title: Presidency of Richard Nixon

text: In mid-1969, Nixon began efforts to negotiate peace with the North Vietnamese, but negotiators were unable to reach an agreement. With the failure of the peace talks, Nixon implemented a strategy of "Vietnamization," which consisted of increased U.S. aid and Vietnamese troops taking on a greater combat role in the war. To great public approval, he began phased troop withdrawals by the end of 1969, sapping the strength of the domestic anti-war movement. Despite the failure of Operation Lam Son 719, which was designed to be the first major test of the South Vietnamese Army since the implementation of Vietnamization, the drawdown of American soldiers in Vietnam continued throughout Nixon's tenure.


title: Presidency of Richard Nixon

text: In early 1970, Nixon sent U.S. and South Vietnamese soldiers into Cambodia to attack North Vietnamese bases, expanding the ground war out of Vietnam for the first time. He had previously approved a secret B-52 carpet bombing campaign of North Vietnamese positions in Cambodia in March 1969 (code-named "Operation Menu"), without the consent of Cambodian leader Norodom Sihanouk. Even within the administration, many disapproved of the incursions into Cambodia, and anti-war protesters were irate. The bombing of Cambodia continued into the 1970s in support of the Cambodian government of Lon Nol—which was then battling a Khmer Rouge insurgency in the Cambodian Civil War—as part of Operation Freedom Deal.


title: Presidency of Richard Nixon

text: In 1971, Nixon ordered incursions into Laos to attack North Vietnamese bases, provoking further domestic unrest. That same year, excerpts from the "Pentagon Papers" were published by "The New York Times" and "The Washington Post". When news of the leak first appeared, Nixon was inclined to do nothing, but Kissinger persuaded him to try to prevent their publication. The Supreme Court ruled for the newspapers in the 1971 case of "New York Times Co. v. United States", thereby allowing for the publication of the excerpts. By mid-1971, disillusionment with the war had reached a new high, as 71 percent of Americans believed that sending soldiers to Vietnam had been a mistake. By the end of 1971, 156,000 U.S. soldiers remained in Vietnam; 276 American soldiers serving in Vietnam were killed in the last six months of that year.


title: Presidency of Richard Nixon

text: North Vietnam launched the Easter Offensive in March 1972, overwhelming the South Vietnamese army. In reaction to the Easter Offensive, Nixon ordered a massive bombing campaign in North Vietnam known as Operation Linebacker. As U.S. troop withdrawals continued, conscription was reduced and in 1973 ended; the armed forces became all-volunteer. In the aftermath of the Easter Offensive, peace talks between the United States and North Vietnam resumed, and by October 1972 a framework for a settlement had been reached. Objections from South Vietnamese President Nguyễn Văn Thiệu derailed this agreement, and the peace talks broke down. In December 1972, Nixon ordered another massive bombing campaign, Operation Linebacker II; domestic criticism of the operation convinced Nixon of the necessity to quickly reach a final agreement with North Vietnam.


title: Presidency of Richard Nixon

text: After years of fighting, the Paris Peace Accords were signed at the beginning of 1973. The agreement implemented a cease fire and allowed for the withdrawal of remaining American troops; however, it did not require the 160,000 North Vietnam Army regulars located in the South to withdraw. By March 1973, U.S. military forces had been withdrawn from Vietnam. Once American combat support ended, there was a brief truce, but fighting quickly broke out again, as both South Vietnam and North Vietnam violated the truce. Congress effectively ended any possibility of another American military intervention by passing the War Powers Resolution over Nixon's veto.


title: Presidency of Richard Nixon

text: Nixon took office in the midst of the Cold War, a sustained period of geopolitical tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union. The United States and Soviet Union had been the clear leaders of their respective blocs of allies during the 1950s, but the world became increasingly multipolar during the 1960s. U.S. allies in Western Europe and East Asia had recovered economically, and while they remained allied with United States, they set their own foreign policies. The fracture in the so-called "Second World" of Communist states was more serious, as the split between the Soviet Union and China escalated into a border conflict in 1969. The United States and the Soviet Union continued to compete for worldwide influence, but tensions had eased considerably since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. In this shifting international context, Nixon and Kissinger sought to realign U.S. foreign policy and establish peaceful coexistence with both the Soviet Union and China. Nixon's goal of closer relations with China and the Soviet Union was closely linked to ending the Vietnam War, since he hoped that rapprochement with the two leading Communist powers would pressure North Vietnam into accepting a favorable settlement.


title: Presidency of Richard Nixon

text: Since the end of the Chinese Civil War, the United States had refused to formally recognize the People's Republic of China (PRC) as the legitimate government of China, though the PRC controlled Mainland China. The U.S. had instead supported the Republic of China (ROC), which controlled Taiwan. By the time Nixon took office, many leading foreign policy figures in the United States had come to believe the U.S. should end its policy of isolating the PRC. The vast Chinese markets presented an economic opportunity for the increasingly-weak U.S. economy, and the Sino-Soviet split offered an opportunity to play the two Communist powers against each other. Chinese leaders, meanwhile, were receptive to closer relations with the U.S. for several reasons, including hostility to the Soviet Union, a desire for increased trade, and hopes of winning international recognition.


title: Presidency of Richard Nixon

text: Both sides faced domestic pressures against closer relations. A conservative faction of Republicans led by Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan strongly opposed a rapprochement with China, while Lin Biao led a similar faction in the PRC. For the first two years of his presidency, Nixon and China each made subtle moves designed to lower tensions, including the removal of travel restrictions. The expansion of the Vietnam War into Laos and Cambodia hindered, but did not derail, the move towards normalization of relations. Due to a misunderstanding at the 1971 World Table Tennis Championships, the Chinese table tennis team invited the U.S. table tennis team to tour China, creating an opening for further engagement between the U.S. and China. In the aftermath of the visit, Nixon lifted the trade embargo on China. At a July 1971 meeting with Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai, Kissinger promised not to support independence for Taiwan, while Zhou invited Nixon to China for further talks. After the meeting, China and the United States astounded the world by simultaneously announcing that Nixon would visit China in February 1972. In the aftermath of the announcement, the United Nations passed Resolution 2758, which recognized the PRC as the legitimate government of China and expelled representatives from the ROC.


title: Presidency of Richard Nixon

text: In February 1972, Nixon traveled to China; Kissinger briefed Nixon for over 40 hours in preparation. Upon touching down in the Chinese capital of Beijing, Nixon made a point of shaking Zhou's hand, something which then-Secretary of State John Foster Dulles had refused to do in 1954 when the two met in Geneva. The visit was carefully choreographed by both governments, and major events were broadcast live during prime time to reach the widest possible television audience in the U.S. When not in meetings, Nixon toured architectural wonders such as the Forbidden City, Ming Tombs, and the Great Wall, giving many Americans received their first glimpse into Chinese life.


title: Presidency of Richard Nixon

text: Nixon and Kissinger discussed a range of issues with Zhou and Mao Zedong, the Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party. China provided assurances that it would not intervene in the Vietnam War, while the United States promised to prevent Japan from acquiring nuclear weapons. Nixon recognized Taiwan as part of China, while the Chinese agreed to pursue a peaceful settlement in the dispute with the ROC. The United States and China increased trade relations and established unofficial embassies in each other's respective capitals. Though some conservatives criticized his visit, Nixon's opening of relations with China was widely popular in the United States. The visit also aided Nixon's negotiations with the Soviet Union, which feared the possibility of a Sino-American alliance.


title: Presidency of Richard Nixon

text: Nixon made détente, the easing of tensions with the Soviet Union, one of his top priorities. Through détente, he hoped to "minimize confrontation in marginal areas and provide, at least, alternative possibilities in the major ones." West Germany had also pursued closer relations with the Soviet Union in a policy known as "Ostpolitik," and Nixon hoped to re-establish American dominance in NATO by taking the lead in negotiations with the Soviet Union. Nixon also believed that expanding trade with the Soviet Union would help the U.S. economy and could allow both countries to devote fewer resources to defense spending. For their part, the Soviets were motivated by a struggling economy and their ongoing split with China.


title: Presidency of Richard Nixon

text: Upon taking office, Nixon took several steps to signal to the Soviets his desire for negotiation. In his first press conference, he noted that the United States would accept nuclear parity, rather than superiority, with the Soviet Union. Kissinger conducted extensive backchannel talks with Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin over arms control negotiations and potential Soviet assistance in negotiations with North Vietnam. Seeking a bargaining chip in negotiations, Nixon funded development of MIRVs, which were not easily countered by existing anti-ballistic missile (ABM) systems. Arms control negotiations would thus center over ABM systems, MIRVs, and the various components of each respective country's nuclear arsenal. After over a year of negotiations, both sides agreed to the outlines of two treaties; one treaty would focus on ABM systems, while the other would focus on limiting nuclear arsenals.


title: Presidency of Richard Nixon

text: In May 1972, Nixon met with Leonid Brezhnev and other leading Soviet officials at the 1972 Moscow Summit. The two sides reached the Strategic Arms Limitation Agreement (SALT I), which set upper limits on the number of offensive missiles and ballistic missile submarines that each county could maintain. A separate agreement, the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, stipulated that each country could only field two anti-ballistic missile systems. The United States also agreed to the creation of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe. An October 1972 trade agreement between the United States and the Soviet Union vastly increased trade between the two countries, though Congress did not approve of Nixon's proposal to extend most favored nation status to the Soviet Union.


title: Presidency of Richard Nixon

text: Nixon would embark on a second trip to the Soviet Union in 1974, meeting with Brezhnev in Yalta. They discussed a proposed mutual defense pact and other issues, but there were no significant breakthroughs in the negotiations. During Nixon's final year in office, Congress undercut Nixon's détente policies by passing the Jackson–Vanik amendment. Senator Henry M. Jackson, an opponent of détente, introduced the Jackson–Vanik amendment in response to a Soviet tax that curbed the flow of Jewish emigrants, many of whom sought to immigrate to Israel. Angered by the amendment, the Soviets canceled the 1972 trade agreement and reduced the number of Jews who were permitted to emigrate. Though détente was unpopular with many on the left due to humanitarian concerns, and with many on the right due to concerns about being overly accommodating to the Soviets, Nixon's policies helped significantly lower Cold War tensions even after he left office.


title: Presidency of Richard Nixon

text: Relations hit an all-time low under the Nixon administration in the early 1970s. Nixon shifted away from the neutral stance which his predecessors had taken towards India-Pakistan hostilities. He established a very close relationship with Pakistan, aiding it militarily and economically, as India, now under the leadership of Indira Gandhi, was leaning towards Soviet Union. He considered Pakistan as a very important ally to counter Soviet influence in the Indian subcontinent and establish ties with China, with whom Pakistan was very close. The frosty personal relationship between Nixon and Indira further contributed to the poor relationship between the two nations.


title: Presidency of Richard Nixon

text: During the 1971 Indo-Pakistani War, the US openly supported Pakistan and deployed its aircraft carrier USS "Enterprise" towards the Bay of Bengal, which was seen as a show of force by the US in support of the West Pakistani forces. Later in 1974, India conducted its first nuclear test, Smiling Buddha, which was opposed by the US, however it also concluded that the test did not violate any agreement and proceeded with a June 1974 shipment of enriched uranium for the Tarapur reactor.


title: Presidency of Richard Nixon

text: Richard Nixon's actions and the US administration's policy toward South Asia under Mr. Nixon was influenced by his hatred of, and sexual repulsion toward, Indians, according to Princeton professor Gary Bass.


title: Presidency of Richard Nixon

text: Nixon had been a firm supporter of Kennedy in the 1961 Bay of Pigs Invasion and 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis; on taking office he stepped up covert operations against Cuba and its president, Fidel Castro. He maintained close relations with the Cuban-American exile community through his friend, Bebe Rebozo, who often suggested ways of irritating Castro. These activities concerned the Soviets and Cubans, who feared Nixon might attack Cuba in violation of the understanding between Kennedy and Khrushchev which had ended the missile crisis. In August 1970, the Soviets asked Nixon to reaffirm the agreement. Despite his hard line against Castro, Nixon agreed. The process—which began in secret, but quickly leaked—had not been completed when the U.S. deduced that the Soviets were expanding their base at the Cuban port of Cienfuegos in October 1970. A minor confrontation ensued, which was concluded with an understanding that the Soviets would not use Cienfuegos for submarines bearing ballistic missiles. The final round of diplomatic notes, reaffirming the 1962 accord, were exchanged in November.


title: Presidency of Richard Nixon

text: Like his predecessors, Nixon was determined to prevent the rise of another Soviet-aligned state in Latin America, and his administration was greatly distressed by the victory of Marxist candidate Salvador Allende in the 1970 Chilean presidential election. Nixon pursued a vigorous campaign of covert resistance to Allende, intended to first prevent Allende from taking office, called Track I, and then when that failed, to provide a "military solution", called Track II. As part of Track II, CIA operatives approached senior Chilean military leaders, using false flag operatives, and encouraged a coup d'état, providing both finances and weapons. These efforts failed, and Allende took office in November 1970.


title: Presidency of Richard Nixon

text: The Nixon administration drastically cut economic aid to Chile and convinced World Bank leaders to block aid to Chile. Extensive covert efforts continued as the U.S. funded black propaganda, organized strikes against Allende, and provided funding for Allende opponents. When the Chilean newspaper "El Mercurio" requested significant funds for covert support in September 1971, Nixon personally authorized the funds in "a rare example of presidential micromanagement of a covert operation." In September 1973, General Augusto Pinochet assumed power in a violent coup d'état. During the coup, the deposed president died under disputed circumstances, and there were allegations of American involvement. According to diplomatic historian George Herring, "no evidence has ever been produced to prove conclusively that the United States instigated or actively participated in the coup." Herring also notes, however, that whether or not it took part in the coup, the U.S. created the atmosphere in which the coup took place.


title: Presidency of Richard Nixon

text: Early in his first term, Nixon pressured Israel over its nuclear program, and his administration developed a peace plan in which Israel would withdraw from the territories it conquered in the Six-Day War. After the Soviet Union upped arms shipments to Egypt in mid-1970, Nixon moved closer to Israel, authorizing the shipment of F-4 fighter aircraft. In October 1973, after Israel declined Egyptian President Anwar Sadat's offer of negotiations over the lands it had won control of in the Six-Day War, Egypt and Syria launched a surprise attack against Israel. After Egypt and Syria experienced early successes in what became known as the Yom Kippur War, the United States began to supply massive amounts of military aid to Israel, as Nixon overrode Kissinger's early reluctance to provide strong support to Israel. After Israel turned the tide in the war and advanced into Egypt and Syria, Kissinger and Brezhnev organized a cease fire. Cutting out the Soviet Union from further involvement, Kissinger helped arrange agreements between Israel and the Arab states.


title: Presidency of Richard Nixon

text: Though it had been established in 1960, OPEC did not gain effective control over oil prices until 1970, when Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi forced oil companies in Libya to agree to a price increase; other countries followed suit. U.S. leaders did not attempt to block these price increases, as they believed that higher prices would help increase domestic production of oil. This increased production failed to materialize, and by 1973 the U.S. consumed over one and a half times the oil that it produced domestically. In 1973, in response to the U.S. support of Israel in the Yom Kippur War, OPEC countries cut oil production, raised prices, and initiated an embargo targeted against the United States and other countries that had supported Israel. The embargo caused gasoline shortages and rationing in the United States in late 1973, but was eventually ended by the oil-producing nations as the Yom Kippur War peace took hold.


title: Presidency of Richard Nixon

text: Just weeks after his 1969 inauguration, Nixon made an eight-day trip to Europe. He met with British Prime Minister Harold Wilson in London and French President Charles de Gaulle in Paris. He also made groundbreaking trips to several Eastern European nations, including Romania, Yugoslavia, and Poland. However, the NATO allies of the United States generally did not play a large role in Nixon's foreign policy, as he focused on the Vietnam War and détente. In 1971, the United States, Britain, France, and the Soviet Union reached the Four Power Agreement, in which the Soviet Union guaranteed access to West Berlin so long as it was not incorporated into West Germany.


title: Presidency of Richard Nixon

text: Nixon explored the possibility of establishing a new center-right party and running on a ticket with John Connally, but he ultimately chose to seek re-election as a Republican. His success with the People's Republic of China and the Soviet Union bolstered his approval ratings in the lead-up to the 1972 presidential election, and he was the overwhelming favorite to be re-nominated at the start of the 1972 Republican primaries. He was challenged in the primaries by two congressmen: anti-war candidate Pete McCloskey and détente opponent John Ashbrook. Nixon virtually assured his nomination by winning the New Hampshire primary with a comfortable 67.8 percent of the vote. He was re-nominated at the August 1972 Republican National Convention, receiving 1,347 of the 1,348 votes. Delegates also re-nominated Spiro Agnew by acclamation.


title: Presidency of Richard Nixon

text: Nixon had initially expected his Democratic opponent to be Senator Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts, but the 1969 Chappaquiddick incident effectively removed Kennedy from contention. Nonetheless, Nixon ordered constant surveillance of Kennedy by E. Howard Hunt. Nixon also feared the effect of another independent candidacy by George Wallace, and worked to defeat Wallace's 1970 gubernatorial campaign by contributing $400,000 to the unsuccessful campaign of Albert Brewer. Wallace won several Democratic primaries during the 1972 campaign, but any possibility that he would win the Democratic nomination or run on a third party ticket was ended after he was severely wounded in an assassination attempt.


title: Presidency of Richard Nixon

text: With Kennedy out of the race, Senator Edmund Muskie of Maine and Hubert Humphrey emerged as the front-runners for the 1972 Democratic nomination. Senator George McGovern's victory in the June California primary made him the overwhelming favorite entering the July Democratic National Convention. McGovern was nominated on the first ballot, but the convention endured a chaotic vice presidential selection process. The convention ultimately nominated Senator Thomas Eagleton of Missouri as McGovern's running mate. After it was disclosed that Eagleton had undergone mental health treatment, including electroshock therapy, Eagleton withdrew from the race. McGovern replaced him with Sargent Shriver of Maryland, a Kennedy in-law.


title: Presidency of Richard Nixon

text: McGovern intended to sharply reduce defense spending and supported amnesty for draft evaders as well as abortion rights. With some of his supporters believed to be in favor of drug legalization, McGovern was perceived as standing for "amnesty, abortion and acid". He was further damaged by the widespread perception that he mismanaged his campaign, chiefly due to the incident with Eagleton. McGovern claimed that the "Nixon Administration is the most corrupt administration in our national history," but his attacks had little effect. Nixon, meanwhile, appealed to many working class Democrats who were repelled by the Democratic Party's positions on racial and cultural issues. Despite new limits on campaign fundraising imposed by the Federal Election Campaign Act, Nixon vastly outraised McGovern, and his campaign dominated radio and television advertising.


title: Presidency of Richard Nixon

text: Nixon, ahead in polls throughout 1972, focused on the prospect of peace in Vietnam and an upsurge in the economy. He was elected to a second term on November 7, 1972 in one of the largest landslide election victories in American history. He won over 60% of the popular vote, receiving 47,169,911 votes to McGovern's 29,170,383, and won an even larger Electoral College victory, garnering 520 electoral votes to 17 for McGovern. Despite Nixon's strong victory, Democrats retained control of both houses of Congress. In the aftermath of the elections, many conservative Southern Democratic congressmen seriously discussed the possibility of switching parties to give Republicans control of the House, but these talks were derailed by the Watergate scandal.


title: Presidency of Richard Nixon

text: After the Supreme Court denied the Nixon administration's request to prevent the publication of the Pentagon Papers, Nixon and Ehrlichman established the White House Special Investigations Unit, also known as the "Plumbers." The Plumbers were charged with preventing future news leaks and retaliating against Daniel Ellsberg, who had been behind the leaking of the Pentagon Papers. Among those who joined the Plumbers were G. Gordon Liddy, E. Howard Hunt, and Charles Colson. Shortly after the establishment of the Plumbers, the organization broke into the office of Ellsberg's psychiatrist. Rather than relying on the Republican National Committee, Nixon's re-election campaign was primarily waged through the Committee for the Re-Election of the President (CRP), whose top leadership was composed of former White House personnel. Liddy and Hunt became involved with the CRP, conducting espionage on Democrats.


title: Presidency of Richard Nixon

text: During the 1972 Democratic primaries, Nixon and his allies believed that Senator McGovern would be the weakest plausible Democratic nominee in the general election, and the CRP worked to bolster McGovern's strength. Nixon was not informed about the details of each CRP undertaking, but he approved of the overall operation. The CRP especially targeted Muskie, secretly employing Muskie's driver as a spy. The CRP also established fake organizations that nominally supported Muskie, and used those organizations to attack other Democratic candidates; Senator Henry Jackson was accused of having been arrested for homosexual activities, while Humphrey was alleged to have been involved in a drunk driving incident. In June 1972, Hunt and Liddy led a break-in of the Democratic National Committee's headquarters at the Watergate complex. The break-in was foiled by the police, and the Nixon administration denied any involvement in the incident. The break-in perpetrators were indicted on in September 1972, but federal judge John Sirica ordered a gag order on the case until after the election. Though Watergate remained in the news during the 1972 campaign, it had relatively little effect on the election. The motivation for the Watergate break-in remains a matter of dispute.


title: Presidency of Richard Nixon

text: Nixon may not have known about the Watergate break-in beforehand, but he became involved in a cover-up. Nixon and Haldeman pressured the FBI to end its investigation of Watergate, and White House Counsel John Dean promised the Watergate burglars money and executive clemency if they did not implicate the White House in the break-in. The Watergate burglars were convicted in January 1973 without implicating the White House, but members of Congress organized an investigation into Nixon's role in Watergate. As Congressman Tip O'Neill stated, in the 1972 campaign Nixon and his allies "did too many things. Too many people know about it. There is no way to keep it quiet. The time is going to come when impeachment is going to hit this Congress." Though Nixon would continue to be active in foreign affairs during his second term, the fallout from the Watergate scandal effectively precluded any major domestic initiatives.


title: Presidency of Richard Nixon

text: At the urging of Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield, Senator Sam Ervin of North Carolina took the lead in the Senate's Watergate investigation. Under Ervin's leadership, the Senate established the Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities to investigate and conduct hearings on Watergate. The "Watergate hearings" were televised and widely watched. As the various witnesses gave details, not only of the Watergate break-in, but of various other alleged acts of malfeasance by various administration officials, Nixon's approval rating plummeted. Journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein also helped keep the Watergate investigations as a top news item. Nixon attempted to discredit the hearings as a partisan witch hunt, but some Republican senators took an active role in the investigations. In April 1973, Nixon dismissed Haldeman, Erlichman, and Attorney General Richard Kleindienst in April 1973, replacing Kleindienst with Elliot Richardson. With Nixon's permission, Richardson appointed Archibald Cox as an independent special prosecutor charged with investigating Watergate.


title: Presidency of Richard Nixon

text: Fearing that Nixon would use him as a scapegoat for the cover-up, John Dean began to cooperate with Watergate investigators. On June 25, Dean accused Nixon of having helped to plan the burglary's cover-up, and the following month, White House aide Alexander Butterfield testified that Nixon had a secret taping system that recorded his conversations and phone calls in the Oval Office. Cox and the Senate Watergate Committee both asked Nixon to turn over the tapes, but Nixon refused, citing executive privilege and national security concerns. The White House and Cox remained at loggerheads until the "Saturday Night Massacre" October 23, 1973, when Nixon demanded that the Justice Department fire Cox. Richardson and Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus both resigned instead of complying with Nixon's order, but Robert Bork, the next-in-line at the Justice Department, fired Cox.


title: Presidency of Richard Nixon

text: The firing infuriated Congress and engendered public protest. On October 30, the House Judiciary Committee began consideration of possible impeachment procedures; the following day Leon Jaworski was named as Cox's replacement, and soon thereafter the president agreed to turn over the requested tapes. When the tapes were turned over a few weeks later, Nixon's lawyers revealed that one audio tape of conversations held in the White House on June 20, 1972 featured an 18½ minute gap. Rose Mary Woods, the president's personal secretary, claimed responsibility for the gap, alleging that she had accidentally wiped the section while transcribing the tape, though her explanation was widely mocked. The gap, while not conclusive proof of wrongdoing by the president, cast doubt on Nixon's statement that he had been unaware of the cover-up. That same month, during an hour-long televised question-and-answer session with the press, Nixon insisted that he had made mistakes, but had no prior knowledge of the burglary, did not break any laws, and did not learn of the cover-up until early 1973. He declared, "I'm not a crook. I've earned everything I've got.


title: Presidency of Richard Nixon

text: Through late 1973 and early 1974, Nixon continued to deflect accusations of wrongdoing and vowed that he would be vindicated. Meanwhile, in the courts and in Congress, developments continued to propel the unfolding saga toward a climax. On March 1, 1974 a grand jury indicted seven former administration officials for conspiring to hinder the investigation of the Watergate burglary. The grand jury, it was disclosed later, also named Nixon as an unindicted conspirator. In April the House Judiciary Committee voted to subpoena tapes of 42 presidential conversations, and the special prosecutor subpoenaed more tapes and documents as well. The White House refused both subpoenas, citing executive privilege once more. In response, the House Judiciary Committee opened impeachment hearings against the president on May 9. These hearings, which were televised, culminated in votes for articles of impeachment, the first being 27–11 in favor on July 27, 1974 on obstruction of justice; six Republicans voted "yes" along with all 21 Democrats. On July 24, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the full tapes, not just selected transcripts, must be released.


title: Presidency of Richard Nixon

text: Even though his base of support had been diminished by the continuing series of revelations, Nixon hoped to avoid impeachment. However, one of the newly released tapes, the "smoking gun" tape, recorded just a few days after the break-in, demonstrated that Nixon had been told of the White House connection to the Watergate burglaries soon after they took place, and had approved plans to thwart the investigation. In a statement accompanying the release of the tapes on August 5, 1974, Nixon accepted blame for misleading the country about when he had been told of the truth behind the Watergate break-in, stating that he had a lapse of memory.


title: Presidency of Richard Nixon

text: On August 7, Nixon met in the Oval Office with Republican congressional leaders "to discuss the impeachment picture," and was told that his support in Congress had all but disappeared. They painted a gloomy picture for the president: he would face certain impeachment when the articles came up for vote in the full House, and in the Senate, there were not only enough votes to convict him, no more than 15 or so senators were willing to vote for acquittal. That night, knowing his presidency was effectively over, Nixon finalized his decision to resign.


title: Presidency of Richard Nixon

text: At 11:00 a.m. on August 8, his last full day in office, Nixon informed Vice President Ford of his impending resignation. That evening, Nixon announced his intention to resign to the nation. The speech was delivered from the Oval Office and was carried live on radio and television. Nixon stated that he was resigning for the good of the country as he had lost the political support in Congress necessary to govern effectively, and asked the nation to support the new president, Gerald Ford. Nixon went on to review the accomplishments of his presidency, especially in foreign policy, and concluded by invoking Theodore Roosevelt's "Man in the Arena" speech. Nixon's speech contained no admission of wrongdoing; biographer Conrad Black opined that "What was intended to be an unprecedented humiliation for any American president, Nixon converted into a virtual parliamentary acknowledgement of almost blameless insufficiency of legislative support to continue." The initial response from network commentators was generally favorable, with only Roger Mudd of CBS stating that Nixon had evaded the issue, and had not admitted his role in the cover-up.


title: Presidency of Richard Nixon

text: The following morning, August 9, 1974, Nixon officially resigned from office, submitting a brief letter to Kissinger that read: "I hereby resign the office of President of the United States." Afterward, Kissinger signed his initials, acknowledging that he had received it, and the time, 11:35 a.m., denoting when Nixon's presidency ended. Gerald Ford, in his first public statement as president, declared, "My fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over." Nixon was the first U.S. president to leave office intra-term for a reason other than death. To date, he remains the only president to have resigned. One month after Nixon left office, President Ford granted Nixon an unconditional pardon for all federal crimes he "committed or may have committed or taken part in" while president.


title: Presidency of Richard Nixon

text: Polls of historians and political scientists generally rank Nixon as a below average president. In a 2018 poll of the American Political Science Association's Presidents and Executive Politics section, Nixon was ranked as the 33rd greatest president. A 2017 C-SPAN poll of historians ranked Nixon as the 28th greatest president. According to historian Stephen E. Ambrose, "Nixon wanted to be judged by what he accomplished. What he will be remembered for is the nightmare he put the country through in his second term and for his resignation." Biographer Jonathan Aitken, by contrast, feels that "Nixon, both as a man and as a statesman, has been excessively maligned for his faults and inadequately recognised for his virtues. Yet even in a spirit of historical revisionism, no simple verdict is possible."


title: Presidency of Richard Nixon

text: Historian and political scientist James MacGregor Burns asked of Nixon, "How can one evaluate such an idiosyncratic president, so brilliant and so morally lacking?" Political historian and pollster Douglas Schoen argues that Nixon was the most important American figure in post-war U.S. politics, while constitutional law professor Cass Sunstein noted in 2017, "If you are listing the five most consequential Presidents in American history, you could make a good argument that Nixon belongs on the list." Historian Melvin Small argues that, "If it is possible to evaluate Nixon's years in the White House without considering his character and the scandals that led to his resignation, then his presidency certainly seems far from a failure." But Small also states, "Watergate did not begin when CREEP operatives broke into Democratic headquarters in 1972. It began when Nixon took office, armed with his private slush fund, prepared to do battle by fair means and foul against his enemies...no president before or after ordered or participated in so many serious illegal and extralegal acts that violated constitutional principles."


title: Presidency of Richard Nixon

text: Ken Hughes of the Miller Center of Public Affairs notes that "scholars who classify [Nixon] as liberal, moderate, or conservative find ample evidence for each label and conclusive evidence for none of them...In foreign and domestic policy, Nixon's inclinations were conservative, but he assumed the presidency at the end of the 1960s, liberalism's postwar peak." James Patterson describes Nixon as being "easily the most liberal Republican" president of the 20th century, aside from Theodore Roosevelt. Nixon saw his policies on Vietnam, China, and the Soviet Union as central to his place in history. Nixon's onetime opponent George McGovern commented in 1983, "President Nixon probably had a more practical approach to the two superpowers, China and the Soviet Union, than any other president since World War II [...] With the exception of his inexcusable continuation of the war in Vietnam, Nixon really will get high marks in history." Political scientist Jussi Hanhimäki disagrees, saying that Nixon's diplomacy was merely a continuation of the Cold War policy of containment by diplomatic, rather than military means. Historian Keith W. Olson has written that Nixon left a legacy of fundamental mistrust of government, rooted in Vietnam and Watergate. Another legacy, for a time, was a decrease in the power of the presidency as Congress passed restrictive legislation like the War Powers Act and the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974.


title: Aloy

text: Aloy is a fictional character and protagonist of the 2017 video game "Horizon Zero Dawn" and its sequel "Horizon Forbidden West". In the games' post-apocalyptic tribal setting, she is born in 3021, raised as an outcast, and trains as a warrior in order to win a ritual competition to discover her mother's identity. After narrowly evading an assassination attempt, she embarks on a journey to stop a cult that worships an artificial intelligence bent on the world's destruction, while also hunting machines that have grown hostile to humans. She has been critically praised for her design and characterization. She is voiced by American voice actress Ashly Burch and modeled after Dutch actress Hannah Hoekstra.


title: Aloy

text: Aloy was created as a character who could provide many tactical options in battle. As a "hunter at heart", she has little compassion for machines beyond a "hunter's respect". She also has a gritty personality, disliking "comforts or ease", and tends to be "very forthright and blunt, sometimes even confrontational" in how she addresses issues. Guerrilla Games always envisioned the game as starring a strong female character, with game director Mathijs de Jonge citing Sarah Connor from "Terminator", Ellen Ripley from "Alien", and Ygritte from "Game of Thrones" as influences. Sony decided to do rigorous market testing, believing that adding a female lead might be a "risk", but approved her as the lead role. The developers were aware of the strong female character cliche and tried to make a more human character with a more interesting personality. Aloy's physical likeness was based on the Dutch actress Hannah Hoekstra.


title: Aloy

text: Aloy is first introduced as an infant who has been entrusted to Rost's care, a man who has been cast out by the Nora tribe. Six years later, while exploring on her own, she falls into a forbidden bunker that was created by ancient humans. While trying to escape from the destroyed facility, she discovers an augmented reality device known as a Focus before being rescued by Rost. Despite his misgivings, Rost allows her to keep the Focus, which she soon develops an affinity for. The next morning, while learning to hunt with Rost, she uses the Focus to rescue Teb, an injured member of the Nora tribe who has recklessly fallen into the path of machines. Aloy expresses the desire to learn the identity of her mother, and Rost suggests training to compete in the Proving, a coming-of-age ritual that would not only allow her entry into the Nora, but give her the answers she seeks as a boon if she wins.


title: Aloy

text: The game skips forwards twelve years to when she has become a skilled warrior and huntress due to her intensive training. She attends the Proving, winning the competition and being declared a Nora. Before she can ask about her parents, the tribe is attacked by a group of cultists led by the fanatical Helis, who seeks to kill Aloy. Most of her fellow warriors are murdered, but Helis hesitates when stabbing Aloy and is attacked by Rost, who then sacrifices himself to protect her from a blast. When she comes to inside All-Mother Mountain, one of the tribe's elders explains that Aloy was actually found in front of another bunker inside the mountain, and their disagreement over whether she was a good or evil omen led to her exile. However, her Focus reveals that Helis was given orders along with a picture of an older woman who looks just like her.


title: Aloy

text: Aloy is declared a Seeker and sets out to avenge the attack on the tribe. Eventually, she is contacted by a man named Sylens, who reveals that the older woman is Dr. Elisabet Sobeck. Her genetic profile allows her to access the headquarters of Faro Automated Solutions, where she sees that Elisabet was a skilled scientist who was called in to try to stop a rogue swarm of self-replicating combat robots that used biomass as fuel and ultimately consumed all life on Earth thanks to the company's CEO, Ted Faro, refusing to allow any backdoor access into the machines. She then sets out to discover what Elisabet had planned to do, what was referred to as "Project Zero Dawn."


title: Aloy

text: Eventually, Aloy discovers that Zero Dawn was a terraforming system whose development involved deceiving the global human populace into sacrificing itself in a futile attempt to stop the swarm to provide time to complete it. The system would restore the human species and other life after shutting down the swarm. However, a mysterious signal attacked Zero Dawn's AI, GAIA, forcing her to self-destruct and unshackling her component processes. With nothing to protect humanity from the rogue AI of HADES, initially created as an emergency "reset switch" for the planet, GAIA was forced to order ELEUTHIA, a sub-function tasked with maintaining the artificial wombs, to clone Elisabet using DNA stored for the defunct "Lightkeeper Protocol", predicting that her genes would cause her to become the world's savior once again. Aloy was brought outside the facility by a robot, leading the elders to believe she had mysteriously appeared there.


title: Aloy

text: Reaching the entrance to GAIA Prime, Aloy witnesses a series of significant damages caused by GAIA's self-destruction and is skeptical that GAIA could ever be repaired. While exploring the Zero Dawn facility, Aloy also learns that Dr. Sobeck sacrificed herself to close a malfunctioning vent and save the project from the encroaching all-consuming robots. Upon realizing this, Aloy sets out to find the Master Override that can shut down HADES. With the help of Sylens, she obtains the Override and confronts HADES, shutting it down in the nick of time. In an ending scene, she is seen finding the body of Dr. Sobeck and getting closure in the search for her origins.


title: Aloy

text: Intrigued by rumors of a new wave of dangerous machines at the edge of the Banuk land, Aloy took a detour from her mission to explore the Cut. After learning more about the "Spirit" from Ourea, Aloy attempts to fulfil her request by saving the mysterious entity. Soon afterwards, she teams up with Ourea's brother, Aratak. Subsequently, they head to an ancient ruin at Thunder's Drum, the Firebreak facility to free the "Spirit". Later, Aloy discovers that HEPHAESTUS, one of GAIA's sub-functions, took control of the facility from an unknown remote location, enslaving the previous governing AI, CYAN, who Ourea earlier deemed as the voice of the "Spirit". After Aloy, Ourea and Aratak defeat the enemy, they head to the facility's core. Ourea sacrifices herself to finish the override, with Aloy later consoling Aratak for his loss. They quickly flee from the collapsing facility, leaving Ourea's body behind. After a successful escape, Aloy and Aratak meet again at Ourea's Retreat to discuss matters with CYAN. Prior to finishing the last mission at the Cut, Aloy attempts to converse with Aratak, who requests for her help to eliminate the remaining threats caused by HEPHAESTUS. After finishing the mission, Aloy returns to Ourea's apprentice Naltuk, who thanks her for assisting the Banuk. He then bids her with a respectful farewell.


title: Aloy

text: Aloy has appeared in other media outside of the "Horizon games." She was a playable character in the PlayStation 4 version of "" and makes a cameo appearance in "Astro's Playroom".


title: Aloy

text: Aloy was added to "Fortnite Battle Royale" on April 15, 2021, for the Chapter 2, Season 6 "Primal" event. A limited time "Aloy Cup" was available to PlayStation players, while a "Team Up!" mode with Lara Croft from "Tomb Raider" was added. She also got an extra style called Ice Hunter, which is only available to players that own a PlayStation 5. but can be used across all consoles when unlocked. In September 2021, Aloy was given out as a free collaboration character for PS4 and PS5 players of the game "Genshin Impact", while players on other platforms received her for free in October 2021. In the game, she is a Bow user of the Cryo element.


title: Aloy

text: Peter Tieryas of "Kotaku" praised the character of Aloy, finding the scene where Aloy talks to her father's grave moving in part due to how "real" their relationship felt and how it shows how things have changed for Aloy since her childhood. Malindy Hetfield of "Polygon" praised Aloy as "inspiring and captivating", but also called her "not particularly relatable" compared to the game's other female characters due to her "flawlessness". Aloy's story about her origins resonated with Sam Loveridge of "GamesRadar+" and inspired her to seek out her own birth parents. Lucas Sullivan of the same site called her "one of gaming's greatest female leads". She was ranked as one of the best video game characters of the 2010s by "Polygon" staff by Colin Campbell praising the character by stating that "She's pragmatic but compassionate, iron-willed but open-minded. In a 31st-century world with its own norms and taboos, particularly around gender, Aloy refuses to let anyone else tell her how to live." "Paste" magazine writer Holly Green included Aloy as the best new game characters of 2017. "TheGamer" also included Aloy on their "Iconic Video Game Characters", stating that "Aloy is one of the best protagonists of the last decade, of which there are many to choose from, mostly because of her strong-willed nature and ability to act strong in difficult situations."


title: Aloy

text: Ashly Burch, the voice actress for Aloy, won an award for "best gaming performance" at the 35th Golden Joystick Awards. She thanked the developers, saying that playing the character made her a "braver and stronger woman", and that she hoped Aloy would be inspiring to other women.


title: Alliance Party of Northern Ireland

text: The Alliance Party of Northern Ireland (APNI), or simply Alliance, is a liberal and centrist political party in Northern Ireland. As of the 2022 Northern Ireland Assembly election, it is the third-largest party in the Northern Ireland Assembly, holding seventeen seats, and has made recent breakthroughs to place third in first preference votes in the 2019 European Parliament election and third highest-polling regionally at the 2019 UK general election. The party won one of the three Northern Ireland seats in the European Parliament, and one seat, North Down, in the House of Commons, the lower house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom.


title: Alliance Party of Northern Ireland

text: Founded in 1970 from the New Ulster Movement, the Alliance Party originally represented moderate and non-sectarian unionism. However, over time, particularly in the 1990s, it moved towards neutrality on the Union, and has come to represent wider liberal and non-sectarian concerns. It supports the Good Friday Agreement but maintains a desire for the reform of the political system towards a non-sectarian future, and in the Northern Ireland Assembly, it is designated as neither unionist nor Irish nationalist, but 'Other'.


title: Alliance Party of Northern Ireland

text: The Alliance Party won their first seat in the UK House of Commons in the 2010 general election, unseating the former East Belfast MP Peter Robinson, First Minister of Northern Ireland and leader of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP). Naomi Long was the first MP from the Alliance Party since Stratton Mills, who joined the party from the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) in 1973. However, the DUP regained the seat at the 2015 general election following an electoral pact with the UUP. In the 2019 general election, Alliance regained its presence in the House of Commons when Stephen Farry won the North Down seat vacated by the independent unionist, Sylvia Hermon. Earlier that year, the party's leader, Naomi Long, won the party's first seat in the European Parliament in the last European election before Brexit. Under Long's leadership, the Alliance Party would exceed expectations in the 2022 Northern Ireland Assembly election and gain numerous seats in the Northern Ireland Assembly.


title: Alliance Party of Northern Ireland

text: The Alliance Party is a member of the Liberal International and Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe, and is aligned with the Liberal Democrats in Great Britain.


title: Alliance Party of Northern Ireland

text: It was formed in April 1970 as an alternative to the established parties. In the context of a rapidly worsening political crisis, the party aimed not only to present an alternative to what they perceived as sectarian parties and expressly aimed to act as a bridge between the Protestant and Catholic sections of the community and heal the divisions in Northern Ireland society. The Party's founding principles were expressly in favour of Northern Ireland remaining part of the United Kingdom, although in contrast to other unionist parties, this was expressed in socio-economic rather than ethnic terms.


title: Alliance Party of Northern Ireland

text: On 5 February 1973, prior to the 1973 Northern Ireland border poll, the party's Chairman, Jim Hendron, stated that "Support for the position of Northern Ireland as an integral part of the United Kingdom is a fundamental principle of the Alliance Party, not only for economic reasons but also because we firmly believe that a peaceful solution to our present tragic problems is only possible within a United Kingdom context. Either a Sinn Fein all-Ireland republic or a Vanguard-style Ulster republic would lead to disaster for all our people."


title: Alliance Party of Northern Ireland

text: The party's prominence increased in 1972 when three members of the Northern Ireland House of Commons defected to Alliance. The MPs were drawn from across Northern Ireland's political divide and included Bertie McConnell, an independent Unionist, the Ulster Unionist Phelim O'Neill and Tom Gormley who sat as an independent Nationalist. In 1973 Lord Dunleath joined the party in the House of Lords. Stratton Mills, who had been elected as an Ulster Unionist/Conservative MP at Westminster for North Belfast also joined that year, becoming the party's sole MP between 1973–74 and didn't have another MP until 2010. Its first electoral challenge was the District Council elections of May 1973 when they managed to win 13.6% of the votes cast.


title: Alliance Party of Northern Ireland

text: In the elections to the Northern Ireland Assembly which followed the Sunningdale Agreement the party polled 9.2% and won eight seats. After the elections Alliance entered the power sharing Northern Ireland Executive. Oliver Napier became Legal Minister and Head of the Office of Law Reform and Bob Cooper took the junior role of Minister for Manpower Services.


title: Alliance Party of Northern Ireland

text: In its manifesto for the elections to the Northern Ireland Constitutional Convention in 1975, the Alliance Party stated "Alliance supports the constitutional position of Northern Ireland as an integral part of the United Kingdom. We know that this belief is shared by the overwhelming majority of our people and that provocative debate about it has been the primary cause of all our most fundamental troubles. The link is in the best economic and social interests of all the people of Northern Ireland, and we will maintain that only the people of Northern Ireland have the right to decide any change by voting in a referendum."


title: Alliance Party of Northern Ireland

text: Alliance's vote increased significantly in the 1977 local elections when it obtained 14.4% of the vote and had 74 Councillors elected. In 1979, Party Leader Oliver Napier came closer than Alliance had previously come to electing a Westminster MP, polling just 928 votes short of Peter Robinson's winning total in East Belfast, albeit placing third in a three-way marginal.


title: Alliance Party of Northern Ireland

text: Alliance was seriously damaged by the 1981 Irish Hunger Strike, which deeply polarised Northern Ireland politics, and led to the emergence of Sinn Féin as a serious political force. The party supported the 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement, and despite claims that this would fatally damage its soft unionist support, Alliance rebounded to pick up 10.0% of the vote in Northern Ireland in the 1987 United Kingdom general election.


title: Alliance Party of Northern Ireland

text: Its new leader, John Alderdice, polled 32.0% of the vote in East Belfast, while Alliance came within 15,000 votes of both the Democratic Unionist Party and Sinn Féin across Northern Ireland. In 1996 Alderdice accepted a peerage, becoming the Alliance Party's only representation in Parliament. Lord Alderdice took the Liberal Democrat whip on wider UK and European issues but remained free from the whip's control on issues impacting Northern Ireland.


title: Alliance Party of Northern Ireland

text: In 1988, in Alliance's keynote post-Anglo Irish Agreement document, "Governing with Consent", Alderdice called for a devolved power-sharing government. Throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s, Alliance's vote stabilised at between 7% and 10%. After the IRA and loyalist ceasefires in 1994, Alliance became the first non-nationalist party to enter into talks with Sinn Féin, as an active participant in the Northern Ireland peace process negotiations leading to the Good Friday Agreement, which it strongly supported. Alliance polled poorly in the 1996 elections for the Northern Ireland Forum, and the 1998 election for the Northern Ireland Assembly winning around 6.5% of the vote each time. This did enable the party to win six seats in the Assembly, although this was somewhat of a let-down given that it had been expected to do much better.


title: Alliance Party of Northern Ireland

text: John Alderdice resigned as party leader in 1998 to take up the post of the Assembly's Presiding Officer. He was replaced by Seán Neeson, who himself resigned as party leader in September 2001. Neeson was replaced by David Ford, a member of the Assembly for South Antrim.


title: Alliance Party of Northern Ireland

text: It was predicted that Alliance would suffer electorally as a new centrist challenger established itself in Northern Irish politics, the Northern Ireland Women's Coalition. Another problem for the APNI was that the rules of the Assembly require major votes (such as the election of the First Minister and deputy First Minister) to have the support of both a majority of unionist and nationalist MLAs, thus diminishing the importance of parties such as Alliance which are not aligned to either of these two blocs.


title: Alliance Party of Northern Ireland

text: In the 2003 Assembly elections, Alliance held all their seats, while the Women's Coalition lost both of theirs. Alliance's vote fell to just 3.7%. In the European Parliament Elections in 2004, Alliance gave strong support to Independent candidate John Gilliland who polled 6.6% of the vote, the highest for a non-communal candidate in a European election since 1979. In the early years of the peace process, the centre ground was relentlessly squeezed in Northern Ireland politics. The support for Gilliland's candidature, which was also supported by parties such as the Workers' Party and Northern Ireland Conservatives, reflected a desire to reunite the fragmented and weakened non-communal bloc in Northern Ireland politics.


title: Alliance Party of Northern Ireland

text: In the 5 May 2005 United Kingdom general election, they contested 12 seats and polled 3.9% of the vote. In the simultaneous elections to Northern Ireland's local authorities, they polled 5.0% of first preference votes and had 30 Councillors elected, a gain of two seats relative to the previous elections.


title: Alliance Party of Northern Ireland

text: The 2006–2007 period saw some signs of an Alliance upturn, topping the poll and gaining a seat in a by-election for Coleraine Borough Council.


title: Alliance Party of Northern Ireland

text: In the 2007 Northern Ireland Assembly elections, Alliance put in a strong media campaign and polled 5.2%, up from 3.6% in the previous election and gaining a seat in Belfast South following the successful candidature of Anna Lo, the first ethnic Chinese public representative in a national assembly anywhere in Western Europe. In an election cycle where many pundits had predicted that the Alliance Party would struggle to hold on to the six seats it won in the 2003 election, the party pulled off a credible performance which included Deputy Leader Naomi Long doubling her share of the vote in Belfast East.


title: Alliance Party of Northern Ireland

text: In 2008, during the deadlock between Sinn Féin and the DUP over the devolution of policing, the two parties came to an agreement that the Minister of Justice would not come from either party. The Alliance Party was the obvious choice but party leader David Ford said "it's a very definite and a very emphatic no". Ford further stated, "this executive is incompetent, it's time they got on with doing the job that they were set up to do". Following further negotiations, Ford assumed office on 12 April 2010.


title: Alliance Party of Northern Ireland

text: At the 2009 European elections, Alliance candidate Ian Parsley achieved the party's best European election vote share in 30 years with 5.5% of the vote.


title: Alliance Party of Northern Ireland

text: In the 2010 general election, the party won its first seat in Westminster, with Naomi Long taking the seat of sitting First Minister Peter Robinson. The 2011 Northern Ireland Assembly Election resulted in eight Assembly members being returned with a gain in Belfast East. It overtook the UUP on Belfast City Council.


title: Alliance Party of Northern Ireland

text: In a poll conducted in November 2012, Alliance (on 11.6%) overtook the UUP (11.4%) for the first time.


title: Alliance Party of Northern Ireland

text: During the 2016 elections to the Assembly, in spite of initially confident predications from David Ford that Alliance would see a surplus of up to 11 seats, the party's share of the popular vote stagnated somewhat, from 7.7% in 2011 to 7.0%. Ultimately, its 8 MLAs from their original respective constituencies were returned to Stormont for the fifth Assembly term. Ford later resigned as Alliance Party leader on 6 October 2016, on his 15th anniversary as leader of the party.


title: Alliance Party of Northern Ireland

text: On 26 October 2016, Naomi Long officially became the new leader of the Alliance Party. In the snap 2017 Assembly election, Alliance increased its vote share to 9.1% and retained all eight of their MLA seats in a reduced Assembly. For the 2017 general election, the party advocated a confirmatory referendum on the Brexit withdrawal agreement and remaining in the European Single Market. In April 2018, the party joined the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe Party as an associate member.


title: Alliance Party of Northern Ireland

text: Alliance increased its vote share by 5 percentage points in the 2019 local elections and broke out of its traditional Greater Belfast heartlands by taking seats on Armagh, Banbridge and Craigavon Borough Council and Derry City & Strabane District Council where the party had not previously been represented. During the election campaign, the party had urged a break from "orange and green politics" and was vocal in its opposition to Brexit using the slogan "Demand Better".


title: Alliance Party of Northern Ireland

text: In the 2019 European election, Naomi Long became the Alliance Party's first ever MEP, receiving the second of three seats allocated to Northern Ireland and securing the best ever result for Alliance with 18.5% of first-preference votes.


title: Alliance Party of Northern Ireland

text: The party greatly increased its vote share at the 2019 general election, from 7.9% to 16.8% of Northern Ireland, over-taking the SDLP and UUP to come third overall. The party re-gained a seat in the House of Commons (North Down, previously held by the retiring independent Sylvia Hermon), and was second in another four constituencies.


title: Alliance Party of Northern Ireland

text: Long became Stormont's justice minister in January 2020, holding the position throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. In March 2022, Long told the Alliance Party conference in Belfast that the DUP and Sinn Féin were "addicted to crisis and conflict", and hoped that her party could bring an end to the "binary system" at Stormont. Alliance fought the 2022 Northern Ireland Assembly election on a platform of reforming the Stormont institutions, health transformation, integrated education, a Green New Deal and tackling paramilitarism. The Alliance Party would go on to win the third highest number of seats in the Northern Ireland Assembly, 4.5% more of the vote than they did in the 2017 election and also gaining at least nine seats. In all, the 2022 election saw the Alliance Party win 17 seats in the Northern Ireland Assembly, more than double the number of seats than what the party previously had after the 2017 Northern Ireland Assembly election.


title: Alliance Party of Northern Ireland

text: Over the past 40 years and particularly since the mid-1990s, Alliance's political philosophy has veered away from non-sectarian unionism towards a more liberal, neutral position on the question of either a united Ireland or continued Union with Great Britain. Alliance supports the Good Friday Agreement as a basis that can be used to manage the conflict whilst working to ultimately create a non-sectarian political system for Northern Ireland. It believes that the consociational power-sharing structure established by the agreement may not be capable of providing long-term stability, citing various reservations such as the entrenchment of pre-existing divisions as well as the inability to adapt to demographic changes. Its 2022 manifesto stated "Alliance supports the Good Friday Agreement, and endorses its underlying principles, its structures, and its interlocking relationships. However, we have always supported reform of the structures of government and, in light of recent developments, the case for reform is stronger than ever."


title: Alliance Party of Northern Ireland

text: The Alliance Party was founded by moderate Unionists in the New Ulster Movement in April 1970 in response to the emergence of the Troubles. As Alliance viewed the situation, the major problem of Northern Ireland was the division between Protestants and Catholics. It contended that the turmoil had its origins in that division and not in the partition of Ireland. The party's founding members resolved to change the "traditional mould" of sectarian politics in Northern Ireland, by launching a party deliberately set out to win support from both sections of the population. The party's founding principles were an attempt to address the "fundamental fears" of Protestants being coerced into a united Ireland, and of Catholics being condemned to second-class citizenship within Northern Ireland.


title: Alliance Party of Northern Ireland

text: The distinguishing feature of Alliance is its belief in the legitimacy of a distinctive Northern Irish community, one that has more in common than what divides it, with most inhabitants speaking a common language, sharing some form of Christianity, and not separated by distinguishable racial or physical characteristics. Alliance does not view unionism and nationalism as distinct communities, but as "political positions". Furthermore, Alliance sees identity as an individual matter, one that is fluid and open to change over time; In a 2014 document the Alliance stated:


title: Alliance Party of Northern Ireland

text: Because of this stance, Alliance is at times referred to as representing a "third tradition" or "third force" within Northern Irish politics that is outside of Nationalism and Unionism.


title: Alliance Party of Northern Ireland

text: As Alliance have moved to an ideologically liberal perspective, and Northern Ireland society has become more diverse, support for diversity has become a key Alliance platform, with Anna Lo MLA elected as the first ethnically East Asian parliamentarian in Northern Ireland and the party promoting a number of openly gay spokespeople. In July 2005, Seamus Close, then an MLA and Lisburn councillor for the party and its former deputy leader, proposed that the Lisburn Council deny gay couples access to the council's designated wedding facility if they were seeking a civil partnership under the Civil Partnership Act 2004. The council adopted his recommendation, although it was later reversed on legal advice. His position ran against Alliance policy, which had been strongly supportive of the introduction of civil partnership laws, and he was publicly criticised by other senior party members. The then party chair and future MLA, Lisburn councillor Trevor Lunn, who had also opposed the use of the wedding facility for civil partnerships, resigned as chair later that year, stating that "I always thought the Alliance Party was a broad enough church that we could support some difference of opinion. But it appears that in terms of equality issues, that we just can't." The party's liberal ideology has also pushed the party towards a general favourable position on abortion, immigration and LGBT rights. The party also supports an integrated education system where Catholics and Protestants are educated together, improving healthcare in Northern Ireland, and legislating a Green New Deal.


title: Alliance Party of Northern Ireland

text: One trend over time with Alliance's vote is that in contrast to 1973, when Alliance support was dispersed across Northern Ireland, Alliance has increasingly polled best in the Greater Belfast hinterland. For example, the 1977 elections, while representing an overall increase for Alliance, masked a sharp decline in vote share in many Western councils. In the 12 councils covering the former counties of Londonderry, Tyrone, Armagh and Fermanagh their vote only rose in Omagh, it remained static in Magherafelt and fell in the other ten councils (these being Fermanagh, Dungannon, Cookstown, Strabane, Londonderry, Limavady, Coleraine, Newry & Mourne, Armagh and Craigavon.) Overall in these 12 councils the number of Alliance councillors fell from 18 in 1973 to ten in 1977. In contrast, in the rest of the region Alliance increased their number of councillors from 45 to 60.


title: Alliance Party of Northern Ireland

text: The party won eight council seats across Belfast in 1985. Although that has now recovered to six (from three in 2001), the six are entirely from South and East Belfast. Both seats in the Falls Road area of West Belfast were lost after the death and resignation of their councillors there in 1987 while their seat in North Belfast was lost in 1993, regained four years later and lost again in 2001. In the neighbouring areas of Dunmurry Cross (Twinbrook/Dunmurry) and Macedon (Rathcoole) Alliance lost their councillors in 1989 and 1994 respectively; on the other hand, the party won three out of seven seats in Victoria in 2011, the first time since 1977 that the party had won three council seats in the same electoral area.


title: Alliance Party of Northern Ireland

text: By 2005, the party had councillors in only half of Northern Ireland's 18 constituencies. However, this rose to 13 in 2011 after gains in Coleraine, Craigavon, Down and elsewhere. Having had around 30 councillors for a decade, the party won 44 seats in 2011. In the 2010 elections, the Alliance gained the Westminster seat of Belfast East, and gained a 22.6% swing there; in 2011 it re-emphasised that result, winning two out of the six MLA seats available.


title: Alliance Party of Northern Ireland

text: In 2014 the party gained one seat in the Belfast Council area, this coming in North Belfast when Nuala McAllister ousted Sinn Féin. Outside of the capital the party's vote held up, and with the exception of Patrick Brown winning in Rowallane, there were no outstanding results.


title: Alliance Party of Northern Ireland

text: In the 2015 Westminster elections the party directed their resources at retaining the East Belfast seat Naomi Long had gained from the DUP in 2010. The party lost the seat to the DUP by 2,500 votes, after a Unionist pact, whilst the Alliance vote increased by 6% across the constituency.


title: Alliance Party of Northern Ireland

text: The 2019 Northern Ireland local elections saw a substantial increase in the Alliance vote and resulted in 53 councillors being elected, with the only council not having any Alliance representation being in Mid Ulster. The balance of power in the capital of Belfast, is held by the party after an increase to 10 seats and becoming the 3rd party, at Belfast City Hall.


title: Alliance Party of Northern Ireland

text: Several Alliance members have held the position of Lord Mayor of Belfast, including Long and (from 2021 to 2022), Kate Nicholl.


title: Alliance Party of Northern Ireland

text: Alliance Youth is the party's youth wing and student movement. Alliance members who are under 31 years old automatically become members of Alliance Youth if they choose to share their details at registration.


title: Tifa Lockhart

text: Tifa is the childhood friend of Cloud Strife, the protagonist of "Final Fantasy VII". She is owner of the 7th Heaven bar in the slums of Midgar and a member of the eco-terrorist group AVALANCHE. She convinces Cloud Strife to join the group to keep him close and safe, and later assists him in saving the Planet from the game's villain, Sephiroth. Titles in the "Compilation of Final Fantasy VII" later expanded upon her character, such as in "Advent Children", where she attempts to convince Cloud to let go of his self-imposed guilt and move on with his life after Sephiroth's defeat.


title: Tifa Lockhart

text: Named the pin-up girl of the "cyber generation" by "The New York Times", Tifa has been compared to Lara Croft as an example of a strong, independent and attractive female character in video games. Media have repeatedly praised both the character's strength and appearance and described her as one of the best female characters in gaming.


title: Tifa Lockhart

text: Designed by Tetsuya Nomura, Tifa was not present in early versions of "Final Fantasy VII", as initially, the game was to have only three playable characters; the protagonist Cloud Strife, Aerith Gainsborough and Barret Wallace. However, during a phone call to project director Yoshinori Kitase, it was suggested that at some point in the game, one of the main characters should die and after much discussion as to whether it should be Barret or Aerith, the producers chose Aerith. Nomura later joked that this was his idea, so as to enable him to introduce Tifa into the game. The notion of having two concurrent heroines and having the hero waver between them was something Kitase liked, describing it as something new in the "Final Fantasy" series. Nomura describes Tifa's character in "Advent Children" as having several dimensions, calling her "like a mother, a sweetheart and a close ally in battle" and "remarkably strong, not only emotionally, but physically as well."


title: Tifa Lockhart

text: Tifa was designed to use the "monk" character class that appears in previous games in the series. She has long, black hair in a style resembling a dolphin's tail at the tip and simple and monotone garments, consisting of a white crop top and black miniskirt. She also wears red boots and gloves, with black sleeves extending from wrist to elbow; her skirt is held up by a pair of narrow black suspenders and a large metal guard covers her left elbow. She stands about 5 feet 6 inches (167 cm) tall and has measurements of 36-24-35" (92-60-88 cm).


title: Tifa Lockhart

text: Initially, Nomura had difficulty deciding whether to go with a miniskirt or long pants. Seeking input, he passed his sketches around Square's offices and the majority of the staff members approved of the miniskirt design. This additionally served as a contrast to Aerith, whose "long skirt" was her trademark. The attire was explained as giving her freedom of movement, due to her hand-to-hand combat specialty and the skirt, referred to as "quite short [...] giving a considerable degree of exposure," was kept as a staple of her alternate costumes. The developers noted that due to her figure, her otherwise plain garments took on a pleasant appearance.


title: Tifa Lockhart

text: When producing "", co-director Takeshi Nozue had difficulty developing a framework for Tifa's body that was "balanced, yet showed off her feminine qualities." Her outfit was redesigned at this point, with emphasis on expressing those qualities, while still being pleasing to the eye. A white tank top with black zipped up vest covers her front, a pink ribbon wraps around her left biceps and boots cover her feet. A black buttoned-up skirt covers her thighs and she wears shorts beneath, with a piece of cloth similar to a coattail extending from the back of the skirt's waistband and ending at her ankles. She no longer uses suspenders to hold up her skirt and she wears her gloves only during the film's fight scenes. Her hairstyle was changed to end at the middle of her back, with the removal of the dolphin tail from her original design. This alteration was because of the difficulty of animating her original length of hair, as well as problems that arose due to its black color and lighting.


title: Tifa Lockhart

text: For "Final Fantasy VII Remake", Square modified Tifa's original appearance to make her look more realistic as members from the staff realized her design would not fit fight scenes. As a result, she was given black undergarments and a tank top, giving her a sporty feel. The development team wanted to avoid the appearance of favoring either Tifa or Aerith so they deliberately tried to match their screen time. Both Tifa and Aerith were positioned as heroes in "Remake".


title: Tifa Lockhart

text: Nomura noted that he liked Ayumi Ito as an actress and wished to work with her on "Advent Children". With Aerith's voice actor already decided, Nomura asked Ito to voice Tifa, feeling her "husky voice" would offer a good contrast to Maaya Sakamoto's soft-spoken Aerith. Although Tifa's updated design had already been finalized, Ito's casting motivated them to blend many traits from the voice actress into the character's appearance. Cloud's voice actor Takahiro Sakurai stated that while he recorded most of his work individually, he performed alongside Ito for a few scenes. These recordings left him feeling "deflated", as the "exchanges he has with Tifa [could] be pretty painful". Ayaka Mitsumoto voiced Tifa in the flashback from the remake where a teenage Tifa interacts with Cloud. Finding a voice suitable for the young Tifa made Nomura and the staff worried in the recording of the title.


title: Tifa Lockhart

text: English voice actress Rachael Leigh Cook has stated in an interview for "Kingdom Hearts II" that she enjoys playing Tifa and described her as "very strong physical and emotionally, but also very sensitive" and "very multi-dimensional". In voicing the character, Cook listened to Ito's recording as a guide to how the character sounds. Following "Advent Children", Cook thanked Nomura for the film he created as she enjoyed it. Britt Baron voiced Tifa in "Final Fantasy VII Remake". As a child, Tifa was voiced by Glory Curda.


title: Tifa Lockhart

text: Introduced in "Final Fantasy VII", Tifa is the childhood friend of Cloud Strife and owner of the 7th Heaven bar in the slums of Midgar, a technologically advanced metropolis owned by the Shinra Electric Power Company. She is also a member of the eco-terrorist organization AVALANCHE, who oppose Shinra's extraction and use of Mako, the planet's spiritual energy, as a power source. She convinces Cloud to join the group to keep a closer eye on him after noticing his personality has changed, and she follows him in pursuit of the game's antagonist, Sephiroth. Unable to keep him from being manipulated by Sephiroth, she helps him recover after his mind becomes fractured and they realize their mutual feelings for one another, working together to defeat Sephiroth.


title: Tifa Lockhart

text: In a formative memory of their time as children, Tifa and Cloud had decided to follow a path to a mountain near their hometown of Nibelheim. However, they were both injured and Tifa was in a coma for a week, with her father holding Cloud responsible for the incident. Cloud eventually left to join Shinra's SOLDIER program in order to become stronger, but it is later revealed that he did it primarily to attract her attention. In response, she requested if she were ever in danger, he would return to save her. Years later, during Sephiroth's rampage in Nibelheim, Cloud rescued Tifa after she was wounded by Sephiroth. Tifa was taken to safety by her martial arts instructor and eventually arrived in Midgar, meeting AVALANCHE's leader, Barret Wallace. She joined AVALANCHE to get revenge for the destruction of her home. Shortly before the beginning of "Final Fantasy VII", she encountered an incoherent Cloud at the city's train station and convinced him to work for Barret, to keep him close and watch over him.


title: Tifa Lockhart

text: In early drafts of "Final Fantasy VII", Tifa was a background character. Her role in AVALANCHE was to add support behind the scenes and to cheer everyone up after missions, as well as having a particular fondness for Cloud. She was supposed to have a large scar on her back caused by Cloud, and partial amnesia from the incident when she had received it. A scene intended to imply herself and Cloud having sex was proposed by Masato Kato, one of the event planners, but it was replaced with a toned-down version by Kitase in which a risqué line is followed by a fade to black. In an interview, Nojima stated that none of the staff thought the scene would become such an issue at the time.


title: Tifa Lockhart

text: In 2005, she appeared in the CGI film "", set two years after the events of the game. She tries to give emotional support to Cloud, urging him to come to terms with the unwarranted guilt he places upon himself. She also takes care of Barret's adopted daughter Marlene and an orphan, Denzel. During the film, she duels against one of the antagonists, Loz, and later she battles the summoned creature Bahamut SIN with the team. Script writer Kazushige Nojima described her role in the film as "very much like any woman who's been left behind by a man," stating that while they did not want her to appear clingy, they wanted to portray that she was emotionally hurt by Cloud's departure. In the film's initial draft, she was intended to have a more central role in the then-short film, which only featured herself, Cloud and several children, with the story revolving around a note being delivered to him.


title: Tifa Lockhart

text: Tifa features in the prequel games "" and "", as well as the OVA "". Each of these appearances show different perspectives on the destruction of Nibelheim. The novella "Case of Tifa", written as part of the "On the Way to a Smile" series, is a story set between the original game and "Advent Children". Told from her point of view, the story details how she creates a new 7th Heaven bar in the city of Edge and attempts to hold onto the concept of a normal family with herself and Cloud, despite him beginning to isolate himself from others. Tifa also appears briefly in the game "", set one year after the events of "Advent Children" in which she helps the protagonist Vincent Valentine defend the planet against the monster Omega WEAPON; in the game's epilogue, she discuss Vincent's disappearance.


title: Tifa Lockhart

text: Tifa features prominently as a playable character in "Final Fantasy VII Remake", which covers only the Midgar portion of the original game. By focusing solely on Midgar, the development team was able to include additional scenes that developed the relationship between Tifa and Aerith.


title: Tifa Lockhart

text: Outside of the "Compilation of Final Fantasy VII", Tifa features in the fighting game "Ehrgeiz" as an unlockable character and an optional boss. She is a playable character in the electronic board games "Itadaki Street Special" and "Itadaki Street Portable". In "Kingdom Hearts II", she appears in her "Advent Children" attire, searching for Cloud and later fighting various Heartless, the series' monsters. She was originally planned to appear in the "Final Mix" version of the original "Kingdom Hearts", but due to time constraints the staff members chose to incorporate Sephiroth instead. Whereas in the game Cloud goes missing after a battle with Sephiroth, in the manga adaptation, Tifa successfully finds him in Hollow Bastion. In 2015, she was added to the mobile game "" as a playable character.


title: Tifa Lockhart

text: Tifa is one of the playable characters in the fighting game "Dissidia 012 Final Fantasy", which features characters from various "Final Fantasy" games. She is featured in her "Final Fantasy VII" outfit, but the player has access to her "Advent Children" form and a third costume that is shown during Tifa's appearances in Nibelheim. The first print run of the game features another form based on artwork by Yoshitaka Amano. In "LittleBigPlanet 2", Tifa is featured as a downloadable character model, and as a Mii costume and spirit in "Super Smash Bros. Ultimate".


title: Tifa Lockhart

text: Korean singer Ivy portrayed the character in a 2007 music video for the song "유혹의 소나타" ("Sonata of Temptation"). Square Enix sued for plagiarism as the video recreated shot for shot a fight scene from "Advent Children". Both civil and criminal courts agreed, banning the video from airing and imposing hefty fines on the director and agency.


title: Tifa Lockhart

text: Since her introduction, critics reacted positively to Tifa. "The New York Times" featured her as the pin-up girl of for the "cyber generation." while "The Beaumont Enterprise" cited Tifa as an example of a strong female character in video games in the wake of Lara Croft from the "Tomb Raider" series. "IGN" noted that her strength and complex narrative allowed her to transcend superficial readings of her character based on her appearance. Tifa's romantic relationship with Cloud was also praised though some sites noted there were arguments between fans about whether or not Aerith was more suitable to be Cloud's love interest. In a retrospective, Polygon analyzed several arguments fans have made about Cloud's preferred partner and how each side misrepresents the other's chosen heroine. Polygon concludes that there is no winning couple as, after killing Sephiroth, Cloud has a vision of Aerith when Tifa tries to help him and the duo agrees to meet her again.


title: Tifa Lockhart

text: Tifa's appearances in other media also received praise. For "Advent Children", Kotaku and Destructoid believed the film's story primarily focused on the relationship between Tifa and Cloud due to the latter's guilt and inability to move on. With "Remake", "Comic Book Resources" looked forward to her and Cloud's relationship and the differences from the original game. Kotaku praised "Remake" for toning down the love triangle that fans often mentioned and instead made Tifa and Aerith friendlier with each other. Destructoid enjoyed her combo-based gameplay style due to how different it is from the rest of the playable characters. Siliconera enjoyed that "Remake" made time to expand Tifa's characterization and role in the story. UGO also praised her inclusion in the fighting game "Ehrgeiz". Rachael Leigh Cook was praised by both IGN and Anime News Network for her portrayal as Tifa in the film.


title: Tifa Lockhart

text: Tifa has been a popular character, often appearing near the top of fan polls. A significant part of Tifa's reception has focused on her sex appeal; "Electronic Gaming Monthly" awarded her the "Hottest Game Babe" of 1997, calling her "as well-proportioned as they come," and praising her as a viable alternative to Lara Croft. The IGN staff attributed her placement on their list to her breasts, though in a later 2009 article admitted that such reactions may sound sexist and overlook other aspects of the character.


title: Baden-Baden

text: Baden-Baden () is a spa town in the state of Baden-Württemberg, south-western Germany, at the north-western border of the Black Forest mountain range on the small river Oos, ten kilometres (six miles) east of the Rhine, the border with France, and forty kilometres (twenty-five miles) north-east of Strasbourg, France.


title: Baden-Baden

text: In 2021, the town became part of the transnational UNESCO World Heritage Site under the name "Great Spa Towns of Europe", because of its famous spas and architecture that exemplifies the popularity of spa towns in Europe in the 18th through 20th centuries.


title: Baden-Baden

text: The springs at Baden-Baden were known to the Romans as ' ("The Waters") and ' ("Aurelia-of-the-Waters") after M. Aurelius Severus Alexander Augustus.


title: Baden-Baden

text: In modern German, ' is a noun meaning "bathing" but Baden, the original name of the town, derives from an earlier plural form of ' ("bath"). (Modern German uses the plural form ".) As with the English placename "Bath", other Badens are at hot springs throughout Central Europe. The current doubled name arose to distinguish it from the others, particularly Baden near Vienna in Austria and Baden near Zürich in Switzerland. The original Margraviate of Baden (1112-1535) split into several territories, including Baden-Baden and Baden-Durlach. The name "Baden-Baden" distinguished the Margraviate of Baden-Baden (1535–1771), from the Margraviate of Baden-Durlach. "Baden-Baden" thus means the town of Baden in the territory of Baden, whereas the name of the Margraviate of Baden-Baden meant "the Margraviate of Baden with its princely seat at Baden". Baden-Baden formally got its current name in 1931.


title: Baden-Baden

text: Baden-Baden lies in a valley of the Northern Black Forest in southwestern Germany. The western districts lie within the Upper Rhine Plain. The highest mountain of Baden-Baden is the Badener Höhe (), which is part of the Black Forest National Park. The old town lies on the side of a hill on the right bank of the Oos. Since the 19th century, the principal resorts have been located on the other side of the river. There are 29 natural springs in the area, varying in temperature from . The water is rich in salt and flows from artesian wells under Florentine Hill at a rate of 341 litres (90 gallons) per minute and is conveyed through pipes to the town's baths.


title: Baden-Baden

text: Roman settlement at Baden-Baden has been dated as far back as the emperor Hadrian, but on dubious authority. The known ruins of the Roman bath were rediscovered just below the New Castle in 1847 and date to the reign of Caracalla (AD 210s), who visited the area to relieve his arthritic aches. The facilities were used by the Roman garrison in Strasbourg.


title: Baden-Baden

text: The town fell into ruin but its church was first constructed in the 7th century. By 1112, it was the seat of the Margraviate of Baden. The Lichtenthal Convent (') was founded in 1254. The margraves initially used Hohenbaden Castle (the Old Castle, '), whose ruins still occupy the summit above the town, but they completed and moved to the New Castle (") in 1479. The Margraviate was divided in 1535, with Baden-Baden becoming the capital of the Margraviate of Baden-Baden, while the other portion became the Margraviate of Baden-Durlach. The Baden-Baden witch trials, an investigating encompassing the entire territory and resulting in hundreds of verdicts, took place in 1627-1631. Baden suffered severely during the Thirty Years' War, particularly at the hands of the French, who plundered it in 1643. They returned to occupy the city in 1688 at the onset of the Nine Years' War, burning it to the ground the next year. The margravine Sibylla rebuilt the New Castle in 1697, but the margrave Louis William removed his seat to Rastatt in 1706. The Stiftskirche was rebuilt in 1753 and houses the tombs of several of the margraves.


title: Baden-Baden

text: The town began its recovery in the late 18th century, serving as a refuge for émigrés from the French Revolution. The town was frequented during the Second Congress of Rastatt in 1797–99 and became popular after the visit of the Prussian queen in the early 19th century. She came for medicinal reasons, as the waters were recommended for gout, rheumatism, paralysis, neuralgia, skin disorders, and stones. The Ducal government subsequently subsidized the resort's development. The town became a meeting place for celebrities, who visited the hot springs and the town's other amenities: luxury hotels, the Spielbank Casino, horse races, and the gardens of the Lichtentaler Allee. Guests included Queen Victoria, Wilhelm I, and Berlioz. The pumproom ("") was completed in 1842. The Grand Duchy's railway's mainline reached Baden in 1845. Reaching its zenith under Napoleon III in the 1850s and '60s, Baden became "Europe's summer capital". With a population of around , the town's size could quadruple during the tourist season, with the French, British, Russians, and Americans all well represented. (French tourism fell off following the Franco-Prussian War.)


title: Baden-Baden

text: The theater was completed in 1861 and a Greek church with a gilt dome was erected on the Michaelsberg in 1863 to serve as the tomb of the teenage son of the prince of Moldavia Mihail Sturdza after he died during a family vacation. A Russian Orthodox church was also subsequently erected. The casino was closed for a time in the 1870s.


title: Baden-Baden

text: During the Second World War, 3.1% of the houses in Baden-Baden were completely destroyed by bombs and 125 civilians were killed. 5.8% of the houses were heavily damaged by bombs. Lichtenthal, a residential area in the southwest of the town, was hit by bombs and Saint Bonifatius Church was severely damaged on 11 March 1943. Balg, a residential area in the northeast of Baden-Baden, was hit by bombs on 17 December 1944. On 30 December 1944 one third of the buildings of Oos (i.e. about 300 houses), a residential area in the north of the town, was destroyed or heavily damaged by bombs and Saint Dionysius Church was severely damaged as well. On 2 January 1945 the railway station of Oos and various barracks on Schwarzwald Road were heavily damaged by bombs.


title: Baden-Baden

text: After World War II, Baden-Baden became the headquarters of the French occupation forces in Germany as well as of the Südwestfunk, one of Germany's large public broadcasting stations, which is now part of Südwestrundfunk. From 23–28 September 1981, the XIth Olympic Congress took place in Baden-Baden's ". The Festspielhaus Baden-Baden, Germany's largest opera and concert house, opened in 1998.


title: Baden-Baden

text: CFB Baden-Soellingen, a military airfield built in the 1950s in the Upper Rhine Plain, west of downtown Baden-Baden, was converted into a civil airport in the 1990s. Karlsruhe/Baden-Baden Airport, or Baden Airpark is now the second-largest airport in Baden-Württemberg by number of passengers.


title: Baden-Baden

text: In 1981 Baden-Baden hosted the Olympic Congress, which later has made the town awarded the designation Olympic town.


title: Baden-Baden

text: Climate in this area has mild differences between highs and lows, and there is precipitation year round. The Köppen Climate Classification subtype for this climate is "" (Marine West Coast Climate/Oceanic climate).


title: Baden-Baden

text: Baden-Baden is a German spa town. The city offers many options for sports enthusiasts; golf and tennis are both popular in the area. Horse races take place each May, August and October at nearby Iffezheim. The countryside is ideal for hiking and mountain climbing. In the winter Baden-Baden is a skiing destination. There is an 18-hole golf course in Fremersberg.


title: Baden-Baden

text: There are two stations providing intercity bus services: one next to the main railway station and one at the airport.


title: Baden-Baden

text: Karlsruhe/Baden-Baden Airport is an airport located in Baden-Baden that also serves the city of Karlsruhe. It is Baden-Württemberg's second-largest airport after Stuttgart Airport, and the 18th-largest in Germany with 1,110,500 passengers as of 2016 and mostly serves low-cost and leisure flights.


title: Baden-Baden

text: Baden featured in Tolstoy's "Anna Karenina" (under an alias) and Turgenev's "Smoke". Dostoyevsky wrote "The Gambler" while compulsively gambling at the town's casino.


title: Baden-Baden

text: The novel "Summer in Baden-Baden" by Leonid Tsypkin is inspired in Dostoyevsky's visit to this resort.


title: Baden-Baden

text: The 1975 film "The Romantic Englishwoman" was filmed on location in Baden-Baden, featuring the Brenner's Park Hotel particularly prominently. The 1997 Bollywood movie "Dil To Pagal Hai" was also shot in the town.


title: Baden-Baden

text: Baden-Baden is the subject of a pop song by Finnish songwriter Chisu of how the economic woes of Finland could be solved by selling bottled tears to Europe (specifically Baden-Baden).


title: Escalator

text: An escalator is a moving staircase which carries people between floors of a building or structure. It consists of a motor-driven chain of individually linked steps on a track which cycle on a pair of tracks which keep the step tread horizontal.


title: Escalator

text: Escalators are often used around the world in places where lifts would be impractical, or they can be used in conjunction with them. Principal areas of usage include department stores, shopping malls, airports, transit systems (railway/railroad stations), convention centers, hotels, arenas, stadiums and public buildings.


title: Escalator

text: Escalators have the capacity to move large numbers of people. They have no waiting interval (except during very heavy traffic). They can be used to guide people toward main exits or special exhibits and may be weatherproofed for outdoor use. A non-functional escalator can function as a normal staircase, whereas many other methods of transport become useless when they break down or lose power.


title: Escalator

text: Escalators typically rise at an angle of about 30 degrees from the ground. They move at – like moving walkways – and may traverse vertical distances in excess of . Most modern escalators have single-piece aluminum or stainless steel steps that move on a system of tracks in a continuous loop.


title: Escalator

text: Most countries require escalators to have moving handrails that keep pace with the movement of the steps as a safety measure. This helps riders steady themselves, especially when stepping onto the moving stairs. Occasionally a handrail moves at a slightly different speed from the steps, causing it to "creep" slowly forward or backward relative to the steps; it is only slippage and normal wear that causes such losses of synchronicity, and is not by design.


title: Escalator

text: The direction of escalator movement (up or down) can be permanently set, controlled manually depending on the predominant flow of the crowd, or controlled automatically. In some setups, the direction is controlled by whoever arrives first.


title: Escalator

text: Design factors include physical requirements, location, traffic patterns, safety considerations and aesthetics. Physical factors such as the distance to be spanned determine the length and pitch of the escalator, while factors such as the infrastructure's ability to provide support and power must be considered. How upward and downward traffic is separated and load/unload areas are other important considerations.


title: Escalator

text: Temporal traffic patterns must be anticipated. Some escalators need only to move people from one floor to another, but others may have specific requirements, such as funneling visitors towards exits or exhibits. The visibility and accessibility of the escalator to traffic is relevant. Designers need to account for the projected traffic volumes. For example, a single-width escalator traveling at about can move about 2000 people per hour, assuming that passengers ride single file. The carrying capacity of an escalator system is typically matched to the expected peak traffic demand. For example, escalators at transit stations must be designed to cater for the peak traffic flow discharged from a train, without excessive bunching at the escalator entrance.


title: Escalator

text: In this regard, escalators help manage the flow of people. For example, at many airports an unpaired escalator delivers passengers to an exit, with no means for anyone entering at the exit to access the concourse.


title: Escalator

text: Escalators are often built next to or around staircases that allow alternative travel between the same two floors. Elevators are necessary for disability access to floors serviced by escalators.