title: Tahmasp I

text: Relations with the Ottomans remained hostile until the revolt of Alqas Mirza, another one of Tahmasp's younger brothers, who had led the Safavid army during the 1534–35 Ottoman invasion and was governor of Shirvan. He led an unsuccessful revolt against Tahmasp, who conquered Derbant in the spring of 1547 and appointed his son Ismail as governor. Alqas fled to Crimea with his remaining forces and took refuge with Suleiman. He promised to restore Sunni Islam in Iran and encouraged the Sultan to lead another campaign against Tahmasp. The new invasion sought the quick capture of Tabriz in July 1548; it soon became clear, however, that Alqas Mirza's claims of support from all the Qizilbash leaders were untrue. The long campaign focused on looting, plundering Hamadan, Qom, and Kashan before being stopped at Isfahan. Tahmasp did not fight the exhausted Ottoman army but laid waste the entire region from Tabriz to the frontier; the Ottomans could not permanently occupy the captured lands, since they soon ran out of supplies.


title: Tahmasp I

text: Eventually, Alqas Mirza was captured on the battlefield and imprisoned in a fortress, where he died. Suleiman ended his campaign, and by the fall of 1549 the remaining Ottoman forces retreated. The Ottoman sultan launched his last campaign against the Safavids in May 1554, when Ismail Mirza (Tahmasp's son) invaded eastern Anatolia and defeated Erzerum governor Iskandar Pasha. Suleiman marched from Diyarbakr towards Armenian Karabakh and reconquered the lost lands. Tahmasp divided his army into four corps and sent each in a different direction, indicating a Safavid army that had grown much larger than it was in the previous wars. With Tahmasp's Safavids holding the advantage, Suleiman had to retreat. The Ottomans negotiated the Peace of Amasya, in which Tahmasp recognised Ottoman sovereignty in Mesopotamia and much of Kurdistan; furthermore, as an act of obeisance towards Sunni Islam and Sunnis, he banned the holding of (a festival commemorating the assassination of the second caliph Umar ibn al-Khattab) and expressing hatred towards the Rashidun caliphs, who are held dear by the Sunni Muslims. The Ottomans allowed Iranian pilgrims to travel freely to Mecca, Medina, Karbala, and Najaf. Through this treaty, Iran had time to increase its forces and resources as its western provinces had the opportunity to recuperate from the war. This peace also demarcated the Ottoman-Safavid frontier in the north-west without the cession of large areas of territory on the Safavid side. These terms, in circumstances favourable to the Safavids, were evidence of the frustration felt by Suleiman the Magnificent at his inability to inflict a greater defeat on the Safavids.


title: Tahmasp I

text: Tahmasp was interested in the Caucasus, especially Georgia, for two reasons: to reduce the influence of the Ostajlu tribe (who kept their lands in southern Georgia and Armenia after the 1526 civil war) and a desire for booty, similar to that of his father. Since the Georgians were mainly Christian, he used the pretext of (Islamic armed struggle against nonbelievers) to justify the invasion. Between 1540 and 1553, Tahmasp led four campaigns against the Georgian kingdoms. The Safavid army looted Tbilisi, including its churches and the wives and children of the nobility, in the first campaign. Tahmasp also forced the governor of Tbilisi, Golbad, to convert to Islam. The King of Kartli, Luarsab I (), managed to escape and went to hiding during Tahmasp's raiding. During his second invasion, ostensibly to ensure the stability of Georgian territory, he looted the farms and subjugated Levan of Kakheti (). One year before the Peace of Amasya in 1554, Tahmasp led his last military campaign into the Caucasus. Throughout his campaigns, he took many prisoners, and this time he brought 30,000 Georgians to Iran. Luarsab's mother, Nestan Darejan was captured during these campaigns, but committed suicide upon incarceration. The descendants of these prisoners formed a "third force" in the Safavid administration and bureaucracy with the Turkomans and Persians and became a main rival to the other two during the later years of the Safavid Empire. Although this "third force" came to power two generations later during the reign of Tahmasp's grandson, Abbas the Great (), it began infiltrating Tahmasp's army during the second quarter of his reign as (slave warriors) and (royal bodyguards of the shah) and became more influential at the apex of the Safavid empire.


title: Tahmasp I

text: In 1555, following the Peace of Amasya, eastern Georgia remained in Iranian hands and western Georgia was ruled by the Turks. Never again did Tahmasp appear on the Caucasus frontier after the treaty. Instead, the Governor of Georgia, Shahverdi Sultan, represented Safavid power north of the Aras River. Tahmasp sought to establish his dominance by imposing several Iranian political and social institutions and placing converts to Islam on the thrones of Kartli and Kakheti; one was Davud Khan, brother of Simon I of Kartli (). Son of Levan of Kakheti, Prince Jesse also appeared in Qazvin during the 1560s and converted to Islam. In return, Tahmasp granted him favours and gifts. The prince was given the old royal palace for his residence in Qazvin, and became the governor of Shaki and adjacent territories. The conversion of these Georgian princes did not dissuade the Georgian forces who tried to reconquer Tbilisi under Simon I and his father, Luarsab I of Kartli, in the Battle of Garisi; the battle ended in a stalemate, with Luarsab and the Safavid commander Shahverdi Sultan both slain in battle.


title: Tahmasp I

text: One of the most celebrated events of Tahmasp's reign was the visit of Humayun (), the eldest son of Babur () and emperor of the Mughal Empire, who faced rebellions by his brothers. Humayun fled to Herat, travelled through Mashhad, Nishapur, Sabzevar, and Qazvin, and met Tahmasp at Soltaniyeh in 1544. Tahmasp honoured Homayun as a guest and gave him an illustrated version of Saadi's "Gulistan" dating back to the reign of Abu Sa'id Mirza (), Humayun's great-grandfather; however, he refused to give him political assistance unless he converted to Shia Islam. Humayun reluctantly agreed, but reverted to Sunni Islam when he returned to India; however he did not force the Iranian Shias, who came with him to India, to convert. Tahmasp also demanded a "quid pro quo" in which the city of Kandahar would be given to his infant son, Morad Mirza. Humayun spent Nowruz in the Shah's court and left in 1545 with an army provided by Tahmasp to regain his lost lands; his first conquest was Kandahar, which he ceded to the young Safavid prince. Morad Mirza soon died, however, and the city became a bone of contention between the two empires: the Safavids claimed that it had been given to them in perpetuity, while the Mughals maintained that it had been an appanage that expired with the death of the prince. Tahmasp began the first Safavid expedition to Kandahar in 1558, after the death of Humayun, and reconquered the city.


title: Tahmasp I

text: Another notable visitor to Tahmasp's court was Şehzade Bayezid, the fugitive Ottoman prince who rebelled against his father, Suleiman the Magnificent, and went to the Shah in the autumn 1559 with an army of 10,000 to persuade him to begin a war against the Ottomans. Although he honoured Bayezid, Tahmasp did not want to disturb the Peace of Amasya. Suspecting that Bayezid was planning a coup, he had him arrested and returned to the Ottomans; Bayezid and his children were immediately executed.


title: Tahmasp I

text: Although Tahmasp rarely left Qazvin from the Peace of Amasya in 1555 to his death in 1576, he was still active during this period. A 1564 rebellion in Herat was suppressed by Masum Bek and the Khorasan governors, but the region remained troubled and was raided by the Uzbeks two years later. Tahmasp became seriously ill in 1574 and neared death twice in two months. Since he had not chosen a crown prince, the question of succession was raised by members of the royal family and Qizilbash leaders. His favourite son, Haydar Mirza, was supported by the Ustajlu tribe and the powerful Georgian court faction; the imprisoned prince Ismail Mirza was supported by Pari Khan Khanum, Tahmasp's influential daughter. The pro-Haydar faction tried to eliminate Ismail by winning the favour of the castellan of Qahqaheh Castle (where Ismail was imprisoned), but Pari Khan learned about the plot and informed Tahmasp; the shah, who was still fond of his son, ordered him to be guarded by Afshar musketeers.


title: Tahmasp I

text: Tahmasp, recovered from his illness, returned his attention to affairs of state. Remaining court tensions, however, triggered another civil war when the shah died on 14 May 1576 from poisoning. The poisoning was blamed on Abu Naser Gilani, a physician who attended Tahmasp when he was ill. According to "Tarikh-e Alam-ara-ye Abbasi", "He unwisely sought recognition of his superior status vis-à-vis the other physicians; as a result, when Tahmasp died, Abu Nasr was accused of treachery in the treatment he had prescribed, and he was put to death within the palace by members of the ". Tahmasp I had the longest reign of any member of the Safavid dynasty: nine days short of fifty-two years. He died without a designated heir and the two factions in his court clashed for the throne. Haydar Mirza was murdered not long after his father's death, and Ismail Mirza became king and was crowned Ismail II (). Less than two months after his enthronement, Ismail ordered a mass purge of all male members of the royal family. Only Mohammad Khodabanda, already nearly blind, and his three toddler sons survived this purge.


title: Tahmasp I

text: Tahmasp's reign after the civil wars between the Qizilbash leaders became a "personal rule" that sought to control Turkoman influence by empowering the Persian bureaucracy. The key change was the 1535 appointment of Qazi Jahan Qazvini, who extended diplomacy beyond Iran by establishing contact with the Portuguese, the Venetians, the Mughals, and the Shiite Deccan sultanates. English explorer Anthony Jenkinson, who was received at the Safavid court in 1562, also sought to promote trade. The Habsburgs were eager to ally with the Safavids against the Ottomans. In 1529, Ferdinand I () sent an envoy to Iran with the objective of a two-front attack on the Ottoman Empire the following year. The mission was unsuccessful, however, since the envoy took over a year to return. The first extant Safavid letters to a European power were sent in 1540 to Doge of Venice Pietro Lando (). In response, the Doge and the Great Council of Venice commissioned Michel Membré to visit the Safavid court. In 1540, he visited Tahmasp's encampment at Marand, near Tabriz. Membré's mission lasted for three years, during which, he wrote the "Relazione di Persia", one of the few European sources which describe Tahmasp's court. In his letter to Lando, Tahmasp promised to "cleanse the earth of [Ottoman] wickedness" with the help of the Holy League. The alliance, however, never bore fruit.


title: Tahmasp I

text: One of the most important events of Tahmasp's reign was his relocation of the Safavid capital, which began what is known as the Qazvin period. Although the exact date is uncertain, Tahmasp began preparations to have the royal capital moved from Tabriz to Qazvin during a 1540s period of ethnic re-settlement. The move from Tabriz to Qazvin discontinued the Turco-Mongol tradition of shifting between summer and winter pastures with the herds, ending Ismail I's nomadic lifestyle. The idea of a Turkoman state with a center in Tabriz was abandoned for an empire centered on the Iranian plateau. Moving into a city that linked the realm to Khorasan through an ancient route, allowed a greater degree of centralisation as distant provinces such as Shirvan, Georgia, and Gilan were brought into the Safavid fold. The incorporation of Gilan in particular was vital to the Safavids. To ensure his permanent control on the province, Tahmasp arranged royal marriages with the influential families in Gilan. Qazvin's non-Qizilbash population allowed Tahmasp to bring new members to his court who were unrelated to the Turkoman tribes. The city, associated with orthodoxy and stable governance, developed under Tahmasp's patronage; the era's foremost building is Chehel Sotoun.


title: Tahmasp I

text: From the transition of capitals, a new era in history-writing emerged under Tahmasp's rule. The Safavid historiography, which until then relied only on historians outside of Safavid's influence, matured and became a valued project in Tahmasp's new court. Tahmasp is the only Safavid monarch to have recorded his memories, known as "Tazkera-ye Shah Tahmasb". On the shah's behalf, Abdi Beg Shirazi, a secretary-accountant in the royal chancellery, wrote a world history named "Takmelat al-akhbar", which he dedicated it to Pari Khan Khanum, Tahmasp's daughter. Although intended to be a world history, only the last part of the book which covers the reigns of Ismail I and Tahmasp up until 1570 was published. He also commissioned Abol-Fath Hosseini to rewrite "Safvat as-safa", the oldest surviving text regarding Safi-ad-din Ardabili and the Sufi beliefs of the Safavids, in order to legitimise his claim. All of the historians under Tahmasp's patronage centred their works around one main goal: to tell the history of the Safavid dynasty. They defined themselves as 'Safavid' historians, as living in a Safavid period of Iranian history, a concept that had not been seen in the earlier chronicles of the dynasty. This new definement has its roots in the change of the capital and the urbanisation of the Safavid nomadic lifestyle. Historians such as Charles Melville and Sholeh Quinn thus consider Tahmasp's reign as the start of the "real flourishing of Safavid historiography".


title: Tahmasp I

text: The Safavid military evolved during Tahmasp's reign. The first corps of gunners () and musketeers (), developed initially during Ismail I's reign, came to be used in his army. A court chronicle's retelling of Battle of Jam and a military review in 1530 show that the Safavid army was armed with several hundred light canons and several thousand infantrymen. , military slaves developed by Tahmasp from Caucasus prisoners, commanded the and . To lessen Qizilbash power, he discontinued the titles of and . The (the commander of the "s"), formerly subordinate to the , became the chief Safavid military officer.


title: Tahmasp I

text: After the Peace of Amasya in 1555, Tahmasp became an avaricious person who did not care how and where his troops obtained their pay, even if it was through criminal means. By 1575, Iran’s troops had not been paid for four years. They are said to have accepted this because, as one chronicler put it, ‘they loved the shah so much’.


title: Tahmasp I

text: Tahmasp described himself as a "pious Shia mystic king". His religious views and the extent to which they influenced Safavid religious policy is the most interesting aspect of his reign for historians, both contemporary and modern. As the Italian historian Biancamaria Scarcia Amoretti has noted, “the modern originality of Persian Shi'ism has its roots [with Shah Tahmasp].” Until 1533, the Qizilbash leaders (worshipping Ismail I as the promised Mahdi) urged the young Tahmasp to continue in his father's footsteps; that year, he had a spiritual rebirth, performed an act of repentance and outlawed irreligious behaviour. Tahmasp rejected his father's claim of being a mahdi, becoming a mystical lover of Ali and a king bound to sharia, but still enjoyed villagers travelling to his palace in Qazvin to touch his clothing. Tahmasp held firmly to the controversial Shia belief in the imminent coming of the Mahdi. He refused to allow his favourite sister, Shahzada Sultanim, to marry, because he was keeping her as a bride for the Mahdi. He claimed connections with Ali and Sufi saints, such as his ancestor Safi al-Din, through dreams in which he foresaw the future. Tahmasp had other superstitious beliefs too; for instance, his obsession with the occult science of geomancy. According to the Venetian diplomat, Vincenzo degli Alessandri, the shah was so devoted to practice geomancy that he had not left his palace for a decade. He also observed that Tahmasp was worsipped by his people as a godlike being possessing a frail and old body. Tahmasp wanted the poets of his court to write about Ali, rather than him. He sent copies of the Quran as gifts to several Ottoman sultans; overall, during his reign, eighteen copies of the Quran were sent to Istanbul and all were encrusted with jewels and gold.


title: Tahmasp I

text: Tahmasp saw Twelverism as a new doctrine of kingship, giving the authority in religious and legal matters, and appointing Shaykh Ali al-Karaki as the deputy of the Hidden Imam. This brought new political and court power to the (Islamic clerics), , and their networks, intersecting Tabriz, Qazvin, Isfahan, and the recently-incorporated centres of Rasht, Astarabad, and Amol. As observed by Iskandar Beg Munshi, the court chronicler, the as a class of landed elite enjoyed considerable power. During the 1530s and 1540s, they hegemonised the Safavid court in Tabriz and according to Iskandar Beg, “any wish of theirs was translated into reality almost before it was uttered… although they were guilty of unlawful practices.” During Tahmasp's reign, Persian scholars accepted the Safavid claims to heritage and called him "the Husaynid". Tahmasp embarked on a wide-scale urban program designed to reinvent the city of Qazvin as a centre of Shiite piety and orthodoxy, expanding the Shrine of Husayn (son of Ali al-Rida, the eighth Imam). He was also attentive to his ancestral Sufi order in Ardabil, building the Janat Sarai mosque to encourage visitors and hold (Sufi spiritual ceremony). Tahmasp ordered the practice of Sufi rituals and had Sufis and come to his palace and perform public acts of piety and (a form of Islamic meditation) for Eid al-Fitr (and renew their allegiance to him). This encouraged Tahmasp's followers to see themselves as belonging to a community too large to be bound by tribal or other local social orders. Although Tahmasp continued the Shia conversion in Iran, unlike his father he did not coerce other religious groups; he had a long-established acknowledgment and patronage of Christian Armenians.


title: Tahmasp I

text: In his youth, Tahmasp was inclined towards calligraphy and art and patronised masters in both. His preeminent and acclaimed contribution to the Safavid arts was his patronage of Persian miniature manuscripts that took place during the first half of his reign. He was the namesake of one of the most celebrated illustrated manuscripts of the "Shahnameh", which was commissioned by his father around 1522 and completed during the mid-1530s. He encouraged painters such as Kamāl ud-Dīn Behzād, bestowing a royal painting workshop for masters, journeymen, and apprentices with exotic materials such as ground gold and lapis lazuli. Tahmasp's artists illustrated the "Khamsa of Nizami", and he worked on Chehel Sotoun's balcony paintings. The "Tarikh-e Alam-ara-ye Abbasi" calls Tahmasp's reign the zenith of Safavid calligraphic and pictorial art. Tahmasp lost interest in the miniature arts around 1555 and, accordingly, disbanded the royal workshop and allowed his artists to practice elsewhere. His patronage of arts, however, has been praised by many modern art historians such as James Elkins and Stuart Cary Welch. The American historian, Douglas Streusand, calls him 'the greatest Safavid patron'. Colin P. Mitchell associates Tahmasp's patronage with the revival of Iranian artistic and cultural life.


title: Tahmasp I

text: The reigns of Tahmasp and his father, Ismail I, are considered as the most productive era of the history of the Azeri Turkish language and literature. The renowned poet, Fuzuli, who wrote in Turkish, Persian, and Arabic, flourished during this era. In his memoir, Tahmasp denotes his love for both Persian and Turkish poetry. During the later years of his life, however, he came to despise poets and poetry; as his devotion to the Quran increased, he no longer counted poets as pious men, for many of them were addicted to wine, an irreligious behaviour. Tahmasp refused to allow poets in his court and ceased to regard them with favour. According to "Tazkera-ye Tohfe-ye Sāmi" by his brother, Sam Mirza, there were 700 poets during the reigns of the first two Safavid kings. After Tahmasp's religious conversion, many joined Humayun; those who remained and wrote erotic (sonnets), such as Vahshi Bafqi and Mohtasham Kashani, were shunned. Other poets such as Naziri Nishapuri and 'Orfi Shirazi chose to leave Iran and emigrate to the Mughal court, where they pioneered the rise of Indian-style poetry (), known for its high-rhetorical texts of metaphors, mystical-philosophical themes and allegories.


title: Tahmasp I

text: Tahmasp I's coins were characterised by the region they were minted in. The was used in Shirvan; in Mazandaran, was minted, and Khuzestan used the currency. By the 1570s, most of these autonomous monetary were unified. The weight of the "shahi" coins decreased significantly from at the beginning of Tahmasp's reign to in the western parts of the realm and in the east at the end. These weight reductions were the results of Ottoman and Uzbek invasions as well as the Ottoman trade ban which had a devastating impact on trade, and thus on the shah’s revenues. According the Venetian Michel Membré, no merchant could have travelled to Iran through Ottoman borders without permission from the sultan. All travellers were stopped and arrested if they had no royal permit.


title: Tahmasp I

text: In his coins, Arabic is no longer the only language used, in his ("folus-i shahi") coins, the phrase "May be eternally [condemned] to the damnation of God / He, who alters [the rate of] the royal folus" is minted in Persian. Old copper coins were released anew with the countermarks "folus-i shahi", "'adl-e shahi", etc. that showed their new value.


title: Tahmasp I

text: Tahmasp, unlike his ancestors who married Turkomans, took Georgians and Circassians as wives; most of his children had Caucasian mothers. His only Turkoman consort was his chief wife, Sultanum Begum of the Mawsillu tribe (a marriage of state), who gave birth to two sons: Mohammad Khodabanda and Ismail II. Tahmasp had a poor relationship with Ismail, whom he imprisoned on suspicion that his son might attempt a coup against him. However, he was attentive to his other children; On his orders, his daughters were instructed in administration, art, and scholarship, and Haydar Mirza (his favourite son, born of a Georgian slave) participated in state affairs.


title: Tahmasp I

text: Tahmasp I's reign started in an era of civil wars between the Qizilbash leaders after the death of Ismail I, whose charismatic characterisation as Messiah, which had driven the Qizilbash to follow him, came to an end with Tahmasp's succession. In contrast to his father, Tahmasp did not possess charisma in any political or spiritual sense, nor was he old enough to prove himself a fierce warrior on the battlefield, a quality valued by the Qizilbash. Eventually, Tahmasp did overcome that challenge; he proved himself a worthy military commander in the Battle of Jam against the Uzbeks and, instead of facing the Ottomans directly in the battlefield, he preferred to loot their rearguards. Even the ability to survive against the much larger Ottoman army marks him as a master of Fabian tactics. Tahmasp knew that he could not replace his father as a charismatic spiritual leader, and while he struggled to restore his family's legitimacy amongst the Qizilbash, he also had to craft a public figure of himself to convince the wider population of his right to rule as the new Safavid shah. Thus, he became a devout follower of Shi'ism and maintained this image with exaggerated piety until the end of his reign. This zealous image helped him to break the influence of the Qizilbash, and he became able to take the reins of power within ten years, after the realm had been through the civil war between the plotting tribal chieftains. He thus established a standard public image for Safavid kings: a zealous monarch who functioned as a representative of the Hidden Imam. However, none of his successors kept this image as zealously as him. Even after consolidating his power, Tahmasp had little political leverage compared to the Ottoman Empire. However, he successfully laid the foundation for Abbas the Great's transformation of the Safavid polity by bringing Caucasian slaves into his realm. He thus created the core of the force that changed the political balance of the empire in his grandson's time.


title: Tahmasp I

text: Tahmasp I made little impression on Western historians, who often compared him with his father. He is portrayed as a "miser" and a "religious bigot". He was accused of never leaving the harem and it was said that he divided his time between sexual liaisons with his favourites and foretelling the future. This characterisation has made an obscure figure out of Tahmasp as a king and a person. However, there are several instances recorded by the contemporary historians which denoted the more favourable sides of the shah's character: the fact that, despite his greed, piety led him to forgo taxes of about 30,000 tomans because collecting them would offend the religious law; his speech to the envoys of Suleiman the Magnificent, who had come to collect the fugitive Şehzade Bayezid, showed his political skill; he patronised the arts and had a highly cultured mind. According to Colin P. Mitchell, it is an achievement that he was able to not only maintain his father's empire from dissolution but also expanded it whilst being contemporaneous with Suleiman the Magnificent, the most successful Ottoman sultan. It was during Tahmasp's reign that the Safavid right to rule was established and gradually accepted among the Shia people, who were endeared to the idea of a descendent of (Family of the prophet of Islam, Muhammad) ruling over them. Thus the Safavid dynasty gained an ideological underpinning much stronger than the initial premise of the right of conquest. By the end of his reign, Tahmasp's success in keeping the empire together allowed the Persian elite of the bureaucracy to assume bureaucratic and ideological custodianship of the Safavid empire. This allowed Tahmasp and his successors to gain dynastic legitimacy and to cultivate an imperial cult of personality that prevented another civil war, even when the empire was at its most fragile position.


The Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany (, or , BVO) is the only federal decoration of Germany. It is awarded for special achievements in political, economic, cultural, intellectual or honorary fields. It was created by the first President of the Federal Republic of Germany, Theodor Heuss, on 7 September 1951. Colloquially, the decorations of the different classes of the Order are also known as the Federal Cross of Merit ().


title: Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany

text: It has been awarded to over 200,000 individuals in total, both Germans and foreigners. Since the 1990s, the number of annual awards has declined from over 4,000, first to around 2,300–2,500 per year, and now under 2,000, with a low of 1752 in 2011. Since 2013, women have made up a steady 30–35% of recipients.


text: Most of the German federal states ("Länder") have each their own order of merit as well, with the exception of the Free and Hanseatic Cities of Bremen and Hamburg, which reject any orders (by old tradition their citizens, particularly former or present senators, will refuse any decoration in the form of an order, the most famous example being former Chancellor Helmut Schmidt).


text: The order was established on 7 September 1951 by the decree of Federal President Theodor Heuss. Signed by Heuss, German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, and Minister of the Interior Robert Lehr, the decree states:


text: In 2022 Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier introduced a gender quota which demands a minimum of 40% of nominees to the order to be women.


text: The Order comprises four groups with eight regular classes and one special (medal) class (hereafter enumerated in English):


text: The President of the Federal Republic holds the "Grand Cross special class" ex officio. It is awarded to him in a ceremony by the President of the Bundestag, attended by the Chancellor of Germany, the President of the Bundesrat, and the Supreme Court President. Other than the German president, only a foreign head of state and their spouse can be awarded with this highest class. There is also the provision of awarding the "Grand Cross 1st class" in a "special issue" with laurel wreath design (), in which the central medallion with the black eagle is surrounded by a stylized laurel wreath in relief. This "Grand Cross 1st class, special issue" has been awarded so far only twice, to former German chancellors Konrad Adenauer and Helmut Kohl.


text: Except for the lowest class, the medal, the badge is the same for all classes, but with slightly different versions for men and women (slightly smaller badge and ribbon for women):


text: The badge for the Member and Officer classes however are only enamelled on one side, and flat on the reverse. The "badge" of the Order is made up of a golden four-armed cross enamelled in red, with a central gold disc bearing a black enamelled German federal eagle (Bundesadler).


text: The "star" is a golden star with straight rays, its size and points vary according to class, with the badge superimposed upon it. An interesting fact about the stars, of which no less than four grades use one, is that they all have the same basic shape as various other breast stars from German history.


text: The reasoning behind this is not clear. It is not known if this is deliberate or coincidence, as the tools used to make the stars were in short supply after the war, and using stamping dies that were readily available and could be reused or acquired from other manufacturers would have been a good way of cutting costs and simplifying production in a Germany only just starting to experience the "Wirtschaftswunder". It is of course possible that this could have been deliberate, and a way to celebrate German history in the design of the new honour for the Federal Republic. This is unlikely however as two stars represent decorations awarded during the Third Reich, and the other two are of Prussian origin. Prussia itself had only been recently abolished and the legacy of so called "Prussian militarism" was not something openly celebrated in the new Federal Republic of Germany.


text: The "riband" of the Order is made up of the colours of the German flag. The pattern is a large central band of red, edged on both sides in a smaller band of gold-black-gold.


title: Rubber bullet

text: Rubber bullets (also called rubber baton rounds) are a type of baton round. Despite the name, rubber bullets typically have either a metal core with a rubber coating, or are a homogeneous admixture with rubber being a minority component. Although they are considered a less lethal alternative to metal projectiles, rubber bullets can still cause fatal injuries as well as other serious injuries such as blindness and permanent disability.


title: Rubber bullet

text: Like other similar projectiles made from plastic, wax, and wood, rubber bullets may be used for short range practice and animal control, but are most commonly used in riot control and to disperse protests.


title: Rubber bullet

text: Rubber bullets were invented by the British Ministry of Defence for riot control purposes in Northern Ireland during the Troubles, and were first used there in 1970.


title: Rubber bullet

text: Rubber projectiles have largely been replaced by other materials, as rubber tends to bounce uncontrollably.


title: Rubber bullet

text: Analysis of the composition of the "rubber" pellets used by Chilean police shows that 80% of the pellets is made up of hard substances, chiefly silica and barium sulfate, while rubber makes up 20%. The measured hardness of the "rubber" pellets is 96.5 shore A. The hardness of the pellets explain why "exploded eyes" are so common in the 2019–2020 Chilean protests.


title: Rubber bullet

text: The British Ministry of Defence developed rubber rounds—the "Round, Anti-Riot, 1.5in Baton"—in 1970 for riot control purposes in Northern Ireland during The Troubles. A low power propelling charge gave them a muzzle velocity of about and maximum range of about ."The round is generally deployed in low trajectories or skip fired in the general direction (non-target specific) of the intended targets," causing pain but not injury, but is also intended to be direct fired at the discretion of the operator. From 1970 to 1975, about 55,000 rubber bullets were fired by the British Army in Northern Ireland. Often they were fired directly at people from close range, which resulted in several people being killed and injured by rubber bullets. Humans rights campaigner and co-founder of United Campaign Against Plastic Bullets Emma Groves was blinded by a rubber bullet in 1971. In 1975, they were replaced by plastic bullets. In Northern Ireland over 35 years (1970–2005), about 125,000 rubber and plastic bullets were fired—an average of ten per day—causing 17 deaths.


title: Rubber bullet

text: The baton round was made available to British police forces outside Northern Ireland from 2001. In 2013 however, Ministry of Defence papers declassified from 1977 revealed it was aware rubber bullets were more dangerous than was publicly disclosed. The documents contained legal advice for the MoD to seek a settlement over a child who had been blinded in 1972, rather than go to court which would expose problems with the bullets and make it harder to fight future related cases. The papers stated that further tests would reveal serious problems with the bullets, including that they were tested "in a shorter time than was ideal", that they "could be lethal" and that they "could and did cause serious injuries".


title: Rubber bullet

text: Israeli rubber bullets are produced in two main types. The older type, the standard rubber bullet, is a steel sphere coated in a thin layer of rubber, weighing 14 grams, while the newly improved rubber bullet, introduced in 1989, is a rubber-coated metal cylinder 1.7 cm in diameter, weighing 15.4grams. Of the lethal injuries from this projectile, most are suffered to the head.


title: Rubber bullet

text: Smaller rubber bullets are used in riot shotguns and are available in a variety of types. One company, for example, makes both rubber buckshot rounds, containing 15 8.3mm diameter rubber balls per cartridge, and rubber baton rounds, containing a single 4.75-gram projectile.


title: Rubber bullet

text: In some countries, less-lethal guns that fire rubber projectiles may be used by civilians for self-defense.


title: Rubber bullet

text: Rubber bullets, powered only by primer, are usually used for short-range indoor target practice or training, generally with handguns. They are intended only for target shooting, unlike paintballs or airsoft pellets, which are intended for use on suitably protected live targets. Rubber bullets, if used with a suitable backstop, can be recovered undamaged after firing, and reused many times.


title: Hypergolic propellant

text: A hypergolic propellant is a rocket propellant combination used in a rocket engine, whose components spontaneously ignite when they come into contact with each other.


title: Hypergolic propellant

text: The two propellant components usually consist of a fuel and an oxidizer. The main advantages of hypergolic propellants are that they can be stored as liquids at room temperature and that engines which are powered by them are easy to ignite reliably and repeatedly. Common hypergolic propellants are difficult to handle due to their extreme toxicity and/or corrosiveness.


title: Hypergolic propellant

text: In contemporary usage, the terms "hypergol" and "hypergolic propellant" usually mean the most common such propellant combination: dinitrogen tetroxide plus hydrazine and/or its relatives monomethylhydrazine (MMH) and unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine (UDMH).


title: Hypergolic propellant

text: In 1935, Hellmuth Walter discovered that hydrazine hydrate was hypergolic with high-test peroxide of 80-83%. He was probably the first to discover this phenomenon, and set to work developing a fuel. Prof. Otto Lutz assisted the Walter Company with the development of "C-Stoff" which contained 30% hydrazine hydrate, 57% methanol, and 13% water, and spontaneously ignited with high strength hydrogen peroxide. BMW developed engines burning a hypergolic mix of nitric acid with various combinations of amines, xylidines and anilines.


title: Hypergolic propellant

text: Hypergolic propellants were discovered independently, for the second time, in the U.S. by GALCIT and Navy Annapolis researchers in 1940. They developed engines powered by aniline and red fuming nitric acid (RFNA). Robert Goddard, Reaction Motors, and Curtiss-Wright worked on aniline/nitric acid engines in the early 1940s, for small missiles and jet assisted take-off (JATO).The project resulted in the successful assisted take off of several Martin PBM and PBY bombers, but the project was disliked because of the toxic properties of both fuel and oxidizer, as well as the high freezing point of aniline. The second problem was eventually solved by the addition of small quantities of furfuryl alcohol to the aniline.


title: Hypergolic propellant

text: In Germany from the mid-1930s through World War II, rocket propellants were broadly classed as monergols, hypergols, non-hypergols and lithergols. The ending "ergol" is a combination of Greek "ergon" or work, and Latin "oleum" or oil, later influenced by the chemical suffix "-ol" from alcohol. Monergols were monopropellants, while non-hypergols were bipropellants which required external ignition, and lithergols were solid/liquid hybrids. Hypergolic propellants (or at least hypergolic ignition) were far less prone to hard starts than electric or pyrotechnic ignition. The "hypergole" terminology was coined by Dr. Wolfgang Nöggerath, at the Technical University of Brunswick, Germany.


title: Hypergolic propellant

text: The only rocket-powered fighter ever deployed was the Messerschmitt Me 163B "Komet". The Komet had a HWK 109-509, a rocket motor which consumed methanol/hydrazine as fuel and high test peroxide "T-Stoff" as oxidizer. The hypergolic rocket motor had the advantage of fast climb and quick-hitting tactics at the cost of being very volatile and capable of exploding with any degree of inattention. Other proposed combat rocket fighters like the Heinkel "Julia" and reconnaissance aircraft like the DFS 228 were meant to use the Walter 509 series of rocket motors, but besides the Me 163, only the Bachem Ba 349 "Natter" vertical launch expendable fighter was ever flight-tested with the Walter rocket propulsion system as its primary sustaining thrust system for military-purpose aircraft.


title: Hypergolic propellant

text: The earliest ballistic missiles, such as the Soviet R-7 that launched Sputnik 1 and the U.S. Atlas and Titan-1, used kerosene and liquid oxygen. Although they are preferred in space launchers, the difficulties of storing a cryogen like liquid oxygen in a missile that had to be kept launch ready for months or years at a time led to a switch to hypergolic propellants in the U.S. Titan II and in most Soviet ICBMs such as the R-36. But the difficulties of such corrosive and toxic materials, including leaks and explosions in Titan-II silos, led to their near universal replacement with solid-fuel boosters, first in Western submarine-launched ballistic missiles and then in land-based U.S. and Soviet ICBMs.


title: Hypergolic propellant

text: The Apollo Lunar Module, used in the Moon landings, employed hypergolic fuels in both the descent and ascent rocket engines. The Apollo spacecraft used the same combination for the Service Propulsion System. Those spacecraft and the Space Shuttle (among others) used hypergolic propellants for their reaction control systems.


title: Hypergolic propellant

text: The trend among western space launch agencies is away from large hypergolic rocket engines and toward hydrogen/oxygen engines with higher performance. Ariane 1 through 4, with their hypergolic first and second stages (and optional hypergolic boosters on the Ariane 3 and 4) have been retired and replaced with the Ariane 5, which uses a first stage fueled by liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. The Titan II, III and IV, with their hypergolic first and second stages, have also been retired. Hypergolic propellants are still widely used in upper stages when multiple burn-coast periods are required, and in Launch escape systems.


title: Hypergolic propellant

text: Hypergolically-fueled rocket engines are usually simple and reliable because they need no ignition system. Although larger hypergolic engines in some launch vehicles use turbopumps, most hypergolic engines are pressure-fed. A gas, usually helium, is fed to the propellant tanks under pressure through a series of check and safety valves. The propellants in turn flow through control valves into the combustion chamber; there, their instant contact ignition prevents a mixture of unreacted propellants from accumulating and then igniting in a potentially catastrophic hard start.


title: Hypergolic propellant

text: As hypergolic rockets do not need an ignition system, they can fire any number of times by simply opening and closing the propellant valves until the propellants are exhausted and are therefore uniquely suited for spacecraft maneuvering and well suited, though not uniquely so, as upper stages of such space launchers as the Delta II and Ariane 5, which must perform more than one burn. Restartable non-hypergolic rocket engines nevertheless exist, notably the cryogenic (oxygen/hydrogen) RL-10 on the Centaur and the J-2 on the Saturn V. The RP-1/LOX Merlin on the Falcon 9 can also be restarted.


title: Hypergolic propellant

text: The most common hypergolic fuels, hydrazine, monomethylhydrazine and unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine, and oxidizer, nitrogen tetroxide, are all liquid at ordinary temperatures and pressures. They are therefore sometimes called storable liquid propellants. They are suitable for use in spacecraft missions lasting many years. The cryogenity of liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen has so far limited their practical use to space launch vehicles where they need to be stored only briefly. As the largest issue with the usage of cryogenic propellants in interplanetary space is boil-off, which is largely dependant on the scale of spacecraft, for larger craft such as Starship this is less of an issue.


title: Hypergolic propellant

text: Another advantage of hypergolic propellants is their high density compared to cryogenic propellants. LOX has a density of 1.14 g/ml, while on the other hand, hypergolic oxidisers such as nitric acid or nitrogen tetroxide have a density of 1.55 g/ml and 1.45 g/ml respectively. LH2 fuel offers extremely high performance, yet its density only warrants its usage in the largest of rocket stages, while mixtures of hydrazine and UDMH have a density at least ten times higher. This is of great importance in space probes, as the higher propellant density allows the size of their propellant tank to be reduced significantly, which in turn allows the probe to fit within a smaller payload fairing.


title: Hypergolic propellant

text: Relative to their mass, traditional hypergolic propellants possess a lower calorific value than cryogenic propellant combinations like LH2 / LOX or LCH4 / LOX. A launch vehicle that uses hypergolic propellant must therefore carry a greater mass of fuel than one that uses these cryogenic fuels.


title: Hypergolic propellant

text: The corrosivity, toxicity, and carcinogenicity of traditional hypergolics necessitate expensive safety precautions. Failure to follow adequate safety procedures with an exceptionally dangerous UDMH-nitric acid propellant mixture nicknamed "Devil's Venom", for example, resulted in the deadliest rocketry accident in history, the Nedelin catastrophe.


title: Hypergolic propellant

text: Pyrophoric substances, which ignites spontaneously in the presence of air, are also sometimes used as rocket fuels themselves or to ignite other fuels. For example a mixture of triethylborane and triethylaluminium (which are both separately and even more so together pyrophoric), was used for engine starts in the SR-71 Blackbird and in the F-1 engines on the Saturn V rocket and is used in the Merlin engines on the SpaceX Falcon 9 rockets.


title: Football hooliganism in the United Kingdom

text: Beginning in at least the 1960s, the United Kingdom gained a reputation worldwide for football hooliganism; the phenomenon was often dubbed the "British" or "English Disease". However, since the 1980s and well into the 1990s the UK government has led a widescale crackdown on football related violence. While football hooliganism has been a growing concern in some continental European countries in recent years, British football fans now tend to have a better reputation abroad. Although reports of British football hooliganism still surface, the instances now tend to occur at pre-arranged locations rather than at the matches themselves.


text: Football hooliganism dates all the way back to the Middle Ages in England. Fights between groups of youths often occurred during football matches organised between neighbouring towns and villages on Shrove Tuesdays and other Holy Days. Merchants concerned over the effect of such disturbance on trade called for the control of football as early as the 14th century. King Edward II banned football in 1314, and then King Edward III in 1349 because he felt the disorder and violence that accompanied matches led to civil unrest and distracted his subjects. A number of other monarchs and various authorities also tried to ban football through the centuries in England and Scotland but they were largely ineffective.


text: Hooliganism in the modern game of football in England dates back to its establishment in the 19th century. Individuals referred to as "roughs" were known to cause trouble at football matches in the 1880s, for example when they attacked the visiting team in a match between Aston Villa and Preston North End in 1885. Local derby matches would usually have the worst trouble in an era when fans did not often travel to other towns and cities, and roughs sometimes attacked the referees and visiting team's players. Incidences of fan violence have been reported from the late 19th and the early 20th century in England and Scotland. In 1909, thousands of Rangers and Celtic fans rioted at the replay of the Scottish Cup Final at Hampden Park. Crowd troubles also extended to areas outside of the ground, into the town as well as trains and railway stations. For example, Leicester City fans vandalised a train in 1934, and several trains were damaged in 1955 and 1956 by Liverpool and Everton fans. John Moynihan in "The Soccer Syndrome" describes a stroll around the touchline of an empty Goodison Park (Everton's home stadium) on a summer's day in the 1960s. "Walking behind the infamous goal, where they built a barrier to stop objects crunching into visiting goalkeepers, there was a strange feeling of hostility remaining as if the regulars had never left." The "News of the World" Bob Pennington spoke of the "lunatic fringe of support that fastens onto them (Everton), seeking identification in a multi-national port where roots are hard to establish." The same newspaper later described Everton supporters as the "roughest, rowdiest rabble who watches British soccer."


text: Incidences of disorderly behaviour by fans gradually increased before they reached a peak in the 1970s and 1980s. Between 1946 and 1960, there were an average of 13 incidents reported per season, but between 1961 and 1968, the number had increased to 25 per season. Hooliganism in the modern age has been attributed by some sociologists to the decline of the British Empire.


text: Many organised hooligan firms emerged in the 1970s, associating themselves with clubs such as Arsenal (The Herd), Aston Villa (Villa Hardcore), Birmingham City (Zulu Warriors), Blackpool (The Muckers), Burnley (Suicide Squad), Derby County (Derby Lunatic Fringe), Cardiff City (Soul Crew), Charlton Athletic, (B Mob), Chelsea (Chelsea Headhunters), Everton (County Road Cutters), Hull City (Hull City Psychos), Leeds United (Leeds Service Crew), Middlesbrough (Middlesbrough Frontline), Millwall (Millwall Bushwackers), Newcastle United (Gremlins), Nottingham Forest (Forest Executive Crew), Manchester United (Red Army), Portsmouth (6.57 Crew), Queen's Park Rangers (Bushbabies), Tottenham Hotspur (Yid Army), Sheffield United (Blades Business Crew), Shrewsbury Town (English Border Front), Stoke City (Naughty Forty), Sunderland A.F.C. (The Vauxies, Seaburn Casuals), West Ham United (Inter City Firm) and Wolverhampton Wanderers (Subway Army).


text: In 1974, when Manchester United were relegated to the Second Division, the Red Army hooligan firm caused mayhem at grounds up and down the country, and in the same year a Bolton Wanderers fan stabbed a young Blackpool fan to death behind the Kop at Bloomfield Road during a Second Division match. These two events led to introduction of crowd segregation and the erection of fences at football grounds in England.


text: A bad-tempered FA Cup quarter-final tie between Newcastle United and Nottingham Forest on 9 March 1974 was halted mid-match when "hundreds of fans" invaded the pitch, one of whom attacked Forest midfielder Dave Serella.


text: The so-called "relegation battle", when Tottenham Hotspur and Chelsea fans fought on the pitch before Spurs relegated Chelsea in the return fixture in 1975, made national news when shown on the BBC television programme "John Craven's Newsround". Leeds United were banned from Europe soon after, when their fans rioted after the 1975 European Cup Final against Bayern Munich in Paris. Manchester United were banned in 1977 after rioting before, during and after their Cup Winners Cup game with Saint-Étienne, also in France. In March 1978, a full-scale riot broke out at The Den during an FA Cup quarter-final between Millwall and Ipswich Town. Fighting began on the terraces and spilled out on to the pitch and into the narrow streets around the ground. Dozens of people were injured.


text: During the 1970s, black footballers became an increasingly frequent presence in English football, mostly born to Afro-Caribbean immigrants who settled in Britain from 1948. With racial tension high in many parts of Britain and the far-right National Front peaking in popularity at the same time, many of these players were subjected to regular racial abuse from fans of rival teams, whose fans often pelted them with banana skins, as well as making monkey chants or shouting racist obscenities. Perhaps the most notable player to suffer this type of racial abuse during the 1970s was Viv Anderson, the Nottingham Forest full-back who became England's first black senior international player in 1978. Black players became an increasingly frequent feature in the English game during the 1980s, and with hooliganism still widespread, incidents of racial abuse continued on a large scale. John Barnes, who made his Football League debut for Watford in 1981, was soon targeted with racial abuse by rival fans, which continued after he joined Liverpool in 1987, soon after which he suffered severe racist abuse. In 1984, soon after breaking into the England national football team, Barnes was racially abused during a friendly match in Brazil by a section of England supporters identifying themselves as supporters or members of the National Front.


text: During the 1980s, clubs which had rarely experienced hooliganism feared hooliganism coming to their towns, with Swansea City supporters anticipating violence after their promotion to the Football League First Division in 1981, at a time when most of the clubs most notorious for hooliganism were playing in the First Division, while those living in Milton Keynes were concerned when Luton Town announced plans to relocate to the town, although this relocation ultimately never happened.


text: On 1 May 1982, after a London derby between Arsenal and West Ham United, a supporter was killed in a riot between fans of the two teams. On 5 January 1985, an FA Cup third-round tie between Burton Albion and Leicester City was replayed after Albion goalkeeper Paul Evans was wounded by a block of wood thrown from the City end of the neutral Baseball Ground.


text: On 13 March 1985, Millwall supporters were responsible in large-scale rioting in Luton when Millwall played Luton Town in the quarter-final of the FA Cup, although a number of Luton fans were also involved in the violence. In response, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's government set up a "war cabinet" to combat football hooliganism. This was the first of several high-profile incidents of hooliganism in 1985.


text: On 11 May 1985 (the same day as the Bradford City stadium fire) a 14-year-old boy died at St Andrew's stadium when fans were pushed by police onto a wall which subsequently collapsed following crowd violence at a match between Birmingham City and Leeds United. The fighting that day was described by Justice Popplewell, during the Popplewell Committee investigation into football in 1985, as more like "the Battle of Agincourt than a football match". Because of the other events in 1986 and the growing rise in football hooliganism during the early 1980s, an interim report from the committee stated that "football may not be able to continue in its present form much longer" unless hooliganism was reduced, perhaps by excluding "away" fans.


text: On 29 May 1985, 39 people, mostly Italian and Juventus fans, were crushed to death during the European Cup Final between Liverpool and Juventus at Heysel Stadium in Brussels; an event that became known as the Heysel Stadium disaster. Just before kick-off, Liverpool fans broke through a line of police officers and ran towards opposing supporters in a section of the ground containing Italian fans. Many fans tried to escape the fighting, and a wall collapsed on them. As a result of the Heysel Stadium disaster, English clubs were banned from all European competitions until 1990, with Liverpool banned for an additional year.


text: On 8 August 1986 rival gangs of Manchester United and West Ham United hooligans were involved in violence on a Sealink ferry bound for Hook of Holland. Eight football hooligans, all either Manchester United or West Ham United supporters, received prison sentences totalling 51 years 16 months later. Another incident was soon forthcoming: on 20 September 1986 Leeds United hooligans overturned and immolated a fish and chip van at Odsal Stadium, the temporary home of Bradford City following the fire at Valley Parade the previous year.


text: On August 15, 1987, thousands of Wolverhampton Wanderers supporters invaded the seaside town of Scarborough for their opening game of the division four season. Fifty-six people were arrested and thousands of pounds' worth of damage was caused in some of the worst violence the town has ever seen.


text: Millwall hooligans were involved in their third high-profile incident of the decade on 9 January 1988, when in an FA Cup tie against Arsenal at Highbury, 41 people were arrested for rioting after the Herd and the Millwall Bushwackers clashed.


text: Football hooliganism has also featured prominently with relation to the Hillsborough disaster, with barristers representing the officers policing the ground where 96 people died saying they had a duty to prevent "hooliganism and unruly behaviour" from Liverpool supporters, following the Heysel Stadium disaster. UEFA President Jacques Georges caused controversy by describing the Liverpool supporters as "beasts", suggesting that hooliganism was the cause of the Hillsborough disaster. His remarks led to Liverpool F.C. calling for his resignation. Many newspapers also reported that football hooliganism was a major factor in the tragedy, most notably "The Sun", whose article entitled "The Truth" sparked a sharp fall in sales of the tabloid on Merseyside, with many newsagents refusing to stock it. However, a 2016 inquest found the 96 victims unlawfully killed due to failings by police and ambulance services.


text: Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher made a high-profile public call during 1985 for the country's football hooligans to be given "stiff" prison sentences to act as a deterrent to others in a bid to clamp down on hooliganism. Her minister for sport, Colin Moynihan, attempted to bring in an ID card scheme for football supporters. This scheme, set out in Part I of the Football Spectators Act 1989, was never implemented following criticism by the Taylor Report following the Hillsborough disaster. Documents released in 2014 revealed that the Conservative government of the 1980s crafted a number of schemes to combat hooliganism: these included an initiative to be titled "Goalies against Hoolies", consisting of getting "the more articulate goalkeepers, who are often first in line of hooligan fire" to speak out against the violence. Daniel Taylor, writing in "The Guardian" in 2015, described the revelations as "a reminder about how hopelessly out of touch the establishment were when it came to football".


text: Racial abuse of black players was a common feature of hooliganism during the 1970s and even more so in the 1980s, when they were first prominent in the English leagues. Before the early 1970s, only a small number of black players had ever played in English football, but the arrival of Commonwealth immigrants in Britain from 1948 saw many black players born in Britain to Afro-Caribbean parents breaking onto the scene a generation later. The first wave of black players mostly appeared for clubs who were based in areas which now had significant black communities—including Birmingham, Luton, Nottingham and West Bromwich.


text: John Barnes, capped 79 times for England, was first racially abused by rival fans, from Luton Town, when he began his professional career at Watford in the early 1980s, regularly being targeted with racist chants and having banana skins hurled at him. Soon after his transfer to Liverpool in 1987, Barnes was racially abused by Everton fans in the Merseyside derby. Everton chairman Philip Carter then denounced the racist Everton fans as "scum". Barnes was only the second black player to appear for Liverpool (the first being Howard Gayle, who had played a few games for the club at the beginning of the 1980s) while Everton had still yet to field their first black player at this stage. Also in the 1980s, Paul Canoville became Chelsea's first black footballer and as well as being racially abused by fans of rival clubs, he was even abused by some of his own team's fans—who had a reputation for being some of the worst hooligans in the English game at the time. Viv Anderson, who had become England's first black full international in 1978, was also subjected to regular racist abuse during the 1980s when playing for Nottingham Forest and, later, Arsenal.


text: By 1990, the hooliganism problem in English football had reduced enough that UEFA chose to lift its ban on English clubs in European competitions.


text: In 1994, a few days before a Sunderland A.F.C. vs Nottingham Forest game, police snatched a pile of weapons, drugs worth thousands of pounds from Seaburn Casuals (firm from Sunderland) who were preparing for a showdown with Nottingham hooligans.


text: A riot on 15 February 1995, during an aborted England–Ireland friendly at Lansdowne Road in Dublin, resulting in 20 injuries and 40 arrests. When an English equaliser was disallowed, English fans in the upper tier threw items into the lower tier, ripped up seats and benches, and fought Garda riot police.


text: After England's defeat to Germany in the Euro 96 semi-finals, a large-scale riot took place in Trafalgar Square, with a number of injuries, and a Russian youth was stabbed in Brighton after his attackers mistook him for a German. However, by 1997, it was said by "Reuters" that the English game had "virtually rid itself of the hooligan scourge".


text: Before the 1998 FIFA World Cup, 26 hooligans from Seaburn Casuals (a Sunderland A.F.C. firm) were arrested in a police raid after a military-issue smoke bomb was let out at a local pub after a fight with bouncers. By the end of the operation, over 60 were facing charges. Some of the Seaburn Casuals hooligans picked up in the raid were also involved with neo-Nazi groups like Combat 18. The operation failed when judge ruled CCTV footage from the pub inadmissible.


text: France 98 was marred by violence as English fans clashed with the North African locals of Marseille, leading to up to 100 fans being arrested.


text: At the end of the 1999–2000 season, Sunderland topped the hooliganism table in the Premier League, with 223 fans arrested that season. By the end of the 2002–03 season, Sunderland topped the football arrests table with 154.


text: According to Colin Blaney in "Hotshot: The Story of a Little Red Devil", many of Manchester United's football hooligans turned to serious crime during this period. He states that roughly half of the team's hooligans became involved in selling class A drugs, partly because of the wave of drugs that came with early 1990s rave culture, a scene that football hooligans were at the centre of.


text: In the 2000s English football hooligans often adopted clothing styles associated with the casual subculture, such as items made by Shark and Burberry and Stone Island. Prada and Burberry withdrew some garments over fears that their brands were becoming linked with hooliganism. English hooligans began using Internet forums, mobile phones and text messages to set up fights or provoke rival gangs into brawls. Fight participants sometimes posted live commentaries on the Internet.


text: Football violence in British stadiums declined after the introduction of the 1989 Football Spectators Act, and in the 2000s much of the trouble occurred away from stadiums or abroad at major international tournaments. The England team was threatened with expulsion from Euro 2000 because of the poor behaviour of fans.


text: In March 2002, the Seaburn Casuals (a Sunderland A.F.C. firm) fought with hooligans from the Newcastle Gremlins in a pre-arranged clash near the North Shields Ferry terminal, in what was described as "some of the worst football related fighting ever witnessed in the United Kingdom". The leaders of the Gremlins and Casuals were both jailed for four years for conspiracy, with 28 others jailed for various terms, based on evidence gained after police examined the messages sent by mobile phone between the gang members on the day. By the end of the 2002–03 season, Sunderland topped the football arrests table with 154.


text: The English reputation improved as a result of good behaviour at the 2002 FIFA World Cup and the 2004 UEFA European Football Championship, despite reports of the arrest of 33 England supporters in the latter tournament.


text: At the 2006 FIFA World Cup in Germany there were limited incidences of violence. Over 200 preventative arrests were made in Stuttgart, although only three people were charged with criminal offences. Another 400 were taken into preventative custody. Police believe that on average each rioter drank or threw of beer on that day.


text: The 2000s saw several death threats. Peter Ridsdale was a target of death threats from Leeds United fans.


text: Swedish referee Anders Frisk quit his position after receiving death threats from Chelsea fans. Reading players Ibrahima Sonko and Stephen Hunt also received death threats from Chelsea fans in 2006. Fernando Torres received death threats from Liverpool fans. Sol Campbell received death threats from Tottenham fans. A steward died after serious clashes between firms from Aston Villa and Queens Park Rangers after a League Cup game in September 2004.


text: On 28 January 2007 Wolverhampton Wanderers hooligans rioted after their sides 3–0 home loss to local rivals West Bromwich Albion. 11 officers were injured and 9 hooligans arrested as bricks, bollards and road signs were thrown and gas canisters let off. Police fought running battles with hundreds of thugs as chaos descended on the city centre. Drivers were surrounded by violence in Stafford street and bus passengers looked on as the angry mob surged past. Officers used dogs to catch yobs who tried to flip over a police vehicle near Molineux, a number of pedestrians were injured after being caught up in the violence.


text: After some 20 years of improved behaviour among English football fans, extreme scenes of rioting and hooliganism took place at Upton Park on 25 August 2009 during a Football League Cup second round tie between London rivals West Ham United and Millwall. The pitch was invaded several times during the game by West Ham fans and rioting in the streets followed. In one incident a Millwall fan suffered stab wounds. The West Ham United-Millwall rivalry has led officials to threaten to hold fixtures between the two sides in private, although the threat has never been executed, save for a November 2014 U21 Premier League Cup tie between the two sides' development squads which was ordered by Metropolitan Police to be played at Rush Green with a 12pm kick-off behind closed doors.


text: On 1 December 2010, supporters of Aston Villa and Birmingham City clashed at St Andrew's stadium after a Second City derby match in the League Cup, and 14 people were injured. Missiles were hurled on to the pitch, a rocket flare was released in the stands, and there were scuffles in nearby streets. By this stage, football hooliganism was rising dramatically, with 103 incidents of hooliganism involving under-19s in the 2009–10 season compared to 38 the season before.


text: Use of bovver boots in football hooliganism was countered in 2012 by warnings to fans that they would have to remove such boots in order to attend football matches.


text: In a match between Sheffield Wednesday and Leeds United on 19 October 2012, Leeds United hooligan Aaron Cawley attacked Sheffield Wednesday goalkeeper Chris Kirkland during a pitch invasion to celebrate a goal. The hooligan was identified on social media sites as someone who had previously been banned from every football ground in the UK.


text: At a semi-final match of the 2012–13 FA Cup between Millwall and Wigan Athletic at the new Wembley Stadium on 13 April 2013, Millwall fans fought amongst themselves although it is believed that a group of Wigan supporters got into the Millwall end, 14 arrests were made. The next day, Newcastle United fans rioted when their team lost 3–0 to Sunderland in their Tyne–Wear derby match in the Premier League. Bottles were thrown, bins were set on fire and a horse was punched as mounted officers tried to move crowds back to allow visiting fans to be escorted away. Twenty-nine arrests were made during the game itself.


text: On 7 March 2015, during a quarter-final match of the FA Cup between rival clubs from the West Midlands Aston Villa and West Bromwich Albion, hundreds of Villa fans invaded the pitch whilst the game was still in play. A further invasion took place at full time causing players from both teams to flee the pitch. Despite police officers and stewards best efforts to restrain the fans, it is believed almost a thousand fans entered the pitch. On the same day just 21 miles away a group of Wolverhampton Wanderers hooligans clashed with Watford F.C. hooligans, one of who spent three weeks in a coma. Four teenagers were jailed and two more received suspended sentences.


text: In February 2015, before Chelsea FC played against Paris Saint-Germain F.C. Four Chelsea football fans were convicted of racist violence and given suspended prison sentences after a black citizen was pushed off a Paris Métro in Paris while fans chanted: “We’re racist, we’re racist, and that’s the way we like it.” The four men were ordered to pay €10,000 to the black commuter they pushed off Métro carriage.


text: In December 2018, a Napoli fan by the name of Mattia, who attended a champions league group stage match between Liverpool and Napoli as a gift from his parents, claims to have been attacked by a group of seven Liverpool hooligans who surrounded him upon leaving the stadium. He was said to have been admitted to Royal Liverpool University Hospital with a fractured cheekbone and trauma to one eye. But it was apparently only after flagging down a car that he and a friend managed to get help. "I thought I was going to die," is the chilling quote attributed to the victim. The reports stress that this was an attack on a lone fan and not a fight between rival groups.


text: In his autobiography 'Undesirables', Colin Blaney, a high-ranking member of Manchester United's Inter City Jibbers firm, claimed that one of the main developments of the 2010s was that football hooligans were no longer involved in acquisitive crimes overseas. Whereas they had once stolen designer clothing from abroad and used international games as an excuse to loot jewelry shops on the continent, the football firms of today solely engage in profit-oriented forms of crime within the UK.


text: On the day of the UEFA Euro 2020 Final between Italy and England riots broke out at the entrance to Wembley Stadium, and in Piccadilly Circus, Leicester Square and Trafalgar Square. 69 people were arrested by police that day.


text: In September 2021, Leicester City and Napoli fans clashed during a Europa League group stage match. Leicester City fans whipped Napoli supporters with belts before the match started


text: Northern Irish football suffered a major set-back in 1948, when supporters of Linfield invaded the pitch after a match against Belfast Celtic, attacking and seriously injuring three Celtic players. A historical rivalry between Linfield and Glentoran has escalated somewhat in recent years - there were riots in 2005 and on Boxing Day in 2008. In the 1970s, the political Troubles in Northern Ireland spilled onto the terraces of the football stadiums. This is seen as a major factor in Derry City leaving the Irish Football League to join the League of Ireland.


text: One of the first recorded incidents of large-scale crowd violence took place after a 1909 match between Rangers and Celtic. The Glaswegian clubs clashed at Hampden Park at the 1969 Scottish Cup Final, with 50 arrests reported on the terrace relating to fighting and the throwing of objects onto the pitch. More arrests followed, after post-match fighting between supporters and police. Worse violence took place in the aftermath of the 1980 Scottish Cup Final between Celtic and Rangers. Hundreds of fans from both sides invaded the playing field after full-time and fought a pitched battle with one another. TV commentator Archie MacPherson likened the riot to a scene from out of "Apocalypse Now", adding "At the end of the day, let's not kid ourselves. These supporters hate each other." Over 200 arrests were made, and both clubs were fined £20,000 by the Scottish Football Association (SFA). In the aftermath, an Act of Parliament was passed that banned the sale of alcoholic beverages within Scottish sports grounds.


text: By the 1980s the Casual manifestation of football hooliganism was adopted by fans of many clubs in Scotland with Aberdeen being the first club with a "casual" following and the established skinhead/punk hooligan elements from Airdrieonians, Hearts and Rangers that had dominated prior to this were then challenged by casual firms (or 'mobs' as they were more popularly known as in Scotland). Casual firms were attached to clubs such as St. Mirren (Love Street Division), Clyde (Shawfield Shed End Boys), Aberdeen (Aberdeen Soccer Casuals), Dundee and Dundee United (Dundee Utility), Hibernian (Capital City Service), Morton (Morton Soccer Crew), Motherwell (Saturday Service), Partick Thistle (North Glasgow Express), Falkirk (Fear) and Dunfermline Athletic (Carnegie Soccer Service). Aberdeen, under the name Aberdeen Soccer Casuals (ASC), becoming the best known.


text: From the 1980s onwards Aberdeen's ASC and Hibernian's CCS became the most feared casuals in Scotland, the CCS gaining particular notoriety. From the 2000s Hooliganism has declined in Scotland but Aberdeen, Dundee Utility, Celtic, Hibernian, Hearts, Motherwell, Partick Thistle, Airdrie, St. Mirren and Rangers still have a number of hooligans.


text: While the Scotland national team's travelling supporters, the Tartan Army, are generally not violent these days, hooliganism does occur in other areas of Scottish football. Pre-arranged fights between firms on match days mostly take place away from the football grounds. Most Scottish football fans are against this behaviour, and authorities have taken several measures to reduce football hooliganism.


text: Celtic and Rangers are the two biggest teams in Scotland, and the "Old Firm" rivalry is one of the most heated football rivalries in the world. The "Old Firm" rivalry is largely motivated by religious sectarianism, and is related to the conflict between Loyalists and Republicans in Northern Ireland. Rangers' hooligan element (the ICF) have a strong rivalry with Celtic's CSC and Aberdeen's ASC, with Celtic being their traditional cultural enemy. They have also had major clashes with Motherwell, Hibs, Partick Thistle and Dundee's Utility. At the 2008 UEFA Cup Final when Rangers reached the final, Rangers fans and the ICF rioted in Manchester with a huge media spotlight


text: The oldest rivalry in Scotland is between Hibernian and Heart of Midlothian and contained a sectarian hatred from the outset as Hibernian were initially an Irish Catholics only club and Hearts represented the Scottish Protestant establishment—however, this aspect of the rivalry is now almost non-existent. At the first-ever match between Heart of Midlothian and Hibernian on Christmas Day 1875 the Hibs fans chased the Hearts captain, Tom Purdie after allegations of foul play, and since then the rivalry escalated into more serious crowd trouble at virtually every game between them over the next 15 years. This continued as an issue between the clubs and the fans indefinitely.


text: In the 1980s and 1990s these Hibernian hooligans had documented clashes across the UK with various mobs including notorious hooligan followers from such teams as Aberdeen, Leeds United, Millwall and Chelsea. In European competition the CCS also had clashes with Belgian hooligans and local residents in 1989 and in 1992, in 2005 in the Ukraine against FC Dnipro Dnipropetrovsk hooligans. The Hibernian CCS story has been told in books such as 'These Colours Don't Run' and 'Hibs Boy', and online by former notable members. In Scotland, the CCS had a particular hatred towards Aberdeen's ASC, Rangers ICF, Hearts CSF, Falkirk's infamous Fear and Airdrie's Section B.


text: During Euro '96 the CCS, along with Celtic's CSC, Dundee's Utility, Partick Thistle's NGE, Motherwell's SS, St. Mirren's LSD and Aberdeen's ASC organised a well publicised fight with Chelsea, Millwall, Rangers and Airdrie's Section B Hooligans in the Centre of Trafalgar Square. This incident attracted worldwide media attention with footage of both sets of casuals attacking each other and police.


text: In the 2000s Aberdeen Soccer Casuals (ASC) had clashes in England at Bradford and Hartlepool and also in Europe.


text: On 6 January 2007 Motherwell came to Airdrie in the 2006–07 Scottish Cup, with fighting breaking out on in the main street.


text: Cardiff City's hooligan firm, the Soul Crew, has been involved in full-scale riots since the 1970s. In January 2002, Leeds United and Cardiff City fans, players, and Cardiff chairman Sam Hammam were hit by missiles during a match, and hundreds of Cardiff fans invaded the pitch after the final whistle to celebrate knocking the then leaders of the Premier League out of the FA Cup. Cardiff City were fined £40,000 by the Football Association of Wales for the events of that day. Hammam was criticised by the head of the English Police Spotting teams for encouraging the hooligans by saying before the game, "It's better for us to play them at Ninian because the intimidatory factor will be so big ... It's a bit like the old Den at Millwall except ten times more." Hammam at first blamed what he called a "racist English media" for exaggerating the trouble at the Leeds game, but he also launched "a war on hooliganism". In October 2004 a BBC report stated that Cardiff had more fans banned than any other Football League club, with 160 banning orders against its fans, showing a willingness to stamp out hooliganism.


text: Despite the club's small size, Wrexham Football Club has a significant football hooligan element known as the Frontline. It has been involved in major riots with many firms in the UK, such as those of Chester City, Everton, Port Vale, Shrewsbury and Oldham Athletic.


title: Mike Crapo

text: Michael Dean Crapo ( ; born May 20, 1951) is an American lawyer and politician serving as the senior United States senator from Idaho, a seat he has held since 1999. A member of the Republican Party, Crapo previously served as the U.S. representative for Idaho's 2nd congressional district from 1993 to 1999.


title: Mike Crapo

text: Born in Idaho Falls, Crapo is a graduate of Brigham Young University and Harvard Law School. He practiced law in his home city throughout the 1980s, while also maintaining an active role in local Republican politics. His brother Terry Crapo was majority leader in the Idaho House of Representatives from 1968 to 1972 and an influential political figure until his death from leukemia in 1982. After his brother's death, Crapo was elected to the Idaho Senate in 1984. He served as Senate president pro tempore from 1988 to 1992.


title: Mike Crapo

text: Crapo was elected to an open seat in Congress in 1992, representing Idaho's 2nd congressional district in the House of Representatives. After three terms in the House, he ran for the open seat in the U.S. Senate in 1998 when Dirk Kempthorne vacated it to run for Idaho governor. Crapo was elected with 70% of the vote, and became the first Mormon to represent Idaho in the Senate. In 2004, he defeated his only opponent, write-in Democratic candidate Scott McClure, with 99% of the vote. He was reelected in 2010 with 71% of the vote, and in 2016 with 66% of the vote.


title: Mike Crapo

text: Crapo was born in Idaho Falls, Idaho, the son of Melba (née Olsen) and George Lavelle Crapo. He earned a B.A. in political science from Brigham Young University in 1973 and a J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1977.


title: Mike Crapo

text: After graduating from law school, Crapo served for one year as a law clerk to Judge James M. Carter of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. He then returned to Idaho to practice as a lawyer, joining his brother Terry Crapo's law firm of Holden Kidwell Hahn & Crapo in Idaho Falls. In the 1980s, he became active in the Republican Party's campaigns for seats in the state legislature. His brother served in Idaho House of Representatives for four years as majority leader (1968 to 1972) and was considered a rising star in Idaho politics. After Terry's death from leukemia in 1982, Mike ran for an open seat in the Idaho Senate. He was elected to the State Senate in 1984, where he served until 1992. In 1988, Senate President "pro tempore" Jim Risch unexpectedly lost reelection to the Idaho Senate, and Crapo was elected by his colleagues to the president's position. He served as senate president "pro tempore" from 1988 to 1992.


title: Mike Crapo

text: On January 27, 1989, Crapo served as acting governor of Idaho for 12 hours while Governor Cecil D. Andrus was out of the state testifying before Congress and Lieutenant Governor Butch Otter was out of the state on business for his employer, Simplot. Andrus, a Democrat, left Crapo a note saying, "Don't do anything I wouldn't do. ... P.S. The chair is comfortable, isn't it?"


title: Mike Crapo

text: Crapo was elected to Congress in 1992, representing Idaho's 2nd congressional district in the United States House of Representatives. He served three terms from 1993 to 1999. He was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1998.


title: Mike Crapo

text: Crapo was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1998. He succeeded fellow Republican Dirk Kempthorne, who retired after one term to run for governor. In his Senate bid, as in his House campaigns, Crapo's campaign made signs that had a macron placed over the "a" in his name (Crāpo) to indicate its correct pronunciation ("Cray-poe").


title: Mike Crapo

text: Crapo was reelected in 2004 with 99.2% of the vote, with the other .8% going to a write-in candidate, Democrat Scott McClure.


title: Mike Crapo

text: In 2010, Crapo was reelected to a third term with 71% of the vote, defeating Democratic nominee P. Tom Sullivan and Constitution Party nominee Randy Bergquist.


title: Mike Crapo

text: In 2016, Crapo was reelected to a fourth term with 66% of the vote, defeating Democratic nominee Jerry Sturgill and Constitution Party nominee Ray Writz. In October 2016, after the Donald Trump and Billy Bush recording came to light, Crapo said he would not vote for Trump. He later reversed that decision.


title: Mike Crapo

text: On February 12, 1999, Crapo was one of 50 senators to vote to convict of impeachable offenses and to remove Bill Clinton from office.


title: Mike Crapo

text: In the 111th Congress, Crapo served on the following Senate committees: Banking, Housing and Urban Development; Budget; Environment and Public Works; Indian Affairs; and Finance. He co-chairs the Senate Nuclear Caucus, the Canada-U.S. Inter-parliamentary Group (IPG); the COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease) Caucus, which he founded; and the Congressional Sportsmen's Caucus.


title: Mike Crapo

text: Crapo became the state's senior senator when the 111th United States Congress convened on January 3, 2009, succeeding Larry Craig, who decided not to seek reelection. At the convening of the 112th United States Congress, Crapo ranked 39th in seniority in the Senate.


title: Mike Crapo

text: He opposed President Barack Obama's health reform legislation, voted against the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act in December 2009, and voted against the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010.


title: Mike Crapo

text: In April 2013, Crapo was one of 46 senators to vote against a bill that would have expanded background checks for all gun buyers. He voted with 40 Republicans and 5 Democrats to stop passage of the bill.


title: Mike Crapo

text: "The New York Times" noted that Crapo became "something of a hero among advocates of bipartisanship" for his involvement in the "Gang of Six".


title: Mike Crapo

text: In 2017, Crapo was one of 22 senators to sign a letter to President Donald Trump urging him to withdraw the United States from the Paris Agreement.


title: Mike Crapo

text: Crapo's view on senatorial responsibilities for Supreme Court nominees has evolved. Of President George W. Bush's 2006 nomination of Samuel Alito, Crapo said in a press release, "All of the President's nominees deserve up-and-down votes and not efforts to obstruct judicial nominees for political purposes. Judges are not politicians, and hopefully, Judge Alito's nomination will put an end to the politics which have crept into the nomination process." By contrast, in 2016, his press release regarding President Obama's nomination of Merrick Garland to replace the late Antonin Scalia said:


title: Mike Crapo

text: The Constitution gives the President the right to make nominations to the Supreme Court, with the advice and consent of the Senate. As part of its role in this process, the Senate may, at its discretion, withhold consent. The next Supreme Court justice will make decisions that affect every American and shape our nation's legal landscape for decades. Therefore, the current Supreme Court vacancy should be filled by an individual nominated by the next President of the United States.


title: Mike Crapo

text: In September 2020, with less than two months to the next presidential election, Crapo voiced support for an immediate Senate vote on Trump's nominee to fill the Supreme Court vacancy caused by the death of justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, once a "well-qualified candidate" was put forth.


title: Mike Crapo

text: For his tenure as the chairman of the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee during the 116th Congress, Crapo was given an "F" grade from the non-partisan Lugar Center's Congressional Oversight Hearing Index.


title: Mike Crapo

text: On January 6, 2021, Crapo was participating in the certification of the 2021 United States Electoral College vote count when Trump supporters stormed the United States Capitol. In response, he called for "perpetrators" to be "prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law". He opposed removing Trump from office, saying that the "country is too divided" and that invoking the Twenty-fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution "would only make matters worse".


title: Mike Crapo

text: Crapo is considered politically conservative. The American Conservative Union's Center for Legislative Accountability gives him a lifetime conservative rating of 91.30. Americans for Democratic Action gave him a liberalism score of five in 2020.


title: Mike Crapo

text: Crapo is anti-abortion. In 1998, he supported a bill that made it illegal for minors to cross state lines to get abortions in order to avoid parental consent laws. In 2009, he voted to restrict UN funding for population control policies. Crapo praised the overturning of "Roe v. Wade" in June 2022.


title: Mike Crapo

text: Crapo is a proponent of nuclear energy. He supports the nuclear energy projects at the Idaho National Laboratory (INL) and helped work on the nuclear-related Senate bills known as the Nuclear Energy Innovation Capabilities Act (NEICA) and the Nuclear Energy Innovation and Modernization Act (NEIMA). The former bill helped establish the National Reactor Innovation Center at the INL.


title: Mike Crapo

text: In 2012, Crapo said that more gun control regulations would not curb violence in the United States. He also said that he supported efforts to improve mental health access rather than more gun laws.


title: Mike Crapo

text: As of 2013, Crapo had an "A+" rating from the National Rifle Association (NRA) for his voting record on causes supported by the NRA. The same year, he joined 12 other senators vowing to filibuster any attempts by Democrats to introduce additional gun control regulations in the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. Crapo also supported legislation to make open carry legal in National Parks.


title: Mike Crapo

text: In January 2017, the NRA praised Crapo for introducing the Hearing Protection Act, which would make access to gun silencers easier.


title: Mike Crapo

text: In response to the 2017 Las Vegas shooting, Crapo called for "solidarity" and praised first responders. The Hearing Protection Act bill was tabled in wake of the shooting.


title: Mike Crapo

text: On May 28, 2021, Crapo voted against creating an independent commission to investigate the 2021 United States Capitol attack.


title: Mike Crapo

text: On August 2, 2022, Crapo was one of only 11 senators to vote against the Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics (PACT) Act, a bill to expand VA health care and benefits for veterans exposed to burn pits and other toxic substances.


title: Mike Crapo

text: Crapo married Susan Diane Hasleton in June 1974, and they have five children. He is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.


title: Mike Crapo

text: Crapo was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 1999 and underwent a radical prostatectomy in January 2000. He had a full recovery and was declared cancer-free. In 2005 he had a recurrence of prostate cancer, and underwent a series of radiation treatments. He has become active in advocating early detection tests for cancer and other treatable diseases. Crapo has also pushed to create a federal Office of Men's Health.


title: Mike Crapo

text: Crapo is an Eagle Scout, awarded in 1966. He received the Distinguished Eagle Scout Award (DESA) in 2000.


title: Mike Crapo

text: On January 4, 2013, Crapo pleaded guilty to DUI in connection with a December 2012 incident and received the standard punishment for a first-time offender in Virginia. He issued a public apology just after his arrest, and various Idaho media outlets criticized him in light of his religion's temperance tenets.


title: Pepi II Neferkare

text: Pepi II Neferkare (2284 BC – after 2247 BC, probably either  2216 or  2184 BC) was a pharaoh of the Sixth Dynasty in Egypt's Old Kingdom who reigned from  2278 BC. His second name, Neferkare ("Nefer-ka-Re"), means "Beautiful is the Ka of Re". He succeeded to the throne at age six, after the death of Merenre I.


title: Pepi II Neferkare

text: Pepi II's reign marked a sharp decline of the Old Kingdom. As the power of the nomarchs grew, the power of the pharaoh declined. With no dominant central power, local nobles began raiding each other's territories and the Old Kingdom came to an end within a couple of years after the close of Pepi II's reign.


title: Pepi II Neferkare

text: He was traditionally thought to be the son of Pepi I and Queen Ankhesenpepi II, but the South Saqqara Stone annals record that Merenre had a minimum reign of 11 years. Several 6th Dynasty royal seals and stone blocks – the latter of which were found within the funerary temple of Queen Ankhesenpepi II, the known mother of Pepi II – were discovered in the 1999–2000 excavation season at Saqqara, which demonstrate that she also married Merenre after Pepi I's death and became this king's chief wife. Inscriptions on these stone blocks give Ankhesenpepi II the royal titles of: "King's Wife of the Pyramid of Pepy I, King's Wife of the Pyramid of Merenre, King's Mother of the Pyramid of Pepy II". Therefore, today, many Egyptologists believe that Pepi II was likely Merenre's own son. Pepi II would, therefore, be Pepi I's grandson while Merenre was, most likely, Pepi II's father since he is known to have married Pepi II's known mother, Queen Ankhesenpepi II.


title: Pepi II Neferkare

text: His mother Ankhesenpepi II (Ankhesenmeryre II) most likely ruled as regent in the early years of his reign. She may have been helped in turn by her brother Djau, who was a vizier under the previous pharaoh. An alabaster statuette in the Brooklyn Museum depicts a young Pepi II, in full kingly regalia, sitting on the lap of his mother. Despite his long reign, this piece is one of only three known sculptural representations in existence of this particular king. Some scholars have taken the relative paucity of royal statuary to suggest that the royal court was losing the ability to retain skilled artisans.


title: Pepi II Neferkare

text: A glimpse of the personality of the pharaoh while he was still a child can be found in a letter he wrote to Harkhuf, a governor of Aswan and the head of one of the expeditions he sent into Nubia. Sent to trade and collect ivory, ebony, and other precious items, he captured a pygmy. News of this reached the royal court, and an excited young king sent word back to Harkhuf that he would be greatly rewarded if the pygmy were brought back alive, where he would have likely served as an entertainer for the court. This letter was preserved as a lengthy inscription on Harkhuf's tomb, and has been called the first travelogue.


title: Pepi II Neferkare

text: Of these queens, Neith, Iput, and Udjebten each had their own minor pyramids and mortuary temples as part of the king's own pyramid complex in Saqqara. Queen Ankhesenpepi III and Meritites IV were buried in pyramids near the pyramid of Pepi I Meryre, and Ankhesenpepi IV was buried in a chapel in the complex of Queen Udjebten.


title: Pepi II Neferkare

text: Pepi II seems to have carried on foreign policy in ways similar to that of his predecessors. Copper and turquoise were mined at Wadi Maghareh in the Sinai, and alabaster was quarried from Hatnub. He is mentioned in inscriptions found in the Phoenician city of Byblos.


title: Pepi II Neferkare

text: In the south, the trade relations consist of caravans trading with the Nubians. Harkhuf was a governor of Upper Egypt, who led several expeditions under Merenre and Pepi II. His last expedition was a trip to a place called Iam. Harkhuf brought back with him what his correspondence with the young pharaoh referred to as a dwarf, apparently a pygmy. Egypt received goods such as incense, ebony, animal skins, and ivory from Nubia.


title: Pepi II Neferkare

text: The Western desert was known to have extensive caravan routes. Some of these routes allowed for trade with the Kharga Oasis, the Selima Oasis, and the Dakhla Oasis.


title: Pepi II Neferkare

text: Only a small number of pharaohs were immortalized in ancient fiction, Pepi II may be among them. In the tale of "King Neferkare and General Sasenet", three fragments of a papyrus dating from the late New Kingdom (although the story may have been composed earlier), report clandestine nocturnal meetings with a military commander – a General Sasenet or Sisene. Some have suggested this reflects a homosexual relationship although it is disputed that the text relates to Pepi II at all. Some, like R. S. Bianchi, think that it is a work of archaizing literature and dates to the 25th Dynasty referring to Shabaka Neferkare, a Kushite pharaoh.


title: Pepi II Neferkare

text: The decline of the Old Kingdom arguably began before the time of Pepi II, with nomarchs (regional representatives of the king) becoming more and more powerful and exerting greater influence. Pepi I, for example, married two sisters who were the daughters of a nomarch and later made their brother a vizier. Their influence was extensive, both sisters bearing sons who were chosen as part of the royal succession: Merenre Nemtyemsaf I and Pepi II himself.


title: Pepi II Neferkare

text: Increasing wealth and power appears to have been handed over to high officials during Pepi II's reign. Large and expensive tombs appear at many of the major nomes of Egypt, built for the reigning nomarchs, the priestly class and other administrators. Nomarchs were traditionally free from taxation and their positions became hereditary. Their increasing wealth and independence led to a corresponding shift in power away from the central royal court to the regional nomarchs.


title: Pepi II Neferkare

text: Later in his reign, it is known that Pepi divided the role of vizier so that there were two viziers: one for Upper Egypt and one for Lower, a further decentralization of power away from the royal capital of Memphis. Further, the seat of vizier of Lower Egypt was moved several times. The southern vizier was based at Thebes.


title: Pepi II Neferkare

text: Pepi II is often mentioned as the longest reigning monarch in history, due to a 3rd-century BC account of Ancient Egypt by Manetho, which accords the king a reign of 94 years; this has, however, been disputed by some Egyptologists due to the absence of attested dates known for Pepi II after his 31st count (Year 62 if biennial) such as Hans Goedicke (1926-2015) and Michel Baud note. Ancient sources upon which Manetho's estimate is based are long lost, and could have resulted from a misreading on Manetho's behalf (see von Beckerath). The Turin canon attributes 90+ [X] years of reign to Pepi II, but this document dates to the time of Ramesses II, 1,000 years after Pepi II's death.


title: Pepi II Neferkare

text: At the present time, the latest written source contemporary with Pepi II dates from the "Year after the 31st Count, 1st Month of Shemu, day 20" from Hatnub graffito No.7 (Spalinger, 1994), which implies, assuming a biennial cattle count system, that this king had a reign of at least 62 complete or partial years. Therefore, some Egyptologists suggest instead that Pepi II reigned no more than 64 years. This is based on the complete absence of higher attested dates for Pepi beyond his Year after the 31st Count (Year 62 on a biannual cattle count). A previous suggestion by Hans Goedicke that the Year of the 33rd Count appears for Pepi II in a royal decree for the mortuary cult of Queen Udjebten was withdrawn by Goedicke himself in 1988 in favour of a reading of "the Year of the 24th Count" instead. Goedicke writes that Pepi II is attested by numerous year dates until the Year of his 31st count which strongly implies that this king died shortly after a reign of about 64 years. Other scholars note that the lack of contemporary sources dated after his 62nd year on the throne does not preclude a much longer reign, in particular since the end of Pepi II's reign was marked by a sharp decline in the fortunes of the Old Kingdom pharaohs who succeeded him.


title: Pepi II Neferkare

text: The Egyptologist David Henige states while there have been examples of kinglists where rulers were ascribed reigns as long as that assigned to Pepi II, "often exceeding 100 years, but these are invariably rejected as mythical", the problems inherent in dating Pepi II's reign are many since:...a hyperextended duration [for Pepi II's reign] is not really necessary to bring Old Kingdom chronology into some equilibrium with other chronologies. For Mesopotamia from at least this early until virtually the Persian conquest, numerous localized synchronisms play vital roles in absolute dating, but seldom affect the duration of individual dynasties. Not only is Old Kingdom Egypt well outside any "synchronism zone" but, as it happens, since Pepy [II] was the last substantive ruler of Egypt before a period of political and chronological chaos...there are no awkward ramifying effects by reducing his reign by twenty or thirty years, a period that can simply be added on to the First Intermediate Period.Henige himself is somewhat skeptical of the 94 year figure assigned to Pepi II and follows Naguib Kanawati's 2003 suggestion that this king's reign was most probably much shorter than 94 years.


title: Pepi II Neferkare

text: This situation could have produced a succession crisis and led to a stagnation of the administration, centered on an absolute yet aging ruler who was not replaced because of his perceived divine status. A later, yet better documented, example of this type of problem is the case of the long reigning Nineteenth Dynasty pharaoh Ramesses II and his successors.