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 the plague occur in the city where Flora's painter died?

The following are given passages.
Context 1: Passage 1:
The Martyrdom of Saint Lawrence (Titian)
The Martyrdom of Saint Lawrence is a 1558 painting by Titian, now in the church of I Gesuiti in Venice  It so impressed Philip II of Spain that he commissioned a second version in 1567 for the basilica at El Escorial 

See also
List of works by Titian
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 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:
Black Death in England
The Black Death was a bubonic plague pandemic, which reached England in June 1348  It was the first and most severe manifestation of the second pandemic, caused by Yersinia pestis bacteria  The term Black Death was not used until the late 17th century 
Originating in Asia, it spread west along the trade routes across Europe and arrived on the British Isles from the English province of Gascony  The plague was spread by flea-infected rats, as well as individuals who had been infected on the continent  Rats were the reservoir hosts of the Y  pestis bacteria and the Oriental rat flea was the primary vector 
The first-known case in England was a seaman who arrived at Weymouth, Dorset, from Gascony in June 1348  By autumn, the plague had reached London, and by summer 1349 it covered the entire country, before dying down by December  Low estimates of mortality in the early twentieth century have been revised upwards due to re-examination of data and new information, and a figure of 40–60 percent of the population is widely accepted 
The most immediate consequence was a halt to the campaigns of the Hundred Years' War  In the long term, the decrease in population caused a shortage of labour, with subsequent rise in wages, resisted by the landowners, which caused deep resentment among the lower classes  The Peasants' Revolt of 1381 was largely a result of this resentment, and even though the rebellion was suppressed, in the long term serfdom was ended in England  The Black Death also affected artistic and cultural efforts, and may have helped advance the use of the vernacular 
In 1361–62 the plague returned to England, this time causing the death of around 20 per cent of the population  After this the plague continued to return intermittently throughout the 14th and 15th centuries, in local or national outbreaks  From this point on its effect became less severe, and one of the last outbreaks of the plague in England was the Great Plague of London in 1665–1666 

Background
England in the mid-14th century
It is impossible to establish with any certainty the exact number of inhabitants in England at the eve of the Black Death, and estimates range from 3 to 7 million  The number is probably in the higher end, and an estimate of around 6 million inhabitants seems likely  Earlier demographic crises—in particular the Great Famine of 1315–1317—had resulted in great numbers of deaths, but there is no evidence of any significant decrease in the population prior to 1348  England was still a predominantly rural and agrarian society; close to 90 per cent of the population lived in the countryside  Of the major cities, London was in a class of its own, with perhaps as many as 70,000 inhabitants  Further down the scale were Norwich, with around 12,000 people, and York with around 10,000  The main export, and the source of the nation's wealth, was wool  Until the middle of the century the export had consisted primarily of raw wool to cloth makers in Flanders  Gradually though, the technology for cloth making used on the Continent was appropriated by English manufacturers, who started an export of cloths around mid-century that would boom over the following decades Politically, the kingdom was evolving into a major European power, through the youthful and energetic kingship of Edward III  In 1346, the English had won a decisive battle over the Scots at the Battle of Neville's Cross, and it seemed that Edward III would realise his grandfather Edward I's ambition of bringing the Scots under the suzerainty of the English crown  The English were also experiencing military success on the continent  Less than two months before the Battle of Neville's Cross, a numerically inferior English army led by the king himself won a spectacular victory over the French royal forces at the Battle of Crécy  The victory was immediately followed by Edward laying siege to the port city of Calais  When the city fell the next year, this provided the English with a strategically important enclave that would remain in their possession for over two centuries 

The Black Death
The term "Black Death"—which refers to the first and most serious outbreak of the second pandemic—was not used by contemporaries, who preferred such names as the "Great Pestilence" or the "Great Mortality"  It was not until the 17th century that the term under which we know the outbreak today became common, probably derived from Scandinavian languages  It is generally agreed today that the disease in question was plague, caused by Yersinia pestis bacteria  These bacteria are carried by fleas, which can be transferred to humans through contact with rats  Flea bites carry the disease into the lymphatic system, through which it makes its way to the lymph nodes  Here the bacteria multiply and form swellings called buboes, from which the term bubonic plague is derived  After three or four days the bacteria enter the bloodstream, and infect organs such as the spleen and the lungs  The patient will then normally die after a few days  A different strain of the disease is pneumonic plague, where the bacteria become airborne and enter directly into the patient's lungs  This strain is far more virulent, as it spreads directly from person to person  These types of infection probably both played a significant part in the Black Death, while a third strain was more rare  This is the septicaemic plague, where the flea bite carries the bacteria directly into the blood stream, and death occurs very rapidly A study reported in 2011 of skeletons exhumed from the Black Death cemetery in East Smithfield, London, found Yersinia pestis DNA  An archaeological dig in the vicinity of Thornton Abbey in Lincolnshire was reported in the science section of The Guardian for 30 November 2016, not only confirming evidence of the Y  pestis DNA in the human remains exhumed there but also dating the remains to mid-1349 
Genotyping showed that it was [at that time] a newly evolved strain, ancestor of all modern strains and proved the Black Death was bubonic plague  Modern medical knowledge suggests that because it was a new strain, the human immune system would have had little or no defence against it, helping to explain the plague's virulence and high death rates The Black Death seems to have originated in Central Asia, where the Y  pestis bacterium is endemic in the rodent population  It is unknown exactly what caused the outbreak, but a series of natural occurrences likely brought humans into contact with the infected rodents  The epidemic reached Constantinople in the late spring of 1347, through Genoese merchants trading in the Black Sea  From here it reached Sicily in October that same year, and by early 1348 it had spread over the entire Italian mainland  It spread rapidly through France, and had reached as far north as Paris by June 1348  Moving simultaneously westward, it arrived in the English province of Gascony around the same time 

Progress of the plague
According to the chronicle of the grey friars at King's Lynn, the plague arrived by ship from Gascony to Melcombe in Dorset—today normally referred to as Weymouth—shortly before the Feast of St  John the Baptist on 24 June 1348  Other sources mention different points of arrival, including Bristol and Southampton  Though the plague might have arrived independently at Bristol at a later point, the Grey Friars' Chronicle is considered the most authoritative account  If it is assumed that the chronicle reports the first outbreak of the plague, rather than its actual arrival, then the arrival most likely happened around 8 May From Weymouth the disease spread rapidly across the south-west  The first major city to be struck was Bristol  The disease reached London in the autumn of 1348, before most of the surrounding countryside  This had certainly happened by November, though according to some accounts as early as 29 September  Arrival in London happened by three principal roads: overland from Weymouth—through Salisbury and Winchester—overland from Gloucester, and along the coast by ship  The full effect of the plague was felt in the capital early the next year  Conditions in London were ideal for the plague: the streets were narrow and flowing with sewage, and houses were overcrowded and poorly ventilated  By March 1349 the disease was spreading haphazardly across all of southern England During the first half of 1349 the Black Death spread northwards  A second front opened up when the plague arrived by ship at the Humber, after which it spread both south and north  In May it reached York, and during the summer months of June, July and August, it ravaged the north  Certain northern counties, like Durham and Cumberland, had been the victim of violent incursions from the Scots, and were therefore left particularly vulnerable to the devastations of the plague  Pestilence is less virulent during the winter months, and spreads less rapidly  The Black Death in England had survived the winter of 1348–49, but during the following winter it gave in, and by December 1349 conditions were returning to relative normality  It had taken the disease approximately 500 days to traverse the entire country 

Medical practice
Various methods were used including sweating, bloodletting, forced vomiting and urinating to treat patients infected with the plague  Several symptoms of the illness included blotches, hardening of the glands under the groin and underarms, and dementia  Within the initial phase of the disease, bloodletting was performed on the same side of where the physical manifestations of the buboes or risings appeared  For instance, if a rising appeared on the right side of the groin the physician would bleed a vein in the ankle on the same side  In the case of sweating, it was achieved with such medicines as Mithridate, Venice-Treacle, Matthiolus, Bezoar-Water, Serpentary Roots and Electuarium de Ovo  Sweating was used when measures were desperate; if a patient had tokens, a severe version of risings, the physician would wrap the naked patient in a blanket drenched in cold water  This measure was only performed while the patient still had natural heat in his system  The desired effect was to make the patient sweat violently and thus purge all corruption from the blood which was caused by the disease Another practice was the use of pigeons when treating swellings  Swellings which were white in appearance and deep were unlikely to break and were anointed with Oil of Lillies or Camomil  Once the swelling rose to a head and was red in appearance and not deep in the flesh, it was broken with the use of a feather from a young pigeon's tail  The feather's fundament was held to the swelling and would draw out the venom  However, if the swelling dropped and became black in appearance, the physician had to be cautious when drawing the cold from the swelling  If it was too late to prevent, the physician would take the young pigeon, cut it open from breast to back, break it open and apply the pigeon (while still alive) over the cold swelling  The cupping therapy was an alternative method which was heated and then placed over the swellings  Once the sore was broken, the physician would apply Mellilot Plaister with Linimentum Arcei and heal the sore with digence 

Victims
Death toll
Although historical records for England were more extensive than those of any other European country, it is still extremely difficult to establish the death toll with any degree of certainty  Difficulties involve uncertainty about the size of the total population, as described above, but also issues regarding the proportion of the population that died from the plague  Contemporary accounts are often grossly inflated, stating numbers as high as 90 per cent  Modern historians give estimates of death rates ranging from around 25 per cent to more than 60 per cent of the total population 
The pioneering work in the field was made by Josiah William Russell in his 1948 British Medieval Population  Russell looked at inquisitions post mortem (IPMs)—taken by the crown to assess the wealth of the greatest landowners after their death—to assess the mortality caused by the Black Death, and from this arrived at an estimate of 23 6 per cent of the entire population  He also looked at episcopal registers for the death toll among the clergy, where the result was between 30 and 40 per cent  Russell believed the clergy was at particular risk of contagion, and eventually concluded with a low mortality level of only 20 per cent Several of Russell's assumptions have been challenged, and the tendency since has been to adjust the assessment upwards  Philip Ziegler, in 1969, estimated the death rate to be at around one third of the population  Jeremy Goldberg, in 1996, believed a number closer to 45 per cent would be more realistic  A 2004 study by Ole Jørgen Benedictow suggests the exceptionally high mortality level of 62 5 per cent  Assuming a population of 6 million, this estimate would correspond to 3,750,000 deaths  Such a high percentage would place England above the average that Benedictow estimates for Western Europe as a whole, of 60 per cent  A death rate at such a high level has not been universally accepted in the historical community In 2016, Carenza Lewis reported the results of a new method of assessing the death toll  She argued that pottery before and after the Black Death is datable because there was a change at that time from the high medieval to the late medieval style, and that counts of pottery of each type therefore provide a useful proxy for long term changes in population  She and her colleagues analysed pottery sherds from test pits in more than 50 continuously occupied rural settlements in eastern England, and found a decline in the number of pottery producing pits of 45 per cent  Norfolk had the greatest drop of 65 per cent, while there was no drop in 10 per cent of settlements, mostly commercial centres 

Impact of the Black Death: 1349
Archbishop Zouche of York issued a warning throughout the diocese in July 1348 (when the epidemic was raging further south) of "great mortalities, pestilences and infections of the air" 
The Great Mortality, as it was then known, entered Yorkshire around February 1349 and quickly spread through the diocese  The clergy were on the front line of the disease, bringing comfort to the dying, hearing final confessions and organising burials  This, almost by necessity, put them at a greater risk of infection 
Estimates suggest that the death rate of clergy in some parts of the archdiocese could have been as high as 48 per cent  This is reflected in the Ordination Register, which shows a massive rise in ordained clergy over the period—some being recruited before the arrival of plague in a clerical recruitment drive, but many once plague had arrived, replacing those who had been killed  In 1346, 111 priests and 337 acolytes were recruited  In 1349, 299 priests and 683 acolytes are named, with 166 priests being ordained in one session alone in February 1350 "

Social distribution
Russell had trusted the IPMs to give a true picture of the national average, because he assumed death rates to be relatively equal across the social spectrum  This assumption has been proven wrong, and studies of peasant plague mortality from manor rolls have returned much higher rates  This could be a consequence of the elite's ability to avoid infection by escaping plague-infected areas  It could also result from lower post-infection mortality among those more affluent, due to better access to care and nursing  If so, this would also mean that the mortality rates for the clergy—who were normally better off than the general population—were no higher than the average 

The manorial records offer a good opportunity to study the geographical distribution of the plague  Its effect seems to have been about the same all over England, though a place like East Anglia, which had frequent contact with the Continent, was severely affected  On a local level, however, there were great variations  A study of the Bishop of Worcester's estates reveal that, while his manors of Hartlebury and Hanbury had a mortality of only 19 per cent, the manor of Aston lost as much as 80 per cent of its population  The manor rolls are less useful for studying the demographic distribution of the mortality, since the rolls only record the heads of households, normally an adult male  Here the IPMs show us that the most vulnerable to the disease were infants and the elderly There seem to have been relatively few deaths from the Black Death at higher levels of society  The only member of the royal family who can be said with any certainty to have died from the Black Death was in France at the time of her infection  Edward III's daughter Joan was residing in Bordeaux on her way to marry Pedro of Castile in the summer of 1348  When the plague broke out in her household she was moved to a small village nearby, but she could not avoid infection, and died there on 2 September  It is possible that the popular religious author Richard Rolle, who died on 30 September 1349, was another victim of the Black Death  The English philosopher William of Ockham has been mentioned as a plague victim  This, however, is an impossibility  Ockham was living in Munich at the time of his death, on 10 April 1347, two years before the Black Death reached that city 

Consequences
Economic, social and political effects
Among the most immediate consequences of the Black Death in England was a shortage of farm labour, and a corresponding rise in wages  The medieval world-view was unable to interpret these changes in terms of socio-economic development, and it became common to blame degrading morals instead  The landowning classes saw the rise in wage levels as a sign of social upheaval and insubordination, and reacted with coercion  In 1349, King Edward III passed the Ordinance of Labourers, fixing wages at pre-plague levels  The ordinance was reinforced by Parliament's passing of the Statute of Labourers in 1351  The labour laws were enforced with ruthless determination over the following decades 

These legislative measures proved largely inefficient at regulating the market, but the government's repressive measures to enforce them caused public resentment  These conditions were contributing factors to the Peasants' Revolt in 1381  The revolt started in Kent and Essex in late May, and once the rebels reached London they burnt down John of Gaunt's Savoy Palace, and killed both the Chancellor and the Treasurer  They then demanded the complete abolition of serfdom, and were not pacified until the young King Richard II personally intervened  The rebellion was eventually suppressed, but the social changes it promoted were already irreversible  By around 1400 serfdom was virtually extinct in England, replaced by the form of tenure called copyhold It is conspicuous how well the English government handled the crisis of the mid-fourteenth century, without descending into chaos and total collapse in the manner of the Valois government of France  To a large extent this was the accomplishment of administrators such as Treasurer William de Shareshull and Chief Justice William Edington, whose highly competent leadership guided the governance of the nation through the crisis  The plague's greatest effect on the government was probably in the field of war, where no major campaigns were launched in France until 1355 Another notable consequence of the Black Death was the raising of the real wage of England (due to the shortage of labour as a result of the reduction in population), a trait shared across Western Europe, which in general led to a real wage in 1450 that was unmatched in most countries until the 19th or 20th century  The higher wages for workers combined with sinking prices on grain products led to a problematic economic situation for the gentry  As a result, they started to show an increased interest for offices like justice of the peace, sheriff and member of parliament  The gentry took advantage of their new positions and a more systematic corruption than before spread  A result of this was that the gentry as a group became highly disliked by commoners 

Religious and cultural consequences
The omnipresence of death also inspired greater piety in the upper classes, which can be seen in the fact that three Cambridge colleges were founded during or shortly after the Black Death  England did not experience the same trend of roving bands of flagellants, common on the continent  Neither were there any pogroms against the Jews, since the Jews had been expelled by Edward I in 1290 The high rate of mortality among the clergy naturally led to a shortage of priests in many parts of the country  The clergy were seen to have an elevated status among ordinary people and this was partly due to their purported closeness with God, being his envoys on earth  However, as the church itself had given the cause of the Black Death to be the impropriety of the behaviour of men, the higher death rate among the clergy led the people to lose faith in the Church as an institution—it had proved as ineffectual against the horror of Y  pestis as every other medieval institution  The corruption within the Catholic priesthood also angered the English people  Many priests abandoned the terrified people  Others sought benefits from the rich families who needed burials  The dissatisfaction led to anti-clericalism and the rise of John Wycliffe, an English priest  His ideas paved a path for the Christian reformation in England  Some people did not lose their Christian faith, if anything it was renewed; they began to long for a more personal relationship with God—around the time after the Black Death many chantries (private chapels) began to spread in use from not just the nobility, but to among the well-to-do  This change in the power of the papacy in England is demonstrated by the statutes of Praemunire 
The Black Death also affected arts and culture significantly  It was inevitable that a catastrophe of such proportions would affect some of the greater building projects, as the amount of available labour fell sharply  The building of the cathedrals of Ely and Exeter was temporarily halted in the years immediately following the first outbreak of the plague  The shortage of labour also helped advance the transition from the Decorated style of building to the less elaborate Perpendicular style  The Black Death may also have promoted the use of vernacular English, as the number of teachers proficient in French dwindled, contributing to the late-14th-century flowering of English literature, represented by writers such as Geoffrey Chaucer and John Gower 

Recurrences
The Black Death was the first occurrence of the second pandemic, which continued to strike England and the rest of Europe more or less regularly until the 18th century  The first serious recurrence in England came in the years 1361−62  Little is known about the death rates caused by these later outbreaks, but the so-called pestis secunda may have had a mortality of around 20 per cent  Genetic analysis performed on remains recovered from the abbey of St  Mary's Graces dating between 1353 and 1364 found the pPCP1 plasmid, a plasmid only found in Yersinia pestis and not the related environmental agent Yersinia pseudotuberculosis, revealing that this outbreak was also caused by Yersinia pestis just as the initial outbreak had been  This epidemic was also particularly devastating for the population's ability to recover, since it disproportionately affected infants and young men  This was also the case with the next occurrence, in 1369, where the death rate was around 10−15 per cent Over the following decades the plague would return—on a national or a regional level—at intervals of five to 12 years, with gradually dwindling death tolls  Then, in the decades from 1430 to 1480, the disease returned in force  An outbreak in 1471 took as much as 10–15 per cent of the population, while the death rate of the plague of 1479–80 could have been as high as 20 per cent  From that point outbreaks became fewer and more manageable, due largely to conscious efforts by central and local governments—from the late 15th century onward—to curtail the disease  This included quarantines on people and goods coming from infected places, bans on public gatherings (such as fairs), enforced household quarantine for the infected (known as 'locking up') and quarantines on ships and crews coming from ports where Plague outbreaks had occurred  From the early seventeenth century there was also greater use of quarantine facilities, called pesthouses, in preference to household quarantine  Some of these, such as the Forlorn Hope Pesthouse established by Bristol in 1665–6, appear to have been proper quarantine hospitals, staffed by doctors  The establishment of such a hospital may help to explain why the death rate in Bristol in the 1665–66 outbreak was "only" c 0 6 percent  This was much lower than the mortality rate of 10–20 percent witnessed in Bristol's Plague epidemics of 1565, 1575, 1603–04 and 1645  The Great Plague of 1665–66 was the last major outbreak in England  It is best known for the famous Great Plague of London, which killed 100,000 people (20 per cent of the population) in the capital  Other places hit hard included Eyam in Derbyshire, Derby itself and Norwich 

See also
Passage 4:
2013 Houphouët-Boigny stampede
The 2013 Houphouët-Boigny stampede occurred as crowds departed a New Year's Eve fireworks display in the early hours of 1 January 2013 near the Félix Houphouët-Boigny Stadium in Abidjan, Ivory Coast  It resulted in 61 deaths and over 200 injuries, mostly women and children  This was the second time in four years that a fatal stampede occurred at the stadium 
President Alassane Ouattara declared three days of mourning and promised an investigation 

Incident
At some time between 1 and 4 am according to sources, following the New Year's Eve celebration and fireworks display, crowds stampeded as they exited the stadium into the Boulevard de la République near the Hotel Tirama  This was the second year that fireworks had been held by the government to commemorate the end of the 2010–2011 Ivorian crisis and the Second Ivorian Civil War, following the controversial 2010 presidential election  According to official reports, 61 individuals were killed, with upwards of 200 injured  According to Alain Lobognon, the Minister of Youth, 26 children were among the dead, most of whom were between the ages of 8 and 15, as well as 28 women and six men 

Investigation and reaction
The cause of the stampede is not yet clear, however a senior police spokesman has confirmed they are investigating  Lieutenant Colonel Issa Sako, the officer in charge of the military responding to the disaster, said that the deaths were caused when "people were walked over and suffocated by the crowd"  According to an Ivorian government official, approximately "50,000 people [were] on the streets     going home" after the New Year's celebrations  Witnesses have alternatively claimed that two large crowds moving in opposite directions collided, and that security forces attempting to break up the crowd leaving the stadium caused a panic Visiting the injured in hospital, President Alassane Ouattara said that the national tragedy would be investigated  Minister of the Interior Hamed Bakayoko stated in a national television broadcast on Radiodiffusion Television Ivoirienne that "the government extends its condolences to the families of those deceased and assures them of its solidarity" and that the Ivorian government would help by "all means possible " Bakayoko went on to say that "the precise circumstances of this tragic occurrence are being looked into by the security services" 
Passage 5:
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
Passage 6:
Flora (Titian)
Flora is an oil painting by Italian late Renaissance painter Titian, dated to around 1515 and now held at the Uffizi Gallery in Florence 

History
The work was reproduced in numerous 16th century etchings  Later, it followed an unclear series of changes of hands at Brussels and Vienna  In the 17th century, it was sold by the Spanish ambassador at Amsterdam to Archduke Leopold Wilhelm of Austria and was cited by Rembrandt in his Saskia Dressing as Flora  of London and in two portraits in Dresden and New York  Later included in the Kunsthistorisches Museum of Vienna, it was one of the works exchanged with the Uffizi 
In the 18th century, it was erroneously attributed to Palma the Elder 

Description
It portrays an idealized beautiful woman, a model established in the Venetian school by Titian's master Giorgione with his Laura  Her left hand holds a pink-shaded mantle, and her right holds a handful of flowers and leaves 
The woman was portrayed by Titian in numerous other works of the period, including the Woman at the Mirror, the Vanity, Salome and Violante, as well as some Holy Conversations  The meaning of the painting is disputed: some, basing for example to inscriptions added to the 16th century reproductions, identifies the woman as a courtesan; other consider it a symbol of nuptial love, although her dress is not a dressing one  The identification with Flora, the ancient goddess of Spring and vegetation, derives from the presence of Spring flowers in her hands 

See also
List of works by Titian

Notes
Context 2: Passage 1:
Tycho Brahe Prize
The Tycho Brahe Prize is awarded by the European Astronomical Society  Inaugurated in 2008, the prize is awarded annually in recognition of the pioneering development or exploitation of European astronomical instrumentation, or major discoveries based largely on such instruments 

Tycho Brahe Prize laureates
The following persons have received the Tycho Brahe Prize:

See also
List of astronomy awards
Prizes named after people
Passage 2:
Booktrust Teenage Prize
The Booktrust Teenage Prize was an annual award given to young adult literature published in the UK  The prize was administered by Book Trust, an independent charity which promotes books and reading  The Booktrust Teenage Prize was last awarded in 2010 and is no longer running 

Honorees
Passage 3:
Adam Smith Prize
The Adam Smith Prizes are prizes currently awarded for the best overall examination performance and best dissertation in Part IIB of the Economics Tripos (the graduation examination for economics undergraduates) at the University of Cambridge  The prize - named after Scottish philosopher and economist Adam Smith - was originally established in 1891 and awarded triennially for the best submitted essay on a subject of the writer's choice 

List of past recipients
1894 Arthur Lyon Bowley
1897 Frederick Pethick-Lawrence, 1st Baron Pethick-Lawrence
1900 Sydney Chapman
1903 Arthur Cecil Pigou
1906 Ernest Alfred Benians
1909 John Maynard Keynes
1929 R  F  Kahn
1930 Ruth Cohen
1932 K  S  Isles
1933 B  P  Adarkar
1935 W  B  Reddaway
1936 D  G  Champernowne
1954 Amartya Sen
1956 Manmohan Singh
1974 Martin Osborne
1987 Richard J  Parkin
2000 Saugato Datta and Richard Fearon
2004 James Benford
2006 Mark Shields
2007 Stefanie Stantcheva
2008 Thomas Mckendrick and Shivam Patel
2009 Praneet Shah
2011 Ossie Akushie and Shafi Anwar
2013 Inna Grinis and Ivan Kuznetsov
2014 James Walker
2015 Ben Andrews and Jonathon Hazell
2016 Isar Bhattacharjee and Toni Oki
2017 Joel Flynn and Joseph Lee
2018 Tireni Ajilore, George Nikolakoudis, Laurence O’Brien and Sajan Shah
2019 Vlastimil Rasocha and Kuishuai Yi
2020 Neal Patel, David Lee, Liam Grant, Andrew Koh and Michael Bennett
2021 Valerie Chuang, Matthew Chen and Jack Golden

See also
List of economics awards
Passage 4:
Berwick Prize
The Berwick Prize and Senior Berwick Prize are two prizes of the London Mathematical Society awarded in alternating years in memory of William Edward Hodgson Berwick, a previous Vice-President of the LMS  Berwick left some money to be given to the society to establish two prizes  His widow Daisy May Berwick gave the society the money and the society established the prizes, with the first Senior Berwick Prize being presented in 1946 and the first Junior Berwick Prize the following year  The prizes are awarded "in recognition of an outstanding piece of mathematical research     published by the Society" in the eight years before the year of the award The Berwick Prize was known as the Junior Berwick Prize up to 1999, and was given its current name for the 2001 award 

Senior Berwick Prize winners
Source:

Berwick Prize winners
Source:

See also
Whitehead Prize
Senior Whitehead Prize
Shephard Prize
Fröhlich Prize
Naylor Prize and Lectureship
Pólya Prize (LMS)
De Morgan Medal
List of mathematics awards 
Passage 5:
Lilienfeld Prize
The Julius Edgar Lilienfeld Prize of the American Physical Society, to remember Julius Edgar Lilienfeld, has been awarded annually, since 1989  (It was not awarded in 2002)  The purpose of the Prize is to recognize outstanding contributions to physics 

Recipients
Source: American Physical Society

External links
J  E  Lilienfeld Prize for Theoretical Particle Physics APS

See also
List of physics awards
Passage 6:
List of Nobel laureates in Chemistry
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry (Swedish: Nobelpriset i kemi) is awarded annually by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences to scientists in the various fields of chemistry  It is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the 1895 will of Alfred Nobel, who died in 1896   These prizes are awarded for outstanding contributions in chemistry, physics, literature, peace, and physiology or medicine  As dictated by Nobel's will, the award is administered by the Nobel Foundation and awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences  The first Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded in 1901 to Jacobus Henricus van 't Hoff, of the Netherlands  Each recipient receives a medal, a diploma and a monetary award prize that has varied throughout the years  In 1901, van 't Hoff received 150,782 SEK, which is equal to 7,731,004 SEK in December 2007   The award is presented in Stockholm at an annual ceremony on 10 December, the anniversary of Nobel's death At least 25 laureates have received the Nobel Prize for contributions in the field of organic chemistry, more than any other field of chemistry  Two Nobel Prize laureates in Chemistry, Germans Richard Kuhn (1938) and Adolf Butenandt (1939), were not allowed by their government to accept the prize  They would later receive a medal and diploma, but not the money  Frederick Sanger is one out of three laureates to be awarded the Nobel Prize twice in the same subject, in 1958 and 1980  John Bardeen, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1956 and 1972, and Karl Barry Sharpless, who won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 2001 and 2022, are the others  Two others have won Nobel Prizes twice, one in chemistry and one in another subject: Maria Skłodowska-Curie (physics in 1903, chemistry in 1911) and Linus Pauling (chemistry in 1954, peace in 1962)  As of 2022, the prize has been awarded to 189 individuals, including eight women (Maria Skłodowska-Curie being the first to be awarded in 1911) There have been eight years for which the Nobel Prize in Chemistry was not awarded (1916, 1917, 1919, 1924, 1933, 1940–42)  There were also nine years for which the Nobel Prize in Chemistry was delayed for one year  The Prize was not awarded in 1914, as the Nobel Committee for Chemistry  decided that none of that year's nominations met the necessary criteria, but was awarded to Theodore William Richards in 1915 and counted as the 1914 prize  This precedent was followed for the 1918 prize awarded to Fritz Haber in 1919, the 1920 prize awarded to Walther Nernst in 1921, the 1921 prize awarded to Frederick Soddy in 1922, the 1925 prize awarded to Richard Zsigmondy in 1926, the 1927 prize awarded to Heinrich Otto Wieland in 1928, the 1938 prize awarded to Richard Kuhn in 1939, the 1943 prize awarded to George de Hevesy in 1944, and the 1944 prize awarded to Otto Hahn in 1945 In 2020, Ioannidis et al  reported that half of the Nobel Prizes for science awarded between 1995 and 2017 were clustered in just a few disciplines within their broader fields  Atomic physics, particle physics, cell biology, and neuroscience dominated the two subjects outside chemistry, while molecular chemistry was the chief prize-winning discipline in its domain  Molecular chemists won 5 3% of all science Nobel Prizes during this period 

Laureates
See also
Timeline of chemistry
Passage 7:
Karl Jaspers Prize
The Karl Jaspers Prize or Karl-Jaspers-Preis is a German philosophy award named after Karl Jaspers and awarded by the city of Heidelberg and the University of Heidelberg  It was first awarded in 1983 "for a scientific work of international significance supported by philosophical spirit"  The Karl Jaspers Prize was initially endowed with 5,000 euros, though since 2013 this has increased to €25,000  Next to the Friedrich Nietzsche Prize it is one of the highest awards in Germany awarded exclusively for philosophical achievements 

Award winners
Passage 8:
British Empire
The British Empire was composed of the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates, and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom and its predecessor states  It began with the overseas possessions and trading posts established by England in the late 16th and early 17th centuries  
At its height in the 19th and early 20th century, it was the largest empire in history and, for a century, was the foremost global power  By 1913, the British Empire held sway over 412 million people, 23 per cent of the world population at the time, and by 1920, it covered 35 5 million km2 (13 7 million sq mi), 24 per cent of the Earth's total land area  As a result, its constitutional, legal, linguistic, and cultural legacy is widespread  At the peak of its power, it was described as "the empire on which the sun never sets", as the Sun was always shining on at least one of its territories  Today, numerous nations across the world trace their contemporary statehood to the end of British rule, including the United States, India, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Israel 
During the Age of Discovery in the 15th and 16th centuries, Portugal and Spain pioneered European exploration of the globe, and in the process established large overseas empires  Envious of the great wealth these empires generated, England, France, and the Netherlands began to establish colonies and trade networks of their own in the Americas and Asia  A series of wars in the 17th and 18th centuries with the Netherlands and France left England (Britain, following the 1707 Act of Union with Scotland) the dominant colonial power in North America  Britain became the dominant power in the Indian subcontinent after the East India Company's conquest of Mughal Bengal at the Battle of Plassey in 1757 
The American War of Independence resulted in Britain losing some of its oldest and most populous colonies in North America by 1783  British attention then turned towards Asia, Africa, and the Pacific  After the defeat of France in the Napoleonic Wars (1803–1815), Britain emerged as the principal naval and imperial power of the 19th century and expanded its imperial holdings  It pursued trade concessions in China and Japan, and territory in Southeast Asia   The  "Scramble for Africa" and "Great Game" also ensued  The period of relative peace (1815–1914) during which the British Empire became the global hegemon was later described as Pax Britannica (Latin for "British Peace")  Alongside the formal control that Britain exerted over its colonies, its dominance of much of world trade meant that it effectively controlled the economies of many regions, such as Asia and Latin America  Increasing degrees of autonomy were granted to its white settler colonies, some of which were formally reclassified as Dominions in the 1920s  By the start of the 20th century, Germany and the United States had begun to challenge Britain's economic lead  Military and economic tensions between Britain and Germany were major causes of the First World War, during which Britain relied heavily on its empire  The conflict placed enormous strain on its military, financial, and manpower resources  Although the empire achieved its largest territorial extent immediately after the First World War, Britain was no longer the world's preeminent industrial or military power 
In the Second World War, Britain's colonies in East Asia and Southeast Asia were occupied by the Empire of Japan  Despite the final victory of Britain and its allies, the damage to British prestige helped accelerate the decline of the empire  India, Britain's most valuable and populous possession, achieved independence in 1947 as part of a larger decolonisation movement, in which Britain granted independence to most territories of the empire  The Suez Crisis of 1956 confirmed Britain's decline as a global power, and the transfer of Hong Kong to China on 1 July 1997 symbolised for many the end of the British Empire, though fourteen overseas territories that are remnants of the empire remain under British sovereignty  After independence, many former British colonies, along with most of the dominions, joined the Commonwealth of Nations, a free association of independent states  Fifteen of these, including the United Kingdom, retain a common monarch, currently King Charles III 

Origins (1497–1583)
The foundations of the British Empire were laid when England and Scotland were separate kingdoms  In 1496, King Henry VII of England, following the successes of Spain and Portugal in overseas exploration, commissioned John Cabot to lead an expedition to discover a northwest passage to Asia via the North Atlantic  Cabot sailed in 1497, five years after the first voyage of Christopher Columbus, and made landfall on the coast of Newfoundland  He believed he had reached Asia, and there was no attempt to found a colony  Cabot led another voyage to the Americas the following year but did not return; it is unknown what happened to his ships No further attempts to establish English colonies in the Americas were made until well into the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, during the last decades of the 16th century  In the meantime, Henry VIII's 1533 Statute in Restraint of Appeals had declared "that this realm of England is an Empire"  The Protestant Reformation turned England and Catholic Spain into implacable enemies  In 1562, Elizabeth I encouraged the privateers John Hawkins and Francis Drake to engage in slave-raiding attacks against Spanish and Portuguese ships off the coast of West Africa with the aim of establishing an Atlantic slave trade  This effort was rebuffed and later, as the Anglo-Spanish Wars intensified, Elizabeth I gave her blessing to further privateering raids against Spanish ports in the Americas and shipping that was returning across the Atlantic, laden with treasure from the New World  At the same time, influential writers such as Richard Hakluyt and John Dee (who was the first to use the term "British Empire") were beginning to press for the establishment of England's own empire  By this time, Spain had become the dominant power in the Americas and was exploring the Pacific Ocean, Portugal had established trading posts and forts from the coasts of Africa and Brazil to China, and France had begun to settle the Saint Lawrence River area, later to become New France Although England tended to trail behind Portugal, Spain, and France in establishing overseas colonies, it carried out its first modern colonisation, referred to as the Ulster Plantation, in 16th century Ireland by settling English Protestants in Ulster  England had already colonised part of the country following the Norman invasion of Ireland in 1169  Several people who helped establish the Ulster Plantations later played a part in the early colonisation of North America, particularly a group known as the West Country Men 

English overseas possessions (1583–1707)
In 1578, Elizabeth I granted a patent to Humphrey Gilbert for discovery and overseas exploration  That year, Gilbert sailed for the Caribbean with the intention of engaging in piracy and establishing a colony in North America, but the expedition was aborted before it had crossed the Atlantic  In 1583, he embarked on a second attempt  On this occasion, he formally claimed the harbour of the island of Newfoundland, although no settlers were left behind  Gilbert did not survive the return journey to England and was succeeded by his half-brother, Walter Raleigh, who was granted his own patent by Elizabeth in 1584  Later that year, Raleigh founded the Roanoke Colony on the coast of present-day North Carolina, but lack of supplies caused the colony to fail In 1603, James VI of Scotland ascended (as James I) to the English throne and in 1604 negotiated the Treaty of London, ending hostilities with Spain  Now at peace with its main rival, English attention shifted from preying on other nations' colonial infrastructures to the business of establishing its own overseas colonies  The British Empire began to take shape during the early 17th century, with the English settlement of North America and the smaller islands of the Caribbean, and the establishment of joint-stock companies, most notably the East India Company, to administer colonies and overseas trade  This period, until the loss of the Thirteen Colonies after the American War of Independence towards the end of the 18th century, has been referred to by some historians as the "First British Empire" 

Americas, Africa and the slave trade
England's early efforts at colonisation in the Americas met with mixed success  An attempt to establish a colony in Guiana in 1604 lasted only two years and failed in its main objective to find gold deposits  Colonies on the Caribbean islands of St Lucia (1605) and Grenada (1609) rapidly folded  The first permanent English settlement in the Americas was founded in 1607 in Jamestown by Captain John Smith, and managed by the Virginia Company; the Crown took direct control of the venture in 1624, thereby founding the Colony of Virginia  Bermuda was settled and claimed by England as a result of the 1609 shipwreck of the Virginia Company's flagship, while attempts to settle Newfoundland were largely unsuccessful  In 1620, Plymouth was founded as a haven by Puritan religious separatists, later known as the Pilgrims  Fleeing from religious persecution would become the motive for many English would-be colonists to risk the arduous trans-Atlantic voyage: Maryland was established by English Roman Catholics (1634), Rhode Island (1636) as a colony tolerant of all religions and Connecticut (1639) for Congregationalists  England's North American holdings were further expanded by the annexation of the Dutch colony of New Netherland in 1664, following the capture of New Amsterdam, which was renamed New York  Although less financially successful than colonies in the Caribbean, these territories had large areas of good agricultural land and attracted far greater numbers of English emigrants, who preferred their temperate climates The British West Indies initially provided England's most important and lucrative colonies  Settlements were successfully established in St  Kitts (1624), Barbados (1627) and Nevis (1628), but struggled until the "Sugar Revolution" transformed the Caribbean economy in the mid-17th century  Large sugarcane plantations were first established in the 1640s on Barbados, with assistance from Dutch merchants and Sephardic Jews fleeing Portuguese Brazil  At first, sugar was grown primarily using white indentured labour, but rising costs soon led English traders to embrace the use of imported African slaves  The enormous wealth generated by slave-produced sugar made Barbados the most successful colony in the Americas, and one of the most densely populated places in the world  This boom led to the spread of sugar cultivation across the Caribbean, financed the development of non-plantation colonies in North America, and accelerated the growth of the Atlantic slave trade, particularly the triangular trade of slaves, sugar and provisions between Africa, the West Indies and Europe To ensure that the increasingly healthy profits of colonial trade remained in English hands, Parliament decreed in 1651 that only English ships would be able to ply their trade in English colonies  This led to hostilities with the United Dutch Provinces—a series of Anglo-Dutch Wars—which would eventually strengthen England's position in the Americas at the expense of the Dutch  In 1655, England annexed the island of Jamaica from the Spanish, and in 1666 succeeded in colonising the Bahamas 
In 1670, Charles II incorporated by royal charter the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC), granting it a monopoly on the fur trade in the area known as Rupert's Land, which would later form a large proportion of the Dominion of Canada  Forts and trading posts established by the HBC were frequently the subject of attacks by the French, who had established their own fur trading colony in adjacent New France Two years later, the Royal African Company was granted a monopoly on the supply of slaves to the British colonies in the Caribbean  The company would transport more slaves across the Atlantic than any other, and significantly grew England's share of the trade, from 33 per cent in 1673 to 74 per cent in 1683  The removal of this monopoly between 1688 and 1712 allowed independent British slave traders to thrive, leading to a rapid escalation in the number of slaves transported  British ships carried a third of all slaves shipped across the Atlantic—approximately 3 5 million Africans—until the abolition of the trade by Parliament in 1807 (see § Abolition of slavery)  To facilitate the shipment of slaves, forts were established on the coast of West Africa, such as James Island, Accra and Bunce Island  In the British Caribbean, the percentage of the population of African descent rose from 25 per cent in 1650 to around 80 per cent in 1780, and in the Thirteen Colonies from 10 per cent to 40 per cent over the same period (the majority in the southern colonies)  The transatlantic slave trade played a pervasive role in British economic life, and became a major economic mainstay for western port cities  Ships registered in Bristol, Liverpool and London were responsible for the bulk of British slave trading  For the transported, harsh and unhygienic conditions on the slaving ships and poor diets meant that the average mortality rate during the Middle Passage was one in seven 

Rivalry with other European empires
At the end of the 16th century, England and the Dutch Empire began to challenge the Portuguese Empire's monopoly of trade with Asia, forming private joint-stock companies to finance the voyages—the English, later British, East India Company and the Dutch East India Company, chartered in 1600 and 1602 respectively  The primary aim of these companies was to tap into the lucrative spice trade, an effort focused mainly on two regions: the East Indies archipelago, and an important hub in the trade network, India  There, they competed for trade supremacy with Portugal and with each other  Although England eclipsed the Netherlands as a colonial power, in the short term the Netherlands' more advanced financial system and the three Anglo-Dutch Wars of the 17th century left it with a stronger position in Asia  Hostilities ceased after the Glorious Revolution of 1688 when the Dutch William of Orange ascended the English throne, bringing peace between the Dutch Republic and England  A deal between the two nations left the spice trade of the East Indies archipelago to the Netherlands and the textiles industry of India to England, but textiles soon overtook spices in terms of profitability Peace between England and the Netherlands in 1688 meant the two countries entered the Nine Years' War as allies, but the conflict—waged in Europe and overseas between France, Spain and the Anglo-Dutch alliance—left the English a stronger colonial power than the Dutch, who were forced to devote a larger proportion of their military budget to the costly land war in Europe  The death of Charles II of Spain in 1700 and his bequeathal of Spain and its colonial empire to Philip V of Spain, a grandson of the King of France, raised the prospect of the unification of France, Spain and their respective colonies, an unacceptable state of affairs for England and the other powers of Europe  In 1701, England, Portugal and the Netherlands sided with the Holy Roman Empire against Spain and France in the War of the Spanish Succession, which lasted for thirteen years 

Scottish attempt to expand overseas
In 1695, the Parliament of Scotland granted a charter to the Company of Scotland, which established a settlement in 1698 on the Isthmus of Panama  Besieged by neighbouring Spanish colonists of New Granada, and affected by malaria, the colony was abandoned two years later  The Darien scheme was a financial disaster for Scotland: a quarter of Scottish capital was lost in the enterprise  The episode had major political consequences, helping to persuade the government of the Kingdom of Scotland of the merits of turning the personal union with England into a political and economic one under the Kingdom of Great Britain established by the Acts of Union 1707 

"First" British Empire (1707–1783)
The 18th century saw the newly united Great Britain rise to be the world's dominant colonial power, with France becoming its main rival on the imperial stage  Great Britain, Portugal, the Netherlands, and the Holy Roman Empire continued the War of the Spanish Succession, which lasted until 1714 and was concluded by the Treaty of Utrecht  Philip V of Spain renounced his and his descendants' claim to the French throne, and Spain lost its empire in Europe  The British Empire was territorially enlarged: from France, Britain gained Newfoundland and Acadia, and from Spain Gibraltar and Menorca  Gibraltar became a critical naval base and allowed Britain to control the Atlantic entry and exit point to the Mediterranean  Spain ceded the rights to the lucrative asiento (permission to sell African slaves in Spanish America) to Britain  With the outbreak of the Anglo-Spanish War of Jenkins' Ear in 1739, Spanish privateers attacked British merchant shipping along the Triangle Trade routes  In 1746, the Spanish and British began peace talks, with the King of Spain agreeing to stop all attacks on British shipping; however, in the 1750 Treaty of Madrid Britain lost its slave-trading rights in Latin America In the East Indies, British and Dutch merchants continued to compete in spices and textiles  With textiles becoming the larger trade, by 1720, in terms of sales, the British company had overtaken the Dutch  During the middle decades of the 18th century, there were several outbreaks of military conflict on the Indian subcontinent, as the English East India Company and its French counterpart, struggled alongside local rulers to fill the vacuum that had been left by the decline of the Mughal Empire  The Battle of Plassey in 1757, in which the British defeated the Nawab of Bengal and his French allies, left the British East India Company in control of Bengal and as the major military and political power in India  France was left control of its enclaves but with military restrictions and an obligation to support British client states, ending French hopes of controlling India  In the following decades the British East India Company gradually increased the size of the territories under its control, either ruling directly or via local rulers under the threat of force from the Presidency Armies, the vast majority of which was composed of Indian sepoys, led by British officers  The British and French struggles in India became but one theatre of the global Seven Years' War (1756–1763) involving France, Britain, and the other major European powers The signing of the Treaty of Paris of 1763 had important consequences for the future of the British Empire  In North America, France's future as a colonial power effectively ended with the recognition of British claims to Rupert's Land, and the ceding of New France to Britain (leaving a sizeable French-speaking population under British control) and Louisiana to Spain  Spain ceded Florida to Britain  Along with its victory over France in India, the Seven Years' War therefore left Britain as the world's most powerful maritime power 

Loss of the Thirteen American Colonies
During the 1760s and early 1770s, relations between the Thirteen Colonies and Britain became increasingly strained, primarily because of resentment of the British Parliament's attempts to govern and tax American colonists without their consent  This was summarised at the time by the colonists' slogan "No taxation without representation", a perceived violation of the guaranteed Rights of Englishmen  The American Revolution began with a rejection of Parliamentary authority and moves towards self-government  In response, Britain sent troops to reimpose direct rule, leading to the outbreak of war in 1775  The following year, in 1776, the Second Continental Congress issued the Declaration of Independence proclaiming the colonies' sovereignty from the British Empire as the new United States of America  The entry of French and Spanish forces into the war tipped the military balance in the Americans' favour and after a decisive defeat at Yorktown in 1781, Britain began negotiating peace terms  American independence was acknowledged at the Peace of Paris in 1783 The loss of such a large portion of British America, at the time Britain's most populous overseas possession, is seen by some historians as the event defining the transition between the "first" and "second" empires, in which Britain shifted its attention away from the Americas to Asia, the Pacific and later Africa  Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, published in 1776, had argued that colonies were redundant, and that free trade should replace the old mercantilist policies that had characterised the first period of colonial expansion, dating back to the protectionism of Spain and Portugal  The growth of trade between the newly independent United States and Britain after 1783 seemed to confirm Smith's view that political control was not necessary for economic success The war to the south influenced British policy in Canada, where between 40,000 and 100,000 defeated Loyalists had migrated from the new United States following independence  The 14,000 Loyalists who went to the Saint John and Saint Croix river valleys, then part of Nova Scotia, felt too far removed from the provincial government in Halifax, so London split off New Brunswick as a separate colony in 1784  The Constitutional Act of 1791 created the provinces of Upper Canada (mainly English speaking) and Lower Canada (mainly French-speaking) to defuse tensions between the French and British communities, and implemented governmental systems similar to those employed in Britain, with the intention of asserting imperial authority and not allowing the sort of popular control of government that was perceived to have led to the American Revolution Tensions between Britain and the United States escalated again during the Napoleonic Wars, as Britain tried to cut off American trade with France and boarded American ships to impress men into the Royal Navy  The United States Congress declared war, the War of 1812, and invaded Canadian territory  In response, Britain invaded the US, but the pre-war boundaries were reaffirmed by the 1814 Treaty of Ghent, ensuring Canada's future would be separate from that of the United States 

Rise of the "Second" British Empire (1783–1815)
Exploration of the Pacific
Since 1718, transportation to the American colonies had been a penalty for various offences in Britain, with approximately one thousand convicts transported per year  Forced to find an alternative location after the loss of the Thirteen Colonies in 1783, the British government turned to Australia  The coast of Australia had been discovered for Europeans by the Dutch in 1606, but there was no attempt to colonise it  In 1770 James Cook charted the eastern coast while on a scientific voyage, claimed the continent for Britain, and named it New South Wales  In 1778, Joseph Banks, Cook's botanist on the voyage, presented evidence to the government on the suitability of Botany Bay for the establishment of a penal settlement, and in 1787 the first shipment of convicts set sail, arriving in 1788  Unusually, Australia was claimed through proclamation  Indigenous Australians were considered too uncivilised to require treaties, and colonisation brought disease and violence that together with the deliberate dispossession of land and culture were devastating to these peoples  Britain continued to transport convicts to New South Wales until 1840, to Tasmania until 1853 and to Western Australia until 1868  The Australian colonies became profitable exporters of wool and gold, mainly because of the Victorian gold rush, making its capital Melbourne for a time the richest city in the world During his voyage, Cook visited New Zealand, known to Europeans due to the 1642 voyage of the Dutch explorer, Abel Tasman  Cook claimed both the North and the South islands for the British crown in 1769 and 1770 respectively  Initially, interaction between the indigenous Maori population and European settlers was limited to the trading of goods  European settlement increased through the early decades of the 19th century, with many trading stations being established, especially in the North  In 1839, the New Zealand Company announced plans to buy large tracts of land and establish colonies in New Zealand  On 6 February 1840, Captain William Hobson and around 40 Maori chiefs signed the Treaty of Waitangi which is considered to be New Zealand's founding document, despite differing interpretations of the Maori and English versions of the text being the cause of ongoing dispute The British also expanded their mercantile interests in the North Pacific  Spain and Britain had become rivals in the area, culminating in the Nootka Crisis in 1789  Both sides mobilised for war, but when France refused to support Spain it was forced to back down, leading to the Nootka Convention  The outcome was a humiliation for Spain, which practically renounced all sovereignty on the North Pacific coast  This opened the way to British expansion in the area, and a number of expeditions took place; firstly a naval expedition led by George Vancouver which explored the inlets around the Pacific North West, particularly around Vancouver Island  On land, expeditions sought to discover a river route to the Pacific for the extension of the North American fur trade  Alexander Mackenzie of the North West Company led the first, starting out in 1792, and a year a later he became the first European to reach the Pacific overland north of the Rio Grande, reaching the ocean near present-day Bella Coola  This preceded the Lewis and Clark Expedition by twelve years  Shortly thereafter, Mackenzie's companion, John Finlay, founded the first permanent European settlement in British Columbia, Fort St  John  The North West Company sought further exploration and backed expeditions by David Thompson, starting in 1797, and later by Simon Fraser  These pushed into the wilderness territories of the Rocky Mountains and Interior Plateau to the Strait of Georgia on the Pacific Coast, expanding British North America westward 

Wars with France
Britain was challenged again by France under Napoleon, in a struggle that, unlike previous wars, represented a contest of ideologies between the two nations  It was not only Britain's position on the world stage that was at risk: Napoleon threatened to invade Britain itself, just as his armies had overrun many countries of continental Europe The Napoleonic Wars were therefore ones in which Britain invested large amounts of capital and resources to win  French ports were blockaded by the Royal Navy, which won a decisive victory over a French Imperial Navy-Spanish Navy fleet at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805  Overseas colonies were attacked and occupied, including those of the Netherlands, which was annexed by Napoleon in 1810  France was finally defeated by a coalition of European armies in 1815  Britain was again the beneficiary of peace treaties: France ceded the Ionian Islands, Malta (which it had occupied in 1798), Mauritius, St Lucia, the Seychelles, and Tobago; Spain ceded Trinidad; the Netherlands ceded Guyana, Ceylon and the Cape Colony, while the Danish ceded Heligoland  Britain returned Guadeloupe, Martinique, French Guiana, and Réunion to France; Menorca to Spain; Danish West Indies to Denmark and Java and Suriname to the Netherlands 

Abolition of slavery
With the advent of the Industrial Revolution, goods produced by slavery became less important to the British economy  Added to this was the cost of suppressing regular slave rebellions  With support from the British abolitionist movement, Parliament enacted the Slave Trade Act in 1807, which abolished the slave trade in the empire  In 1808, Sierra Leone Colony was designated an official British colony for freed slaves  Parliamentary reform in 1832 saw the influence of the West India Committee decline  The Slavery Abolition Act, passed the following year, abolished slavery in the British Empire on 1 August 1834, finally bringing the empire into line with the law in the UK (with the exception of the territories administered by the East India Company and Ceylon, where slavery was ended in 1844)  Under the Act, slaves were granted full emancipation after a period of four to six years of "apprenticeship"  Facing further opposition from abolitionists, the apprenticeship system was abolished in 1838  The British government compensated slave-owners 

Britain's imperial century (1815–1914)
Between 1815 and 1914, a period referred to as Britain's "imperial century" by some historians, around 10 million sq mi (26 million km2) of territory and roughly 400 million people were added to the British Empire  Victory over Napoleon left Britain without any serious international rival, other than Russia in Central Asia  Unchallenged at sea, Britain adopted the role of global policeman, a state of affairs later known as the Pax Britannica, and a foreign policy of "splendid isolation"  Alongside the formal control it exerted over its own colonies, Britain's dominant position in world trade meant that it effectively controlled the economies of many countries, such as China, Argentina and Siam, which has been described by some historians as an "Informal Empire" 

British imperial strength was underpinned by the steamship and the telegraph, new technologies invented in the second half of the 19th century, allowing it to control and defend the empire  By 1902, the British Empire was linked together by a network of telegraph cables, called the All Red Line 

East India Company rule and the British Raj in India
The East India Company drove the expansion of the British Empire in Asia



ground_truth: 22

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

Question: Who gives out the award named after the person who argued that colonies were redundant?

The following are given passages.
Context 2:  The company's army had first joined forces with the Royal Navy during the Seven Years' War, and the two continued to co-operate in arenas outside India: the eviction of the French from Egypt (1799), the capture of Java from the Netherlands (1811), the acquisition of Penang Island (1786), Singapore (1819) and Malacca (1824), and the defeat of Burma (1826) From its base in India, the company had been engaged in an increasingly profitable opium export trade to Qing China since the 1730s  This trade, illegal since it was outlawed by China in 1729, helped reverse the trade imbalances resulting from the British imports of tea, which saw large outflows of silver from Britain to China  In 1839, the confiscation by the Chinese authorities at Canton of 20,000 chests of opium led Britain to attack China in the First Opium War, and resulted in the seizure by Britain of Hong Kong Island, at that time a minor settlement, and other Treaty Ports including Shanghai During the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the British Crown began to assume an increasingly large role in the affairs of the company  A series of Acts of Parliament were passed, including the Regulating Act of 1773, Pitt's India Act of 1784 and the Charter Act of 1813 which regulated the company's affairs and established the sovereignty of the Crown over the territories that it had acquired  The company's eventual end was precipitated by the Indian Rebellion in 1857, a conflict that had begun with the mutiny of sepoys, Indian troops under British officers and discipline  The rebellion took six months to suppress, with heavy loss of life on both sides  The following year the British government dissolved the company and assumed direct control over India through the Government of India Act 1858, establishing the British Raj, where an appointed governor-general administered India and Queen Victoria was crowned the Empress of India  India became the empire's most valuable possession, "the Jewel in the Crown", and was the most important source of Britain's strength A series of serious crop failures in the late 19th century led to widespread famines on the subcontinent in which it is estimated that over 15 million people died  The East India Company had failed to implement any coordinated policy to deal with the famines during its period of rule  Later, under direct British rule, commissions were set up after each famine to investigate the causes and implement new policies, which took until the early 1900s to have an effect 

Rivalry with Russia
During the 19th century, Britain and the Russian Empire vied to fill the power vacuums that had been left by the declining Ottoman Empire, Qajar dynasty and Qing dynasty  This rivalry in Central Asia came to be known as the "Great Game"  As far as Britain was concerned, defeats inflicted by Russia on Persia and Turkey demonstrated its imperial ambitions and capabilities and stoked fears in Britain of an overland invasion of India  In 1839, Britain moved to pre-empt this by invading Afghanistan, but the First Anglo-Afghan War was a disaster for Britain When Russia invaded the Ottoman Balkans in 1853, fears of Russian dominance in the Mediterranean and the Middle East led Britain and France to enter the war in support of the Ottoman Empire and invade the Crimean Peninsula to destroy Russian naval capabilities  The ensuing Crimean War (1854–1856), which involved new techniques of modern warfare, was the only global war fought between Britain and another imperial power during the Pax Britannica and was a resounding defeat for Russia  The situation remained unresolved in Central Asia for two more decades, with Britain annexing Baluchistan in 1876 and Russia annexing Kirghizia, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan  For a while, it appeared that another war would be inevitable, but the two countries reached an agreement on their respective spheres of influence in the region in 1878 and on all outstanding matters in 1907 with the signing of the Anglo-Russian Entente  The destruction of the Imperial Russian Navy by the Imperial Japanese Navy at the Battle of Tsushima during the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905 limited its threat to the British 

Cape to Cairo
The Dutch East India Company had founded the Dutch Cape Colony on the southern tip of Africa in 1652 as a way station for its ships travelling to and from its colonies in the East Indies  Britain formally acquired the colony, and its large Afrikaner (or Boer) population in 1806, having occupied it in 1795 to prevent its falling into French hands during the Flanders Campaign  British immigration to the Cape Colony began to rise after 1820, and pushed thousands of Boers, resentful of British rule, northwards to found their own—mostly short-lived—independent republics, during the Great Trek of the late 1830s and early 1840s  In the process the Voortrekkers clashed repeatedly with the British, who had their own agenda with regard to colonial expansion in South Africa and to the various native African polities, including those of the Sotho people and the Zulu Kingdom  Eventually, the Boers established two republics that had a longer lifespan: the South African Republic or Transvaal Republic (1852–1877; 1881–1902) and the Orange Free State (1854–1902)  In 1902 Britain occupied both republics, concluding a treaty with the two Boer Republics following the Second Boer War (1899–1902) In 1869 the Suez Canal opened under Napoleon III, linking the Mediterranean Sea with the Indian Ocean  Initially the Canal was opposed by the British; but once opened, its strategic value was quickly recognised and became the "jugular vein of the Empire"  In 1875, the Conservative government of Benjamin Disraeli bought the indebted Egyptian ruler Isma'il Pasha's 44 per cent shareholding in the Suez Canal for £4 million (equivalent to £400 million in 2021)  Although this did not grant outright control of the strategic waterway, it did give Britain leverage  Joint Anglo-French financial control over Egypt ended in outright British occupation in 1882   Although Britain controlled the Khedivate of Egypt into the 20th century, it was officially a vassal state of the Ottoman Empire and not part of the British Empire   The French were still majority shareholders and attempted to weaken the British position, but a compromise was reached with the 1888 Convention of Constantinople, which made the Canal officially neutral territory With competitive French, Belgian and Portuguese activity in the lower Congo River region undermining orderly colonisation of tropical Africa, the Berlin Conference of 1884–85 was held to regulate the competition between the European powers in what was called the "Scramble for Africa" by defining "effective occupation" as the criterion for international recognition of territorial claims  The scramble continued into the 1890s, and caused Britain to reconsider its decision in 1885 to withdraw from Sudan  A joint force of British and Egyptian troops defeated the Mahdist Army in 1896 and rebuffed an attempted French invasion at Fashoda in 1898  Sudan was nominally made an Anglo-Egyptian condominium, but a British colony in reality British gains in Southern and East Africa prompted Cecil Rhodes, pioneer of British expansion in Southern Africa, to urge a "Cape to Cairo" railway linking the strategically important Suez Canal to the mineral-rich south of the continent  During the 1880s and 1890s, Rhodes, with his privately owned British South Africa Company, occupied and annexed territories named after him, Rhodesia 

Changing status of the white colonies
The path to independence for the white colonies of the British Empire began with the 1839 Durham Report, which proposed unification and self-government for Upper and Lower Canada, as a solution to political unrest which had erupted in armed rebellions in 1837  This began with the passing of the Act of Union in 1840, which created the Province of Canada  Responsible government was first granted to Nova Scotia in 1848, and was soon extended to the other British North American colonies  With the passage of the British North America Act, 1867 by the British Parliament, the Province of Canada, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia were formed into Canada, a confederation enjoying full self-government with the exception of international relations  Australia and New Zealand achieved similar levels of self-government after 1900, with the Australian colonies federating in 1901  The term "dominion status" was officially introduced at the 1907 Imperial Conference The last decades of the 19th century saw concerted political campaigns for Irish home rule  Ireland had been united with Britain into the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland with the Act of Union 1800 after the Irish Rebellion of 1798, and had suffered a severe famine between 1845 and 1852  Home rule was supported by the British Prime minister, William Gladstone, who hoped that Ireland might follow in Canada's footsteps as a Dominion within the empire, but his 1886 Home Rule bill was defeated in Parliament  Although the bill, if passed, would have granted Ireland less autonomy within the UK than the Canadian provinces had within their own federation, many MPs feared that a partially independent Ireland might pose a security threat to Great Britain or mark the beginning of the break-up of the empire  A second Home Rule bill was defeated for similar reasons  A third bill was passed by Parliament in 1914, but not implemented because of the outbreak of the First World War leading to the 1916 Easter Rising 

World wars (1914–1945)
By the turn of the 20th century, fears had begun to grow in Britain that it would no longer be able to defend the metropole and the entirety of the empire while at the same time maintaining the policy of "splendid isolation"  Germany was rapidly rising as a military and industrial power and was now seen as the most likely opponent in any future war  Recognising that it was overstretched in the Pacific and threatened at home by the Imperial German Navy, Britain formed an alliance with Japan in 1902 and with its old enemies France and Russia in 1904 and 1907, respectively 

First World War
Britain's fears of war with Germany were realised in 1914 with the outbreak of the First World War  Britain quickly invaded and occupied most of Germany's overseas colonies in Africa  In the Pacific, Australia and New Zealand occupied German New Guinea and German Samoa respectively  Plans for a post-war division of the Ottoman Empire, which had joined the war on Germany's side, were secretly drawn up by Britain and France under the 1916 Sykes–Picot Agreement  This agreement was not divulged to the Sharif of Mecca, who the British had been encouraging to launch an Arab revolt against their Ottoman rulers, giving the impression that Britain was supporting the creation of an independent Arab state The British declaration of war on Germany and its allies committed the colonies and Dominions, which provided invaluable military, financial and material support  Over 2 5 million men served in the armies of the Dominions, as well as many thousands of volunteers from the Crown colonies  The contributions of Australian and New Zealand troops during the 1915 Gallipoli Campaign against the Ottoman Empire had a great impact on the national consciousness at home and marked a watershed in the transition of Australia and New Zealand from colonies to nations in their own right  The countries continue to commemorate this occasion on Anzac Day  Canadians viewed the Battle of Vimy Ridge in a similar light  The important contribution of the Dominions to the war effort was recognised in 1917 by the British Prime Minister David Lloyd George when he invited each of the Dominion Prime Ministers to join an Imperial War Cabinet to co-ordinate imperial policy Under the terms of the concluding Treaty of Versailles signed in 1919, the empire reached its greatest extent with the addition of 1 8 million sq mi (4 7 million km2) and 13 million new subjects  The colonies of Germany and the Ottoman Empire were distributed to the Allied powers as League of Nations mandates  Britain gained control of Palestine, Transjordan, Iraq, parts of Cameroon and Togoland, and Tanganyika  The Dominions themselves acquired mandates of their own: the Union of South Africa gained South West Africa (modern-day Namibia), Australia gained New Guinea, and New Zealand Western Samoa  Nauru was made a combined mandate of Britain and the two Pacific Dominions 

Inter-war period
The changing world order that the war had brought about, in particular the growth of the United States and Japan as naval powers, and the rise of independence movements in India and Ireland, caused a major reassessment of British imperial policy  Forced to choose between alignment with the United States or Japan, Britain opted not to renew its Anglo-Japanese Alliance and instead signed the 1922 Washington Naval Treaty, where Britain accepted naval parity with the United States  This decision was the source of much debate in Britain during the 1930s as militaristic governments took hold in Germany and Japan helped in part by the Great Depression, for it was feared that the empire could not survive a simultaneous attack by both nations  The issue of the empire's security was a serious concern in Britain, as it was vital to the British economy In 1919, the frustrations caused by delays to Irish home rule led the MPs of Sinn Féin, a pro-independence party that had won a majority of the Irish seats in the 1918 British general election, to establish an independent parliament in Dublin, at which Irish independence was declared  The Irish Republican Army simultaneously began a guerrilla war against the British administration  The Irish War of Independence ended in 1921 with a stalemate and the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty, creating the Irish Free State, a Dominion within the British Empire, with effective internal independence but still constitutionally linked with the British Crown  Northern Ireland, consisting of six of the 32 Irish counties which had been established as a devolved region under the 1920 Government of Ireland Act, immediately exercised its option under the treaty to retain its existing status within the United Kingdom 

A similar struggle began in India when the Government of India Act 1919 failed to satisfy the demand for independence  Concerns over communist and foreign plots following the Ghadar conspiracy ensured that war-time strictures were renewed by the Rowlatt Acts  This led to tension, particularly in the Punjab region, where repressive measures culminated in the Amritsar Massacre  In Britain, public opinion was divided over the morality of the massacre, between those who saw it as having saved India from anarchy, and those who viewed it with revulsion  The non-cooperation movement was called off in March 1922 following the Chauri Chaura incident, and discontent continued to simmer for the next 25 years In 1922, Egypt, which had been declared a British protectorate at the outbreak of the First World War, was granted formal independence, though it continued to be a British client state until 1954  British troops remained stationed in Egypt until the signing of the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty in 1936, under which it was agreed that the troops would withdraw but continue to occupy and defend the Suez Canal zone  In return, Egypt was assisted in joining the League of Nations  Iraq, a British mandate since 1920, gained membership of the League in its own right after achieving independence from Britain in 1932  In Palestine, Britain was presented with the problem of mediating between the Arabs and increasing numbers of Jews  The Balfour Declaration, which had been incorporated into the terms of the mandate, stated that a national home for the Jewish people would be established in Palestine, and Jewish immigration allowed up to a limit that would be determined by the mandatory power  This led to increasing conflict with the Arab population, who openly revolted in 1936  As the threat of war with Germany increased during the 1930s, Britain judged the support of Arabs as more important than the establishment of a Jewish homeland, and shifted to a pro-Arab stance, limiting Jewish immigration and in turn triggering a Jewish insurgency The right of the Dominions to set their own foreign policy, independent of Britain, was recognised at the 1923 Imperial Conference  Britain's request for military assistance from the Dominions at the outbreak of the Chanak Crisis the previous year had been turned down by Canada and South Africa, and Canada had refused to be bound by the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne  After pressure from the Irish Free State and South Africa, the 1926 Imperial Conference issued the Balfour Declaration of 1926, declaring the Dominions to be "autonomous Communities within the British Empire, equal in status, in no way subordinate one to another" within a "British Commonwealth of Nations"  This declaration was given legal substance under the 1931 Statute of Westminster  The parliaments of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the Union of South Africa, the Irish Free State and Newfoundland were now independent of British legislative control, they could nullify British laws and Britain could no longer pass laws for them without their consent  Newfoundland reverted to colonial status in 1933, suffering from financial difficulties during the Great Depression  In 1937 the Irish Free State introduced a republican constitution renaming itself Ireland 

Second World War
Britain's declaration of war against Nazi Germany in September 1939 included the Crown colonies and India but did not automatically commit the Dominions of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Newfoundland and South Africa  All soon declared war on Germany  While Britain continued to regard Ireland as still within the British Commonwealth, Ireland chose to remain legally neutral throughout the war After the Fall of France in June 1940, Britain and the empire stood alone against Germany, until the German invasion of Greece on 7 April 1941  British Prime Minister Winston Churchill successfully lobbied President Franklin D  Roosevelt for military aid from the United States, but Roosevelt was not yet ready to ask Congress to commit the country to war  In August 1941, Churchill and Roosevelt met and signed the Atlantic Charter, which included the statement that "the rights of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they live" should be respected  This wording was ambiguous as to whether it referred to European countries invaded by Germany and Italy, or the peoples colonised by European nations, and would later be interpreted differently by the British, Americans, and nationalist movements For Churchill, the entry of the United States into the war was the "greatest joy"  He felt that Britain was now assured of victory, but failed to recognise that the "many disasters, immeasurable costs and tribulations [which he knew] lay ahead" in December 1941 would have permanent consequences for the future of the empire  The manner in which British forces were rapidly defeated in the Far East irreversibly harmed Britain's standing and prestige as an imperial power, including, particularly, the Fall of Singapore, which had previously been hailed as an impregnable fortress and the eastern equivalent of Gibraltar  The realisation that Britain could not defend its entire empire pushed Australia and New Zealand, which now appeared threatened by Japanese forces, into closer ties with the United States and, ultimately, the 1951 ANZUS Pact  The war weakened the empire in other ways: undermining Britain's control of politics in India, inflicting long-term economic damage, and irrevocably changing geopolitics by pushing the Soviet Union and the United States to the centre of the global stage 

Decolonisation and decline (1945–1997)
Though Britain and the empire emerged victorious from the Second World War, the effects of the conflict were profound, both at home and abroad  Much of Europe, a continent that had dominated the world for several centuries, was in ruins, and host to the armies of the United States and the Soviet Union, who now held the balance of global power  Britain was left essentially bankrupt, with insolvency only averted in 1946 after the negotiation of a US$4 33 billion loan from the United States, the last installment of which was repaid in 2006  At the same time, anti-colonial movements were on the rise in the colonies of European nations  The situation was complicated further by the increasing Cold War rivalry of the United States and the Soviet Union  In principle, both nations were opposed to European colonialism  In practice, American anti-communism prevailed over anti-imperialism, and therefore the United States supported the continued existence of the British Empire to keep Communist expansion in check  At first, British politicians believed it would be possible to maintain Britain's role as a world power at the head of a re-imagined Commonwealth, but by 1960 they were forced to recognise that there was an irresistible "wind of change" blowing  Their priorities changed to maintaining an extensive zone of British influence and ensuring that stable, non-Communist governments were established in former colonies  In this context, while other European powers such as France and Portugal waged costly and unsuccessful wars to keep their empires intact, Britain generally adopted a policy of peaceful disengagement from its colonies, although violence occurred in Malaya, Kenya and Palestine  Between 1945 and 1965, the number of people under British rule outside the UK itself fell from 700 million to 5 million, 3 million of whom were in Hong Kong 

Initial disengagement
The pro-decolonisation Labour government, elected at the 1945 general election and led by Clement Attlee, moved quickly to tackle the most pressing issue facing the empire: Indian independence  India's two major political parties—the Indian National Congress (led by Mahatma Gandhi) and the Muslim League (led by Muhammad Ali Jinnah)—had been campaigning for independence for decades, but disagreed as to how it should be implemented  Congress favoured a unified secular Indian state, whereas the League, fearing domination by the Hindu majority, desired a separate Islamic state for Muslim-majority regions  Increasing civil unrest and the mutiny of the Royal Indian Navy during 1946 led Attlee to promise independence no later than 30 June 1948  When the urgency of the situation and risk of civil war became apparent, the newly appointed (and last) Viceroy, Lord Mountbatten, hastily brought forward the date to 15 August 1947  The borders drawn by the British to broadly partition India into Hindu and Muslim areas left tens of millions as minorities in the newly independent states of India and Pakistan  Millions of Muslims crossed from India to Pakistan and Hindus vice versa, and violence between the two communities cost hundreds of thousands of lives  Burma, which had been administered as part of British India until 1937, and Sri Lanka gained their independence the following year in 1948  India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka became members of the Commonwealth, while Burma chose not to join The British Mandate in Palestine, where an Arab majority lived alongside a Jewish minority, presented the British with a similar problem to that of India  The matter was complicated by large numbers of Jewish refugees seeking to be admitted to Palestine following the Holocaust, while Arabs were opposed to the creation of a Jewish state  Frustrated by the intractability of the problem, attacks by Jewish paramilitary organisations and the increasing cost of maintaining its military presence, Britain announced in 1947 that it would withdraw in 1948 and leave the matter to the United Nations to solve  The UN General Assembly subsequently voted for a plan to partition Palestine into a Jewish and an Arab state  It was immediately followed by the outbreak of a civil war between the Arabs and Jews of Palestine, and British forces withdrew amid the fighting  The British Mandate for Palestine officially terminated at midnight on 15 May 1948 as the State of Israel declared independence and the 1948 Arab-Israeli War broke out, during which the territory of the former Mandate was partitioned between Israel and the surrounding Arab states  Amid the fighting, British forces continued to withdraw from Israel, with the last British troops departing from Haifa on 30 June 1948 Following the surrender of Japan in the Second World War, anti-Japanese resistance movements in Malaya turned their attention towards the British, who had moved to quickly retake control of the colony, valuing it as a source of rubber and tin  The fact that the guerrillas were primarily Malaysian Chinese Communists meant that the British attempt to quell the uprising was supported by the Muslim Malay majority, on the understanding that once the insurgency had been quelled, independence would be granted  The Malayan Emergency, as it was called, began in 1948 and lasted until 1960, but by 1957, Britain felt confident enough to grant independence to the Federation of Malaya within the Commonwealth  In 1963, the 11 states of the federation together with Singapore, Sarawak and North Borneo joined to form Malaysia, but in 1965 Chinese-majority Singapore was expelled from the union following tensions between the Malay and Chinese populations and became an independent city-state  Brunei, which had been a British protectorate since 1888, declined to join the union 

Suez and its aftermath
In the 1951 general election, the Conservative Party returned to power in Britain under the leadership of Winston Churchill  Churchill and the Conservatives believed that Britain's position as a world power relied on the continued existence of the empire, with the base at the Suez Canal allowing Britain to maintain its pre-eminent position in the Middle East in spite of the loss of India  Churchill could not ignore Gamal Abdul Nasser's new revolutionary government of Egypt that had taken power in 1952, and the following year it was agreed that British troops would withdraw from the Suez Canal zone and that Sudan would be granted self-determination by 1955, with independence to follow  Sudan was granted independence on 1 January 1956 In July 1956, Nasser unilaterally nationalised the Suez Canal  The response of Anthony Eden, who had succeeded Churchill as Prime Minister, was to collude with France to engineer an Israeli attack on Egypt that would give Britain and France an excuse to intervene militarily and retake the canal  Eden infuriated US President Dwight D  Eisenhower by his lack of consultation, and Eisenhower refused to back the invasion  Another of Eisenhower's concerns was the possibility of a wider war with the Soviet Union after it threatened to intervene on the Egyptian side  Eisenhower applied financial leverage by threatening to sell US reserves of the British pound and thereby precipitate a collapse of the British currency  Though the invasion force was militarily successful in its objectives, UN intervention and US pressure forced Britain into a humiliating withdrawal of its forces, and Eden resigned The Suez Crisis very publicly exposed Britain's limitations to the world and confirmed Britain's decline on the world stage and its end as a first-rate power, demonstrating that henceforth it could no longer act without at least the acquiescence, if not the full support, of the United States  The events at Suez wounded British national pride, leading one Member of Parliament (MP) to describe it as "Britain's Waterloo" and another to suggest that the country had become an "American satellite"  Margaret Thatcher later described the mindset she believed had befallen Britain's political leaders after Suez where they "went from believing that Britain could do anything to an almost neurotic belief that Britain could do nothing", from which Britain did not recover until the successful recapture of the Falkland Islands from Argentina in 1982 While the Suez Crisis caused British power in the Middle East to weaken, it did not collapse  Britain again deployed its armed forces to the region, intervening in Oman (1957), Jordan (1958) and Kuwait (1961), though on these occasions with American approval, as the new Prime Minister Harold Macmillan's foreign policy was to remain firmly aligned with the United States  Although Britain granted Kuwait independence in 1961, it continued to maintain a military presence in the Middle East for another decade  On 16 January 1968, a few weeks after the devaluation of the pound, Prime Minister Harold Wilson and his Defence Secretary Denis Healey announced that British Armed Forces troops would be withdrawn from major military bases East of Suez, which included the ones in the Middle East, and primarily from Malaysia and Singapore by the end of 1971, instead of 1975 as earlier planned  By that time over 50,000 British military personnel were still stationed in the Far East, including 30,000 in Singapore  The British granted independence to the Maldives in 1965 but continued to station a garrison there until 1976, withdrew from Aden in 1967, and granted independence to Bahrain, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates in 1971 

Wind of change
Macmillan gave a speech in Cape Town, South Africa in February 1960 where he spoke of "the wind of change blowing through this continent"  Macmillan wished to avoid the same kind of colonial war that France was fighting in Algeria, and under his premiership decolonisation proceeded rapidly  To the three colonies that had been granted independence in the 1950s—Sudan, the Gold Coast and Malaya—were added nearly ten times that number during the 1960s  Owing to the rapid pace of decolonisation during this period, the cabinet post of Secretary of State for the Colonies was abolished in 1966, along with the Colonial Office, which merged with the Commonwealth Relations Office to form the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (now the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office) in October 1968 Britain's remaining colonies in Africa, except for self-governing Southern Rhodesia, were all granted independence by 1968  British withdrawal from the southern and eastern parts of Africa was not a peaceful process  Kenyan independence was preceded by the eight-year Mau Mau uprising, in which tens of thousands of suspected rebels were interned by the colonial government in detention camps  Throughout the 1960s, the British government took a "No independence until majority rule" policy towards decolonising the empire, leading the white minority government of Southern Rhodesia to enact the 1965 Unilateral Declaration of Independence from Britain, resulting in a civil war that lasted until the British-mediated Lancaster House Agreement of 1979  The agreement saw the British Empire temporarily re-establish the Colony of Southern Rhodesia from 1979 to 1980 as a transitionary government to a majority-rule Republic of Zimbabwe  This was the last British possession in Africa  
In Cyprus, a guerrilla war waged by the Greek Cypriot organisation EOKA against British rule, was ended in 1959 by the London and Zürich Agreements, which resulted in Cyprus being granted independence in 1960  The UK retained the military bases of Akrotiri and Dhekelia as sovereign base areas  The Mediterranean colony of Malta was amicably granted independence from the UK in 1964 and became the country of Malta, though the idea had been raised in 1955 of integration with Britain Most of the UK's Caribbean territories achieved independence after the departure in 1961 and 1962 of Jamaica and Trinidad from the West Indies Federation, established in 1958 in an attempt to unite the British Caribbean colonies under one government, but which collapsed following the loss of its two largest members  Jamaica attained independence in 1962, as did Trinidad and Tobago  Barbados achieved independence in 1966 and the remainder of the eastern Caribbean islands, including the Bahamas, in the 1970s and 1980s, but Anguilla and the Turks and Caicos Islands opted to revert to British rule after they had already started on the path to independence  The British Virgin Islands, The Cayman Islands and Montserrat opted to retain ties with Britain, while Guyana achieved independence in 1966  Britain's last colony on the American mainland, British Honduras, became a self-governing colony in 1964 and was renamed Belize in 1973, achieving full independence in 1981  A dispute with Guatemala over claims to Belize was left unresolved British Overseas Territories in the Pacific acquired independence in the 1970s beginning with Fiji in 1970 and ending with Vanuatu in 1980  Vanuatu's independence was delayed because of political conflict between English and French-speaking communities, as the islands had been jointly administered as a condominium with France  Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and Tuvalu became Commonwealth realms 

End of empire
By 1981, aside from a scattering of islands and outposts, the process of decolonisation that had begun after the Second World War was largely complete  In 1982, Britain's resolve in defending its remaining overseas territories was tested when Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands, acting on a long-standing claim that dated back to the Spanish Empire  Britain's successful military response to retake the Falkland Islands during the ensuing Falklands War contributed to reversing the downward trend in Britain's status as a world power The 1980s saw Canada, Australia, and New Zealand sever their final constitutional links with Britain  Although granted legislative independence by the Statute of Westminster 1931, vestigial constitutional links had remained in place  The British Parliament retained the power to amend key Canadian constitutional statutes, meaning that effectively an act of the British Parliament was required to make certain changes to the Canadian Constitution  The British Parliament had the power to pass laws extending to Canada at Canadian request  Although no longer able to pass any laws that would apply as Australian Commonwealth law, the British Parliament retained the power to legislate for the individual Australian states  With regard to New Zealand, the British Parliament retained the power to pass legislation applying to New Zealand with the New Zealand Parliament's consent  In 1982, the last legal link between Canada and Britain was severed by the Canada Act 1982, which was passed by the British parliament, formally patriating the Canadian Constitution  The act ended the need for British involvement in changes to the Canadian constitution  Similarly, the Australia Act 1986 (effective 3 March 1986) severed the constitutional link between Britain and the Australian states, while New Zealand's Constitution Act 1986 (effective 1 January 1987) reformed the constitution of New Zealand to sever its constitutional link with Britain On 1 January 1984, Brunei, Britain's last remaining Asian protectorate, was granted independence  Independence had been delayed due to the opposition of the Sultan, who had preferred British protection In September 1982 the Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, travelled to Beijing to negotiate with the Chinese Communist government, on the future of Britain's last major and most populous overseas territory, Hong Kong  Under the terms of the 1842 Treaty of Nanking and 1860 Convention of Peking, Hong Kong Island and Kowloon Peninsula had been respectively ceded to Britain in perpetuity, but the majority of the colony consisted of the New Territories, which had been acquired under a 99-year lease in 1898, due to expire in 1997  Thatcher, seeing parallels with the Falkland Islands, initially wished to hold Hong Kong and proposed British administration with Chinese sovereignty, though this was rejected by China  A deal was reached in 1984—under the terms of the Sino-British Joint Declaration, Hong Kong would become a special administrative region of the People's Republic of China  The handover ceremony in 1997 marked for many, including King Charles III, then Prince of Wales, who was in attendance, "the end of Empire", though many British territories that are remnants of the empire still remain 

Legacy
Britain retains sovereignty over 14 territories outside the British Isles  In 1983, the British Nationality Act 1981 renamed the existing Crown Colonies as "British Dependent Territories", and in 2002 they were renamed the British Overseas Territories  Most former British colonies and protectorates are members of the Commonwealth of Nations, a voluntary association of equal members, comprising a population of around 2 2 billion people  The United Kingdom and 14 other countries, all collectively known as the Commonwealth realms, voluntarily continue to share the same person—King Charles III—as their respective head of state  These 15 nations are distinct and equal legal entities: the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Antigua and Barbuda, The Bahamas, Belize, Grenada, Jamaica, Papua New Guinea, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Solomon Islands and Tuvalu Decades, and in some cases centuries, of British rule and emigration have left their mark on the independent nations that rose from the British Empire  The empire established the use of the English language in regions around the world  Today it is the primary language of up to 460 million people and is spoken by about 1 5 billion as a first, second or foreign language  Individual and team sports developed in Britain, particularly football, cricket, lawn tennis, and golf were exported  British missionaries who travelled around the globe often in advance of soldiers and civil servants spread Protestantism (including Anglicanism) to all continents  The British Empire provided refuge for religiously persecuted continental Europeans for hundreds of years 

Political boundaries drawn by the British did not always reflect homogeneous ethnicities or religions, contributing to conflicts in formerly colonised areas  The British Empire was responsible for large migrations of peoples  Millions left the British Isles, with the founding settler colonist populations of the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand coming mainly from Britain and Ireland  Tensions remain between the white settler populations of these countries and their indigenous minorities, and between white settler minorities and indigenous majorities in South Africa and Zimbabwe  Settlers in Ireland from Great Britain have left their mark in the form of divided nationalist and unionist communities in Northern Ireland  Millions of people moved to and from British colonies, with large numbers of Overseas Indian people emigrating to other parts of the empire, such as Malaysia and Fiji, and Overseas Chinese people to Malaysia, Singapore and the Caribbean  The demographics of the United Kingdom itself were changed after the Second World War owing to immigration to Britain from its former colonies In the 19th century, innovation in Britain led to revolutionary changes in manufacturing, the development of factory systems, and the growth of transportation by railway and steamship  British colonial architecture, such as in churches, railway stations and government buildings, can be seen in many cities that were once part of the British Empire  The British choice of system of measurement, the imperial system, continues to be used in some countries in various ways  The convention of driving on the left-hand side of the road has been retained in much of the former empire The Westminster system of parliamentary democracy has served as the template for the governments for many former colonies, and English common law for legal systems  International commercial contracts are often based on English common law  The British Judicial Committee of the Privy Council still serves as the highest court of appeal for twelve former colonies Historians' approaches to understanding the British Empire are diverse and evolving  Two key sites of debate over recent decades have been the impact of post-colonial studies, which seek to critically re-evaluate the history of imperialism, and the continued relevance of historians Ronald Robinson and John Gallagher, whose work greatly influenced imperial historiography during the 1950s and 1960s  In addition, differing assessments of the empire's legacy remain relevant to debates over recent history and politics, such as the Anglo-American invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as Britain's role and identity in the contemporary world Historians such as Caroline Elkins have argued against perceptions of the British Empire as a primarily liberalising and modernising enterprise, criticising its widespread use of violence and emergency laws to maintain power  Common criticisms of the empire include the use of detention camps in its colonies, massacres of indigenous peoples, and famine-response policies  Some scholars, including Amartya Sen, assert that British policies worsened the famines in India that killed millions during British rule  Conversely, historians such as Niall Ferguson say that the economic and institutional development the British Empire brought resulted in a net benefit to its colonies  Other historians treat its legacy as varied and ambiguous  Public attitudes towards the empire within Britain remain somewhat positive 

See also
Notes



ground_truth: University of Cambridge

Cambridge

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

Question: Who is the voice of the character in Spongebob Squarepants with the same name as the creature that annelid larvae live like?

The following are given passages.
Context 3: Passage 1:
Mary Jo Catlett
Mary Jo Catlett (born September 2, 1938) is an American actress  She is a main cast member on the animated series SpongeBob SquarePants, providing the voice of Mrs  Puff  She is also known for originating the role of Ernestina in the 1964 Broadway production of Hello, Dolly! and for playing Pearl Gallagher, the third housekeeper on Diff'rent Strokes Catlett was born in Denver, Colorado, where she performed in a variety of plays and eventually directed a company of Pirates of Penzance  Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, she performed in Off-Broadway and Broadway musicals, often taking light-hearted, humorous roles  Since the late 1960s, Catlett has appeared in television shows such as M*A*S*H, The Dukes of Hazzard, and General Hospital  Catlett received Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Awards in 1978 and 1980, a nomination for Best Featured Actress in a Musical at the Ovation Awards in 1995, and a Daytime Emmy Award nomination in 1990 In 1998, Catlett joined the main cast of the then-upcoming cartoon SpongeBob SquarePants as the voice of Mrs  Puff, the title character's teacher, who has become her longest-running and most well-known role  Series creator Stephen Hillenburg had seen Catlett perform on stage and sought her out for the part himself  She quickly accepted and has since voiced Mrs  Puff in every season of the cartoon, in addition to all of the theatrical SpongeBob films and video games  In 2001, she received an Annie Award nomination for her voice-over work as Mrs  Puff 

Early life
Catlett was born in Denver, Colorado, on September 2, 1938, the daughter of Cornelia M  (née Callaghan) and Robert J  Catlett  She has a sister, Patricia Marie, who is a nun with the Dominican Order  Catlett is a Catholic 

Career
In 1974, Catlett originated the role of Mrs  Tiffany in Fashion: or, Life in New York  Her performance was well-received; The New York Times' theater critic Clive Barnes called Catlett and co-star Henrietta Valor "exceptional     both particular delights," and Jerry Tallmer of the New York Post said that the play's casting was "top-notch, with particular praise from this quarter for Mary Jo Catlett " Catlett would reprise her role in the 1994 revival of Fashion Catlett described herself as a character actress  In a 1988 interview with the Orlando Sentinel, she said, "It has been a plus to be a character actress  There are plenty of them out there but far fewer than ingenues and leading ladies, who perhaps eventually become character actresses  But I always was a character actress  I always was round and funny "

In 1976 and 1980, Catlett received Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Awards for her roles in Come Back, Little Sheba and Philadelphia, Here I Come!, respectively  In 1995, Catlett's role as Madame de la Grande Bouche in Beauty and the Beast earned her a nomination for Best Featured Actress in a Musical at the Ovation Awards  Catlett became a main cast member on Diff'rent Strokes in its fifth season, playing the third housekeeper, Pearl Gallagher  She also played characters on General Hospital (for which she was nominated for a Daytime Emmy Award) and in several episodes of the television sitcom M*A*S*H 
In 1987, Catlett directed a production of Dan Goggin's Nunsense after meeting with Goggin and discussing the character of Sister Mary Regina  It was staged at the Mark Two Dinner Theatre in Orlando, Florida  Catlett decided to play Sister Mary as well, taking on a dual role as both director and performer  She was partially inspired to direct the show after witnessing directors' unfair treatment of her castmates in previous productions  She said, "I have worked with many directors who were tyrannical  You get afraid to do anything because he'll yell, 'Don't do that!' It makes you crazy    as a director, I believe that there can be a democracy "

SpongeBob SquarePants
In 1998, Catlett was cast as the voice of Mrs  Puff, one of the main characters of Nickelodeon's then-upcoming animated series SpongeBob SquarePants  She is one of the show's nine main cast members and has performed in every season, as well as in all of the theatrical SpongeBob films and video games  Mrs  Puff has become her longest-running and most well-known role  Stephen Hillenburg, the creator of the cartoon, specifically sought out Catlett to voice Mrs  Puff  He had seen her perform on stage and had a strong vision for Mrs  Puff as a character  Catlett quickly accepted and attended early practice sessions with the rest of the voice cast  Her first official recording as Mrs  Puff took place on August 24, 1998; she recorded dialogue with Tom Kenny as SpongeBob SquarePants and Bill Fagerbakke as Patrick Star in a single booth at Nickelodeon Animation Studio for the episode "Boating School" 
In 2001, Catlett was nominated for an Annie Award for her voice-over work as Mrs  Puff, placing in the category "Best Voice Acting by a Female Performer in an Animated Production " Kenny was also nominated at the same ceremony, making Catlett and Kenny the first two SpongeBob cast members to be nominated for an award 
As of 2017, voicing Mrs  Puff is Catlett's only regular television role; Catlett described herself as "basically retired" in 2013, since she is good friends with the other SpongeBob cast members, making the SpongeBob recording booth an easy environment that requires less preparation than in-person performances  The About Group's Nancy Basille noted in 2016 that Catlett's "rich, low tones as teacher Mrs  Puff recall other roles she has had," citing Diff'rent Strokes and M*A*S*H as programs on which she had used a similar voice 

Filmography
Film
Television
Video games
Theatre
Passage 2:
Annelid
The annelids  (Annelida , from Latin anellus, "little ring"), also known as the segmented worms, are a large phylum, with over 22,000 extant species including ragworms, earthworms, and leeches  The species exist in and have adapted to various ecologies – some in marine environments as distinct as tidal zones and hydrothermal vents, others in fresh water, and yet others in moist terrestrial environments 
The Annelids are bilaterally symmetrical, triploblastic, coelomate, invertebrate organisms  They also have parapodia for locomotion  Most textbooks still use the traditional division into polychaetes (almost all marine), oligochaetes (which include earthworms) and leech-like species  Cladistic research since 1997 has radically changed this scheme, viewing leeches as a sub-group of oligochaetes and oligochaetes as a sub-group of polychaetes  In addition, the Pogonophora, Echiura and Sipuncula, previously regarded as separate phyla, are now regarded as sub-groups of polychaetes  Annelids are considered members of the Lophotrochozoa, a "super-phylum" of protostomes that also includes molluscs, brachiopods, and nemerteans 
The basic annelid form consists of multiple segments  Each segment has the same sets of organs and, in most polychates, has a pair of parapodia that many species use for locomotion  Septa separate the segments of many species, but are poorly defined or absent in others, and Echiura and Sipuncula show no obvious signs of segmentation  In species with well-developed septa, the blood circulates entirely within blood vessels, and the vessels in segments near the front ends of these species are often built up with muscles that act as hearts  The septa of such species also enable them to change the shapes of individual segments, which facilitates movement by peristalsis ("ripples" that pass along the body) or by undulations that improve the effectiveness of the parapodia  In species with incomplete septa or none, the blood circulates through the main body cavity without any kind of pump, and there is a wide range of locomotory techniques – some burrowing species turn their pharynges inside out to drag themselves through the sediment 
Earthworms are oligochaetes that support terrestrial food chains both as prey and in some regions are important in aeration and enriching of soil  The burrowing of marine polychaetes, which may constitute up to a third of all species in near-shore environments, encourages the development of ecosystems by enabling water and oxygen to penetrate the sea floor  In addition to improving soil fertility, annelids serve humans as food and as bait  Scientists observe annelids to monitor the quality of marine and fresh water  Although blood-letting is used less frequently by doctors than it once was, some leech species are regarded as endangered species because they have been over-harvested for this purpose in the last few centuries  Ragworms' jaws are now being studied by engineers as they offer an exceptional combination of lightness and strength 
Since annelids are soft-bodied, their fossils are rare – mostly jaws and the mineralized tubes that some of the species secreted  Although some late Ediacaran fossils may represent annelids, the oldest known fossil that is identified with confidence comes from about 518 million years ago in the early Cambrian period  Fossils of most modern mobile polychaete groups appeared by the end of the Carboniferous, about 299 million years ago  Palaeontologists disagree about whether some body fossils from the mid Ordovician, about 472 to 461 million years ago, are the remains of oligochaetes, and the earliest indisputable fossils of the group appear in the Paleogene period, which began 66 million years ago 

Classification and diversity
There are over 22,000 living annelid species, ranging in size from microscopic to the Australian giant Gippsland earthworm and Amynthas mekongianus, which can both grow up to 3 meters (9 8 ft) long  to the largest annelid, Microchaetus rappi which can grow up to 6 7 m (22 ft)  Although research since 1997 has radically changed scientists' views about the evolutionary family tree of the annelids, most textbooks use the traditional classification into the following sub-groups:
Polychaetes (about 12,000 species)  As their name suggests, they have multiple chetae ("hairs") per segment  Polychaetes have parapodia that function as limbs, and nuchal organs that are thought to be chemosensors  Most are marine animals, although a few species live in fresh water and even fewer on land 
Clitellates (about 10,000 species )  These have few or no chetae per segment, and no nuchal organs or parapodia  However, they have a unique reproductive organ, the ring-shaped  clitellum ("pack saddle") around their bodies, which produces a cocoon that stores and nourishes fertilized eggs until they hatch  or, in moniligastrids, yolky eggs that provide nutrition for the embryos  The clitellates are sub-divided into:Oligochaetes ("with few hairs"), which includes earthworms  Oligochaetes have a sticky pad in the roof of the mouth  Most are burrowers that feed on wholly or partly decomposed organic materials 
Hirudinea, whose name means "leech-shaped" and whose best known members are leeches  Marine species are mostly blood-sucking parasites, mainly on fish, while most freshwater species are predators  They have suckers at both ends of their bodies, and use these to move rather like inchworms The Archiannelida, minute annelids that live in the spaces between grains of marine sediment, were treated as a separate class because of their simple body structure, but are now regarded as polychaetes  Some other groups of animals have been classified in various ways, but are now widely regarded as annelids:

Pogonophora / Siboglinidae were first discovered in 1914, and their lack of a recognizable gut made it difficult to classify them  They have been classified as a separate phylum, Pogonophora, or as two phyla, Pogonophora and Vestimentifera  More recently they have been re-classified as a family, Siboglinidae, within the polychaetes 
The Echiura have a checkered taxonomic history: in the 19th century they were assigned to the phylum "Gephyrea", which is now empty as its members have been assigned to other phyla; the Echiura were next regarded as annelids until the 1940s, when they were classified as a phylum in their own right; but a molecular phylogenetics analysis in 1997 concluded that echiurans are annelids 
Myzostomida live on crinoids and other echinoderms, mainly as parasites  In the past they have been regarded as close relatives of the trematode flatworms or of the tardigrades, but in 1998 it was suggested that they are a sub-group of polychaetes  However, another analysis in 2002 suggested that myzostomids are more closely related to flatworms or to rotifers and acanthocephales 
Sipuncula was originally classified as annelids, despite the complete lack of segmentation, bristles and other annelid characters  The phylum Sipuncula was later allied with the Mollusca, mostly on the basis of developmental and larval characters  Phylogenetic analyses based on 79 ribosomal proteins indicated a position of Sipuncula within Annelida  Subsequent analysis of the mitochondrion's DNA has confirmed their close relationship to the Myzostomida and Annelida (including echiurans and pogonophorans)  It has also been shown that a rudimentary neural segmentation similar to that of annelids occurs in the early larval stage, even if these traits are absent in the adults Mitogenomic and phylogenomic analysis also implies that Orthonectida, a group of extremely simplified parasites traditionally placed in Mesozoa, are actually reduced annelids 

Distinguishing features
No single feature distinguishes Annelids from other invertebrate phyla, but they have a distinctive combination of features  Their bodies are long, with segments that are divided externally by shallow ring-like constrictions called annuli and internally by septa ("partitions") at the same points, although in some species the septa are incomplete and in a few cases missing  Most of the segments contain the same sets of organs, although sharing a common gut, circulatory system and nervous system makes them inter-dependent  Their bodies are covered by a cuticle (outer covering) that does not contain cells but is secreted by cells in the skin underneath, is made of tough but flexible collagen and does not molt – on the other hand arthropods' cuticles are made of the more rigid α-chitin, and molt until the arthropods reach their full size  Most annelids have closed circulatory systems, where the blood makes its entire circuit via blood vessels 

Description
Segmentation
Most of an annelid's body consists of segments that are practically identical, having the same sets of internal organs and external chaetae (Greek χαιτη, meaning "hair") and, in some species, appendages  The frontmost and rearmost sections are not regarded as true segments as they do not contain the standard sets of organs and do not develop in the same way as the true segments  The frontmost section, called the prostomium (Greek προ- meaning "in front of" and στομα meaning "mouth") contains the brain and sense organs, while the rearmost, called the pygidium (Greek πυγιδιον, meaning "little tail") or periproct contains the anus, generally on the underside  The first section behind the prostomium, called the peristomium (Greek περι- meaning "around" and στομα meaning "mouth"), is regarded by some zoologists as not a true segment, but in some polychaetes the peristomium has chetae and appendages like those of other segments The segments develop one at a time from a growth zone just ahead of the pygidium, so that an annelid's youngest segment is just in front of the growth zone while the peristomium is the oldest  This pattern is called teloblastic growth  Some groups of annelids, including all leeches, have fixed maximum numbers of segments, while others add segments throughout their lives 
The phylum's name is derived from the Latin word annelus, meaning "little ring" 

Body wall, chaetae and parapodia
Annelids' cuticles are made of collagen fibers, usually in layers that spiral in alternating directions so that the fibers cross each other  These are secreted by the one-cell deep epidermis (outermost skin layer)  A few marine annelids that live in tubes lack cuticles, but their tubes have a similar structure, and mucus-secreting glands in the epidermis protect their skins  Under the epidermis is the dermis, which is made of connective tissue, in other words a combination of cells and non-cellular materials such as collagen  Below this are two layers of muscles, which develop from the lining of the coelom (body cavity): circular muscles make a segment longer and slimmer when they contract, while under them are longitudinal muscles, usually four distinct strips,  whose contractions make the segment shorter and fatter  But several families have lost the circular muscles, and it has been suggested that the lack of circular muscles is a plesiomorphic character in Annelida  Some annelids also have oblique internal muscles that connect the underside of the body to each side The setae ("hairs") of annelids project out from the epidermis to provide traction and other capabilities  The simplest are unjointed and form paired bundles near the top and bottom of each side of each segment  The parapodia ("limbs") of annelids that have them often bear more complex chetae at their tips – for example jointed, comb-like or hooked  Chetae are made of moderately flexible β-chitin and are formed by follicles, each of which has a chetoblast ("hair-forming") cell at the bottom and muscles that can extend or retract the cheta  The chetoblasts produce chetae by forming microvilli, fine hair-like extensions that increase the area available for secreting the cheta  When the cheta is complete, the microvilli withdraw into the chetoblast, leaving parallel tunnels that run almost the full length of the cheta  Hence annelids' chetae are structurally different from the setae ("bristles") of arthropods, which are made of the more rigid α-chitin, have a single internal cavity, and are mounted on flexible joints in shallow pits in the cuticle Nearly all polychaetes have parapodia that function as limbs, while other major annelid groups lack them  Parapodia are unjointed paired extensions of the body wall, and their muscles are derived from the circular muscles of the body  They are often supported internally by one or more large, thick chetae  The parapodia of burrowing and tube-dwelling polychaetes are often just ridges whose tips bear hooked chetae  In active crawlers and swimmers the parapodia are often divided into large upper and lower paddles on a very short trunk, and the paddles are generally fringed with chetae and sometimes with cirri (fused bundles of cilia) and gills 

Nervous system and senses
The brain generally forms a ring round the pharynx (throat), consisting of a pair of ganglia (local control centers) above and in front of the pharynx, linked by nerve cords either side of the pharynx to another pair of ganglia just below and behind it  The brains of polychaetes are generally in the prostomium, while those of clitellates are in the peristomium or sometimes the first segment behind the prostomium  In some very mobile and active polychaetes the brain is enlarged and more complex, with visible hindbrain, midbrain and forebrain sections  The rest of the central nervous system, the ventral nerve cord, is generally "ladder-like", consisting of a pair of nerve cords that run through the bottom part of the body and have in each segment paired ganglia linked by a transverse connection  From each segmental ganglion a branching system of local nerves runs into the body wall and then encircles the body  However, in most polychaetes the two main nerve cords are fused, and in the tube-dwelling genus Owenia the single nerve chord has no ganglia and is located in the epidermis As in arthropods, each muscle fiber (cell) is controlled by more than one neuron, and the speed and power of the fiber's contractions depends on the combined effects of all its neurons  Vertebrates have a different system, in which one neuron controls a group of muscle fibers  Most annelids' longitudinal nerve trunks include giant axons (the output signal lines of nerve cells)  Their large diameter decreases their resistance, which allows them to transmit signals exceptionally fast  This enables these worms to withdraw rapidly from danger by shortening their bodies  Experiments have shown that cutting the giant axons prevents this escape response but does not affect normal movement The sensors are primarily single cells that detect light, chemicals, pressure waves and contact, and are present on the head, appendages (if any) and other parts of the body  Nuchal ("on the neck") organs are paired, ciliated structures found only in polychaetes, and are thought to be chemosensors  Some polychaetes also have various combinations of ocelli ("little eyes") that detect the direction from which light is coming and camera eyes or compound eyes that can probably form images  The compound eyes probably evolved independently of arthropods' eyes  Some tube-worms use ocelli widely spread over their bodies to detect the shadows of fish, so that they can quickly withdraw into their tubes  Some burrowing and tube-dwelling polychaetes have statocysts (tilt and balance sensors) that tell them which way is down  A few polychaete genera have on the undersides of their heads palps that are used both in feeding and as "feelers", and some of these also have antennae that are structurally similar but probably are used mainly as "feelers" 

Coelom, locomotion and circulatory system
Most annelids have a pair of coelomata (body cavities) in each segment, separated from other segments by septa and from each other by vertical mesenteries  Each septum forms a sandwich with connective tissue in the middle and mesothelium (membrane that serves as a lining) from the preceding and following segments on either side  Each mesentery is similar except that the mesothelium is the lining of each of the pair of coelomata, and the blood vessels and, in polychaetes, the main nerve cords are embedded in it   The mesothelium is made of modified epitheliomuscular cells; in other words, their bodies form part of the epithelium but their bases extend to form muscle fibers in the body wall  The mesothelium may also form radial and circular muscles on the septa, and circular muscles around the blood vessels and gut  Parts of the mesothelium, especially on the outside of the gut, may also form chloragogen cells that perform similar functions to the livers of vertebrates: producing and storing glycogen and fat; producing the oxygen-carrier hemoglobin; breaking down proteins; and turning nitrogenous waste products into ammonia and urea to be excreted 

Many annelids move by peristalsis (waves of contraction and expansion that sweep along the body), or flex the body while using parapodia  to crawl or swim  In these animals the septa enable the circular and longitudinal muscles to change the shape of individual segments, by making each segment a separate fluid-filled "balloon"  However, the septa are often incomplete in annelids that are semi-sessile or that do not move by peristalsis or by movements of parapodia – for example some move by whipping movements of the body, some small marine species move by means of cilia (fine muscle-powered hairs) and some burrowers turn their pharynges (throats) inside out to penetrate the sea-floor and drag themselves into it The fluid in the coelomata contains coelomocyte cells that defend the animals against parasites and infections  In some species coelomocytes may also contain a respiratory pigment – red hemoglobin in some species, green chlorocruorin in others (dissolved in the plasma) – and provide oxygen transport within their segments  Respiratory pigment is also dissolved in the blood plasma  Species with well-developed septa generally also have blood vessels running all long their bodies above and below the gut, the upper one carrying blood forwards while the lower one carries it backwards  Networks of capillaries in the body wall and around the gut transfer blood between the main blood vessels and to parts of the segment that need oxygen and nutrients  Both of the major vessels, especially the upper one, can pump blood by contracting  In some annelids the forward end of the upper blood vessel is enlarged with muscles to form a heart, while in the forward ends of many earthworms some of the vessels that connect the upper and lower main vessels function as hearts  Species with poorly developed or no septa generally have no blood vessels and rely on the circulation within the coelom for delivering nutrients and oxygen However, leeches and their closest relatives have a body structure that is very uniform within the group but significantly different from that of other annelids, including other members of the Clitellata  In leeches there are no septa, the connective tissue layer of the body wall is so thick that it occupies much of the body, and the two coelomata are widely separated and run the length of the body  They function as the main blood vessels, although they are side-by-side rather than upper and lower  However, they are lined with mesothelium, like the coelomata and unlike the blood vessels of other annelids  Leeches generally use suckers at their front and rear ends to move like inchworms  The anus is on the upper surface of the pygidium 

Respiration
In some annelids, including earthworms, all respiration is via the skin  However, many polychaetes and some clitellates (the group to which earthworms belong) have gills associated with most segments, often as extensions of the parapodia in polychaetes  The gills of tube-dwellers and burrowers usually cluster around whichever end has the stronger water flow 

Feeding and excretion
Feeding structures in the mouth region vary widely, and have little correlation with the animals' diets  Many polychaetes have a muscular pharynx that can be everted (turned inside out to extend it)  In these animals the foremost few segments often lack septa so that, when the muscles in these segments contract, the sharp increase in fluid pressure from all these segments everts the pharynx very quickly  Two families, the Eunicidae and Phyllodocidae, have evolved jaws, which can be used for seizing prey, biting off pieces of vegetation, or grasping dead and decaying matter  On the other hand, some predatory polychaetes have neither jaws nor eversible pharynges   Selective deposit feeders generally live in tubes on the sea-floor and use palps to find food particles in the sediment and then wipe them into their mouths  Filter feeders use "crowns" of palps covered in cilia that wash food particles towards their mouths  Non-selective deposit feeders ingest soil or marine sediments via mouths that are generally unspecialized  Some clitellates have sticky pads in the roofs of their mouths, and some of these can evert the pads to capture prey  Leeches often have an eversible proboscis, or a muscular pharynx with two or three teeth The gut is generally an almost straight tube supported by the mesenteries (vertical partitions within segments), and ends with the anus on the underside of the pygidium  However, in members of the tube-dwelling family Siboglinidae the gut is blocked by a swollen lining that houses symbiotic bacteria, which can make up 15% of the worms' total weight  The bacteria convert inorganic matter – such as hydrogen sulfide and carbon dioxide from hydrothermal vents, or methane from seeps – to organic matter that feeds themselves and their hosts, while the worms extend their palps into the gas flows to absorb the gases needed by the bacteria Annelids with blood vessels use metanephridia to remove soluble waste products, while those without use protonephridia  Both of these systems use a two-stage filtration process, in which fluid and waste products are first extracted and these are filtered again to re-absorb any re-usable materials while dumping toxic and spent materials as urine  The difference is that protonephridia combine both filtration stages in the same organ, while metanephridia perform only the second filtration and rely on other mechanisms for the first – in annelids special filter cells in the walls of the blood vessels let fluids and other small molecules pass into the coelomic fluid, where it circulates to the metanephridia  In annelids the points at which fluid enters the protonephridia or metanephridia are on the forward side of a septum while the second-stage filter and the nephridiopore (exit opening in the body wall) are in the following segment  As a result, the hindmost segment (before the growth zone and pygidium) has no structure that extracts its wastes, as there is no following segment to filter and discharge them, while the first segment contains an extraction structure that passes wastes to the second, but does not contain the structures that re-filter and discharge urine 

Reproduction and life cycle
Asexual reproduction
Polychaetes can reproduce asexually, by dividing into two or more pieces or by budding off a new individual while the parent remains a complete organism  Some oligochaetes, such as Aulophorus furcatus, seem to reproduce entirely asexually, while others reproduce asexually in summer and sexually in autumn  Asexual reproduction in oligochaetes is always by dividing into two or more pieces, rather than by budding  However, leeches have never been seen reproducing asexually Most polychaetes and oligochaetes also use similar mechanisms to regenerate after suffering damage  Two polychaete genera, Chaetopterus and Dodecaceria, can regenerate from a single segment, and others can regenerate even if their heads are removed  Annelids are the most complex animals that can regenerate after such severe damage  On the other hand, leeches cannot regenerate 

Sexual reproduction
It is thought that annelids were originally animals with two separate sexes, which released ova and sperm into the water via their nephridia  The fertilized eggs develop into trochophore larvae, which live as plankton  Later they sink to the sea-floor and metamorphose into miniature adults: the part of the trochophore between the apical tuft and the prototroch becomes the prostomium (head);  a small area round the trochophore's anus becomes the pygidium (tail-piece); a narrow band immediately in front of that becomes the growth zone that produces new segments; and the rest of the trochophore becomes the peristomium (the segment that contains the mouth) However, the lifecycles of most living polychaetes, which are almost all marine animals, are unknown, and only about 25% of the 300+ species whose lifecycles are known follow this pattern  About 14% use a similar external fertilization but produce yolk-rich eggs, which reduce the time the larva needs to spend among the plankton, or eggs from which miniature adults emerge rather than larvae  The rest care for the fertilized eggs until they hatch – some by producing jelly-covered masses of eggs which they tend, some by attaching the eggs to their bodies and a few species by keeping the eggs within their bodies until they hatch  These species use a variety of methods for sperm transfer; for example, in some the females collect sperm released into the water, while in others the males have a penis that inject sperm into the female  There is no guarantee that this is a representative sample of polychaetes' reproductive patterns, and it simply reflects scientists' current knowledge Some polychaetes breed only once in their lives, while others breed almost continuously or through several breeding seasons  While most polychaetes remain of one sex all their lives, a significant percentage of species are full hermaphrodites or change sex during their lives  Most polychaetes whose reproduction has been studied lack permanent gonads, and it is uncertain how they produce ova and sperm  In a few species the rear of the body splits off and becomes a separate individual that lives just long enough to swim to a suitable environment, usually near the surface, and spawn Most mature clitellates (the group that includes earthworms and leeches) are full hermaphrodites, although in a few leech species younger adults function as males and become female at maturity  All have well-developed gonads, and all copulate  Earthworms store their partners' sperm in spermathecae ("sperm stores") and then the clitellum produces a cocoon that collects ova from the ovaries and then sperm from the spermathecae  Fertilization and development of earthworm eggs takes place in the cocoon  Leeches' eggs are fertilized in the ovaries, and then transferred to the cocoon  In all clitellates the cocoon also either produces yolk when the eggs are fertilized or nutrients while they are developing  All clitellates hatch as miniature adults rather than larvae 

Ecological significance
Charles Darwin's book The Formation of Vegetable Mould Through the Action of Worms (1881) presented the first scientific analysis of earthworms' contributions to soil fertility  Some burrow while others live entirely on the surface, generally in moist leaf litter  The burrowers loosen the soil so that oxygen and water can penetrate it, and both surface and burrowing worms help to produce soil by mixing organic and mineral matter, by accelerating the decomposition of organic matter and thus making it more quickly available to other organisms, and by concentrating minerals and converting them to forms that plants can use more easily  Earthworms are also important prey for birds ranging in size from robins to storks, and for mammals ranging from shrews to badgers, and in some cases conserving earthworms may be essential for conserving endangered birds Terrestrial annelids can be invasive in some situations  In the glaciated areas of North America, for example, almost all native earthworms are thought to have been killed by the glaciers and the worms currently found in those areas are all introduced from other areas, primarily from Europe, and, more recently, from Asia   Northern hardwood forests are especially negatively impacted by invasive worms through the loss of leaf duff, soil fertility, changes in soil chemistry and the loss of ecological diversity  Especially of concern is Amynthas agrestis and at least one state (Wisconsin) has listed it as a prohibited species 
Earthworms migrate only a limited distance annually on their own, and the spread of invasive worms is increased rapidly by anglers and from worms or their cocoons in the dirt on vehicle tires or footwear 
Marine annelids may account for over one-third of bottom-dwelling animal species around coral reefs and in tidal zones  Burrowing species increase the penetration of water and oxygen into the sea-floor sediment, which encourages the growth of populations of aerobic bacteria and small animals alongside their burrows Although blood-sucking leeches do little direct harm to their victims, some transmit flagellates that can be very dangerous to their hosts  Some small tube-dwelling oligochaetes transmit myxosporean parasites that cause whirling disease in fish 

Interaction with humans
Earthworms make a significant contribution to soil fertility  The rear end of the Palolo worm, a marine polychaete that tunnels through coral, detaches in order to spawn at the surface, and the people of Samoa regard these spawning modules as a delicacy  Anglers sometimes find that worms are more effective bait than artificial flies, and worms can be kept for several days in a tin lined with damp moss   Ragworms are commercially important as bait and as food sources for aquaculture, and there have been proposals to farm them in order to reduce over-fishing of their natural populations  Some marine polychaetes' predation on molluscs causes serious losses to fishery and aquaculture operations Scientists study aquatic annelids to monitor the oxygen content, salinity and pollution levels in fresh and marine water Accounts of the use of leeches for the medically dubious practise of blood-letting have come from China around 30 AD, India around 200 AD, ancient Rome around 50 AD and later throughout Europe  In the 19th century medical demand for leeches was so high that some areas' stocks were exhausted and other regions imposed restrictions or bans on exports, and Hirudo medicinalis is treated as an endangered species by both IUCN and CITES  More recently leeches have been used to assist in microsurgery, and their saliva has provided anti-inflammatory compounds and several important anticoagulants, one of which also prevents tumors from spreading Ragworms' jaws are strong but much lighter than the hard parts of many other organisms, which are biomineralized with calcium salts  These advantages have attracted the attention of engineers  Investigations showed that ragworm jaws are made of unusual  proteins that bind strongly to zinc 

Evolutionary history
Fossil record
Since annelids are soft-bodied, their fossils are rare  Polychaetes' fossil record consists mainly of the jaws that some species had and the mineralized tubes that some secreted  Some Ediacaran fossils such as Dickinsonia in some ways resemble polychaetes, but the similarities are too vague for these fossils to be classified with confidence  The small shelly fossil Cloudina, from 549 to 542 million years ago, has been classified by some authors as an annelid, but by others as a cnidarian (i e  in the phylum to which jellyfish and sea anemones belong)  Until 2008 the earliest fossils widely accepted as annelids were the polychaetes Canadia and Burgessochaeta, both from Canada's Burgess Shale, formed about 505 million years ago in the early Cambrian  Myoscolex, found in Australia and a little older than the Burgess Shale, was possibly an annelid  However, it lacks some typical annelid features and has features which are not usually found in annelids and some of which are associated with other phyla   Then Simon Conway Morris and John Peel reported Phragmochaeta from Sirius Passet, about 518 million years old, and concluded that it was the oldest annelid known to date  There has been vigorous debate about whether the Burgess Shale fossil Wiwaxia was a mollusc or an annelid  Polychaetes diversified in the early Ordovician, about 488 to 474 million years ago   It is not until the early Ordovician that the first annelid jaws are found, thus the crown-group cannot have appeared before this date and probably appeared somewhat later  By the end of the Carboniferous, about 299 million years ago, fossils of most of the modern mobile polychaete groups had appeared  Many fossil tubes look like those made by modern sessile polychaetes, but the first tubes clearly produced by polychaetes date from the Jurassic, less than 199 million years ago  In 2012, a 508 million year old species of annelid found near the Burgess shale beds in British Columbia, Kootenayscolex, was found that changed the hypotheses about how the annelid head developed  It appears to have bristles on its head segment akin to those along its body, as if the head simply developed as a specialized version of a previously generic segment 
The earliest good evidence for oligochaetes occurs in the Tertiary period, which began 65 million years ago, and it has been suggested that these animals evolved around the same time as flowering plants in the early Cretaceous, from 130 to 90 million years ago  A trace fossil consisting of a convoluted burrow partly filled with small fecal pellets may be evidence that earthworms were present in the early Triassic period from 251 to 245 million years ago  Body fossils going back to the mid Ordovician, from 472 to 461 million years ago, have been tentatively classified as oligochaetes, but these identifications are uncertain and some have been disputed 

Internal relationships
Traditionally the annelids have been divided into two major groups, the polychaetes and clitellates  In turn the clitellates were divided into oligochaetes, which include earthworms, and hirudinomorphs, whose best-known members are leeches  For many years there was no clear arrangement of the approximately 80 polychaete families into higher-level groups  In 1997 Greg Rouse and Kristian Fauchald attempted a "first heuristic step in terms of bringing polychaete systematics to an acceptable level of rigour", based on anatomical structures, and divided polychaetes into:
Scolecida, less than 1,000 burrowing species that look rather like earthworms 
Palpata, the great majority of polychaetes, divided into:
Canalipalpata, which are distinguished by having long grooved palps that they use for feeding, and most of which live in tubes 
Aciculata, the most active polychaetes, which have parapodia reinforced by internal spines (aciculae) 
Also in 1997 Damhnait McHugh, using molecular phylogenetics to compare similarities and differences in one gene, presented a very different view, in which: the clitellates were an offshoot of one branch of the polychaete family tree; the pogonophorans and echiurans, which for a few decades had been regarded as a separate phyla, were placed on other branches of the polychaete tree  Subsequent molecular phylogenetics analyses on a similar scale presented similar conclusions In 2007 Torsten Struck and colleagues compared three genes in 81 taxa, of which nine were outgroups, in other words not considered closely related to annelids but included to give an indication of where the organisms under study are placed on the larger tree of life  For a cross-check the study used an analysis of 11 genes (including the original 3) in ten taxa  This analysis agreed that clitellates, pogonophorans and echiurans were on various branches of the polychaete family tree  It also concluded that the classification of polychaetes into Scolecida, Canalipalpata and Aciculata was useless, as the members of these alleged groups were scattered all over the family tree derived from comparing the 81 taxa  It also placed sipunculans, generally regarded at the time as a separate phylum, on another branch of the polychaete tree, and concluded that leeches were a sub-group of oligochaetes rather than their sister-group among the clitellates  Rouse accepted the analyses based on molecular phylogenetics, and their main conclusions are now the scientific consensus, although the details of the annelid family tree remain uncertain In addition to re-writing the classification of annelids and three previously independent phyla, the molecular phylogenetics analyses undermine the emphasis that decades of previous writings placed on the importance of segmentation in the classification of invertebrates  Polychaetes, which these analyses found to be the parent group, have completely segmented bodies, while polychaetes' echiurans and sipunculan offshoots are not segmented and pogonophores are segmented only in the rear parts of their bodies  It now seems that segmentation can appear and disappear much more easily in the course of evolution than was previously thought  The 2007 study also noted that the ladder-like nervous system, which is associated with segmentation, is less universal than previously thought in both annelids and arthropods The updated phylogenetic tree of the Annelid phylum is comprised by a grade of basal groups of polychaetes: Palaeoannelida, Chaetopteriformia and the Amphinomida/Sipuncula/Lobatocerebrum clade  This grade is followed by Pleistoannelida, the clade containing nearly all of annelid diversity, divided into two highly diverse groups: Sedentaria and Errantia  Sedentaria contains the clitellates, pogonophorans, echiurans and some archiannelids, as well as several polychaete groups  Errantia contains the eunicid and phyllodocid polychaetes, and several archiannelids  Some small groups, such as the Myzostomida, are more difficult to place due to long branching, but belong to either one of these large groups 

External relationships
Annelids are members of the protostomes, one of the two major superphyla of bilaterian animals – the other is the deuterostomes, which includes vertebrates  Within the protostomes, annelids used to be grouped with arthropods under the super-group Articulata ("jointed animals"), as segmentation is obvious in most members of both phyla  However, the genes that drive segmentation in arthropods do not appear to do the same in annelids  Arthropods and annelids both have close relatives that are unsegmented  It is at least as easy to assume that they evolved segmented bodies independently as it is to assume that the ancestral protostome or bilaterian was segmented and that segmentation disappeared in many descendant phyla  The current view is that annelids are grouped with molluscs, brachiopods and several other phyla that have lophophores (fan-like feeding structures) and/or trochophore larvae as members of Lophotrochozoa  Meanwhile, arthropods are now regarded as members of the Ecdysozoa ("animals that molt"), along with some phyla that are unsegmented 
The "Lophotrochozoa" hypothesis is also supported by the fact that many phyla within this group, including annelids, molluscs, nemerteans and flatworms, follow a similar pattern in the fertilized egg's development  When their cells divide after the 4-cell stage, descendants of these four cells form a spiral pattern  In these phyla the "fates" of the embryo's cells, in other words the roles their descendants will play in the adult animal, are the same and can be predicted from a very early stage  Hence this development pattern is often described as "spiral determinate cleavage" 

Fossil discoveries lead to the hypothesis that Annelida and the lophophorates are more closely related to each other than any other phyla  Because of the body plan of lophotrochozoan fossils, a phylogenetic analysis found the lophophorates as the sister group of annelids  Both groups share in common: the presence of chaetae secreted by microvilli; paired, metameric coelomic compartments; and a similar metanephridial structure 

Notes
Passage 3:
Lori Alan
Lori Alan is an American actress  She has played a long-running role as Pearl Krabs on the animated television series SpongeBob SquarePants  She also voiced Diane Simmons on Family Guy, the Invisible Woman on Fantastic Four, and The Boss in the Metal Gear video game series 

Personal life
Alan had a mixed-faith family: her mother is a Southern Baptist and her father is Jewish  Both of her parents were performers and supported her choice to be an actress  Alan lives in Los Angeles 
She started acting at age five, making her television debut in a Shakey's Pizza commercial Alan is active in animal rescue and welfare causes  She has spoken out against animal cruelty and has campaigned for the anti-dog meat charity World Protection for Dogs and Cats in the Meat Trade  She is also on the board of Pickle Pants Rescue, an animal rescue organization in Los Angeles 

Career
Alan has done vocal work for over three decades  Her process of getting to the authentic personality of the character she is providing the voice for is to improvise and trust her own choices, something she learned at her first voice acting job Alan voices Pearl the Whale on SpongeBob SquarePants, Sue Richards (the Invisible Woman) on Marvel Comics' The Fantastic Four, newsreader-turned-murderer Diane Simmons on Family Guy, and The Boss in the Metal Gear series  Lori has done voices in feature films: Monsters University, Toy Story 3, Despicable Me 2, WALL·E, Inside Out, and each movie in the SpongeBob SquarePants film series  She has also voiced roles for Henry Hugglemonster, Cow and Chicken, Animaniacs, and Futurama  Her rendition of The Boss was rated as one of the top 25 "Greatest Acting Performances in Video Games" by Complex In 2005, she joined Warren Beatty, Rob Reiner, Kurtwood Smith and Jason George to help voice commercials against proposals made by California's Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger In 2014, she won a Voice Arts Award (VAA) for outstanding body of work and outstanding national television commercial Alan's on-camera roles include Desperate Housewives, Ray Donovan, Comedy Central's Workaholics, Bones, Southland, CSI, 90210, Law & Order: LA, Law & Order and many more  On stage credits include The Pee-wee Herman Show, solo show Lori Alan: The Musical, Queen Celia in the hit musical Sneaux!, and the award-winning musical Reefer Madness  Her 1999 performance in Reefer Madness as a "Reefer Madam" was praised by the Los Angeles Times She revisited her role in the Reefer Madness tenth Anniversary Cast in 2015  Her vocals on the song "The Stuff" was considered both sultry and comical by Broadway World 

Filmography
Film
Television
Web
Video games
Passage 4:
Hilo March
"Hilo March" is a Hawaiian popular song written by Joseph Kapeau Ae`a  It was originally called "Ke Ala Tuberose"  It has been covered by a number of musicians, Polynesian and non-Polynesian alike  It was also used in the soundtrack of SpongeBob SquarePants (arranged by The Hawaiian Serenaders as "Hilo March", and arragnged by Kapono Beamer as "Old Hilo March") 

About the song
It has been adopted as the school song by the University of Hawaii at Hilo  Along with another popular song, "Aloha ʻOe", every person from child to senior citizen know is said to the words and music to these songs  Originally the song was called "Ke Ala Tuberose" and was composed by Joseph Kapeau Ae`a, who was a member of the Royal Hawaiian Band and also a friend of Princess Liliuokalani  The princess requested  Ae`a and the band come to Hilo and that is where he composed the song  In August 1881, the title was changed from "Ke Ala Tuberose" to "Hilo March" and played by the Royal Hawaiian band under Captain Henri Berger's direction  Besides being a favorite of the Royal Hawaiian band and its popularity in the Islands, it has been picked up as a favorite by many steel guitarists on the mainland  The lyrics of the song tell of Hilo's beauty as well as the beauty of the Lehua flower 

Covers
It has been covered by artists such as Trevor Edmondson, Christopher Homer & Raney Van Vink, the Four Hawaiians, Lani McIntyre and his Aloha Islanders, the Mena Moeria Minstrels, Tau Moe's Original Hawaiians, Johnny Pineapple And His Orchestra, Hank Snow, Bashful Brother Oswald, and Bill Wolfgramme and his Islanders
Passage 5:
Derek Drymon
Derek Drymon (born November 19, 1968) is an American animator, writer, storyboard artist, director, comedian, and producer  He has worked on numerous animated cartoon productions of the 1990s and 2000s, best known for his work on Rocko's Modern Life, SpongeBob SquarePants and Adventure Time 

Early life
Derek Drymon was born in New Jersey  He attended Jefferson Township and Dover public schools as a child and enjoyed drawing and making comic books  Drymon graduated from Jefferson Township High School in 1987  Drymon attended the School of Visual Arts (SVA) in New York, where he majored in Illustration, sharpening his drawing skills and moving from still images to animation  He graduated from SVA in 1992 

Career
Drymon obtained an internship with Disney on the strength of his life drawings Drymon was discovered by Nickelodeon in 1993  He moved to California to work as an animator for Nickelodeon  In 1993, Drymon also began working as a storyboard artist and writer for Rocko's Modern Life  It was here he met two of his future employers, Tim Hill and Stephen Hillenburg; Hill was a writer, Hillenburg a co-producer and storyboard artist  In 1997, Hillenburg created SpongeBob SquarePants  Drymon performed many duties on SpongeBob, including being a writer on all episodes, the creative director, and, on his last season with the show, supervising producer  Drymon also worked on the Cartoon Network animated series Camp Lazlo  Drymon worked on Tim Hill's side project, the popular KaBlam! skit Action League Now!, as a storyboard artist  He also wrote the Emmy Award-nominated episode of CatDog "Doggone" Drymon met Stephen Hillenburg on the Nickelodeon cartoon Rocko's Modern Life  Hillenburg recalled Drymon as "one of the main people in the genesis of SpongeBob"  Drymon teamed up with Hillenburg, Hill, and Nick Jennings who was also a companion from Nickelodeon  Drymon was the creative director for the first three seasons and became Supervising Producer in season 3 until being replaced by Paul Tibbitt starting in season 4  Along with Stephen Hillenburg, Drymon approved the writers' ideas and outlines for episodes and controlled the creative and production process on SpongeBob Drymon was eventually promoted to Executive producer on television show Adventure Time, and become a lead writer for DreamWorks Pictures, and a director at Illumination Entertainment  During the first three seasons of SpongeBob, Drymon being creative director allowed him to work with executive story editor Merriwether Williams and the rest of the writing team 
Staff writer Kent Osborne responded to the writing process with Drymon and other writers by saying  "By the third season we had done 26 half-hours  I came up with millions of ideas"  Despite the issues with writing new episodes, Drymon collaborated with the writers to create episode ideas like the half-hour specials and episodes that focused on other characters, for example the season three episodes "The Algae Always Greener" and "Plankton's Army" focused on Sheldon Plankton and "Doing Time" focused on Mrs  Puff  Drymon said in an interview "Coming up with episode ideas was always tough"  The writers were influenced for the episode "The Secret Box", which was influenced by Drymon because he told them when he was younger he kept a "secret box", the writers thought it was hilarious and weird and used Drymon's idea to create the story of the episode   Drymon co-wrote the pilot episode "Help Wanted"  Drymon earned two Emmy nominations and along with the crew of SpongeBob won the "Best Animated Television Production" Annie award in 2005 for season 3 of SpongeBob Drymon hired a large amount of the staff writers, including Sam Henderson, a friend and fellow alumnus of SVA, along with Kent Osborne and Walt Dohrn From 2008 to 2017, Drymon work as a Storyboard Artist for DreamWorks Animation, working on films such as the Kung Fu Panda trilogy, Monsters vs  Aliens, Shrek Forever After, Puss in Boots, Turbo, Penguins of Madagascar, and Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie 
Drymon was an executive producer (with Fred Seibert) on the Cartoon Network series Adventure Time, created by Pendleton Ward for the show's first season  He was no longer credited on episodes starting with the second season On September 17, 2020, Drymon was set to co-direct Hotel Transylvania: Transformania with story artist Jennifer Kluska In April 2023, Drymon was announced as the director of the fourth SpongeBob SquarePants theatrical film titled The SpongeBob Movie: Search for SquarePants 

Filmography
Television
Film
Bibliography
Passage 6:
List of SpongeBob SquarePants cast members
SpongeBob SquarePants is an American animated television series created by marine biologist and animator Stephen Hillenburg that debuted on Nickelodeon in the United States on May 1, 1999  The regular voice cast consists of Tom Kenny, Bill Fagerbakke, Rodger Bumpass, Clancy Brown, Doug Lawrence, Jill Talley, Carolyn Lawrence, Mary Jo Catlett and Lori Alan  Most one-off and background characters are voiced by Dee Bradley Baker, Sirena Irwin, Bob Joles, Mark Fite, Thomas F  Wilson, Carlos Alazraqui and Jess Harnell  Throughout the show's run, it has employed numerous guest stars from many ranges of professions  Repeat guests include Ernest Borgnine, Tim Conway, Brian Doyle-Murray, Marion Ross, John O'Hurley and Michael McKean 
SpongeBob SquarePants chronicles the adventures and endeavors of the title character and his various friends in the fictional underwater city of Bikini Bottom  Many of the ideas for the show originated in an unpublished, educational comic book titled The Intertidal Zone, which Hillenburg created in the mid-1980s  He began developing SpongeBob SquarePants into a television series in 1996 upon the cancellation of Rocko's Modern Life, another Nickelodeon animated series which Hillenburg directed  While creating the show, Hillenburg, with colleague Derek Drymon, was also conducting auditions to find voices for the show's characters  He turned to Kenny, who had worked with him on Rocko's Modern Life, to voice the title character 
The cast members receive residuals every time a new episode they appeared in has aired, which Carolyn Lawrence described as "a very complicated mathematical calculation " Lawrence said in 2008 that it was a "declining scale" and the entertainment industry were "still in negotiations    both sides are still talking " She further stated that "they're still trying to work it out "Kenny and Catlett were the first cast members to receive award nominations for their performance on SpongeBob SquarePants  They each received Annie Award nominations in 2001, but did not win  In 2010, Kenny won the Annie Award for Best Voice Acting in a Television Production, making it the first time a cast member had won this type of award  Bumpass was the first cast member to be nominated for an Emmy Award, receiving a nomination in 2012  In 2018, Kenny won both an Annie Award and an Emmy Award for his performance as SpongeBob 

Regular cast
Background
SpongeBob SquarePants has featured the voices of Tom Kenny, Bill Fagerbakke,  Rodger Bumpass,  Clancy Brown, Mr  Lawrence, Jill Talley, Carolyn Lawrence, Mary Jo Catlett and Lori Alan since it began  Stephen Hillenburg started developing the SpongeBob concept into a television series in 1996 upon the cancellation of Rocko's Modern Life, which he directed  While creating the show and writing its pilot episode in 1997, he and the show's then-creative director Derek Drymon were also conducting auditions to find voices for the show's characters For the voice of SpongeBob, the main character, Hillenburg approached Kenny, who previously worked with him on Rocko's Modern Life  Drymon said, "Steve [Hillenburg] wanted to find an original sounding voice [for SpongeBob] " Hillenburg utilized Kenny's and other people's personalities to help create the personality of SpongeBob  The voice of SpongeBob was originally used by Kenny for a minor character in Rocko's Modern Life  Kenny forgot the voice initially as he created it only for that single use  Hillenburg, however, remembered it when he was coming up with SpongeBob and used a video clip of the episode to remind Kenny of the voice  Kenny says that SpongeBob's high-pitched laugh was specifically created to be unique   They wanted an annoying laugh in the tradition of Popeye and Woody Woodpecker  Fagerbakke voices SpongeBob's best friend, a starfish named Patrick Star  He auditioned for the role after Kenny had been cast as SpongeBob  Fagerbakke said, "Steve is such a lovely guy, and I had absolutely no feeling for the material whatsoever " He described his experience in the audition, saying "I was just going in for another audition, and I had no idea what was in store there in terms of the remarkable visual wit and really the kind of endearing child-like humanity in the show  I couldn't pick that up from the audition material at all  I was just kind of perfunctorially trying to give the guy what he wanted "Rodger Bumpass provides the voice of Squidward Tentacles, and other characters  Squidward was "a very nasally, monotone kind of guy", said Bumpass  He said that the character "became a very interesting character to do" because of "his sarcasm, and then his frustration, and then his apoplexy, and so he became a wide spectrum of emotions"  Voice acting veteran Clancy Brown voices Mr  Krabs, SpongeBob's boss at the Krusty Krab  For the character, Brown uses a voice that he describes as "piratey" with "a little Scottish brogue"  According to Brown, his Mr  Krabs voice was improvised during his audition and it was not challenging for him to find the correct voice Mr  Lawrence had met Hillenburg previously on Rocko's Modern Life  When working on the pilot episode of SpongeBob, Hillenburg invited him to audition for all of the characters  Since other voices had been found for the main cast already, Lawrence started out by voicing a variety of minor characters  This included Plankton, who was initially only set to appear in one episode  Mr  Lawrence stated in an interview with Thomas F  Wilson that Nickelodeon executives told Hillenburg, "'we could stunt-cast this  You know, we could have Bruce Willis do this voice ' And Steve was just like, 'it's Doug [Lawrence], don't you hear it? This is the character! This is the guy!'" Jill Talley, Tom Kenny's wife, voices Karen Plankton  Being a Chicago native, she uses a Midwestern accent for the character  Electronic sound effects are underlaid by the series' audio engineers to create a robotic sound whenever she speaks  Talley and Lawrence often improvise their characters' dialogue  In 2009, Lawrence called improvisation his "favorite part of the voice over"  He elaborated in a 2012 interview, saying, "I always enjoy the back-and-forth  [Talley and I] start to actually overlap so much talking to each other that [the voice directors] have to tell us, 'hey, stop doing that, separate what you're saying!'"Carolyn Lawrence provides Sandy Cheeks' voice  When Lawrence was on a sidewalk in Los Feliz, Los Angeles with a friend who knew SpongeBob SquarePants casting director Donna Grillo, her friend said to the director that Lawrence had "an interesting voice"  Grillo invited Lawrence to audition and she then got the role  American actress Mary Jo Catlett, who is known for her live-action roles on television programs from the 1970s such as Diff'rent Strokes and M*A*S*H, provides Mrs  Puff's voice  As of 2017, voicing Mrs  Puff has become her only regular television role; Catlett described herself as "basically retired" in 2013, since she is good friends with the other SpongeBob cast members, making the SpongeBob recording booth an easy environment that requires less preparation than in-person performances  Lori Alan voices Pearl  During her audition for the role, she was shown an early drawing of Pearl and took note of how the character was much larger than the rest of the cast  She decided to reflect the character's size in her voice by making it deep and full in tone  She aimed to make Pearl's voice invoke the sound of whales’ low vocalizations while also sounding "spoiled and lovable " In an interview with AfterBuzz TV, Alan said that she knew Pearl "had to sound somewhat like a child," but at the same time needed "an abnormally large voice "In the Christmas special "Christmas Who?", the characters of Patchy the Pirate, the president of the fictional SpongeBob SquarePants fan club, and his pet called Potty the Parrot debuted  The former is portrayed by Kenny in live-action, while series creator Hillenburg voiced the latter  After Hillenburg's departure as the series' showrunner in 2004, staff writer Paul Tibbitt was given the role voicing Potty the Parrot  Mr  Krabs' mother, Mama Krabs, who debuted in the episode "Sailor Mouth", was voiced by Tibbitt  However, voice actress Sirena Irwin overtook Tibbitt's role as the character reappeared in the fourth season episode "Enemy In-Law" in 2005  Irwin also provides the voices of other characters in the show, including Margaret SquarePants, SpongeBob's mother 
Voice recording sessions always include a full cast of actors, which Kenny describes as "getting more unusual"  Kenny said, "That's another thing that's given SpongeBob its special feel  Everybody's in the same room, doing it old radio-show style  It's how the stuff we like was recorded"  It takes about four hours to record an 11-minute episode  For the first three seasons, Hillenburg and Drymon sat in on recording sessions at Nickelodeon Studios, and they directed the actors  In the fourth season, Andrea Romano took over the role as the voice director  Wednesday is recording day, the same schedule followed by the crew since 1999  Casting supervisor Jennie Monica Hammond said, "I loved Wednesdays" 

Main cast
Other regular cast
Recurring guest voices
Former cast members
Awards and nominations
Notes
Passage 7:
List of SpongeBob SquarePants episodes
SpongeBob SquarePants is an American animated television series created by marine biologist and animator Stephen Hillenburg that premiered on Nickelodeon on May 1, 1999  The series is set in the fictional underwater city of Bikini Bottom, and centers on the adventures and endeavors of SpongeBob SquarePants, an over-optimistic sea sponge  Many of the ideas for the show originated in an unpublished, educational comic book titled The Intertidal Zone, which Hillenburg created in the mid-1980s  He began developing SpongeBob SquarePants into a television series in 1996 after the cancellation of Rocko's Modern Life, another Nickelodeon television series that Hillenburg previously directed As of April 7, 2023, 288 episodes of SpongeBob SquarePants have aired, currently in its thirteenth season  The thirteenth season consists of 26 episodes  The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie, a feature-length film, was released in theaters on November 19, 2004, and grossed over US$140 million worldwide  Atlantis SquarePantis, a television film guest starring David Bowie, debuted as part of the fifth season  In 2009, Nickelodeon celebrated the show's tenth anniversary with Square Roots: The Story of SpongeBob SquarePants and SpongeBob's Truth or Square  The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water, a stand-alone sequel, was released in theaters on February 6, 2015, and grossed over US$324 million worldwide Episodes of SpongeBob SquarePants have been nominated for a variety of different awards, including 17 Annie Awards (with six wins), 17 Golden Reel Awards (with eight wins), 15 Emmy Awards (with one win), 21 Kids' Choice Awards (with 20 wins), and four BAFTA Children's Awards (with two wins)  Several compilation DVDs have been released  In addition, the first twelve seasons have been released on DVD, and are available for Regions 1, 2 and 4 as of January 12, 2021 

Series overview
Episodes
Season 1 (1999–2001)
The first season of SpongeBob SquarePants consists of 20 episodes (41 segments, since the first episode has three segments)  This is the only season that used cel animation  The episodes are ordered according to Nickelodeon's packaging order, and not their original production or broadcast order 

Season 2 (2000–03)
The second season of SpongeBob SquarePants consists of 20 episodes (39 segments), which are ordered below according to Nickelodeon's packaging order, and not their original production or broadcast order 

Season 3 (2001–04)
The third season of SpongeBob SquarePants consists of 20 episodes (37 segments), which are ordered below according to Nickelodeon's packaging order, and not their original production or broadcast order 

Season 4 (2005–07)
The fourth season of SpongeBob SquarePants consists of 20 episodes (38 segments), which are ordered below according to Nickelodeon's packaging order, and not their original production or broadcast order 

Season 5 (2007–09)
The fifth season of SpongeBob SquarePants consists of 20 episodes (41 segments), which are ordered below according to Nickelodeon's packaging order, and not their original production or broadcast order 

Season 6 (2008–10)
The sixth season of SpongeBob SquarePants consists of 26 episodes (47 segments), which are ordered below according to Nickelodeon's packaging order, and not their original production or broadcast order 

Season 7 (2009–11)
The seventh season of SpongeBob SquarePants consists of 26 episodes (50 segments), which are ordered below according to Nickelodeon's packaging order, and not their original production or broadcast order 

Season 8 (2011–12)
The eighth season of SpongeBob SquarePants consists of 26 episodes (47 segments), which are ordered below according to Nickelodeon's packaging order, and not their original production or broadcast order 

Season 9 (2012–17)
The ninth season of SpongeBob SquarePants consists of 26 episodes (49 segments), which are ordered below according to Nickelodeon's packaging order, and not their original production or broadcast order 

Season 10 (2016–17)
The tenth season of SpongeBob SquarePants consists of 11 episodes (22 segments), which are ordered below according to Nickelodeon's packaging order, and not their original production or broadcast order  It is the shortest season, lacking the usual 26 episode length 

Season 11 (2017–18)
The eleventh season of SpongeBob SquarePants consists of 26 episodes (50 segments), which are ordered below according to Nickelodeon's packaging order, and not their original production or broadcast order 

Season 12 (2018–22)
The twelfth season of SpongeBob SquarePants consists of 31 episodes (53 segments), including 5 specials, which are ordered according to Nickelodeon's packaging order, and not their original production or broadcast order  This was the last season that series creator Stephen Hillenburg was involved in, before his death from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis on November 26, 2018, at age 57 

Season 13 (2020–23)
The thirteenth season of SpongeBob SquarePants consists of 26 episodes, which are ordered below according to Nickelodeon's packaging order, and not their original production or broadcast order 

Films
Notes
DVD Notes
Passage 8:
Nannochoristidae
Nannochoristidae is a family of scorpionflies with many unusual traits  It is a tiny, relict family with a single extant genus, Nannochorista, with eight species occurring in New Zealand, southeastern Australia, Tasmania, Argentina and Chile  Due to the group's distinctiveness from other scorpionflies, it is sometimes placed in its own order, the Nannomecoptera  Some studies have placed them as the closest living relatives of fleas  Most mecopteran larvae are eruciform, or shaped like caterpillars  Nannochoristid larvae, however, are elateriform, and have elongated and slender bodies  The larvae are aquatic, which is unique among mecopterans  The larvae are predatory, hunting on the beds of shallow streams, primarily on the larvae of aquatic Diptera like chironomids Fossils indicate that Nannochoristidae formerly had a wider distribution, being present in the Northern Hemisphere during the Jurassic and Early Cretaceous Some research suggests the nannochoristids are the only holometabolous insects with true larval compound eyes  All other eyed larvae have stemmata, which are structurally different from adult compound eyes with ommatidia  This is unusual, since most adult features are present as imaginal discs in larvae and not formed until pupation  The presence of compound eyes in nannochoristid larvae suggests the timing of the development of adult features can be initiated earlier in development, which has important implications for insect evolutionary development 

Phylogeny
The cladogram of external relationships, based on a 2008 DNA and protein analysis, shows the family as a clade, sister to the Siphonaptera (fleas) and rest of Mecoptera, and more distantly related to the Diptera (true flies) and Mecoptera (scorpionflies) 
A more recent study in 2021 found Nannochoristidae to be the sister group to fleas, with strong support 

Genera
After Cao et al  2022 
Nannochorista Tillyard, 1917 (8 species: Argentina, Chile, Tasmania, Australia, New Zealand) Koonwarra fossil bed, Australia, Early Cretaceous (Aptian)
†Dahurochorista Sukatsheva 1985 (one species: Ichetuy Formation, Russia, Late Jurassic (Oxfordian)
†Dahurolarva Sukatsheva 1985 (one species: Ichetuy Formation, Oxfordian, Russia) (based on larvae only)
†Itaphlebia Sukatsheva 1985 (14 species) Itat Formation, Russia, Middle Jurassic (Bathonian), Daohugou, China, Middle Jurassic (Callovian), Karabastau Formation, Kazakhstan, Late Jurassic (Oxfordian) Doronino Formation, Russia, Early Cretaceous (Barremian)
†Namdyrus Sukacheva 1993 Khaya Formation, Russia, Late Jurassic (Tithonian)
†Tarantogus Sukatsheva, 1985 Itat Formation, Russia, Bathonian (based on larvae only)
†Undisca Sukatsheva, 1990 Glushkovo Formation, Russia, Tithonian



ground_truth: Mr. Lawrence

Doug Lawrence