prompt_front: Answer the question based on the given passages. Only give me the answer and do not output any other words.

Question: What is the abbreviated name of the exclusive platform of the video game named for the league with a halftime event just before the publishers clearing house sweepstakes drawing.

The following are given passages.
Context 1: Passage 1:
List of Super Bowl halftime shows
Halftime shows are a tradition during American football games at all levels of competition  Entertainment during the Super Bowl, the annual championship game of the National Football League (NFL), represents a fundamental link to pop culture, which helps broaden the television audience and nationwide interest 
Prior to the early 1990s, the halftime show featured university marching bands (the Grambling State University Marching Band has performed at the most Super Bowl halftime shows, featuring in six shows including at least one per decade from the 1960s to 1990), drill teams, and other performance ensembles such as Up with People  In the 90s, the halftime show began to feature major hit musicians, beginning with Super Bowl XXV (1991) with New Kids on the Block  In an effort to boost the prominence of the halftime show to increase viewer interest, Super Bowl XXVII (1993) featured a headlining performance by Michael Jackson 

Background
During most of the Super Bowl's first decade, the halftime show featured a college marching band  The show's second decade featured a more varied show, often featuring drill teams and other performance ensembles; the group Up with People produced and starred in four of the performances  The middle of the third decade, in an effort to counter other networks' efforts to counterprogram the game, saw the introduction of popular music acts such as New Kids on the Block, Gloria Estefan, Michael Jackson, Clint Black, Patti LaBelle, and Tony Bennett  Starting with Super Bowl XXXII, commercial sponsors presented the halftime show; within five years, the tradition of having a theme—begun with Super Bowl III—ended, replaced by major music productions by arena rock bands and other high-profile acts  In the six years immediately following an incident at Super Bowl XXXVIII where Justin Timberlake exposed one of Janet Jackson's breasts in an alleged "wardrobe malfunction", all of the halftime shows consisted of a performance by one artist or group, with the musicians in that era primarily being rock artists from the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s   These shows were considered "family friendly" and the time in which they took place has been described as "the age of reactionary halftime shows"  Since Super Bowl XLV, the halftime show has returned to featuring popular contemporary musicians, with the typical format featuring a single headline artist collaborating with a small number of guest acts 
The NFL does not pay the halftime show performers an appearance fee, though it covers all expenses for the performers and their entourage of band members management, technical crew, security personnel, family, and friends  Super Bowl XXVII halftime show with Michael Jackson provided an exception, as the NFL and Frito-Lay agreed to make a donation and provide commercial time for Jackson's Heal the World Foundation  According to Nielsen SoundScan data, the halftime performers regularly experience significant spikes in weekly album sales and paid digital downloads due to the exposure  For Super Bowl XLIX, it was reported by the Wall Street Journal that league officials asked representatives of potential acts if they would be willing to provide financial compensation to the NFL in exchange for their appearance, in the form of either an up-front fee, or a cut of revenue from concert performances made after the Super Bowl  While these reports were denied by an NFL spokeswoman, the request had, according to the Journal, received a "chilly" response from those involved 

History
The following is a list of the performers, producers, themes, and sponsors for each Super Bowl game's show  This list does not include national anthem performers, which are listed in the article List of national anthem performers at the Super Bowl  Names in bold are headline performers 

1960s
1970s
1980s
1990s
2000s
2010s
2020s
Details on specific shows
Super Bowl XL
For the Rolling Stones, the stage was in the form of the group's iconic tongue logo (John Pasche's design first used in 1971 on their Sticky Fingers album)  It was the largest stage ever assembled for a Super Bowl halftime show, with 28 separate pieces assembled in five minutes by a 600-member volunteer stage crew  The group performed three songs: "Start Me Up", "Rough Justice", and "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction"  The show was viewed by 89 9 million people, more than the audiences for the Oscars, Grammys and Emmy Awards combined  In the wake of the Super Bowl XXXVIII halftime show controversy with Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake, ABC and the NFL imposed a five-second delay and censored lyrics considered too sexually explicit in the first two songs by briefly turning off Mick Jagger's microphone—censoring to which the group had previously agreed 
However, the choice of the Rolling Stones sparked controversy in the Detroit community because the band did not represent the traditional Detroit "Motown Sound", and no artists from the area were included 

Achievements
The Super Bowl XXVII halftime show starring Michael Jackson is the most watched Super Bowl halftime show, with a TV audience of 133 4 million viewers 
The Super Bowl LIV halftime show starring Shakira and Jennifer Lopez is the most viewed Super Bowl halftime show on YouTube, with 270 million Views 
Based on online metrics, TicketSource revealed that the Super Bowl LIV halftime show starring Shakira and Jennifer Lopez is the "World's most popular" halftime show 
The Super Bowl LVI halftime show starring Dr  Dre, Snoop Dogg, Eminem, Mary J  Blige and Kendrick Lamar is the first Super Bowl halftime show to win the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Variety Special (Live) 

See also
List of AFL Grand Final pre-match performances
List of Grey Cup halftime shows
List of national anthem performers at the Super Bowl

Notes
Passage 2:
6,000 Enemies
6,000 Enemies is a 1939 American drama film directed by George B  Seitz and starring Walter Pidgeon as a successful District Attorney who is framed on charge of bribery   Although innocent, he is sent to prison where he fights to clear his name  The film also stars Rita Johnson 

Plot summary
Steve Donegan is an elected district attorney and launches an anti-organized crime campaign  Joe Silenus, a crime boss, plots to frame Donegan for accepting a bribe  Donegan is sentenced to prison, where he re-encounters all the men he convicted during his anti-crime crusade  Martin receives orders to eliminate Donegan  Anne Barry, the embezzlement convict, saves his life by alerting the guards to her screams 
Steve’s brother pursues Silenus, disguised as a chauffeur in order to prove his innocence  ‘Socks’ Martin knocks Steve Donegan down six times, but he keeps getting up and fighting  Two revolvers are smuggled into the prison inside a fruit basket meant for the warden  ‘Socks suggests that Steve join him in the prison break  When Phil arrives at the prison to see Steve, he is shot in the drive by just outside the gates  The prisoners riot as a result of the shots, and the rumored prison break begins 

Cast
Walter Pidgeon as Steve Donegan
Rita Johnson as Anne Barry
Paul Kelly as Dr  Malcolm Scott
Nat Pendleton as 'Socks' Martin
Harold Huber as Joe Silenus
Grant Mitchell as Warden Alvin Parkhurst
John Arledge as Phil Donegan
J M  Kerrigan as Dan Barrett
Adrian Morris as 'Bull' Snyder
Guinn 'Big Boy' Williams as Maxie (as Guinn Williams)
Arthur Aylesworth as 'Bluebeard' Dawson
Raymond Hatton as Prisoner 'Wibbie' Yern
Lionel Royce as Prisoner 'Dutch' Myers
Tom Neal as Prisoner Ransom
Willie Fung as Wang

Box office
According to MGM records, the film earned $233,000 in the US and Canada and $125,000 elsewhere, resulting in a profit of $22,000  It also featured the short "The Bear That Couldn't Sleep", which was the first Barney Bear short 
Passage 3:
NFL (video game)
NFL is a 1989 football video game, developed by Atlus and published by LJN exclusively for the Nintendo Entertainment System 

Gameplay modes
This game was the first since NFL Football - released in 1979 for the Intellivision - to get an official National Football League license  Intending to loosely represent the 1988-89 season of the National Football League, the game uses the teams and play formations of that particular era while avoiding usage of the players' names, due to a lack of an NFLPA license, which was given to Tecmo's Tecmo Bowl The player could play one of four options, either Interconference, AFC and NFC game or the Super Bowl (specifically Super Bowl XXIII)  Along with the option to choose a package to play during the game, players can directly control the entire team at once  This game was one of the first NFL video games on a gaming system  The game employs a Top-Down system for the actual gameplay and allows players to assign handicaps to a human opponent that is not as skilled as they are 

Reception
Allgame gave the game a 2 5 out of 5 rating in their overview 
Passage 4:
Nintendo Entertainment System
The Nintendo Entertainment System, commonly known as the NES, is an 8-bit third-generation home video game console produced by Nintendo  It was first released in Japan in 1983 as the Family Computer, commonly referred to as the Famicom or FC  The NES, a redesigned version, was released in American test markets on October 18, 1985, before becoming widely available in North America and other countries 
After developing a series of successful arcade games in the early 1980s, Nintendo planned to create a home video game console  Rejecting more complex proposals, the Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi called for a simple, cheap console that ran games stored on cartridges  The controller design was reused from Nintendo's portable Game & Watch games  Nintendo released several add-ons, such as a light gun for shooting games like Duck Hunt 
The NES was one of the best-selling consoles of its time and helped revitalize the US gaming industry following the video game crash of 1983  It introduced a now-standard business model of licensing third-party developers to produce and distribute games  The NES featured a number of groundbreaking games, such as the 1985 platform game Super Mario Bros  and the 1986 action-adventure games The Legend of Zelda and Metroid, which became long-running franchises  It was succeeded in 1990 by the Super Nintendo Entertainment System  In 2011, IGN named the NES the greatest video game console of all time 

History
Development
Following a series of arcade game successes in the early 1980s, Nintendo made plans to create a cartridge-based console called the Family Computer, or Famicom  Masayuki Uemura designed the system  The console's hardware was largely based on arcade video games, particularly the hardware for Namco's Galaxian (1979) and Nintendo's Radar Scope (1980) and Donkey Kong (1981), with the goal of matching their powerful sprite and scrolling capabilities in a home system  Original plans called for an advanced 16-bit system which would function as a full-fledged computer with a keyboard and floppy disk drive, but Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi rejected this and instead decided to go for a cheaper, more conventional cartridge-based game console as he believed that features such as keyboards and disks were intimidating to non-technophiles  A test model was constructed in October 1982 to verify the functionality of the hardware, after which work began on programming tools  Because 65xx CPUs had not been manufactured or sold in Japan up to that time, no cross-development software was available and it had to be produced from scratch  Early Famicom games were written on a system that ran on an NEC PC-8001 computer and LEDs on a grid were used with a digitizer to design graphics as no software design tools for this purpose existed at that time The code name for the project was "GameCom", but Masayuki Uemura's wife proposed the name "Famicom", arguing that "In Japan, 'pasokon' is used to mean a personal computer, but it is neither a home nor personal computer  Perhaps we could say it is a family computer " Meanwhile, Hiroshi Yamauchi decided that the console should use a red and white theme after seeing a billboard for DX Antenna (a Japanese antenna manufacturer) which used those colors The Famicom was also influenced by the ColecoVision, Coleco's competition against the Atari 2600 in the United States; the ColecoVision's top-seller was a port of Nintendo's Donkey Kong  The project's chief manager Takao Sawano brought a ColecoVision home to his family, impressed by its smooth graphics, which contrasts with the flicker and slowdown commonly seen on Atari 2600 games  Uemura said the ColecoVision set the bar for the Famicom  They wanted to surpass it and match the more powerful Donkey Kong arcade hardware; they took a Donkey Kong arcade cabinet to chip manufacturer Ricoh for analysis, which led to Ricoh producing the Picture Processing Unit (PPU) chip for the NES Original plans called for the Famicom's cartridges to be the size of a cassette tape, but ultimately they ended up being twice as big  Careful design attention was paid to the cartridge connectors because loose and faulty connections often plagued arcade machines  As it necessitated 60 connection lines for the memory and expansion, Nintendo decided to produce its own connectors The controllers are hard-wired to the console with no connectors for cost reasons  The controller designs were reused from the Game & Watch machines, although the Famicom design team originally wanted to use arcade-style joysticks, even dismantling some from American game consoles to see how they worked  There were concerns regarding the durability of the joystick design and that children might step on joysticks on the floor  Katsuya Nakawaka attached a Game & Watch D-pad to the Famicom prototype and found that it was easy to use and caused no discomfort  Ultimately though, they installed a 15-pin expansion port on the front of the console so that an optional arcade-style joystick could be used Gunpei Yokoi suggested an eject lever to the cartridge slot which is not necessary, but he believed that children could be entertained by pressing it  Uemura adopted his idea  Uemura added a microphone to the second controller with the idea that it could be used to make players voices sound through the TV speaker 

Japanese release
The console was released on July 15, 1983, as the Home Cassette-type Video Game: Family Computer, for ¥14,800 (equivalent to ¥18,400 in 2019) with three ports of Nintendo's successful arcade games Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jr , and Popeye  The Famicom was slow to gather success; a bad chip set caused the early revisions to crash  Following a product recall and a reissue with a new motherboard, the Famicom's popularity soared, becoming the bestselling game console in Japan by the end of 1984 : 279, 285 Nintendo launched the system with only first-party games, but after being approached by Namco and Hudson Soft in 1984, agreed to produce third-party games for a 30% fee for console licensing and production costs  This rate continued in the industry for consoles and digital storefronts through the 21st Century 

North American release
Nintendo also had its sights set on the North American market, entering into negotiations with Atari, Inc  to release the Famicom under Atari's name as the Nintendo Advanced Video Gaming System  The deal was set to be finalized and signed at the Summer Consumer Electronics Show in June 1983  However, Atari discovered at that show that its competitor Coleco was illegally demonstrating its Coleco Adam computer with Nintendo's Donkey Kong game  This violation of Atari's exclusive license with Nintendo to publish the game for its own computer systems delayed the implementation of Nintendo's game console marketing contract with Atari  Atari's CEO Ray Kassar was fired the next month, so the deal went nowhere, and Nintendo decided to market its system on its own : 283–285 

Subsequent plans for the Nintendo Advanced Video System likewise never materialized: a North American repackaged Famicom console featuring a keyboard, cassette data recorder, wireless joystick controller and a special BASIC cartridge : 287  By the beginning of 1985, more than 2 5 million Famicom units had been sold in Japan, and Nintendo soon announced plans to release it in North America as the Advanced Video Entertainment System (AVS) that year  The American video game press was skeptical that the console could have any success in the region, as the industry was still recovering from the video game crash of 1983  The March 1985 issue of Electronic Games magazine stated that "the videogame market in America has virtually disappeared" and that "this could be a miscalculation on Nintendo's part" The Famicom hardware first made its North American debut in the arcades, in the form of the Nintendo VS  System in 1984; the system's success in arcades paved the way for the official release of the NES console  With US retailers refusing to stock game consoles, Yamauchi realized there was still a market for video games in the arcades, so he decided to introduce the Famicom to North America through the arcade industry  The VS  System became a major success in North American arcades, becoming the highest-grossing arcade machine of 1985 in the United States  By the time the NES launched, nearly 100,000 VS  Systems had been sold to American arcades  The success of the VS  System gave Nintendo the confidence to release the Famicom in North America as a video game console, for which there was growing interest due to Nintendo's positive reputation in the arcades  It also gave Nintendo the opportunity to test new games as VS  Paks in the arcades, to determine which games to release for the NES launch At June 1985's Consumer Electronics Show (CES), Nintendo unveiled the American version of its Famicom, with a new case redesigned by Lance Barr and featuring a "zero insertion force" cartridge slot  The change from a top-loader in the Famicom to a front-loader was to make the new console more like a video cassette recorder, which had grown in popularity by 1985, and differentiate the unit from past video game consoles  Additionally, Uemura explained that Nintendo developers had feared that the console's electronics might face electrostatic hazards in dry American states such as Arizona and Texas, and a front-loading design would be safer if children handled the console carelessly This was deployed as the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES)  Nintendo seeded these first systems to limited American test markets starting in New York City on October 18, 1985, and followed up in Los Angeles in February 1986; the American nationwide release came on September 27, 1986  Nintendo released 17 launch games: 10-Yard Fight, Baseball, Clu Clu Land, Duck Hunt, Excitebike, Golf, Gyromite, Hogan's Alley, Ice Climber, Kung Fu, Pinball, Soccer, Stack-Up, Super Mario Bros , Tennis, Wild Gunman, and Wrecking Crew 
For expedient production, some varieties of these launch games contain Famicom chips with an adapter inside the cartridge so they play on North American consoles, which is why the title screens of Gyromite and Stack-Up show the titles of the Famicom games Robot Gyro and Robot Block, respectively 
The system's launch represented not only a new product, but also a reframing of the severely damaged home video game market in North America  The 1983 video game crash had occurred in large part due to a lack of consumer and retailer confidence in video games, which had been partially due to confusion and misrepresentation in video game marketing  Prior to the NES, the packaging of many video games presented bombastic artwork which did not represent a game's actual graphics  Furthermore, a single game such as Pac-Man appeared across consoles with substantial variations in graphics, sound, and general quality  In contrast, Nintendo's marketing strategy aimed to regain consumer and retailer confidence by delivering a singular platform whose graphics could be represented truthfully and whose qualities were clearly defined To differentiate Nintendo's new home platform from the perception of a troubled and shallow video game market still reeling from the 1983 crash, the company freshened its product nomenclature and established a strict product approval and licensing policy  The overall platform is referred to as "Entertainment System" instead of a "video game system", is centered upon a machine called a "Control Deck" instead of a "console", and features software cartridges called "Game Paks" instead of "video games"  This allowed Nintendo to gain more traction in selling the system in toy stores  To deter production of games which had not been licensed by Nintendo, and to prevent copying, the 10NES lockout chip system act as a lock-and-key coupling of each Game Pak and Control Deck  The packaging of the launch lineup of NES games bear pictures of close representations of actual onscreen graphics  To reduce consumer confusion, symbols on the games' packaging clearly indicate the genre of the game  A seal of quality is on all licensed game and accessory packaging  The initial seal states, "This seal is your assurance that Nintendo has approved and guaranteed the quality of this product"  This text was later changed to "Official Nintendo Seal of Quality" Unlike with the Famicom, Nintendo of America marketed the console primarily to children, instituting a strict policy of censoring profanity, sexual, religious, or political content  The most famous example is Lucasfilm's attempts to port the comedy-horror game Maniac Mansion to the NES, which Nintendo insisted be considerably watered down 
The optional Robotic Operating Buddy, or R O B , was part of a marketing plan to portray the NES's technology as being novel and sophisticated when compared to previous game consoles, and to portray its position as being within reach of the better established toy market  Though at first, the American public exhibited limited excitement for the console itself, peripherals such as the light gun and R O B  attracted extensive attention 

Other markets
In Europe and Oceania, the NES was released in two separate marketing regions  The first consisted of mainland Europe (excluding Italy) where distribution was handled by a number of different companies, with Nintendo responsible for manufacturing  The NES saw an early launch in Europe in 1986 although most of the European countries received the console in 1987  The release in Scandinavia was on September 1, 1986, where it was released by Bergsala  In the Netherlands, it was distributed by Bandai BV  In France it was released in October 1987, while in Spain between late 1987 and 1988 through distributor Spaco  Also in 1987, Mattel handled distribution for the second region, consisting of the United Kingdom, Ireland, Italy, Australia and New Zealand  Mattel handled distribution for Nintendo in Canada as well; however, it was unrelated to the aforementioned European / Australian releases In Brazil, the console was released late in 1993 by Playtronic, even after the SNES  But the Brazilian market had been dominated by unlicensed NES clones – both locally made, and smuggled from Taiwan  One of the most successful local clones was the Phantom System, manufactured by Gradiente, which licensed Nintendo products in the country for the following decade  The sales of officially licensed products were low, due to the cloning, the quite late official launch, and the high prices of Nintendo's licensed products Outside of Japan, regions in greater Asia received an "Asian Version" of the front-loader NES despite the prevalence of imported Famicom systems  Due to import restrictions, NES consoles in India and South Korea were rebranded and distributed by local licensees  The Indian version is called the Samurai Electronic TV Game System and the Korean version is called the Hyundai Comboy  The console sold very poorly in India 

Later redesigns and bundles
For its complete North American release, the Nintendo Entertainment System was progressively released over the ensuing years in several different bundles, beginning with the Deluxe Set, the Basic Set, the Action Set and the Power Set  The Deluxe Set, retailing at US$179 99 (equivalent to $529 in 2022), included R O B , a light gun called the NES Zapper, two controllers, and two Game Paks: Gyromite and Duck Hunt  The Control Deck, first released in 1987, retailed at US$89 99 with no game, and US$99 99 bundled with the Super Mario Bros  cartridge  The Action Set, released April 14, 1988, for US$109 99, came with the Control Deck, two game controllers, an NES Zapper, and a dual Game Pak containing both Super Mario Bros  and Duck Hunt 
In 1989, the Power Set included the console, two game controllers, an NES Zapper, a Power Pad, and a triple Game Pak containing Super Mario Bros, Duck Hunt, and World Class Track Meet  In 1990, a Sports Set bundle was released, including the console, an NES Satellite infrared wireless multitap adapter, four game controllers, and a dual Game Pak containing Super Spike V'Ball and Nintendo World Cup  Two more bundle packages were later released using the original model NES console  The Challenge Set of 1992 included the console, two controllers, and a Super Mario Bros  3 Game Pak for a retail price of US$89 99  The Basic Set retailed at US$89 99; it included only the console and two controllers, and no pack-in game  Instead, it contained a book called the Official Nintendo Player's Guide, which contained detailed information for every NES game made up to that point 
Finally, the console was redesigned for the Australian, North American and Japanese markets  As part of the final Nintendo-released bundle package, the product included the New-Style NES, or NES-101, and one redesigned "dogbone" game controller  In Australia, this version of the system was also available with a cartridge compiling Super Mario Bros, Tetris and Nintendo World Cup  Released in October 1993 in North America and 1994 in Australia, this final bundle retailed for US$49 99 and A$69 99 (A$79 99 with the pack-in game) respectively, and remained in production until the discontinuation of the NES in 1995 

Discontinuation
On August 14, 1995, Nintendo discontinued the Nintendo Entertainment System in both North America and Europe  In North America, replacements for the original front-loading NES were available for $25 in exchange for a broken system until at least December 1996, under Nintendo's Power Swap program  The Game Boy and Super NES were also covered in this program, for $25 and $35 respectively On May 30, 2003, Nintendo announced the discontinuation of the Famicom in September alongside the Super Famicom and the disk rewriting services for the Famicom Disk System  The last Famicom, serial number HN11033309, was manufactured on September 25; it was kept by Nintendo and subsequently loaned to the organizers of Level X, a video game exhibition held from December 4, 2003, to February 8, 2004, at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, for a Famicom retrospective in commemoration of the console's 20th anniversary  Nintendo offered repair service for the Famicom in Japan until 2007, when it was discontinued due to a shortage of available parts 

Hardware
Configurations
Although all versions of the Famicom/NES include essentially similar hardware, they vary in physical characteristics  The original Famicom's design is predominantly white plastic, with dark red trim; it featured a top-loading cartridge slot, grooves on both sides of the deck in which the hardwired game controllers could be placed when not in use, and a 15-pin expansion port located on the unit's front panel for accessories  In contrast, the design of the original NES features a more subdued gray, black, and red color scheme; it includes a front-loading cartridge slot covered by a small, hinged door that can be opened to insert or remove a cartridge and closed at other times, and an expansion port on the bottom of the unit  The cartridge connector pinout was changed between the Famicom and NES In late 1993, Nintendo introduced a redesigned version of the Famicom/NES (officially named the New Famicom in Japan and the New-Style NES in the U S ) to complement the Super Famicom/NES and prolong interest in the console while implementing cost reduction measures  For the redesigned NES, Nintendo opted to use a top-loading cartridge slot in to avoid reliability issues with the original console; the redesign also omitted AV output  Conversely, the redesigned Famicom offered such output while introducing detachable game controllers, though the microphone functionality was omitted as a result  The redesigned Famicom and NES models are cosmetically similar aside from the presence of a cartridge "bump" on the NES model, which the Famicom model lacks to accommodate its shorter cartridges as well as the RAM Adapter for the Famicom Disk System Sharp Corporation produced three licensed variants of the Famicom in Japan, all of which prominently displayed the shortened moniker rather than the official "Family Computer" name  One variant was a television set with an integrated Famicom; originally released in 1983 as the My Computer TV in 14-inch (36 cm) and 19-inch (48 cm) models, it was later released in the United States in 1989 as a 19-inch model named the Video Game Television  Another variant was the Twin Famicom, a console released in 1986 that combined a Famicom with a Famicom Disk System  Sharp then produced the Famicom Titler in 1989; intended for video capture and production, it featured internal RGB video generation and video output via S-Video while including inputs for adding subtitles and voice-overs 

Hardware clones
A thriving market of unlicensed NES hardware clones emerged during the climax of the console's popularity  Initially, such clones were popular in markets where Nintendo issued a legitimate version of the console long time after unlicensed hardware  In particular, the Dendy (Russian: Де́нди), an unlicensed hardware clone produced in Taiwan and sold in the former Soviet Union, emerged as the most popular video game console of its time in that setting and it enjoyed a degree of fame roughly equivalent to that experienced by the NES/Famicom in North America and Japan  A range of Famicom clones was marketed in Argentina during the late 1980s and early 1990s under the name of "Family Game", resembling the original hardware design  Thailand got Family FR brand famiclones, the Micro Genius (Simplified Chinese: 小天才) was marketed in Southeast Asia as an alternative to the Famicom; and in Central Europe, especially Poland, the Pegasus was available  Since 1989, there were many Brazilian clones of NES, and the very popular Phantom System (with hardware superior to the original console) caught the attention of Nintendo itself 

The unlicensed clone market has flourished following Nintendo's discontinuation of the NES  Some of the more exotic of these resulting systems surpass the functionality of the original hardware, such as a portable system with a color LCD (PocketFami)  Others have been produced for certain specialized markets, such as a rather primitive personal computer with a keyboard and basic word processing software  These unauthorized clones have been helped by the invention of the so-called NES-on-a-chip As was the case with unlicensed games, Nintendo has typically gone to the courts to prohibit the manufacture and sale of unlicensed cloned hardware  Many of the clone vendors have included built-in copies of licensed Nintendo software, which constitutes copyright infringement in most countries 

Design flaws
Nintendo's design styling for US release was made deliberately different from that of other game consoles  Nintendo wanted to distinguish its product from those of competitors and to avoid the generally poor reputation that game consoles had acquired following the video game crash of 1983  One result of this philosophy is to disguise the cartridge slot design as a front-loading zero-insertion force (ZIF) cartridge socket, designed to resemble the front-loading mechanism of a VCR  The socket works well when both the connector and the cartridges are clean and the pins on the connector are new  However, the socket is not truly zero-insertion force  When a user inserts the cartridge into the NES, the force of pressing the cartridge into place bends the contact pins slightly and presses the cartridge's ROM board back into the cartridge  Frequent insertion and removal of cartridges wears out the pins, and the ZIF design proved more prone to interference by dirt and dust than an industry-standard card edge connector The design problems were exacerbated by Nintendo's choice of materials  The console slot nickel connector springs wear due to design and the game cartridge's brass plated nickel connectors are also prone to tarnishing and oxidation  Nintendo sought to fix these problems by redesigning the next generation Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) as a top loader similar to the Famicom  Many players try to alleviate issues in the game caused by this corrosion by blowing into the cartridges, then reinserting them, which actually speeds up the tarnishing due to moisture  One way to slow down the tarnishing process and extend the life of the cartridges is to use isopropyl alcohol and swabs, as well as non-conductive metal polish such as Brasso or Sheila Shine Users have attempted to solve these problems by blowing air onto the cartridge connectors, inserting the cartridge just far enough to get the ZIF to lower, licking the edge connector, slapping the side of the system after inserting a cartridge, shifting the cartridge from side to side after insertion, pushing the ZIF up and down repeatedly, holding the ZIF down lower than it should have been, and cleaning the connectors with alcohol  Many frequently used methods to fix this problem actually risk damaging gaming cartridges or the system  In 1989, Nintendo released an official NES Cleaning Kit to help users clean malfunctioning cartridges and consoles 
In response to these hardware flaws, "Nintendo Authorized Repair Centers" sprang up across the U S  According to Nintendo, the authorization program was designed to ensure that the machines were properly repaired  Nintendo would ship the necessary replacement parts only to shops that had enrolled in the authorization program 
With the release of the top-loading NES-101 (New-Style NES) in 1993 toward the end of the NES's lifespan, Nintendo resolved the problems by switching to a standard card edge connector and eliminating the lockout chip  All of the Famicom systems use standard card edge connectors, as do Nintendo's two subsequent game consoles, the Super Nintendo Entertainment System and the Nintendo 64 

Lockout
The Famicom as released in Japan contains no lockout hardware, which led to unlicensed cartridges (both legitimate and bootleg) becoming extremely common throughout Japan and East Asia  Nintendo tried to promote its "Seal of Quality" in these regions to identify licensed games to combat bootlegs, but bootleg Famicom games continued to be produced even after Nintendo moved production onto the Super Famicom, effectively extending the lifetime of the Famicom The original NES released for Western countries in 1985 contains the 10NES lockout chip, which prevents it from running cartridges unapproved by Nintendo  The inclusion of the 10NES was a direct influence from the 1983 video game crash in North America, partially caused by a market flooded with uncontrolled publishing of games of poor quality for the home consoles  Nintendo did not want to see that happen with the NES and used the lockout chip to restrict games to only those they licensed and approved for the system  This means of protection worked in combination with the Nintendo "Seal of Quality", which a developer had to acquire before they would be able to have access to the required 10NES information prior to publication of their game Initially, the 10NES chip proved a significant barrier to unlicensed developers seeking to develop and sell games for the console  However, hobbyists in later years discovered that disassembling the NES and cutting the fourth pin of the lockout chip would change the chip's mode of operation from "lock" to "key", removing all effects and greatly improving the console's ability to play legal games, as well as bootlegs and converted imports 
Original NES consoles sold in different regions have different lockout chips, thereby enforcing regional lockout (regardless of TV signal compatibility)  Such regions include North America; most of continental Europe (PAL-B); Asia; and the British Isles, Italy, and Australasia (PAL-A) Problems with the 10NES lockout chip frequently result in one of the console's most common issues: the blinking red power light, in which the system appears to turn itself on and off repeatedly because the 10NES would reset the console once per second  The lockout chip required constant communication with the chip in the game to work : 247  Dirty, aging, and bent connectors often disrupt the communication, resulting in the blink effect  In other cases, the console turns on but only displays a solid white, gray, or green screen 

Technical specifications
The console's main central processing unit (CPU) was produced by Ricoh, which manufactured different versions between NTSC and PAL regions; NTSC consoles use a 2A03 clocked at 1 79 MHz, while PAL consoles use a 2A07 clocked at 1 66 MHz  Both CPUs are second source variants of the MOS Technology 6502, an 8-bit microprocessor prevalent in contemporary home computers and consoles; Nintendo ostensibly disabled the 6502's binary-coded decimal mode on them to avoid patent infringement against or licensing fees towards MOS Technology, which was owned by then-rival Commodore International  The CPU has access to 2 KB of onboard work RAM The console's graphics are handled by a Ricoh 2C02, a processor known as the Picture Processing Unit (PPU) that is clocked at 5 37 MHz  A derivative of the Texas Instruments TMS9918—a video display controller used in the ColecoVision—the PPU features 2 KB of video RAM, 256 bytes of on-die "object attribute memory" (OAM) to store sprite display information on up to 64 sprites, and 28 bytes of RAM to store information on the YIQ-based color palette; the console can display up to 25 colors simultaneously out of 54 usable colors The console's standard display resolution is 256 × 240 pixels, though video output options vary between models  The original Famicom features only radio frequency (RF) modulator output, while the NES additionally includes support for composite video via RCA connectors  The redesigned Famicom omits the RF modulator entirely, only outputting composite video via a proprietary "multi-out" connector first introduced on the Super Famicom/NES; conversely, the redesigned NES features RF modulator output only, though a version of the model including the "multi-out" connector was produced in rare quantities The console produces sound via an audio processing unit (APU) integrated into the processor  It supports a total of five sound channels: two pulse wave channels, one triangle wave channel, one white noise channel, and one DPCM channel for sample playback  Audio playback speed is dependent on the CPU clock rate, which is set by a crystal oscillator 

Accessories
Controllers
The game controller for both the NES and the Famicom has an oblong brick-like design with a simple four button layout: two round buttons labeled "A" and "B", a "START" button, and a "SELECT" button  Additionally, the controllers use the cross-shaped D-pad, designed by Nintendo employee Gunpei Yokoi for Nintendo Game & Watch systems, to replace the bulkier joysticks on controllers of earlier gaming consoles : 279 The original model Famicom features two game controllers, both of which are hardwired to the back of the console  The second controller lacks the START and SELECT button, featuring a small microphone instead; however, few games use this feature  The earliest produced Famicom units have square A and B buttons; issues with them getting stuck when pressed down led Nintendo to change their shape to a circular design in subsequent units following the console's recall Instead of the Famicom's hardwired controllers, the NES has two proprietary seven-pin ports on the front of the console to support detachable controllers and third-party peripherals  The controllers bundled with the NES are identical and include the START and SELECT buttons, lacking the microphone on the original Famicom's second controller  The cables for NES controllers are also generally three times longer than their Famicom counterparts A number of special controllers are intended for use with specific games, though are not commonly used  Such peripherals include the NES Zapper (a light gun), R O B  (a toy robot),: 297  and the Power Pad (a dance pad) : 226  The original Famicom has a deepened DA-15 expansion port on the front of the unit to accommodate them Two official advanced controllers were produced for the NES: the NES Advantage, an arcade controller produced by Asciiware and licensed by Nintendo of America; and the NES Max, a controller with grip handles that featured a "cycloid" sliding-disc D-pad in place of the traditional one  Both controllers have a "Turbo" feature, which simulates multiple rapid button presses, for the A and B buttons; the NES Max has manually pressed Turbo buttons, while the NES Advantage offers toggle buttons for Turbo functionality along with knobs that adjust the firing rate of each button  The latter also includes a "Slow" button that rapidly pauses games, though this function is not intended for games that invoke a pause menu or screen The standard game controller was redesigned upon the introduction of the redesigned console  Though the original button layout was retained, the shape of the redesigned controller—nicknamed the "dog bone" controller—resembles that of the Super Famicom/NES  In addition, the redesigned Famicom adopted NES-style detachable controller ports The original NES controller has become one of the most recognizable symbols of the console  Nintendo has mimicked the look of the controller in several other products, from promotional merchandise to limited edition versions of the Game Boy Advance 

Japanese accessories
Few of the numerous peripheral devices and software packages for the Famicom were released outside Japan 
The Famicom 3D System, an active shutter 3D headset headset peripheral released in 1987, enabled the ability to play stereoscopic video games  It was a commercial failure and never released outside Japan; users described the headset as bulky and uncomfortable  Seven games are compatible with the glasses, with three of them developed by Square; two titles received worldwide releases as Rad Racer and The 3-D Battles of WorldRunner Family BASIC is an implementation of BASIC for the Famicom, packaged with a keyboard  Similar in concept to the Atari 2600 BASIC cartridge, it allows the user to write programs, especially games, which can be saved on an included cassette recorder  Nintendo of America rejected releasing Famicom BASIC in the US in favor of its primary marketing demographic of children : 162 The Famicom Modem connected a Famicom to a now defunct proprietary network in Japan which provided content such as financial services  A dial-up modem was never released for the NES after a partnership with Fidelity Investments 

Famicom Disk System
By 1986, the cost and size limitations of ROM chips used in the Famicom's ROM cartridges were apparent, with no new advancements present to address them  With this in mind, Nintendo looked at the personal computer (PC) market, where the floppy disk was gaining wide adoption as a computer data storage medium  Partnering with Mitsumi to develop a floppy disk add-on for the Famicom based on the latter's Quick Disk format, Nintendo officially released it as the Family Computer Disk System in Japan on February 21, 1986, at a retail price of ¥15,000 The advantages of the format (called "Disk Card") were apparent on launch: it offered more than triple the data storage capacity of the then-largest cartridge (used for Super Mario Bros ) and introduced game save capability while offering lower production costs compared to cartridges, which resulted in lower retail prices for consumers  The add-on also offered upgraded sound capability by adding a wavetable synthesis channel while including more space that developers could use for the Famicom's audio sample channel  Taking advantage of the disk's re-writability, Nintendo set up "Disk Writer" interactive kiosks at retail stores throughout Japan; at each kiosk, consumers could rewrite their disks with new games; new blank disks to write onto were also offered inside it : 75  Nintendo also set up "Disk Fax" kiosks for players to submit their high scores on special blue disks for contests and rankings, predating the online leaderboard by several years Although Nintendo committed to exclusively releasing games on the Disk System after its release, numerous external issues plagued its long-term viability  Just four months after launch, Capcom released a Famicom port of Makaimura (known as Ghosts 'n Goblins in the U S ) on a cartridge with more data storage capacity than what was possible on Disk Cards, nullifying one of the Disk System's major advantages by using discrete logic chips to perform bank switching  Nintendo also demanded half of the copyright ownership for each game it selected for release on the Disk System, resulting in developers electing to remain on cartridge instead as the latter gained functionality previously considered unique to the former  Developers additionally loathed the Disk Writer kiosks due to their lower profit margin, while retailers complained of their presence taking up valuable space as interest in the format waned : 78 Usage of a floppy disk-based medium brought about further complications; Disk Cards were more fragile than cartridges and were prone to data corruption from magnetic exposure  Their unreliability was exacerbated by their lack of a shutter, which Nintendo substituted with a wax sleeve and clear keep case to reduce costs; blue disks and later Disk Cards included shutters  The rubber belt-based disk drives were also unreliable, with cryptic error codes complicating troubleshooting; even when fully functional, players accustomed to cartridges were annoyed with the introduction of loading times and disk flipping  Furthermore, the rewritable nature of the format resulted in rampant software piracy, with Nintendo's attempts at anti-piracy measures quickly defeated Despite selling close to two million units for all of 1986, Nintendo only managed to increase the total to 4 4 million units by 1990, falling well short of internal projections : 76  By then, the Disk System was rendered obsolete due to advancements in ROM cartridge production: memory mapping chips for expanded data storage capacity, battery-backed SRAM for game saving, and declining overall production costs  While Nintendo alluded to a Western release for the Disk System, going so far as to successfully file a U S  patent for it and having the Famicom's cartridge pins used by its RAM Adapter for enhanced audio rerouted to the NES's little-used bottom expansion port, such a release never materialized due to its reception in Japan  Most of its games were re-released with workarounds on cartridge for both the Famicom and NES, albeit without the enhanced audio  Although the last game for the Disk System was released in December 1992, Nintendo continued to offer repair and rewrite services for it until September 2003 

NES Test Station
The NES Test Station diagnostics machine was introduced in 1988  It is an NES-based unit designed for testing NES hardware, components, and games  It was only provided for use in World of Nintendo boutiques as part of the Nintendo World Class Service program  Visitors were to bring items to test with the station, and could be assisted by a store technician or employee 
The NES Test Station's front has a Game Pak slot and connectors for testing various components (AC adapter, RF switch, Audio/Video cable, NES Control Deck, accessories and games), with a centrally-located selector knob to choose which component to test  The unit itself weighs approximately 11 7 pounds without a TV  It connects to a television via a combined A/V and RF Switch cable  By actuating the green button, a user can toggle between an A/V Cable or RF Switch connection  The television it is connected to (typically 11" to 14") is meant to be placed atop it In 1991, Nintendo provided an add-on called the "Super NES Counter Tester" that tests Super NES components and games  The Super NES Counter Tester is a standard Control Deck on a metal fixture with the connection from the back of the unit re-routed to the front  These connections may be made directly to the test station or to the TV, depending on what is to be tested 

Games
Game Pak
The NES uses a 72-pin design, as compared with 60 pins on the Famicom  To reduce costs and inventory, some early games released in North America are simply Famicom cartridges attached to an adapter to fit inside the NES hardware  Early NES cartridges are held together with five small slotted screws  Games released after 1987 were redesigned slightly to incorporate two plastic clips molded into the plastic itself, removing the need for the top two screws The back of the cartridge bears a label with handling instructions  Production and software revision codes were imprinted as stamps on the back label to correspond with the software version and producer  All licensed NTSC and PAL cartridges are a standard shade of gray plastic, with the exception of The Legend of Zelda and Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, which were manufactured in gold-plastic carts  Unlicensed carts were produced in black, robin egg blue, and gold, and are all slightly different shapes than standard NES cartridges  Nintendo also produced yellow-plastic carts for internal use at Nintendo Service Centers, although these "test carts" were never made available for purchase  All licensed US cartridges were made by Nintendo, Konami, and Acclaim  For promotion of DuckTales: Remastered, Capcom sent 150 limited-edition gold NES cartridges with the original game, featuring the Remastered art as the sticker, to different gaming news agencies  The instruction label on the back includes the opening lyric from the show's theme song, "Life is like a hurricane" Famicom cartridges are shaped slightly differently  Unlike NES games, official Famicom cartridges were produced in many colors of plastic  Adapters, similar in design to the popular accessory Game Genie, are available that allow Famicom games to be played on an NES  In Japan, several companies manufactured the cartridges for the Famicom : 61  This allowed these companies to develop customized chips designed for specific purposes, such as superior sound and graphics 

Third-party licensing
Nintendo's near monopoly on the home video game market left it with a dominant influence over the industry  Unlike Atari, which never actively pursued third-party developers (and even went to court in an attempt to force Activision to cease production of Atari 2600 games), Nintendo had anticipated and encouraged the involvement of third-party software developers, though strictly on Nintendo's terms  Some of the Nintendo platform-control measures were adopted in a less stringent way by later console manufacturers such as Sega, Sony, and Microsoft 
To this end, a 10NES authentication chip is in every console and in every licensed cartridge  If the console's chip can not detect a counterpart chip inside the cartridge, the game does not load : 247  Nintendo portrayed these measures as intended to protect the public against poor-quality games, and placed a golden seal of approval on all licensed games released for the system 
Nintendo found success with Japanese arcade manufacturers such as Konami, Capcom, Taito and Namco, which signed on as third-party developers  However, they found resistance with US game developers including Atari Games, Activision, Electronic Arts and Epyx refusing Nintendo's one-sided terms  Acclaim Entertainment, a fledgling game publisher founded by former Activision employees, was the first major third-party licensee in the United States to sign on with Nintendo in late 1987  Atari Games (through Tengen) and Activision signed on soon after 
Nintendo was not as restrictive as Sega, which did not permit third-party publishing until Mediagenic in late summer 1988  Nintendo's intention was to reserve a large part of NES game revenue for itself  Nintendo required that it be the sole manufacturer of all cartridges, and that the publisher had to pay in full before the cartridges for that game be produced  Cartridges could not be returned to Nintendo, so publishers assumed all the risk  As a result, some publishers lost more money due to distress sales of remaining inventory at the end of the NES era than they ever earned in profits from sales of the games  Because Nintendo controlled the production of all cartridges, it was able to enforce strict rules on its third-party developers, who were required to sign a contract that would obligate them to develop exclusively for the system, order at least 10,000 cartridges, and only make five games per year : 214–215  The global 1988 shortage of DRAM and ROM chips reportedly caused Nintendo to only permit an average of 25% of publishers' requests for cartridges, with some receiving much higher amounts and others almost none  GameSpy noted that Nintendo's "iron-clad terms" made the company many enemies during the 1980s  Some developers tried to circumvent the five game limit by creating additional company brands like Konami's Ultra Games label; others tried circumventing the 10NES chip 

Nintendo was accused of antitrust violations because of the strict licensing requirements  The United States Department of Justice and several states began probing Nintendo's business practices, leading to the involvement of Congress and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC)  The FTC conducted an extensive investigation which included interviewing hundreds of retailers  During the FTC probe, Nintendo changed the terms of its publisher licensing agreements to eliminate the two-year rule and other restrictive terms  Nintendo and the FTC settled the case in April 1991, with Nintendo required to send vouchers giving a $5 discount off to a new game, to every person that had purchased an NES game between June 1988 and December 1990  GameSpy remarked that Nintendo's punishment was particularly weak giving the case's findings, although it has been speculated that the FTC did not want to damage the video game industry in the United States With the NES near the end of its life, many third-party publishers such as Electronic Arts supported upstart competing consoles with less strict licensing terms such as the Sega Genesis and then the PlayStation, which eroded and then took over Nintendo's dominance in the home console market, respectively  Consoles from Nintendo's rivals in the post-SNES era had always enjoyed much stronger third-party support than Nintendo, which relied more heavily on first-party games 

Unlicensed games
Companies that refused to pay the licensing fee or were rejected by Nintendo found ways to circumvent the console's authentication system  Most of these companies created circuits that use a voltage spike to temporarily disable the 10NES chip : 286  A few unlicensed games released in Europe and Australia are in the form of a dongle to connect to a licensed game, to use the licensed game's 10NES chip for authentication  To combat unlicensed games, Nintendo of America threatened retailers who sold them with losing their supply of licensed games, and multiple revisions were made to the NES PCBs to prevent unlicensed games from working 
Atari Games took a different approach with its line of NES products, Tengen  The company attempted to reverse engineer the lockout chip to develop its own "Rabbit" chip  Tengen also obtained a description of the lockout chip from the United States Patent and Trademark Office by falsely claiming that it was required to defend against present infringement claims  Nintendo successfully sued Tengen for copyright infringement  Tengen's antitrust claims against Nintendo were never decided Color Dreams made Christian video games under the subsidiary name Wisdom Tree  Historian Steven Kent wrote, "Wisdom Tree presented Nintendo with a prickly situation  The general public did not seem to pay close attention to the court battle with Atari Games, and industry analysts were impressed with Nintendo's legal acumen; but going after a tiny company that published innocuous religious games was another story ": 400

Game rentals
As the Nintendo Entertainment System grew in popularity and entered millions of American homes, some small video rental shops began buying their own copies of NES games, and renting them out to customers for around the same price as a video cassette rental for a few days  Nintendo received no profit from the practice beyond the initial cost of their game, and unlike movie rentals, a newly released game could hit store shelves and be available for rent on the same day  Nintendo took steps to stop game rentals, but did not take any formal legal action until Blockbuster Video began to make game rentals a large-scale service  Nintendo claimed that allowing customers to rent games would significantly hurt sales and drive up the cost of games  Nintendo lost the lawsuit, but did win on a claim of copyright infringement  Blockbuster was banned from including photocopies of original, copyrighted instruction booklets with its rented games  In compliance with the ruling, Blockbuster produced original short instructions—usually in the form of a small booklet, card, or label stuck on the back of the rental box—that explained the game's basic premise and controls  Video rental shops continued the practice of renting video games 

Reception
By 1988, industry observers stated that the NES's popularity had grown so quickly that the market for Nintendo cartridges was larger than that for all home computer software : 347  Compute! reported in 1989 that Nintendo had sold seven million NES systems in 1988 alone, almost as many as the number of Commodore 64s sold in its first five years  "Computer game makers [are] scared stiff", the magazine said, stating that Nintendo's popularity caused most competitors to have poor sales during the previous Christmas and resulted in serious financial problems for some 

In June 1989, Nintendo of America's vice president of marketing Peter Main, said that the Famicom was present in 37% of Japan's households  By 1990, 30% of American households owned the NES, compared to 23% for all personal computers  By 1990, the NES had outsold all previously released consoles worldwide  The slogan for this brand was "It can't be beaten" : 345  The Nintendo Entertainment System was not available in the Soviet Union 
In the early 1990s, gamers predicted that competition from technologically superior systems such as the 16-bit Sega Genesis would mean the immediate end of the NES's dominance  Instead, during the first year of Nintendo's successor console the Super Famicom (named Super Nintendo Entertainment System outside Japan), the Famicom remained the second highest-selling video game console in Japan, outselling the newer and more powerful NEC PC Engine and Sega Mega Drive by a wide margin  The console remained popular in Japan and North America until late 1993, when the demand for new NES software abruptly plummeted  The final licensed Famicom game released in Japan is Takahashi Meijin no Bōken Jima IV (Adventure Island IV), in North America is Wario's Woods, and in Europe is The Lion King in 1995  In the wake of ever decreasing sales and the lack of new games, Nintendo of America officially discontinued the NES by 1995  Nintendo produced new Famicom units in Japan until September 25, 2003, and continued to repair Famicom consoles until October 31, 2007, attributing the discontinuation of support to insufficient supplies of parts The NES was initially not as successful in Europe during the late 1980s, when it was outsold by the Master System in the United Kingdom  By 1990, the Master System was the highest-selling console in Europe, though the NES was beginning to have a fast-growing user base in the United Kingdom  During the early 1990s, NES sales caught up with and narrowly overtook the Master System overall in Western Europe, though the Master System maintained its lead in several markets such as the United Kingdom, Belgium and Spain 

Legacy
The NES was released two years after the video game crash of 1983, when many retailers and adult consumers regarded electronic games as a passing fad,: 280  so many believed at first that the NES would soon fade  Before the NES and Famicom, Nintendo was known as a moderately successful Japanese toy and playing card manufacturer, but the consoles' popularity helped the company grow into an internationally recognized name almost synonymous with video games as Atari had been, and set the stage for Japanese dominance of the video game industry  With the NES, Nintendo also changed the relationship between console manufacturers and third-party software developers by restricting developers from publishing and distributing software without licensed approval  This led to higher-quality games, which helped change the attitude of a public that had grown weary from poorly produced games for earlier systems : 306–307 The NES hardware design is also very influential  Nintendo chose the name "Nintendo Entertainment System" for the US market and redesigned the system so it would not give the appearance of a child's toy  The front-loading cartridge input allowed it to be used more easily in a TV stand with other entertainment devices, such as a videocassette recorder The system's hardware limitations led to design principles that still influence the development of modern video games  Many prominent game franchises originated on the NES, including Nintendo's own Super Mario Bros ,|: 57  The Legend of Zelda: 353  and Metroid,: 357  Capcom's Mega Man franchise, Konami's Castlevania: 358  franchise, Square's Final Fantasy,|: 95  and Enix's Dragon Quest|: 222  franchises 
NES imagery, especially its controller, has become a popular motif for a variety of products, including Nintendo's Game Boy Advance  Clothing, accessories, and food items adorned with NES-themed imagery are still produced and sold in stores 

Emulation
The NES can be emulated on many other systems  The first emulator was the Japanese-only Pasofami  It was soon followed by iNES, which is available in English and is cross-platform, in 1996  It was described as being the first NES emulation software that could be used by a non-expert  The first version of NESticle, an unofficial MS-DOS-based emulator, was released on April 3, 1997  Nintendo offers licensed emulation of some NES games via its Virtual Console service for the Wii, Nintendo 3DS, and Wii U, and via its Nintendo Switch Online service 

Re-release
On July 14, 2016, Nintendo announced the November 2016 launch of a miniature replica of the NES, named the Nintendo Entertainment System: NES Classic Edition in the United States and Nintendo Classic Mini: Nintendo Entertainment System in Europe and Australia  The emulation-based console includes 30 permanently bundled games from the vintage NES library, including the Super Mario Bros  series and The Legend of Zelda series  The system has HDMI display output and a new replica controller, which can also connect to the Wii Remote for use with Virtual Console games  It was discontinued in North America on April 13, 2017, and worldwide on April 15, 2017  However, Nintendo announced in September 2017 that the NES Classic Mini would return to production on June 29, 2018, only to be discontinued again permanently by December of that year 

See also
History of Nintendo
Nintendo hard
Nintendo World Championships

Notes
Transliterations
Passage 5:
The Journal of Men's Studies
The Journal of Men's Studies (abbreviated JMS) is a peer-reviewed journal established in 1992 as the first  published by Men's Studies Press  As of 2015 the journal is published by SAGE Publications 

See also
Gender studies
Men's studies
Women's studies

External links
Official website
Passage 6:
Publishers Clearing House
Publishers Clearing House (PCH) is a direct marketing company that markets merchandise and magazine subscriptions with sweepstakes and prize-based games 
It was founded in 1953 by Harold Mertz to replace door-to-door magazine subscription sales by a single vendor offering multiple subscriptions by mail  It introduced its sweepstakes in 1967  In the early 1990s, the company was the subject of concerns and legal actions regarding whether consumers were misled about their odds of winning the sweepstakes and whether purchases increased their chances  By 2010, the company had reached settlements with all 50 states 
The company acquired search company Blingo in 2006, online gaming company Funtank in 2010, mobile marketing company Liquid Wireless in 2012, and internet news aggregator Topix in 2019 

History
Early history
Publishers Clearing House was founded in 1953 in Port Washington, New York by Harold Mertz, a former manager of a door-to-door sales team for magazine subscriptions  The company started in Mertz's basement with help from his first wife LuEsther and daughter Joyce  Its first mailings were of 10,000 envelopes from Mertz's home in Long Island, New York, and offered 20 magazine subscriptions  A hundred orders were received  Within a few years the company moved out of Mertz's basement into an office building and started hiring staff  When PCH moved its headquarters in 1969, its prior location was donated to the city and renamed the Harold E  Mertz Community Center  The company revenue had grown to US$50 million by 1981, and $100 million by 1988 In 1967 PCH ran its first sweepstakes as a way to increase subscription sales, based on the sweepstakes held by Reader's Digest  The first prizes ranged from $1 to $10 and entrants had a 1 in 10 chance of winning  After the sweepstakes increased response rates to mailings, prizes of $5,000 and eventually $250,000 were offered  PCH began advertising the sweepstakes on TV in 1974  It was the only major multi-magazine subscription business until 1977  Former client Time Inc  and several other publishers formed American Family Publishers (AFP) to compete with PCH after the company refused repeated requests by Time for a larger share of sales revenue from magazine subscriptions AFP and PCH competed for exclusive rights to magazines and for the better promotion and prize ideas  When AFP increased their jackpot to $1 million, and then to $10 million in 1985, PCH raised its prizes to match  $7 million in prizes were distributed by 1979, $40 million by 1991, and $137 million by 2000  In 1989, two members of its advertising team, Dave Sayer and Todd Sloane, started the Prize Patrol, a publicized event where winners are surprised with a check at their home  The idea was inspired by the 1950s television series The Millionaire  The two companies were often mistaken for each other, with Star Search host Ed McMahon and The $25,000 Pyramid host Dick Clark, the spokespeople for AFP, mistaken for representatives of the better-known PCH In 1992 thousands of discarded sweepstakes entries from contestants who had not bought magazine subscriptions were found in the company's trash, reinforcing beliefs that the company favored those who made purchases in selecting a sweepstakes winner  PCH said this was done by a disgruntled employee at their mail processing vendor  A class action lawsuit ensued, which PCH settled by giving discarded entrants a second chance to win 

Government regulation
In the 1990s PCH and its primary competitor, AFP, experienced a series of legal troubles due to concerns that their mailings misled consumers about their odds of winning and implied that magazine purchases increased their chances  This led to the Deceptive Mail Prevention and Enforcement Act of 2000, which regulates direct mail businesses  At the senate hearings regarding this Act, PCH said most consumers were not confused about their chances of winning or that purchases did not increase their chances  The company said that fewer than five percent of participants spend more than $300  Government officials from California said 5,000 local consumers paid more than $2,500 each in magazine purchases under the false belief that they were increasing their odds of winning the sweepstakes Industry sources estimated PCH's response rates decreased by 7 to 12 percent a its sales volume by 22 to 30 percent in response to the bad publicity from the lawsuits  In 2000, PCH laid off a quarter of its 800-person work force 

Lawsuits and settlements
In 1994 PCH sent mailings telling recipients they were all "finalists", which led to a lawsuit involving the attorneys general of 14 US states  Later that year, PCH denied wrongdoing, but agreed to pay a settlement of $490,000 and to change their practices  Under the agreement, PCH said it would define terms like "finalist" and disclose the chances of winning In 1997, a contestant of competitor AFP flew to Tampa, Florida thinking he had won, though he had not  The resulting publicity caused more lawsuits for both companies  PCH reached a $30 million national settlement in 1999  In 2000, another $18 million settlement was reached with 24 states, after the company sent mass mailings which said "You are a winner!" and used mock personalized checks  PCH agreed to avoid similar mailings in the future, and add a "sweepstakes fact box" to mailings State attorneys spoke out against the national settlement from 2000 and additional lawsuits were filed by individual states  Another $34 million settlement was reached in 2001 in a lawsuit involving 25 states, bringing the total settlements since 1999 to $82 million  As part of the settlement, PCH was required to avoid terms including "Guaranteed Winner," add disclaimers to mailings saying that the recipient had not yet won and that purchasing merchandise would not increase their chances of being a winner  PCH reached settlements with all fifty states and agreed to work with a "compliance counsel " PCH apologized in the settlement and said it would contact customers who had spent more than $1,000 on merchandise the prior year PCH also reached an agreement with Iowa in 2007  In 2010 the company paid $3 5 million to the attorneys general of 32 states and the District of Columbia to settle possible contempt charges that it had violated the terms of the 2001 agreement  The company denied wrongdoing, but agreed to work with both an ombudsman and a compliance counsel who would review its mailings quarterly In April 2014, an investigation by the Senate Special Committee on Aging concluded that PCH had "pushed the limits" of prior agreements and that additional legislation may be needed In late 2021 PCH was hit with another lawsuit  "Publishers Clearing House sells and rents mailing lists containing subscribers’ personal information to a variety of third parties, including data miners and list brokers, multiple new class action lawsuits allege  Five plaintiffs have filed separate class action lawsuits against Publishers Clearing House (PCH), with each claiming the publishing company monetizes its subscribers’ private information—including their names and addresses—without consent 

Online development
PCH began selling merchandise in 1985 with two products  After a Hershey's Chocolate Cookbook and a diet cookbook sold more than other products, the company began expanding into jewelry, media, collectibles, household products, and others  The company also shifted its focus online  It began selling magazine subscriptions and merchandise on PCH com in 1996  In 2006, it acquired Blingo Inc , an ad-supported metasearch engine that was later re-branded as PCH Search and Win  PCH ran contests on Twitter, Facebook, and Myspace  iPhone apps for slot games and trivia were developed  The company created online play-and-win sites like PCH Games (formerly Candystand) and PCHQuiz4Cash, with air-hockey and video poker games In December 2010, PCH acquired Funtank and its online gaming site Candystand com  In 2011, PCH promoted a "$5,000 every week for life" sweepstakes in TV ads and the front page of AOL com  The following year the company acquired a mobile marketing company, Liquid Wireless  The company utilized, then stopped then started again utilizing coregistration (through other websites) to expand its customer base In 2008, a PCH spokesperson said the digital properties were intended to attract younger consumers  By 2013, the internet had become PCH's primary channel of interaction with consumers  The New York Times described the digital transition as "part of an overall effort to collect information on Web users, show them advertisements and use the registration information for PCH’s mailing lists "In 2020, PCH acquired digital publisher Wide Open Media Group, publisher of websites Wide Open Spaces, Wide Open Country, and FanBuzz 

Products
PCH is a direct-marketing company that sells merchandise and magazine subscriptions and operates several prize-based websites  While best known for the sweepstakes and Prize Patrol it uses to promote its magazine subscriptions, the majority of the company's revenue is from merchandise  The company has been selling books, media, jewelry, and other consumer items since the 1980s  PCH operates eight websites, including PCH Search and Win, PCH Lotto, PCH Games, PCH Save and Win, and Candystand The company also sells magazine subscriptions at a discount and advertises subscriptions along with its sweepstakes  It's estimated that companies like PCH keep 75 to 90 percent of the fees from the original subscription, while publishers use the increased distribution to improve circulation numbers and revenue from renewals  PCH popularized the idea of using sweepstakes to sell magazine subscriptions in the direct-marketing market and became known by detractors as a producer of junk mail for advertising through mass-mailings  Documents filed with the New York State Department in 1993 said that year the company mailed 220 million envelopes  Frequent buyers can receive 30 to 40 mailings a year 

Sweepstakes
Although PCH advertises its sweepstakes along with magazine subscriptions, no purchase is necessary to enter or win  In 1995, PCH began the tradition of announcing winners of its $10 million prize just after the Super Bowl  As of 2012, $225 million in prizes have been distributed  Some of its larger prizes are for $5,000 a week for life, or $10 million  Prizes can also range from $1 Amazon gift cards to $2,500, $1 million or $3 million  The larger cash prizes are paid in installments, typically with a balloon payment at 30 years, reducing the present value of prizes to much less than their nominal values 

Odds of winning
According to the official rules, as of June 2020, the odds of winning "$5,000 a Week for Life" in Giveaway 16000 are 1 in 6 2 billion 

Prize Patrol
The Prize Patrol surprises sweepstakes winners at their homes, work, or other locations with cash prizes capturing the event on video  Since their introduction in 1989, these reality TV-style videos of prize-winners surprised at their doorstep with checks for $1,000 to $10 million have been used in widely broadcast television commercials, and, more recently, in the company's online acquisition efforts, websites and social media communications  In 2013, a $5 million television campaign modified the traditional prize patrol commercial by digitally altering video from classic sitcoms like The Brady Bunch and Gilligan's Island to show the prize patrol visiting characters in the show  Major winners are never contacted in advance; any letters, telephone calls, and social media messages claiming that a person may have already won a major prize, or claiming that they need to pay a fee to collect the prize, are always scams The Prize Patrol has made in-person appearances or delivered prizes on TV programs including The Oprah Winfrey Show, The Price Is Right, and Let's Make a Deal  Their surprise winning moments have been spoofed by Jay Leno, Conan O'Brien, and the cast of Saturday Night Live; woven into the plots of movies such as Let's Go to Prison, The Sentinel, and Knight and Day; and Early Edition  They have been the subject of cartoons 

Spokesperson
In the summer of 2020 Marie Osmond became a spokesperson for Publishers Clearing House with television and online advertisements as well as direct-to-home mailings 
In January 2021, Steve Harvey made his debut in television commercials as a spokesperson for PCH 

Charitable Giving
Over 40% of net profits are donated to charity 

See also
List of New York companies
Passage 7:
Legal Help Desk
Legal Help Desk (abbreviated as Legal HD) is a legal-consulting public affairs show that aired on CNN Philippines since November 26, 2012  It is hosted by Atty  Karen Jimeno 

See also
Nine Media Corporation
Solar Entertainment Corporation
Solar News Channel
Solar News and Current Affairs
Solar Daybreak
Solar Newsday
Solar Network News
Solar Nightly News
Solar Headlines
Passage 8:
Groove Games
Groove Games was a Canadian developer and publisher of video game  Established in 2001, Groove Games had published more than 20 retail game titles on the PC, Xbox, and PlayStation 2 platforms 
In December 2006, Groove Media Inc  launched an online software platform, SkillGround  It allowed visitors to download retail-quality games for free and play against competitors of similar skill levels for fun, or for cash  SkillGround hosted multiple genres including: first-person shooter, racing, sports and fighting 

Released games
Context 2: Passage 1:
Ernst Angel
Ernst Angel (11 August 1894, Vienna, Austria – 10 January 1986, Newark, New Jersey) was an Austrian-born poet, theatre and film critic, screen play author, film director and publisher who later became a psychologist  He was Jewish For a period of time, he worked with Rollo May, co-authoring a book 
He died in Newark Airport 

Publications in psychology
Rollo May, Ernest Angel & Henry F  Ellenberger (Hg ): Existence: A new dimension in Psychiatry and Psychology  New York: Basic Book, 1958  New edition 1994 with Jason Aronson Publishers, Lanham, MD (the USA); ISBN 1-56821-271-2 Ernest Angel, Ph D  was vice-president of the National Psychological Association for Psychoanalysis ( NPAP) for many years  He escaped the Nazi concentration camps but many of his family members died  He told one of his students in supervision that he witnessed a prisoner in the camp being shot in the head directly in front of him  He confided that he would pretend to be invisible as a defense mechanism to the horrible conditions around him  After the war, he became a book editor in Berlin  After reading the works of Binswanger and Boss dealing with existential issues, he went to his supervisor and said that they should publish a book on existentialism  His publisher told him to find an authority who has written something on the subject  He went through " Dissertation Abstracts" and noticed that Rollo May wrote a dissertation on anxiety  He contacted him and that he told his student  is how Rollo May became the " pope of existentialism " Ernest was more comfortable remaining a Freudian  Dr  Angel was always concerned with the world around him and especially the threat of nuclear buildups  He said that the younger generations introject these threats and lose their sense of having a destiny and live only for the moment  With this in mind, he started the " Union for Concerned Psychologists and Psychoanalysts" that later merged with an international medical union  Always a snappy dresser, he was a man of style  In 1984, he encouraged his student, Philip Ingenito  to write and produce the video, " How To Choose a Therapist"  The video took a red ribbon at the American Film Awards and was voted "top 25" films by the American Library Association in 1985 

Selected filmography
Love on Wheels (1932)
Hunting You (1929)
Passage 2:
This Is My God
This is My God is a non-fiction book by Herman Wouk, first published in 1959  The book summarizes many key aspects of Judaism and is intended for both Jewish and non-Jewish audiences  The author, who served in the United States Navy and was a Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist, writes from a Modern Orthodox perspective 

Key topics
Jewish history
Shabbat
High Holy Days
Minor Holy Days (9th of Av, Purim, Hanukkah)
Jewish prayer
Kashrut (dietary laws)
Torah
Talmud
Orthodox Judaism
Reform Judaism
Israel
Zionism  This is My God, page 264, first edition (1959), published by Doubleday, Garden City 
Passage 3:
Storm of the Century
Storm of the Century, alternatively known as Stephen King's Storm of the Century, is a 1999 American horror television miniseries written by Stephen King and directed by Craig R  Baxley  Unlike many other television adaptations of King's work, Storm of the Century was not based on a novel but was an original screenplay written by the author and directly produced for television  King described the screenplay as a "novel for television " The screenplay was published as a mass-market book in February 1999 prior to the TV broadcast of the mini-series King has called Storm of the Century his personal favorite of all the TV productions related to his works 

Plot
As the people of Little Tall Island, Maine prepare for a powerful blizzard in 1989, elderly resident Martha Clarendon is brutally murdered by a menacing stranger  Town manager Robbie Beals investigates, and the stranger terrifies him by relating shameful secrets from his past  Mike Anderson, a supermarket manager and part-time constable, arrests the stranger, who identifies himself as André Linoge  Linoge seems to know the names and morbid secrets of all the island's residents, and is particularly interested in Mike's son Ralphie, who has a birthmark on his nose  Yet he gives no hint of his own background, saying only, "Give me what I want, and I'll go away " While sitting in a jail cell, Linoge possesses the minds of several townspeople, causing suicides and a murder  He then escapes the jail in the form of a wizened old man and repeats his demand before disappearing into the storm 
The residents take shelter from the storm in the town hall  As they sleep, Linoge appears on the televisions as a televangelist and lectures them on the consequences of refusing to accommodate a stranger  The residents have the same dream in which authorities find the island deserted after the storm and the word "Croaton" carved on a tree  A news reporter connects the disappearance to the lost Roanoke colony  Meanwhile Mike dreams that the townspeople walk into the ocean and drown  The next day, Linoge causes three residents to vanish while everyone is watching the lighthouse collapse  Two die and the third, Angie Carver, is discovered alive but visibly aged  Ralphie goes missing and, when found in a closet, says that he was with Linoge  With each death and abduction, Linoge sends his demand again 
The town's children fall under a spell and go to sleep, dreaming that they are flying through the clouds with Linoge  That evening Mike finds Linoge inside the town hall holding a resident hostage  Amused by Mike's sympathy for the townspeople, Linoge says that they are all sinners and criminals who merely pretend to be decent  He tells Mike to arrange a town meeting at 9:00 that night and escapes again  When the meeting gathers, Linoge tells the residents that he has lived thousands of years and, having grown old, he wants a child whom he can raise to be a sorcerer like him  He cannot take a child by force, but the dream that the residents had will come true if they refuse  He leaves them to debate for half an hour  Mike urges the people to stand up to Linoge and is horrified when all of them, even his wife Molly, decide to give in  Linoge returns and presides over a lottery in which Ralphie is chosen  Taking his natural elderly form once more, Linoge thanks the residents and warns them never to speak about what has happened  He then walks out of the town hall with Ralphie in his arms and flies into the night sky  Mike rushes outside and falls to his knees in the snow, begging Linoge to return Ralphie in exchange for anything  
In an epilogue, Mike leaves Little Tall and becomes a United States Marshal in San Francisco  Molly and Mike divorce and she gets remarried to Alton "Hatch" Hatcher, his deputy constable  Some residents succumb to their guilt and commit suicide  Years later, Linoge and Ralphie walk past Mike in Chinatown, Ralphie having become corrupted and evil  Mike considers telling Molly what he saw, but knows that it is better kept a secret 

Cast
Screenplay
The screenplay for the miniseries was written by Stephen King expressly for television  The screenplay was published as a mass-market book by Pocket Books just prior to the initial airing of Storm of the Century on ABC  The book included photographs of the TV mini-series  The book contains an introduction in which King describes the genesis of the idea as it occurred to him in late 1996  Beginning to write it in December 1996, he initially debated if the story should be either a novel or a screenplay  He described the result as a "novel for television " A hardcover edition, written as a screenplay rather than "prose", was published concurrently by the Book of the Month Club 

Release and reception
Storm of the Century aired on ABC on February 14–18, 1999  It was released on DVD on June 22 the same year On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 82% based on 22 reviews, with an average rating of 7 33/10  The website's critical consensus reads, "Chilling performances and an even darker moral dilemma shelter Storm of the Century's somewhat long-winded tale from ever being anything less than watchable "U S  Television Ratings:

See also
List of adaptations of works by Stephen King
Passage 4:
Herman Wouk Is Still Alive
"Herman Wouk Is Still Alive" is a short story by American author Stephen King  It was originally published in the May 2011 issue of The Atlantic magazine 

Synopsis
Old friends Brenda and Jasmine, along with their seven children between them, set off on a road trip in a rented Chevy Express after Brenda wins $2,700 on the Pick-3 lottery  They reflect back on their harsh childhoods and disappointing lives  Meanwhile, Phil and Pauline, two aging poets and former lovers, are on their way to a poetry festival at the University of Maine  They stop at a rest area to have lunch together  Soon, Brenda decides that their lives are no longer worth living and that the children are doomed to a pitiful future  Deliberately and with the consent and encouragement of Jasmine, she crashes the van into a tree near Phil and Pauline at high speed  Phil and Pauline hurry to the wreckage, but Brenda and Jasmine and all their children are dead  When a passer-by asks Pauline what happened, she finally loses her well-cultured disposition and asks him "What the fuck does it look like?"

Publication
"Herman Wouk Is Still Alive" came about as part of a bet between King and his son Owen during the NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament in which the loser would have to write a story based on a title supplied by the winner  Owen King came up with the title after reading in an article that Herman Wouk was still alive and writing despite being in his mid-nineties  King conceived of the story after reading about the 2009 Taconic State Parkway crash "Herman Wouk Is Still Alive" was first published in The Atlantic in May 2011  It was collected as part of the 2015 work The Bazaar of Bad Dreams 

Reception
Rocky Wood described "Herman Wouk Is Still Alive" as "King showing once again what a clear eye he has for observing society" and "another mainstream story that illustrates the horror that lurks in real life"  Tim Lepczyk described it as "an enjoyable and saddening story"  Herman Wouk himself was asked about the short story in a questions and answers session published as part of his 2012 novel The Lawgiver; Wouk stated "I read Mr  King's short story and enjoyed it " The story won the 2011 Bram Stoker Award for Short Fiction 

See also
2009 Taconic State Parkway crash
Herman Wouk
Stephen King short fiction bibliography
Passage 5:
David Wallechinsky
David Wallechinsky (born David Wallace, February 5, 1948) is an American populist historian and television commentator, the president of the International Society of Olympic Historians (ISOH) and the founder and editor-in-chief of AllGov com and worldfilmreviews us 

Early life
Wallechinsky was born in Los Angeles to a Jewish family, the son of writer Sylvia Kahn and the author and screenwriter Irving Wallace  His younger sister was fellow author Amy Wallace, a "witch" of Carlos Castaneda who co-wrote many books with him and their father and authored Sorcerer's Apprentice: My Life with Carlos Castaneda in 2003 
One day, after he got off an airplane in Britain, the customs officer looked at his passport and remarked, "Ah Wallace, a good Scottish boy coming home " Disquieted, back in the States he discovered that the original family name was Wallechinsky and he adopted that moniker 
He was educated at Palisades High School in Pacific Palisades, Los Angeles, California, graduating in 1965  One of his classmates was the future film critic and talk radio host Michael Medved, and they later wrote What Really Happened to the Class of '65, based on a series of interviews with their former classmates 

Career
In 1973, Wallechinsky grew dismayed with almanacs that, in his opinion, rehashed bare facts  He began developing an idea for a reference book to be read for pleasure, that would include lesser-known history  He worked on the book for a year, before being joined by his father for an additional year of research  The People's Almanac was published by Doubleday in 1975 and became a best-seller  One of the most popular chapters was a selection of lists, leading Wallechinsky (in conjunction with his father and sister Amy) to write The Book of Lists, which became an international best-seller  Both books spawned not only follow-up editions but copycat titles such as The Ethnic Almanac, The Jewish Almanac, and The Book Of TV Lists 
In 1960, Wallechinsky's father took him to the Rome Olympic Games  In 1984, he published the first edition of his work The Complete Book of the Olympics, a reference work with full results and many anecdotes about the modern Games  The book became unwieldy so was later split into two volumes The Complete Book of the Summer Olympics and The Complete Book of the Winter Olympics series  Wallechinsky now shares the editorial duties with his nephew Jaime Loucky  The books led to work for Wallechinsky as an Olympic commentator for NBC 
In 1985, Wallechinsky followed the book previously co-authored with Medved with a sequel, going back to his high school graduation year contemporaries and solely writing a similar retrospective Midterm Report: The Class of '65: Chronicles of an American Generation about pupils from across America who left high school in that year  He interviewed twenty-eight of those 1965 graduates including President Jimmy Carter's son Jack, and Rhode Island's then-congressional Representative Claudine Schneider  It was later published as "Class Reunion '65, Tales of an American Generation," written from the perspective of two decades post-high school graduation  In the book, Wallechinsky noted the profound impact that the war on Viet Nam had on the lives of his interview subjects In 1991, he was one of the founding members of the International Society of Olympic Historians (ISOH)  He served as treasurer of the organization from 1996 to 2004, vice-president from 2004 to 2012, then served as the organization's president Wallechinsky is the founder of AllGov com, which provides news about various departments and agencies of the American government  AllGov describes the functions of each agency, their histories, and controversies, and shares critiques and suggested reforms from both the left and the right 
He has compiled the list of "The World’s 10 Worst Dictators" for Parade magazine for a number of years  In 2006, this subject became a book entitled: Tyrants: The World’s 20 Worst Living Dictators 

Personal life
Wallechinsky is a vegetarian and is married to Flora Chavez  They have two sons: Elijah Chavez Wallechinsky, born in 1983, and Aaron Chavez Wallechinsky  born in 1986  Both brothers are photographers and designers  Wallechinsky splits his time between Santa Monica, California and the south of France 

Bibliography
Chico's Organic Gardening and Natural Living (1972) With Frank "Chico" Bucaro
Laughing Gas: Nitrous Oxide, with Michael Sheldin and Saunie Salyer (And/Or Press, 1973)
The People's Almanac (Doubleday, 1975) (with Irving Wallace)
What Really Happened to the Class of '65? (1976) (with Michael Medved)
The Book of Lists (William Morrow, 1977) (with Irving Wallace and Amy Wallace)
The People's Almanac #2 (William Morrow, 1978) (with Irving Wallace)
The Book of Lists #2 (William Morrow, 1980) (with Irving Wallace, Amy Wallace and Sylvia Wallace)
The Book of Predictions (1980) (with Amy Wallace and Irving Wallace)
The People's Almanac #3 (William Morrow, 1981) (with Irving Wallace)
The Intimate Sex Lives of Famous People (Delacorte, 1981) (with Irving Wallace, Amy Wallace and Sylvia Wallace)
The Book of Lists #3 (William Morrow, 1983) (with Amy Wallace and Irving Wallace)
Significa (Dutton, 1983) (with Irving Wallace and Amy Wallace)
The Complete Book of the Olympics (Penguin, 1984)
Midterm Report: The Class of '65: Chronicles Of An American Generation (1986); later published as Class Reunion '65, Tales of an American Generation
The Book of Lists: The '90s Edition (Little, Brown, 1993) (with Amy Wallace)
The People's Almanac Presents The 20th Century: History With The Boring Parts Left Out (Little, Brown, 1999)
The New Book of Lists (2005) (with Amy Wallace)
Tyrants: The World’s 20 Worst Living Dictators (ReganBooks, 2006)
The Complete Book of the Summer Olympics (various editions) (with Jaime Loucky)
The Complete Book of the Winter Olympics (various editions) (with Jaime Loucky)
Passage 6:
Roger Vadim
Roger Vadim Plemiannikov (French: [ʁɔʒe vadim]; 26 January 1928 – 11 February 2000) was a French screenwriter, film director and producer, as well as an author, artist and occasional actor  His best-known works are visually lavish films with erotic qualities, such as And God Created Woman (1956), Blood and Roses (1960), Barbarella (1968), and Pretty Maids All in a Row (1971) 

Early life
Vadim was born Roger Vadim Plemiannikov (sometimes transliterated Plemiannikoff) in Paris  His father, Igor Nikolaevich Plemiannikov (И́горь Никола́евич Племя́нников), a White Russian military officer and pianist, had emigrated from the Russian Empire and become a naturalized French citizen  He was a vice consul of France to Egypt, stationed in Alexandria, later posting to Mersin, Turkey as a consul  Vadim's mother, Marie-Antoinette (née Ardilouze), was a French actress  Although Vadim lived as a diplomat's child in Northern Africa and the Middle East in his early youth, the death of his father when Vadim was nine years old caused the family to return to France, where his mother found work running a hostel in the French Alps, which was functioning as a way-station for Jews and other fugitives fleeing Nazism Vadim studied journalism and writing at the University of Paris, without graduating 

Film career
Marc Allégret
At age 19, he became assistant to film director Marc Allégret, whom he met while working at the Theatre Sarah Bernhardt, and for whom he worked on several screenplays  He was an assistant director on Allegret's Blanche Fury (1948), a commercially unsuccessful melodrama which Allegret made for a British company in English 
Vadim was one of several writers on Allegret's French-British The Naked Heart (1950), aka Maria Chapdelaine, starring Michèle Morgan, as well as serving as assistant director  It was shot in French and English versions  Blackmailed (1951) was another film Allegret directed in England, starring Mai Zetterling and Dirk Bogarde; Vadim was credited as one of the writers  He was also one of several writers on Allegret's, La demoiselle et son revenant (1952) 
Vadim did the screenplay and commentary for a documentary, Le gouffre de la Pierre Saint-Marti (1953) and was assistant director on Allegret's Julietta (1953), a popular romance with Jean Marais, Dany Robin and Jeanne Moreau  Vadim wrote Allegret's Loves of Three Queens (1954), with Hedy Lamarr 

Brigitte Bardot
Vadim had begun a relationship with model-actress Brigitte Bardot  She was given a good role in a drama directed by Allegret, School for Love (1953), aka Futures Vedettes, starring Jean Marais; Vadim wrote the script with Allegret  The film was a commercial disappointment 
However the next collaboration between Allegret, Bardot and Vadim, Plucking the Daisy (1956), aka Mam'selle Striptease, was a huge success at the French box office  So too was Naughty Girl (1956), with Bardot  This allowed Vadim to get backing for his first movie as director 
Vadim's first film as director was based on an original story of his, And God Created Woman (1956)  Starring Bardot, Curt Jurgens and Christian Marquand and produced by Raoul Levy it was not only a major success in France, but around the world, and established Bardot as a world icon 
Vadim followed it with No Sun in Venice (1957) starring Françoise Arnoul and Marquand, produced by Levy, which was considerably less popular than And God Created Woman  Levy, Vadim and Bardot were to make Paris by Night with Frank Sinatra but Bardot refused to spend months in the US and Sinatra felt likewise about filming in France  Instead Vadim made The Night Heaven Fell (1958), starring Bardot and Stephen Boyd  He was one of several writers on Allegret's popular comedy, Be Beautiful But Shut Up (1958), starring Mylène Demongeot 
Vadims's next film was an adaptation of the book Les liaisons dangereuses (1959), which he wrote and directed  It starred Moreau,  Gérard Philipe (in his final film) and Annette Stroyberg, a Danish model who became Vadim's second wife  The film became a huge hit in France 
Stroyberg was also in the vampire film Blood and Roses (1960)  They divorced shortly afterwards 
Vadim was reunited with Bardot for Please, Not Now! (1961), a popular comedy  He was one of several directors of the anthology film, The Seven Deadly Sins (1962) 
Vadim began a relationship with a young Catherine Deneuve  She starred in a segment of the anthology film Tales of Paris (1962), which was written by Vadim and directed by Allegret  She starred in a film Vadim helped write and produce, And Satan Calls the Turns (1962), and was also in Vice and Virtue (1963), which Vadim directed 
Vadim had another success writing and directing for Bardot, Love on a Pillow (1962), but found less favour with Nutty, Naughty Chateau (1963) starring Monica Vitti 

Jane Fonda
Vadim tried another adaptation of a classic erotic text, La Ronde (1964)  He said at the time, "When I make a picture about relations between people, something erotic comes through; I can't help it! But sex has been an inspiration, the greatest inspiration, since art exists " One of the film's many stars was rising American actress Jane Fonda who began a romantic relationship with Vadim 
Vadim devised a vehicle for Fonda, The Game Is Over (1966), based on a book by Émile Zola  Shot in French and English versions, it was very popular in France, though less so in the US 
Dino de Laurentiis wanted Fonda to star in a science fiction sex comedy, Barbarella (1968) and she agreed provided Vadim could direct  Following this he directed Fonda in a segment of the omnibus horror film Spirits of the Dead (1968) along with her brother Peter Fonda 
During his marriage to Fonda, Vadim would accompany her back to the US periodically while she made movies there  He and Fonda broke up and Vadim directed Pretty Maids All in a Row (1971) for MGM, starring Rock Hudson and Angie Dickinson  It was a commercial disappointment 

Later career
Vadim returned to France  He wrote and directed Hellé (1972), starring Gwen Welles, which was a flop  He was reunited with Bardot for Don Juan, or If Don Juan Were a Woman (1973), which was Bardot's penultimate movie and a commercial disappointment 
Not particularly successful either  were Charlotte (1974), and Game of Seduction (1976) with Sylvia Kristel and Nathalie Delon  He directed a TV movie Bonheur, impair et passe (1977), starring Danielle Darrieux 
In the 1980s Vadim based himself in the US  He directed Night Games (1980), where he attempted to make a star of Cindy Pickett, with whom he became romantically involved  He directed a caper film in Canada, The Hot Touch (1981), starring Marie-France Pisier  Back in France he wrote and directed Surprise Party (1983)  He directed episodes of Faerie Tale Theatre (1984) and Deadly Nightmares (1986) 
Vadim attempted to recapture his former success with a new version of And God Created Woman (1988), with Rebecca de Mornay  Very different from the original – it only really used the same title – it failed critically and commercially 
His final years were spent working in TV, where he directed Safari (1991) and wrote and directed Amour fou (1993), starring Marie-Christine Barrault who became his final wife  She was also in La Nouvelle tribu (1996) and its sequel Un coup de baguette magique (1997), which Vadim wrote and directed 

Personal life
Romances
Vadim was famous for his romances and marriages to beautiful actresses  In his mid-30s, he lived with the teenaged Catherine Deneuve, by whom he had a child, Christian Vadim, prior to his marriage to Fonda  He was also involved with American actresses Margaret Markov and Cindy Pickett  Later, he cohabited with screenwriter Ann Biderman for several years, announcing their engagement in 1984, but the couple never wed 

Marriages
Brigitte Bardot, 20 December 1952  – 6 December 1957 (divorced)
Annette Stroyberg, 17 June 1958  – 14 March 1961 (divorced); 1 daughter (Nathalie) b  7 December 1957
Jane Fonda, 14 August 1965  – 16 January 1973 (divorced); 1 daughter (Vanessa) b  28 September 1968
Catherine Schneider, 13 December 1975  – 10 June 1977 (divorced); 1 son (Vania) b  April 1974
Ann Biderman, partner (engaged 1984 but never wed), California
Marie-Christine Barrault, 21 December 1990  – 11 February 2000 (his death)He also had two stepsons from his marriage to Schneider (younger sister of novelist Dominique Schneidre and heiress to the Schneider-Creusot steel and armaments firm) as well as adult stepchildren from Barrault's first marriage to Daniel Toscan du Plantier, also a friend of Vadim's, who called him "a happy man  He was someone in whom there was so much satisfaction to the end of his life  The films merely reflected his happiness " Nathalie, his eldest daughter, told Fonda biographer Patricia Bosworth: "Jane was the love of my father's life "

Writing
In addition to Vadim's theatre and film work, he also wrote several books, including the memoirs "Memoires du Diable", "Le Gout du Bonheur: Souvenirs 1940–1958" and an autobiography, D'une étoile à l'autre (From One Star to the Next) as well as a tell-all about his most famous exes, Bardot, Deneuve & Fonda: My Life with the Three Most Beautiful Women in the World, published in 1986  "My attitude is that if this book makes me a little money it will be a tiny compensation for all the money I helped those actresses make", Vadim explained 
He also wrote several plays and books of fiction, including L'ange affamé 

Death
Vadim died of cancer at age 72 on 11 February 2000  Ex-wives Bardot, Fonda, Schneider and Stroyberg were all in attendance at his funeral  He is buried at St  Tropez Cemetery 

Filmography
Writer or director
The Naked Heart (1950)
Blackmailed (1951)
Plucking the Daisy aka Mam'selle Striptease (1956)
And God Created Woman (1956)
Sait-on jamais? (1957)
Sois belle et tais-toi/Be Beautiful but Shut up (1957)
Les Bijoutiers du Clair de Lune/The Night Heaven Fell (1958)
Les liaisons dangereuses/Dangerous Liaisons (1959)
Blood and Roses (1960)
La Bride sur le cou/Please Not Now! (1961)
Les Sept péchés capitaux/Seven Capital Sins (1962)
Les Parisiennes/Beds and Broads (1962)
Love on a Pillow (1962)
Un château en Suède/Castle in Sweden (1963)
Le vice et la vertu/Vice and Virtue (1963)
La Ronde/Circle of Love (1964)
La Curée/The Game is Over (1966)
Spirits of the Dead (1968)
Barbarella (1968)
Pretty Maids All in a Row (1971)
Hellé (1972)
Don Juan ou Si Don Juan était une femme  (1973)
La jeune fille Assassinée/The Murdered Young Girl (1974)
Une femme fidèle (1976)
Bonheur, impair et passe (1977)
Jeux de Nuit/Night Games (1980)
The Hot Touch (1981)
Surprise Party (1983)
Faerie Tale Theatre (1984 TV, segment "Beauty and the Beast")
The Hitchhiker (1986 TV, segment "Dead Man's Curve")
And God Created Woman (1988)
Safari (1991, TV movie)
Amour fou (1993, TV movie)
La Nouvelle tribu (1996, TV mini-series)
Mon père avait raison (1996, TV movie)
Un coup de baguette magique (1997, TV movie)

Actor
School for Love (1955)
Sweet and Sour (1963)
Ciao! Manhattan (1972)
The Assassinated Young Girl (1974)
Rich and Famous (1981)
Into the Night (1985)
Passage 7:
Maine
Maine ( (listen)) is the easternmost state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States  It borders New Hampshire to the west, the Gulf of Maine to the southeast, and the Canadian provinces of New Brunswick and Quebec to the northeast and northwest, respectively  The largest state by total area in New England, Maine is the 12th-smallest by area, the 9th-least populous, the 13th-least densely populated, and the most rural of the 50 U S  states  It is also the northeasternmost among the contiguous United States, the northernmost state east of the Great Lakes, the only state whose name consists of a single syllable, and the only state to border exactly one other U S  state  Approximately half the area of Maine lies on each side of the 45th parallel north in latitude  The most populous city in Maine is Portland  Maine's capital is Augusta 
Maine has traditionally been known for its jagged, rocky Atlantic Ocean and bayshore coastlines; smoothly contoured mountains; heavily forested interior; picturesque waterways; and its wild lowbush blueberries and seafood cuisine, especially lobster and clams  Coastal and Down East Maine have emerged as important centers for the creative economy, especially in the vicinity of Portland, which is also bringing gentrification The territory of Maine has been inhabited by aboriginal populations for thousands of years after the glaciers retreated during the last ice age  At the time of European arrival, several Algonquian-speaking nations governed the area and these nations are now known as the Wabanaki Confederacy  The first European settlement in the area was by the French in 1604 on Saint Croix Island, founded by Pierre Dugua, Sieur de Mons  The first English settlement was the short-lived Popham Colony, established by the Plymouth Company in 1607  A number of English settlements were established along the coast of Maine in the 1620s, although the rugged climate and conflict with the local Indigenous people caused many to fail 
As Maine entered the 18th century, only a half dozen European settlements had survived  Loyalist and Patriot forces contended for Maine's territory during the American Revolution  During the War of 1812, the largely undefended eastern region of Maine was occupied by British forces with the goal of annexing it to Canada via the Colony of New Ireland, but returned to the United States following failed British offensives on the northern border, mid-Atlantic and south which produced a peace treaty that restored the pre-war boundaries  Maine was part of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts until 1820 when it voted to secede from Massachusetts to become a separate state  On March 15, 1820, under the Missouri Compromise, it was admitted to the Union as the 23rd state 

History
The earliest known inhabitants of the territory that is now Maine were Algonquian-speaking Wabanaki peoples, including the Passamaquoddy, Maliseet, Penobscot, Androscoggin, and Kennebec  During the later King Philip's War, many of these peoples would merge in one form or another to become the Wabanaki Confederacy, aiding the Wampanoag of Massachusetts and the Mahican of New York  Afterwards, many of these people were driven from their natural territories, but most of Maine's tribes continued, unchanged, until the American Revolution  Before this point, however, most of these people were considered separate nations  Many had adapted to living in permanent, Iroquois-inspired settlements, while those along the coast tended to move from summer villages to winter villages on a yearly cycle  They would usually winter inland and head to the coasts by summer European contact with what is now called Maine may have started around 1200 CE when Vikings are believed to have interacted with the native Penobscot in present-day Hancock County, most likely through trade  If confirmed, this would make Maine the site of the earliest European discovery in the entire US  About 200 years earlier, from the settlements in Iceland and Greenland, the Norse first identified America and attempted to settle areas such as Newfoundland, but failed to establish a permanent settlement  Archeological evidence suggests that Vikings in Greenland returned to North America for several centuries after the initial discovery to trade and collect timber, with the most relevant evidence being the Maine Penny, an 11th-century Norwegian coin found at a Native American dig site in 1954 The first European confirmed settlement in modern-day Maine was in 1604 on Saint Croix Island, led by French explorer Pierre Dugua, Sieur de Mons  His party included Samuel de Champlain, noted as an explorer  The French named the entire area Acadia, including the portion that later became the state of Maine  The Plymouth Company established the first English settlement in Maine at the Popham Colony in 1607, the same year as the settlement at Jamestown, Virginia  The Popham colonists returned to Britain after 14 months The French established two Jesuit missions: one on Penobscot Bay in 1609, and the other on Mount Desert Island in 1613  The same year, Claude de La Tour established Castine  In 1625, Charles de Saint-Étienne de la Tour erected Fort Pentagouet to protect Castine  The coastal areas of eastern Maine first became the Province of Maine in a 1622 land patent  The part of western Maine north of the Kennebec River was more sparsely settled and was known in the 17th century as the Territory of Sagadahock  A second settlement was attempted in 1623 by English explorer and naval Captain Christopher Levett at a place called York, where he had been granted 6,000 acres (24 km2) by King Charles I of England  It also failed 
The 1622 patent of the Province of Maine was split at the Piscataqua River into the Province of New Hampshire to the south and New Somersetshire to the north  A disputed 1630 patent split off the area around present-day Saco as Lygonia  Justifying its actions with a 1652 geographic survey that showed an overlapping patent, the Massachusetts Bay Colony had seized New Somersetshire and Lygonia by force by 1658  The Territory of Sagadahock between the Kennebec River and St  Croix River notionally became Cornwall County, Province of New York under a 1664 grant from Charles II of England to his brother James, at the time the Duke of York  Some of this land was claimed by New France as part of Acadia  All of the English settlements in the Massachusetts Bay Colony and the Province of New York became part of the Dominion of New England in 1686  All of present-day Maine was unified as York County, Massachusetts under a 1691 royal patent for the Province of Massachusetts Bay 
Central Maine was formerly inhabited by the Androscoggin tribe of the Abenaki nation, also known as Arosaguntacook  They were driven out of the area in 1690 during King William's War  They were relocated to St  Francis, Canada, which was destroyed by Rogers' Rangers in 1759, and is now Odanak  The other Abenaki tribes suffered several severe defeats, particularly during Dummer's War, with the capture of Norridgewock in 1724 and the defeat of the Pequawket in 1725, which significantly reduced their numbers  They finally withdrew to Canada, where they were settled at Bécancour and Sillery, and later at St  Francis, along with other refugee tribes from the south Maine was much fought over by the French, English, and allied natives during the 17th and 18th centuries  These natives conducted raids against settlers and each other, taking captives for ransom or, in some cases, kidnapped for adoption by Native American tribes  A notable example was the early 1692 Abenaki raid on York, where about 100 English settlers were killed and another estimated 80 taken hostage  The Abenaki took captives taken during raids of Massachusetts in Queen Anne's War of the early 1700s to Kahnewake, a Catholic Mohawk village near Montreal, where some were adopted and others ransomed After the British defeated the French in Acadia in the 1740s, the territory from the Penobscot River east fell under the nominal authority of the Province of Nova Scotia, and together with present-day New Brunswick formed the Nova Scotia county of Sunbury, with its court of general sessions at Campobello  American and British forces contended for Maine's territory during the American Revolution and the War of 1812, with the British occupying eastern Maine in both conflicts via the Colony of New Ireland  The territory of Maine was confirmed as part of Massachusetts when the United States was formed following the Treaty of Paris ending the revolution, although the final border with British North America was not established until the Webster–Ashburton Treaty of 1842 
Maine was physically separate from the rest of Massachusetts  Long-standing disagreements over land speculation and settlements led to Maine residents and their allies in Massachusetts proper forcing an 1807 vote in the Massachusetts Assembly on permitting Maine to secede; the vote failed  Secessionist sentiment in Maine was stoked during the War of 1812 when Massachusetts pro-British merchants opposed the war and refused to defend Maine from British invaders  In 1819, Massachusetts agreed to permit secession, sanctioned by voters of the rapidly growing region the following year 

Statehood and Missouri Compromise
Formal secession from Massachusetts and admission of Maine as the 23rd state occurred on March 15, 1820, as part of the Missouri Compromise, which geographically limited the spread of slavery and enabled the admission to statehood of Missouri the following year, keeping a balance between slave and free states Maine's original state capital was Portland, Maine's largest city, until it was moved to the more central Augusta in 1832  The principal office of the Maine Supreme Judicial Court remains in Portland 
The 20th Maine Volunteer Infantry Regiment, under the command of Colonel Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, prevented the Union Army from being flanked at Little Round Top by the Confederate Army during the Battle of Gettysburg 
Four U S  Navy ships have been named USS Maine, most famously the armored cruiser USS Maine (ACR-1), whose sinking by an explosion on February 15, 1898 precipitated the Spanish–American War 

Geography
To the south and east is the Gulf of Maine, and to the west is the state of New Hampshire  The Canadian province of New Brunswick is to the north and northeast, and the province of Quebec is to the northwest  Maine is the northernmost state in New England and the largest, accounting for almost half of the region's entire land area  Maine is the only state to border exactly one other American state (New Hampshire) 
Maine is the easternmost state in the United States both in its extreme points and in its geographic center  The town of Lubec is the easternmost organized settlement in the United States



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prompt_front: Answer the question based on the given passages. Only give me the answer and do not output any other words.

Question: There is a state A where Storm of the Century was filmed based on the book by the author who wrote a short story featuring the author of This Is My God. What is the population of state A?

The following are given passages.
Context 2:  Its Quoddy Head Lighthouse is also the closest place in the United States to Africa and Europe  Estcourt Station is Maine's northernmost point, as well as the northernmost point in New England  (For more information see extreme points of the United States )
Maine's Moosehead Lake is the largest lake wholly in New England, since Lake Champlain is located between Vermont, New York, and Quebec  A number of other Maine lakes, such as South Twin Lake, are described by Thoreau in The Maine Woods (1864)  Mount Katahdin is the northern terminus of the Appalachian Trail, which extends southerly to Springer Mountain, Georgia, and the southern terminus of the new International Appalachian Trail which, when complete, will run to Belle Isle, Newfoundland and Labrador 
Machias Seal Island and North Rock, off the state's Downeast coast, are claimed by both Canada and the American town of Cutler, and are within one of four areas between the two countries whose sovereignty is still in dispute, but it is the only one of the disputed areas containing land  Also in this easternmost area in the Bay of Fundy is the Old Sow, the largest tidal whirlpool in the Western Hemisphere 
Maine is the least densely populated U S  state east of the Mississippi River  It is called the Pine Tree State; over 80% of its total land is forested or unclaimed, the most forest cover of any U S  state  In the wooded areas of the interior lies much uninhabited land, some of which does not have formal political organization into local units (a rarity in New England)  The Northwest Aroostook unorganized territory in the northern part of the state, for example, has an area of 2,668 square miles (6,910 km2) and a population of 10, or one person for every 267 square miles (690 km2) 
Maine is in the temperate broadleaf and mixed forests biome  The land near the southern and central Atlantic coast is covered by the mixed oaks of the Northeastern coastal forests  The remainder of the state, including the North Woods, is covered by the New England–Acadian forests Maine has almost 230 miles (400 km) of ocean coastline (and 3,500 miles (5,600 km) of tidal coastline)  West Quoddy Head in Lubec is the easternmost point of land in the 48 contiguous states  Along the famous rock-bound coast of Maine are lighthouses, beaches, fishing villages, and thousands of offshore islands, including the Isles of Shoals which straddle the New Hampshire border  There are jagged rocks and cliffs and many bays and inlets  Inland are lakes, rivers, forests, and mountains  This visual contrast of forested slopes sweeping down to the sea has been summed up by American poet Edna St  Vincent Millay of Rockland and Camden, in "Renascence":

Geologists describe this type of landscape as a "drowned coast", where a rising sea level has invaded former land features, creating bays out of valleys and islands out of mountain tops  A rise in land elevation due to the melting of heavy glacier ice caused a slight rebounding effect of underlying rock; this land rise, however, was not enough to eliminate all the effect of the rising sea level and its invasion of former land features 
Much of Maine's geomorphology was created by extended glacial activity at the end of the last ice age  Prominent glacial features include Somes Sound and Bubble Rock, both part of Acadia National Park on Mount Desert Island  Carved by glaciers, Somes Sound reaches depths of 175 feet (50 m)  The extreme depth and steep drop-off allow large ships to navigate almost the entire length of the sound  These features also have made it attractive for boat builders, such as the prestigious Hinckley Yachts 
Bubble Rock, a glacial erratic, is a large boulder perched on the edge of Bubble Mountain in Acadia National Park  By analyzing the type of granite, geologists discovered that glaciers carried Bubble Rock to its present location from near Lucerne, 30 miles (48 km) away  The Iapetus Suture runs through the north and west of the state, being underlain by the ancient Laurentian terrane, and the south and east underlain by the Avalonian terrane 
Acadia National Park is the only national park in New England  Areas under the protection and management of the National Park Service include:
Acadia National Park near Bar Harbor
Appalachian National Scenic Trail
Maine Acadian Culture in St  John Valley
Roosevelt Campobello International Park on Campobello Island in New Brunswick, Canada, operated by both the U S  and Canada, just across the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Bridge from Lubec
Saint Croix Island International Historic Site at Calais
Katahdin Woods and Waters National MonumentLands under the control of the state of Maine include:

Maine State Parks
Maine Wildlife Management Areas (WMA)

Climate
Maine has a humid continental climate (Köppen climate classification Dfb), with warm and sometimes humid summers, and long, cold and very snowy winters  Winters are especially severe in the northern and western parts of Maine, while coastal areas are moderated slightly by the Atlantic Ocean, resulting in marginally milder winters and cooler summers than inland regions  Daytime highs are generally in the 75–85 °F (24–29 °C) range throughout the state in July, with overnight lows in the high 50s °F (around 15 °C)  January temperatures range from highs near 30 °F (−1 °C) on the southern coast to overnight lows averaging below 0 °F (−18 °C) in the far north The state's record high temperature is 105 °F (41 °C), set in July 1911, at North Bridgton 
Precipitation in Maine is evenly distributed year-round, but with a slight summer maximum in northern/northwestern Maine and a slight late-fall or early-winter maximum along the coast due to "nor'easters" or intense cold-season rain and snowstorms  In coastal Maine, the late spring and summer months are usually driest—a rarity across the Eastern United States  Maine has fewer days of thunderstorms than any other state east of the Rockies, with most of the state averaging fewer than twenty days of thunderstorms a year  Tornadoes are rare in Maine, with the state averaging two per year, although this number is increasing  Most severe thunderstorms and tornadoes occur in the southwestern interior portion of the state, where summer temperatures are often the warmest and the atmosphere is thus more unstable compared to northern and coastal areas  Maine rarely sees the direct landfall of tropical cyclones, as they tend to recurve out to sea or are rapidly weakening by the time they reach the cooler waters of Maine 
In January 2009, a new record low temperature for the state was set at Big Black River of −50 °F (−46 °C), tying the New England record Annual precipitation varies from 35 8 in (909 mm) in Presque Isle to 56 7 in (1,441 mm) in Acadia National Park 

Demographics
Population
The U S  Census Bureau estimates that the population of Maine was 1,344,212 on July 1, 2019, a 1 19% increase since the 2010 United States census  At the 2020 census, 1,362,359 people lived in the state  The state's population density is 41 3 people per square mile, making it the least densely populated state east of the Mississippi River  As of 2010, Maine was also the most rural state in the Union, with only 38 7% of the state's population living within urban areas  As explained in detail under "Geography", there are large tracts of uninhabited land in some remote parts of the interior of the state, particularly in the North Maine Woods 
The mean population center of Maine is located in Kennebec County, just east of Augusta  The Greater Portland metropolitan area is the most densely populated with nearly 40% of Maine's population  This area spans three counties and includes many farms and wooded areas; the 2016 population of Portland proper was 66,937 Maine has experienced a very slow rate of population growth since the 1990 census; its rate of growth (0 57%) since the 2010 census ranks 45th of the 50 states  The modest population growth in the state has been concentrated in the southern coastal counties; with more diverse populations slowly moving into these areas of the state  However, the northern, more rural areas of the state have experienced a slight decline in population from 2010 to 2016 As of 2020, Maine has the highest population age 65 or older in the United States According to the 2010 census, Maine has the highest percentage of non-Hispanic whites of any state, at 94 4% of the total population  In 2011, 89 0% of all births in the state were to non-Hispanic white parents  Maine also has the second-highest residential senior population According to HUD's 2022 Annual Homeless Assessment Report, there were an estimated 4,411 homeless people in Maine The table below shows the racial composition of Maine's population as of 2016 

According to the 2016 American Community Survey, 1 5% of Maine's population were of Hispanic or Latino origin (of any race): Mexican (0 4%), Puerto Rican (0 4%), Cuban (0 1%), and other Hispanic or Latino origin (0 6%)  The six largest ancestry groups were: English (20 7%), Irish (17 3%), French (15 7%), German (8 1%), American (7 8%) and French Canadian (7 7%) People citing that they are American are of overwhelmingly English descent, but have ancestry that has been in the region for so long (often since the 17th century) that they choose to identify simply as Americans Maine has the highest percentage of French Americans of any state  Most of them are of Canadian origin, but in some cases have been living there since prior to the American Revolutionary War  There are particularly high concentrations in the northern part of Maine in Aroostook County, which is part of a cultural region known as Acadia that goes over the border into New Brunswick  Along with the Acadian population in the north, many French-Canadians came from Quebec as immigrants between 1840 and 1930 
The upper Saint John River valley area was once part of the so-called Republic of Madawaska, before the frontier was decided in the Webster-Ashburton Treaty of 1842  Over a quarter of the population of Lewiston, Waterville, and Biddeford are Franco-American  Most of the residents of the Mid Coast and Down East sections are chiefly of British heritage  Smaller numbers of various other groups, including Irish, Italian and Polish, have settled throughout the state since the late 19th and early 20th century immigration waves 

Birth data
Note: Births in table do not sum to 100% because Hispanics are counted both by their ethnicity and by their race 

Since 2016, data for births of White Hispanic origin are not collected, but included in one Hispanic group; persons of Hispanic origin may be of any race 

Language
Maine does not have an official language, but the most widely spoken language in the state is English  The 2000 census reported 92 25% of Maine residents aged five and older spoke only English at home  French-speakers are the state's chief linguistic minority; census figures show that Maine has the highest percentage of people speaking French at home of any state: 5 28% of Maine households are French-speaking, compared with 4 68% in Louisiana, which is the second highest state  Although rarely spoken, Spanish is the third-most-common language in Maine, after English and French 

Religion
According to the Pew Research Center in 2014, the religious affiliations of Maine were: Protestant 37% (in particular: Evangelical Protestant 14%, Mainline Protestant 21%, Historical Black Protestant 2%), Atheism or Agnosticism 6%, Nothing in Particular 26%, Roman Catholic Church 21%, other Christians 5%, non-Christian religions including Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism and Baháʼí 7%, and Pagans and Unitarians 5% 
In 2014, the Roman Catholic Church was the largest religious institution and the Baptists (7% Evangelical and 5% Mainline) was the state's the largest Protestant institution, followed by the Methodists (6%) and the Congregationalists (5%)  The atheists and the agnostics are only 6% of the state, but 26% of Mainers said that they "Believe in God but they are Unaffiliated " The 81% of Mainers believed in God, while 3% don't know and 16% do not believe in God  The 34% of Mainers think that "religion is very important" and 29% said that is "important," while 21% said that religion isn't important By the publication of another study in 2020 through the Public Religion Research Institute, approximately 62% of the population were Christian; the religiously unaffiliated slightly increased to 33% from the separate 2014 study by the Pew Research Center  In a 2022 study by the Public Religion Research Institute, 63% of the population were Christian, and 30% were religiously unaffiliated, reflecting a shift of population  Among the non-Christian population in 2022, 1% were Unitarian Universalist, 5% Jewish, and 1% New Ager 
According to the Association of Religion Data Archives in 2020, with Christianity as the dominant faith, the largest denominations by number of adherents were Catholicism (219,233 members), non-denominational Protestantism (45,364), and United Methodists (19,686)  According to the same study, there were an estimated 16,894 Muslims in the state 

Economy
Total employment 2020:

520,969Total employer establishments 2020:

41,646The Bureau of Economic Analysis estimates that Maine's total gross state product for 2021 was $77 96 billion  Its per capita personal income for 2021 was $58,484, 30th in the nation  As of September 2022, Maine's unemployment rate is 3 3% 
Maine's agricultural outputs include poultry, eggs, dairy products, cattle, wild blueberries, apples, maple syrup, and maple sugar  Aroostook County is known for its potato crops  Potatoes make the state $166,672,000 a year  Commercial fishing, once a mainstay of the state's economy, maintains a presence, particularly lobstering and groundfishing  While lobster is the main seafood focus for Maine, the harvest of both oysters and seaweed are on the rise  In 2015, 14% of the Northeast's total oyster supply came from Maine  In 2017, the production of Maine's seaweed industry was estimated at $20 million per year  The shrimp industry of Maine is on a government-mandated hold  With an ever-decreasing Northern shrimp population, Maine fishermen are no longer allowed to catch and sell shrimp  The hold began in 2014 and is expected to continue until 2021  Western Maine aquifers and springs are a source of bottled water for companies like Poland Spring 
Maine's industrial outputs consist chiefly of paper, lumber and wood products, electronic equipment, leather products, food products, textiles, and bio-technology  Naval shipbuilding and construction remain key as well, with Bath Iron Works in Bath and Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery 
Brunswick Landing, formerly Naval Air Station Brunswick, is also in Maine  Formerly a large support base for the U S  Navy, the BRAC campaign initiated the Naval Air Station's closing, despite a government-funded effort to upgrade its facilities  The former base has since been changed into a civilian business park, as well as a new satellite campus for Southern Maine Community College 
Maine is the top U S  producer of low-bush blueberries  Preliminary data from the USDA for 2012 also indicate Maine was the largest blueberry producer of the major blueberry producing states, with a total production of 91,100,000 lbs  This data includes both low (wild) and high-bush (cultivated) blueberries  
Tourism and outdoor recreation play a major and increasingly important role in Maine's economy  The state is a popular destination for sport hunting (particularly deer, moose, and bear), sport fishing, snowmobiling, skiing, boating, camping and hiking, among other activities  Along with the tourist and recreation-oriented economy, Maine has developed a burgeoning creative economy, most notably centered in the Greater Portland vicinity Historically, Maine ports played a key role in national transportation  Beginning around 1880, Portland's rail link and ice-free port made it Canada's principal winter port, until the aggressive development of Halifax, Nova Scotia in the mid-20th century  In 2013, 12,039,600 short tons passed into and out of Portland by sea, which places it 45th of U S  water ports  Portland International Jetport has been expanded, providing the state with increased air traffic from carriers such as JetBlue and Southwest Airlines 
Maine has very few large companies that maintain headquarters in the state, and that number has fallen due to consolidations and mergers, particularly in the pulp and paper industry  Some of the larger companies that do maintain headquarters in Maine include Covetrus in Portland, Fairchild Semiconductor in South Portland, IDEXX Laboratories in Westbrook, Hannaford Bros  Co  in Scarborough, and L L Bean in Freeport  Maine is also the home of the Jackson Laboratory, the world's largest non-profit mammalian genetic research facility and the world's largest supplier of genetically purebred mice 

Taxation
Maine has an income tax structure containing two brackets, 6 5 and 7 95 percent of personal income  Before July 2013, Maine had four brackets: 2, 4 5, 7, and 8 5 percent  Maine's general sales tax rate is 5 5 percent  The state also levies charges of nine percent on lodging and prepared food and ten percent on short-term auto rentals  Commercial sellers of blueberries, a Maine staple, must keep records of their transactions and pay the state 1 5 cents per pound ($1 50 per 100 pounds) of the fruit sold each season  All real and tangible personal property located in the state of Maine is taxable unless specifically exempted by statute  The administration of property taxes is handled by the local assessor in incorporated cities and towns, while property taxes in the unorganized territories are handled by the State Tax Assessor 

Shipbuilding
Maine has a long-standing tradition of being home to many shipbuilding companies, such as Bath Iron Works and the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard  In the 18th and 19th centuries, Maine was home to many shipyards that produced wooden sailing ships  The main function of these ships was to transport either cargos or passengers overseas  One of these yards was located in Pennellville Historic District in what is now Brunswick, Maine  This yard, owned by the Pennell family, was typical of the many family-owned shipbuilding companies of the time period  Other such examples of shipbuilding families were the Skolfields and the Morses  During the 18th and 19th centuries, wooden shipbuilding of this sort made up a sizable portion of the economy 

Transport
Airports
Maine receives passenger jet service at its two largest airports, the Portland International Jetport in Portland, and the Bangor International Airport in Bangor  Both are served daily by many major airlines to destinations such as New York, Atlanta, and Orlando  Essential Air Service also subsidizes service to a number of smaller airports in Maine, bringing small turboprop aircraft to regional airports such as the Augusta State Airport, Hancock County-Bar Harbor Airport, Knox County Regional Airport, and the Northern Maine Regional Airport at Presque Isle  These airports are served by regional providers such as Cape Air with Cessna 402s, and CommutAir with Embraer ERJ 145 aircraft 
Many smaller airports are scattered throughout Maine, serving only general aviation traffic  The Eastport Municipal Airport, for example, is a city-owned public-use airport with 1,200 general aviation aircraft operations each year from single-engine and ultralight aircraft 

Highways
Interstate 95 (I-95) travels through Maine, as well as its easterly branch I-295 and spurs I-195, I-395 and the unsigned I-495 (the Falmouth Spur)  In addition, U S  Route 1 (US 1) starts in Fort Kent and travels to Florida  The eastern terminus of the eastern section of US 2 starts in Houlton, near the New Brunswick, Canada border to Rouses Point, New York, at US 11  US 2A connects Old Town and Orono, primarily serving the University of Maine campus  US 201 and US 202 flow through the state  US 2, Maine State Route 6 (SR 6), and SR 9 are often used by truckers and other motorists of the Maritime Provinces en route to other destinations in the United States or as a short cut to Central Canada 

Rail
Passenger
The Downeaster passenger train, operated by Amtrak, provides passenger service between Brunswick and Boston's North Station, with stops in Freeport, Portland, Old Orchard Beach, Saco, and Wells  The Downeaster makes five daily trips 

Freight
Freight service throughout the state is provided by a handful of regional and shortline carriers: Pan Am Railways (formerly known as Guilford Rail System), which operates the former Boston & Maine and Maine Central railroads; St  Lawrence and Atlantic Railroad; Maine Eastern Railroad; Central Maine and Quebec Railway; and New Brunswick Southern Railway 

Shipping
Cargo
The International Marine Terminal in Portland provides shipping container transport  In 2021 an estimated 36,700 shipping containers moved through the terminal  In 2017, a total of 17,515 shipping containers were transported  The Icelandic shipping company Eimskip opened its United States headquarters in Portland in 2013  Its ships stop in Portland once a week in a route that includes Atlantic Canada and Iceland with connections to northern Europe and Asia  In 2015, the terminal moved 10,500 containers  The Maine Port Authority in 2016 began a $15 5 million expansion and improvement of the terminal  The Maine Port Authority leased the International Marine Terminal from the city of Portland in 2009 

Law and government
The Maine Constitution structures Maine's state government, composed of three co-equal branches—the executive, legislative, and judicial branches  The state of Maine also has three Constitutional Officers (the Secretary of State, the State Treasurer, and the State Attorney General) and one Statutory Officer (the State Auditor) 
The legislative branch is the Maine Legislature, a bicameral body composed of the Maine House of Representatives, with 151 members, and the Maine Senate, with 35 members  The Legislature is charged with introducing and passing laws 
The executive branch is headed by the Governor of Maine (currently Janet Mills)  The Governor is elected every four years; no individual may serve more than two consecutive terms in this office  The current attorney general of Maine is Aaron Frey  As with other state legislatures, the Maine Legislature can by a two-thirds majority vote from both the House and Senate override a gubernatorial veto  Maine is one of seven states that do not have a lieutenant governor 
The highest court in the state's judicial branch is the Maine Supreme Judicial Court  The lower courts are the District Court, Superior Court and Probate Court  All judges except for probate judges serve full-time, are nominated by the Governor, and confirmed by the Legislature for terms of seven years  Probate judges serve part-time and are elected by the voters of each county for four-year terms 
In a 2020 study, Maine was ranked as the 14th easiest state for citizens to vote in 

Counties
Maine is divided into political jurisdictions designated as counties  Since 1860 there have been 16 counties in the state, ranging in size from 370 to 6,829 square miles (958 to 17,700 km2) 

Politics
Maine politics are dynamic in nature, with parties loosely hung together, governors often winning by pluralities rather than majorities, and significant turnover both in members and parties in legislative districts  In his 2010 article Maine's Paradoxical Politics, Kenneth Palmer suggests that "Maine's political leaders find themselves as centrists, primarily because they want to find practical solutions to difficult problems "The results of the elections are often varied  Maine is seen as a swing state, with unusually high support for independent candidates  The Republican Party have won Maine in 11 out of the past 20 presidential elections, and the governorship has been won by Democrats and independents three times each, and Republicans four times, since 1974 

Law enforcement
Municipalities
Organized municipalities
An organized municipality has a form of elected local government which administers and provides local services, keeps records, collects licensing fees, and can pass locally binding ordinances, among other responsibilities of self-government  The governmental format of most organized towns and plantations is the town meeting, while the format of most cities is the council-manager form  As of 2022 the organized municipalities of Maine consist of 23 cities, 430 towns, and 30 plantations  Collectively these 483 organized municipalities cover less than half of the state's territory  Maine also has three Reservations: Indian Island, Indian Township Reservation, and Pleasant Point Indian Reservation 
The largest municipality in Maine, by population, is the city of Portland (pop  66,318) 
The smallest city by population is Eastport (pop  1,331) 
The largest town by population is Brunswick (pop  20,278) 
The smallest town by population is Frye Island, a resort town which reported zero year-round population in the 2000 Census; one plantation, Glenwood Plantation, also reported a permanent population of zero 
In the 2000 census, the smallest town aside from Frye Island was Centerville with a population of 26, but since that census, Centerville voted to disincorporate and therefore is no longer a town  The next smallest town with a population listed in that census is Beddington (pop  50 at the 2010 census) 
The largest municipality by land area is the town of Allagash, at 128 square miles (332 km2) 
The smallest municipality by land area is Monhegan Island, at 0 86 square miles (2 2 km2)  The smallest municipality by area that is not an island is Randolph, at 2 23 square miles (6 km2) 

Unorganized territory
Unorganized territory (UT) has no local government  Administration, services, licensing, and ordinances are handled by the state government as well as by respective county governments who have townships within each county's bounds  The unorganized territory of Maine consists of more than 400 townships (in Maine, towns are incorporated, townships are unincorporated), plus many coastal islands that do not lie within any municipal bounds  The UT land area is slightly over half the entire area of the State of Maine  Year-round residents in the UT number approximately 9,000 (about 1 3% of the state's total population), with many more people staying there only seasonally  Only four of Maine's sixteen counties (Androscoggin, Cumberland, Waldo and York) are entirely incorporated, although a few others are nearly so, and most of the unincorporated area is in the vast and sparsely populated Great North Woods of Maine 

Most populous cities and towns
Throughout Maine, many municipalities, although each separate governmental entities, nevertheless form portions of a much larger population base  There are many such population clusters throughout Maine, but some examples from the municipalities appearing in the above listing are:

Portland, South Portland, Cape Elizabeth, Westbrook, Scarborough, and Falmouth
Lewiston and Auburn
Bangor, Orono, Brewer, Old Town, and Hampden
Biddeford, Saco and Old Orchard Beach
Brunswick and Topsham
Waterville, Winslow, Fairfield, and Oakland
Presque Isle and Caribou

Education
There are thirty institutions of higher learning in Maine  These institutions include the University of Maine, which is the oldest, largest and only research university in the state  UMaine was founded in 1865 and is the state's only land grant and sea grant college  The University of Maine is located in the town of Orono and is the flagship of Maine  There are also branch campuses in Augusta, Farmington, Fort Kent, Machias, and Presque Isle Bowdoin College is a liberal arts college founded in 1794 in Brunswick, making it the oldest institution of higher learning in the state  Colby College in Waterville was founded in 1813 making it the second oldest college in Maine  Bates College in Lewiston was founded in 1855 making it the third oldest institution in the state and the oldest coeducational college in New England  The three colleges collectively form the Colby-Bates-Bowdoin Consortium and are ranked among the best colleges in the United States; often placing in the top 10% of all liberal arts colleges Maine's per-student public expenditure for elementary and secondary schools was 21st in the nation in 2012, at $12,344 The collegiate system of Maine also includes numerous baccalaureate colleges such as: the Maine Maritime Academy (MMA), College of the Atlantic, Unity College, and Thomas College  There is only one medical school in the state, (University of New England's College of Osteopathic Medicine) and only one law school (The University of Maine School of Law)  There is one art school in the state, Maine College of Art, along with a private graduate school, Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts, which offers a Doctor of Philosophy to visual artists 
The Maine Community College System, founded in 1985 also serves "to provide associate degree, diploma and certificate programs directed at the educational, career and technical needs of the State's citizens and the workforce needs of the State's employers " This system includes Southern Maine Community College (SMCC), York County Community College (YCCC), Central Maine Community College (CMCC), Eastern Maine Community College (EMCC), Kennebec Valley Community College (KVCC), Northern Maine Community College (NMCC), and Washington County Community College (WCCC) Private schools in Maine are funded independently of the state and its furthered domains  Private schools are less common than public schools  A large number of private elementary schools with under 20 students exist, but most private high schools in Maine can be described as "semi-private" 
Maine also has Vocational Schools, such as the Biddeford Regional Center of Technology and Sanford Regional Technical Center that teach trades such as welding, construction and vehicle repair to students 

Culture
Agriculture
Maine was a center of agriculture before it achieved statehood  Prior to colonization, Wabanaki nations farmed large crops of corn and other produce in southern Maine Maine was a center of grain production in the 1800s, until grain production moved westward  However, in the early 2000s the local food movement spurred renewed interested in locally grown grains  In 2007, the Kneading Conference was founded  In, 2012, the Skowhegan grist mill Maine Grains opened  The revival of grain farming and milling in Maine has led to the creation of other businesses, including bakeries and malthouses Maine has many vegetable farms and other small, diversified farms  In the 1960s and 1970s, the book "Living the Good Life" by Helen Nearing and Scott Nearing caused many young people to move to Maine and engage in small-scale farming and homesteading  These back-to-the-land migrants increased the population of some counties Maine is home to the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association and had 535 certified organic farms in 2019 

Food
Along with the growth of the local food movement over the last several decades, Maine has received national recognition for its food and restaurant scene  Portland was named Bon Appetit magazine's Restaurant City of the Year in 2018  In 2018, HealthIQ com named Maine the 3rd most vegan-friendly state  Biddeford was selected by Food & Wine in 2022 as one of America's next great food cities  Maine food shares many ingredients with Wabanaki cuisine, including corn, beans, squash, wild blueberries, maple syrup, fish, and seafood  Baked beans are a common dish in Maine, served at community suppers where the beans are sometimes cooked underground in a bean hole  In New England, Maine baked beans are one of two well-known regional styles of baked beans, the other being Boston baked beans  Maine baked beans use thicker skinned, native bean varieties such like Marafax, soldier, and yellow-eye beans 

Sports teams
Professional
Maine Celtics, basketball, NBA G League
Portland Sea Dogs, minor league baseball, Double-A Northeast
Maine Mariners, ice hockey, ECHL

Non-professional
Portland Phoenix FC, soccer, Premier Developmental League
Maine Roller Derby, roller derby, Women's Flat Track Derby Association

NCAA
Maine Black Bears

USCAA
York County Community College
University of Maine at Augusta

Terminology
Maine maintains some vernacular and terminology that is unique in comparison to the rest of the country  There are unique terms like "from away", "Upta camp" and "Ayuh" that are popular in the state 

People from Maine
Citizens of Maine are often known as Mainers, though the term is often reserved for those whose roots in Maine go back at least three generations  The term Downeaster may be applied to residents of the northeast coast of the state  The term Mainiac is considered by some to be derogatory, but is embraced with pride by others, and is used for a variety of organizations and for events such as the YMCA Mainiac Sprint Triathlon & Duathlon 

See also
Index of Maine-related articles
Outline of Maine
 Maine portal
 New England portal
 United States portal
Context 3: Passage 1:
Mexican passport
Mexican passport (Spanish: pasaporte mexicano) is the passport issued to Mexican citizens for the purpose of travelling abroad  The Mexican passport is also an official ID and proof of Mexican citizenship  According to the 2021 Henley Visa Restrictions Index, holders of a Mexican passport can visit 164 (of 192 as the maximum) countries without a visa, placing Mexico in the 22nd rank in terms of global travel freedom 
Mexico transitioned to a biometric passport in 2021 called the electronic passport (pasaporte electrónico) 

Types of passports
Ordinary Passport – Issued for ordinary travel, such as holidays and business trips 
Diplomatic Passport – Issued to Mexican diplomats, top ranking government officials, diplomatic couriers, and family of the previous on the list, another type of identification Cédula diplomática mexicana is issued for travel when not in official duties, it may be accompanied by an ordinary passport 
Official Passport – Issued to individuals representing the Mexican government on official business

Physical appearance
Mexican passports are dark green, with the Mexican Coat of Arms in the center of the front cover and the official name of the country "Estados Unidos Mexicanos" (United Mexican States) around the coat of arms  The word "Pasaporte" is inscribed below the coat of arms, the international biometric symbol below this, and "Mexico" (as the country is commonly known) above  The Mexican passport contains many different security features, some of them visible only under a black light 

Identity information page
Each passport has a biographical information page and a signature page  Illustration: biographical information page and signature page – right  Mexico is currently on the 'G' and 'N' series passport 

Photo of passport holder (digital)
Type (P)
Country code (MEX)
Passport no 
Surnames (Includes Father/Mother's maiden name)
Given names
Nationality
Observations
Date of birth
Personal ID number (CURP)
Sex
Place of birth
Date of issue
Authority
Date of expiration
Hologram picture in the center-right and national symbols scattered throughout the biographic page 
The passports of minors (18 and under) also contain the image, full name, nationality, CURP and signature of those that have custody of the minor The biographical information page ends with the Machine Readable Zone  The passport includes 32 pages for visas and passport stamps, each featuring the coat of arms of one of the 31 Mexican states and Mexico City 

Requirements
Requirements for first time applicants that are over the age of eighteen 

1  Personally attend to any Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores (SRE) delegation or SRE affiliated office, with an appointment 
2  Fill with black ink, and by hand and in print the application for an ordinary passport book (Form OP-5)  The application can be obtained for free at any of the branches of the SRE or the Office of State or Municipal Liaison SRE 
3  Proof of Mexican nationality by presenting an original and a photocopy of any of the following documents:
a) Certified copy of birth certificate issued by the Mexican civil registry office  Birth registration should not be time-barred (must have occurred within the first three years of life), if exceeded temporality, see section "Additional Documentation for birth certificates with untimely registration" this is referred to as "registro extemporáneo" under Mexican law;
b) Certified copy of birth certificate issued by a consular office abroad * 
c) Certificate * Copy of Mexican nationality;
d) Declaration of Mexican nationality by birth *;
e) Naturalization Certificate*, and
f) Certificate of Citizenship Identity issued by the Secretary of the Interior4  Prove identity with an original and a photocopy of any of the following official documents with photograph and signature of the holder, the data should agree closely with those of the document that is proving nationality:

a) Cédula de Identidad Ciudadana issued by the Secretaría de Gobernación;
b) Matrícula Consular (Certificate of Consular Registration, Consular ID Card);
c) Naturalization Certificate;
d) Certificate of Mexican nationality;
e) Declaration of Mexican nationality by birth;
f) Voting Card issued by the National Electoral Institute;
g) Cartilla de Identidad del Servicio Militar Nacional Liberada;
h) Professional Certificate;
i) Professional Degree;
j) Letter of internship;
k) A valid identification issued by the Instituto Nacional de las Personas Adultas Mayores;
l) Credential of medical services from a public health institution or social security badges with a photo that has been sealed with official seal of the institution  If credentials are in digital format, they can be accepted even if the seal does not overlap the photograph;
m) For retired or pensioned credentials issued by an institution of social security, badges have to be sealed with the official seal, along with the signature and title of the person who issued it  If credentials in digital format, they can be accepted even if the seal does not overlap the photograph and
n) National Credential for Persons with Disabilities issued by the Sistema Integral para la Familia (DIF) 
o) Embassies and consulates abroad may also accept identity documents issued in the country or region in which it is located such as but not limited to, drivers licenses, passports, residence permits or visas 

Fees
In Mexico, fees are paid either online or at an affiliated Mexican bank that receives payments for passports  Citizens that live abroad pay at the consulate or embassy in which they are applying  There is a 50% discount for people that are over the age of sixty, people with disabilities, and agricultural workers  In order to be able to receive a discount, the person must show proof at the time of payment  All fees below are current as of 2022 
Mexican 1-year expiration passport: 815 MXN (Mexican Peso)Issued to children under three years of age and in cases of a justified emergency to adults who cannot fulfill all of the requirements for an ordinary passport issuance, as well as to individuals living outside Mexico that need consular protection Mexican 3-year expiration passport: 1,585 MXNIssued to all individuals over the age of three Mexican 6-year expiration passport: 2,155 MXNIssued to all individuals over the age of three Mexican 10-year expiration passport: 3,780 MXNIssued only to adults over the age of eighteen in Mexico and some embassies and consulates abroad 

Languages
The textual portions of the Mexican passports are printed in Spanish, English and French  In the updated passport design or the "Pasaporte Electronico" French is absent with the SRE deciding to no longer print any text in the passports in that language 

Passport message
The passports contain a note from the issuing state that is addressed to the authorities of all other states, identifying the bearer as a citizen of that state and requesting that he or she be allowed to pass and be treated according to international norms  The note inside the Mexican passports state:
In Spanish,

"La Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores de los Estados Unidos Mexicanos solicita a las autoridades competentes que permitan al titular de este pasaporte de nacionalidad mexicana su libre paso sin retraso u obstáculo alguno y, dado el caso, le otorguen toda la asistencia y protección posibles "in English,

"The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the United Mexican States hereby requests all competent authorities to permit the holder of this passport, a Mexican national, free transit without delay or hindrance and in case of need to give him all lawful aid and protection "and in French 

"Le Ministère des Affaires Étrangères des États-Unis du Mexique prie les autorités compétentes de bien vouloir laisser passer librement et sans entrave le titulaire du présent passeport, de nationalité mexicaine, et du lui prêter toute aide et assistance possibles "

Visa requirements
As of 11 January 2022, Mexican citizens had visa-free or visa on arrival access to 159 countries and territories, ranking the Mexican passport 24th in the world 

Gallery of historic images
See also
List of diplomatic missions of Mexico
List of diplomatic missions in Mexico
Mexican nationality law
Secretariat of Foreign Affairs
Visa requirements for Mexican citizens
Visa policy of Mexico

Notes
(1) holders of diplomatic identity cards enjoy the same rights and privileges as holders of diplomatic passports  
(2) diplomatic identity cards are usually accompanied by an ordinary passport
Passage 2:
Black Death
The Black Death (also known as the Pestilence, the Great Mortality or the Plague) was a bubonic plague pandemic occurring in Western Eurasia and North Africa from 1346 to 1353  It is the most fatal pandemic recorded in human history, causing the deaths of 75–200 million people, peaking in Europe from 1347 to 1351  Bubonic plague is caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis spread by fleas, but during the Black Death it probably also took a secondary form, spread by person-to-person contact via aerosols, causing pneumonic plague The Black Death was the beginning of the second plague pandemic  The plague created religious, social and economic upheavals, with profound effects on the course of European history 
The origin of the Black Death is disputed  Genetic analysis points to the evolution of Yersinia pestis in the Tian Shan mountains on the border between Kyrgyzstan and China 2,600 years ago  The immediate territorial origins of the Black Death and its outbreak remains unclear with some pointing towards Central Asia, China, the Middle East and Europe  The pandemic was reportedly first introduced to Europe during the siege of the Genoese trading port of Kaffa in Crimea by the Golden Horde army of Jani Beg in 1347  From Crimea, it was most likely carried by fleas living on the black rats that travelled on Genoese ships, spreading through the Mediterranean Basin and reaching North Africa, Western Asia and the rest of Europe via Constantinople, Sicily and the Italian Peninsula  There is evidence that once it came ashore, the Black Death mainly spread person-to-person as pneumonic plague, thus explaining the quick inland spread of the epidemic, which was faster than would be expected if the primary vector was rat fleas causing bubonic plague  In 2022, it was discovered that there was a sudden surge of deaths in what is today Kyrgyzstan from the Black Death in the late 1330s; when combined with genetic evidence, this implies that the initial spread may not have been due to Mongol conquests in the 14th century, as previously speculated The Black Death was the second great natural disaster to strike Europe during the Late Middle Ages (the first one being the Great Famine of 1315–1317) and is estimated to have killed 30 percent to 60 percent of the European population, as well as about one-third of the population of the Middle East  The plague might have reduced the world population from c  475 million to 350–375 million in the 14th century  There were further outbreaks throughout the Late Middle Ages and, with other contributing factors (the Crisis of the Late Middle Ages), the European population did not regain its level in 1300 until 1500  Outbreaks of the plague recurred around the world until the early 19th century 

Names
European writers contemporary with the plague described the disease in Latin as pestis or pestilentia, 'pestilence'; epidemia, 'epidemic'; mortalitas, 'mortality'  In English prior to the 18th century, the event was called the "pestilence" or "great pestilence", "the plague" or the "great death"  Subsequent to the pandemic "the furste moreyn" (first murrain) or "first pestilence" was applied, to distinguish the mid-14th century phenomenon from other infectious diseases and epidemics of plague The 1347 pandemic plague was not referred to specifically as "black" in the time of occurrence in any European language, though the expression "black death" had occasionally been applied to fatal disease beforehand  "Black death" was not used to describe the plague pandemic in English until the 1750s; the term is first attested in 1755, where it translated Danish: den sorte død, lit  'the black death'  This expression as a proper name for the pandemic had been popularized by Swedish and Danish chroniclers in the 15th and early 16th centuries, and in the 16th and 17th centuries was transferred to other languages as a calque: Icelandic: svarti dauði, German: der schwarze Tod, and French: la mort noire  Previously, most European languages had named the pandemic a variant or calque of the Latin: magna mortalitas, lit  'Great Death' The phrase 'black death' – describing Death as black – is very old  Homer used it in the Odyssey to describe the monstrous Scylla, with her mouths "full of black Death" (Ancient Greek: πλεῖοι μέλανος Θανάτοιο, romanized: pleîoi mélanos Thanátoio)  Seneca the Younger may have been the first to describe an epidemic as 'black death', (Latin: mors atra) but only in reference to the acute lethality and dark prognosis of disease  The 12th–13th century French physician Gilles de Corbeil had already used atra mors to refer to a "pestilential fever" (febris pestilentialis) in his work On the Signs and Symptoms of Diseases (De signis et symptomatibus aegritudium)  The phrase mors nigra, 'black death', was used in 1350 by Simon de Covino (or Couvin), a Belgian astronomer, in his poem "On the Judgement of the Sun at a Feast of Saturn" (De judicio Solis in convivio Saturni), which attributes the plague to an astrological conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn  His use of the phrase is not connected unambiguously with the plague pandemic of 1347 and appears to refer to the fatal outcome of disease The historian Cardinal Francis Aidan Gasquet wrote about the Great Pestilence in 1893 and suggested that it had been "some form of the ordinary Eastern or bubonic plague"  In 1908, Gasquet said use of the name atra mors for the 14th-century epidemic first appeared in a 1631 book on Danish history by J  I  Pontanus: "Commonly and from its effects, they called it the black death" (Vulgo & ab effectu atram mortem vocitabant) 

Previous plague epidemics
Research from 2017 suggests plague first infected humans in Europe and Asia in the Late Neolithic-Early Bronze Age  Research in 2018 found evidence of Yersinia pestis in an ancient Swedish tomb, which may have been associated with the "Neolithic decline" around 3000 BCE, in which European populations fell significantly  This Y  pestis may have been different from more modern types, with bubonic plague transmissible by fleas first known from Bronze Age remains near Samara The symptoms of bubonic plague are first attested in a fragment of Rufus of Ephesus preserved by Oribasius; these ancient medical authorities suggest bubonic plague had appeared in the Roman Empire before the reign of Trajan, six centuries before arriving at Pelusium in the reign of Justinian I  In 2013, researchers confirmed earlier speculation that the cause of the Plague of Justinian (541–542 CE, with recurrences until 750) was Y  pestis  This is known as the first plague pandemic  In 610, the Chinese physician Chao Yuanfang described a "malignant bubo" "coming in abruptly with high fever together with the appearance of a bundle of nodes beneath the tissue " The Chinese physician Sun Simo who died in 652 also mentioned a "malignant bubo" and plague that was common in Lingnan (Guangzhou)  Ole Jørgen Benedictow believes that this indicates it was an offshoot of the first plague pandemic which made its way eastward to Chinese territory by around 600 

14th-century plague
Causes
Early theory
The most authoritative contemporary account is found in a report from the medical faculty in Paris to Philip VI of France  It blamed the heavens, in the form of a conjunction of three planets in 1345 that caused a "great pestilence in the air" (miasma theory)  Muslim religious scholars taught that the pandemic was a "martyrdom and mercy" from God, assuring the believer's place in paradise  For non-believers, it was a punishment  Some Muslim doctors cautioned against trying to prevent or treat a disease sent by God  Others adopted preventive measures and treatments for plague used by Europeans  These Muslim doctors also depended on the writings of the ancient Greeks 

Predominant modern theory
Due to climate change in Asia, rodents began to flee the dried-out grasslands to more populated areas, spreading the disease  The plague disease, caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, is enzootic (commonly present) in populations of fleas carried by ground rodents, including marmots, in various areas, including Central Asia, Kurdistan, Western Asia, North India, Uganda and the western United States Y  pestis was discovered by Alexandre Yersin, a pupil of Louis Pasteur, during an epidemic of bubonic plague in Hong Kong in 1894; Yersin also proved this bacillus was present in rodents and suggested the rat was the main vehicle of transmission  The mechanism by which Y  pestis is usually transmitted was established in 1898 by Paul-Louis Simond and was found to involve the bites of fleas whose midguts had become obstructed by replicating Y  pestis several days after feeding on an infected host  This blockage starves the fleas and drives them to aggressive feeding behaviour and attempts to clear the blockage by regurgitation, resulting in thousands of plague bacteria being flushed into the feeding site, infecting the host  The bubonic plague mechanism was also dependent on two populations of rodents: one resistant to the disease, which act as hosts, keeping the disease endemic, and a second that lacks resistance  When the second population dies, the fleas move on to other hosts, including people, thus creating a human epidemic 

DNA evidence
Definitive confirmation of the role of Y  pestis arrived in 2010 with a publication in PLOS Pathogens by Haensch et al  They assessed the presence of DNA/RNA with polymerase chain reaction (PCR) techniques for Y  pestis from the tooth sockets in human skeletons from mass graves in northern, central and southern Europe that were associated archaeologically with the Black Death and subsequent resurgences  The authors concluded that this new research, together with prior analyses from the south of France and Germany, "ends the debate about the cause of the Black Death, and unambiguously demonstrates that Y  pestis was the causative agent of the epidemic plague that devastated Europe during the Middle Ages"  In 2011, these results were further confirmed with genetic evidence derived from Black Death victims in the East Smithfield burial site in England  Schuenemann et al  concluded in 2011 "that the Black Death in medieval Europe was caused by a variant of Y  pestis that may no longer exist" Later in 2011, Bos et al  reported in Nature the first draft genome of Y  pestis from plague victims from the same East Smithfield cemetery and indicated that the strain that caused the Black Death is ancestral to most modern strains of Y  pestis Since this time, further genomic papers have further confirmed the phylogenetic placement of the Y  pestis strain responsible for the Black Death as both the ancestor of later plague epidemics including the third plague pandemic and as the descendant of the strain responsible for the Plague of Justinian  In addition, plague genomes from significantly earlier in prehistory have been recovered DNA taken from 25 skeletons from 14th century London have shown plague is a strain of Y  pestis almost identical to that which hit Madagascar in 2013  Further DNA evidence also proves the role of Y  Pestis and traces the source to the Tian Shan Mountains in Kyrgyzstan 

Alternative explanations
It is recognised that an epidemiological account of plague is as important as an identification of symptoms, but researchers are hampered by the lack of reliable statistics from this period  Most work has been done on the spread of the disease in England, and even estimates of overall population at the start vary by over 100% as no census was undertaken in England between the time of publication of the Domesday Book of 1086 and the poll tax of the year 1377  Estimates of plague victims are usually extrapolated from figures for the clergy 
Mathematical modelling is used to match the spreading patterns and the means of transmission  A research in 2018 challenged the popular hypothesis that "infected rats died, their flea parasites could have jumped from the recently dead rat hosts to humans"  It suggested an alternative model in which "the disease was spread from human fleas and body lice to other people"  The second model claims to better fit the trends of death toll because the rat-flea-human hypothesis would have produced a delayed but very high spike in deaths, which contradict historical death data Lars Walløe complains that all of these authors "take it for granted that Simond's infection model, black rat → rat flea → human, which was developed to explain the spread of plague in India, is the only way an epidemic of Yersinia pestis infection could spread", whilst pointing to several other possibilities  Similarly, Monica Green has argued that greater attention is needed to the range of (especially non-commensal) animals that might be involved in the transmission of plague Archaeologist Barney Sloane has argued that there is insufficient evidence of the extinction of numerous rats in the archaeological record of the medieval waterfront in London and that the disease spread too quickly to support the thesis that Y  pestis was spread from fleas on rats; he argues that transmission must have been person to person  This theory is supported by research in 2018 which suggested transmission was more likely by body lice and fleas during the second plague pandemic 

Summary
Although academic debate continues, no single alternative solution has achieved widespread acceptance  Many scholars arguing for Y  pestis as the major agent of the pandemic suggest that its extent and symptoms can be explained by a combination of bubonic plague with other diseases, including typhus, smallpox and respiratory infections  In addition to the bubonic infection, others point to additional septicaemic (a type of "blood poisoning") and pneumonic (an airborne plague that attacks the lungs before the rest of the body) forms of plague, which lengthen the duration of outbreaks throughout the seasons and help account for its high mortality rate and additional recorded symptoms  In 2014, Public Health England announced the results of an examination of 25 bodies exhumed in the Clerkenwell area of London, as well as of wills registered in London during the period, which supported the pneumonic hypothesis  Currently, while osteoarcheologists have conclusively verified the presence of Y  pestis bacteria in burial sites across northern Europe through examination of bones and dental pulp, no other epidemic pathogen has been discovered to bolster the alternative explanations 

Transmission
Lack of hygiene
The importance of hygiene was recognised only in the nineteenth century with the development of the germ theory of disease; until then streets were commonly filthy, with live animals of all sorts around and human parasites abounding, facilitating the spread of transmissible disease By the early fourteenth century so much filth had collected inside urban Europe that French and Italian cities were naming streets after human waste  In medieval Paris, several street names were inspired by merde, the French word for "shit"  There were rue Merdeux, rue Merdelet, rue Merdusson, rue des Merdons and rue Merdiere—as well as a rue du Pipi Pigs, cattle, chickens, geese, goats and horses roamed the streets of medieval London and Paris  Medieval homeowners were supposed to police their housefronts, including removing animal dung, but most urbanites were as careless as William E  Cosner, a resident of the London suburb of Farringdon Without  A complaint lodged against Cosner charges that "men could not pass [by his house] for the stink [of]       horse dung and horse piss "One irate Londoner complained that the runoff from the local slaughterhouse had made his garden "stinking and putrid", while another charged that the blood from slain animals flooded nearby streets and lanes, "making a foul corruption and abominable sight to all dwelling near " In much of medieval Europe, sanitation legislation consisted of an ordinance requiring homeowners to shout, "Look out below!" three times before dumping a full chamber pot into the street Early Christians, who thought self-abnegation a cardinal virtue, considered bathing, if not a vice, then a temptation  "Who knows what impure thoughts might arise in a tub of warm water? With this danger in mind, St  Benedict declared, "To those who are well, and especially to the young, bathing shall seldom be permitted " St  Agnes took the injunction to heart and died without ever bathing 

Territorial origins
According to a team of medical geneticists led by Mark Achtman that analysed the genetic variation of the bacterium Yersinia pestis "evolved in or near China" over 2,600 years ago  Later research by a team led by Galina Eroshenko places the origins more specifically in the Tian Shan mountains on the border between Kyrgyzstan and China  However more recent research notes that the previous sampling had a very heavy East Asian bias and that sampling since then has discovered strains of Y  pestis in the Caucasus region that were previously thought to be restricted to China  There is also no physical or specific textual evidence of the Black Death in 14th century China  As a result, China's place in the sequence of the plague's spread is still debated to this day  According to Charles Creighton, records of epidemics in 14th century China suggest nothing more than typhus and major Chinese outbreaks of epidemic disease post-date the European epidemic by several years  The earliest Chinese descriptions of the bubonic plague do not appear until the 1640s Nestorian graves dating to 1338–1339 near Issyk-Kul in Kyrgyzstan have inscriptions referring to plague, which has led some historians and epidemiologists to think they mark the outbreak of the epidemic; this is supported by recent direct findings of Y  pestis DNA in teeth samples from graves in the area with inscriptions referring to "pestilence" as the cause of death  Epidemics killed an estimated 25 million across Asia during the fifteen years before the Black Death reached Constantinople in 1347 
The evidence does not suggest, at least at present, that these mortality crises were caused by plague  Although some scholars, including McNeill and Cao, see the 1333 outbreak as a prelude to the outbreaks in Europe from the late 1340s to the early 1350s, scholars of the Yuan and Ming periods remain skeptical about such an interpretation  Nonetheless, the remarkably high mortality rates during the Datong mortality should discourage us from rejecting the possibility of localized/regional outbreaks of plague in different parts of China, albeit differing in scale from, and unrelated to, the pandemic mortality of the Black Death  What we lack is any indication of a plague pandemic that engulfed vast territories of the Yuan Empire and later moved into western Eurasia through Central Asia 
According to John Norris, evidence from Issyk-Kul indicates a small sporadic outbreak characteristic of transmission from rodents to humans with no wide-scale impact  According to Achtman, the dating of the plague suggests that it was not carried along the Silk Road, and its widespread appearance in that region probably postdates the European outbreak  There are no records of the symptoms of the Black Death from Mongol sources or writings from travelers east of the Black Sea prior to the Crimean outbreak in 1346  Finally, the Silk Road had already been heavily disrupted before the spread of the Black Death  Western and Middle Eastern traders found it difficult to trade on the Silk Road by 1325 and impossible by 1340, making spread of the plague less likely Others still favor an origin in China or even Kurdistan, and not Central Asia  According to the theory of Chinese origin, the disease may have traveled along the Silk Road with Mongol armies and traders, or it could have arrived via ship, but this theory is still contested  It is speculated that rats aboard Zheng He's ships in the 15th century may have carried the plague to Southeast Asia, India and Africa 
Research on the Delhi Sultanate and the Yuan Dynasty shows no evidence of any serious epidemic in fourteenth-century India and no specific evidence of plague in fourteenth-century China, suggesting that the Black Death may not have reached these regions  Ole Benedictow argues that since the first clear reports of the Black Death come from Kaffa, the Black Death most likely originated in the nearby plague focus on the northwestern shore of the Caspian Sea 
Demographic historians estimate that China's population fell by at least 15 percent, and perhaps as much as a third, between 1340 and 1370  This population loss coincided with the Black Death that ravaged Europe and much of the Islamic world in 1347–52  However, there is a conspicuous lack of evidence for pandemic disease on the scale of the Black Death in China at this time  War and famine – and the diseases that typically accompanied them – probably were the main causes of mortality in the final decades of Mongol rule 
Monica H  Green suggests that the reason why other parts of Eurasia outside the west do not contain the same evidence of the Black Plague is because there were actually four strains of Yersinia pestis that became predominant in different parts of the world  Mongol records of illness such as food poisoning may have been referring to the Black Plague  Another theory is that the Black Death originated near Europe and cycled through the Mediterranean, Northern Europe and Russia before making its way to China  Other historians such as John Norris and Ole Benedictaw believe the Black Death likely originated in Europe or the Middle East and never reached China 

European outbreak
Plague was reportedly first introduced to Europe via Genoese traders from their port city of Kaffa in the Crimea in 1347  During a protracted siege of the city, in 1345–1346 the Mongol Golden Horde army of Jani Beg, whose mainly Tatar troops were suffering from the disease, catapulted infected corpses over the city walls of Kaffa to infect the inhabitants, though it is more likely that infected rats travelled across the siege lines to spread the epidemic to the inhabitants  As the disease took hold, Genoese traders fled across the Black Sea to Constantinople, where the disease first arrived in Europe in summer 1347 The epidemic there killed the 13-year-old son of the Byzantine emperor, John VI Kantakouzenos, who wrote a description of the disease modelled on Thucydides's account of the 5th century BCE Plague of Athens, but noting the spread of the Black Death by ship between maritime cities  Nicephorus Gregoras also described in writing to Demetrios Kydones the rising death toll, the futility of medicine, and the panic of the citizens  The first outbreak in Constantinople lasted a year, but the disease recurred ten times before 1400 Carried by twelve Genoese galleys, plague arrived by ship in Sicily in October 1347; the disease spread rapidly all over the island  Galleys from Kaffa reached Genoa and Venice in January 1348, but it was the outbreak in Pisa a few weeks later that was the entry point to northern Italy  Towards the end of January, one of the galleys expelled from Italy arrived in Marseilles From Italy, the disease spread northwest across Europe, striking France, Spain (the epidemic began to wreak havoc first on the Crown of Aragon in the spring of 1348), Portugal and England by June 1348, then spread east and north through Germany, Scotland and Scandinavia from 1348 to 1350  It was introduced into Norway in 1349 when a ship landed at Askøy, then spread to Bjørgvin (modern Bergen) and Iceland  Finally, it spread to northwestern Russia in 1351  Plague was somewhat more uncommon in parts of Europe with less developed trade with their neighbours, including the majority of the Basque Country, isolated parts of Belgium and the Netherlands, and isolated Alpine villages throughout the continent According to some epidemiologists, periods of unfavourable weather decimated plague-infected rodent populations and forced their fleas onto alternative hosts, inducing plague outbreaks which often peaked in the hot summers of the Mediterranean, as well as during the cool autumn months of the southern Baltic region  Among many other culprits of plague contagiousness, malnutrition, even if distantly, also contributed to such an immense loss in European population, since it weakened immune systems 

Western Asian and North African outbreak
The disease struck various regions in the Middle East and North Africa during the pandemic, leading to serious depopulation and permanent change in both economic and social structures  As infected rodents infected new rodents, the disease spread across the region, entering also from southern Russia 
By autumn 1347, plague had reached Alexandria in Egypt, transmitted by sea from Constantinople; according to a contemporary witness, from a single merchant ship carrying slaves  By late summer 1348 it reached Cairo, capital of the Mamluk Sultanate, cultural centre of the Islamic world, and the largest city in the Mediterranean Basin; the Bahriyya child sultan an-Nasir Hasan fled and more than a third of the 600,000 residents died  The Nile was choked with corpses despite Cairo having a medieval hospital, the late 13th century bimaristan of the Qalawun complex  The historian al-Maqrizi described the abundant work for grave-diggers and practitioners of funeral rites, and plague recurred in Cairo more than fifty times over the following one and a half centuries During 1347, the disease travelled eastward to Gaza by April; by July it had reached Damascus, and in October plague had broken out in Aleppo  That year, in the territory of modern Lebanon, Syria, Israel and Palestine, the cities of Ascalon, Acre, Jerusalem, Sidon and Homs were all infected  In 1348–1349, the disease reached Antioch  The city's residents fled to the north, but most of them ended up dying during the journey  Within two years, the plague had spread throughout the Islamic world, from Arabia across North Africa  The pandemic spread westwards from Alexandria along the African coast, while in April 1348 Tunis was infected by ship from Sicily  Tunis was then under attack by an army from Morocco; this army dispersed in 1348 and brought the contagion with them to Morocco, whose epidemic may also have been seeded from the Islamic city of Almería in al-Andalus Mecca became infected in 1348 by pilgrims performing the Hajj  In 1351 or 1352, the Rasulid sultan of the Yemen, al-Mujahid Ali, was released from Mamluk captivity in Egypt and carried plague with him on his return home  During 1348, records show the city of Mosul suffered a massive epidemic, and the city of Baghdad experienced a second round of the disease 

Signs and symptoms
Bubonic plague
Symptoms of the disease include fever of 38–41 °C (100–106 °F), headaches, painful aching joints, nausea and vomiting, and a general feeling of malaise  Left untreated, of those that contract the bubonic plague, 80 percent die within eight days Contemporary accounts of the pandemic are varied and often imprecise  The most commonly noted symptom was the appearance of buboes (or gavocciolos) in the groin, neck and armpits, which oozed pus and bled when opened  Boccaccio's description:

In men and women alike it first betrayed itself by the emergence of certain tumours in the groin or armpits, some of which grew as large as a common apple, others as an egg     From the two said parts of the body this deadly gavocciolo soon began to propagate and spread itself in all directions indifferently; after which the form of the malady began to change, black spots or livid making their appearance in many cases on the arm or the thigh or elsewhere, now few and large, now minute and numerous  As the gavocciolo had been and still was an infallible token of approaching death, such also were these spots on whomsoever they showed themselves 
This was followed by acute fever and vomiting of blood  Most people died two to seven days after initial infection  Freckle-like spots and rashes, which could have been caused by flea-bites, were identified as another potential sign of plague 

Pneumonic plague
Lodewijk Heyligen, whose master the Cardinal Colonna died of plague in 1348, noted a distinct form of the disease, pneumonic plague, that infected the lungs and led to respiratory problems  Symptoms include fever, cough and blood-tinged sputum  As the disease progresses, sputum becomes free-flowing and bright red  Pneumonic plague has a mortality rate of 90 to 95 percent 

Septicaemic plague
Septicaemic plague is the least common of the three forms, with a mortality rate near 100%  Symptoms are high fevers and purple skin patches (purpura due to disseminated intravascular coagulation)  In cases of pneumonic and particularly septicaemic plague, the progress of the disease is so rapid that there would often be no time for the development of the enlarged lymph nodes that were noted as buboes 

Consequences
Deaths
There are no exact figures for the death toll; the rate varied widely by locality  In urban centres, the greater the population before the outbreak, the longer the duration of the period of abnormal mortality  It killed some 75 to 200 million people in Eurasia  A study published in 2022 of pollen samples across Europe between 1250 and 1450 was used to estimate changes in agricultural output before and after the Black Death  The authors found great variability in different regions, with evidence for high mortality in areas of Scandinavia, France, western Germany, Greece and central Italy, but uninterrupted agricultural growth in central and eastern Europe, Iberia and Ireland The mortality rate of the Black Death in the 14th century was far greater than the worst 20th-century outbreaks of Y  pestis plague, which occurred in India and killed as much as 3% of the population of certain cities  The overwhelming number of deceased bodies produced by the Black Death caused the necessity of mass burial sites in Europe, sometimes including up to several hundred or several thousand skeletons  The mass burial sites that have been excavated have allowed archaeologists to continue interpreting and defining the biological, sociological, historical and anthropological implications of the Black Death According to medieval historian Philip Daileader, it is likely that over four years, 45–50% of the European population died of plague  Norwegian historian Ole Benedictow suggests it could have been as much as 60% of the European population  In 1348, the disease spread so rapidly that before any physicians or government authorities had time to reflect upon its origins, about a third of the European population had already perished  In crowded cities, it was not uncommon for as much as 50% of the population to die  Half of Paris' population of 100,000 people died  In Italy, the population of Florence was reduced from between 110,000 and 120,000 inhabitants in 1338 down to 50,000 in 1351  At least 60% of the population of Hamburg and Bremen perished, and a similar percentage of Londoners may have died from the disease as well, with a death toll of approximately 62,000 between 1346 and 1353  Florence's tax records suggest that 80% of the city's population died within four months in 1348  Before 1350, there were about 170,000 settlements in Germany, and this was reduced by nearly 40,000 by 1450  The disease bypassed some areas, with the most isolated areas being less vulnerable to contagion  Plague did not appear in Douai in Flanders until the turn of the 15th century, and the impact was less severe on the populations of Hainaut, Finland, northern Germany and areas of Poland  Monks, nuns and priests were especially hard-hit since they cared for people with the Black Death 

The physician to the Avignon Papacy, Raimundo Chalmel de Vinario (Latin: Magister Raimundus, lit  'Master Raymond'), observed the decreasing mortality rate of successive outbreaks of plague in 1347–48, 1362, 1371 and 1382 in his 1382 treatise On Epidemics (De epidemica)  In the first outbreak, two thirds of the population contracted the illness and most patients died; in the next, half the population became ill but only some died; by the third, a tenth were affected and many survived; while by the fourth occurrence, only one in twenty people were sickened and most of them survived  By the 1380s in Europe, it predominantly affected children  Chalmel de Vinario recognised that bloodletting was ineffective (though he continued to prescribe bleeding for members of the Roman Curia, whom he disliked), and said that all true cases of plague were caused by astrological factors and were incurable; he himself was never able to effect a cure The most widely accepted estimate for the Middle East, including Iraq, Iran and Syria, during this time, is for a death toll of about a third of the population  The Black Death killed about 40% of Egypt's population  In Cairo, with a population numbering as many as 600,000, and possibly the largest city west of China, between one third and 40% of the inhabitants died within eight months



ground_truth: 1,335,907

prompt_front: Answer the question based on the given passages. Only give me the answer and do not output any other words.

Question: How many times did plague occur in the place where Bajazet's composer was born?

The following are given passages.
Context 3: Italian chronicler Agnolo di Tura recorded his experience from Siena, where plague arrived in May 1348:

Father abandoned child, wife husband, one brother another; for this illness seemed to strike through the breath and sight  And so they died  And none could be found to bury the dead for money or friendship  Members of a household brought their dead to a ditch as best they could, without priest, without divine offices     great pits were dug and piled deep with the multitude of dead  And they died by the hundreds both day and night     And as soon as those ditches were filled more were dug     And I, Agnolo di Tura     buried my five children with my own hands  And there were also those who were so sparsely covered with earth that the dogs dragged them forth and devoured many bodies throughout the city  There was no one who wept for any death, for all awaited death  And so many died that all believed it was the end of the world 

Economic
It has been suggested that the plague, like some others in history, disproportionately affected the poorest people, who were already in generally worse physical condition than the wealthier citizens   Nevertheless, with such a large overall population decline from the pandemic, wages soared in response to a labour shortage  On the other hand, in the quarter century after the Black Death in England, it is clear many labourers, artisans and craftsmen, those living from money-wages alone, did suffer a reduction in real incomes owing to rampant inflation  Landowners were also pushed to substitute monetary rents for labour services in an effort to keep tenants 

Environmental
A study performed by Thomas Van Hoof of the Utrecht University suggests that the innumerable deaths brought on by the pandemic cooled the climate by freeing up land and triggering reforestation  This may have led to the Little Ice Age 

Persecutions
Renewed religious fervour and fanaticism bloomed in the wake of the Black Death  Some Europeans targeted "various groups such as Jews, friars, foreigners, beggars, pilgrims", lepers and Romani, blaming them for the crisis  Lepers, and others with skin diseases such as acne or psoriasis, were killed throughout Europe 
Because 14th-century healers and governments were at a loss to explain or stop the disease, Europeans turned to astrological forces, earthquakes and the poisoning of wells by Jews as possible reasons for outbreaks  Many believed the epidemic was a punishment by God for their sins, and could be relieved by winning God's forgiveness There were many attacks against Jewish communities  In the Strasbourg massacre of February 1349, about 2,000 Jews were murdered  In August 1349, the Jewish communities in Mainz and Cologne were annihilated  By 1351, 60 major and 150 smaller Jewish communities had been destroyed  During this period many Jews relocated to Poland, where they received a warm welcome from King Casimir the Great 

Social
One theory that has been advanced is that the devastation in Florence caused by the Black Death, which hit Europe between 1348 and 1350, resulted in a shift in the world view of people in 14th-century Italy and led to the Renaissance  Italy was particularly badly hit by the pandemic, and it has been speculated that the resulting familiarity with death caused thinkers to dwell more on their lives on Earth, rather than on spirituality and the afterlife  It has also been argued that the Black Death prompted a new wave of piety, manifested in the sponsorship of religious works of art This does not fully explain why the Renaissance occurred in Italy in the 14th century  The Black Death was a pandemic that affected all of Europe in the ways described, not only Italy  The Renaissance's emergence in Italy was most likely the result of the complex interaction of the above factors, in combination with an influx of Greek scholars following the fall of the Byzantine Empire  As a result of the drastic reduction in the populace the value of the working class increased, and commoners came to enjoy more freedom  To answer the increased need for labour, workers travelled in search of the most favorable position economically Prior to the emergence of the Black Death, the workings of Europe were run by the Catholic Church and the continent was considered a feudalistic society, composed of fiefs and city-states  The pandemic completely restructured both religion and political forces; survivors began to turn to other forms of spirituality and the power dynamics of the fiefs and city-states crumbled Cairo's population, partly owing to the numerous plague epidemics, was in the early 18th century half of what it was in 1347  The populations of some Italian cities, notably Florence, did not regain their pre-14th century size until the 19th century  The demographic decline due to the pandemic had economic consequences: the prices of food dropped and land values declined by 30–40% in most parts of Europe between 1350 and 1400  Landholders faced a great loss, but for ordinary men and women it was a windfall  The survivors of the pandemic found not only that the prices of food were lower but also that lands were more abundant, and many of them inherited property from their dead relatives, and this probably destabilised feudalism The word "quarantine" has its roots in this period, though the concept of isolating people to prevent the spread of disease is older  In the city-state of Ragusa (modern Dubrovnik, Croatia), a thirty-day isolation period was implemented in 1377 for new arrivals to the city from plague-affected areas  The isolation period was later extended to forty days, and given the name "quarantino" from the Italian word for "forty" 

Recurrences
Second plague pandemic
The plague repeatedly returned to haunt Europe and the Mediterranean throughout the 14th to 17th centuries  According to Jean-Noël Biraben, the plague was present somewhere in Europe in every year between 1346 and 1671  (Note that some researchers have cautions about the uncritical use of Biraben's data ) The second pandemic was particularly widespread in the following years: 1360–63; 1374; 1400; 1438–39; 1456–57; 1464–66; 1481–85; 1500–03; 1518–31; 1544–48; 1563–66; 1573–88; 1596–99; 1602–11; 1623–40; 1644–54; and 1664–67  Subsequent outbreaks, though severe, marked the retreat from most of Europe (18th century) and northern Africa (19th century)  The historian George Sussman argued that the plague had not occurred in East Africa until the 1900s  However, other sources suggest that the Second pandemic did indeed reach Sub-Saharan Africa According to historian Geoffrey Parker, "France alone lost almost a million people to the plague in the epidemic of 1628–31 " In the first half of the 17th century, a plague killed some 1 7 million people in Italy  More than 1 25 million deaths resulted from the extreme incidence of plague in 17th-century Spain The Black Death ravaged much of the Islamic world  Plague could be found in the Islamic world almost every year between 1500 and 1850  Sometimes the outbreaks affected small areas, while other outbreaks affected multiple regions  Plague repeatedly struck the cities of North Africa  Algiers lost 30,000–50,000 inhabitants to it in 1620–21, and again in 1654–57, 1665, 1691 and 1740–42  Cairo suffered more than fifty plague epidemics within 150 years from the plague's first appearance, with the final outbreak of the second pandemic there in the 1840s  Plague remained a major event in Ottoman society until the second quarter of the 19th century  Between 1701 and 1750, thirty-seven larger and smaller epidemics were recorded in Constantinople, and an additional thirty-one between 1751 and 1800  Baghdad has suffered severely from visitations of the plague, and sometimes two-thirds of its population had died 

Third plague pandemic
The third plague pandemic (1855–1859) started in China in the mid-19th century, spreading to all inhabited continents and killing 10 million people in India alone  The investigation of the pathogen that caused the 19th-century plague was begun by teams of scientists who visited Hong Kong in 1894, among whom was the French-Swiss bacteriologist Alexandre Yersin, after whom the pathogen was named Twelve plague outbreaks in Australia between 1900 and 1925 resulted in well over 1,000 deaths, chiefly in Sydney  This led to the establishment of a Public Health Department there which undertook some leading-edge research on plague transmission from rat fleas to humans via the bacillus Yersinia pestis The first North American plague epidemic was the San Francisco plague of 1900–1904, followed by another outbreak in 1907–1908 

Modern-day
Modern treatment methods include insecticides, the use of antibiotics, and a plague vaccine  It is feared that the plague bacterium could develop drug resistance and again become a major health threat  One case of a drug-resistant form of the bacterium was found in Madagascar in 1995  A further outbreak in Madagascar was reported in November 2014  In October 2017, the deadliest outbreak of the plague in modern times hit Madagascar, killing 170 people and infecting thousands An estimate of the case fatality rate for the modern bubonic plague, following the introduction of antibiotics, is 11%, although it may be higher in underdeveloped regions 

See also
Black Death in England
Black Death in medieval culture
Crisis of the Late Middle Ages
Flagellant
Globalization and disease
List of epidemics
Second plague pandemic
Timeline of plague
Passage 3:
Giovanni Cifolelli
Giovanni Cifolelli was an Italian mandolin virtuoso and dramatic composer whose date and place of birth are unknown  In 1764 he made his appearance in Paris as a mandolin virtuoso and was highly esteemed, both as a performer and teacher  He published his Method for the mandolin while residing in Paris, which met with great success throughout France, being the most popular of its period 
His chief works were the operas L'Italienne and Pierre et Lucette, the former being an opera bouffe in one act (with the storyline or libretto by Nicolas-Étienne Framery)  These works were commissioned by the Comedie Italienne, Paris, and were produced at this theatre successfully, in 1770 and 1774  Several of the songs and duets in Pierre and Lucette were exceedingly popular in France, and they were republished in Paris in 1775 and 1780 

Works
L'Italienne  : comédie en 1 acte, mêlée d'ariettes (Paris, 1770)
Pierre et Lucette, comédie en deux actes et en prose mêlée d'ariettes (Paris, 1774)
Airs détachés de Perin et Lucette, comédie en deux actes, mêlées d'ariettes par M  Davesne (Paris, 1775)
Ariette nouvelle avec accompagnement de deux violons et basse
Non, laisse moi, laisse moi, Lucas  Duo (1775)
Passage 4:
Orlando furioso (Vivaldi, 1714)
Orlando furioso RV 819 (Italian pronunciation: [orˈlando fuˈrjoːzo, -so], Teatro San Angelo, Venice 1714) is a three-act opera surviving in manuscript in Antonio Vivaldi's personal library, only partly related to his better known Orlando furioso (RV 728) of 1727  It is a recomposition of an Orlando furioso written by Giovanni Alberto Ristori which had been very successfully staged by Vivaldi and his father's impresa in 1713, and whose music survives in a few fragments retained in the score of RV 819  Therefore, Vivaldi's first cataloguer Peter Ryom did not assign the opera a RV number, but catalogued it as RV Anh  84  The libretto was by Grazio Braccioli 

Authorship
Federico Maria Sardelli, according to the studies of Reinhard Strohm, argues that Orlando RV 819 was entirely recomposed by Vivaldi, starting from the original Ristori's opera that Vivaldi himself had already changed during the numerous representations of the season 1713  He assigned to it the catalogue number RV 819  One suggestion is that Vivaldi avoided putting his own name on the opera having himself only recently taken direction of the Teatro San Angelo  Against this others consider that the bulk of the opera is a copy of Ristori's lost work 

Opera
Unlike the Orlando furioso (RV 728) of 1727, in which the role of Orlando is sung by a contralto, the 1714 opera assigns the title role to a bass  The third act is missing and the rest of the score (evidently used in performances by the composer) is incomplete  Two arias are lost, seven arias are incomplete (only the bass part is extant) and three arias are identical with extant arias in RV 727 and RV 729 

Recording
The French label Naïve, which had already recorded the more famous Orlando furioso and Orlando finto pazzo for its Vivaldi Edition, released a recording of the July 20, 2012 première at the Festival de Beaune, with Sardelli conducting Modo Antiquo and singers including Riccardo Novaro as Orlando, Gaëlle Arquez as Angelica, Romina Basso as Alcina and Teodora Gheorghiu as Bradamante  Given the heavily defective nature of the surviving manuscript, Sardelli had to reconstruct or compose ex novo the seven incomplete arias, in a Vivaldian style 

See also
List of operas by Antonio Vivaldi
Passage 5:
Bajazet (opera)
Bajazet (Italian pronunciation: [baʒaˈzɛ]; also called Il Tamerlano) (RV 703) is an Italian opera in 3 acts composed by Antonio Vivaldi in 1735  Its libretto was written by Agostino Piovene  It was premiered in Verona, during the Carnival season of that year  It includes a three-movement sinfonia as an introduction  The story is about the fate of Bajazet (known as Bayezid I) after being captured by Tamerlane (Timur Lenk)  The famous aria "Sposa son disprezzata" is from this opera 

Roles
Synopsis
Act I  In garden of occupied capital of Bursa, where Tamerlane resides following the defeat of the Turks 

Scene 1 (Bajazet & Andronicus): Awaiting death, Bajazet tells Andronicus that if he weds Asteria he must hate Tamerlane 
Scene 2 (Andronicus & Idaspe)  Andronicus tells Idaspe to watch Bajazet for Asteria’s sake  Idaspe warns him that Greece has already turned the Empire over to Tamerlane and that Asteria’s beauty will fade, but Andronicus could be crowned Byzantine emperor 
Scene 3 (Tamerlane & Andronicus): Tamerlane grants to Andronicus the Byzantine Empire and discloses that he is in love with Asteria  He asks Andronicus to ask her hand from Bajazet and tells him that he should marry Irene (who is betrothed to Tamerlane) 
Scene 4 (Andronicus alone): Andronicus considers: He is not ungrateful to Tamerlane but wishes to have Asteria  Royal apartments for Bajazet and Asteria, guarded 
Scene 5 (Asteria): Asteria considers her dilemma—she loves Andronicus but believes he is interested only in imperial ambition 
Scene 6 (Tamerlane & Asteria); Tamerlane tells Asteria of his love and threatens her with her father’s life  He tells her that Andronicus will wed Irene and sings love aria before leaving 
Scene 7 (Andronicus, Bajazet & Asteria): Asteria reproaches Andronicus in front of her father  Andronicus begins to explain himself but Bajazet tells him that he speaks for his daughter in saying that she will refuse to marry Tamerlane and Bajazet will forfeit his head 
Scene 8 (Asteria & Andronicus): Asteria remains angry with Andronicus and tells him to carry out her father’s orders but not to speak for her  After he leaves, she wonders how she can continue to love one who is untrue to her 
Scene 9 (Irene, Andronicus & Idaspe): Irene wants to know why her proposed husband is not there to greet her  Idaspe explains that he loves another  Andronicus proposes that she go to him as Irene’s messenger  [Tamerlane does not know what she looks like ] She agrees to fight for her rights 
Scene 10 (Andronicus alone): Andronicus admits to himself that Irene is pretty and her kingdom adds to her beauty, but he is sad for Asteria  He sings aria in which he recognizes that if one does not die of grief in these circumstances it is because “either the power of death is weak; or grief is powerless ”
Act 2  Open countryside with Tamerlane’s pavilions which open to show Tamerlane and Andronicus seated  

Scene 1 (Tamerlane, Andronicus, Idaspe): Tamerlane tells Andronicus that he learned of Asteria’s consent through her maid and that today both Tamerlane’s marriage to Asteria and Andronicus’s to Irene will take place 
Scene 2 (Andronicus & Idaspe): Andronicus tells Idaspe that he plans to reprove Asteria, relinquish Irene and her realm to Tamerlane, make full restitution, and offer Asteria his life and fortune  Idapse goes to inform Bajazet of Asteria’s decision 
Scene 3 (Andronicus & Asteria): Asreria berates Andronicus for not opposing Tamerlane’s offer to her  Andronicus says that he will lay down his life if that is what she wishes  She tells him it is too late, Tamerlane calls 
Scene 4 (Andronicus alone): Andronicus despairs that he has lost Asteria and will lose his life  He decides to see Bajazet  Pavilion opens to reveal Tamerlane and Asteria on cushions 
Scene 5  (Tamerlane, Asteria, Idaspe & later Irene): Idaspe announces a messenger from Irene, and Irene enters pretending to be that messenger  Tamerlane has Asteria tell her of her decision to accept Tamerlane  Irene protests and Tamerlane admits his guilt (of faithlessness) but instructs her to tell Irene that she will obtain a new husband and a kingdom that day 
Scene 6 (Asteria, Irene, & Idaspe): Asteria informs Irene’s “messenger” that she intends to displease Tamerlane and Irene might have him back 
Scene 7 (Irene & Idaspe): Irene marvels at the resolve of Asteria and says that she loves Tamerlane, despite his unfaithfulness 
Scene 8 (Andronicus & Bajazet): Andronicus informs Bajazet that he saw Asteria accept the throne  Bajazet accuses Andronicus of not fighting hard enough for her  They go to see her, while Bajazet sings of his desperation  Military camp with Tamerlane and Asteria sitting in view of the army 
Scene 9 (Tamerlane, Asteria, later Andronicus, Bajazet & Irene): Asteria complies with Tamerlane’s request that she retire to the royal quarters (with aside that she has a plan)  Bajazet arrives seeking his daughter and tells Tamerlane that the blood of an Ottoman sultan will not mingle with a peasant’s  Irene (still as messenger) arrives to challenge Asteria  Tamerlane says that if she can make Asteria renounce the throne, will be Irene’s  Bajazet gives lengthy denunciation of Asteria  Then Asteria renounces the throne and reveals she was going to stab Tamerlane in bed  Tamerlane calls on guards to take Asteria and Bajazet upon whom he will exact vengeance  Tamerlane, Bajazet, Asteria and Irene sing quartet about faithlessness, cruelty mercy and death 
Act 3  Garden on the banks of the River Euphrates  

Scene 1 (Asteria & Bajazet): Bajazet shares with his daughter poison to be used when Tamerlane begins his vengeance on them 
Scene 2 (Tamerlane, Andronicus & Asteria (aside at first)): Tamerlane tells Andronicus that he will forgive Asteria if she relents  Andronicus begins to plead but Asteria enters and misunderstands his intention  Andronicus is forced to declare his love in front of Tamerlane, who in fury orders Bajazet beheaded and ASteria wedded to the meanest slave 
Scene 3 (Bajazet and the foregoing): Bajazet enters and orders his daughter to arise; she is not to bow to Tamerlane   Tamerlane becomes enraged and orders both Asteria and Bajazet to the dining hall and invites Andronicus should he wish to watch  Tamerlane sings an aria of his “hate, fury and poison for Asteria 
Scene 4 (Andronicus alone): Andronicus decides to give up his throne for Asteria, realizing that he cannot escape from “love and pity, anger and cruelty ” Dining hall with entire guard 
Scene 5 (Tamerlane, Bajzset, Andronicus, later Irene): Tamerlane informs Bajazet that he has been brought from his cell to watch  He then summons Asteria 
Scene 6 (Asteria and the foregoing): Tamerlane orders Asteria to serve him a drink  She secretly fills it with the poison Bajazet gave her  and offers it to Tamerlane 
Scene 7 (Irene with the foregoing): Irene warns Tamerlane not to take the drink, telling him that him that Asteria has poisoned it  Asteria takes the cup to drink it but Andronicus snatches it from her hand  Asteria rushes out  Tamerlane orders the guard to take her to be turned over to the mob  Bajazet promises he will come with a thousand furies to tear out Tamerlane’s heart 
Scene 8 (Bajazet leaves, the rest remain): Irene asks Tamerlane what will become of her  Tamerlane says that she will be his bride  Irene agrees to forgive his past insults to her 
Scene 9 (Idaspe and the foregoing): Idaspe advises Tamerlane that Bajazet has taken poison and is on the verge of death  Tamerlane offers Andronicus his friendship, but not Asteria 
Scene 10 (Asteria and the foregoing): Asteria arrives and announces that “he is indeed dead, you tyrant ” Her Ottoman hatred for Tamerlane has not died, however  She begs for the means to kill herself so she can join her father and sings “Stab me, beat me, kill me, fell me ”
Final Scene (Asteria leaves, but others remain): Irene and Andronicus ask Tamerlanne to have mercy on Asteria  Tamerlane says that the death of Bajazet has softened his heart  All sing of the coming peace and hope for the loss of hate among “a thousand amorous flames ”

Sinfonia
Allegro
Andante Molto
Allegro

Music
Origin of arias
Bajazet is a pasticcio  It was a common practice during Vivaldi's time for composers to borrow and adapt arias from other composers with their own works for an opera  Vivaldi himself composed the arias for the good characters (Bajazet, Asteria and Idaspe) and mostly used existing arias from other composers for the villains (Tamerlano, Irene, Andronico) in this opera  Some of the arias are reused from previous Vivaldi operas  The table below lists the origin of some of the arias used in Bajazet 

Recordings
The first complete recording of this opera was released by Virgin Classics on 10 May 2005  Fabio Biondi conducts Europa Galante in Brussels for this recording  The singers are:

bass-baritone Ildebrando D'Arcangelo as Bajazet
countertenor David Daniels as Tamerlano
mezzo-soprano Vivica Genaux as Irene
contralto Marijana Mijanovic as Asteria
soprano Patrizia Ciofi as Idaspe
mezzo-soprano Elīna Garanča as AndronicoThis recording received the award for Best Opera by Midem Classical Awards 2006 and shortlisted for the 48th Annual Grammy Awards 2006 
Before this release, excerpts from this opera had been performed by other singers such as Cecilia Bartoli 
Pinchgut Opera's 2015 production of the opera was recorded live and broadcast on ABC Classic FM A recoding of the complete opera was released in 2020 on naive classics, featuring Bruno Taddia as Bajazet and Filippo Mineccia as Tamerlano  The orchestra is Accademia Bizantina   All conducted by Ottavio Dantone 
Passage 6:
Denmark Place fire
The Denmark Place fire occurred on 16 August 1980 at 18 Denmark Place in Central London  The fire, caused by arson, killed 37 people of eight nationalities, most of whom were Spanish or Latin American, who were patrons of two unlicensed bars in the building  At the time, The Sunday Times suggested that it could be "the worst mass murder in British history" 

Background
There were two unlicensed bars on the top two floors of 18 Denmark Place: The Spanish Rooms, a late night bar frequented by locals, including Irish and Jamaican immigrants; and Rodo's, also known as El Dandy, a salsa club popular with South American immigrants  Access to both of these bars was obtained by shouting up from the street below in order to obtain a key  The only way into both of these clubs was through a locked front door and up some stairs leading to a landing  
Access to the club on the lower floor was via this landing and access to the club on the upper floor was via a fire escape enclosed with plywood  Both bars, being unlicensed, were obscured from the outside world by boarded up windows and the door on Denmark Street that led to the fire escape was bolted shut  The Metropolitan Police were aware of the clubs and were planning to shut them both down on Monday 18 August  A farewell party was being thrown over the weekend 

The fire
On the night of 16 August 1980, John Thompson, a Scottish-born petty criminal aged 42, entered The Spanish Rooms and drank there  He believed that the barman had overcharged him for the drink  After fighting with the barman he was ejected from the building and the door was locked behind him  Thompson found a 2-gallon container outside the club, hailed a taxi and then travelled to a 24-hour petrol station in Camden where he filled the container with petrol  He then returned to 18 Denmark Place, poured the petrol through the letterbox of the front door and put a lit piece of paper through Fire quickly took hold in the premises owing to the largely timber construction of the building  Both bars were badly damaged  There were estimated to be 150 people within the building at the time  People could not escape easily due to the boarded up windows, the locked fire escape and general lack of fire safety precautions owing to the bars' unlicensed status The fire burned quickly through the wooden staircase, destroying the main entrance and exit to the bars  Some patrons tried to escape via the back door but found that this was locked  Others smashed windows and jumped out onto the street below  On Denmark Street there was a music shop that backed onto the clubs and some patrons were found here trapped behind the security shutters  One firefighter managed to rescue six people from this area 
When firefighters were called to the fire at around 03:30 they could see smoke seeping from the shuttered windows  When an attempt was made to force the locked front door open they were showered with sparks and embers and were forced to retreat  Once firefighters were able to access the front door it took four minutes to break it down – behind it they found that the staircase was completely on fire 
The speed of the fire was so rapid that many of the bar patrons died where they were sitting or standing  An officer from the London Fire Brigade described the scene:

People seem to have died on the spot without even having time to move an inch  Some were slumped at tables  Seven were at the bar and appear to have fallen as they stood, with drinks still in their hands 

Aftermath
In May 1981, Thompson was convicted on a specimen charge of murdering one of the victims, Archibald Campbell (aged 63) and sentenced to life imprisonment  He died of lung cancer on 16 August 2008, the 28th anniversary of the fire There was comparatively little publicity about the fire, and no formal enquiry into it  The families of some of those who died were not aware of the circumstances  In 2022, after redevelopment of the site, a plaque was placed on a wall in memory 

See also
Blue Bird Café fire, 1972 fire in Montreal started in retaliations by patrons refused entry who then lit petrol in front of main entrance and only exit; also killed 37 
Happy Land fire, 1990 fire in New York City at illegally operated nightclub started the same way by aggrieved ejected patron; resulting 87 fatalities is the worst mass murder in city history caused by a single person 
Clerkenwell cinema fire, 1994 fire in London at an illegally operated adult cinema, intentionally started by an aggrieved patron 
Ghost Ship warehouse fire, 2016 fire at illegally operated nightclub in California that killed 37
Passage 7:
2010 Elazığ earthquake
The 2010 Elazığ earthquake was a 6 1 Mw earthquake that occurred on 8 March 2010 at 02:32 UTC (04:32 local time)  The epicentre was Başyurt in Elazığ Province, in eastern Turkey  Initial reports in global media said as many as 57 people had died  By 10 March, reports in the Turkish media placed the death toll at 41 and later, the death toll rose to 42  Another 74 were injured, many after falling and jumping from buildings  A stampede through the streets led to further injuries The earthquake came one week to the day after the Turkish Chamber of Civil Engineers sent a report to parliament detailing inadequate building projects and the possibility that Istanbul would be destroyed by an earthquake, which could kill tens of thousands of people, at some point in the next three decades 

Earthquake
The quake occurred on the East Anatolian Fault, a major transform fault which represents  the boundary between the Anatolian Plate and the Arabian Plate 

Damage
According to officials, most of the deaths occurred in three villages: Okçular, Yukarı Kanatlı and Kayalı  At least five villages, though, suffered loss of life  Villagers fled buildings, spending the night outside and lighting fires in the streets for warmth Thirty houses collapsed in Okçular, and the death toll is at least 17  Reports from the scene indicate "the village is totally flattened" and "everything has been knocked down – there is not a stone in place" At least 25 people died in Yukarı Demirci, and emergency services went to Kovancılar Many people used vehicles and taxis to drive to the hospital  Most were asleep at the time the quake struck, with four sleeping sisters perishing in one house  Farm animals were also killed, and minarets fell down 

Aftershocks
Several aftershocks were felt, the strongest measuring 5 5 (at 09:47 local time), 5 1 (at 12:14) and 5 3 (at 13:12)  A total of over 20 aftershocks were counted within a short time following the quake  Villagers were told to stay away from buildings for several days due to the potential of further aftershocks Onur Tan et al  (2011) analyzed 2130 aftershocks (ML≥0 3) and reported in Geophysical Research Letters 

Response
Turkey: Four government ministers, including Deputy Prime Minister Cemil Çiçek, visited the scene as soon as news of the earthquake was reported  The Red Crescent and Turkey's disaster management centre donated blankets and tents  Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan later arrived  Pakistan: Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani sent a condolence message to his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdoğan over the loss of lives and property and said that "We have learnt with utter sense of shock and profound sadness the news of the massive earthquake that has hit your beautiful country, today  Our hearts go out to our Turkish brethren over the loss of precious lives and destruction of property  I wish to convey, on behalf of the people and Government of Pakistan and on my own behalf our deepest condolences and commiserations to the people and Government of Turkey in bearing this enormous natural calamity " Israel: Defense Minister Ehud Barak ordered an aid proposal to be put together but later said that Turkey informed Israel that it did not require assistance at this time 

See also
2020 Elazığ earthquake
List of earthquakes in 2010
List of earthquakes in Turkey



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