and a guest appearance in an episode of "Seinfeld" as "Carl" the anti-abortion furniture mover.


title: David James Elliott

text: In 1995, Elliott landed the role he would hold for 10 years, the role of naval aviator-turned JAG lawyer Harmon Rabb, Jr. in the NBC/CBS television drama "JAG". His tenure on "JAG" ended in 2005 with the series finale.


title: David James Elliott

text: In 1996, Elliott starred in the made-for-cable movie "Holiday Affair" with Cynthia Gibb. This is a remake of the 1949 classic "Holiday Affair" which starred Robert Mitchum and Janet Leigh. In 2005, Elliott starred in a Canadian television movie "The Man Who Lost Himself", which was based on the true story of Terry Evanshen, a Canadian football player who was in a car accident and lost his memory due to severe head injuries. Nanci Chambers also appeared in this movie as a doctor. In October 2006, Elliott joined the cast of legal drama "Close to Home" (2005–2007) as Chief Deputy Prosecutor James Conlon. During 2008, he had a recurring role in the Canadian series "The Guard". He starred in Sci Fi Channel's four-hour miniseries, "Knights of Bloodsteel" (2009). Elliott was cast as an Internet millionaire in "Terror Trap", directed by Dan Garcia. Elliott also starred in "Dad's Home" (2010), a widowed advertising executive who loses his job and becomes a stay-at-home dad for his two children.


title: David James Elliott

text: On March 19, 2010, Elliott replaced Neal McDonough as the male lead in the television series "Scoundrels". In 2010, Elliott was cast as FBI Agent Russ Josephson on "", a recurring role as Detective Jo Danville's (Sela Ward) ex-husband, a role which he first portrayed in January 2011.


title: David James Elliott

text: In 2012, Elliott also co-starred as Ripp Cockburn, the husband of Kristin Chenoweth's character Carlene, on ABC's comedy-drama series "GCB". In 2014, Elliott appeared in "Mad Men (season 7)" as Dave Wooster. In 2015, Elliott guest starred in the TV drama "Scorpion".


title: David James Elliott

text: On March 29, 2019, CBS announced Elliott would be reprising his "JAG" role of Harmon Rabb, Jr. for a multi-episode arc in the tenth season of "".


title: David James Elliott

text: He married actress Nanci Chambers in 1992. She also appeared in "JAG" as the ambitious Lt. Loren Singer. They have a daughter, Stephanie Elliott (b. 1993) and a son, Wyatt Elliott.


title: Marek Hamšík

text: Marek Hamšík (; born 27 July 1987) is a Slovak professional footballer who plays as an midfielder for Süper Lig club Trabzonspor. He formerly captained the Slovakia national team.


title: Marek Hamšík

text: After beginning his club career with Slovan Bratislava in 2004, Hamšík moved to Italian club Brescia later that year. In 2007, he was purchased by newly promoted Serie A club Napoli, where he became a mainstay in the squad's starting line-up. His energy, leadership, creativity, skill and eye for goal from midfield saw him play a key role in helping the team to two Coppa Italia titles, a Supercoppa Italiana, UEFA Champions League qualification and the 2014–15 UEFA Europa League semi-finals. He scored 121 goals for the club and collected 521 appearances in all competitions during his 12 seasons with the team, and also served as the club's captain between 2014 and 2019; he became the club's all-time top goalscorer in 2017 (surpassed by Dries Mertens in 2020), and the club's all-time appearance holder in 2018. In February 2019, he joined Chinese club Dalian Professional (then Dalian Yifang).


title: Marek Hamšík

text: At international level, Hamšík helped Slovakia qualify for the country' first ever FIFA World Cup, captaining the side at the 2010 tournament as they reached the round of 16 following a victory over defending champions Italy. He would go on to lead his nation to European Championship qualification for the first time in 2016, as they once again reached the second round of a major tournament; a second consecutive European Championship appearance would follow for Hamšík in 2020. From 2007 to 2022, Hamšík collected 136 international caps at senior level, scoring 26 goals, and in 2018 became Slovakia's most capped player ever. In 2019, he scored his 25th international goal, overtaking Róbert Vittek as the nation's all-time top scorer.


title: Marek Hamšík

text: For his performances, Hamšík has also won several individual awards: he is an eight-time winner of the Slovak Footballer of the Year Award, and he was named Serie A Young Footballer of the Year in 2008. In 2011, 2016 and 2017, he was named to the Serie A Team of the Year, and in 2015, he was included in the UEFA Europa League Squad of the season. In 2013, Hamšík was ranked as the eighth best footballer in Europe by Bloomberg.


title: Marek Hamšík

text: Despite the fact Hamšík grew up in Banská Bystrica, he never played for major local team Dukla Banská Bystrica. Instead, he began playing for a small youth team, Jupie Podlavice. In 2002, he signed with top Slovak club Slovan Bratislava. He played six times for the Slovan Bratislava first team and scored one goal.


title: Marek Hamšík

text: In 2004, at age 17, Hamšík joined Italian Serie A club Brescia for a €500,000 transfer fee. He made his Brescia debut in a 3–1 away defeat against Chievo on 20 March 2005, when he was 17 years and 237 days old. Later that season, Brescia finished 19th in Serie A and was therefore relegated to the Serie B. In 2005–06, he played 24 league matches for Brescia, with Brescia finishing tenth. He had an impressive 2006–07 season, scoring 10 goals in 40 matches.


title: Marek Hamšík

text: On 28 June 2007, newly promoted Serie A club Napoli announced Hamšík had signed a five-year contract with the club after Napoli paid Brescia a €5.5 million transfer fee. Napoli club chairman Aurelio De Laurentiis described Hamšík as a player who should be closely watched in the future.


title: Marek Hamšík

text: Hamšík played his first competitive match with Napoli on 15 August 2007, against Cesena in the first round of the Coppa Italia; Napoli won the match 4–0, as Hamšík set up the opening goal and scored the second himself. He scored his first goal in Serie A on 16 September 2007 in the match against Sampdoria.


title: Marek Hamšík

text: His football icon is Czech midfielder Pavel Nedvěd, to whom Hamšík has often been compared due to his playing style. In 2007, he was voted the second-best Slovak footballer of the year, after Martin Škrtel, and also he was voted the best young Slovak footballer (the Peter Dubovský Trophy). Hamšík ended his first season with Napoli as the club's top scorer, with nine goals from 37 matches. At the start of the 2008–09 season, Hamšík scored in both of Napoli's first two matches and went on to score a further nine goals in his second season with the club, finishing as Napoli's top scorer for the second-straight year.


title: Marek Hamšík

text: In 2009, he was again runner-up as best Slovak footballer of the year and repeated his success as the best young Slovak footballer.


title: Marek Hamšík

text: On 19 September 2010, Hamšík scored Napoli's first goal as they came back from a goal down to defeat Sampdoria 2–1 in Genoa. On 23 September, Hamšík signed a three-year contract extension set to last until June 2015. Three days later, Hamšík scored his second goal of the new season with an 81st-minute penalty to earn Napoli a 4–1 comeback win away to newly promoted Cesena. On 30 January 2011, Hamšík scored a well taken effort as Napoli hammered Sampdoria 4–0.


title: Marek Hamšík

text: The 2010–11 season was very productive for Hamšík, as he helped lead Napoli to a very successful season and earn automatic qualification into the UEFA Champions League by finishing third in Serie A. Hamšík played in 36 of Napoli's 38 Serie A matches that season, scoring 11 goals and contributing 6 assists.


title: Marek Hamšík

text: Hamšík scored the winning goal in Napoli's 2–0 home victory over Villarreal on 27 September, earning Napoli its first ever victory in the Champions League. On 29 November, Napoli welcomed Serie A table leaders Juventus to the Stadio San Paolo; Hamšík missed a 15th-minute penalty before heading in a goal to give the hosts the lead seven minutes later. The match was enthralling, however it ended in a 3–3 draw after Napoli conceded two late goals to preserve Juventus' unbeaten start to the season.


title: Marek Hamšík

text: Hamšík provided an assist for Gökhan Inler's opening goal against Villarreal on 7 December and then scored the decisive goal, helping Napoli to a 2–0 victory in Spain. The win secured qualification to the round of 16 in a very difficult group, which included Bayern Munich and Manchester City. Hamšík helped Napoli finish the first half of the 2011–12 campaign on a high, scoring a superb goal in Napoli's 6–1 hammering of Genoa on 21 December. Hamšík also provided assists for strikes by Goran Pandev and Walter Gargano in the match. Through the first half of the 2011–12 campaign, Hamšík had appeared in 16 Serie A matches, contributing five goals and five assists. In Napoli's European campaign, Hamšík appeared in all six group stage matches and contributed two goals and one assist.


title: Marek Hamšík

text: Following the winter break, Hamšík provided an assist for Edinson Cavani's goal and scored Napoli's third goal in its 3–1 defeat of Palermo on 8 January 2012. On 13 February 2012, he made his 200th appearance for Napoli in a 2–0 home win over Chievo.


title: Marek Hamšík

text: On 9 March, Hamšík signed a one-year contract extension with Napoli, keeping him at the club until June 2016. The announcement was made following Hamšík scoring an incredible angled shot against Cagliari earlier that day, as Napoli ran out 6–3 winners. Hamšík's final goal of the season came in a 2–0 victory over Palermo on 1 May, as he doubled Napoli's lead in the 35th minute following a penalty from Edinson Cavani. Napoli finished the season in fifth place in Serie A, with Hamšík contributing nine league goals and nine assists.


title: Marek Hamšík

text: Hamšík was also very influential as Napoli reached the Coppa Italia final against "Scudetto" winners Juventus on 20 May. After being slipped in by Goran Pandev, Hamšík was one-on-one with Juve goalkeeper Marco Storari and made no mistake as he touched it past the onrushing Storari, securing a 2–0 win which delivered "The Partenopei" its first trophy in over 20 years.


title: Marek Hamšík

text: Hamšík started in the 2012 Supercoppa Italiana, held in Beijing, on 11 August; however, Napoli were defeated by Juventus 4–2 in extra time. Later that month, in Napoli's first league fixture of the 2012–13 Serie A season, Hamšík scored the club's first goal and assisted Christian Maggio's strike in an eventual 3–0 defeat of Palermo. Missing leading goal-scorer Edinson Cavani for the club's match against Chievo on 28 October 2012, Hamšík connected on a Juan Camilo Zúñiga cross to give Napoli a 1–0 victory. On 6 January 2013, he made his 200th Serie A appearance in a 4–1 home win over Roma. On the penultimate matchday of the Serie A season, Hamšík collected a pass from Goran Pandev and nudged the ball home in the 93rd minute, rescuing a 2–1 win over Siena, confirming the club's place in the group stages of the Champions League while condemning Siena to relegation. The Slovak featured in every Serie A match for Napoli during the 2012–13 season, providing 11 goals and 14 assists as the "Partenopei" finished second behind reigning champions Juventus, a season which proved to be manager Walter Mazzarri's last at the club, as he became coach of Internazionale later that summer.


title: Marek Hamšík

text: On 10 August 2013, Hamšík signed a contract extension with Napoli, tying him to the club until the summer of 2018. In the first match of the 2013–14 Serie A season on 26 August 2013, Hamšík scored Napoli's second and third goals in the club's 3–0 home defeat of Bologna. Hamšík continued his scoring form in Napoli's following match, netting another brace in their 4–2 away victory over Chievo on 31 August.


title: Marek Hamšík

text: Following Paolo Cannavaro's departure to Sassuolo in the 2014 January transfer window, Hamšík was named Napoli's new captain. On 27 April 2014, he made his 300th appearance for Napoli in a 0–0 draw against Internazionale. On 3 May 2014, Hamšík played 63 minutes in Napoli's 3–1 win over Fiorentina in the 2014 Coppa Italia Final.


title: Marek Hamšík

text: On 27 August 2014, Hamšík scored the opening goal, his first of the 2014–15 season, in the second leg of Napoli's Champions League play-off against Athletic Bilbao, as Bilbao came from behind to win the match 3–1 at home and eliminate Napoli from the competition. On 20 October, Hamšík scored the opening goal in a 2–0 away win over his former club Slovan Bratislava in Napoli's second group match of that season's UEFA Europa League, making his 40th appearance for the club in UEFA club competitions in the process and overtaking Antonio Juliano as the club's record appearance holder in European club competitions.


title: Marek Hamšík

text: On 22 December, Hamšík lifted the 2014 Supercoppa Italiana as Napoli's captain, defeating Juventus 6–5 on penalties after a 2–2 draw following extra time. On 22 January 2015, he scored his first Coppa Italia goal of the season in the round of 16 against Udinese, as Napoli went on to win the match on penalties. On 3 May, he scored his 90th goal for Napoli in a 3–0 victory over Milan in Serie A.


title: Marek Hamšík

text: Under new Napoli manager Maurizio Sarri, Hamšík returned to playing as a central midfielder on the left in Napoli's three-man midfield for the 2015–16 season, which he described as being his preferred role. On 23 August 2015, Hamšík scored the opening goal in a 2–1 away defeat to Sassuolo on the opening match of the Serie A season. On 17 September, he scored in a 5–0 win over Club Brugge in the group stage of the Europa League. He made his 300th Serie A appearance on 6 January 2016, scoring in a 2–1 home win over Torino. In the following league match, on 10 January, he made his 300th Serie A appearance for Napoli in a 5–1 away win over Frosinone, as Napoli finished the first half of the season as unofficial "winter champions". He marked the occasion by scoring a goal, his 80th in Serie A, all of which were scored with Napoli.


title: Marek Hamšík

text: On 6 August 2016, Napoli announced Hamšík had signed a new four-year deal, keeping him at the club until 2020. On 24 September, he scored his 100th goal for the club in a 2–0 home win over Chievo in Serie A.


title: Marek Hamšík

text: On 16 December 2017, Hamšík scored his 115th goal for Napoli in a 3–1 away victory over Torino, equalling Diego Maradona as the club's all-time top scorer. He surpassed Maradona's record one week later, becoming Napoli's outright all-time top goalscorer with his 116th goal for the club, which came in a 3–2 victory against Sampdoria in Naples. On 6 May 2018, he scored his 100th goal in Serie A (all of which came with Napoli) in a 2–2 home draw against Torino after coming off the bench.


title: Marek Hamšík

text: On 23 September 2018, Hamšík made his 400th appearance in Serie A in a 3–1 away win over Torino. On 28 October, he made his 511th appearance for Napoli in a 1–1 home draw against Roma, equaling Giuseppe Bruscolotti as the club's record all-time appearance holder. On 6 November, he overtook Bruscolotti with his 512th appearance in all competitions for Napoli in a 1–1 home draw against Paris Saint-Germain in the Champions League.


title: Marek Hamšík

text: On 14 February 2019, he agreed a contract with Chinese club Dalian Professional (then Dalian Yifang) for a reported fee of €13 million, bringing to an end an eleven-and-a-half year spell with Napoli. On 3 March, in the opening match of the 2019 Chinese Super League season, Hamšík made his club debut in a 1–1 away draw against Henan Jianye. In 2020, it was reported he earned a weekly wage of about € 200 thousand. Earlier reports suggested an annual salary of about 9 million Euros.


title: Marek Hamšík

text: On 8 March 2021, he signed as a free agent with Swedish club IFK Göteborg. After breaking the contract with his then club Dalian Professional, he sought his way back to Europe to get playtime before UEFA Euro 2020. He then turned to Allsvenskan, where the transfer window still was open, and signed for Göteborg until 30 August 2021. He made his debut for Göteborg on 19 April in a league game against AIK, replacing Simon Thern in the 73rd minute of a 2–0 win. He scored his first and only goal for the club on 17 May in a 2–2 draw with IK Sirius from a spectacular half-volley shot, which also won goal of the season in Allsvenskan.


title: Marek Hamšík

text: On 8 June 2021, it was announced he will join Turkish club Trabzonspor on a 2-year contract, effective from 1 July. Hamšík scored on his Süper Lig debut for the club, a 5–1 win over Yeni Malatyaspor on 16 August.


title: Marek Hamšík

text: Hamšík represented Slovakia at junior level, playing in the UEFA European Under-17 Championship qualifiers and the UEFA European Under-19 Championship. He played also for the Slovakia national under-21 team.


title: Marek Hamšík

text: Hamšík was a regular member of the Slovakia national team. He made his debut on 7 February 2007 in a friendly against Poland, which ended in a 2–2 draw. He played his second match against Germany in the UEFA Euro 2008 qualification, which Slovakia lost 2–1. He became the key member of the attack for the national team, usually playing as a left or central attacking midfielder. Hamšík captained his country in its first FIFA World Cup experience in South Africa in 2010, where the nation made it to the first knockout stage after defeating then-world champions Italy 3–2. Slovakia was defeated by later finalists Netherlands in the first knockout stage.


title: Marek Hamšík

text: Hamšík also played a key role in helping his nation qualify for Euro 2016 for the first time in the nation's history, finishing as Slovakia's top scorer as Slovakia placed second in its qualifying group behind defending champions Spain. Slovakia suffered a closely contested 2–1 defeat to Wales in its opening match of the competition on 11 June. Hamšík came close to opening the scoring in the third minute of play after dribbling past several Welsh defenders, but his strike was denied by Ben Davies' goal-line clearance. In Slovakia's second group B match of the tournament, against Russia on 15 June 2016, Hamšík set up a goal and later scored another himself in a 2–1 win, his nation's first in the competition. Following a 0–0 draw against England on 20 June, Slovakia advanced to the second round as the best third-placed team of the tournament. However, Slovakia was eliminated in the round of 16 on 26 June after a 3–0 defeat to reigning world champions Germany.


title: Marek Hamšík

text: On 5 October 2017, Hamšík made his 100th appearance for the Slovak national team in a 0–1 loss to Scotland in a 2018 FIFA World Cup qualification match.


title: Marek Hamšík

text: On 13 October 2018, Hamšík made his 108th international appearance in a 2–1 home defeat to Czech Republic in the UEFA Nations League; with this cap, he overtook Miroslav Karhan to become Slovakia's most capped player ever. He marked the occasion with a goal, his 22nd for his country, putting him equal with Szilárd Németh as his nation's second-highest goalscorer of all time, only behind Róbert Vittek with 23 goals.


title: Marek Hamšík

text: In March 2019, after a surprise retirement of Martin Škrtel at the end of February, Hamšík regained the position of the captain of the national team, despite captaining the team some 20 times since 2010, most notably during the 2010 FIFA World Cup. In the previous years, Hamšík served as the vice-captain to Škrtel.


title: Marek Hamšík

text: In May 2022, Hamšík announced his international retirement, capping a total of 135 matches and scoring 26 goals in them. He stated that his retirement is caused by increasing number of injuries he went through in preceding months and to spend more time with his family. Nonetheless, he stated he would wish to play in a final retirement match at home during the autumn of the year.


title: Marek Hamšík

text: Hamšík was afforded this recognition on 20 November 2022 at Tehelné pole during an international friendly versus Chile. Earlier in the month, on 17 November, the national team also featured in another friendly at Podgorica City Stadium versus Montenegro. While Hamšík was a part of the squad for both fixtures, he did not appear in Podgorica, remaining out of the match nomination. The match against Montenegro concluded with a 2–2 tie.


title: Marek Hamšík

text: For his retirement match versus Chile, on 17 November, Hamšík expressed that he hoped to fill up the Tehelné pole stadium. Prior to the match, he was praised by Francesco Calzona as being a "silent leader", recalling their period of coopeartion in Napoli. For the match, Hamšík had provided admission and transportation for the majority of youth players from his RSC Hamsik Academy. The caravan of 7 coaches and dozens of cars from Hamšík's native Banská Bystrica to Bratislava numbered over 500 people.


title: Marek Hamšík

text: During the match, Hamšík, captained the team. Although it was expected that he was going to be subbed off earlier during the second half, Hamšík remained on the de facto for the entirety of the match only being replaced in the 89th minute of the match by Martin Regáli. Hamšík was exited by a standing ovation of almost 20 thousand spectators of an essentially sold out stadium. During the substitution he was reduced to tears reducing Calzona to tears in turn. In play, Hamšík continued to be a key player of Slovakia completing about 90 passes, with almost 90% accuracy with the media noting especially his cooperation with László Bénes. Repeatedly, fans have chanted his name and he was walked off through the walk of fame by his team-mates after the match. The match was also filled with numerous banner commemorations, social media interactions and 17th minute standing ovation as well as farewell messages from his relatives and previous managers including Ján Kocian, Ján Kozák or Vladimír Weiss


title: Marek Hamšík

text: After the match in press conferences and media appearances, Hamšík did not rule out the option to re-join the national team in a managerial or coaching positions in the future.


title: Marek Hamšík

text: Hamšík has been described as "quick, energetic, hard-working, and tactically versatile midfielder, who is capable of playing in several offensive positions on either side of the pitch, or even through the centre". Throughout his career, he has been deployed as a central midfielder, as an attacking midfielder, as a mezzala, as a winger, or even as a supporting striker or inside forward on occasion. Although naturally right footed, he is capable of striking the ball well with either foot, and is known for his ability to both score and create goals, often dropping deep to participate in the build-up of his team's plays, courtesy of his vision, passing, and crossing ability. A talented, elegant, and technically gifted advanced playmaker, in addition to his footballing skills, he is also known for his leadership and stamina, as well as his play, movement, creativity, and intelligence off the ball, in particular his ability to find spaces and make attacking runs to get into good positions in the opposition's half, and his tireless running. He is also capable of playing as a deep-lying playmaker or in a box-to-box role, due to his passing and tactical intelligence, and is an effective free kick and penalty taker, although his record from the penalty spot has been inconsistent at times throughout his career. Francesco Calzona, who crossed paths with Hamšík on club and international level, described him as an elegant and silent leader.


title: Marek Hamšík

text: As early as 2013, Hamšík invested in FK Jupie Banská Bystrica - Podlavice, his youth club, renaming the club to Jupie Futbalová škola Mareka Hamšíka. In May 2022, while announcing his international retirement, Hamšík also announced the fusion of Jupie FŠMH and FK Rakytovce to form Rakytovce Sporting Club Hamsik Academy Banska Bystrica, with Rakytovce providing a 3. Liga senior side and Jupie FŠMH providing youth teams.


title: Marek Hamšík

text: Even during Hamšík's career in Napoli, Hamšík, in cooperation with his father Richard, began to develop his brand of wine assortments under the name Hamšík Winery. In 2021, Hamšík Winery broadened their business ventures into the beer industry, cooperating with Urpiner brewery from Hamšík's native Banská Bystrica.


title: Marek Hamšík

text: Ahead of the 2010 FIFA World Cup, then 22-year-old Hamšík was featured in popular Slovak T-com ads featuring a South African child-fan name 'Dédé', played by Sithembele Jinghosa. The gimmick ad series was continued ahead of Christmas in 2010.


title: Marek Hamšík

text: In 2015, Hamšík represented Slovakia and co-starred in events at the country's pavillion at Expo 2015 in Milan along with Slovak President Andrej Kiska.


title: Marek Hamšík

text: Hamšík is the son of Richard Hamšík and Renáta Hamšíková. In July 2014, Hamšík married Martina née Fraňová. The couple have three children - two sons named Christian (born 2010) and Lucas (born 2012), and a daughter named Melissa (born 2017). His sister Michaela is married to Uruguayan footballer Walter Gargano, Hamšík's former teammate at Napoli.


title: Louis Althusser

text: Louis Pierre Althusser (, ; ; 16 October 1918 – 22 October 1990) was a French Marxist philosopher. He was born in Algeria and studied at the École normale supérieure in Paris, where he eventually became Professor of Philosophy.


title: Louis Althusser

text: Althusser was a long-time member and sometimes a strong critic of the French Communist Party ("Parti communiste français", PCF). His arguments and theses were set against the threats that he saw attacking the theoretical foundations of Marxism. These included both the influence of empiricism on Marxist theory, and humanist and reformist socialist orientations which manifested as divisions in the European communist parties, as well as the problem of the cult of personality and of ideology. Althusser is commonly referred to as a structural Marxist, although his relationship to other schools of French structuralism is not a simple affiliation and he was critical of many aspects of structuralism.


title: Louis Althusser

text: Althusser's life was marked by periods of intense mental illness. In 1980, he killed his wife, the sociologist Hélène Rytmann, by strangling her. He was declared unfit to stand trial due to insanity and committed to a psychiatric hospital for three years. He did little further academic work, dying in 1990.


title: Louis Althusser

text: Althusser was born in French Algeria in the town of Birmendreïs, near Algiers, to a "pied-noir" petit-bourgeois family from Alsace, France. His father, Charles-Joseph Althusser, was a lieutenant in the French army and a bank clerk, while his mother, Lucienne Marthe Berger, a devout Roman Catholic, worked as a schoolteacher. According to his own memoirs, his Algerian childhood was prosperous; historian Martin Jay said that Althusser, along with Albert Camus and Jacques Derrida, was "a product of the French colonial culture in Northern Africa." In 1930, his family moved to the French city of Marseille as his father was to be the director of the Compagnie Algérienne (Algerian Banking Company) branch in the city. Althusser spent the rest of his childhood there, excelling in his studies at the and joining a scout group. A second displacement occurred in 1936 when Althusser settled in Lyon as a student at the Lycée du Parc. Later he was accepted by the highly regarded higher-education establishment ("grande école") École Normale Supérieure (ENS) in Paris. At the Lycée du Parc, Althusser was influenced by Catholic professors, joined the Catholic youth movement Jeunesse Étudiante Chrétienne, and wanted to be a Trappist. His interest in Catholicism coexisted with his communist ideology, and some critics argued that his early Catholic introduction affected the way he interpreted Karl Marx.


title: Louis Althusser

text: After a two-year period of preparation ("Khâgne") under Jean Guitton at the Lycée du Parc, Althusser was admitted into the ENS in July 1939. But his attendance was deferred by many years because he was drafted into the French Army in September of that year in the run-up to World War II and, like most French soldiers following the Fall of France, was captured by the Germans. Seized in Vannes in June 1940, he was held in a prisoner-of-war camp in Schleswig-Holstein, in Northern Germany, for the five remaining years of the war. In the camp, he was at first drafted to hard labour but ultimately reassigned to work in the infirmary after falling ill. This second occupation allowed him to read philosophy and literature. In his memoirs, Althusser described the experiences of solidarity, political action, and community in the camp as the moment he first understood the idea of communism. Althusser recalled: "It was in prison camp that I first heard Marxism discussed by a Parisian lawyer in transit—and that I actually met a communist". His experience in the camp also affected his lifelong bouts of mental instability, reflected in constant depression that lasted until the end of life. Psychoanalyst Élisabeth Roudinesco has argued that the absurd war experience was essential for Althusser's philosophical thought.


title: Louis Althusser

text: Althusser resumed his studies at the ENS in 1945 to prepare himself for the "agrégation", an exam to teach philosophy in secondary schools. In 1946, Althusser met sociologist Hélène Rytmann, a Jewish former French Resistance member with whom he was in a relationship until he killed her by strangulation in 1980. That same year, he started a close friendly relationship with Jacques Martin, a translator of G. W. F. Hegel and Herman Hesse. Martin, to whom Althusser dedicated his first book, would later commit suicide. Martin was influential on Althusser's interest on reading the bibliography of Jean Cavaillès, Georges Canguilhem and Hegel. Although Althusser remained a Catholic, he became more associated with left-wing groups, joining the "worker priests" movement and embracing a synthesis of Christian and Marxist thought. This combination may have led him to adopt German Idealism and Hegelian thought, as did Martin's influence and a renewed interest in Hegel in the 1930s and 1940s in France. In consonance, Althusser's master thesis to obtain his "diplôme d'études supèrieures" was "On Content in the Thought of G. W. F. Hegel" ("Du contenu dans la pensée de G. W. F. Hegel", 1947). Based on "The Phenomenology of Spirit", and under Gaston Bachelard's supervision, Althusser wrote a dissertation on how Marx's philosophy refused to withdraw from the Hegelian master–slave dialectic. According to the researcher Gregory Elliott, Althusser was a Hegelian at that time but only for a short period.


title: Louis Althusser

text: In 1948, he was approved to teach in secondary schools but instead made a tutor at the ENS to help students prepare for their own "agrégation". His performance on the exam—he was the best ranked on the writing part and second on the oral module—guaranteed this change on his occupation. He was responsible for offering special courses and tutorials on particular topics and on particular figures from the history of philosophy. In 1954, he became (secretary of the literary school), assuming responsibilities for management and direction of the school. Althusser was deeply influential at the ENS because of the lectures and conferences he organized with participation of leading French philosophers such as Gilles Deleuze and Jacques Lacan. He also influenced a generation of French philosophers and French philosophy in general—among his students were Derrida, Pierre Bourdieu, Michel Foucault, and Michel Serres. In total, Althusser spent 35 years in the ENS, working there until November 1980.


title: Louis Althusser

text: Parallel to his academic life, Althusser joined the French Communist Party ("Parti communiste français", PCF) in October 1948. In the early postwar years, the PCF was one of the most influential political forces and many French intellectuals joined it. Althusser himself declared, "Communism was in the air in 1945, after the German defeat, the victory at Stalingrad, and the hopes and lessons of the Resistance." Althusser was primarily active on the "Peace Movement" section and kept for a few years his Catholic beliefs; in 1949, he published in the "L'Évangile captif" (The captive gospel), the tenth book of the Jeunesse de l'Église (the youth wing of Church), an article on the historic situation of Catholicism in response to the question: "Is the good news preached to the men today?" In it, he wrote about the relationship between the Catholic Church and the labour movement, advocating at the same time for social emancipation and the Church "religious reconquest". There was mutual hostility between these two organizations—in the early 1950s, the Vatican prohibited Catholics from membership in the worker priests and left-wing movements—and it certainly affected Althusser since he firmly believed in this combination.


title: Louis Althusser

text: Initially afraid of joining the party because of ENS's opposition to communists, Althusser did so when he was made a tutor—when membership became less likely to affect his employment—and he even created at ENA the "Cercle Politzer", a Marxist study group. Althusser also introduced colleagues and students to the party and worked closely with the communist cell of the ENS. But his professionalism made him avoid Marxism and Communism in his classes; instead, he helped students depending on the demands of their "agrégation". In the early 1950s, Althusser distanced himself from his youthful political and philosophical ideals and from Hegel, whose teachings he considered a "bourgeois" philosophy. Starting from 1948, he studied history of philosophy and gave lectures on it; the first was about Plato in 1949. In 1949–1950, he gave a lecture about René Descartes, and wrote a thesis titled "Politics and Philosophy in the Eighteenth Century" and a small study on Jean-Jacques Rousseau's "Second Discourse". He presented the thesis to Jean Hyppolite and Vladimir Jankélévitch in 1950 but it was rejected. These studies were nonetheless valuable because Althusser later used them to write his book about Montesquieu's philosophy and an essay on Rousseau's "The Social Contract". Indeed, his first and the only book-length study published during his lifetime was "Montesquieu, la politique et l'histoire" ("Montesquieu: Politics and History") in 1959. He also lectured on Rousseau from 1950 to 1955, and changed his focus to philosophy of history, also studying Voltaire, Condorcet, and Helvétius, which resulted in a 1955–1956 lecture on "Les problèmes de la philosophie de l'histoire". This course along with others on Machiavelli (1962), 17th- and 18th-century political philosophy (1965–1966), Locke (1971), and Hobbes (1971–1972) were later edited and released as a book by François Matheron in 2006. From 1953 to 1960, Althusser basically did not publish on Marxist themes, which in turn gave him time to focus on his teaching activities and establish himself as a reputable philosopher and researcher.


title: Louis Althusser

text: Althusser resumed his Marxist-related publications in 1960 as he translated, edited, and published a collection directed by Hyppolite about Ludwig Feuerbach's works. The objective of this endeavour was to identify Feuerbach's influence on Marx's early writings, contrasting it with the absence of his thought on Marx's mature works. This work spurred him to write "On the Young Marx: Theoretical Questions" ("Sur le jeune Marx – Questions de théorie", 1961). Published in the journal "La Pensée", it was the first in a series of articles about Marx that were later collected in his most famous book "For Marx". He inflamed the French debate on Marx and Marxist philosophy, and gained a considerable number of supporters. Inspired by this recognition, he started to publish more articles on Marxist thought; in 1964, Althusser published an article titled "Freud and Lacan" in the journal "La Nouvelle Critique", which greatly influenced the Freudo-Marxism thought. At the same time, he invited Lacan to a lecture on Baruch Spinoza and the fundamental concepts of psychoanalysis. The impact of the articles led Althusser to change his teaching style at the ENS, and he started to minister a series of seminars on the following topics: "On the Young Marx" (1961–1962), "The Origins of Structuralism" (1962–1963; it versed on Foucault's "History of Madness", which Althusser highly appreciated), "Lacan and Psychoanalysis" (1963–1964), and "Reading Capital" (1964–1965). These seminars aimed for a "return to Marx" and were attended by a new generation of students.


title: Louis Althusser

text: "For Marx" (a collection of works published between 1961 and 1965) and "Reading Capital" (in collaboration with some of his students), both published in 1965, brought international fame to Althusser. Despite being criticized widely, these books made Althusser a sensation in French intellectual circles and one of the leading theoreticians of the PCF. He supported a structuralist view of Marx's work, influenced by Cavaillès and Canguilhem, affirming that Marx laid the "cornerstones" of a new science, incomparable to all non-Marxist thought, of which, from 1960 to 1966, he espoused the fundamental principles. Critiques were done to Stalin's cult of personality and Althusser defended what he called "theoretical anti-humanism", as an alternative to Stalinism and the Marxist humanism—both popular at the time. At mid-decade, his popularity grew to the point that it was virtually impossible to have an intellectual debate about political or ideological theoretical questions without mentioning his name. Althusser's ideas were influential enough to arouse the creation of a young militants group to dispute the power within the PCF. Nevertheless, the official position of the party was still Stalinist Marxism, which was criticized both from Maoist and humanist groups. Althusser was initially careful not to identify with Maoism but progressively agreed with its critique of Stalinism. At the end of 1966, Althusser even published an unsigned article titled "On the Cultural Revolution", in which he considered the beginning of the Chinese Cultural Revolution as "a historical fact without precedent" and of "enormous theoretical interest". Althusser mainly praised the non-bureaucratic, non-party, mass organizations in which, in his opinion, the "Marxist principles regarding the nature of the ideological' were fully applied.


title: Louis Althusser

text: Key events in the theoretical struggle took place in 1966. In January, there was a conference of communist philosophers in Choisy-le-Roi; Althusser was absent but Roger Garaudy, the official philosopher of the party, read an indictment that opposed the "theoretical anti-humanism". The controversy was the pinnacle of a long conflict between the supporters of Althusser and Garaudy. In March, in Argenteuil, the theses of Garaudy and Althusser were formally confronted by the PCF Central Committee, chaired by Louis Aragon. The Party decided to keep Garaudy's position as the official one, and even Lucien Sève—who was a student of Althusser at the beginning of his teaching at the ENS—supported it, becoming the closest philosopher to the PCF leadership. General secretary of the party, Waldeck Rochet said that "Communism without humanism would not be Communism". Even if he was not publicly censured nor expelled from the PCF, as were 600 Maoist students, the support of Garaudy resulted in a further reduction of Althusser's influence in the party.


title: Louis Althusser

text: Still in 1966, Althusser published in the "Cahiers pour l'Analyse" the article "On the 'Social Contract'" ("Sur le 'Contrat Social'"), a course about Rousseau he had given at the ENS, and "Cremonini, Painter of the Abstract" ("Cremonini, peintre de l'abstrait") about Italian painter Leonardo Cremonini. In the following year, he wrote a long article titled "The Historical Task of Marxist Philosophy" ("La tâche historique de la philosophie marxiste") that was submitted to the Soviet journal "Voprossi Filosofii"; it was not accepted but was published a year later in a Hungarian journal. In 1967–1968, Althusser and his students organized an ENS course titled "Philosophy Course for Scientists" ("Cours de philosophie pour scientifiques") that would be interrupted by May 1968 events. Some of the material of the course was reused in his 1974 book "Philosophy and the Spontaneous Philosophy of the Scientists" ("Philosophie et philosophie spontanée des savants"). Another Althusser's significant work from this period was "Lenin and Philosophy", a lecture first presented in February 1968 at the .


title: Louis Althusser

text: During May 68, the tumultuous events of May 1968 in France, Althusser was hospitalized because of a depressive breakdown and was absent from the Latin Quarter. Many of his students participated in the events, and Régis Debray in particular became an international celebrity revolutionary. Althusser's initial silence was met with criticism by the protesters, who wrote on walls: "Of what use is Althusser?" ("A quoi sert Althusser?"). Later, Althusser was ambivalent about it; on the one hand, he was not supportive of the movement and he criticized the movement as an "ideological revolt of the mass", adopting the PCF official argument that an "infantile disorder" of anarchistic utopianism that had infiltrated the student movement. On the other hand, he called it "the most significant event in Western history since the Resistance and the victory over Nazism" and wanted to reconcile the students and the PCF. Nevertheless, the Maoist journal "La Cause du peuple" called him a revisionist, and he was condemned by former students, mainly by Jacques Rancière. After it, Althusser went through a phase of "self-criticism" that resulted in the book "Essays in Self-criticism" ("Éléments d'autocritique", 1974) in which he revisited some of his old positions, including his support of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia.


title: Louis Althusser

text: In 1969, Althusser started an unfinished work that was only released in 1995 as "Sur la reproduction" ("On the Reproduction"). However, from these early manuscripts, he developed "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses", which was published in the journal "La Pensée" in 1970, and became very influential on ideology discussions. In the same year, Althusser wrote "Marxism and Class Struggle" ("Marxisme et lutte de classe") that would be the foreword to the book "The Basic Concepts of Historical Materialism" of his former student, the Chilean Marxist sociologist Marta Harnecker. By this time, Althusser was very popular in Latin America: some leftist activists and intellectuals saw him almost as a new Marx, although his work has been the subject of heated debates and sharp criticism. As an example of this popularity, some of his works were first translated to Spanish than into English, and others were released in book format first in Spanish and then in French. At the turn from the 1960s to the 1970s, Althusser's major works were translated into English—"For Marx", in 1969, and "Reading Capital" in 1970—disseminating his ideas among the English-speaking Marxists.


title: Louis Althusser

text: In the early 1970s, the PCF was, as most of European Communist parties, in a period of internal conflicts on strategic orientation that occurred against the backdrop of the emergence of Eurocommunism. In this context, Althusserian structuralist Marxism was one of the more or less defined strategic lines. Althusser participated in various public events of the PCF, most notably the public debate "Communists, Intellectuals and Culture" ("Les communistes, les intellectuels et la culture") in 1973. He and his supporters contested the party's leadership over its decision to abandon the notion of the "dictatorship of the proletariat" during its twenty-second congress in 1976. The PCF considered that in European condition it was possible to have a peaceful transition to socialism, which Althusser saw as "a new opportunistic version of Marxist Humanism". In a lecture given to the Union of Communist Students in the same year, he criticized above all the form in which this decision was taken. According to Althusser—echoing his notion of "French misery" exposed on "For Marx"—the party demonstrated a contempt for the materialist theory when it suppressed a "scientific concept". This struggle ultimately resulted in the debacle of the fraction "Union of the Left" and an open letter written by Althusser and five other intellectuals in which they asked for "a real political discussion in the PCF". That same year, Althusser also published a series of articles in the newspaper "Le Monde" under the title of "What Must Change in the Party". Published between 25 and 28 April, they were expanded and reprinted in May 1978 by François Maspero as the book "Ce qui ne peut plus durer dans le parti communiste". Between 1977 and 1978, Althusser mainly elaborated texts criticizing Eurocommunism and the PCF. "Marx in his Limits" ("Marx dans ses limits"), an abandoned manuscript written in 1978, argued that there was no Marxist theory of the state; it was only published in 1994 in the "Écrits philosophiques et politiques I". The Italian Communist newspaper "Il manifesto" allowed Althusser to develop new ideas on a conference held in Venice about "Power and Opposition in Post-Revolutionary Societies" in 1977. His speeches resulted into the articles "The Crisis of Marxism" ("La crisi del marxismo") and "Marxism as a 'finite' theory" in which he stressed "something vital and alive can be liberated by this crisis": the perception of Marxism as a theory that originally only reflected Marx's time and then needed to be completed by a state theory. The former was published as "Marxism Today" ("Marxismo oggi") in the 1978 Italian "Enciclopedia Europea". The latter text was included in a book published in Italy, "Discutere lo Stato", and he criticized the notion of "government party" and defended the notion of a revolutionary party "out of state".