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Liberty Head double eagle

American twenty-dollar gold piece

The Liberty Head double eagle or Coronet double eagle is an American twenty-dollar gold piece struck as a pattern coin in 1849, and for commerce from 1850 to 1907. It was designed by Mint of the United States Chief Engraver James B. Longacre. The largest denomination of United States coin authorized by the Mint Act of 1792 was the eagle, or ten-dollar piece. The large amount of bullion being brought east after the discovery of gold in California in the 1840s caused Congress to consider new denominations of gold coinage. The gold dollar and double eagle were the result. After considerable infighting at the Philadelphia Mint, Chief Engraver James B. Longacre designed the double eagle, and it began to be issued for commerce in 1850. Only one 1849 double eagle is known to survive and it rests in the National Numismatic Collection at the Smithsonian. The coin was immediately successful; merchants and banks used it in trade. It was struck until replaced by the Saint-Gaudens double eagle in 1907, and many were melted when President Franklin D. Roosevelt recalled gold coins from the public in 1933. Millions of double eagles were sent overseas in international transactions throughout its run to be melted or placed in bank vaults. Many of the latter have now been repatriated to feed the demand from collectors and those who desire to hold gold. ## Inception Under the Mint Act of 1792, the largest-denomination coin was the gold eagle, or ten-dollar piece. Also struck were a half eagle (\$5) and quarter eagle (\$2.50). Bullion flowed out of the United States for economic reasons for much of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The eagle's size made it convenient for use in international transactions, and, faced with the likelihood that most being struck were exported, the Director of the Mint Elias Boudinot ended its production in 1804. In 1838, coinage resumed after Congress revised the weight and fineness of American gold coins. The new eagle was struck to a design by Christian Gobrecht, who was one of the Mint's engravers. In 1836, the Public Ledger, a Philadelphia newspaper, proposed the issuance of both a gold dollar and a twenty-dollar piece; they wrote of the latter, "Twenty [silver dollars] are an encumbrance in a pocket ... if we are to have larger coins, let them be of gold. Along with the eagle, which has the size of the half dollar, we would recommend the double eagle, which [would be] of the size of our silver dollar, [and] would contain the value of twenty." Others perceived a need for a large U.S. gold coin to be used in international transactions—American merchants sometimes used high-denomination Latin American gold coins for that purpose. No proposal for a gold twenty-dollar piece was considered until after the California Gold Rush, beginning in 1848, greatly increased the amount of the metal available in the United States. The increase in the supply of gold caused silver coins to be worth more than their face value, and they were heavily exported, generating new support for a gold dollar to take their place in commerce. The quantity of gold made a larger denomination desirable as well, to more efficiently convert gold to coins. In January 1849, North Carolina Congressman James Iver McKay amended his previously introduced legislation for a gold dollar to provide for a double eagle as well. He wrote to Mint Director Robert M. Patterson, who responded, "there can be no other objection to the Double eagle except that it is not needed. It will be a handsome coin, between the half dollar and dollar in size." Concerned about likely Whig opposition to the coinage bill, McKay got his fellow Democrat, New Hampshire Senator Charles Atherton, to introduce the bill in the Senate on February 1, 1849—Atherton was chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. McKay introduced a version of the bill into the House on February 20; debate began the same day. The dollar was attacked on the ground it would be too small; the double eagle on the claim that it would be heavily abraded in circulation, and would become lightweight. McKay did not respond substantively, but stated that if no one wanted these denominations, they would be unasked-for at the Mint, and would not be coined. Pennsylvania Representative Joseph Ingersoll, a Whig, spoke against the bill, noting that Patterson opposed the new denominations. Ingersoll stated that a twenty-dollar piece would be "doubled into a ponderous and unparalleled size". Nevertheless, the bill providing for the issuance of the gold dollar and double eagle passed both houses by large margins, and was signed into law by President James K. Polk on March 3, 1849. According to numismatist David Lange, "the double eagle was a banker's coin intended to simplify transfers of large sums between financial institutions and between nations". ## Preparation The act authorizing the gold dollar and double eagle precipitated conflict at the Philadelphia Mint. There the officers, including Chief Coiner Franklin Peale, were mostly the friends and relations of Director Patterson. The outsider in their midst was Chief Engraver James B. Longacre, successor to Gobrecht (who had died in 1844). A former copper-plate engraver, Longacre had been appointed through the political influence of South Carolina Senator John C. Calhoun. Patterson despised Calhoun, and Longacre became a loner at the mint. Most of Peale's formal duties were performed by his predecessor, Adam Eckfeldt, who continued to do the work of chief coiner despite his retirement. Peale spent the resulting free time running a private medal business taking commissions from the public and using the government's facilities, including its Contamin portrait lathe. This machine, used in Peale's medal work, was needed to reduce models of new designs to coin-sized reductions from which working dies could be made. So long as no new coin designs were needed, dies could be reproduced mechanically, without using the Contamin device. Although it belonged to his department, Longacre did not use the Contamin lathe much until Congress ordered that the two new coins be struck. When Longacre began work on the two new coins in early 1849, he had no assistants. He completed work on the gold dollar first, anxious to show that he could create a coin design. In May, he requested that Patterson hire another engraver to assist him. The director declined, willing only to have engraving work contracted out. This was unsatisfactory to Longacre, who was responsible under the law for the proper execution of coinage dies, and who could not supervise outside work. As Longacre worked on the double eagle design, according to numismatist Walter Breen, "Peale, with Patterson's tacit approval, began harassment." Longacre prepared a large model of the new coin in wax and was instructed to give it to Peale for use in preparing a metal galvano, which could be used in the lathe. The operation failed, and Longacre's model was destroyed. Longacre had, however, made a cast of his model in plaster, and was able to use it in the machine. The resulting steel die had to be hardened in Peale's department; as Longacre put it, "it unluckily split in the process". According to numismatic historian Don Taxay, "Peale's adoption of a process not normally used at the Mint, together with its catastrophic failures, seems more than coincidental". Longacre set forth on a third attempt to create a die. He was hampered not only by the continued opposition of Peale but by poor lighting and the noxious fumes that penetrated his office at the Philadelphia Mint. A friend, New York engraver Charles Cushing Wright, arranged for Peter F. Cross to assist Longacre with making hubs and dies. Cross made the first obverse die in November and December 1849 at Longacre's direction, and the chief engraver made the reverse. On December 22, 1849, Patterson wrote to Treasury Secretary William M. Meredith that the dies were completed. He enclosed a double eagle, asking Meredith, if he approved of the piece, to send word as quickly as possible to allow the coinage of 1849 double eagles in quantity. Before any reply could be received, Peale objected on December 24, complaining that the relief of the head of Liberty was so high that pieces struck using the Philadelphia Mint's steam-powered machinery could not fully bring out the design—the coin sent to Meredith had been coined on a medal press, by hand. In addition, Peale alleged that the head was in such high relief that the coins would not stack. Patterson sent Peale's letter to Meredith on December 25, noting that this meant there would be a lengthy delay. Longacre completed the lower-relief dies about January 12, 1850. Peale did not test them for two weeks; when he did, he rejected them, stating that Liberty's head opposed the eagle on the reverse, making it difficult for the full design to be brought forth. He stated that Longacre would have to move the position of the head. Longacre, outraged, appealed to Director Patterson, who took no action, but early the next month came to see Longacre in his office. He told the engraver that the Taylor administration (which had taken office in March 1849) had decided on Longacre's removal, and urged him to send in his resignation as quickly as possible. Longacre did not resign but went to Washington to see Secretary Meredith. He found that Patterson had lied to Meredith about a number of matters. For example, when Longacre took a new double eagle from his pocket, Meredith expressed surprise, believing that the dies from which it had been made had been broken. Longacre kept his job. According to numismatic author Q. David Bowers, Longacre's last set of dies were completed in February 1850, and were accepted. Breen, however, stated that the first production coins appeared about January 26, 1850. Only one 1849 double eagle is known to be extant; it forms part of the Smithsonian Institution's National Numismatic Collection. The specimen sent to Meredith is unlocated, and is said to have been owned in the 1950s by coin dealer William K. Nagy, whose former business partner John W. Haseltine supposedly acquired it from the Meredith estate. Nagy allegedly stated that he had sold the coin to a private collector. One 1849 piece, in gilt brass, was later struck for Philadelphia druggist and numismatist Robert Coulton Davis, who had close ties to the Mint. Its location is also unknown. ## Design The obverse depicts a head of Liberty in the Greco-Roman style, facing left, with her hair pulled back—according to numismatists Jeff Garrett and Ron Guth, "attractively"—in a bun. Some of her hair descends the back of her neck. She wears a coronet, inscribed "Liberty", and is surrounded by thirteen stars, representative of the original states, and the year of issue. The reverse features a heraldic eagle, holding a double ribbon, on which "E Pluribus Unum" is inscribed. The double ribbon is an allusion by Longacre to the denomination of the piece he was designing. The design is a variant on the Great Seal of the United States; the eagle protects a shield, which represents the nation, and holds an olive branch and arrows. Above the bird, Longacre again placed thirteen stars, arranged as a halo, together with an arc of rays. Longacre's initials, JBL, appear on the truncation of the head. The gold dollar and twenty-dollar piece were the first American federal coins on which the designer's initials appear—on the gold dollar, only the "L" is used. Longacre's designs for the double eagle and the Type I gold dollar (1849–1854) are similar. Art historian Cornelius Vermeule disliked the double eagle and other Longacre coins showing Liberty, calling them routine. He did find that the reverse "has some commendable points of heraldic imagery" and likened that side of the coin to "the frontispiece for a patriotic brochure". The Daily Alta California in May 1850 reprinted a piece from an unnamed Eastern newspaper, which said of the new piece, "we cannot say that we admire it ... [the eagle on the reverse is] imperfectly formed, and marred by some adjacent flummery intended for radiance we suppose, by which the whole thing is rendered confused". The Journal of Commerce, a New York periodical, suggested that the piece be replaced with one showing George Washington on one side and on the other "a handsome eagle standing out as if it were not ashamed of itself". The Boston Evening Transcript suggested that Mint authorities should be "stopping the issuance of this very shabby coin. The manager of the mint would seem to be utterly destitute of taste to allow such a specimen to go forth." Bowers, writing in 2004, stated that despite the negative contemporary reaction, the design of the double eagle is now very popular among collectors. ## Production ### Type I (1850–1866) The double eagle soon became the most popular gold coin in terms of the number of pieces struck. During the denomination's life, from 1850 to 1933, far more gold was struck into double eagles than into all other denominations combined. Of all gold coins struck from the start of gold coinage for circulation in 1795 to the end in 1933, just under half of the coins struck were double eagles, but 78% of the gold used was struck into twenty-dollar pieces. According to Bowers, the double eagle "represented the most efficient way to coin a given quantity of gold bullion into coin form". Regular production of the double eagle began with the striking of just over a million at Philadelphia in 1850, and 141,000 at the New Orleans Mint that year. Double eagles were struck at New Orleans every year from 1850 to 1861, generally in small quantities. In the early years of the Liberty Head double eagle, when no mint was in the Far West, some California gold was presented there for coining into double eagles. Once the San Francisco Mint opened in 1854, New Orleans mintages were light as for the most part only local gold was deposited, and there was not much of it. The Philadelphia Mint continued to receive much of the California gold. After Louisiana seceded from the Union in 1861, some of the double eagles from New Orleans that year, though bearing the standard designs, were struck under the authority of the State of Louisiana, and later, the Confederacy. That mint then closed, reopening in 1879. The branch mints at Charlotte and Dahlonega, which also closed with the Civil War, had limited coinage facilities, and struck no denomination higher than a half eagle. A shortage of gold coins occurred in California and the Far West in the early 1850s; federal authorities refused to accept gold dust for payment of customs duties and private minters soon stepped into the breach. California Senator William Gwin proposed legislation to establish assay offices in California and for the issuance of high-denomination gold coins, as large as \$10,000. Although most of his proposals were defeated, an assay office was established at San Francisco. Nevertheless, two waves of panic related to money roiled California, and in 1852, Congress established the San Francisco Mint. The first double eagle was coined there on April 3, 1854; struck in proof condition, that piece is now part of the National Numismatic Collection. Just over half of the double eagles struck between 1850 and 1933 were minted at San Francisco. Many of the high-grade San Francisco Type I double eagles known today were taken from shipwrecks, where they had rested for over a century. These ships included the SS Brother Jonathan, the SS Central America, and the SS Yankee Blade. Thousands of almost-pristine 1857 double eagles struck at San Francisco (1857-S) went down with the Central America when it sank off the East Coast of the United States that September, as did some 435 people, including Captain William Herndon. The cargo was salvaged beginning in the 1980s; once litigation over its ownership was settled, the pieces were marketed to the public. The Brother Jonathan, a luxurious paddle steamer en route from San Francisco north to Portland, sank in July 1865; few survived the wreck. The thousands of double eagles and other coins on board were salvaged beginning in 1996, and once litigation concluded, many mint state double eagles came on the market. The word "LIBERTY" on double eagles between 1850 and 1858 was originally spelled "LLBERTY" by Longacre, who converted the second L into an I; this is visible under magnification. In 1860, Assistant Engraver Anthony C. Paquet completed a revision of the reverse, with taller, narrower letters. After production had begun in early 1861 at Philadelphia and San Francisco, it was noticed that the design lacked a rim high enough to protect the design from abrasion, and the Mint went back to the old reverse. Only a handful of the Philadelphia specimens were not melted, but by the time word reached San Francisco to stop production, the western mint had issued 20,000 pieces. A Philadelphia specimen sold at auction for \$1,610,000 in August 2006, setting a record for the Liberty Head double eagle series. In February 2013, an 1866-S double eagle with no motto was discovered in the Saddle Ridge Hoard in the Gold Country on the western slope of the Sierra Nevada in California. Only a very small number of proof coins in the Liberty Head double eagle series were struck for sale to the public, beginning in 1858, at Philadelphia; Breen noted, "few collectors could afford them even then". ### Type II (1866–1876) With the nation in the midst of an internal war, in November 1861, Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase received a proposal that American coinage bear an expression of faith in God. After various wordings were considered, "In God We Trust" was placed on the new two-cent piece in 1864. The Act of March 3, 1865, that authorized the copper-nickel three-cent piece also required the motto to appear on all coins large enough to bear it. Pursuant to this mandate, Longacre began re-engraving the various denominations of U.S. coinage. In 1866, he added "In God We Trust" to all coins that did not already have it, excepting the pieces smaller in diameter than the nickel, a coin which began to be struck that year. The San Francisco Mint used up leftover double eagle reverse dies from 1865 before switching over during 1866. Longacre made the required addition to the double eagle by slightly enlarging the circle of stars on the reverse, and placing the motto within it. He took the opportunity to make other changes to the double eagle. The shield on the reverse was given rococo sides; previously they had been straight. A ninth leaf was added to the olive branch, and the shape of the leaves was changed. The finials of the scroll were made smaller though more elaborate—on the left-hand scroll, the finials impinge less on the letters "ibus" in "Pluribus" than before. The eagle's wings and tail feathers were also slightly elongated. In 1870, the Carson City Mint opened in Nevada at the urging of silver mining interests, so that ore could be refined and converted to coin locally. In addition to silver, it struck gold half eagles, eagles, and double eagles. The 1870-CC double eagle, like other coins from that mint's first year of operations, is a great rarity—only 3,789 were struck. One sold for \$414,000 at auction in March 2009. Carson City double eagles circulated for the most part only locally, since they were only struck in response to the deposit of gold bullion and the request of the depositor that it be coined into twenty-dollar pieces. Heavy production of the coin occurred in San Francisco and satisfied the needs of Californians and those in the export trade. As gold did not circulate in the East, most Philadelphia pieces of this era were either sent west, or exported and melted. In November 1872, Chief Engraver William Barber, Longacre's successor, submitted a set of logotypes to show how the following year's date would appear on the coinage. They were approved, but on January 18, 1873, Chief Coiner A. Loudon Snowden filed a written complaint, stating that the "3" in the date too closely resembled an "8". Barber was ordered to redo his work; this decision affected most denominations of U.S. coins. The differences between the "Closed 3" and "Open 3" on the double eagle are small. One difference is that on the Closed 3, the two knobs on the "3" are equal in size; on the Open 3, the upper one is somewhat smaller. All Carson City and most San Francisco issues from that year are Closed 3. ### Type III (1877–1907) In 1876, William Barber altered the double eagle's reverse, emboldening "In God We Trust". The two varieties are known as the "Heavy Motto" and "Light Motto" types. He made more extensive changes for the following year's production. He truncated Liberty's neck at a sharper angle to allow more space for the date, which was punched into the dies by hand. In Longacre's original version, the tip of Liberty's coronet is very close to the seventh star clockwise from the date; beginning in 1877, it points between the sixth and seventh stars. A more noticeable change was made to the reverse, where the denomination, formerly "Twenty D.", was spelled out as "Twenty Dollars". The phrase "E Pluribus Unum", on the ribbon that the eagle bears, was enlarged. The new dies initially created difficulties at the Mint and Barber made minor adjustments to the design over the first few months of production. Many double eagles were struck at San Francisco between 1877 and 1883. Beginning in 1881, mintage of double eagles at Philadelphia was sharply curtailed. For the seven years 1881–1887, only 4,521 were made at that mint for circulation, none being struck in 1882, 1883, and 1887. They were struck yearly in proof at Philadelphia: the 1883 (mintage 92), 1884 (71) and 1887 (121) are great rarities. The mintage of 2,325 at New Orleans in 1879, the only postwar strikings there, is unexplained—Breen suggested that the local mint superintendent might have anticipated demand for the denomination. Double eagles were unpopular in commerce in the South, as were eagles. Millions of double eagles were sent to Europe as payment in international transactions beginning in the 1880s, often in cloth bags containing 250 coins, for a total of \$5,000 per bag. In 1900, William Barber's successor as chief engraver, his son Charles E. Barber, slightly adjusted the design; other modifications to U.S. coins about that time suggest that he most likely did it as part of a plan to re-engrave all denominations. The most significant change made by Charles Barber was smoothing the back of the eagle's neck. In 1904, the Mint set records for production of double eagles: 6,256,699 at Philadelphia and 5,134,175 at San Francisco—highs for the series for those mints. The only higher production of double eagles after the Liberty Head series ended, was the figure of 8,816,000 from Philadelphia in 1928. The 1891 discovery of gold at Cripple Creek, Colorado, in 1891 led to a gold rush there. The greater availability of gold in Colorado was one reason the Denver Mint was authorized in 1904—it opened in 1906. About a dozen proofs were struck for presentation to dignitaries when production of double eagles was inaugurated at Denver on April 4, 1906. ### Replacement In 1904, President Theodore Roosevelt complained to his Secretary of the Treasury, Leslie M. Shaw, about the designs on American coinage, and enquired if a sculptor such as the President's friend, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, could be hired to provide beautiful, up-to-date designs. The following year, the Mint hired Saint-Gaudens to create new designs for the four gold pieces then being struck, as well as the cent. Other commissions delayed him, and as he became more ill with the cancer that would kill him, his work slowed. Chief Engraver Barber repeatedly objected to the design Saint-Gaudens finally submitted, which shows Liberty striding across a rocky outcrop, on the grounds that its relief was too high. After Saint-Gaudens's death on August 3, 1907, Barber produced his own, low-relief version of Saint-Gaudens's coin. Its striking began in late 1907, and it entered commerce that December—thereby putting an end to the Liberty Head double eagle series. ## Collecting Large quantities of double eagles were melted in the 1930s by the government after they were called in under President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Although many of the double eagles exported in bulk in the late 19th and early 20th centuries were melted—records show that most sent to the United Kingdom were recoined into sovereigns—millions remained in banks. Large quantities of double eagles were found in the vaults of European banks beginning in the 1940s, and were placed on the numismatic market. Many common and low-grade Liberty Head double eagles have been sold as investments, valued based on their bullion content. Type I double eagles have been recovered from shipwrecks, bringing many high-grade early specimens onto the market, with the romance of "treasure coins" increasing the public demand. In the 19th century, double eagles were little collected. Numismatists did not yet consider mint-marked coins to be distinct from those without. Even proof coins—with mintages in the dozens or low hundreds—sold on the secondary market at a slight increase from face value, and probably many were spent in hard times. In 1909, early numismatic writer Edgar H. Adams published a catalog of American gold issues. No Liberty Head double eagle was considered by Adams to be worth more than the value inscribed on it. As it became clear in the 1940s that the withdrawal of gold coins in 1933 had left several late-date Saint-Gaudens double eagles unexpectedly rare, collector interest grew in the denomination. The massive importation of double eagles held overseas once Americans were allowed to own gold again in 1974 added to the supply, but according to numismatic writer and coin dealer Bowers, "today they are of such wide popularity, fascination, and interest that the record prices achieved [at an important sale in 1949] seem like incredible bargains!" There are many ways to collect Liberty Head double eagles. Some, wishing only a few pieces, may choose one each of the three major types, or seek pieces from the five mints that struck them. Carson City double eagles are highly popular. As the 1870-CC is almost unobtainable, collectors may limit themselves to Carson City Type III pieces (1877–1893). Collectors seeking one double eagle per year of mintage will find it expensive to fill the 1886 entry, a year in which double eagles were only struck at Philadelphia, and just 1,000 business strikes and 106 proof pieces were issued. The 2015 edition of R.S. Yeoman's A Guide Book of United States Coins lists the 1886 in Very Fine condition (VF-20) at \$22,500.

Hu Zhengyan

Chinese painter, seal carver, and publisher (c. 1584 – 1674)

Hu Zhengyan (Chinese: 胡正言; c. 1584 – 1674) was a Chinese artist, printmaker and publisher. He worked in calligraphy, traditional Chinese painting, and seal-carving, but was primarily a publisher, producing academic texts as well as records of his own work. Hu lived in Nanjing during the transition from the Ming dynasty to the Qing dynasty. A Ming loyalist, he was offered a position at the rump court of the Hongguang Emperor, but declined the post, and never held anything more than minor political office. He did, however, design the Hongguang Emperor's personal seal, and his loyalty to the dynasty was such that he largely retired from society after the emperor's capture and death in 1645. He owned and operated an academic publishing house called the Ten Bamboo Studio, in which he practised various multi-colour printing and embossing techniques, and he employed several members of his family in this enterprise. Hu's work at the Ten Bamboo Studio pioneered new techniques in colour printmaking, leading to delicate gradations of colour which were not previously achievable in this art form. Hu is best known for his manual of painting entitled The Ten Bamboo Studio Manual of Painting and Calligraphy, an artist's primer which remained in print for around 200 years. His studio also published seal catalogues, academic and medical texts, books on poetry, and decorative writing papers. Many of these were edited and prefaced by Hu and his brothers. ## Biography Hu was born in Xiuning County, Anhui Province in 1584 or early 1585. Both his father and elder brother Zhengxin (正心, art name Wusuo, 無所) were physicians, and after he turned 30 he travelled with them while they practised medicine in the areas around Lu'an and Huoshan. It is commonly stated that Zhengyan himself was also a doctor, though the earliest sources attesting to this occur only in the second half of the 19th century. By 1619, Hu had moved to Nanjing where he lived with his wife Wu. Their home on Jilongshan (雞籠山, now also known as Beiji Ge), a hill located just within the northern city wall, served as a meeting-house for like-minded artists. Hu named it the Ten Bamboo Studio (Shizhuzhai, 十竹齋), after the ten bamboo plants that grew in front of the property. It functioned as the headquarters for his printing business, where he employed ten artisans including his two brothers Zhengxin and Zhengxing (正行, art name Zizhu, 子著) and his sons Qipu (其樸) and Qiyi (其毅, courtesy name 致果). During Hu's lifetime, the Ming dynasty, which had ruled China for over 250 years, was overthrown and replaced by China's last imperial dynasty, the Qing. Following the fall of the capital Beijing in 1644, remnants of the imperial family and a few ministers set up a Ming loyalist regime in Nanjing with Zhu Yousong on the throne as the Hongguang Emperor. Hu, who was noted for his seal-carving and facility with seal script, created a seal for the new Emperor. The court offered him the position of Drafter for the Secretariat (zhongshu sheren, 中書舍人) as a reward, but he did not accept the role (although he did accord himself the title of zhongshu sheren in some of his subsequent personal seals). According to Wen Ruilin's Lost History of the South (Nanjiang Yishi, 南疆繹史), prior to the Qing invasion of Nanjing Hu studied at the National University there, and whilst a student was employed by the Ministry of Rites to record official proclamations; he produced the Imperial Promotion of Minor Learning (Qin Ban Xiaoxue, 御頒小學) and the Record of Displayed Loyalty (Biaozhong Ji, 表忠記) as part of this work. As a result, he was promoted to the Ministry of Personnel and gained admittance to the Hanlin Academy, but before he could take up this appointment, Beijing had fallen to the Manchu rebellion. Since contemporaneous biographies (Wen's work was not published until 1830) make no mention of these events, it has been suggested that they were fabricated after Hu's death. Hu retired from public life and went into seclusion in 1646, after the end of the Ming dynasty. Xiao Yuncong and Lü Liuliang recorded visiting him during his later years, in 1667 and 1673 respectively. He died in poverty at the age of 90, sometime around late 1673 or early 1674. ## Seal-carving Hu Zhengyan was a noted seal-carver, producing personal seals for numerous dignitaries. His style was rooted in the classical seal script of the Han dynasty, and he followed the Huizhou school of carving founded by his contemporary He Zhen. Hu's calligraphy, although balanced and with a clear compositional structure, is somewhat more angular and rigid than the classical models he followed. Huizhou seals attempt to impart an ancient, weathered impression, although unlike other Huizhou artists Hu did not make a regular practice of artificially aging his seals. Hu's work was known outside his local area. Zhou Lianggong, a poet who lived in Nanjing around the same time as Hu and was a noted art connoisseur, stated in his Biography of Seal-Carvers (Yinren Zhuan, 印人傳) that Hu "creates miniature stone carvings with ancient seal inscriptions for travellers to fight over and treasure", implying that his carvings were popular with visitors and travellers passing through Nanjing. In 1644, Hu took it upon himself to create a new Imperial seal for the Hongguang Emperor, which he carved after a period of fasting and prayer. He presented his creation with an essay, the Great Exhortation of the Seal (Dabao Zhen, 大寶箴), in which he bemoaned the loss of the Chongzhen Emperor's seal and begged Heaven's favour in restoring it. Hu was concerned that his essay would be overlooked because he had not written it in the form of rhyming, equally-footed couplets (pianti, 駢體) used in the Imperial examinations, but his submission and the seal itself were nevertheless both accepted by the Southern Ming court. ## Ten Bamboo Studio Despite his reputation as an artist and seal-carver, Hu was primarily a publisher. His publishing house, the Ten Bamboo Studio, produced reference works on calligraphy, poetry and art; medical textbooks; books on etymology and phonetics; and copies of as well as commentaries on the Confucian Classics. Unlike other publishers in the area, the Ten Bamboo Studio did not publish works of narrative fiction such as plays or novels. This bias towards academia was likely a consequence of the studio's location: the mountain on which Hu took up residence was just to the north of the Nanjing Guozijian (National Academy), which provided a captive market for academic texts. Between 1627 and 1644, the Ten Bamboo Studio produced over twenty printed books of this kind, aimed at a wealthy, literary audience. The studio's earliest publications were medical textbooks, the first of which, Tested Prescriptions for Myriad Illnesses (Wanbing Yanfang, 萬病驗方) was published in 1631 and proved popular enough to be reissued ten years later. Hu's brother Zhengxin was a medical practitioner and appears to have been the author of these books. During the 1630s the Ten Bamboo Studio also produced political works extolling the rule of the Ming; these included the Imperial Ming Record of Loyalty (Huang Ming Biaozhong Ji, 皇明表忠紀), a biography of loyal Ming officials, and the Edicts of the Imperial Ming (Huang Ming Zhaozhi, 皇明詔制), a list of Imperial proclamations. After the fall of the Ming Dynasty, Hu renamed the studio the Hall Rooted in the Past (Digutang, 迪古堂) as a sign of his affiliation with the previous dynasty, although the Ten Bamboo imprint continued to be used. Despite Hu's withdrawal from society after 1646, the studio continued to publish well into the Qing dynasty, for the most part focussing on seal impression catalogues showcasing Hu's carving work. The Ming dynasty had seen considerable advancement in the process of colour printing in China. At his studio, Hu Zhengyan experimented with various forms of woodblock printing, creating processes for producing multi-coloured prints and embossed printed designs. As a result, he was able to produce some of China's first printed publications in colour, using a block printing technique known as "assorted block printing" (douban yinshua, 饾板印刷). This system made use of multiple blocks, each carved with a different part of the final image and each bearing a different colour. It was a lengthy, painstaking process, requiring thirty to fifty engraved printing blocks and up to seventy inkings and impressions to create a single image. Hu also employed a related form of multiple-block printing called "set-block printing" (taoban yinshua, 套板印刷), which had existed since the Yuan period some 200 years earlier but had only recently come into fashion again. He refined these block printing techniques by developing a process for wiping some of the ink off the blocks before printing; this enabled him to achieve gradation and modulation of shades which were not previously possible. In some images, Hu employed a blind embossing technique (known as "embossed designs" (gonghua, 拱花) or "embossed blocks" (gongban, 拱板), using an uninked, imprinted block to stamp designs onto paper. He used this to create white relief effects for clouds and for highlights on water or plants. This was a relatively new process, having been invented by Hu's contemporary Wu Faxiang, who was also a Nanjing-based publisher. Wu had used this technique for the first time in his book Wisteria Studio Letter Paper (Luoxuan Biangu Jianpu, 蘿軒變古箋譜), published in 1626. Both Hu and Wu used embossing to create decorative writing papers, the sale of which provided a sideline income for the Ten Bamboo Studio. ## Major works Hu's most notable work is the Ten Bamboo Studio Manual of Painting and Calligraphy (Shizhuzhai Shuhuapu, 十竹齋書畫譜), an anthology of around 320 prints by around thirty different artists (including Hu himself), published in 1633. It consists of eight sections, covering calligraphy, bamboo, flowers, rocks, birds and animals, plum blossoms, orchids and fruit. Some of these sections had been released previously as single volumes. As well as a collection of artworks, it was also intended as an artistic primer, with instructions on correct brush position and technique and several pictures designed for beginners to copy. Although these instructions only appear in the sections on orchids and bamboo, the book still remains the first example of a categorical and analytical approach to Chinese painting. In this book, Hu used his multiple-block printing methods to obtain gradations of colour in the images, rather than obvious outlines or overlaps. The manual is bound in the "butterfly binding" (hudie zhuang, 蝴蝶裝) style, whereby whole-folio illustrations are folded so that each occupies a double-page spread. This binding style allows the reader to lay the book flat in order to look at a particular image. Cambridge University Library released a complete digital scan of the manual, including all writings and illustrations in August, 2015. Said Charles Aylmer, Head of the Cambridge University Chinese Department, "The binding is so fragile, and the manual so delicate, that until it was digitized, we have never been able to let anyone look through it or study it – despite its undoubted importance to scholars." This volume went on to influence colour printing across China, where it paved the way for the later but better-known Manual of the Mustard Seed Garden (Jieziyuan Huazhuan 芥子園畫傳), and also in Japan, where it was reprinted and foreshadowed the development in ukiyo-e of the colour woodblock printing process known as nishiki-e (錦絵). The popularity of the Ten Bamboo Studio Manual was such that print runs continued to be produced all the way through to the late Qing dynasty. Hu also produced the work Ten Bamboo Studio Letter Paper (Shizhuzhai Jianpu, 十竹齋箋譜), a collection of paper samples, which made use of the gonghua stamped embossing technique to make the illustrations stand out in relief. Whilst primarily a catalogue of decorative writing papers, it also contained paintings of rocks, people, ritual vessels and other subjects. The book was bound in the "wrapped back" (baobei zhuang, 包背裝) style, in which the folio pages are folded, stacked, and sewn along the open edges. Originally published in 1644, it was reissued in four volumes between 1934 and 1941 by Zheng Zhenduo and Lu Xun, and revised and republished again in 1952. ### Other publications Other works produced by Hu's studio included a reprint of Zhou Boqi's manual of seal-script calligraphy, The Six Styles of Calligraphy, Correct and Erroneous (Liushu Zheng'e, 六書正譌) and the related Necessary Investigations into Calligraphy (Shufa Bi Ji, 書法必稽), which discussed common errors in the formation of characters. With his brother Zhengxin, Hu edited a new introductory edition of the Confucian classics, entitled The Standardised Text of the Four Books, Identified and Corrected (Sishu Dingben Bianzheng, 四書定本辨正) (1640), giving the correct formation and pronunciation of the text. A similar approach was taken with the Essentials of the Thousand Character Classic in Six Scripts (Qianwen Liushu Tongyao, 千文六書統要) (1663), which Hu compiled with the aid of his calligraphy teacher, Li Deng. It was published after Li's death, partly in homage to him. The three Hu brothers worked together to collate a student primer on poetry by their contemporary Ye Tingxiu, which was called simply the Discussion of Poetry (Shi Tan, 詩譚) (1635). Other works on poetry from the studio included Helpful Principles to the Subtle Workings of Selected Tang Poems (Leixuan Tang Shi Zhudao Weiji, 類選唐詩助道微機), which was a compilation of several works on poetry and included colophons by Hu Zhengyan himself. Among the studio's more obscure publications was a text on Chinese dominoes entitled Paitong Fuyu (牌統浮玉), written under a pseudonym but with a preface by Hu Zhengyan. ## Gallery

Vidkun Quisling

Norwegian politician, Nazi collaborator (1887–1945)

Vidkun Abraham Lauritz Jonssøn Quisling (/ˈkwɪzlɪŋ/, ; 18 July 1887 – 24 October 1945) was a Norwegian military officer, politician and Nazi collaborator who nominally headed the government of Norway during the country's occupation by Nazi Germany during World War II. He first came to international prominence as a close collaborator of the explorer Fridtjof Nansen, and through organising humanitarian relief during the Russian famine of 1921 in Povolzhye. He was posted as a Norwegian diplomat to the Soviet Union and for some time also managed British diplomatic affairs there. He returned to Norway in 1929 and served as minister of defence in the governments of Peder Kolstad (1931–32) and Jens Hundseid (1932–33) in representing the Farmers' Party. In 1933, Quisling left the Farmers' Party and founded the fascist Nasjonal Samling (National Gathering). Although he gained some popularity after his attacks on the political left, his party failed to win any seats in the Storting, and by 1940, it was still little more than peripheral. On 9 April 1940, with the German invasion of Norway in progress, he attempted to seize power in the world's first radio-broadcast coup d'état but failed since the Germans sought to convince the recognized Norwegian government to legitimize the German occupation, as had been done in Denmark during the simultaneous invasion there, instead of recognizing Quisling. On 1 February 1942, he formed a second government, approved by the Germans, and served as minister president and headed the Norwegian state administration jointly with the German civilian administrator, Josef Terboven. His pro-Nazi puppet government, known as the Quisling regime, was dominated by ministers from Nasjonal Samling. The collaborationist government participated in Germany's war efforts, and sent Jews out of the country to concentration camps in occupied Poland (General Government). Quisling was put on trial during the legal purge in Norway after World War II. He was found guilty of charges including embezzlement, murder and high treason against the Norwegian state, and was sentenced to death. He was executed by firing squad at Akershus Fortress, Oslo, on 24 October 1945. Since his death, Quisling has become one of history's most infamous traitors due to his collaboration with Nazi Germany. The term quisling has become a byword for "collaborator" or "traitor" in several languages and reflects the contempt with which Quisling's conduct has been regarded both at the time and in the present day. ## Early life ### Background Vidkun Abraham Lauritz Jonssøn Quisling () was born on 18 July 1887 in Fyresdal, in the Norwegian county of Telemark. He was the son of Church of Norway pastor and genealogist Jon Lauritz Qvisling (1844–1930) and his wife Anna Caroline Bang (1860–1941), the daughter of Jørgen Bang, ship-owner and at the time the richest man in the town of Grimstad in South Norway. The elder Quisling had lectured in Grimstad in the 1870s; one of his pupils was Bang, whom he married on 28 May 1886, following a long engagement. The newly-wed couple promptly moved to Fyresdal, where Vidkun and his younger siblings were born. The family name derives from Quislinus, a Latinised name invented by Quisling's ancestor Lauritz Ibsen Quislin (1634–1703), based on the village of Kvislemark near Slagelse, Denmark, whence he had emigrated. Having two brothers and a sister, the young Quisling was "shy and quiet but also loyal and helpful, always friendly, occasionally breaking into a warm smile." Private letters later found by historians also indicate a warm and affectionate relationship between the family members. From 1893 to 1900, his father was a chaplain for the Strømsø borough in Drammen. Here, Vidkun went to school for the first time. He was bullied by other students at the school for his Telemark dialect, but proved a successful student. In 1900, the family moved to Skien when his father was appointed provost of the city. Academically Quisling proved talented in humanities, particularly history, and natural sciences; he specialised in mathematics. At this point, however, his life had no clear direction. In 1905, Quisling enrolled at the Norwegian Military Academy, having received the highest entrance examination score of the 250 applicants that year. Transferring in 1906 to the Norwegian Military College, he graduated with the highest score since the college's inception in 1817, and was rewarded by an audience with the King. On 1 November 1911, he joined the army General Staff. Norway was neutral in the First World War; Quisling detested the peace movement, though the high human cost of the war did temper his views. In March 1918, he was sent to Russia as an attaché at the Norwegian legation in Petrograd, to take advantage of the five years he had spent studying the country. Though dismayed at the living conditions he experienced, Quisling nonetheless concluded that "the Bolsheviks have got an extraordinarily strong hold on Russian society" and marvelled at how Leon Trotsky had managed to mobilise the Red Army forces so well; he asserted that by contrast, in granting too many rights to the people of Russia, the Russian Provisional Government under Alexander Kerensky had brought about its own downfall. When the legation was recalled in December 1918, Quisling became the Norwegian military's expert on Russian affairs. ## Travels ### Paris, Eastern Europe, and Norway In September 1919, Quisling departed Norway to become an intelligence officer with the Norwegian delegation in Helsinki, a post that combined diplomacy and politics. In the autumn of 1921, Quisling left Norway once again, this time at the request of explorer and humanitarian Fridtjof Nansen, and in January 1922 arrived in the Ukrainian capital Kharkiv to help with the League of Nations humanitarian relief effort there. Highlighting the massive mismanagement of the area and the death toll of approximately ten thousand a day, Quisling produced a report that attracted aid and demonstrated his administrative skills, as well as his dogged determination to get what he wanted. On 21 August 1922, he married the Russian Alexandra Andreevna Voronina. Alexandra wrote in her memoirs that Quisling declared his love for her, but from his letters home and investigations undertaken by his cousins, it appeared that there was no romantic involvement between the two, Quisling merely seemed to have wanted to lift the girl out of poverty by providing her with a Norwegian passport and financial security. Having left Ukraine in September 1922, Quisling and Alexandra returned to Kharkiv in February 1923 to prolong aid efforts, with Nansen describing Quisling's work as "absolutely indispensable." In March 1923, Alexandra was pregnant, and Quisling insisted on her having an abortion, which greatly distressed her. Quisling found the situation much improved and, with no fresh challenges, found it a more boring trip than his last. He did however meet Maria Vasiljevna Pasetchnikova (Russian: Мари́я Васи́льевна Па́сечникова), a Ukrainian more than ten years his junior. Her diaries from the time "indicate a blossoming love affair" during the summer of 1923, despite Quisling's marriage to Alexandra the year before. She recalled that she was impressed by his fluent command of the Russian language, his Aryan appearance, and his gracious demeanour. Quisling later claimed to have married Pasetchnikova in Kharkiv on 10 September 1923, although no legal documentation has been discovered. Quisling's biographer, Dahl, believes that in all likelihood the second marriage was never official. Regardless, the couple behaved as though they were married, claimed Alexandra was their daughter, and celebrated their wedding anniversary. Soon after September 1923, the aid mission came to an end and the trio left Ukraine, planning to spend a year in Paris. Maria wanted to see Western Europe; Quisling wanted to get some rest following bouts of stomach pain that had lasted all winter. The stay in Paris required a temporary discharge from the army, which Quisling slowly grew to understand was permanent: army cutbacks meant that there would be no position available for him when he returned. Quisling devoted much of his time in the French capital to study, reading works of political theory and working on his philosophical project, which he called Universism. On 2 October 1923, he persuaded the Oslo daily newspaper Tidens Tegn to publish an article he had written calling for diplomatic recognition of the Soviet government. Quisling's stay in Paris did not last as long as planned, and in late 1923 he started work on Nansen's new repatriation project in the Balkans, arriving in Sofia in November. The next two months he spent traveling constantly with his wife Maria. In January, Maria returned to Paris to look after Alexandra, who took on the role of the couple's foster-daughter; Quisling joined them in February. In the summer of 1924, the trio returned to Norway where Alexandra subsequently left to live with an aunt in Nice and never returned. Although Quisling promised to provide for her well-being, his payments were irregular, and over the coming years he would miss a number of opportunities to visit. Back in Norway, and to his later embarrassment, Quisling found himself drawn into the communist Norwegian labour movement. Among other policies, he fruitlessly advocated a people's militia to protect the country against reactionary attacks, and asked members of the movement whether they would like to know what information the General Staff had on them, but he got no response. Although this brief attachment to the far-left seems unlikely given Quisling's later political direction, Dahl suggests that, following a conservative childhood, he was by this time "unemployed and dispirited ... deeply resentful of the General Staff ... [and] in the process of becoming politically more radical." Dahl adds that Quisling's political views at this time could be summarised as "a fusion of socialism and nationalism," with definite sympathies for the Soviets in Russia. ### Russia and the rouble scandal In June 1925, Nansen once again provided Quisling with employment. The pair began a tour of Armenia, where they hoped to help repatriate Armenians, including those who survived the Armenian Genocide, via a number of projects proposed for funding by the League of Nations. Despite Quisling's substantial efforts, however, the projects were all rejected. In May 1926, Quisling found another job with long-time friend and fellow Norwegian Frederik Prytz in Moscow, working as a liaison between Prytz and the Soviet authorities who owned half of Prytz's firm Onega Wood. He stayed in the job until Prytz prepared to close down the business in early 1927, when Quisling found new employment as a diplomat. British diplomatic affairs in Russia were being managed by Norway, and he became their new legation secretary; Maria joined him late in 1928. A massive scandal broke when Quisling and Prytz were accused of using diplomatic channels to smuggle millions of roubles onto the black markets, a much-repeated claim that was later used to support a charge of "moral bankruptcy," but neither it nor the charge that Quisling spied for the British has ever been substantiated. The harder line now developing in Russian politics led Quisling to distance himself from Bolshevism. The Soviet government had rejected outright his Armenian proposals, and obstructed an attempt by Nansen to help with the 1928 Ukrainian famine. Quisling took these rebuffs as a personal insult; in 1929, with the British now keen to take back control of their own diplomatic affairs, he left Russia. He was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for his services to Britain, an honour revoked by King George VI in 1940. By this time, Quisling had also been awarded the Romanian Crown Order and the Yugoslav Order of St. Sava for his earlier humanitarian efforts. ## Early political career ### Final return to Norway Having spent nine of the previous twelve years abroad, but with no practical experience in party politics outside the Norwegian Army, Quisling returned to Norway in December 1929, bringing with him a plan for change he termed Norsk Aktion, meaning "Norwegian Action." The planned organisation consisted of national, regional and local units with the intention of recruiting in the style of the Soviet Communist Party. Like Action Française of the French right, it advocated radical constitutional changes. The Parliament of Norway, or Storting, was to become bicameral with the second chamber made up of Soviet-style elected representatives from the working population. Quisling focused more on organisation than the practicalities of government; for instance, all members of Norsk Aktion were to have their own designation in a militaristic hierarchy. Quisling next sold a large number of antiques and works of art that he had acquired cheaply in post-revolutionary Russia. His collection stretched to some 200 paintings, including works claimed to be by Rembrandt, Goya, Cézanne and numerous other masters. The collection, including "veritable treasures," had been insured for almost 300,000 kroner. In the spring of 1930, he again joined up with Prytz, who was back in Norway. They participated in regular group meetings that included middle-aged officers and business people, since described as "the textbook definition of a Fascist initiative group," through which Prytz appeared determined to launch Quisling into politics. After Nansen died on 13 May 1930, Quisling used his friendship with the editor of the Tidens Tegn newspaper to get his analysis of Nansen onto the front page. The article was entitled "Politiske tanker ved Fridtjof Nansens død" ("Political Thoughts on the Death of Fridtjof Nansen") and was published on 24 May. In the article, he outlined ten points that would complete Nansen's vision as applied to Norway, among them "strong and just government" and a "greater emphasis on race and heredity." This theme was followed up in his new book, Russia and Ourselves (Norwegian: Russland og vi), which was serialised in Tidens Tegn during the autumn of 1930. Advocating war against Bolshevism, the openly racist book catapulted Quisling into the political limelight. Despite his earlier ambivalence, he took up a seat on the Oslo board of the previously Nansen-led Fatherland League. Meanwhile, he and Prytz founded a new political movement, Nordisk folkereisning i Norge, or "Nordic popular rising in Norway", with a central committee of 31 and Quisling as its fører – a one-man executive committee – though Quisling seemed to have had no particular attachment to the term. The first meeting of the league took place on 17 March 1931, stating the purpose of the movement was to "eliminate the imported and depraved communist insurgency." ### Defence minister Quisling left Nordisk folkereisning i Norge in May 1931 to serve as defence minister in the Agrarian government of Peder Kolstad, despite being neither an Agrarian nor a friend of Kolstad. He had been suggested to Kolstad for the post by Thorvald Aadahl, editor of the Agrarian newspaper Nationen, who was in turn influenced by Prytz. The appointment came as a surprise to many in the Parliament of Norway. Quisling's first action in the post was to deal with the aftermath of the Battle of Menstad, an "extremely bitter" labour dispute, by sending in troops. After narrowly avoiding criticism by the left wing over his handling of the dispute, and the revelation of his earlier "militia" plans, Quisling turned his attention to the perceived threat posed by communists. He created a list of the Revolutionary Trade Union Opposition leadership, who had been the alleged agitators at Menstad; a number of them were eventually charged with subversion and violence against the police. Quisling's policies also resulted in the establishment of a permanent militia called the Leidang which, unlike the body he had previously planned, was to be counter-revolutionary. Despite the ready availability of junior officers in the reserve following defence cuts, only seven units were established in 1934, and funding restrictions meant that the enterprise included less than a thousand men before it faded away. Sometime during the period 1930–33, Quisling's first wife, Asja, received notice of the annulment of her marriage to him. In mid-1932 Nordisk folkereisning i Norge was forced to confirm that even though Quisling remained in the cabinet, he would not become a member of the party. They further stated that the party programme had no basis in fascism of any kind, including the National Socialism model. This did not dampen criticism of Quisling, who remained constantly in the headlines, although he was gradually earning a reputation as a disciplined and efficient administrator. After he was attacked in his office by a knife-wielding assailant who threw ground pepper in his face on 2 February 1932, some newspapers, instead of focusing on the attack itself, suggested that the assailant had been the jealous husband of one of Quisling's cleaners; others, especially those aligned with the Labour Party, posited that the whole thing had been staged. In November 1932, Labour politician Johan Nygaardsvold put this theory to Parliament, prompting suggestions that charges of slander be brought against him. No charges were brought, and the identity of the assailant has never been confirmed. Quisling later indicated it was an attempt to steal military papers recently left by Swedish Lieutenant Colonel Wilhelm Kleen. The so-called "pepper affair" served to polarise opinion about Quisling, and government fears grew concerning reasonably open Soviet elements in Norway who had been active in promoting industrial unrest. Following Kolstad's death in March 1932, Quisling retained his post as defence minister in the second Agrarian government under Jens Hundseid for political reasons, though they remained in bitter opposition throughout. Just as he had been under Kolstad, Quisling was involved in many of the spats that characterised Hundseid's government. On 8 April that year, Quisling had a chance to defend himself over the pepper affair in Parliament, but instead used the opportunity to attack the Labour and Communist parties, claiming that named members were criminals and "enemies of our fatherland and our people." Support for Quisling from right-wing elements in Norwegian society rocketed overnight, and 153 distinguished signatories called for Quisling's claims to be investigated. In the coming months, tens of thousands of Norwegians followed suit and Quisling's summer was full of speeches to packed political rallies. In Parliament, however, Quisling's speech was viewed as political suicide; not only was his evidence weak, but questions were raised as to why the information had not been handed over much sooner if the revolutionary threat were so serious. ### Popular party leader Over the course of 1932 and into 1933, Prytz's influence over Nordisk folkereisning i Norge weakened and lawyer Johan Bernhard Hjort assumed the leadership role. Hjort was keen to work with Quisling because of his new-found popularity, and they devised a new programme of right-wing policies including proscription of revolutionary parties including those funded by foreign bodies such as Comintern, the suspension of the voting rights for people in receipt of social welfare, agricultural debt relief, and an audit of public finances. In 1932, during the Kullmann Affair, Quisling turned on the prime minister for questioning his hard-line stance over pacifist agitator Captain Olaf Kullmann. In a memorandum laying out his proposals for economic and social reform distributed to the entire cabinet, Quisling called for the prime minister to stand down. As the government began to collapse, Quisling's personal popularity reached new heights; he was referred to as "man of the year," and there were expectations of forthcoming electoral success. Despite the new programme, some of Quisling's circle still favoured a cabinet coup. He later said he had even considered the use of force to overthrow the government but, in late February, it was the Liberal Party that brought them down. With the assistance of Hjort and Prytz, Nordisk folkereisning i Norge quickly became a political party, Nasjonal Samling, or NS, literally "National Unity," ready to contest the forthcoming October election. Quisling was mildly disappointed and would have preferred to head a national movement, not just one of seven political parties. Nasjonal Samling soon afterwards announced it would support candidates from other parties if they supported its key aim of "establishing a strong and stable national government independent of ordinary party politics." Although not an overnight success in the already crowded political spectrum, the party slowly gained support. With its Nazi-inspired belief in the central authority of a strong Führer, as well as its powerful propaganda elements, it gained support from many among the Oslo upper classes, and began to give the impression that "big money" lay behind it. Increased support also materialised when the Bygdefolkets Krisehjelp, the Norwegian Farmers' Aid Association, sought financial aid from Nasjonal Samling, who in turn gained political influence and a useful existing network of well-trained party officers. Quisling's party never managed a grand anti-socialist coalition, however, in part because of competition from the Conservative Party for right-wing votes. Though Quisling remained unable to demonstrate any skill as an orator, his reputation for scandal nonetheless ensured that the electorate were aware of Nasjonal Samling's existence. As a result, the party showed only moderate success in the October elections, with 27,850 votes—approximately two per cent of the national vote, and about three and a half per cent of the vote in constituencies where it fielded candidates. This made it the fifth largest party in Norway, out-polling the Communists but not the Conservative, Labour, Liberal or Agrarian parties, and failing to secure a single seat in Parliament. ### Fører of a party in decline After the underwhelming election results, Quisling's attitude to negotiation and compromise hardened. A final attempt to form a coalition of the right in March 1934 came to nothing, and from late 1933, Quisling's Nasjonal Samling began to carve out its own form of national socialism. With no leader in Parliament, however, the party struggled to introduce the constitutional reform bill needed to achieve its lofty ambitions. When Quisling tried to introduce the bill directly, it was swiftly rejected, and the party went into decline. In the summer of 1935, headlines quoted Quisling telling opponents that "heads [would] roll" as soon as he achieved power. The threat irreparably damaged the image of his party, and over the following few months several high-ranking members resigned, including Kai Fjell and Quisling's brother Jørgen. Quisling began to familiarise himself with the international fascist movement, attending the 1934 Montreux Fascist conference in December. For his party, the association with Italian fascism could not have come at a worse time, so soon after headlines of illegal Italian incursions into Abyssinia. On his return trip from Montreux, he met Nazi ideologue and foreign policy theorist Alfred Rosenberg, and though he preferred to see his own policies as a synthesis of Italian fascism and German Nazism, by the time of the 1936 elections, Quisling had in part become the "Norwegian Hitler" that his opponents had long accused him of being. Part of this was due to his hardening anti-Semitic stance, associating Judaism with Marxism, liberalism, and, increasingly, anything else he found objectionable, and part as a result of Nasjonal Samling's growing similarity to the German Nazi Party. Despite receiving an unexpected boost when the Norwegian government acceded to Soviet demands to arrest Leon Trotsky, the party's election campaign never gained momentum. Although Quisling sincerely believed he had the support of around 100,000 voters, and declared to his party that they would win an absolute minimum of ten seats, Nasjonal Samling managed to poll just 26,577, fewer than in 1933 when they had fielded candidates in only half the districts. Under this pressure, the party split in two, with Hjort leading the breakaway group; although fewer than fifty members left immediately, many more drifted away during 1937. Dwindling party membership created many problems for Quisling, especially financial ones. For years he had been in financial difficulties and reliant on his inheritance, while increasing numbers of his paintings were found to be copies when he tried to sell them. Vidkun and his brother Arne sold one Frans Hals painting for just four thousand dollars, believing it to be a copy and not the fifty-thousand-dollar artwork they had once thought it to be, only to see it reclassified as an original and revalued at a hundred thousand dollars. In the difficult circumstances of the Great Depression, even originals did not raise as much as Quisling had hoped. His disillusionment with Norwegian society was furthered by news of the planned constitutional reform of 1938, which would extend the parliamentary term from three to four years with immediate effect, a move Quisling bitterly opposed. ## World War II ### Coming of war In 1939, Quisling turned his attention towards Norway's preparations for the anticipated European war, which he believed involved a drastic increase in the country's defence spending to guarantee its neutrality. Meanwhile, Quisling presented lectures entitled "The Jewish problem in Norway" and supported Adolf Hitler in what appeared to be growing future conflict. Despite condemning Kristallnacht, he sent the German leader a fiftieth-birthday greeting thanking him for "saving Europe from Bolshevism and Jewish domination". Quisling also contended that should an Anglo-Russian alliance make neutrality impossible, Norway would have "to go with Germany." Invited to the country in the summer of 1939, he began a tour of a number of German and Danish cities. He was received particularly well in Germany, which promised funds to boost Nasjonal Samling's standing in Norway, and hence spread pro-Nazi sentiment. When war broke out on 1 September 1939, Quisling felt vindicated by both the event and the immediate superiority displayed by the German army. He remained outwardly confident that, despite its size, his party would soon become the centre of political attention. For the next nine months, Quisling continued to lead a party that was at best peripheral to Norwegian politics. He was nonetheless active, and in October 1939 he worked with Prytz on an ultimately unsuccessful plan for peace between Britain, France and Germany and their eventual participation in a new economic union. Quisling also mused on how Germany ought to go on the offensive against its ally the Soviet Union, and on 9 December travelled to Germany to present his multi-faceted plans. After impressing German officials, he won an audience with Hitler himself, scheduled for 14 December, whereupon he received firm advice from his contacts that the most useful thing he could do would be to ask for Hitler's help with a pro-German coup in Norway, that would let the Germans use Norway as a naval base. Thereafter, Norway would maintain official neutrality as long as possible, and finally the country would fall under German rather than British control. It is not clear how much Quisling himself understood about the strategic implications of such a move, and he instead relied on his future Minister of Domestic Affairs Albert Hagelin, who was fluent in German, to put the relevant arguments to German officials in Berlin during pre-meeting talks, even though Hagelin was prone to damaging exaggeration at times. Quisling and his German contacts almost certainly went away with different views as to whether they had agreed upon the necessity of a German invasion. On 14 December 1939, Quisling met Hitler. The German leader promised to respond to any British invasion of Norway (Plan R 4), perhaps pre-emptively, with a German counter-invasion, but found Quisling's plans for both a Norwegian coup and an Anglo-German peace unduly optimistic. Nonetheless, Quisling would still receive funds to bolster Nasjonal Samling. The two men met again four days later, and afterwards Quisling wrote a memorandum that explicitly told Hitler that he did not consider himself a National Socialist. As German machinations continued, Quisling was intentionally kept in the dark. He was also incapacitated by a severe bout of illness, probably nephritis in both kidneys, for which he refused hospitalisation. Though he returned to work on 13 March 1940, he remained ill for several weeks. In the meantime, the Altmark incident complicated Norway's efforts to maintain its neutrality. Hitler himself remained in two minds over whether an occupation of Norway should require an invitation from the Norwegian government. Finally, Quisling received his summons on 31 March, and reluctantly travelled to Copenhagen to meet with Nazi intelligence officers who asked him for information on Norwegian defences and defence protocols. He returned to Norway on 6 April and, on 8 April, the British Operation Wilfred commenced, bringing Norway into the war. With Allied forces in Norway, Quisling expected a characteristically swift German response. ### German invasion and coup d'état In the early hours of 9 April 1940, Germany invaded Norway by air and sea in "Operation Weserübung", or "Operation Weser Exercise", intending to capture King Haakon VII and the government of Prime Minister Johan Nygaardsvold. However, alert to the possibility of invasion, Conservative President of the Parliament C. J. Hambro arranged for their evacuation to Hamar in the east of the country. The Blücher, a German cruiser which carried most of the personnel intended to take over Norway's administration, was sunk by cannon fire and torpedoes from Oscarsborg Fortress in the Oslofjord. The Germans had expected the government to surrender and to have its replacement ready; neither happened, although the invasion itself continued. After hours of discussion, Quisling and his German counterparts decided that an immediate coup was necessary, though this was not the preferred option either of Germany's ambassador Curt Bräuer or of the German Foreign Ministry. In the afternoon, German liaison-person Hans-Wilhelm Scheidt told Quisling that should he set up a government, it would have Hitler's personal approval. Quisling drew up a list of ministers and, although the legitimate government had merely relocated some 150 kilometres (93 mi) to Elverum, accused it of having "fled". Meanwhile, the Germans occupied Oslo and at 17:30 Norwegian radio (NRK) ceased broadcasting at the request of the occupying forces. With German support, at approximately 19:30, Quisling entered the NRK studios in Oslo and proclaimed the formation of a new government with himself as prime minister. He also revoked an earlier order to mobilise against the German invasion. He still lacked legitimacy. Two of his orders—the first to his friend Colonel Hans Sommerfeldt Hiorth, the commanding officer of the army regiment at Elverum, to arrest the government, and the second to Kristian Welhaven, Oslo's chief of police—were both ignored. At 22:00, Quisling resumed broadcasting, repeating his earlier message and reading out a list of new ministers. Hitler lent his support as promised, and recognised the new Norwegian government under Quisling within 24 hours. Norwegian batteries were still firing on the German invasion force, and at 03:00 on 10 April, Quisling acceded to a German request to halt the resistance of the Bolærne fortress. As a result of actions such as these, it was claimed at the time that Quisling's seizure of power in a puppet government had been part of the German plan all along. Quisling now reached the high-water mark of his political power. On 10 April, Bräuer travelled to Elverum where the legitimate Nygaardsvold government now sat. On Hitler's orders, he demanded that King Haakon appoint Quisling head of a new government, thereby securing a peaceful transition of power. Haakon rejected this demand. He went further in a meeting with his cabinet, letting it be known that he would sooner abdicate than appoint any government headed by Quisling. Hearing this, the government unanimously voted to support the king's stance, and urged the people to continue their resistance. With his popular support gone, Quisling ceased to be of use to Hitler. Germany retracted its support for his rival government, preferring instead to build up its own independent governing commission. In this way, Quisling was manoeuvred out of power by Bräuer and a coalition of his former allies, including Hjort, who now saw him as a liability. Even his political allies, including Prytz, deserted him. In return, Hitler wrote to Quisling thanking him for his efforts and guaranteeing him some sort of position in the new government. The transfer of power on these terms was duly enacted on 15 April, with Hitler still confident the Administrative Council would receive the backing of the king. Quisling's domestic and international reputation both hit new lows, casting him as both a traitor and a failure. ### Head of the government Once the king had declared the German commission unlawful, it became clear that he would never be won over. An impatient Hitler appointed a German, Josef Terboven, as the new Norwegian reichskommissar, or governor-general, on 24 April, reporting directly to him. Despite Hitler's assurances, Terboven wanted to make sure that there would be no room in the government for the Nasjonal Samling nor its leader Quisling, with whom he did not get along. Terboven eventually accepted a certain Nasjonal Samling presence in the government during June, but remained unconvinced about Quisling. As a result, on 25 June, Terboven forced Quisling to step down as leader of the Nasjonal Samling and take a temporary leave of absence in Germany. Quisling remained there until 20 August, while Rosenberg and Admiral Erich Raeder, whom he had met on his earlier visit to Berlin, negotiated on his behalf. In the end, Quisling returned "in triumph," having won Hitler over in a meeting on 16 August. The Reichskommissar would now have to accommodate Quisling as leader of the government, then allow him to rebuild the Nasjonal Samling and bring more of his men into the cabinet. Terboven complied and addressed the Norwegian people in a radio broadcast in which he asserted that the Nasjonal Samling would be the only political party allowed. As a result, by the end of 1940 the monarchy had been suspended, although the Parliament of Norway and a body resembling a cabinet remained. The Nasjonal Samling, the only pro-German party, would be cultivated, but Terboven's Reichskommissariat would keep power in the meantime. Quisling would serve as acting prime minister and ten of the thirteen "cabinet" ministers were to come from his party. He set out on a programme of wiping out "the destructive principles of the French Revolution", including pluralism and parliamentary rule. This reached into local politics, whereby mayors who switched their allegiance to the Nasjonal Samling were rewarded with much greater powers. Investments were made in heavily censored cultural programmes, though the press remained theoretically free. To bolster the survival chances of the Nordic genotype, contraception was severely restricted. Quisling's party experienced a rise in membership to a little over 30,000, but despite his optimism it was never to pass the 40,000 mark. On 5 December 1940, Quisling flew to Berlin to negotiate the future of Norway's independence. By the time he returned on 13 December, he had agreed to raise volunteers to fight with the German Schutzstaffel (SS). In January, SS head Heinrich Himmler travelled to Norway to oversee preparations. Quisling clearly believed that if Norway supported Nazi Germany on the battlefield, there would be no reason for Germany to annex it. To this end, he opposed plans to have a German SS brigade loyal only to Hitler installed in Norway. In the process, he also toughened his attitude to the country harbouring the exiled king, the United Kingdom, which he no longer saw as a Nordic ally. Finally, Quisling aligned Norwegian policy on Jews with that of Germany, giving a speech in Frankfurt on 26 March 1941 in which he argued for compulsory exile, but warned against extermination. In May, Quisling was shattered by the death of his mother Anna, as the two had been particularly close. At the same time, the political crisis over Norwegian independence deepened, with Quisling threatening Terboven with his resignation over the issue of finance. In the end, the Reichskommissar agreed to compromise on the issue, but Quisling had to concede on the SS issue: A brigade was formed, but as a branch of the Nasjonal Samling. Meanwhile, the government line hardened, with Communist Party leaders arrested and trade unionists intimidated. On 10 September 1941, Viggo Hansteen and Rolf Wickstrøm were executed and many more imprisoned following the milk strike in Oslo. Hansteen's execution was later seen as a watershed moment, dividing the occupation into its more innocent and more deadly phases. The same year Statspolitiet ("the State Police"), abolished in 1937, was reestablished to assist the Gestapo in Norway, and radio sets were confiscated across the country. Though these were all Terboven's decisions, Quisling agreed with them and went on to denounce the government-in-exile as "traitors." As a result of the toughened stance, an informal "ice front" emerged, with Nasjonal Samling supporters ostracised from society. Quisling remained convinced this was an anti-German sentiment that would fade away once Berlin had handed power over to Nasjonal Samling. However, the only concessions he won in 1941 were having the heads of ministries promoted to official ministers of the government and independence for the party secretariat. In January 1942, Terboven announced the German administration would be wound down. Soon afterwards he told Quisling that Hitler had approved the transfer of power, scheduled for 30 January. Quisling remained doubtful it would happen, since Germany and Norway were in the midst of complex peace negotiations that could not be completed until peace had been reached on the Eastern Front, while Terboven insisted that the Reichskommissariat would remain in power until such peace came about. Quisling could nevertheless be reasonably confident that his position within the party and with Berlin was unassailable, even if he was unpopular within Norway, something of which he was well aware. After a brief postponement, an announcement was made on 1 February 1942, detailing how the cabinet had elected Quisling to the post of minister president of the national government. The appointment was accompanied by a banquet, rallying, and other celebrations by the Nasjonal Samling members. In his first speech, Quisling committed the government to closer ties with Germany. The only change to the Constitution was the reinstatement of the ban on Jewish entry into Norway, which had been abolished in 1851. ### Minister President His new position gave Quisling a security of tenure he had not previously enjoyed, although the Reichskommissariat remained outside his control. A month later, in February 1942, Quisling made his first state visit to Berlin. It was a productive trip, in which all key issues of Norwegian independence were discussed—but Joseph Goebbels in particular remained unconvinced of Quisling's credentials, noting that it was "unlikely" he would "...ever make a great statesman." Back at home, Quisling was now less concerned about Nasjonal Samling's membership and even wanted action to clean up the membership list, including purging it of drunkards. On 12 March 1942, Norway officially became a one-party state. In time, criticism of, and resistance to, the party was criminalised, though Quisling expressed regret for having to take this step, hoping that every Norwegian would freely come around to accepting his government. This optimism was short-lived. In the course of the summer of 1942, Quisling lost any ability he might have had to sway public opinion by attempting to force children into the Nasjonal Samlings Ungdomsfylking youth organisation, which was modelled on the Hitler Youth. This move prompted a mass resignation of teachers from their professional body and churchmen from their posts, along with large-scale civil unrest. His attempted indictment of Bishop Eivind Berggrav proved similarly controversial, even amongst his German allies. Quisling now toughened his stance, telling Norwegians that they would have the new regime forced upon them "whether they like it or not." On 1 May 1942, the German High Command noted that "organised resistance to Quisling has started" and Norway's peace talks with Germany stalled as a result. On 11 August 1942, Hitler postponed any further peace negotiations until the war ended. Quisling was admonished and learned that Norway would not get the independence he so greatly yearned for. As an added insult, for the first time he was forbidden to write letters directly to Hitler. Quisling had earlier pushed for a corporate alternative to the Parliament of Norway, the Storting, which he called a Riksting. It would comprise two chambers, the Næringsting (Economic Chamber) and Kulturting (Cultural Chamber). Now, in advance of Nasjonal Samling's eighth and last national convention on 25 September 1942 and becoming increasingly distrustful of professional bodies, he changed his mind. The Riksting became an advisory body while the Førerting, or Leader Council, and parliamentary chambers were now to be independent bodies subordinate to their respective ministries. After the convention, support for Nasjonal Samling, and Quisling personally, ebbed away. Increased factionalism and personal losses, including the accidental death of fellow politician Gulbrand Lunde, were compounded by heavy-handed German tactics, such as the shooting of ten well-known residents of Trøndelag and its environs in October 1942. In addition, the lex Eilifsen ex-post facto law of August 1943, which led to the first death sentence passed by the regime, was widely seen as a blatant violation of the Constitution and a sign of Norway's increasing role in the Final Solution, would destroy everything the convention had achieved in terms of boosting party morale. With government abatement and Quisling's personal engagement, Jews were registered in a German initiative of January 1942. On 26 October 1942, German forces, with help from the Norwegian police, arrested 300 registered male Jews in Norway and sent them to concentration camps, most in Berg and manned by Hirden, the paramilitary wing of Nasjonal Samling. Most controversially, the Jews' property was confiscated by the state. On 26 November, the detainees were deported, along with their families. Although this was an entirely German initiative—Quisling himself was left unaware of it, although government assistance was provided—Quisling led the Norwegian public to believe that the first deportation of Jewish people, to camps in Nazi-German occupied Poland, was his idea. A further 250 were deported in February 1943, and it remains unclear what the party's official position was on the eventual fate of the 759 Norwegian deportees. There is evidence to suggest that Quisling honestly believed the official line throughout 1943 and 1944 that they were awaiting repatriation to a new Jewish homeland in Madagascar. At the same time, Quisling believed that the only way he could win back Hitler's respect would be to raise volunteers for the now-faltering German war effort, and he committed Norway wholeheartedly to German plans to wage total war. For him at least, after the German defeat at Stalingrad in February 1943, Norway now had a part to play in keeping the German empire strong. In April 1943, Quisling delivered a scathing speech attacking Germany's refusal to outline its plans for post-war Europe. When he put this to Hitler in person, the Nazi leader remained unmoved despite Norway's contributions to the war effort. Quisling felt betrayed over this postponement of Norwegian freedom, an attitude that waned only when Hitler eventually committed to a free post-war Norway in September 1943. Quisling tired during the final years of the war. In 1942 he passed 231 laws, 166 in 1943, and 139 in 1944. Social policy was the one area that still received significant attention. By that autumn, Quisling and Mussert in the Netherlands could be satisfied they had at least survived. In 1944, the weight problems Quisling had been having during the preceding two years also eased. Despite the increasingly dire military outlook in 1943 and 1944, Nasjonal Samling's position at the head of the government, albeit with its ambiguous relationship to the Reichskommissariat, remained unassailable. Nevertheless, the Germans exerted increasing control over law and order in Norway. Following the deportation of the Jews, Germany deported Norwegian officers and finally attempted to deport students from the University of Oslo. Even Hitler was incensed by the scale of the arrests. Quisling became entangled in a similar debacle in early 1944 when he forced compulsory military service on elements of the Hirden, causing a number of members to resign to avoid being drafted. On 20 January 1945, Quisling made what would be his final trip to visit Hitler. He promised Norwegian support in the final phase of the war if Germany agreed to a peace deal that would remove Norway's affairs from German intervention. This proposal grew out of a fear that as German forces retreated southwards through Norway, the occupation government would have to struggle to keep control in northern Norway. To the horror of the Quisling regime, the Nazis instead decided on a scorched earth policy in northern Norway, going so far as to shoot Norwegian civilians who refused to evacuate the region. The period was also marked by increasing civilian casualties from Allied air raids, and mounting resistance to the government within occupied Norway. The meeting with the German leader proved unsuccessful and upon being asked to sign the execution order of thousands of Norwegian "saboteurs," Quisling refused, an act of defiance that so enraged Terboven, acting on Hitler's orders, that he stormed out of the negotiations. On recounting the events of the trip to a friend, Quisling broke down in tears, convinced the Nazi refusal to sign a peace agreement would seal his reputation as a traitor. Quisling spent the last months of the war trying to prevent Norwegian deaths in the showdown that was developing between German and Allied forces in Norway. The regime worked for the safe repatriation of Norwegians held in German prisoner-of-war camps. Privately, Quisling had long accepted that National Socialism would be defeated. Hitler's suicide on 30 April 1945 left him free to pursue publicly his chosen end-game, a naïve offer of a transition to a power-sharing government with the government-in-exile. On 7 May, Quisling ordered police not to offer armed resistance to the Allied advance except in self-defence or against overt members of the Norwegian resistance movement. The same day, Germany announced it would surrender unconditionally, making Quisling's position untenable. A realist, Quisling met military leaders of the resistance on the following day to discuss how he would be arrested. Quisling declared whilst he did not want to be treated as a common criminal, he did not want preferential treatment compared to his Nasjonal Samling colleagues. He argued he could have kept his forces fighting until the end, but had chosen not to so as to avoid turning "Norway into a battlefield." Instead, he tried to ensure a peaceful transition. In return, the resistance offered full trials for all accused Nasjonal Samling members after the war, and its leadership agreed he could be incarcerated in a house rather than a prison complex. ## Arrest The civil leadership of the resistance, represented by lawyer Sven Arntzen, demanded Quisling be treated like any other murder suspect and, on 9 May 1945, Quisling and his ministers turned themselves in to police. Quisling was transferred to Cell 12 in Møllergata 19, the main police station in Oslo. The cell was equipped with a tiny table, a basin, and a hole in the wall for a toilet bucket. After ten weeks being constantly watched to prevent suicide attempts in police custody, he was transferred to Akershus Fortress and awaited trial as part of the legal purge. He soon started working on his case with Henrik Bergh, a lawyer with a good track record but largely unsympathetic, at least initially, to Quisling's plight. Bergh did, however, believe Quisling's testimony that he tried to act in the best interests of Norway and decided to use this as a starting point for the defence. Initially, Quisling's charges related to the coup, including his revocation of the mobilisation order, to his time as Nasjonal Samling leader and to his actions as minister president, such as assisting the enemy and illegally attempting to alter the constitution. Finally, he was accused of Gunnar Eilifsen's murder. Whilst not contesting the key facts, he denied all charges on the grounds that he had always worked for a free and prosperous Norway, and submitted a sixty-page response. On 11 July 1945, a further indictment was brought, adding a raft of new charges, including more murders, theft, embezzlement and, most worrying of all for Quisling, the charge of conspiring with Hitler over the invasion and occupation of Norway. ## Trial and execution The trial opened on 20 August 1945. Quisling's defence rested on downplaying his unity with Germany and stressing that he had fought for total independence, something that seemed completely contrary to the recollections of many Norwegians. From that point on, wrote biographer Dahl, Quisling had to tread a "fine line between truth and falsehood," and emerged from it "an elusive and often pitiful figure." He misrepresented the truth on several occasions and the truthful majority of his statements won him few advocates in the country at large, where he remained almost universally despised. In the later days of the trial, Quisling's health suffered, largely as a result of the number of medical tests to which he was subjected, and his defence faltered. The prosecution's final speech placed responsibility for the Final Solution being carried out in Norway at the feet of Quisling, using the testimony of German officials. The prosecutor Annæus Schjødt called for the death penalty, using laws introduced by the government-in-exile in October 1941 and January 1942. Speeches by both Bergh and Quisling himself could not change the outcome. When the verdict was announced on 10 September 1945, Quisling was convicted on all but a handful of minor charges and sentenced to death. An October appeal to the Supreme Court was rejected. The court process was judged to be "a model of fairness" in a commentary by author Maynard Cohen. After giving testimony in a number of other trials of Nasjonal Samling members, Quisling was executed by firing squad at Akershus Fortress at 02:40 on 24 October 1945. His last words before being shot were, "I'm convicted unfairly and I die innocent." After his death his body was cremated, leaving the ashes to be interred in Fyresdal. ## Legacy His wife Maria lived in Oslo until her death in 1980. They had no children. Upon her death, she donated all their Russian antiques to a charitable fund that still operated in Oslo as of August 2017. For most of his later political career, Quisling lived in a mansion on Bygdøy in Oslo that he called "Gimle," after the place in Norse mythology where survivors of the great battle of Ragnarök were to live. The house, later renamed Villa Grande, in time became a Holocaust museum. The Nasjonal Samling movement was wiped out as a political force in Norway and Quisling has become one of the most written-about Norwegians of all time. The word quisling became a synonym for traitor. The term was coined by the British newspaper The Times in its lead of 15 April 1940, titled "Quislings everywhere." The noun survived, and for a while during and after World War II, the back-formed verb to quisle /ˈkwɪzəl/ was used. One who was quisling was in the act of committing treason. ## Personality To his supporters, Quisling was regarded as a conscientious administrator of the highest order, knowledgeable and with an eye for detail. He was believed to care deeply about his people and maintained high moral standards throughout. To his opponents, Quisling was unstable and undisciplined, abrupt, even threatening. Quite possibly he was both, at ease among friends and under pressure when confronted with his political opponents, and generally shy and retiring with both. During formal dinners he often said nothing at all except for the occasional cascade of dramatic rhetoric. Indeed, he did not react well to pressure and would often let slip over-dramatic sentiments when put on the spot. Normally open to criticism, he was prone to assuming larger groups were conspiratorial. Post-war interpretations of Quisling's character are similarly mixed. After the war, collaborationist behaviour was popularly viewed as a result of mental deficiency, leaving the personality of the clearly more intelligent Quisling an "enigma". He was instead seen as weak, paranoid, intellectually sterile, and power-hungry: ultimately "muddled rather than thoroughly corrupted". As quoted by Dahl, psychiatrist Professor Gabriel Langfeldt stated Quisling's ultimate philosophical goals "fitted the classic description of the paranoid megalomaniac more exactly than any other case [he had] ever encountered." During his time in office, Quisling arose early, often having completed several hours of work before arriving at the office between 9:30 and 10:00. He liked to intervene in virtually all government matters, reading all letters addressed to him or his chancellery personally and marking a surprising number for action. Quisling was independent minded, made several key decisions on the spot and, unlike his German counterpart, he liked to follow procedure to ensure that government remained "a dignified and civilised" affair throughout. He took a personal interest in the administration of Fyresdal, where he was born. He rejected German racial supremacy and instead saw the Norwegian race as the progenitor of Northern Europe, tracing his own family tree in his spare time. Party members did not receive preferential treatment, though Quisling did not himself share in the wartime hardships of his fellow Norwegians. Nevertheless, many gifts went unused and he did not live extravagantly. ## Religious and philosophical views Quisling was interested in science, eastern religions and metaphysics, eventually building up a library that included the works of Spinoza, Kant, Hegel and Schopenhauer. He kept up with developments in the realm of quantum physics, but did not keep up with more current philosophical ideas. He blended philosophy and science into what he called Universism, or Universalism, which was a unified explanation of everything. His original writings stretched to a claimed two thousand pages. He rejected the basic teachings of orthodox Christianity and established a new theory of life, which he called Universism, a term borrowed from a textbook which Jan Jakob Maria de Groot had written on Chinese philosophy. De Groot's book argued that Taoism, Confucianism and Buddhism were all part of a world religion that De Groot called Universism. Quisling described how his philosophy "... followed from the universal theory of relativity, of which the specific and general theories of relativity are special instances." His magnum opus was divided into four parts: an introduction, a description of mankind's apparent progression from individual to increasing complex consciousnesses, a section on his tenets of morality and law, and a final section on science, art, politics, history, race and religion. The conclusion was to be titled The World's Organic Classification and Organisation, but the work remained unfinished. Generally, Quisling worked on it infrequently during his time in politics. The biographer Hans Fredrik Dahl describes this as "fortunate" since Quisling would "never have won recognition" as a philosopher. During his trial and particularly after being sentenced, Quisling became interested once more in Universism. He saw the events of the war as part of the move towards the establishment of God's kingdom on earth and justified his actions in those terms. During the first week of October, he wrote a fifty-page document titled Universistic Aphorisms, which represented "... an almost ecstatic revelation of truth and the light to come, which bore the mark of nothing less than a prophet." The document was also notable for its attack on the materialism of Nazism. In addition, he simultaneously worked on a sermon, Eternal Justice, which reiterated his key beliefs, including reincarnation. ## Works ### In Norwegian #### Articles and speeches ## See also - Førergarde, Quisling's personal guard - Philippe Pétain, French Marshal whose name has been used to mean "traitor" - Andrey Vlasov, Soviet general whose name has been used to mean "traitor" - Mir Jafar, ruler of Bengal whose name has been used to mean "traitor" - Robert Lundy, Scottish army officer whose name has been used to mean "traitor" - Wang Jingwei, Chinese politician whose name has been used to mean "traitor" - Benedict Arnold, American officer whose name has been used to mean "traitor" - Judas, Apostle whose name has been used to mean "traitor"

Doolittle (album)

1989 studio album by Pixies

Doolittle is the second studio album by the American alternative rock band Pixies, released in April 1989 on 4AD. Doolittle was the Pixies' first international release, with Elektra Records as the album's distributor in the United States and PolyGram in Canada. The album's lyrics invoke surrealist imagery, refer to instances of biblical violence, and allude to themes of torture and death. "Doolittle" has been considered as one of the quintessential albums of the 1980s, and continued to sell consistently since its release. The album itself reached number eight on the UK Albums Chart. It was certified gold in 1995 and Platinum in 2018 by the Recording Industry Association of America. Pixies released two singles from the album: "Here Comes Your Man" and "Monkey Gone to Heaven", both of which reached the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart in the US, while tracks such as "Debaser" and "Hey" remain critical favourites. Numerous music publications have ranked it as one of the top albums of the 1980s, and it has been cited as an inspiration for many alternative rock artists. ## Background Following their 1988 album Surfer Rosa, which was well received in England but not in the United States, the band embarked on a European tour with fellow Bostonians Throwing Muses. In July 1988, versions of the songs that would appear on Doolittle—including "Dead", "Hey", "Tame" and "There Goes My Gun"—were recorded during several sessions for John Peel's radio show in 1988, and "Hey" appeared on a free EP circulated with a 1988 edition of Sounds. `In mid-1988 the Pixies began to record demo sessions while on breaks from touring. The band headed to the Boston recording studio Eden Sound, located in the basement of a hair salon. They recorded at the studio for a week, similar to the previous year's Purple Tape sessions. Black Francis, the group's frontman and principal songwriter, gave the demo tape and upcoming album the provisional title of Whore, later claiming that he meant it "in the more traditional sense ... the operatic, biblical sense, ... as in the great whore of Babylon". After completing the demo tape, band manager Ken Goes suggested two producers for the album: Liverpudlian Gil Norton and American Ed Stasium. The band had previously worked with Norton while recording the single version of "Gigantic" in May 1988. Francis had no preference. Ivo Watts-Russell, head of the band's label 4AD, chose Norton to produce the next album. Norton arrived in Boston in mid October 1988 and had Francis come over to his temporary apartment to review the album's demos. The two spent two days analyzing the song structures and arrangements. They spent a further two weeks in pre-production while Norton familiarize himself with the Pixies' sound.` ## Recording and production Recording sessions for the album began on October 31, 1988, at Downtown Recorders in Boston, Massachusetts, which was at the time a professional 24-track studio. 4AD allotted the Pixies a budget of \$40,000 (approximately \$ today), excluding producer's fees. This was a modest sum for a 1980s major label album; however, it quadrupled the amount spent on the band's previous album, Surfer Rosa. Along with Norton, two assistant recording engineers and two second assistants were assigned to the project. The sessions lasted three weeks, concluding on November 23. Production and mixing began on November 28. The band relocated to Carriage House Studios, a residential studio in Stamford, Connecticut, to oversee production and record further tracks. Norton recruited Steven Haigler as mixing engineer, whom he had worked with at Fort Apache Studios. During production, Haigler and Norton added layers of guitars and vocals to songs, including overdubbed guitars on "Debaser" and double tracked vocals on "Wave of Mutilation". During the recordings, Norton advised Francis to alter several songs; a noted example being "There Goes My Gun", which was originally intended as a much faster, Hüsker Dü-style song. At Norton's advice, Francis slowed down the tempo. Norton's suggestions were not always welcome, and several instances of advice to add verses and increase track length contributed to the Francis's building frustration. Once, he took Norton to a record store and handed him a copy of a Buddy Holly greatest hits album in which most of the songs are around two minutes or three minutes long, justifying why his songs should be kept short. Francis later expressed that Norton was trying to give the band a more commercial sound and Francis wanted to keep it more grunge-like. Production continued until December 12, 1988, with Norton and Haigler adding extra effects, including gated reverb to the mix. The master tapes were then sent for final post-production later that month. During the recording of Doolittle, tensions between Francis and Deal became visible to band members and the production team. Bickering and standoffs between the two marred the recording sessions and led to increased stress among the band members. John Murphy, Deal's husband at the time, later recalled that, with Doolittle, the band dynamic "went from just all fun to work". Exhaustion from touring and from releasing three records in two years contributed to the friction. The friction between Francis and Deal culminated at the end of the US post-Doolittle "Fuck or Fight" tour, and they did not attend their end-of-tour party. Soon afterwards, the band announced that they were going on hiatus. ## Composition ### Music Francis wrote all the material for Doolittle with the exception of "Silver", which he co-wrote with Kim Deal. The album features an eclectic mix of musical styles. "Crackity Jones" has a distinctly Spanish sound, incorporating G and A triads over a C pedal. The song's rhythm guitar, played by Francis, starts with an eighth-note downstroke typical of punk rock. "Tame"'s three chord bass progression is overlaid by Joey Santiago's "Hendrix chord", and pivots on a sudden shift from quiet to loud, a signature Pixie dynamic. In contrast, "Monkey Gone to Heaven" features cellos and violins. ### Lyrics The lyrics explore a variety of violent topics: the opening song, "Debaser", mentions slicing eyes and the closing song, "Gouge Away", ends with everyone dying in a crush. Black Francis often claimed that Doolittles lyrics were words which just "fit together nicely", and that "the point [of the album] is to experience it, to enjoy it, to be entertained by it". "Debaser" contains references to surrealism; the lyrics "slicing up eyeballs" refers to Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí's 1929 film Un Chien Andalou. Surrealism influenced Francis in his college years and throughout his career with the Pixies. Describing its influence on his songwriting method, he said "I got into avant-garde movies and Surrealism as an escape from reality. ... To me, Surrealism is totally artificial. I recently read an interview with the director David Lynch who said he had ideas and images but that he didn't know exactly what they meant. That's how I write." "Monkey Gone to Heaven" describes the human-caused environmental catastrophe in the ocean, As Francis put it: "On one hand, it's this big organic toilet. Things get flushed and repurified or decomposed and it's this big, dark, mysterious place. It's also a very mythological place where there are octopus's gardens, the Bermuda Triangle, Atlantis, and mermaids." The song's lyrics question humanity's place in the universe. The following song, "Mr. Grieves" takes the theme of destruction further, suggesting the human race it doomed to extinction. Francis described "Wave of Mutilation" as being about "Japanese businessmen doing murder-suicides with their families because they'd failed in business, and they're driving off a pier into the ocean." Imagery of the drowning and the sea are also used in "Mr. Grieves" and "Monkey Gone to Heaven". Two of the songs are based Old Testament stories of sex and death: the story of David and Bathsheba in "Dead", and Samson and Delilah in "Gouge Away". Francis' fascination with Biblical themes can be traced back to his teenage years; when he was twelve, he and his parents joined an evangelical church linked to the Assemblies of God. The themes also influenced the lyrics of "Monkey Gone to Heaven", the Devil being "six" and God being "seven". The lyrics for "Crackity Jones" allude to Francis' roommate during a student exchange trip to San Juan, Puerto Rico, whom he described as a "weird psycho gay roommate". "La La Love You", which was sung by the band's drummer David Lovering, is seen as a satire of love songs. Its tongue-in-cheek vocal style and simplistic lyrics (including the line "first base, second base, third base, home run") were a crude joke about sex. Francis asked Lovering to provide vocals so it would be "a Ringo thing". Lovering initially refused, but according to Norton Francis was soon unable to "get him away from the microphone". ### Artwork and title The artwork was designed by photographer Simon Larbalestier and graphic artist Vaughan Oliver who had worked on the Pixies' previous albums, Come on Pilgrim and Surfer Rosa. Larbalestier stated Doolittle was the first album where he and Oliver had access to the lyrics, which according to Larbalestier "made a fundamental difference", and he, like Francis, was interested in early surrealism. The artwork was designed by photographer Simon Larbalestier and graphic artist Vaughan Oliver who had worked on the Pixies' previous albums, Come on Pilgrim and Surfer Rosa. Larbalestier stated Doolittle was the first album where he and Oliver had access to the lyrics, which "made a fundamental difference" Larbalestier said that both Oliver and Francis supported the dark, macabre, and surreal images to illustrate the album. These were photographs constructed by juxtaposing two principle elements, such as a bell and teeth. Images included: Monkey Gone to Heaven, with a monkey and halo; "Tame", with a pelvic bone and stiletto; "Gouge Away", a spoon containing hair laid across a woman's torso. Around the time Oliver decided to portray a monkey and halo for the cover art, Francis discarded the working title Whore for the album. He later explained that he "thought people were going to think I was some kind of anti-Catholic or that I'd been raised Catholic and trying to get into this Catholic naughty-boy stuff. ... A monkey with a halo, calling it Whore, that would bring all kinds of shit that wouldn't be true. So I said I'd change the title." ## Release In Fall 1988, Elektra Records began to take interest in the Pixies, and amid a bidding war, signed the band. Elektra then began to negotiate with the Pixies' British label 4AD, which held their worldwide distribution rights, and released a promotional live album containing the album tracks "Debaser" and "Gouge Away" along with a selection of earlier material. Two weeks before Doolittle released on April 2, 1989, Elektra and 4AD closed a deal that gave Elektra distribution rights in the US. By that time, PolyGram had already secured Canadian distribution rights. Doolittle was released in the UK on April 17, 1989, and in the US the following day. Elektra's major label status helped get retail displays for the record put up across the United States. Elektra also got "Monkey Gone to Heaven", the first single from the album, sent to major radio stations. ### Critical reception When Doolittle was released, it was received positively by many critics, NME critic Edwin Pouncey wrote that "the songs on Doolittle have the power to make you literally jump out of your skin with excitement". He singled out "Debaser" as one of the highlights, describing it as "blessed with the kind of beefy bass hook that originally brought "Gigantic" to life". Q critic Peter Kane wrote that the album's "carefully structured noise and straightforward rhythmic insistence makes perfect sense". Robert Christgau of The Village Voice wrote, "They're in love and they don't know why—with rock and roll, which is heartening in a time when so many college dropouts have lost touch with the verities". However, he concluded that "getting famous too fast could ruin them", while suggesting the lyrics reflect somewhat of a disconnection with "the outside world". Some reviewers were more critical. Spin ran a hundred-word review of the album, with critic Joe Levy finding "the insanity less surreal and more silly, and the songs themselves more like songs and less like adventures". Rolling Stone published "a tentative endorsement" of Doolittle, rating it three and a half stars; reviewer Chris Mundy concluded, "The emphasis on more textured production has in no way taken away from the band's intensity. Francis is at all times in command of the album, quietly stringing us along before turning on us and screaming for attention." Doolittle appeared on several end-of-year "Best Album" lists. Both Rolling Stone and The Village Voice placed the album tenth, and independent music magazines Sounds and Melody Maker both ranked the album as the second-best of the year. NME ranked the album fourth in their end-of-year list. ### Sales In the first week after its release in Britain, Doolittle was number eight on the UK Albums Chart. In the US, the album entered the Billboard 200 at number 171. With the help of college radio-play of "Monkey Gone to Heaven", it eventually rose to number 98, spending two weeks in the Top 100. Doolittle sold steadily in America, breaking sales of 100,000 after six months. By early 1992, while the band were supporting U2 on their Zoo TV Tour, the album was selling 1,500 copies per week. By the middle of 1993—two years after the release of the band's last album before their initial breakup, Trompe le Monde—Doolittle saw sales average 1,200 copies per week. Doolittle was certified Gold by the Recording Industry Association of America in 1995 and Platinum in 2018. Ten years after their breakup, Doolittle continued to sell between 500 and 1,000 copies a week, and following their 2004 reunion tour sales reached 1,200 copies per week. At the end of 2005, best estimates put total US sales at between 800,000 and one million copies. As of 2015, sales in the United States have exceeded 834,000 copies, according to Nielsen SoundScan. A number of singles from Doolittle were released. In 1997, "Debaser" was re-released to promote the Death to the Pixies compilation. In June 1989, 4AD released "Here Comes Your Man" as the album's second single. It reached number three on the US Modern Rock Tracks chart and number 56 in the UK Singles Chart. On May 6, 2019, "Here Comes Your Man" was certified Gold in Canada; On September 20, 2021, "Hey" was certified Gold in Canada. ## Legacy "Doolittle" consistently appears in numerous lists as one of the best albums of the 1980s and of all time. In 2017, Pitchfork ranked it as the fourth best album of the 1980s; a 2003 poll of NME writers ranked Doolittle as the second-greatest album of all time; and Rolling Stone placed the album at 141 on its 2020 list of "The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time". The album has been recognized as one of the key alternative rock albums of the 1980s. It established the Pixies' loud—quiet dynamic, which became highly influential on alternative rock. After writing "Smells Like Teen Spirit", both Kurt Cobain and Krist Novoselic of Nirvana thought: "this really sounds like the Pixies. People are really going to nail us for this." Norton was frequently credited with capturing the album's dynamics and became highly sought after by bands wishing to achieve a similar sound. Fellow alternative musician PJ Harvey was "in awe" of "I Bleed" and "Tame", and described Francis's writing as "amazing". A 2002 Rolling Stone review gave it the maximum score five stars, remarking that it laid the "groundwork for Nineties rock". The critic Michael Powell called "Doolittle" "their most famous album." It was included in critic Robert Dimer's influential book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die. PopMatters included it in their list of the "12 Essential 1980s Alternative Rock Albums" saying, "Doolittle, captured the musicians at the top of their game when it was released in 1989." ## Track listing All tracks were written by Black Francis, except where noted. ## Reissues To celebrate the 25th anniversary of the album, 4AD released a deluxe edition titled Doolittle 25, containing unreleased B-sides, demos and two full Peel sessions. On December 9, 2016, a limited Pure Audio Blu-Ray version of the album was released containing a 5.1 surround sound mix of the album by Kevin Vanbergen and a high definition stereo mix by Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab. ### Doolittle 25 bonus discs All tracks previously released unless otherwise indicated. ## Personnel Pixies - Black Francis – vocals, rhythm guitar, acoustic guitar - Kim Deal – bass guitar, vocals, acoustic slide guitar ("Silver") - Joey Santiago – lead guitar, backing vocals - David Lovering – drums, lead vocal ("La La Love You"), bass guitar ("Silver") Additional musicians - Karen Karlsrud – violin ("Monkey Gone to Heaven") - Corine Metter – violin ("Monkey Gone to Heaven") - Arthur Fiacco – cello ("Monkey Gone to Heaven") - Ann Rorich – cello ("Monkey Gone to Heaven") Technical' - Gil Norton – producer, engineer - Dave Snider – assistant engineer - Matt Lane – assistant engineer - Steve Haigler – mixing - Vaughan Oliver – art direction, design - Simon Larbalestier – photography - Chris Bigg – calligraphy ## Charts ## Certifications

Hurricane Ioke

Category 5 Pacific hurricane and typhoon in 2006

Hurricane Ioke, also referred to as Typhoon Ioke, was a record breaking, long-lived and extremely powerful storm that traversed the Pacific for 17 days, reaching the equivalent of Category 5 status on the Saffir–Simpson hurricane scale on three different occasions. It was the most intense hurricane ever recorded in the Central Pacific, as well as the fifth-most intense Pacific hurricane on record, tied with 1973's Hurricane Ava. It also generated the most accumulated cyclone energy for a single storm, until that record was broken by Cyclone Freddy in 2023. Ioke was the ninth named storm, fifth hurricane, and third major hurricane of the active 2006 Pacific hurricane season. The cyclone developed in the Intertropical Convergence Zone on August 20 far to the south of Hawaii. Encountering warm waters, little wind shear, and well-defined outflow, Ioke intensified from a tropical depression to Category 4 status within 48 hours. Late on August 22, it rapidly weakened to Category 2 status before crossing over Johnston Atoll. Two days later, favorable conditions again allowed for rapid strengthening, and Ioke attained Category 5 status on August 25 before crossing the International Date Line. As it continued westward, its intensity fluctuated, and on August 31, it passed near Wake Island with winds of 155 mph (250 km/h). Ioke gradually weakened as it turned northwestward and northward, and by September 6, it had transitioned into an extratropical cyclone. The remnants of Ioke accelerated northeastward and ultimately crossed into the Bering Sea, and then the Gulf of Alaska. Ioke did not affect any permanently-populated areas in the Central Pacific or Western Pacific basins as a hurricane or a typhoon. A crew of 12 people rode out the hurricane in a hurricane-proof bunker on Johnston Atoll; the crew estimated winds reached over 100 mph (160 km/h), which damaged trees on the island but did not impact the island's bird population. The typhoon left moderate damage on Wake Island totaling \$88 million (2006 USD, equivalent to \$ million in ), including blown off roofs and damaged buildings, though the infrastructure of the island was left intact; all military personnel were evacuated from the island. Later, the extratropical remnants of Ioke produced a severe storm surge along the Alaskan coastline, causing beach erosion. ## Meteorological history The Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) spawned a tropical disturbance with a low-level circulation far to the southeast of Hawaiʻi in the middle of August 2006. Under the influence of a strong westward-moving subtropical ridge to its north, the disturbance tracked nearly due westward, with deep convection in the region increasing and decreasing on a daily basis. It slowly became better organized, and early on August 20 the disturbance developed into Tropical Depression One-C while located about 775 mi (1,245 km) south of Honolulu, Hawaii. At the time, there was no convection associated with the ITCZ within 10° Longitude. With wind shear practically non-existent and sea surface temperatures of around 82 °F (28 °C), conditions favored strengthening, and operationally the cyclone was forecast to reach minimal hurricane status within four days before beginning to weaken. The depression attained tropical storm status within six hours of developing. The Central Pacific Hurricane Center designated the system with the name Ioke /iːˈoʊkeɪ/, Hawaiian for the name Joyce. Subsequently, Ioke quickly strengthened, and by late on August 20 the storm developed a central dense overcast and the beginnings of an eyewall; early on August 21 the storm intensified into a hurricane, just 24 hours after first developing. Hurricane Ioke steadily deepened as it continued west-northwestward, with better definition of the eye and deepening of the eyewall convection. Near the International Date Line a frontal trough turned the hurricane to the northwest, and after a period of rapid deepening Ioke attained winds of 135 mph (215 km/h) early on August 22 while located about 280 mi (450 km) southeast of Johnston Atoll. After maintaining Category 4 status on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale for about 18 hours, southwesterly wind shear slightly disrupted the inner core of the hurricane, and Ioke quickly weakened to winds of about 105 mph (169 km/h). Late on August 22, the hurricane passed about 30 mi (48 km) south of Johnston Atoll, with the northeastern portion of the eyewall crossing the atoll early on August 23. After turning westward later in the day, wind shear began to decrease, allowing a second period of rapid deepening. By August 24 the hurricane maintained a 23 mi (37 km) closed eyewall, and on August 25 Ioke attained Category 5 status on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale while located about 970 mi (1,560 km) west-southwest of the Hawaiian Island of Kauaʻi. After maintaining Category 5 status for about 18 hours, Ioke weakened slightly due to an eyewall replacement cycle. Completing the cycle on August 26, the hurricane restrengthened to Category 5 status. The trough to its west tracked further away from the hurricane, allowing the subtropical ridge to build ahead of the hurricane which turned Ioke to the southwest. The overall environment remained very favorable for sustainment of the powerful cyclone. Strong upper-level cyclones far to its northwest provided outflow channels and light wind shear, with warm water temperatures along its path. With the conditions, the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory hurricane model predicted Ioke to reach winds of 220 mph (350 km/h), with a predicted minimum pressure of 860 mbar (25 inHg). Early on August 27, the pressure dropped to 915 mbar (27.0 inHg), and shortly thereafter Ioke crossed the International Date Line, becoming a 160 mph (260 km/h) typhoon. Unofficially referred as a super typhoon by the Joint Typhoon Warning Center (JTWC), Ioke remained at the equivalence of a Category 5 hurricane for about 12 hours after crossing the Date Line. It then began a slight weakening trend on August 28, due to increased inflow from the ridge to its north. On August 29, the cyclone turned to the west and west-northwest while tracking around the periphery of the subtropical ridge, and Ioke again reached the equivalence of Category 5 status. The Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) assessed Ioke as attaining peak 10‐minute sustained winds of 120 mph (195 km/h) on August 30. Later that day, the typhoon weakened to the equivalent of a Category 4 hurricane for the final time, and on August 31 Ioke passed very near Wake Island with winds of about 155 mph (250 km/h). By September 1, increased wind shear and drier air caused the eye of Ioke to become cloud-filled and elongated, and by September 2 Ioke was undergoing another eyewall replacement cycle. On September 2, Ioke passed about 50 mi (80 km) north of Minami-Tori-shima with winds of about 125 mph (200 km/h). Gradual weakening continued, and the typhoon steadily shifted its track to the northwest around the subtropical ridge. A deepening trough turned Ioke to the north-northwest and north, and the cyclone weakened to a tropical storm a few hundred miles east of Japan. After accelerating northeastward, the cyclone began losing tropical characteristics, and the JTWC declared Ioke as an extratropical cyclone on September 6. The JMA maintained Ioke as a typhoon until a day later, and maintained Ioke as a tropical cyclone until it was declared extratropical midday on September 6. The extratropical remnants of Ioke were tracked by the JMA until September 7, when it was located near the Aleutian Islands of Alaska. The storm deepened as it approached the Aleutians, and re-developed winds of hurricane-force. The storm entered the Bering Sea on September 8, and after turning eastward, crossed the Aleutian Islands and entered the Gulf of Alaska. The extratropical remnants of Ioke dissipated near southeastern Alaska on September 12. ## Preparations and impact ### Johnston Atoll Late on August 21, about 24 hours prior to its closest approach, the Central Pacific Hurricane Center issued a hurricane warning for uninhabited territory of Johnston Island, due to the uncertainty of whether anyone was on the island. A United States Air Force vessel and a 12-person crew were on the island, and after securing their ship the crew took shelter in a hurricane-proof concrete bunker. There were no meteorological observations on the island, but the crew estimated tropical storm force winds lasted for about 27 hours with hurricane-force winds lasting six to eight hours; peak wind gusts were estimated at 110 to 130 mph (175 to 210 km/h). The crew sustained no injuries, and their ship received only minor damage. Hurricane Ioke, with a portion of its eye crossing the atoll, left an estimated 15% of the palm trees on the island with their tops blown off, with some ironwood trees blown over; the island bird population was unaffected. The hurricane produced rough surf which washed away a portion of a sea wall and an adjacent road. ### Wake Island Under the threat of the typhoon for several days, two C-17 Globemaster III airlifters evacuated between 188 and 200 military personnel from Wake Island to Hawaii, the first full-scale evacuation of the island since Typhoon Sarah in 1967. A buoy just east of the island recorded a pressure of 921.5 mbar (27.21 inHg) as Ioke crossed directly over it. Before the typhoon passed just north of the island, an anemometer recorded hurricane-force winds with a peak wind gust of 100 mph (160 km/h) before the instrument stopped reporting. Sustained winds were estimated to have reached 155 mph (250 km/h), with gusts to 190 mph (310 km/h). The minimum central pressure recorded on the island was 934 mbar at 0906 UTC on August 31. The typhoon was expected to produce a storm surge of 18 ft (5.5 m) and wave heights of 40 ft (12 m) along Wake Island, where the highest point is 20 ft (6.1 m). Additionally, heavy rainfall from the typhoon left buildings flooded, with 2 ft (0.61 m) of standing water found several days after its passage. The powerful winds of Typhoon Ioke caused extensive damage to the island's power grid, leaving most power lines to buildings and backup generators damaged. The combination of the winds and storm surge flooding damaged 70% of the buildings in the territory, many of which with moderate roof damage. All low-lying areas were described as being covered with sea water or sand, and the territory was left without running water. Communications were downed on the island, with satellite dishes and cables destroyed. Damage to the infrastructure was extensive, though repairable and less than expected. Damage on the island was estimated at \$88 million (2006 USD). ### Japan and Alaska On September 1, the Japan Meteorological Agency ordered the temporary evacuation of its staff on Minami-Tori-shima, under threat of the typhoon. The agency expected high waves and winds on the island. Facilities on the island were damaged, although it was repaired and fully operational within three weeks after the storm. The extratropical remnant of Ioke produced a storm surge and high surf in excess of 30 ft (9.1 m) along the southwestern coastline of Alaska, which coincided with the astronomical high tide; the combination led to minor flooding along Bristol Bay and Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta. Wind gusts peaked at 84 mph (135 km/h) in Unalaska. The system produced moderate to heavy rainfall across the western portion of Alaska, including daily rainfall records of 1.15 inches (29 mm) at Bethel and 0.67 in (17 mm) at Kotzebue. Rainfall continued into the southeastern portion of the state, contributing to above-normal rainfall totals near Juneau. ## Records and aftermath Hurricane Ioke became one of only seven hurricanes to reach Category 5 status on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale in the Central North Pacific Ocean. The others were Patsy in 1959, Emilia, Gilma, and John in 1994, as well as Lane and Walaka in 2018. With an estimated minimum central pressure of 915 mbar (27.019 inHg), the cyclone attained the lowest estimated surface pressure for any hurricane within the basin, surpassing the previous minimum set by Hurricane Gilma in 1994. Ioke maintained at least Category 4 status for 198 consecutive hours, which was the longest continuous time period at that intensity ever observed for any tropical cyclone anywhere on Earth. Additionally, the cyclone remained at the equivalence of a super typhoon for 174 consecutive hours, which was also a record. The United States Coast Guard first performed an aerial assessment of damage on Wake Island on September 2, three days after the typhoon struck. The flight indicated an overall damage smaller than expected, and reported a lack of oil spill or hazardous material leak. The U.S. Coast Guard arrived by boat with a team on September 7, with a preliminary damage assessment completed four days later; the team repaired a generator to provide power. The United States Navy's combat stores ship, the USNS San Jose (T-AFS-7), and sixteen members United States Air Force's 36th Contingency Response Group at Andersen AFB, Guam arrived on September 8 and analyzed the stability of the airfield along with assisting in clean-up efforts, and after core tests workers cleared the runway to allow flights onto the territory. On September 13, a group of engineers restored power on the island. About two weeks after the cyclone, several buildings were operational. The Central Pacific Hurricane Center requested the retirement of the name, and in April 2007, the name Ioke was retired, and replaced with Iopa. ## See also - List of Category 5 Pacific hurricanes - Typhoon Olive (1952) - Typhoon Ophelia (1960) - Hurricane John (1994) – The second longest-lasting tropical cyclone ever recorded globally. - Typhoon Oliwa (1997) – A Category 5 super typhoon that crossed the Central Pacific. - Hurricane Genevieve (2014) – A weak Category 3 hurricane that crossed three basins. - Hurricane Hector (2018) – An erratic Category 4 hurricane that crossed three basins. - Hurricane Walaka (2018) – The third most intense hurricane formed in the Central Pacific - Cyclone Freddy (2023) – The longest lived and highest accumulated cyclone energy (ACE) of any tropical cyclone on record

Flight Unlimited II

1997 video game

Flight Unlimited II is a 1997 flight simulator video game developed by Looking Glass Studios and published by Eidos Interactive. The player controls one of five planes in the airspace of the San Francisco Bay Area, which is shared with up to 600 artificially intelligent aircraft directed by real-time air traffic control. The game eschews the aerobatics focus of its predecessor, Flight Unlimited, in favor of general civilian aviation. As such, new physics code and an engine were developed, the former because the programmer of Flight Unlimited's computational fluid dynamics system, Seamus Blackley, had left the company. The team sought to create an immersive world for the player and to compete with the Microsoft Flight Simulator series. Commercially, Flight Unlimited II performed well enough to recoup its development costs. Critics lauded the game's graphics and simulated airspace, and several praised its physics. However, some considered the game to be inferior to Microsoft Flight Simulator 98. Following the completion of Flight Unlimited II, its team split up to develop Flight Unlimited III (1999) and Flight Combat (later Jane's Attack Squadron) simultaneously. Both projects were troubled, and they contributed to the closure of Looking Glass in May 2000. ## Gameplay Flight Unlimited II is a flight simulator video game: its gameplay is a simulation of piloting real-world planes. Players may control the Piper PA-28R-200, de Havilland Canada DHC-2 Beaver, Beechcraft Baron 58, North American P-51D Mustang or Cessna 172. The interactive cockpit of each plane is based on its real-world counterpart, and it contains simulated flight instruments such as an airspeed indicator, a heading indicator and a VOR indicator, among others. The player begins by engaging in a Quick Flight or by using the fixed-base operator (FBO) interface. In a Quick Flight, the player selects a plane and the flying conditions before taking off; the FBO interface features additional options, such as lessons, flight plans and adventures. The game's six lessons detail such maneuvers as takeoffs and taxiing. Adventures are pre-built missions, with objectives such as landing on an aircraft carrier, helping a prisoner to escape from Alcatraz Island or dropping turkeys into Candlestick Park. There are 25 adventures in total. The game is set in a reproduction of 11,000 square miles of the San Francisco Bay Area. The player may land at or takeoff from the area's 46 airports. Weather conditions such as rain, wind and fog are simulated. Players share the game's airspace with up to 600 artificially intelligent (AI) planes, which fly and respond to the player in real-time. Real-time air traffic control (ATC) directs the player and the AI planes to prevent collisions. The player interacts with the ATC and with other planes by constructing radio messages with a menu. Three cockpit views are available: IFR (instrument flight rules), which allows the player to monitor and interact with all flight instruments; VFR (visual flight rules), which features a larger windshield area but fewer flight instruments; and Virtual Cockpit View, which allows free look but features no interactive flight instruments. External camera angles are also available, and the player may ride as a passenger in any AI plane. ## Development Following the completion of Flight Unlimited in 1995, project leader Seamus Blackley planned to use that game's computational fluid dynamics (CFDs) code to create a combat flight simulator called Flight Combat. However, a new manager at Looking Glass Studios demanded that Blackley instead design a direct sequel to Flight Unlimited. Blackley refused and was fired, leaving the company in late 1995. Constantine Hantzopoulos became the lead designer and project leader of the fourteen-member Flight Unlimited II team. The team eschewed the aerobatics focus of their previous game in favor of general civilian aviation, in order to compete with the Microsoft Flight Simulator series. Looking Glass announced the game on December 18, 1996. It was slated to include 6 planes, 45 airports and 8,500 square miles of terrain from the San Francisco Bay Area. The Bay Area was chosen because of its varied landscape and numerous airports. In January 1997, Eidos Interactive partnered with Looking Glass to provide the game's marketing and distribution. The team opted not to reuse the technology of Flight Unlimited. Hantzopoulos learned from Blackley that it was necessary to recreate the "visceral feel" of real flight, but Blackley's CFDs system was "all black box spaghetti code" that the team could not understand. Programmer Jim Berry, who had previously worked on simulators such as Falcon 4.0, wrote new physics code based on force vector calculations to replace the CFDs system. To gather data for the new physics, Hantzopoulos and Berry flew in real-world planes with designer Ed Tatro and aerobatic pilot Michael Goulian. James Fleming coded Flight Unlimited II's new terrain renderer, ZOAR. Flight Unlimited uses distance fog to limit visible terrain, but this causes pop-in issues that the team sought to avoid in the sequel. Instead of removing textures that exceed the draw distance, the new engine uses mipmapping to lower the polygon count of distant terrain. This increases the viewable area and allowed the team to use fog as an atmospheric effect, rather than as a "crutch". The team's goal was to create the "best, most realistic civilian flight simulator", which would provide an immersive world for the player. Radio communications between ATCs, AI planes and the player occur in real-time: a "sophisticated audio splicing system" gathers pre-recorded voice fragments into contextually appropriate sentences. The team recorded the engine noise of each of the game's planes, and they designed cockpits more interactive than those in Flight Unlimited. Roughly 300 times more terrain area was included in Flight Unlimited II than in its predecessor. To generate the terrain, the team combined digital elevation maps with satellite imagery rendered at four square meters per pixel. The images were taken at 9:30 am, because the long shadows provided an illusion of depth. 3D models were used for all buildings taller than nine stories. Because of the terrain detail, the game was the first to allow players to follow VFR. Initially, the team planned to include only VFR flight, but they later enabled IFR to "ease navigation". The team hoped to add more terrain and planes and a multiplayer feature after the game's release. The game was shown at the Electronic Entertainment Expo in June 1997, alongside Thief: The Dark Project. At the show, the team detailed early plans to include missions. The game was well received, and Combatsim praised it as "the next level in civilian flight sims". Denny Atkin of Computer Gaming World liked the game, but he questioned Looking Glass's decision to compete in the civilian rather than the combat flight simulators market. That August, Looking Glass merged with Intermetrics, a technology company that hoped to branch into the video game industry. The merger came amid financial difficulties; a large portion of the Looking Glass staff was laid off during the middle of 1997. Looking Glass's Tim Stellmach and Paul Neurath described the merger as amicable, and the former noted that "through the whole deal everyone was really psyched about both The Dark Project and Flight Unlimited II". In September, Eidos took over publishing duties on Flight Unlimited II, as a result of Looking Glass's new business model with Intermetrics. The game was released on November 24, 1997. ## Reception Flight Unlimited II was placed in direct competition with the Microsoft Flight Simulator series and Sierra Entertainment's Pro Pilot, and it performed well enough to recoup its development costs. PC Gamer US's Stephen Poole commented that the limited environments of Flight Unlimited did not create a believable flight experience, but that the "exquisite terrain, impressive flight-physics models, and meticulous attention to the details and procedures of civilian aviation" in Flight Unlimited II created "the closest experience to actual flight" available. He praised the game's ATC system, which he considered to be "so real that it's almost scary". Poole summarized, "Flight Unlimited II is so impressive that to even whine about little details shows a shortsightedness that's all too common amongst us gamers." Denny Atkin of Computer Gaming World believed the game to be the first simulator to recreate "the real feeling of civilian flying", particularly because of its graphics and ATC system. He considered its flight physics to be "much better than Pro Pilot, although not up to the level of Flight Simulator 98". He finished by calling Flight Unlimited II "a must-have for any general-aviation enthusiast." John Nolan of Computer Games Magazine found that the new flight physics were "more than adequate for the task at hand", despite certain "questionable areas". He praised the graphics and ATC, but noted AI glitches with the latter. He summarized, "Overall, this simulation is somewhat above average". Dean Evans of PC Gamer UK called it "the best civilian flight sim we've ever seen", which makes "Flight Simulator look like a sack of old spam". He found the game to be "immensely realistic" and praised its terrain and simulated airspace. Similarly, Edge praised the believable and highly detailed environment, noting that Looking Glass Studios managed to cleverly soften the contrast between photo-captured textures and polygon objects "using haze as a real effect rather than a distance-clipping cheat". The magazine concluded that dismissing the game simply because of its lack of weapons "would be a mistake", and explained that the interaction with the world "is everything—it's reward enough simply to explore rather than to destroy." PC Zone's Paul Presley believed the game to be inferior to combat flight simulators and stated that it "isn't nearly as deep or varied as Microsoft's Flight Simulator '98". He found the graphics to be lackluster and the terrain to be "a bit empty", which he believed damaged the game's atmosphere. However, he noted that Flight Unlimited II's "underlying playability" made it "worthwhile" and "addictive". Presley summarized, "[A]s a time-waster, a novelty item or an office toy, it does the job and it does it well." Jonathan Gordon of The Independent wrote, "The original Flight Unlimited promised much but delivered relatively little, and it's a similar story with this sequel." He noted that the graphics, while good from a distance, became "disappointingly bland" up close; and he found the game to be limited compared to Microsoft Flight Simulator '98. Flight Unlimited II was a runner-up for Computer Gaming World's 1997 "Simulation Game of the Year" award, which ultimately went to Longbow 2. The editors called Flight Unlimited II "the first aviation sim to truly capture the environment of real civilian flying". ## Aftermath In April 1998, Looking Glass released a patch for Flight Unlimited II that included six new adventures, a new plane (the Fokker Dr.I) and an "Adventure Builder Kit", which allowed players to construct their own adventures and to share them online. The patch also added moving objects on the ground. After completing Flight Unlimited II, certain members of the game's team wanted to develop Flight Unlimited III, while others wanted to create Flight Combat. Looking Glass split the team in two and expanded both with new hires, so that the games could be developed simultaneously. Flight Unlimited III lead designer Peter James later wrote that his project's development was troubled, in part because of a lack of interest from company management. It became one of Looking Glass's biggest commercial failures. Flight Combat (renamed Jane's Attack Squadron) struggled through a long and costly development cycle. Both projects contributed to Looking Glass's closure in May 2000. Mad Doc Software later completed Jane's Attack Squadron, and it was published by Xicat Interactive in March 2002.

Ninian Park

Stadium in Cardiff, Wales

Ninian Park was a football stadium in the Leckwith area of Cardiff, Wales, that was the home of Cardiff City F.C. for 99 years. Opened in 1910 with a single wooden stand, it underwent numerous renovations during its lifespan and hosted fixtures with over 60,000 spectators in attendance. At the time of its closure in 2009, it had a capacity of 21,508. Cardiff City had originally been playing home fixtures at Sophia Gardens but the lack of facilities at the ground had prevented them from joining the Southern Football League. To combat this, club founder Bartley Wilson secured a plot of land from Cardiff Corporation that had previously been used as a rubbish tip and construction of a new ground began in 1909. The stadium was completed a year later and named Ninian Park after Lieutenant-Colonel Lord Ninian Crichton-Stuart, who had acted as a financial guarantor for the build. A friendly match against Football League First Division champions Aston Villa was organised to open the ground. It was originally constructed with a single wooden stand and three large banks made of ash, but gradual improvements saw stands constructed on all sides of the pitch. The four stands were named the Canton Stand, the Grange End, the Popular Bank and the Grandstand. The ground was also used as the home stadium for the Wales national football team from 1911 until the late 1980s, hosting 84 international fixtures during its existence. Safety concerns led to the ground's capacity being drastically reduced and Cardiff Arms Park replacing the stadium as the preferred home venue for the national side. The Welsh national side holds the record attendance for a match at Ninian Park; 62,634 fans watched a fixture against England on 17 October 1959. Cardiff City's club record attendance of 57,893 came at the stadium during a Football League fixture against Arsenal on 22 April 1953. The ground hosted its last match on 25 April 2009 against Ipswich Town and was demolished soon after, being replaced by the adjacent newly constructed Cardiff City Stadium. The site was converted into a residential housing estate which was completed in 2010. ## History ### Construction and early years Following the founding of the club in 1899, Cardiff City F.C. (originally named Riverside A.F.C.) played their home matches at Sophia Gardens. The club was becoming increasingly popular with local people, but the facilities at Sophia Gardens were deemed inadequate for this growing support due to the lack of turnstiles or an enclosed pitch. The limitations meant the club was forced to turn down an invitation to join the newly formed Southern Football League Second Division in 1908. To capitalise on growing interest, Cardiff organised friendly matches against Crystal Palace, Bristol City and Middlesbrough that were held at Cardiff Arms Park and the Harlequins Ground, part of Cardiff High School. The attendances convinced club founder Bartley Wilson of the potential success of a professional football club in Cardiff, and he approached the Bute Estate, a large landholder within the city, about securing a plot of land to build a new ground at Leckwith Common. The club was instead offered an area of waste ground by Councillor John Mander which was known as Tanyard Lane with the incentive that Cardiff Corporation would assist in the construction of the ground. Located between Sloper Road and a local railway station, the area had been used previously as a rubbish tip and an allotment ground. The club chose an area of around five acres near a junction on Leckwith Road. They were offered the ground on an initial seven-year lease with a yearly rent of £90. This was to be supported by guarantors should the club have financial difficulties and be unable to maintain payments. Local volunteers and workers were used to clear the site of debris and level the surface. The ground was surrounded by large mounds of ash and slag sourced from the furnaces of local companies and used to form banking for spectators. A white fence was erected around the outside of the ground. A small 200-seat wooden stand and changing rooms were added to complete the build. To secure the site, the club was required to provide two or more guarantors to back the deal. One of the guarantors who had initially agreed to support the project later pulled out during development. This led the club's solicitor, Norman Robertson, to address a local council meeting, stating that "there had been difficulties in obtaining promises of support" due to the uncertain state of the coal industry. Lieutenant-Colonel Lord Ninian Crichton-Stuart, son of John Patrick Crichton-Stuart, 3rd Marquess of Bute, stepped in to offer his financial support. In appreciation of his contribution, the ground was subsequently named Ninian Park, replacing the original planned name Sloper Park. The other four guarantors for the site were David Alfred Thomas, 1st Viscount Rhondda, J. Bell Harrison and local councillors Charles Wall and H.C. Vivian. A further 24 people offered to become sureties if their contribution would be limited to £5. Harry Bradshaw, secretary of the Southern Football League, inspected the ground ahead of the 1910–11 season. He declared that Ninian Park had "the making of the finest football ground in the country" and allowed Cardiff City to join the Southern League's Second Division. Cardiff held two trial matches at the ground, the club's professional players competing against its amateur players in preparation for the opening match. The new ground was officially opened at 5:00 pm on 1 September 1910 with a friendly against Aston Villa, reigning champions of the Football League First Division, that attracted a crowd of around 7,000 people. The match began with a ceremonial kick-off performed by Lord Ninian and ended in a 2–1 defeat for Cardiff. Jack Evans became the first player to score for the club at the ground. The first competitive match played at Ninian Park was the opening match of the 1910–11 season, which took place three weeks later on 24 September 1910. The match ended in a 4–1 victory for Cardiff over Ton Pentre and attracted a crowd of around 8,000. In November, a larger timber stand that could hold up to 3,000 spectators was built at the Canton end of the ground. Several players who worked as labourers in their spare time helped to complete construction. The stand was extended three years later to cover the length of the pitch. Less than a year after it opened, Ninian Park was chosen as the new home ground for the Wales national football team, replacing Cardiff Arms Park. It hosted its first international fixture on 6 March 1911, a 2–2 draw against Scotland in front of 17,000 spectators in the 1910–11 British Home Championship. The Times described the ground as "primitive" and reported that it had contributed to the poor standard of play. During its formative years, the pitch sometimes bore signs of its former use as a rubbish tip with debris such as glass often rising to the surface. The club paid players 6d an hour to arrive early before matches and help clear the pitch of objects. This approach was not always successful; Scottish international Peter McWilliam suffered a gash to his leg in the first international fixture that ended his playing career, and Wales' Billy Meredith also suffered a cut knee during the match. Cardiff's Jack Evans was scarred for life in a similar incident in a later match when a piece of glass cut his knee. In the early years at the stadium, the ground contained only one changing room and washing area, meaning home and away teams shared facilities. This continued until a separate dressing room was constructed in 1913. A local primary school, originally named Virgil Street Board School, adopted the name of the ground in 1911, becoming Ninian Park Primary School. ### Football League and development Cardiff won promotion from the Second Division of the Southern Football League to the First Division in 1912–13. Following the resumption of league football after the First World War, the team's fourth-placed finish in the 1919–20 season raised enough income to eliminate the club's debts. This also allowed for the construction of an all-seater stand at Ninian Park behind the north goal which was named the Canton Stand. In 1920, Cardiff was elected to the Second Division of The Football League, helping attendances increase significantly. Matches against well known clubs in the top two divisions of the English football league system attracted considerable interest, with attendances averaging over 28,000 in the Second Division. Further improvements were implemented after this first season in The Football League; a roof was erected over the new Canton Stand, the spectator banks were raised and the pitch was relaid with sea-washed turf, a fine variety of grass grown on the coast that is cleansed by tidal flow. The club stated that the new playing surface was "now equal to the best in the country." Attendances rose again as Cardiff won promotion to the First Division after one season. The opening match of the 1921–22 season attracted a crowd of over 55,000 for a 1–0 defeat by Tottenham Hotspur. The turnstiles were closed once 50,000 spectators had been let into the ground, but the remaining crowds outside, still queuing for entry, forced open the exit gates and entered the ground. Club estimates put the attendance at between 56,000 and 60,000, with spectators even climbing the scoreboard to gain a vantage point. In 1923, plans were initiated to build new dressing rooms and offices at the ground but the project proved too costly. This was partly due to the expense of replacing the sea-washed turf, which had proved troublesome and had been described as "treacherous" in the two years since it had been installed. The pitch at the ground would prove problematic for several seasons and the club eventually enlisted the help of seed specialists Suttons to improve the quality of the surface. Victory in the 1927 FA Cup Final raised enough funds for a roof to be erected over the terrace at the Grangetown end of the ground. Built by local company Connies & Meaden Limited, it was officially opened on 1 September 1928 before a league match against Burnley by the Lord Mayor of Cardiff, Arthur John Howell. It could hold 18,000 spectators. The investment in the stadium proved detrimental to the team as manager Fred Stewart was left with little money to reinvest in an ageing squad. Replacements were sourced from amateur clubs, but the side was relegated to the Football League Third Division South by 1932. With the club's finances dwindling, the board was keen to add new revenue streams. Boxing matches were soon held at Ninian Park with the first professional event in August 1931 featuring former British light-heavyweight champion Frank Moody. The 1932 Cardiff Sports Carnival was also based at the ground, which included the final of the 12-mile road race finishing with three laps around the stands. The idea of installing a greyhound track at the stadium was also proposed the same year but was met with opposition from council and footballing authorities before being abandoned. On 18 January 1937, the main stand caught fire after thieves attempted to break into the club's safe using explosives. They mistakenly believed that money taken from gate receipts in an FA Cup tie against Grimsby Town was stored inside. The match had attracted a season-high attendance of more than 36,000 spectators leading to higher than usual income. The fire was discovered at 3:45 am by a local policeman. He alerted the fire brigade but they were unable to douse the fire before it destroyed the stand, the dressing rooms and offices. It also claimed the lives of the club's watchdog Jack as well as one of the club's cats and destroyed the majority of its historical records. The stand was largely destroyed in the blaze but was rebuilt using a brick and stone construction before the outbreak of World War II. Prior to the return of The Football League after the war, Ninian Park hosted its first European opposition when Dynamo Moscow played Cardiff as part of a tour of the United Kingdom in 1945. Cardiff, chosen for being deemed the leading club in Wales, suffered a heavy 10–1 defeat to the visiting side but did earn a substantial profit from ticket sales. Over the following few decades, several areas of the ground underwent significant renovations. The main stand was extended in 1947 at a cost of £9,000, with a new concrete terrace being added in front of the original seating area. Floodlights were added to the ground for the first time in 1960. Ninian Park was one of the last Football League grounds to have them installed. During this period the club's popularity had increased as they challenged for a return to the First Division. On 27 August 1949, Cardiff sold 60,855 tickets for a South Wales derby match against Swansea Town but only 57,510 entered the ground on the day. Their record attendance for a match was set four years later, on 22 April 1953, when a crowd of 57,893 watched a First Division match against Arsenal. In February 1958, the ground was host to the second leg of the 1958 FIFA World Cup play-off qualifying match between Wales and Israel. Already leading 2–0 from the first leg, Wales secured a second victory by the same scoreline to reach the World Cup finals for the only time in the team's history. Later that year, Connies & Meaden were employed again to construct a large roof over the rear section of the Popular Bank and to extend the stand the length of the pitch. In the early 1960s, qualification for the UEFA Cup Winners' Cup by virtue of winning the Welsh Cup was introduced and Cardiff entered European competition for the first time in the 1964–65 season. The side were drawn against Danish semi-professional team Esbjerg fB and the first European tie held at Ninian Park took place on 13 October for the second leg of the fixture. After a goalless draw in the first leg, Peter King scored the only goal of the tie to secure a 1–0 aggregate victory for Cardiff in front of a crowd of around 9,000. The low crowd was blamed on the relatively unknown status of the opposition; the club's match against Portuguese side Sporting CP, reigning champions of the competition, in the following round attracted over 23,000 spectators, the biggest home crowd the club had played in front of for nearly two years. This was bettered again in the following round when 38,458 supporters attended a 1–0 defeat against Spanish side Real Zaragoza. As the club's fortunes declined during the 1960s crowd numbers fell, but during the 1972–73 season Cardiff spent £225,000 extending the main stand capacity by a further 4,500 seats under the stewardship of new chairman David Goldstone. In 1975, the Safety of Sports Grounds Act was introduced, and two years later local authorities introduced sanctions on Ninian Park that saw the capacity reduced from 46,000 to just 10,000 over safety concerns. The club was forced to pay £600,000 towards improving the ground's safety features to ensure that Ninian Park could be maintained and awarded the necessary safety certificate. A sum of £200,000 was provided by the Football Grounds Improvement Trust and £27,000 by the Football Association of Wales (FAW). The Safety Act also required that the Grange End Stand be overhauled. This included the demolition of the roof, and the removal of banking that severely reduced the overall capacity of the ground. Director Tony Clemo later complained that the restrictions were unduly harsh, stating "There was no common sense [...] the Grangetown Stand had to be demolished in 1978 when the council's safety officers said that if there was two feet of snow and an 80 mile an hour wind blowing, it would be unsafe. We maintained that if there were two feet of snow and an 80 mile and hour wind, we wouldn't be playing football anyway! They insisted and down it came! It was a total waste of time and money." The club did benefit from a relationship with engineering firm Kenton Utilities who undertook most of the work at a reduced rate due to the firm being owned by another Cardiff director, Bob Grogan. During a qualifying match between Wales and Scotland for the 1986 FIFA World Cup on 10 September 1985, Scotland manager Jock Stein collapsed at the ground after suffering a heart-attack during the final minutes of the match. He was taken to the ground's medical room where he received treatment, but doctors were unable to revive him. In memory of Stein, a plaque was installed in one of the dugouts at the ground. ### Downscaling, closure and demolition In the late 1980s, increasing concerns over safety issues saw Ninian Park replaced as the main home venue of the Wales national side by Cardiff Arms Park. A few matches were played there until it hosted its final international fixture, a UEFA Euro 2000 qualifying match on 14 October 1998 against Belarus. In January 1990, the club was dealt a blow when thieves broke into the stadium following an FA Cup tie against Queens Park Rangers. They stole £50,000 of gate receipts by gaining access to offices via the pitch. The money was eventually recovered. Some was found in the house of one of the perpetrators; the majority was found buried on Caerphilly Mountain. Later the same year, the FAW chose to move a UEFA Euro 1992 qualifying match between Wales and Belgium to Cardiff Arms Park over fears that proposed safety improvements at Ninian Park would not be completed in time. FAW secretary Alun Evans alluded to the fact that matches between Belgium and the Home Nations were still deemed to be "sensitive" following the Heysel Stadium disaster in 1985. Cardiff threatened legal action over the decision, stating that the club could "meet any deadline" to complete the work, but were unsuccessful. The game went ahead at Cardiff Arms Park. With Cardiff struggling financially and owing several payments to their landlords the City of Cardiff Council, the club was forced to close three stands in the ground to save on policing costs during matches. The closure remained in place for a year until Rick Wright acquired control of the club and invested heavily in updating the ground. Improvements included installing 2,100 seats and extending the roof in the Grandstand, replacing terracing in the Popular Bank with 5,330 seats and refurbishing the Grange End and the Canton Stand, which added a further 1,761 seats. Wright decided to sell his stake in the club in 1993 and a feasibility study of Ninian Park carried out by Tarmac Group on behalf of a prospective buyer estimated that the redevelopment of the ground would cost an estimated £4.6 million. The increasingly dilapidated nature of the ground gained national attention following Cardiff's victory over Leeds United in the FA Cup in January 2002 due to crowd trouble after the match. Jeff Cooksley, Chief Superintendent of South Wales Police, commented that, although no objection was made to using the ground, Ninian Park was a "very old ground, [...] and is very poorly designed compared with modern standards." Plans for a new stadium to replace Ninian Park were in development for several years before Cardiff City officially submitted an application to local councils. Welsh Rugby Union chief executive David Moffett originally objected to the proposals as he wished for the club to use the Millennium Stadium as their home ground instead to maximise the occupancy levels of the stadium. The plans for a 30,000-seat stadium, with the potential to expand to 60,000, were eventually approved by Cardiff council, and plans were submitted in 2006. Work started on the new Cardiff City Stadium at the end of 2007 on the site of the Cardiff Athletics Stadium at an expected cost of £38 million. The last football match played by Cardiff at Ninian Park was a 3–0 defeat by Ipswich Town on 25 April 2009. The final senior player to score at the ground was Jon Stead, then of Ipswich Town; the last player for Cardiff to score at the ground was Ross McCormack in a 3–1 victory over Burnley in the penultimate senior game at Ninian Park. After the final match, an online memorabilia auction was setup, with items such as goalposts, office furniture and supporters' seats being listed for sale. In July 2009, the gates of the Ninian Park ground were re-erected opposite the stadium site, though minus one of the bluebird logos which had gone missing following the final match. The stadium was handed over to Redrow Homes by Cardiff chairman Peter Ridsdale on 10 September 2009. The 99-year-old Ninian Park was demolished later in 2009 to make way for a housing development. Redrow built 142 houses on the site, intending to retain the name Ninian Park. A planted square was proposed at the centre of the new housing development, in the area of Ninian Park's centre spot. The first show home of the £24 million development was opened in late spring 2010, with a mixture of terraced, detached and semi-detached houses. The first families moved into the new housing in November 2010. After completion, the road through the development was named Bartley Wilson Way after the founder of Cardiff City. ## Structure and facilities At the time of its closure in 2009, Ninian Park had a capacity of 21,508 and comprised four stands; the Grandstand, the Grange End, the Popular Bank and the Canton Stand. The Grandstand was an all-seated stand that was built before the Second World War to replace the original wooden structure that had been destroyed in a fire. The stand had originally contained a standing section at the bottom, but this was later converted to seats. Press areas reserved for journalists had been located in the stand since 1960. Directly opposite was the Popular Bank, which was commonly referred to as the "Bob Bank" as it previously cost one shilling (known as one bob) to enter. It was originally an all-standing construction with no roof on its completion in 1910. A roof was constructed in 1958, and the top half of the stand was converted to seating in the early 1990s. The Popular Bank became well known for the advertising featured on the roof of the stand. In 1960, an advert for Captain Morgan rum, named after Sir Henry Morgan who hailed from Cardiff, was painted on the roof and remained in place for 42 years. The advert was the longest running stadium roof advert in the history of The Football League. It was replaced in 2001 by an advert for Hyper Value. The Grange End and Canton Stand were both named after local districts in the city, Grangetown and Canton. The Grange End also housed visiting away fans and due to crowd trouble, had featured a 6 ft (1.8 m) fence to separate opposing fans and netting to stop objects being thrown. It was removed in 2006, becoming the last venue in the Football League to remove fencing between opposing fans. The Canton Stand also housed executive boxes, hospitality areas and several club offices. These areas had originally been commissioned in the 1980s but financial difficulties at the club delayed the completion of the project until 2001. The ground featured floodlights in each corner and a plasma-screen television showed highlights during the game. The television was bought by the club in 2002 from Bolton Wanderers. They had used the screen in their former ground Burnden Park before moving to the Reebok Stadium. It was located between the Popular Bank and the Grange End. ## Transport The stadium and surrounding area was served by Ninian Park railway station (on the Cardiff City Line) on one side of Sloper Road and Grangetown railway station (on the Vale Line) on the other side. Ninian Park Station (originally named Ninian Park Halt) was built in 1912 by the Taff Vale Railway at the junction of Sloper Road and Leckwith Road. Railway officials had been encouraged by increasing crowd numbers at the club's matches and looked to capitalise on the interest. When the railway was privatised, the stations became part of the Valley Lines. Trains operated frequently to Central and Queen Street stations. By road, the stadium was also served by the A4232 dual carriageway, which is approximately 0.7 miles (1.13 km) away from the Leckwith Interchange. ## Other usage ### Sporting events #### Rugby Cardiff Rugby Club played at Ninian Park twice between 1960 and 1961 as their ground did not have floodlights. The Cardiff City Blue Dragons rugby league team used the ground as their home between 1981 and 1984. The team had been founded by Cardiff City director Bob Grogan as a way of generating income and ensuring that Ninian Park was being used more frequently. Initially the project proved a moderate success. Having been set up at a cost of less than £50,000, the side was credited with keeping the football club afloat by former Cardiff director Tony Clemo, who commented "We weren't getting many through the gates but rugby league helped to keep Cardiff City going [...] The Blue Dragons income was paying the rents and rates and there was always a small profit at the end of the day." The team's first match against Salford on 31 August 1981 attracted more than 9,000 spectators. However, the Blue Dragons failed to reach the top tier of Rugby league and crowds dropped to below 1,000 by the end of the first season. Grogan's death soon after led to the club folding after a year playing in Bridgend. The Welsh national rugby league team, the Wales Dragons, used Ninian Park as one of its home venues. The ground hosted seven internationals between 1981 and 1995 with the first match a 15–20 defeat to England in November 1981. Ahead of the game, rugby officials had hoped to draw a crowd of more than 10,000 but the final figure was around 8,000. The Dragons held a 3–3 record at Ninian Park, winning their last game 28–6 over France before the largest international rugby league crowd at the ground (a sellout 10,250) on their way to a semi-final berth in the 1995 Rugby League World Cup. The 1999 final of the WRU Challenge Cup was also held at the ground, featuring Swansea RFC defeating Llanelli RFC 37–10. #### Other Cardiff-born boxer Jack Petersen fought at the ground on several occasions, including victories over Hein Müller and George Cook that attracted crowds of more than 40,000. The ground also hosted several boxing World title fights; Ronnie James contested the first World title fight ever held in Wales when he fought American Ike Williams for the NBA Lightweight Title in September 1946. The bout lasted until the ninth round when reigning champion Williams knocked James out in front of a crowd of 45,000 people. Howard Winstone's rematch against reigning WBC and WBA featherweight champion Vicente Saldivar was also held at Ninian Park; Salvidar claimed a narrow victory over Winstone by half a point. During the 1958 British Empire and Commonwealth Games held in Cardiff, Ninian Park hosted the show jumping championships, although the sport was only an exhibition event at the games. A trial event to inform 1960 Summer Olympics equestrian team selection was also hosted at the ground in May 1960. Other sporting uses included hosting an exhibition basketball game between the Harlem Globetrotters and the United States Star Basketeers Team in June 1958 and an American football match featuring the Cardiff Tigers team in 1986. ### Concerts The ground has been used for numerous other events. Pope John Paul II visited the city on 2 June 1982, touring several locations, appearing at a National Youth Rally held at Ninian Park attended by 35,000 people. As part of his Rastaman Vibration Tour, reggae singer Bob Marley staged a concert at the ground on 19 June 1976 for the West Coast Rock Show. He was supported by Country Joe and the Fish and Eric Burdon among others. The concert had originally been scheduled for Stephen Stills. When he was unable to play, Marley filled the date. ## Records The highest attendance recorded at the ground is 62,634, for a match between Wales and England on 17 October 1959 in the 1959–60 British Home Championship. Cardiff City's record attendance at the ground was 57,893 during a league fixture against Arsenal on 22 April 1953. Although a match against Swansea Town in August 1949 sold 60,855 tickets only an attendance of 57,510 was recorded through the turnstiles on the day. The ground holds the record for the highest attendance for a Welsh Cup match after 37,500 fans watched Cardiff defeat Swansea Town 3–2 in the 1956 final. It also holds the record for the highest non-final Welsh Cup attendance with 22,500 fans attending a semifinal between Cardiff and Merthyr Tydfil in 1949. The highest season average attendance record was set during the 1952–53 season with 37,937. The lowest season average was recorded in the 1986–87 season with 2,856. That season also included the club's lowest ever home attendance for a fixture in the Football League when 1,510 fans attended a match against Hartlepool United on 7 May. ## See also - Leckwith development - Sport in Cardiff

Giganotosaurus

Carcharodontosaurid dinosaur genus from the late Cretaceous period

Giganotosaurus (/ˌɡɪɡəˌnoʊtəˈsɔːrəs/ GIG-ə-NOH-tə-SOR-əs) is a genus of theropod dinosaur that lived in what is now Argentina, during the early Cenomanian age of the Late Cretaceous period, approximately 99.6 to 95 million years ago. The holotype specimen was discovered in the Candeleros Formation of Patagonia in 1993 and is almost 70% complete. The animal was named Giganotosaurus carolinii in 1995; the genus name translates to "giant southern lizard", and the specific name honors the discoverer, Rubén D. Carolini. A dentary bone, a tooth, and some tracks, discovered before the holotype, were later assigned to this animal. The genus attracted much interest and became part of a scientific debate about the maximum sizes of theropod dinosaurs. Giganotosaurus was one of the largest known terrestrial carnivores, but the exact size has been hard to determine due to the incompleteness of the remains found so far. Estimates for the most complete specimen range from a length of 12 to 13 m (39 to 43 ft), a skull 1.53 to 1.80 m (5.0 to 5.9 ft) in length, and a weight of 4.2 to 13.8 t (4.6 to 15.2 short tons). The dentary bone that belonged to a supposedly larger individual has been used to extrapolate a length of 13.2 m (43 ft). Some researchers have found the animal to be larger than Tyrannosaurus, which has historically been considered the largest theropod, while others have found them to be roughly equal in size and the largest size estimates for Giganotosaurus exaggerated. The skull was low, with rugose (rough and wrinkled) nasal bones and a ridge-like crest on the lacrimal bone in front of the eye. The front of the lower jaw was flattened and had a downward-projecting process (or "chin") at the tip. The teeth were compressed sideways and had serrations. The neck was strong and the pectoral girdle proportionally small. Part of the family Carcharodontosauridae, Giganotosaurus is one of the most completely known members of the group, which includes other very large theropods, such as the closely related Mapusaurus and Carcharodontosaurus. Giganotosaurus is thought to have been homeothermic (a type of "warm-bloodedness"), with a metabolism between that of a mammal and a reptile, which would have enabled fast growth. It would have been capable of closing its jaws quickly, capturing and bringing down prey by delivering powerful bites. The "chin" may have helped in resisting stress when a bite was delivered against prey. Giganotosaurus is thought to have been the apex predator of its ecosystem, and it may have fed on juvenile sauropod dinosaurs. ## Discovery In 1993, the amateur fossil hunter Rubén D. Carolini discovered the tibia (lower leg bone) of a theropod dinosaur while driving a dune buggy in the badlands near Villa El Chocón, in the Neuquén province of Patagonia, Argentina. Specialists from the National University of Comahue were sent to excavate the specimen after being notified of the find. The discovery was announced by the paleontologists Rodolfo Coria and Leonardo Salgado at a Society of Vertebrate Paleontology meeting in 1994, where science writer Don Lessem offered to fund the excavation, after having been impressed by a photo of the leg-bone. The partial skull was scattered over an area of about 10 m² (110 sq ft), and the postcranial skeleton was disarticulated. The specimen preserved almost 70% of the skeleton, and included most of the vertebral column, the pectoral and pelvic girdles, the femora, and the left tibia and fibula. In 1995, this specimen (MUCPv-Ch1) was preliminarily described by Coria and Salgado, who made it the holotype of the new genus and species Giganotosaurus carolinii (parts of the skeleton were still encased in plaster at this time). The generic name is derived from the Ancient Greek words gigas/γίγας (meaning "giant"), notos/νότος (meaning "austral/southern", in reference to its provenance) and -sauros/-σαύρος (meaning "lizard"). The specific name honors Carolini, the discoverer. The holotype skeleton is now housed in the Ernesto Bachmann Paleontological Museum in Villa El Chocón, which was inaugurated in 1995 at the request of Carolini. The specimen is the main exhibition at the museum, and is placed on the sandy floor of a room devoted to the animal, along with tools used by paleontologists during the excavation. A mounted reconstruction of the skeleton is exhibited in an adjacent room. One of the features of theropod dinosaurs that has attracted most scientific interest is the fact that the group includes the largest terrestrial predators of the Mesozoic Era. This interest began with the discovery of one of the first known dinosaurs, Megalosaurus, named in 1824 for its large size. More than half a century later in 1905, Tyrannosaurus was named, and it remained the largest known theropod dinosaur for 90 years, though other large theropods were also known. The discussion of which theropod was the largest was revived in the 1990s by new discoveries in Africa and South America. In their original description, Coria and Salgado considered Giganotosaurus at least the largest theropod dinosaur from the southern hemisphere, and perhaps the largest in the world. They conceded that comparison with Tyrannosaurus was difficult due to the disarticulated state of the cranial bones of Giganotosaurus, but noted that at 1.43 m (4.7 ft), the femur of Giganotosaurus was 5 cm (2 in) longer than that of "Sue", the largest known Tyrannosaurus specimen, and that the bones of Giganotosaurus appeared to be more robust, indicating a heavier animal. They estimated the skull to have been about 1.53 m (5 ft) long, and the whole animal to have been 12.5 m (41 ft) long, with a weight of about 6 to 8 t (6.6 to 8.8 short tons). In 1996, the paleontologist Paul Sereno and colleagues described a new skull of the related genus Carcharodontosaurus from Morocco, a theropod described in 1927 but previously known only from fragmentary remains (much of its fossils were destroyed in World War II). They estimated the skull to have been 1.60 m (5 ft) long, similar to Giganotosaurus, but perhaps exceeding that of the Tyrannosaurus "Sue", with a 1.53 m (5 ft) long skull. They also pointed out that carcharodontosaurs appear to have had the proportionally largest skulls, but that Tyrannosaurus appears to have had longer hind limbs. In an interview for a 1995 article entitled "new beast usurps T. rex as king carnivore", Sereno noted that these newly discovered theropods from South America and Africa competed with Tyrannosaurus as the largest predators, and would help in the understanding of Late Cretaceous dinosaur faunas, which had otherwise been very "North America-centric". In the same issue of the journal in which Carcharodontosaurus was described, the paleontologist Philip J. Currie cautioned that it was yet to be determined which of the two animals were larger, and that the size of an animal is less interesting to paleontologists than, for example, adaptations, relationships, and distribution. He also found it remarkable that the two animals were found within a year of each other, and were closely related, in spite of being found on different continents. In a 1997 interview, Coria estimated Giganotosaurus to have been 13.7 (45 ft) to 14.3 (47 ft) m long and weighing 8 to 10 t (8.8 to 11.0 short tons) based on new material, larger than Carcharodontosaurus. Sereno countered that it would be difficult to determine a size range for a species based on few, incomplete specimens, and both paleontologists agreed that other aspects of these dinosaurs were more important than settling the "size contest". In 1998, the paleontologist Jorge O. Calvo and Coria assigned a partial left dentary bone (part of the lower jaw) containing some teeth (MUCPv-95) to Giganotosaurus. It had been collected by Calvo near Los Candeleros in 1988 (found in 1987), who described it briefly in 1989, while noting it may have belonged to a new theropod taxon. Calvo and Coria found the dentary to be identical to that of the holotype, though 8% larger at 62 cm (24 in). Though the rear part of it is incomplete, they proposed that the skull of the holotype specimen would have been 1.80 m (6 ft) long, and estimated the skull of the larger specimen to have been 1.95 m (6.4 ft) long, the longest skull of any theropod. In 1999, Calvo referred an incomplete tooth, (MUCPv-52), to Giganotosaurus; this specimen was discovered near Lake Ezequiel Ramos Mexia in 1987 by A. Delgado, and is therefore the first known fossil of the genus. Calvo further suggested that some theropod trackways and isolated tracks (which he made the basis of the ichnotaxon Abelichnus astigarrae in 1991) belonged to Giganotosaurus, based on their large size. The largest tracks are 50 cm (20 in) long with a pace of 130 cm (51 in), and the smallest is 36 cm (14 in) long with a pace of 100 cm (39 in). The tracks are tridactyl (three-toed) and have large and coarse digits, with prominent claw impressions. Impressions of the digits occupy most of the track-length, and one track has a thin heel. Though the tracks were found in a higher stratigraphic level than the main fossils of Giganotosaurus, they were from the same strata as the single tooth and some sauropod dinosaurs that are also known from the same strata as Giganotosaurus. ### Continued debate about size In 2001, the physician-scientist Frank Seebacher proposed a new polynomial method of calculating body-mass estimates for dinosaurs (using body-length, depth, and width), and found Giganotosaurus to have weighed 6.6 t (7.3 short tons) (based on the original 12.5 m (41 ft) length estimate). In their 2002 description of the braincase of Giganotosaurus, Coria and Currie gave a length estimate of 1.60 m (5 ft) for the holotype skull, and calculated a weight of 4.2 t (4.6 short tons) by extrapolating from the 520 mm (20 in) circumference of the femur-shaft. This resulted in an encephalization quotient (a measure of relative brain size) of 1.9. In 2004, the paleontologist Gerardo V. Mazzetta and colleagues pointed out that though the femur of the Giganotosaurus holotype was larger than that of "Sue", the tibia was 8 cm (3 in) shorter at 1.12 m (4 ft). They found the holotype specimen to have been equal to Tyrannosaurus in size at 8 t (8.8 short tons) (marginally smaller than "Sue"), but that the larger dentary might have represented an animal of 10 t (11 short tons), if geometrically similar to the holotype specimen. By using multivariate regression equations, these authors also suggested an alternative weight of 6.5 t (7.2 short tons) for the holotype and 8.2 t (9.0 short tons) for the larger specimen, and that the latter was therefore the largest known terrestrial carnivore. In 2005, the paleontologist Cristiano Dal Sasso and colleagues described new skull material (a snout) of Spinosaurus (the original fossils of which were also destroyed during World War II), and concluded this dinosaur would have been 16 to 18 m (52 to 59 ft) long with a weight 7 to 9 t (7.7 to 9.9 short tons), exceeding the maximum size of all other theropods. In 2006, Coria and Currie described the large theropod Mapusaurus from Patagonia; it was closely related to Giganotosaurus and of approximately the same size. In 2007, the paleontologists François Therrien and Donald M. Henderson found that Giganotosaurus would have approached 13 m (43 ft) in length and 13.8 t (15.2 short tons) in weight, while Carcharodontosaurus would have approached 13.3 m (44 ft) in length and 15.1 t (16.6 short tons) in weight (surpassing Tyrannosaurus), and estimated the Giganotosaurus holotype skull to have been 1.56 m (5 ft) long. They cautioned that these measurements depended on whether the incomplete skulls of these animals had been reconstructed correctly, and that more complete specimens were needed for more accurate estimates. They also found that Dal Sasso and colleagues' reconstruction of Spinosaurus was too large, and instead estimated it to have been 14.3 m (47 ft) long, weighing 20.9 t (23.0 short tons), and possibly as low as 12.6 m (41 ft) in length and 12 t (13 short tons) in weight. They concluded that these dinosaurs had reached the upper biomechanical size limit attainable by a strictly bipedal animal. In 2010, the paleontologist Gregory S. Paul suggested that the skulls of carcharodontosaurs had been reconstructed as too long in general. In 2012, the paleontologist Matthew T. Carrano and colleagues noted that though Giganotosaurus had received much attention due to its enormous size, and in spite of the holotype being relatively complete, it had not yet been described in detail, apart from the braincase. They pointed out that many contacts between skull bones were not preserved, which lead to the total length of the skull being ambiguous. They found instead that the skulls of Giganotosaurus and Carcharodontosaurus were exactly the same size as that of Tyrannosaurus. They also measured the femur of the Giganotosaurus holotype to be 1.365 m (4 ft) long, in contrast to the original measurement, and proposed that the body mass would have been smaller overall. In 2013, the paleontologist Scott Hartman published a Graphic Double Integration mass estimate (based on drawn skeletal reconstructions) on his blog, wherein he found Tyrannosaurus ("Sue") to have been larger than Giganotosaurus overall. He estimated the Giganotosaurus holotype to have weighed 6.8 t (7.5 short tons), and the larger specimen 8.2 t (9.0 short tons). Tyrannosaurus was estimated to have weighed 8.4 t (9.3 short tons), and Hartman noted that it had a wider torso, though the two seemed similar in side view. He also pointed out that the Giganotosaurus dentary that was supposedly 8% larger than that of the holotype specimen would rather have been 6.5% larger, or could simply have belonged to a similarly sized animal with a more robust dentary. He conceded that with only one good Giganotosaurus specimen known, it is possible that larger individuals will be found, as it took most of a century to find "Sue" after Tyrannosaurus was discovered. In 2014, the paleontologist Nizar Ibrahim and colleagues estimated the length of Spinosaurus to have been over 15 m (49 ft), by extrapolating from a new specimen scaled up to match the snout described by Dal Sasso and colleagues. This would make Spinosaurus the largest known carnivorous dinosaur. In 2019, the paleontologist W. Scott Persons and colleagues described a Tyrannosaurus specimen (nicknamed "Scotty"), and estimated it to be more massive than other giant theropods, but cautioned that the femoral proportions of the carcharodontosaurids Giganotosaurus and Tyrannotitan indicated a body mass larger than other adult Tyrannosaurus. They noted that these theropods were known by far fewer specimens than Tyrannosaurus, and that future finds may reveal specimens larger than "Scotty", as indicated by the large Giganotosaurus dentary. While "Scotty" had the greatest femoral circumference, the femoral length of Giganotosaurus was about 10% longer, but the authors stated it was difficult to compare proportions between large theropod clades. In 2021, the paleontologist Matías Reolid and colleagues compiled various mass estimates of theropods (including Giganotosaurus) to calculate the average, but did not include Therrien and Henderson's 2007 estimates of Carnotaurus and Giganotosaurus, considering them outliers. This resulted in a body mass range for Giganotosaurus between 5.5 and 8.5 t (6.1 and 9.4 short tons), with an average of 6.75 t (7.44 short tons). They also applied the skull length and body length ratio proposed by Therrien and Henderson and reconstructed various digital 3D models of theropods to measure body mass distribution and volume, resulting in the mass of a 13 m (43 ft) long Giganotosaurus up to 7.2 t (7.9 short tons). These researchers found the estimates consistent with the values proposed by previous studies. In 2022, Juan I. Canale and colleagues described the large carcharodontosaurid Meraxes, which has the most completely known Carcharodontosaurine skull, with an estimated length of 1.27 m (4.2 ft). Extrapolating from that skull, they estimated the skull of Giganotosaurus to have been 1.634 m (5.36 ft) long, making it one of the largest known theropod skulls. ## Description Giganotosaurus is thought to have been one of the largest theropod dinosaurs, but the incompleteness of its remains have made it difficult to estimate its size reliably. It is therefore impossible to determine with certainty whether it was larger than Tyrannosaurus, for example, which has been considered the largest theropod historically. Different size estimates have been reached by several researchers, based on various methods, and depending on how the missing parts of the skeleton have been reconstructed. Length estimates for the holotype specimen have varied between 12 and 13 m (39 and 43 ft), with a skull between 1.53 and 1.80 m (5.0 and 5.9 ft) long, a femur (thigh bone) between 1.365 and 1.43 m (4.48 and 4.69 ft) long, and a weight between 4.2 and 13.8 t (4.6 and 15.2 short tons). Fusion of sutures (joints) in the braincase indicates the holotype specimen was a mature individual. A second specimen, consisting of a dentary bone from a supposedly larger individual, has been used to extrapolate a length of 13.2 m (43 ft), a skull 1.95 m (6.4 ft) long, and a weight of 8.2 t (9.0 short tons). Some writers have considered the largest size estimates for both specimens exaggerated. Giganotosaurus has been compared to an oversized version of the well-known genus Allosaurus. ### Skull Though incompletely known, the skull of Giganotosaurus appears to have been low. The maxilla of the upper jaw had a 92 cm (36 in) long tooth row, was deep from top to bottom, and its upper and lower edges were almost parallel. The maxilla had a pronounced process (projection) under the nostril, and a small, ellipse-shaped fenestra (opening), as in Allosaurus and Tyrannosaurus. The nasal bone was very rugose (rough and wrinkled), and these rugosities continued backwards, covering the entire upper surface of this bone. The lacrimal bone in front of the eye had a prominent, rugose crest (or horn) that pointed up at a backwards angle. The crest was ridge-like, and had deep grooves. The postorbital bone behind the eye had a down and backwards directed jugal process that projected into the orbit (eye opening), as seen in Tyrannosaurus, Abelisaurus, and Carnotaurus. The supraorbital bone above the eye that contacted between the lacrimal and postorbital bones was eave-like, and similar to that of Abelisaurus. The quadrate bone at the back of the skull was 44 cm (17 in) long, and had two pneumatic (air-filled) foramina (holes) on the inner side. The skull roof (formed by the frontal and parietal bones) was broad and formed a "shelf", which overhung the short supratemporal fenestrae at the top rear of the skull. The jaw articulated far behind the occipital condyle (where the neck is attached to the skull) compared to other theropods. The condyle was broad and low, and had pneumatic cavities. Giganotosaurus did not have a sagittal crest on the top of the skull, and the jaw muscles did not extend onto the skull roof, unlike in most other theropods (due to the shelf over the supratemporal fenestrae). These muscles would instead have been attached to the lower side surfaces of the shelf. The neck muscles that elevated the head would have attached to the prominent supraoccipital bones on the top of the skull, which functioned like the nuchal crest of tyrannosaurs. A latex endocast of the brain cavity of Giganotosaurus showed that the brain was similar to that of the related genus Carcharodontosaurus, but larger. The endocast was 29 mm (1 in) long, 64 mm (3 in) wide, and had a volume of 275 ml (9.7 imp fl oz). The dentary of the lower jaw expanded in height towards the front (by the mandibular symphysis, where the two halves of the lower jaw connected), where it was also flattened, and it had a downwards projection at the tip (which has been referred to as a "chin"). The lower side of the dentary was concave, the outer side was convex in upper view, and a groove ran along it, which supported foramina that nourished the teeth. The inner side of the dentary had a row of interdental plates, where each tooth had a foramen. The Meckelian groove ran along the lower border. The curvature of the dentary shows that the mouth of Giganotosaurus would have been wide. It is possible that each dentary had twelve alveoli (tooth sockets). Most of the alveoli were about 3.5 cm (1.3 in) long from front to back. The teeth of the dentary were of similar shape and size, except for the first one, which was smaller. The teeth were compressed sideways, were oval in cross-section, and had serrations at the front and back borders, which is typical of theropods. The teeth were sigmoid-shaped when seen in front and back view. One tooth had nine to twelve serrations per mm (0.039 in). The side teeth of Giganotosaurus had curved ridges of enamel, and the largest teeth in the premaxilla (front of the upper jaw) had pronounced wrinkles (with their highest relief near the serrations). ### Postcranial skeleton The neck of Giganotosaurus was strong, and the axis bone (the neck vertebra that articulates with the skull) was robust. The rear neck (cervical) vertebrae had short, flattened centra (the "bodies" of the vertebrae), with almost hemispherical articulations (contacts) at the front, and pleurocoels (hollow depressions) divided by laminae (plates). The back (dorsal) vertebrae had high neural arches and deep pleurocoels. The tail (caudal) vertebrae had neural spines that were elongated from front to back and had robust centra. The transverse processes of the caudal vertebrae were long from front to back, and the chevrons on the front were blade-like. The pectoral girdle was proportionally shorter than that of Tyrannosaurus, with the ratio between the scapula (shoulder blade) and the femur being less than 0.5. The blade of the scapula had parallel borders, and a strong tubercle for insertion of the triceps muscle. The coracoid was small and hook-shaped. The ilium of the pelvis had a convex upper border, a low postacetabular blade (behind the acetabulum), and a narrow brevis-shelf (a projection where tail muscles attached). The pubic foot was pronounced and shorter at the front than behind. The ischium was straight and expanded hindwards, ending in a lobe-shape. The femur was sigmoid-shaped, and had a very robust, upwards pointing head, with a deep sulcus (groove). The lesser trochanter of the femoral head was wing-like, and placed below the greater trochanter, which was short. The fourth trochanter was large and projected backwards. The tibia of the lower leg was expanded at the upper end, its articular facet (where it articulated with the femur) was wide, and its shaft was compressed from front to back. ## Classification Coria and Salgado originally found Giganotosaurus to group more closely with the theropod clade Tetanurae than to more basal (or "primitive") theropods such as ceratosaurs, due to shared features (synapomorphies) in the legs, skull, and pelvis. Other features showed that it was outside the more derived (or "advanced") clade Coelurosauria. In 1996, Sereno and colleagues found Giganotosaurus, Carcharodontosaurus, and Acrocanthosaurus to be closely related within the superfamily Allosauroidea, and grouped them in the family Carcharodontosauridae. Features shared between these genera include the lacrimal and postorbital bones forming a broad "shelf" over the orbit, and the squared front end of the lower jaw. As more carcharodontosaurids were discovered, their interrelationships became clearer. The group was defined as all allosauroids closer to Carcharodontosaurus than Allosaurus or Sinraptor by the paleontologist Thomas R. Holtz and colleagues in 2004. In 2006, Coria and Currie united Giganotosaurus and Mapusaurus in the carcharodontosaurid subfamily Giganotosaurinae based on shared features of the femur, such as a weak fourth trochanter, and a shallow, broad groove on the lower end. In 2008, Sereno and the paleontologist Stephen L. Brusatte united Giganotosaurus, Mapusaurus, and Tyrannotitan in the tribe Giganotosaurini. In 2010, Paul listed Giganotosaurus as "Giganotosaurus (or Carcharodontosaurus) carolinii" without elaboration. Giganotosaurus is one of the most complete and informative members of Carcharodontosauridae. The following cladogram shows the placement of Giganotosaurus within Carcharodontosauridae according to Sebastián Apesteguía et al., 2016: ### Evolution Coria and Salgado suggested that the convergent evolution of gigantism in theropods could have been linked to common conditions in their environments or ecosystems. Sereno and colleagues found that the presence of carcharodontosaurids in Africa (Carcharodontosaurus), North America (Acrocanthosaurus), and South America (Giganotosaurus), showed the group had a transcontinental distribution by the Early Cretaceous period. Dispersal routes between the northern and southern continents appear to have been severed by ocean barriers in the Late Cretaceous, which led to more distinct, provincial faunas, by preventing exchange. Previously, it was thought that the Cretaceous world was biogeographically separated, with the northern continents being dominated by tyrannosaurids, South America by abelisaurids, and Africa by carcharodontosaurids. The subfamily Carcharodontosaurinae, in which Giganotosaurus belongs, appears to have been restricted to the southern continent of Gondwana (formed by South America and Africa), where they were probably the apex (top) predators. The South American tribe Giganotosaurini may have been separated from their African relatives through vicariance, when Gondwana broke up during the Aptian–Albian ages of the Early Cretaceous. ## Paleobiology In 1999, the paleontologist Reese E. Barrick and the geologist William J. Showers found that the bones of Giganotosaurus and Tyrannosaurus had very similar oxygen isotope patterns, with similar heat distribution in the body. These thermoregulatory patterns indicate that these dinosaurs had a metabolism intermediate between that of mammals and reptiles, and were therefore homeothermic (with a stable core body-temperature, a type of "warm-bloodedness"). The metabolism of an 8 t (8.8 short tons) Giganotosaurus would be comparable to that of a 1 t (1.1 short tons) mammalian carnivore, and would have supported rapid growth. In 2001, the physicist Rudemar Ernesto Blanco and Mazzetta evaluated the cursorial (running) capability of Giganotosaurus. They rejected the hypothesis by James O. Farlow that the risk of injuries involved in such large animals falling while on a run, would limit the speed of large theropods. Instead they posed that the imbalance caused by increasing velocity would be the limiting factor. Calculating the time it would take for a leg to gain balance after the retraction of the opposite leg, they found the upper kinematic limit of the running speed to be 14 m/s (50 km/h; 31 mph). They also found comparison between the running capability of Giganotosaurus and birds like the ostrich based on the strength of their leg-bones to be of limited value, since theropods, unlike birds, had heavy tails to counterbalance their weight. A 2017 biomechanical study of the running ability of Tyrannosaurus by the biologist William I. Sellers and colleagues suggested that skeletal loads were too great to have allowed adult individuals to run. The relatively long limbs, which were long argued to indicate good running ability, would instead have mechanically limited it to walking gaits, and it would therefore not have been a high-speed pursuit predator. They suggested that these findings would also apply to other long-limbed giant theropods such as Giganotosaurus, Mapusaurus, and Acrocanthosaurus. ### Feeding In 2002, Coria and Currie found that various features of the rear part of the skull (such as the frontwards slope of the occiput and low and wide occipital condyle) indicate that Giganotosaurus would have had a good capability of moving the skull sideways in relation to the front neck vertebrae. These features may also have been related to the increased mass and length of the jaw muscles; the jaw articulation of Giganotosaurus and other carcharodontosaurids was moved hindwards to increase the length of the jaw musculature, enabling faster closure of the jaws, whereas tyrannosaurs increased the mass of the lower jaw musculature, to increase the power of their bite. In 2005 Therrien and colleagues estimated the relative bite force of theropods and found that Giganotosaurus and related taxa had adaptations for capturing and bringing down prey by delivering powerful bites, whereas tyrannosaurs had adaptations for resisting torsional stress and crushing bones. Estimates in absolute values like newtons were impossible. The bite force of Giganotosaurus was weaker than that of Tyrannosaurus, and the force decreased hindwards along the tooth row. The lower jaws were adapted for slicing bites, and it probably captured and manipulated prey with the front part of the jaws. These authors suggested that Giganotosaurus and other allosaurs may have been generalized predators that fed on a wide spectrum of prey smaller than themselves, such as juvenile sauropods. The ventral process (or "chin") of the lower jaw may have been an adaptation for resisting tensile stress when the powerful bite was delivered with the front of the jaws against the prey. The first known fossils of the closely related Mapusaurus were found in a bonebed consisting of several individuals at different growth stages. In their 2006 description of the genus, Coria and Currie suggested that though this could be due to a long term or coincidental accumulation of carcasses, the presence of different growth stages of the same taxon indicated the aggregation was not coincidental. In a 2006 National Geographic article, Coria stated that the bonebed was probably the result of a catastrophic event and that the presence of mainly medium-sized individuals, with very few young or old, is normal for animals that form packs. Therefore, Coria said, large theropods may have hunted in groups, which would be advantageous when hunting gigantic sauropods. ## Paleoenvironment Giganotosaurus was discovered in the Candeleros Formation, which was deposited during the Early Cenomanian age of the Late Cretaceous period, approximately 99.6 to 97 million years ago. This formation is the lowest unit in the Neuquén Group, wherein it is part of the Río Limay Subgroup. The formation is composed of coarse and medium-grained sandstones deposited in a fluvial environment (associated with rivers and streams), and in aeolian conditions (effected by wind). Paleosols (buried soil), siltstones, and claystones are present, some of which represent swamp conditions. Giganotosaurus was probably the apex predator in its ecosystem. It shared its environment with herbivorous dinosaurs such as the titanosaurian sauropod Andesaurus, and the rebbachisaurid sauropods Limaysaurus and Nopcsaspondylus. Other theropods include the abelisaurid Ekrixinatosaurus, the dromaeosaurid Buitreraptor, and the alvarezsauroid Alnashetri. Other reptiles include the crocodyliform Araripesuchus, sphenodontians, snakes, and the turtle Prochelidella. Other vertebrates include cladotherian mammals, a pipoid frog, and ceratodontiform fishes. Footprints indicate the presence of large ornithopods and pterosaurs as well.

Sovereign (British coin)

British gold coin

The sovereign is a British gold coin with a nominal value of one pound sterling (£1) and contains 0.2354 troy oz of pure gold. Struck since 1817, it was originally a circulating coin that was accepted in Britain and elsewhere in the world; it is now a bullion coin and is sometimes mounted in jewellery. In addition, circulation strikes and proof examples are often collected for their numismatic value. In most recent years, it has borne the design of Saint George and the Dragon on the reverse; the initials (B P) of the designer, Benedetto Pistrucci, are visible to the right of the date. The coin was named after the English gold sovereign, which was last minted about 1603, and originated as part of the Great Recoinage of 1816. Many in Parliament believed a one-pound coin should be issued rather than the 21-shilling guinea that was struck until that time. The Master of the Mint, William Wellesley Pole had Pistrucci design the new coin; his depiction was also used for other gold coins. Originally, the coin was unpopular because the public preferred the convenience of banknotes but paper currency of value £1 was soon limited by law. With that competition gone, the sovereign became a popular circulating coin, and was used in international trade and overseas, being trusted as a coin containing a known quantity of gold. The British government promoted the use of the sovereign as an aid to international trade, and the Royal Mint took steps to see lightweight gold coins withdrawn from circulation. From the 1850s until 1932, the sovereign was also struck at colonial mints, initially in Australia and later in Canada, South Africa and India—they have again been struck in India for the local market since 2013, in addition to the production in Britain by the Royal Mint. The sovereigns issued in Australia initially carried a unique local design but by 1887, all new sovereigns bore Pistrucci's George and Dragon design. Strikings there were so large that by 1900, about forty per cent of the sovereigns in Britain had been minted in Australia. With the start of the First World War in 1914, the sovereign vanished from circulation in Britain; it was replaced by paper money and did not return after the war, though issues at colonial mints continued until 1932. The coin was still used in the Middle East and demand rose in the 1950s, to which the Royal Mint eventually responded by striking new sovereigns in 1957. Since then, it has been struck both as a bullion coin and beginning in 1979 for collectors. Although the sovereign is no longer in circulation, it is still legal tender in the United Kingdom. ## Background and authorisation There had been an English coin known as the sovereign, first authorised by HenryVII in 1489. It had a diameter of 42 millimetres (1.7 in), and weighed 15.55 grams (0.500 troy ounces), twice the weight of the existing gold coin, the ryal. The new coin was struck in response to a large influx of gold into Europe from West Africa in the 1480s, and Henry at first called it the double ryal, but soon changed the name to sovereign. Too great in value to have any practical use in circulation, the original sovereign likely served as a presentation piece to be given to dignitaries. The English sovereign, the country's first coin to be valued at one pound, was struck by the monarchs of the 16th century, the size and fineness often being altered. James I, when he came to the English throne in 1603, issued a sovereign in the year of his accession, but the following year, soon after he proclaimed himself King of Great Britain, France and Ireland, he issued a proclamation for a new twenty-shilling piece. About ten per cent lighter than the final sovereigns, the new coin was called the unite, symbolising that James had merged the Scottish and English crowns. In the 1660s, following the Restoration of Charles II and the mechanisation of the Royal Mint that quickly followed, a new twenty-shilling gold coin was issued. It had no special name at first but the public soon nicknamed it the guinea and this became the accepted term. Coins were at the time valued by their precious metal content, and the price of gold relative to silver rose soon after the guinea's issuance. Thus, it came to trade at 21 shillings or even sixpence more. Popular in commerce, the coin's value was set by the government at 21 shillings in silver in 1717, and was subject to revision downwards, though in practice this did not occur. The term sovereign, referring to a coin, fell from use—it does not appear in Samuel Johnson's dictionary, compiled in the 1750s. The British economy was disrupted by the Napoleonic Wars, and gold was hoarded. Among the measures taken to allow trade to continue was the issue of one-pound banknotes. The public came to like them as more convenient than the odd-value guinea. After the war, Parliament, by the Coinage Act 1816, placed Britain officially on the gold standard, with the pound to be defined as a given quantity of gold. Almost every speaker supported having a coin valued at twenty shillings, rather than continuing to use the guinea. Nevertheless, the Coinage Act did not specify which coins the Mint should strike. A committee of the Privy Council recommended gold coins of ten shillings, twenty shillings, two pounds and five pounds be issued, and this was accepted by George, Prince Regent on 3August 1816. The twenty-shilling piece was named a sovereign, with the resurrection of the old name possibly promoted by antiquarians with numismatic interests. ## Creation William Wellesley Pole, elder brother of the Duke of Wellington, was appointed Master of the Mint (at that time a junior government position) in 1812, with a mandate to reform the Royal Mint. Pole had favoured retaining the guinea, due to the number extant and the amount of labour required to replace them with sovereigns. Formal instruction to the Mint came with an indenture dated February 1817, directing the Royal Mint to strike gold sovereigns. As one troy pound (12 troy ounces) of 22-karat gold used to be minted into 441⁄2 guineas worth 44.5\*£11⁄20 = £4629⁄40, each troy pound of 22K gold was henceforth minted into 46.725 sovereigns, with each coin weighing 7.98805 g (0.256822 ozt; 123.2745 gr) and containing 7.32238 g (0.235420 ozt; 113.0016 gr) fine gold. The Italian sculptor Benedetto Pistrucci came to London early in 1816. His talent opened the doors of the capital's elite, among them Lady Spencer, who showed Pistrucci a model in wax of Saint George and the Dragon by Nathaniel Marchant and commissioned him to reproduce it in the Greek style as part of her husband's regalia as a Knight of the Garter. Pistrucci had already been thinking of such a work, and he produced the cameo. The model for the saint was an Italian waiter at Brunet's Hotel in Leicester Square, where he had stayed after coming to London. In 1816, Pole hired Pistrucci to create models for the new coinage. After completing Lady Spencer's commission, by most accounts, Pistrucci suggested to Pole that an appropriate subject for the sovereign would be Saint George. He created a head, in jasper, of King George III, to be used as model for the sovereign and the smaller silver coins. He had prepared a model in wax of Saint George and the Dragon for use on the crown; this was adapted for the sovereign. The Royal Mint's engravers were not able to successfully reproduce Pistrucci's imagery in steel, and the sculptor undertook the engraving of the dies himself. ### Pistrucci's George and Dragon design Pistrucci's design for the reverse of the sovereign features Saint George on horseback. His left hand clutches the rein of the horse's bridle, and he does not wear armour, other than on his lower legs and feet, with his toes bare. Further protection is provided by the helmet, with, on early issues, a streamer or plume of hair floating behind. Also flowing behind the knight is his chlamys, or cloak; it is fastened in front by a fibula. George's right shoulder bears a balteus for suspending the gladius, the sword that he grasps in his right hand. He is otherwise naked—the art critic John Ruskin later considered it odd that the saint should be unclothed going into such a violent encounter. The saint's horse appears to be half attacking, half shrinking from the dragon, which lies wounded by George's spear and in the throes of death. The original 1817 design had the saintly knight still carrying part of his broken spear. This was changed to a sword when the garter that originally surrounded the design was eliminated in 1821, and George is intended to have broken his spear earlier in the encounter with the dragon. Also removed in 1821 was the plume of hair, or streamer, behind George's helmet; it was restored in 1887, modified in 1893 and 1902, and eliminated in 2009. The George and Dragon design is in the Neoclassical style. When Pistrucci created the coin, Neoclassicism was all the rage in London, and he may have been inspired by the Elgin Marbles, which were exhibited from 1807, and which he probably saw soon after his arrival in London. Pistrucci's sovereign was unusual for a British coin of the 19th century in not having a heraldic design, but this was consistent with Pole's desire to make the sovereign look as different from the guinea as possible. ## Circulation years (1817–1914) ### Early years (1817–1837) When the sovereign entered circulation in late 1817, it was not initially popular, as the public preferred the convenience of the banknotes the sovereign had been intended to replace. Lack of demand meant that mintages dropped from 2,347,230 in 1818 to 3,574 the following year. Another reason why few sovereigns were struck in 1819 was a proposal, eventually rejected, by economist David Ricardo to eliminate gold as a coinage metal, though making it available on demand from the Bank of England. Once this plan was abandoned in 1820, the Bank encouraged the circulation of gold sovereigns, but acceptance among the British public was slow. As difficulties over the exchange of wartime banknotes were overcome, the sovereign became more popular, and with low-value banknotes becoming scarcer, in 1826 Parliament prohibited the issuance of notes with a value of less than five pounds in England and Wales. The early sovereigns were heavily exported; in 1819, Robert Peel estimated that of the some £5,000,000 in gold struck in France since the previous year, three-quarters of the gold used had come from the new British coinage, melted down. Many more sovereigns were exported to France in the 1820s as the metal alloyed with the gold included silver, which could be profitably recovered, with the gold often returned to Britain and struck again into sovereigns. Beginning in 1829, the Mint was able to eliminate the silver, but the drain on sovereigns from before then continued. George III died in January 1820, succeeded by George, Prince Regent, as George IV. Mint officials decided to continue to use the late king's head on coinage for the remainder of the year. For King GeorgeIV's coinage, Pistrucci modified the George and Dragon reverse, eliminating the surrounding Garter ribbon and motto, with a reeded border substituted. Pistrucci also modified the figure of the saint, placing a sword in his hand in place of the broken lance seen previously, eliminating the streamer from his helmet, and refining the look of the cloak. The obverse design for GeorgeIV's sovereigns featured a "Laureate head" of GeorgeIV, based on the bust Pistrucci had prepared for the Coronation medal. The new version was authorised by an Order in Council of 5May 1821. These were struck every year between 1821 and 1825, but the king was unhappy with the depiction of him and requested a new one be prepared, based on a more flattering bust by Francis Chantrey. Pistrucci refused to copy the work of another artist and was barred from further work on the coinage. Second Engraver (later Chief Engraver) William Wyon was assigned to translate Chantrey's bust into a coin design, and the new sovereign came into use during 1825. It did not bear the George and Dragon design, as the new Master of the Mint, Thomas Wallace, disliked several of the current coinage designs, and had Jean Baptiste Merlen of the Royal Mint prepare new reverse designs. The new reverse for the sovereign featured the Ensigns Armorial, or royal arms of the United Kingdom, crowned, with the lions of England seen in two of the quarters, balanced by those of Scotland and the harp of Ireland. Set on the shield are the arms of Hanover, again crowned, depicting the armorial bearings of Brunswick, Lüneburg and Celle. The George and Dragon design would not again appear on the sovereign until 1871. William IV's accession in 1830 upon the death of his brother George IV led to new designs for the sovereign, with the new king's depiction engraved by William Wyon based on a bust by Chantrey. Two slightly different busts were used, with what is usually called the "first bust" used for most 1831 circulating pieces (the first year of production) and some from 1832, with the "second bust" used for the prototype pattern coins that year, as well as for proof coins of 1831, some from 1832 and taking over entirely by 1833. The reverse shows another depiction by Merlen of the Ensigns Armorial, with the date accompanied by the Latin word Anno, or "in the year". These were struck every year until the year of the king's death, 1837. ### Victorian era The accession of Queen Victoria in 1837 ended the personal union between Britain and Hanover, as under the latter's Salic Law, a woman could not take the Hanoverian throne. Thus, both sides of the sovereign had to be changed. Wyon designed his "Young head" portrait of the Queen, which he engraved, for the obverse, and Merlen engraved the reverse, depicting the royal arms inside a wreath, and likely played some part in designing it. The new coin was approved on 26 February 1838, and with the exception of 1840 and 1867, the "shield back" sovereign was struck at the Royal Mint in London every year from 1838 to 1874. Sovereigns struck in London with the shield design between 1863 and 1874 bear small numbers under the shield, representing which coinage die was used. Records of why the numbers were used are not known to survive, with one widely printed theory that they were used to track die wear. George Frederick Ansell states in his 1870 book The Royal Mint, Its Workings, Conduct, And Operations Fully And Practically Explained that "the reverse die has been made to carry, in addition to its recognised device, a small number, with a view to determine at which coining press, and on what particular day, the numbered die was used, that bad work might be traced to an individual." By 1850, some £94million in sovereigns and half sovereigns had been struck and circulated widely, well beyond Britain's shores, a dispersion aided by the British government, who saw the sovereign's use as an auxiliary to their imperialist ambitions. Gold is a soft metal, and the hazards of circulation tended to make sovereigns lightweight over time. In 1838, when the legacy of James Smithson was converted into gold in preparation for transmission to the United States, American authorities requested recently-struck sovereigns, likely to maximise the quantity of gold when the sovereigns were melted after arrival in the United States. The weight of a newly-struck sovereign was intended to be 123.274 grains (7.98805 g). It ceased to be legal currency for £1 if found to weigh less than 1221⁄2 grains (i.e. a deficiency of 11⁄2 pence in gold per sovereign). By the early 1840s, the Bank of England estimated that twenty per cent of the gold coins that came into its hands were lightweight. In part to boost the sovereign's reputation in trade, the Bank undertook a programme of recoinage, melting lightweight gold coins and using the gold for new, full-weight ones. Between 1842 and 1845, the Bank withdrew and had recoined some £14million in lightweight gold, about one-third the amount of that metal in circulation. This not only kept the sovereign to standard, it probably removed most of the remaining guineas still in commerce. The unlucky holder of a lightweight gold coin could only turn it in as bullion, would lose at least 11⁄2 pence because of the lightness and often had to pay an equal amount to cover the Bank of England's costs. There was also increased quality control within the Royal Mint; by 1866, every gold and silver coin was weighed individually. The result of these efforts was that the sovereign became, in Sir John Clapham's later phrase, the "chief coin of the world". The California Gold Rush and other discoveries of the 1840s and 1850s boosted the amount of available gold and also the number of sovereigns struck, with £150million in sovereigns and half sovereigns coined between 1850 and 1875. The wear problem continued: it was estimated that, on average, a sovereign became lightweight after fifteen years in circulation. The Coinage Act 1870 tightened standards at the Royal Mint, requiring sovereigns to be individually tested at the annual Trial of the Pyx rather than in bulk. These standards resulted in a high rejection rate for newly coined sovereigns, though less than for the half sovereign, which sometimes exceeded 50 per cent. When the Royal Mint was rebuilt in 1882, a decisive factor in shutting down production for renovation rather than moving to a new mint elsewhere was the Bank of England's report that there was an abnormally large stock of sovereigns and that no harm would result if they could not be coined in London for a year. Advances in technology allowed sovereigns to be individually weighed by automated machines at the Bank of England by the 1890s, and efforts to keep the coin at full weight were aided by an 1889 Act of Parliament which allowed redemption of lightweight gold coin at full face value, with the loss from wear to fall upon the government. The Coinage Act 1889 also authorised the Bank of England to redeem worn gold coins from before Victoria's reign, but on 22 November 1890 all gold coins from before her reign were called in by Royal Proclamation and demonetised effective 28 February 1891. Owing to an ongoing programme to melt and recoin lightweight pieces, estimates of sovereigns in trade weighing less than the legal minimum had fallen to about four per cent by 1900. The sovereign was seen in fiction: in Dickens' Oliver Twist, Mrs Bumble is paid £25 in sovereigns for her information. Joseph Conrad, in his novels set in Latin America, refers several times to ship's captains keeping sovereigns as a ready store of value. Although many sovereigns were melted down for recoining on reaching a foreign land (as were those for the Smithsonian) it was regarded as a circulating coin in dozens of British colonies and even in nations such as Brazil and Portugal; the latter accepted it at a value of 4,500 reis. In 1871, the Deputy Master of the Mint, Charles Fremantle, restored the Pistrucci George and Dragon design to the sovereign, as part of a drive to beautify the coinage. The return of Saint George was approved by the Queen, and authorised by an Order in Council dated 14 January 1871. The two designs were struck side by side in London from 1871 to 1874, and at the Australian branch mints until 1887, after which the Pistrucci design alone was used. The saint returned to the rarely-struck two- and five-pound pieces in 1887, and was placed on the half sovereign in 1893. Wyon's "Young head" of Queen Victoria for the sovereign's obverse was struck from 1838 until 1887, when it was replaced by the "Jubilee head" by Joseph Boehm. That obverse was criticised and was replaced in 1893 by the "Old head" by Thomas Brock. Victoria's death in 1901 led to a new obverse for her son and successor, Edward VII by George William de Saulles, which began production in 1902; Edward's death in 1910 necessitated a new obverse for his son, George V by Bertram Mackennal. Pistrucci's George and Dragon design continued on the reverse. ## Branch mint coinage The 1851 discovery of gold in Australia quickly led to calls from the local populace for the establishment of a branch of the Royal Mint in the colonies there. Authorities in Adelaide did not wait for London to act, but set up an assay office, striking what became known as the "Adelaide Pound". In 1853, an Order in Council approved the establishment of the Sydney Mint; the Melbourne Mint would follow in 1872, and the Perth Mint in 1899. The act which regulated currency in New South Wales came into force on 18 July 1855 and stipulated that the gold coins were to be called sovereigns and half sovereigns. They were also to be the same weight, fineness and value as other sovereigns. Early issues for Sydney, until 1870, depicted a bust of Victoria similar to those struck in Britain, but with a wreath of banksia, native to Australia, in her hair. The reverse was distinctive as well, with the name of the mint, the word AUSTRALIA and the denomination ONE SOVEREIGN on the reverse. These coins were not initially legal tender outside Australia, as there were concerns about the design and about the light colour of the gold used (due to a higher percentage of silver in the alloy) but from 1866 Australian sovereigns were legal tender alongside those struck in London. Beginning in 1870, the designs were those used in London, though with a mint mark "S" or "M" (or, later, "P") denoting their origin. The mints at Melbourne and Sydney were allowed to continue striking the shield design even though it had been abandoned at the London facility, and did so until 1887 due to local popularity. The large issues of the colonial mints meant that by 1900, about forty per cent of the sovereigns circulating in Britain were from Australia. Dies for the Australian coinage were made at London. Following the Klondike Gold Rush, the Canadian Government asked for the establishment of a Royal Mint branch in Canada. It was not until 1908 that what is now the Royal Canadian Mint, in Ottawa, opened, and it struck sovereigns with the mint mark "C" from 1908 to 1919, except 1912 and 1915, each year in small numbers. Branch mints at Bombay (1918; mint mark "I") and Pretoria (1923–1932; mint mark "SA") also struck sovereigns. Melbourne and Perth stopped striking sovereigns after 1931, with Sydney having closed in 1926. The 1932 sovereigns struck at Pretoria were the last to be issued intended as currency at their face value. To address the high demand for gold coins in the Indian market, which does not allow gold coins to be imported, the minting of gold sovereigns in India with mint mark I has resumed since 2013. Indian/Swiss joint venture company MMTC-PAMP mints under licence in its facility close to Delhi with full quality control from the Royal Mint. The coins are legal tender in the United Kingdom. ## Trade coin (1914–1979) In the late 19th century, several Chancellors of the Exchequer had questioned the wisdom of having much of Britain's stock of gold used in coinage. Lord Randolph Churchill proposed relying less on gold coinage and moving to high-value silver coins, and the short-lived double florin or four-shilling piece is a legacy of his views. Churchill's successor, George Goschen, urged issuing banknotes to replace the gold coins, saying he preferred £20million in gold in the Bank of England to thirty million sovereigns in the hands of the public. Fears that widespread forgery of banknotes would shake confidence in the pound ended his proposal. In March 1914, John Maynard Keynes noted that the large quantities of gold arriving from South Africa were making the sovereign even more important. "The combination of the demand for sovereigns in India and Egypt with London's situation as the distributing centre of the South African gold is rapidly establishing the sovereign as the predominant gold coin of the world. Possibly it may be destined to hold in the future the same kind of international position as was held for several centuries, in the days of a silver standard, by the Mexican dollar." As Britain moved towards war in the July Crisis of 1914, many sought to convert Bank of England notes into gold, and the bank's reserves of the metal fell from £27million on 29 July to £11million on 1August. Following the declaration of war against Germany on 4August, the government circulated one-pound and ten-shilling banknotes in place of the sovereign and half sovereign. Restrictions were placed on sending gold abroad, and the melting-down of coin made an offence. Not all were enthusiastic about the change from gold to paper: J.J. Cullimore Allen, in his 1965 book on sovereigns, recalled meeting his first payroll after the change to banknotes, with the workers dubious about the banknotes and initially asking to be paid in gold. Allen converted five sovereigns from his own pocket into notes, and the workers made no further objection. Conversion into gold was not forbidden, but the Chancellor, David Lloyd George, made it clear that such actions would be unpatriotic and would harm the war effort. Few insisted on payment in gold in the face of such appeals, and by mid-1915, the sovereign was rarely seen in London commerce. The coin was depicted on propaganda posters, which urged support for the war. Although sovereigns continued to be struck at London until the end of 1917, they were mostly held as part of the nation's gold reserves, or were paid out for war debts to the United States. They were still used as currency in some foreign countries, especially in the Middle East. Sovereigns continued to be struck at the Australian mints, where different economic circumstances prevailed. After the war, the sovereign did not return to commerce in Britain, with the pieces usually worth more as gold than as currency. In 1925, the Chancellor, Winston Churchill, secured the passage of the Gold Standard Act 1925, restoring Britain to that standard, but with gold to be kept in reserve rather than as a means of circulation. The effort failed—Churchill regarded it as the worst mistake of his life—but some lightweight sovereigns were melted and restruck dated 1925, and were released only later. Many of the Australian pieces struck in the postwar period were to back currency, while the South African sovereigns were mostly for export and to pay workers at the gold mines. By the time Edward VIII came to the throne in 1936, there was no question of issuing sovereigns for circulation, but pieces were prepared as part of the traditional proof set of coins issued in the coronation year. With a bust of King Edward by Humphrey Paget and the date 1937, these sovereigns were not authorised by royal proclamation prior to Edward VIII's abdication in December 1936, and are considered pattern coins. Extremely rare, one sold in 2020 for £1,000,000, setting what was then a record (since broken) for a British coin. Sovereigns in proof condition dated 1937 were struck for Edward's brother and successor, George VI, also designed by Paget, the only sovereigns to bear George's effigy. The 1925-dated GeorgeV sovereign was restruck in 1949, 1951 and 1952, lowering the value of the original, of which only a few had hitherto been known. These were struck to meet the need for sovereigns, and to maintain the skills of the Royal Mint in striking them. The sovereign remained popular as a trade coin in the Middle East and elsewhere following the Second World War. The small strikings of 1925-dated sovereigns in the postwar period were not enough to meet the demand, which was met in part by counterfeiters in Europe and the Middle East, who often put full value of gold in the pieces. A counterfeiting prosecution was brought, to which the defence was made that the sovereign was no longer a current coin. The judge directed an acquittal although the sovereign remained legal tender under the Coinage Act 1870. Sovereigns were struck in 1953, the coronation year of Elizabeth II, bearing the portrait of her by Mary Gillick, though the gold pieces were placed only in the major museums. A 1953 sovereign sold at auction in 2014 for £384,000. In 1957, the Treasury decided to defend the status of the sovereign, both by continuing prosecutions and by issuing new pieces with the current date. ElizabethII sovereigns bearing Gillick's portrait were struck as bullion pieces between 1957 and 1959, and from 1962 to 1968. The counterfeiting problem was minimised by the striking of about 45,000,000 sovereigns by 1968, and efforts by Treasury solicitors which resulted in the sovereign's acceptance as legal tender by the highest courts of several European nations. In 1966, the Wilson government placed restrictions on the holding of gold coins to prevent hoarding against inflation, with collectors required to obtain a licence from the Bank of England. This proved ineffective, as it drove gold dealing underground, and was abandoned in 1970. The sovereign's role in popular culture continued: in the 1957 novel From Russia, with Love, Q issues James Bond with a briefcase, the handle of which contains 50 sovereigns. When held at gunpoint on the Orient Express by Red Grant, Bond uses the gold to distract Grant, leading to the villain's undoing. The sovereign survived both decimalisation and the Royal Mint's move from London to Llantrisant, Wales. The last of the Gillick sovereigns had been struck in 1968; when production resumed in 1974, it was with a portrait by Arnold Machin. The last coin minted at Tower Hill, in 1975, was a sovereign. ## Bullion and collectors coin (1979 to present) From 1979, the sovereign was issued as a coin for the bullion market, but was also struck by the Royal Mint in proof condition for collectors, and this issuance of proof coins has continued annually. In 1985, the Machin portrait of Elizabeth was replaced by one by Raphael Maklouf. Striking of bullion sovereigns had been suspended after 1982, and so the Maklouf portrait, struck every year but 1989 until the end of 1997, is seen on the sovereign only in proof condition. In 1989, a commemorative sovereign, the first, was issued for the 500th anniversary of HenryVII's sovereign. The coin, designed by Bernard Sindall, evokes the designs of that earlier piece, showing Elizabeth enthroned and facing front, as Henry appeared on the old English sovereign. The reverse of the 1489 piece depicts a double Tudor rose fronted by the royal arms; a similar design with updated arms graces the reverse of the 1989 sovereign. Ian Rank-Broadley designed the fourth bust of Elizabeth to be used on the sovereign, and this went into use in 1998 and was used until 2015. Bullion sovereigns began to be issued again in 2000, and this has continued. A special reverse design was used in 2002 for the Golden Jubilee, with an adaptation of the royal arms on a shield by Timothy Noad recalling the 19th-century "shield back" sovereigns. The years 2005 and 2012 (the latter, Elizabeth's Diamond Jubilee) saw interpretations of the George and Dragon design, the first by Noad, the later by Paul Day. Day’s design was used for the first struck-on-the-day sovereign which commemorated the jubilee. In 2009, the reverse was re-engraved using tools from the reign of GeorgeIII in the hope of better capturing Pistrucci's design. A new portrait of the Queen by Jody Clark was introduced during 2015, and some sovereigns were issued with the new bust. The most recent special designs, in 2016 and 2017, were only for collectors. The 2016 collector's piece, for Elizabeth's 90th birthday, has a one-year-only portrait of her on the obverse designed by James Butler. The 2017 collector's piece returned to Pistrucci's original design of 1817 for the modern sovereign's 200th birthday, with the Garter belt and motto. A piedfort was also minted, and the bullion sovereign struck at Llantrisant, though retaining the customary design, was given a privy mark with the number 200. For 2022, a reverse design by Noad in honour of Elizabeth's Platinum Jubilee, depicting his interpretation of the Royal Coat of Arms was used. Following the death of Elizabeth II in September 2022, the Royal Mint announced the issue of sovereigns showing the new king, Charles III, on the obverse, and with a depiction of the Royal Arms by Clark, chosen in memory of Elizabeth and her long reign. When they began accepting orders on 15 November, there was such demand that visitors to the Mint's website were placed in virtual queues. For the Coronation of Charles III in May 2023, the Royal Mint issued sovereigns showing a crowned bust of the king, with the Pistrucci reverse. Both the crowned bust and the uncrowned one first issued in 2022 were designed by Martin Jennings. ### Collecting, other use and tax treatment Many of the variant designs of the sovereign since 1989 have been intended to appeal to coin collectors, as have the other gold coins based on the sovereign, from the quarter sovereign to the five-sovereign piece. To expedite matters, the Royal Mint is authorised to sell gold sovereigns directly to the public, rather than having its output channelled through the Bank of England as was once the case. As a legal tender coin, the sovereign is exempt from capital gains tax for UK residents. As well as being used as a circulating coin, the sovereign has entered fashion: some men in the 19th century placed one on their pocket watch chains (seen as a sign of integrity), and others carried them in a small purse linked to the chain. These customs vanished with the popularisation of the wrist watch. Women also have worn sovereigns, as bangles or ear rings. In the 21st century, the wearing of a sovereign ring has been seen as a sign of chav culture. The staff carried by the Gentleman or Lady Usher of the Black Rod (known as Black Rod) as a symbol of office, and used to strike the door of the House of Commons of the United Kingdom during the State Opening of Parliament, has a sovereign inset into one of its ends. Coin auction houses deal in rare sovereigns of earlier date, as do specialist dealers. As well as the 1937 EdwardVIII and 1953 ElizabethII sovereigns, rare dates in the series include the 1819, and the 1863 piece with the number "827" on the obverse in place of William Wyon's initials. The 827 likely is an ingot number, used for some sort of experiment, though research has not conclusively established this. Few 1879 sovereigns were struck at London, and those that remain are often well-worn. Only 24,768 of the Adelaide Pound were struck; surviving specimens are rare and highly prized. The sovereign itself has been the subject of commemoration; in 2005, the Perth Mint issued a gold coin with face value A\$25, reproducing the reverse design of the pre-1871 Sydney Mint sovereigns. ## See also - Crown gold - Gold Britannia coin - Krugerrand

William H. Seward

American politician

William Henry Seward (/ˈsuːərd/; May 16, 1801 – October 10, 1872) was an American politician who served as United States Secretary of State from 1861 to 1869, and earlier served as governor of New York and as a United States Senator. A determined opponent of the spread of slavery in the years leading up to the American Civil War, he was a prominent figure in the Republican Party in its formative years, and was praised for his work on behalf of the Union as Secretary of State during the Civil War. He also negotiated the treaty for the United States to purchase the Alaska Territory. Seward was born in 1801 in the village of Florida, in Orange County, New York, where his father was a farmer and owned slaves. He was educated as a lawyer and moved to the Central New York town of Auburn. Seward was elected to the New York State Senate in 1830 as an Anti-Mason. Four years later, he became the gubernatorial nominee of the Whig Party. Though he was not successful in that race, Seward was elected governor in 1838 and won a second two-year term in 1840. During this period, he signed several laws that advanced the rights of and opportunities for black residents, as well as guaranteeing jury trials for fugitive slaves in the state. The legislation protected abolitionists, and he used his position to intervene in cases of freed black people who were enslaved in the South. After many years of practicing law in Auburn, he was elected by the state legislature to the U.S. Senate in 1849. Seward's strong stances and provocative words against slavery brought him hatred in the South. He was re-elected to the Senate in 1855, and soon joined the nascent Republican Party, becoming one of its leading figures. As the 1860 presidential election approached, he was regarded as the leading candidate for the Republican nomination. Several factors, including attitudes to his vocal opposition to slavery, his support for immigrants and Catholics, and his association with editor and political boss Thurlow Weed, worked against him, and Abraham Lincoln secured the presidential nomination. Although devastated by his loss, he campaigned for Lincoln, who appointed him Secretary of State after winning the election. Seward did his best to stop the southern states from seceding; once that failed, he devoted himself wholeheartedly to the Union cause. His firm stance against foreign intervention in the Civil War helped deter the United Kingdom and France from recognizing the independence of the Confederate States. He was one of the targets of the 1865 assassination plot that killed Lincoln and was seriously wounded by conspirator Lewis Powell. Seward remained in his post through the presidency of Andrew Johnson, during which he negotiated the Alaska Purchase in 1867 and supported Johnson during his impeachment. His contemporary Carl Schurz described Seward as "one of those spirits who sometimes will go ahead of public opinion instead of tamely following its footprints". ## Early life Seward was born on May 16, 1801, in the small community of Florida, New York, in Orange County. He was the fourth son of Samuel Sweezy Seward and his wife Mary (Jennings) Seward. Samuel Seward was a wealthy landowner and slaveholder in New York State; slavery was not fully abolished in the state until 1827. Florida, located some 60 miles (100 km) north of New York City and west of the Hudson River, was a small rural village of perhaps a dozen homes. Young Seward attended school there, and also in the nearby county seat of Goshen. He was a bright student who enjoyed his studies. In later years, one of the former family slaves would relate that instead of running away from school to go home, Seward would run away from home to go to school. At the age of 15, Henry—he was known by his middle name as a boy—was sent to Union College in Schenectady, New York. Admitted to the sophomore class, Seward was an outstanding student and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. Seward's fellow students included Richard M. Blatchford, who became a lifelong legal and political associate. Samuel Seward kept his son short on cash, and in December 1818—during the middle of Henry's final year at Union—the two quarreled about money. The younger Seward returned to Schenectady but soon left school in company with a fellow student, Alvah Wilson. The two took a ship from New York to Georgia, where Wilson had been offered a job as rector, or principal, of a new academy in rural Putnam County. En route, Wilson took a job at another school, leaving Seward to continue on to Eatonton in Putnam County. The trustees interviewed the 17-year-old Seward, and found his qualifications acceptable. Seward enjoyed his time in Georgia, where he was accepted as an adult for the first time. He was treated hospitably, but also witnessed the ill-treatment of slaves. Seward was persuaded to return to New York by his family and did so in June 1819. As it was too late for him to graduate with his class, he studied law at an attorney's office in Goshen before returning to Union College, securing his degree with highest honors in June 1820. ## Lawyer and state senator ### Early career and involvement in politics After graduation, Seward spent much of the following two years studying law in Goshen and New York City with attorneys John Duer, John Anthon and Ogden Hoffman. He passed the bar examination in late 1822. He could have practiced in Goshen, but he disliked the town and sought a practice in growing Western New York. Seward decided upon Auburn in Cayuga County, which was about 150 miles (200 km) west of Albany and 200 miles (300 km) northwest of Goshen. He joined the practice of retired judge Elijah Miller, whose daughter Frances Adeline Miller was a classmate of his sister Cornelia at Emma Willard's Troy Female Seminary. Seward married Frances Miller on October 20, 1824. In 1824, Seward was journeying with his wife to Niagara Falls when one of the wheels on his carriage was damaged while they passed through Rochester. Among those who came to their aid was local newspaper publisher Thurlow Weed. Seward and Weed would become closer in the years ahead as they found they shared a belief that government policies should promote infrastructure improvements, such as roads and canals. Weed, deemed by some to be one of the earliest political bosses, would become a major ally of Seward. Despite the benefits to Seward's career from Weed's support, perceptions that Seward was too much controlled by Weed became a factor in the former's defeat for the Republican nomination for president in 1860. Almost from the time he settled in Auburn, Seward involved himself in politics. At that time, the political system was in flux as new parties evolved. In New York State, there were generally two factions, which went by varying names, but were characterized by the fact that Martin Van Buren led one element, and the other opposed him. Van Buren, over a quarter century, held a series of senior posts, generally in the federal government. His allies were dubbed the Albany Regency, as they governed for Van Buren while he was away. Seward originally supported the Regency, but by 1824 had broken from it, concluding that it was corrupt. He became part of the Anti-Masonic Party, which became widespread in 1826 after the disappearance and death of William Morgan, a Mason in Upstate New York; he was most likely killed by fellow Masons for publishing a book revealing the order's secret rites. Since the leading candidate in opposition to President John Quincy Adams was General Andrew Jackson, a Mason who mocked opponents of the order, Anti-Masonry became closely associated with opposition to Jackson, and to his policies once he was elected president in 1828. Governor DeWitt Clinton had nominated Seward as Cayuga County Surrogate in late 1827 or early 1828, but as Seward was unwilling to support Jackson, he was not confirmed by the state Senate. During the 1828 campaign, Seward made speeches in support of President Adams's re-election. Seward was nominated for the federal House of Representatives by the Anti-Masons, but withdrew, deeming the fight hopeless. In 1829, Seward was offered the local nomination for New York State Assembly, but again felt there was no prospect of winning. In 1830, with Weed's aid, he gained the Anti-Masonic nomination for state senator for the local district. Seward had appeared in court throughout the district, and had spoken in favor of government support for infrastructure improvements, a position popular there. Weed had moved his operations to Albany, where his newspaper, the Albany Evening Journal, advocated for Seward, who was elected by about 2,000 votes. ### State senator and gubernatorial candidate Seward was sworn in as state senator in January 1831. He left Frances and their children in Auburn and wrote to her of his experiences. These included meeting former vice president Aaron Burr, who had returned to practicing law in New York following a self-imposed exile in Europe after his duel with Alexander Hamilton and treason trial. The Regency (or the Democrats, as the national party led by Jackson and supported by Van Buren, was becoming known) controlled the Senate. Seward and his party allied with dissident Democrats and others to pass some legislation, including penal reform measures, for which Seward would become known. During his term as state senator, Seward traveled extensively, visiting other anti-Jackson leaders, including former president Adams. He also accompanied his father Samuel Seward on a trip to Europe, where they met the political men of the day. Seward hoped that the Anti-Masons would nominate Supreme Court Justice John McLean for president against Jackson's re-election bid in 1832, but the nomination fell to former Attorney General William Wirt. Kentucky Senator Henry Clay, an opponent of Jackson, was a Mason, and thus unacceptable as party standard-bearer. In the aftermath of Jackson's easy victory, many of those who opposed him believed that a united front was necessary to defeat the Democrats, and the Whig Party gradually came into being. The Whigs believed in legislative action to develop the country and opposed Jackson's unilateral actions as president, which they deemed imperial. Many Anti-Masons, including Seward and Weed, readily joined the new party. In preparation for the 1834 election, New York's Whigs met in Utica to determine a gubernatorial candidate. Democratic Governor William Marcy was heavily favored to be re-elected, and few prominent Whigs were anxious to run a campaign that would most likely be lost. Seward's wife and father wanted him to retire from politics to increase the income from his law practice, and Weed urged him to seek re-election to the state Senate. Nevertheless, the reluctance of others to run caused Seward to emerge as a major candidate. Weed procured Seward's triumph at the Utica convention. The election turned on national issues, most importantly President Jackson's policies. These were then popular, and in a strong year for Democrats, Seward was defeated by some 11,000 votes—Weed wrote that the Whigs were overwhelmed by illegally cast ballots. Defeated for governor and with his term in the state Senate having expired, Seward returned to Auburn and the practice of law at the start of 1835. That year, Seward and his wife undertook a lengthy trip, going as far south as Virginia. Although they were hospitably received by southerners, the Sewards saw scenes of slavery which confirmed them as its opponents. The following year, Seward accepted a position as agent for the new owners of the Holland Land Company, which owned large tracts of land in Western New York, upon which many settlers were purchasing real estate on installment. The new owners were viewed as less forgiving landlords than the old, and when there was unrest, they hired Seward, popular in Western New York, in hopes of adjusting the matter. He was successful, and when the Panic of 1837 began, persuaded the owners to avoid foreclosures where possible. He also, in 1838, arranged the purchase of the company's holdings by a consortium that included himself. Van Buren had been elected president in 1836; even with his other activities, Seward had found time to campaign against him. The economic crisis came soon after the inauguration and threatened the Regency's control of New York politics. Seward had not run for governor in 1836, but with the Democrats unpopular, saw a path to victory in 1838 (the term was then two years). Other prominent Whigs also sought the nomination. Weed persuaded delegates to the convention that Seward had run ahead of other Whig candidates in 1834; Seward was nominated on the fourth ballot. Seward's opponent was again Marcy, and the economy the principal issue. The Whigs argued that the Democrats were responsible for the recession. As it was thought improper for candidates for major office to campaign in person, Seward left most of that to Weed. Seward was elected by a margin of about 10,000 votes out of 400,000 cast. The victory was the most significant for the Whig Party to that point, and eliminated the Regency from power in New York, permanently. ## Governor of New York William Seward was sworn in as governor of New York on January 1, 1839, and inaugurated in front of a crowd of jubilant Whigs. In that era, the annual message by the New York governor was published and discussed to the extent of that of a president. Seward biographer Walter Stahr wrote that his address "brimmed with his youth, energy, ambition, and optimism." Seward took note of America's great unexploited resources and stated that immigration should be encouraged in order to take advantage of them. He urged that citizenship and religious liberty be granted to those who came to New York's shores. At the time, New York City's public schools were run by Protestants, and used Protestant texts, including the King James Bible. Seward believed the current system was a barrier to literacy for immigrants' children and proposed legislation to change it. Education, he stated, "banishes the distinctions, old as time, of rich and poor, master and slave. It banishes ignorance and lays axe to the root of crime." Seward's stance was popular among immigrants, but was disliked by nativists; their opposition would eventually help defeat his bid for the Republican presidential nomination in 1860. Although the Assembly had a Whig majority at the start of Seward's first term as governor, the party had only 13 legislators out of 32 in the state Senate. The Democrats refused to co-operate with Governor Seward except on the most urgent matters, and he initially found himself unable to advance much of his agenda. Accordingly, the 1839 legislative elections were crucial to Seward's legislative hopes, and to advancing the nominations of many Whigs to state office whose posts required Senate confirmation. Both Seward and President Van Buren gave several speeches across New York State that summer. Henry Clay, one of the hopefuls for the Whig nomination for president, spent part of the summer in Upstate New York, and the two men met by chance on a ferry. Seward refused to formally visit Clay at his vacation home in Saratoga Springs in the interests of neutrality, beginning a difficult relationship between the two men. After the 1839 election, the Whigs had 19 seats, allowing the party full control of state government. Following the election, there was unrest near Albany among tenant farmers on the land owned by Dutch-descended patroons of the van Rensselaer family. These tenancies allowed the landlords privileges such as enlisting the unpaid labor of tenants, and any breach could result in termination of tenure without compensation for improvements. When sheriff's deputies in Albany County were obstructed from serving eviction writs, Seward was asked to call out the militia. After an all-night cabinet meeting, he did so, though quietly assuring the tenants that he would intervene with the legislature. This mollified the settlers, though Seward proved unable to get the legislature to pass reforming laws. This question of tenants' rights was not settled until after Seward had left office. In September 1839, a ship sailing from Norfolk, Virginia, to New York City was discovered to have an escaped slave on board. The slave was returned to his owner pursuant to the Fugitive Slave Clause of the Constitution, but Virginia also demanded that three free black sailors, said to have concealed the fugitive aboard ship, be surrendered to its custody. This Seward would not do, and the Virginia General Assembly passed legislation inhibiting trade with New York. With Seward's encouragement, the New York legislature passed acts in 1840 protecting the rights of blacks against Southern slave-catchers. One guaranteed alleged fugitive slaves the right of a jury trial in New York to establish whether they were slaves, and another pledged the aid of the state to recover free blacks kidnapped into slavery. Seward and Van Buren were both up for re-election in 1840. Seward did not attend the December 1839 Whig National Convention in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, but Weed did on his behalf. They were determined to support General Winfield Scott for president, but when Weed concluded Scott could not win, he threw New York's support behind the eventual winner, General William Henry Harrison. This action outraged supporters of Senator Clay. These grievances would not be quickly forgotten—one supporter of the Kentuckian wrote in 1847 that he was intent on seeing the "punishment of Seward & Co. for defrauding the country of Mr. Clay in 1840". Seward was renominated for a second term by the Whig convention against Democrat William C. Bouck, a former state legislator. Seward did not campaign in person, but ran affairs behind the scenes with Weed and made his views known to voters through a Fourth of July speech and lengthy letters, declining invitations to speak, printed in the papers. In one, Seward expounded upon the importance of the log cabin—a structure evoking the common man and a theme that the Whigs used heavily in Harrison's campaign—where Seward had always found a far warmer welcome than in the marble palaces of the well-to-do (evoking Van Buren). Both Harrison and Seward were elected. Although Seward would serve for nearly thirty more years in public life, his name would never again pass before the voters. In his second term, Seward was involved with the trial of Alexander McLeod, who had boasted of involvement in the 1837 Caroline Affair, in which Canadians came across the Niagara River and sank the Caroline, a steamboat being used to supply William Lyon Mackenzie's fighters during the Upper Canada Rebellion. McLeod was arrested, but the British Foreign Minister, Lord Palmerston, demanded his release. McLeod, who was part of the Canadian colonial militia, could not be held responsible for actions taken under orders. Although the Van Buren administration had agreed with Seward that McLeod should be tried under state law, its successor did not and urged that charges against McLeod be dropped. A series of testy letters were exchanged between Governor Seward and Harrison's Secretary of State Daniel Webster, and also between the governor and the new president John Tyler, who succeeded on Harrison's death after a month in office. McLeod was tried and acquitted in late 1841. Stahr pointed out that Seward got his way in having McLeod tried in a state court, and the diplomatic experience served him well as Secretary of State. Seward continued his support of blacks, signing legislation in 1841 to repeal a "nine-month law" that allowed slaveholders to bring their slaves into the state for a period of nine months before they were considered free. After this, slaves brought to the state were immediately considered freed. Seward also signed legislation to establish public education for all children, leaving it up to local jurisdictions as to how that would be supplied (some had segregated schools). ## Out of office As governor, Seward incurred considerable personal debt not only because he had to live beyond his salary to maintain the lifestyle expected of the office, but also because he could not pay down his obligation from the land company purchase. At the time he left office, he owed \$200,000. Returning to Auburn, he absorbed himself in a profitable law practice. He did not abandon politics and received former president Adams at the Seward family home in 1843. According to his biographer, John M. Taylor, Seward picked a good time to absent himself from electoral politics, as the Whig Party was in turmoil. President Tyler, a former Democrat, and Senator Clay each claimed leadership of the Whig Party and, as the two men differed over such issues as whether to re-establish the Bank of the United States, party support was divided. The abolitionist movement attracted those who did not want to be part of a party led by slavery-supporting southerners. In 1844, Seward was asked to run for president by members of the Liberty Party; he declined and reluctantly supported the Whig nominee, Clay. The Kentuckian was defeated by Democrat James K. Polk. The major event of Polk's administration was the Mexican–American War; Seward did not support this, feeling that the price in blood was not worth the increase in territory, especially as southerners were promoting this acquisition to expand territory for slavery. In 1846, Seward became the center of controversy in Auburn when he defended, in separate cases, two felons accused of murder. Henry Wyatt, a white man, was charged with fatally stabbing a fellow inmate in prison; William Freeman, a black, was accused of breaking into a house after his release and stabbing four people to death. In both cases, the defendants were likely mentally ill and had been abused while in prison. Seward, having long been an advocate of prison reform and better treatment for the insane, sought to prevent each man from being executed by using the relatively new defense of insanity. Seward gained a hung jury in Wyatt's first trial, though he was subsequently convicted in a retrial and executed despite Seward's efforts to secure clemency. Freeman was convicted, though Seward gained a reversal on appeal. There was no second Freeman trial, as officials were convinced of his insanity. Freeman died in prison in late 1846. In the Freeman case, invoking mental illness and racial issues, Seward argued, "he is still your brother, and mine, in form and color accepted and approved by his Father, and yours, and mine, and bears equally with us the proudest inheritance of our race—the image of our Maker. Hold him then to be a Man." Although they were locally contentious, the trials boosted Seward's image across the North. He gained further publicity in association with Ohioan Salmon P. Chase when handling the unsuccessful appeal in the United States Supreme Court of John Van Zandt, an anti-slavery advocate sued by a slaveowner for assisting blacks in escaping on the Underground Railroad. Chase was impressed with Seward, writing that the former New York governor "was one of the very first public men in our country. Who but himself would have done what he did for the poor wretch Freeman?" The main Whig contenders in 1848 were Clay again, and two war hero generals with little political experience, Winfield Scott and Zachary Taylor. Seward supported General Taylor. The former governor was less enthusiastic about the vice-presidential candidate, New York State Comptroller Millard Fillmore, a rival of his from Buffalo. Nevertheless, he campaigned widely for the Whigs against the Democratic presidential candidate, former Michigan senator Lewis Cass. The two major parties did not make slavery an issue in the campaign. The Free Soil Party, mostly Liberty Party members and some Northern Democrats, nominated former president Van Buren. The Taylor/Fillmore ticket was elected, and the split in the New York Democratic Party allowed the Whigs to capture the legislature. State legislatures elected U.S. senators until the ratification of the Seventeenth Amendment in 1913. One of New York's seats was up for election in 1849, and a Whig would likely be elected to replace John Adams Dix. Seward, with Weed's counsel, decided to seek the seat. When legislators convened in January 1849, he was spoken of as the favorite. Some opposed him as too extreme on slavery issues and intimated that he would not support the slaveholding President-elect Taylor, a Louisianan. Weed and Seward worked to dispel these concerns, and when the vote for the Senate seat took place, the former governor received five times the vote of the nearest other candidate, gaining election on the first ballot. ## U.S. Senator ### First term William Seward was sworn in as senator from New York on March 5, 1849, during the brief special session called to confirm President Taylor's Cabinet nominees. Seward was seen as having influence over Taylor. Taking advantage of an acquaintance with Taylor's brother, Seward met with the former general several times before Inauguration Day (March 4) and was friendly with Cabinet officers. Taylor hoped to gain the admission of California to the Union, and Seward worked to advance his agenda in the Senate. The regular session of Congress that began in December 1849 was dominated by the issue of slavery. Senator Clay advanced a series of resolutions, which became known as the Compromise of 1850, giving victories to both North and South. Seward opposed the pro-slavery elements of the Compromise, and in a speech on the Senate floor on March 11, 1850, invoked a "higher law than the Constitution". The speech was widely reprinted and made Seward the leading anti-slavery advocate in the Senate. President Taylor took a stance sympathetic to the North, but his death in July 1850 caused the accession of the pro-Compromise Fillmore and ended Seward's influence over patronage. The Compromise passed, and many Seward adherents in federal office in New York were replaced by Fillmore appointees. Although Clay had hoped the Compromise would be a final settlement on the matter of slavery that could unite the nation, it divided his Whig Party, especially when the 1852 Whig National Convention endorsed it to the anger of liberal northerners like Seward. The major candidates for the presidential nomination were President Fillmore, Senator Daniel Webster, and General Scott. Seward supported Scott, who he hoped would, like Harrison, unite enough voters behind a military hero to win the election. Scott gained the nomination, and Seward campaigned for him. The Whigs were unable to reconcile over slavery, whereas the Democrats could unite behind the Compromise; the Whigs won only four states, and former New Hampshire senator Franklin Pierce was elected president. Other events, such as the 1852 publication of Uncle Tom's Cabin and Northern anger over the enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act (an element of the Compromise), widened the divide between North and South. Seward's wife Frances was deeply committed to the abolitionist movement. In the 1850s, the Seward family opened their Auburn home as a safehouse to fugitive slaves on the Underground Railroad. Seward's frequent travel and political work suggest that it was Frances who played the more active role in Auburn abolitionist activities. In the excitement following the rescue and safe transport of fugitive slave William "Jerry" Henry in Syracuse on October 1, 1851, Frances wrote to her husband, "two fugitives have gone to Canada—one of them our acquaintance John". Another time she wrote, "A man by the name of William Johnson will apply to you for assistance to purchase the freedom of his daughter. You will see that I have given him something by his book. I told him I thought you would give him more." In January 1854, Democratic Illinois Senator Stephen A. Douglas introduced his Kansas–Nebraska Bill. This would permit territories to choose whether to join the Union as free or slave states, and effectively repeal the Missouri Compromise forbidding slavery in new states north of 36° 30′ North latitude. Seward was determined to defeat what he called "this infamous Nebraska Bill," and worked to ensure the final version of the bill would be unpalatable to enough senators, North and South, to defeat it. Seward spoke against the bill both on initial consideration in the Senate and when the bill returned after reconciliation with the House. The bill passed into law, but northerners had found a standard around which they could rally. Those in the South defended the new law, arguing that they should have an equal stake through slavery in the territories their blood and money had helped secure. ### Second term The political turmoil engendered by the North–South divide split both major parties and led to the founding of new ones. The American Party (known as the Know Nothings) contained many nativists and pursued an anti-immigrant agenda. The Know Nothings did not publicly discuss party deliberations (thus, they knew nothing). They disliked Seward, and an uncertain number of Know Nothings sought the Whig nomination to legislative seats. Some made clear their stance by pledging to vote against Seward's re-election, but others did not. Although the Whigs won a majority in both houses of the state legislature, the extent of their support for Seward as a US senator was unclear. When the election was held by the legislature in February 1855, Seward won a narrow majority in each house. The opposition was scattered, and a Know Nothing party organ denounced two dozen legislators as "traitors". The Republican Party had been founded in 1854, in reaction to the Kansas–Nebraska Act. Its anti-slavery stance was attractive to Seward, but he needed the Whig structure in New York to get re-elected. In September 1855, the New York Whig and Republican parties held simultaneous conventions that quickly merged into one. Seward was the most prominent figure to join the new party and was spoken of as a possible presidential candidate in 1856. Weed, however, did not feel that the new party was strong enough on a national level to secure the presidency, and advised Seward to wait until 1860. When Seward's name was mentioned at the 1856 Republican National Convention, a huge ovation broke out. In the 1856 presidential election, the Democratic candidate, former Pennsylvania senator James Buchanan, defeated the Republican, former California senator John C. Frémont, and the Know Nothing candidate, former president Fillmore. The 1856 campaign played out against the backdrop of "Bleeding Kansas", the violent efforts of pro- and anti-slavery forces to control the government in Kansas Territory and determine whether it would be admitted as a slave or free state. This violence spilled over into the Senate chamber itself after Republican Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner delivered an incendiary speech against slavery, making personal comments against South Carolina Senator Andrew P. Butler. Sumner had read a draft of the speech to Seward, who had advised him to omit the personal references. Two days after the speech, Butler's nephew, Congressman Preston Brooks entered the chamber and beat Sumner with a cane, injuring him severely. Although some southerners feared the propaganda value of the incident in the North, most lionized Brooks as a hero. Many northerners were outraged, though some, including Seward, felt that Sumner's words against Butler had unnecessarily provoked the attack. Some Southern newspapers felt that the Sumner precedent might usefully be applied to Seward; the Petersburg Intelligencer, a Virginia periodical, suggested that "it will be very well to give Seward a double dose at least every other day". In a message to Congress in December 1857, President Buchanan advocated the admission of Kansas as a slave state under the Lecompton Constitution, passed under dubious circumstances. This split the Democrats: the administration wanted Kansas admitted; Senator Douglas demanded a fair ratification vote. The Senate debated the matter through much of early 1858, though few Republicans spoke at first, content to watch the Democrats tear their party to shreds over the issue of slavery. The issue was complicated by the Supreme Court's ruling the previous year in Dred Scott v. Sandford that neither Congress nor a local government could ban slavery in the territories. In a speech on March 3 in the Senate, Seward "delighted Republican ears and utterly appalled administration Democrats, especially the Southerners". Discussing Dred Scott, Seward accused Buchanan and Chief Justice Roger B. Taney of conspiring to gain the result and threatened to reform the courts to eliminate Southern power. Taney later told a friend that if Seward had been elected in 1860, he would have refused to administer the oath of office. Buchanan reportedly denied the senator access to the White House. Seward predicted slavery was doomed: > The interest of the white races demands the ultimate emancipation of all men. Whether that consummation shall be allowed to take effect, with needful and wise precautions against sudden change and disaster, or be hurried on by violence, is all that remains for you to decide. Southerners saw this as a threat, by the man deemed the likely Republican nominee in 1860, to force change on the South whether it liked it or not. Statehood for Kansas failed for the time being, but Seward's words were repeatedly cited by Southern senators as the secession crisis grew. Nevertheless, Seward remained on excellent personal terms with individual southerners such as Mississippi's Jefferson Davis. His dinner parties, where those from both sides of the sectional divide mingled, were a Washington legend. With an eye to a presidential bid in 1860, Seward tried to appear a statesman who could be trusted by both North and South. Seward did not believe the federal government could mandate emancipation but that it would develop by action of the slave states as the nation urbanized and slavery became uneconomical, as it had in New York. Southerners still believed that he was threatening the forcible ending of slavery. While campaigning for Republicans in the 1858 midterm elections, Seward gave a speech at Rochester that proved divisive and quotable, alleging that the U.S. had two "antagonistic systems [that] are continually coming into closer contact, and collision results ... It is an irrepressible conflict between opposing and enduring forces, and it means that the United States must and will, sooner or later, become entirely either a slave-holding nation, or entirely a free-labor nation." White southerners saw the "irrepressible conflict" speech as a declaration of war, and Seward's vehemence ultimately damaged his chances of gaining the presidential nomination. ## Election of 1860 ### Candidate for the nomination In 1859, Seward was advised by his political supporters that he would be better off avoiding additional controversial statements, and left the country for an eight-month tour of Europe and the Middle East. Seward spent two months in London, meeting with the Prime Minister, Lord Palmerston, and was presented at Court to Queen Victoria. Seward returned to Washington in January 1860 to find controversy: that some southerners blamed him for his rhetoric, which they believed had inspired John Brown to try to start a slave insurrection. Brown was captured and executed; nevertheless, Mississippi representatives Reuben Davis and Otho Singleton each stated that if Seward or another Radical Republican was elected, he would meet with the resistance of a united South. To rebut such allegations, and to set forth his views in the hope of receiving the nomination, Seward made a major speech in the Senate on February 29, 1860, which most praised, though white southerners were offended, and some abolitionists also objected because the senator, in his speech, said that Brown was justly punished. The Republican National Committee ordered 250,000 copies in pamphlet form, and eventually twice that many were printed. Weed sometimes expressed certainty that Seward would be nominated; at other times he expressed gloom at the thought of the convention fight. He had some reason for doubt, as word from Weed's agents across the country was mixed. Many in the Midwest did not want the issue of slavery to dominate the campaign, and with Seward as the nominee, it inevitably would. The Know Nothing Party was still alive in the Northeast, and was hostile to Seward for his pro-immigrant stance, creating doubts as to whether Seward could win Pennsylvania and New Jersey, where there were many nativists, in the general election. These states were crucial to a Republican nominee faced with a Solid South. Conservative factions in the evolving Republican Party opposed Seward. ### Convention There were no primaries in 1860, no way to be certain how many delegates a candidate might receive. Nevertheless, going into the 1860 Republican National Convention in May in Chicago, Seward was seen as the overwhelming favorite. Others spoken of for the nomination included Ohio Governor Salmon P. Chase, former Missouri congressman Edward Bates, and former Illinois congressman Abraham Lincoln. Seward stayed in Auburn during the convention; Weed was present on his behalf and worked to shore up Seward's support. He was amply supplied with money: business owners had eagerly given, expecting Seward to be the next president. Weed's reputation was not entirely positive; he was believed corrupt by some, and his association both helped and hurt Seward. Enemies such as publisher and former Seward ally Horace Greeley cast doubts as to Seward's electability in the battleground states of Illinois, Indiana, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey. Lincoln had worked hard to gain a reputation as a moderate in the party and hoped to be seen as a consensus second choice, who might be successful in those critical states, of which the Republicans had to win three to secure the election. Lincoln's men, led by his friend David Davis, were active on his behalf. As Lincoln had not been seen as a major candidate, his supporters had been able to influence the decision to hold the convention in his home state, and surrounded the New York delegation, pro-Seward, with Lincoln loyalists. They were eventually successful in gaining the support of the delegations from the other battleground states, boosting delegates' perceptions of Lincoln's electability. Although Lincoln and Seward shared many views, Lincoln, out of office since 1849, had not excited opposition as Seward had in the South and among Know Nothings. Lincoln's views on nativism, which he opposed, were not public. On the first ballot, Seward had 1731⁄2 votes to Lincoln's 102, with 233 needed to nominate. Pennsylvania shifted its vote to Lincoln on the second ballot, and Seward's lead was cut to 1841⁄2 to 181. On the third, Lincoln had 2311⁄2 to Seward's 180 after the roll call, but Ohio changed four votes from Chase to Lincoln, giving the Illinoian the nomination and starting a small stampede; the nomination was eventually made unanimous. By the accounts of witnesses, when word reached Seward by telegraph he calmly remarked that Lincoln had some of the attributes needed to be president, and would certainly be elected. ### Campaigning for Lincoln Despite his public nonchalance, Seward was devastated by his convention loss, as were many of his supporters. The New Yorker was the best-known and most popular Republican, and his defeat shocked many in the North, who felt that Lincoln had been nominated through chicanery. Although Seward sent a letter stating Weed was not to blame, Seward's political manager took the defeat hard. Seward was initially inclined to retire from public life but received many letters from supporters: distrustful of Lincoln, they urged Seward to remain involved in politics. On his way to Washington to return to Senate duties, he stopped in Albany to confer with Weed, who had gone to Lincoln's home in Springfield, Illinois, to meet with the candidate, and had been very impressed at Lincoln's political understanding. At the Capitol, Seward received sympathy even from sectional foes such as Jefferson Davis. Lincoln faced three major opponents. A split in the Democratic Party had led northerners to nominate Senator Douglas, while southerners chose Vice President John C. Breckinridge. The Constitutional Union Party, a new party consisting mostly of former Southern Whigs, selected former Tennessee senator John Bell. As Lincoln would not even be on the ballot in ten southern states, he needed to win almost every northern state to take the presidency. Douglas was said to be strong in Illinois and Indiana, and if he took those, the election might be thrown into the House of Representatives. Seward was urged to undertake a campaign tour of the Midwest in support of Lincoln and did so for five weeks in September and October, attracting huge crowds. He journeyed by rail and boat as far north as Saint Paul, Minnesota, into the border state of Missouri at St. Louis, and even to Kansas Territory, though it had no electoral votes to cast in the election. When the train passed through Springfield, Seward and Lincoln were introduced, with Lincoln appearing "embarrassed" and Seward "constrained". In his oratory, Seward spoke of the U.S. as a "tower of freedom", a Union that might even come to include Canada, Latin America, and Russian America. New York was key to the election; a Lincoln loss there would deadlock the Electoral College. Soon after his return from his Midwest tour, Seward embarked on another, speaking to large crowds across the state of New York. At Weed's urging, he went to New York City and gave a patriotic speech before a large crowd on November 3, only three days before the election. On Election Day, Lincoln carried most Northern states, while Breckinridge took the Deep South, Bell three border states, and Douglas won Missouri—the only state Seward campaigned in that Lincoln did not win. Lincoln was elected. ## Secession crisis Lincoln's election had been anticipated in Southern states, and South Carolina and other Deep South states began to call conventions for the purpose of secession. In the North, there was dissent over whether to offer concessions to the South to preserve the Union, and if conciliation failed, whether to allow the South to depart in peace. Seward favored compromise. He had hoped to remain at home until the New Year, but with the deepening crisis left for Washington in time for the new session of Congress in early December. The usual tradition was for the leading figure of the winning party to be offered the position of Secretary of State, the most senior Cabinet post. Seward was that person, and around December 12, the vice president-elect, Maine Senator Hannibal Hamlin, offered Seward the position on Lincoln's behalf. At Weed's advice, Seward was slow to formally accept, doing so on December 28, 1860, though well before Inauguration Day, March 4, 1861. Lincoln remained in Illinois until mid-February, and he and Seward communicated by letter. As states in the Deep South prepared to secede in late 1860, Seward met with important figures from both sides of the sectional divide. Seward introduced a proposed constitutional amendment preventing federal interference with slavery. This was done at Lincoln's private request; the president-elect hoped that the amendment, and a change to the Fugitive Slave Act to allow those captured a jury trial, would satisfy both sides. Congressmen introduced many such proposals, and Seward was appointed to a committee of 13 senators to consider them. Lincoln was willing to guarantee the security of slavery in the states that currently had it, but he rejected any proposal that would allow slavery to expand. It was increasingly clear that the deep South was committed to secession; the Republican hope was to provide compromises to keep the border slave states in the Union. Seward voted against the Crittenden Compromise on December 28, but quietly continued to seek a compromise that would keep the border states in the Union. Seward gave a major speech on January 12, 1861. By then, he was known to be Lincoln's choice as Secretary of State, and with Lincoln staying silent, it was widely expected that he would propound the new administration's plan to save the Union. Accordingly, he spoke to a crowded Senate, where even Jefferson Davis attended despite Mississippi's secession, and to packed galleries. He urged the preservation of the Union, and supported an amendment such as the one he had introduced, or a constitutional convention, once passions had cooled. He hinted that New Mexico Territory might be a slave state, and urged the construction of two transcontinental railroads, one northern, one southern. He suggested the passage of legislation to bar interstate invasions such as that by John Brown. Although Seward's speech was widely applauded, it gained a mixed reaction in the border states to which he had tried to appeal. Radical Republicans were not willing to make concessions to the South, and were angered by the speech. Pennsylvania Congressman Thaddeus Stevens, a radical, warned that if Lincoln, like Seward, ignored the Republican platform and tried to purchase peace through concessions, he would retire, as too old to bear the years of warfare in the Republican Party that would result. Lincoln applauded Seward's speech, which he read in Springfield, but refused to approve any compromise that could lead to a further expansion of slavery. Once Lincoln left Springfield on February 11, he gave speeches, stating in Indianapolis that it would not be coercing a state if the federal government insisted on retaining or retaking property that belonged to it. This came as the United States Army still held Fort Sumter; the president-elect's words upset moderate southerners. Virginia Congressman Sherrard Clemens wrote, > Mr. Lincoln, by his speech in the North, has done vast harm. If he will not be guided by Mr. Seward but puts himself in the hands of Mr. Chase and the ultra [that is, Radical] Republicans, nothing can save the cause of the Union in the South. Lincoln arrived in Washington, unannounced and incognito, early on the morning of February 23, 1861. Seward had been advised by General Winfield Scott that there was a plot to assassinate Lincoln in Baltimore when he passed through the city. Senator Seward sent his son Frederick to warn Lincoln in Philadelphia, and the president-elect decided to travel alone but for well-armed bodyguards. Lincoln travelled without incident and came to regret his decision as he was widely mocked for it. Later that morning, Seward accompanied Lincoln to the White House, where he introduced the Illinoisan to President Buchanan. Seward and Lincoln differed over two issues in the days before the inauguration: the composition of Lincoln's cabinet, and his inaugural address. Given a draft of the address, Seward softened it to make it less confrontational toward the South; Lincoln accepted many of the changes, though he gave it, according to Seward biographer Glyndon G. Van Deusen, "a simplicity and a poetic quality lacking in Seward's draft". The differences regarding the Cabinet revolved around the inclusion of Salmon Chase, a radical. Lincoln wanted all elements of the party, as well as representation from outside it; Seward opposed Chase, as well as former Democrats such as Gideon Welles and Montgomery Blair. Seward did not get his way, and gave Lincoln a letter declining the post of Secretary of State. Lincoln felt, as he told his private secretary, John Nicolay, that he could not "afford to let Seward take the first trick". No reply or acknowledgment was made by Lincoln until after the inaugural ceremonies were over on March 4, when he asked Seward to remain. Seward did and was both nominated and confirmed by the Senate, with minimal debate, on March 5, 1861. ## Secretary of State ### Lincoln administration #### War breaks out Lincoln faced the question of what to do about Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor, held by the Army against the will of South Carolinians, who had blockaded it. The fort's commander, Major Robert Anderson, had sent word that he would run out of supplies. Seward, backed by most of the Cabinet, recommended to Lincoln that an attempt to resupply Sumter would be provocative to the border states, that Lincoln hoped to keep from seceding. Seward hinted to the commissioners who had come to Washington on behalf of the Confederacy that Sumter would be surrendered. Lincoln was loath to give up Sumter, feeling it would only encourage the South in its insurgency. With the Sumter issue unresolved, Seward sent Lincoln a memorandum on April 1, proposing various courses of action, including possibly declaring war on France and Spain if certain conditions were not met, and reinforcing the forts along the Gulf of Mexico. In any event, vigorous policies were needed and the president must either establish them himself or allow a Cabinet member to do so, with Seward making it clear he was willing to do it. Lincoln drafted a reply indicating that whatever policy was adopted, "I must do it", though he never sent it, but met with Seward instead, and what passed between them is not known. Seward's biographers make the point that the note was sent to a Lincoln who had not yet proved himself in office. Lincoln decided on expeditions to try to relieve Sumter and Florida's Fort Pickens. Meanwhile, Seward was assuring Justice John Archibald Campbell, the intermediary with the Confederate commissioners who had come to Washington in an attempt to secure recognition, that no hostile action would be taken. Lincoln sent a notification to South Carolina's governor of the expedition, and on April 12, Charleston's batteries began firing on Sumter, beginning the Civil War. #### Diplomacy When the war started, Seward turned his attention to making sure that foreign powers did not interfere in the conflict. When, in April 1861, the Confederacy announced that it would authorize privateers, Seward sent word to the American representatives abroad that the U.S. would become party to the Paris Declaration Respecting Maritime Law of 1856. This would outlaw such vessels, but Britain required that, if the U.S. were to become a party, the ratification would not require action to be taken against Confederate vessels. The Palmerston government considered recognizing the Confederacy as an independent nation. Seward was willing to wage war against Britain if it did and drafted a strong letter for the American Minister in London, Charles Francis Adams, to read to the Foreign Secretary, Lord Russell. Seward submitted it to Lincoln, who, realizing that the Union was in no position to battle both the South and Britain, toned it down considerably, and made it merely a memorandum for Adams's guidance. In May 1861, Britain and France declared the South to be belligerents by international law, and their ships were entitled to the same rights as U.S.-flagged vessels, including the right to remain 24 hours in neutral ports. Nevertheless, Seward was pleased that both nations would not meet with Confederate commissioners or recognize the South as a nation. Britain did not challenge the Union blockade of Confederate ports, and Seward wrote that if Britain continued to avoid interfering in the war, he would not be overly sensitive to what wording they used to describe their policies. In November 1861, the USS San Jacinto, commanded by Captain Charles Wilkes, intercepted the British mail ship RMS Trent and removed two Confederate diplomats, James Mason and John Slidell. They were held in Boston amid jubilation in the North and outrage in Britain. The British minister in Washington, Lord Lyons, demanded their release, as the U.S. had no right to stop a British-flagged ship traveling between neutral ports. The British drew up war plans to attack New York and sent reinforcements to Canada. Seward worked to defuse the situation. He persuaded Lyons to postpone delivering an ultimatum and told Lincoln that the prisoners would have to be released. Lincoln did let them go, reluctantly, on technical grounds. Relations between the U.S. and Britain soon improved; in April 1862, Seward and Lyons signed a treaty they had negotiated allowing each nation to inspect the other's ships for contraband slaves. In November 1862, with America's image in Britain improved by the issuance of the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, the British cabinet decided against recognition of the Confederacy as a nation. Despite Britain's neutrality, Confederate agents in Britain had arranged for the purchases of arms to be delivered to Confederate ports through blockade runners as well as the construction of Confederate warships, most notably the CSS Alabama, which ravaged Union shipping after her construction in 1862. With two more such vessels under construction the following year, supposedly for French interests, Seward pressed Palmerston not to allow the warships to leave port, and, nearly complete, they were seized by British officials in October 1863. However, Britain's complicity in allowing its blockade runners loaded with weapons to Confederate ports lengthened the Civil War by two years and killed 400,000 more Americans. This caused strained relations between the UK and the U.S. #### Involvement in wartime detentions From the start of the war until early 1862, when responsibility was passed to the War Department, Seward was in charge of determining who should be detained without charges or trial. Approximately 800 men and a few women, believed to be Southern sympathizers or spies, were detained, usually at the initiation of local officials. Once Seward was informed, he would often order that the prisoner be transferred to federal authorities. Seward was reported to have boasted to Lord Lyons that "I can touch a bell on my right hand, and order the arrest of a citizen ... and no power on earth, except that of the President, can release them. Can the Queen of England do so much?" In September 1861, Maryland legislators planned to vote to leave the Union. Seward took action against them: his son Frederick, the United States Assistant Secretary of State, reported to his father that the disloyal legislators were in prison. On the evidence provided by detective Allen Pinkerton, Seward in 1862 ordered the arrest of Rose Greenhow, a Washington socialite with Confederate sympathies. Greenhow had sent a stream of reports south, which continued even after she was placed under house arrest. From Washington's Old Capitol Prison, the "Rebel Rose" provided newspaper interviews until she was allowed to cross into Confederate territory. When Seward received allegations that former president Pierce was involved in a plot against the Union, he asked Pierce for an explanation. Pierce indignantly denied it. The matter proved to be a hoax, and the administration was embarrassed. On February 14, 1862, Lincoln ordered that responsibility for detentions be transferred to the War Department, ending Seward's part in them. #### Relationship with Lincoln Seward had mixed feelings about the man who had blocked him from the presidency. One story is that when Seward was told that to deny Carl Schurz an office would disappoint him, Seward angrily stated, "Disappointment! You speak to me of disappointment! To me, who was justly entitled to the Republican nomination for the presidency, and who had to stand aside and see it given to a little Illinois lawyer!" Despite his initial reservations about Lincoln's abilities, he came to admire Lincoln as the president grew more confident in his job. Seward wrote to his wife in June 1861, "Executive skill and vigor are rare qualities. The President is the best of us, but he needs constant and assiduous cooperation." According to Goodwin, "Seward would become his most faithful ally in the cabinet ... Seward's mortification at not having received his party's nomination never fully abated, but he no longer felt compelled to belittle Lincoln to ease his pain." Lincoln, a one-term congressman, was inexperienced in Washington ways and relied on Seward's advice on protocol and social etiquette. The two men built a close personal and professional relationship. Lincoln fell into the habit of entrusting Seward with tasks not within the remit of the State Department, for example asking him to examine a treaty with the Delaware Indians. Lincoln would come to Seward's house and the two lawyers would relax before the fire, chatting. Seward began to feature in the president's humorous stories. For example, Lincoln would tell of Seward remonstrating with the president, whom he found polishing his boots, "In Washington, we do not blacken our own boots," with Lincoln's response, "Indeed, then whose boots do you blacken, Mr. Secretary?" Other cabinet members became resentful of Seward, who seemed to be always present when they discussed their departments' concerns with Lincoln, yet they were never allowed to be there when the two men discussed foreign affairs. Seward announced when cabinet meetings would be; his colleagues eventually persuaded Lincoln to set a regular date and time for those sessions. Seward's position on the Emancipation Proclamation when Lincoln read it to his cabinet in July 1862 is uncertain; Secretary of War Edwin Stanton wrote at the time that Seward opposed it in principle, feeling the slaves should simply be freed as Union armies advanced. Two later accounts indicate that Seward felt that it was not yet time to issue it, and Lincoln did wait until after the bloody stalemate at Antietam that ended Confederate General Robert E. Lee's incursion into the North to issue it. In the interim, Seward cautiously investigated how foreign powers might react to such a proclamation, and learned it would make them less likely to interfere in the conflict. Seward was not close to Lincoln's wife Mary, who by some accounts had opposed his appointment as Secretary of State. Mary Lincoln developed such a dislike for Seward that she instructed her coachman to avoid passing by the Seward residence. The Secretary of State enjoyed the company of the younger Lincoln boys, Willie and Tad, presenting them with two cats from his assortment of pets. Seward accompanied Lincoln to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, in November 1863, where Lincoln was to deliver a short speech, that would become famous as the Gettysburg Address. The night before the speech, Lincoln met with Seward. There is no surviving evidence that Seward authored any changes: he stated after the address, when asked if had had any hand in it, that only Lincoln could have made that speech. Seward also proposed to Lincoln that he proclaim a day of national thanksgiving, and drafted a proclamation to that effect. Although post-harvest thanksgiving celebrations had long been held, this first formalized Thanksgiving Day as a national observance. #### 1864 election; Hampton Roads Conference It was far from certain that Lincoln would even be nominated in 1864, let alone re-elected, as the tide of war, though generally favoring the North, washed back and forth. Lincoln sought nomination by the National Union Party, composed of Republicans and War Democrats. No one proved willing to oppose Lincoln, who was nominated. Seward was by then unpopular among many Republicans and opponents sought to prompt his replacement by making Lincoln's running mate former New York Democratic senator Daniel S. Dickinson; under the political customs of the time, one state could not hold two positions as prestigious as vice president and Secretary of State. Administration forces turned back Dickinson's bid, nominating instead Military Governor of Tennessee Andrew Johnson, with whom Seward had served in the Senate. Lincoln was re-elected in November; Seward sat with Lincoln and the assistant presidential secretary, John Hay, as the returns came in. In January 1865, Francis Preston Blair, father of former Lincoln Postmaster General Montgomery Blair, went, with Lincoln's knowledge, to the Confederate capital of Richmond to propose to Davis that North and South unite to expel the French from their domination of Mexico. Davis appointed commissioners (Vice President Alexander Stephens, former U.S. Supreme Court justice Campbell, and former Confederate Secretary of State Robert M. T. Hunter) to negotiate. They met with Lincoln and Seward at the Hampton Roads Conference the following month. Lincoln would settle for nothing short of a cessation of resistance to the federal government and an end to slavery; the Confederates would not even concede that they and the Union were one nation. There was much friendly talk, as most of them had served together in Washington, but no agreement. After the conference broke up, Seward sent a bucket of champagne to the Confederates, conveyed by a black oarsman in a rowboat, and called to the southerners, "keep the champagne, but return the Negro." #### Assassination attempt John Wilkes Booth had originally planned to kidnap Lincoln, and recruited conspirators, including Lewis Powell, to help him. Having found no opportunity to abduct the president, on April 14, 1865, Booth assigned Powell to assassinate Seward, with George Atzerodt to kill Vice President Johnson and himself to kill Lincoln, which would slay the three senior members of the Executive Branch. Accordingly, another member of the conspiracy, David Herold, led Powell to the Seward home on horseback and was responsible for holding Powell's horse while he committed the attack. Seward had been hurt in an accident some days before, and Powell gained entry to the home on the excuse he was delivering medicine to the injured man, but was stopped at the top of the stairs by Seward's son Frederick, who insisted Powell give him the medicine. Powell instead attempted to fire on Frederick and beat him over the head with the barrel of his gun when it misfired. Powell burst through the door, threw Fanny Seward (Seward's daughter) to one side, jumped on the bed, and stabbed William Seward in the face and neck five times. A soldier assigned to guard and nurse the secretary, Private George F. Robinson, jumped on Powell, forcing him from the bed. Private Robinson and Augustus Henry Seward, another of Seward's sons, were also injured in their struggle with the would-be assassin. Ultimately, Powell fled, stabbing a messenger, Emerick Hansell, as he went, only to find that Herold, panicked by the screams from the house, had left with both horses. Seward was at first thought dead, but revived enough to instruct Robinson to send for the police and lock the house until they arrived. Almost simultaneously with the attack on Seward, Booth had mortally wounded Lincoln at Ford's Theatre. Atzerodt, however, decided not to go through with the attack on Johnson. When Secretary of War Edwin Stanton and Navy Secretary Gideon Welles hurried to Seward's home to find out what had happened, they found blood everywhere. All five men injured that night at the Seward home survived. Powell was captured the next day at the boarding house of Mary Surratt. He was hanged on July 7, 1865, along with Herold, Atzerodt, and Surratt, convicted as conspirators in the Lincoln assassination. Their deaths occurred only weeks after that of Seward's wife Frances, who never recovered from the shock of the assassination attempt. ### Johnson administration #### Reconstruction and impeachment In the first months of the new Johnson administration, Seward did not work much with the president. Seward was at first recovering from his injuries, and Johnson was ill for a time in the summer of 1865. Seward was likely in accord with Johnson's relatively gentle terms for the South's re-entry to the Union, and with his pardon of all Confederates but those of high rank. Radical Republicans such as Stanton and Pennsylvania Representative Thaddeus Stevens proposed that the freed slaves be given the vote, but Seward was content to leave that to the states (few Northern states gave African-Americans the ballot), believing the priority should be reconciling the power-holding white populations of the North and South to each other. Unlike Lincoln, who had a close rapport with Seward, Johnson kept his own counsel and generally did not take advantage of Seward's political advice as Congress prepared to meet in December 1865. Johnson had issued proclamations allowing for the southern states to reform their state governments and hold elections; they mostly elected men who had served as prewar or wartime leaders. Seward advised Johnson to state, in his first annual message to Congress, that southern states meet three conditions for readmission to the Union: repeal of secession, repudiation of the war debt incurred by the rebel governments, and ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment. Johnson, hoping to appeal to both Republicans and Democrats, did not take the suggestion. Congress did not seat southerners but appointed a joint committee of both houses to make recommendations on the issue. Johnson opposed the committee; Seward was prepared to wait and see. In early 1866, Congress and president battled over the extension of the authorization of the Freedmen's Bureau. Both sides agreed that the bureau should end after the states were re-admitted, the question was whether that would be soon. With Seward's support, Johnson vetoed the bill. Republicans in Congress were angry with both men, and tried but failed to override Johnson's veto. Johnson vetoed the Civil Rights Bill, which was to grant citizenship to the freedmen. Seward advised a conciliatory veto message; Johnson ignored him, telling Congress it had no right to pass bills affecting the South until it seated the region's congressmen. This time Congress overrode his veto, gaining the necessary two-thirds majority of each house, the first time this had been done on a major piece of legislation in American history. Johnson hoped the public would elect congressmen who agreed with him in the 1866 midterm elections, and embarked on a trip, dubbed the Swing Around the Circle, giving speeches in a number of cities that summer. Seward was among the officials who went with him. The trip was a disaster for Johnson; he made a number of ill-considered statements about his opponents that were criticized in the press. The Radical Republicans were strengthened by the results of the elections. The Republican anger against Johnson extended to his Secretary of State—Maine Senator William P. Fessenden said of Johnson, "he began by meaning well, but I fear that Seward's evil counsels have carried him beyond the reach of salvation". In February 1867, both houses of Congress passed the Tenure of Office Bill, purporting to restrict Johnson in the removal of presidential appointees. Johnson suspended, then fired, Stanton over Reconstruction policy differences, leading to the president's impeachment for allegedly violating the Tenure of Office Act. Seward recommended that Johnson hire the renowned attorney, William M. Evarts, and, with Weed, raised funds for the president's successful defense. #### Mexico Mexico was strife-torn in the early 1860s, as it often had been in the fifty years since its independence. There had been 36 changes of government and 73 presidents, and a refusal to pay foreign debts. France, Spain, and Great Britain joined together to intervene in 1861 on the pretext of protecting their nationals, and to secure repayment of debt. Spain and the British soon withdrew, but France remained. Seward realized that a challenge to France at this point might provoke its intervention on the Confederate side, so he stayed quiet. In 1864, French emperor Napoleon III set Archduke Maximilian of Austria on the Mexican throne, with French military support. Seward used strident language publicly but was privately conciliatory toward the French. The Confederates had been supportive of France's actions. Upon returning to work after the assassination attempt, Seward warned France that the U.S. still wanted the French gone from Mexico. Napoleon feared that the large, battle-tested American army would be used against his troops. Seward remained conciliatory, and in January 1866, Napoleon agreed to withdraw his troops after a twelve- to eighteen-month period, during which time Maximilian could consolidate his position against the insurgency led by Benito Juárez. In December 1865, Seward bluntly told Napoleon that the United States desired friendship, but, "this policy would be brought into imminent Jeopardy unless France could deem it consistent with her interest and honor to desist from the prosecution of armed intervention in Mexico." Napoleon tried to postpone the French departure, but the Americans had General Phil Sheridan and an experienced combat army on the north bank of the Rio Grande and Seward held firm. Napoleon suggested a new Mexican government that would exclude both Maximilian and Juárez. The Americans had recognized Juárez as the legitimate president and were not willing to consider this. In the meantime, Juárez, with the help of American military aid, was advancing through northeast Mexico. The French withdrew in early 1867. Maximilian stayed behind but was soon captured by Juárez's troops. Although both the U.S. and France urged Juárez against it, the deposed emperor was executed by firing squad on June 19, 1867. #### Territorial expansion and Alaska Although in speeches Seward had predicted all of North America joining the Union, he had, as a senator, opposed the Gadsden Purchase obtaining land from Mexico, and Buchanan's attempts to purchase Cuba from Spain. Those stands were because the land to be secured would become slave territory. After the Civil War, this was no longer an issue, and Seward became an ardent expansionist and even contemplated the purchase of Greenland and Iceland. The Union Navy had been hampered due to the lack of overseas bases during the war, and Seward also believed that American trade would be helped by the purchase of overseas territory. Believing, along with Lincoln, that the U.S. needed a naval base in the Caribbean, in January 1865, Seward offered to purchase the Danish West Indies (today the United States Virgin Islands). Late that year, Seward sailed for the Caribbean on a naval vessel. Among the ports of call was St. Thomas in the Danish West Indies, where Seward admired the large, easily defended harbor. Another stop was in the Dominican Republic, where he opened talks to obtain Samaná Bay. When Congress reconvened in December 1866, Seward caused a sensation by entering the chamber of the House of Representatives and sitting down with the administration's enemy, Congressman Stevens, persuading him to support an appropriation for more money to expedite the purchase of Samaná, and sent his son Frederick to the Dominican Republic to negotiate a treaty. Both attempts fell through; the Senate, in the dying days of the Johnson administration, failed to ratify a treaty for the purchase of the Danish possessions, while negotiations with the Dominican Republic were not successful. Seward had been interested in whaling as a senator; his interest in Russian America was a byproduct of this. In his speech prior to the 1860 convention, he predicted the territory would become part of the U.S., and when he learned in 1864 that it might be for sale, he pressed the Russians for negotiations. Russian minister Baron Eduard de Stoeckl recommended the sale. The territory was a money loser, and the Russian-American Company itself allowed its charter to expire in 1861. Russia could use the money more efficiently for its expansion in Siberia or Central Asia. Keeping it ran the risk of it being captured in war by the British, or overrun by American settlers. Stoeckl was given the authority to make the sale and when he returned in March 1867, negotiated with the Secretary of State. Seward initially offered \$5 million; the two men settled on \$7 million and on March 15, Seward presented a draft treaty to the Cabinet. Stoeckl's superiors raised several concerns; to induce him to waive them, the final purchase price was increased to \$7.2 million. The treaty was signed in the early morning of March 30, 1867, and ratified by the Senate on April 10. Stevens sent the secretary a note of congratulations, predicting that the Alaska Purchase would be seen as one of Seward's greatest accomplishments. ## 1868 election, retirement and death Seward hoped that Johnson would be nominated at the 1868 Democratic National Convention, but the delegates chose former New York Governor Horatio Seymour. The Republicans chose General Ulysses S. Grant, who had a hostile relationship with Johnson. Seward gave a major speech on the eve of the election, endorsing Grant, who was easily elected. Seward met twice with Grant after the election, leading to speculation that he was seeking to remain as secretary for a third presidential term. However, the president-elect had no interest in retaining Seward, and the secretary resigned himself to retirement. Grant refused to have anything to do with Johnson, even declining to ride to his inauguration in the same carriage as the outgoing president, as was customary. Despite Seward's attempts to persuade him to attend Grant's swearing-in, Johnson and his Cabinet spent the morning of March 4, 1869, at the White House dealing with last-minute business, then left once the time for Grant to be sworn in had passed. Seward returned to Auburn. Restless in Auburn, Seward embarked on a trip across North America by the new transcontinental railroad. In Salt Lake City, Utah Territory, he met with Brigham Young, President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, who had worked as a carpenter on Seward's house (then belonging to Judge Miller) as a young man. On reaching the Pacific Coast, the Seward party sailed north on the steamer Active to visit Sitka, Department of Alaska, part of the vast wilderness Seward had acquired for the U.S. After spending time in Oregon and California, the party went to Mexico, where he was given a hero's welcome. After a visit to Cuba, he returned to the U.S., concluding his nine-month trip in March 1870. In August 1870, Seward embarked on another trip, this time westbound around the world. With him was Olive Risley, daughter of a Treasury Department official, to whom he became close in his final year in Washington. They visited Japan, then China, where they walked on the Great Wall. During the trip, they decided that Seward would adopt Olive, and he did so, thus putting an end to gossip and the fears of his sons that Seward would remarry late in life. They spent three months in India, then journeyed through the Middle East and Europe, not returning to Auburn until October 1871. Back in Auburn, Seward began his memoirs, but only reached his thirties before putting it aside to write of his travels. In these months he was steadily growing weaker. On October 10, 1872, he worked at his desk in the morning as usual, then complained of trouble breathing. Seward grew worse during the day, as his family gathered around him. Asked if he had any final words, he said, "Love one another". Seward died that afternoon. His funeral a few days later was preceded by the people of Auburn and nearby filing past his open casket for four hours. Thurlow Weed was there for the burial of his friend, and Harriet Tubman, a former slave whom the Sewards had aided, sent flowers. President Grant sent his regrets he could not be there. William Seward rests with his wife Frances and daughter Fanny (1844–1866), in Fort Hill Cemetery in Auburn. ## Legacy and historical view Seward's reputation, controversial in life, remained so in death, dividing his contemporaries. Former Navy Secretary Gideon Welles argued that not only did Seward lack principles, Welles was unable to understand how Seward had fooled Lincoln into thinking that he did, gaining entry to the Cabinet thereby. Charles Francis Adams, minister in London during Seward's tenure as secretary, deemed him "more of a politician than a statesman", but Charles Anderson Dana, former Assistant Secretary of War, disagreed, writing that Seward had "the most cultivated and comprehensive intellect in the administration" and "what is very rare in a lawyer, a politician, or a statesman—imagination". Scholars of history have generally praised Seward for his work as Secretary of State; in 1973, Ernest N. Paolino deemed him "the one outstanding Secretary of State after John Quincy Adams". Seward has been given high marks by historians both for his achievements in office, and for his foresight in anticipating the future needs of the U.S. According to his biographer Van Deusen, "his foreign policy built for the future. He wished to prepare America for the great era which lay ahead. So he sought bases, naval stations and, peacefully, additional territory." Seward's biographers suggested that there are two faces to Seward. One, "John Quincy Adams Seward", dreamed big dreams and tried to convey them in speeches, working to achieve education for all, a fair deal for immigrants, an end to slavery, and an expanded America. The other, "Thurlow Weed Seward", cut backroom deals over cigars and a bottle, and was a pragmatist who often settled for half a loaf when the whole was not achievable. Daniel S. Crofts, in Seward's entry in the American National Biography argued, "Each Seward was, of course, a caricature, and both tendencies, at once symbiotic and contradictory, existed in tandem." The praise Seward has received extends to his work during the Civil War. Stahr wrote that Seward "skillfully managed the nation's foreign affairs, avoiding the foreign intervention that would have ensured that the Confederacy would become a separate nation". Nevertheless, historians, focusing on the battlefields of the Civil War, have given him relatively little attention. Seward has a dozen biographers, while thousands of books focus on Lincoln. According to Crofts, "Seward and Lincoln were the two most important leaders spawned by the intersection of antebellum idealism and partisan politics. Lincoln, of course, will always overshadow Seward. Before 1860, however, Seward eclipsed Lincoln." Lincoln's assassination helped to seal his greatness, and according to Seward biographer John M. Taylor, to relegate "his associates ... to the status of bit players." Dozens of biographies extolling Lincoln as the quintessential American were written in the decades after the president's death, placing Lincoln on a pedestal of public esteem Seward could not climb. Seward realized this even in life; by one account, when asked to show his scars from the attempt on his life, Seward regretted he had not been martyred along with Lincoln, "I think I deserved the reward of dying there". Despite his being an ardent supporter of American expansionism during his time in the Cabinet, only Alaska was added to U.S. territory during Seward's service as Secretary of State. (It should be remembered that the purchase of Alaska from Russia was not inevitable; the land had the same latitude as Siberia and was very difficult to farm, while neither gold nor oil nor any other important mineral was discovered there until years after Seward's death.) Nevertheless, his influence extended to later American acquisitions. One of his friends, Hamilton Fish, in 1875 signed the trade reciprocity treaty with the Kingdom of Hawaii that eventually led to the American annexation of the islands. William Everts, another Seward friend, in 1877 signed a treaty of friendship with the Samoan Islands, laying the groundwork for another American acquisition. A young friend and protege of Seward, Lincoln's assistant private secretary, John Hay, served as a successor to Seward from 1898 to 1905, during which time the U.S. acquired Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa, the Philippines, and the Panama Canal Zone. Stahr believes that Seward's influence is still felt today: > Seward believed not only in territorial expansion but in a commercial and diplomatic empire. He encouraged immigration to the United States, always seeing immigration as a source of strength; he ... was prepared to back up words with arms; and he believed that Washington was the natural center for inter-American and international discussion. If he were alive today, he would not be surprised to learn ... that many of the most famous Americans are first- or second-generation immigrants, or that New York City is the world's financial center, or that the headquarters of the World Bank and the Organization of American States are both in Washington. Seward would not be surprised by these developments: he would be pleased. ## See also - Sites and works regarding William H. Seward

U2

Irish rock band

U2 are an Irish rock band from Dublin, formed in 1976. The group consists of Bono (lead vocals and rhythm guitar), the Edge (lead guitar, keyboards, and backing vocals), Adam Clayton (bass guitar), and Larry Mullen Jr. (drums and percussion). Initially rooted in post-punk, U2's musical style has evolved throughout their career, yet has maintained an anthemic quality built on Bono's expressive vocals and the Edge's chiming, effects-based guitar sounds. Bono's lyrics, often embellished with spiritual imagery, focus on personal and sociopolitical themes. Popular for their live performances, the group have staged several elaborate tours over their career. The band was formed when the members were teenaged pupils of Mount Temple Comprehensive School and had limited musical proficiency. Within four years, they signed with Island Records and released their debut album, Boy (1980). Works such as their first UK number-one album, War (1983), and singles "Sunday Bloody Sunday" and "Pride (In the Name of Love)" helped establish U2's reputation as a politically and socially conscious group. Their fourth album, The Unforgettable Fire (1984), was their first collaboration with producers Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois, whose influence resulted in a more abstract, ambient sound for the band. By the mid-1980s, U2 had become renowned globally for their live act, highlighted by their performance at Live Aid in 1985. Their fifth album, The Joshua Tree (1987), made them international stars and was their greatest critical and commercial success. One of the world's best-selling albums with 25 million copies sold, it produced the group's only number-one singles in the US to date: "With or Without You" and "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For". Facing creative stagnation and a backlash to their documentary and double album Rattle and Hum (1988), U2 reinvented themselves in the 1990s. Beginning with their acclaimed seventh album, Achtung Baby (1991) and the multimedia-intensive Zoo TV Tour, the band pursued a new musical direction influenced by alternative rock, electronic dance music, and industrial music, and they embraced a more ironic, flippant image. This experimentation continued on Zooropa (1993) and concluded with Pop (1997) and the PopMart Tour, which were mixed successes. U2 regained critical and commercial favour with the records All That You Can't Leave Behind (2000) and How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb (2004), which established a more conventional, mainstream sound for the group. Although their twelfth album, No Line on the Horizon (2009), did not meet commercial expectations, the supporting U2 360° Tour of 2009–2011 set records for the highest-attended and highest-grossing concert tour, both of which stood until 2019. In the 2010s, U2 released the companion albums Songs of Innocence (2014) and Songs of Experience (2017); Innocence received criticism for its pervasive, no-cost release through the iTunes Store. Their most recent album, Songs of Surrender (2023), consists of reimagined versions of 40 songs from their career. U2 have released 15 studio albums and are one of the world's best-selling music artists, having sold an estimated 150–170 million records worldwide. They have won 22 Grammy Awards, more than any other band, and in 2005, they were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in their first year of eligibility. Rolling Stone ranked U2 at number 22 on its list of the "100 Greatest Artists of All Time". Throughout their career, as a band and as individuals, they have campaigned for human rights and social justice causes, working with organisations and coalitions that include Amnesty International, Jubilee 2000, DATA/the ONE Campaign, Product Red, War Child, and Music Rising. ## History ### Formation and early years (1976–1980) In 1976, Larry Mullen Jr., then a 14-year-old pupil of Mount Temple Comprehensive School in Dublin, Ireland, posted a note on the school's notice board in search of musicians for a new band. At least five people responded and attended the first practice, which was held on 25 September in Mullen's kitchen. Mullen played drums and was joined by: Paul Hewson ("Bono") on lead vocals; David Evans ("the Edge") and his older brother Dik Evans on guitar; Adam Clayton, a friend of the Evans brothers, on bass guitar; and Ivan McCormick. Mullen later described it as "'The Larry Mullen Band' for about ten minutes, then Bono walked in and blew any chance I had of being in charge." Peter Martin, a friend of Mullen and McCormick, loaned his guitar and amplifier for the first practice, but he could not play and was quickly phased out; sources differ on whether he was in attendance at the first meeting or not. McCormick was dropped from the group after a few weeks. The remaining five members settled on the name "Feedback" for the group because it was one of the few technical terms they knew. Early rehearsals took place in their music teacher's classroom at Mount Temple. Most of their initial material consisted of cover songs, which they admitted was not their forte. Emerging punk rock acts such as the Stranglers, the Jam, the Clash, Buzzcocks, and Sex Pistols were strong influences on the group. The popularity of punk convinced them that musical proficiency was not a prerequisite to success. In April 1977, Feedback played their first gig for a paying audience at St. Fintan's High School. Shortly thereafter, the band changed their name to "The Hype". Dik Evans, who was older and by that time attending college, was becoming the odd man out. The rest of the band was leaning towards the idea of a four-piece ensemble. In March 1978, the group changed their name to "U2". Steve Averill, a punk rock musician with the Radiators from Space and a family friend of Clayton's, had suggested six potential names from which the band chose U2 for its ambiguity and open-ended interpretations, and because it was the name that they disliked the least. Dik Evans was officially phased out of the band with a farewell concert at the Presbyterian Hall in Sutton on 4 March. During the show, which featured the group playing cover songs as the Hype, Dik ceremonially walked offstage. The remaining four band members returned later in the concert to play original material as U2. Dik joined another band, the Virgin Prunes, which comprised mutual friends of U2's; the Prunes were their default opening act early on, and the two groups often shared members for live performances to cover for occasional absences. On 18 March, the four-piece U2 won the "Pop Group '78" talent contest sponsored by the Evening Press and Guinness as part of Limerick Civic Week. The win was an important milestone and affirmation for the fledgling act. The contest prize consisted of £500 and a recording session for a demo that would be heard by record label CBS Ireland. U2's demo tape was recorded at Keystone Studios in Dublin in April 1978, but the results were largely unsuccessful due to their inexperience. Irish magazine Hot Press was influential in shaping U2's future; in addition to being one of their earliest allies, the publication's journalist Bill Graham introduced the band to Paul McGuinness, who agreed to be their manager in mid-1978. With the connections he was making within the music industry, McGuinness booked demo sessions for the group and sought to garner them a record deal. The band continued to build their fanbase with performances across Ireland, the most famous of which were a series of weekend afternoon shows at Dublin's Dandelion Market in the summer of 1979. In August, U2 recorded demos at Windmill Lane Studios with CBS talent scout Chas de Whalley as producer, marking the first of the band's many recordings at the studio during their career. The following month, three songs from the session were released by CBS as the Ireland-only EP Three. It was the group's first chart success, selling all 1,000 copies of its limited edition 12-inch vinyl almost immediately. In December 1979, the band performed in London for their first shows outside Ireland, although they were unable to gain much attention from audiences or critics. On 26 February 1980, their second single, "Another Day", was released on the CBS label, but again only for the Irish market. The same day, U2 played a show at the 2,000-seat National Stadium in Dublin as part of an Irish tour. Despite their gamble of booking a concert in such a large venue, the move paid off. Bill Stewart, an A&R representative for Island Records, was in attendance and offered to sign them to the label. The following month, the band signed a four-year, four-album contract with Island, which included a £50,000 advance and £50,000 in tour support. ### Boy and October (1980–1982) In May 1980, U2 released "11 O'Clock Tick Tock", their first international single and their debut on Island, but it failed to chart. Martin Hannett, who produced the single, was slated to produce the band's debut album, Boy, but ultimately was replaced with Steve Lillywhite. From July to September 1980, U2 recorded the album at Windmill Lane Studios, drawing from their nearly 40-song repertoire at the time. Lillywhite suggested recording Mullen's drums in a stairwell, and recording smashed bottles and forks played against a spinning bicycle wheel. The band found Lillywhite to be very encouraging and creative; Bono called him "such a breath of fresh air", while the Edge said he "had a great way of pulling the best out of everybody". The album's lead single, "A Day Without Me", was released in August. Although it did not chart, the song was the impetus for the Edge's purchase of a delay effect unit, the Electro-Harmonix Memory Man, which came to define his guitar playing style and had a significant impact on the group's creative output. Released in October 1980, Boy received generally positive reviews. Paul Morley of NME called it "touching, precocious, full of archaic and modernist conviction", while Declan Lynch of Hot Press said he found it "almost impossible to react negatively to U2's music". Bono's lyrics reflected on adolescence, innocence, and the passage into adulthood, themes represented on the album cover through the photo of a young boy's face. Boy peaked at number 52 in the United Kingdom and number 63 in the United States. The album included the band's first songs to receive airplay on US radio, including the single "I Will Follow", which reached number 20 on the Top Tracks rock chart. Boy's release was followed by the Boy Tour, U2's first tour of continental Europe and the US. Despite being unpolished, these early live performances demonstrated the band's potential, as critics complimented their ambition and Bono's exuberance. The band faced several challenges in writing their second album, October. On an otherwise successful American leg of the Boy Tour, Bono's briefcase containing in-progress lyrics and musical ideas was lost backstage during a March 1981 performance at a nightclub in Portland, Oregon. The band had limited time to write new music on tour and in July began a two-month recording session at Windmill Lane Studios largely unprepared, forcing Bono to quickly improvise lyrics. Lillywhite, reprising his role as producer, called the sessions "completely chaotic and mad". October's lead single, "Fire", was released in July and was U2's first song to chart in the UK. Despite garnering the band an appearance on UK television programme Top of the Pops, the single fell in the charts afterwards. On 16 August 1981, the group opened for Thin Lizzy at the inaugural Slane Concert, but the Edge called it "one of the worst shows [U2] ever played in [their] lives". Adding to this period of self-doubt, Bono's, the Edge's, and Mullen's involvement in a Charismatic Christian group in Dublin called the "Shalom Fellowship" led them to question the relationship between their religious faith and the lifestyle of a rock band. Bono and the Edge considered quitting U2 due to their perceived spiritual conflicts before deciding to leave Shalom instead. October was released in October 1981 and contained overtly spiritual themes. The album received mixed reviews and limited radio play, and although it debuted at number 11 in the UK, it sold poorly elsewhere. The single "Gloria" was U2's first song to have its music video played on MTV, generating excitement for the band during the October Tour of 1981–1982 in markets where the television channel was available. During the tour, U2 met Dutch photographer Anton Corbijn, who became their principal photographer and has had a major influence on their vision and public image. In March 1982, the band played 14 dates as the opening act for the J. Geils Band, increasing their exposure. Still, U2 were disappointed by their lack of progress by the end of the October Tour. Having run out of money and feeling unsupported by their record label, the group committed to improving; Clayton recalled that "there was a firm resolve to come out of the box fighting with the next record". ### War and Under a Blood Red Sky (1982–1983) After the October Tour, U2 decamped to a rented cottage in Howth, where they lived, wrote new songs, and rehearsed for their third album, War. Significant musical breakthroughs were achieved by the Edge in August 1982 during a two-week period of independent songwriting, while the other band members vacationed and Bono honeymooned with his wife, Ali. From September to November, the group recorded War at Windmill Lane Studios. Lillywhite, who had a policy of not working with an artist more than twice, was convinced by the group to return as their producer for a third time. The recording sessions featured contributions from violinist Steve Wickham and the female singers of Kid Creole and the Coconuts. For the first time, Mullen agreed to play drums to a click track to keep time. After completing the album, U2 undertook a short tour of Western Europe in December. War's lead single, "New Year's Day", was released in January 1983. It reached number 10 in the UK and became the group's first hit outside of Europe; in the US, it received extensive radio coverage and peaked at number 53. Resolving their doubts of the October period, U2 released War in February. Critically, the album received favourable reviews, although a few UK reviewers were critical of it. Nonetheless, it was the band's first commercial success, debuting at number one in the UK, while reaching number 12 in the US. War's sincerity and "rugged" guitar were intentionally at odds with the trendier synthpop of the time. Described as a record on which the band "turned pacifism itself into a crusade", War was lyrically more political than their first two records, focusing on the physical and emotional effects of warfare. The album included the protest song "Sunday Bloody Sunday", in which Bono lyrically tried to contrast the events of the 1972 Bloody Sunday shooting with Easter Sunday. Other songs from the record addressed topics such as nuclear proliferation ("Seconds") and the Polish Solidarity movement ("New Year's Day"). War was U2's first record to feature Corbijn's photography. The album cover depicted the same young child who had appeared on the cover of their debut album, albeit with his previously innocent expression replaced by a fearful one. On the subsequent 1983 War Tour of Europe, the US and Japan, the band began to play progressively larger venues, moving from clubs to halls to arenas. Bono attempted to engage the growing audiences with theatrical, often dangerous antics, climbing scaffoldings and lighting rigs and jumping into the audience. The sight of Bono waving a white flag during performances of "Sunday Bloody Sunday" became the tour's iconic image. The band played several dates at large European and American music festivals, including a performance at the US Festival on Memorial Day weekend for an audience of 125,000 people. Nearly rained out, the group's 5 June 1983 concert at Red Rocks Amphitheatre was singled out by Rolling Stone as one of "50 Moments that Changed the History of Rock and Roll". The show was recorded for the concert video Live at Red Rocks, and was one of several concerts from the tour captured on their live album Under a Blood Red Sky. The releases received extensive play on MTV and the radio, expanding the band's audience and showcasing their prowess as a live act. During the tour, the group established a new tradition by closing concerts with the War track "40", during which the Edge and Clayton would switch instruments and the band members would leave the stage one-by-one as the crowd continued to sing the refrain "How long to sing this song?". The War Tour was U2's first profitable tour, grossing about US\$2 million. ### The Unforgettable Fire and Live Aid (1984–1985) With their record deal with Island Records coming to an end, U2 signed a more lucrative extension in 1984. They negotiated the return of the copyrights of their songs, an increase in their royalty rate, and a general improvement in terms, at the expense of a larger initial payment. U2 feared that following the overt rock of the War album and tour, they were in danger of becoming another "shrill", "sloganeering arena-rock band". They were confident that fans would embrace them as successors to groups like the Who and Led Zeppelin, but according to Bono: "something just didn't feel right. We felt we had more dimension than just the next big anything, we had something unique to offer." Thus, they sought experimentation for their fourth studio album, The Unforgettable Fire. Clayton said, "We were looking for something that was a bit more serious, more arty." The Edge admired the ambient and "weird works" of Brian Eno, who, along with his engineer Daniel Lanois, eventually agreed to produce the record. Their hiring contravened the initial recommendation of Island Records founder Chris Blackwell, who believed that just when the band were about to achieve the highest levels of success, Eno would "bury them under a layer of avant-garde nonsense". Partly recorded in Slane Castle, The Unforgettable Fire was released in October 1984 and was at the time the band's most marked change in direction. It was ambient and abstract, and featured a rich, orchestrated sound. Under Lanois' direction, Mullen's drumming became looser, funkier, and more subtle, and Clayton's bass became more subliminal. Complementing the album's atmospheric sound, the lyrics were left open to interpretation, providing what the band called a "very visual feel". Due to a tight recording schedule, Bono felt songs like "Bad" and "Pride (In the Name of Love)" were incomplete "sketches". The album reached number one in the UK, and was successful in the US. The lead single "Pride (In the Name of Love)", written about civil rights movement leader Martin Luther King Jr., was the band's biggest hit to that point and was their first song to chart in the US top 40. Much of the Unforgettable Fire Tour moved into indoor arenas as U2 began to win their long battle to build their audience. The complex textures of the new studio-recorded tracks, such as "The Unforgettable Fire" and "Bad", posed a challenge in translating to live performances. One solution was programming music sequencers, which the band had previously been reluctant to use but now incorporate into the majority of their performances. Songs on the album had been criticised as being "unfinished", "fuzzy", and "unfocused", but were better received by critics when played on stage. Rolling Stone, which was critical of the album version of "Bad", described its live performance as a "show stopper". In March 1985, a Rolling Stone cover story called U2 the "Band of the '80s", saying that "for a growing number of rock-and-roll fans, U2 have become the band that matters most, maybe even the only band that matters". On 13 July 1985, the group performed at the Live Aid concert at Wembley Stadium for Ethiopian famine relief, before a crowd of 72,000 fans and a worldwide television audience of 1.5 billion people. During a 12-minute performance of "Bad", Bono climbed down from the stage to embrace and dance with a female fan he had picked out of the crowd, showing a television audience the personal connection that he could make with fans. The performance was regarded as a pivotal event in the band's career; The Guardian cited Live Aid as the moment that made stars of U2, and it included their performance on a list of 50 key events in rock history. ### The Joshua Tree and Rattle and Hum (1986–1990) For their fifth album, The Joshua Tree, the band wanted to build on The Unforgettable Fire's textures, but instead of out-of-focus experimentation, they sought a harder-hitting sound within the limitation of conventional song structures. Realising that "U2 had no tradition" and that their knowledge of music from before their childhood was limited, the group delved into American and Irish roots music. Friendships with Bob Dylan, Van Morrison, and Keith Richards motivated Bono to explore blues, folk, and gospel music and to focus on his skills as a songwriter and lyricist. U2 halted the album sessions in June 1986 to serve as a headline act on the Conspiracy of Hope benefit concert tour for Amnesty International. Rather than distract the band, the tour invigourated their new material. The following month, Bono travelled to Nicaragua and El Salvador and saw first-hand the distress of peasants affected by political conflicts and US military intervention. The experience became a central influence on their new music. The Joshua Tree was released in March 1987. The album juxtaposes antipathy towards US foreign policy against the group's deep fascination with the country, its open spaces, freedom, and ideals. The band wanted music with a sense of location and a "cinematic" quality, and the record's music and lyrics draw on imagery created by American writers whose works the band had been reading. The Joshua Tree was critically acclaimed; Robert Hilburn of the Los Angeles Times said the album "confirms on record what this band has been slowly asserting for three years now on stage: U2 is what the Rolling Stones ceased being years ago—the greatest rock and roll band in the world". The record went to number one in over 20 countries, including the UK where it received a platinum certification in 48 hours and sold 235,000 copies in its first week, making it the fastest seller in British chart history at the time. In the US, it spent nine consecutive weeks at number one. The album included the hit singles "With or Without You", "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For", and "Where the Streets Have No Name", the first two of which became the group's only number-one hits in the US. U2 became the fourth rock band to be featured on the cover of Time magazine, which called them "Rock's Hottest Ticket". The album and its songs received four Grammy Award nominations, winning for Album of the Year and Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal. Many publications, including Rolling Stone, have cited The Joshua Tree as one of rock's greatest albums. The Joshua Tree Tour was the first tour on which the band played shows in stadiums alongside smaller arena shows. It grossed US\$40 million and drew 3 million attendees. In October 1988, the group released Rattle and Hum, a double album and theatrically released documentary film that captured the band's experiences with American roots music on the Joshua Tree Tour. The record featured nine studio tracks and six live U2 performances, including recordings at Sun Studio in Memphis and collaborations with Dylan and B.B. King. Intended as a tribute to American music, the project received mixed reviews from both film and music critics; one Rolling Stone editor spoke of the album's "excitement", another described it as "misguided and bombastic". The film's director, Phil Joanou, described it as "an overly pretentious look at U2". The film underperformed at the box office and was pulled from theatres after three weeks, having grossed only \$8.6 million. Despite the criticism, the album sold 14 million copies and reached number one worldwide. Lead single "Desire" became the band's first number-one song in the UK while reaching number three in the US. Most of the album's new material was played on 1989–1990's Lovetown Tour, which only visited Australasia, Japan, and Europe. In addition, they had grown dissatisfied with their live performances; Mullen recalled, "We were the biggest, but we weren't the best". With a sense of musical stagnation, Bono hinted at changes to come during a 30 December 1989 concert near the end of the tour; before a hometown crowd in Dublin, he said on stage that it was "the end of something for U2" and that they had to "go away and ... just dream it all up again". ### Achtung Baby, Zoo TV, and Zooropa (1990–1993) Stung by the criticism of Rattle and Hum, the band sought to transform themselves musically. Seeking inspiration from German reunification, they began work on their seventh studio album, Achtung Baby, at Berlin's Hansa Studios in October 1990 with producers Daniel Lanois and Brian Eno. The sessions were fraught with conflict, as the band argued over their musical direction and the quality of their material. While Clayton and Mullen preferred a sound similar to U2's previous work, Bono and the Edge were inspired by European industrial music and electronic dance music and advocated a change. Weeks of tension and slow progress nearly prompted the group to break up until they made a breakthrough with the improvised writing of the song "One". They returned to Dublin in 1991, where morale improved and the majority of the album was completed. Achtung Baby was released in November 1991. The album represented a calculated change in musical and thematic direction for the group; the shift was one of their most dramatic since The Unforgettable Fire. Sonically, the record incorporated influences from alternative rock, dance, and industrial music of the time, and Bono referred to its musical departure as "four men chopping down the Joshua Tree". Thematically, it was a more introspective and personal record; it was darker, yet at times more flippant than the band's previous work. Commercially and critically, it has been one of the band's most successful albums. It produced five hit singles, including "The Fly", "Mysterious Ways", and "One", and it was a crucial part of the band's early 1990s reinvention. In 1993, Achtung Baby won the Grammy Award for Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal. Like The Joshua Tree, many publications have cited the record as one of rock's greatest. Like Achtung Baby, the 1992–1993 Zoo TV Tour was an unequivocal break with the band's past. In contrast to the austere stage setups of previous U2 tours, Zoo TV was an elaborate multimedia event. It satirised the pervasive nature of television and its blurring of news, entertainment, and home shopping by attempting to instill "sensory overload" in its audience. The stage featured large video screens that showed visual effects, random video clips from pop culture, and flashing text phrases, along with a lighting system partially made of Trabant automobiles. Whereas U2 were known for their earnest performances in the 1980s, the group's Zoo TV performances were intentionally ironic and self-deprecating. On stage, Bono performed as several over-the-top characters, including the leather-clad egomaniac "The Fly", the greedy televangelist "Mirror Ball Man", and the devilish "MacPhisto". Prank phone calls were made to US President George H. W. Bush, the United Nations, and others. Live satellite link-ups to war-torn Sarajevo caused controversy. Zoo TV was the highest-grossing North American tour of 1992, earning US\$67 million. In June 1993, U2 signed a long-term, six-album deal to remain with Island Records/PolyGram. The Los Angeles Times estimated that the deal was worth US\$60 million to the band, making them the highest-paid rock group ever. The following month, the group released a new album, Zooropa. Quickly recorded during a break in the Zoo TV Tour in early 1993, it expanded on many of the themes from Achtung Baby and the tour. Initially intended to be an EP, Zooropa ultimately evolved into a full-length LP album. It was an even greater musical departure for the group, delving further into electronic, industrial, and dance music. Country musician Johnny Cash sang the lead vocals on the closing track "The Wanderer". Most of the songs were played at least once during the 1993 legs of the tour, which visited Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan; half the album's tracks became permanent fixtures in the setlist. Although the commercially successful Zooropa won the Grammy Award for Best Alternative Music Album in 1994, the band regard it with mixed feelings, as they felt it was more of "an interlude". Clayton's issues with alcohol came to a head on the final leg of the Zoo TV Tour. After experiencing a blackout, Clayton was unable to perform for the group's 26 November 1993 show in Sydney, which served as the dress rehearsal for a worldwide television broadcast the following night. Bass guitar technician Stuart Morgan filled in for him, marking the first time a member of U2 had missed a concert since their earliest days. After the incident, Clayton resolved to quit drinking alcohol. The tour concluded the following month in Japan. Overall, it tallied 5.3 million in ticket sales and US\$151 million in gross revenues. Q's Tom Doyle said in 2002 that Zoo TV was "the most spectacular rock tour staged by any band". ### Passengers, Pop, and PopMart (1994–1998) In 1995, following a long break, U2 contributed "Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me" to the soundtrack album of the film Batman Forever. The song was a hit, reaching number one in Australia and Ireland, number two in the UK, and number 16 in the US. In November, the band released an experimental album called Original Soundtracks 1, a collaboration with Brian Eno, who contributed as a full songwriting partner and performer. Due to his participation and the record's highly experimental nature, the band chose to release it under the moniker "Passengers" to distinguish it from U2's conventional albums. Mullen said of the release: "There's a thin line between interesting music and self-indulgence. We crossed it on the Passengers record." It was commercially unnoticed by U2 standards and it received generally mixed reviews. The single "Miss Sarajevo" (featuring Luciano Pavarotti) was among Bono's favourite U2 songs. U2 began work on their next studio album, Pop, in mid-1995, holding recording sessions with Nellee Hooper, Flood, and Howie B. The band mixed the contrasting influences of each producer into their music, in particular Howie B's experiences with electronica and dance music. Mullen was sidelined due to back surgery in November, prompting the other band members to take different approaches to songwriting, such as programming drum loops and playing to samples provided by Howie B. Upon Mullen's return in February 1996, the group began re-working much of their material but struggled to complete songs, causing them to miss their mid-year deadline to complete the record. Further complicating matters, the band allowed manager Paul McGuinness to book their 1997–1998 PopMart Tour with the album still in progress; Bono called it "the worst decision U2 ever made". Rushed to complete the album, the band delayed its release date a second time from the 1996 holiday season to March 1997, cutting into tour rehearsal time. Even with the additional recording time, U2 worked up to the last minute to complete songs. In February 1997, the group released Pop's lead single, "Discothèque", a dance-heavy song with a music video in which the band wore Village People costumes. The song reached number one in the UK, Japan, and Canada, but did not chart for long in the US despite debuting at number 10. Within days of the single's release, the group announced the PopMart Tour with a press conference in the lingerie section of a Kmart department store. Tickets went on sale shortly after, but Pop would not be released until March. The album represented U2's further exploration of nightclub culture, featuring heavy, funky dance rhythms. The record drew favourable reviews. Rolling Stone stated that U2 had "defied the odds and made some of the greatest music of their lives". Other critics, though, felt that the album was a major disappointment. Despite debuting at number one in over 30 countries, Pop dropped off the charts quickly. Bono admitted that the album "didn't communicate the way it was intended to", while the Edge called it a "compromise project by the end". The PopMart Tour commenced in April 1997 and was intended as a satire of consumerism. The stage included a 100-foot-tall (30 m) golden yellow arch reminiscent of the McDonald's logo, a 40-foot-tall (12 m) mirrorball lemon, and a 150-foot-long (46 m) LED video screen, at the time the world's largest. U2's "big shtick" failed to satisfy many who were seemingly confused by the band's new kitsch image and the tour's elaborate set. The reduced rehearsal time for the tour affected the quality of early shows, and in some US markets, the band played to half-empty stadiums. On several occasions, the mirrorball lemon from which the band emerged for the encores malfunctioned, trapping them inside. Despite the mixed reviews and difficulties of the tour, Bono considered PopMart to be "better than Zoo TV aesthetically, and as an art project it is a clearer thought." He later explained, "When that show worked, it was mindblowing." The European leg of the tour featured two highlights. The group's 20 September 1997 show in Reggio Emilia was attended by over 150,000 people, which was reported to have set a world record for the largest paying audience for a one-act show. U2 also performed in Sarajevo on 23 September, making them the first major group to stage a concert there following the Bosnian War. Mullen described the show as "an experience I will never forget for the rest of my life, and if I had to spend 20 years in the band just to play that show, and have done that, I think it would have been worthwhile." Bono called the show "one of the toughest and one of the sweetest nights of my life". The tour concluded in March 1998 with gross revenues of US\$173.6 million and 3.98 million tickets sold. The following month, U2 appeared on the 200th episode of the animated sitcom The Simpsons, in which Homer Simpson disrupts the band on stage during a PopMart concert. In November 1998, U2 released their first compilation album, The Best of 1980–1990, which featured a re-recording of a 1987 B-side, "Sweetest Thing", as its single. The album broke a first-week sales record in the US for a greatest hits collection by a group, while "Sweetest Thing" topped the singles charts in Ireland and Canada. ### All That You Can't Leave Behind and Elevation Tour (1998–2002) Following the mixed success of their musical pursuits in the 1990s, U2 sought to simplify their sound; the Edge said that with Pop, the group had "taken the deconstruction of the rock 'n' roll band format to its absolute 'nth degree". For their tenth album, All That You Can't Leave Behind, the group wanted to return to their old recording ethos of "the band in a room playing together". Reuniting with Eno and Lanois, U2 began working on the album in late 1998. After their experiences with being pressured to complete Pop, the band were content to work without deadlines. With Bono's schedule limited by his commitments to debt relief for Jubilee 2000 and the other band members spending time with their families, the recording sessions stretched through August 2000. Released in October of that year, All That You Can't Leave Behind was seen by critics as a "back to basics" album, on which the group returned to a more mainstream, conventional rock sound. For many of those not won over by the band's forays into dance music, it was considered a return to grace; Rolling Stone called it U2's "third masterpiece" alongside The Joshua Tree and Achtung Baby. The album debuted at number one in 32 countries and sold 12 million copies. Its lead single, "Beautiful Day", was a worldwide hit, reaching number one in Ireland, the UK, Australia, and Canada, while peaking at number 21 in the US. The song won Grammy Awards for Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal, Song of the Year, and Record of the Year. At the awards ceremony, Bono declared that U2 were "reapplying for the job ... [of] the best band in the world". The album's other singles were worldwide hits as well; "Stuck in a Moment You Can't Get Out Of", "Elevation", and "Walk On" reached number one in Canada, while charting in the top five in the UK and top ten in Australia. The band's 2001 Elevation Tour commenced in March, visiting North America and Europe across three legs. For the tour, U2 performed on a scaled-down stage, returning to arenas after nearly a decade of stadium productions. Mirroring the album's themes of "emotional contact, connection, and communication", the tour's set was designed to afford the group greater proximity to their fans; a heart-shaped catwalk around the stage encircled many audience members, and festival seating was offered in the US for the first time in the group's history. During the tour, U2 headlined a pair of Slane Concerts in Ireland, playing to crowds of 80,000. Following the September 11 attacks in the US, All That You Can't Leave Behind found added resonance with American audiences, as the album climbed in the charts and songs such as "Walk On" and "Peace on Earth" garnered radio airplay. In October, U2 performed at Madison Square Garden in New York City for the first time since the attacks. Bono and the Edge said these shows were among their most memorable and emotional performances. The Elevation Tour was the top-earning North American tour of 2001 with a gross of US\$109.7 million, the second-most ever at the time for a North American tour. Globally, it grossed US\$143.5 million from 2.18 million tickets sold, making it the year's highest-grossing tour overall. Spin named U2 the "Band of the Year" for 2001, saying they had "schooled bands half their age about what a rock show could really accomplish". On 3 February 2002, U2 performed during the Super Bowl XXXVI halftime show. In a tribute to those who died in the September 11 attacks, the victims' names were projected onto a backdrop, and at the end, Bono opened his jacket to reveal an American flag in the lining. Sports Illustrated, Rolling Stone, and USA Today ranked the band's performance as the best halftime show in Super Bowl history. Later that month, U2 received four additional Grammy Awards; All That You Can't Leave Behind won Best Rock Album, while "Walk On" was named Record of the Year, marking the first time an artist had won the latter award in consecutive years for songs from the same album. In November 2002, the band released their second compilation, The Best of 1990–2000, which featured several remixed 1990s songs and two new tracks, including the single "Electrical Storm". ### How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb and Vertigo Tour (2003–2006) Looking for a harder-hitting rock sound than that of All That You Can't Leave Behind, U2 began recording their eleventh studio album, How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, in February 2003 with producer Chris Thomas. After nine months of work, the band had an album's worth of material ready for release, but they were not satisfied with the results; Mullen said that the songs "had no magic". The group subsequently enlisted Steve Lillywhite to take over as producer in Dublin in January 2004. Lillywhite, along with his assistant Jacknife Lee, spent six months with the band reworking songs and encouraging better performances. Several other producers received credits on the album, including Lanois, Eno, Flood, Carl Glanville, and Nellee Hooper; Bono acknowledged that the involvement of multiple producers affected the record's "sonic cohesion". Released in November 2004, How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb received favourable reviews from critics. The album featured lyrics touching on life, death, love, war, faith, and family. It reached number one in 30 countries, including the US, where first-week sales of 840,000 copies nearly doubled those of All That You Can't Leave Behind, setting a personal best for the band. Overall, it sold 9 million copies globally. For the album's release, U2 partnered with Apple for several cross-promotions: the first single, "Vertigo", was featured in a television advertisement for the company's iPod music player, while a U2-branded iPod and digital box set exclusive to the iTunes Store were released. "Vertigo" was an international hit, topping the charts in Ireland and the UK, while reaching number two in Canada and number five in Australia. The song won three Grammy Awards, including one for Best Rock Song. Other singles from the album were also hits; "Sometimes You Can't Make It on Your Own", written as a tribute to Bono's late father, went to number one in the UK and Canada, while "City of Blinding Lights" reached number two in both regions. In March 2005, U2 were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame by Bruce Springsteen in their first year of eligibility. During his speech, Springsteen said the band had "beaten [the odds] by continuing to do their finest work and remaining at the top of their game and the charts for 25 years". U2's 2005–2006 Vertigo Tour was preceded by several complications. A sudden illness afflicting the Edge's daughter nearly resulted in the tour's cancellation, before the group decided to adjust the tour schedule to accommodate her treatment. Additionally, ticket presales on the band's website were plagued with issues, as subscribing members encountered technical glitches and limited ticket availability, partially due to scalpers exploiting the system. Commencing in March 2005, the Vertigo Tour consisted of arena shows in North America and stadium shows internationally across five legs. The indoor stage replaced the heart-shaped ramp of the Elevation Tour with an elliptical one and featured retractable video curtains around the stage, while the stadium stage used a massive LED video screen. Setlists on tour varied more than in the group's past and included songs they had not played in decades. Like its predecessor, the Vertigo Tour was a commercial success, ranking as the top-earning tour of 2005 with US\$260 million grossed. In February 2006, U2 received five additional Grammy Awards, including Song of the Year for "Sometimes You Can't Make It on Your Own", and Best Rock Album and Album of the Year for How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb; the awards made the album and its singles winners in all eight categories in which U2 were nominated, spanning two separate Grammy ceremonies. The group resumed the Vertigo Tour that month with a Latin American leg, on which several shows were filmed for the concert film U2 3D. It was released in theatres nearly two years later, and was the world's first live-action digital 3D film. In March, the band postponed the tour's remaining shows until the end of the year due to the health of the Edge's daughter. On 25 September 2006, U2 and Green Day performed at the Louisiana Superdome prior to an NFL football game, the New Orleans Saints' first home game in the city since Hurricane Katrina. The two bands covered the Skids' song "The Saints Are Coming" during the performance and for a benefit single, which reached number one in Australia and throughout Europe. U2 issued an official autobiography, U2 by U2, that month, followed in November by their third compilation album, U218 Singles. The Vertigo Tour concluded in December, having sold 4.6 million tickets and having earned US\$389 million, the second-highest gross ever at the time. In August 2006, the band incorporated its publishing business in the Netherlands following the capping of Irish artists' tax exemption at €250,000. The Edge stated that businesses often seek to minimise their tax burdens. The move was criticised in the Irish parliament. The band defended themselves, saying approximately 95% of their business took place outside Ireland, that they were taxed globally because of this, and that they were all "personal investors and employers in the country". Bono later said, "I think U2's tax business is our own business and I think it is not just to the letter of the law but to the spirit of the law." ### No Line on the Horizon and U2 360° Tour (2006–2011) Recording for U2's twelfth album, No Line on the Horizon, began with producer Rick Rubin in 2006, but the sessions were short-lived and the material was shelved. In May 2007, the group began new sessions with Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois in Fez, Morocco, involving the producers as full songwriting partners. Intending to write "future hymns"—songs that would be played forever—the group spent two weeks recording in a riad and exploring local music. The Edge called it "a very freeing experience" that "reminded [him] in many ways of early on and why [they] got into a band in the first place. Just that joy of playing." As recording on the album continued in New York, London, and Dublin, the band scaled back their experimental pursuits, which Eno said "sounded kind of synthetic" and were not easily married with the group's sound. No Line on the Horizon was released in February 2009, more than four years after How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, marking the longest gap between albums of the band's career to that point. It received generally positive reviews, including their first five-star Rolling Stone review, but critics found it was not as experimental as originally billed. The album debuted at number one in over 30 countries, but its sales of 5 million were seen as a disappointment by U2 standards and it did not contain a hit single. Following the album's release, the band discussed tentative plans for a follow-up record entitled Songs of Ascent. Bono described the project as "a more meditative album on the theme of pilgrimage". The group embarked on the U2 360° Tour in June 2009. It was their first live venture for Live Nation under a 12-year, US\$100 million (£50 million) contract signed the year prior. As part of the deal, the company assumed control over U2's touring, merchandising, and official website. The 360° Tour concerts featured the band playing stadiums "in the round" on a circular stage, allowing the audience to surround them on all sides. To accommodate the stage configuration, a large four-legged structure nicknamed "The Claw" was built above the stage, with the sound system and a cylindrical, expanding video screen on top of it. At 164 feet (50 m) tall, it was the largest stage ever constructed. The tour visited Europe and North America in 2009. On 25 October 2009, U2 set a new US record for single concert attendance for one headline act, performing to 97,014 people at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena. In May 2010, while rehearsing for the next leg of the tour, Bono suffered a herniated disk and severe compression of the sciatic nerve, requiring emergency back surgery. The band were forced to postpone the North American leg of the tour and a headlining performance at the Glastonbury Festival 2010 until the following year. After Bono's recovery, U2 resumed the 360° Tour in August 2010 with legs in Europe, Australia, and New Zealand, during which they began to play new, unreleased songs live. By its conclusion in July 2011, U2 360° had set records for the highest-grossing concert tour (US\$736 million) and most tickets sold for a tour (7.3 million). ### Songs of Innocence and Innocence + Experience Tour (2011–2015) Throughout the 360° Tour, the band worked on multiple projects, including: a traditional rock album produced by Danger Mouse; a dance record produced by RedOne and will.i.am; and Songs of Ascent. However, the latter was not completed to their satisfaction, and by December 2011, Clayton admitted it would not come to fruition. The sessions with Danger Mouse instead formed the foundation of U2's next album, and they worked with him until May 2013 before enlisting the help of producers Paul Epworth, Ryan Tedder, Declan Gaffney, and Flood. The band suspended work on the album late in 2013 to contribute a new song, "Ordinary Love", to the film Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom. The track, written in honour of Nelson Mandela, won the 2014 Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song. In November 2013, U2's long-time manager Paul McGuinness stepped down from his post as part of a deal with Live Nation to acquire his management firm, Principle Management. McGuinness, who had managed the group for over 30 years, was succeeded by Guy Oseary. In February 2014, another new U2 song, the single "Invisible", debuted in a Super Bowl television advertisement and was made available in the iTunes Store at no cost to launch a partnership with Product Red and Bank of America to fight AIDS. Bono called the track a "sneak preview" of their pending record. On 9 September 2014, U2 appeared at an Apple product launch event to make a surprise announcement of their thirteenth studio album, Songs of Innocence. They released it digitally the same day to all iTunes Store customers at no cost, making it available to over 500 million people in what Apple CEO Tim Cook called "the largest album release of all time". Apple reportedly paid Universal Music Group and U2 a lump sum for a five-week exclusivity period in which to distribute the album and spent US\$100 million on a promotional campaign. Songs of Innocence recalls the group members' youth in Ireland, touching on childhood experiences, loves and losses, while paying tribute to their musical inspirations. Bono described it as "the most personal album we've written". The record received mixed reviews and drew criticism for its digital release strategy; it was automatically added to users' iTunes accounts, which for many, triggered an unprompted download to their electronic devices. Chris Richards of The Washington Post called the release "rock-and-roll as dystopian junk mail". The group's press tour for the album was interrupted after Bono was seriously injured in a bicycle accident in Central Park on 16 November 2014. He suffered fractures of his shoulder blade, humerus, orbit, and pinky finger, leading to uncertainty that he would ever be able to play guitar again. Following Bono's recuperation, U2 embarked on the Innocence + Experience Tour in May 2015, visiting arenas in North America and Europe from May through December. The group structured their concerts around a loose autobiographical narrative of "innocence" passing into "experience", with a fixed set of songs for the first half of each show and a varying second half, separated by an intermission—a first for U2 concerts. The stage spanned the length of the venue floor and comprised three sections: a rectangular main stage, a smaller circular B-stage, and a connecting walkway. The centerpiece of the set was a 96-foot-long (29 m) double-sided video screen that featured an interior catwalk, allowing the band members to perform amidst the video projections. U2's sound system was moved to the venue ceilings and arranged in an oval array, in hopes of improving acoustics by evenly distributing sound throughout the arena. In total, the tour grossed US\$152.2 million from 1.29 million tickets sold. The final date of the tour, one of two Paris shows rescheduled due to the 13 November 2015 attacks in the city, was filmed for the video Innocence + Experience: Live in Paris and broadcast on the American television network HBO. ### The Joshua Tree anniversary tours and Songs of Experience (2016–2019) In 2016, U2 worked on their next studio album, Songs of Experience, which was intended to be a companion piece to Songs of Innocence. The group had mostly completed the album by year's end and planned to release it in the fourth quarter, but after the shift of global politics in a conservative direction, highlighted by the UK's Brexit referendum and the 2016 US presidential election, they chose to put the record on hold and reassess its tone. The group spent the extra time rewriting lyrics, rearranging and remixing songs, and pursuing different production styles. Further impacting the lyrical direction of the album was a "brush with mortality" that Bono experienced; in December 2016, he underwent open-heart surgery due to an aortic aneurysm that formed over time as a result of having a bicuspid aortic valve. U2 toured in 2017 to commemorate the 30th anniversary of The Joshua Tree, with each show featuring a performance of the entire album. It was the first time the group toured in promotion of an album from their back catalogue, rather than a new release. The Edge cited the same world events that caused the group to delay Songs of Experience for what he judged to be renewed resonance of The Joshua Tree's subject matter and a reason to revisit it. The tour's stage featured a 7.6K video screen measuring 200 ft × 45 ft (61 m × 14 m) that was, according to The Guardian, the largest and highest resolution screen used on a concert tour. The tour included a headlining appearance at the Bonnaroo Music Festival in June. The tour grossed more than \$316 million from over 2.7 million tickets sold, making it the highest-grossing tour of the year. Songs of Experience was released on 1 December 2017. Lyrically, the album reflects the "political and personal apocalypse" that Bono felt had occurred in his life in 2016. The first single, "You're the Best Thing About Me", is one of several songs from the record for which Bono wrote the lyrics as letters addressed to people and places closest to his heart. Songs of Experience received generally mixed reviews from critics, though it was the sixth-best-selling album globally in 2017 with 1.3 million copies sold. In 2018, the group embarked on the Experience + Innocence Tour, beginning in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on 2 May 2018. It grossed \$126.2 million from 924,000 tickets sold, according to Billboard. U2's Joshua Tree anniversary concert tour visited Oceania and Asia in 2019, marking the band's first performances in Australia and New Zealand since the 360° Tour in 2010, and their first ever performances in South Korea, Singapore, India, and the Philippines. The band released a new single, "Ahimsa", with Indian musician A.R. Rahman to promote their December concert in India. The group's 2019 shows grossed \$73.8 million and sold 567,000 tickets, bringing the cumulative totals for their Joshua Tree anniversary tours to \$390.8 million grossed and 3.3 million tickets sold. ### Songs of Surrender and concerts at Sphere at The Venetian Resort (2020–current) In October 2022, several media outlets reported that U2 were in discussions to sign with Irving Azoff and his son Jeffrey of Full Stop Management, following the end of Guy Oseary's nine-year tenure as the band's manager. Over a two-year period during lockdowns for the COVID-19 pandemic, the group worked on Songs of Surrender, an album of re-recorded and reinterpreted versions of 40 songs from their back catalogue. Largely the effort of the Edge and Bono, the album was recorded with collaborators that included Bob Ezrin, Duncan Stewart, Declan Gaffney, and Stjepan Hauser. The reimagined songs feature stripped-down and acoustic arrangements, in different keys and tempos and often with re-written lyrics. The project was conceived as a companion to Bono's memoir Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story, which was released in November 2022. That same month, Bono embarked on a book tour called "Stories of Surrender", initially consisting of 14 dates across North America and Europe. During the shows, Bono performed U2 songs in stripped-down arrangements mirroring those from Songs of Surrender. The record was released in March 2023 to mixed reviews. It was the group's first number-one album in the UK since 2009, but it quickly dropped off the charts; it charted in the UK for three weeks, and in the US for one week after reaching number five. The album's release coincided with a television documentary film, Bono & The Edge: A Sort of Homecoming, With Dave Letterman, that premiered on Disney+. During a Super Bowl LVII television advertisement, it was announced that U2 would perform a limited concert engagement to open the Sphere at The Venetian Resort in the Las Vegas Valley in autumn 2023. The series of shows, named U2:UV Achtung Baby Live at Sphere, will be focused on the group's 1991 album Achtung Baby. Mullen, however, will not participate in the concerts due to a planned surgery and period of recuperation, marking the first time since 1978 that U2 will perform without him; Dutch drummer Bram van den Berg from the band Krezip will fill in. ## Musical style Bono's songwriting exhibits a penchant for social, political, and personal subject matter, while maintaining a grandiosity. In addition, the Edge has described U2 as a fundamentally live band. U2's early sound was punk-influenced alternative rock, and the group were associated with the post-punk movement. Their influences included acts such as Television, Siouxsie and the Banshees, and Joy Division, and their resulting sound was described as containing a "sense of exhilaration" that resulted from the Edge's "radiant chords" and Bono's "ardent vocals". However, according to Bob Stanley, "U2 rejected post-punk's own rejection of pop as lingua franca, its hunkering down in regional particularity, and its raised finger to populist communication." U2 developed a melodic sound under the early influence of record producer Steve Lillywhite at a time when they were not known for musical proficiency. Their songs began as minimalistic and uncomplicated instrumentals heard on Boy and October, before evolving with War to include aspects of rock anthem, funk, and dance rhythms to become more versatile and aggressive. Boy and War were labelled "muscular and assertive" by Rolling Stone, influenced in large part by Lillywhite's producing. The Unforgettable Fire, which began with the Edge playing more keyboards than guitars, as well as follow-up The Joshua Tree, had Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois at the production helm. With their influence, both albums achieved a "diverse texture". The songs from The Joshua Tree and Rattle and Hum placed more emphasis on Lanois-inspired rhythm as they mixed distinct and varied styles of gospel and blues music, which stemmed from the band's burgeoning fascination with America's culture, people and places. In the 1990s, U2 reinvented themselves as they began using synthesisers, distortion, and electronic beats derived from noise music, dance, and hip-hop on Achtung Baby, Zooropa, and Pop. According to Stephen Thomas Erlewine, "U2 was able to sustain their popularity in the '90s by reinventing themselves as a post-modern, self-consciously ironic dance-inflected pop-rock act, owing equally to the experimentalism of late '70s Bowie and '90s electronic dance and techno". They have also been called a pop-rock band by biographer Michael Heatley and musicologist Gerry Smyth. The band's 1990s output has been regarded as an art rock phase in commentaries by biographer John Jobling, Salon journalist Nico Lang, and music critic Jim DeRogatis, as well as in an interview by Bono. Time magazine's Josh Tyrangiel went further in saying that, "In the towering period that spanned The Joshua Tree to Zooropa, U2 made stadium-size art rock with huge melodies that allowed Bono to throw his arms around the world while bending its ear about social justice." In the 2000s, U2 returned to more stripped-down rock and pop sounds, with more conventional rhythms and reduced usage of synthesisers and effects, "reinvent[ing] themselves as a quality pop band", according to music journalist Chris Charlesworth. U2's music has been regarded as pop in analyses by writers David Hawke, Robert Christgau, and Niall Stokes. In an interview with Stokes for Hot Press, Bono explained the band's struggles in the 1980s among high-brow circles who patronized them for being a successful pop group, leading to their embrace of the term "pop" by the 1990s. Reviewing their 2000 album All That You Can't Leave Behind, Christgau remarked that, "since they'd been calling themselves pop for half of their two-decade run, maybe they'd better sit down and write some catchy songs. So they did." Summing up U2's stylistic evolution since Boy, Guitar journalist Owen Bailey said that they "have gone on to conquer the world's airwaves and arenas in a number of different incarnations, ranging from earnest, politically charged new-wave flagbearers to wide-eyed art-rock musicologists to purveyors of irony-laden alt-rock and ever onward", with the Edge remaining "at the heart of their sound". ### Vocals Bono is known for his impassioned vocal style, often delivered in a high register through open-throated belting. Bono has been classified as a tenor, and according to him has a three-octave vocal range; one analysis found it to span from C₂ to G₅ on studio recordings over the course of his career. He frequently employs "whoa-oh-oh" vocalisations in his singing. Rock musician Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day said: "He's a physical singer, like the leader of a gospel choir, and he gets lost in the melodic moment. He goes to a place outside himself, especially in front of an audience, when he hits those high notes." He added that Bono is "not afraid to go beyond what he's capable of". In the early days of U2, Bono unintentionally developed an English vocal accent as a result of him mimicking his musical influences such as Siouxsie and the Banshees. "I still think that I sing like Siouxsie from The Banshees on the first two U2 albums. But I found my voice through Joey Ramone at that gig in Dublin. I stood there and heard him singing. He sang a bit like a girl too. It was all going to be OK after all. That was my way in." His vocal style evolved during the band's exploration of roots music for The Joshua Tree; Spin said that he learned to command "the full whisper-to-shout range of blues mannerisms". Bono attributed this maturation to "loosening up", "discover[ing] other voices", and employing more restraint in his singing. For "Where the Streets Have No Name", Bono varied the timbre of his voice extensively and used rubato to vary its timing, while author Susan Fast found "With or Without You" to be the first track on which he "extended his vocal range downward in an appreciable way". Bono continued to explore a lower range in the 1990s, using what Fast described as "breathy and subdued colors" for Achtung Baby. One technique used on the album is octave doubling, in which his vocals are sung in two different octaves, either simultaneously or alternating between verses and choruses. According to Fast, this technique introduces "a contrasting lyrical idea and vocal character to deliver it", leading to both literal and ironic interpretations of Bono's vocals. On tracks such as "Zoo Station" and "The Fly", his vocals were highly processed, giving them a different emotional feel from his previous work. Bono said that lowering his voice helped him find a new vocal vocabulary, which he felt was limited to "certain words and tones" by his tenor voice. His singing on Zooropa was an even further departure from U2's previous style; throughout the record, Bono "underplay[ed] his lung power", according to Jon Pareles, and he also used an operatic falsetto he calls the "Fat Lady" voice on the tracks "Lemon" and "Numb". As he has aged, Bono has continued to evolve his singing, relying more on "the croon than the belt", according to Rolling Stone's Joe Gross. ### Guitar The Edge's style of playing guitar is distinguished by his chiming timbres, echoing notes, sparse voicings, and extensive use of effects units. He favours the perfect fifth interval and often plays chords consisting of just two notes, the fifth and the root note, while eliminating the third. This style is not explicitly in a minor or major key, but implies both, creating a musical ambiguity. For these chords, he often plays the same notes on multiple strings, some of which are left open, creating an Irish-influenced drone. Against this drone, he changes other notes to imply a harmony. Among the Edge's signature techniques are playing arpeggios, sixteenth note percussive strumming, and harmonics, the latter of which he described as "so pure and finely-focused that [they have] the incredible ability to pierce through [their] environment of sound, just like lightning". His approach to guitar playing is relatively understated and eschews virtuosity in favour of "atmospherics, subtlety, minimalism, and clever signal processing". Rather than emulate common playing styles, the Edge is interested in "tearing up the rule book" and finding new ways to approach the instrument. He cited guitarists such as Tom Verlaine of Television, John McGeoch, Rory Gallagher, and Patti Smith as some of his strongest influences. The Edge's guitar sound is frequently modulated with a delay set to a dotted eighth note for rhythmic effect. After acquiring his first delay pedal, the Electro-Harmonix Memory Man, he became fascinated with how to use its return echo to "fill in notes that [he's] not playing, like two guitar players rather than one". The effect unit became a mainstay in his guitar rig and had a significant impact on the band's creative output. The Edge became known for his extensive use of effects units, and for his meticulous nature in crafting specific sounds and guitar tones from his equipment choices. Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page called him a "sonic architect", while Neil McCormick described him as an "effects maestro". Critics have variously referred to the Edge's guitar sounds as evoking the image of fighter planes on "Bullet the Blue Sky", resembling a "dentist's drill" on "Love Is Blindness", and resembling an "airplane turbine" on "Mofo". The Edge said that rather than using effects merely to modify his sound, he uses them to spark ideas during his songwriting process. The Edge developed his playing style during his teenage years, partially as a result of him and Mullen trying to accommodate the "eccentric" bass playing of Clayton by being the timekeepers of the band. In their early days, the Edge's only guitar was his 1976 Gibson Explorer Limited Edition, which became a signature of the group. However, he found the sound of the Explorer's bass strings unsatisfactory and avoided them in his playing early on, resulting in a trebly sound. He said by focusing "on one area of the fretboard [he] was developing a very stylized way of doing something that someone else would play in a normal way". Other equipment choices contribute to the Edge's unique sound. His 1964 Vox AC30 "Top Boost" amplifier (housed in a 1970s cabinet) is favoured for its "sparkle" tone, and is the basis for his sound both in the studio and live. Rather than hold his plectrum with a standard grip, the Edge turns it sideways or upside down to use the dimpled edge against the strings, producing a "rasping top end" to his tone. ### Rhythm section As a rhythm section, Mullen and Clayton often play the same patterns, giving U2's music a driving, pulsating beat that serves as a foundation for the Edge's guitar work. For his drumming, Mullen locks into the Edge's guitar playing, while Clayton locks his bass playing into Mullen's drumming. Author Bill Flanagan said that their playing styles perfectly reflected their personalities: "Larry is right on top of the beat, a bit ahead—as you'd expect from a man who's so ordered and punctual in his life. Adam plays a little behind the beat, waiting till the last moment to slip in, which fits Adam's casual, don't-sweat-it personality." Mullen's drumming style is influenced by his experience in marching bands during his adolescence, which helped contribute to the militaristic beats of songs such as "Sunday Bloody Sunday". Flanagan said that he plays "with a martial rigidity but uses his kit in a way a properly trained drummer would not"; he tends to transition from the snare drum onto tom-toms positioned on either side of him, contrasting with how they are traditionally used. Mullen occasionally rides a tom-tom the way other drummers would play a cymbal, or rides the hi-hat how others would play a snare. He admitted his bass drum technique is not a strength, as he mostly played the snare in marching bands and did not learn to properly combine the separate drumming elements together on a full kit. As a result, he uses a floor tom to his left to create the effect of a bass drum. He said, "I couldn't do what most people would consider a normal beat for the song, so I chose alternatives." He was heavily influenced by glam rock acts of the 1970s when first learning to play drums. In the early days of U2, Mullen had what Bono called a "florid" drumming style, before he eventually adopted a philosophy of simplicity and pared down his rhythms. His drumming leaves open space, owing to what Modern Drummer described as his understanding of "when to hit and when not to hit". As he matured as a timekeeper, he developed a preternatural sense of rhythm; Eno recounted one occasion when Mullen noticed that his click track had been set incorrectly by just six milliseconds. Under the tutelage of Lanois, Mullen learned more about his musical role as the drummer in filling out the band's sound, while Flood helped Mullen learn to play along with electronic elements such as drum machines and samples. His kit has a tambourine mounted on a cymbal stand, which he uses as an accent on certain beats for songs such as "With or Without You". Clayton's style of bass guitar playing is noted for what instructor Patrick Pfeiffer called "harmonic syncopation". With this technique, Clayton plays a consistent rhythm that stresses the eighth note of each bar, but he "anticipates the harmony by shifting the tonality" before the guitar chords do. This gives the music a feeling of "forward motion". In the band's early years, Clayton had no formal musical training, and he generally played simple bass parts in time consisting of steady eighth notes emphasising the roots of chords. Over time, he incorporated influences from Motown and reggae into his playing style, and as he became a better timekeeper, his playing became more melodic. Flanagan said that he "often plays with the swollen, vibrating bottom sound of a Jamaican dub bassist, covering the most sonic space with the smallest number of notes". Clayton relies on his own instincts when developing basslines, deciding whether to follow the chord progressions of the guitars or play a counter-melody, and when to play an octave higher or lower. He cites bassists such as Paul Simonon, Bruce Foxton, Peter Hook, Jean-Jacques Burnel, and James Jamerson as major influences on him. Describing his role in the rhythm section, Clayton said, "Larry's drums have always told me what to play, and then the chords tell me where to go". ### Lyrics and themes U2's lyrics are known for their social and political themes, and are often embellished with Christian and spiritual imagery. Songs such as "Sunday Bloody Sunday", "Silver and Gold", and "Mothers of the Disappeared" were motivated by current events of the time. The first was written about the Troubles in Northern Ireland, while the last was a tribute to COMADRES, the women whose children were killed or forcibly disappeared at the hands of the Salvadoran government during the country's civil war. The song "Running to Stand Still" from The Joshua Tree was inspired by the heroin addiction that was sweeping through Dublin—the lyric "I see seven towers, but I only see one way out" references the Ballymun Towers of Dublin's Northside and the imagery throughout the song personifies the struggles of addiction. Bono's personal conflicts and turmoil inspired songs like "Mofo", "Tomorrow" and "Kite". An emotional yearning or pleading frequently appears as a lyrical theme, in tracks such as "Yahweh", "Peace on Earth", and "Please". Much of U2's songwriting and music is also motivated by contemplations of loss and anguish, coupled with hopefulness and resilience, themes that are central to The Joshua Tree. Some of these lyrical ideas have been amplified by Bono and the band's personal experiences during their youth in Ireland, as well as Bono's campaigning and activism later in his life. U2 have used tours such as Zoo TV and PopMart to caricature social trends, such as media overload and consumerism, respectively. While the band and its fans often affirm the political nature of their songs, U2's lyrics and music were criticised as apolitical by Slate in 2002 for their perceived vagueness and "fuzzy imagery", and a lack of any specific references to people. ### Influences The band cites the Who, the Clash, Television, Ramones, the Beatles, Joy Division, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Elvis Presley, Patti Smith, and Kraftwerk as influences. In addition, Van Morrison has been cited by Bono as an influence, and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame mentioned his influence on U2. U2 have also worked with or had influential relationships with artists including Johnny Cash, Green Day, Leonard Cohen, Bruce Springsteen, B.B. King, Lou Reed, Bob Dylan and Luciano Pavarotti. Bono said that David Bowie helped him discover the works of Bertolt Brecht, William Burroughs, Springsteen, and Brian Eno. Fellow Irish rock band The Script have also been influenced by U2. ## Activism and philanthropy Since the early 1980s, the members of U2—as a band and individually—have collaborated with other musicians, artists, celebrities, and politicians to address issues concerning poverty, disease, and social injustice. In 1984, Bono and Clayton participated in Band Aid to raise money for the 1983–85 famine in Ethiopia. This initiative produced the hit charity single "Do They Know It's Christmas?", which would be the first of several collaborations between U2 and Bob Geldof. In July 1985, U2 performed at Live Aid, a follow-up to Band Aid's efforts. Bono and his wife Ali, invited by World Vision, visited Ethiopia that year where they witnessed the famine first-hand. Bono later said that this laid the groundwork for his Africa campaigning and some of his songwriting. In 1986, U2 participated in the Self Aid benefit concert for unemployment in Ireland and the Conspiracy of Hope benefit concert tour in support of Amnesty International. The same year, Bono and Ali also visited Nicaragua and El Salvador at the invitation of the Sanctuary movement and saw the effects of the Salvadoran Civil War. These 1986 events greatly influenced The Joshua Tree album, which was being recorded at the time. During their Zoo TV Tour in 1992, U2 participated in the "Stop Sellafield" concert with Greenpeace to protest a nuclear fuel reprocessing plant. Events in Sarajevo during the Bosnian War inspired the song "Miss Sarajevo", which premiered at a September 1995 Pavarotti and Friends show, and which Bono and the Edge performed at War Child. U2 fulfilled a 1993 promise to play in Sarajevo during the PopMart Tour in 1997. The following year, they performed in Belfast days prior to the vote on the Good Friday Agreement, bringing Northern Irish political leaders David Trimble and John Hume on stage to promote the agreement. Later that year, all proceeds from the release of the "Sweetest Thing" single went towards supporting the Chernobyl Children's Project. The band dedicated their 2000 song "Walk On" to Burma's pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who had been under house arrest since 1989. In late 2003, Bono and the Edge participated in the South Africa HIV/AIDS awareness 46664 series of concerts hosted by Nelson Mandela. In 2005, the band played the Live 8 concert in London, which Geldof helped stage on the 20th anniversary of Live Aid to support the Make Poverty History campaign. The band and manager Paul McGuinness were awarded Amnesty International's Ambassador of Conscience Award for their work in promoting human rights. Since 2000, Bono's campaigning has included Jubilee 2000 with Geldof, Muhammad Ali, and others to promote the cancellation of third-world debt during the Great Jubilee. In January 2002, Bono co-founded the multinational NGO DATA, with the aim of improving the social, political, and financial state of Africa. He continued his campaigns for debt and HIV/AIDS relief into June 2002 by making high-profile visits to Africa. Product Red, a for-profit licensed brand seeking to raise money for the Global Fund, was co-founded by Bono in 2006. The ONE Campaign, originally the US counterpart of Make Poverty History, was shaped by his efforts and vision. In November 2005, the Edge and producer Bob Ezrin helped introduce Music Rising, an initiative to replace instruments for musicians in the New Orleans area impacted by Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita. In 2006, U2 collaborated with pop punk band Green Day to record a remake of the song "The Saints Are Coming" by the Skids to benefit Music Rising. A live version of the song recorded at the Louisiana Superdome was released on the single. At the 3rd iHeartRadio Music Awards in April 2016, U2 were honored with the Innovator Award for their "impact on popular culture and commitment to social causes." In April 2020, the group donated €10 million to purchase personal protective equipment for Irish healthcare workers working during the COVID-19 pandemic. The band also donated US\$1.5 million to ease the impact of the pandemic on the music industry, including a €200,000 donation to the Songs from an Empty Room fundraiser. Bono has received a number of awards for his music and activism, including the Legion of Honour from the French Government in 2003, Time's Person of the Year for 2005 (along with Bill Gates and Melinda Gates), and an honorary British knighthood in 2007. Some news sources have questioned the efficacy of Bono's campaign to relieve debt and provide assistance to Africa. ## Other projects and collaborations The members of U2 have undertaken side projects, sometimes in collaboration with some of their bandmates. In 1985, Bono recorded the song "In a Lifetime" with the Irish band Clannad. The Edge recorded a solo soundtrack album for the film Captive, which was released in 1986 and included a vocal performance by Sinéad O'Connor on the song "Heroine" that predates her own debut album by a year. For Robbie Robertson's 1987 self-titled solo album, U2 performed on the songs "Sweet Fire of Love" and "Testimony". Bono and the Edge wrote the song "She's a Mystery to Me" for Roy Orbison, which was featured on his 1989 album Mystery Girl. In 1990, Bono and the Edge provided the original score to the Royal Shakespeare Company London's stage adaptation of A Clockwork Orange. One track, "Alex Descends into Hell for a Bottle of Milk/Korova 1", was on the B-side to "The Fly" single. That same year, Mullen produced and played drums on "Put 'Em Under Pressure", a song for the Ireland national team for the 1990 FIFA World Cup; the song topped the Irish charts for 13 weeks. For the 1995 James Bond film GoldenEye, Bono and the Edge wrote the title song "GoldenEye", which was performed by Tina Turner. Clayton and Mullen reworked the "Theme from Mission: Impossible" for the franchise's 1996 film. Bono and the Edge ventured into theatre again by writing the music and lyrics for the Broadway musical Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, which opened in June 2011. Bono and the Edge collaborated with Dutch DJ Martin Garrix on the 2021 track "We Are the People", which served as the official song of the UEFA Euro 2020 tournament. In addition to collaborating with fellow musicians, U2 have worked with several authors. American author William S. Burroughs had a guest appearance in U2's video for "Last Night on Earth" shortly before he died. Video footage of him reading his poem "Thanksgiving Prayer" was used during a Zoo TV Tour television special. Other collaborators include Allen Ginsberg and Salman Rushdie. Lyrics from Rushdie's 1999 book The Ground Beneath Her Feet were adapted by U2 into the song "The Ground Beneath Her Feet", which was one of three tracks the group contributed to The Million Dollar Hotel movie soundtrack in 2000. In April 2017, U2 were featured on a Kendrick Lamar song, "XXX", from his album DAMN. ## Legacy U2 have sold an estimated 150–170 million records worldwide, placing them among the best-selling music artists in history. The group's fifth studio album, The Joshua Tree, is one of the best-selling albums in the US (10 million copies shipped) and worldwide (25 million copies sold). With 52 million certified units by the RIAA, U2 rank as the 24th-highest-selling music artist in the US. U2 have eight albums that have reached number one in the US, the third-most of any group. They were the first group to attain number-one albums in the US in the 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, and 2010s. In the UK, the group have had seven number-one singles, tied for the 17th-most of any artist, and eleven number-one albums, tied for the 7th-most of any artist. The band's 1,468 weeks spent on the UK music charts ranks 17th all-time. In their native Ireland, U2 hold the record for most number-one singles with 21, and they have 10 number-one albums. In the 1980s, U2 "dominated the alternative rock scene", according to cultural critic Kevin J. H. Dettmar. Similarly, in the next decade, they were one of the most famous alternative rock bands worldwide and among the highest-selling rock bands. Record sales declined in the 2000s and the music industry entered an age of often illegal digital downloading, but according to author Mat Snow, U2 prospered more than younger acts because of a loyal following that held an attachment to the album format. Snow said, "Children of the album era as they were, U2 would never stop regarding the album as the core statement of their creativity", despite progressively decreasing sales, while he noted that live shows consequently became the group's greatest source of revenue. Based on data from Pollstar, U2 were the second-highest-grossing musical act from 1980–2022, earning \$2.127 billion in revenue from 26.178 million tickets sold. According to Billboard Boxscore, the band grossed US\$1.67 billion in ticket sales from 1990 to 2016, second only to the Rolling Stones. U2 were the only group in the top 25 touring acts from 2000 to 2009 to sell out every show they played. According to Pollstar, the band grossed \$1.038 billion and sold 9,300,500 tickets from 255 shows played between 2010 and November 2019, earning the publication's title of touring artist of the 2010s decade; U2 were the only artist to surpass \$1 billion grossed during that span. Forbes has named U2 the world's annual highest-earning music artist a record five times. The Sunday Times' 2020 Irish Rich List estimated the group's collective wealth at €670 million. U2 are regarded as one of the greatest pop-rock acts of all time. Rolling Stone placed U2 at number 22 on its list of "The 100 Greatest Artists of All Time", while ranking Bono the 32nd-greatest singer, the Edge the 38th-greatest guitarist, and Mullen the 96th-greatest drummer. The magazine placed Bono and the Edge at number 35 on its list of the "100 Greatest Songwriters of All Time". In 2004, Q ranked U2 as the fourth-biggest band in a list compiled based on album sales, time spent on the UK charts, and largest audience for a headlining show. VH1 placed U2 at number 19 on its 2010 list of "The 100 Greatest Artists of All Time". In 2010, eight of U2's songs appeared on Rolling Stone's updated list of "The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time", with "One" ranking the highest at number 36. Five of the group's twelve studio albums were ranked on the magazine's 2012 list of "The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time"—The Joshua Tree placed the highest at number 27. Reflecting on the band's popularity and worldwide impact, Jeff Pollack for The Huffington Post said, "like The Who before them, U2 wrote songs about things that were important and resonated with their audience". Houston Press journalist John Seaborn Gray attributed U2's pioneering impact on pop-rock music largely to the Edge's unique guitar style. U2 received their first Grammy Award in 1988 for The Joshua Tree, and they have won 22 in total out of 46 nominations, more than any other group. These include Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group, Album of the Year, Record of the Year, Song of the Year, and Best Rock Album. In the UK, U2 have received 7 Brit Awards out of 20 nominations from the British Phonographic Industry, including five wins for Best International Group. They were the first international group to win the Brit Award for Outstanding Contribution to Music. In Ireland, U2 have won 14 Meteor Awards since the awards began in 2001. Other awards won by the band and their members include one American Music Award, six MTV Video Music Awards, eleven Q Awards, two Juno Awards, five NME Awards, and two Golden Globe Awards. The band were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in March 2005. In 2006, all four members of the band received ASCAP awards for writing the songs "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" and "Vertigo". In 2022, the group received Kennedy Center Honors for their contributions in the performing arts, making them only the fifth musical group to be so honoured. ## Members ### Current members - Bono (Paul Hewson) – lead vocals, rhythm guitar, harmonica (1976–present) - The Edge (David Evans) – lead guitar, keyboards, backing vocals (1976–present) - Adam Clayton – bass guitar (1976–present) - Larry Mullen Jr. – drums, percussion (1976–present) #### Current touring musicians - Terry Lawless – keyboards (2001–present) - Bram van den Berg – drums, percussion (2023–present) ### Former members - Dik Evans – guitar (1976–1978) - Ivan McCormick – guitar (1976) ## Discography - Boy (1980) - October (1981) - War (1983) - The Unforgettable Fire (1984) - The Joshua Tree (1987) - Rattle and Hum (1988) - Achtung Baby (1991) - Zooropa (1993) - Pop (1997) - All That You Can't Leave Behind (2000) - How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb (2004) - No Line on the Horizon (2009) - Songs of Innocence (2014) - Songs of Experience (2017) - Songs of Surrender (2023) ## Live performances ### Concert tours - U2-3 Tour (1979–1980) - 11 O'Clock Tick Tock Tour (1980) - Boy Tour (1980–1981) - October Tour (1981–1982) - War Tour (1982–1983) - The Unforgettable Fire Tour (1984–1985) - The Joshua Tree Tour (1987) - Lovetown Tour (1989–1990) - Zoo TV Tour (1992–1993) - PopMart Tour (1997–1998) - Elevation Tour (2001) - Vertigo Tour (2005–2006) - U2 360° Tour (2009–2011) - Innocence + Experience Tour (2015) - The Joshua Tree Tour 2017 (2017) - Experience + Innocence Tour (2018) - The Joshua Tree Tour 2019 (2019) ### Concert residencies - U2:UV Achtung Baby Live at Sphere (2023)

Lost: Missing Pieces

Series of streamed video clips

Lost: Missing Pieces is a series of thirteen video clips ranging in length from one to four minutes that aired during the hiatus between the 3rd and 4th seasons of the television show Lost, from which this series is a spin off. They generally became available to Verizon Wireless users on Mondays from November 2007 to January 2008 and were uploaded onto ABC's website a week later for free streaming. The "mobisodes", or "webisodes", were shot in Honolulu, Hawaii, and produced by the same crew with the same cast as the television series; thus, all content is considered to be canonical. Lost: Missing Pieces were included as special features in the fourth season's 2008 DVD releases. The project was announced in November 2005 as the Lost Video Diaries; however, production was delayed several times due to contractual restrictions. Lost's writer-producers originally proposed the mobisodes as a self-contained story that would focus on two previously unseen characters of the Lost fictional universe. These characters would be played by actors who were not part of the Screen Actors Guild; however the entertainment guilds refused to support such a project. After months of unsuccessful negotiating, the series was seemingly shelved by ABC. In June 2007, it was announced that the mobisodes, which would be renamed Lost: Missing Pieces, would star the regular characters of Lost in thirteen short video clips unrelated to each other. Twelve scenes were newly shot; one was a deleted scene from the television series. Critical response to Lost: Missing Pieces was mixed. The series was nominated for an Emmy Award in 2008. ## Production ### Conception In November 2005, while the early second season of Lost was airing, The Hollywood Reporter reported that twenty-two mobisodes—each spanning several minutes—were expected to be produced in December for a January 2006 release. Zap2it reported that they would later be present on the second season's DVD set and that six would be exclusive to the DVD. Unlike the television series, it would not be produced by ABC Studios (known then as "Touchstone Television") and would star non-Screen Actors Guild members; however it would be produced under the oversight of Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, like the television series. In response to fan inquiries about Lost's approximately thirty background characters, the Lost Video Diaries would focus on a self-contained story about two survivors of the crash of Oceanic Flight 815 who had not previously been introduced. The Los Angeles Times confirmed in January 2006–the month scheduled to launch the series–that the mobisodes would be broadcast on V CAST from Verizon Wireless and that each mobisode would span only two minutes. Verizon would ultimately pay ABC \$400,000 for the mobisodes. ### Postponement Production was delayed when the actors, directors and writers guilds refused to support the spin-off. A deal previously unheard of was negotiated in April, which allowed guild members involved to collect residuals. This agreement prompted Lindelof and Cuse to develop a storyline for the Video Diaries that would include Lost's regular characters, although not all of Lost's regular cast signed contracts. According to Touchstone's executive vice president for production Barry Jossen, who would eventually serve as an executive producer on the mobisodes, "They seem to be under the impression that we'll make millions of dollars and they won't". Variety reported that the mobisodes would be produced and aired alongside the third season of Lost. At Comic-Con International in July, Lindelof and Cuse announced that only thirteen mobisodes would be produced. They would run during the third season's winter hiatus, with none saved exclusively for the third season's DVD set. A sneak peek of the Video Diaries was also shown at Comic-Con. The new premise featured Hurley Reyes (played by Jorge Garcia) finding a functional Dharma Initiative video camcorder that had Dharma orientation films on it. In the clip, he films Kate Austen (Evangeline Lilly) and James "Sawyer" Ford (Josh Holloway). During the hiatus, no mobisodes were to be found and clips from upcoming episodes called Lost Moments aired instead, on television and then ABC.com. In January 2007, Wizard discovered that ABC was still negotiating the actors' contracts; thus, no mobisodes had been produced, aside from the Comic-Con teaser. In February, Lost's script coordinator, responding to a fan question, suspected the mobisodes had seemingly been put on hold indefinitely due to an inability to reach a contract agreement. ### Revamp In June, Lindelof and Cuse were interviewed by The Hollywood Reporter and they revealed the ultimate plan for the mobisodes. The mobisodes would air during the hiatus between the third and fourth seasons and would give viewers interesting information that would probably not be found in the show; the average mobisode would only be one and a half minutes long. In the third season, the writers tried to integrate two previously unseen crash survivors named Nikki Fernandez (Kiele Sanchez) and Paulo (Rodrigo Santoro) into the story, but the pair was negatively received for their abrupt appearance and the writers killed them off after seven appearances. Lindelof and Cuse learned from their mistake and decided that the mobisodes would focus on the regular Lost cast. The writers were paid \$800 per mobisode, whereas the actors received \$425 per mobisode. Actors were contracted to receive more money if the mobisode were reused in another medium. ### Release In regard to writing, co-executive producer Edward Kitsis said that "sometimes it was a scene we always wanted to do, a scene that never got shot, sometimes it was just something interesting". "Buried Secrets" revisits the first season storylines of sexual tension between Sun-Hwa Kwon (Yunjin Kim) and Michael Dawson (Harold Perrineau) and the mutual detestation between Sun's husband Jin (Daniel Dae Kim) and Michael. These conflicts were going to be further explored in the first season; however, positive fan reaction to Sun and Jin as a couple and good chemistry between the actors playing Michael and Jin led to the abandonment of the love triangle. Reuters announced in November that the mobisodes would premiere that month. This proved to be true, with "The Watch" appearing suddenly to Verizon customers as the first of the Lost: Missing Pieces. A new mobisode would generally become available each Monday and would be released a week later as a free webisode on ABC's website. The Writers Guild of America strike occurred as the mobisodes were released, due to television writers wanting a deal similar to that achieved for Missing Pieces. Filming was completed in late November. The mobisodes were later released as special features on the DVD and Blu-ray sets of Lost: The Complete Fourth Season – The Expanded Experience in the second half of 2008. ### Crew Although it had not always been the plan, the Missing Pieces were produced by ABC Studios. Executive producer Jack Bender directed each mobisode, with writing duties divided between executive producers Lindelof and Cuse, supervising producer Elizabeth Sarnoff, co-producer Brian K. Vaughan, executive story editor Christina M. Kim, and co-executive producers Drew Goddard, Edward Kitsis, and Adam Horowitz. Other crew members included executive producer Bryan Burk of post-production and co-executive producer Jean Higgins of physical production. "The Envelope"—a deleted scene from the third-season premiere; the only mobisode not to be originally filmed and written for Lost: Missing Pieces—contained additional credits: Jeff Pinkner is an executive producer and executive producer J. J. Abrams is a co-writer. ## Plot ### Cast and characters The Missing Pieces retains many of the cast members from the television series. Perrineau plays Michael, who had not been seen since the second season finale. Matthew Fox plays Jack Shephard, the leader of the castaways and Elizabeth Mitchell portrays his love interest, Juliet Burke. Garcia reprises his role as crash survivor Hurley. Kim and Kim play married couple Jin and Sun. Michael Emerson acts as Ben Linus, the leader of the island residents known as the "Others". Guest stars John Terry, Daniel Roebuck, William Mapother and Julie Adams reprise their roles of Christian Shephard, Leslie Arzt, Ethan Rom, and Amelia, respectively. Emilie de Ravin, who plays Claire Littleton, appears solely in archived footage from the television show. Vincent, a dog who survived the plane crash, is played by the dog Pono. Guest star Sean Whalen makes his first appearance as the crash survivor Neil "Frogurt". While the second season was airing, the writer-producers confirmed in the April 3, 2006, edition of the Official Lost Podcast that Frogurt would appear in the late second season, however, he was merely mentioned once. Frogurt also did not appear in the third season and he became a running gag in the podcast, with Lindelof and Cuse repeatedly claiming that Frogurt would appear in the show. However, Frogurt did appear in the fifth season briefly, but was shot through with flaming arrows shortly after being introduced. ### Mobisodes "Prod. no." is short for "production code number", which signifies the order that the mobisodes were produced in and appear on DVD and Blu-ray, which is different from the order that they aired in. "Original air date" refers to the original V CAST airdate. Days are in relation to the day of the crash, which is day 1 and September 22, 2004. All mobisodes are newly written and shot, with the exception of "The Envelope", which is a deleted scene from "A Tale of Two Cities" that was shot on August 9 and 11, 2006, a year before the other mobisodes. ## Reception The finale—"So It Begins"—was submitted to the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences for Emmy consideration in the "Special Class: Short-Format Live-Action Entertainment Programs" category. Executive producers Damon Lindelof, Carlton Cuse, and Barry Jossen were successful in receiving a nomination on July 17, 2007; however, they lost to SciFi's Battlestar Galactica: Razor Flashbacks on September 13 at the Creative Arts Emmy Award ceremony of the 60th Primetime Emmy Awards. Douglas Durdan of the Richmond Times-Dispatch described "The Watch" "as unsatisfying as it is satisfying" because the reviewer was unsure of which lines were important or if there were any clues to future episodes hidden among the background. After two mobisodes aired, UGO's Jon Lachonis wrote that "the [first two] mobisodes ... have most fans kvetching about the irrelevancy and down right Lost-lessness of the tidbits that are meant to traverse gaps in the story", "it's way too early to dismiss the mobisodes as a complete waste of time, as Lost has a long history of righting its own wrongs and the best may certainly be yet to come" and "[Frogurt is] the most annoying person on Lost's mystery island". Four mobisodes later, UGO called them "impressive" and said that "they 'look' like full out productions". Larry Dobrow of Advertising Age enjoyed the first six Lost: Missing Pieces, describing them as "all entertaining and professionally rendered" and calling the project "a great friggin' idea". Josh Wigler of Wizard wrote that the Lost: Missing Pieces are "hit or miss in terms of quality and importance. Some episodes, however, shed some excellent light on Lost mythology. ... In terms of flat out fun, it doesn't get much better than 'Jin has a Temper-Tantrum on the Golf Course' ... featuring a frustrated Jin screaming to the high heavens after botching an easy putt against Michael. Unnecessary, yes. Hysterical, absolutely." MSNBC's Ree Hines reviewed the first seven Missing Pieces. He wrote that "'The Watch' is basically pointless", "the humor [of 'The Adventures of Hurley and Frogurt'] doesn't work" and "Operation: Sleeper" was deemed "the most useless of the webisodes". Hines said that "King of the Castle" "almost satisfies ... due to ... Ben's deadpan dastardly presence" and "Room 23" is the most promising of the first half of the series. Hines concluded that "the creators fill gaps that don't need filling. The installments fail to form a cohesive stand-alone arc, leaving viewers with little more than a series of fragmented scenes, presumably no better than those left on the cutting-room floor." Chris Carabott of IGN reviewed most of Lost: Missing Pieces and has given each a rating out of ten. After four mobisodes aired, he remarked that "these vignettes feel like your average deleted scene—removed for a good reason"; however, no mobisode received a score less than 6.5. "The Watch" scored a 7.5 and was called "touching" because Jack and his father have rarely been seen getting along in Lost. "The Adventures of Hurley and Frogurt" was given a 6.5 and described as "a funny little moment" and "tragic", in regard to Libby's death. "King of the Castle" received an 8.5. Carabott said that it was well written, "a great performance from [Fox and Emerson]" and worthy of appearing on television. Carabott celebrated Michael's return in "The Deal", but the reviewer noted that "The Deal" "doesn't reveal anything new or exciting at all". "Operation: Sleeper" was rated as a 7.5, as was "Buried Secrets". "Room 23" got an 8 and was described as "definitely the type of new content that we are looking for. It's something that won't be missed by regular viewers but gives a little more insight into the nature of events on the island". "Arzt and Crafts" also got an 8 and was said to have "a cleverly devised title" and was "packed with a healthy amount of humor". "Tropical Depression" received an 8.5, with Carabott calling it "rather pointless ... but cute nonetheless". "Jack, Meet Ethan. Ethan? Jack" scored an 8 and Mapother's acting skills were commended. "Jin Has a Temper-Tantrum on the Golf Course" was deemed "hilarious" and "one of [Lost's] funniest ... moments" and worthy of a 7.5. "The Envelope" was given a 6.5, and "So It Begins" was given a 9—the highest score of any mobisode—and was described as "a shocking new look at the Christian Shephard who appeared to Jack". Oscar Dahl of BuddyTV reviewed each mobisode. "The Watch" was called "a fun couple minutes of character work", but "relatively worthless". "The Adventures of Hurley and Frogurt" was thought to be better than "The Watch". "King of the Castle" was reviewed better than the previous two mobisodes and the reviewer noted that "it's a testament to ... Fox and ... Emerson's acting abilities that [it] is so intense". "The Deal" was said to be even better than "King of the Castle". While Dahl "always like[s] what Juliet brings to the table", he thought that "Operation: Sleeper" "serves little purpose". "Room 23" was called the "best mobisode ever". In regard to "Arzt and Crafts", Dahl wrote that "Lindelof wrote this mobisode ... and as a result ... it has the best dialogue of any mobisode so far". He commented that "Tropical Depression" is "not totally superfluous, though the new information isn't very enlightening". Dahl "liked" "Jack, Meet Ethan. Ethan? Jack", but decided "that it's not [Lindelof]'s best work". Dahl wrote that "Jin Has a Temper-Tantrum on the Golf Course" is "a nice little scene", but the reviewer pointed out an inaccuracy in the scene's golf gameplay. When reviewing "The Envelope", Dahl wrote that "The people over at Lost have cheated a little bit ... [but] it's still a pretty cool deleted scene". After seeing "So It Begins", Dahl was "not entirely sure what to think" because the reviewer liked "showing the moments before the pilot began" and "doing a mobisode from Vincent's perspective, but adding a supposed-to-be-dead Christian to the mix is confusing". Ryan McGee of Zap2it also reviewed every mobisode. "The Watch" was described as "anticlimactic". "The Adventures of Hurley and Frogurt" was described as "a little ... lacking", but McGee wrote that "'King of the Castle' proves that brevity is the soul of awesome, with a tense, information-rich two-and-a-half minutes that tingled my Spidey-esque mythology sense the entire time". "The Deal" was received less favourably than the previous installment McGee wrote that "Room 23" was "short but sweet". "Arzt and Crafts" was called "a weak-ish entry" and it was noted that "not everything Lost does turns into Dharma-laced gold, sadly". "Buried Secrets" was described as mediocre. In the review for "Tropical Depression", McGee commented that "It's just not good. At all." and compared its quality to the episode "Stranger in a Strange Land" and the character Paulo, both of which were negatively received by fans and critics. "Jack, Meet Ethan. Ethan? Jack" had "return[ed Lost: Missing Pieces] to compelling form", however the title was called "clunky". After watching "So It Begins", McGee wrote that it is "a mobisode so vital, so important that I can't believe that ABC didn't bother to air this [online] before the start of Season 4".

Museum of Bad Art

Art museum in Massachusetts

The Museum of Bad Art (MOBA) is a privately owned museum whose stated aim is "to celebrate the labor of artists whose work would be displayed and appreciated in no other forum". It was originally in Dedham, Massachusetts and is currently in Boston, Massachusetts. Its permanent collection includes over 700 pieces of "art too bad to be ignored", 25 to 35 of which are on public display at any one time. MOBA was founded in 1994, after antique dealer Scott Wilson showed a painting he had recovered from the trash to some friends, who suggested starting a collection. Within a year, receptions held in Wilson's friends' home were so well-attended that the collection needed its own viewing space. The museum then moved to the basement of a theater in Dedham. Explaining the reasoning behind the museum's establishment, co-founder Jerry Reilly said in 1995: "While every city in the world has at least one museum dedicated to the best of art, MOBA is the only museum dedicated to collecting and exhibiting the worst." To be included in MOBA's collection, works must be original and have serious intent, but they must also have significant flaws without being boring; curators are not interested in displaying deliberate kitsch. MOBA has been mentioned in dozens of off-the-beaten-path guides to Boston, featured in international newspapers and magazines, and has inspired several other collections throughout the world that set out to rival its own visual atrocities. Deborah Solomon of The New York Times Magazine noted that the attention the Museum of Bad Art receives is part of a wider trend of museums displaying "the best bad art". The museum has been criticized for being anti-art, but the founders deny this, responding that its collection is a tribute to the sincerity of the artists who persevered with their art despite something going horribly wrong in the process. According to co-founder Marie Jackson, "We are here to celebrate an artist's right to fail, gloriously." ## History The Museum of Bad Art was founded by antique dealer Scott Wilson, who discovered what has become the museum's signature piece—Lucy in the Field with Flowers—protruding from between two trash cans on a Roslindale-area curb in Boston, among some garbage waiting to be collected. Wilson was initially interested only in the frame, but when he showed the picture to his friend Jerry Reilly, the latter wanted both the frame and the painting. He exhibited Lucy in his home, and encouraged friends to look for other bad art and notify Wilson of what they found. When Wilson acquired another "equally lovely" piece and shared it with Reilly, they decided to start a collection. Reilly and his wife, Marie Jackson, held a party in their basement to exhibit the collection to date, and hosted a reception they facetiously titled "The Opening of the Museum of Bad Art". Regular showings of the pieces collected by Wilson, Reilly, and Jackson (and those donated by others), became too much for Reilly and Jackson's small home in West Roxbury, Massachusetts, as hundreds of people attended the receptions. The founders' initial attempt at dealing with their constrained exhibition space was to create the Virtual Museum Of Bad Art, a CD-ROM with a cast of 95 people that presented the MOBA art collection in a fictional imaginary museum. This fictional MOBA allowed the visitors not only to view the paintings but to go behind the scenes in the fictional museum. The MOBA was officially founded in 1993, and its first exhibition was presented in March 1994. Word of the museum's collection continued to spread until, according to "Permanent Interim Acting Director" Louise Reilly Sacco, "it got completely out of hand" when a group of senior citizens on a tour bus stopped to see it. In 1995 the display space was moved to the basement of the Dedham Community Theatre, a building with an aesthetic described in 2004 as "ramshackle". The museum in Dedham had no fixed operating hours, instead being open while the theater upstairs was open. As The Boston Globe notes, the art collection was appropriately placed "just outside the men's room", where sounds and smells carry to the collection and the constant flushing of the toilet "supposedly helps maintain a uniform humidity", according to the South China Morning Post. In MOBA's early days, the museum hosted traveling shows; on one occasion the works were hung from trees in the woods on Cape Cod for the "Art Goes Out the Window—The Gallery in the Woods". Bad music was played during the public viewings to complete the ambiance. In an exhibition titled "Awash in Bad Art", 18 pieces of art were covered in shrink wrap for "the world's first drive-thru museum and car wash". Marie Jackson, formerly the Director of Aesthetic Interpretation noted, "We didn't put any watercolors in there." A 2001 exhibition, "Buck Naked—Nothing But Nudes" featured all of the MOBA nudes hung in a local spa. MOBA features its works in rotating collections. In 2003, "Freaks of Nature" focused on landscape artwork "gone awry". A 2006 exhibit titled "Hackneyed Portraits" was designed to "pick up some of the slack" when the David Hockney show at Boston's Museum of Fine Arts closed. MOBA unveiled its show "Nature Abhors a Vacuum and All Other Housework" in 2006; this format continues on the museum's website. A second gallery opened in 2008 at the Somerville Theatre in Davis Square, Somerville, Massachusetts, where the collection was placed near both the women's and men's restrooms. Although the original gallery was free and open to the public, the second is free with admission to the theater or with a pass requested from the museum. Exhibitions titled "Bright Colors / Dark Emotions" and "Know What You Like / Paint How You Feel" have been held in the academic gallery at Montserrat College of Art in Beverly, Massachusetts. One of MOBA's goals is "to take bad art on the road", according to Sacco. Pieces from MOBA's collection have been on display in museums in New York City, Ottawa, Taipei, and Virginia. In February 2009, MOBA announced a fundraiser to assist the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University, which was seriously considering whether to sell masterpieces because of the global financial crisis of 2008–2009, made worse for the university by some of its donors losing money in Bernard Madoff's investment scheme. Current MOBA curator and balloon artist/musician Michael Frank placed Studies in Digestion—a four-panel piece showing four renditions of the human digestive tract in various media by artist Deborah Grumet—on eBay for a buy-it-now price of \$10,000; the first bid was \$24.99. It eventually sold for \$152.53 and the meager proceeds went to the Rose Art Museum, while both museums gained publicity. In 2010, the museum opened a third location in the offices of the Brookline Interactive Group. In December 2012, the branch at the Dedham Community Theater closed to convert the space into a screening room. Another branch later opened at the New England Wildlife Center in South Weymouth. The Somerville location was closed in 2019 when theater owners sought to renovate the basement space it occupied. All locations closed after the breakout of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. The museum reopened at the Dorchester Brewing Company's tap room in Boston in September 2022. ### Thefts The loss of two MOBA works to theft has drawn media attention and enhanced the museum's stature. In 1996, the painting Eileen, by R. Angelo Le, vanished from MOBA. Eileen was acquired from the trash by Wilson, and features a rip in the canvas where someone slashed it with a knife even before the museum acquired it, "adding an additional element of drama to an already powerful work", according to MOBA. The museum offered a reward of \$6.50 for the return of Eileen, and although MOBA donors later increased that reward to \$36.73, the work remained unrecovered for many years. The Boston Police listed the crime as "larceny, other", and Sacco was reported saying she was unable to establish a link between the disappearance of Eileen and a notorious heist at Boston's famed Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum that occurred in 1990. In 2006, 10 years after Eileen was stolen, MOBA was contacted by the purported thief demanding a \$5,000 ransom for the painting; no ransom was paid, but it was returned anyway. Prompted by the theft of Eileen, MOBA staff installed a fake video camera over a sign at their Dedham branch reading (in Comic Sans): "Warning. This gallery is protected by a fake security camera". Despite this deterrent, in 2004 Rebecca Harris' Self Portrait as a Drainpipe was removed from the wall and replaced with a ransom note demanding \$10, although the thief neglected to include any contact information. Soon after its disappearance the painting was returned, with a \$10 donation. Curator Michael Frank speculates that the thief had difficulty fencing the portrait because "reputable institutions refuse to negotiate with criminals." ## Collection standards Although the museum's motto is "Art too bad to be ignored", MOBA holds rigorous standards as to what they will accept. According to Marie Jackson, "Nine out of ten pieces don't get in because they're not bad enough. What an artist considers to be bad doesn't always meet our low standards." As stated in the introduction to The Museum of Bad Art: Masterworks, the primary attribute of an objet d'art to be acquired by MOBA is that it must have been seriously attempted by someone making an artistic statement. A lack of artistic skill is not essential for a work to be included; a prospective painting or sculpture for the collection ideally should "[result] in a compelling image", or as honorary curator Ollie Hallowell stated, the art must have an "Oh my God" quality. An important criterion for inclusion is that a painting or sculpture must not be boring. Michael Frank says they are not interested in commercial works like Dogs Playing Poker: "We collect things made in earnest, where people attempted to make art and something went wrong, either in the execution or in the original premise." Montserrat College of Art used MOBA's exhibition as a demonstration to its students that "sincerity is still important, and pureness of intent is valid". MOBA accepts unsolicited works if they meet its standards. Frequently, curators consider works by artists who display an intensity or emotion in the art that they are unable to reconcile with their level of skill. The museum dedicated a show to "relentless creativity" in an exhibition titled "I Just Can't Stop" that was covered by local news and CNN. Other artists are clearly technically proficient, but attempted an experiment that did not end well. Michael Frank has compared some of the works at MOBA with outsider art or art brut; some MOBA artists' works are also included in other galleries' outsider collections. Dean Nimmer, a professor at the Massachusetts College of Art (also holding the title of MOBA's Executive Director of Good Taste), noted the parallels between the Museum of Bad Art's standards and those of other institutions: "They take the model of a museum of fine arts and apply the same kind of criteria to acceptance for bad work ... [Their rules] are very similar to a gallery or museum that says 'Well, our area is really installation art or realist paintings or neo-post-modern abstractions.'" MOBA does not collect art created by children, or art traditionally perceived as lesser in quality, such as black velvet paintings, paint-by-numbers, kitsch, or factory-produced art—including works specifically created for tourists. Curators are also not interested in crafts such as latch hook rug kits. MOBA curators suggest that more appropriate venues for such works would be the "Museum of Questionable Taste, The International Schlock Collection, or the National Treasury of Dubious Home Decoration". The Museum of Bad Art has been accused of being anti-art, or taking works that were sincerely rendered and mocking them. However, Scott Wilson insists that a work of art accepted into MOBA is a celebration of the artist's enthusiasm. Marie Jackson reiterated this thought, saying "I think it's a great encouragement to people... who want to create [and] are held back by fear, and when they see these pieces, they realize there's nothing to be afraid of—just go for it." Louise Reilly Sacco agreed, stating, "If we're making fun of something, it's the art community, not the artists. But this is a real museum. It's 10 years. It's 6,000 people on a mailing list. It's recognition all over the world." Curators insist that artists whose works are selected by MOBA enjoy the attention and that it is a win-win; the museum gains another work of art, and the artist receives exposure in a museum. A 1997 article in The Chicago Tribune stated that none of the 10 to 15 artists who had stepped forward to acknowledge their work in MOBA had been upset. Many of the works in MOBA are donated, often by the artists themselves. Others come from yard sales or thrift stores; the Trash Collectors Union in Cambridge, Massachusetts has donated works rescued from imminent demise. Occasionally a painting may be purchased; at one time MOBA's policy was not to spend more than \$6.50 on any piece. More recently, twice and even three times that amount has been paid for an exceptional work. Those pieces not retained by the museum are included in a "Rejection Collection" that may be sold at auction. In the past, some proceeds went to the Salvation Army for providing so many of MOBA's pieces; the museum itself usually benefits from most auctions. ## Collection highlights Each painting or sculpture MOBA exhibits is accompanied by a brief description of the medium, size, name of the artist, as well as how the piece was acquired, and an analysis of the work's possible intention or symbolism. Museums Journal noted that the discussion accompanying each work would most likely have most visitors reduced "to hysterics". The captions—described as "distinctly tongue-in-cheek commentaries" by David Mutch of the Christian Science Monitor—were primarily written by Marie Jackson, until the "dissolution of the MOBA interpretative staff"; the task was then taken over by Michael Frank and Louise Reilly Sacco. ### Lucy in the Field with Flowers Many of MOBA's works generate extensive discourse from visitors. Lucy in the Field with Flowers (oil on canvas by Unknown; acquired from trash in Boston) remains a favorite with the news media and patrons. As the first work acquired by the museum, Lucy is "a painting so powerful it commands its own preservation for posterity", setting a standard by which all future acquisitions would be compared, and causing MOBA's founders to question if Scott Wilson found Lucy or she found him. Kate Swoger of The Montreal Gazette called Lucy a "gorgeous mistake", describing her thus: "an elderly woman dancing in a lush spring field, sagging breasts flopping willy-nilly, as she inexplicably seems to hold a red chair to her behind with one hand and a clutch of daisies in the other". Author Cash Peters, using less florid language, summarized it as "the old woman with an armchair glued to her ass". MOBA's statement about Lucy reads: "The motion, the chair, the sway of her breast, the subtle hues of the sky, the expression on her face—every detail combines to create this transcendent and compelling portrait, every detail cries out 'masterpiece'." The Times recounted comments left by a museum visitor regarding the "endless layers of mysteries" the image offers: "What is Norman Mailer's head doing on an innocent grandma's body, and are those crows or F-16s skimming the hills?" Lucy's granddaughter, a Boston-area nurse named Susan Lawlor, became a fan of MOBA after seeing the portrait in a newspaper. She recognized it as her grandmother, Anna Lally Keane (c. 1890–1968); upon seeing the picture, Lawlor snorted Coca-Cola from her nose in astonishment. The painting was commissioned by her mother, and it hung in her aunt's house for many years, despite the trepidation family members felt at seeing the final composition. Says Lawlor: "The face is hauntingly hers, but everything else is so horribly wrong. It looks like she only has one breast. I'm not sure what happened to her arms and legs, and I don't know where all the flowers and yellow sky came from." ### Sunday on the Pot with George Sunday on the Pot with George (acrylic on canvas by John Gedraitis; donated by Jim Schulman) has been deemed "iconic" by Bella English of The Boston Globe, who assures the work is "100 percent guaranteed to make you burst out laughing". Wilson has pointed to George as an example of a technically well-executed piece of art using a subject not usually seen rendered in paint. Many admirers of the first work donated to MOBA are hypnotized by the image of a portly man wearing "Y-front" underwear while sitting on a chamber pot, in pointillist impressionism similar to the style of Georges Seurat. One critic speculates the pointillist style in George may have been acquired "from watching too much TV". The title refers to the Stephen Sondheim musical Sunday in the Park with George, which contains a dramatic recreation of Seurat's painting A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte. Author Amy Levin suggests that George is a pastiche of Seurat's painting. The subject of this painting has been "tentatively identified" by the Annals of Improbable Research—the creators of the Ig Nobel award—as John Ashcroft, former United States Attorney General. A visitor was so moved by George he felt compelled to express his gratitude for its display in the Dedham Community Theatre basement, writing "Someone had slipped into the bathroom as I took in this painting and began peeing loudly into a toilet. The reverberating sound of urine splashing while viewing George brought the painting to life, and when the denouement of the flush sounded, I wept." MOBA's accompanying caption introduces questions and observations: "Can the swirling steam melt away the huge weight of George's corporate responsibilities? This pointillist piece is curious for meticulous attention to fine detail, such as the stitching around the edge of the towel, in contrast to the almost careless disregard for the subject's feet." ### Bone-Juggling Dog in Hula Skirt In contrast to the pointillist impressionism of George, the museum also features a "fine example of labor-intensive pointlessism", according to MOBA staff. Mari Newman's Bone-Juggling Dog in Hula Skirt (tempera and acrylic paint on canvas; donated by the artist), inspired this description by MOBA: "We can only wonder what possesses an artist to portray a dog juggling bones while wearing a hula skirt." MOBA enjoys the mystery as much as any other aspect of art, however. Newman, a professional artist from Minneapolis, responded to the curators' cogitation by describing how the image came into being. She bought used canvases while a poor art student, and was unsure how to use a canvas with these dimensions. Inspired by a cartoon of a dachshund, she chose that as a subject, but was unhappy with the effect until she added a hula skirt she had seen in a magazine, and colored dog bones she spied in a pet store. Newman wrote to them, saying "I almost threw it out until I heard of MOBA. After many years of slashing rejected work, now I wish I had saved them all for you." ### Motifs and interpretations Travel writer Cash Peters identifies six characteristics common to many of the museum's artworks. The first is that MOBA artists are unable to render hands or feet, and mask them by extending figures' arms off the canvas, hiding them with long sleeves, or placing shoes on feet in inappropriate scenarios. Second, Peters compared artists Rembrandt and J. M. W. Turner, masters of landscapes, who "could probably paint with their eyes shut" to MOBA artists who apparently did paint with their eyes shut, as skies are often painted in any color but blue, flora are created without reference to any existing plant organisms, and fauna appear so small in the background it is impossible to discern what kind of animals they are. Third, MOBA artists apply perspective inconsistently, either from one painting to the next, or within a single work. Peters's fourth observation concerns the difficulty MOBA artists seem to have in successfully rendering noses: he writes that a nose will be attempted so many times that the work takes on a third dimension as paint is reapplied over and over. Fifth, bad artists favor "mixed media": if in doubt, they glue feathers, glitter, or hair to their work. Lastly, Peters suggests that artists know their work is bad, but apparently feel the piece may be saved by including a monkey or a poodle in the composition. Since late 2008, MOBA has been experimenting with allowing the public to title and caption some works. According to the curatorial staff, since some of the works are so puzzling, mere artistic interpretation is not sufficient: they must be "interpretated". The "Guest Interpretator's Collection" is an invitation for MOBA's visitors to include their thoughts on compelling artworks; a contest decides the best analysis and these interpretations are added as each contest ends. A professor at Boston University offered his thoughts: "The location of the museum as much as its collection suggests a commitment to the abject and a belief in the power and force of culture's marginalized effects. I was also reminded that I need to pick up some toilet bowl cleaner on my way home!" ## Influence The Museum of Bad Art has been mentioned in hundreds of international publications, as well as in Boston-area travel guides highlighting offbeat attractions. It has inspired similar collections or events in Australia, Ohio, and Seattle. Commedia Beauregard, a theatre company whose mission focuses on translation, was inspired by MOBA's mission to create their Master Works series of short play festivals. The company commissioned six playwrights to write short plays based on MOBA artworks. Master Works: The MOBA Plays was originally performed in January and February 2009 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The plays were based on the MOBA pieces Mana Lisa, Invasion of the Office Zombies, My Left Foot, Bone-Juggling Dog in Hula Skirt, Gina's Demons, and Lulli, Fowl and Gravestone. After moving to Chicago, the company again produced The MOBA Plays in March and April 2011, using three of the original plays and translating three new paintings. ### Responses to bad art Museum visitors can sign a guest book, and leave comments. One Canadian visitor wrote: "This collection is disturbing, yet I can't seem to look away...Just like a hideous car accident." Another visitor warns: "Her nipples follow you around the room. Creepy!" Response to MOBA's opening and continued success is, for some, evocative of the way art is treated in society. MOBA works have been described as "unintentionally hilarious", similar to the atrocious films of Ed Wood. Visitors—and even MOBA staff—often laugh out loud at displays. In Gullible's Travels, Cash Peters contrasted this behavior with what is expected of patrons at galleries such as Southern California's Getty Museum; though viewers might find the art at the Getty equally hilarious, were they to show it they would almost certainly be thrown out. In 2006, Louise Reilly Sacco participated in a panel discussion with authorities on art and architecture about standards of beauty and ugliness in art, published in Architecture Boston. She remarked that teachers bring high school art students to MOBA, then to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA). Sacco observes, "Somehow MOBA frees kids to laugh and point, to have their own opinions and argue about things. Then they take the experience to the MFA, where they might otherwise feel intimidated... Maybe the ugly ... frees us." Sacco believes that extreme ugliness is more striking than extreme beauty, and it forces people to think more deeply about what is wrong or misplaced. She connects this rigid judgment of what does not conform to beauty with intolerance for physical imperfections in people, noting that such rigidity sometimes causes parents to "fix" the perceived flaws in their children's faces to keep them from suffering later. Jason Kaufman, a Harvard professor who teaches the sociology of culture, wrote that MOBA is part of a social trend he calls "annoyism", where mass media venues promote performances and artists who mix the deliberately bad with the clever. The Museum of Bad Art happens to embody this trend, and further illustrates its central aim to mock the judgment system by which people identify what is bad from what is not. For Kaufman, "The beauty of MOBA—though beauty is surely the wrong word—is the way it undermines aesthetic criteria from numerous angles." Amy Levin, describing how American history and culture have been shaped by small local museums, suggests that MOBA is a parody of art itself, and that MOBA's commentary, newsletter, website, and publications mock museums as authorities on what is good art. The director of the Ellipse Arts Center, a gallery in Arlington, Virginia, that hosted a traveling exhibition of MOBA works, was astonished to see people's exuberant laughter because no one visiting the Ellipse had ever responded to art this way. She observed, "If I didn't have a sign on the door, people might not think it's so bad. Who's to say what's bad and what's good?" Deborah Solomon, in The New York Times Magazine, asserted that MOBA's success reflects a trend in modern art among artists and audiences. The arrival of abstraction and modern art in the early 20th century made art appreciation more esoteric and less accessible for the general community, showing that "the American public ... think[s] of museums as intimidating places ruled by a cadre of experts whose taste and rituals [seem] as mysterious as those of Byzantine priests." Bad art is in vogue, as a movement that rejects the anti-sentimentalism that marked earlier disdain for artists such as Norman Rockwell or Gustave Moreau, according to Solomon. Garen Daly, a MOBA fan on several Boston-area art councils, stated in 1995, "I go to a lot of openings, and sometimes they're pretty damn stuffy." Not only does the Museum of Bad Art offer different fare for the eyes, but instead of the wine and cheese that is provided for most museum and art gallery visitors, a MOBA show provides its patrons with Kool-Aid, Fluffernutters and cheese puffs. ### Use in academic research The Museum of Bad Art has been used in academic studies as a standard of reference for the spectacularly awful. In one such study, published in Perspectives on Psychological Science, researchers tested the consistency of responses between people asked to make "gut" judgments versus those who gave conscious well-reasoned responses regarding the quality of various pieces of art. The researchers showed respondents images from MOBA and New York's Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and asked them to rate each painting on a scale with two ends representing "Very Attractive" and "Very Unattractive". The study found that those who reasoned in conscious thought were neither more accurate nor as consistent in their ratings. Study participants identified and rated MoMA art higher quality, but those who used conscious reasoning did not find MoMA art more attractive than those who rated with "gut" judgments. Furthermore, the deliberators did not find MOBA art as unattractive as those with quicker response times. The study concluded that people who make quick judgments do so more consistently, with no significant change to accuracy. In another study that appeared in the British Journal of Psychology, researchers tested how respondents considered balance in artwork composition of differing qualities. Fifteen pairs of works from ArtCyclopedia by artists such as Paul Gauguin, Georgia O'Keeffe, and Georges-Pierre Seurat, and fifteen from MOBA by artists including Doug Caderette, Unknown, and D. Alix were shown to participants; in each, an item in the painting was shifted vertically or horizontally, and respondents were asked to identify the original. The researchers hypothesized that respondents would identify balance and composition more easily in the traditional masterworks, and that study participants would find a greater change of quality when items were shifted in traditional masterworks than they would in MOBA pieces. However, the study concluded that balance alone did not define art of higher quality for the participants, and that respondents were more likely to see that original art was more balanced than the altered version, not necessarily that the traditional art was significantly better composed and balanced than MOBA works. ## See also - Museum of Particularly Bad Art

Bennerley Viaduct

Railway viaduct spanning the Erewash Valley

Bennerley Viaduct (originally Ilkeston Viaduct and known informally as the Iron Giant) is a former railway bridge, now a foot and cycle bridge, between Ilkeston, Derbyshire, and Awsworth, Nottinghamshire, in central England. It was completed in 1877 and carried the Great Northern Railway's (GNR) Derbyshire Extension over the River Erewash, which forms the county boundary, and its wide, flat valley. The engineer was Samuel Abbott, who worked under Richard Johnson, the GNR's chief engineer. The site required a bespoke design as the ground would not support a traditional masonry viaduct due to extensive coal mining. The viaduct consists of 16 spans of wrought iron, lattice truss girders, carried on 15 wrought iron piers which are not fixed to the ground but are supported by brick and ashlar bases. The viaduct is 60 feet (18 metres) high, 26 feet (8 metres) wide between the parapets, and over a quarter of a mile (400 metres) long. It was once part of a chain of bridges and embankments carrying the railway for around two miles (three kilometres) across the valley but most of its supporting structures were demolished when the line closed in 1968. The only similar surviving bridge in the United Kingdom is Meldon Viaduct in Devon. The viaduct opened in January 1878. Its working life was uneventful except for minor damage inflicted by a Zeppelin bombing raid during the First World War. Plans to demolish the viaduct failed because of the cost of dismantling the ironwork and it became a listed building in 1974. After closure, the viaduct received little maintenance and fell into disrepair. Railway Paths, a walking and cycling charity, acquired it for preservation in 2001 but work faltered due to a lack of funding. The viaduct was listed on the Heritage at Risk Register in 2007 and the 2020 World Monuments Watch for its condition and lack of use. A detailed survey was undertaken in 2016 and funding for restoration work was secured in 2019. The work included rebuilding an embankment to allow step-free access. It opened to the public as part of a cycling and walking route in January 2022. ## Background Most of the viaduct is in Awsworth, Nottinghamshire, but the western end is just north of Ilkeston in Derbyshire; the River Erewash forms the boundary between the two counties. The viaduct was built for the Great Northern Railway's (GNR) Derbyshire Extension, which opened in 1878. The company's stronghold was previously the eastern side of England between London and York, though it had lines as far west as Nottingham, and it was keen to expand westwards to access the coal fields of Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire, an area which had previously been monopolised by the Midland Railway. The main line of the extension ran from Nottingham Victoria railway station to Burton upon Trent via Derby (Friargate) station. The route involved significant civil engineering works. The Midland Railway already occupied the most obvious paths and so the GNR had to take a more difficult route, which required multiple bridges, tunnels, and viaducts. Among several branches from the main route, one diverged just east of Awsworth and continued north up the Erewash Valley; another served Bennerley Ironworks (since demolished). Bennerley Viaduct was built immediately south of the ironworks site, which is roughly mid-way between Nottingham and Derby. It was the second-largest engineering work on the GNR's East Midlands routes after the Giltbrook Viaduct on the Awsworth branch, which was a more traditional brick viaduct and demolished after the line's closure. Bennerley was one of several wrought iron viaducts built in the period after cast iron fell out of favour for bridge building following the 1847 Dee Bridge disaster, but before steel became commonplace. The crossing of the River Erewash and its wide, flat valley required a bespoke solution—the valley is boggy and undermined by extensive coal workings which were poorly mapped. The ground would not have been able to support a conventional brick or masonry structure. Thus, Bennerley Viaduct was designed to be lightweight to minimise the load on the foundations. The viaduct was designed by Samuel Abbott, a Nottinghamshire-born engineer and the GNR's resident engineer on the Derbyshire Extension, with input from Richard Johnson, the GNR's chief engineer. Abbot and Johnson were also responsible for Handyside Bridge and Friar Gate Bridge in Derby, further west on the same line. The contractor was Benton and Woodiwiss, and the wrought iron was supplied by Eastwood Swingler & Company of Derby. ## Description According to Graeme Bickerdike, writing in 2016 in the magazine Rail Engineer, the design was based on the Viaduc de Busseau [fr], opened in 1864, in central France. The bridge deck consists of 16 spans, each 77 feet (23 metres) long and formed from four 8-foot (2.4-metre) deep wrought-iron Warren lattice truss girders braced together horizontally and vertically. The trusses support a series of transverse iron troughs at 2-foot-4-inch (0.71-metre) centres. Because of the corrugated surface provided by the troughs, the volume of track ballast required was half that of a traditional flat-decked bridge. The rails were not fixed to the bridge deck, instead lying directly on the ballast. The bridge deck is enclosed by low wrought-iron latticework parapets. The spans are supported on 15 evenly spaced piers of the same height, 56 feet (17 metres). The piers rest on concrete foundations but are not bolted down. They are held in place by blue brick and ashlar bases, which were built around them. The lack of fixity allows slight movement of the structure to compensate for the ground conditions. Any misalignment of the tracks could be rectified by repacking the ballast. The piers are formed of 12 wrought-iron tubular columns, each constructed from four quadrant pieces riveted together. The tubes are arranged in four groups of three. The centre-most two groups consist of a central vertical column with a slightly inclined column either side of it longitudinally; in the two outermost groups the central columns are offset transversely as raking columns to provide lateral support. The tube groups are braced together horizontally and vertically at four stages. The viaduct is 1,421 feet (433 metres) long (over a quarter of a mile), 60 feet (18 metres) above the valley floor in the centre, and 26 feet (8 metres) wide between the parapets. Both ends of the viaduct are supported on brick piers. The structure provides a constant 1:100 gradient; the Awsworth end is 15 feet (4.6 metres) higher than the Ilkeston end. It was once the central (and longest) part of a roughly 2-mile (3.2-kilometre) section of raised line over the Erewash Valley. The valley was approached on embankments at each end. At the western (Ilkeston) end, another iron bridge, supported on Bennerley Viaduct's western pier, continues the line of the viaduct across the Erewash Valley line (built by the Midland Railway and still in use); that bridge is a plate girder structure at a 15-degree skew. A brick bridge continued the line over the Erewash Canal towards Derby but this was demolished after the railway's closure. The terminating brick pier at the eastern (Awsworth) end was built into an embankment on which the line continued towards Nottingham. The embankments were also demolished, though stubs remain at both ends and between the viaduct and the canal. Aside from the demolition of its surrounding structures, the viaduct survives in a largely unaltered state. The Erewash Valley is largely flat, making Bennerley Viaduct the dominant feature in the landscape. The only nearby patch of high ground is Ilkeston town centre, around two miles (three kilometres) to the south. ## History Construction on the viaduct began with the foundations in May 1876 and the work was completed 18 months later in November 1877. The railway line opened in January 1878. The viaduct's operational life was largely uneventful. On 31 January 1916, nine Zeppelin airships of the German Airship Naval Division conducted a bombing raid over the English Midlands known as the Great Midlands Raid. One of these airships, the L.20 (LZ 59), dropped seven high-explosive bombs in the vicinity of Bennerley Viaduct. One landed just to the north of the viaduct on the Midland Railway line at Bennerley Junction, destroying a signal box on the Midland line. One pier of the viaduct was hit by shrapnel, causing superficial damage; the marks are still visible on one of the piers. In the 1960s, the British railway industry, which had been nationalised in the 1950s, was in decline and the Derbyshire Extension was considered unnecessarily duplicative. Passenger services were withdrawn in 1964 and Bennerley Viaduct closed altogether, along with the rest of the line, in 1968 as a result of the Beeching cuts. Most of the other structures carrying the line across the valley were demolished. A contractor was appointed to demolish Bennerley Viaduct but wrought iron cannot be cut up using conventional metal-cutting equipment and it would therefore have to be dismantled piece by piece. The cost was deemed prohibitive and the viaduct remained in situ. Bennerley Viaduct became part of the closed-line estate, a group of redundant railway structures maintained by the railway authorities to ensure they did not pose a risk to the public. The derelict land around the bridge became a wildlife haven, though the area also attracted anti-social behaviour and there were several incidents involving people attempting to climb the piers and falling off. As a result of the privatisation of British Rail between 1994 and 1997, the viaduct became part of the Historical Railways Estate (or Burdensome Estate), managed by BRB (Residuary) Limited. By that time, there were advanced plans for a conservation group to take ownership of it. On 23 March 2001, Railway Paths Ltd, a sister charity of Sustrans formed to conserve redundant railway structures and convert them into walking and cycling paths, purchased the viaduct from BRB (Residuary). ## Restoration The viaduct was designated a grade II listed building in 1974, later upgraded to grade II\*. It is listed for its architectural interest, rarity, constructional interest, and completeness. Listed status provides legal protection from demolition or unsympathetic modification. British Rail applied for planning permission to demolish the viaduct in 1975 and 1980, partly due to persistent trespass—there were several incidents of people injuring themselves after falling from the viaduct—but both applications were rejected. The viaduct received little maintenance after 1986 and fell into disrepair. Repair and conservation schemes were mooted but with little progress. In 2007, the viaduct was added to the Heritage at Risk Register as its condition had deteriorated to the point that it was in danger of irreparable damage, and it was the only site in the United Kingdom on the 2020 World Monuments Watch, a list published by the World Monuments Fund to highlight heritage sites "in need of urgent action that demonstrate the potential to trigger social change through conservation". A detailed condition survey was undertaken in 2016, following volunteer work to clear vegetation from the bases of the piers. The survey revealed the viaduct to be in generally good condition. It noted corrosion to the ends of the troughs on the bridge deck, damage to brickwork from frost weathering, and missing rivets among the minor defects. In 2017, the Heritage Lottery Fund gave an initial grant to promote engagement and interpretation, which led to the formation of the Friends of Bennerley Viaduct, a community group which works alongside Railway Paths on the restoration and preservation of the viaduct. An application for further Heritage Lottery funding to enable the viaduct to be opened to the public was rejected at the end of 2017, leaving it with an uncertain future. In 2019 Historic England offered £120,000 to cover a funding shortfall, allowing restoration work to begin the following year. Ben Robinson, Historic England's Principal Advisor for Heritage at Risk, said "The importance of this viaduct cannot be underplayed. [It is] a stunning example of the genius of British engineering". The work included repairs to the ironwork, the bases of the piers, and abutments and partial reconstruction of the parapets at the eastern end. The embankment at the western end was rebuilt to provide ramped access from the Erewash Canal towpath and steps were built from the eastern end with a wheel trough alongside for bicycles. The viaduct twice featured on the television series The Architecture the Railways Built, once in the inaugural episode in 2020 and once during the restoration work. It opened to walkers and cyclists on 13 January 2022 after the completion of work costing £1.7 million, which was contributed by Railway Paths, the Railway Heritage Trust, and others. In January 2023, funding was awarded towards creating ramped access from the Awsworth end. ## Appreciation and influence The only other surviving wrought-iron lattice viaduct in the United Kingdom is Meldon Viaduct, near Okehampton, in Devon. Meldon is significantly taller but less than half the length. The railway historians Gordon Biddle and O. S. Nock described Bennerley as "by far the more attractive" of the two. Meldon Viaduct has been significantly altered since it was built, whereas Bennerley is essentially unchanged. Belah Viaduct in Cumbria had a similar design but was demolished shortly after its closure in 1962. Another wrought-iron bridge was Crumlin Viaduct, once Britain's tallest, in South Wales. This too was demolished in the 1960s despite efforts to preserve it. Gregory Beecroft, a senior project surveyor for the British Rail Property Board, described Bennerley Viaduct in a contribution for a 1997 book as "among the least impressive" of several metal viaducts that once stood on the British railway network, contrasting it in particular with Belah Viaduct. He believed that "in retrospect, it is a pity that the resources now to be devoted to Bennerley could not have been used to preserve Belah Viaduct. [...] Belah Viaduct closed in 1962, when we were less conscious of our railway heritage, and it was demolished not long after". Historic England calls Bennerley Viaduct "an outstanding survival of the mature phase of development of the railway network in England, demonstrating the confidence of railway engineers in seeking solutions to specific engineering challenges". The journalist Matthew Parris (formerly a Derbyshire MP) visited during restoration work in 2021, and wrote in a column for The Times: "It is, on one view, a hideous thing; and on another a precious and remarkable monument to early railway engineering". The author D. H. Lawrence grew up in the Erewash Valley and used it as a backdrop to many of his works. He references Bennerley Viaduct in several, most prominently in the novel Sons and Lovers, which includes the lines "There was a faint rattling noise. Away to the right the train, like a luminous caterpillar, was threading across the night. The rattling ceased. 'She's over the viaduct. You'll just do it.'" ## See also - Route diagram of the Derbyshire Extension (Bennerley Viaduct is immediately east of where the extension crosses the Erewash Valley line) - Grade II\* listed buildings in Erewash - Grade II\* listed buildings in Nottinghamshire - Listed buildings in Awsworth - Listed buildings in Ilkeston - List of lattice girder bridges in the United Kingdom

All Money Is Legal

2000 studio album by Amil

All Money Is Legal, also known as A.M.I.L.: (All Money Is Legal), is the only studio album by American rapper Amil. It was released on August 29, 2000, through Roc-A-Fella, Columbia, and Sony Music. Jay-Z, Damon Dash, and Amil served as executive producer with a team of producers that included Just Blaze. Before the album's release, Amil was best known for her feature on Jay-Z's 1998 single "Can I Get A...". She was one of several up-and-coming artists signed to Roc-A-Fella, alongside Memphis Bleek and Beanie Sigel, who released an album in 2000. Although it was her only album on Roc-A-Fella, Amil had been closely associated with the label and its cofounder Jay-Z, earning the moniker "First Lady of Roc-A-Fella". A hip hop album, the lyrics of All Money Is Legal focus on wealth and, to a lesser degree, Amil's personal life. It was recorded at Playground Studios in Los Angeles and at The Cutting Room, The Hit Factory, and Quad Studios in New York City. Although Jay-Z had written Amil's verses for their past collaborations, she wrote her own lyrics for all the album's tracks. Amil mostly raps throughout the album, but sings on some tracks. According to academic commentators and music critics, Amil adopted the persona of a "gold digger" throughout the album. Reviews were mixed, the production and Amil's verses dividing critics. The album peaked at number 45 on the US Billboard 200 chart. Two singles – "I Got That" with vocals from Beyoncé and "4 da Fam" with verses from Memphis Bleek, Beanie Sigel, and Jay-Z – were released from the album and promoted with music videos. "I Got That" reached number one on the Bubbling Under R&B/Hip-Hop Singles Billboard chart, and "4 da Fam" charted on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs. Shortly after the release of All Money Is Legal, Amil was dropped from the Roc-A-Fella roster. Rumors circulated within the industry that her departure stemmed from personal conflict with Jay-Z. Years later, she publicly denied the rumors and said she had left because she was unable to handle industry pressures and wanted to have more time to care for her child. Although her music career continued, Amil did not sign to another major label and she dropped out of the commercial mainstream of hip hop. ## Background and recording In 1997, Amil formed the girl group Major Coins with Liz Leite and Monique. Amil was not interested in being a solo artist at the time and was uncertain about pursuing a career as a rapper, and later said, "I never looked at it as going beyond me being known in the streets." When Jay-Z asked Leite to provide vocals for "It's Like That" from his third studio album Vol. 2... Hard Knock Life (1998), Amil accompanied her to the recording studio. Jay-Z asked Amil to freestyle during the sessions, and her vocals were featured on the album single "Can I Get A...". He later encouraged her to become a solo artist. After Major Coins disbanded, Jay-Z signed Amil to Roc-A-Fella in 1998. She was one of several new artists signed to the label, and she became a high-profile member of the label and received the nicknames "Diana Ross" and "the First Lady of Roc-A-Fella". According to a 2015 Fact article, Amil's signing to the label became the subject of industry gossip. She denied reports of a pregnancy involving a married man and a romantic relationship with Jay-Z. Foxy Brown accused Jay-Z of using Amil to try to create a new artist similar to herself. In a 2003 interview, he denied these claims and said he stopped working with Brown in favor of Amil because the two women frequently fought on tour. Before the release of her debut album, Amil featured on albums by Mariah Carey, Jermaine Dupri, Tamar Braxton, and Funkmaster Flex. She collaborated again with Jay-Z for the 1999 singles "Nigga What, Nigga Who (Originator 99)" and "Do It Again (Put Ya Hands Up)" and the 2000 song "Hey Papi". Jay-Z wrote all of Amil's verses for these collaborations. She also performed on his Hard Knock Life tour. Amil, who became known as one of Jay-Z's protégés, described her work with him as "a natural thing" and "always smooth". As she told Vibe in 2000, "[He] just put this career in my hands. I went from having nothing at all to wearing diamonds." The same year, she appeared in a Sprite advertisement campaign alongside Roxanne Shante, Mia X, Angie Martinez, and Eve; they are referred to as the Five Deadly Women, a reference to the 1978 film Five Deadly Venoms. She also played a lead character, Tanya, in the 2000 direct-to-video film Get Down or Lay Down; it was distributed through a joint deal with Roc-A-Fella and Miramax. Amil was also the only prominent female in the 2000 documentary Backstage. All Money Is Legal was recorded at The Cutting Room, The Hit Factory, and Quad Studios in New York City, and Playground Studios in Los Angeles. Amil, Jay-Z, and Damon Dash were the album's executive producers. It was one of several albums from up-and-coming artists at Roc-A-Fella to be released in 2000, along with Memphis Bleek's The Understanding and Beanie Sigel's The Truth. Amil has co-writing credits on all the album's songs, and Jay-Z said she had a "talent for song-making". To be taken seriously as a solo artist by "naysayers who say Jay is her puppeteer", Amil said: "I kept this album me — nothing more, nothing less." She said she wanted to avoid sexual topics on All Money Is Legal and had planned not to use any profanity in her future music, explaining: "I know I sin, but I'm trying to become a better person." Producer Just Blaze contributed to All Money Is Legal, and felt his work on the album raised his profile within Roc-A-Fella. Beyoncé recorded her guest vocals for "I Got That" in 2000 in a separate recording session. Her then-manager Mathew Knowles paid Roc-A-Fella for the featured spot as a way to assess her viability as a solo artist, since she was still a part of Destiny's Child at the time. As a result of this collaboration, Beyoncé worked with her future husband Jay-Z for the first time. ## Composition and lyrics All Money Is Legal is a hip hop album with 13 tracks. Alongside Just Blaze, the album's production team included Tyrone Fyffe, Jon-John Robinson, LES, Poke & Tone, Rockwilder, EZ Elpee, Chavon Henry, Sean Lashley, K-Rob, Jay Garfield, Lofey, and Omen. David Browne, writing for Entertainment Weekly, described its compositions as having "low slung beats and [an] uncluttered vibe" similar to Jay-Z's music from that era, and the Dayton Daily News' Talia Jackson said the album had his signature funk samples and R&B choruses. Lyrically, the songs on All Money Is Legal focus mainly on material possessions and money, as evidenced by the album title. Some tracks touch on more personal issues, specifically "Smile 4 Me" and "Quarrels". The New York Daily News' Jim Farber wrote that Amil was more personal in her music than Foxy Brown and Lil' Kim, whom he described as "sexy cartoons". Amil raps most of her vocals on the album, but also sings on several tracks like "Get Down". Critics have referred to Amil's rapping style as sing songy, and Farber said she "specializes in short, jabbing melodies". The opening track "Smile 4 Me" was inspired by Amil's life, and includes the lyrics: "Got my people up north trying to slice the bid / While I'm in love with a nigga with a wife and a kid." On "Smile 4 Me", Amil retells aspects of her life before her music career, such as living on welfare and shoplifting. The second song, "I Got That", features Beyoncé on its chorus and encourages women to become more independent. Commentators compared the song to music released by Destiny's Child, and a Spin writer said it continues the "statement[s] of simple financial and romantic independence" found throughout Beyoncé's discography. Amil references Satan as being at the root of all business in the bass-heavy track "Quarrels", which has additional vocals by R&B singer Thomas. Other critics interpreted the song as being about an unhealthy relationship. In "Girlfriend", she worries about infidelity after taking a woman's boyfriend, and raps about the shame of going "from Gucci sandals back to no-name brands" on "Anyday". Amil's lyrics on All Money Is Legal have been cited as an example of the theme of "gold digging" in hip hop performed by women. In a 2003 academic paper, women's studies professor Layli D. Phillips and social psychology professor Dionne P. Stephens cited Amil and All Money Is Legal as part of a trend of female hip hop artists performing the stereotypical role of a "Gold Digger". Along with the "Freak", "Diva", and "Dyke", Phillips and Stephens named the "Gold Digger" as one of the major archetypes adopted by female rappers, defining the role with the following terms: > "The Gold Digger will supposedly resort to any and all sexual means to gain whatever financial rewards she wants or needs, seeing men as stepping stones to provide for short-term needs. Short term is not defined so much by a length of time, but rather a mind set whereby the male is good for as long as he can meet the Gold Digger's demands. She takes whatever she can, and when the well runs dry, the Gold Digger is history." They highlighted the lyric "You know I gotta keep tricks up the sleeve, leav' em bankrupt with blue balls till the dick bleed" from the title track "All Money is Legal (A.M.I.L.)" as an example of the Gold Digger persona in Amil's music. Vibes Andréa Duncan wrote that Amil used the album to balance her onstage persona as a gold digger with her more mellow personality in her personal life. Len Righi, writing for The Morning Call, described Amil's style as "golddigger rap", but noted the album contained songs that were "not all diamonds and major coins". All Money Is Legal includes three features from Jay-Z. Amil and Jay-Z rap about materialism on "Heard It All", which features the pair attempting to scam one another. He also contributed to "That's Right" after hearing Just Blaze's production during a recording session. His final appearance is the album closer "4 da Fam", also featuring Memphis Bleek and Beanie Sigel. For his verse in "4 da Fam", Jay-Z rapped about expecting a child: "I got four nephews and they're all writing ... and I'm having a child, which is more frightening." A column in Vibe interpreted the line as a pregnancy announcement from Jay-Z, who was an uncommitted bachelor at the time. In a 2000 statement to the New York Daily News, Jay-Z denied these reports. He had his first child, Blue Ivy, with Beyoncé in January 2012. ## Release and promotion "I Got That" was released on July 5, 2000, as the album's lead single. The music video for "I Got That" appeared on the list of BET's most-played clips for the weeks of August 1 and 8, 2000. The video also played on The Box—a now-defunct music video network—during the same two weeks. Kathy Iandoli of Dazed praised "I Got That" as a showcase for Amil's potential as a rapper. Conversely, Vibe named the song among the year's worst artistic pairings in hip hop for its Beyoncé feature. "I Got That" reached number one on the Bubbling Under R&B/Hip-Hop Singles Billboard chart on September 16. Beyoncé's vocals have been applauded retrospectively; Andrew Unterberger at Spin said the song "deserved better, and Bey's breathy chorus is a big reason why", and Iandoli said that "Beyoncé did Amil the favor of her life" with her feature. All Money Is Legal was released through Roc-A-Fella, Columbia, and Sony Music on August 29, 2000, as a cassette, and CD. It was issued in both an "explicit" version with a Parental Advisory label and a "clean" version with edited lyrics. The album had originally been scheduled for a release in early August. With an acronym form matching the artist's name, All Money Is Legal is alternately titled A.M.I.L.: (All Money Is Legal). The album sold 29,000 copies in the first week of its release, and simultaneously debuted and peaked at number 45 on the US Billboard 200 chart. On the Billboard Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart, All Money Is Legal reached its peak position at number 12 on October 7, 2000, and was on the chart for a total of eight weeks. The second single, "4 da Fam", was released on July 29, 2000, and issued as a Double A-Side with "I Got That"; an accompanying "4 da Fam" music video had premiered earlier in the summer. For a 2017 Vulture article, John Kennedy had a lukewarm response to the song, calling it "a passable Roc-A-Fella posse cut that feels more like a team-building exercise". In a 2018 Complex article, Andrew Barber and Al Shipley considered "4 da Fam" to be "really a Jay record" despite being on Amil's album; they praised Jay-Z for having "the best verse and batt[ing] clean up". The song peaked at number 99 on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs Billboard chart and number 29 on the Hot Rap Songs Billboard chart. "That's Right" and "Get Down" were released on a 12-inch single and vinyl record as promotional singles. ## Critical reception The album received a mixed response from critics. In Vibe, Andréa Duncan praised it as a "surprisingly diverse and thoughtful collection of tracks". AllMusic's MacKenzie Wilson said Amil was "bold enough to make it solo" with her "New York childhood street smarts" and a "sultry sassiness" throughout the music. A reviewer for The Source commended the album as "a set that displays [Amil's] feminine flair". and Anthony M. Thompson for the San Antonio Express-News described it as having a "distinct, woman's touch". Despite criticizing All Money Is Legal as "unfortunately titled", Dan DeLuca said in The Philadelphia Inquirer that Amil's rapping abilities distinguished her from other female rappers and allowed her to stand out from the album's featured artists. In Entertainment Weekly, David Browne praised some of the lyrics—specifically, references to Aesop and Blake Carrington—but he dismissed the overall focus on money as unoriginal. Ta-Nehisi Coates, writing for the Washington City Paper, panned All Money Is Legal as "a schizophrenic work" with songs "swinging from aching honesty to gangsta-bitch schtick". Coates deemed the album "self-hating" and said Amil had "reduc[ed] herself to a prostitute with a microphone" with the sexually explicit lyrics. Several reviewers cited "Quarrels" and "Smile 4 Me" as album highlights. An anonymous review columnist in Billboard praised the autographical "Smile 4 Me" as "a testament to [Amil's] lyricism" and wrote that her verses in "Quarrels" on themes of morality would "make heads both nod and think". Despite an overall negative assessment of the album, Coates said Amil had successfully pulled from her past in "melancholy confessionals" like "Smile 4 Me". The Morning Call's Len Righi praised "Smile 4 Me" as the song that Amil best represents her "gritty self-assurance" and "fierce determination". Righi later named All Money Is Legal among the best albums of the year. A Vibe columnist identified "Quarrels", alongside Eve's 1999 single "Love Is Blind", as examples of "strong-willed, pro-woman songs" written and recorded by female rappers. Despite their criticism of Amil's album as inferior to her collaborations with Jay-Z, Soren Baker, writing for the Los Angeles Times, believed she demonstrated "promise when she becomes more personal in her storytelling". On the other hand, the Dayton Daily News' Talia Jackson criticized Amil as "less than believable when she is not rapping about her material world". In a 2014 Billboard interview, Amil said "Smile 4 Me" was one of her favorite songs from the album and that she generally preferred the songs drawn from her personal life. Retrospective assessments of All Money Is Legal have remained mixed. In a 2018 Rolling Stone article, Rob Sheffield praised Amil for releasing "her own kick-ass album with [an] excellent title" following her early collaboration with Jay-Z. In an article for PopMatters published about three years after the album's release, Terry Sawyer said Amil's music was generic and left only a "fleeting, shrugging impression". He unfavorably compared Amil to rapper Sarai, saying both had "virtually identical", "silken, imploded vocal styles". At Fact, Son Raw said Amil's voice made her music a "love-her-or-hate-her proposition", but highlighted "4 da Fam" as a "prime Roc La Familia-era posse cut". Complex also included All Money is Legal in a 2015 listicle on "factually incorrect" titles for hip hop albums because, in their words, "guess what, Amil, all money is not legal." ## Aftermath Amil was removed from the Roc-A-Fella roster shortly after the release of All Money Is Legal. After appearing in a music video alongside the rapper Baby (later known as Birdman), a February 2001 Vibe column speculated that she was likely to sign a record deal with Cash Money, the label he co-founded. But she never signed a deal with Cash Money, and—other than a select few releases—she largely dropped out of the mainstream, major-label recording industry. Music industry rumors attributed Amil's departure from Roc-A-Fella to personal conflict between her and Jay-Z, as well as his disapproval of her (reported) weight gain. During a 2011 interview with Vibe, she responded to the rumors about her and Jay-Z: > "People think there was bad blood between us, but there never was any bad blood. Things happen and I wasn't ready for where my career was going at that time. It was really overwhelming." Amil said she took a hiatus from her music career because she was mentally unprepared for the pressures of the industry and she wanted to take care of her child, who suffered from asthma. Describing herself as "rebell[ing] against the industry" after the album's release, she refused to do promotion for it and said: "I faded myself." She said she regretted signing a record deal, preferring to be "an around the way rapper" and a songwriter instead. Jay-Z did not comment on Amil's departure from Roc-A-Fella at the time and, as of 2017, has still never publicly discussed why Amil was dropped from the label. However, Jay-Z did defend the quality of All Money Is Legal against its detractors in a 2013 appearance on the New York radio show The Breakfast Club. When DJ Envy asked Jay-Z who had been the "worst signing" at Roc-A-Fella, Charlamagne tha God interrupted to say "Amil!" and Jay-Z replied, "Nah, nah, I wouldn't say Amil. Amil's album, you should listen to it. It's good!" ## Track listing Credits adapted from the liner notes of All Money Is Legal. Sample credits' - "Smile 4 Me" contains a sample from "Summer Love", performed by David Oliver. - "I Got That" contains a sample from "Seventh Heaven", performed by Gwen Guthrie. - "Get Down" contains a sample from "Blank Generation", performed by Richard Hell and the Voidoids. - "Heard It All" contains a sample from the composition "Chitarra Romana", written by Cherubini, Di Lazzaro and Harper. - "Anyday" contains a sample from "Collage", performed by The Three Degrees. - "4 da Fam" contains a sample from "Main Theme", by Roy Budd. ## Credits and personnel Credits adapted from AllMusic: - Amil – associate executive producer, primary artist, vocals - Beyoncé – featured artist, primary artist - Shawn Carter – executive producer - Kevin Crouse – mixing - Damon Dash – executive producer - Tyrone Fyfee – producer - Chris Gehringer – mastering - Jason Goldstein – mixing - Erwin Gorostiza – art direction - Jay-Z – guest artist, primary artist - Manny Marroquin – mixing - Memphis Bleek – guest artist, performer, primary artist - Monica Morrow – stylist - Jon-John Robinson – engineer, producer - Beanie Sigel – guest artist, primary artist - Brian Stanley – engineer, mixing - Carl Thomas – guest artist, primary artist, vocals - Richard Travali – mixing - Reggie Wells – make-up - Carlisle Young – engineer ## Charts

Apollo 12

Second crewed Moon landing

Apollo 12 (November 14–24, 1969) was the sixth crewed flight in the United States Apollo program and the second to land on the Moon. It was launched on November 14, 1969, by NASA from the Kennedy Space Center, Florida. Commander Charles "Pete" Conrad and Lunar Module Pilot Alan L. Bean performed just over one day and seven hours of lunar surface activity while Command Module Pilot Richard F. Gordon remained in lunar orbit. Apollo 12 would have attempted the first lunar landing had Apollo 11 failed, but after the success of Neil Armstrong's mission, Apollo 12 was postponed by two months, and other Apollo missions also put on a more relaxed schedule. More time was allotted for geologic training in preparation for Apollo 12 than for Apollo 11, Conrad and Bean making several geology field trips in preparation for their mission. Apollo 12's spacecraft and launch vehicle were almost identical to Apollo 11's. One addition was hammocks to allow Conrad and Bean to rest more comfortably on the Moon. Shortly after being launched on a rainy day at Kennedy Space Center, Apollo 12 was twice struck by lightning, causing instrumentation problems but little damage. Switching to the auxiliary power supply resolved the data relay problem, saving the mission. The outward journey to the Moon otherwise saw few problems. On November 19, Conrad and Bean achieved a precise landing at their expected location within walking distance of the Surveyor 3 robotic probe, which had landed on April 20, 1967. In making a pinpoint landing, they showed that NASA could plan future missions in the expectation that astronauts could land close to sites of scientific interest. Conrad and Bean carried the Apollo Lunar Surface Experiments Package, a group of nuclear-powered scientific instruments, as well as the first color television camera taken by an Apollo mission to the lunar surface, but transmission was lost after Bean accidentally pointed the camera at the Sun and its sensor was destroyed. On the second of two moonwalks, they visited Surveyor 3 and removed parts for return to Earth. Lunar Module Intrepid lifted off from the Moon on November 20 and docked with the command module, which subsequently traveled back to Earth. The Apollo 12 mission ended on November 24 with a successful splashdown. ## Crew and key Mission Control personnel The commander of the all-Navy Apollo 12 crew was Charles "Pete" Conrad, who was 39 years old at the time of the mission. After receiving a bachelor's degree in aeronautical engineering from Princeton University in 1953, he became a naval aviator, and completed United States Naval Test Pilot School at Patuxent River Naval Air Station. He was selected in the second group of astronauts in 1962, and flew on Gemini 5 in 1965, and as command pilot of Gemini 11 in 1966. Command Module Pilot Richard "Dick" Gordon, 40 years old at the time of Apollo 12, also became a naval aviator in 1953, following graduation from the University of Washington with a degree in chemistry, and completed test pilot school at Patuxent River. Selected as a Group 3 astronaut in 1963, he flew with Conrad on Gemini 11. The original Lunar Module pilot assigned to work with Conrad was Clifton C. Williams Jr., who was killed in October 1967 when the T-38 he was flying crashed near Tallahassee. When forming his crew, Conrad had wanted Alan L. Bean, a former student of his at the test pilot school, but had been told by Director of Flight Crew Operations Deke Slayton that Bean was unavailable due to an assignment to the Apollo Applications Program. After Williams's death, Conrad asked for Bean again, and this time Slayton yielded. Bean, 37 years old when the mission flew, had graduated from the University of Texas in 1955 with a degree in aeronautical engineering. Also a naval aviator, he was selected alongside Gordon in 1963, and first flew in space on Apollo 12. The three Apollo 12 crew members had backed up Apollo 9 earlier in 1969. The Apollo 12 backup crew was David R. Scott as commander, Alfred M. Worden as Command Module pilot, and James B. Irwin as Lunar Module pilot. They became the crew of Apollo 15. For Apollo, a third crew of astronauts, known as the support crew, was designated in addition to the prime and backup crews used on projects Mercury and Gemini. Slayton created the support crews because James McDivitt, who would command Apollo 9, believed that, with preparation going on in facilities across the US, meetings that needed a member of the flight crew would be missed. Support crew members were to assist as directed by the mission commander. Usually low in seniority, they assembled the mission's rules, flight plan, and checklists, and kept them updated; For Apollo 12, they were Gerald P. Carr, Edward G. Gibson and Paul J. Weitz. Flight directors were Gerry Griffin, first shift, Pete Frank, second shift, Clifford E. Charlesworth, third shift, and Milton Windler, fourth shift. Flight directors during Apollo had a one-sentence job description, "The flight director may take any actions necessary for crew safety and mission success." Capsule communicators (CAPCOMs) were Scott, Worden, Irwin, Carr, Gibson, Weitz and Don Lind. ## Preparation ### Site selection The landing site selection process for Apollo 12 was greatly informed by the site selection for Apollo 11. There were rigid standards for the possible Apollo 11 landing sites, in which scientific interest was not a major factor: they had to be close to the lunar equator and not on the periphery of the portion of the lunar surface visible from Earth; they had to be relatively flat and without major obstructions along the path the Lunar Module (LM) would fly to reach them, their suitability confirmed by photographs from Lunar Orbiter probes. Also desirable was the presence of another suitable site further west in case the mission was delayed and the sun would have risen too high in the sky at the original site for desired lighting conditions. The need for three days to recycle if a launch had to be scrubbed meant that only three of the five suitable sites found were designated as potential landing sites for Apollo 11, of which the Apollo 11 landing site in the Sea of Tranquillity was the easternmost. Since Apollo 12 was to attempt the first lunar landing if Apollo 11 failed, both sets of astronauts trained for the same sites. With the success of Apollo 11, it was initially contemplated that Apollo 12 would land at the site next further west from the Sea of Tranquility, in Sinus Medii. However, NASA planning coordinator Jack Sevier and engineers at the Manned Spaceflight Center at Houston argued for a landing close enough to the crater in which the Surveyor 3 probe had landed in 1967 to allow the astronauts to cut parts from it for return to Earth. The site was otherwise suitable, and had scientific interest. Given that Apollo 11 had landed several miles off-target, though, some NASA administrators feared Apollo 12 would land far enough away that the astronauts could not reach the probe, and the agency would be embarrassed. Nevertheless, the ability to perform pinpoint landings was essential if Apollo's exploration program was to be carried out, and on July 25, 1969, Apollo Program Manager Samuel Phillips designated what became known as Surveyor crater as the landing site, despite the unanimous opposition of members of two site selection boards. ### Training and preparation The Apollo 12 astronauts spent five hours in mission-specific training for every hour they expected to spend in flight on the mission, a total exceeding 1,000 hours per crew member. Conrad and Bean received more mission-specific training than Apollo 11's Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin had. This was in addition to the 1,500 hours of training they received as backup crew members for Apollo 9. The Apollo 12 training included over 400 hours per crew member in simulators of the Command Module (CM) and of the LM. Some of the simulations were linked in real time to flight controllers in Mission Control. To practice landing on the Moon, Conrad flew the Lunar Landing Training Vehicle (LLTV), training in which continued to be authorized even though Armstrong had been forced to bail out of a similar vehicle in 1968, just before it crashed. Soon after being assigned as Apollo 12 crew commander, Conrad met with NASA geologists and told them that the training for lunar surface activities would be conducted much as Apollo 11's, but there was to be no publicity or involvement by the media. Conrad felt he had been abused by the press during Gemini, and the sole Apollo 11 geology field trip had turned into a near-fiasco, with a large media contingent present, some getting in the way—the astronauts had trouble hearing each other due to a hovering press helicopter. After the successful return of Apollo 11 in July 1969, more time was allotted for geology, but the astronauts' focus was in getting time in the simulators without being pre-empted by the Apollo 11 crew. On the six Apollo 12 geology field trips, the astronauts would practice as if on the Moon, collecting samples and documenting them with photographs, while communicating with a CAPCOM and geologists who were out of sight in a nearby tent. Afterwards, the astronauts' performance in choosing samples and taking photographs would be critiqued. To the frustration of the astronauts, the scientists kept changing the photo documentation procedures; after the fourth or fifth such change, Conrad required that there be no more. After the return of Apollo 11, the Apollo 12 crew was able to view the lunar samples, and be briefed on them by scientists. As Apollo 11 was targeted for an ellipse-shaped landing zone, rather than at a specific point, there was no planning for geology traverses, the designated tasks to be done at sites of the crew's choosing. For Apollo 12, before the mission, some of NASA's geology team met with the crew and Conrad suggested they lay out possible routes for him and Bean. The result was four traverses, based on four potential landing points for the LM. This was the start of geology traverse planning that on later missions became a considerable effort involving several organizations. The stages of the lunar module, LM–6, were delivered to Kennedy Space Center (KSC) on March 24, 1969, and were mated to each other on April 28. Command module CM–108 and service module SM–108 were delivered to KSC on March 28, and were mated to each other on April 21. Following installation of gear and testing, the launch vehicle, with the spacecraft atop it, was rolled out to Launch Complex 39A on September 8, 1969. The training schedule was complete, as planned, by November 1, 1969; activities after that date were intended as refreshers. The crew members felt that the training, for the most part, was adequate preparation for the Moon mission. ## Hardware ### Launch vehicle There were no significant changes to the Saturn V launch vehicle used on Apollo 12, SA–507, from that used on Apollo 11. There were another 17 instrumentation measurements in the Apollo 12 launch vehicle, bringing the number to 1,365. The entire vehicle, including the spacecraft, weighed 6,487,742 pounds (2,942,790 kg) at launch, an increase from Apollo 11's 6,477,875 pounds (2,938,315 kg). Of this figure, the spacecraft weighed 110,044 pounds (49,915 kg), up from 109,646 pounds (49,735 kg) on Apollo 11. #### Third stage trajectory After LM separation, the third stage of the Saturn V, the S-IVB, was intended to fly into solar orbit. The S-IVB auxiliary propulsion system was fired, with the intent that the Moon's gravity slingshot the stage into solar orbit. Due to an error, the S-IVB flew past the Moon at too high an altitude to achieve Earth escape velocity. It remained in a semi-stable Earth orbit until it finally escaped Earth orbit in 1971, but briefly returned to Earth orbit 31 years later. It was discovered by amateur astronomer Bill Yeung who gave it the temporary designation J002E3 before it was determined to be an artificial object. Again in solar orbit as of 2021, it may again be captured by Earth's gravity, but not at least until the 2040s. The S-IVBs used on later lunar missions were deliberately crashed into the Moon to create seismic events that would register on the seismometers left on the Moon and provide data about the Moon's structure. ### Spacecraft The Apollo 12 spacecraft consisted of Command Module 108 and Service Module 108 (together Command and Service Modules 108, or CSM–108), Lunar Module 6 (LM–6), a Launch Escape System (LES), and Spacecraft-Lunar Module Adapter 15 (SLA–15). The LES contained three rocket motors to propel the CM to safety in the event of an abort shortly after launch, while the SLA housed the LM and provided a structural connection between the Saturn V and the LM. The SLA was identical to Apollo 11's, while the LES differed only in the installation of a more reliable motor igniter. The CSM was given the call sign Yankee Clipper, while the LM had the call sign Intrepid. These sea-related names were selected by the all-Navy crew from several thousand proposed names submitted by employees of the prime contractors of the respective modules. George Glacken, a flight test engineer at North American Aviation, builder of the CSM, proposed Yankee Clipper as such ships had "majestically sailed the high seas with pride and prestige for a new America". Intrepid was from a suggestion by Robert Lambert, a planner at Grumman, builder of the LM, as evocative of "this nation's resolute determination for continued exploration of space, stressing our astronauts' fortitude and endurance of hardship". The differences between the CSM and LM of Apollo 11, and those of Apollo 12, were few and minor. A hydrogen separator was added to the CSM to stop the gas from entering the potable water tank—Apollo 11 had had one, though mounted on the water dispenser in the CM's cabin. Gaseous hydrogen in the water had given the Apollo 11 crew severe flatulence. Other changes included the strengthening of the recovery loop attached following splashdown, meaning that the swimmers recovering the CM would not have to attach an auxiliary loop. LM changes included a structural modification so that scientific experiment packages could be carried for deployment on the lunar surface. Two hammocks were added for greater comfort of the astronauts while resting on the Moon, and a color television camera substituted for the black and white one used on the lunar surface during Apollo 11. ### ALSEP The Apollo Lunar Surface Experiments Package, or ALSEP, was a suite of scientific instruments designed to be emplaced on the lunar surface by the Apollo astronauts, and thereafter operate autonomously, sending data to Earth. Development of the ALSEP was part of NASA's response to some scientists who opposed the crewed lunar landing program (they felt that robotic craft could explore the Moon more cheaply) by demonstrating that some tasks, such as deployment of the ALSEP, required humans. In 1966, a contract to design and build the ALSEPs was awarded to the Bendix Corporation Due to the limited time the Apollo 11 crew would have on the lunar surface, a smaller suite of experiments was flown, known as the Early Apollo Surface Experiment Package (EASEP). Apollo 12 was the first mission to carry an ALSEP; one would be flown on each of the subsequent lunar landing missions, though the components that were included would vary. Apollo 12's ALSEP was to be deployed at least 300 feet (91 m) away from the LM to protect the instruments from the debris that would be generated when the ascent stage of the LM took off to return the astronauts to lunar orbit. Apollo 12's ALSEP included a Lunar Surface Magnetometer (LSM), to measure the magnetic field at the Moon's surface, a Lunar Atmosphere Detector (LAD, also known as the Cold Cathode Ion Gauge Experiment), intended to measure the density and temperature of the thin lunar atmosphere and how it varies, a Lunar Ionosphere Detector (LID, also known as the Charged Particle Lunar Environment Experiment, or CPLEE), intended to study the charged particles in the lunar atmosphere, and the Solar Wind Spectrometer, to measure the strength and direction of the solar wind at the Moon's surface—the free-standing Solar Wind Composition Experiment, to measure what makes up the solar wind, would be deployed and then brought back to Earth by the astronauts. A Dust Detector was used to measure the accumulation of lunar dust on the equipment. Apollo 12's Passive Seismic Experiment (PSE), a seismometer, would measure moonquakes and other movements in the Moon's crust, and would be calibrated by the nearby planned impact of the ascent stage of Apollo 12's LM, an object of known mass and velocity hitting the Moon at a known location, and projected to be equivalent to the explosive force of one ton of TNT. The ALSEP experiments left on the Moon by Apollo 12 were connected to a Central Station, which contained a transmitter, receiver, timer, data processor, and equipment for power distribution and control of the experiments. The equipment was powered by SNAP-27, a radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG) developed by the Atomic Energy Commission. Containing plutonium, the RTG flown on Apollo 12 was the first use of atomic energy on a crewed NASA spacecraft—some NASA and military satellites had previously used similar systems. The plutonium core was brought from Earth in a cask attached to an LM landing leg, a container designed to survive re-entry in the event of an aborted mission, something NASA considered unlikely. The cask would survive re-entry on Apollo 13, sinking in the Tonga Trench of the Pacific Ocean, apparently without radioactive leakage. The Apollo 12 ALSEP experiments were activated from Earth on November 19, 1969. The LAD returned only a small amount of useful data due to the failure of its power supply soon after activation. The LSM was deactivated on June 14, 1974, as was the other LSM deployed on the Moon, from Apollo 15. All powered ALSEP experiments that remained active were deactivated on September 30, 1977, principally because of budgetary constraints. ## Mission highlights ### Launch With President Richard Nixon in attendance, the first time a current U.S. president had witnessed a crewed space launch, as well as Vice President Spiro Agnew, Apollo 12 launched as planned at 11:22:00 on November 14, 1969 (16:22:00 UT) from Kennedy Space Center. This was at the start of a launch window of three hours and four minutes to reach the Moon with optimal lighting conditions at the planned landing point. There were completely overcast rainy skies, and the vehicle encountered winds of 151.7 knots (280.9 km/h; 174.6 mph) during ascent, the strongest of any Apollo mission. There was a NASA rule against launching into a cumulonimbus cloud; this had been waived and it was later determined that the launch vehicle never entered such a cloud. Had the mission been postponed, it could have been launched on November 16 with landing at a backup site where there would be no Surveyor, but since time pressure to achieve a lunar landing had been removed by Apollo 11's success, NASA might have waited until December for the next opportunity to go to the Surveyor crater. Lightning struck the Saturn V 36.5 seconds after lift-off, triggered by the vehicle itself. The static discharge caused a voltage transient that knocked all three fuel cells offline, meaning the spacecraft was being powered entirely from its batteries, which could not supply enough current to meet demand. A second strike at 52 seconds knocked out the "8-ball" attitude indicator. The telemetry stream at Mission Control was garbled, but the Saturn V continued to fly normally; the strikes had not affected the Saturn V instrument unit guidance system, which functioned independently from the CSM. The astronauts unexpectedly had a board red with caution and warning lights, but could not tell exactly what was wrong. The Electrical, Environmental and Consumables Manager (EECOM) in Mission Control, John Aaron, remembered the telemetry failure pattern from an earlier test when a power loss caused a malfunction in the CSM signal conditioning electronics (SCE), which converted raw signals from instrumentation to data that could be displayed on Mission Control's consoles, and knew how to fix it. Aaron made a call, "Flight, EECOM. Try SCE to Aux", to switch the SCE to a backup power supply. The switch was fairly obscure, and neither Flight Director Gerald Griffin, CAPCOM Gerald P. Carr, nor Conrad knew what it was; Bean, who as LMP was the spacecraft's engineer, knew where to find it and threw the switch, after which the telemetry came back online, revealing no significant malfunctions. Bean put the fuel cells back online, and the mission continued. Once in Earth parking orbit, the crew carefully checked out their spacecraft before re-igniting the S-IVB third stage for trans-lunar injection. The lightning strikes caused no serious permanent damage. Initially, it was feared that the lightning strike could have damaged the explosive bolts that opened the Command Module's parachute compartment. The decision was made not to share this with the astronauts and to continue with the flight plan, since they would die if the parachutes failed to deploy, whether following an Earth-orbit abort or upon a return from the Moon, so nothing was to be gained by aborting. The parachutes deployed and functioned normally at the end of the mission. ### Outward journey After systems checks in Earth orbit, performed with great care because of the lightning strikes, the trans-lunar injection burn, made with the S-IVB, took place at 02:47:22.80 into the mission, setting Apollo 12 on course for the Moon. An hour and twenty minutes later, the CSM separated from the S-IVB, after which Gordon performed the transposition, docking and extracting maneuver to dock with the LM and separate the combined craft from the S-IVB, which was then sent on an attempt to reach solar orbit. The stage fired its engines to leave the vicinity of the spacecraft, a change from Apollo 11, where the SM's Service Propulsion System (SPS) engine was used to distance it from the S-IVB. As there were concerns the LM might have been damaged by the lightning strikes, Conrad and Bean entered it on the first day of flight to check its status, earlier than planned. They found no issues. At 30:52.44.36, the only necessary midcourse correction during the translunar coast was made, placing the craft on a hybrid, non-free-return trajectory. Previous crewed missions to lunar orbit had taken a free-return trajectory, allowing an easy return to Earth if the craft's engines did not fire to enter lunar orbit. Apollo 12 was the first crewed spacecraft to take a hybrid free-return trajectory, that would require another burn to return to Earth, but one that could be executed by the LM's Descent Propulsion System (DPS) if the SPS failed. The use of a hybrid trajectory allowed more flexibility in mission planning. It for example allowed Apollo 12 to launch in daylight and reach the planned landing spot on schedule. Use of a hybrid trajectory meant that Apollo 12 took 8 hours longer to go from trans-lunar injection to lunar orbit. ### Lunar orbit and Moon landing Apollo 12 entered a lunar orbit of 170.2 by 61.66 nautical miles (315.2 by 114.2 km; 195.9 by 70.96 mi) with an SPS burn of 352.25 seconds at mission time 83:25:26.36. On the first lunar orbit, there was a television transmission that resulted in good-quality video of the lunar surface. On the third lunar orbit, there was another burn to circularize the craft's orbit to 66.1 by 54.59 nautical miles (122.4 by 101.1 km; 76.07 by 62.82 mi), and on the next revolution, preparations began for the lunar landing. The CSM and LM undocked at 107:54:02.3; a half hour later there was a burn by the CSM to separate them. The 14.4 second burn by some of the CSM's thrusters meant that the two craft would be 2.2 nautical miles (4.1 km; 2.5 mi) apart when the LM began the burn to move to a lower orbit in preparation for landing on the Moon. The LM's Descent Propulsion System began a 29-second burn at 109:23:39.9 to move the craft to the lower orbit, from which the 717-second powered descent to the lunar surface began at 110:20:38.1. Conrad had trained to expect a pattern of craters known as "the Snowman" to be visible when the craft underwent "pitchover", with the Surveyor crater in its center, but had feared he would see nothing recognizable. He was astonished to see the Snowman right where it should be, meaning they were directly on course. He took over manual control, planning to land the LM, as he had in simulations, in an area near the Surveyor crater that had been dubbed "Pete's Parking Lot", but found it rougher than expected. He had to maneuver, and landed the LM at 110:32:36.2 (06:54:36 UT on November 19, 1969), just 535 feet (163 m) from the Surveyor probe. This achieved one objective of the mission, to perform a precision landing near the Surveyor craft. The lunar coordinates of the landing site were 3.01239° S latitude, 23.42157° W longitude. The landing caused high velocity sandblasting of the Surveyor probe. It was later determined that the sandblasting removed more dust than it delivered onto the Surveyor, because the probe was covered by a thin layer that gave it a tan hue as observed by the astronauts, and every portion of the surface exposed to the direct sandblasting was lightened back toward the original white color through the removal of lunar dust. ### Lunar surface activities When Conrad, the shortest man of the initial groups of astronauts, stepped onto the lunar surface his first words were "Whoopie! Man, that may have been a small one for Neil, but that's a long one for me." This was not an off-the-cuff remark: Conrad had made a bet with reporter Oriana Fallaci he would say these words, after she had queried whether NASA had instructed Neil Armstrong what to say as he stepped onto the Moon. Conrad later said he was never able to collect the money. To improve the quality of television pictures from the Moon, a color camera was carried on Apollo 12 (unlike the monochrome camera on Apollo 11). When Bean carried the camera to the place near the LM where it was to be set up, he inadvertently pointed it directly into the Sun, destroying the Secondary Electron Conduction (SEC) tube. Television coverage of this mission was thus terminated almost immediately. After raising a U.S. flag on the Moon, Conrad and Bean devoted much of the remainder of the first EVA to deploying the Apollo Lunar Surface Experiments Package (ALSEP). There were minor difficulties with the deployment. Bean had trouble extracting the RTG's plutonium fuel element from its protective cask, and the astronauts had to resort to the use of a hammer to hit the cask and dislodge the fuel element. Some of the ALSEP packages proved hard to deploy, though the astronauts were successful in all cases. With the PSE able to detect their footprints as they headed back to the LM, the astronauts secured a core tube full of lunar material, and collected other samples. The first EVA lasted 3 hours, 56 minutes and 3 seconds. Four possible geologic traverses had been planned, the variable being where the LM might set down. Conrad had landed it between two of these potential landing points, and during the first EVA and the rest break that followed, scientists in Houston combined two of the traverses into one that Conrad and Bean could follow from their landing point. The resultant traverse resembled a rough circle, and when the astronauts emerged from the LM some 13 hours after ending the first EVA, the first stop was Head crater, some 100 yards (91 m) from the LM. There, Bean noticed that Conrad's footprints showed lighter material underneath, indicating the presence of ejecta from Copernicus crater, 230 miles (370 km) to the north, something that scientists examining overhead photographs of the site had hoped to find. After the mission, samples from Head allowed geologists to date the impact that formed Copernicus—according to initial dating, some 810,000,000 years ago. The astronauts proceeded to Bench crater and Sharp crater and past Halo crater before arriving at Surveyor crater, where the Surveyor 3 probe had landed. Fearing treacherous footing or that the probe might topple on them, they approached Surveyor cautiously, descending into the shallow crater some distance away and then following a contour to reach the craft, but found the footing solid and the probe stable. They collected several pieces of Surveyor, including the television camera, as well as taking rocks that had been studied by television. Conrad and Bean had procured an automatic timer for their Hasselblad cameras, and had brought it with them without telling Mission Control, hoping to take a selfie of the two of them with the probe, but when the time came to use it, could not locate it among the lunar samples they had already placed in their Hand Tool Carrier. Before returning to the LM's vicinity, Conrad and Bean went to Block crater, within Surveyor crater. The second EVA lasted 3 hours, 49 minutes, 15 seconds, during which they traveled 4,300 feet (1,300 m). During the EVAs, Conrad and Bean went as far as 1,350 feet (410 m) from the LM, and collected 73.75 pounds (33.45 kg) of samples. ### Lunar orbit solo activities After the LM's departure, Gordon had little to say as Mission Control focused on the lunar landing. Once that was accomplished, Gordon sent his congratulations and, on the next orbit, was able to spot both the LM and the Surveyor on the ground and convey their locations to Houston. During the first EVA, Gordon prepared for a plane change maneuver, a burn to alter the CSM's orbit to compensate for the rotation of the Moon, though at times he had difficulty communicating with Houston since Conrad and Bean were using the same communications circuit. Once the two moonwalkers had returned to the LM, Gordon executed the burn, which ensured he would be in the proper position to rendezvous with the LM when it launched from the Moon. While alone in orbit, Gordon performed the Lunar Multispectral Photography Experiment, using four Hasselblad cameras arranged in a ring and aimed through one of the CM's windows. With each camera having a different color filter, simultaneous photos would be taken by each, showing the appearance of lunar features at different points on the spectrum. Analysis of the images might reveal colors not visible to the naked eye or detectable with ordinary color film, and information could be obtained about the composition of sites that would not soon be visited by humans. Among the sites studied were contemplated landing points for future Apollo missions. ### Return LM Intrepid lifted off from the Moon at mission time 143:03:47.78, or 14:25:47 UT on November 20, 1969; after several maneuvers, CSM and LM docked three and a half hours later. At 147:59:31.6, the LM ascent stage was jettisoned, and shortly thereafter the CSM maneuvered away. Under control from Earth, the LM's remaining propellent was depleted in a burn that caused it to impact the Moon 39 nautical miles (72 km; 45 mi) from the Apollo 12 landing point. The seismometer the astronauts had left on the lunar surface registered the resulting vibrations for more than an hour. The crew stayed another day in lunar orbit taking photographs of the surface, including of candidate sites for future Apollo landings. A second plane change maneuver was made at 159:04:45.47, lasting 19.25 seconds. The trans-Earth injection burn, to send the CSM Yankee Clipper towards home, was conducted at 172:27:16.81 and lasted 130.32 seconds. Two short midcourse correction burns were made en route. A final television broadcast was made, the astronauts answering questions submitted by the media. There was ample time for rest on the way back to Earth, One event was the photography of a solar eclipse that occurred when the Earth came between the spacecraft and the Sun; Bean described it as the most spectacular sight of the mission. ### Splashdown Yankee Clipper returned to Earth on November 24, 1969, at 20:58 UT (3:58 pm Eastern Time, 10:58 am HST), in the Pacific Ocean. The landing was hard, resulting in a camera becoming dislodged and striking Bean in the forehead. After recovery by USS Hornet, they entered the Mobile Quarantine Facility (MQF), while lunar samples and Surveyor parts were sent ahead by air to the Lunar Receiving Laboratory (LRL) in Houston. Once the Hornet docked in Hawaii, the MQF was offloaded and flown to Ellington Air Force Base near Houston on November 29, from where it was taken to the LRL, where the astronauts remained until released from quarantine on December 10. ## Mission insignia The Apollo 12 mission patch shows the crew's naval background; all three astronauts at the time of the mission were U.S. Navy commanders. It features a clipper ship arriving at the Moon, representing the CM Yankee Clipper. The ship trails fire, and flies the flag of the United States. The mission name APOLLO XII and the crew names are on a wide gold border, with a small blue trim. Blue and gold are traditional U.S. Navy colors. The patch has four stars on it – one each for the three astronauts who flew the mission and one for Clifton Williams, the original LMP on Conrad's crew who was killed in 1967 and would have flown the mission. The star was placed there at the suggestion of his replacement, Bean. The insignia was designed by the crew with the aid of several employees of NASA contractors. The Apollo 12 landing area on the Moon is within the portion of the lunar surface shown on the insignia, based on a photograph of a globe of the Moon, taken by engineers. The clipper ship was based on photographs of such a ship obtained by Bean. ## Aftermath and spacecraft location After the mission, Conrad urged his crewmates to join him in the Skylab program, seeing in it the best chance of flying in space again. Bean did so—Conrad commanded Skylab 2, the first crewed mission to the space station, while Bean commanded Skylab 3. Gordon, though, still hoped to walk on the Moon and remained with the Apollo program, serving as backup commander of Apollo 15. He was the likely commander of Apollo 18, but that mission was canceled and he did not fly in space again. The Apollo 12 command module Yankee Clipper, was displayed at the Paris Air Show and was then placed at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia; ownership was transferred to the Smithsonian in July 1971. It is on display at the Virginia Air and Space Center in Hampton. Mission Control had remotely fired the service module's thrusters after jettison, hoping to have it skip off the atmosphere and enter a high-apogee orbit, but the lack of tracking data confirming this caused it to conclude it most likely burned up in the atmosphere at the time of CM re-entry. The S-IVB is in a solar orbit that is sometimes affected by the Earth. The ascent stage of LM Intrepid impacted the Moon November 20, 1969, at 22:17:17.7 UT (5:17 pm EST) . In 2009, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) photographed the Apollo 12 landing site, where the descent stage, ALSEP, Surveyor 3 spacecraft, and astronaut footpaths remain. In 2011, the LRO returned to the landing site at a lower altitude to take higher resolution photographs. ## See also - List of artificial objects on the Moon - List of spacewalks and moonwalks 1965–1999

Planet

Large, round non-stellar astronomical object

A planet is a large, rounded astronomical body that is neither a star nor its remnant. The best available theory of planet formation is the nebular hypothesis, which posits that an interstellar cloud collapses out of a nebula to create a young protostar orbited by a protoplanetary disk. Planets grow in this disk by the gradual accumulation of material driven by gravity, a process called accretion. The Solar System has at least eight planets: the terrestrial planets Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars, and the giant planets Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. These planets each rotate around an axis tilted with respect to its orbital pole. All planets of the Solar System other than Mercury possess a considerable atmosphere, and some share such features as ice caps, seasons, volcanism, hurricanes, tectonics, and even hydrology. Apart from Venus and Mars, the Solar System planets generate magnetic fields, and all except Venus and Mercury have natural satellites. The giant planets bear planetary rings, the most prominent being those of Saturn. The word planet probably comes from the Greek planḗtai, meaning "wanderers". In antiquity, this word referred to the Sun, Moon, and five points of light visible by the naked eye that moved across the background of the stars—namely, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. Planets have historically had religious associations: multiple cultures identified celestial bodies with gods, and these connections with mythology and folklore persist in the schemes for naming newly discovered Solar System bodies. Earth itself was recognized as a planet when heliocentrism supplanted geocentrism during the 16th and 17th centuries. With the development of the telescope, the meaning of planet broadened to include objects only visible with assistance: the moons of the planets beyond Earth; the ice giants Uranus and Neptune; Ceres and other bodies later recognized to be part of the asteroid belt; and Pluto, later found to be the largest member of the collection of icy bodies known as the Kuiper belt. The discovery of other large objects in the Kuiper belt, particularly Eris, spurred debate about how exactly to define a planet. The International Astronomical Union (IAU) adopted a standard by which the four terrestrials and four giants qualify, placing Ceres, Pluto and Eris in the category of dwarf planet, although many planetary scientists have continued to apply the term planet more broadly. Further advances in astronomy led to the discovery of over five thousand planets outside the Solar System, termed exoplanets. These include hot Jupiters—giant planets that orbit close to their parent stars—like 51 Pegasi b, super-Earths like Gliese 581c that have masses in between that of Earth and Neptune; and planets smaller than Earth, like Kepler-20e. Multiple exoplanets have been found to orbit in the habitable zones of their stars, but Earth remains the only planet known to support life. ## History The idea of planets has evolved over its history, from the divine lights of antiquity to the earthly objects of the scientific age. The concept has expanded to include worlds not only in the Solar System, but in multitudes of other extrasolar systems. The consensus definition as to what counts as a planet vs. other objects orbiting the Sun has changed several times, previously encompassing asteroids, moons, and dwarf planets like Pluto, and there continues to be some disagreement today. The five classical planets of the Solar System, being visible to the naked eye, have been known since ancient times and have had a significant impact on mythology, religious cosmology, and ancient astronomy. In ancient times, astronomers noted how certain lights moved across the sky, as opposed to the "fixed stars", which maintained a constant relative position in the sky. Ancient Greeks called these lights πλάνητες ἀστέρες (planētes asteres, "wandering stars") or simply πλανῆται (planētai, "wanderers"), from which today's word "planet" was derived. In ancient Greece, China, Babylon, and indeed all pre-modern civilizations, it was almost universally believed that Earth was the center of the Universe and that all the "planets" circled Earth. The reasons for this perception were that stars and planets appeared to revolve around Earth each day and the apparently common-sense perceptions that Earth was solid and stable and that it was not moving but at rest. ### Babylon The first civilization known to have a functional theory of the planets were the Babylonians, who lived in Mesopotamia in the first and second millennia BC. The oldest surviving planetary astronomical text is the Babylonian Venus tablet of Ammisaduqa, a 7th-century BC copy of a list of observations of the motions of the planet Venus, that probably dates as early as the second millennium BC. The MUL.APIN is a pair of cuneiform tablets dating from the 7th century BC that lays out the motions of the Sun, Moon, and planets over the course of the year. Late Babylonian astronomy is the origin of Western astronomy and indeed all Western efforts in the exact sciences. The Enuma anu enlil, written during the Neo-Assyrian period in the 7th century BC, comprises a list of omens and their relationships with various celestial phenomena including the motions of the planets. Venus, Mercury, and the outer planets Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn were all identified by Babylonian astronomers. These would remain the only known planets until the invention of the telescope in early modern times. ### Greco-Roman astronomy The ancient Greeks initially did not attach as much significance to the planets as the Babylonians. In the 6th and 5th centuries BC, the Pythagoreans appear to have developed their own independent planetary theory, which consisted of the Earth, Sun, Moon, and planets revolving around a "Central Fire" at the center of the Universe. Pythagoras or Parmenides is said to have been the first to identify the evening star (Hesperos) and morning star (Phosphoros) as one and the same (Aphrodite, Greek corresponding to Latin Venus), though this had long been known in Mesopotamia. In the 3rd century BC, Aristarchus of Samos proposed a heliocentric system, according to which Earth and the planets revolved around the Sun. The geocentric system remained dominant until the Scientific Revolution. By the 1st century BC, during the Hellenistic period, the Greeks had begun to develop their own mathematical schemes for predicting the positions of the planets. These schemes, which were based on geometry rather than the arithmetic of the Babylonians, would eventually eclipse the Babylonians' theories in complexity and comprehensiveness, and account for most of the astronomical movements observed from Earth with the naked eye. These theories would reach their fullest expression in the Almagest written by Ptolemy in the 2nd century CE. So complete was the domination of Ptolemy's model that it superseded all previous works on astronomy and remained the definitive astronomical text in the Western world for 13 centuries. To the Greeks and Romans there were seven known planets, each presumed to be circling Earth according to the complex laws laid out by Ptolemy. They were, in increasing order from Earth (in Ptolemy's order and using modern names): the Moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. ### Medieval astronomy After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, astronomy developed further in India and the medieval Islamic world. In 499 CE, the Indian astronomer Aryabhata propounded a planetary model that explicitly incorporated Earth's rotation about its axis, which he explains as the cause of what appears to be an apparent westward motion of the stars. He also theorised that the orbits of planets were elliptical. Aryabhata's followers were particularly strong in South India, where his principles of the diurnal rotation of Earth, among others, were followed and a number of secondary works were based on them. The astronomy of the Islamic Golden Age mostly took place in the Middle East, Central Asia, Al-Andalus, and North Africa, and later in the Far East and India. These astronomers, like the polymath Ibn al-Haytham, generally accepted geocentrism, although they did dispute Ptolemy's system of epicycles and sought alternatives. The 10th-century astronomer Abu Sa'id al-Sijzi accepted that the Earth rotates around its axis. In the 11th century, the transit of Venus was observed by Avicenna. His contemporary Al-Biruni devised a method of determining the Earth's radius using trigonometry that, unlike the older method of Eratosthenes, only required observations at a single mountain. ### Scientific Revolution and new planets With the advent of the Scientific Revolution and the heliocentric model of Copernicus, Galileo and Kepler, use of the term "planet" changed from something that moved around the sky relative to the fixed star to a body that orbited the Sun, directly (a primary planet) or indirectly (a secondary or satellite planet). Thus the Earth was added to the roster of planets and the Sun was removed. The Copernican count of primary planets stood until 1781, when William Herschel discovered Uranus. When four satellites of Jupiter (the Galilean moons) and five of Saturn were discovered in the 17th century, they were thought of as "satellite planets" or "secondary planets" orbiting the primary planets, though in the following decades they would come to be called simply "satellites" for short. Scientists generally considered planetary satellites to also be planets until about the 1920s, although this usage was not common among non-scientists. In the first decade of the 19th century, four new planets were discovered: Ceres (in 1801), Pallas (in 1802), Juno (in 1804), and Vesta (in 1807). It soon became apparent that they were rather different from previously known planets: they shared the same general region of space, between Mars and Jupiter (the asteroid belt), with sometimes overlapping orbits. This was an area where only one planet had been expected, and they were much much smaller than all other planets; indeed, it was suspected that they might be shards of a larger planet that had broken up. Herschel called them asteroids (from the Greek for "starlike") because even in the largest telescopes they resembled stars, without a resolvable disk. The situation was stable for four decades, but in the mid-1840s several additional asteroids were discovered (Astraea in 1845, Hebe and Iris in 1847, Flora and Metis in 1848, and Hygiea in 1849). New "planets" were discovered every year; as a result, astronomers began tabulating the asteroids (minor planets) separately from the major planets, and assigning them numbers instead of abstract planetary symbols, although they continued to be considered as small planets. Neptune was discovered in 1846, its position having been predicted thanks to its gravitational influence upon Uranus. Because the orbit of Mercury appeared to be affected in a similar way, it was believed in the late 19th century that there might be another planet even closer to the Sun. However, the discrepancy between Mercury's orbit and the predictions of Newtonian gravity was instead explained by an improved theory of gravity, Einstein's general relativity. ### 20th century Pluto was discovered in 1930. After initial observations led to the belief that it was larger than Earth, the object was immediately accepted as the ninth major planet. Further monitoring found the body was actually much smaller: in 1936, Ray Lyttleton suggested that Pluto may be an escaped satellite of Neptune, and Fred Whipple suggested in 1964 that Pluto may be a comet. The discovery of its large moon Charon in 1978 showed that Pluto was only 0.2% the mass of Earth. As this was still substantially more massive than any known asteroid, and because no other trans-Neptunian objects had been discovered at that time, Pluto kept its planetary status, only officially losing it in 2006. In the 1950s, Gerard Kuiper published papers on the origin of the asteroids. He recognised that asteroids were typically not spherical, as had previously been thought, and that the asteroid families were remnants of collisions. Thus he differentiated between the largest asteroids as "true planets" versus the smaller ones as collisional fragments. From the 1960s onwards, the term "minor planet" was mostly displaced by the term "asteroid", and references to the asteroids as planets in the literature became scarce, except for the geologically evolved largest three: Ceres, and less often Pallas and Vesta. The beginning of Solar System exploration by space probes in the 1960s spurred a renewed interest in planetary science. A split in definitions regarding satellites occurred around then: planetary scientists began to reconsider the large moons as also being planets, but astronomers who were not planetary scientists generally did not. In 1992, astronomers Aleksander Wolszczan and Dale Frail announced the discovery of planets around a pulsar, PSR B1257+12. This discovery is generally considered to be the first definitive detection of a planetary system around another star. Then, on 6 October 1995, Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz of the Geneva Observatory announced the first definitive detection of an exoplanet orbiting an ordinary main-sequence star (51 Pegasi). The discovery of extrasolar planets led to another ambiguity in defining a planet: the point at which a planet becomes a star. Many known extrasolar planets are many times the mass of Jupiter, approaching that of stellar objects known as brown dwarfs. Brown dwarfs are generally considered stars due to their theoretical ability to fuse deuterium, a heavier isotope of hydrogen. Although objects more massive than 75 times that of Jupiter fuse simple hydrogen, objects of 13 Jupiter masses can fuse deuterium. Deuterium is quite rare, constituting less than 0.0026% of the hydrogen in the galaxy, and most brown dwarfs would have ceased fusing deuterium long before their discovery, making them effectively indistinguishable from supermassive planets. ### 21st century With the discovery during the latter half of the 20th century of more objects within the Solar System and large objects around other stars, disputes arose over what should constitute a planet. There were particular disagreements over whether an object should be considered a planet if it was part of a distinct population such as a belt, or if it was large enough to generate energy by the thermonuclear fusion of deuterium. Complicating the matter even further, bodies too small to generate energy by fusing deuterium can form by gas-cloud collapse just like stars and brown dwarfs, even down to the mass of Jupiter: there was thus disagreement about whether how a body formed should be taken into account. A growing number of astronomers argued for Pluto to be declassified as a planet, because many similar objects approaching its size had been found in the same region of the Solar System (the Kuiper belt) during the 1990s and early 2000s. Pluto was found to be just one small body in a population of thousands. They often referred to the demotion of the asteroids as a precedent, although that had been done based on their geophysical differences from planets rather than their being in a belt. Some of the larger trans-Neptunian objects, such as Quaoar, Sedna, Eris, and Haumea, were heralded in the popular press as the tenth planet. The announcement of Eris in 2005, an object 27% more massive than Pluto, created the impetus for an official definition of a planet, as considering Pluto a planet would logically have demanded that Eris be considered a planet as well. Since different procedures were in place for naming planets versus non-planets, this created an urgent situation because under the rules Eris could not be named without defining what a planet was. At the time, it was also thought that the size required for a trans-Neptunian object to become round was about the same as that required for the moons of the giant planets (about 400 km diameter), a figure that would have suggested about 200 round objects in the Kuiper belt and thousands more beyond. Many astronomers argued that the public would not accept a definition creating a large number of planets. To acknowledge the problem, the IAU set about creating the definition of planet, and produced one in August 2006. Their definition dropped to the eight significantly larger bodies that had cleared their orbit (Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune), and a new class of dwarf planets was created, initially containing three objects (Ceres, Pluto and Eris). This definition has not been universally used or accepted. In planetary geology celestial objects have been assessed and defined as planets by geophysical characteristics. Planetary scientists are more interested in planetary geology than dynamics, so they classify planets based on their geological properties. A celestial body may acquire a dynamic (planetary) geology at approximately the mass required for its mantle to become plastic under its own weight. This leads to a state of hydrostatic equilibrium where the body acquires a stable, round shape, which is adopted as the hallmark of planethood by geophysical definitions. For example: > a substellar-mass body that has never undergone nuclear fusion and has enough gravitation to be round due to hydrostatic equilibrium, regardless of its orbital parameters. In the Solar System, this mass is generally less than the mass required for a body to clear its orbit, and thus some objects that are considered "planets" under geophysical definitions are not considered as such under the IAU definition, such as Ceres and Pluto. Proponents of such definitions often argue that location should not matter and that planethood should be defined by the intrinsic properties of an object. Dwarf planets had been proposed as a category of small planet (as opposed to planetoids as sub-planetary objects) and planetary geologists continue to treat them as planets despite the IAU definition. The number of dwarf planets even among known objects is not certain. In 2019, Grundy et al. argued based on the low densities of some mid-sized trans-Neptunian objects that the limiting size required for a trans-Neptunian object to reach equilibrium was in fact much larger than it is for the icy moons of the giant planets, being about 900 km diameter. There is general consensus on Ceres in the asteroid belt and on the eight trans-Neptunians that probably cross this threshold: Quaoar, Sedna, Orcus, Pluto, Haumea, Eris, Makemake, and Gonggong. Planetary geologists may include the nineteen known planetary-mass moons as "satellite planets", including Earth's Moon and Pluto's Charon, like the early modern astronomers. Some go even further and include as planets relatively large, geologically evolved bodies that are nonetheless not very round today, such as Pallas and Vesta, or rounded bodies that were completely disrupted by impacts and re-accreted like Hygiea. The 2006 IAU definition presents some challenges for exoplanets because the language is specific to the Solar System and the criteria of roundness and orbital zone clearance are not presently observable for exoplanets. There is no official definition of exoplanets, but the IAU's working group on the topic adopted a provisional statement in 2018. Astronomer Jean-Luc Margot proposed a mathematical criterion that determines whether an object can clear its orbit during the lifetime of its host star, based on the mass of the planet, its semimajor axis, and the mass of its host star. The formula produces a value called π that is greater than 1 for planets. The eight known planets and all known exoplanets have π values above 100, while Ceres, Pluto, and Eris have π values of 0.1, or less. Objects with π values of 1 or more are expected to be approximately spherical, so that objects that fulfill the orbital-zone clearance requirement around Sun-like stars will also fulfill the roundness requirement. ## Definition and similar concepts At the 2006 meeting of the IAU's General Assembly, after much debate and one failed proposal, the following definition was passed in a resolution voted for by a large majority of those remaining at the meeting, addressing particularly the issue of the lower limits for a celestial object to be defined as a planet. The 2006 resolution defines planets within the Solar System as follows: > A "planet" [1] is a celestial body inside the Solar System that (a) is in orbit around the Sun, (b) has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape, and (c) has cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit. [1] The eight planets are: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. Under this definition, the Solar System is considered to have eight planets. Bodies that fulfill the first two conditions but not the third are classified as dwarf planets, provided they are not natural satellites of other planets. Originally an IAU committee had proposed a definition that would have included a larger number of planets as it did not include (c) as a criterion. After much discussion, it was decided via a vote that those bodies should instead be classified as dwarf planets. This definition is based in modern theories of planetary formation, in which planetary embryos initially clear their orbital neighborhood of other smaller objects. As described below, planets form by material accreting together in a disk of matter surrounding a protostar. This process results in a collection of relatively substantial objects, each of which has either "swept up" or scattered away most of the material that had been orbiting near it. These objects do not collide with one another because they are too far apart, sometimes in orbital resonance. ### Exoplanet The 2006 IAU definition presents some challenges for exoplanets because the language is specific to the Solar System and the criteria of roundness and orbital zone clearance are not presently observable for exoplanets. The IAU working group on extrasolar planets (WGESP) issued a working definition in 2001 and amended it in 2003. In 2018, this definition was reassessed and updated as knowledge of exoplanets increased. The current official working definition of an exoplanet is as follows: > 1. Objects with true masses below the limiting mass for thermonuclear fusion of deuterium (currently calculated to be 13 Jupiter masses for objects of solar metallicity) that orbit stars, brown dwarfs or stellar remnants and that have a mass ratio with the central object below the L4/L5 instability (M/M_central \< 2/(25+) are "planets" (no matter how they formed). The minimum mass/size required for an extrasolar object to be considered a planet should be the same as that used in our Solar System. > 2. Substellar objects with true masses above the limiting mass for thermonuclear fusion of deuterium are "brown dwarfs", no matter how they formed nor where they are located. > 3. Free-floating objects in young star clusters with masses below the limiting mass for thermonuclear fusion of deuterium are not "planets", but are "sub-brown dwarfs" (or whatever name is most appropriate). The IAU noted that this definition could be expected to evolve as knowledge improves. A 2022 review article discussing the history and rationale of this definition suggested that the words "in young star clusters" should be deleted in clause 3, as such objects have now been found elsewhere, and that the term "sub-brown dwarfs" should be replaced by the more current "free-floating planetary mass objects". ### Planetary-mass object Geoscientists often reject the IAU definition, preferring to consider round moons and dwarf planets as also being planets. Some scientists who accept the IAU definition of "planet" use other terms for bodies satisfying geophysical planet definitions, such as "world". The term "planetary mass object" has also been used to refer to ambiguous situations concerning exoplanets, such as objects with mass typical for a planet that are free-floating or orbit a brown dwarf instead of a star. ## Mythology and naming Naming of planets differs between planets of the Solar System and Exoplanets (planets of other planetary systems). Latter are commonly named after their parent star and their order of discovery within its planetary system, such as Proxima Centauri b. The names for the planets of the Solar System (other than Earth) in the English language are derived from naming practices developed consecutively by the Babylonians, Greeks and Romans of antiquity. The practice of grafting the names of gods onto the planets was almost certainly borrowed from the Babylonians by the ancient Greeks, and thereafter from the Greeks by the Romans. The Babylonians named Venus after the Sumerian goddess of love with the Akkadian name Ishtar; Mars after their god of war, Nergal; Mercury after their god of wisdom Nabu; and Jupiter after their chief god, Marduk. There are too many concordances between Greek and Babylonian naming conventions for them to have arisen separately. Given the differences in mythology, the correspondence was not perfect. For instance, the Babylonian Nergal was a god of war, and thus the Greeks identified him with Ares. Unlike Ares, Nergal was also a god of pestilence and ruler of the underworld. In ancient Greece, the two great luminaries, the Sun and the Moon, were called Helios and Selene, two ancient Titanic deities; the slowest planet, Saturn, was called Phainon, the shiner; followed by Phaethon, Jupiter, "bright"; the red planet, Mars was known as Pyroeis, the "fiery"; the brightest, Venus, was known as Phosphoros, the light bringer; and the fleeting final planet, Mercury, was called Stilbon, the gleamer. The Greeks assigned each planet to one among their pantheon of gods, the Olympians and the earlier Titans: - Helios and Selene were the names of both planets and gods, both of them Titans (later supplanted by Olympians Apollo and Artemis); - Phainon was sacred to Cronus, the Titan who fathered the Olympians; - Phaethon was sacred to Zeus, Cronus's son who deposed him as king; - Pyroeis was given to Ares, son of Zeus and god of war; - Phosphoros was ruled by Aphrodite, the goddess of love; and - Stilbon with its speedy motion, was ruled over by Hermes, messenger of the gods and god of learning and wit. Although modern Greeks still use their ancient names for the planets, other European languages, because of the influence of the Roman Empire and, later, the Catholic Church, use the Roman (Latin) names rather than the Greek ones. The Romans inherited Proto-Indo-European mythology as the Greeks did and shared with them a common pantheon under different names, but the Romans lacked the rich narrative traditions that Greek poetic culture had given their gods. During the later period of the Roman Republic, Roman writers borrowed much of the Greek narratives and applied them to their own pantheon, to the point where they became virtually indistinguishable. When the Romans studied Greek astronomy, they gave the planets their own gods' names: Mercurius (for Hermes), Venus (Aphrodite), Mars (Ares), Iuppiter (Zeus) and Saturnus (Cronus). Some Romans, following a belief possibly originating in Mesopotamia but developed in Hellenistic Egypt, believed that the seven gods after whom the planets were named took hourly shifts in looking after affairs on Earth. The order of shifts went Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury, Moon (from the farthest to the closest planet). Therefore, the first day was started by Saturn (1st hour), second day by Sun (25th hour), followed by Moon (49th hour), Mars, Mercury, Jupiter and Venus. Because each day was named by the god that started it, this became the order of the days of the week in the Roman calendar. In English, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday are straightforward translations of these Roman names. The other days were renamed after Tīw (Tuesday), Wōden (Wednesday), Þunor (Thursday), and Frīġ (Friday), the Anglo-Saxon gods considered similar or equivalent to Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, and Venus, respectively. Earth's name in English is not derived from Greco-Roman mythology. Because it was only generally accepted as a planet in the 17th century, there is no tradition of naming it after a god. (The same is true, in English at least, of the Sun and the Moon, though they are no longer generally considered planets.) The name originates from the Old English word eorþe, which was the word for "ground" and "dirt" as well as the world itself. As with its equivalents in the other Germanic languages, it derives ultimately from the Proto-Germanic word erþō, as can be seen in the English earth, the German Erde, the Dutch aarde, and the Scandinavian jord. Many of the Romance languages retain the old Roman word terra (or some variation of it) that was used with the meaning of "dry land" as opposed to "sea". The non-Romance languages use their own native words. The Greeks retain their original name, Γή (Ge). Non-European cultures use other planetary-naming systems. India uses a system based on the Navagraha, which incorporates the seven traditional planets and the ascending and descending lunar nodes Rahu and Ketu. The planets are Surya 'Sun', Chandra 'Moon', Budha for Mercury, Shukra ('bright') for Venus, Mangala (the god of war) for Mars, '' (councilor of the gods) for Jupiter, and Shani (symbolic of time) for Saturn. The native Persian names of most of the planets are based on identifications of the Mesopotamian gods with Iranian gods, analogous to the Greek and Latin names. Mercury is Tir (تیر) for the western Iranian god Tīriya (patron of scribes), analogous to Nabu; Venus is Nāhid (ناهید) for Anahita; Mars is Bahrām (بهرام) for Verethragna; and Jupiter is Hormoz (هرمز) for Ahura Mazda. The Persian name for Saturn, Keyvān (کیوان), is a borrowing from Akkadian kajamānu, meaning "the permanent, steady". China and the countries of eastern Asia historically subject to Chinese cultural influence (such as Japan, Korea and Vietnam) use a naming system based on the five Chinese elements: water (Mercury 水星 "water star"), metal (Venus 金星 "metal star"), fire (Mars 火星 "fire star"), wood (Jupiter 木星 "wood star") and earth (Saturn 土星 "earth star"). The names of Uranus (天王星 "sky king star"), Neptune (海王星 "sea king star"), and Pluto (冥王星 "underworld king star") in Chinese, Korean, and Japanese are calques based on the roles of those gods in Roman and Greek mythology. In the 19th century, Alexander Wylie and Li Shanlan calqued the names of the first 117 asteroids into Chinese, and many of their names are still used today, e.g. Ceres (穀神星 "grain goddess star"), Pallas (智神星 "wisdom goddess star"), Juno (婚神星 "marriage goddess star"), Vesta (灶神星 "hearth goddess star"), and Hygiea (健神星 "health goddess star"). Such translations were extended to some later minor planets, including some of the dwarf planets discovered in the 21st century, e.g. Haumea (妊神星 "pregnancy goddess star", Makemake (鳥神星 "bird goddess star"), and Eris (鬩神星 "quarrel goddess star"). However, except for the better-known asteroids and dwarf planets, many of them are rare outside Chinese astronomical dictionaries. In traditional Hebrew astronomy, the seven traditional planets have (for the most part) descriptive names – the Sun is חמה Ḥammah or "the hot one", the Moon is לבנה Levanah or "the white one", Venus is כוכב נוגה Kokhav Nogah or "the bright planet", Mercury is כוכב Kokhav or "the planet" (given its lack of distinguishing features), Mars is מאדים Ma'adim or "the red one", and Saturn is שבתאי Shabbatai or "the resting one" (in reference to its slow movement compared to the other visible planets). The odd one out is Jupiter, called צדק Tzedeq or "justice". Hebrew names were chosen for Uranus (אורון Oron, "small light") and Neptune (רהב Rahab, a Biblical sea monster) in 2009; prior to that the names "Uranus" and "Neptune" had simply been borrowed. The etymologies for the Arabic names of the planets are less well understood. Mostly agreed among scholars are Venus الزهرة (az-Zuhara, "the bright one"), Earth الأرض (al-ʾArḍ, from the same root as eretz), and Saturn زُحَل (Zuḥal, "withdrawer"). Multiple suggested etymologies exist for Mercury عُطَارِد (ʿUṭārid), Mars اَلْمِرِّيخ (al-Mirrīkh), and Jupiter المشتري (al-Muštarī), but there is no agreement among scholars. When subsequent planets were discovered in the 18th and 19th centuries, Uranus was named for a Greek deity and Neptune for a Roman one (the counterpart of Poseidon). The asteroids were initially named from mythology as well – Ceres, Juno, and Vesta are major Roman goddesses, and Pallas is an epithet of the major Greek goddess Athena – but as more and more were discovered, they first started being named after more minor goddesses, and the mythological restriction was dropped starting from the twentieth asteroid Massalia in 1852. Pluto was given a classical name, as it was considered a major planet when it was discovered. After more objects were discovered beyond Neptune, naming conventions depending on their orbits were put in place: those in the 2:3 resonance with Neptune (the plutinos) are given names from underworld myths, while others are given names from creation myths. Most of the trans-Neptunian dwarf planets are named after gods and goddesses from other cultures (e.g. Quaoar is named after a Tongva god), except for Orcus and Eris which continued the Roman and Greek scheme. The moons (including the planetary-mass ones) are generally given names with some association with their parent planet. The planetary-mass moons of Jupiter are named after four of Zeus' lovers (or other sexual partners); those of Saturn are named after Cronus' brothers and sisters, the Titans; those of Uranus are named after characters from Shakespeare and Pope (originally specifically from fairy mythology, but that ended with the naming of Miranda). Neptune's planetary-mass moon Triton is named after the god's son; Pluto's planetary-mass moon Charon is named after the ferryman of the dead, who carries the souls of the newly deceased to the underworld (Pluto's domain). ### Symbols The written symbols for Mercury, Venus, Jupiter, Saturn and possibly Mars have been traced to forms found in late Greek papyrus texts. The symbols for Jupiter and Saturn are identified as monograms of the corresponding Greek names, and the symbol for Mercury is a stylized caduceus. According to Annie Scott Dill Maunder, antecedents of the planetary symbols were used in art to represent the gods associated with the classical planets. Bianchini's planisphere, discovered by Francesco Bianchini in the 18th century but produced in the 2nd century, shows Greek personifications of planetary gods charged with early versions of the planetary symbols. Mercury has a caduceus; Venus has, attached to her necklace, a cord connected to another necklace; Mars, a spear; Jupiter, a staff; Saturn, a scythe; the Sun, a circlet with rays radiating from it; and the Moon, a headdress with a crescent attached. The modern shapes with the cross-marks first appeared around the 16th century. According to Maunder, the addition of crosses appears to be "an attempt to give a savour of Christianity to the symbols of the old pagan gods." Earth itself was not considered a classical planet; its symbol descends from a pre-heliocentric symbol for the four corners of the world. When further planets were discovered orbiting the Sun, symbols were invented for them. The most common astronomical symbol for Uranus, ⛢, was invented by Johann Gottfried Köhler, and was intended to represent the newly discovered metal platinum. An alternative symbol, ♅, was invented by Jérôme Lalande, and represents a globe with a H on top, for Uranus' discoverer Herschel. Today, ⛢ is mostly used by astronomers and ♅ by astrologers, though it is possible to find each symbol in the other context. The first few asteroids were similarly given abstract symbols, e.g. Ceres' sickle (⚳), Pallas' spear (⚴), Juno's sceptre (⚵), and Vesta's hearth (⚶), but as their number rose further and further, this practice stopped in favour of numbering them instead (Massalia, the first asteroid not named from mythology, is also the first asteroid that was not assigned a symbol by its discoverer). Neptune's symbol (♆) represents the god's trident. The astronomical symbol for Pluto is a P-L monogram (♇), though it has become less common since the IAU definition reclassified Pluto. Since Pluto's reclassification, NASA has used the traditional astrological symbol of Pluto (⯓), a planetary orb over Pluto's bident. The IAU discourages the use of planetary symbols in modern journal articles in favour of one-letter or (to disambiguate Mercury and Mars) two-letter abbreviations for the major planets. The symbols for the Sun and Earth are nonetheless common, as solar mass, Earth mass and similar units are common in astronomy. Other planetary symbols today are mostly encountered in astrology. Astrologers have resurrected the old astronomical symbols for the first few asteroids, and continue to invent symbols for other objects. Unicode includes some relatively standard astrological symbols for minor planets, including dwarf planets discovered in the 21st century, though astronomical use of any of them is rare. In particular, the Eris symbol is a traditional one from Discordianism, a religion worshipping the goddess Eris. The other dwarf-planet symbols are mostly initialisms (except Haumea) in the native scripts of the cultures they come from; they also represent something associated with the corresponding deity or culture, e.g. Orcus' gape, Makemake's face, or Gonggong's snake-tail. ## Formation It is not known with certainty how planets are built. The prevailing theory is that they are formed during the collapse of a nebula into a thin disk of gas and dust. A protostar forms at the core, surrounded by a rotating protoplanetary disk. Through accretion (a process of sticky collision) dust particles in the disk steadily accumulate mass to form ever-larger bodies. Local concentrations of mass known as planetesimals form, and these accelerate the accretion process by drawing in additional material by their gravitational attraction. These concentrations become ever denser until they collapse inward under gravity to form protoplanets. After a planet reaches a mass somewhat larger than Mars' mass, it begins to accumulate an extended atmosphere, greatly increasing the capture rate of the planetesimals by means of atmospheric drag. Depending on the accretion history of solids and gas, a giant planet, an ice giant, or a terrestrial planet may result. It is thought that the regular satellites of Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus formed in a similar way; however, Triton was likely captured by Neptune, and Earth's Moon and Pluto's Charon might have formed in collisions. When the protostar has grown such that it ignites to form a star, the surviving disk is removed from the inside outward by photoevaporation, the solar wind, Poynting–Robertson drag and other effects. Thereafter there still may be many protoplanets orbiting the star or each other, but over time many will collide, either to form a larger, combined protoplanet or release material for other protoplanets to absorb. Those objects that have become massive enough will capture most matter in their orbital neighbourhoods to become planets. Protoplanets that have avoided collisions may become natural satellites of planets through a process of gravitational capture, or remain in belts of other objects to become either dwarf planets or small bodies. The energetic impacts of the smaller planetesimals (as well as radioactive decay) will heat up the growing planet, causing it to at least partially melt. The interior of the planet begins to differentiate by density, with higher density materials sinking toward the core. Smaller terrestrial planets lose most of their atmospheres because of this accretion, but the lost gases can be replaced by outgassing from the mantle and from the subsequent impact of comets. (Smaller planets will lose any atmosphere they gain through various escape mechanisms.) With the discovery and observation of planetary systems around stars other than the Sun, it is becoming possible to elaborate, revise or even replace this account. The level of metallicity—an astronomical term describing the abundance of chemical elements with an atomic number greater than 2 (helium)—appears to determine the likelihood that a star will have planets. Hence, a metal-rich population I star is more likely to have a substantial planetary system than a metal-poor, population II star. ## Solar System According to the IAU definition, there are eight planets in the Solar System, which are (in increasing distance from the Sun): Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. Jupiter is the largest, at 318 Earth masses, whereas Mercury is the smallest, at 0.055 Earth masses. The planets of the Solar System can be divided into categories based on their composition. Terrestrials are similar to Earth, with bodies largely composed of rock and metal: Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars. Earth is the largest terrestrial planet. Giant planets are significantly more massive than the terrestrials: Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. They differ from the terrestrial planets in composition. The gas giants, Jupiter and Saturn, are primarily composed of hydrogen and helium and are the most massive planets in the Solar System. Saturn is one third as massive as Jupiter, at 95 Earth masses. The ice giants, Uranus and Neptune, are primarily composed of low-boiling-point materials such as water, methane, and ammonia, with thick atmospheres of hydrogen and helium. They have a significantly lower mass than the gas giants (only 14 and 17 Earth masses). Dwarf planets are gravitationally rounded, but have not cleared their orbits of other bodies. In increasing order of average distance from the Sun, the ones generally agreed among astronomers are , , , , , , , and . Ceres is the largest object in the asteroid belt, located between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. The other eight all orbit beyond Neptune. Orcus, Pluto, Haumea, Quaoar, and Makemake orbit in the Kuiper belt, which is a second belt of small Solar System bodies beyond the orbit of Neptune. Gonggong and Eris orbit in the scattered disc, which is somewhat further out and, unlike the Kuiper belt, is unstable towards interactions with Neptune. Sedna is the largest known detached object, a population that never comes close enough to the Sun to interact with any of the classical planets; the origins of their orbits are still being debated. All nine are similar to terrestrial planets in having a solid surface, but they are made of ice and rock, rather than rock and metal. Moreover, all of them are smaller than Mercury, with Pluto being the largest known dwarf planet, and Eris being the most massive known. There are at least nineteen planetary-mass moons or satellite planets—moons large enough to take on ellipsoidal shapes: - One satellite of Earth: the Moon - Four satellites of Jupiter: Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto - Seven satellites of Saturn: Mimas, Enceladus, Tethys, Dione, Rhea, Titan, and Iapetus - Five satellites of Uranus: Miranda, Ariel, Umbriel, Titania, and Oberon - One satellite of Neptune: Triton - One satellite of Pluto: Charon The Moon, Io, and Europa have compositions similar to the terrestrial planets; the others are made of ice and rock like the dwarf planets, with Tethys being made of almost pure ice. (Europa is often considered an icy planet, though, because its surface ice layer makes it difficult to study its interior.) Ganymede and Titan are larger than Mercury by radius, and Callisto almost equals it, but all three are much less massive. Mimas is the smallest object generally agreed to be a geophysical planet, at about six millionths of Earth's mass, though there are many larger bodies that may not be geophysical planets (e.g. ). ### Planetary attributes The tables below summarise some properties of objects generally agreed to satisfy geophysical planet definitions. There are many smaller dwarf planet candidates, such as Salacia, that have not been included in the tables because astronomers disagree on whether or not they are dwarf planets. Likewise, objects such as Pallas and Vesta that developed planetary geology but are no longer round are also excluded, though some authors would include them regardless. The diameters, masses, orbital periods, and rotation periods of the major planets are available from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. JPL also provides their semi-major axes, inclinations, and eccentricities of planetary orbits, and the axial tilts are taken from their Horizons database. Other information is summarized by NASA. The data for the dwarf planets and planetary-mass moons is taken from list of gravitationally rounded objects of the Solar System, with sources listed there. As all the planetary-mass moons exhibit synchronous rotation, their rotation periods equal their orbital periods. ## Exoplanets An exoplanet (extrasolar planet) is a planet outside the Solar System. Known exoplanets range in size from gas giants about twice as large as Jupiter down to just over the size of the Moon. Analysis of gravitational microlensing data suggests a minimum average of 1.6 bound planets for every star in the Milky Way. In early 1992, radio astronomers Aleksander Wolszczan and Dale Frail announced the discovery of two planets orbiting the pulsar PSR 1257+12. This discovery was confirmed, and is generally considered to be the first definitive detection of exoplanets. Researchers suspect they formed from a disk remnant left over from the supernova that produced the pulsar. The first confirmed discovery of an extrasolar planet orbiting an ordinary main-sequence star occurred on 6 October 1995, when Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz of the University of Geneva announced the detection of 51 Pegasi b, an exoplanet around 51 Pegasi. From then until the Kepler mission most known extrasolar planets were gas giants comparable in mass to Jupiter or larger as they were more easily detected. The catalog of Kepler candidate planets consists mostly of planets the size of Neptune and smaller, down to smaller than Mercury. In 2011, the Kepler Space Telescope team reported the discovery of the first Earth-sized extrasolar planets orbiting a Sun-like star, Kepler-20e and Kepler-20f. Since that time, more than 100 planets have been identified that are approximately the same size as Earth, 20 of which orbit in the habitable zone of their star – the range of orbits where a terrestrial planet could sustain liquid water on its surface, given enough atmospheric pressure. One in five Sun-like stars is thought to have an Earth-sized planet in its habitable zone, which suggests that the nearest would be expected to be within 12 light-years distance from Earth. The frequency of occurrence of such terrestrial planets is one of the variables in the Drake equation, which estimates the number of intelligent, communicating civilizations that exist in the Milky Way. There are types of planets that do not exist in the Solar System: super-Earths and mini-Neptunes, which have masses between that of Earth and Neptune. Such planets could be rocky like Earth or a mixture of volatiles and gas like Neptune—the dividing line between the two possibilities is currently thought to occur at about twice the mass of Earth. The planet Gliese 581c, with mass 5.5–10.4 times the mass of Earth, attracted attention upon its discovery for potentially being in the habitable zone, though later studies concluded that it is actually too close to its star to be habitable. Exoplanets have been found that are much closer to their parent star than any planet in the Solar System is to the Sun. Mercury, the closest planet to the Sun at 0.4 AU, takes 88 days for an orbit, but ultra-short period planets can orbit in less than a day. The Kepler-11 system has five of its planets in shorter orbits than Mercury's, all of them much more massive than Mercury. There are hot Jupiters, such as 51 Pegasi b, that orbit very close to their star and may evaporate to become chthonian planets, which are the leftover cores. There are also exoplanets that are much farther from their star. Neptune is 30 AU from the Sun and takes 165 years to orbit, but there are exoplanets that are thousands of AU from their star and take more than a million years to orbit. e.g. COCONUTS-2b. ## Attributes Although each planet has unique physical characteristics, a number of broad commonalities do exist among them. Some of these characteristics, such as rings or natural satellites, have only as yet been observed in planets in the Solar System, whereas others are commonly observed in extrasolar planets. ### Dynamic characteristics #### Orbit In the Solar System, all the planets orbit the Sun in the same direction as the Sun rotates: counter-clockwise as seen from above the Sun's north pole. At least one extrasolar planet, WASP-17b, has been found to orbit in the opposite direction to its star's rotation. The period of one revolution of a planet's orbit is known as its sidereal period or year. A planet's year depends on its distance from its star; the farther a planet is from its star, the longer the distance it must travel and the slower its speed, since it is less affected by its star's gravity. No planet's orbit is perfectly circular, and hence the distance of each from the host star varies over the course of its year. The closest approach to its star is called its periastron, or perihelion in the Solar System, whereas its farthest separation from the star is called its apastron (aphelion). As a planet approaches periastron, its speed increases as it trades gravitational potential energy for kinetic energy, just as a falling object on Earth accelerates as it falls. As the planet nears apastron, its speed decreases, just as an object thrown upwards on Earth slows down as it reaches the apex of its trajectory. Each planet's orbit is delineated by a set of elements: - The eccentricity of an orbit describes the elongation of a planet's elliptical (oval) orbit. Planets with low eccentricities have more circular orbits, whereas planets with high eccentricities have more elliptical orbits. The planets and large moons in the Solar System have relatively low eccentricities, and thus nearly circular orbits. The comets and many Kuiper belt objects, as well as several extrasolar planets, have very high eccentricities, and thus exceedingly elliptical orbits. - The semi-major axis gives the size of the orbit. It is the distance from the midpoint to the longest diameter of its elliptical orbit. This distance is not the same as its apastron, because no planet's orbit has its star at its exact centre. - The inclination of a planet tells how far above or below an established reference plane its orbit is tilted. In the Solar System, the reference plane is the plane of Earth's orbit, called the ecliptic. For extrasolar planets, the plane, known as the sky plane or plane of the sky, is the plane perpendicular to the observer's line of sight from Earth. The eight planets of the Solar System all lie very close to the ecliptic; comets and Kuiper belt objects like Pluto are at far more extreme angles to it. The large moons are generally not very inclined to their parent planets' equators, but Earth's Moon, Saturn's Iapetus, and Neptune's Triton are exceptions. Triton is unique among the large moons in that it orbits retrograde, i.e. in the direction opposite to its parent planet's rotation. - The points at which a planet crosses above and below its reference plane are called its ascending and descending nodes. The longitude of the ascending node is the angle between the reference plane's 0 longitude and the planet's ascending node. The argument of periapsis (or perihelion in the Solar System) is the angle between a planet's ascending node and its closest approach to its star. #### Axial tilt Planets have varying degrees of axial tilt; they spin at an angle to the plane of their stars' equators. This causes the amount of light received by each hemisphere to vary over the course of its year; when the northern hemisphere points away from its star, the southern hemisphere points towards it, and vice versa. Each planet therefore has seasons, resulting in changes to the climate over the course of its year. The time at which each hemisphere points farthest or nearest from its star is known as its solstice. Each planet has two in the course of its orbit; when one hemisphere has its summer solstice with its day being the longest, the other has its winter solstice when its day is shortest. The varying amount of light and heat received by each hemisphere creates annual changes in weather patterns for each half of the planet. Jupiter's axial tilt is very small, so its seasonal variation is minimal; Uranus, on the other hand, has an axial tilt so extreme it is virtually on its side, which means that its hemispheres are either continually in sunlight or continually in darkness around the time of its solstices. In the Solar System, Mercury, Venus, Ceres, and Jupiter have very small tilts; Pallas, Uranus, and Pluto have extreme ones; and Earth, Mars, Vesta, Saturn, and Neptune have moderate ones. Among extrasolar planets, axial tilts are not known for certain, though most hot Jupiters are believed to have a negligible axial tilt as a result of their proximity to their stars. Similarly, the axial tilts of the planetary-mass moons are near zero, with Earth's Moon at 6.687° as the biggest exception; additionally, Callisto's axial tilt varies between 0 and about 2 degrees on timescales of thousands of years. #### Rotation The planets rotate around invisible axes through their centres. A planet's rotation period is known as a stellar day. Most of the planets in the Solar System rotate in the same direction as they orbit the Sun, which is counter-clockwise as seen from above the Sun's north pole. The exceptions are Venus and Uranus, which rotate clockwise, though Uranus's extreme axial tilt means there are differing conventions on which of its poles is "north", and therefore whether it is rotating clockwise or anti-clockwise. Regardless of which convention is used, Uranus has a retrograde rotation relative to its orbit. The rotation of a planet can be induced by several factors during formation. A net angular momentum can be induced by the individual angular momentum contributions of accreted objects. The accretion of gas by the giant planets contributes to the angular momentum. Finally, during the last stages of planet building, a stochastic process of protoplanetary accretion can randomly alter the spin axis of the planet. There is great variation in the length of day between the planets, with Venus taking 243 days to rotate, and the giant planets only a few hours. The rotational periods of extrasolar planets are not known, but for hot Jupiters, their proximity to their stars means that they are tidally locked (that is, their orbits are in sync with their rotations). This means, they always show one face to their stars, with one side in perpetual day, the other in perpetual night. Mercury and Venus, the closest planets to the Sun, similarly exhibit very slow rotation: Mercury is tidally locked into a 3:2 spin–orbit resonance (rotating three times for every two revolutions around the Sun), and Venus' rotation may be in equilibrium between tidal forces slowing it down and atmospheric tides created by solar heating speeding it up. All the large moons are tidally locked to their parent planets; Pluto and Charon are tidally locked to each other, as are Eris and Dysnomia. Orcus and its moon Vanth may be another example of mutual tidal locking, but the data is not conclusive. The other dwarf planets with known rotation periods rotate faster than Earth; Haumea rotates so fast that it has been distorted into a triaxial ellipsoid. The exoplanet Tau Boötis b and its parent star Tau Boötis appear to be mutually tidally locked. #### Orbital clearing The defining dynamic characteristic of a planet, according to the IAU definition, is that it has cleared its neighborhood''. A planet that has cleared its neighborhood has accumulated enough mass to gather up or sweep away all the planetesimals in its orbit. In effect, it orbits its star in isolation, as opposed to sharing its orbit with a multitude of similar-sized objects. As described above, this characteristic was mandated as part of the IAU's official definition of a planet in August 2006. Although to date this criterion only applies to the Solar System, a number of young extrasolar systems have been found in which evidence suggests orbital clearing is taking place within their circumstellar discs. ### Physical characteristics #### Size and shape Gravity causes planets to be pulled into a roughly spherical shape, so a planet's size can be expressed roughly by an average radius (for example, Earth radius or Jupiter radius). However, planets are not perfectly spherical; for example, the Earth's rotation causes it to be slightly flattened at the poles with a bulge around the equator. Therefore, a better approximation of Earth's shape is an oblate spheroid, whose equatorial diameter is 43 kilometers (27 mi) larger than the pole-to-pole diameter. Generally, a planet's shape may be described by giving polar and equatorial radii of a spheroid or specifying a reference ellipsoid. From such a specification, the planet's flattening, surface area, and volume can be calculated; its normal gravity can be computed knowing its size, shape, rotation rate and mass. #### Mass A planet's defining physical characteristic is that it is massive enough for the force of its own gravity to dominate over the electromagnetic forces binding its physical structure, leading to a state of hydrostatic equilibrium. This effectively means that all planets are spherical or spheroidal. Up to a certain mass, an object can be irregular in shape, but beyond that point, which varies depending on the chemical makeup of the object, gravity begins to pull an object towards its own centre of mass until the object collapses into a sphere. Mass is the prime attribute by which planets are distinguished from stars. While the lower stellar mass limit is estimated to be around 75 times that of Jupiter (), the upper planetary mass limit for planethood is only roughly 13 for objects with solar-type isotopic abundance, beyond which it achieves conditions suitable for nuclear fusion of deuterium. Other than the Sun, no objects of such mass exist in the Solar System; but there are exoplanets of this size. The 13 limit is not universally agreed upon and the Extrasolar Planets Encyclopaedia includes objects up to 60 , and the Exoplanet Data Explorer up to 24 . The mass-radius relationship does not change appreciably with the onset of deuterium fusion, with radius remaining roughly constant as mass increases from one Saturn mass (beginning of significant self-compression) to about 0.08 (around 80 , the onset of hydrogen burning and becoming a red dwarf), and thus some authors argue that brown dwarfs should be considered as high-mass Jovian planets. The smallest known exoplanet with an accurately known mass is PSR B1257+12A, one of the first extrasolar planets discovered, which was found in 1992 in orbit around a pulsar. Its mass is roughly half that of the planet Mercury. Even smaller is WD 1145+017 b, orbiting a white dwarf; its mass is roughly that of the dwarf planet Haumea, and it is typically termed a minor planet. The smallest known planet orbiting a main-sequence star other than the Sun is Kepler-37b, with a mass (and radius) that is probably slightly higher than that of the Moon. The smallest object in the Solar System generally agreed to be a geophysical planet is Saturn's moon Mimas, with a radius about 3.1% of Earth's and a mass about 0.00063% of Earth's. Saturn's smaller moon Phoebe, currently an irregular body of 1.7% Earth's radius and 0.00014% Earth's mass, is thought to have attained hydrostatic equilibrium and differentiation early in its history before being battered out of shape by impacts. Some asteroids may be fragments of protoplanets that began to accrete and differentiate, but suffered catastrophic collisions, leaving only a metallic or rocky core today, or a reaccumulation of the resulting debris. #### Internal differentiation Every planet began its existence in an entirely fluid state; in early formation, the denser, heavier materials sank to the centre, leaving the lighter materials near the surface. Each therefore has a differentiated interior consisting of a dense planetary core surrounded by a mantle that either is or was a fluid. The terrestrial planets' mantles are sealed within hard crusts, but in the giant planets the mantle simply blends into the upper cloud layers. The terrestrial planets have cores of elements such as iron and nickel, and mantles of silicates. Jupiter and Saturn are believed to have cores of rock and metal surrounded by mantles of metallic hydrogen. Uranus and Neptune, which are smaller, have rocky cores surrounded by mantles of water, ammonia, methane and other ices. The fluid action within these planets' cores creates a geodynamo that generates a magnetic field. Similar differentiation processes are believed to have occurred on some of the large moons and dwarf planets, though the process may not always have been completed: Ceres, Callisto, and Titan appear to be incompletely differentiated. The asteroid Vesta, though not a dwarf planet because it was battered by impacts out of roundness, has a differentiated interior similar to that of Venus, Earth, and Mars. #### Atmosphere All of the Solar System planets except Mercury have substantial atmospheres because their gravity is strong enough to keep gases close to the surface. Saturn's largest moon Titan also has a substantial atmosphere thicker than that of Earth; Neptune's largest moon Triton and the dwarf planet Pluto have more tenuous atmospheres. The larger giant planets are massive enough to keep large amounts of the light gases hydrogen and helium, whereas the smaller planets lose these gases into space. Analysis of exoplanets suggests that the threshold for being able to hold on to these light gases occurs at about 2.0+0.7 −0.6 , so that Earth and Venus are near the maximum size for rocky planets. The composition of Earth's atmosphere is different from the other planets because the various life processes that have transpired on the planet have introduced free molecular oxygen. The atmospheres of Mars and Venus are both dominated by carbon dioxide, but differ drastically in density: the average surface pressure of Mars' atmosphere is less than 1% that of Earth's (too low to allow liquid water to exist), while the average surface pressure of Venus' atmosphere is about 92 times that of Earth's. It is likely that Venus' atmosphere was the result of a runaway greenhouse effect in its history, which today makes it the hottest planet by surface temperature, hotter even than Mercury. Despite hostile surface conditions, temperature and pressure at about 50–55 km altitude in Venus' atmosphere are close to Earthlike conditions (the only place in the Solar System beyond Earth where this is so) and this region has been suggested as a plausible base for future human exploration. Titan has the only nitrogen-rich planetary atmosphere in the Solar System other than Earth's. Just as Earth's conditions are close to the triple point of water, allowing it to exist in all three states on the planet's surface, so Titan's are to the triple point of methane. Planetary atmospheres are affected by the varying insolation or internal energy, leading to the formation of dynamic weather systems such as hurricanes (on Earth), planet-wide dust storms (on Mars), a greater-than-Earth-sized anticyclone on Jupiter (called the Great Red Spot), and holes in the atmosphere (on Neptune). Weather patterns detected on exoplanets include a hot region on HD 189733 b twice the size of the Great Red Spot, as well as clouds on the hot Jupiter Kepler-7b, the super-Earth Gliese 1214 b and others. Hot Jupiters, due to their extreme proximities to their host stars, have been shown to be losing their atmospheres into space due to stellar radiation, much like the tails of comets. These planets may have vast differences in temperature between their day and night sides that produce supersonic winds, although multiple factors are involved and the details of the atmospheric dynamics that affect the day-night temperature difference are complex. #### Magnetosphere One important characteristic of the planets is their intrinsic magnetic moments, which in turn give rise to magnetospheres. The presence of a magnetic field indicates that the planet is still geologically alive. In other words, magnetized planets have flows of electrically conducting material in their interiors, which generate their magnetic fields. These fields significantly change the interaction of the planet and solar wind. A magnetized planet creates a cavity in the solar wind around itself called the magnetosphere, which the wind cannot penetrate. The magnetosphere can be much larger than the planet itself. In contrast, non-magnetized planets have only small magnetospheres induced by interaction of the ionosphere with the solar wind, which cannot effectively protect the planet. Of the eight planets in the Solar System, only Venus and Mars lack such a magnetic field. Of the magnetized planets the magnetic field of Mercury is the weakest, and is barely able to deflect the solar wind. Jupiter's moon Ganymede has a magnetic field several times stronger, and Jupiter's is the strongest in the Solar System (so intense in fact that it poses a serious health risk to future crewed missions to all its moons inward of Callisto). The magnetic fields of the other giant planets, measured at their surfaces, are roughly similar in strength to that of Earth, but their magnetic moments are significantly larger. The magnetic fields of Uranus and Neptune are strongly tilted relative to the planets' rotational axes and displaced from the planets' centres. In 2003, a team of astronomers in Hawaii observing the star HD 179949 detected a bright spot on its surface, apparently created by the magnetosphere of an orbiting hot Jupiter. ### Secondary characteristics Several planets or dwarf planets in the Solar System (such as Neptune and Pluto) have orbital periods that are in resonance with each other or with smaller bodies. This is common in satellite systems (e.g. the resonance between Io, Europa, and Ganymede around Jupiter, or between Enceladus and Dione around Saturn). All except Mercury and Venus have natural satellites, often called "moons". Earth has one, Mars has two, and the giant planets have numerous moons in complex planetary-type systems. Except for Ceres and Sedna, all the consensus dwarf planets are known to have at least one moon as well. Many moons of the giant planets have features similar to those on the terrestrial planets and dwarf planets, and some have been studied as possible abodes of life (especially Europa and Enceladus). The four giant planets are orbited by planetary rings of varying size and complexity. The rings are composed primarily of dust or particulate matter, but can host tiny 'moonlets' whose gravity shapes and maintains their structure. Although the origins of planetary rings is not precisely known, they are believed to be the result of natural satellites that fell below their parent planet's Roche limit and were torn apart by tidal forces. The dwarf planets Haumea and Quaoar also have rings. No secondary characteristics have been observed around extrasolar planets. The sub-brown dwarf Cha 110913-773444, which has been described as a rogue planet, is believed to be orbited by a tiny protoplanetary disc and the sub-brown dwarf OTS 44 was shown to be surrounded by a substantial protoplanetary disk of at least 10 Earth masses. ## See also - List of landings on extraterrestrial bodies - Lists of planets – A list of lists of planets sorted by diverse attributes

1927 World Snooker Championship

Professional snooker tournament

The 1927 World Snooker Championship was a snooker tournament held at several venues from 29 November 1926 to 12 May 1927. At the time, it was titled the Professional Championship of Snooker but it is now recognised as the inaugural edition of the World Snooker Championship. The impetus for the championship came from professional English billiards player Joe Davis and billiard hall manager Bill Camkin, who had both observed the growing popularity of snooker, and proposed the event to the Billiards Association and Control Council. Ten players entered the competition, including most of the leading English billiards players. The two matches in the preliminary round were held at Thurston's Hall in London, and the semi-finals and final took place at Camkin's Hall in Birmingham. The players involved determined the venues for the quarter-finals, resulting in matches in London, Birmingham, Nottingham and Liverpool. The final took place from 9 to 12 May 1927. Joe Davis won the title by defeating Tom Dennis by 20 to 11. Davis had led 7–1 following the first day's play and had achieved a winning margin at 16–7. The highest break of the tournament was 60, compiled by Albert Cope in the 21st frame of his match against Davis. It remained the highest break in the Championship until Davis made a 61 in the 1929 final. The same trophy awarded to Davis is still presented to the world champion each year. ## Background Professional English billiards player and billiard hall manager Joe Davis had noticed the growing popularity of snooker compared to billiards in the 1920s, as had Birmingham-based billiard hall manager Bill Camkin. They persuaded the Billiards Association and Control Council (BACC) to recognise an official professional snooker championship in the 1926–27 season. The BACC's secretary, A. Stanley Thorn, had rejected a request in 1924 from professional Tom Dennis, doubting that snooker was popular enough to attract large enough audiences to make such a competition viable. Davis drafted the conditions under which a championship could take place, after a conversation with Camkin, and sent it to the BACC, who gave their consent. At its meeting on 1 September 1926, the Professional Championship Committee of the BACC agreed the terms for the tournament, and set a closing date for entries of 1 November 1926. All professional players of English billiards were eligible to enter. The preliminary round matches were to be held at Thurston's Hall in London, and the venue for the semi-finals and final was to be Camkin's Hall on John Bright Street in Birmingham, the players having to arrange dates and venues for the other matches. The winner of the tournament would retain the title until either they resigned it, they were defeated in a BACC-sanctioned championship match, or they refused to defend it against a BACC-approved challenger; with a proviso that the champion would not be required to defend the title more than once a year. Match referees would require BACC approval, and the games were to be played with composition balls and under the official BACC rules of snooker. Stanley Thorn wrote that the decision to promote a professional championship was "in view of the increasing popularity of the game of snooker", and added that "the winner will be declared on the number of games won, but the conditions state that play shall be continued until the full number of games has been completed"; therefore s were played after the result of each match was determined. The final was played over 31 s, the semi-finals were 23 frames, and the earlier matches were 15 frames. The entry fee was five guineas per player, with a five-guineas wager between the players for each match. Gate receipts for each match, after expenses, were to be equally shared out between the players concerned. The terms specified that half of the total entry fees would go to the finalists, the winner receiving sixty percent of the part allocated to prize money. Davis, the eventual champion, received £6 and 10 shillings from gate receipts, but the BACC used £19 from the players' part of the entry fees, which were expected to be used as prize money, towards purchasing the trophy. Snooker historian Clive Everton wrote that when the official professional snooker tournament started, "Billiards was still very much the premier game, with snooker a sideshow which few were convinced would ever come to much as a public entertainment," and that the early championships received "minimal publicity". The same trophy awarded to Davis is still presented to the world champion each year. Ten players entered the championship. There were two matches in a preliminary round; the two winners of these would join the other six players in the quarter-finals. The Observer'''s correspondent opined that "the policy of playing a serious [snooker] match in conjunction with the billiards has proved an additional public attraction", and that only three of the leading billiards players, Willie Smith, Tom Reece, and Arthur Peall, had declined to participate in the championship. An article in the Athletic News said that the field of entrants was "on the whole representative and piquant". Originally called the Professional Championship of Snooker, the annual competition was re-titled as the World Championship in 1935, but the 1927 tournament is now referred to as the first World Snooker Championship. ## Schedule ## Summary The first match was between Melbourne Inman and Tom Newman; it was held at Thurston's Hall, Leicester Square in London, as an extra attraction to the main event, a billiards match between them. The match took place on an experimental billiard table with 3+1⁄4 inch , 1⁄4 inch smaller than normal. The winner of the billiards match would be the first player to reach 16,000 points, with Inman receiving a 3,500 handicap head start. The match started on 29 November 1926 with two sessions per day until 11 December. One frame of snooker was played at the end of each . Inman won the first two frames, but after eight frames Newman led 5–3. Inman then won the next five frames to secure victory 8–5, the match finishing on the Monday afternoon, a week after it started. Newman won the billiards match easily 16,000–13,039 despite giving a 3,500 handicap. Tom Dennis and Fred Lawrence played their match on 9 and 10 December at the Lord Nelson Hotel, Carlton Street, Nottingham. Dennis led 5–3 after the first day. Although Dennis won the first frame on the second afternoon, Lawrence won the other three to leave the match level at 6–6. In the evening session Dennis won the first two frames to eliminate Lawrence 8–6. Joe Davis and Joe Brady met on 29 and 30 December 1926 in Cable Street, Liverpool. Davis won all four frames in the afternoon and led 5–3 at the end of the first day. The match ended 10–5 on the second day, with Davis having achieved a winning margin at 8–5. Tom Carpenter and Nat Butler played their match on 31 December 1926 and 1 January 1927 at Thurston's Hall. There were eight frames played on the first day, in two sessions. The score was 2–2 after the afternoon but Carpenter won all four in the evening to lead 6–2. Butler won the first frame on the second day but Carpenter won the next two to win 8–3. The first semi-final saw Joe Davis meet Albert Cope over three days from 31 January to 2 February in Birmingham. On the first day Davis won the four afternoon frames and three of the four in the evening to lead 7–1. On the second day Davis extended his lead to 10–1 before Cope won three successive frames. Davis still led 11–4 overnight, just one frame from victory. On the final day Davis won the first frame to take the match 12–4. He took two more frames in the afternoon to lead 14–5 and eventually won 16–7. Cope made a 60 break in frame 21, winning the frame 87–24. Cope's break of 60 was the highest made in the tournament, and in recognition of this Cope would receive a commemorative certificate from the BACC. The break remained the best in the Championship until Davis made a 61 in the 1929 final. The match between Inman and Carpenter was also played at Thurston's Hall, Leicester Square in London. As with the game between Inman and Newman, it was an extra to a billiards match. The billiards match was to 7,000 with Carpenter receiving a 1,000 start. The match lasted from Monday 14 to Saturday 19 March 1927 with two sessions per day. One frame of snooker was generally played in each session, although with a possible 15 frames and only 12 sessions, two frames were required on occasions. Two frames were played on the Wednesday afternoon. Carpenter won the evening frame on the Friday to win the match 8–3, having led throughout. Carpenter also won the billiards match, which finished the following day, 7,000–4,798. The second semi-final, between Dennis and Carpenter, was held from 20 to 22 April in Birmingham. Carpenter led 5–3 after the first day but Dennis won all four frames on the second afternoon to lead 7–5. The second day ended with Dennis 9–7 ahead. Carpenter won three frames on the final afternoon to level the match at 10–10 but Dennis won the first two in the evening to complete a 12–10 victory. Starting on 25 April, Newman and Davis contested the BACC Professional Billiards Championship, a title later recognised as the world championship for billiards. During the match, Davis compiled a billiards championship record break of 2,501, using the shot, where the are kept near a corner pocket for repeated strokes. Newman won the match 16,000–14,763 on 7 May. ### Final The snooker final between Davis and Dennis was played from 9 to 12 May at Camkin's Hall in Birmingham and was refereed by Camkin. Davis won the first seven frames before Dennis took the last of the day to give Davis a 7–1 lead after the first day. Davis won three frames on the second afternoon and, although the evening session was shared, Davis led 12–4. Davis made a 57 break in frame 11, winning the frame 78–32. Davis secured a winning lead by taking the 23rd frame 80–34 to lead 16–7. Both sessions on the third day were shared, to leave Davis 16–8 ahead. Davis won four of the seven frames on the last day, resulting in a final score of 20–11. Davis was presented with the trophy by the BACC chairman John C. Bissett. After each of the sessions on 12 May, Davis was scheduled to perform an exhibition of the billiards pendulum cannon, which by that time was already on the way to being restricted in competitive play by the BACC. Writing about the snooker final in The Billiard Player'', Arthur Goundrill commented that "without casting any doubts on Dennis's skill as a player, it may be said that Davis is in a class by himself at the 22-ball game. 'Extraordinary' is the only way to describe his potting, and his positional play is perfect in its conception." Quoting Davis's brother Fred Davis, who said that "Joe was a great player before anyone else knew how to play the game," Everton added "he was certainly far too good for his rivals in the early championships". Davis went on to win the World Championship every year until 1940, after which the event was on hold, due to World War II, until 1946, when he won his fifteenth title and announced that he would no longer play in the tournament. ## Main draw Match results are shown below. Winning players and scores are denoted in bold text. The numbers in parentheses are the scores at which the result of the match was determined; "\*" indicates that the score after any s is not known. ## Final

Herman the Archdeacon

11th-century hagiographer in England

Herman the Archdeacon (also Hermann the Archdeacon and Hermann of Bury, born before 1040, died late 1090s) was a member of the household of Herfast, Bishop of East Anglia, in the 1070s and 1080s. Thereafter, he was a monk of Bury St Edmunds Abbey in Suffolk for the rest of his life. Herman was probably born in Germany. Around 1070 he entered Herfast's household, and according to a later source he became the bishop's archdeacon, which was at that time an important secretarial position. He assisted Herfast in his unsuccessful campaign to move his bishopric to Bury St Edmunds Abbey, against the opposition of its abbot, and helped to bring about a temporary reconciliation between the two men. He remained with the bishop until his death in 1084, but he later regretted supporting his campaign to move the bishopric and himself moved to the abbey by 1092. Herman was a colourful character and a theatrical preacher, but he is chiefly known as an able scholar who wrote the Miracles of St Edmund, a hagiographical account of miracles believed to have been performed by Edmund, King of East Anglia after his death at the hands of a Danish Viking army in 869. Herman's account also covered the history of the eponymous abbey. After his death, two revised versions of his Miracles were written, a shortened anonymous work which cut out the historical information, and another by Goscelin, which was hostile to Herman. ## Life Herman is described by the historian Tom Licence as a "colourful figure". His origin is unknown but it is most likely that he was German. Similarities between his works and those of Sigebert of Gembloux and an earlier writer, Alpert of Metz, both of whom were at the Abbey of St. Vincent [fr] in Metz, suggest that he was a monk there for a period between 1050 and 1070. He may have been a pupil in Sigebert's school before emigrating to East Anglia. Herman was probably born before 1040 as between around 1070 and 1084 he held an important secretarial post in the household of Herfast, Bishop of East Anglia, and Herman would have been too young for the post if he had been born later. According to the fourteenth-century archivist and prior of Bury St Edmunds Abbey, Henry de Kirkestede, Herman was Herfast's archdeacon, a post which was administrative in the immediate post-Conquest period. Soon after his appointment as bishop in 1070, Herfast came into conflict with Baldwin, abbot of Bury St Edmunds Abbey, over his attempt, with Herman's secretarial assistance, to move his bishopric to the abbey. Herfast's see was located at North Elmham when he was appointed and in 1072 he moved it to Thetford, but both minsters had an income which was grossly inadequate for a bishop's estate and Bury would have provided a much better base of operations. Lanfranc, the Archbishop of Canterbury, sent an angry letter to Herfast, demanding that he submit the dispute to Lanfranc's archiepiscopal court and concluding by requiring that Herfast "banish the monk Herman, whose life is notorious for its many faults, from your society and your household completely. It is my wish that he live according to a rule in an observant monastery, or – if he refuses to do this – that he depart from the kingdom of England." Lanfranc's informant was a clerk of Baldwin, who may have had a grudge against Herfast. In spite of Lanfranc's demand for his expulsion, Herman remained with Herfast. In 1071, Baldwin went to Rome and secured a papal immunity for the abbey from episcopal control and from conversion into a bishop's see. Baldwin was a physician to Edward the Confessor and William the Conqueror, and when Herfast almost lost his sight in a riding accident, Herman persuaded him to seek Baldwin's medical help and end their dispute, but Herfast later renewed his campaign, finally losing by a judgement of the king's court in 1081. Herman later regretted supporting Herfast in the dispute, and looking back on it he wrote: Nor will I omit to mention – now that the blush of shame is wiped away – that I frequently gave ear to the bishop in this matter; that, when he sent across the sea to the king already mentioned [William the Conqueror], seeking to establish his see at the abbey, I drafted the letters and wrote up those that were drafted. I also read the responses that he received. Herman stayed with Herfast until his death in 1084, but it is not clear whether he served the succeeding bishop, William de Beaufeu, and by 1092 he was a monk at Bury St Edmunds Abbey. He occupied senior roles there, probably precentor, and perhaps from about 1095 the position of prior or sub-prior. The abbey's most important relics were the bloodstained undergarments of the saint it was named after, Edmund the Martyr, and Herman was an enthusiastic preacher who enjoyed displaying the relics to the common people. According to an account by a writer who was hostile to him, his disrespectful treatment of the undergarments on one occasion, in taking them out of their box and allowing people to kiss them for two pence, was punished by his death soon afterwards. He probably died in June 1097 or 1098. ## Miracles of St Edmund The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records the defeat of the Kingdom of East Anglia and killing of King Edmund (the Martyr) by a Viking army in 869, but almost nothing survives giving information about his life and reign apart from some coins in his name. Between about 890 and 910 the Danish rulers of East Anglia, who had recently converted to Christianity, issued a coinage commemorating Edmund as a saint, and in the early tenth century his remains were translated to what was to become Bury St Edmunds Abbey. The first known hagiography of Edmund was Abbo of Fleury's Life of St Edmund in the late tenth century and the second was by Herman. Edmund was a patron saint of the English people and kings, and a popular saint in the Middle Ages. Herman's historical significance in the view of historians lies in the Miracles of St Edmund, his hagiography of King Edmund. His ultimate aim in this work, according to Licence, "was to validate belief in the power of God and St Edmund", but it was also a work of history, using the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle to provide a basic structure and covering not only Edmund's miracles but also the history of the abbey and good deeds of kings and bishops. The Miracles was intended for an erudite audience with an advanced knowledge of Latin. Like other writers of his time, he collected rare words, but his choice of vocabulary was unique. Licence comments that he employed "a convoluted style and recherché vocabulary, which included Grecisms, archaisms and neologisms ... Herman's penchant for odd vernacular proverbs, dark humour and comically paradoxical metaphors such as 'the anchor of disbelief', 'the knot of slackness', 'the burden of laziness', and 'trusting to injustice' is evident throughout his work." His style was "mannerist", in the sense of "that tendency or approach in which the author says things 'not normally, but abnormally', to surprise, astonish, and dazzle the audience". His writing was influenced by Christian and classical sources and he could translate a vernacular text into accurate and poetic Latin: Licence observes that "his inner Ciceronian was at peace with his inner Christian". Summarising the Miracles, Licence says: > Herman's work was exceptional for its day in its historical vision and breadth. The product of a writer schooled at an abbey with an unusually strong interest in historical writing, it was no mere saint's Life or miracle collection ... Nor were its horizons limited like those of local institutional histories ... Although closer to their genre of composition, Herman's piece was developing into something bigger. The catalyst in this experiment was his desire to reinterpret St Edmund as the deputy of God interested in English affairs ... Herman's achievement was to create a seamless narrative of English history without annalistic entries, a feat that neither Byrhtferth of Ramsey at the turn of the eleventh century nor John of Worcester early in the twelfth undertook. Bede had accomplished it, and so would William of Malmesbury on a far more impressive scale in the 1120s. Herman may have written the first half, covering the period up to the Conquest, around 1070, but it is more likely that the whole work was written in the reign of King William II (1087–1100). Herman's original text in his own hand does not survive, but a shorter version forms part of a book which covers the official biography of the abbey's patron saint. As Herman clearly intended, the book is composed of Abbo's Life followed by the Miracles. It is a luxury product dating to around 1100. This version has some blank spaces and the final miracle stops in the middle of a sentence, indicating that the copying ceased abruptly. A manuscript dating to 1377 includes seven miracles assigned by the scribe to Herman which are not in the Miracles, and they are probably the stories which were intended for the blank spaces. Two copies survive of a version produced shortly after Herman's death which leaves out the historical sections and only includes the miracles. Another revised version of the Miracles (illustrated above) was written around 1100 and survives in a manuscript dating to the 1120s or 1130s. It is attributed by Licence to the hagiographer and musician Goscelin, who is not recorded after 1106. Herbert de Losinga, who was Bishop of East Anglia from 1091 to 1119, renewed Herfast's campaign to bring St Edmunds under episcopal control, against the opposition of Baldwin and his supporters, including Herman. The dispute continued after the deaths of Baldwin and Herman in the late 1090s, but like Herfast, Herbert was ultimately unsuccessful. Baldwin's death was followed by a battle over the appointment of a new abbot. Goscelin's text attacks Herbert's enemies, including Herman, and emphasises the role of bishops in Bury's history. The version was probably commissioned by Herbert. Herbert had bought the bishopric of East Anglia for himself, and the abbacy of New Minster, Winchester, for his father, from William II, and the father and son were attacked in an anonymous satire in fifty hexameters, On the Heresy Simony. Licence argues that Herman, who compared Herbert to Satan in the Miracles, was the author of the satire. The three versions of the Miracles, together with the additional seven miracles and On the Heresy Simony, are printed and translated by Licence. ## Controversy over authorship The historian Antonia Gransden described the writer of the Miracles as "a conscientious historian, highly educated, and a gifted Latinist", but she questioned Herman's authorship in a journal article in 1995 and her Oxford Dictionary of National Biography article about Herman in 2004. She stated that the earliest attribution of authorship to Herman is by Henry de Kirkestede in about 1370, and that there is no record of an archdeacon called Herman in the records of Norwich Cathedral, nor can the hagiographer be identified as a monk at St Edmunds Abbey. She thought that the author was probably a hagiographer praised by Goscelin called Bertrann, and de Kirkestede may have misread Bertrann for Hermann (her spelling). Gransden's arguments are dismissed by Licence, who points out that the author of the Miracles confirmed his name by describing a monk called Herman of Binham as his namesake.

Masked shrike

Migratory bird in the family Laniidae

The masked shrike (Lanius nubicus) is a species of bird in the shrike family, Laniidae. It breeds in southeastern Europe and at the eastern end of the Mediterranean, with a separate population in eastern Iraq and western Iran. It is migratory, wintering mainly in northeast Africa. Although it is a short-range migrant, vagrants have occurred widely elsewhere, including northern and western Europe. It is the smallest member of its genus, long-tailed and with a hooked bill. The male has mainly black upperparts, with white on its crown, forehead and supercilium and large white patches on the shoulders and wings. The throat, neck sides and underparts are white, with orange flanks and breast. The female is a duller version of the male, with brownish black upperparts and a grey or buff tone to the shoulders and underparts. The juvenile has grey-brown upperparts with a paler forehead and barring from the head to rump, barred off-white underparts and brown wings аpart from the white primary patches. The species' calls are short and grating, but the song has melodic warbler-like components. The masked shrike's preferred habitat is open woodland with bushes and some large trees. It is less conspicuous than its relatives, avoiding very open country and often perching in less exposed locations. The nest is a neat cup built in a tree by both adults, and the clutch is normally 4–6 eggs, which are incubated by the female for 14–16 days until hatching. The chicks are fed by both parents until they fledge 18–20 days later, and remain dependent on the adults for about 3–4 weeks after leaving the nest. The masked shrike eats mainly large insects, occasionally small vertebrates; it sometimes impales its prey on thorns or barbed wire. Populations are decreasing in parts of the European range, but not rapidly enough to raise serious conservation concerns, and the species is therefore classified by the International Union for Conservation of Nature as being of least concern. ## Taxonomy The shrikes are a family of slender, long-tailed passerines, most of its members being in the genus Lanius, the typical shrikes. They are short-necked birds with rounded wings and a hooked tip to the bill. Most occur in open habitats. The affiliations of the masked shrike with other members of the genus are uncertain; the "brown" shrikes (brown, red-backed and isabelline shrikes) and tropical species like the Somali fiscal have both been suggested as possible relatives. The masked shrike has no subspecies. The masked shrike was described by German explorer and naturalist Martin Lichtenstein in 1823 under its current scientific name. Lanius is the Latin for a butcher, and comes from the shrikes' habit of impaling prey, reminiscent of a butcher hanging carcasses, and nubicus means "Nubian" (from northeast Africa). The bird was independently described by Dutch zoologist Coenraad Temminck in 1824 as Lanius personatus, from the Latin personatus "masked", referring, as does the English name, to the bird's appearance, but the older name takes precedence. A later synonym from 1844 was L. leucometopon from the Greek leukos, "white", and metopon, "forehead", describing a feature of the distinctive head pattern. "Shrike", first recorded in 1545, derives from the shrill cries given by this family, and the traditional common name "butcher-bird" again refers to the characteristic prey storage, and has been in use since at least 1668. ## Description The masked shrike is the smallest of its genus, a slender bird which usually weighs 20–23 g (0.71–0.81 oz), measuring 17–18.5 cm (6.7–7.3 in) long with a 24–26.5 cm (9.4–10.4 in) wingspan. It has a long tail and relatively small bill, on each side of which is a tomial tooth; the upper mandible bears a triangular ridge which fits a corresponding notch in the lower mandible. This adaptation is otherwise only found in falcons. The male has mainly black upperparts, a white crown, forehead and supercilium. There are large white patches on the shoulders and primaries, and the outermost tail feathers are also white. The throat, neck sides and underparts are white, with orange on the flanks and breast. The iris is brown, the bill is black and the legs are dark brown or black. The female is a duller version of the male, with brownish-black upperparts and a grey or buff tinge to the white shoulder patches and underparts. The juvenile has grey-brown upperparts with darker bars from the head to rump, a paler grey forehead, barred off-white underparts and brown wings with white primary patches. Masked shrikes are most similar in appearance to woodchat shrikes, but are smaller, more slender and longer-tailed. Adults of the two species are easily distinguished, since the masked shrike has white on its head and a dark rump, whereas the woodchat shrike has a black crown, rusty nape and white rump. Juveniles are more similar, but the masked shrike has a longer tail, paler face, and grey back and rump, whereas the woodchat shrike has a sandy back and pale grey rump. Juveniles moult their head, body and some wing feathers a few weeks after fledging, and adults have a complete moult after breeding. In both cases, if the process is not complete by the time of migration it is suspended and completed on the wintering grounds. ### Voice The masked shrike gives the harsh calls typical of this family, with repeated tsr, tzr or shek notes and some whistles, and when alarmed produces a rattling krrrr. The bill may be snapped when the bird is agitated. The song, up to a minute long, is soft for a shrike, with chattering sounds interspersed with rich warbles. It resembles the songs of Hippolais species, particularly the olive-tree warbler. On rare occasions, males may sing in flight. In the film the Great Escape, the POWs were taught how to mimic the masked shrike's call. ## Distribution and habitat The masked shrike breeds in the Balkans and Western Asia: southern Bulgaria, eastern Republic of North Macedonia, northeast Greece and some of the Greek islands, Turkey, Cyprus and from Syria south to Israel. It also nests in eastern Iraq and western Iran. The range in the east is uncertain, and may include Afghanistan and northern Saudi Arabia. It is migratory, wintering south of the Sahara, mainly in Chad, Sudan and Ethiopia. Smaller numbers are found west to eastern Mali and Nigeria, and in northern Kenya and southern Saudi Arabia. Most birds leave the breeding areas in late August and September, and return north in February and March. This species is seen in Egypt, Jordan and Israel much more often in spring than autumn, suggesting that the southern movement may be concentrated further east. Birds will hold small territories on about 0.5 hectares (1.2 acres) on migration, and, unlike other shrikes, may congregate in significant numbers. More than 100 have been seen in one locality in Israel, with five in a single bush. This shrike has occurred as a vagrant in Algeria, Finland, Kenya, Libya, Spain, Sweden, Mauritania and Turkmenistan. At least three individuals have been documented in Great Britain, and two individuals in Armenia. The masked shrike's preferred habitat is open woodland with bushes and some large trees. Unlike its relatives, it avoids very open, lightly vegetated country. Orchards and other cultivated land with suitable old trees or large hedges are also used by this species. It is normally found in more wooded areas than sympatric shrikes. It occurs in lowlands and in hills up to 1,000 m (3,300 ft). In some areas breeding occurs at greater altitudes, up to 2,000 m (6,600 ft). It may occur in gardens and resorts on migration, and in winter again prefers open country with thorny bushes and large trees like acacia or introduced eucalyptus. ## Behaviour The masked shrike is a solitary species except when on migration. It maintains a breeding territory of 2–5 ha (5–12 acres) and is also territorial on the wintering grounds, defending an area of about 3 ha (7 acres). Although unafraid of humans, it is aggressive to its own species and other birds which infringe on its territory. Most other shrikes use high, exposed branches throughout the year, but the masked shrike only uses conspicuous locations at the start of the breeding season, otherwise choosing lower, more sheltered spots. It perches upright, frequently cocking its tail, and has an easy, agile flight. A masked shrike has been recorded as feigning injury when trapped, only to return to normal when the threat receded. ### Breeding Male masked shrikes sing from perches in their territories from early April, sometimes chasing or competing vocally with neighbouring males. The male's courtship display, usually accompanied by singing, starts with the bird perching erect and shivering its wings on an exposed perch, and is followed by the shrike stepping down its branch and bowing, either on the move or while temporarily halted. The male may also give a fluttering, zigzagging flight display. The female is sometimes fed by her mate while she crouches with spread wings and gives begging calls. Elements of the display are shared with other shrikes, but stepping-down and bowing on the move appear to be confined to this species. The nest, built by both sexes, is a small, neat cup of rootlets, stems and twigs, lined with wool or hair, and adorned with lichen externally. It is constructed in a tree 1.5–10 m (4.9–32.8 ft) above the ground and averages 170 mm (6.7 in) wide and 65 mm (2.6 in) deep, with the cup 75 mm (3.0 in) across and a 35 mm (1.4 in) in depth. Eggs are laid from April to June, mainly in May in the lowlands and about a month later in the mountains. Replacement clutches are laid in June or July if the nest fails, and second broods appear to be common in at least some areas. The first nest is destroyed by the pair to provide material for a replacement breeding attempt. The eggs average 20 mm × 16 mm (0.79 in × 0.63 in) in size and are variable in colour, with a background of grey, cream or yellow, diffuse grey blotches, and a ring of brown markings. The normal clutch is 4–6 eggs, which are incubated by the female for 14–16 days until hatching. The altricial downy chicks are fed by both parents until they fledge 18–20 days later. They are dependent on the adults for about 3–4 weeks after leaving the nest. The masked shrike breeds in its first year, but its average life span is unknown. Vertebrate predators of young birds include cats and crows. This species may also be infected by parasites, such as a tick, Hyalomma marginatum, and at least two species of Haemoproteus blood parasites. ### Feeding Like its relatives, the masked shrike hunts from a perch, typically 3–8 m (10–26 ft) high, although usually in less exposed locations than those favoured by most other shrikes. Prey is usually taken from the ground, but occasionally picked off foliage or caught in the air with an agile flycatcher-like flight. The kill may be impaled on thorns or barbed wire as a "larder" for immediate or later consumption. Because passerines have relatively weak legs, impalement holds the corpse while it is dismembered. It was once thought that this behaviour was shown mainly by male shrikes in the breeding season, but this is not the case. Masked shrikes of both sexes are known to impale in winter and on migration. Individual birds may be very tame, following a gardener or feeding close to an observer. The masked shrike feeds mainly on large insects, although other arthropods and small vertebrates are also caught. Shrikes fatten up before migration, but to a lesser extent than other passerines because they can feed on the way, sometimes taking other tired migrants. Despite its relatively small size, the masked shrike has been recorded as killing species such as lesser whitethroat and little swift. Vertebrates are killed by bill blows to the back of the head, and the tomial teeth are then used to separate the neck bones. ## Status The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) estimates the European population of the masked shrike to be between 105,000–300,000 individuals, suggesting a global total of 142,000–600,000 birds. Although the population appears to be declining, the decrease is not rapid enough to trigger the IUCN vulnerability criteria. The large numbers and extensive breeding range of about 353,000 km² (136,000 sq mi), mean that this shrike is classified by the IUCN as being of least concern. Numbers have declined in recent decades in Europe, although Bulgaria, Greece and Cyprus still have several thousand breeding pairs. Turkey is a stronghold with up to 90,000 pairs. The species is declining in Greece and Turkey because of habitat loss, and a large decrease in Israel is thought to be due to pesticides. In Somalia, this bird is now rare. Migrating birds are shot in the countries around the eastern Mediterranean, despite legal protection in most countries, and there is some persecution of breeding birds in Greece and Syria, where this species is considered to be unlucky. There are indications that this shrike is adapting to plantations instead of natural woodlands, which could help populations in the longer term. ## Cited texts

Yamato-class battleship

Class of Japanese battleship

The Yamato-class battleships (大和型戦艦, Yamato-gata senkan) were two battleships of the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN), Yamato and Musashi, laid down leading up to World War II and completed as designed. A third hull laid down in 1940 was converted to an aircraft carrier, Shinano, during construction. Displacing nearly 72,000 long tons (73,000 t) at full load, the completed battleships were the heaviest ever constructed. The class carried the largest naval artillery ever fitted to a warship, nine 460-mm (18.1 in) naval guns, each capable of firing 1,460 kg (3,220 lb) shells over 42 km (26 mi). Due to the threat of U.S. submarines and aircraft carriers, both Yamato and Musashi spent the majority of their careers in naval bases at Brunei, Truk, and Kure—deploying on several occasions in response to U.S. raids on Japanese bases. All three ships were sunk by the U.S. Navy; Musashi by air strikes while participating in the Battle of Leyte Gulf in October 1944, the Shinano torpedoed by Archerfish while under way from Yokosuka to Kure for fitting out in November 1944, and the Yamato by air strikes while en route from Japan to Okinawa as part of Operation Ten-Go in April 1945. ## Background The design of the Yamato-class battleships was shaped by expansionist movements within the Japanese government, Japanese industrial power, and the need for a fleet powerful enough to intimidate likely adversaries. Most importantly, the latter, in the form of the Kantai Kessen or Decisive Battle Doctrine, a naval strategy adopted by the Imperial Japanese Navy prior to the Second World War, in which the Japanese navy would win a war by fighting and winning a single, decisive naval action. After the end of the First World War, many navies—including those of the United States, the United Kingdom, and Imperial Japan—continued and expanded construction programs that had begun during the conflict. The enormous costs associated with these programs pressured their government leaders to begin a disarmament conference. On 8 July 1921, the United States' Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes invited delegations from the other major maritime powers—France, Italy, Japan, and the United Kingdom—to come to Washington, D.C. and discuss a possible end to the naval arms race. The subsequent Washington Naval Conference resulted in the Washington Naval Treaty. Along with many other provisions, it limited all future battleships to a standard displacement of 35,000 long tons (35,562 t; 39,200 short tons) and a maximum gun caliber of 16 inches (406 mm). It also agreed that the five countries would not construct more capital ships for ten years and would not replace any ship that survived the treaty until it was at least twenty years old. In the 1930s, the Japanese government began a shift towards ultranationalist militancy. This movement called for the expansion of the Japanese Empire to include much of the Pacific Ocean and Southeast Asia. The maintenance of such an empire—spanning 3,000 miles (4,800 km) from China to Midway Island—required a sizable fleet capable of sustained control of territory. Although all of Japan's battleships built prior to the Yamato class had been completed before 1921—as the Washington Treaty had prevented any more from being completed—all had been either reconstructed or significantly modernized, or both, in the 1930s. This modernization included, among other things, additional speed and firepower, which the Japanese intended to use to conquer and defend their aspired-to empire. When Japan withdrew from the League of Nations in 1934 over the Mukden Incident, it also renounced all treaty obligations, freeing it to build warships larger than those of the other major maritime powers. Japan's intention to acquire resource-producing colonies in the Pacific and Southeast Asia would likely lead to confrontation with the United States, thus the U.S. became Japan's primary potential enemy. The U.S. possessed significantly greater industrial power than Japan, with 32.2% of worldwide industrial production compared to Japan's 3.5%. Furthermore, several leading members of the United States Congress had pledged "to outbuild Japan three to one in a naval race." Consequently, as Japanese industrial output could not compete with American industrial power, Japanese ship designers developed plans for new battleships individually superior to their counterparts in the United States Navy. Each of these battleships would be capable of engaging multiple enemy capital ships simultaneously, eliminating the need to expend as much industrial effort as the U.S. on battleship construction. ## Design Preliminary studies for a new class of battleships began after Japan's departure from the League of Nations and its renunciation of the Washington and London naval treaties; from 1934 to 1936, 24 initial designs were put forth. These early plans varied greatly in armament, propulsion, endurance, and armor. Main batteries fluctuated between 460 mm (18.1 in) and 406 mm (16 in) guns, while the secondary armaments were composed of differing numbers of 155 mm (6.1 in), 127 mm (5 in), and 25 mm (1 in) guns. Propulsion in most of the designs was a hybrid diesel-turbine combination, though one relied solely on diesel and another planned for only turbines. The maximum range of the various designs was between 6,000 nautical miles (11,000 km; 6,900 mi) in design A-140-J₂ to a high of 9,200 nmi (17,000 km; 10,600 mi) in designs A-140A and A-140-B₂, at a speed of 18 knots (33 km/h; 21 mph). Armor varied between providing protection from the fire of 406 mm guns to enough protection against 460 mm guns. After these had been reviewed, two of the original twenty-four were finalized as possibilities, A-140-F₃ and A-140-F₄. Differing primarily in their range (4,900 nmi (9,100 km; 5,600 mi) versus 7,200 nmi (13,300 km; 8,300 mi) at 16 knots (30 km/h; 18 mph)), they were used in the formation of the final preliminary study, which was finished on 20 July 1936. Tweaks to that design resulted in the definitive design of March 1937, which was put forth by Rear-Admiral Fukuda Keiji; a range of 7,200 nmi was finally decided upon, and the hybrid diesel-turbine propulsion was abandoned in favor of turbines. The diesel engines were removed from the design because of problems with the engines aboard the submarine tender Taigei. Their engines, which were similar to the ones that were going to be mounted in the new battleships, required a "major repair and maintenance effort" to keep them running due to a "fundamental design defect". In addition, if the engines failed entirely, the 200 mm (7.9 in) armored citadel deck roof that protected the proposed diesel engine rooms and attendant machinery spaces, would severely hamper any attempt to remove and replace them. The final design called for a standard displacement of 64,000 long tons (65,000 t) and a full-load displacement of 69,988 long tons (71,111 t), making the ships of the class the largest battleships yet designed, and the largest battleships ever constructed. The design called for a main armament of nine 460 mm naval guns, mounted in three three-gun turrets—each of which weighed more than a 1930s-era destroyer. The designs were quickly approved by the Japanese Naval high command, over the objections of naval aviators, who argued for the construction of aircraft carriers rather than battleships. In all, five Yamato-class battleships were planned. ## Ships Although five Yamato-class vessels had been planned in 1937, only three—two battleships and a converted aircraft carrier—were completed. All three vessels were built in extreme secrecy, to prevent American intelligence officials from learning of their existence and specifications; indeed, the United States' Office of Naval Intelligence only became aware of Yamato and Musashi by name in late 1942. At this early time, their assumptions on the class's specifications were quite far off; while they were correct on their length, the class was given as having a beam of 110 ft (34 m)—in actuality, it was about 127 ft (39 m) and a displacement of 40,000–57,000 tons (actually, 69,000 tons). In addition, the main armament of Yamato class was given as nine 16 in (410 mm) guns as late as July 1945, four months after Yamato was sunk. Both Jane's Fighting Ships and the Western media also misreported the specifications of the ships. In September 1944, Jane's Fighting Ships listed the displacement of both Yamato and Musashi as 45,000 tons. Similarly, both the New York Times and the Associated Press reported that the two ships displaced 45,000 tons with a speed of 30 knots, and even after the sinking of Yamato in April 1945, The Times of London continued to give 45,000 tons as the ship's displacement. Nevertheless, the existence of the ships—and their supposed violation of naval treaties—heavily influenced American naval engineers in the design of the 60,500-ton Montana-class battleships, though they were not designed specifically to counter the Yamato class. ### Yamato Yamato was ordered in March 1937, laid down 4 November 1937, launched 8 August 1940, and commissioned 16 December 1941. She underwent training exercises until 27 May 1942, when the vessel was deemed "operable" by Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto. Joining the 1st Battleship Division, Yamato served as the flagship of the Japanese Combined Fleet during the Battle of Midway in June 1942, yet did not engage enemy forces during the battle. The next two years were spent intermittently between Truk and Kure naval bases, with her sister ship Musashi replacing Yamato as the flagship of the Combined Fleet. During this time period, Yamato, as part of the 1st Battleship Division, deployed on multiple occasions to counteract American carrier-raids on Japanese island bases. On 25 December 1943, she suffered major torpedo damage at the hands of USS Skate and was forced to return to Kure for repairs and structural upgrades. In 1944—following extensive anti-aircraft and secondary battery upgrades—Yamato joined the Second Fleet in the Battle of the Philippine Sea, serving as an escort to a Japanese Carrier Division. In October 1944, as part of Vice-Admiral Takeo Kurita's Center Force for the Battle of Leyte Gulf, she used her naval artillery against an enemy vessel for the only time, helping sink the American escort carrier Gambier Bay and the destroyer Johnston before she was forced away by torpedoes from Heermann, which put her out of combat. Lightly damaged at Kure in March 1945, the ship was then rearmed in preparation for operations. Yamato was deliberately expended in a suicide mission as part of Operation Ten-Go, sent to use her big guns to provide relief to Japanese forces engaged in the Battle of Okinawa. She never came close, sunk en-route on 7 April 1945 by 386 American carrier aircraft. After receiving 10 torpedo and 7 bomb hits she capsized, taking 2,498 of the 2,700 crew-members with her, including Vice-Admiral Seiichi Itō. The sinking of Yamato was seen as a major American victory, and Hanson W. Baldwin, the military editor of The New York Times, wrote that "the sinking of the new Japanese battleship Yamato ... is striking proof—if any were needed—of the fatal weakness of Japan in the air and at sea". ### Musashi Musashi was ordered in March 1937, laid down 29 March 1938, launched 1 November 1940, and commissioned 5 August 1942. From September to December 1942, she was involved in surface and air-combat training exercises at Hashirajima. On 11 February 1943, Musashi relieved her sister ship Yamato as the flagship of the Combined Fleet. Until July 1944, Musashi shifted between the naval bases of Truk, Yokosuka, Brunei, and Kure. On 29 March 1944, she sustained moderate damage near the bow from one torpedo fired by the American submarine Tunny. After repairs and refitting throughout April 1944, Musashi joined the 1st Battleship Division in Okinawa. In June 1944, as part of the Second Fleet, the ship escorted Japanese aircraft carriers during the Battle of the Philippine Sea. In October 1944, she left Brunei as part of Admiral Takeo Kurita's Center Force during the Battle of Leyte Gulf. Musashi was sunk 24 October during the Battle of the Sibuyan Sea, taking 17 bomb and 19 torpedo hits, with the loss of 1,023 of her 2,399-man crew. ### Shinano Shinano, originally Warship Number 110, was laid down as the third member of the Yamato class, albeit with a slightly modified design. Most of the original armor values were slightly reduced, including the belt, deck, and turrets. The savings in weight this entailed meant that improvements could be made in other areas, including added protection for fire-control and lookout positions. In addition, the 12.7 cm (5.0 in) secondary armament on the first two Yamatos was to have been replaced by the 10 cm (3.9 in)/65 caliber Type 98 gun. Although smaller, this gun was superior to the 127 mm, possessing a significantly greater muzzle velocity, maximum range, anti-aircraft ceiling, and rate of fire. In June 1942, following the Japanese defeat at Midway, construction of Shinano was suspended, and the hull was gradually rebuilt as an aircraft carrier. She was designed as a 64,800-ton support vessel that would be capable of ferrying, repairing and replenishing the air fleets of other carriers. Although she was originally scheduled for commissioning in early 1945, the construction of the ship was accelerated after the Battle of the Philippine Sea; this resulted in Shinano being launched on 5 October 1944 and commissioned a little more than a month later on 19 November. Shinano departed Yokosuka for Kure nine days later. In the early morning on 29 November, Shinano was hit by four torpedoes from USS Archerfish. Although the damage seemed manageable, poor flooding control caused the vessel to list to starboard. Shortly before midday, she capsized and sank, taking 1,435 of her 2,400-man crew with her. To this day, Shinano is the largest naval vessel to have been sunk by a submarine. ### Warships Number 111 and 797 Warship Number 111, never named, was planned as the fourth member of the Yamato class and the second ship to incorporate the improvements of Shinano. The ship's keel was laid after Yamato's launch in August 1940 and construction continued until December 1941, when the Japanese began to question their ambitious capital ship building program—with the coming of war, the resources essential in constructing the ship would become much harder to obtain. As a result, the hull of the fourth vessel, only about 30% complete, was taken apart and scrapped in 1942; materials from this were used in the conversions of Ise and Hyūga to hybrid battleship/aircraft carriers. The fifth vessel, Warship Number 797, was planned as an improved Shinano but was never laid down. In addition to the modifications made to that ship, 797 would have removed the two 155 mm (6.1 in) wing turrets in favor of additional 100 mm guns; authors William Garzke and Robert Dulin estimate that this would have allowed for 24 of these weapons. Yamato was eventually modified in 1944 to something akin to this. ## Specifications ### Armaments #### Primary armament The Yamato-class battleships had primary armaments consisting of three 3-gun turrets mounting 46 cm (18.1 in)/45 caliber Type 94 naval guns – the largest guns ever fitted to a warship, although they were officially designated as the 40 cm/45 caliber (15.9 in) Type 94 – each of which weighed 2,774 tonnes for the complete mount. Each gun was 21.13 m (69.3 ft) long and weighed 147.3 metric tons (145.0 long tons), and could fire 1,460 kg (3,220 lb) armor-piercing shells and 1,360 kg (3,000 lb) high explosive shells out to 42.0 km (26.1 mi) at a rate of 11⁄2 to 2 shells per minute. The main guns were also capable of firing 1,360 kg (3,000 lb) 3 Shiki tsûjôdan ("Common Type 3") anti-aircraft shells. A time fuze was used to set how far away the shells would explode (although they were commonly set to go off 1,000 m (1,100 yd) away). Upon detonation, each of these shells would release 900 incendiary-filled tubes in a 20° cone facing towards incoming aircraft; a bursting charge was then used to explode the shell itself to create more steel splinters, finally, the tubes would ignite. The tubes would burn for five seconds at about 3,000 °C (5,430 °F) and would start a flame that was around 5 m (16 ft) long. Even though they comprised 40% of the total main ammunition load by 1944, 3 Shiki tsûjôdan were rarely used in combat against enemy aircraft due to the severe damage the firing of these shells inflicted on the barrels of the main guns; indeed, one of the shells may have exploded early and disabled one of Musashi's guns during the Battle of the Sibuyan Sea. The shells were intended to put up a barrage of flame that any aircraft attempting to attack would have to navigate through. However, U.S. pilots considered these shells to be more of a pyrotechnics display than a competent anti-aircraft weapon. #### Secondary armament In the original design, the Yamato class' secondary armament comprised twelve 15.5 cm/60 Type 3 guns mounted in four 3-gun turrets (one forward, two amidships, one aft), and twelve 12.7 cm/40 Type 89 guns in six double turrets (three on each side amidships). These had become available once the Mogami-class cruisers were rearmed with 20.3 cm (8.0 in) guns. With a 55.87 kg (123.2 lb) AP shell, the guns had a maximum range of 27,400 metres (30,000 yd) at an elevation of 45 degrees. Their rate of fire was five rounds per minute. The two midships turrets were removed in 1944 in favor of additional 127 mm (5.0 in) heavy and 25 mm (0.98 in) light anti-aircraft guns. Initially, heavy anti-aircraft defence was provided by a dozen 40-caliber 127-mm Type 89 dual-purpose guns in six double turrets, three on each side of the superstructure. In 1944, the two amidship 15.5 cm turrets were removed to make room for three additional 127-mm mounts on each side of Yamato, bringing the total number of these guns to twenty-four . When firing at surface targets, the guns had a range of 14,700 m (16,100 yd); they had a maximum ceiling of 9,440 m (30,970 ft) at their maximum elevation of 90 degrees. Their maximum rate of fire was 14 rounds a minute; their sustained rate of fire was around eight rounds per minute. #### Anti-aircraft armament The Yamato class originally carried twenty-four 25 mm Type 96 anti-aircraft guns, primarily mounted amidships. In 1944, both Yamato and Musashi underwent significant anti-aircraft upgrades in preparation for operations in Leyte Gulf using the space freed up by the removal of both midships 15.5 cm (6.1 in) secondary battery turrets, and ended up with a complement of twenty-four 12.7 cm (5.0 in) guns, and one hundred and sixty-two 25 mm (0.98 in) antiaircraft guns, The 25 mm anti-aircraft guns could tilt at 90-degree angles to aim at planes directly overhead, but their mountings' lack of protection made their gunnery crews extremely vulnerable to direct enemy fire. These 25 mm (0.98 in) guns had an effective range of 1,500–3,000 m (1,600–3,300 yd), and an effective ceiling of 5,500 m (18,000 ft) at an elevation of +85 degrees. The maximum effective rate of fire was only between 110 and 120 rounds per minute because of the frequent need to change the fifteen-round magazines. This was the standard Japanese light AA gun during World War II; it suffered from severe design shortcomings that rendered it a largely ineffective weapon. According to historian Mark Stille, the twin and triple mounts "lacked sufficient speed in train or elevation; the gun sights were unable to handle fast targets; the gun exhibited excessive vibration; the magazine was too small, and ... the gun produced excessive muzzle blast". The class was also provided with two twin mounts for the licence-built 13.2 mm Type 93 anti-aircraft machine guns, one on each side of the bridge. The maximum range of these guns was 6,500 m (7,100 yd), but the effective range against aircraft was only 1,000 m (1,100 yd). The cyclic rate was adjustable between 425 and 475 rounds per minute; the need to change 30-round magazines reduced the effective rate to 250 rounds per minute. The armament on Shinano was quite different from that of her sister vessels due to her conversion. As the carrier was designed for a support role, significant anti-aircraft weaponry was installed on the vessel: sixteen 12.7 cm (5.0 in) guns, one hundred forty-five 25 mm (0.98 in) anti-aircraft guns, and three hundred and thirty-six 5 in (13 cm) anti-aircraft rocket launchers in twelve twenty-eight barrel turrets. None of these guns were ever used against an enemy vessel or aircraft. ### Armor Designed to engage multiple enemy battleships simultaneously, the Yamatos were fitted with heavy armor plating described by naval historian Mark Stille as providing "an unparalleled degree of protection in surface combat". The main belt of armor along the side of the vessel was up to 410 mm (16 in) thick, with transverse bulkheads of the armoured citadel up to 355 mm (14.0 in) thick. A lower belt armor 200 millimetres (7.9 in) thick extending below the main belt was included in the ships as a response to gunnery experiments upon Tosa and the new Japanese Type 91 shell which could travel great lengths underwater. Furthermore, the top hull shape was very advanced, the peculiar sideways curving effectively maximizing armor protection and structural rigidity while optimizing weight. The armor on the main turrets surpassed even that of the main belt, with turret face plating 650 mm (26 in) thick. Armor plates in both the main belt and main turrets were made of Vickers Hardened steel, which was a face-hardened steel armor. Main armored deck—200 mm (7.9 in) thick—was composed of a nickel-chromium-molybdenum alloy. Ballistics tests at the proving ground at Kamegakubi demonstrated the deck alloy to be superior to the homogeneous Vickers plates by 10–15%. Additional plating was designed by manipulating the chromium and nickel composition of the alloy. Higher contents of nickel allowed the plate to be rolled and bent without developing fracture properties. For torpedo protection, a multiple bulkhead side protection system was used which consisted of several void spaces as well as the lower belt armor; the system has a depth of 5.1 m (17 ft) and was designed to withstand a 400 kg (880 lb) TNT charge. No torpedo defense system compartments were liquid loaded, despite the known benefits. This may have been the result of overestimating the effectiveness of the lower belt armor against torpedoes, an effort to decrease draft, and provision of additional counter-flooding spaces. The relatively new procedure of arc welding was used extensively throughout the ship, strengthening the durability of the armor plating. Through this technique, the lower-side belt armor was used to strengthen the hull structure of the entire vessel. In total, the vessels of the Yamato class contained 1,147 watertight compartments, of which 1,065 were beneath the armored deck. The ships were also designed with a very large amount of reserve buoyancy to mitigate the effects of flooding. However, despite the immense armor thickness, the protection scheme of the Yamato class still suffered from several major design flaws and shortcomings. Structural weakness existed near the bow of the vessels, where the armor plating was generally thinner, as demonstrated by Musashi's damage from a torpedo hit in 1943. The hull of the Shinano was subject to even greater structural weakness, being hastily constructed near the end of the war and having been equipped with incomplete armor and unsealed watertight compartments at the time of her sinking. The torpedo defense system performed substantially worse than designed. In particular, very poor jointing between the upper-belt and lower-belt armor created a rupture-prone seam just below the waterline. When combined with the relatively shallow system depth and the lack of liquid loading, this caused the class to be susceptible to torpedoes. Joint failures have been attributed to the considerable damage inflicted upon Yamato from a single torpedo impact in 1943, and to the sinking of Shinano from four hits in 1944. ### Propulsion The Yamato class was fitted with 12 Kampon boilers, which powered quadruple steam turbines, with an indicated horsepower of 147,948 (110,325 kW). These, in turn, drove four 6 m (20 ft) propellers. This powerplant enabled the Yamato class to achieve a top speed of 27 knots (50 km/h). With this speed, the Yamato class' ability to function alongside fast carriers was limited. In addition, the fuel consumption rate of both battleships was very high. As a result, neither battleship was used in combat during the Solomon Islands Campaign or the minor battles during the "island hopping" period of 1943 and early 1944. The propulsion system of Shinano was slightly improved, allowing the carrier to achieve a top speed of 28 kn (52 km/h). ## "Super Yamato"-class battleships Two battleships of an entirely new and larger design were planned as a part of the 1942 fleet replenishment program. Designated as Design A-150 and initially named Warship Number 178 and Warship Number 179, plans for the ships began soon after the design of the Yamato class was finished, probably in 1938–39. Everything was "essentially completed" sometime in 1941, but with war on the horizon, work on the battleships was halted to fill a need for additional warships, such as aircraft carriers and cruisers, to replace war losses of those vital ships. The Japanese loss in the Battle of Midway, where four carriers were sunk (out of ten, to date, in the entire navy), made it certain that work on the ships would never begin. In the third volume of their Battleships series, Axis and Neutral Battleships in World War II, the authors William H. Garzke and Robert O. Dulin asserted that these ships would have been the "most powerful battleships in history" because of their massive 51 cm (20 in) main battery and extensive anti-aircraft weaponry. Similar to the fate of papers relating to the Yamato class, most papers and all plans relating to the class were destroyed to prevent capture at the end of the war. It is known that the final design of the ships would have had an even greater firepower and size than the Yamato class—a main battery of six 51 cm (20 in) guns in three turrets and secondary dual purpose armament consisting of twenty-four 10 cm (3.9 in) dual mounted guns (similar to the Akizuki-class destroyers). The displacement was to be bigger than the Yamato's, and a side armor belt of 46 cm (18 in) was planned. ## Destruction of records On the eve of the Allies' occupation of Japan, special-service officers of the Imperial Japanese Navy destroyed virtually all records, drawings, and photographs of or relating to the Yamato-class battleships, leaving only fragmentary records of the design characteristics and other technical matters. The destruction of these documents was so efficient that until 1948 the only known images of Yamato and Musashi were those taken by United States Navy aircraft involved in the attacks on the two battleships. Although some additional photographs and information, from documents that were not destroyed, have come to light over the years, the loss of the majority of written records for the class has made extensive research into the Yamato class somewhat difficult. Because of the lack of written records, information on the class largely came from interviews of Japanese officers following Japan's surrender. However, in October 1942, based upon a special request from Adolf Hitler, German Admiral Paul Wenneker, attached to the German Naval Attache in Japan, was allowed to inspect a Yamato-class battleship while it was undergoing maintenance in a dockyard, at which time Admiral Wenneker cabled a detailed description of the warship to Berlin. On 22 August 1943, Erich Groner, a German naval historian, and author of the book Die Deutschen Kriegschiffe, 1815–1945, was shown the report while at the "Führer Headquarters", and was directed to make an "interpretation" and then prepare a "design sketch drawing" of the Japanese battleship. The material was preserved by Erich Groner's wife, Mrs. H. Groner, and submitted to publishers in the 1950s. ## Cultural significance From the time of their construction until the present day, Yamato and Musashi have carried a notable presence in Japanese culture, Yamato in particular. Upon completion, the battleships represented the epitome of Imperial Japanese naval engineering. In addition, the two ships, due to their size, speed, and power, visibly embodied Japan's determination and readiness to defend its interests against the western powers, especially the United States. Shigeru Fukudome, chief of the Operations Section of the Imperial Japanese Navy General Staff, described the two ships as "symbols of naval power that provided to officers and men alike a profound sense of confidence in their navy." Yamato, and especially the story of her sinking, has appeared often in Japanese popular culture, such as the anime Space Battleship Yamato and the 2005 film Yamato. The appearances in popular culture usually portray the ship's last mission as a brave, selfless, but futile, symbolic effort by the participating Japanese sailors to defend their homeland. One of the reasons that the warship may have such significance in Japanese culture is that the word "Yamato" was often used as a poetic name for Japan. Thus, the end of the battleship Yamato could serve as a metaphor for the end of the Japanese empire. ## See also - H-class battleship proposals (World War II German Kriegsmarine) - Montana-class battleship (U. S. Navy) - Yamato Museum - Japanese munition ship Kashino Purpose-built ship to carry main gun turrets and barrels of the class

Smoking on My Ex Pack

"Smoking on My Ex Pack" is a song by American singer-songwriter SZA from her second studio album, SOS (2022). The second of the album's three rap tracks, it is a boom bap song with a chipmunk soul production style, fusing hard-hitting drum beats with a sped-up sample of Webster Lewis's "Open Up Your Eyes" (1981). Before SOS, SZA had been known as an R&B artist who made "sad girl" music, a narrative she wanted to dispel because she viewed it as reductive. She found the R&B categorization in particular racially insensitive. As such, she wanted to experiment with "aggressive" hip hop music for SOS, leading to the conception of "Smoking on My Ex Pack". Its producer was Jay Versace, to whom SZA credited her first attempts at rap music. In the lyrics, SZA makes braggadocious comments about her sexual desirability and ridicules her past lovers in various ways, for instance insulting their penises. Her rapping originally lasted for over two minutes, but she had the song cut in half because she was unsure if the rapping was good enough. Critics in contemporary reviews felt otherwise and found the songwriting effectively harsh and the flow satisfactory, believing it showcased SZA's potential to become a proper rapper. Some deemed "Smoking on My Ex Pack" a highlight of SOS or of her discography. After the album's release, the song charted in the US and Canada, reached number 71 on the Billboard Global 200, and was included in the set list of the SOS Tour. ## Background SZA released her debut studio album, Ctrl, in 2017. Primarily an R&B album that deals with themes like heartbreak, it received widespread acclaim for SZA's vocals and the eclectic musical style, as well as the emotional impact and confessional nature of its songwriting. The album brought SZA to mainstream fame. Critics credit it with establishing her status as a major figure in contemporary pop and R&B music and pushing the boundaries of the R&B genre. Her next studio album was highly anticipated by fans and music critics alike, and she alluded to its completion as early as August 2019, during an interview with DJ Kerwin Frost. From April to May 2022, SZA told media outlets that she had recently finished the album in Hawaii and said that it was coming soon. Wanting to experiment with genres she had not yet incorporated in her discography, she envisioned it to be an amalgamation of disparate musical styles, or in her words, "a little bit of everything". While some tracks were balladic or soft, certain others had an "aggressive" sound. Apart from the "traditional" R&B that had been a staple of SZA's past works, the album also contained prominent elements of hip hop music. ## Music and production SZA wanted to include rap as a major element of her second studio album, SOS (2022). The media tended to categorize her as an R&B artist, and she staunchly disagreed with the description. In her view, she was forced into the label because she was a Black woman, to which she asserted: "I love making Black music, period. Something that is just full of energy. Black music doesn't have to just be R&B [...] Why can't we just be expansive and not reductive?" According to Punch, president of SZA's record label Top Dawg Entertainment, SZA recorded an "[extended play]'s worth" of strictly rap records during the making of SOS. The final product contains three rap tracks—one in the beginning, one in the end, and one in the middle. The rap track in the middle is "Smoking on My Ex Pack". Its composition incorporates chipmunk soul, a production style that uses looped, sped-up samples of soul music; in the case of "Smoking on My Ex Pack", the song sampled is Webster Lewis's "Open Up Your Eyes" (1981). "Smoking on My Ex Pack" is a boom bap song, built around hard-hitting drum beats. Jay Versace, a record producer and former comedian, produced "Smoking on My Ex Pack". Versace, whom SZA credits with getting her interested in creating "aggressive" rap music, created the beat sometime in 2022. It was three years after the two first met up for the album's recording sessions. Versace was inspired by the boom bap music he had heard growing up, much of which played on his car radio when he was driving with his father. For "Smoking on My Ex Pack", he wanted SZA's take on these childhood songs: "I literally made that for her [...] That was specifically for her." Versace chose to sample "Open Up Your Eyes" because of his interest in love ballads from the latter half of the 20th century, citing the "really crazy instrumentation in their music". He particularly liked the song's horns and vocals, so he created the sample in Ableton and formed a beat around it. Once he finished, he sent the audio file to SZA, who started writing the lyrics almost immediately. About the production, she texted him: "Your beats are so easy to write to. Why am I already writing lyrics right now?" ## Lyrics SZA said that while creating SOS, she learned that sometimes she could act like a villainous "bitch" and she had to come to terms with this perception of herself. According to her, many songs on the album centered around themes of revenge and "being pissed" to a degree that she had never felt before. She described how these feelings manifested in its tracks: "It is in the way I say no [...] It's in the fucked up things that I don't apologize for." Versace encouraged her to "talk her shit" on "Smoking on My Ex Pack", the lyrics to which she wrote to dispel a narrative that she only made "sad girl music". Its initial version was over two minutes long, but SZA scrapped the song's first half because she did not feel confident enough in her rapping skills. The released version of "Smoking on My Ex Pack" is 1 minute and 23 seconds long. Spin compared its lyrics to blind items, or articles that do not disclose the identity of their subject and are frequently gossip pieces. Braggadocio is also a major element of the songwriting. In the song's verse, SZA communicates her desirability to men and announces "them hoe accusations weak" and "them bitch accusations true". After revealing how she embodies those traits by saying she presents an unfriendly attitude and has sex with men she calls heart throbs, she finds various ways to insult her past lovers. SZA raps about having "your favorite rapper" blocked on social media, saying she heard a rumor that his "dick was wack". Certain athletes, who try to flirt in her messages and incessantly ask she text them back but to no avail, are other subjects whom she targets. Her lesser side, she reasons, loves to taunt people, explaining her refusal to make exceptions for any of the men she does not acknowledge. She rejects an ex-boyfriend seeking to rekindle their relationship, through the lines "he screamin', 'Gеt back together', I'm screamin', 'Back of thе bus, trick!'" The lyrics contain a comparison between SZA's former romantic partners and Sideshow Bob, a character from The Simpsons who is a clown and a criminal: > > Got you talkin' crazy Abracadabra, you niggas Sideshow I'm Bobbin' like Psycho ## Release During a Billboard cover story published in November 2022, SZA revealed that the album's release date was scheduled for sometime during the following month. She posted the album's track list on Twitter on December 5, and SOS was released four days later. Out of 23 songs, "Smoking on My Ex Pack" appears as the eleventh track. The song charted in Canada, the United States and its component Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs, and the Billboard Global 200 upon the album's release. In April 2023, it was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America. One month after the album's release, American rapper Latto performed a freestyle rap over the beat of "Smoking on My Ex Pack", to which SZA reacted positively. On Instagram, she wrote, "OH ITS UPPPPPP [sic]", paired with a heart emoji. The song had its live performance debut during the SOS Tour, performed while SZA went backstage for an outfit change, which the stage screen captured. ## Critical reception Critics were positive about SZA's experimenting with rap on "Smoking on My Ex Pack", lauding it for showcasing her more confident side. They welcomed its lyrics for marking a departure from her other works, which primarily focused on angst and vulnerability, and its placement between tracks that, by contrast, focused on SZA's insecurities about her relationships. Much of the praise focused on the harshness and unfiltered nature of her songwriting. They found it clever, funny, or emotionally impactful. Shaad D'Souza of The Guardian wrote: the [SOS] lyrics that stick out to me aren't the deeply sad ones that seem to be the basis for a lot of 2am tweets and TikTok captions, but the ones that call bullshit on ideas that SZA should have to be respectable or 'real'." Other music journalists wrote that "Smoking on My Ex Pack" best exemplified the album's lyrical motif of begrudging disapproval towards SZA's ex-partners and was the album's "most stank-face-inducing" track. Another point of commentary was SZA's flow and delivery, attributes that led many critics to think her first attempts at rap music demonstrated her potential to become a good rapper. In the words of The Sydney Morning Herald's Giselle Au-Nhien Nguyen: "she takes to rapping for the first time and she sounds like a natural, with impeccable flow and a healthy dose of venom." For this reason, Steffanee Wang of Nylon and Precious Fondren of HipHopDX called "Smoking on My Ex Pack" a highlight of SOS—Fondren recommended that readers play it on repeat. Some critics liked how the harsh rapping in "Smoking on My Ex Pack" juxtaposed the soft sound of the album tracks that come before it. Paul Attard, Slant Magazine writer, argued that this provided the album's otherwise weak middle section some much-needed catharsis. "Smoking on My Ex Pack", for critics Jason P. Frank of Vulture and Robyn Mowatt of Okayplayer, was a highlight of SZA's discography. Encouraging SZA to make more lyrically similar songs, Frank wrote: "in the context of her career, it's also a flex; her best is not her limit — it's the floor." In Complex, Ecleen Luzmila Caraballo listed the "Smoking on My Ex Pack" rap verse as one of the best of 2022 and wrote that SZA's usage of wordplay further strengthened her lyrics. She and Frank, however, took issue with the song's length, feeling "Smoking on My Ex Pack" did not reach its full potential due to its shortness. ## Credits Adapted from the liner notes of SOS Recording and management - Engineered at Westlake Studio A (Los Angeles, California) - Mixed at The Gift Shop (Los Angeles) - Mastered at Becker Mastering (Pasadena, California) - Contains a sample of "Open Up Your Eyes" as performed by Webster Lewis, written by Skip Scarborough and Raina Taylor, published by Warner Chappell Music, Inc. (BMI) and Raina Bundy (Raina Bundy Publishing Designee) (BMI), used courtesy of Sony Music Entertainment. Personnel - Solána Rowe (SZA) vocals, songwriting - Jahlil Gunter (Jay Versace) songwriting, production - Skip Scarborough songwriting - Raina Taylor songwriting - Dylan Neustadter engineering - Rob Bisel engineering - Josh Deguzman engineering (for mix) - Syd Tagle assistant engineering - Jon Castelli mixing - Dale Becker mastering - Katie Harvey assistant mastering - Noah McCorkle assistant mastering ## Charts ## Certification

Luc Bourdon

Canadian ice hockey player (1987–2008)

Luc Bourdon (February 16, 1987 – May 29, 2008) was a Canadian professional ice hockey defenceman who played for the Vancouver Canucks of the National Hockey League from 2006 until 2008. After overcoming childhood arthritis, he was selected third overall in the 2003 Quebec Major Junior Hockey League (QMJHL) draft and played for the Val-d'Or Foreurs, Moncton Wildcats, and Cape Breton Screaming Eagles, spending four seasons in the QMJHL. The Canucks drafted Bourdon with their first selection, 10th overall, in the 2005 NHL Entry Draft, and he split his professional career with the Canucks and their American Hockey League affiliate, the Manitoba Moose. Noted as a strong defenceman who could contribute on offence, Bourdon represented Canada in three international tournaments, winning two gold medals at the IIHF World Junior Championship and a silver medal at the IIHF World U18 Championship. Bourdon died at the age of 21 near his hometown of Shippagan, New Brunswick, when his motorcycle collided with a tractor trailer. ## Early life Born on February 16, 1987, Bourdon was an only child raised by his mother, Suzanne Boucher, in the small French-speaking community of Shippagan, New Brunswick. When he was nine, he was diagnosed with juvenile arthritis and needed to use a wheelchair, which he later overcame. As a teenager, he attended Marie-Esther Secondary, where he was a straight-A student. Growing up in a fishing town, he worked summers on his uncle's crab fishing boat. As a youth, Bourdon played in the 1999, 2000 and 2001 Quebec International Pee-Wee Hockey Tournaments with the Peninsule Acadien Lynx minor ice hockey team. He later played with the Miramichi Rivermen minor teams from ages 15–16. After being the third overall choice in the 2003 QMJHL draft, Bourdon left home when he was 16, returning in the off-season to live with his mother. Upon turning professional and signing his first contract, he anonymously donated C\$10,000 to the local minor hockey association for families who could not afford equipment. His donation was posthumously revealed by his former bantam hockey coach, Gilles Cormier, who managed the local arena at the time of Bourdon's death. ## Playing career Bourdon joined the Val-d'Or Foreurs for the 2003–04 season, registering eight points in 64 regular season games and scoring one goal in seven playoff games. He appeared in all 70 games with the Foreurs in 2004–05, scoring 13 goals and 19 assists, and participated in the CHL Top Prospects Game, an exhibition for draft-eligible players. In June 2005, Bourdon was the tenth pick overall, selected by the Vancouver Canucks, at the 2005 NHL Entry Draft. Ranked sixth overall for North American skaters coming into the draft, Bourdon was noted as a physical two-way defenceman with significant offensive skills and a strong shot, as well as an excellent skater. He was the second Shippagan-born hockey player to be drafted in the NHL, after goaltender Yanick Degrace was drafted by the Philadelphia Flyers in 1991. Invited to the Canucks training camp, Bourdon almost made the team as an 18-year-old, but instead was returned to the QMJHL for further development. He began the 2005–06 season with the Foreurs, registering 20 points in 20 games, before being traded to the Moncton Wildcats, who were hosting the 2006 Memorial Cup. In exchange for Bourdon, the Wildcats sent Ian Mathieu-Girard, Jean-Sébastien Adam, a fourth-round pick, and a first-round selection in 2008 to Val-d'Or. Shortly after the trade, Bourdon injured his ankle, suffering a fractured fibula, high and low sprains, and a second-degree ligament tear. Although he returned to join Moncton in the playoffs, doctors told him that it would take two years to fully recover. He managed a full recovery after one year, but his turning ability and backwards skating sometimes lagged. Competing in the Memorial Cup, he reached the Canadian Hockey League (CHL) final with the Wildcats, who lost 6–2 to the Quebec Remparts. After signing a three-year contract, worth \$850,000 per year with the Canucks on May 4, 2006, Bourdon earned a spot on the team's 2006–07 opening roster. He played his first NHL game on October 10, 2006 against the Minnesota Wild, but after playing nine games and scoring no points, he was sent again to the QMJHL for further development. On January 8, 2007, Bourdon was again traded in the QMJHL, with Moncton sending him to the Cape Breton Screaming Eagles in exchange for Mark Barberio and a first round selection in the 2007 QMJHL draft. As a Screaming Eagle, Bourdon lost in the QMJHL semi-final against his former team, Val-d'Or. He finished the 2006–07 QMJHL season with 20 points in 36 games. After his QMJHL season ended, the Canucks sent Bourdon to play five games for the Manitoba Moose, who were in the middle of the AHL playoffs. He was held pointless through five AHL playoff games. Including his participation in the 2007 World Junior Championships, Bourdon played for five different teams throughout the 2006–07 season. Initially failing to make the Canucks starting roster out of training camp, Bourdon began the 2007–08 season with the Manitoba Moose; however, because of a series of injuries among the Canucks' defencemen throughout the season, Bourdon was called up on several occasions. Bourdon scored his first goal on November 16, 2007, against goaltender Niklas Bäckström in a 6–2 win over the Minnesota Wild. Bourdon finished the season on the Canucks roster, and was sent back to the Manitoba Moose for the AHL playoffs, playing in six playoff games for the Moose. He appeared in 27 games for the Canucks over the season, scoring one more goal, as well as scoring 14 points during 41 games with the Moose. As a young and promising defenceman, Bourdon was regularly mentioned in rumours of trades for more offence at the forward positions. Most significantly, he was speculated to be part of a package in exchange for Tampa Bay Lightning forward Brad Richards. Although Bourdon had a powerful shot, he did not play defence responsibly enough to earn a regular spot on the roster. He began to show signs of improvement and maturity as the Canucks used him more in the 2007–08 season. ## International play Bourdon made his international debut representing Team Canada in the 2005 World Under-18 Championships, held in the Czech Republic, earning one assist in a silver-medal effort. In the 2006 World Junior Ice Hockey Championships in British Columbia, Bourdon competed in his first of two consecutive World Junior Championships. He was named player of the game in round-robin play after a scoring a goal and an assist in a 4–0 win against Norway. He finished the tournament leading all defencemen in scoring with six points in six games and was named to the tournament's all-star team. Upon winning gold, Bourdon returned to Shippagan and showcased his medal at the local arena to crowds of supporters. At the 2007 World Junior Championships in Leksand and Mora, Sweden, Bourdon was awarded a second player of the game distinction after the first round-robin contest against Sweden, in which he scored the game-winning goal in a 2–0 victory. Later in the tournament, Bourdon scored the game-tying goal in the third period of a 2–1 shootout win over the United States in the semi-final. In total, Bourdon picked up two goals and two assists in six games, helping Canada to a second straight gold medal. ## Death Bourdon was killed instantly in a head-on motorcycle collision in Lamèque, New Brunswick, near his hometown of Shippagan on May 29, 2008, when he hit a tractor-trailer after losing control of his Suzuki GSX-R1000 and crossing the centre line. Environment Canada showed winds gusting to more than 50 km/h (31 mph) in the area at the time of the accident. The RCMP stated that Bourdon's inexperience with motorcycles may have been a factor in the crash. Bourdon's agent, Kent Hughes, stated that he never knew about his client's new hobby (motorcycles). "I had no idea," he explained to CKNW in Vancouver. "Another client of ours, Kris Letang, said Luc let him know he was riding his dad's motorcycle with some friends a week or two ago. I have since been told—though I don't know—that he actually bought a motorcycle two days ago". Maryse Bourdon, Luc's stepmother, said he had purchased the motorcycle about three weeks before. Letang, Bourdon's close friend and former roommate from junior hockey, planned to buy a motorcycle after Bourdon told him about his; because of the crash, he decided against it. The American Hockey League, where Bourdon had played for the Manitoba Moose, observed a moment of silence in Bourdon's honour prior to game one of the Calder Cup Finals between the Chicago Wolves and the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins just hours after the accident, and on May 31, the Pittsburgh Penguins and Detroit Red Wings observed a moment of silence before game four of the 2008 Stanley Cup Finals. During the 2008 NHL Draft, the Canucks' management wore guitar pins to remember Bourdon, because he was an avid guitarist. At the Canucks' 2008–09 NHL season home opener against the Calgary Flames, the Canucks honoured Bourdon with a brief pre-game ceremony. Bourdon's family was presented with his last game-worn jersey, given by the fan who won the jersey during an annual charity event the previous season. Afterwards, Tom Cochrane and Red Rider performed "Big League" during the video tribute. Commemorative pins were handed out to fans attending the game and were worn throughout the season by General Motors Place hosts. The Canucks also wore "LB" on their helmets that season in memory of Bourdon. At General Motors Place, the Luc Bourdon Wall of Dreams was established to commemorate Bourdon. The Manitoba Moose honoured Bourdon with a video tribute before their 2008–09 home opener on October 10, 2008. Moose players all wore \#4 Bourdon jerseys during the warmup, and "#4 LB" patches were worn on the jerseys of players all season. A senior men's ice hockey team in New Brunswick, the Lameque/Shippagan Pêcheurs, also honoured him, wearing a "28 Bourdon" patch on their jerseys over the course of the 2008–09 season. During the 2009 World Junior Ice Hockey Championships, Team Canada honoured Bourdon by wearing LB stickers in their opening game. In addition, no Canadian player wore the jersey number 6, the number Bourdon wore with the national team, throughout the tournament. In the 2008–09 season, the QMJHL Moncton Wildcats hockey club, where Bourdon had played during the 2006 season, paid tribute by having Acadian singer Roland Gauvin, from the musical group 1755, play "Le monde a bien changé" along with a video tribute. The franchise presented the Bourdon family with Bourdon's Moncton Wildcats Jersey as well as flowers. The team wore an "LB" patch on their uniforms for that season. ## Career statistics ### Regular season and playoffs ### International ## See also - List of ice hockey players who died during their playing careers

Murder of Leigh Leigh

1989 murder in New South Wales, Australia

The murder of Leigh Leigh, born Leigh Rennea Mears, occurred on 3 November 1989 while she was attending a 16-year-old boy's birthday party at Stockton Beach, New South Wales, on the east coast of Australia. The 14-year-old girl from Fern Bay was assaulted by a group of boys after she returned distressed from a sexual encounter on the beach that a reviewing judge later called non-consensual. After being kicked and spat on by the group, Leigh left the party. Her naked body was found in the sand dunes nearby the following morning, with severe genital damage and a crushed skull. Matthew Grant Webster, an 18-year-old who acted as a bouncer at the event, pleaded guilty to her murder and was sentenced to 20 years in prison with a 14-year non-parole period. He was released on parole in June 2004, after serving 141⁄2 years. Guy Charles Wilson, the other bouncer and only other person aged over 18 at the party, pleaded guilty to assault; a third male (aged 15) pleaded guilty to having sex with a minor. The investigation of Leigh's murder proved controversial, however, as several people who admitted to various crimes, including assaulting Leigh, were never charged; nor was anyone ever charged with her sexual assault. Webster's confession did not match the forensic evidence. The murder investigation was reviewed by the New South Wales Crime Commission in 1996, and by the Police Integrity Commission in 1998, with the latter recommending the dismissal of the detective in charge of the investigation. Leigh's murder received considerable attention in the media. Initially focusing on her sexual assault and murder, media attention later concentrated more on the lack of parental supervision and the drugs and alcohol at the party, and on Leigh's sexuality. The media coverage of the murder has been cited as an example of blaming the victim. Leigh's murder inspired a theatrical play entitled A Property of the Clan, which was later revised and renamed Blackrock, as well as a feature film of the same name. ## Background Leigh Leigh, born Leigh Rennea Mears on 24 July 1975, was the daughter of Robyn Lynne Maunsell and Robert William Mears. Leigh's grandmother said that Leigh lived with her between the ages of about four and seven, though she did not disclose reasons for this living arrangement. Leigh's parents divorced when she was about seven years old. She moved back to live with her mother after her sister Jessie was born in 1983; her surname was subsequently changed to Leigh as this was the surname of her sister's father. At the time of her death she lived with her sister, mother and stepfather Brad Shearman on Fullerton Road, Fern Bay, having moved there nine months earlier from a housing commission flat near the Stockton ferry terminal. Leigh was a Year Eight student at Newcastle High School who enjoyed school, according to her grandmother. She had attended three primary schools successively: St Patrick's in Swansea, Hamilton North Public School, and St Peter's in Stockton. Leigh spent most of her weekends and school holidays with her grandmother at her house in Kilaben Bay. Her cousin and best friend Tracey stated she and Leigh enjoyed going to the cinema together, as well as roller-skating and "just hanging about". According to her aunt, Leigh had wanted to be a veterinarian. Both Leigh's mother and her grandmother described her as a "typical teenager". ## Night of the murder Newcastle High School student Jason Robertson's 16th birthday party was held on 3 November 1989 at the North Stockton Surf Club, a formerly abandoned building which the Stockton Lions Club had taken over four years prior, leasing it for various functions. Police estimated that about 60 people had attended the party, though figures as high as 100 were reported in the media. Most of the attendees were Year Ten students from Newcastle High School, though two 10-year-olds were seen at the party at one point. Many were drinking alcohol and smoking marijuana, and some were having sex. Fourteen-year-old Leigh had a written invitation to attend the party and permission from her mother to stay there until 11 pm; Leigh's mother had been assured that responsible adults would be present at the party. Matthew Webster and Guy Wilson, who acted as bouncers, were the only people aged over 18 at the party. Leigh was said to be very excited, as it was the first teenage party she had attended. According to police witness reports, Leigh was one of several under-age girls who were invited to the party for the purpose of getting them intoxicated and having sex with them. According to a police report, Webster approached another person at the party and said, "Hey dude, we're going to get Leigh pissed and all go through her." Leigh was also one of several under-age people for whom an adult purchased alcohol before the party; she and her friend were given a bottle of Jim Beam whiskey, which they then mixed with Coca-Cola. She was reported to have gotten heavily intoxicated very quickly. A 15-year-old boy, who for legal reasons could not be named and was referred to in official documentation as 'NC1', is quoted to have said, "I'm going to go and fuck [Leigh]." Shortly afterwards Leigh went to the beach with NC1; witnesses stated Leigh was so intoxicated that he "had to almost carry her". When Leigh returned from the beach, she was bleeding between her legs, distressed, crying and seeking assistance. Some people at the party reported trying to console Leigh and find out what had happened to her; Leigh "asserted she had been raped", replying "[NC1] fucked me" and "I hate him". After witnessing Leigh's complaints, Webster is quoted as saying to a group of boys "she's a bit of a slut and why don't all of us have a go". Nineteen-year-old Guy Wilson then approached Leigh, placed his arm around her and asked her for sex. Wilson pushed Leigh to the ground when she refused, and was joined by Webster and around ten other boys who surrounded Leigh. They yelled abuse, kicked her, poured beer on her and spat both beer and saliva on her. Several people witnessed the assault, yet nobody came to help her or attempted to contact the police, her parents or other adults. The assaults continued for approximately five minutes; Leigh stood up when they stopped and staggered away before picking up an empty beer bottle and throwing it at the group of boys, missing them. Guy Wilson threw a beer bottle back at her as she left, which either hit her in the leg or missed, according to different witness accounts. The group of boys followed her inside the crowded clubhouse where she sought refuge, and similar assaults continued. Leigh was seen leaving the club and walking towards the beach at about 10:30pm. Leigh's stepfather arrived at the party to pick her up at 10:50pm. He and several of the party-goers searched for Leigh, but she could not be found. After repeated search attempts, Leigh's mother and stepfather decided to wait for her to return home, assuming she had gone to a friend's house for the night. Leigh's stepfather recommenced the search for Leigh the following morning, aided by several youths from the party. Her body was found in the sand dunes about 90 metres (300 ft) north of the surf club. Leigh's invitation to attend the party was still in her pocket. Leigh was found naked except for her socks and shoes, with her knickers and shorts around her right ankle. She was on her back with her legs apart. Her bra, which had its securing hook bent, was found nearby, as was her shirt and jumper, which were intertwined, inside out and stained with liquor. Saltbushes nearby had been flattened. According to the police forensics report, a blood-stained rock weighing 5.6 kg (12 lb) was found next to her, and blood stains were found up to 2.8 metres (9.2 ft) from her body. ### Postmortem The postmortem report stated Leigh's cause of death to be a fractured skull and injury to the brain. Leigh had been struck with great force several times, including at least three times in the head. The postmortem also found that Leigh had asphyxial haemorrhages, and multiple injuries to the jaw, ribs, liver and right kidney. Leigh had neck fingertip pressure injuries, indicating she had been choked before she died, though this was not the cause of death. Leigh's blood alcohol reading was 0.128, a level which, according to the University of Notre Dame, would have caused "significant impairment of motor coordination and loss of good judgment". There was no doubt that Leigh was violently sexually assaulted before she was murdered, and the evidence indicated that prior to the night of her murder she had not had sexual intercourse. Leigh had deep bruising to the left wall of her vagina, extensive bruising to her hymen and two tears, one 20 millimetres (0.79 in) long, to her vulva. An analysis of the postmortem by Dr Johan Duflou, deputy director of the New South Wales Institute of Forensic Medicine, stated that an inflexible object, possibly a beer bottle, was likely to have caused most of her genital injuries. No semen was found in her body. ## Investigation Twenty detectives, led by Detective Sergeant Lance Chaffey, were assigned to the case though the squad was reduced to fewer than ten members several weeks later. Crime reporter Mark Riley wrote that police were going through the "exhaustive process" of cross-checking the stories of several dozen teenagers; by 5 November police had interviewed around 40 teenagers, stating they expected to interview around 20 more. The three suspects who emerged early in the investigation were Matthew Webster, Guy Wilson and NC1. In interviews on 5 November, NC1 admitted to having sex with Leigh, but said it was consensual. Wilson initially denied any wrongdoing, though in a later interview he admitted to pushing Leigh, pouring beer over her, spitting on her and throwing an empty beer bottle at her. Webster admitted to pouring beer on Leigh, but denied sexually assaulting or killing her. He originally told police he went to a pub after the party, but in an interview eight days later changed his story to state that he had gone for a walk. Webster also stated that two 14-year-old girls had approached him and NC1 at the party, asking for some "hash", and that the two of them had obtained a small bag of resin and exchanged it with the girls for \$20. Blood samples were taken from two suspects; The Newcastle Herald reported this as probably the first use of DNA tests in a Hunter Valley murder investigation. Clothing samples were also taken from several suspects. In her book Who Killed Leigh Leigh?, Kerry Carrington, a criminologist and prominent researcher of the murder, described the investigation as being "fuelled by mutual suspicion and by rumour and counter-rumour". People who attended the party complained of living in fear of being the next rumoured killer; Matthew Webster, Jason Robertson and two other boys appeared on the front page of The Newcastle Herald on 8 November with such complaints. For a time the most popular rumour was that Leigh had been murdered by her stepfather, and that he had been having sex with her for months. In November 1990 Detective Chaffey told journalist Mark Riley that police had heard this rumour so many times that they considered Shearman to be a suspect. Riley's article stated that the community of Stockton harboured suspicions about Shearman right until Webster was charged with murder. On 16 November Webster pleaded guilty to assaulting Leigh and to supplying cannabis resin to a minor. He was released on bail, with his sentencing scheduled for 21 February 1990. On 19 January Wilson pleaded guilty to assaulting Leigh; he was released on bail pending sentencing. On 28 January, upon being taunted by four boys regarding the murder, Webster assaulted one of them. On 31 January, Brad Shearman approached Guy Wilson in public, and punched him in the head three times after Wilson allegedly told him he would get Leigh's younger sister next. Shearman was charged and pleaded guilty to assault. While he was still on bail on 16 February 1990, during his third interview with police, Webster admitted to killing Leigh. In the interview transcript, Webster initially denied killing Leigh, then "without being asked a further question" he stated, "Well, I did it. But I just can't believe ... it happened. It's just unbelievable." Webster went on to state that he saw Leigh while he was looking for his stash of beers. According to Webster, they walked to the saltbushes together, where he pulled off her clothes and stuck a finger in her vagina. Webster stated he lost his temper when Leigh rebuffed him, choking her for a while before killing her with a rock, specifically saying he killed Leigh because he "thought she would squeal on [him] for trying to rape her". After spending the weekend in a police cell, Webster appeared in court on 19 February where he was refused bail. On 21 March, while in custody, Webster was convicted and fined \$250 for offensive behaviour in the 28 January assault. On 17 July Shearman was given a 12-month good behaviour bond for the 31 January assault; the judge did not record a conviction, taking into consideration that he had been provoked into attacking Wilson. ## Convictions NC1 was the first to be sentenced, on 28 February 1990, after pleading guilty to having sex with someone under the age of consent. He was given six months' custody in a detention centre, the maximum possible sentence for a youth charged with that offence. Kerry Carrington and Andrew Johnson, writing in The Australian Feminist Law Journal, said it was likely that prosecutors did not charge NC1 with rape, as a conviction on such a charge would have been unlikely due to a lack of evidence; Leigh's complaints about the incident as reported by witnesses were hearsay and therefore inadmissible in court. On 11 May the sentence was reduced on appeal to 100 hours' community service. In reducing his sentence the judge stated the evidence obliged him to find that the sex was consensual, and that it was better for NC1 to do something positive for the community rather than possibly being led further astray in custody. A number of sources state the judge reached the conclusion that the sex had been consensual because of the inadequate way the evidence was presented to the court. On 19 March 1990 Wilson was sentenced to six months' imprisonment for assaulting Leigh. Charges were initially laid against Webster for sexual assault, though by the time the case went to trial they had been dropped without public explanation. Hillary Byrne-Armstrong, writing in The Australian Feminist Law Journal, stated it was likely that Webster was offered a plea bargain that would drop the lesser charges in exchange for his guilty plea for murder. Webster pleaded guilty to Leigh's murder on 24 October 1990. The guilty plea meant that no witnesses were called for the trial; Detective Chaffey instead read a list of facts to the court. Justice James Roland Wood sentenced Webster to a minimum of 14 years in prison, with an additional six years during which he would be eligible for parole, saying that a life sentence was inappropriate in view of Webster's potential to be rehabilitated. Wood found that Webster's motivation for killing Leigh was his fear she would report his sexual assault. Five Stockton citizens volunteered to give character evidence at his trial, describing the 120 kg (265 lb) teenager as a quiet "gentle giant" from a good family. Others expressed amazement at this description of Webster, who was also known as "fat Matt, the thug of Stockton". Webster served his sentence at Parklea Correctional Centre. While acknowledging that plea bargains such as the one Webster was probably offered are common and help avoid expensive and time-consuming trials, Byrne-Armstrong stated that accepting Webster's confession helped create a legal fiction that he unquestionably acted alone in both sexually assaulting and murdering Leigh. The actual level of sexual violence that Leigh sustained was accordingly, she said, "all but erased" from the sentencing, and it appeared Justice Wood had only been given the limited information from the post-mortem report that would have corroborated Webster's confession. Webster was the first person in New South Wales to be sentenced under the "truth in sentencing" legislation, which meant he could not be released under any circumstances before the end of his 14-year non-parole period; under the previous legislation a person of Webster's age would probably have been released after only nine years. Webster appealed the length of his prison term to the New South Wales Court of Criminal Appeal, where Justices Gleeson, Lee and Allen dismissed his appeal in July 1992. In their view the crime was "so gross that nothing less of a very severe sentence would accord with the general moral sense of the community". Webster's first application for parole in February 2004 was denied as he had not yet undertaken work release. After completing a few months of this program, Webster was released on parole on 10 June 2004 after serving 141⁄2 years. The conditions of his parole specified that he would only be allowed to visit Newcastle or Stockton with permission from his probation and parole officer. Webster's parole was discussed in the Parliament of New South Wales, with Minister John Hatzistergos responding to queries and concluding that the option to supervise Webster's re-integration into society was better than the alternative of releasing him without supervision at the end of his sentence. Following his release, Leigh's family stated they harboured "no ill thoughts" towards Webster and wished him well in the "re-establishment of his life". Webster's parole was revoked in November 2004 after he was arrested for assault; he pleaded not guilty, citing self-defence. He was released from prison in May 2005 after the charges were dropped due to insufficient evidence. ## Media coverage Leigh's death received widespread and ongoing coverage in both the Sydney and Newcastle media, possibly due to a fascination with her reduplicated name. Between 1989 and 1994, The Newcastle Herald ran at least 39 stories on Leigh, 23 of them featured on the front page. At least ten articles on the case were published in The Sydney Morning Herald during the same period. Both the extended media coverage and the theatrical plays and film the murder inspired have led to it being termed a "celebrity crime", and to Leigh being referred to as a "celebrity victim". In 1996 Psychologist Roger Peters attributed the media fascination to the sense of community in Stockton, and due to the crimes being committed by people not considered to be typical criminals, stating "I think one of the main things is that people can identify with people involved. Had it of been a criminal from outside who stalked her and killed I think it would be long forgotten." Various sources considered the media coverage prior to Webster's arrest to be focused on finding something to blame other than her murderer. After Webster's arrest the media continued to search for any outside agency that might have been responsible for the event. From the beginning, media reports highlighted the lack of parental supervision at the party, and in sentencing Webster, Justice Wood made comments criticising the lack of parental supervision. Researchers Jonathan Morrow and Mehera San Roque in the Sydney Law Review wrote that Wood's comments "might as well have been quoted from the very newspapers that were covering the crime"; his comments, in turn, were heavily reported in the media. Webster's sentencing also received considerable media coverage, possibly due to his youth and the length of his sentence, as well as curiosity about the newly established "truth-in-sentencing" principles. His appeal regarding the length of his sentence received similar coverage. According to observations by Kerry Carrington and Andrew Johnson, media references to Leigh being sexually assaulted "almost completely disappeared" in less than a year, as did the references to her being assaulted by the group of boys. They stated that the fact that NC1 was not charged with raping Leigh had created the legal fiction that his sex with her was consensual. The "unsustainable assumption" that Leigh consented to sex was the turning point in her being blamed for her own assault and murder on the grounds that, because she was supposedly sexually promiscuous, Leigh had somehow "asked for [the attack]". In addition to sexual promiscuity and the lack of parental supervision, Carrington states that media attention also shifted to the presence of drugs and alcohol at the party; Morrow and San Roque credit media attention to these factors as taking attention away from the abuse that Leigh suffered before she died. The epithet slut in a pretrial psychological report also became a topic of focus for the media: > Webster attacked Leigh, not so much because she would not let him have sex with her but because she became the living proof that even a slut, a property of the clan, thought he was not good enough to have sex with. Carrington accused the media of completely missing the point that the report was not stating the views of the psychiatrist, rather it was the psychiatrist's interpretation of Webster's feelings. She also considered Mark Riley's extended coverage of the case, which she described at one point as "journalistic voyeurism", to be the most profound case of shifting the blame from the assailants to Leigh herself. One of Riley's articles in particular was considered by her to have suggested that Leigh's discussions with her mother about sex and Leigh's looks and physical development had contributed to her murder. Morrow and San Roque also criticised Riley's article, stating it "disturbingly ... married parental blame with the well-documented notion that the rape victim herself is presumably to blame for her attack". Several writers, including Eva Cox and Adele Horin, rejected the concept that Leigh was in any way responsible for her sexual assault and murder. The media coverage of the murder has been considered by multiple sources to be part of a wider culture of victim blaming. ## Criticism of police Police were criticised over their handling of the investigation, including their failure to identify perpetrators in a timely manner. It took police over three months to press charges against Webster even though they had established within ten days that he had lied about his whereabouts, had publicly stated his intention to rape Leigh, and had the opportunity to commit the crime. Criticism was also raised regarding the relatively few convictions. Despite several people's admissions to police that they physically attacked Leigh at the party, only Wilson was charged with assault, and the adult who admitted to supplying her with alcohol prior to the party was never charged. NC1 admitted to having sex with another under-age girl at the party, though he was not charged with that offence. With the exception of the charges against Webster that were dropped without explanation, nobody was ever charged with raping or sexually assaulting Leigh in spite of the presence of graphic forensic evidence of genital injuries. During a report on Radio National, Leigh's mother said that when she asked Detective Chaffey why others were not being charged, he asked her if she knew "how much it costs to run an investigation". ### Forensic testing Police took blood and clothing samples from suspects, including the shirt Wilson was wearing on the night of the murder, which he admitted had a bloodstain on it, but it is not known whether any DNA tests were carried out. Kerry Carrington speculated that the reports of evidence being sent for testing may have been a fabrication to obtain a confession. Leigh's grandmother told Carrington that she called Scotland Yard to enquire about the results, as a detective on the case had informed Leigh's family that this was where the suspects' clothing had been sent. Scotland Yard informed her that they had not received anything from Australia for forensic testing in the relevant timespan. The only record of forensic testing that has been uncovered is an acknowledgement by a forensic biologist of four items being received for testing on 6 November 1989: three items of Leigh's clothing, and the blood-stained rock found near her body. The acknowledgement, however, indicates that other items were not sent for testing. Results from the supposed tests were never made available, nor was information on why the other items were not sent. According to Carrington, four years after the investigation a detective involved in the case told her that none of the samples taken from suspects were tested. Samples taken from Webster were not used in his prosecution. Professor Harry Boettcher, a forensic scientist, said that if police did not actually test the samples it would be "professional negligence – indefensible". In 2009 a solicitor who acted on behalf of Leigh's family stated that given the advances in DNA testing technology, it was time to re-examine the evidence. ### Possibility of accomplices Several factors have led to speculation that Webster was not alone when he killed Leigh. According to the transcript of Webster's confession, he was never asked if he acted alone. Carrington accused police of accepting Webster's confession at face value, ignoring both forensic and witness evidence. Her investigations highlighted several discrepancies in Webster's confession, and in the forensic evidence. For example, Webster stated in his confession that he had choked Leigh with his left hand as he knelt beside her although, according to the autopsy report, the bruises on Leigh's neck were consistent with being choked with a right hand. Carrington also questioned Webster's statement that he walked along lit streets to the other side of the Stockton peninsula to wash his bloodstained hands, when he could have washed his hands in total darkness at the beach less than 100 metres (330 ft) away. She also queried his claim that he had blood on his hands but none on his clothes, despite Leigh having been struck so hard blood was splattered 2.8 metres one way from her body and 1.3 metres the other way. Webster stated that he walked to the beach with Leigh, though according to police reports four witnesses said she walked to the beach alone; two witnesses stated they saw Webster and Wilson leave the surf club together. Neither NC1 nor Wilson had a reliable alibi for their whereabouts at the time of the murder; Wilson told police he was alone on the beach when Leigh walked past him as she left the club, minutes before she was murdered. Webster's statement that he only penetrated Leigh with his finger has been considered by various sources to be inconsistent with the autopsy findings of genital trauma, and the trauma is also inconsistent with NC1's account that his sex with her was consensual. In reviewing the autopsy, Boettcher said that the numerous blows which killed Leigh came from multiple directions, and were probably inflicted with different items, indicating the possibility of more than one perpetrator. Carrington and Johnson speculated that Leigh was assaulted by the group of boys after returning from the beach, as punishment for complaining about being raped, and was murdered by Webster and two others because they were afraid she would tell other people. They refused to specifically name the two other suspects for fear of legal repercussions, though clarified that one had sexually assaulted Leigh earlier in the night, and the other likely sexually assaulted her with a beer bottle before she died, as punishment for publicly refusing to have sex with him. Webster talked to the media about the murder for the first time in 1997, and insisted that he acted alone in killing Leigh. ## Aftermath After being told that nobody was going to be charged with Leigh's sexual assault, in 1990 Leigh's mother began a campaign for the case to be officially re-investigated. In August 1994, Kerry Carrington sent a 17,000-word document and 300 pages of evidence to the Royal Commission into the New South Wales Police Service, asking for the case to be investigated. The commission was headed by Judge James Roland Wood, though a representative for the commission stated that Wood's involvement in Webster's trial would not affect the outcome of any investigation. In December 1994, a representative for the commission said that after thorough consideration, they would not be investigating the matter. In May 1993 a victim's compensation case had awarded Leigh's mother and sister a combined total of \$29,214. An appeal, aided by Carrington's research, was lodged against the original victim's compensation payout. In May 1995, in a landmark legal decision, Judge Joseph Moore approved the appeal, awarding Leigh's mother and sister an additional \$134,048. Moore said the evidence indicated that Leigh rejected NC1's sexual advances, and that "his intercourse with her was without her consent." He also acknowledged that whoever sexually assaulted Leigh had never been brought to justice, and the lack of convictions for assault, specifically naming Jason Robertson and three other boys as those who assaulted her in addition to Webster and Wilson. Leigh's mother abandoned her efforts to have the case re-opened in 1997, citing "exhaustion and survival". ### NSW Crime Commission In October 1996, Police Minister Paul Whelan made an announcement in the Parliament of New South Wales, stating that the murder would be reviewed by the New South Wales Crime Commission. Acknowledging that nobody had ever been charged with Leigh's sexual assault, Whelan stated the upcoming review was "our one opportunity to right the terrible wrongs that occurred on the night that Leigh died". In March 1998 the Crime Commission released its findings, stating that the crimes that resulted in convictions occurred substantially in the way described to the courts, that no further charges would be laid as Webster had acted alone in both the murder and the assault that immediately preceded it, and that police had not acted inappropriately in their decision not to charge other persons. It did, however, criticise some police procedures and practices. The review did not comment on the discrepancies between Webster's confession and the forensic evidence, and it did not clarify whether forensic evidence was ever sent for testing. A representative for the Commission refused to comment on whether Wilson's blood-stained shirt was ever tested. One expert opinion obtained by the Commission wrote that it was "likely [Webster] engaged in sexual behaviour which demeaned Leigh and to which he will never admit because he is ashamed and embarrassed", and Dr Johan Duflou said that a finger or penis was unlikely to have caused Leigh's severe genital damage. Hillary Byrne-Armstrong stated that these expert opinions, which contradict Webster's confession, raised questions on how the Commission concluded that Leigh's sexual assault occurred in the manner to which he had confessed, also raising doubts about several of the commission's other findings. The Crime Commission released one of their two reports on the matter; their second unpublished report was handed over to the Police Integrity Commission (PIC) for investigation. ### Police Integrity Commission Twenty-six people, mainly police officers, were interviewed in 1998 as part of the subsequent PIC inquiry. Several witnesses from the party, as well as Webster, Wilson and NC1 were also questioned. The inquiry heard allegations that police assaulted four people during interviews: Webster, Wilson, NC1 and another unnamed suspect referred to as NC5, a relative of Webster who was 17 at the time of the murder. Admitting to the inquiry that he killed Leigh and insisting that he was alone in doing so, Webster stated that police repeatedly punched and kicked him when he refused to confess to her murder. According to Scott Tucker writing in The Newcastle Herald, police were also accused of threatening violence, falsifying reports and withholding evidence; one of the officers being investigated had his police locker raided by internal affairs, who discovered several records on the murder that had previously been listed as missing. Carrington was also summoned to give evidence, though she was not informed why; her book, Who Killed Leigh Leigh, which criticised police over their handling of the investigation, had been released earlier that year. Carrington was cross-examined for three days, longer than any of the police officers who were questioned, in what was described by Hillary Byrne-Armstrong as "an inquisition on just about every word she had spoken [or] written" in relation to Leigh's murder". Byrne-Armstrong accused the PIC of summoning Carrington for the sole purpose of attacking her credibility on issues they had no intention of investigating, and to discredit someone who had attracted considerable media attention for criticising police. The PIC released their review in October 2000. The review recommended the dismissal of Detective Sergeant Chaffey for "gross dereliction" of duty, also recommending criminal charges against five other investigative officers. The review stated that Webster was falsely arrested, as police arrested him for the purpose of questioning, something for which they did not have the power, and that he was probably assaulted by police while he was in custody. Police received further criticism after it was uncovered that they had interviewed NC1 without contacting his parents, and did not question him about Leigh's murder, only about his intercourse with her. Following the review, Chaffey retired "a little earlier than [he] intended", but dismissed the review's findings, stating he was proud of his team's performance. In October 2001, the Director of Public Prosecutions declined to press criminal charges against any of the officers, on the grounds they had suffered emotional hardship and their careers had already been destroyed. The case, which was described on PM as "one of the longest ever investigations into police conduct in New South Wales", prompted changes in the New South Wales Police Force, including the reform of record-keeping procedures. ## Theatrical and film adaptations Newcastle's Freewheels Theatre commissioned Nick Enright to produce a play that explored themes around the rape and murder. Titled A Property of the Clan, it premiered at the Freewheels Theatre in Newcastle in 1992, and was performed at the National Institute of Dramatic Art in 1993. The title was taken from the controversial quote in the psychological report on Webster made in preparation for his trial. Enright omitted the criminal acts and the murder from the play, instead focusing on the drama, its participants and the aftermath of the murder. The play was shown at various high schools in the Newcastle area, and following its positive reception was shown at high schools nationally, winning several awards. However, Newcastle High School, where both Leigh and Webster had been students, declined to show it. The play is set in the fictional town of Blackrock, and the rape and murder victim is named Tracy. Leigh's family requested that the name be changed, as 'Tracey' was the name of Leigh's cousin and best friend. The name remained, despite other revisions to the script; the play was retitled Blackrock. It was performed by the Sydney Theatre Company in 1995 and 1996. Blackrock was developed into a film of the same name, which was partially filmed in Stockton and released in 1997. The community of Stockton opposed filming in the area, stating the memories of the events were still fresh and the details of the script were "too close for comfort". When filmmakers arrived in Stockton the local media treated them with hostility, and locations that had previously been reserved were no longer available. The situation was exacerbated by the filmmakers' denial that the film was specifically about Leigh, despite the choice of Stockton for filming. Leigh's family were opposed to the film, saying the filmmakers were "feasting on an unfortunate situation" and portraying Leigh negatively. Associate professor Donna Lee Brien of Central Queensland University stated that some fictional aspects in the film portrayed Leigh in a negative manner, though the book Reel Tracks by Rebecca Doyle credited the film with correcting misinformation reported in the media regarding the murder, as well as with providing a forum for reflection on the events. The film received a mixed-to-positive reception in Australia, but performed poorly when shown elsewhere; Brien stated that because the film lacked the "poignant and powerful narrative support of Leigh's tragedy", it was deemed by critics to be "shallow and clichéd".

Manchester Bolton & Bury Canal

Canal in Greater Manchester, England

The Manchester Bolton & Bury Canal is a disused canal in Greater Manchester, England, built to link Bolton and Bury with Manchester. The canal, when fully opened, was 15 miles 1 furlong (24 km) long. It was accessed via a junction with the River Irwell in Salford. Seventeen locks were required to climb to the summit as it passed through Pendleton, heading northwest to Prestolee before it split northwest to Bolton and northeast to Bury. Between Bolton and Bury the canal was level and required no locks. Six aqueducts were built to allow the canal to cross the rivers Irwell and Tonge and several minor roads. The canal was commissioned in 1791 by local landowners and businessmen and built between 1791 and 1808, during the Golden Age of canal building, at a cost of £127,700 (£ today). Originally designed for narrow gauge boats, during its construction the canal was altered into a broad gauge canal to allow an ultimately unrealised connection with the Leeds and Liverpool Canal. The canal company later converted into a railway company and built a railway line close to the canal's path, which required modifications to the Salford arm of the canal. Most of the freight carried was coal from local collieries but, as the mines reached the end of their working lives sections of the canal fell into disuse and disrepair and it was officially abandoned in 1961. In 1987 a society was formed with the aim of restoring the canal for leisure use and, in 2006, restoration began in the area around the junction with the River Irwell in Salford. The canal is currently navigable as far as Oldfield Road, Salford. ## History ### Proposal The local geology of the Irwell Valley, which included steep sided valleys with fast flowing rivers subject to rapid flooding and dry seasons, confined local river transport to the Mersey and Irwell Navigation, west of Manchester. Financial unrest and British involvement in the American Revolutionary War restricted local transport investment to road improvements. With the arrival of more favourable conditions, including the end of the war, a proposal for a canal to link the towns of Manchester, Bolton and Bury was mooted. Matthew Fletcher had in 1789 been employed as a technical advisor and had surveyed the route of the proposed canal, but the first public notice came from Manchester on 4 September 1790. The initial proposal probably came from a group in Bolton, with the support of the Mersey and Irwell Navigation Company. A meeting was "intended to be holden at the House of Mr Shawe, the Bull's Head in Manchester aforesaid, on Monday, the twentieth day of this instant, September, at eleven o'clock in the forenoon", where "Surveys, Plans, Levels, Estimates and Proposals" would be presented. A further meeting on 16 September, held in Bolton, appointed a committee of six Boltonians chaired by Lord Grey de Wilton to attend at Manchester. A series of resolutions at this meeting followed a discussion of the route, and authorised the necessary actions to bring the plan into fruition, which included the petitioning of Parliament for the required bill. Hugh Henshall was asked to survey the proposed route of the canal. For local industries along the route of the proposed canal, whose operations relied on water from local rivers and brooks which the canal might also use, its construction was a controversial idea. At a meeting in Bolton on 4 October 1790, it was resolved that "proper clauses be inserted in the bill to prevent injury to owners of mills". A meeting in Bury at the Eagle & Child public house on 29 September 1790 secured an agreement that "the utility of this scheme nevertheless cannot with propriety be ascertained until such time as it has been certified, from whence and in what proportion the proprietors of the intended navigation expect to draw their resources of water". At another meeting in Bury, on 13 October 1790, Hugh Henshall gave a written report on the canal, and stated that his plan would not require water from the river in times of drought, but that floods and rivulets would supply his reservoirs. He suggested that mill owners could be protected by a suitable clause in the bill, and such a clause was duly obtained by Robert Peel. Businesses in Bolton were concerned with the location of the canal terminus, and proposed the construction of a tunnel to allow the terminus to be built closer to the town centre. Ralph Fletcher, spokesman for those concerned, reported on this proposal to the committee, although no tunnel was built. ### Subscribers and funding A document entitled "A list of subscribers to the intended Bolton Bury and Manchester Canal Navigation", now kept in the Greater Manchester County Record Office, lists notable subscribers including the Earl of Derby, Lord Grey de Wilton, Matthew Fletcher, and Robert Peel. The 95 investments ranged from £100 to £3,000, and many were made by proxy. The total sum of investments was £47,700; £5 per £100 share was initially paid, with an additional £10 call made by 10 August 1791. Similar share calls were made at regular intervals over the following years. The first dividend of 4% was paid in July 1812, with regular payments following thereafter. ### Work begins Following a parliamentary survey of the route by Charles McNiven, the bill received Royal Assent on 13 May 1791 and became an Act of Parliament for the construction of the canal, by which "the proprietors were empowered to purchase land for a breadth of 26 yards on level ground, and wider where required for cuttings or embankments." The Act allowed the company to raise £47,000, with shares of £100. The intention was that at Prestolee the route would divide into two branches (arms), with one branch towards Bolton and the other to Bury, but it would not, however, join the River Irwell. The proprietors were entitled to take water from any brooks within 1,000 yards (910 m) of the canal, or within 3 miles (4.8 km) of the canal summits at Bolton and Bury. At a meeting in Manchester on 30 June 1791, at the house of Alexander Patten, a committee was formed with the following members: 1. Lord Grey de Wilton, Heaton House, Lancashire 2. Sir John Edensor Heathcote, Longton, Newcastle, Staffordshire 3. Thomas Butterworth Bayley esq. — Hope, Salford 4. Robert Andrews esq — Rivington 5. James Wareing, Gentleman, Knowsley 6. Matthew Fletcher (Mine owner, Clifton) 7. Peter Wright, Gentleman, Manchester 8. William Marsden, Merchant, Manchester 9. Charles McNiven, Gentleman, Manchester 10. Hugh Henshall, Longpost, Staffordshire 11. John Pilkington, Merchant, Manchester The meeting secured a resolution that "Matthew Fletcher and Mr McNiven shall dispatch or procure 100 wheelbarrows and as many planks as they shall think necessary for the use and accommodation of the canal navigation". Further meetings took place from 26 to 29 July. Matthew Fletcher was ordered to meet with land owners to discuss the purchase of any land along the route of the canal, and with this in mind, on 30 July 1791 John Seddon of Sandy Lane was ordered to survey the line of the canal beginning within the estate of John Edenson Heathcote, and ending at the southern extremity of the Reverend Dauntesey's estate. Fletcher and Henshall were ordered to contact people and companies in the building trade to discuss construction. At a meeting on 16 August 1791, "several persons" attended, and made offers for the contract to build the canal. A Mr John Seddon of Little Hulton, a labourer, agreed to a contract on Matthew Fletcher's terms, for a "certain part of the canal". Five other persons were rejected, their proposals not receiving the "approbation" of the committee. With news of the planned Rochdale Canal link into Manchester, the company proposed to extend the canal from Bury through Littleborough, and to connect with the Rochdale Canal at Sladen. The new route, known as the Bury and Sladen Canal, was intended as a rival scheme to the proposed Rochdale link into Manchester. A survey was also carried out on a proposed extension from Sladen to Sowerby Bridge. The company also considered links to the Leeds and Liverpool Canal and the Mersey and Irwell Navigation. These plans would have substantially increased the trans-Pennine traffic using the company's canal, and caused a potential loss of traffic and revenue on the nearby Bridgewater Canal. With this in mind, the owner of the Bridgewater Canal, the Duke of Bridgewater, agreed to allow the Rochdale Canal Company to connect to his canal at Manchester. Despite the persistence of the canal company, the Rochdale Canal plan won the day and in 1797 the company abandoned the Bury and Sladen Canal plan. After several years of construction, on 9 January 1794 an agreement was reached with the Leeds and Liverpool Canal Company to create a link from the Bolton arm of the canal to the Leeds and Liverpool Canal at Red Moss, near Horwich. This agreement required significant design changes to allow the canal to carry the wider boats used on the broad gauge Leeds and Liverpool Canal, which included a change to broad locks. Benjamin Outram was employed to inspect the works, and reported on the cost of this conversion as being £26,924. Although the necessary changes were implemented, the route of the Leeds and Liverpool Canal was altered and the link was not built. In the same year the Haslingden Canal link to the Leeds and Liverpool Canal was proposed, from the Bury arm of the canal. Although authorised by an Act of Parliament, it too was never built. The canal company remained hopeful of a link between the two canals, but all hope of this was lost when on 21 June 1819 an Act of Parliament was enacted to create a link between the Leigh extension of the Bridgewater Canal, and the Leeds and Liverpool Canal. A report entitled "A Statement of the Situation of the Works of the Manchester, Bolton and Bury Canal, on the Eighteenth of December, 1795." gives details of the progress of the works, including details of bridges, cuttings, raised bankings and aqueducts. Much of the document details the work required to convert the canal to broad gauge. A 5.75-mile (9.25 km) length between Oldfield Lane in Salford and Giants Seat Locks in Outwood was navigable with 3 feet 8 inches (1.12 m) of water. The remaining work included strengthening work to the banks, an increase of water depth to 5 feet (1.5 m), and the gravelling of half of the towpath. Between Giants Seat locks and Ringley Bridge two locks had been erected, with a small section of canal to be broadened before becoming navigable. From Ringley Bridge to Prestolee Aqueduct one lock had been erected. Nob End Locks were still under construction but mostly complete, although the basin at the bottom had not yet been dug. The stretch to Bolton had at this time been widened, with several bridges requiring further work, incomplete embankments, construction of a weir, and gravelling of the towpath. On the Bury arm, almost the entire length had been dug, and walls to support the canal along the bank of the Irwell had been built. Some widening of previously narrow sections had yet to be undertaken, none of the towpath had been gravelled, and no fences had been erected along the towpath. Significant parts of the canal were completed by 1796, including the stretch up to Bury in October of that year. With the completion of the Bolton arm in the following year, much of the canal opened for business. The connection to Fletcher's Canal was completed in 1800, but with the failure of the scheme to connect the Bolton arm of the canal to the Leeds and Liverpool Canal, the canal remained isolated from any other navigable waterway. One proposed remedy involved the construction of an aqueduct over the River Irwell in Manchester, to connect directly to the Rochdale Canal between Castlefield and Piccadilly. A bill was proposed in 1799 but after strong objections from the Mersey and Irwell Navigation Company they eventually gave up and subsequently, over the following seven years, the canal company purchased enough land to build a canal link directly to the Irwell. During construction the company, having spent all of the money allowed in the 1791 Act of Parliament, incurred a debt of £31,345. They therefore applied for a further Act to raise more money. This act, granted in 1805, allowed them to raise an additional £80,000. This allowed them to repay the debt, and continue work to finish the canal. An inspection in June 1808 reported that by November 1808 the canal would be complete throughout. A connection to the Rochdale Canal was eventually built in 1839 via the Manchester and Salford Junction Canal, which was funded in part by the proprietors of the MB&B canal. ### Traffic Most of the traffic along the canal transported coal from the many collieries that existed along its length, such as Outwood Colliery and Ladyshore Colliery. Some of these pits were linked to the canal by road, and some by short tramlines. In the late 19th century as much as 650,000 metric tons (640,000 long tons) of coal and 43,000 metric tons (42,000 long tons) of other materials including night soil and fruit were transported annually. The canal also enabled the transport of salt from Cheshire to the many bleach and dye works in its area – hence the name of Salt Wharf on the Bolton arm of the canal. Tolls were easily calculated as milestones were placed along the towpath at 1⁄4 mile (400 m) intervals. This was important as journeys were often quite short, the collieries being so close to industry along the canal's length. The boats used to transport coal were short and narrow, and each contained a row of boxes used for carrying coal. Each box had a base of two halves, hinged and held closed with chains. These boxes would be lifted out of the boats, positioned by crane over a bunker or cart and emptied by releasing the chains on the base. This design helped keep the canal competitive, as it increased the speed with which loading and unloading of the boats could be performed. The canal would often freeze in winter, so an icebreaker was used to ensure the canal remained navigable during the cold weather. Named "Sarah Lansdale" and owned by James Crompton Paperworks, it was towed by a team of horses while the crew stood astride the deck, secured to the handrails, rocking the boat from side to side and breaking the ice in the process. Often, ice would be encountered that was so thick the boat would rise up onto the surface of the ice. This boat did once reside at the boat museum in Ellesmere Port Dock but was later destroyed by fire. Food and drink was made available to those using the canal in several places including Margaret Barlow's Tea Gardens, Kilcoby Cottage and Rhodes Lock. A camping ground was also available at Kilcoby Cottage. The nearby Giant's Seat House was for some time the home of the canal manager. The canal also carried packet services, with passengers facing a three-hour journey between Bolton and Manchester. The first passenger boat to Bolton was launched in 1796 from the Windsor Castle public house, and in 1798 a new packet boat was built for the use of the company. Fares were initially fixed by the canal company (although from 1805 contracted-out) and based upon the service required; a passenger using the state cabin from Bolton to Manchester would be charged one shilling six pence, and a single shilling on the return journey. Passengers would change boats at Prestolee to avoid delays at the lock flight and also to save water, and a purpose-built covered walkway the length of the road was constructed for their benefit. Another passenger service ran along the two arms from Bolton to Bury, and over 60,000 passengers per year travelled on the canal; between July 1833 and June 1834, 21,060 made the journey from Bolton to Manchester, 21,212 people travelled from Manchester to Bolton, and 20,818 intermediary passengers hopped on and off the boats en route. In 1834 the Bolton to Manchester service earned £1,177 and the Bolton to Bury service earned £75. The service was quite luxurious compared to some packet boat services: central heating was provided in winter and drinks were served on board. This caused a tragedy in 1818, however, when a party of twenty drunken passengers managed to capsize the boat and a number of passengers, including two children, were drowned. Several fatal incidents combined with general passenger concern caused the canal company to improve passenger safety; in 1802 a wall was built at the wharf at Oldfield Lane in Salford and in 1833 a gas lamp was installed at Ringley Wharf. A parcel service was also offered, although this proved unpopular as it was unreliable. ### Railway proposal In March 1829 the idea of building a branch railway line from the Oldfield Road terminus in Salford to the new Liverpool and Manchester Railway was mooted, but nothing was built. In 1830 the canal company, led by chairman Sir John Tobin, began to promote a proposal to build a railway along the line of the canal, from Salford to Bolton. Alexander Nimmo was employed to report on the proposal and told that it was possible "so far as he expressed himself capable of judging from his present cursory view of the canal". The shareholders then sought a bill for a railway from Bolton to Manchester and on 23 August 1831 obtained an Act of Parliament to become the "Company of Proprietors of the Manchester, Bolton and Bury Canal Navigation and Railway Company". They were empowered to build a line from Manchester to Bolton and Bury, "upon or near the line of ... the Canal", and a branch from Clifton Aqueduct through to Great Lever. In 1832 this company obtained an Act that allowed it to build the railway. Due mainly to the objections of local mine owners who would have lost access to the canal and supplies, and would not have had branch railways built for them, the company agreed to an amending bill which would keep the canal and allow the new railway to be constructed alongside it. Due to technical and financial constraints the branch to Bury was never built. The canal therefore survived, although locks 4 and 5 in Salford were moved and combined into a two-rise staircase, with a second tunnel built underneath the line which became known as the Manchester and Bolton Railway. The line opened on 28 May 1838, and the company had purchased four locomotives from Bury, Curtis, and Kennedy, two from George Forrester and Company, and two from William Fairbairn & Sons. Between the opening date and 9 January 1839 the railway carried 228,799 passengers – far more than had been carried on the canal. Shortly thereafter passenger services on the canal ceased and the boats were sold off. In 1846 the company was taken over by the Manchester and Leeds Railway, which itself became the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway (L&YR) the following year. In 1890 the L&YR widened the line through Salford. Locks 4, 5 and 6 were moved slightly to the north and the tunnel under the railway was replaced by a bridge (although it is still referred to as a tunnel). In 1922 the L&YR amalgamated into the London and North Western Railway, and in 1923 this company amalgamated into the London, Midland and Scottish Railway. This company was nationalised in 1948 under the Transport Act 1947 and became part of British Railways. ### Decline By 1924 the Bolton arm had experienced a significant fall in traffic, although until the 1930s, when colliery closures reduced traffic even further, coal trade remained brisk. By 1935 Fletcher's Canal had fallen into disuse. Burst banks alongside the Irwell and Croal rivers (caused largely by subsidence from mining activities) were common. A major breach occurred in 1936 and was never repaired. 10.45 acres (42,300 m²) of land around this breach was purchased from the British Transport Commission by Cream's Paper Mill, who subsequently built over part of the canal. On 2 March 1937 the London, Midland and Scottish Railway held a Special General Meeting during which they proposed to abandon the canal from Clifton Aqueduct to Bailey Bridge, from Bailey Bridge to Bury, and the entire Bolton arm from Nob End Locks to Bolton. The proposal was not carried but four years later, under the London, Midland and Scottish Railway Act of 1941, they abandoned 7 miles (11 km) of the canal, including a section from Prestolee to Clifton and the entire Bolton arm. In 1939, during the Second World War, the Ministry of Transport ordered a half-mile section in Agecroft piped, to reduce the risk of German bomb damage damaging the adjacent Magnesium Elektron Company's site. Although it continued to generate revenue from the sale of water, tolls produced only a small proportion of the canal's income. In 1946, against expenses of £12,500, it earned a total of £7,296, of which only £471 was from tolls. In 1951 total income was £8,815 against a total expenditure of £9,574. In the same year, the canal carried 3,933 long tons (3,996 t) of coal and no other materials. A British Transport Commission report of 1955 included the canal in its list of "Waterways having insufficient commercial prospects to justify their retention for navigation". Following an Act of Parliament, in 1961 the canal was abandoned. A single coal delivery service between Sion Street and Bury Moors continued until 1968, but this was the last commercial traffic to use the canal. ## Features There are several notable features along the canal, including Prestolee Aqueduct and Clifton Aqueduct, both of which are Grade II listed structures. Nob End Locks (sometimes referred to as Prestolee Locks) sit at the junction of the three arms of the canal at Nob End. They comprise two sets of three staircase locks, separated by a passing basin. These locks served to lower the level of the canal by 64 feet (20 m) over a distance of 600 feet (183 m). The upper staircase is still visible, but most of the lower staircase was filled in at some point in the 1950s, and much of the stonework was removed. A major breach of the canal along the Bury arm revealed the scale of the engineering used in the construction of the retaining wall. Railway rails, which were used to increase the strength of the walls, are still clearly visible at the site of the breach. The Mount Sion steam crane (a depiction of which is used as the logo of the Manchester Bolton & Bury Canal Society) sits rusting and unused at Mount Sion, on the Bury arm. One of the earliest surviving cranes in England, it was built some time about 1875–1884 for Mount Sion Bleach Works by Thomas Smith & Sons of Rodley and was used to unload coal boxes from barges into the yard below the canal. It was granted Grade II listed status in 2011. ## Design and construction The canal was originally supplied by the River Irwell in Bury, at the Weddell Brook tributary. This proved insufficient for local industry and in 1842 Elton Reservoir at Bury was built to become the canal's principal supply. Although the Bury and Bolton arms are on one level, the Salford arm used seventeen broad locks, including some in staircases (Nob End, for example), to descend 190 feet (58 m) over 8 miles (13 km) from the summit level to the lowest point at Salford. Robert Fulton had proposed an inclined plane at Nob End, but this design was rejected. The connection with Fletcher's Canal near Clifton Aqueduct was made by a single lock 90 feet (27 m) long by 21 feet (6 m) wide, with a drop of 18 inches (46 cm). Although the canal was originally designed to be a narrow canal with narrow locks for boats 7 feet (2 m) wide, in 1794 an agreement was reached with the Leeds and Liverpool Canal company to create a link near Red Moss near Horwich, so broad locks were built to accommodate the 14 feet (4 m) wide boats using that canal. This meant removing some of the narrow locks that had already been built. An extension to the original canal feeder was built at Weddell Brook in Bury, alongside the River Irwell. The route of the Leeds and Liverpool Canal was changed, however, and the planned link never materialised. The design changes to the canal were not completely without merit, since they allowed two narrowboats to use each lock simultaneously, saving passage time and water. Much of the Bury arm of the canal runs alongside the River Irwell through the Irwell Valley, and eventually required the construction of huge retaining walls to prevent the canal bank from sliding down the hill. Similar strengthening, although on a smaller scale, was required on the Bolton arm where it ran alongside the River Croal. Through these sections the towpath is normally on the side of the canal closest to the river. Six aqueducts were required to allow the canal to cross the River Irwell, the River Tonge and four roads. On the Bolton arm these were Hall Lane Aqueduct, Fogg's Aqueduct and the larger Damside Aqueduct, all of which have since been demolished. Hall Lane Aqueduct was damaged by mining subsidence and replaced in 1884–1885. It was demolished in 1950. The Salford arm flowed over Prestolee Aqueduct, then Clifton Aqueduct, and finally the smaller Lumn's Lane Aqueduct (since demolished). Many bridges were also constructed, along the length of the canal. Most were of small design allowing access to farmland, although many are wide enough for a horse and cart. In places where the canal crossed important thoroughfares, such as Water Street in Radcliffe, Radcliffe Road in Darcy Lever and Agecroft Road in Pendlebury, larger bridges were constructed. Cranes were used along the many wharfs on the canal to offload cargo. One of these, a steam crane at Mount Sion, still exists (albeit in poor condition). At Bury Wharf a traversing steam crane positioned between the two arms of the terminus would offload cargo to be loaded into waiting lorries and a similar system was used at Radcliffe Wharf. ### Costs In 1795 costs of construction were detailed as follows: The total cost of construction was £127,700. ## Breaches The canal has suffered several major breaches throughout its history. As early as 1799 a flood carried away large sections of the lower banks, and on 15 October 1853 two boats were swept through a 93-yard (85 m) breach near the bottom of Nob End Locks (no injuries were reported). Three breaches were reported from 1878 to 1879, in Little Lever and Darcy Lever, the latter near Burnden Chemical Works. Subsidence, caused by mining activity, prompted a breach near Agecroft in 1881. As a result of such incidents, from 1881 to 1888 engineer Edwin Muir was employed to reduce the subsidence caused by mining activity. Similar work was undertaken throughout the 1920s. Maps from the 1880s show that by then, to safeguard against further subsidence, the canal company had purchased areas of coal beneath the canal. In 1884 the canal's owners, the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway, successfully sued colliery owners Knowles & Sons for losses incurred from damage caused by subsidence. Following this judgement, the railway company settled out of court with other colliery owners. Constant repairs were made, particularly through Pendleton, where the embankment was periodically raised. Some bridges were lifted far above their original supports, while others sank as low as 8 feet (2 m) above head height. One of the most serious breaches occurred on 6 July 1936 near Nob End, close to the junction of the canal's three arms, reported by the Manchester Evening News the following day. It was never repaired and although the canal saw continued use between Ladyshore Colliery and Bury, it eventually closed in 1961. > CANAL BURSTS ITS BANKS – Barges Smashed and River Dammed When the Bolton–Manchester Canal burst its banks at Little Lever yesterday millions of gallons of water cascaded 300 feet into the River Irwell, carrying down hundreds of tons of earth and stones. The river rapidly became blocked on the Bury side and the banked-up water flooded the surrounding land. "Like Niagara" was the description applied by one resident in the vicinity. Bricks and iron reinforcements of the side of the canal were torn away and carried into the river. Canal barges were smashed up as they too swept over the falls. Fortunately, there are no houses in the neighbourhood, and no one was hurt. It is feared that work at a paper mill and a chemical works which depend upon the canal for transport will be affected. Mr John W. Martin, of Loxham Street, Bolton, said: "I was cycling along the bank when I suddenly saw signs of a subsidence begin on a bend in the canal. I could not stop and my only chance was to ride furiously along the two feet of earth which remained. As I passed over the earth fell away behind the back wheel of my bicycle and I was thrown off. The noise was deafening. A few yards from me tremendous quantities of water, rock, and earth were moving bodily from the canal." A gap about 100 yards long has been opened in the canal embankment. A few years ago there was a similar landslide near the spot. ## Current status Almost 60% of the canal's original length is no longer in water. Bury Wharf is now covered by an industrial estate. A car park has been built on top of the canal, near Daisyfield Viaduct, but from there on the towpath remains accessible. The canal, in water but overgrown with weeds, is culverted under Water Street in Radcliffe. It continues in water up to a dam at Ladyshore, following which the foundations of a demolished paper mill, built in 1956, may be found. The 1936 breach was never repaired and presents a significant gap in the canal's route. On the Salford arm, although in good condition, the top three locks at Prestolee are derelict; the bottom three have been removed. The canal is in water from the bottom of the lock flight through to Ringley Locks. Ringley Bridge is infilled, as is the canal through Ringley Village and Giants Seat Locks. Kilcoby Bridge is missing and from there the canal is inaccessible until it reaches the M60 motorway. Overgrown, Rhodes Lock is still in reasonable condition. One or more electricity pylons straddle the infilled canal between Rhodes Lock and the motorway, which has been built over the line of the canal. A sludge lagoon built during the motorway's construction blocks a short section toward Clifton Aqueduct. The canal does not take water again until beyond Clifton Aqueduct, where a short 900-foot (270 m) length exists between the former Pilkington factory and the Enersys factory. Lumn's Lane Aqueduct is missing but the canal is in water between there and Holland Street. Beyond this point the canal is infilled and in parts built over, especially through Pendleton. Its junction with the River Irwell in Salford has recently been restored and made navigable. The Bolton arm of the canal is interrupted by the absence of Hall Lane Aqueduct at Little Lever, which was demolished in 1950 to make way for the widening of Hall Lane. In Darcy Lever, Damside Aqueduct, which crossed Radcliffe Road and the Tonge River, is also missing, having been demolished in June 1965. The route of St Peter's Way has almost entirely destroyed a significant section of the canal as it heads into the centre of Bolton and Church Wharf no longer exists. The last section of the Bolton arm of the canal still in water is currently used for fishing. The entire route of the canal is protected from any adverse development that would prevent its restoration, having been included in the unitary development plans of Salford City Council, Bolton Council and Bury Council. ## Restoration To help secure the canal's future, in 1987 the Manchester Bolton & Bury Canal Society was formed to protect the canal and campaign for restoration. On 21 October 2005 British Waterways announced funding from European Objective Two Funding, the Northwest Regional Development Agency (NWDA) and Salford City Council for a restoration scheme at the newly named Middlewood Locks in Salford, which began in September 2006. Restoration was halted briefly by the discovery of what was initially thought to be a Second World War bomb but which proved to be a wartime American mortar with no explosive content. Pilings for the tunnel under the Manchester to Preston Line were completed in 2008. The missing Irwell towpath bridge, known as Bloody Bridge, which once crossed the canal's entrance, was replaced with an arched timber structure incorporating elements of the old lock 1. Much of the canal's existing masonry has been re-used and, where possible, the original washwalls were grouted and pointed. The original river locks 1 and 2 were replaced by a single deep lock. Completion was scheduled for the end of July 2008 and marked with an opening ceremony on 19 September that year, during which the new Margaret Fletcher tunnel under the Manchester Inner Ring Road was formally named. Full restoration of the canal could create up to 6,000 jobs and add an annual £6 million to the local economy. The total cost is estimated at £60 million. The next planned major restoration may be along Salford Crescent. Local volunteers under the guidance of the Manchester Bolton and Bury Canal Society have for years worked on sections of the canal, removing overgrowth and tidying up its general appearance. A new pedestrian footbridge, designed by artist Liam Curtin, was opened at Nob End Locks in April 2013. Made entirely out of scaled-up pieces of Meccano, it was built by society volunteers and other members of the public at a cost of about £90,000. Toward the end of 2015, work began to excavate the buried locks of the Nob End flight, exposing the six locks. Infill beneath the first bridge on the canal's Bolton arm was also excavated, exposing the towpath for the first time in decades. ## Locations of features Bury Arm Bolton Arm Salford Arm ## See also - Agecroft Colliery - Manchester to Preston Line - Waterway restoration

Louis Rwagasore

Burundian prince and politician (1932–1961)

Louis Rwagasore (Kirundi: Ludoviko Rwagasore; 10 January 1932 – 13 October 1961) was a Burundian prince and politician, who served as the second prime minister of Burundi for two weeks, from 28 September 1961 until his assassination on 13 October 1961. Born to the Ganwa family of Burundian Mwami (king) Mwambutsa IV in Belgian-administered Ruanda-Urundi in 1932, Rwagasore was educated in Burundian Catholic schools before attending university in Belgium. After he returned to Burundi in the mid-1950s he founded a series of cooperatives to economically empower native Burundians and build up his base of political support. The Belgian administration took over the venture, and as a result of the affair his national profile increased and he became a leading figure of the anti-colonial movement. He soon thereafter became involved with a nationalist political party, the Union for National Progress (UPRONA). He pushed for Burundian independence from Belgian control, national unity, and the institution of a constitutional monarchy. Rwagasore sought to bring UPRONA mass appeal across different regions, ethnicities, and castes, and thus under his leadership the party maintained a leadership balanced between ethnic Hutus and Tutsis, though the latter were usually favoured for more important positions. The Belgian administration disliked UPRONA and initially attempted to stifle Rwagasore's activities, placing him under house arrest in 1960 during municipal elections. International pressure led the administration to back down, and the following year UPRONA won an overwhelming majority in the legislative elections. As a result, Rwagasore became Prime Minister of Burundi on 28 September 1961. Two weeks later he was assassinated by a Greek national at the direction of leaders of a rival political party with the probable support of the Belgian Resident in Burundi. Rwagasore's death derailed his attempts to build national ethnic cohesion and facilitated the growth of Hutu–Tutsi tensions in the country. It also fractured UPRONA, as his former lieutenants engaged in a power struggle to succeed him as the party's leader. Within Burundi, Rwagasore's reputation enjoys nearly-universal acclaim, and his assassination is commemorated annually with large ceremonies. He remains relatively unknown internationally in comparison to other leaders of independence movements in the African Great Lakes region. ## Early life Louis Rwagasore was born on 10 January 1932 in Gitega, Ruanda-Urundi, to Mwami (king) of Urundi Mwambutsa IV and Thérèse Kanyonga. Ethnically, he was a member of the Bezi clan of the Ganwa, a group of people of aristocratic status often associated with the Tutsis. The frequency of matrimonial alliances among the Ganwa gave Rwagasore familial links to numerous chiefs in Urundi. Mwambutsa and Kanyonga afterward had two daughters, Rosa Paula Iribagiza and Régine Kanyange, before divorcing in 1940. Mwambutsa remarried in 1946 and fathered a second son, Charles Ndizeye. Rwagasore began attending school at the age of seven, going to Catholic institutions in Bukeye, Kanyinya, and Gitega. In 1945 Rwagasore enrolled in the Groupe Scolaire d'Astrida. He studied there for six years, and in 1951 went to Antwerp to study at the University Institute of Overseas Territories (Institut universitaire des Territoires d'Outre-Mer). He was a poor student, but after one year at the institute he enrolled at the Catholic University of Leuven, where after three years of study he earned a degree in political economy. Rwagasore returned to Urundi in December 1956. In April 1957 he was hired by the Belgian administration to oversee studies of economic, agricultural, and administrative concerns. On 12 September 1959 he married a Hutu woman, Marie-Rose Ntamikevyo, in Usumbura. They had two daughters, both of whom died in infancy. ## Political career ### CCB and leadership of UPRONA In June 1957 Rwagasore founded a series of cooperatives, known as the Traders' Cooperatives of Burundi (Coopératives des Commerçants du Burundi, CCB), with the goal of empowering native Urundians to control their own commerce and thus building his personal support among Swahili traders of Usumbura. In its first public meeting, the CCB drew a crowd of 200 merchants, and it secured several favourable contracts with exporters. It facilitated the creation of links between rural farmers and urban traders, and, at the same time, Urundians began protesting fees and taxes levied by the Belgians. The colonial administration was irritated by the CCB, but reasoned that it could not take direct action against Rwagasore, with Governor of Ruanda-Urundi Jean-Paul Harroy writing to the Minister of Colonies that detaining or deporting the eldest son of the Mwami would be poorly received by peasants and lead to civil disorder. Despite its early successes, the CCB quickly ran into financial trouble, in part due to mismanagement. Rwagasore attributed the cooperatives' problems to Belgian sabotage, while the colonial administration accused Rwagasore of embezzling its money to fund a lavish lifestyle. To what extent either of these factors was true and how heavily they affected the project remains unclear. Rwagasore spent three months at the Expo 58 in Brussels seeking new investors and asked for help from President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt, but these appeals were unsuccessful. He then requested credit for the cooperatives from the Supreme Land Council (Conseil Supérieur du Pays), an advisory body presided over by the Mwami that had some competence over budgetary and administrative affairs in Urundi. Though the Belgian administration informed the council that it disapproved of the cooperative, Rwagasore convinced the body to support him. The Belgian administration formally vetoed the loan in June, and intervened to take over the CCB. In the ensuing struggle Rwagasore's national profile dramatically increased and he became a leading figure of the anti-colonial activists. The CCB was ultimately merged with an administration cooperative. As a result of the affair he forged connections with Tanganyikan nationalist Julius Nyerere, who provided him with advice and financial assistance. Some time thereafter Rwagasore became involved with a nascent political party, the Union for National Progress (Union pour le Progres National, UPRONA), though sources differ on the circumstances of UPRONA's founding and Rwagasore's role in its early days. He took virtual control over the movement, though his familial connection to the Mwami disqualified him from holding any party offices and he officially served UPRONA only as an advisor. UPRONA was able to secure the early financial support of the Swahili population in Bujumbura and Lake Tanganyika coastline. The party initially was strongly identified with the interests of the Bezi lineage of Ganwa and support for traditional institutions, but this alignment fell apart after Rwagasore came into conflict with his father. Mwambutsa had been quietly supportive of his son's attempts to build a political career in the late 1950s, but encouraged other Ganwa to compete with Rwagasore to ensure his own authority remained unchallenged. Mwambutsa cared little for UPRONA and his son was not among his close confidants. At the centre of their political differences was Rwagasore's anti-colonial rhetoric, which frustrated Mwambutsa, as he felt it strained the monarchy's relationship with the Belgians. In an attempt to distract Rwagasore from politics, the Belgian administration designated him head of the Butanyerera chiefdom (an area in Ngozi Province) in February 1959. He resigned from the post to focus on his political career. Under Rwagasore, UPRONA pushed a program of modernisation, committing neither to a return to the feudal system nor a complete societal transformation. He used symbols of the monarchy to communicate his message and often emphasised his princely status at public appearances, but he stressed that UPRONA would support the monarchy "only insofar as this regime and its dynasty favoured the genuine emancipation of the Murundi people". He believed that only a constitutional monarchy could maintain legitimacy and that the Mwami should cede most authority to a civilian government. While conscious of socioeconomic problems, he primarily focused on issues relating to Urundian independence, popular legitimacy of the monarchy, and national unity. He advocated a foreign policy of nonalignment in the ongoing Cold War. Rwagasore sought to transform UPRONA into a mass party with broad-base appeal across different regions, ethnicities, and castes. Wary of the growing Hutu-Tutsi conflict in Ruanda, he sought to counteract tensions by bringing members of both groups into UPRONA's leadership. Formal party positions at both the national and local levels were usually evenly divided between Hutus and Tutsis, though the latter tended to occupy the most important offices. The party enjoyed some cohesive success in Usumbura, but never truly cultivated a mass political base, especially outside the capital. UPRONA's internal rules set devolved responsibilities to the central committee, but in practice the party operated at the whim of Rwagasore; it retained relatively weak organisational capability and was held together by his charismatic leadership. His populist tendencies and personal popularity led many of the original chiefs who had supported UPRONA, including founding member Léopold Biha, to leave the party and engage in their own political activities. Rumours that the Mwami would pass the throne on to his younger son, Charles, facilitated criticisms by UPRONA's rivals that the party was simply a mechanism for Rwagasore to achieve power. In response, he issued a tract which said, "[I]f I do not become Mwami, will that prevent me from fighting for you, from being a great leader for you?" Rwagasore favoured "immediate independence" from Belgian control. To protest colonial rule, he encouraged boycotts of European goods and refusal to pay taxes. The Belgian administration was wary of Rwagasore's nationalism, which it perceived as extremist, and supported the creation of a rival party, the Christian Democratic Party (Parti Démocratique Chrétien, PDC), a grouping seen as more moderate and which rejected immediate independence. Despite ideological differences, the rivalries between the two parties were primarily fueled by the intra-nobility conflicts, as the Bezi and Tare lineages backed UPRONA and PDC respectively. The two lineages had long struggled for control of the country. In 1959 Tare leader Chief Pierre Baranyanka questioned whether Mwambutsa's marriage to Kanyonga was legitimate according to custom in an attempt to challenge Rwagasore's place in the line to the throne. Even though UPRONA had distanced themselves from the Bezi, Rwagasore was still perceived as leader of the Bezi nobility by the time of the elections. As the PDC and UPRONA campaigned in early 1960, the antipathy between Rwagasore and Baranyanka grew; the former feared an assassination plot sponsored by the chief and began carrying a gun, while the latter wrote letters to the Mwami to condemn him for failing to control his son. ### 1960 and 1961 elections Rwagasore attended the independence celebrations of the Republic of the Congo in June 1960. As civil order broke down and the Congo fell into crisis, he released a joint communique with rival politician Joseph Biroli on 15 July, appealing for calm and racial harmony, saying Urundi had "the unique chance ... to create in the heart of Africa an island of peace, tranquility and prosperity." In anticipation of Urundi's first municipal elections in November 1960, he issued circulars which called for people to "shake off foreign domination and slavery". Shortly before the contests were held, the administration placed Rwagasore under house arrest on 27 October with the pretext that he was violating a previous agreement by Urundian political parties stipulating that persons within two degrees of familial relationship to the Mwami be barred from political activity. It further accused him of possessing "seditious" pamphlets. In reality, the administration hoped the arrest would weaken UPRONA and generate a more preferable outcome in the elections. At the administration's encouragement, the PDC also joined with several other parties to create an anti-UPRONA cartel known as the Common Front (Front Commun, FC). Angered by the arrest of their leader, UPRONA declared a boycott of the elections. The PDC won a plurality of the offices in the contest, and in early 1961 the administration established a transitional government under Joseph Cimpaye with some PDC ministers but none from UPRONA. Rwagasore was released after the elections on 9 December 1960. Subsequent international scrutiny, particularly from the United Nations (UN), led the Belgians to withdraw themselves from national politics. The UN created a Commission for Ruanda-Urundi which liberalised the political sphere and restored Rwagasore's political rights. Thereafter he was allowed to engage in politics unhindered by the Belgian administration. In 1961 the Belgian administration officially renamed Ruanda-Urundi as Rwanda-Burundi. For the 1961 legislative elections, UPRONA concentrated its entire election campaign on Rwagasore, using his charisma to rally substantial support. Rwagasore traveled across the country to introduce his party's candidates. In course of the elections, he was able to collect a broad political coalition; even though most of it was pro-monarchical, he also voiced support for the leftist ideas of Patrice Lumumba from the neighboring Congo. This earned him the support of a small group of radical anti-monarchist Tutsi intellectuals. In the end, Rwagasore's coalition included representatives of the Tutsi oligarchy, conservative Hutu évolués, radical youth groups, urban factions, and large sections of the rural population. In general, UPRONA presented itself as strongly pro-monarchy, with the slogan "God, Fatherland, Mwami" being prominently used. The PDC had assumed a certain victory due to its success during the November 1960 municipal elections. It began its election campaign far too late, and also used the alternate slogan "God and Fatherland" which seemed to many Burundians to be deliberately critical of the monarchy, costing it substantial grassroots backing. Burundi hosted legislative elections on 18 September 1961. With approximately 80% voter turnout, UPRONA won 58 of 64 seats in the Legislative Assembly, and Rwagasore was declared formateur. Two days later he delivered a speech over national radio aimed at reconciliation, saying that UPRONA's "electoral victory is not the one of the party. It is the triumph of order, that of discipline, of peace, of public tranquility ... the electoral campaign is over, the past must be forgotten". Belgian officials were generally unhappy with Rwagasore's victory, though they conceded some appreciation for his address. Angered by their loss, PDC members in Mukenke, Kirundo Province rioted and attacked UPRONA members. Rwagasore appealed to the latter not to be provoked, and the colonial authorities quickly restored order. On 28 September the Legislative Assembly convened to decide on a new government. In a secret ballot, 51 deputies indicated their desire for Rwagasore to lead the new government. He assembled a 10-member government of national unity which secured the confidence of all but one of the deputies in the Legislative Assembly and was sworn in. Pierre Ngendandumwe became Vice Prime Minister, while Rwagasore's brother-in-law, André Muhirwa, was made Minister of Interior. Rwagsore's government did not offer a programme to the Assembly. In his inaugural address, he promised that his government would look "into the real problems of the nation, especially the economic problems, the problems of the land and of the social emancipation of the population, the problems of education and so many others, to which we will find our own solutions." His government was generally welcomed by Burundians, although some Hutu UPRONA members felt they were underrepresented. The government did not have any control over matters of defence, foreign affairs, or technical assistance—these competencies being reserved to the Belgian Resident—though Rwagasore proclaimed his wish to reduce the role of the colonial administration in Burundi to one of consultative aid. His government pledged to incorporate opposition party members into the administration and supported a political union with Rwanda and Tanganyika, though he later suggested that he wanted an economic union with Tanganyika but no association with the ethnically polarised Rwanda. He also promised to address Hutu interests. However, UPRONA's victory caused considerable unrest among the nobility, with the Tare lineage perceiving Rwagasore's success as a takeover by the Bezi. Existing hostilities between the nobility escalated as a result of the elections. As a measure of reconciliation, Rwagasore appointed a Tare as Director of Tourism. The Belgian Resident in Burundi, Roberto Régnier, later claimed that Rwagasore planned to make several FC figures ambassadors or grant them other positions, though in an interview with the press in October the prime minister remained vague about the place of an opposition in the new regime. ## Assassination ### Murder and criminal investigation On 13 October 1961, Rwagasore was assassinated while dining outdoors with friends and his cabinet members at the Hotel Tanganyika in Usumbura. He was killed by a single gunshot wound to the throat, fired from approximately 60 feet (18 meters) away from a group of bushes. In the ensuing confusion the assassin jumped into a waiting car and escaped. After being inspected by a doctor, Rwagasore's corpse was taken to Rhodain Hospital. A witness described the getaway car to the authorities, and an investigator was able to connect the vehicle to a group of people he had seen in the capital earlier that day. Within three days the police had arrested a Greek national, Ioannis Kageorgis—who had fired the shot—and three Burundian accomplices: Antoine Nahimana, Henri Ntakiyica, and Jean-Baptiste Ntakiyica. The latter three were all members of the PDC. The group quickly admitted responsibility for the murder and incriminated three other persons in their plot: Michel Iatrou, Jean-Baptiste Ntidendereza, and Joseph Biroli. The former was a Greek national who had given money to the PDC and was a business associate of Kageorgis. The latter two were high-ranking members of the PDC, with Ntidendereza having previously served as a minister in government. As sons of Chief Pierre Baranyanka, they were also distant cousins of Rwagasore. The investigators concluded that Ntidendereza and Biroli planned the assassination. Iatrou denied this, while Ntidendereza initially implicated himself in the conspiracy, saying that FC leaders viewed Rwagasore as an existential threat to multi-party democracy and that the prime minister had planned assassination attempts against himself and his father, before later recanting his testimony. The investigators also uncovered three previous assassination plots against Rwagasore in September which had been cancelled. On 2 April 1962 a Burundian tribunal composed of Belgian judges sentenced Kageorgis, Nahimana, and Ntidendereza to death for their role in the murder. Two others accused of minor roles in the affair, Pascal Bigirindavyi (a Burundian) and Liverios Archianotis (a Greek), were given prison sentences. On 7 May the Court of Appeal affirmed Kageorgis' sentence but commuted the other death sentences to 20 years of penal servitude. On 30 June, one day before Burundi's independence, Kageorgis was executed. Following independence Burundi established a Supreme Court with retroactive competence, and on 27 October it ruled the previous trials to have violated the right to judgement by a jury established by the new constitution and ordered a retrial. On 27 November the lower court found Ntidendereza, Biroli, Nahimana, Iatrou, and Ntakiyica guilty and sentenced them to death. The defendants' final appeal to the Supreme Court was denied, as were the attempts of the Belgian government to convince the Mwami to offer clemency, and on 15 January 1963 all five were publicly hanged. ### Responsibility There was immediate concern in Burundi following the killing that the Belgian administration shared responsibility for Rwagasore's murder. When Governor Harroy went to the hospital to pay respects to the corpse of the late prime minister, Rwagasore's mother confronted him in a hallway and slapped him. Belgian Foreign Minister Paul-Henri Spaak sent several telegrams to officials in Usumbura inquiring about the role of "Europeans" in the events. Spaak was also fearful of a UN inquiry and ordered Harroy to send him a detailed report on the murder which he could present so as to assuage international concerns. The UN General Assembly ultimately passed a resolution calling for an investigation and dispatched a Commission for Ruanda-Urundi delegation to Burundi to draft a report. The commission noted complaints from UPRONA leaders which accused the administration of being complicit in the murder, with additional accusations of culpability lodged against Brioli's and Ntidendereza's father, Chief Baranyanka. The body also received complaints that the PDC leaders were given favourable treatment in prison. The commission's report was ultimately dismissive of such concerns and affirmed the findings of the original criminal investigation. Generally, little academic attention has been paid to the details of the murder. Political scientist René Lemarchand wrote, "That the assassin, [Ioannis] Kageorgis, was a mere tool ... that the crime was the result of a political conspiracy organised by Biroli and Ntidendereza, and that the ultimate aim of this conspiracy was to create disturbances throughout the realm that would then be exploited by the PDC to its own advantages—these are well-established facts. However, the PDC leaders might have not resorted to such drastic action unless they had been actively encouraged to go ahead with their plans by certain Belgian functionaries." Harroy wrote in his 1987 memoirs pertaining to concerns of Belgian support for the assassination that, "To deny this seems unreasonable." Belgian journalist Guy Poppe wrote a book on Rwagasore's assassination in 2012, but conceded that its publication was rushed and that he was not "well placed enough" to make concrete claims on the extent of Belgian involvement. Historian Ludo De Witte concluded that the "Residency at Gitega was an accomplice" and that "Belgian responsibility must be attributed to ... Régnier and some of his collaborators. Noting civil disorder fomented by opposition members in the aftermath of the September 1961 elections with the alleged support of Belgian administrators, De Witte argued that Rwagasore's assassination fit into a larger scheme to provoke a civil war which would allow the Belgian administration to intervene and install a regime of its choosing, as in Rwanda. In regards to the concrete motives of Biroli and Ntidendereza, political scientist Helmut Strizek and researcher Günther Philipp argued that Rwagasore's assassination was probably inspired by the Bezi-Tare rivalry. The PDC's European secretary, Sabine Belva, testified during the appellate trial that Régnier hosted a meeting shortly after the September elections and had asked "whether the elimination of Rwagasore had been considered, as a means of solving the political problem." Belva stated that she reported this to Ntidendereza. In court, Régnier denied making such remarks. The Belgian judges determined in their verdict that these comments were only "jokes which were expressed lightly" and thus not worthy of serious investigation. Biroli's and Ntidendereza's lawyers also insisted on the responsibility of Belgian officials, though this was rejected by the presiding judge. Some lower-ranking officials in the Belgian Residency were dissuaded from testifying during the proceedings by the Belgian Foreign Ministry, which threatened to have them dismissed from their posts. A separate investigation conducted by the Brussels Public Prosecutor's Office after the initial Burundian proceedings ended—as Kageorgis had requested a pardon from the Belgian King on the grounds that others played a greater role in the murder—obtained the depositions of several Belgian civil servants. Hubert Léonard, an official in the Residency, testified that on 21 September 1961 Régnier had stated in a meeting, "Rwagasore must be killed!" Confronted with this, Régnier admitted to the Brussels Office that he had said such. The evidence gathered by the Brussels Public Prosecutor's Office was not made public, though portions of it were shared with the Burundian courts once they reopened their investigation following independence. Spaak threatened to suspend bilateral aid to Burundi for renewing the inquiry, causing consternation to the Burundian government, though this never occurred. De Witte surmised, "Burundi wanted the skin of those who murdered Rwagasore, at the risk of upsetting Brussels, but Spaak resigned himself to it and did not question Belgium's 'development aid' ... In return, Bujumbura kept the Brussels Public Prosecutor's report under wraps and avoided accusing the Belgians." In 1972, the Burundian government issued a report in an attempt to deflect responsibility for the massacres of the Ikiza. The document included an accusation that Régnier had organised Rwagasore's murder. The matter of the assassination was thereafter ignored by the government for many years, though in 2001 some Burundian parliamentarians called on the Belgian government to open an official investigation into the killing. On 14 October 2018 the Burundian government officially accused Belgium of being the "true backer of the assassination of Rwagasore" and declared that it would set up a "technical commission" to investigate the killing, though no progress on this has since been made. ### Political effects Muhirwa succeeded Rwagasore as Prime Minister of Burundi. Citing the distraction of "recent events", Muhirwa declined to offer a government programme and the Legislative Assembly sat in session aimlessly for the next few months. The establishment of the role of opposition figures in the assassination plot and their subsequent execution led to the immediate demise of a formal parliamentary opposition in Burundi. Rwagasore's death derailed his attempts to build national inter-ethnic cohesion and facilitated the growth of Hutu-Tutsi tensions; the latter came to eclipse the internal Ganwa rivalries in national politics. Subsequent governments remained ethnically diverse but unstable. The assassination also fractured UPRONA, as Rwagasore's former lieutenants struggled to succeed him as the party's leader; figures of Ganwa aristocracy eventually succeeded in claiming control of the organisation. UPRONA subsequently used Rwagasore's image to promote itself while disregarding his vision for the party, ultimately becoming a vehicle for exclusionary, Tutsi-elitist, single-party rule. There is a belief among some Burundians that Rwagasore's murder created a political void with long-term implications for the country and contributed to its later instability. ## Legacy ### Burial and official commemoration Rwagasore was buried on 18 October 1961 at the plot of Vugizo in Bujumbura. Burundi was granted independence in 1962, and in his official speech marking the event, Prime Minister Muhirwa paid extensive tribute to Rwagasore and credited him for pushing the country towards sovereignty. From 1962 to 1963 a monument was constructed at Rwagasore's burial site, featuring a mausoleum and three arches with a black cross. Prince Louis Rwagasore Stadium was also constructed to honour him. The government funded these projects by releasing a series of postage stamps bearing his image in February 1963. That year the government declared 13 October a public holiday and renamed a hospital and avenue in Bujumbura in commemoration. His image was also used to adorn public buildings, while the first printings of the Burundian franc included banknotes with his visage. Two more postage series featuring Rwagasore were later released; one in 1966 pairing his image with that of assassinated United States President John F. Kennedy, and another in 1972 celebrating the 10th anniversary of Burundian independence. Numerous schools and roads in Burundi have since been named for him, as was the sole aircraft of the country's first state airline, and the Legislative Assembly created the Order of Prince Louis as a national order of merit. In 1966 Captain Michel Micombero launched a military coup, overthrowing the monarchy and transforming Burundi into a republic with himself as its president. UPRONA subsequently became the only legal political party. Micombero referred to himself as the "successor" and sometimes "little brother" of Rwagasore. Throughout his tenure the late prime minister was frequently honoured in public ceremonies, and his portrait remained prevalent in public places. In 1976 Micombero was overthrown and replaced by Colonel Jean-Baptiste Bagaza. Bagaza tried to present himself as a moderniser, and Rwagasore's reputation thus competed with him. As a result, he deemphasised mention of Rwagasore and suspended celebration of the 13 October holiday. In 1987 Bagaza was overthrown by Major Pierre Buyoya. Following ethnic violence in 1988, Buyoya declared a policy of national unity, and used Rwagasore as a symbol of this. Under Buyoya's tenure, more portraits of Rwagasore were hung in public places, the mausoleum was renovated and a UPRONA-sponsored Rwagasore Institute was created to promote national reconciliation. In the 1990s Burundi underwent a democratic transition which included the reestablishment of multi-party politics. The end of UPRONA's monopoly on power led to a decline in public celebration of Rwagasore. One of the key nascent opposition parties, Front for Democracy in Burundi (Front pour la Démocratie au Burundi, FRODEBU), made reference to Rwagasore in its official publication but avoided all associations of him with UPRONA. FRODEBU won the parliamentary and presidential elections in 1993. The new president, Melchior Ndadaye, did not attend any official commemorations for Rwagasore in October. Ndadaye was assassinated in a coup attempt later that month, plunging Burundi into a crisis which evolved into a civil war. During this time Rwagasore was usually invoked only by politicians in self-serving fashion or by newspapers calling for reconciliation. In the late 1990s the belligerents in the civil war partook in peace talks. The resulting Arusha Accords praised the "charismatic leadership of Prince Louis Rwagasore and his companions" who had kept Burundi from "plunging into a political confrontation based on ethnic considerations". The implementation of the accords and further negotiation eventually resulted in the election of Pierre Nkurunziza as president in 2005. During his tenure, he attended annual celebrations of Rwagasore in October and frequently mentioned him in his speeches. His government also repaired several monuments to the late premier and erected a new one jointly honoring him and Ndadaye at a roundabout in Bujumbura. In 2019 he renamed Rwagasore Stadium, but stated that the planned parliament building to be built in Gitega would bear Rwagasore's name. ### Popular reputation After his death, historian Aidan Russell wrote that Rwagasore's reputation was quickly transformed into that of a "hero and martyr" and that he was the subject of a "competitive hagiography". Within Burundi, his reputation enjoys nearly-universal acclaim, with his speeches often quoted in political discussions and his surviving political opponents and their descendants offering praise of him. His assassination is commemorated annually with large ceremonies. Historian Christine Deslaurier wrote that "it is the martyrological dimensions of his anti-colonialism that have established a consensus around his mythical figure, more than his political and social thought." De Witte wrote that Rwagasore has "functioned as a two-dimensional icon". Rwagasore's widespread popularity in Burundi stands in contrast to the divided feelings toward most other domestic historical figures. He remains relatively unknown internationally, with his career overshadowed by those of Nyerere and Lumumba and his assassination eclipsed by the Congo Crisis and the contemporary ethnic violence in Rwanda.

Lead

Chemical element with atomic number 82

Lead is a chemical element with the symbol Pb (from the Latin plumbum) and atomic number 82. It is a heavy metal that is denser than most common materials. Lead is soft and malleable, and also has a relatively low melting point. When freshly cut, lead is a shiny gray with a hint of blue. It tarnishes to a dull gray color when exposed to air. Lead has the highest atomic number of any stable element and three of its isotopes are endpoints of major nuclear decay chains of heavier elements. Lead is toxic, even in small amounts, especially to children. Lead is a relatively unreactive post-transition metal. Its weak metallic character is illustrated by its amphoteric nature; lead and lead oxides react with acids and bases, and it tends to form covalent bonds. Compounds of lead are usually found in the +2 oxidation state rather than the +4 state common with lighter members of the carbon group. Exceptions are mostly limited to organolead compounds. Like the lighter members of the group, lead tends to bond with itself; it can form chains and polyhedral structures. Since lead is easily extracted from its ores, prehistoric people in the Near East were aware of it. Galena is a principal ore of lead which often bears silver. Interest in silver helped initiate widespread extraction and use of lead in ancient Rome. Lead production declined after the fall of Rome and did not reach comparable levels until the Industrial Revolution. In 2014, the annual global production of lead was about ten million tonnes, over half of which was from recycling. Lead's high density, low melting point, ductility and relative inertness to oxidation make it useful. These properties, combined with its relative abundance and low cost, resulted in its extensive use in construction, plumbing, batteries, bullets and shot, weights, solders, pewters, fusible alloys, white paints, leaded gasoline, and radiation shielding. Lead played a crucial role in the development of the printing press, as movable type could be relatively easily cast from lead alloys. Lead is a devastating and persistent neurotoxin that accumulates in soft tissues and bones. It damages the nervous system and interferes with the function of biological enzymes, causing neurological disorders ranging from behavioral problems to brain damage, and also affects general health, cardiovascular, and renal systems. Lead's toxicity was first documented by ancient Greek and Roman writers, who noted some of the symptoms of lead poisoning, but became widely recognized in Europe in the late 19th century. ## Physical properties ### Atomic A lead atom has 82 electrons, arranged in an electron configuration of [Xe]4f¹⁴5d¹⁰6s²6p². The sum of lead's first and second ionization energies—the total energy required to remove the two 6p electrons—is close to that of tin, lead's upper neighbor in the carbon group. This is unusual; ionization energies generally fall going down a group, as an element's outer electrons become more distant from the nucleus, and more shielded by smaller orbitals. The sum of the first four ionization energies of lead exceeds that of tin, contrary to what periodic trends would predict. This is explained by relativistic effects, which become significant in heavier atoms, which contract s and p orbitals such that lead's 6s electrons have larger binding energies than its 5s electrons. A consequence is the so-called inert pair effect: the 6s electrons of lead become reluctant to participate in bonding, stabilising the +2 oxidation state and making the distance between nearest atoms in crystalline lead unusually long. Lead's lighter carbon group congeners form stable or metastable allotropes with the tetrahedrally coordinated and covalently bonded diamond cubic structure. The energy levels of their outer s- and p-orbitals are close enough to allow mixing into four hybrid sp³ orbitals. In lead, the inert pair effect increases the separation between its s- and p-orbitals, and the gap cannot be overcome by the energy that would be released by extra bonds following hybridization. Rather than having a diamond cubic structure, lead forms metallic bonds in which only the p-electrons are delocalized and shared between the Pb²⁺ ions. Lead consequently has a face-centered cubic structure like the similarly sized divalent metals calcium and strontium. ### Bulk Pure lead has a bright, shiny gray appearance with a hint of blue. It tarnishes on contact with moist air and takes on a dull appearance, the hue of which depends on the prevailing conditions. Characteristic properties of lead include high density, malleability, ductility, and high resistance to corrosion due to passivation. Lead's close-packed face-centered cubic structure and high atomic weight result in a density of 11.34 g/cm³, which is greater than that of common metals such as iron (7.87 g/cm³), copper (8.93 g/cm³), and zinc (7.14 g/cm³). This density is the origin of the idiom to go over like a lead balloon. Some rarer metals are denser: tungsten and gold are both at 19.3 g/cm³, and osmium—the densest metal known—has a density of 22.59 g/cm³, almost twice that of lead. Lead is a very soft metal with a Mohs hardness of 1.5; it can be scratched with a fingernail. It is quite malleable and somewhat ductile. The bulk modulus of lead—a measure of its ease of compressibility—is 45.8 GPa. In comparison, that of aluminium is 75.2 GPa; copper 137.8 GPa; and mild steel 160–169 GPa. Lead's tensile strength, at 12–17 MPa, is low (that of aluminium is 6 times higher, copper 10 times, and mild steel 15 times higher); it can be strengthened by adding small amounts of copper or antimony. The melting point of lead—at 327.5 °C (621.5 °F)—is very low compared to most metals. Its boiling point of 1749 °C (3180 °F) is the lowest among the carbon-group elements. The electrical resistivity of lead at 20 °C is 192 nanoohm-meters, almost an order of magnitude higher than those of other industrial metals (copper at 15.43 nΩ·m; gold 20.51 nΩ·m; and aluminium at 24.15 nΩ·m). Lead is a superconductor at temperatures lower than 7.19 K; this is the highest critical temperature of all type-I superconductors and the third highest of the elemental superconductors. ### Isotopes Natural lead consists of four stable isotopes with mass numbers of 204, 206, 207, and 208, and traces of five short-lived radioisotopes. The high number of isotopes is consistent with lead's atomic number being even. Lead has a magic number of protons (82), for which the nuclear shell model accurately predicts an especially stable nucleus. Lead-208 has 126 neutrons, another magic number, which may explain why lead-208 is extraordinarily stable. With its high atomic number, lead is the heaviest element whose natural isotopes are regarded as stable; lead-208 is the heaviest stable nucleus. (This distinction formerly fell to bismuth, with an atomic number of 83, until its only primordial isotope, bismuth-209, was found in 2003 to decay very slowly.) The four stable isotopes of lead could theoretically undergo alpha decay to isotopes of mercury with a release of energy, but this has not been observed for any of them; their predicted half-lives range from 10³⁵ to 10¹⁸⁹ years (at least 10²⁵ times the current age of the universe). Three of the stable isotopes are found in three of the four major decay chains: lead-206, lead-207, and lead-208 are the final decay products of uranium-238, uranium-235, and thorium-232, respectively. These decay chains are called the uranium chain, the actinium chain, and the thorium chain. Their isotopic concentrations in a natural rock sample depends greatly on the presence of these three parent uranium and thorium isotopes. For example, the relative abundance of lead-208 can range from 52% in normal samples to 90% in thorium ores; for this reason, the standard atomic weight of lead is given to only one decimal place. As time passes, the ratio of lead-206 and lead-207 to lead-204 increases, since the former two are supplemented by radioactive decay of heavier elements while the latter is not; this allows for lead–lead dating. As uranium decays into lead, their relative amounts change; this is the basis for uranium–lead dating. Lead-207 exhibits nuclear magnetic resonance, a property that has been used to study its compounds in solution and solid state, including in the human body. Apart from the stable isotopes, which make up almost all lead that exists naturally, there are trace quantities of a few radioactive isotopes. One of them is lead-210; although it has a half-life of only 22.2 years, small quantities occur in nature because lead-210 is produced by a long decay series that starts with uranium-238 (that has been present for billions of years on Earth). Lead-211, −212, and −214 are present in the decay chains of uranium-235, thorium-232, and uranium-238, respectively, so traces of all three of these lead isotopes are found naturally. Minute traces of lead-209 arise from the very rare cluster decay of radium-223, one of the daughter products of natural uranium-235, and the decay chain of neptunium-237, traces of which are produced by neutron capture in uranium ores. Lead-210 is particularly useful for helping to identify the ages of samples by measuring its ratio to lead-206 (both isotopes are present in a single decay chain). In total, 43 lead isotopes have been synthesized, with mass numbers 178–220. Lead-205 is the most stable radioisotope, with a half-life of around 1.73×10⁷ years. The second-most stable is lead-202, which has a half-life of about 52,500 years, longer than any of the natural trace radioisotopes. ## Chemistry Bulk lead exposed to moist air forms a protective layer of varying composition. Lead(II) carbonate is a common constituent; the sulfate or chloride may also be present in urban or maritime settings. This layer makes bulk lead effectively chemically inert in the air. Finely powdered lead, as with many metals, is pyrophoric, and burns with a bluish-white flame. Fluorine reacts with lead at room temperature, forming lead(II) fluoride. The reaction with chlorine is similar but requires heating, as the resulting chloride layer diminishes the reactivity of the elements. Molten lead reacts with the chalcogens to give lead(II) chalcogenides. Lead metal resists sulfuric and phosphoric acid but not hydrochloric or nitric acid; the outcome depends on insolubility and subsequent passivation of the product salt. Organic acids, such as acetic acid, dissolve lead in the presence of oxygen. Concentrated alkalis will dissolve lead and form plumbites. ### Inorganic compounds Lead shows two main oxidation states: +4 and +2. The tetravalent state is common for the carbon group. The divalent state is rare for carbon and silicon, minor for germanium, important (but not prevailing) for tin, and is the more important of the two oxidation states for lead. This is attributable to relativistic effects, specifically the inert pair effect, which manifests itself when there is a large difference in electronegativity between lead and oxide, halide, or nitride anions, leading to a significant partial positive charge on lead. The result is a stronger contraction of the lead 6s orbital than is the case for the 6p orbital, making it rather inert in ionic compounds. The inert pair effect is less applicable to compounds in which lead forms covalent bonds with elements of similar electronegativity, such as carbon in organolead compounds. In these, the 6s and 6p orbitals remain similarly sized and sp³ hybridization is still energetically favorable. Lead, like carbon, is predominantly tetravalent in such compounds. There is a relatively large difference in the electronegativity of lead(II) at 1.87 and lead(IV) at 2.33. This difference marks the reversal in the trend of increasing stability of the +4 oxidation state going down the carbon group; tin, by comparison, has values of 1.80 in the +2 oxidation state and 1.96 in the +4 state. #### Lead(II) Lead(II) compounds are characteristic of the inorganic chemistry of lead. Even strong oxidizing agents like fluorine and chlorine react with lead to give only PbF₂ and PbCl₂. Lead(II) ions are usually colorless in solution, and partially hydrolyze to form Pb(OH)⁺ and finally [Pb₄(OH)₄]⁴⁺ (in which the hydroxyl ions act as bridging ligands), but are not reducing agents as tin(II) ions are. Techniques for identifying the presence of the Pb²⁺ ion in water generally rely on the precipitation of lead(II) chloride using dilute hydrochloric acid. As the chloride salt is sparingly soluble in water, in very dilute solutions the precipitation of lead(II) sulfide is instead achieved by bubbling hydrogen sulfide through the solution. Lead monoxide exists in two polymorphs, litharge α-PbO (red) and massicot β-PbO (yellow), the latter being stable only above around 488 °C. Litharge is the most commonly used inorganic compound of lead. There is no lead(II) hydroxide; increasing the pH of solutions of lead(II) salts leads to hydrolysis and condensation. Lead commonly reacts with heavier chalcogens. Lead sulfide is a semiconductor, a photoconductor, and an extremely sensitive infrared radiation detector. The other two chalcogenides, lead selenide and lead telluride, are likewise photoconducting. They are unusual in that their color becomes lighter going down the group. Lead dihalides are well-characterized; this includes the diastatide and mixed halides, such as PbFCl. The relative insolubility of the latter forms a useful basis for the gravimetric determination of fluorine. The difluoride was the first solid ionically conducting compound to be discovered (in 1834, by Michael Faraday). The other dihalides decompose on exposure to ultraviolet or visible light, especially the diiodide. Many lead(II) pseudohalides are known, such as the cyanide, cyanate, and thiocyanate. Lead(II) forms an extensive variety of halide coordination complexes, such as [PbCl₄]²⁻, [PbCl₆]⁴⁻, and the [Pb₂Cl₉]_n⁵ⁿ⁻ chain anion. Lead(II) sulfate is insoluble in water, like the sulfates of other heavy divalent cations. Lead(II) nitrate and lead(II) acetate are very soluble, and this is exploited in the synthesis of other lead compounds. #### Lead(IV) Few inorganic lead(IV) compounds are known. They are only formed in highly oxidizing solutions and do not normally exist under standard conditions. Lead(II) oxide gives a mixed oxide on further oxidation, Pb₃O₄. It is described as lead(II,IV) oxide, or structurally 2PbO·PbO₂, and is the best-known mixed valence lead compound. Lead dioxide is a strong oxidizing agent, capable of oxidizing hydrochloric acid to chlorine gas. This is because the expected PbCl₄ that would be produced is unstable and spontaneously decomposes to PbCl₂ and Cl₂. Analogously to lead monoxide, lead dioxide is capable of forming plumbate anions. Lead disulfide and lead diselenide are only stable at high pressures. Lead tetrafluoride, a yellow crystalline powder, is stable, but less so than the difluoride. Lead tetrachloride (a yellow oil) decomposes at room temperature, lead tetrabromide is less stable still, and the existence of lead tetraiodide is questionable. #### Other oxidation states Some lead compounds exist in formal oxidation states other than +4 or +2. Lead(III) may be obtained, as an intermediate between lead(II) and lead(IV), in larger organolead complexes; this oxidation state is not stable, as both the lead(III) ion and the larger complexes containing it are radicals. The same applies for lead(I), which can be found in such radical species. Numerous mixed lead(II,IV) oxides are known. When PbO₂ is heated in air, it becomes Pb₁₂O₁₉ at 293 °C, Pb₁₂O₁₇ at 351 °C, Pb₃O₄ at 374 °C, and finally PbO at 605 °C. A further sesquioxide, Pb₂O₃, can be obtained at high pressure, along with several non-stoichiometric phases. Many of them show defective fluorite structures in which some oxygen atoms are replaced by vacancies: PbO can be considered as having such a structure, with every alternate layer of oxygen atoms absent. Negative oxidation states can occur as Zintl phases, as either free lead anions, as in Ba₂Pb, with lead formally being lead(−IV), or in oxygen-sensitive ring-shaped or polyhedral cluster ions such as the trigonal bipyramidal Pb₅²⁻ ion, where two lead atoms are lead(−I) and three are lead(0). In such anions, each atom is at a polyhedral vertex and contributes two electrons to each covalent bond along an edge from their sp³ hybrid orbitals, the other two being an external lone pair. They may be made in liquid ammonia via the reduction of lead by sodium. ### Organolead Lead can form multiply-bonded chains, a property it shares with its lighter homologs in the carbon group. Its capacity to do so is much less because the Pb–Pb bond energy is over three and a half times lower than that of the C–C bond. With itself, lead can build metal–metal bonds of an order up to three. With carbon, lead forms organolead compounds similar to, but generally less stable than, typical organic compounds (due to the Pb–C bond being rather weak). This makes the organometallic chemistry of lead far less wide-ranging than that of tin. Lead predominantly forms organolead(IV) compounds, even when starting with inorganic lead(II) reactants; very few organolead(II) compounds are known. The most well-characterized exceptions are Pb[CH(SiMe₃)₂]₂ and Pb(η⁵-C₅H₅)₂. The lead analog of the simplest organic compound, methane, is plumbane. Plumbane may be obtained in a reaction between metallic lead and atomic hydrogen. Two simple derivatives, tetramethyllead and tetraethyllead, are the best-known organolead compounds. These compounds are relatively stable: tetraethyllead only starts to decompose if heated or if exposed to sunlight or ultraviolet light. With sodium metal, lead readily forms an equimolar alloy that reacts with alkyl halides to form organometallic compounds such as tetraethyllead. The oxidizing nature of many organolead compounds is usefully exploited: lead tetraacetate is an important laboratory reagent for oxidation in organic synthesis. Tetraethyllead, once added to gasoline, was produced in larger quantities than any other organometallic compound. Other organolead compounds are less chemically stable. For many organic compounds, a lead analog does not exist. ## Origin and occurrence ### In space Lead's per-particle abundance in the Solar System is 0.121 ppb (parts per billion). This figure is two and a half times higher than that of platinum, eight times more than mercury, and seventeen times more than gold. The amount of lead in the universe is slowly increasing as most heavier atoms (all of which are unstable) gradually decay to lead. The abundance of lead in the Solar System since its formation 4.5 billion years ago has increased by about 0.75%. The solar system abundances table shows that lead, despite its relatively high atomic number, is more prevalent than most other elements with atomic numbers greater than 40. Primordial lead—which comprises the isotopes lead-204, lead-206, lead-207, and lead-208—was mostly created as a result of repetitive neutron capture processes occurring in stars. The two main modes of capture are the s- and r-processes. In the s-process (s is for "slow"), captures are separated by years or decades, allowing less stable nuclei to undergo beta decay. A stable thallium-203 nucleus can capture a neutron and become thallium-204; this undergoes beta decay to give stable lead-204; on capturing another neutron, it becomes lead-205, which has a half-life of around 15 million years. Further captures result in lead-206, lead-207, and lead-208. On capturing another neutron, lead-208 becomes lead-209, which quickly decays into bismuth-209. Bismuth-209 is also radioactive and eventually decays into thallium-205 if left unperturbed. On capturing another neutron, bismuth-209 becomes bismuth-210, and this beta decays to polonium-210, which alpha decays to lead-206. The cycle hence ends at lead-206, lead-207, lead-208, and thallium-205. In the r-process (r is for "rapid"), captures happen faster than nuclei can decay. This occurs in environments with a high neutron density, such as a supernova or the merger of two neutron stars. The neutron flux involved may be on the order of 10²² neutrons per square centimeter per second. The r-process does not form as much lead as the s-process. It tends to stop once neutron-rich nuclei reach 126 neutrons. At this point, the neutrons are arranged in complete shells in the atomic nucleus, and it becomes harder to energetically accommodate more of them. When the neutron flux subsides, these nuclei beta decay into stable isotopes of osmium, iridium, and platinum. ### On Earth Lead is classified as a chalcophile under the Goldschmidt classification, meaning it is generally found combined with sulfur. It rarely occurs in its native, metallic form. Many lead minerals are relatively light and, over the course of the Earth's history, have remained in the crust instead of sinking deeper into the Earth's interior. This accounts for lead's relatively high crustal abundance of 14 ppm; it is the 38th most abundant element in the crust. The main lead-bearing mineral is galena (PbS), which is mostly found with zinc ores. Most other lead minerals are related to galena in some way; boulangerite, Pb₅Sb₄S₁₁, is a mixed sulfide derived from galena; anglesite, PbSO₄, is a product of galena oxidation; and cerussite or white lead ore, PbCO₃, is a decomposition product of galena. Arsenic, tin, antimony, silver, gold, copper, and bismuth are common impurities in lead minerals. World lead resources exceed two billion tons. Significant deposits are located in Australia, China, Ireland, Mexico, Peru, Portugal, Russia, and the United States. Global reserves—resources that are economically feasible to extract—totaled 88 million tons in 2016, of which Australia had 35 million, China 17 million, and Russia 6.4 million. Typical background concentrations of lead do not exceed 0.1 μg/m³ in the atmosphere; 100 mg/kg in soil; 4 mg/kg in vegetation and 5 μg/L in freshwater and seawater. ## Etymology The modern English word lead is of Germanic origin; it comes from the Middle English leed and Old English lēad (with the macron above the "e" signifying that the vowel sound of that letter is long). The Old English word is derived from the hypothetical reconstructed Proto-Germanic \*lauda- ('lead'). According to linguistic theory, this word bore descendants in multiple Germanic languages of exactly the same meaning. There is no consensus on the origin of the Proto-Germanic \*lauda-. One hypothesis suggests it is derived from Proto-Indo-European \*lAudh- ('lead'; capitalization of the vowel is equivalent to the macron). Another hypothesis suggests it is borrowed from Proto-Celtic \*ɸloud-io- ('lead'). This word is related to the Latin plumbum, which gave the element its chemical symbol Pb. The word \*ɸloud-io- is thought to be the origin of Proto-Germanic \*bliwa- (which also means 'lead'), from which stemmed the German Blei. The name of the chemical element is not related to the verb of the same spelling, which is derived from Proto-Germanic \*laidijan- ('to lead'). ## History ### Prehistory and early history Metallic lead beads dating back to 7000–6500 BC have been found in Asia Minor and may represent the first example of metal smelting. At that time lead had few (if any) applications due to its softness and dull appearance. The major reason for the spread of lead production was its association with silver, which may be obtained by burning galena (a common lead mineral). The Ancient Egyptians were the first to use lead minerals in cosmetics, an application that spread to Ancient Greece and beyond; the Egyptians may have used lead for sinkers in fishing nets, glazes, glasses, enamels, and for ornaments. Various civilizations of the Fertile Crescent used lead as a writing material, as coins, and as a construction material. Lead was used in the Ancient Chinese royal court as a stimulant, as currency, and as a contraceptive; the Indus Valley civilization and the Mesoamericans used it for making amulets; and the eastern and southern African peoples used lead in wire drawing. ### Classical era Because silver was extensively used as a decorative material and an exchange medium, lead deposits came to be worked in Asia Minor from 3000 BC; later, lead deposits were developed in the Aegean and Laurion. These three regions collectively dominated production of mined lead until c. 1200 BC. Beginning circa 2000 BC, the Phoenicians worked deposits in the Iberian peninsula; by 1600 BC, lead mining existed in Cyprus, Greece, and Sardinia. Rome's territorial expansion in Europe and across the Mediterranean, and its development of mining, led to it becoming the greatest producer of lead during the classical era, with an estimated annual output peaking at 80,000 tonnes. Like their predecessors, the Romans obtained lead mostly as a by-product of silver smelting. Lead mining occurred in Central Europe, Britain, the Balkans, Greece, Anatolia, and Hispania, the latter accounting for 40% of world production. Lead tablets were commonly used as a material for letters. Lead coffins, cast in flat sand forms, with interchangeable motifs to suit the faith of the deceased were used in ancient Judea. Lead was used to make sling bullets from the 5th century BC. In Roman times, lead sling bullets were amply used, and were effective at a distance of between 100 and 150 meters. The Balearic slingers, used as mercenaries in Carthaginian and Roman armies, were famous for their shooting distance and accuracy. Lead was used for making water pipes in the Roman Empire; the Latin word for the metal, plumbum, is the origin of the English word "plumbing". Its ease of working, its low melting point enabling the easy fabrication of completely waterproof welded joints, and its resistance to corrosion ensured its widespread use in other applications, including pharmaceuticals, roofing, currency, and warfare. Writers of the time, such as Cato the Elder, Columella, and Pliny the Elder, recommended lead (or lead-coated) vessels for the preparation of sweeteners and preservatives added to wine and food. The lead conferred an agreeable taste due to the formation of "sugar of lead" (lead(II) acetate), whereas copper or bronze vessels could impart a bitter flavor through verdigris formation. The Roman author Vitruvius reported the health dangers of lead and modern writers have suggested that lead poisoning played a major role in the decline of the Roman Empire. Other researchers have criticized such claims, pointing out, for instance, that not all abdominal pain is caused by lead poisoning. According to archaeological research, Roman lead pipes increased lead levels in tap water but such an effect was "unlikely to have been truly harmful". When lead poisoning did occur, victims were called "saturnine", dark and cynical, after the ghoulish father of the gods, Saturn. By association, lead was considered the father of all metals. Its status in Roman society was low as it was readily available and cheap. #### Confusion with tin and antimony Since the Bronze Age metallurgists and engineers have understood the difference between rare and valuable tin, essential for alloying with copper to produce tough and corrosion resistant bronze, and ‘cheap and cheerful’ lead. However the nomenclature in some languages is similar. Romans called lead plumbum nigrum ("black lead"), and tin plumbum candidum ("bright lead"). The association of lead and tin can be seen in other languages: the word olovo in Czech translates to "lead", but in Russian, its cognate олово (olovo) means "tin". To add to the confusion, lead bore a close relation to antimony: both elements commonly occur as sulfides (galena and stibnite), often together. Pliny incorrectly wrote that stibnite would give lead on heating, instead of antimony. In countries such as Turkey and India, the originally Persian name surma came to refer to either antimony sulfide or lead sulfide, and in some languages, such as Russian, gave its name to antimony (сурьма). ### Middle Ages and the Renaissance Lead mining in Western Europe declined after the fall of the Western Roman Empire, with Arabian Iberia being the only region having a significant output. The largest production of lead occurred in South and East Asia, especially China and India, where lead mining grew rapidly. In Europe, lead production began to increase in the 11th and 12th centuries, when it was again used for roofing and piping. Starting in the 13th century, lead was used to create stained glass. In the European and Arabian traditions of alchemy, lead (symbol ♄ in the European tradition) was considered an impure base metal which, by the separation, purification and balancing of its constituent essences, could be transformed to pure and incorruptible gold. During the period, lead was used increasingly for adulterating wine. The use of such wine was forbidden for use in Christian rites by a papal bull in 1498, but it continued to be imbibed and resulted in mass poisonings up to the late 18th century. Lead was a key material in parts of the printing press, and lead dust was commonly inhaled by print workers, causing lead poisoning. Lead also became the chief material for making bullets for firearms: it was cheap, less damaging to iron gun barrels, had a higher density (which allowed for better retention of velocity), and its lower melting point made the production of bullets easier as they could be made using a wood fire. Lead, in the form of Venetian ceruse, was extensively used in cosmetics by Western European aristocracy as whitened faces were regarded as a sign of modesty. This practice later expanded to white wigs and eyeliners, and only faded out with the French Revolution in the late 18th century. A similar fashion appeared in Japan in the 18th century with the emergence of the geishas, a practice that continued long into the 20th century. The white faces of women "came to represent their feminine virtue as Japanese women", with lead commonly used in the whitener. ### Outside Europe and Asia In the New World, lead production was recorded soon after the arrival of European settlers. The earliest record dates to 1621 in the English Colony of Virginia, fourteen years after its foundation. In Australia, the first mine opened by colonists on the continent was a lead mine, in 1841. In Africa, lead mining and smelting were known in the Benue Trough and the lower Congo Basin, where lead was used for trade with Europeans, and as a currency by the 17th century, well before the scramble for Africa. ### Industrial Revolution In the second half of the 18th century, Britain, and later continental Europe and the United States, experienced the Industrial Revolution. This was the first time during which lead production rates exceeded those of Rome. Britain was the leading producer, losing this status by the mid-19th century with the depletion of its mines and the development of lead mining in Germany, Spain, and the United States. By 1900, the United States was the leader in global lead production, and other non-European nations—Canada, Mexico, and Australia—had begun significant production; production outside Europe exceeded that within. A great share of the demand for lead came from plumbing and painting—lead paints were in regular use. At this time, more (working class) people were exposed to the metal and lead poisoning cases escalated. This led to research into the effects of lead intake. Lead was proven to be more dangerous in its fume form than as a solid metal. Lead poisoning and gout were linked; British physician Alfred Baring Garrod noted a third of his gout patients were plumbers and painters. The effects of chronic ingestion of lead, including mental disorders, were also studied in the 19th century. The first laws aimed at decreasing lead poisoning in factories were enacted during the 1870s and 1880s in the United Kingdom. ### Modern era Further evidence of the threat that lead posed to humans was discovered in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Mechanisms of harm were better understood, lead blindness was documented, and the element was phased out of public use in the United States and Europe. The United Kingdom introduced mandatory factory inspections in 1878 and appointed the first Medical Inspector of Factories in 1898; as a result, a 25-fold decrease in lead poisoning incidents from 1900 to 1944 was reported. Most European countries banned lead paint—commonly used because of its opacity and water resistance—for interiors by 1930. The last major human exposure to lead was the addition of tetraethyllead to gasoline as an antiknock agent, a practice that originated in the United States in 1921. It was phased out in the United States and the European Union by 2000. In the 1970s, the United States and Western European countries introduced legislation to reduce lead air pollution. The impact was significant: while a study conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the United States in 1976–1980 showed that 77.8% of the population had elevated blood lead levels, in 1991–1994, a study by the same institute showed the share of people with such high levels dropped to 2.2%. The main product made of lead by the end of the 20th century was the lead–acid battery. From 1960 to 1990, lead output in the Western Bloc grew by about 31%. The share of the world's lead production by the Eastern Bloc increased from 10% to 30%, from 1950 to 1990, with the Soviet Union being the world's largest producer during the mid-1970s and the 1980s, and China starting major lead production in the late 20th century. Unlike the European communist countries, China was largely unindustrialized by the mid-20th century; in 2004, China surpassed Australia as the largest producer of lead. As was the case during European industrialization, lead has had a negative effect on health in China. ## Production As of 2014, production of lead is increasing worldwide due to its use in lead–acid batteries. There are two major categories of production: primary from mined ores, and secondary from scrap. In 2014, 4.58 million metric tons came from primary production and 5.64 million from secondary production. The top three producers of mined lead concentrate in that year were China, Australia, and the United States. The top three producers of refined lead were China, the United States, and India. According to the International Resource Panel's Metal Stocks in Society report of 2010, the total amount of lead in use, stockpiled, discarded, or dissipated into the environment, on a global basis, is 8 kg per capita. Much of this is in more developed countries (20–150 kg per capita) rather than less developed ones (1–4 kg per capita). The primary and secondary lead production processes are similar. Some primary production plants now supplement their operations with scrap lead, and this trend is likely to increase in the future. Given adequate techniques, lead obtained via secondary processes is indistinguishable from lead obtained via primary processes. Scrap lead from the building trade is usually fairly clean and is re-melted without the need for smelting, though refining is sometimes needed. Secondary lead production is therefore cheaper, in terms of energy requirements, than is primary production, often by 50% or more. ### Primary Most lead ores contain a low percentage of lead (rich ores have a typical content of 3–8%) which must be concentrated for extraction. During initial processing, ores typically undergo crushing, dense-medium separation, grinding, froth flotation, and drying. The resulting concentrate, which has a lead content of 30–80% by mass (regularly 50–60%), is then turned into (impure) lead metal. There are two main ways of doing this: a two-stage process involving roasting followed by blast furnace extraction, carried out in separate vessels; or a direct process in which the extraction of the concentrate occurs in a single vessel. The latter has become the most common route, though the former is still significant. #### Two-stage process First, the sulfide concentrate is roasted in air to oxidize the lead sulfide: 2 PbS(s) + 3 O₂(g) → 2 PbO(s) + 2 SO₂(g)↑ As the original concentrate was not pure lead sulfide, roasting yields not only the desired lead(II) oxide, but a mixture of oxides, sulfates, and silicates of lead and of the other metals contained in the ore. This impure lead oxide is reduced in a coke-fired blast furnace to the (again, impure) metal: 2 PbO(s) + C(s) → 2 Pb(s) + CO₂(g)↑ Impurities are mostly arsenic, antimony, bismuth, zinc, copper, silver, and gold. Typically they are removed in a series of pyrometallurgical processes. The melt is treated in a reverberatory furnace with air, steam, and sulfur, which oxidizes the impurities except for silver, gold, and bismuth. Oxidized contaminants float to the top of the melt and are skimmed off. Metallic silver and gold are removed and recovered economically by means of the Parkes process, in which zinc is added to lead. Zinc, which is immiscible in lead, dissolves the silver and gold. The zinc solution can be separated from the lead, and the silver and gold retrieved. De-silvered lead is freed of bismuth by the Betterton–Kroll process, treating it with metallic calcium and magnesium. The resulting bismuth dross can be skimmed off. Alternatively to the pyrometallurgical processes, very pure lead can be obtained by processing smelted lead electrolytically using the Betts process. Anodes of impure lead and cathodes of pure lead are placed in an electrolyte of lead fluorosilicate (PbSiF₆). Once electrical potential is applied, impure lead at the anode dissolves and plates onto the cathode, leaving the majority of the impurities in solution. This is a high-cost process and thus mostly reserved for refining bullion containing high percentages of impurities. #### Direct process In this process, lead bullion and slag is obtained directly from lead concentrates. The lead sulfide concentrate is melted in a furnace and oxidized, forming lead monoxide. Carbon (as coke or coal gas) is added to the molten charge along with fluxing agents. The lead monoxide is thereby reduced to metallic lead, in the midst of a slag rich in lead monoxide. If the input is rich in lead, as much as 80% of the original lead can be obtained as bullion; the remaining 20% forms a slag rich in lead monoxide. For a low-grade feed, all of the lead can be oxidized to a high-lead slag. Metallic lead is further obtained from the high-lead (25–40%) slags via submerged fuel combustion or injection, reduction assisted by an electric furnace, or a combination of both. #### Alternatives Research on a cleaner, less energy-intensive lead extraction process continues; a major drawback is that either too much lead is lost as waste, or the alternatives result in a high sulfur content in the resulting lead metal. Hydrometallurgical extraction, in which anodes of impure lead are immersed into an electrolyte and pure lead is deposited (electrowound) onto a cathode, is a technique that may have potential, but is not currently economical except in cases where electricity is very cheap. ### Secondary Smelting, which is an essential part of the primary production, is often skipped during secondary production. It is only performed when metallic lead has undergone significant oxidation. The process is similar to that of primary production in either a blast furnace or a rotary furnace, with the essential difference being the greater variability of yields: blast furnaces produce hard lead (10% antimony) while reverberatory and rotary kiln furnaces produce semisoft lead (3–4% antimony). The ISASMELT process is a more recent smelting method that may act as an extension to primary production; battery paste from spent lead–acid batteries (containing lead sulfate and lead oxides) has its sulfate removed by treating it with alkali, and is then treated in a coal-fueled furnace in the presence of oxygen, which yields impure lead, with antimony the most common impurity. Refining of secondary lead is similar to that of primary lead; some refining processes may be skipped depending on the material recycled and its potential contamination. Of the sources of lead for recycling, lead–acid batteries are the most important; lead pipe, sheet, and cable sheathing are also significant. ## Applications Contrary to popular belief, pencil leads in wooden pencils have never been made from lead. When the pencil originated as a wrapped graphite writing tool, the particular type of graphite used was named plumbago (literally, act for lead or lead mockup). ### Elemental form Lead metal has several useful mechanical properties, including high density, low melting point, ductility, and relative inertness. Many metals are superior to lead in some of these aspects but are generally less common and more difficult to extract from parent ores. Lead's toxicity has led to its phasing out for some uses. Lead has been used for bullets since their invention in the Middle Ages. It is inexpensive; its low melting point means small arms ammunition and shotgun pellets can be cast with minimal technical equipment; and it is denser than other common metals, which allows for better retention of velocity. It remains the main material for bullets, alloyed with other metals as hardeners. Concerns have been raised that lead bullets used for hunting can damage the environment. Lead's high density and resistance to corrosion have been exploited in a number of related applications. It is used as ballast in sailboat keels; its density allows it to take up a small volume and minimize water resistance, thus counterbalancing the heeling effect of wind on the sails. It is used in scuba diving weight belts to counteract the diver's buoyancy. In 1993, the base of the Leaning Tower of Pisa was stabilized with 600 tonnes of lead. Because of its corrosion resistance, lead is used as a protective sheath for underwater cables. Lead has many uses in the construction industry; lead sheets are used as architectural metals in roofing material, cladding, flashing, gutters and gutter joints, and on roof parapets. Lead is still used in statues and sculptures, including for armatures. In the past it was often used to balance the wheels of cars; for environmental reasons this use is being phased out in favor of other materials. Lead is added to copper alloys, such as brass and bronze, to improve machinability and for its lubricating qualities. Being practically insoluble in copper the lead forms solid globules in imperfections throughout the alloy, such as grain boundaries. In low concentrations, as well as acting as a lubricant, the globules hinder the formation of swarf as the alloy is worked, thereby improving machinability. Copper alloys with larger concentrations of lead are used in bearings. The lead provides lubrication, and the copper provides the load-bearing support. Lead's high density, atomic number, and formability form the basis for use of lead as a barrier that absorbs sound, vibration, and radiation. Lead has no natural resonance frequencies; as a result, sheet-lead is used as a sound deadening layer in the walls, floors, and ceilings of sound studios. Organ pipes are often made from a lead alloy, mixed with various amounts of tin to control the tone of each pipe. Lead is an established shielding material from radiation in nuclear science and in X-ray rooms due to its denseness and high attenuation coefficient. Molten lead has been used as a coolant for lead-cooled fast reactors. ### Batteries The largest use of lead in the early 21st century is in lead–acid batteries. The lead in batteries undergoes no direct contact with humans, so there are fewer toxicity concerns. People who work in lead battery production plants may be exposed to lead dust and inhale it. The reactions in the battery between lead, lead dioxide, and sulfuric acid provide a reliable source of voltage. Supercapacitors incorporating lead–acid batteries have been installed in kilowatt and megawatt scale applications in Australia, Japan, and the United States in frequency regulation, solar smoothing and shifting, wind smoothing, and other applications. These batteries have lower energy density and charge-discharge efficiency than lithium-ion batteries, but are significantly cheaper. ### Coating for cables Lead is used in high voltage power cables as shell material to prevent water diffusion into insulation; this use is decreasing as lead is being phased out. Its use in solder for electronics is also being phased out by some countries to reduce the amount of environmentally hazardous waste. Lead is one of three metals used in the Oddy test for museum materials, helping detect organic acids, aldehydes, and acidic gases. ### Compounds In addition to being the main application for lead metal, lead-acid batteries are also the main consumer of lead compounds. The energy storage/release reaction used in these devices involves lead sulfate and lead dioxide: Pb(s) + PbO ₂(s) + 2H ₂SO ₄(aq) → 2PbSO ₄(s) + 2H ₂O(l) Other applications of lead compounds are very specialized and often fading. Lead-based coloring agents are used in ceramic glazes and glass, especially for red and yellow shades. While lead paints are phased out in Europe and North America, they remain in use in less developed countries such as China, India, or Indonesia. Lead tetraacetate and lead dioxide are used as oxidizing agents in organic chemistry. Lead is frequently used in the polyvinyl chloride coating of electrical cords. It can be used to treat candle wicks to ensure a longer, more even burn. Because of its toxicity, European and North American manufacturers use alternatives such as zinc. Lead glass is composed of 12–28% lead oxide, changing its optical characteristics and reducing the transmission of ionizing radiation, a property used in old TVs and computer monitors with cathode-ray tubes. Lead-based semiconductors such as lead telluride and lead selenide are used in photovoltaic cells and infrared detectors. ## Biological effects Lead has no confirmed biological role, and there is no confirmed safe level of lead exposure. A 2009 Canadian–American study concluded that even at levels that are considered to pose little to no risk, lead may cause "adverse mental health outcomes". Its prevalence in the human body—at an adult average of 120 mg—is nevertheless exceeded only by zinc (2500 mg) and iron (4000 mg) among the heavy metals. Lead salts are very efficiently absorbed by the body. A small amount of lead (1%) is stored in bones; the rest is excreted in urine and feces within a few weeks of exposure. Only about a third of lead is excreted by a child. Continual exposure may result in the bioaccumulation of lead. ### Toxicity Lead is a highly poisonous metal (whether inhaled or swallowed), affecting almost every organ and system in the human body. At airborne levels of 100 mg/m³, it is immediately dangerous to life and health. Most ingested lead is absorbed into the bloodstream. The primary cause of its toxicity is its predilection for interfering with the proper functioning of enzymes. It does so by binding to the sulfhydryl groups found on many enzymes, or mimicking and displacing other metals which act as cofactors in many enzymatic reactions. The essential metals that lead interacts with include calcium, iron, and zinc. High levels of calcium and iron tend to provide some protection from lead poisoning; low levels cause increased susceptibility. ### Effects Lead can cause severe damage to the brain and kidneys and, ultimately, death. By mimicking calcium, lead can cross the blood–brain barrier. It degrades the myelin sheaths of neurons, reduces their numbers, interferes with neurotransmission routes, and decreases neuronal growth. In the human body, lead inhibits porphobilinogen synthase and ferrochelatase, preventing both porphobilinogen formation and the incorporation of iron into protoporphyrin IX, the final step in heme synthesis. This causes ineffective heme synthesis and microcytic anemia. Symptoms of lead poisoning include nephropathy, colic-like abdominal pains, and possibly weakness in the fingers, wrists, or ankles. Small blood pressure increases, particularly in middle-aged and older people, may be apparent and can cause anemia. Several studies, mostly cross-sectional, found an association between increased lead exposure and decreased heart rate variability. In pregnant women, high levels of exposure to lead may cause miscarriage. Chronic, high-level exposure has been shown to reduce fertility in males. In a child's developing brain, lead interferes with synapse formation in the cerebral cortex, neurochemical development (including that of neurotransmitters), and the organization of ion channels. Early childhood exposure has been linked with an increased risk of sleep disturbances and excessive daytime drowsiness in later childhood. High blood levels are associated with delayed puberty in girls. The rise and fall in exposure to airborne lead from the combustion of tetraethyl lead in gasoline during the 20th century has been linked with historical increases and decreases in crime levels. ### Exposure sources Lead exposure is a global issue since lead mining and smelting, and battery manufacturing, disposal, and recycling, are common in many countries. Lead enters the body via inhalation, ingestion, or skin absorption. Almost all inhaled lead is absorbed into the body; for ingestion, the rate is 20–70%, with children absorbing a higher percentage than adults. Poisoning typically results from ingestion of food or water contaminated with lead, and less commonly after accidental ingestion of contaminated soil, dust, or lead-based paint. Seawater products can contain lead if affected by nearby industrial waters. Fruit and vegetables can be contaminated by high levels of lead in the soils they were grown in. Soil can be contaminated through particulate accumulation from lead in pipes, lead paint, and residual emissions from leaded gasoline. The use of lead for water pipes is a problem in areas with soft or acidic water. Hard water forms insoluble protective layers on the inner surface of the pipes, whereas soft and acidic water dissolves the lead pipes. Dissolved carbon dioxide in the carried water may result in the formation of soluble lead bicarbonate; oxygenated water may similarly dissolve lead as lead(II) hydroxide. Drinking such water, over time, can cause health problems due to the toxicity of the dissolved lead. The harder the water the more calcium bicarbonate and sulfate it will contain, and the more the inside of the pipes will be coated with a protective layer of lead carbonate or lead sulfate. Ingestion of applied lead-based paint is the major source of exposure for children: a direct source is chewing on old painted window sills. Alternatively, as the applied dry paint deteriorates, it peels, is pulverized into dust and then enters the body through hand-to-mouth contact or contaminated food, water, or alcohol. Ingesting certain home remedies may result in exposure to lead or its compounds. Inhalation is the second major exposure pathway, affecting smokers and especially workers in lead-related occupations. Cigarette smoke contains, among other toxic substances, radioactive lead-210. "As a result of EPA's regulatory efforts, levels of lead in the air [in the United States] decreased by 86 percent between 2010 and 2020." The concentration of lead in the air in the United States fell below the national standard of 0.15 μg/m³ in 2014. Skin exposure may be significant for people working with organic lead compounds. The rate of skin absorption is lower for inorganic lead. #### Lead in foods Lead may be found in food when food is grown in soil that is high in lead, airborne lead contaminates the crops, animals eat lead in their diet, or lead enters the food either from what it was stored or cooked in. Ingestion of lead paint and batteries is also a route of exposure for livestock, which can subsequently affect humans. Milk produced by contaminated cattle can be diluted to a lower lead concentration and sold for consumption. In Bangladesh, lead compounds have been added to turmeric to make it more yellow. This is believed to have started in the 1980s and continues as of 2019. It is believed to be one of the main sources of high lead levels in the country. In Hong Kong the maximum allowed lead parts per million is 6 in solid foods and 1 in liquid foods. In December 2022, Consumer Reports tested 28 dark chocolate brands and found that 23 of contained potentially harmful levels of lead, cadmium or both. They have urged the chocolate makers to reduce the level of lead which could be harmful to certain people, specially pregnant women. Lead-containing dust can settle on drying cocoa beans when they are set outside near polluting industrial plants. #### Lead in plastic toys According to the United States Center for Disease Control, the use of lead in plastics has not been banned. Lead softens the plastic and makes it more flexible so that it can go back to its original shape. It may also be used in plastic toys to stabilize molecules from heat. Lead dust can be formed when plastic is exposed to sunlight, air, and detergents that break down the chemical bond between the lead and plastics. ### Treatment Treatment for lead poisoning normally involves the administration of dimercaprol and succimer. Acute cases may require the use of disodium calcium edetate, the calcium chelate, and the disodium salt of ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid (EDTA). It has a greater affinity for lead than calcium, with the result that lead chelate is formed by exchange and excreted in the urine, leaving behind harmless calcium. ## Environmental effects The extraction, production, use, and disposal of lead and its products have caused significant contamination of the Earth's soils and waters. Atmospheric emissions of lead were at their peak during the Industrial Revolution, and the leaded gasoline period in the second half of the twentieth century. Lead releases originate from natural sources (i.e., concentration of the naturally occurring lead), industrial production, incineration and recycling, and mobilization of previously buried lead. In particular, as lead has been phased out from other uses, in the Global South, lead recycling operations designed to extract cheap lead used for global manufacturing have become a well documented source of exposure. Elevated concentrations of lead persist in soils and sediments in post-industrial and urban areas; industrial emissions, including those arising from coal burning, continue in many parts of the world, particularly in the developing countries. Lead can accumulate in soils, especially those with a high organic content, where it remains for hundreds to thousands of years. Environmental lead can compete with other metals found in and on plants surfaces potentially inhibiting photosynthesis and at high enough concentrations, negatively affecting plant growth and survival. Contamination of soils and plants can allow lead to ascend the food chain affecting microorganisms and animals. In animals, lead exhibits toxicity in many organs, damaging the nervous, renal, reproductive, hematopoietic, and cardiovascular systems after ingestion, inhalation, or skin absorption. Fish uptake lead from both water and sediment; bioaccumulation in the food chain poses a hazard to fish, birds, and sea mammals. Anthropogenic lead includes lead from shot and sinkers. These are among the most potent sources of lead contamination along with lead production sites. Lead was banned for shot and sinkers in the United States in 2017, although that ban was only effective for a month, and a similar ban is being considered in the European Union. Analytical methods for the determination of lead in the environment include spectrophotometry, X-ray fluorescence, atomic spectroscopy and electrochemical methods. A specific ion-selective electrode has been developed based on the ionophore S,S'-methylenebis (N,N-diisobutyldithiocarbamate). An important biomarker assay for lead poisoning is δ-aminolevulinic acid levels in plasma, serum, and urine. ## Restriction and remediation By the mid-1980s, there was significant decline in the use of lead in industry. In the United States, environmental regulations reduced or eliminated the use of lead in non-battery products, including gasoline, paints, solders, and water systems. Particulate control devices were installed in coal-fired power plants to capture lead emissions. In 1992, U.S. Congress required the Environmental Protection Agency to reduce the blood lead levels of the country's children. Lead use was further curtailed by the European Union's 2003 Restriction of Hazardous Substances Directive. A large drop in lead deposition occurred in the Netherlands after the 1993 national ban on use of lead shot for hunting and sport shooting: from 230 tonnes in 1990 to 47.5 tonnes in 1995. In the United States, the permissible exposure limit for lead in the workplace, comprising metallic lead, inorganic lead compounds, and lead soaps, was set at 50 μg/m³ over an 8-hour workday, and the blood lead level limit at 5 μg per 100 g of blood in 2012. Lead may still be found in harmful quantities in stoneware, vinyl (such as that used for tubing and the insulation of electrical cords), and Chinese brass. Old houses may still contain lead paint. White lead paint has been withdrawn from sale in industrialized countries, but specialized uses of other pigments such as yellow lead chromate remain. Stripping old paint by sanding produces dust which can be inhaled. Lead abatement programs have been mandated by some authorities in properties where young children live. Lead waste, depending on the jurisdiction and the nature of the waste, may be treated as household waste (to facilitate lead abatement activities), or potentially hazardous waste requiring specialized treatment or storage. Lead is released into the environment in shooting places and a number of lead management practices have been developed to counter the lead contamination. Lead migration can be enhanced in acidic soils; to counter that, it is advised soils be treated with lime to neutralize the soils and prevent leaching of lead. Research has been conducted on how to remove lead from biosystems by biological means: Fish bones are being researched for their ability to bioremediate lead in contaminated soil. The fungus Aspergillus versicolor is effective at absorbing lead ions from industrial waste before being released to water bodies. Several bacteria have been researched for their ability to remove lead from the environment, including the sulfate-reducing bacteria Desulfovibrio and Desulfotomaculum, both of which are highly effective in aqueous solutions. ## See also - Derek Bryce-Smith – one of the earliest campaigners against lead in petrol in the UK - Thomas Midgley Jr. – discovered that the addition of tetraethyllead to gasoline prevented "knocking" in internal combustion engines - Clair Patterson – instrumental in the banning of tetraethyllead in gasoline in the US and lead solder in food cans. - Robert A. Kehoe – foremost medical advocate for the use of tetraethyllead as an additive in gasoline.

U-1-class submarine (Austria-Hungary)

Class of submarines

The U-1 class (also called the Lake-type) was a class of two submarines or U-boats built for and operated by the Austro-Hungarian Navy (German: kaiserliche und königliche Kriegsmarine). The class comprised U-1 and U-2. The boats were built to an American design at the Pola Navy Yard after domestic design proposals failed to impress the Navy. Constructed between 1907 and 1909, the class was a part of the Austro-Hungarian Navy's efforts to competitively evaluate three foreign submarine designs. Both U-1-class submarines were launched in 1909. An experimental design, the submarines included unique features such as a diving chamber and wheels for traveling along the seabed. Extensive sea trials were conducted in 1909 and 1910 to test these features as well as other components of the boats, including the diving tanks and engines for each boat. Safety and efficiency problems related to the gasoline engines of both submarines led the Navy to purchase new propulsion systems prior to World War I. The design of the U-1 class has been described by naval historians as a failure, being rendered obsolete by the time both submarines were commissioned into the Austro-Hungarian Navy in 1911. Despite this, tests of their design provided information that the Navy used to construct subsequent submarines. Both submarines of the U-1 class served as training boats through 1914, though they were mobilized briefly during the Balkan Wars. At the outbreak of World War I, the U-1-class submarines were in drydock in Pola awaiting the installation of diesel engines. From 1915 to 1918, both boats conducted reconnaissance cruises out of Trieste and Pola, though neither sank any enemy vessels during the war. Declared obsolete in January 1918, both submarines were relegated to secondary duties and served as training boats at the Austro-Hungarian submarine base on Brioni Island, before being transferred back to Pola at the end of the war. When facing defeat in October 1918, the Austro-Hungarian government transferred its navy to the newly formed State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs to avoid having to hand its ships over to the Allied Powers. Following the Armistice of Villa Giusti in November 1918, the U-1-class submarines were seized by Italian forces and subsequently granted to the Kingdom of Italy under the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye in 1920. Italy scrapped the submarines at Pola later that year. ## Background With the establishment of the Austrian Naval League in September 1904 and the appointment of Vice-Admiral Rudolf Montecuccoli to the posts of Commander-in-Chief of the Navy (German: Marinekommandant) and Chief of the Naval Section of the War Ministry (German: Chef der Marinesektion) the following month, the Austro-Hungarian Navy began an expansion program befitting a great power. Montecuccoli immediately pursued the efforts championed by his predecessor, Admiral Hermann von Spaun, and pushed for a greatly expanded and modernized navy. Montecuccoli's appointment as Marinekommandant coincided with the first efforts to develop submarines for Austria-Hungary. Prior to 1904, the Austro-Hungarian Navy had shown little to no interest in submarines. In early 1904, after allowing the navies of other countries to pioneer submarine developments, Constructor General (German: Generalschiffbauingenieur) of the Austro-Hungarian Navy, Siegfried Popper, ordered the Naval Technical Committee (German: Marinetechnisches Kommittee, MTK) to produce a submarine design. Popper himself submitted his first design for a submarine shortly before Montecuccoli took office; technical problems encountered during the initial design phase delayed further proposals from MTK for nearly a year. By this time, Montecuccoli had begun to outline his plans for the future of the Austro-Hungarian Navy. Shortly after assuming command as Commander-in-Chief of the Navy, Montecuccoli drafted his first proposal for a modern Austrian fleet in early 1905. It was to consist of 12 battleships, 4 armored cruisers, 8 scout cruisers, 18 destroyers, 36 high seas torpedo craft, and 6 submarines. While far more attention at the time was being placed upon the construction of battleships—particularly dreadnoughts—Montecuccoli remained interested in the development of a submarine fleet for the Austro-Hungarian Navy and encouraged further development of the program. ### Proposals Following up on Montecuccoli's initial naval expansion plan, MTK submitted its specifications for a class of submarines on 17 January 1905. The MTK design called for a single-hull boat with a waterline length of 22.1 meters (72 ft 6 in), a beam of 3.6 meters (11 ft 10 in) and a draught of 4.37 meters (14 ft 4 in). The submarines were intended to displace 134.5 metric tons (132 long tons) when surfaced. The Naval Section of the War Ministry (German: Marinesektion) remained skeptical about the seaworthiness of this design. Further proposals submitted by the public as part of a design competition were all rejected by the Navy as impractical. As a result, the Navy decided to purchase designs from three different foreign firms for a class of submarines. Each design was to be accompanied by two submarines to test each boat against the others. This was done to properly evaluate the various different proposals which would come forward. Simon Lake, Germaniawerft, and John Philip Holland were each chosen by the Navy to produce a class of submarines for this competitive evaluation. The two Lake-designed submarines comprised the U-1 class, the Germaniawerft design became the U-3 class, and the Holland design became the U-5 class. In 1906, the Navy formally ordered plans for the building of two boats—designated U-1 and U-2—from the Lake Torpedo Boat Company of Bridgeport, Connecticut. The Austro-Hungarian Navy had contacted Lake Torpedo Boat Company as early as 1904 for a submarine design, but the decision to scrap the MTK proposal and initiate a competition among foreign builders led the Navy to formally solicit a bid from the American company. In 1906, Lake traveled to Austria-Hungary to negotiate the details of the agreement and on 24 November, he signed the contracts with the Navy in Pola to construct the U-1-class submarines. Popper, in particular, had high praise for Lake's designs, telling the American naval architect, "When I saw your plans I recognized that you had introduced valuable features that were better than mine, and also that you had actual experience building and operating submarines, so I went to the Emperor and asked his consent to substitute your type of boat for my own...Do you know, Mr. Lake, I have been responsible for the design of all other vessels built for the Austrian Navy during the [past] 25 years?" ## Designs Although intended to serve as an experimental design when initially ordered, the U-1 class became the first submarines of the Austro-Hungarian Navy. The boats proved to be a disappointment. The naval historians David Dickson, Vincent O'Hara, and Richard Worth described the U-1 class as "obsolete and unreliable when completed and suffered from problems even after modifications". René Greger, another naval historian, wrote that "the type proved a total failure". Despite these criticisms and shortcomings, the experimental nature of the submarines provided valuable information for the Austro-Hungarian Navy, and Lake's designs addressed what the Navy was asking for when ordering the submarine class. John Poluhowich writes in his book Argonaut: The Submarine Legacy of Simon Lake that "the two submarines were completed to the satisfaction of Austrian officials". > Our company had built the first two boats for the Austrian Government, U-1 and U-2. Another type of boat had been built later which had only a fixed periscope...One day, when this submarine was running along with her periscope above the surface...some officers approached in a speedy little launch and left their cards tied to the periscope without the knowledge of the commander of the submerged vessel. This demonstrated perfectly that it is essential, both in war and peace times, for the commander of the submarine to know what is going on in his vicinity on the surface. Their design was initially in line with Austro-Hungarian naval policy, which stressed coastal defense and patrolling of the Adriatic Sea. Following the onset of World War I, it became clear that Austro-Hungarian U-boats needed to be capable of offensive operations, namely raiding enemy shipping in the Adriatic and Mediterranean Seas. ### General characteristics The U-1-class submarines had an overall length of 30.48 meters (100 ft 0 in), a beam of 4.8 meters (15 ft 9 in), and a draught of 3.85 meters (12 ft 8 in) at deep load. They were designed to displace 229.7 metric tons (226 long tons) surfaced, but when submerged they displaced 248.9 metric tons (245.0 long tons). The boats were also built with a double hull, as opposed to the single-hull design initially proposed by the MTK. After their modernization, the length of the boats was increased to 30.76 meters (100 ft 11 in). Derived from an earlier concept for a submarine intended for peaceful exploring of the sea, the U-1-class design had several features typical of Lake's designs. These including a diving chamber under the bow and two variable pitch propellers. The diving chamber was intended for manned underwater missions such as destroying ships with explosives and severing offshore telegraph cables, as well as for exiting or entering the submarine during an emergency. This diving chamber proved its usefulness during the sea trials of the U-1 class when the crew of one submarine forgot to bring their lunches on board before conducting an underwater endurance test. A diver from shore was able to transport lunch for the crew without the submarine having to resurface. Lake's design also called for two retractable wheels that, in theory, could allow travel over the seabed. The design also placed the diving tanks above the waterline of the cylindrical hull, which necessitated a heavy ballast keel for vertical stability and required flooding to be done by pumps. The propulsion system for the U-1 class consisted of two gasoline engines for surface running and two electric motors for running submerged. The gasoline engines could produce 720 bhp (540 kW), while the electric motors had an output of 200 bhp (150 kW). These engines could produce a speed of 10.3 knots (19.1 km/h; 11.9 mph) while surfaced, and 6 knots (11 km/h; 6.9 mph) when submerged. The boats had an operational range of 950 nautical miles (1,760 km; 1,090 mi) while traveling at 6 knots (11 km/h; 6.9 mph) when surfaced, and 40 nmi (74 km; 46 mi) while traveling at 2 knots (3.7 km/h; 2.3 mph) when submerged. For underwater steering, the design of the U-1 class featured four pairs of diving planes. These planes provided the submarines with a considerable amount of maneuverability. Both submarines had three 45-centimeter (17.7 in) torpedo tubes—two in the bow, one in the stern—and could carry up to five torpedoes, but typically carried three. While no deck guns were initially installed on the U-1 class, in 1917 a 37-millimeter (1.5 in) gun was mounted on the deck of both boats. These guns were removed in January 1918 when the boats were declared obsolete and returned to training duties. The boats were designed for a crew of 17 officers and men. ## Boats ## Construction and commissioning U-1 was laid down on 2 July 1907 at the Pola Navy Yard (German:Seearsenal) at Pola. She was followed by U-2 on 18 July. Construction on the boats was delayed by the need to import the American-made engines for both submarines. U-1 was the first boat launched on 10 February 1908, and U-2 was launched on 3 April 1909. Upon completion of the two boats, the Austro-Hungarian Navy evaluated the U-1 class in trials during 1909 and 1910. These trials were considerably longer than other sea trials due to the experimental nature of the submarines and the desire by Austro-Hungarian naval officials to test every possible aspect of the boats. While the sea trials for both submarines were underway, efforts were being made to conceal their results from the general public, and especially from the navies of foreign powers. The Austro-Hungarian government attempted to keep the construction and testing of the boats a state secret, to the point of employing many of the same measures which the Navy was using with respect to the Tegetthoff-class battleships. On 13 October 1909, as the U-1-class submarines were still undergoing sea trials, Montecuccoli addressed the Austro-Hungarian Foreign Ministry about the urgent need to impose censorship restrictions on the publication of any sea trial results for Austria-Hungary's submarines. These measures were implemented and in February 1910 the level of secrecy surrounding the U-1 class was so great that a Uruguayan naval officer conducting a visit to Austria-Hungary was shown all of the Navy's warships with the explicit exception of its submarines. During these trials, extensive technical problems with the gasoline engines of both submarines were revealed. Exhaust fumes and gasoline vapor frequently poisoned the air inside the boats and increased the risk of internal explosions, and the engines were not able to reach the contracted speed, which was 12 knots (22 km/h; 14 mph) surfaced and 7 knots (13 km/h; 8.1 mph) submerged. Indeed, the engine problems for both submarines were so significant that on multiple occasions their crews had to conduct emergency resurfacing to bring fresh air into the boats. Because of the problems, the Austro-Hungarian Navy considered the engines to be unsuitable for wartime use and paid only for the hulls and armament of the two U-1 boats. While replacement diesel engines were ordered from the Austrian firm Maschinenfabrik Leobersdorf, they agreed to a lease of the gasoline engines at a fee of US\$4,544 annually. On 5 April 1910, U-1 suffered engine damage when her electric motors were disabled by an accidental flood. Flooding the diving tanks, which was necessary to submerge the submarines, took over 14 minutes and 37 seconds in early tests. This was later reduced to 8 minutes. At a depth of 40 meters (130 ft) the hulls began to show signs of stress and were in danger of being crushed. As a result, the commission overseeing the submarines' trials concluded that the maximum depth for the submarines should be set at 40 meters (130 ft) and that neither boat should attempt to dive deeper. The four pairs of diving planes equipped on each submarine gave the boats exceptional underwater handling, and, when the boats were properly trimmed and balanced, the boats could be held within 20 centimeters (8 in) of the desired depth. While surfaced, the shape of the hull of each submarine resulted in a significant bow-wave, which resulted in the bow of the boat dipping under the water. This led to the deck and bow casing of both submarines to be reconstructed in January 1915. Other tests proved the use of the submarine's underwater wheels on the seabed to be almost impossible. Ultimately, the experimental nature of the submarines resulted in a mixed set of sea trial results. Despite this, the U-1-class boats outperformed the Germaniawerft-built U-3 class and the Holland-built U-5 class in both diving and steering capabilities in the Austro-Hungarian Navy evaluations. After these sea trials, U-1 was commissioned on 15 April 1911; U-2 followed on 22 June. ## History ### Pre-war Both submarines of the U-1 class saw very limited service upon commissioning, as they were originally ordered and constructed for experimental purposes. After being commissioned into the Austro-Hungarian Navy, both submarines were assigned as training boats, with each boat making as many as ten training cruises a month. Within five months of U-1's commissioning into the Austro-Hungarian Navy, the Italo-Turkish War erupted in September 1911. Despite the fact that Austria-Hungary and Italy were nominal allies under the Triple Alliance, tensions between the two nations remained throughout the war. The Austro-Hungarian Navy was placed on high alert, and the Army was deployed to the Italian border. The war ultimately became localized at the request of Austria-Hungary to parts of the eastern Mediterranean and Libya, and the First Balkan War broke out before Italy and the Ottoman Empire were able to conclude a peace agreement. The Ottoman military proved insufficient to defeat its opponents and within a matter of weeks, the Balkan League of Bulgaria, Serbia, Greece, and Montenegro overran most of the Ottoman Empire's remaining European possessions. By November 1912, Serbia appeared poised to obtain a port on the Adriatic Sea. Austria-Hungary strongly opposed this, as a Serbian port on the Adriatic could drastically alter the balance of power in the region by serving as a Russian naval base. Austria-Hungary found Italy in opposition to a Serbian port on the Adriatic as well. Rome opposed Serbian access to the Adriatic on the belief that Russia would use any Serbian ports to station its Black Sea fleet. Italy also feared that Austria-Hungary would one day annex Serbia, and thus gain more Adriatic coastline without any exchange of Italian-speaking territories such as Trentino or Trieste. Russia and Serbia both protested to Austria-Hungary regarding its objection to a potential Serbian port on the Adriatic. By the end of November 1912, the threat of conflict between Austria-Hungary, Italy, Serbia, and Russia, coupled with allegations of Serbian mistreatment of the Austro-Hungarian consul in Prisrena led to a war scare in the Balkans. Both Russia and Austria-Hungary began mobilizing troops along their border, while Austria-Hungary began to mobilize against Serbia. During the crisis, the entire Austro-Hungarian Navy was also fully mobilized, including U-1 and U-2. They were ordered to join the rest of the fleet in the Aegean Sea in the event of a war with Serbia and Russia. By December 1912, the Austro-Hungarian Navy had, in addition to U-1 and U-2, a total of seven battleships, six cruisers, eight destroyers, 28 torpedo boats, and four submarines ready for combat. The crisis eventually subsided after the signing of the Treaty of London, which granted Serbia free access to the sea through an internationally supervised railroad, while at the same time establishing an independent Albania. The Austro-Hungarian Army and Navy were subsequently demobilized on 28 May 1913. After demobilization, both submarines of the U-1 class resumed their duties as training vessels. During one of these training cruises on 13 January 1914 near Fasana, U-1 was accidentally rammed by the Austro-Hungarian armored cruiser Sankt Georg. The collision destroyed the submarine's periscope. ### World War I At the outbreak of World War I, U-1 and U-2 were both in drydock in Pola awaiting the installation of their new diesel engines, batteries, and periscopes. To accommodate the new engines, the boats were lengthened by about 28 centimeters (11 in). These changes lowered the surface displacement to 223.0 metric tons (219 long tons) but increased the submerged displacement to 277.5 metric tons (273 long tons). After these modernization efforts were completed, U-1 returned to training duties until 4 October 1915. Meanwhile, U-2 underwent a further refit in Pola starting on 24 January 1915. During this refit, she had a new conning tower installed, which was completed on 4 June 1915. U-1 continued as a training boat for the Austro-Hungarian Navy for just over a month, before being relocated to Trieste on 11 November to conduct reconnaissance patrols. U-2 had already been relocated to Trieste on 7 August 1915 after her new conning tower had been installed. Both boats subsequently conducted reconnaissance cruises from 1915 onward out of Trieste. The relocation to Trieste was undertaken in part to dissuade Italian naval attacks or raids on the crucial Austro-Hungarian city. The U-1-class submarines were already outdated by 1915, but their relocation to Trieste helped to dissuade the Italians from their plans to bombard the port, as Italian military intelligence suggested the submarines were on regular patrol in the waters off Trieste. After being stationed out of Trieste for just over two years, U-1 was sent back to Pola on 22 December 1917, while U-2 remained at Trieste until the end of the year. Despite being declared obsolete on 11 January 1918, both submarines remained in service as training boats at the submarine base at Brioni Island. In mid-1918, the U-1-class submarines were considered for service as minesweepers, as the diving chamber in the boats could allow divers to sever the anchoring cables of sea mines. The poor condition of the boats prevented the plan from being implemented. Near the war's end, both boats were once more taken to Pola. By October 1918 it had become clear that Austria-Hungary was facing defeat. With various attempts to quell nationalist sentiments failing, Emperor Karl I decided to sever Austria-Hungary's alliance with Germany and appeal to the Allied Powers in an attempt to preserve the empire from complete collapse. On 26 October, Austria-Hungary informed Germany that their alliance was over. In Pola, the Austro-Hungarian Navy was in the process of tearing itself apart along ethnic and nationalist lines. On 29 October the National Council in Zagreb announced Croatia's dynastic ties to Hungary had come to a formal conclusion. The National Council also called for Croatia and Dalmatia to be unified, with Slovene and Bosnian organizations pledging their loyalty to the newly formed government. This new provisional government, while throwing off Hungarian rule, had not yet declared independence from Austria-Hungary. Thus Emperor Karl I's government in Vienna asked the newly formed State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs for help maintaining the fleet stationed at Pola and keeping order among the navy. The National Council refused to assist unless the Austro-Hungarian Navy was first placed under its command. Emperor Karl I, still attempting to save the Empire from collapse, agreed to the transfer, provided that the other "nations" which made up Austria-Hungary could claim their fair share of the value of the fleet at a later time. All sailors not of Slovene, Croatian, Bosnian, or Serbian background were placed on leave for the time being; the officers were given the choice of joining the new navy or retiring. The Austro-Hungarian government thus decided to hand over the bulk of its fleet to the State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs without a shot being fired. This was considered preferential to handing the fleet to the Allies, as the new state had declared its neutrality. Furthermore, the State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs had also not yet publicly rejected Emperor Karl I, keeping the possibility of reforming the Empire into a triple monarchy alive. The transfer to the State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs began on the morning of 31 October, with Rear Admiral (German: Konteradmiral) Miklós Horthy meeting representatives from the South Slav nationalities aboard his flagship, Viribus Unitis. After "short and cool" negotiations, the arrangements were settled and the handover was completed that afternoon. The Austro-Hungarian Naval Ensign was struck from Viribus Unitis, and was followed by the remaining ships in the harbor. Control over the ships in the harbor, and the head of the newly-established navy for the State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs, fell to Captain Janko Vuković, who was raised to the rank of admiral and took over Horthy's old responsibilities as Commander-in-Chief of the Fleet. ### Post-war Under the terms of the Armistice of Villa Giusti, signed between Italy and Austria-Hungary on 3 November 1918, this transfer was not recognized. Italian ships thus sailed into the ports of Trieste, Pola, and Fiume the following day. On 5 November, Italian troops occupied the naval installations at Pola. The State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs attempted to hold onto their ships, but lacked the men and officers to do so as most sailors who were not South Slavs had already gone home. The National Council did not order any men to resist the Italians, but they condemned Italy's actions as illegitimate. On 9 November, all remaining ships in Pola had the Italian flag raised. At a conference at Corfu, the Allied Powers agreed the transfer of Austria-Hungary's navy to the State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs could not be accepted, despite sympathy from the United Kingdom. Faced with the prospect of being given an ultimatum to hand over the former Austro-Hungarian warships, the National Council agreed to hand over the ships beginning on 10 November 1918. In 1920 the final distribution of the ships was settled among the Allied powers under the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye. Both submarines of the U-1 class were ceded to Italy as war reparations and scrapped at Pola in the same year. Due to the training and reconnaissance missions the submarines engaged in throughout the war, neither boat sank any ships during their careers.

Marriage License

1955 painting by Norman Rockwell

Marriage License is an oil painting by American illustrator Norman Rockwell created for the cover of the June 11, 1955, edition of The Saturday Evening Post. It depicts a young man and woman filling out a marriage license application at a government building in front of a bored-looking clerk. The man is dressed in a tan suit and has his arm around his partner, who is wearing a yellow dress and standing on tiptoe to sign her name. Although the room and its furnishings are dark, the couple are illuminated by the window beside them. The contrast between the couple and the clerk highlights two reoccurring themes in Rockwell's works: young love and ordinary life. Rockwell had a long history of using people who lived near him as models. He used photographs of local shopkeeper Jason Braman; Stockbridge, Massachusetts, native Joan Lahart; and her fiancé Francis Mahoney as a reference while creating the painting. Lahart was suggested for the role by her sister Peggy, a nurse at the Austen Riggs Center where Mary Rockwell was receiving treatment. During the photo shoot, Braman was captured in a more natural and uninterested pose compared to the one envisioned by the artist. Rockwell liked it and used it for his painting instead. Since its appearance in The Saturday Evening Post, the painting has been praised by critics and is considered one of Rockwell's best works. Commentators have compared it to the works of Johannes Vermeer due to Rockwell's use of light and dark. The 45.5 by 42.5 inches (116 cm × 108 cm) painting is in the collection of the Norman Rockwell Museum and has been a part of major exhibitions in 1955, 1972, and 1999. In 2004 Mad magazine published a parody of Marriage License by Richard William that used the original work to explore how same-sex marriage challenges the meaning of marriage and government role. ## Description Marriage License is an oil painting on canvas measuring 45.5 by 42.5 inches (116 cm × 108 cm). It is set in a dark city hall office filled with bookshelves. The floor is strewn with used cigarettes and a brass spittoon. In the middle of the painting stand a young couple in front of a rolltop desk filling out their application for a marriage license. The man is wearing a tan suit and has his arm protectively around his fiancée. The woman wears a yellow dress with high heels but has to stand on her tiptoes to sign the document. Light from the open window beams down on the couple's faces. A bored looking older man in a bow tie and waistcoat sits behind the desk, with a cat resting beside his chair. Rubber galoshes have been placed over his shoes. The wearied look on the clerk's face starkly contrasts with the excited couple. Behind the clerk, in the window, sits a single red geranium. On top of the bookshelf is an unfolded United States flag, thought by the Norman Rockwell Museum to be a sign that the couple has come in at the very end of the day. In the background a calendar gives the date as June 11, 1955, the date the painting appeared on the cover of The Saturday Evening Post. ### Themes Marriage License highlights two reoccurring themes in Norman Rockwell's works: the drab of ordinary life and the excitement of young love. The subject choice of a couple signing a marriage license, in private, rather than a public wedding was a deliberate one. Throughout his career, Rockwell consistently opted to show small moments of American life. Love is a topic that Rockwell explored extensively in paintings such as The Letterman (1938), Little Girl Observing Lovers on a Train (1944), Before the Date (1949), and The University Club (1960). Marriage License is one of the few times he directly addressed the theme post-World War II. The subject is amplified by the juxtaposition of the excited young couple next to the uninterested clerk. Depending on the side of the desk the painting is being viewed from, the day depicted in the painting is either run-of-the-mill or monumental. ## Creation ### Commission and models Rockwell moved from Arlington, Vermont, to Stockbridge, Massachusetts, in 1953 to be close to his wife Mary, who was receiving psychiatric treatment at the Austen Riggs Center, and to receive therapy from Erik Erikson. He set up a studio and continued to paint illustrations for magazine covers and yearly Boy Scout calendars. Starting in the 1930s Rockwell created his paintings from 50 to 100 reference photographs. The models for these were often drawn from the local community. Marriage License's three main figures – the young couple and the older man – are drawn from around Stockbridge. The office and surrounding buildings draw from both Johannes Vermeer's The Little Street and photographs of Stockbridge's town clerk's office. In 1954 Rockwell approached Peggy Lahart, a nurse at the Riggs center, to pose for a painting depicting a bride-to-be. Peggy passed the opportunity to her younger sister Joan, who was engaged to Francis "Moe" Mahoney, a retired NBA player, in January 1955. After some prodding, Mahoney agreed to pose with his fiancée. For their photo shoot, Rockwell told the couple what to wear: a specific yellow summer dress with puffed sleeves for Lahart and a "light blue shirt and wingtips" for Mahoney. The dress had to be custom made as summerwear was impossible to buy in Stockbridge during winter. The couple were each paid \$25 () and received an oil sketch of the painting as a wedding gift. The older man was modeled by Jason Braman, a shopkeeper in Stockbridge. Braman was chosen as the model because his wife had recently died. Rockwell originally positioned him sitting nearer the couple. During the photo shoot Braman relaxed and "slumped down" in the chair, a more natural pose Rockwell took a liking to and used for the final painting. ### Process Using his collection of reference photographs, Rockwell composed a series of full-size sketches which were used to create a smaller final color study. A filing cabinet from the clerk's office made its way into a study but was removed in the final painting in favor of a potbelly stove to make the room look older. The final painting was created by transferring the sketch onto the canvas and painting over it. It took Rockwell just over a month to finish the painting, which was framed and then sent to The Saturday Evening Post. The Post had the painting color photographed. It was used to create four plates (blue, red, yellow, and black) which would be used to print a color reproduction. ## Provenance Marriage License was first published as the cover of The Saturday Evening Post in 1955. That same year the painting was included in an exhibition of Rockwell's work at the Corcoran Gallery of Art organized and paid for by the magazine. After the show, the work returned to Rockwell's collection until 1969 when it and thirty-four other paintings – including the Four Freedoms (1943) and Shuffleton's Barbershop (1950) – were permanently loaned to the Old Corner House in Stockbridge. In 1972 the painting was included in Norman Rockwell: A Sixty Year Retrospective at the Brooklyn Museum on the condition that it was not part of the national tour of the same name. Rockwell donated the entirety of his personal collection of paintings, including Marriage License, to the Norman Rockwell Art Collection Trust in 1973. The trust became the core of the Norman Rockwell Museum's permanent collection after the artist died in 1979. Marriage License has been displayed elsewhere only once since joining the collection, for the November 1999 – February 2002 tour, Norman Rockwell: Pictures for the American People, which visited the High Museum of Art, Chicago History Museum, Corcoran Gallery of Art, San Diego Museum of Art, Phoenix Art Museum, Norman Rockwell Museum, and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. ## Reception The painting has been generally well received. In the catalog for the 1972 retrospective exhibition of Rockwell's works, museum director Thomas Buechner described the painting, along with Breaking Home Ties (1954), as the artist's two best works. Art critic Deborah Solomon found the painting to be a "peak of [Rockwell's] talents as a realist painter", and novelist John Updike praised the painting's small and "unnecessary" details. Popular culture historian Christopher Finch considered Marriage License to be iconic, one of Rockwell's "most successful canvases", and belonging "with the very finest examples of Rockwell's art". Writing in 1955 for The Washington Post, critic Leslie Judd Portner described the painting as boring and "pedestrian" in her scathing review of the Rockwell exhibition at the Corcoran Gallery of Art. Philosopher of art Marcia Muelder Eaton uses Marriage License and Vermeer's The Milkmaid as foils in Art and Nonart: Reflections on an Orange Crate and a Moose Call to explore the boundaries of "aesthetic value" by testing a series of assertions about what makes "good art". She tries to test the idea that only one of the two paintings draws from earlier works of art, but fails. Much like Deborah Solomon and Dave Ferman of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Eaton notes that Marriage License is influenced by Dutch old masters, based on its use of light and dark interiors. When analyzing the technical skill needed to produce the works, she finds that both artists have a high degree of craftsmanship. Where Eaton finds the paintings differ is on the subject matter and presentation. She describes Rockwell's work as "cheaply achieved" and "childish" due to the shallow symbolism, and compares it to a mass-market cartoon. Eaton later writes that she has "very little, if any, drive to hear what others have to say about it [Marriage License]" due to the lack of interpretation a viewer performs. ### Legacy As a well-known Rockwell painting, Marriage License has been used as inspiration for other works. There were plans for a Christmas-themed film based on the painting and several other Rockwells in 1979. The production company filmed exterior shots, but production stopped in January because Stockbridge's Board of Selectmen was not properly notified of the project. Despite several attempts the producers could not receive permission to film largely because the Selectmen wanted the best possible deal for the town. As a response to Goodridge v. Department of Public Health, the first state supreme court decision in favor of same-sex marriage, in 2004, artist Richard Williams created a parody of Marriage License for Mad magazine titled If Norman Rockwell Depicted the 21st Century. The parody stays close to the source material but with the cast iron stove replaced by a photocopier, the spittoon becoming a trash can, and a pair of gay men signing their marriage license. The woman's yellow dress in the original is paralleled by the shirt of the man closer to the viewer. Gender studies scholar Katie Oliviero interpreted If Norman Rockwell ... as a commentary on the "competing frameworks of civil marriage's competing public and private meanings". Psychologists Earl Ginter, Gargi Roysircar and Lawrence Gerstein saw it instead as a commentary on the role of government in deciding which marriages are valid and which ones are not. The parody was re-posted in 2012 on Mad's website in celebration of the Second Circuit striking down the Defense of Marriage Act in United States v. Windsor.

Alice Ayres

English nursemaid

Alice Ayres (12 September 1859 – 26 April 1885) was an English nursemaid honoured for her bravery in rescuing the children in her care from a house fire. Ayres was a household assistant and nursemaid to the family of her brother-in-law and sister, Henry and Mary Ann Chandler. The Chandlers owned an oil and paint shop in Union Street, Southwark, then just south of London, and Ayres lived with the family above the shop. In 1885 fire broke out in the shop, and Ayres rescued three of her nieces from the burning building, before falling from a window and suffering fatal injury. Britain, in the wake of the Industrial Revolution, experienced a period of great social change in which the rapidly growing news media paid increasing attention to the activities of the poorer classes. The manner of Ayres's death caused great public interest, with large numbers of people attending her funeral and contributing to the funding of a memorial. Shortly after her death, she underwent what has been described as a "secular canonisation", being widely depicted in popular culture and, although very little was known about her life, widely cited as a role model. Various social and political movements promoted Ayres as an example of the values held by their particular movement. The circumstances of her death were distorted to give the impression that she was an employee willing to die for the sake of her employer's family, rather than for children to whom she was closely related. In 1902 her name was added to the Memorial to Heroic Self-Sacrifice and in 1936 a street near the scene of the fire was renamed Ayres Street in her honour. The case of Alice Ayres came to renewed public notice with the release of Patrick Marber's 1997 play Closer, and the 2004 film based on it. An important element of the plot revolves around a central character who fabricates her identity based on the description of Ayres on the Memorial to Heroic Self-Sacrifice, with some of the film's scenes shot around the memorial. ## Work with the Chandler family Alice Ayres was born into a large family in 1859, the seventh of ten children of a labourer, John Ayres. In December 1877, her sister Mary Ann (older than Alice by eleven years) married an oil and paint dealer, Henry Chandler. Chandler owned a shop at 194 Union Street in Southwark, about 400 yards (370 m) south of the present-day Tate Modern. In 1881 Ayres worked as a household assistant to Edward Woakes, a doctor specialising in ear and throat disorders. By 1885 she had become a household assistant and nursemaid to the Chandlers, living with the family. After her death, Ayres was described by a local resident as "not one of your fast sort—gentle and quiet-spoke, and always busy about her work". Another neighbour told the press that "no merry making, no excursion, no family festivity could tempt her from her self-imposed duties. The children must be bathed and put to bed, the clothes must be mended, the rooms must be 'tidied up', the cloth must be laid, the supper carefully prepared, before Alice would dream of setting forth on her own pleasures". ## Union Street fire The Chandlers' shop at Union Street, as depicted in a contemporary newspaper illustration, occupied the corner premises of a building of three storeys. The family lived above the shop, with Henry and Mary Ann Chandler sleeping in one bedroom with their six-year-old son Henry, and Ayres sharing a room on the second floor with her nieces, five-year-old Edith, four-year-old Ellen and three-year-old Elizabeth. On the night of 24 April 1885, fire broke out in the oil and paint shop, trapping the family upstairs. Gunpowder and casks of oil were stored in the lower floors of the building, causing the flames to spread rapidly. Although the shop was near the headquarters of the London Fire Brigade and the emergency services were quickly on scene, by the time the fire engine arrived intense flames were coming from the lower windows, making it impossible for the fire brigade to position ladders. Meanwhile, Ayres, wearing only a nightdress, had tried to reach her sister but was unable to get to her through the smoke. The crowd that had gathered outside the building were shouting to Ayres to jump. Instead she returned to the room she shared with the three young girls and threw a mattress out of the window, carefully dropping Edith onto it. Despite further calls from below to jump and save herself, she left the window and returned carrying Ellen. Ellen clung to Ayres and refused to be dropped, but Ayres threw her out of the building, and the child was caught by a member of the crowd. Ayres went back into the smoke a third time and returned carrying badly injured Elizabeth, whom she dropped safely onto the mattress. After rescuing the three girls, Ayres tried to jump herself, but overcome by smoke inhalation, fell limply from the window, striking the projecting shop sign. She missed the mattress and the crowd below and fell onto the pavement, suffering spinal injuries. Ayres was rushed to nearby Guy's Hospital where, because of the public interest that her story excited, hourly bulletins were issued about her health and Queen Victoria sent a lady-in-waiting to enquire after her condition. The oil and paint stored in the shop caused the fire to burn out of control, and when the fire services were eventually able to enter the premises the rest of the family were found dead. The body of Henry Chandler was found on the staircase, still clutching a locked strongbox filled with the shop's takings, while the badly burnt remains of Mary Ann Chandler were found lying next to a first floor window, the body of six-year-old Henry by her side. Ayres's condition deteriorated and she died in Guy's Hospital on 26 April 1885. Her last words were reported as "I tried my best and could try no more". Elizabeth, the last of the children to be rescued, had suffered severe burns to her legs and died shortly after Ayres. ### Funeral Ayres's body was not taken to Guy's Hospital's mortuary, but was laid in a room set aside for her. The estimated value of the floral tributes came to over £1,000 (about £ as of 2023). Ayres was posthumously recognised by the Metropolitan Board of Works-controlled Royal Society for the Protection of Life from Fire (today the Society for the Protection of Life from Fire), who awarded her father John Ayres a sum of 10 guineas (about £ as of 2023) in her honour. A memorial service for Ayres at St Saviour's Church (now Southwark Cathedral) attracted such a large crowd that mourners were turned away due to lack of standing room, while a collection taken at the memorial service comprised 951 coins, totalling over £7. Ayres was given a large public funeral, attended by over 10,000 mourners. Her coffin was carried from her parents' house to her grave in Isleworth Cemetery by a team of 16 firemen, relieving each other in sets of four. The church service was attended by a group of 20 girls, dressed in white, from the village school that Ayres had attended. It had been planned that the girls should follow the coffin to the graveside and sing, but a severe hailstorm prevented this. Henry and Mary Ann Chandler were buried in Lambeth Cemetery along with the two children who had died in the fire. Edith and Ellen Chandler were accepted by the Orphan Working School in Kentish Town and trained as domestic servants. ### Memorial Shortly after the fire it was decided to erect a monument to Ayres, to be funded by public subscription, and by August 1885 the fund had raised over £100 (about £ as of 2023). On 15 August 1885 work began on the memorial. The monument was erected above her grave in Isleworth Cemetery, and was of an Egyptian design inspired by Cleopatra's Needle, which had been raised in central London in 1878. It took the form of a 14-foot (4.3 m) solid red granite obelisk, and is still today the tallest grave marker in the cemetery. On the front of the obelisk is inscribed: > Sacred to the memory of ALICE AYRES, aged 26 years, who met her death through a fire which occurred in Union Street, Borough, the 24th of April, 1885 A.D. > Amidst the sudden terrors of the conflagration, with true courage and judgement, she heroically rescued the children committed to her charge. To save them, she three times braved the flames; at last, leaping from the burning house, she sustained injuries from the effects of which she died on April 26th 1885. > This memorial was erected by public subscription to commemorate a noble act of unselfish courage. > "Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life." The right hand side of the monument lists the ten members of the Alice Ayres Memorial Committee, chaired by Rev H. W. P. Richards. The Union Street fire and Ayres's rescue of the children caused great public interest from the outset, and the fire, Ayres's death and funeral, and the fundraising for and erection of the memorial were all reported in detail in the local and national press and throughout the British Empire. ## "A secular canonisation" The British government had traditionally paid little attention to the poor, but in the wake of the Industrial Revolution attitudes towards the accomplishments of the lower classes were changing. The growth of the railways, the mechanisation of agriculture and the need for labour in the new inner-city factories had broken the traditional feudal economy and caused the rapid growth of cities, while increasing literacy rates led to a greater interest in the media and current affairs among ordinary workers. In 1856 the first military honour for bravery open to all ranks, the Victoria Cross, had been instituted, while in 1866 the Albert Medal, the first official honour open to civilians of all classes, was introduced. Additionally, a number of private and charitable organisations dedicated to lifesaving, most prominently the Royal Humane Society (1776) and Royal National Lifeboat Institution (1824), were increasing in activity and prominence, and gave awards and medals as a means of publicising their activities and lifesaving advice. Painter and sculptor George Frederic Watts and his second wife, designer and artist Mary Fraser Tytler, had long been advocates of the idea of art as a force for social change, and of the principle that narratives of great deeds would provide guidance to address the serious social problems of British cities. Watts had recently painted a series of portraits of leading figures he considered to be a positive social influence, the "Hall of Fame", which was donated to the National Portrait Gallery; since at least 1866 he had proposed as a companion piece a monument to "unknown worth", celebrating the bravery of ordinary people. On 5 September 1887, a letter was published in The Times from Watts, proposing a scheme to commemorate the Golden Jubilee of Queen Victoria by means of collecting and commemorating "a complete record of the stories of heroism in every-day life". He cited the death of Alice Ayres as an example of the type of event he proposed to commemorate, and included in his letter a distorted account of Ayres's actions during the Union Street fire. > The roll would be a long one, but I would cite as an example the name of Alice Ayres, the maid of all work at an oilmonger's in Gravel-lane, in April, 1885, who lost her life in saving those of her master's children. > The facts, in case your readers have forgotten them, were shortly these:—Roused by the cries of "Fire" and the heat of the fiercely advancing flames the girl is seen at the window of an upper story, and the crowd, holding up some clothes to break her fall, entreat her to jump at once for her life. Instead she goes back, and reappears dragging a feather bed after her, which, with great difficulty, she pushes through the window. The bed caught and stretched, the girl is again at the window, a child of three in her arms, which with great care and skill she throws safely upon the mattress. Twice again with still older children she repeats the heroic feat. When her turn comes to jump, suffocated or too exhausted by her efforts, she cannot save herself. She jumps, but too feebly, falls upon the pavement, and is carried insensibly to St. Thomas's Hospital, where she dies. Watts had originally proposed that the monument take the form of a colossal bronze figure, but by 1887 was proposing that the memorial take the form of "a kind of Campo Santo", consisting of a covered way and marble wall inscribed with the names of everyday heroes, to be built in Hyde Park. Watts's suggestion was not taken up, leading Watts to comment that "if I had proposed a race course round Hyde Park, there would have been plenty of sympathisers". However, his high-profile lobbying further raised the already high public awareness of the death of Alice Ayres. ### Depiction in literature and art Emilia Aylmer Blake wrote perhaps the first poem about Ayres, titled Alice Ayres, which she recited at a social gathering in June 1885. Sir Francis Hastings Doyle also wrote a well-received poem in honour of Ayres, as did leading social reformer and women's rights campaigner Laura Ormiston Chant. By the late 1880s Ayres was coming to be seen as a model of British devotion to duty, and her story was told in collections of heroic and inspirational stories for children, including as the first story in F. J. Cross's influential Beneath the Banner, in which Cross remarked that: "She had tried to do her best always. Her loving tenderness to the children committed to her care and her pure gentle life were remarked by those around her before there was any thought of her dying a heroic death. So, when the great trial came, she was prepared; and what seems to us Divine unselfishness appeared to her but simple duty." In 1890 a series of painted panels by Walter Crane were unveiled in Octavia Hill's Red Cross Hall, 550 yards (500 m) from the site of the Union Street fire. Inspired by George Frederic Watts's proposals, the panels depicted instances of heroism in everyday life; Watts himself refused to become involved in the project, as his proposed monument was intended to be a source of inspiration and contemplation as opposed to simply commemoration, and he felt that an artistic work would potentially distract viewers from the most important element of the cases, the heroic sacrifices of the individuals involved. The first of Crane's panels depicted the Union Street fire. It is an idealised image depicting Ayres as the rescued rather than the rescuer, blending religious imagery with traditional 19th-century symbols of British heroism, and bears no relationship to actual events. Ayres, in a long and flowing pure white gown, stands at a first floor window, surrounded in flames and holding a small child. A fireman stands on a ladder and reaches out to Ayres and the child; meanwhile, a sailor in full Royal Navy uniform holds a second child. Although in reality Ayres had been at a much higher level of the building and the heat of the burning oil and gunpowder had made it impossible for the fire brigade to approach the building, by depicting Ayres with the fireman and sailor, widely seen as symbols of British heroism and British strength, Crane's picture further enhanced her growing reputation as a heroic figure. Crane's picture in the Red Cross Hall was itself mentioned in Alice Ayres, a border ballad by National Trust founder Canon Hardwicke Rawnsley published in his 1896 Ballads of Brave Deeds, for which George Frederic Watts wrote the preface. ### Memorial to Heroic Self-Sacrifice In 1898 George Frederic Watts was approached by Henry Gamble, vicar of St Botolph's, Aldersgate church in the City of London. St Botolph's former churchyard had recently been converted, along with two smaller adjoining burial grounds, into Postman's Park, one of the largest public parks in the City of London, and the church was engaged in a protracted financial and legal dispute over ownership of part of the park. To provide a public justification for keeping the disputed land as part of the park, and to raise the park's profile and assist in fundraising, the church offered part of the park as a site for his proposed memorial. Watts agreed, and in 1900 the Memorial to Heroic Self-Sacrifice was unveiled by Alfred Newton, Lord Mayor of London, and Mandell Creighton, Bishop of London. The memorial consisted of a 50-foot-long (15 m) and 9-foot-tall (2.7 m) wooden loggia with a tiled roof, designed by Ernest George, sheltering a wall with space for 120 ceramic memorial tablets. The memorial tablets were handmade and expensive to produce, and at the time of the memorial's unveiling only four were in place. In 1902 a further nine tablets were unveiled, including the memorial to Alice Ayres for which Watts had long lobbied. Made by William De Morgan in the Arts and Crafts style, the green-and-white tablet reads "Alice Ayres, daughter of a bricklayer's labourer who by intrepid conduct saved 3 children from a burning house in Union Street, Borough, at the cost of her own young life April 24, 1885". ### Changing attitudes and differing perceptions Although the public would have been familiar with the concept of a female national heroic figure following the widespread coverage and public admiration of Harriet Newell, Grace Darling and Florence Nightingale, the ongoing coverage of Ayres and her elevation as a national hero was unusual for the period. Ayres was an uneducated working-class woman, who after her death underwent what has been described as "a secular canonisation", at a time when, despite the gradual formal recognition of the contributions of the lower classes, national heroes were generally male and engaged in exploration, the military, religion or science and engineering. This was a period in which political pressures for social reform were growing. The version of Ayres presented to the public as a woman devoted entirely to duty embodied the idealised British character at the time, while the image of a hard-working but uncomplaining woman who set the welfare of others above her own embodied the idealised vision of the working class presented by social reformers, and the ideal selfless and dedicated woman presented by campaigners for women's rights. At the unveiling of the Memorial to Heroic Self-Sacrifice the Lord Mayor, Alfred Newton, had remarked that it was "intended to perpetuate the acts of heroism which belonged to the working classes", while George Frederic Watts, although he was opposed in principle to discrimination based on class and saw the Memorial as being theoretically open to all classes, had remarked that "the higher classes do not or ought not to require reminders or inducements". Watts saw the purpose of his Memorial not as a commemoration of deeds, but as a tool for the education of the lower classes. Watts's view was shared by others who sought to provide inspirational material on British heroes, and authors writing about Ayres systematically altered the fact that the children rescued were members of her family, instead describing them as the children of her employer. Press reports at the time of the fire described Ayres variously as a "little nursemaid", "a willing, honest, hard-working servant", and a "poor little domestic". As well as Watts's 1887 description of Ayres as "the maid of all work at an oilmonger's", Cross's chapter on Ayres in Beneath the Banner is titled "Only a Nurse Girl!", while Rawnsley called her "the nursemaid in the household". Barrington, writing five years after the fire at the unveiling of Price's panel, acknowledges in a footnote that Ayres was related to the Chandlers, but nonetheless describes her as displaying the "typical English virtues—courage, fortitude, and an unquestioning sense of duty". While George and Mary Watts and their fellow paternalist social reformers, along with the broadly sympathetic mainstream British press, portrayed Ayres as an inspirational selfless servant to her employer, others had a different view. The left-wing Reynolds's Weekly Newspaper complained that the lack of support for Ayres's family from the state was symbolic of poor treatment of workers as a whole. The pioneering feminist periodical The Englishwoman's Review described their "righteous pride" at Ayres's "instinctive motherhood"; on the other hand Young England, a children's story paper with imperialist ideals, said that "there is no sex in self-sacrifice", lauding Ayres as a model of devotion to duty. ## Later years In 1936 the new Labour administration of the London County Council renamed White Cross Street, near the site of the Red Cross Hall and the scene of the Union Street fire, to Ayres Street in tribute to Alice Ayres, a name it retains today. The Chandlers' house at 194 Union Street no longer stands, and the site is occupied by part of the Union House office complex; immediately opposite the site of the fire is the present-day headquarters of the London Fire Brigade. ## In popular culture Alice Ayres came to renewed public notice with the release of the 1997 play Closer by Patrick Marber and the 2004 BAFTA Award- and Golden Globe-winning film Closer based on it starring Natalie Portman, Julia Roberts, Jude Law and Clive Owen. A key plot element revolves around the memorial tablet to Ayres at the Memorial to Heroic Self-Sacrifice in Postman's Park, in which it is revealed that the character Jane Jones (played by Portman in the film), who calls herself Alice Ayres for most of the story, has in fact fabricated her name and identity based on the tablet on the memorial, which she reads at the time of her first meeting with Dan Woolf (played by Jude Law) near the beginning of the film. The park, and the memorial to Ayres, feature prominently in the opening and closing scenes of the film.

Ten Commandments in Catholic theology

Influence of Hebrew Bible law of Moses in doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church

The Ten Commandments are series of religious and moral imperatives that are recognized as a moral foundation in several of the Abrahamic religions, including the Catholic Church. As described in the Old Testament books Exodus and Deuteronomy, the Commandments form part of a covenant offered by God to the Israelites to free them from the spiritual slavery of sin. According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church—the official exposition of the Catholic Church's Christian beliefs—the Commandments are considered essential for spiritual good health and growth, and serve as the basis for Catholic social teaching. A review of the Commandments is one of the most common types of examination of conscience used by Catholics before receiving the sacrament of Penance. The Commandments appear in the earliest Church writings; the Catechism states that they have "occupied a predominant place" in teaching the faith since the time of Augustine of Hippo (AD 354–430). The Church had no official standards for religious instruction until the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215; evidence suggests the Commandments were used in Christian education in the early Church and throughout the Middle Ages. The perceived lack of instruction in them by some dioceses was the basis of one of the criticisms launched against the Church by Protestant reformers. Afterward, the first Church-wide catechism in 1566 provided "thorough discussions of each commandment", but gave greater emphasis to the seven sacraments. The most recent Catechism devotes a large section to interpret each of the commandments. Church teaching of the Commandments is largely based on the Old and New Testaments and the writings of the early Church Fathers. In the New Testament, Jesus acknowledged their validity and instructed his disciples to go further, demanding a righteousness exceeding that of the scribes and Pharisees. Summarized by Jesus into two "Great Commandments" that teach love of God and love of neighbor, they instruct individuals on their relationships with both. The first three commandments require reverence and respect for God's name, observation of the Lord's Day and prohibit the worship of other gods. The others deal with the relationships between individuals, such as that between parent and child; they include prohibitions against lying, stealing, murdering, adultery and covetousness. ## Numbering The Old Testament refers to ten individual commandments, even though there are more than ten imperative sentences in the two relevant texts: Exodus 20:1–17 and Deuteronomy 5:6–21. The Old Testament does not make clear how the texts should be divided to arrive at ten commandments. The division traditionally used by the Catholic and Lutheran churches was first derived by the Latin Church Father Augustine of Hippo (354–430) who modified the original order in his book Questions on Exodus. Other Christian communities, such as the Eastern Orthodox Church and many Protestant churches, use the formulation standardized by the Greek Fathers of the Christian East. The two forms have slightly different numbering, but maintain exactly the same substance despite some Protestant claims to the contrary. Rabbinic Jewish numbering is more closely aligned with the Eastern Church tradition, considering the text against covetousness as a single proscription, but differs from Christian denominations in that it considers what many Christians call a prologue to be the entire first commandment. ## History The Ten Commandments are recognized as a moral foundation by Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. They first appear in the Book of Exodus, according to which Moses, acting under the orders of God, freed the Israelites from physical slavery in Egypt. According to Church teaching, God offered a covenant—which included the Ten Commandments—to also free them from the "spiritual slavery" of sin. Some historians have described this as "the central event in the history of ancient Israel". The coming of Jesus is seen by the Catholic Church as the fulfillment of the old testament and Jews, who were chosen, according to Peter Kreeft, to "show the true God to the world". Jesus acknowledged the Commandments and instructed his followers to go further, requiring, in Kreeft's words, "more, not less: a 'righteousness (which) exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees'". Explaining Church teaching, Kreeft states, "The Commandments are to the moral order what the creation story in Genesis 1 is to the natural order. They are God's order conquering chaos. They are not man's ideas about God, but God's ideas about man." The Church teaches that Jesus freed people from keeping "the burdensome Jewish law (Torah or Mosaic Law) with its 613 distinct regulations [but] not from the obligation to keep the Ten Commandments", because the Ten "were written 'with the finger of God', unlike [those] written by Moses". This teaching was reaffirmed at the Council of Trent (1545–1563) and at the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965). Although it is uncertain what role the Ten Commandments played in early Christian worship, evidence suggests they were recited during some services and used in Christian education. For example, the Commandments are included in one of the earliest Christian writings, known as the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles or the Didache. Scholars contend that the Commandments were highly regarded by the early Church as a summary of God's law. The Protestant scholar Klaus Bockmuehl believes that the Church replaced the Commandments with lists of virtues and vices, such as the seven deadly sins, from 400 to 1200. Other scholars contend that throughout Church history the Commandments have been used as an examination of conscience and that many theologians have written about them. While evidence exists that the Commandments were part of catechesis in monasteries and other venues, there was no official Church position to promote specific methods of religious instruction during the Middle Ages. The Fourth Lateran Council (1215) was the first attempt to remedy this problem. Surviving evidence reveals that some bishops' efforts to implement the council's resolutions included special emphasis on teaching the Commandments in their respective dioceses. Centuries later, the lack of instruction in them by some dioceses formed the basis of one of the criticisms launched against the Church by Protestant reformers. Catechisms produced in specific dioceses from the mid-fourteenth century emphasized the Commandments and laid the foundation for the first official Church-wide catechism, the 1566 Roman Catechism. Commissioned by the Council of Trent, it provided "thorough discussions of each commandment" but gave greater emphasis to the seven sacraments to emphasize the Catholic belief that Christian life was dependent upon the grace solely obtained through the sacramental life provided by the Catholic Church. This emphasis conflicted with Protestant beliefs, which held the Commandments as the source of divine grace. While more recent papal encyclicals offer interpretations of Church teaching on individual commandments, throughout history official Church teachings on the Commandments are based on their mentions in the Old and New Testaments and the writings of the early Church Fathers Origen, Irenaeus and Augustine. Later, theologians Thomas Aquinas and Bonaventure offered notable commentaries on the Commandments. Aquinas, a Doctor of the Church, considered them to be the "primary precepts of justice and all law, and natural reason gives immediate assent to them as being plainly evident principles.". Aquinas also underlined the disposition into two synoptic tables, where: "Three of these Commandments that were written on the first tablet referred to the love of God; and the seven Commandments written on the other tablet related to the love of our neighbor". In the same way, the Lord gave the twofold Great Commandment, for God and for the neighbour, by virtue of the four reasons of charity. The most recent Catechism of the Catholic Church—the official summary of Church beliefs—devotes a large section to the Commandments, which serve as the basis for Catholic social teaching. According to the Catechism, the Church has given them a predominant place in teaching the faith since the fifth century. Kreeft explains that the Church regards them as "a path of life", and a "path to freedom" just as a schoolyard fence protects children from "life-threatening dangers". ## First commandment The first commandment, according to Church teaching, "means that [followers] must worship and adore God alone because God is alone." The Catechism explains that this prohibits idolatry, providing examples of forbidden practices such as the worship of any creature, and of "'demons ... power, pleasure, race, ancestors, the state [and] money'". Augustine interpreted this commandment as "Love God and then do what you will". Explaining this sentiment, Kreeft states that all sin "serves some other god, obeys another commander: the world or the flesh or the devil", if God truly be loved then one will do what God wills. The Catechism associates this commandment with the three theological virtues. The first virtue, faith, instructs Catholics to believe in God and avoid heresy, apostasy, and schism. The second virtue, hope, cautions Catholics against despair and presumption. According to the Catechism, the last virtue, charity, can be met only if Catholics refrain from indifference or ingratitude toward God, and avoid spiritual laziness and a hatred of God stemming from pride. The Catechism enumerates specific violations of this commandment, including superstition, polytheism, sacrilege, atheism, and all practices of magic and sorcery. It further prohibits astrology, palm reading, and consulting horoscopes or mediums. The Catechism attributes the latter actions to a "desire for power over time, history, and in the last analysis, other human beings as well as a wish to conciliate hidden powers". ### Graven images While Catholics are sometimes accused of worshiping images, in violation of the first commandment, the Church says this is a misunderstanding. In the Church's opinion, "the honor paid to sacred images is a 'respectful veneration', not the adoration due to God alone". In the 8th century, heated arguments arose over whether religious icons (in this context paintings) were prohibited by the first commandment. The dispute was almost entirely restricted to the Eastern church; the iconoclasts wished to prohibit icons, while the iconodules supported their veneration, a position consistently backed by the Western Church. At the Second Council of Nicaea in 787, the ecumenical council determined that the veneration of icons and statues was not in violation of the commandment and stated "whoever venerates an image venerates the person portrayed in it." At around the time of the controversy over Iconoclasm, the Western church began to use monumental sculpture, which by the Romanesque period became a major feature of Western Christian art, that has remained part of the Catholic tradition, in contrast to Eastern Christianity, which avoids large religious sculpture. The Catechism, using very traditional arguments, posits that God gave permission for images that symbolize Christian salvation by leaving symbols such as the bronze serpent, and the cherubim on the Ark of the Covenant. It states that "by becoming incarnate, the Son of God introduced a new economy of images". The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) explain the Catechism in their book entitled United States Catechism for Adults, published in 2006. Regarding graven images, they expound that this command addresses idolatry that in ancient times expressed itself in the worship of such things as the "sun, moon, stars, trees, bulls, eagles, and serpents" as well as "emperors and kings". They explain that today, idolatry expresses itself in the worship of other things, and list some as "power, money, materialism and sports." ## Second commandment The second commandment prohibits the use of God's name in vain. Many ancient cultures believed that names were sacred; some had prohibitions on when a person's name could be spoken. The Gospel of John relates an incident where a group of Jews attempted to stone Jesus after he used a sacred name of God to refer to himself. They interpreted his statement as a claim of divinity. Since they did not believe that he was God, they considered this blasphemy, which under Mosaic law carries a death penalty. Kreeft writes that all of the names by which God is known are holy, and thus all of those names are protected by the second commandment. The Catechism states, "Respect for his name is an expression of the respect owed to the mystery of God himself and to the whole sacred reality it evokes." The Catechism also requires respect for the names of people out of respect for the dignity of that person. The sentiment behind this commandment is further codified in the Lord's Prayer, which begins, "Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name". According to Pope Benedict XVI, when God revealed his name to Moses he established a relationship with mankind; Benedict states that the Incarnation was the culmination of a process that "had begun with the giving of the divine name." Benedict elaborates that this means the divine name could be misused and that Jesus' inclusion of "hallowed be thy name" is a plea for the sanctification of God's name, to "protect the wonderful mystery of his accessibility to us, and constantly assert his true identity as opposed to our distortion of it". According to Catholic teaching, this commandment does not preclude the use of God's name in taking solemn oaths administered by legitimate authority. However, lying under oath, invoking God's name for magical purposes, or voicing words of hatred or defiance against God are considered sins of blasphemy. ## Third commandment Quoting the Jewish rabbi and scholar Jacob Neusner, Pope Benedict XVI explains that to Israel, keeping this commandment was more than ritual; it was a way to imitate God, who rested on the seventh day after the creation. It also constituted the core of the social order. Although a few Christian denominations follow the Judaic practice of observing the Sabbath on Saturday, most Christian denominations, including the liturgical branches (Catholics, Eastern and Oriental Orthodox and the Churches of the East), observe Sunday as the special day for rest and worship, which they call the "Lord's Day". This practice dates to the first century, arising from their belief that Jesus rose from the dead on the first day of the week. The Didache calls on Christians to come together on the Lord's Day to break bread and give thanks, but the meaning of the "Lord's day" is in dispute since it cites the "preparation day" (prior to the Biblical Sabbath) as the proper day for fasting. Tertullian is the first to mention Sunday rest: "We, however (just as tradition has taught us), on the day of the Lord's Resurrection ought to guard not only against kneeling, but every posture and office of solicitude, deferring even our businesses lest we give any place to the devil" ("De orat.", xxiii; cf. "Ad nation.", I, xiii; "Apolog.", xvi). In the sixth century, Caesarius of Arles taught that the whole glory of the Jewish Sabbath had been transferred to Sunday and that Christians must keep Sunday in the same way as the Jews were commanded to keep the Sabbath. The Council of Orléans in 538 reprobated this tendency, to apply the law of the Jewish Sabbath to the observance of the Christian Sunday, as Jewish and non-Christian. Church leaders of later centuries inscribed Sunday rest into official teachings, and Christian governments have attempted to enforce the Sunday rest throughout history. For Catholics, Jesus' teaching that "the sabbath was made for man, not man for the sabbath" means that good works "when the needs of others demand it" can be part of the day of rest. The Catechism offers guidelines on how to observe the Lord's Day, which include attending Mass on Sundays and holy days of obligation. On these days, Catholics may not work or do activities that "hinder the worship due to God", but "performance of the works of mercy, and appropriate relaxation in a spirit of joy" are permitted. According to the USCCB, this commandment "has been concretized for Catholics" as one of the Church precepts. The organization cites the papal encyclical Dies Domini: > Because the faithful are obliged to attend Mass unless there is a grave impediment, pastors have the corresponding duty to offer everyone the real possibility of fulfilling the precept. ... Yet more than a precept, the observance should be seen as a need rising from the depths of Christian life. It is crucially important that all the faithful should be convinced that they cannot live their faith or share fully in the life of the Christian community unless they take part regularly in the Sunday Eucharistic assembly. ## Fourth commandment Pope Benedict XVI states that Rabbi Neusner "rightly sees this commandment as anchoring the heart of the social order". It strengthens generational relationships, makes explicit the connection between family order and societal stability, and reveals that the family is "both willed and protected by God." Because parents' unconditional love for their children mirrors God's love, and because they have a duty to pass the faith on to their children, the Catechism calls the family "a domestic church", "a privileged community" and the "original cell of social life". The Catechism says this commandment requires duties of children to parents that include: 1. Respect toward parents that also flows to brothers and sisters. 2. Gratitude, as expressed in a quote from Sirach: "Remember that through your parents you were born; what can you give back to them that equals their gift to you?" 3. Obedience to parents for as long as the child lives at home "when it is for his good or the good of the family", except when obedience would require the child to do something morally wrong. 4. Support that requires grown children to offer material and moral support for their aging parents, particularly at times of "illness, loneliness, or distress". Keeping this commandment, according to the Catechism, also requires duties of parents to children which include: 1. "Moral education, spiritual formation and evangelization" of their children. 2. Respect for their children as children of God and human persons. 3. Proper discipline for children while being careful not to provoke them. 4. "Avoiding pressure to choose a certain profession or spouse", which does not preclude parents from giving "judicious advice". 5. "Being a good example" to their children. 6. "Acknowledging their own failings" to their children to guide and correct them. ### Jesus' expansion The Gospel of Matthew relates that when told his mother and brothers were waiting to see him, Jesus replied, "Who is my mother and who are my brothers?" Stretching his hand over his disciples he said, "Here are my mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother, and my sister, and mother." Pope Benedict XVI stated that this dictum of Jesus brought the fourth commandment to a new and higher level. By doing God's will, any person can become part of the universal family of Jesus. Thus, the fourth commandment's responsibilities extend to the greater society and requires respect for "legitimate social authorities". The Catechism specifies "duties of citizens and nations", which Kreeft summarizes as: 1. "Obedience and honor" to "all who for our good have received authority in society from God". 2. "Payment of taxes, exercising the right to vote and defending one's country". 3. "An obligation to be vigilant and critical", which requires citizens to criticize that which harms human dignity and the community. 4. "A duty to disobey" civil authorities and directives that are contrary to the moral order. 5. "To practice charity", which is a "necessity for any working family or society"; it is the "greatest social commandment" and requires people to love God and neighbor. 6. "To welcome the foreigner" who is in need of security and livelihood that cannot be found in his own country. 7. "An obligation for rich nations to help poor nations", especially in times of "immediate need". 8. "An expectation for families to help other families". ## Fifth commandment This commandment demands respect for human life and is more accurately translated as "thou shalt not murder." Indeed, killing may, under limited circumstances, be justified within Catholicism. Jesus expanded it to prohibit unjust anger, hatred and vengeance, and to require Christians to love their enemies. The basis of all Catholic teaching about the fifth commandment is the sanctity of life ethic, which Kreeft argues is philosophically opposed to the quality of life ethic, a philosophy which he characterizes as introduced by a book entitled Die Freigabe der Vernichtung des Lebensunwerten Lebens (The Permission to Destroy Life Unworthy of Life) (see Life unworthy of life) and which he asserts was the "first to win public acceptance ... by German doctors before World War II—the basis and beginning of Nazi medical practices." This interpretation is supported by modern medical journals that discuss the dilemma posed by these opposing philosophies to physicians who must make life or death decisions. Some bioethicists characterize the use of the "Nazi analogy" as inappropriate when applied to quality of life decisions; Arthur Caplan called this rhetoric "odiously wrong". The Church is actively involved in the public debates over abortion, capital punishment and euthanasia, and encourages believers to support legislation and politicians it describes as pro-life. ### Abortion The Catechism states: "Human life is sacred because from its beginning it involves the creative action of God and it remains forever in a special relationship with the Creator, who is its sole end. ... no one can under any circumstance claim for himself the right directly to destroy an innocent human being." Direct and intentional killing of an innocent human is considered a mortal sin. Considered by the Church to be of an even greater gravity is the murder of family members, including "infanticide, fratricide, parricide, the murder of a spouse and procured abortion." The Catechism states that the embryo "must be treated from conception as a person". The Latin original of as is tamquam, meaning "like" or "just as". That a human individual's existence begins at fertilization is the accepted position of the Roman Catholic Church, whose Pontifical Academy for Life declared: "The moment that marks the beginning of the existence of a new 'human being' is constituted by the penetration of sperm into the oocyte. Fertilization promotes a series of linked events and transforms the egg cell into a 'zygote'."; respect for life at all stages, even potential life, is generally the context of church documents. Abortion has been specifically and persistently condemned by the Church since the first century. "Formal cooperation" in abortion incurs the penalty of excommunication "by the very commission of the offense" (Lat. latae sententiae, "sentence [already, i.e. automatically] passed"). The Catechism emphasizes that this penalty is not meant to restrict mercy, but that it makes clear the gravity of the crime and the irreparable harm done to the child, its parents and society. "Formal cooperation" in abortion extends not just to the mother who freely submits, but also to the doctor, nurses and anyone who directly aids in the act. The Church has ministries of reconciliation, such as Project Rachel, for those who sincerely repent of their sin of formal cooperation in abortion. Official Church teaching allows for medical procedures and treatments intended to protect or restore the mother's health if she would be in mortal danger without them, even when such procedures carry some risk of death to the fetus. Examples include the removal of a fallopian tube in the case of an ectopic pregnancy, removal of a pregnant cancerous uterus, or an appendectomy. #### Use of embryos for research or fertilization The United States Catechism for Adults devotes a section to in vitro fertilization, stem-cell research and cloning in its explanation of the fifth commandment, because these often involve the destruction of human embryos, considered to be a gravely sinful form of murder. Embryonic stem cell research is called "an immoral means to a good end" and "morally unacceptable." Citing the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith's Instruction on Respect for Human Life in its Origin and on the Dignity of Procreation, the US Bishops quote: "No objective, even though noble in itself, such as a foreseeable advantage to science, to other human beings, or to society, can in any way justify experimentation on living human embryos or fetuses, whether viable or not, either inside or outside the mother's body." The Bishops note that adult stem cell research, using cells obtained with informed consent, is a promising field of research that is morally acceptable. ### Suicide, euthanasia The fifth commandment forbids suicide and the mercy killing of those who are dying, even to eliminate suffering. The ordinary care of those facing an imminent death may not morally be withheld, according to the Church. "Ordinary care" refers to food, water and pain relief, and does not include "extraordinary care", which refers to the use of respirators or feeding tubes that are considered discretionary. Allowing a terminally ill person to die, using painkillers that may shorten their life, or refusing extraordinary treatment to the terminally ill such as chemotherapy or radiation, are considered morally acceptable and not a violation of the fifth commandment, in accordance with the principle of double effect. ### Capital punishment For the first two hundred years, Christians "refused to kill in the military, in self-defense, or in the judicial system", but there was no official Church position on the death penalty. When the Church was first officially recognized as a public institution in 313, its attitude toward capital punishment became one of toleration but not outright acceptance. The death penalty had support from early Catholic theologians, though some of them such as Saint Ambrose encouraged members of the clergy not to pronounce or carry out capital punishment. Saint Augustine answered objections to capital punishment rooted in the first commandment in The City of God. Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus argued that civil authority to carry out capital punishment was supported by scripture. Pope Innocent III required Peter Waldo and the Waldensians to accept that "secular power can, without mortal sin, exercise judgement of blood, provided that it punishes with justice, not out of hatred, with prudence, not precipitation" as a prerequisite for reconciliation with the church. Paul Suris states that official Church teachings have neither absolutely condemned nor promoted capital punishment, but toleration of it has fluctuated throughout the ages. The Inquisitions provide the most memorable instance of Church support for capital punishment, although some historians considered these more lenient than the secular courts of the period. On August 2, 2018, the church adopted the view that capital punishment is "inadmissible" as it violates the dignity of mankind. The Catechism of the Catholic Church proclaims that "in the light of the Gospel" the death penalty is "an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person". Pope Francis has also proclaimed that life imprisonment is a form of torture and "a hidden [form of the] death penalty". ### Personal health, dead bodies, burial According to Church teaching, respect for human life requires respect for one's own body, precluding unhealthy behavior, the abuse of food, alcohol, medicines, illegal drugs, tattoos and piercings. The Church also warns against the opposite behavior of "excessive preoccupation with the health and welfare of the body that 'idolizes' physical perfection, fitness, and success at sports." Kidnapping, terrorism, and torture are forbidden, as well as sterilizations, amputations and mutilations that are not for therapeutic medical reasons. According to the Catechism, societies have a moral obligation to strive to provide healthy living conditions for all people. Church belief in the resurrection of the body led to a prohibition against cremation that was pastorally modified at the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s under limited circumstances, but those conditions have been largely ignored even by the clergy. According to the Catechism, burial of the dead is a corporal work of mercy that must treat the body with respect and love (e.g. scattering of cremated remains, burial in an unmarked grave, etc. are forbidden in the Catholic Church). Organ donation after death and organ transplants under certain terms, also autopsies for legal and scientific reasons are permitted. ### War and self-defense In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus recalls the commandment, "You shall not kill" and then adds to it the proscriptions against anger, hatred and vengeance. Going further, Christ asks his disciples to love their enemies. The Catechism asserts that "it is legitimate to insist on respect for one's own right to life." Kreeft says, "self-defense is legitimate for the same reason suicide is not: because one's own life is a gift from God, a treasure we are responsible for preserving and defending." The Catechism teaches that "someone who defends his life is not guilty of murder even if he is forced to deal his aggressor a lethal blow." Legitimate defense can be not only a right but a grave duty for one who is responsible for the lives of others. The defense of the common good requires that an unjust aggressor be rendered unable to cause harm. For this reason, those who legitimately hold authority also have the right to use arms to repel aggressors against the civil community entrusted to their responsibility. The Church requires all to pray and work to prevent unjust wars, but allows for just wars if certain conditions are met: 1. The reasons for going to war are defensive. 2. "The damage inflicted by the aggressor ... must be lasting, grave, and certain." 3. It is a last resort taken only after all other means of putting an end to the "grave damage" have been ineffective. 4. The ultimate aim is peace and there is a serious chance of success. 5. No graver evils are produced that overshadow the evil to be eliminated. This forbids the use of arms to eliminate whole cities and areas with their inhabitants. 6. Respect and care is required for non-combatants, wounded soldiers and prisoners. Soldiers are required to disobey commands to commit genocide and ones that violate universal principles. ### Scandal The Catechism classifies scandal under the fifth commandment and defines it as "an attitude or behavior which leads another to do evil". In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus stated, "Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened round his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea." The Church considers it a serious crime to cause another's faith, hope and love to be weakened, especially if it is done to young people and the perpetrator is a person of authority such as a parent, teacher or priest. ## Sixth commandment According to the Church, humans are sexual beings whose sexual identity should be accepted in the unity of body and soul. The sexes are meant by divine design to be different and complementary, each having equal dignity and made in the image of God. Sexual acts are sacred within the context of the marital relationship that reflects a "complete and lifelong mutual gift of a man and a woman." Sexual sins thus violate not just the body but the person's whole being. In his 1995 book Crossing the Threshold of Hope, John Paul II reflected on this concept: > After all, young people are always searching for the beauty in love. They want their love to be beautiful. If they give in to weakness, following the models of behavior that can rightly be considered a 'scandal in the contemporary world' (and these are, unfortunately, widely diffused models), in the depths of their hearts they still desire a beautiful and pure love. This is as true of boys as it is of girls. Ultimately, they know that only God can give them this love. As a result, they are willing to follow Christ, without caring about the sacrifices this may entail. Like Orthodox Judaism and Islam, the Catholic Church considers all sexual acts outside of marriage to be grave sins. The gravity of the sin "'excludes one from sacramental communion' until repented of and forgiven in sacramental confession." ### Vocation to chastity Church teaching on the sixth commandment includes a discussion on chastity. The Catechism describes chastity as a "moral virtue ... a gift from God, a grace, a fruit of spiritual effort." The Church sees sex as more than a physical act; it also affects body and soul, so the Church teaches that chastity is a virtue all people are called to acquire. It is defined as the inner unity of a person's "bodily and spiritual being" that successfully integrates a person's sexuality with his or her "entire human nature." To acquire this virtue, followers are encouraged to enter into the "long and exacting work" of self-mastery that is helped by friendships, God's grace, maturity and education "that respects the moral and spiritual dimensions of human life." The Catechism categorizes violations of the sixth commandment into two categories: "offenses against chastity" and "offenses against the dignity of marriage". #### Offenses against chastity The Catechism lists the following "offenses against chastity", in increasing order of gravity according to Kreeft: 1. Lust: the Church teaches that sexual pleasure is good and created by God, who meant for spouses to "experience pleasure and enjoyment of body and spirit". Kreeft says, "Lust does not mean sexual pleasure as such, nor the delight in it, nor the desire for it in its right context." Lust is the desire for sexual pleasure alone, outside its intended purpose of procreation and the uniting of man and woman, body and soul, in mutual self-donation. 2. Masturbation is considered sinful for the same reasons as lust, but is a step above lust in that it involves a physical act instead of a mental one. 3. Fornication is the sexual union of an unmarried man and an unmarried woman. This is considered contrary to "the dignity of persons and of human sexuality" because it is not ordered to the "good of spouses" or the "generation and education of children." 4. Pornography ranks higher because it is considered a perversion of the sexual act that is intended for distribution to third parties for viewing. 5. Prostitution is considered sinful for both the prostitute and the customer; it reduces a person to an instrument of sexual pleasure, violating human dignity and harming society. The gravity of the sinfulness is less for prostitutes who are forced into the act by destitution, blackmail or social pressure. 6. Rape is an intrinsically evil act that can cause grave damage to the victim for life. 7. Incest, or "rape of children by parents or other adult relatives" or "those responsible for the education of the children entrusted to them" is considered the most heinous of sexual sins. #### Homosexuality The Catechism devotes a separate section to homosexuality within its explanation of the sixth commandment. Like heterosexual acts outside of marriage, homosexual acts are considered sins. The Church distinguishes between homosexual attractions, which are not considered sinful, and homosexual acts, which are. The Catechism states that they "violate natural law, cannot bring forth life, and do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved." The Church teaches that a homosexual inclination is "objectively disordered" and can be a great trial for the person, who the Church teaches must be "accepted with respect, compassion and sensitivity ... unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided." Homosexuals are, according to the Church, "called to chastity". They are instructed to practice the virtues of "self-mastery" that teaches "inner freedom" using the support of friends, prayer and grace found in the sacraments of the Church. These tools are meant to help homosexuals "gradually and resolutely approach Christian perfection", which is a state to which all Christians are called. (Two lay movements represent opposing philosophies regarding homosexuality: DignityUSA seeks to change the Church's teachings to justify homosexual acts; Courage International is an organization of homosexuals who "support each other in the sincere effort to live in chastity and in fidelity to Christ and his Church".) ### Love of husband and wife According to Church teaching, spousal love is intended to form an unbroken, two-fold end: the union of husband and wife and the transmission of life. The unitive aspect includes the transference of each partner's being "so that they are no longer two but one flesh." The sacrament of matrimony is viewed as God's sealing the consent which binds the partners together. Church teaching on the marital state requires spousal acceptance of each other's failures and faults, and the recognition that the "call to holiness in marriage" is one that requires a process of spiritual growth and conversion that can last throughout life. #### Fecundity of marriage, sexual pleasure, birth control The Church position on sexual activity can be summarized as: "sexual activity belongs only in marriage as an expression of total self-giving and union, and always open to the possibility of new life." Sexual acts in marriage are considered "noble and honorable" and are meant to be enjoyed with "joy and gratitude." Sexuality is to be reserved to marriage: "by its very nature conjugal love requires the inviolable fidelity of the spouses. This is the consequence of the gift of themselves which they make to each other. Love seeks to be definitive; it cannot be an arrangement 'until further notice.' The "intimate union of marriage, as a mutual giving of two persons, and the good of the children, demand total fidelity from the spouses and require an unbreakable union between them." (Gaudium et spes). Artificial birth control predates Christianity; the Catholic Church has condemned these methods throughout its history. In response to the Church of England accepting the practice of artificial contraception in 1930, the Catholic Church issued the papal encyclical Casti connubii on 31 December 1930. The 1968 papal encyclical Humanae vitae is a reaffirmation of the Catholic Church's traditional view of marriage and marital relations, and a continued condemnation of artificial birth control. The Church sees large families as a sign of God's blessing. "By its very nature the institution of marriage and married love is ordered to the procreation and education of the offspring and it is in them that it finds its crowning glory." (Gaudium et spes) Children are the supreme gift of marriage and contribute greatly to the good of the parents themselves. (...) true married love and the whole structure of family life which results from it, without diminishment of the other ends of marriage, are directed to disposing the spouses to cooperate valiantly with the love of the Creator and Savior, who through them will increase and enrich his family from day to day. (Gaudium et spes)." It recognizes that responsible parenthood sometimes calls for reasonable spacing or limiting of births and considers natural family planning as morally acceptable, but rejects all methods of artificial contraception. The Church rejects all forms of artificial insemination and fertilization because the techniques divorce the sexual act from the creation of a child. The Catechism states, "A child is not something owed to one, but is a gift ... 'the supreme gift of marriage.'" Roderick Hindery, a teacher of moral theology, voiced disagreement on the Church's support for natural family planning, and contends that it contributes to overpopulation and poverty. Celia W. Dugger of the New York Times criticizes the Church's rejection of condom use, in particular with regard to countries where the incidence of AIDS and HIV has reached epidemic proportions. Brenda Wilson of NPR says that Catholics cite countries such as Kenya and Uganda, where behavioral changes are encouraged instead of condom use, and where greater progress in controlling the disease has been made than in countries that promote condom use alone. #### Offenses against the dignity of marriage According to the Church, adultery and divorce are considered offenses against the dignity of marriage and are defined as follows: 1. Adultery is the sexual union of a man and woman where at least one is married to someone else. It is for this reason that the Church considers it a greater sin than fornication. Kreeft states, "The adulterer sins against his spouse, his society, and his children as well as his own body and soul." 2. Divorce: According to the Catholic New American Bible translation, Jesus taught, "whoever divorces his wife (unless the marriage is unlawful) causes her to commit adultery, and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery." Explaining Church interpretation of this teaching, Kreeft says Jesus considered divorce to be an accommodation that had slipped into Jewish law. The Church teaches that marriage was created by God and was meant to be indissoluble: like the creation of a child that cannot be "un-created", neither can the "one flesh" of the marriage bond. The Catechism states, "Divorce is a grave offense against the natural law. It claims to break the contract, to which the spouses freely consented, to live with each other till death." By marrying another, the divorced person adds to the gravity of the offense as the remarried spouse is considered to be in a state of "public and permanent adultery". The Compendium of the Catechism 502 lists other offenses against the dignity of marriage: "polygamy, incest, free unions (cohabitation, concubinage), and sexual acts before or outside of marriage". #### Separation, civil divorce, annulments According to the Church, there are situations that do not equate to divorce: 1. In extreme situations, such as domestic violence, separation is allowed. This is not considered a divorce and may be justified. 2. Civil divorce is not a divorce according to the Church. If it is deemed to be the only way of ensuring legal rights, care of children, or protection of inheritance, the Church considers it morally acceptable. 3. Annulment is not a divorce; it is a ruling by the Church that the marriage was never valid. The marriage is deemed invalid if it lacks one of five integral elements: it should be "complete", "lifelong", "mutual", a "free gift" and of "man and woman". According to Pope John Paul II's Address to the Roman Rota on 22 January 1996, couples do not have a right to an annulment, but do have a right to make their case for nullity or validity before "the competent Church authority and to request a decision in the matter." According to the Catholic Diocese of Arlington: > ... signs that might indicate reasons to investigate for an annulment are: marriage that excluded at the time of the wedding the right to children, or to a permanent marriage, or to an exclusive commitment. In addition, there are youthful marriages; marriages of very short duration; marriages marked by serious emotional, physical, or substance abuse; deviant sexual practices; profound and consistent irresponsibility and lack of commitment; conditional consent to a marriage; fraud or deceit to elicit spousal consent; serious mental illness; or a previous bond of marriage. The determination of the ground should be made after extensive consultation with the parish priest or deacons, and based upon the proofs that are available. ## Seventh commandment The Catechism explains that this commandment regulates worldly goods, and forbids unjustly taking, using or damaging those that belong to someone else. It places requirements upon those who possess worldly goods to use them responsibly, taking into consideration the good of society. The Catechism addresses the concept of human stewardship of God's creation in its explanation of the seventh commandment and forbids abuse of animals and the environment. ### Private property According to the Church, people have a right to private property. However, ownership makes that person "a steward" who is expected to make it "fruitful" or profitable in a way that benefits others after that person has first taken care of their family. Private property and the common good are seen as complementary elements that exist for the purpose of strengthening society. The taking of another's private property "in obvious and urgent necessity" as "the only way to provide for immediate, essential needs (food, shelter, clothing)" is not considered by the Church to be stealing. The concept of slavery as private property is condemned by the Church, which classifies it as the stealing of a person's human rights. ### Theft According to the Catechism, theft or stealing means "usurping another's property against the reasonable will of the owner" though exclusion exists for someone in great need to survive. "Unjustly taking and keeping the property of others" considered as theft, even if the act is outside the scope of civil law. Cardinal Christoph Schönborn once used the example of Saint Augustine's theft of his neighbor's pears in his youth, as recorded in his Confessions. Cardinal Schönborn points out that Augustine still has "pangs of conscience over a childish theft" even when he became grown person, indicating that human conscience is very aware of acts of theft, even if the act itself is legal under civil law. The following acts are also considered as violation of the seventh commandment: price manipulation to get advantage on the harm of others, corruption, appropriation of the public goods for personal interests, work poorly carried out, tax avoidance, counterfeiting of checks or any means of payment, any forms of copyright infringement and piracy, and extravagance. ### Social justice The papal encyclical Rerum novarum discusses the relationships and mutual duties between labor and capital, as well as government and its citizens. Of primary concern was the need for some amelioration for "the misery and wretchedness pressing so unjustly on the majority of the working class". The encyclical supported the right to form unions, rejected socialism, communism and unrestricted capitalism, and affirmed the right to private property. Church interpretation of the seventh commandment teaches that business owners should balance a desire for profits that will ensure the future of the business with a responsibility toward the "good of persons". Business owners are required to pay their workers a reasonable wage, honor contracts, and abstain from dishonest activity, including bribery of government officials. Workers are required to do their jobs conscientiously, as they have been hired to do them, and to avoid dishonesty in the workplace, such as using office goods for personal use without permission (embezzlement). The Church teaches that a balance should exist between government regulation and the laws of the marketplace. It deems that sole reliance on the marketplace (pure capitalism) insufficiently addresses many human needs, while sole reliance on government regulation (pure socialism) "perverts the basis of social bonds". The Church warns about the danger of either capitalism or socialism, as these systems tend to use excessive extremes that result in injustice to persons. Wealthier nations, like wealthier individuals, have a moral obligation to help poorer nations and individuals, and work to reform financial institutions and economic factors to benefit all. ## Eighth commandment The Catechism explains that bearing false witness or "speaking a falsehood with the intention of deceiving" encompasses all violations of truth. These violations have degrees of gravity depending on the "intentions of the one who lies and the harms suffered by its victims." Listed as follows, these are: 1. False witness and perjury: statements made publicly in court which obstruct justice by condemning the innocent or exonerating the guilty, or which may increase the punishment of the accused. 2. Rash judgement: believing, without sufficient evidence, that a person has done moral faults. 3. Detraction: the disclosure of another's faults without a valid reason. 4. Calumny: lying to harm a person's reputation and providing opportunity to others to make false judgements concerning them. 5. Flattery: "speech to deceive others for our benefit." 6. Bragging, boasting, or mocking: speech which either only honors oneself or dishonors others. The Church requires those who have damaged the reputation of another to "make reparation for the untruth they have communicated." However, it does not require a person to reveal a truth to someone who does not have a right to know, and teaches respect for a right to privacy. Priests are prohibited from violating the seal of confession no matter how grave the sin or its impact on society. Included in the Church teachings of this commandment is the requirement for Christians to bear witness to their faith "without equivocation" in situations that require it. The use of modern media in spreading untruths, by individuals, businesses or governments, is condemned. ## Ninth commandment The ninth and tenth commandments deal with coveting, which is an interior disposition not a physical act. The Catechism distinguishes between covetousness of the flesh (improper sexual desire) and covetousness for another's worldly goods. The ninth commandment deals with the former and the tenth the latter. Jesus emphasized the need for pure thoughts as well as actions, and stated, "Everyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart" (Matthew 5:28). The Catechism states that, with the help of God's grace, men and women are required to overcome lust and bodily desires "for sinful relationships with another person's spouse." In Theology of the Body, a series of lectures given by Pope John Paul II, Jesus' statement in Matthew 5:28 is interpreted that one can commit adultery in the heart not only with another's spouse, but also with his/her own spouse if one looks at him/her lustfully or treats him/her "only as an object to satisfy instinct". Purity of heart is suggested as the necessary quality needed to accomplish this task; common Catholic prayers and hymns include a request for this virtue. The Church identifies gifts of God that help a person maintain purity: 1. Chastity, which enables people to love others with upright and undivided hearts. 2. Purity of intention, which seeks to fulfill God's will in everything, knowing that it alone will lead to the true end of man. 3. Purity of vision, "external and internal", disciplining the thoughts and imagination to reject those that are impure. 4. Prayer that recognizes the power of God to grant a person the ability to overcome sexual desires. 5. Modesty, of the feelings as well as the body is discreet in choice of words and clothing. Jesus stated, "Blessed are the clean of heart, for they shall see God." This purity of heart, which the ninth commandment introduces, is the "precondition of the vision of God" and allows the person to see situations and people as God sees. The Catechism teaches that "there is a connection between purity of heart, of body and of faith." ## Tenth commandment Detachment from riches is the goal of the tenth commandment and the first Beatitude ("blessed are the poor in spirit") because, according to the Catechism, this precept is necessary for entrance into the Kingdom of heaven. Covetousness is prohibited by the tenth commandment because it is considered to be the first step toward commission of theft, robbery and fraud; these lead to violence and injustice. The Church defines covetousness as a "disordered desire" that can take different forms: 1. Greed is the desire for too much of what one does not need. 2. Envy is the desire for what belongs to another. The US Bishops define it as "an attitude that fills us with sadness at the sight of another's prosperity." Explaining Church teaching of this commandment, Kreeft cites Saint Thomas Aquinas, who wrote, "An evil desire can only be overcome by a stronger good desire." The US Bishops suggest that this can be achieved through cultivation of goodwill, humility and gratitude for one's own and others' blessings, while trusting in God's grace. Kreeft explains that Saint Paul the Apostle illustrated the concept in his letter to the Philippians when he listed his worldly credentials as a respected Jew and stated, "I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord." As Jesus stated, "What shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?" Church teaching on the tenth commandment is directed toward this same attitude toward worldly goods, termed "poverty of spirit". ## See also - Commandments of the Church - Index of Catholic Church articles - Relations between Catholicism and Judaism

St Donat's Castle

Castle in St Donats, Vale of Glamorgan, Wales

St Donat's Castle (Welsh: Castell Sain Dunwyd), St Donats, Wales, is a medieval castle in the Vale of Glamorgan, about 16 miles (26 km) to the west of Cardiff, and about 1+1⁄2 miles (2.4 km) to the west of Llantwit Major. Positioned on cliffs overlooking the Bristol Channel, the site has been occupied since the Iron Age, and was by tradition the home of the Celtic chieftain Caradog. The present castle's origins date from the 12th century when the de Haweys and later Peter de Stradling began its development. The Stradlings held the castle for four hundred years, until the death of Sir Thomas Stradling in a duel in 1738. During the 18th century, the castle's status and condition declined and by the early 19th century it was only partly habitable. The later 19th and early 20th centuries saw several restorations. In 1852, it was purchased by John Whitlock Nicholl Carne, who claimed descent from the Stradlings but whose efforts at reconstruction were not well regarded. More enlightened improvements were made by its subsequent owner, the coal magnate Morgan Stuart Williams. The castle's transformation occurred after its purchase in 1925 by William Randolph Hearst, the American newspaper tycoon. Hearst undertook a "brutal" expansion, including the incorporation of elements from other ancient structures such as the roofs of Bradenstoke Priory in Wiltshire and St Botolph's Church in Lincolnshire. His approach to architectural reclamation was controversial and the destruction of Bradenstoke was opposed in a vigorous campaign organised by the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings. Bernard Shaw described the castle after Hearst's reconstruction as "what God would have built if he had had the money". Despite spending vast sums of money on St Donat's, Hearst rarely visited and in 1937, with the Hearst Corporation facing financial collapse, the castle was put up for sale, but with war looming, the castle was instead requisitioned for use by the army. In 1960, some nine years after Hearst's death, it was purchased by the son of the businessman and educational philanthropist Antonin Besse and donated to the trustees of Atlantic College, the first of the United World Colleges. Today the castle is home to some 350 international students and, with a history of occupation extending back to the late 13th century, is among the oldest continuously inhabited castles in Wales. Both the castle and the grounds are of historical and architectural importance, and have Grade I listed status. ## History ### Stradling family: 1300–1738 According to tradition, the site of St Donat's was the place to which Caradog, the Celtic chieftain, returned after being released from imprisonment in Rome by the emperor Claudius. After the Norman invasion of Wales in the mid-11th century, a timber castle was constructed on the site. The earliest surviving parts of the present castle, the keep and the inner ward, were built in the late 12th century by the de Hawey family. Ownership passed to the Stradling family through the marriage of Sir Peter Stradling to Joan de Hawey. The Stradlings were adventurers from Strättligen in Switzerland, who came to South Wales in the late 13th century. Sir Peter, his wife and later her second husband John de Pembridge, extended the castle around 1300, building the outer gatehouse and curtain wall and enlarging the keep and inner gatehouse. The Stradling family served as magistrates, members of parliament, sheriffs and deputy lieutenants of Glamorganshire from the 13th to the 18th centuries. A number achieved more than local fame. The third Sir Edward Stradling, in a run of nine Edwards, fought at the Battle of Agincourt, married a great-granddaughter of Edward III and established himself as a powerful landowner and courtier. One of Edward's sons, Henry, was seized by pirates in the Bristol Channel while travelling from his Somerset estates to St Donat's, and was released only on payment of a large ransom. This event has subsequently been much embellished by, among others, Taliesin Williams in his account The Doom of Colyn Dolphyn: A Poem, with Notes Illustrative of Various Traditions of Glamorganshire, which involves the eponymous Breton pirate and the witch Mallt-y-Nos. Henry Stradling's nautical misadventures continued; after acceding to the baronetcy, he died of a fever at Famagusta, returning from a pilgrimage to the Holy Land.The Stradlings remained adherents of the Catholic faith following the Reformation and experienced persecution as a consequence. Sir Thomas Stradling (1495–1571) was imprisoned in the Tower of London in 1561, following accusations of his having used the appearance of a "miraculous" cross in the trunk of an ash tree on the St Donat's estate to encourage support for the Catholic cause. His son, the scholar Edward Stradling (1528/9–1609) established a celebrated, and exceptionally large, library at St Donat's, which was considered the finest in Wales of its time. The historian Graham Thomas records the Stradling tradition of educating their sons abroad, which led to the library holding extensive collections of foreign-language texts, particularly Italian works. Edward Stradling wrote a history of the area, The Winning of the Lordship of Glamorgan out of Welshmen's Hands, which established the legend of the Twelve Knights of Glamorgan, including the inaccurate claim that the first Stradlings had arrived with William the Conqueror, rather than some 200 years later. He was also the patron of Siôn Dafydd Rhys and funded the production and publication of the latter's Cambrobrytannicae Cymraecaeve Linguae Institutiones et Rudimenta, the first Welsh language grammar to be published in Latin and thus widely accessible. During the English Civil War the Stradlings, prominent Royalists, supported Charles I and hosted the archbishop James Ussher, when he had to flee Cardiff. Three Stradlings fought at the Battle of St Fagans in 1648 and two were forced into exile after the King's execution. After the Civil War, the family declined in importance and ceased to occupy any significant position in the country and, ultimately, within Glamorgan. They retained ownership of St Donat's Castle until the death of Sir Thomas Stradling in a duel in France in 1738. The exact circumstances of his death are uncertain; he was travelling with his university friend Sir John Tyrwhitt, with whom he had reputedly made a pact, each promising the other his inheritance in the event of his death. Sources dispute whether the duel was actually between Stradling and Tyrwhitt, or was contrived by Tyrwhitt. In either event, Stradling was killed and Tyrwhitt inherited his estates. ### Decline and recovery: 1739–1925 Under the Tyrwhitts, the castle entered a long decline that lasted over one hundred years. J. M. W. Turner sketched the partly-ruinous castle in 1798. John Wesley is reputed to have preached to a crowd of five thousand people on the terraced lawns in 1777. Partial restoration was started by Dr John Whitlock Nicholl Carne, who claimed to be descended from the Stradlings, and bought the castle from the Tyrwhitt-Drake family in 1862. Carne's reconstructions have not generally been well-regarded; the historian of the castle Alan Hall described the work as being undertaken in an "unscholarly, inauthentic style". A more sympathetic, contemporaneous, account described Carne's efforts as "careful and scrupulous". Morgan Williams, a colliery owner from Aberpergwm and the owner in the Edwardian period, from 1901 to 1909, carried out extensive and careful restoration, employing the noted architects George Frederick Bodley and Thomas Garner. Williams's sensitive reconstructions were praised by Henry Avray Tipping, the writer, architect and garden designer. The architectural writer Michael Hall was also impressed, describing Bodley's drawing room as "Edwardian antiquarian taste at its most refined". The process of reconstruction was less harmonious, Williams and Garner rowed constantly and Garner ultimately resigned. Almost all of Bodley and Garner's work was eradicated in the "brutal" remodelling undertaken by William Randolph Hearst. Williams also assembled a collection of arms and armour which was housed at the castle, and made major improvements to the castle's setting, moving the village which previously stood close to the castle's walls to a new location outside of the gates and constructing three entrance lodges. In 1903, the novelist Violet Paget, writing under her pseudonym Vernon Lee, used the castle as the model for St Salvat's Castle in her Gothic novel Penelope Brandling: A Tale of the Welsh Coast in the Eighteenth Century. Godfrey Williams, Morgan's son, disliked St Donat's, by tradition on account of its being haunted although this is disputed, and in 1921, having first culled the herd of deer that his father had reintroduced to the park, put the castle up for sale. Its advertisement in The Times, dated 3 May 1921, described the castle as "a comfortable and liveable old-world home of the first importance". In 1922, it was bought, along with 123 acres (50 ha) of land, by Richard Pennoyer, an American diplomat married to the Dowager Countess of Shrewsbury. Pennoyer was to own St Donat's for less than three years. ### William Randolph Hearst: 1925–1960 William Randolph Hearst inherited a mining and real estate fortune from his mother, and made a fortune of his own through the establishment of the Hearst Corporation, the largest newspaper and magazine company in the world. Part of the revenues were spent on the building of San Simeon, his Spanish-style castle in California, which began construction in 1919. By 1925 he was eager to purchase a genuine castle, and on 13 August he sent a wire to Alice Head, the London-based managing director of his European operations, "Want buy castle in England [sic]. St Donat's perhaps satisfactory at proper price. See if you can get right price on St Donat's or any other equally good." Within two months it was Hearst's, or specifically, the property of the National Magazine Company. The price paid for the castle and 111 acres (45 ha) of surrounding land was \$130,000. Hearst employed Sir Charles Allom as his architect and designer. Allom was a noted decorator, the founder of White Allom and Company, and had been knighted in 1913 for his redecoration of Buckingham Palace. Hearst attracted strong opinions. Theodore Roosevelt called him "an unspeakable blackguard (with) all the worst faults of the corrupt and dissolute monied man". Winston Churchill, who stayed as Hearst's guest at St Donat's and at San Simeon, described him in a letter to Clementine Churchill as "a grave simple child – with no doubt a nasty temper – playing with the most costly toys ... two magnificent establishments, two charming wives, complete indifference to public opinion, oriental hospitalities". Churchill's mention of "two charming wives" refers to Marion Davies, Hearst's long-time mistress and a constant presence at both San Simeon and St Donat's. P. G. Wodehouse, invited to San Simeon, recalled Hearst's way of dealing with over-staying guests: "The longer you are there, the further you get from the middle [of the refectory dining table]. I sat on Marion's right the first night, then found myself being edged further and further away till I got to the extreme end, when I thought it time to leave. Another day, and I should have been feeding on the floor."Hearst undertook a "rapid and ruthless" redevelopment and rebuilding programme at St Donat’s. He spent around £250,000 on repairs, reconstruction, refurbishment, and furnishings between 1925 and 1937, renovating the castle with architectural trophies from across the United Kingdom and abroad; at the peak of his buying, Hearst's expenditure reportedly accounted for a quarter of the world's entire art market. Alice Head, manager of Hearst's London operations and the actual purchaser of St Donat's, recorded her exhilaration: "We were on top of the wave – out of (one) year's profits, we bought The Connoisseur, we bought St Donat's and we bought vast quantities of antiques." The writer Clive Aslet described Hearst's passion for antiquities as "naked obsession... romance gave way to rape", and his mania for collecting was satirised in Orson Welles's 1941 film Citizen Kane. Kane's palace Xanadu, modelled on San Simeon, is described as containing "A collection of everything, so big that it can never be catalogued or appraised. Enough for ten museums, the loot of the world." Hearst's actions were vigorously opposed, particularly in relation to the destruction of the Augustinian foundation Bradenstoke Priory in Wiltshire. Built in 1142, by the 20th century the priory was in poor repair. Hearst purchased the site in 1929, under conditions of secrecy, and had workmen take down the cloister, tithe barn, prior's lodging and refectory. Parts were shipped to California; major elements were incorporated into St Donat's as part of the newly created Bradenstoke Hall; while other pieces, including the tithe barn, were lost. The Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings ran a poster campaign on the London Underground, using text that was considered libellous and which had to be pasted over. The campaign also saw questions on the issue being raised in Parliament. Hearst was unconcerned, Miss Head responding to the SPAB secretary: "Mr Hearst and I are well aware of your views. You must please allow us to hold our own opinions." Hearst did not visit until September 1928, and even then spent only one night in residence. Having undertaken a night-time tour of the castle which was illuminated by kerosene lamps, he left the following morning to board the Berengaria for New York. During the voyage home he wrote a 25-page memorandum with instructions for further improvements to the castle. Over the next decade his time at St Donat's amounted to some four months; between his purchase in 1925 and his death in 1951 he visited, normally for a month at the end of his summer European tours, in 1930, 1931, 1934 and, for the last time, in 1936. His infrequent visits were invariably undertaken with a large entourage, whom he sometimes took for drinks to the Old Swan Inn at the nearby village of Llantwit Major. Among his guests were the actors Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, Errol Flynn and Clark Gable, in addition to politicians including Winston Churchill, David Lloyd George and a young John F. Kennedy, who visited with his parents, Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. and Rose Kennedy. Visiting writers included Elinor Glyn, Ivor Novello and Bernard Shaw. Of St Donat's, Shaw was quoted as saying: "This is what God would have built if he had had the money." In the late 1930s Hearst's publishing empire came close to collapse. St Donat's was put up for sale in 1937, the Hearst Corporation noting that it had invested £280,000 in the castle through its subsidiary the National Magazine Company. An opinion on the chances of recouping this sum was sought from James Milner, a prominent solicitor and Deputy Speaker of the House of Commons. His response was not encouraging: "We have at St Donat's a white elephant of the rarest species." Billy Butlin, the holiday-camp entrepreneur, was uninterested and a development proposal by Sir Julian Hodge did not progress. Much of the furniture, silver and works of art were disposed of in a series of sales conducted by Christie's and Sotheby's which began in 1937 and continued for some years. These sales did not recoup what Hearst had spent on many of the items. During World War II the castle was requisitioned by the War Office for use by British and American troops for officer training. In October 1939 the 2nd 5th Battalion Glamorgan Welch Regiment of the British army arrived at the castle; two years later, conscripts of the Auxiliary Territorial Service were also stationed at the site. In 1944, it was used by the American 2nd Infantry Division as a command post. and soldiers injured in the D-day Normandy landings were treated and housed there. Hearst did not return after the war but continued to lend the castle to friends; Bob Hope, the comedian, stayed in May 1951 during his visit for a golf tournament at Porthcawl. ### United World Colleges: 1960–present Hearst died in August 1951. The castle remained on the market for the following decade until bought in 1960 by Antonin Besse II, son of the late Sir Antonin Besse, and donated to the founding council of Atlantic College, the first of what would become the United World Colleges. The idea for an international school arose from a meeting between the educationalist Kurt Hahn, who founded Schule Schloss Salem in Germany and Gordonstoun in Scotland, and Air Marshal Sir Lawrence Darvall, the commandant of the NATO Defense College. They conceived of a college for 16–19-year-old students drawn from a wide range of nationalities, with the aim of fostering international understanding. With Rear-Admiral Desmond Hoare, who would become the first headmaster, they persuaded Besse that the castle would make a suitable location for the first United World College, which opened in 1962 with fifty-six students. The first rigid-hulled inflatable boat was invented, developed, and patented by Hoare at St Donat's in the 1960s. In an act of generosity, Hoare sold the patent for the boat's design to the Royal National Lifeboat Institution in 1973 for a notional £1; the RNLI's cheque was not cashed and remains at the castle. From 1963 until 2013 the castle's seafront facilities hosted an RNLI lifeboat station, which was staffed by students and faculty of the college, and was credited with saving ninety-eight lives along the South Wales coast during its period of operation. The college has hosted several royal visitors at the castle, including Charles III, when Prince of Wales, and Princess Diana, Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, Lord Mountbatten, who was closely involved with the UWC movement, Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko of Japan and Queen Beatrix and Prince Claus of the Netherlands. The fiftieth anniversary of the college in 2012 was celebrated with a visit from Queen Noor of Jordan, the then President of the United World Colleges. Politicians such as the former prime minister of Canada Lester B. Pearson and the former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Alec Douglas-Home also visited St Donat's, as have several ambassadors. The college is home to approximately 350 students from more than 90 countries, who live in houses constructed on the castle grounds for the two years of their studies. With a history of occupation from its construction in the late 13th century, St Donat's has been described as the oldest continuously inhabited castle in Wales. ## Architecture and description Detailed drawings and plans prepared by the engineer and antiquary George Thomas Clark in 1871, and subsequently by George Lambert in 1901, assisted the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales (RCAHMW) in their survey of the castle published in 2000. In this survey, RCAHMW described the development of the castle in six phases: Period 1, the late-12th century; Period 2, the early-14th century; Period 3, the late-15th century; Period 4, the early-16th century; Period 5, the late-16th or early-17th centuries and finally the restorations of Carne, Williams and Hearst. The survey identified "substantial" remnants of the original Norman enceinte, including the keep, which had been enveloped by later developments and had previously been unrecognised and unrecorded. The entrance lies to the north-west. The grouping is surrounded by outer and inner curtain walls. The outer curtain wall is pierced by a gatehouse which leads through to an outer court. This is blocked, to the left, by Hearst's Bradenstoke Hall. A further gate, adjacent to the Mansell Tower, leads onto the inner court with the great hall to the south-west, the Bradenstoke Hall behind that, the banqueting hall to the west and the North Range to the right of the inner gatehouse. ### Exterior The castle site offers natural defences, in the form of steep slopes to two sides and the coast to a third. The unprotected side to the east is encircled by a deep dry moat. The castle is built of local lias limestone rubble with Sutton stone and sandstone dressings. The outer gatehouse is approached through modern battlements. The gatehouse has a portcullis room above, with an original fireplace of c. 1300 and a wooden portcullis with wooden doors behind. The first (outer) court beyond is the earliest part of the castle, constructed by the de Haweys in the late-12th century to replace a Norman timber fortification. The most recent RCAHMW survey, published in 2000, identified "significant vestiges" of the earliest stone castle which had been missed by earlier surveys. This discovery enabled a definitive dating for the first stone-built castle to "before 1200". The architectural historian John Newman draws comparisons with Newcastle at Bridgend and Coity Castle. To the sides of this gateway are a domestic range and the Brewhouse, the last major additions made by the Stradlings. The inner wall mostly survives and has a small original tower to the north, and a square gatehouse on the east beside the rectangular Mansell Tower, an enlargement of the original keep. In an article in The Archaeological Journal, C. P. Spurgeon notes the design similarities between the tower's door jambs and those in the chancel of St Donat's church, indicating an earlier construction date than that of the work undertaken by Peter de Stradling. Through this gateway, a c. 40 metres (130 ft) wide inner court is positioned within a polygonal inner curtain wall. The curtain walls date from c. 1300, and were built by the founder of the Stradling family, or perhaps by his widow's second husband. The north-west range dates from the early-16th century; the north-east range is of the late-15th century as is the great hall on the south side of the court. The double-height bay windows date from Bodley and Garner's remodelling for Morgan Williams. Alan Hall describes the inner court as having a "peaceful and domestic" appearance having been constructed in the more settled Tudor period under the later Stradlings. The exterior walls of the inner ward are decorated with a set of terracotta medallions or busts. The writer Simon Jenkins suggests it is unclear whether they are original to the castle or imported from elsewhere, although the architectural historian John Newman records that they were in situ by 1804. They appear to be modelled on the busts of the emperors by Giovanni da Maiano at Hampton Court. There are differing views as to the provenance of the medallions. Cadw is certain that two, those said to depict Marcus Aurelius and Cleopatra, are by da Maiano and were originally part of the Hampton Court set. It also suggests they could have been installed as early as the 16th century. Alan Hall agrees, noting the close connection between Cardinal Wolsey, to whom Pope Leo X had presented them, and Sir Thomas Arundell, father-in-law of the fourth Sir Edward Stradling. Newman is less definitive, although he notes their varying quality and suggests that further investigation should be undertaken. Beside the hall, between the inner and outer curtain walls, is the Bradenstoke Hall, consisting of the inner curtain wall on the north side and the realigned outer curtain wall on the south, with a modern wall on the east end built at that point to fit in an early-14th-century roof, brought from Bradenstoke Priory in Wiltshire. The western range has largely been replaced by a larger, three-storey building which necessitated, when erected, the demolition of the western part of the outer curtain wall. All of this renewal was undertaken by Hearst to achieve larger spaces for entertaining. The historian Adrian Pettifer records St Donat's as the last inhabited castle in Wales to undergo major alteration, describing that Hearst "aggrandised it with plunder". ### Interior The historian Anthony Emery, in the second of his three-volume history, Greater Medieval Houses of England and Wales, 1300–1500, describes the interiors created by Hearst and Allom at St Donat's as "spectacular...surpassing all other work there in size and richness". Their joint creation, the Bradenstoke Hall, contains two large fireplaces of French origin as well as the eponymous, imported roof. The banqueting hall, on the ground floor of the west range, is another example of Hearst's indiscriminate use of architectural salvage. The roof is 15th-century, probably Flemish and was acquired from St Botolph's Church, Boston, Lincolnshire. It has coloured ceiling bosses depicting a wide array of subjects, including flowers, griffins, the beasts of the Apostles and a head of Christ. The fireplace, cut to fit and with jambs from a different piece, is from a château in Beauvais. The entrance screen is from a Devon church. Hearst's breakfast room, off the banqueting hall, reuses another piece of the St Botolph's ceiling, as well as a fireplace from the prior's lodgings at Bradenstoke. The library above contains a major example of linenfold panelling, the Ellenhall Wainscot. Originally from a Staffordshire manor house, the panelling was sold to a dealer by the Earl of Lichfield in 1918 and subsequently acquired by Hearst. The Lady Anne Tower on the south-western corner is a Hearst/Allom reconstruction of the original 16th-century tower. The north range interior was remodelled in the late 1920s and contains Hearst's and Davies's bedroom suites, with an interconnecting door concealed in the panelling of Hearst's room. The panelling of Hearst's bedroom is original, but not to its current location. Allom salvaged it from the Stradling's Red Parlour, which Hearst demolished. Alan Hall notes the similarity of the panelling to that in the Senior Common Room at Jesus College, Oxford, a foundation attended and supported by members of the Welsh gentry, including the Stradlings. Above the banqueting hall, Hearst created an armoury filled with a notable collection of arms and armour, mainly sourced by the dealer, Raymond Bartel, whom Hearst enticed from the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art. The collection, sold after Hearst's death, was at the time "one of the finest in the world", mainly bought at German auctions in the 1920s and 1930s and including a set of plate armour from Milan considered the earliest near-complete set in existence. In addition to the armour, Hearst assembled a considerable collection of art and antiquities at the castle; "must buy many things for St Donat's"; including a large number of 17th and 18th century English portraits, Classical Greek vases, and tapestries. The castle was designated a Grade I listed building, the highest possible grade reserved for buildings of exceptional interest, in 1952. Cadw's listing report describes St Donat's as "an exceptionally fine medieval castle (with) many important interiors". ### St Donat's Arts Centre and other college buildings St Donat's Arts Centre is housed in a tithe barn of medieval origin but predominantly 16th-century in construction. The barn has been converted to a professionally equipped theatre which runs a programme of cinema, exhibitions and festivals. The Glass House is a modern addition and has been described as "aggressively detailed" but offering "spectacular" views. John Newman considered that the other developments undertaken by the college, although to designs of "uncompromising modernity", neither "detract from the historic castle (nor) impinge on its setting". ### Gardens and grounds The original gardens of the Stradlings were famous, begun in the Tudor period by Sir Thomas Stradling. They were extended by his son, Sir Edward Stradling, after a long sojourn in Rome. The Tudor Stradlings also maintained two deer parks on the wider estate, one for red and one for fallow deer. The Welsh poet Thomas Leyson, a friend of Sir Edward, composed a tribute in Latin, suggesting that the beauty of the gardens was sufficient to encourage visits from the sea-god Neptune and the water-nymph Thetis. The gardens descend in a series of terraces to the sea and give 14-mile (23 km) distant views across the Bristol Channel towards Devon and Somerset. Later development in the early 20th century by Morgan Williams saw the establishment of a Tudor-style garden with carved heraldic beasts on pedestals. This was followed by additions by Hearst, including a number of garden structures, such as an Italianate summerhouse overlooking the Rose Garden in which he installed a telephone exchange with connections to New York and California. Hearst built a 150 feet (46 m) long outdoor swimming pool on the lowest terrace, on the site of the castle's medieval tilt-yard. The pool was designed by Allom, assisted by Julia Morgan, Hearst's main architect for San Simeon. Beyond the pool site are the Cavalry Barracks. Newman dates these as 17th-century, but both Alan Hall and Cadw suggest a slightly earlier dating, in the 16th century, as a response to the threat of Spanish invasion. They were certainly converted to stabling, from whence the name derives, in the 17th century, and the Stradlings kept their horses at the barracks during the Civil War. By the 20th century the barracks were in a ruinous state and Hearst converted them into guest accommodation and a pool house in the 1930s. Between 1978 and 1981 Atlantic College rebuilt them in the original 17th-century style to serve as student accommodation. The college installed an indoor swimming pool and replaced the Allom/Morgan outdoor pool. Beyond the barracks, the castellated sea walls and towers have their origins in the 16th century, but were completely reconstructed by Hearst in the 1920s. The watchtower on the opposite slope to the castle is also probably 16th-century, or possibly late-15th-century, and is shown in a state of completion in a view of the castle dated 1740. It decayed thereafter, was restored in the late-19th century, but is again derelict in the early 21st century. It was almost certainly intended as a seaward look-out. Structural elements of the gardens were given Grade I listed status in 1963, Cadw's listing report noting their "exceptional interest as a surviving 16th-century terraced garden". Many of the individual buildings have their own Grade II listings including the watchtower to the west of the castle, the sea walls and towers to the south of the castle, at the end of the terraces, the Cavalry Barracks, the lawn sundial, and the walls to the north and west of the castle entrance. The gardens themselves were given Grade I listing on the Cadw/ICOMOS Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in Wales in 2022. They remain a rare survival of a complete, terraced Tudor garden, once among the finest Renaissance gardens in Wales.

Alexander Cameron Rutherford

Canadian lawyer and politician (1857–1941)

Alexander Cameron Rutherford KC (February 2, 1857 – June 11, 1941) was a Canadian lawyer and politician who served as the first premier of Alberta from 1905 to 1910. Born in Ormond, Canada West, he studied and practiced law in Ottawa before he moved with his family to the North-West Territories in 1895. There, he began his political career, winning in his third attempt a seat in the North-West Legislative Assembly. In keeping with the territorial custom, Rutherford ran as an independent but generally supported the territorial administration of Premier Frederick W. A. G. Haultain. At the federal level, however, Rutherford was a Liberal. When the Province of Alberta was formed in 1905, its Lieutenant Governor, George Bulyea, asked Rutherford to form the new province's first government. As premier, Rutherford's first task was to win a workable majority in the Legislative Assembly of Alberta, which he did in that year's provincial election. His second was to organize the provincial government, and his government established everything from speed limits to a provincial court system. The legislature also controversially, and with Rutherford's support, selected Edmonton over rival Calgary as the provincial capital. Calgarians' bruised feelings were not salved when the government located the University of Alberta, a project dear to the Premier's heart, in his hometown of Strathcona, just across the North Saskatchewan River from Edmonton. The government was faced with labour unrest in the coal mining industry, which it resolved by establishing a commission to examine the problem. It also set up a provincial government telephone network (Alberta Government Telephones) at great expense, and tried to encourage the development of new railways. It was in pursuit of the last objective that the Rutherford government found itself embroiled in scandal. Early in 1910, William Henry Cushing's resignation as Minister of Public Works precipitated the Alberta and Great Waterways Railway scandal, which turned many of Rutherford's Liberals against his government. Eventually, pressure from many party figures forced Rutherford to resign. He kept his seat in the legislature after resigning as premier, but he was defeated in the 1913 election by Conservative Herbert Crawford. After leaving politics, Rutherford continued his law practice and his involvement with a wide range of community groups. Most importantly, he became chancellor of the University of Alberta, whose earlier founding had been a personal project, and stayed in that position until he died of a heart attack. A University of Alberta library, an Edmonton elementary school, and Jasper National Park's Mount Rutherford are named in his honour. Additionally, his home, Rutherford House, was opened as a museum in 1973. ## Early life Alexander Rutherford was born February 2, 1857, near Ormond, Canada West, on his family's dairy farm. His parents, James (1817–1891) and Elspet "Elizabeth" (1818–1901) Cameron Rutherford, had immigrated from Scotland two years previous. They joined the Baptist Church, and his father joined the Liberal Party of Canada and served for a time on the Osgoode village council. Rutherford attended public school locally and, after rejecting dairy farming as a vocation, enrolled in a Metcalfe high school. After graduating in 1874, he attended the Canadian Literary Institute, a Baptist college in Woodstock. He graduated from there in 1876 and taught for a year in Osgoode. He moved to Montreal to study arts and law at McGill University. He was awarded degrees in both in 1881, and joined the Ottawa law firm of Scott, McTavish and McCracken, where he was articled for four years under the tutelage of Richard William Scott. Called to the Ontario bar in 1885, he became a junior partner in the firm of Hodkins, Kidd and Rutherford, with responsibility for its Kemptville office for ten years. He also established a moneylending business there. Meanwhile, his social circle grew to include William Cameron Edwards. Through Edwards, Rutherford was introduced to the Birkett family, which included former Member of Parliament Thomas Birkett. Rutherford married Birkett's niece, Mattie Birkett, in December 1888. The couple had three children: Cecil (born in 1890), Hazel (born in 1893), and Marjorie (born in 1903 but died sixteen months later). Rutherford had a traditional view of gender roles and was happy to leave most childrearing responsibilities to his wife. ### Move west In November 1886 Rutherford visited the Canadian West for the first time when he travelled to British Columbia to investigate the disappearance of his cousin. The Rocky Mountains left a great impression on him, as did the coastal climate, which he found "very agreeable". He visited again in the summer of 1894, when he took the Canadian Pacific Railway across the prairies. Upon arriving in South Edmonton, he was excited by its growth potential and pleased to find that the dry air relieved his bronchitis. He resolved to settle there and did so one year later, bringing his reluctant wife and his children, who arrived by train June 10, 1895. Within ten days of their arrival, Rutherford had opened a law office, purchased four lots of land, and contracted local builder Hugh McCurdy to build him a house. In July, the family moved into their new four-room single storey house. In 1896 Rutherford became the town's only lawyer, as his competition, Mervyn Mackenzie, had moved to Toronto. Rutherford quickly became deeply involved in the community. Among the roles he acquired during his first three years in the District of Alberta were president of the newly formed South Edmonton Football Club, secretary-treasurer of the South Edmonton School Board, president of the South Edmonton Athletic Association, vice president of the South Edmonton Literary Institute, auditor of the South Edmonton Agricultural Society, and worthy master of the Acacia Lodge, Ancient Free and Accepted Masons. He also became secretary of the Edmonton District Butter and Cheese Manufacturing Association. He was an early advocate for the incorporation of South Edmonton, hitherto an unincorporated community. When incorporation came in 1899, as the Town of Strathcona, Rutherford became the new town's secretary-treasurer after he had acted as returning officer in its first election. Throughout that period, he practiced law, from 1899 with Frederick C. Jamieson, who later was elected as a Conservative member of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta. He employed single women as secretaries in an era that clerical workers were predominantly male, and he defended a First Nations person accused of murder when most lawyers refused such cases. As their practice grew, he and Jamieson also engaged in moneylending. Besides his law practice, Rutherford was a successful real estate investor, and he also owned an interest in gold mining equipment situated on the North Saskatchewan River. ### Early political career In 1896, Frank Oliver, who had represented Edmonton in the Legislative Assembly of the Northwest Territories since 1888, resigned to pursue a career in federal politics. Several Strathcona residents urged Rutherford to run for Oliver's old seat in the ensuing by-election. Though he was originally reluctant, he agreed to stand after a 300-signature petition urging his candidacy was presented to him. His only opponent was a former mayor of Edmonton, Matthew McCauley, who, like Rutherford, ran as an independent. Rutherford campaigned on a platform of improved roads, resource development, simplification of territorial ordinances, and (in what would become a theme of his political career) increased educational funding. McCauley won the election, but Rutherford received more than forty per cent of the vote. During the 1898 territorial election, Rutherford again challenged the now-incumbent McCauley. His defeat of two years previous still fresh in his mind, his platform this time included a call for a redrawing of the territory's electoral boundaries. He believed that the current Edmonton riding was gerrymandered in McCauley's favour. He also repeated his past calls for improved roads and advocated increased taxation on the railroads. He pledged "independent support" for the nonpartisan administration of Premier Frederick Haultain, and he supported that administration's call for the creation of a single province from the territories following the 1901 census. Rutherford criticized McCauley's past record, accusing him of silence on issues that were of concern to his constituents. Despite this, McCauley won again but by a reduced margin. Rutherford was at last successful in the 1902 election, when he ran in the newly created riding of Strathcona. His 1902 platform was similar to his 1898 platform and supported Haultain, but he now supported a two-province integration of the Northwest Territories into Confederation, rather than Haultain's preferred one-province approach, on the grounds that a single province would be so large as to be ungovernable. It at first looked as though he would run unopposed; however, at the last minute, local lawyer Nelson D. Mills publicly accused Rutherford of being not a true independent, but a dyed-in-the-wool Haultain supporter, and announced that he would run against him. Rutherford was supported by most of Strathcona's most prominent residents, including his law partner Jamieson and his future rival John R. Boyle, and won an easy victory. Rutherford served in the Legislative Assembly of the Northwest Territories until Alberta became a province in 1905. During his tenure, he was elected deputy speaker and sat on standing committees for libraries, municipal law, and education. His legislative efforts included successful attempts to extend the boundaries of the Town of Strathcona and to empower it to borrow for construction of public works. He was considered a possible member of Haultain's executive council, likely in the post of Commissioner of Public Works, but the post instead went to George Bulyea. He joined many of his fellow MLAs in continuing to advocate for provincial status, finding that the limitations on a territory's means to raise revenue prevented the Northwest Territories from meeting its obligations. Though Rutherford supported Haultain's vision of nonpartisan territorial administration, federally he was an avowed Liberal. In 1900, he was elected president of the Strathcona Liberal association, and was a delegate to the convention that nominated Oliver as the party's candidate in Alberta for the 1900 federal election. He subsequently campaigned for Oliver in his successful re-election attempt. When the new federal constituency of Strathcona was formed in advance of the 1904 election, Rutherford was urged to accept the Liberal nomination but demurred. Peter Talbot was selected instead and, supported by Rutherford, was elected. ### Selection as premier In February 1905, the federal government of Prime Minister Sir Wilfrid Laurier introduced legislation to create two new provinces (Alberta and Saskatchewan) from the Northwest Territories. Though Haultain wanted the new provinces to be governed on the same nonpartisan basis as the Territories had been, the Liberal Laurier was expected to recommend a Liberal to serve as Lieutenant-Governor, and the Lieutenant-Governor was expected to call on a Liberal to form the new province's first government. Oliver was the province's most prominent Liberal, but he had just been named federal Minister of the Interior and was not interested in leaving Ottawa. Talbot was Laurier's preferred candidate, but he expected to be appointed to the Senate and found the latter prospect more congenial than serving as Premier of Alberta. Both men supported Rutherford, but neither was enthusiastic about doing so. In August, Bulyea was appointed Alberta's first Lieutenant-Governor and later that month the Alberta Liberals selected Rutherford as their first leader. A final barrier was removed a few days later, when Haultain, who was a Conservative federally but who was thought to be a potential leader of a coalition government, announced that he would stay in Regina to lead the Saskatchewan Conservatives. On September 2, Bulyea asked Rutherford to form the first government of Alberta. After accepting the position of premier, Rutherford selected a geographically diverse cabinet on September 6: Edmonton's Charles Wilson Cross as Attorney-General, Calgary's William Henry Cushing as Minister of Public Works, Medicine Hat's William Finlay as Minister of Agriculture and Provincial Secretary, and Lethbridge's George DeVeber as Minister without Portfolio. Rutherford kept for himself the positions of Provincial Treasurer and Minister of Education. ## Premier ### 1905 election Rutherford was now premier but had not yet faced the people in an election and did not yet have a legislature to which he could propose legislation. Elections for the first Legislative Assembly of Alberta were accordingly fixed for November 9. The Conservatives, the young province's only other political party, had already selected R. B. Bennett as their leader. Bennett attacked the terms under which Alberta had been made a province, especially the clauses that left control of its lands and natural resources in the hands of the federal government and required the continued provincial funding of separate schools. He pointed out that Canada's older provinces had control of their own natural resources and that education was a provincial responsibility under the British North America Act. The Liberals responded to such criticisms by highlighting the financial compensation the province received from the federal government in exchange for control of its natural resources, which amounted to \$375,000 per year. They further suggested that the Conservatives' concern for control of lands to be caused by desire to make favourable land concessions to the unpopular Canadian Pacific Railway, which had long been friendly with the Conservatives and for which Bennett had acted as solicitor. Besides the Conservatives' ties to the CPR, Rutherford's Liberals enjoyed the incumbent's advantage of controlling the levers of patronage, and the election's result was never really in doubt. Before the election, Talbot predicted that the government would win 18 of the province's 25 seats. Immediately after the election, it appeared that the Liberals had won 21. When all the votes had been counted, the Liberals won 23 seats to the Conservatives' two. Bennett himself was defeated in his Calgary riding. When the outcome was clear, the people of Strathcona feted Rutherford with a torchlight procession and bonfire. ### First legislature and regional tensions One of the most contentious issues facing the newly elected government was the decision of the province's capital city. The federal legislation creating the province had fixed Edmonton as the provisional capital, much to the chagrin of Calgary. Neither party had taken a position on the divisive question during the campaign, but selecting a permanent capital was high on the list of the new legislature's orders of business. Calgary's case was made most enthusiastically by Minister of Public Works Cushing, Edmonton's by Attorney-General Cross. Banff and Red Deer were also possibilities, but motions to select each failed to find seconders. In the end, Edmonton was designated by a vote of sixteen members, including Rutherford, to eight. A personal priority of Rutherford had been the establishment of a university. Though the Edmonton Bulletin opined that it would be unfair "that the people of the Province should be taxed for the special benefit of four per cent that they may be able to attach the cognomen of B.A. or M.A. to their names and flaunt the vanity of such over the taxpayer, who has to pay for it," Rutherford proceeded quickly. He was concerned that delay might result in the creation of denominational colleges, striking a blow to his dream of a high-quality nonsectarian system of postsecondary education. A bill establishing the university was passed by the legislature but left the government to decide the location. Calgary felt that having lost the fight to be provincial capital, it could expect the university to be established there, and it was not pleased when, a year late the government announced the founding of the University of Alberta in Rutherford's hometown, Strathcona. While the regionally-charged issues attracted much attention, they were far from the government's only initiatives during the legislature's first session. In 1906, it passed a series of acts dealing with the organization and administration of the new provincial government and incorporated the cities of Lethbridge, Medicine Hat, and Wetaskiwin. It also established a speed limit of 20 miles per hour (32 km/h) for motorized vehicles and set up a regime for mine inspection. Perhaps most significantly, it set up a court system, with Arthur Lewis Sifton as the province's first Chief Justice. Though the founding of the University of Alberta was the centrepiece of Rutherford's educational policy, his activity as Minister of Education extended well beyond it. In the first year of Alberta's existence, 140 new schools were established, and a normal school was set up in Calgary to train teachers. Rutherford put great emphasis on the creation of English-language schools in the large portions of the province that were occupied primarily by Central and Eastern European immigrants. The immigrants themselves were often unable to speak English, and the provision of these schools for their children was a major factor in their rapid assimilation into Albertan society. They were also in lieu of separate religious schools for groups such as Mennonites. While the continued existence of Roman Catholic separate schools was mandated by the terms of Alberta's admission into Confederation, the government's policy was otherwise to encourage a unified and secular public school system. Rutherford also introduced free school texts in the province but was criticized for commissioning the texts from a Toronto publisher, which printed them in New York, rather than locally. ### Labour unrest The winter of 1906–07 was the coldest in Alberta's history and was exacerbated by a shortage of coal. One cause of this shortage was the strained relationship between coal miners and mine operators in the province. At the beginning of April 1907, the Canada West Coal and Coke Company locked out the miners from its mine near Taber. The same company was also facing a work stoppage at its mine in the Crow's Nest Pass, where miners were refusing to sign a new contract. The problem spread until by April 22, all 3,400 miners working for member-companies of the Western Coal Operators' Association were off work. Miners' demands included increased wages, a reduction in working hours to eight per day (from ten), the posting of mine inspection reports, the isolated storage of explosives, the use of non-freezing explosives, and semi-monthly rather than monthly pay. The mine operators objected to this last point on the basis that since many miners did not report to work the day after payday, it desirable to keep paydays to a minimum. Rutherford's government appointed a commission in February, but it was not until May that it met. It consisted of Chief Justice Arthur Sifton, mining executive Lewis Stockett, and miners' union executive William Haysom. It began taking evidence in July. In the meantime, a May agreement saw most miners return to work at increased rates of pay. Coal supply promptly increased, as did its price. In August, the commission released its recommendations, which included a prohibition on children under 16 working in mines, the posting of inspectors' reports, mandatory bath houses at mine sites, and improved ventilation inspection. It also recommended for Albertans to keep a supply of coal on hand during the summer for winter use. The commission was silent on wages (other than to say that these should not be fixed by legislation), the operation of company stores (a sore point among the miners), and the incorporation of miners' unions, which was recommended by mine management but opposed by the unions. The committee also made no recommendation about working hours, but Rutherford's government legislated an eight-hour day anyway. As well, Rutherford's government also passed workers' compensation legislation designed to make such compensation automatic, rather than requiring the injured worker to sue his employer. Labour representatives criticized the bill for failing to impose fines on negligent employers, for limiting construction workers' eligibility under the program to injuries sustained while they were working on buildings more than 40 feet (12 m) high, and for exempting casual labourers. It also viewed the maximum payout of \$1,500 as inadequate. In response to these concerns, the maximum was increased to \$1,800 and the minimum building height reduced to 30 feet (9.1 m). In response to farmers' concerns, farm labourers were made exempt from the bill entirely. Rutherford's relationship with organized labour was never easy. Historian L.G. Thomas argued that there was little indication that Rutherford had any interest in courting the labour vote. In 1908, Labour candidate Donald McNabb was elected in a Lethbridge by-election; the riding had previously been held by a Liberal. McNabb was the first Labour MLA elected in Alberta (he was defeated in his 1909 re-election bid). ### Public works Rutherford's Liberals self-identified as the party of free enterprise, in contrast to the Conservatives, who supported public ownership Still the Liberals made a limited number of large-scale forays into government operation of utilities, the most notable of which being the creation of Alberta Government Telephones. In 1906, Alberta's municipalities legislation was passed and included a provision authorizing municipalities to operate telephone companies. Several, including Edmonton, did so, alongside private companies. The largest private company was the Bell Telephone Company, which held a monopoly over service in Calgary. Such monopolies and the private firms' refusal to extend their services into sparsely-populated and unprofitable rural areas aroused demand for provincial entry into the market, which was effected in 1907. The government constructed a number of lines, beginning with one between Calgary and Banff, and it also purchased Bell's lines for \$675,000. Alberta's public telephone system was financed by debt, which was unusual for a government like Rutherford's, which was generally committed to the principle of "pay as you go". Rutherford's stated rationale was that the cost of such a large capital project should not.be borne by a single generation and that incurring debt to finance a corresponding asset was, in contrast to operating deficits, acceptable. Though the move was popular at the time, it would prove not to be financially astute. By focusing on areas neglected by existing companies, the government was entering into the most expensive and least profitable fields of telecommunication. Such problems would not come to fruition until Rutherford had left office, however. In the short term, the government's involvement in the telephone business helped it to a sweeping victory in the 1909 election. The Liberals won 37 of 41 seats in the newly expanded legislature. Of equal profile was Rutherford's government's management of the province's railways. Alberta's early years were optimistic and manifested itself in a pronounced enthusiasm for the construction of new railway lines. Every town wanted to be a railway centre, and the government had great confidence in the ability of the free market to provide low freight rates to the province's farmers if sufficient charters were issued to competing companies. The legislature passed government-sponsored legislation setting out a framework for new railways in 1907, but interest from private firms in actually building the lines was limited. In the face of public demand and support by legislators of all parties for as rapid as possible an expansion of the province's lines, the government offered loan guarantees to several companies in exchange for commitments to build lines. Rutherford justified this in part by his conviction that railways needed to expand along with population, rather than have railway expansion follow population growth, which would be the case without government intervention. The Conservatives argued that the strategy did not go far enough, and they called for direct government ownership. While most public works issues were handled by Public Works Minister Cushing, but after the 1909 election, Rutherford named himself as the province's first Minister of Railways. ### Railway scandal When the legislature met for the first time after the 1909 election, things seemed to be going well for Rutherford and his government. He controlled a huge majority, albeit slightly reduced from the 1905 election, and enjoyed widespread popularity. His government had achieved significant success in setting up a new province, and success looked poised to continue. Early in this new legislative session, however, two signs of trouble appeared: Liberal backbencher John R. Boyle began to ask questions about the agreement between the government and the Alberta and Great Waterways Railway Company, and Cushing resigned from cabinet over his views of this same agreement. The Alberta and Great Waterways Railway was one of several companies that had been granted charters and assistance by the legislature to build new railways in the province. The government support that it received was more generous than that received by the more established railways, such as the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway and the Canadian Northern Railway. Boyle, Cushing, and Bennett alleged favouritism or ineptitude by Rutherford and his government, and they pointed to the sale of government-guaranteed bonds in support of the company as further evidence. Because of the high interest rate they paid, the bonds were sold at above par value, but the government received only par for them and left the company to pocket the difference. Boyle sponsored a motion of non-confidence against the government. Despite enjoying the support of twelve Liberals, including Cushing, the motion was defeated and the government upheld. Rutherford attempted to quell the controversy by calling a royal commission, but pressure from many Liberals, including Bulyea, led him to resign May 26, 1910. He was replaced by Arthur Sifton, hitherto the province's chief judge. In November, the royal commission issued its report that found that the evidence did not show a conflict of interest on Rutherford's part, but the majority report was nevertheless highly critical of the former premier. A minority report was much kinder by avowing perfect satisfaction with Rutherford's version of events. ## Later life ### Later political career Before the 1911 federal election, several local Liberals opposed to Frank Oliver asked Rutherford to run against him in Strathcona. Relations between Oliver and Rutherford had always been chilly. Oliver was implacably opposed to Cross and viewed him as a rival for dominance of the Liberal Party in Alberta, and his Edmonton Bulletin had taken the side of the dissidents during the railway scandal. A nominating meeting unanimously nominated Rutherford as Liberal candidate, but Oliver refused to accept its legitimacy and awaited a later meeting. Before the meeting came to pass, however, Rutherford abruptly withdrew. Historian Douglas Babcock suggested that to be caused by the Conservatives' nomination of William Antrobus Griesbach, dashing Rutherford's hopes that his popularity among Conservatives would preclude them from opposing him. Rumours at the time alleged that Rutherford had been asked to make a personal contribution of \$15,000 to his campaign fund and had balked. Rutherford himself cited a desire to avoid splitting the vote on reciprocity, which he and Oliver both favoured but Griesbach opposed. Whatever the reason for Rutherford's standing aloof from the election, Oliver was nominated as Liberal candidate and was re-elected. After resigning as premier, Rutherford continued to sit as a Liberal MLA. He commanded the loyalty of many Liberals who had supported his government through the Alberta and Great Waterways issue, but the faction began increasingly to see Cross as its real leader. Rutherford opposed the Sifton government's decision to confiscate the Alberta and Great Waterways bond money and revoke its charter, and in 1913, he was one of only two Liberals to support a non-confidence motion against the government (Cross had by now joined the Sifton cabinet, which placated most members of the Cross-Rutherford faction. In the 1913 election, Rutherford was again nominated as the Liberal candidate in Edmonton South (Strathcona had been amalgamated into Edmonton in 1912), despite pledging opposition to the Sifton government and offering to campaign around the province for the Conservatives if they agreed not to run a candidate against him. At the nomination meeting, he stated that he was "not running as a Sifton candidate" and was "a good independent candidate ... and a good Liberal too". Despite his opposition to the government, Conservatives declined his offer of support and nominated Herbert Crawford to run against him. After a vigorous campaign, Crawford defeated Rutherford by fewer than 250 votes. Cross lobbied Prime Minister Laurier for Rutherford to be appointed to the Senate. He was unsuccessful, but Rutherford was made King's Counsel shortly after his electoral defeat. Rutherford took a strong line against the Sifton government and was nominated as Conservative candidate for the 1917 provincial election but stood down after being named as Alberta director of the National Service (conscription). (EB, November 6, 1916) In the 1921 Alberta general election, he campaigned actively for the Conservatives, including for Crawford, who had defeated him eight years earlier. Rutherford continued to call himself a Liberal but criticized the incumbent administration for the growth of the provincial debt and for letting the party fall into disarray. Calling the Charles Stewart government "rotten" and holding a grudge against cabinet minister John R. Boyle in particular, he offered voters the slogan "get rid of the barnacles and the Boyles", a homonymic reference to the parasitic growth on the side of a ship. He may have been thrilled to see the Liberal government fall in the election but probably less so when he saw that the triumphant United Farmers of Alberta had also whittled the Conservatives down to only one seat. ### Professional career Once out of politics, Rutherford returned to his law practice. His partnership with Jamieson saw partners come and go. Rutherford divided his time between the original Strathcona office and the Edmonton office that he opened in 1910. His practice focussed on contracts, real estate, wills and estates, and incorporations. In 1923, Rutherford's son Cecil joined the firm, along with Stanley Harwood McCuaig, who, in 1919, would marry Rutherford's daughter Hazel. In 1925, Jamieson left the partnership to establish his own firm. In 1939, McCuaig did the same. Cecil's partnership with his father continued until the latter's death. Besides his work as a lawyer, Alexander Rutherford was involved in a number of business enterprises. He was President of the Edmonton Mortgage Corporation and Vice President and solicitor of the Great Western Garment Company. The latter enterprise, which Rutherford co-founded, was a great success: established in 1911 with eight seamstresses, it had quadrupled in size within a year. During the Second World War, it made military uniforms and was reputed to be the largest garment operation in the British Empire. It was acquired by Levi Strauss & Co. in 1961 but continued to manufacture garments in Edmonton until 2004. Rutherford also acted as director of the Canada National Fire Insurance Company, the Imperial Canadian Trust Company, the Great West Permanent Loan Company, and the Monarch Life Assurance Company. ### University of Alberta Education was a personal priority of Rutherford, as evidenced by his retention of the office of Education Minister for his entire time as Premier and by his enthusiastic work in founding the University of Alberta. In 1911, he was elected by Alberta's university graduates to the University of Alberta Senate, responsible for the institution's academic affairs. In 1912, he established the Rutherford Gold Medal in English for the senior year honours English student with the highest standing; the prize still exists today as the Rutherford Memorial Medal in English. In 1912, with the university's first graduating class, Rutherford instituted a tradition of inviting convocating students to his house for tea; this tradition would last for 26 years. Convocation was not the only reason that students visited Rutherford's home. He had a wealth of both knowledge and books on Canadian subjects and welcomed students to consult his private library. The library eventually expanded beyond the room in his mansion devoted to it, to encompass the house's den, maid's sitting room, and garage as well. After his death, the collection was donated and sold to the university's library system; it was described in 1967 as "still the most important rare collection in the library". Rutherford remained on the university's senate until 1927, when he was elected Chancellor. The position was the titular head of the university, and its primary duty was presiding over convocations. According to Rutherford biographer Douglas Babcock, it was the honour that Rutherford prized most. He was acclaimed to the position every four years until his death. It has been estimated that he awarded degrees to more than five thousand students. His final convocation, however, was marred by controversy. It 1941, a committee of the university senate recommended awarding an honorary degree to Premier William Aberhart. Aberhart was pleased and happily accepted University President William Alexander Robb Kerr's invitation to deliver the commencement address at convocation. However, a week prior to convocation the full senate, responsible for all university academic affairs, met, and voted against awarding Aberhart a degree. Aberhart rescinded his acceptance of Kerr's invitation and later removed the senate's authority except, ironically, the authority to award honorary degrees and Kerr resigned in protest. Rutherford was mortified but presided over convocation nonetheless. ### Community involvement and family life Rutherford remained active in a wide range of community organizations well after his departure from politics. He was a deacon in his church until well into his dotage, was a member of the Young Women's Christian Association advisory board from 1913 until his death, was Edmonton's first exalted ruler of the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks, and was for three years the grand exalted ruler of the Elk Order of Canada. During World War I, he was Alberta director of the National Service Commission, which oversaw conscription from 1916 until 1918, and in 1916, he was appointed Honorary Colonel of the 194th Highland Battalion of the Canadian Expeditionary Force. Rutherford served on the Loan Advisory Committee of the Soldier Settlement Board after the war, was President of the Alberta Historical Society (which had been created by his government) from 1919 to his death, was elected President of the McGill University Alumni Association of Alberta in 1922, and spent the last years of his life as honorary president of the Canadian Authors Association. He was also a member of the Northern Alberta Pioneers and Old-Timers Association, the British Association for the Advancement of Science, the Royal Colonial Institute of London, and the Masons. He continued to play curling and tennis into his late fifties, and he took up golf at the age of sixty-four, becoming a charter member of the Mayfair Golf and Country Club. He received honorary doctorates of laws from four universities: McGill, the University of Alberta, McMaster University, and the University of Toronto. In 1911, the Rutherfords built a new house adjacent to the University of Alberta campus. Rutherford named it "Archnacarry", after his ancestral homeland in Scotland. Now known as Rutherford House, it serves as a museum. He made several trips to the United Kingdom and was invited to attend the coronation of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, but he had to return to Canada before the event. On December 19, 1938, the Rutherfords celebrated their fiftieth wedding anniversary; tributes and well wishes arrived from across Canada. ### Death and legacy Besides his bronchitis, Rutherford developed diabetes in later years. His wife monitored his sugar intake, but when they were apart, Rutherford sometimes took less care than she would have liked him to. In 1938, possibly as a result of diabetes, he suffered a stroke that left him paralysed and mute. He learned to walk again and, with the help of a grade 1 reader, got his speech back. On September 13, 1940, Mattie Rutherford died of cancer. Less than a year later, June 11, 1941, Rutherford suffered a fatal heart attack while he was in hospital for insulin treatment. He was 84 years old. He was buried in Mount Pleasant Cemetery in Edmonton, alongside his family. His name was attached to many institutions both during his life and later. Rutherford Elementary School in Edmonton was established in 1911 and the University of Alberta's Rutherford Library in 1951. In 1954, a mountain in Jasper National Park was named Mount Rutherford. In 1980, the government of Alberta created the Alexander Rutherford Scholarship, which awards more than \$20 million annually to high school students selected on the basis of a minimum of a 75% average. The top ten students receiving Alexander Rutherford scholarships are recognized as Rutherford Scholars and are presented with an additional scholarship and plaque. Rutherford's policy legacy is mixed. L. G. Thomas concludes that he was a weak leader, unable to dominate the ambitions of his lieutenants and with very little skill at debate. Still, Thomas recognizes the Rutherford government's legacy of province building. Douglas Babcock suggests that Rutherford, while himself honourable, left himself at the mercy of unscrupulous men who ultimately ruined his political career. Bennett, Rutherford's rival and later Prime Minister, concurred with this assessment, calling Rutherford "a gentleman of the old school ... not equipped by experience or temperament for the rough and tumble of western politics". There is general agreement that Rutherford's greatest legacy and the one in which he took the most pride lies in his contributions to Alberta's education. As Mount Royal College historian Patricia Roome concludes her chapter on Rutherford in a book about Alberta's first twelve premiers, "Rutherford's educational contribution remains his ultimate legacy to Albertans." ## Electoral record ### As party leader ### As MLA ## See also

Jennifer Lawrence

American actress (born 1990)

Jennifer Shrader Lawrence (born August 15, 1990) is an American actress. Lawrence is known for starring in both action film franchises and independent dramas, and her films have grossed over \$6 billion worldwide. The world's highest-paid actress in 2015 and 2016, she appeared in Time's 100 most influential people in the world list in 2013 and the Forbes Celebrity 100 list from 2013 to 2016. Lawrence began her career as a teenager with guest roles on television. Her first major role was as a main cast member on the sitcom The Bill Engvall Show (2007–2009). She made her film debut with a supporting role in the drama Garden Party (2008), and had her breakthrough playing a poverty-stricken teenager in the independent film Winter's Bone (2010). Lawrence gained stardom portraying the mutant Mystique in the X-Men film series (2011–2019) and Katniss Everdeen in The Hunger Games film series (2012–2015). The latter made her the highest-grossing action heroine. Lawrence collaborated with filmmaker David O. Russell on three films, which earned her various accolades. For portraying a troubled young widow in the romance Silver Linings Playbook (2012) she won the Academy Award for Best Actress, becoming the second-youngest winner in the category at age 22. Lawrence won the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role for playing an unpredictable wife in the black comedy American Hustle (2013). She also received Golden Globe Awards for both, and for portraying businesswoman Joy Mangano in the biopic Joy (2015). A series of mixed reviewed films and the media scrutiny of her role choices led to a small break from acting. Lawrence returned with the streaming film Don't Look Up (2021), after which she produced and starred in the drama Causeway (2022) and comedy No Hard Feelings (2023). Lawrence is a feminist and advocates for women's reproductive rights. In 2015, she founded the Jennifer Lawrence Foundation, which advocates for the Boys & Girls Clubs of America and the Special Olympics. Lawrence formed the production company Excellent Cadaver in 2018. She is an active member of the nonpartisan nonprofit anti-corruption organization RepresentUs and has served as a spokesperson in its videos about protecting democracy. ## Early life and education Jennifer Shrader Lawrence was born on August 15, 1990, in Indian Hills, Kentucky, to Gary, a construction company owner, and Karen (née Koch), a summer camp manager. She has two older brothers, Ben and Blaine. Her mother raised her to be "tough" like her brothers, and would not allow her to play with other girls in preschool, as she deemed her "too rough" with them. Lawrence was educated at the Kammerer Middle School in Louisville. She did not enjoy her childhood due to hyperactivity and social anxiety, and considered herself a misfit among her peers. Lawrence has said that her anxieties vanished when performing on stage and that acting gave her a sense of accomplishment. Her school activities included cheerleading, softball, field hockey and basketball, which she played on a boys' team coached by her father. Growing up, Lawrence was fond of horseback riding and frequently visited a local horse farm. She has an injured tailbone as a result of being thrown from a horse. When her father worked from home, she performed for him, often dressing up as a clown or ballerina. At age nine, Lawrence played a prostitute in a church play based on the Book of Jonah. For the next few years, she continued taking parts in church plays and school musicals. Lawrence was 14 and on a family vacation in New York City when she was spotted on the street by a talent scout, who arranged for her to audition for talent agents. Her mother was not keen on her pursuing an acting career, but she briefly moved her family to New York to let Lawrence read for roles. After her first cold reading, the agents said that hers was the best they had heard from someone so young; however, her mother convinced her that they were lying. Lawrence said her early experiences were difficult because she felt lonely and friendless. She signed with CESD Talent Agency, which convinced her parents to let her audition for roles in Los Angeles. While her mother encouraged her to go into modeling, she insisted on pursuing acting, which she considered a "natural fit" for her abilities, and turned down several modeling offers. She dropped out of school at 14 without receiving a General Educational Development (GED) or diploma. Lawrence has described herself as "self-educated" and said that her career was her priority. Between her acting jobs in the city, she made regular visits to Louisville, where she was an assistant nurse at her mother's camp. ## Career ### Early roles and breakthrough (2006–2010) Lawrence began her acting career with a minor role in the TV pilot Company Town (2006), which was never sold. She followed it with guest roles in several television shows, including Monk (2006) and Medium (2007). She received her first part as a series regular on the TBS sitcom The Bill Engvall Show, in which she played Lauren, the rebellious teenage daughter of a family living in suburban Louisville, Colorado. The series premiered in 2007 and ran for three seasons. Tom Shales of The Washington Post considered her a scene stealer in her part, and David Hinckley of the New York Daily News wrote that she was successful in "deliver[ing] the perpetual exasperation of teenage girls". In 2009 Lawrence won a Young Artist Award for Outstanding Young Performer in a TV Series for the role. Lawrence made her film debut in the 2008 drama film Garden Party, in which she played a troubled teenager named Tiff. She then appeared in director Guillermo Arriaga's feature film debut The Burning Plain (2008), a drama narrated in a hyperlink format. She was cast as the teenage daughter of Kim Basinger's character, who discovers her mother's extramarital affair. She shared the role with Charlize Theron, who played the older version of her character. Mark Feeney of The Boston Globe described her role as "a thankless task", but Derek Elley of Variety praised her as the production's prime asset. Her performance earned her the Marcello Mastroianni Award for Best Emerging Actress at the 2008 Venice Film Festival. The same year, she appeared in the music video for the song "The Mess I Made" by Parachute. In 2008, she starred in Lori Petty's drama The Poker House as the oldest of three sisters living with a drug-abusing mother. Stephen Farber of The Hollywood Reporter opined that Lawrence "has a touching poise on camera that conveys the resilience of children". She won an Outstanding Performance Award at the Los Angeles Film Festival for her performance in the film. Lawrence's breakthrough role came in Debra Granik's independent drama Winter's Bone (2010), based on the novel of the same name by Daniel Woodrell. The film featured her as 17-year-old Ree Dolly, a poverty-stricken teenage girl in the Ozark Mountains who cares for her mentally ill mother and younger siblings while searching for her missing father. She traveled to the Ozarks a week before filming began to live with the family on whom the story was based, and in preparation for the role, she learned to fight, skin squirrels, and chop wood. David Denby of The New Yorker asserted that the film "would be unimaginable with anyone less charismatic", and Peter Travers of Rolling Stone wrote that "her performance is more than acting; it's a gathering storm. Lawrence's eyes are a roadmap to what's tearing Ree apart." The production won the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival. The actress was awarded the National Board of Review Award for Breakthrough Performance, and received her first nominations for the Golden Globe Award, SAG Award and Academy Award for Best Actress, becoming the second-youngest Best Actress Oscar nominee at the time. ### Worldwide recognition (2011–2013) In 2011, Lawrence took on a supporting role in Like Crazy, a romantic drama about long-distance relationships, starring Anton Yelchin and Felicity Jones. Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times considered the film to be an "intensely wrought and immensely satisfying love story" and credited all three performers for "making their [characters'] yearning palpable". She then appeared again with Yelchin in Jodie Foster's The Beaver, alongside Foster and Mel Gibson. Filmed in 2009, the production was delayed due to controversy concerning Gibson and earned less than half of its \$21 million budget. After her dramatic role in Winter's Bone, Lawrence looked for something less serious, and found it with her first high-profile release—Matthew Vaughn's superhero film X-Men: First Class (2011)—a prequel to the X-Men film series. She portrayed the shapeshifting mutant Mystique, a role played by Rebecca Romijn in the earlier films. Vaughn cast Lawrence, as he thought that she would be able to portray the weakness and strength involved in the character's transformation. For the part, Lawrence lost weight and practiced yoga. For Mystique's blue form, she had to undergo eight hours of makeup, where latex pieces and body paint were applied to her otherwise nude body, as Romijn had done on the other films. This process required Lawrence to report to set at 2 a.m. She was intimidated in the role as she admired Romijn. Writing for USA Today, Claudia Puig considered the film to be a "classy re-boot" of the film series, and believed that her "high-spirited performance" empowered the film. With worldwide earnings of \$350 million, X-Men: First Class became Lawrence's highest-grossing film at that point. In 2012, Lawrence starred as Katniss Everdeen in The Hunger Games, an adaptation of the first book in author Suzanne Collins' Hunger Games trilogy. Set in a post-apocalyptic future, the series tells the story of the teenage heroine Everdeen as she joins rebel forces against a totalitarian government after winning a brutal televised annual event. Despite being an admirer of the books, Lawrence was initially hesitant to accept the part, because of the grand scale of the film. She agreed to the project after her mother convinced her to take the part. She practiced archery, rock and tree climbing, and hand-to-hand combat techniques, and other physically demanding activities for the role. While training for the part, she injured herself running into a wall. The Hunger Games garnered positive reviews, with Lawrence's portrayal of Everdeen being particularly praised; Roger Ebert described the film as "an effective entertainment," and found Lawrence to be "strong and convincing in the central role." Similarly, Todd McCarthy of The Hollywood Reporter called her an "ideal screen actress", believing that she had embodied the Everdeen of the novel, and added that she "anchors [the film] with impressive gravity and presence". With worldwide revenues of over \$690 million, The Hunger Games became a top-grossing film featuring a female lead, making Lawrence the highest-grossing action heroine of all time. The film's success established her as a global star. Later in 2012, Lawrence played Tiffany Maxwell, a troubled young widow, in David O. Russell's romantic comedy-drama Silver Linings Playbook. The film is an adaptation of Matthew Quick's novel of the same name, and follows her character as she finds companionship with Pat Solitano Jr. (played by Bradley Cooper), a man with bipolar disorder. Lawrence was drawn to her character's complex personality, explaining, "She was just kind of this mysterious enigma to me because she didn't really fit any basic kind of character profile. Somebody who is very forceful and bullheaded is normally very insecure, but she isn't." While Russell initially found her too young for the part, she convinced him to cast her via a Skype audition. She found herself challenged by Russell's spontaneity as a director, and described working on the project as the "best experience of [her] life". Richard Corliss of Time magazine wrote: "Just 21 when the movie was shot, Lawrence is that rare young actress who plays, who is, grown-up. Sullen and sultry, she lends a mature intelligence to any role." Peter Travers called her "some kind of miracle. She's rude, dirty, funny, foulmouthed, sloppy, sexy, vibrant, and vulnerable, sometimes all in the same scene, even in the same breath." Lawrence won the Golden Globe, SAG Award and the Academy Award for Best Actress, becoming—at age 22—the second-youngest Best Actress Oscar winner. Her final film of the year was alongside Max Thieriot and Elisabeth Shue in Mark Tonderai's critically panned thriller House at the End of the Street. In January 2013, she hosted an episode of the NBC late-night sketch comedy Saturday Night Live. The Devil You Know, a small-scale production that Lawrence had filmed for in 2005, was her first release of 2013. She then reprised the role of Everdeen in The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, the second installment in the Hunger Games series. While performing the film's underwater stunts, Lawrence suffered from an ear infection that resulted in a brief loss of hearing. Writing for The Village Voice, Stephanie Zacharek believed that the actress' portrayal of Everdeen made her an ideal role model, stating that "there's no sanctimony or pretense of false modesty in the way Lawrence plays her." With box office earnings of \$865 million, Catching Fire remains her highest-grossing film. In the same year, Lawrence took on a supporting role in David O. Russell's ensemble black comedy crime American Hustle as Rosalyn Rosenfeld, the neurotic wife of con man Irving Rosenfeld (played by Christian Bale). Inspired by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)'s Abscam sting operation, the film is set against the backdrop of political corruption in 1970s New Jersey. She did little research for the role, and based her performance on knowledge of the era from films and television shows she had watched. Geoffrey Macnab of The Independent found Lawrence to be "brilliant", "funny and acerbic" in her part, and highlighted an improvised scene in which she aggressively kisses her husband's mistress (played by Amy Adams) on the lips. For her performance, she won the Golden Globe and BAFTA Award for Best Supporting Actress, and received her third Screen Actors Guild Award and Academy Award nominations, her first in the supporting category. This made her the youngest actor to accrue three Oscar nominations. ### Established actress and career fluctuations (2014–2019) Lawrence played Serena Pemberton in Susanne Bier's depression-era drama Serena (2014), based on the novel of the same name by Ron Rash. In the film, she and her husband George (played by Bradley Cooper) become involved in criminal activities after realizing that they cannot bear children. The project was filmed in 2012, and was released in 2014 to poor reviews. Lawrence then reprised the role of Mystique in X-Men: Days of Future Past, which served as a sequel to both X-Men: The Last Stand (2006) and X-Men: First Class (2011). The film received positive reviews and grossed \$748.1 million worldwide, becoming the highest-grossing film in the X-Men series to that point. Justin Chang of Variety praised her look in the film but thought she had little to do but "glower, snarl and let the f/x artists do their thing". Lawrence's next two releases were the final installments of The Hunger Games film series, Mockingjay – Part 1 (2014) and Part 2 (2015). For the soundtrack of the former film, she recorded the song "The Hanging Tree", which charted on multiple international singles charts. In a review of the final installment in the series, Manohla Dargis of The New York Times drew similarities between Everdeen's journey as a rebel leader and Lawrence's rise to stardom, stating that the actress "now inhabits the role as effortlessly as breathing, partly because, like all great stars, she seems to be playing a version of her 'real' self." Both films grossed over \$650 million worldwide. Lawrence worked with David O. Russell for the third time on the biopic Joy (2015), in which she played the eponymous character, a troubled single mother who becomes a successful businesswoman after inventing the Miracle Mop. During production in Boston, the press reported on a disagreement between Lawrence and Russell that resulted in a "screaming match". She said their friendship made it easier for them to disagree, because people fight when they really love each other. The film was not as well-received as their previous collaborations, but Lawrence's performance was unanimously praised; critic Richard Roeper found it to be her best work since Winter's Bone, terming it "a wonderfully layered performance that carries the film through its rough spots and sometime dubious detours." She won her third Golden Globe for it, and was nominated for another Academy Award for Best Actress, becoming the youngest actor in history to accrue four Oscar nominations. Lawrence began 2016 by providing the narration for A Beautiful Planet, a documentary film that explores Earth from the International Space Station. She played Mystique for the third time in X-Men: Apocalypse (2016). The film received mixed reviews, with a consensus that it was overfilled with action that detracted from the story's themes and the cast's performances. Helen O'Hara of Empire deemed it a letdown from the previous installments of the series and criticized Lawrence for making her character too grim. Despite this, she was awarded Favorite Movie Actress at the 43rd People's Choice Awards. Lawrence was paid \$20 million to star in the science fiction romance Passengers (2016), and received top billing over co-star Chris Pratt. The film featured Pratt and Lawrence as two individuals who wake up ninety years too soon from an induced hibernation on a spaceship bound for a new planet. She felt nervous performing her first sex scene and kissing a married man (Pratt) onscreen; she drank alcohol to prepare herself for filming those scenes. Passengers was met with underwhelming reviews, much to the surprise of its cast and crew, but Lawrence initially defended the film by calling it a "tainted, complicated love story." She later expressed regret over starring in the film. Darren Aronofsky's psychological horror film Mother! was Lawrence's sole release of 2017. She played a young wife who experiences trauma when her home is invaded by unexpected guests. Lawrence spent three months rehearsing the film in a warehouse in Brooklyn, despite her reluctance to rehearsals in her previous assignments. The intense role proved grueling for her; she was put on supplemental oxygen when she hyperventilated one day, and also dislocated a rib. Mother! polarized audiences and prompted mass walkouts. The film was better received by critics; Walter Addiego of the San Francisco Chronicle labeled it "assaultive" and a "deliberate test of audience endurance", and credited Lawrence for "never allow[ing] herself to be reduced simply to a howling victim." The following year, she starred as Dominika Egorova, a Russian spy who makes contact with a mysterious Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) agent (played by Joel Edgerton), in Francis Lawrence's espionage thriller Red Sparrow, based on Jason Matthews' novel of the same name. In preparation for the part, she learned to speak in a Russian accent and trained in ballet for four months. Having been the victim of a nude photo hack, the actress found herself challenged by the sexuality in her role but said that performing the nude scenes made her feel empowered. Eric Kohn of IndieWire disliked the film's denouement, but praised the performances of Lawrence and Charlotte Rampling, remarking that "the considerable talent on display is [the film's] constant saving grace." In 2019, Lawrence made her fourth and final appearance as Mystique, in the superhero film Dark Phoenix, which emerged as a critical and box-office failure. ### Hiatus and return to film (2019–present) Following roles in a series of mixed reviewed films, Lawrence took a small break from acting. She felt unsatisfied with her films, wanted to avoid media scrutiny, and focused on domestic activities during this period. Wanting to work with director Adam McKay since she was 19, Lawrence returned in 2021 in his film Don't Look Up for Netflix for a reported fee of \$25 million. A "slapstick apocalypse", the film had her and costar Leonardo DiCaprio play two astronomers attempting to warn humanity about an extinction-level asteroid. For the role, Lawrence received a red dye job and an undercut; in an interview with Vogue, she said that she extensively researched the typical look of aspiring astrophysicists. Reviews for the film were mixed, but critics mostly praised the performances of Lawrence and DiCaprio, who were described as "powerhouse" by Ian Sandwell of Digital Spy and "a delight to watch" by Saibal Chatterjee of NDTV. Lawrence earned a fifth Golden Globe nomination for the film. It broke the record for the most views, 152 million hours in a single week in Netflix history, and ranks as the platform's second most-watched film within 28 days of release. Lawrence starred in Lila Neugebauer's independent drama Causeway (2022), playing a soldier suffering from a brain injury. She also produced the film under her company Excellent Cadaver, which she had formed in 2018. After starring in several big-budget films, she was drawn to the "slow melody of a character-driven story". Comparing it to her work in Winter's Bone, Allison Wilmore of Vulture opined that the film "is a welcome reminder of how compelling Lawrence can be, as well as a promising indication that she's willing to seek out smaller projects and work with emerging directors". Under Excellent Cadaver, Lawrence produced Bread and Roses (2023), a documentary film from director Sahra Mani about Afghan women under Taliban rule. Keen to work in a comedy, Lawrence accepted her friend Gene Stupnitsky's offer to star in his sex comedy No Hard Feelings (2023), which she also produced. She played a young woman facing bankruptcy who accepts a Craigslist posting from wealthy parents to date their introverted 19-year-old son (played by Andrew Barth Feldman). Reviewers had favorable opinions on the film, and appreciated Lawrence's comic timing. ## Artistry and public image In 2012, the review website IndieWire described Lawrence's off-screen persona as "down-to-earth, self-deprecating, unaffected". Adam McKay, who directed Lawrence in Don't Look Up, considered her "a strong, funny truth-teller". "No one has more beautiful anger than Jen," McKay said. "When she unleashes, it is a sight to behold." An IGN writer described her as a "sharp", "funny" and "quirky" actress who liked to "stay grounded" despite her considerable success. Lawrence has said she finds acting "stupid" in comparison to life-saving professions like doctors, and therefore does not believe in being "cocky" about her accomplishments. In 2012, Rolling Stone called Lawrence "the most talented young actress in America". Her The Hunger Games co-star Donald Sutherland found her an "exquisite and brilliant actor", and favorably compared her craft to that of Laurence Olivier. David O. Russell, who directed Lawrence in Silver Linings Playbook, American Hustle and Joy, has said that her acting "is effortless and she makes it look easy". She has played roles in both high-profile, mainstream productions and low-budget independent films, and appeared in a range of film genres. She did not study acting and has not been involved in professional theater. She has said she bases her acting approach on her observations of people around her. She said in 2010 that she did not "invest any of [her] real emotions" or take home any of her characters' pain. She went on to say that "I don't even take it to craft services" and has never shared her characters' experiences, relying instead on her imagination: "I can't go around looking for roles that are exactly like my life... If it ever came down to the point where, to make a part better, I had to lose a little bit of my sanity, I wouldn't do it. I would just do comedies." Lawrence has become one of the world's highest-paid actresses. The Daily Telegraph reported in 2014 that she was earning \$10 million per film. In 2013, Time magazine named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world, Elle labeled her the most powerful woman in the entertainment business, and Forbes ranked her as the second most powerful actress, behind only Angelina Jolie. In 2014, Forbes named her the second-highest-paid actress in the world with earnings of \$34 million, and cited her as the most powerful actress, ranking at number 12 on the magazine's Celebrity 100 list; she appeared on the list again in 2015 and 2016. In 2015, Lawrence was named "Entertainer of the Year" by Entertainment Weekly—a title she also won in 2012—and was recognized as the highest-grossing action heroine in Guinness World Records for starring in the Hunger Games series. In 2015 and 2016, Forbes ranked her as the world's highest-paid actress, with annual earnings of \$52 million and \$46 million, respectively. In the following two years, it ranked her as the world's third and fourth highest-paid actress, with respective earnings of \$24 million and \$18 million. The Hollywood Reporter listed Lawrence among the 100 most powerful people in entertainment from 2016 to 2018. As of 2019, her films have grossed over \$6 billion worldwide. Lawrence appeared on Victoria's Secret's listing of the "Sexiest Up-and-Coming Bombshell" in 2011, People's Most Beautiful People in 2011 and 2013, Maxim's Hot 100 from 2011 to 2014, and was placed at number one on FHM's 100 Sexiest Women list in 2014. From 2013 to 2015, she was featured on Glamour's annual listing of the best dressed women, topping the list in 2014. During Raf Simons's tenure at Dior, Lawrence became a celebrity ambassador for the brand, appearing in advertisement campaigns for its fashion and perfumes. She frequently wears Dior to red carpet events such as film premieres and award ceremonies. She wore a custom Dior bridal gown on her wedding day. ## Other ventures Lawrence identifies as a feminist, a concept she argues should not intimidate people "because it just means equality". She has promoted body positivity among women. In 2015, she wrote an essay for Lenny Letter criticizing the gender pay gap in Hollywood, describing her own experiences in the industry, such as the lesser pay she received for her work on American Hustle in comparison to her male co-stars. In a 2015 interview with Vogue, she condemned Kentucky county clerk Kim Davis for her opposition to same-sex marriage. Lawrence was raised a Republican and voted for John McCain in the 2008 presidential election, but has since been critical of the party. Lawrence strongly opposed Donald Trump's presidency, stating in 2015 that his election would "be the end of the world". She endorsed Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election. Lawrence joined the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 2011. She has lent her support to several charitable organizations, such as the World Food Programme, Feeding America, and the Thirst Project. Along with her The Hunger Games co-stars Josh Hutcherson and Liam Hemsworth, she partnered with the United Nations to publicize poverty and hunger. She organized an early screening of The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (2013) to benefit Saint Mary's Center, a disabilities organization in Louisville, and raised more than \$40,000 for the cause. She partnered with the charity broadcast network Chideo to raise funds for the 2015 Special Olympics World Summer Games by screening her film Serena (2014). She also collaborated with Omaze to host a fundraising contest for the games as part of the premiere of The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1 (2014). In 2015, Lawrence teamed with Hutcherson and Hemsworth for Prank It FWD, a charitable initiative to raise money for the nonprofit organization DoSomething. That year, she also launched the Jennifer Lawrence Foundation, which supports charities such as the Boys & Girls Clubs of America and the Special Olympics. In 2016, she donated \$2 million to the Kosair Children's Hospital in Louisville to set up a cardiac intensive care unit named after her foundation. She is a board member of RepresentUs, a nonprofit seeking to pass anti-corruption laws in the United States. In 2018, she collaborated with 300 women in Hollywood to set up the Time's Up initiative to protect women from harassment and discrimination, and took part in the 2018 Women's March in Los Angeles. In 2018, Lawrence spoke out in support of retaining ranked-choice voting in Maine. ## Personal life During filming of X-Men: First Class in 2010, Lawrence began dating her co-star Nicholas Hoult. Their relationship ended around the time they wrapped filming X-Men: Days of Future Past in 2014. In September 2016, she began dating filmmaker Darren Aronofsky after they had met during filming of Mother! They broke up in November 2017. In 2018, she began a relationship with Cooke Maroney, an art gallery director. They became engaged in February 2019 and married that October in Rhode Island. As of May 2019, they reside in the Lower Manhattan area of New York City and in Beverly Hills, California. In February 2022, Lawrence gave birth to their son, Cy. Lawrence was one of the victims of the 2014 celebrity nude photo leak, in which several private nude pictures of her were hacked and posted online. She emphasized that the photos were never meant to go public, calling the leak a "sex crime" and a "sexual violation", and added that viewers of the images should be ashamed of themselves for "perpetuating a sexual offense". Lawrence further said her pictures had been intended for Hoult during their relationship, and that unlike other victims of the incident, she did not plan to sue Apple Inc. ## Filmography ### Film ### Television | Year | Title | Role | Notes | |-----------|---------------------|------------------------------|--------------------------------------------| | 2006 | Monk | Mascot | Episode: "Mr. Monk and the Big Game" | | 2007 | Cold Case | | Episode: "A Dollar, a Dream" | | 2007–2008 | Medium | Young Allison / Claire Chase | 2 episodes | | 2007–2009 | '' | | Main role | | 2013 | Saturday Night Live | Herself (host) | Episode: "Jennifer Lawrence/The Lumineers" | | 2017 | Jimmy Kimmel Live | Herself (host) | Episode: "November 2, 2017" | | | | | | List of television appearances and roles ### Music videos ## Accolades Lawrence won an Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in Silver Linings Playbook (2012). She has won three Golden Globe Awards; Best Actress – Comedy or Musical for Silver Linings Playbook (2012) and Joy (2015), and Best Supporting Actress for American Hustle (2013). She also won a BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role for American Hustle. Her other accolades include seven MTV Movie Awards (five for The Hunger Games series, two for Silver Linings Playbook), six People's Choice Awards (three for The Hunger Games, three for the X-Men series), a Satellite Award for Silver Linings Playbook, and a Saturn Award for The Hunger Games''.

Loev

2015 Indian romantic drama film by Sudhanshu Saria

Loev (pronounced love) is a 2015 Indian romantic drama film written and directed by Sudhanshu Saria. It stars Dhruv Ganesh and Shiv Panditt as two friends who set off to the Western Ghats for a weekend trip and focuses on their complex emotional and sexual relationship. It was Ganesh's final film, as he died from tuberculosis before its release. Loev also features Siddharth Menon and Rishabh Chaddha in supporting roles. The film's title is a deliberate misspelling of the word "love". Saria wrote Loev's script while he was working on the draft of the unreleased film I Am Here and drew heavily from his personal experiences. It was eventually picked up for production by Arfi Lamba and Katherine Suckale despite Saria's own doubts on its viability. Principal photography took place at Mahabaleshwar, in the Western Ghats in peninsular India, and at Mumbai. The film was shot in the summer of 2014 over the course of sixteen days by the cinematographer Sherri Kauk in 2K resolution. It relied on crowdfunding and cost-cutting measures; its budget was relatively low at US\$1 million. Loev had its world premiere at the 2015 Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival in Estonia. It had its North American premiere at the 2016 South By Southwest Film Festival and premiered in India at the 2016 Mumbai International Film Festival. It was released on Netflix on 1 May 2017. The film was well received by critics and audiences during its international premieres at film festivals. Particular praise was given for the script, as well as the performances of Panditt and Ganesh. Commentators were also appreciative of the unconventional and fresh treatment of same-sex relationships in India. The film won the Audience Award for Best Feature Film at the 2016 Tel Aviv International Film Festival. ## Plot Sahil (Dhruv Ganesh), a young Mumbai-based musician, plans a weekend getaway to the Western Ghats with his childhood friend, Jai (Shiv Panditt), a successful businessman who lives in New York, but visits Mumbai for a business meeting. The duo drive to Mahabaleshwar overnight and upon arrival decide to visit the local market. While at a music store, Jai is impressed by Sahil's skill as a guitarist and suggests that he pursue a career as a full-time musician. Throughout their trip, they argue about their past failure to maintain a relationship. Sahil is irked by Jai's increasingly indifferent behaviour and his workaholic nature. Jai, on the other hand, is disgruntled with Sahil's continuous complaints. One night, Jai makes a pass at Sahil, who is initially hesitant but eventually responds to his advances. The next morning, the two visit the Ghats as Sahil had intended. Sahil takes Jai to an overhanging cliff with a scenic view of Mahabaleshwar, where the two kiss. They later return to a hotel in Mumbai for Jai's scheduled business meeting. At the hotel room, the two admit to their mutual attraction, just before Jai has to leave for his meeting. Sahil interrupts the meeting and embarrasses Jai with a romantic gesture witnessed by everyone present. This leads to a confrontation between the two back in the hotel room, during which Sahil accuses Jai of being scared of coming out. Jai counters by blaming Sahil for not reciprocating his affection from the beginning. The two kiss, but when Sahil tries to pull away, Jai rapes him, only to immediately regret it. Jai apologises and tells Sahil that he need not stay any longer if he doesn't want to. Sahil stays, but refrains from conversing with Jai. As planned, the two meet Alex (Menon), Sahil's boyfriend, who is accompanied by a friend, Junior (Chaddha). The group discuss their lives over supper, which is cut short by an argument between Alex and Sahil over the former's irresponsible behaviour. The four head back to the hotel room to collect Sahil's belongings, as Jai plans to return to New York later that night. Alex notices the guitar and insists that Sahil play for him; Sahil obliges with an original song. Alex dances with Jai, who is completely smitten by Sahil by this point. Alex offers to take back Sahil's belongings and give the two some more time together. When he leaves, Sahil and Jai embrace, but do not talk about the rape. At the airport, Jai asks Sahil to leave. He rejects Sahil's efforts at reconciliation, and tells him that they can never be together because they have vastly different lives. When they eventually part ways, Jai writes a text message to Sahil saying he loves him but does not send it. Alex arrives at the airport to pick Sahil up, much to his surprise. He tries to make up for his mistakes by offering Sahil a heartfelt apology as the two drive back to their apartment. ## Cast - Dhruv Ganesh as Sahil - Shiv Panditt as Jai - Siddharth Menon as Alex - Rishabh J. Chaddha as Junior ## Production ### Development Loev's script was written by Sudhanshu Saria in the United States when he was working on the screenplay of another film, I Am Here. Describing the film as "small, fragile, honest", Saria said that through his endeavours he "tries to capture the silences and the things unsaid in male friendships". He began working on Loev because he was unable to manage funds for I Am Here. At the time of the script's inception, Saria had no plan of making it into a feature film, as he believed that no investors or actors would want to be associated with a film that he thought would be censored or banned in its home country. The narrative of the production, which is set in Saria's hometown, Mumbai, follows many personal experiences that he himself went through, growing up in the Indian hill town of Darjeeling, and later at the Ithaca Arts College, New York. The dialogue was written in Hinglish, a macaronic hybrid use of English and South Asian languages. Pre-production work for the film began in February 2014, when Katharina Suckale, Jasleen Marwah, and Arfi Lamba of the Bombay Berlin Film Production showed interest in adapting the script into a full-length feature film. Saria said the screenplay was written out of "deep shame and fear" and on completion was not pitched to any investors, but instead put away into a drawer. The script was picked up by Suckale and Lamba, who agreed to co-produce Saria's directorial debut. The film's title is a deliberate misspelling of the word love, though the two are pronounced identically and are essentially synonyms. The misspelling was explained by Saria in an interview with Gaylaxy: "no matter how different love may look like compared to convention, i.e. no matter how it is spelt, it is still love". The Supreme Court of India's December 2013 decision to reinstate Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, which criminalised same-sex relationships in India, had a major bearing on Saria's work. In the film's official release statement Saria talked about the environment that he worked in, saying "It was in this India [referring to the Supreme Court judgement] that our actors, technicians, investors and supporters came together to make this film, working in absolute secrecy." The film stars Shiv Panditt and Dhruv Ganesh; the former came across the film's script during a casual meeting with Saria. In an interview with Daily News and Analysis, Panditt discussed the meeting between him and Saria, saying, "he had no desire to cast me, [...] because he thought I do only commercial films. I had to force it out of him. But when I heard it I found it interesting and we decided to do it". Saria called Ganesh for the table read for the protagonist of the film, Sahil, and was greatly impressed by his approach to the character. Ganesh was apprehensive about playing the character, but after initial scepticism he agreed to play the role. Siddharth Menon and Rishabh J. Chaddha play supporting roles in the film. Loev marked the last film role for Ganesh, as he died of tuberculosis in January 2015, while the film was in post-production. The opening credits in the film's final cut honour his memory. ### Filming and post-production Principal photography began in the summer of 2014 and took place entirely in Mumbai and Mahabaleshwar, a small hilltown in the UNESCO World Heritage site of the Western Ghats, in peninsular India. American Film Institute alumnus Sherri Kauk served as the director of photography for the film. Loev was filmed in a single schedule in a short span of 16 days. Saria said, "We had to plan well, be extremely frugal, count every penny and make sure it all ended up on the screen." With a modest budget of \$1 million, the production of Loev was funded partly by the production partners, and by private equity. A crowdfunding campaign was started on the funding portal Indiegogo, raising an amount of approximately 4,000. In an interview with Manoj Sharma of Pandolin, a digital film magazine, Lamba talked about the struggle of funding the project saying that the investors had backed out at the last-minute at more than one occasion. The film's crew members financed the project from their own salaries to meet the cost of production. The filming was done discreetly as Saria feared opposition from the local community towards the film's underlying subject of homosexuality. Among the crew members, only a core group were aware of the details of the plot, and to the rest of the crew it was a road trip film, one identical to Dil Chahta Hai (2001). Crew members were left surprised while filming the scene where Panditt kisses Ganesh in the outdoors as most of them were unaware of any romantic involvement between the two characters. Panditt found the rape scene difficult to shoot, because of the emotional weight it carried: "What I did to overcome my revulsion was to not stand judgment over my character Jai's action. I just went with how Jai reacted to the given situation." The film editing process began in June 2015; the team of editors was headed by Nitesh Bhatia, and Pritam Das was the sound mixer. Sweta Gupta was the film's art director, and the costumes were by Rohit Chaturvedi. Tony Kakkar provided the soundtrack for the film. An original track recorded by Kakkar, entitled "Ek Chaand", was released as part of the official soundtrack for the film. It was released on 4 May 2017, under the label of Desi Music Factory on iTunes. A two-and-a-half-minute preview of the song was released on YouTube in the same month. Loev's entire editing and sound mixing process was completed on 25 November, after four months of post-production work. With a total runtime of 92 minutes, the film was pitched under the labels of Bombay Berlin Film Productions and Four Line Films. Its foreign distribution rights were acquired by Loic Magneron's Wide Management, a Paris-based sales-production-distribution house. The deal was finalised after a meeting between Magneron and Saria at the film's Tallinn premiere. However, the distribution rights were withdrawn when the producers entered into negotiations with Netflix. The worldwide rights of the film were acquired by Netflix in April 2017. ## Themes and influences The themes of unrequited love and self-acceptance are central to Loev as noted by such commentators as Aseem Chhabra, Zack Ford, and Subhash K. Jha. They wrote in their reviews that the theme of sexuality takes a backseat to the aforementioned subjects. Chhabra, a New York-based film writer and director noted that the film beautifully presented an emotional journey of gay characters, who seemed to be comfortable with their identity. Also, as expressed by Saria himself, the film was intended as a "universal story about attraction". He did not want to conform to a single definition for the film or the relationship between two lead characters. While Vox's Siddharth Naidu thought of the film as politically radical and emotionally raw, Chhabra called it the least bit political in another editorial for Rediff.com. This view was shared by the freelance journalist Steven Borowiec, who wrote that the social context of same-sex relationships in India remained "mostly off-screen". Writing for ThinkProgress, Ford also noted that although the socio-political backdrop "is never explicitly mentioned, it's alluded to throughout". Addressing the same issue, Saria said that Loev is not a political film, but the act of making it was a political one. He said, "[W]hat started out as an intellectual act of protest quickly became something else. Love." Jha believed that it marked "a new beginning for cinema on unconstitutional love in India". While working in the United States, Saria familiarised himself with independent American cinema, which greatly influenced his work. He also listed such directors as the Dardenne brothers, Éric Rohmer and Hrishikesh Mukherjee as influential during his formative years as a filmmaker. Critics and commentators drew parallels between Loev and Ang Lee's Brokeback Mountain (2005), with some observing the palpable similarity "in the way the rocky terrain is used to define the theme of forbidden love". The film was also thought to be visually and structurally similar to Andrew Haigh's Weekend (2011), and Wong Kar-wai's Happy Together (1997). Ford thought that despite being a lot more subtle in its portrayal of same-sex affection in comparison to Weekend, Loev was still "quite novel for Bollywood". ## Release Loev premiered at the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival, Estonia on 19 November 2015. The film was then screened at various other film festivals across Europe and Asia, including the Jeonju International Film Festival, South Korea; the Istanbul International Film Festival, Turkey; the Art Film Festival, Slovakia; and the Transilvania International Film Festival, Romania. It had its North American premiere on 12 March, for the "Visions" section at the 2016 South By SouthWest Film Festival. The Tel Aviv International LGBT Film Festival, the BFI Flare: London LGBT Film Festival, and the Frameline Film Festival were among the LGBTQ film festivals that featured the production. The film won the Audience Award for Best Feature Film at the 2016 Tel Aviv International Film Festival. Upon release in India at the "India Gold" segment of the 2016 Mumbai Film Festival, Loev garnered positive response from critics. It was also screened at the 2016 International Film Festival of Kerala, Thiruvananthapuram. Loev was released on Netflix on 1 May 2017. A new poster was unveiled for the film's Netflix release. Designed by an Indian-based designing house, Pigeon & Co, it featured the two lead actors. Shortly after the film's release, Rajeev Masand hosted Saria on a talk show on News18 and organised a roundtable discussion for the lead actors, Saria, and the film's producers. In May 2017, the film had a special screening in Mumbai, which was attended by the entire cast and crew along with Bollywood personalities such as Richa Chaddha, Kalki Koechlin, Rannvijay Singh, Bejoy Nambiar, Shruti Seth, and Meiyang Chang among others. ## Critical reception ### Domestic Loev received positive response from critics at the Mumbai Film Festival; Manika Verma from the MAMI Young Critics Lab gave a largely positive review calling the film a "breather", and stating that it "doesn't pander and conform to the stereotypes, a trap very easy to fall into." The view was shared by Namrata Joshi of The Hindu, who wrote that the film added a new dimension to gay cinema; she thought the endeavour was "a deceptively simple yet nuanced and heartfelt take on the eternal relationship conundrum." Subhash K. Jha gave the film four stars out of five, defining it not as a gay film but an "unforgettable love story". Applauding the cinematography, direction, and the performances from Ganesh and Panditt, he described the film as one that not only "re-defines love and passion in the context of the Indian reality, it is a new beginning for cinema on unconstitutional love in India." Deepali Singh also praised the film in her review for Daily News and Analysis, with particular emphasis on the cinematography and Ganesh's performance. She thought there were several memorable scenes in the film. Praising the chemistry of the leading cast, Joshi said Panditt was "all solidity and strength", and Ganesh "tenderness and vulnerability". ### International Loev garnered praise from critics at many film festivals; commentators were largely laudatory of both the film's sensitive treatment of a homosexuality theme and the performances of the cast. Reviewing the film at Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival, Shelagh Rowan-Legg of Screen Anarchy praised the refreshing concept of the film, different from the usual cinema associated with India: "Loev examines the personal and the political, [...] in a sensitive yet open portrait of love and sexuality." Rowan-Legg further called the cast "tailor-made", lauding Panditt in particular and saying, "Pandit perfectly times the slow release of his frustration, [...] is both appalling and believable." Although finding Ganesh to be "a charismatic presence on screen", Screen International's Wendy Ide – otherwise impressed with the cast's performances – stated, "naturalistic acting style notwithstanding, there is something not entirely persuasive about the relationship between Jai and Sahil." Loev was well received in North America. Its screening was the first time an Indian film was shown at the South by Southwest Film Festival; Brooke Corso of The Macguffin remarked that the beautiful and heartbreaking film shines when "it focuses on what is said when the characters aren't speaking, and what is avoided when they do." Matt Shiverdecker of Austin American-Statesman was largely laudatory of the production at the same event as well, dubbing it as a "small miracle". He praised the film's realism, and attributed its success to the actors and to the beautiful scenery. Siddhant Adlakha of Birth Movies Death called Loev a "minuscule film of miraculous construction" and "a melancholy tale where questions have no easy answers, [...] but one where bliss, even momentary, feels infinite." ## Awards and nominations

Gamma-ray burst

Flashes of gamma rays from distant galaxies

In gamma-ray astronomy, gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are immensely energetic explosions that have been observed in distant galaxies. They are the most energetic and luminous electromagnetic events since the Big Bang. Bursts can last from ten milliseconds to several hours. After an initial flash of gamma rays, a longer-lived "afterglow" is usually emitted at longer wavelengths (X-ray, ultraviolet, optical, infrared, microwave and radio). The intense radiation of most observed GRBs is thought to be released during a supernova or superluminous supernova as a high-mass star implodes to form a neutron star or a black hole. A subclass of GRBs appears to originate from the merger of binary neutron stars. The sources of most GRBs are billions of light years away from Earth, implying that the explosions are both extremely energetic (a typical burst releases as much energy in a few seconds as the Sun will in its entire 10-billion-year lifetime) and extremely rare (a few per galaxy per million years). All observed GRBs have originated from outside the Milky Way galaxy, although a related class of phenomena, soft gamma repeaters, are associated with magnetars within the Milky Way. It has been hypothesized that a gamma-ray burst in the Milky Way, pointing directly towards the Earth, could cause a mass extinction event. The Late Ordovician mass extinction has been hypothesised by some researchers to have occurred as a result of such a gamma-ray burst. GRBs were first detected in 1967 by the Vela satellites, which had been designed to detect covert nuclear weapons tests; after thorough analysis, this was published in 1973. Following their discovery, hundreds of theoretical models were proposed to explain these bursts, such as collisions between comets and neutron stars. Little information was available to verify these models until the 1997 detection of the first X-ray and optical afterglows and direct measurement of their redshifts using optical spectroscopy, and thus their distances and energy outputs. These discoveries, and subsequent studies of the galaxies and supernovae associated with the bursts, clarified the distance and luminosity of GRBs, definitively placing them in distant galaxies. ## History Gamma-ray bursts were first observed in the late 1960s by the U.S. Vela satellites, which were built to detect gamma radiation pulses emitted by nuclear weapons tested in space. The United States suspected that the Soviet Union might attempt to conduct secret nuclear tests after signing the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in 1963. On July 2, 1967, at 14:19 UTC, the Vela 4 and Vela 3 satellites detected a flash of gamma radiation unlike any known nuclear weapons signature. Uncertain what had happened but not considering the matter particularly urgent, the team at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, led by Ray Klebesadel, filed the data away for investigation. As additional Vela satellites were launched with better instruments, the Los Alamos team continued to find inexplicable gamma-ray bursts in their data. By analyzing the different arrival times of the bursts as detected by different satellites, the team was able to determine rough estimates for the sky positions of 16 bursts and definitively rule out a terrestrial or solar origin. Contrary to popular belief, the data was never classified. After thorough analysis, the findings were published in 1973 as an Astrophysical Journal article entitled "Observations of Gamma-Ray Bursts of Cosmic Origin". Most early theories of gamma-ray bursts posited nearby sources within the Milky Way Galaxy. From 1991, the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory (CGRO) and its Burst and Transient Source Explorer (BATSE) instrument, an extremely sensitive gamma-ray detector, provided data that showed the distribution of GRBs is isotropic – not biased towards any particular direction in space. If the sources were from within our own galaxy, they would be strongly concentrated in or near the galactic plane. The absence of any such pattern in the case of GRBs provided strong evidence that gamma-ray bursts must come from beyond the Milky Way. However, some Milky Way models are still consistent with an isotropic distribution. ### Counterpart objects as candidate sources For decades after the discovery of GRBs, astronomers searched for a counterpart at other wavelengths: i.e., any astronomical object in positional coincidence with a recently observed burst. Astronomers considered many distinct classes of objects, including white dwarfs, pulsars, supernovae, globular clusters, quasars, Seyfert galaxies, and BL Lac objects. All such searches were unsuccessful, and in a few cases particularly well-localized bursts (those whose positions were determined with what was then a high degree of accuracy) could be clearly shown to have no bright objects of any nature consistent with the position derived from the detecting satellites. This suggested an origin of either very faint stars or extremely distant galaxies. Even the most accurate positions contained numerous faint stars and galaxies, and it was widely agreed that final resolution of the origins of cosmic gamma-ray bursts would require both new satellites and faster communication. ### Afterglow Several models for the origin of gamma-ray bursts postulated that the initial burst of gamma rays should be followed by afterglow: slowly fading emission at longer wavelengths created by collisions between the burst ejecta and interstellar gas. Early searches for this afterglow were unsuccessful, largely because it is difficult to observe a burst's position at longer wavelengths immediately after the initial burst. The breakthrough came in February 1997 when the satellite BeppoSAX detected a gamma-ray burst (GRB 970228) and when the X-ray camera was pointed towards the direction from which the burst had originated, it detected fading X-ray emission. The William Herschel Telescope identified a fading optical counterpart 20 hours after the burst. Once the GRB faded, deep imaging was able to identify a faint, distant host galaxy at the location of the GRB as pinpointed by the optical afterglow. Because of the very faint luminosity of this galaxy, its exact distance was not measured for several years. Well after then, another major breakthrough occurred with the next event registered by BeppoSAX, GRB 970508. This event was localized within four hours of its discovery, allowing research teams to begin making observations much sooner than any previous burst. The spectrum of the object revealed a redshift of z = 0.835, placing the burst at a distance of roughly 6 billion light years from Earth. This was the first accurate determination of the distance to a GRB, and together with the discovery of the host galaxy of 970228 proved that GRBs occur in extremely distant galaxies. Within a few months, the controversy about the distance scale ended: GRBs were extragalactic events originating within faint galaxies at enormous distances. The following year, GRB 980425 was followed within a day by a bright supernova (SN 1998bw), coincident in location, indicating a clear connection between GRBs and the deaths of very massive stars. This burst provided the first strong clue about the nature of the systems that produce GRBs. ### More recent instruments BeppoSAX functioned until 2002 and CGRO (with BATSE) was deorbited in 2000. However, the revolution in the study of gamma-ray bursts motivated the development of a number of additional instruments designed specifically to explore the nature of GRBs, especially in the earliest moments following the explosion. The first such mission, HETE-2, was launched in 2000 and functioned until 2006, providing most of the major discoveries during this period. One of the most successful space missions to date, Swift, was launched in 2004 and as of January 2023 is still operational. Swift is equipped with a very sensitive gamma-ray detector as well as on-board X-ray and optical telescopes, which can be rapidly and automatically slewed to observe afterglow emission following a burst. More recently, the Fermi mission was launched carrying the Gamma-Ray Burst Monitor, which detects bursts at a rate of several hundred per year, some of which are bright enough to be observed at extremely high energies with Fermi's Large Area Telescope. Meanwhile, on the ground, numerous optical telescopes have been built or modified to incorporate robotic control software that responds immediately to signals sent through the Gamma-ray Burst Coordinates Network. This allows the telescopes to rapidly repoint towards a GRB, often within seconds of receiving the signal and while the gamma-ray emission itself is still ongoing. New developments since the 2000s include the recognition of short gamma-ray bursts as a separate class (likely from merging neutron stars and not associated with supernovae), the discovery of extended, erratic flaring activity at X-ray wavelengths lasting for many minutes after most GRBs, and the discovery of the most luminous (GRB 080319B) and the former most distant (GRB 090423) objects in the universe. The most distant known GRB, GRB 090429B, is now the most distant known object in the universe. In October 2018, astronomers reported that GRB 150101B (detected in 2015) and GW170817, a gravitational wave event detected in 2017 (which has been associated with GRB170817A, a burst detected 1.7 seconds later), may have been produced by the same mechanism – the merger of two neutron stars. The similarities between the two events, in terms of gamma ray, optical, and x-ray emissions, as well as to the nature of the associated host galaxies, are "striking", suggesting the two separate events may both be the result of the merger of neutron stars, and both may be a kilonova, which may be more common in the universe than previously understood, according to the researchers. The highest energy light observed from a gamma-ray burst was one teraelectronvolt, from GRB 190114C in 2019. (Note, this is about a thousand times lower energy than the highest energy light observed from any source, which is 1.4 petaelectronvolts as of the year 2021.) ## Classification The light curves of gamma-ray bursts are extremely diverse and complex. No two gamma-ray burst light curves are identical, with large variation observed in almost every property: the duration of observable emission can vary from milliseconds to tens of minutes, there can be a single peak or several individual subpulses, and individual peaks can be symmetric or with fast brightening and very slow fading. Some bursts are preceded by a "precursor" event, a weak burst that is then followed (after seconds to minutes of no emission at all) by the much more intense "true" bursting episode. The light curves of some events have extremely chaotic and complicated profiles with almost no discernible patterns. Although some light curves can be roughly reproduced using certain simplified models, little progress has been made in understanding the full diversity observed. Many classification schemes have been proposed, but these are often based solely on differences in the appearance of light curves and may not always reflect a true physical difference in the progenitors of the explosions. However, plots of the distribution of the observed duration for a large number of gamma-ray bursts show a clear bimodality, suggesting the existence of two separate populations: a "short" population with an average duration of about 0.3 seconds and a "long" population with an average duration of about 30 seconds. Both distributions are very broad with a significant overlap region in which the identity of a given event is not clear from duration alone. Additional classes beyond this two-tiered system have been proposed on both observational and theoretical grounds. ### Short gamma-ray bursts Events with a duration of less than about two seconds are classified as short gamma-ray bursts. These account for about 30% of gamma-ray bursts, but until 2005, no afterglow had been successfully detected from any short event and little was known about their origins. Since then, several dozen short gamma-ray burst afterglows have been detected and localized, several of which are associated with regions of little or no star formation, such as large elliptical galaxies. This rules out a link to massive stars, confirming that short events are physically distinct from long events. In addition, there has been no association with supernovae. The true nature of these objects was initially unknown, and the leading hypothesis was that they originated from the mergers of binary neutron stars or a neutron star with a black hole. Such mergers were theorized to produce kilonovae, and evidence for a kilonova associated with GRB 130603B was seen. The mean duration of these events of 0.2 seconds suggests (because of causality) a source of very small physical diameter in stellar terms; less than 0.2 light-seconds (about 60,000 km or 37,000 miles – four times the Earth's diameter). The observation of minutes to hours of X-ray flashes after a short gamma-ray burst is consistent with small particles of a primary object like a neutron star initially swallowed by a black hole in less than two seconds, followed by some hours of lesser energy events, as remaining fragments of tidally disrupted neutron star material (no longer neutronium) remain in orbit to spiral into the black hole, over a longer period of time. A small fraction of short gamma-ray bursts are probably produced by giant flares from soft gamma repeaters in nearby galaxies. The origin of short GRBs in kilonovae was confirmed when short GRB 170817A was detected only 1.7 s after the detection of gravitational wave GW170817, which was a signal from the merger of two neutron stars. ### Long gamma-ray bursts Most observed events (70%) have a duration of greater than two seconds and are classified as long gamma-ray bursts. Because these events constitute the majority of the population and because they tend to have the brightest afterglows, they have been observed in much greater detail than their short counterparts. Almost every well-studied long gamma-ray burst has been linked to a galaxy with rapid star formation, and in many cases to a core-collapse supernova as well, unambiguously associating long GRBs with the deaths of massive stars. Long GRB afterglow observations, at high redshift, are also consistent with the GRB having originated in star-forming regions. In December 2022, astronomers reported the first evidence of a long GRB produced by a neutron star merger. ### Ultra-long gamma-ray bursts These events are at the tail end of the long GRB duration distribution, lasting more than 10,000 seconds. They have been proposed to form a separate class, caused by the collapse of a blue supergiant star, a tidal disruption event or a new-born magnetar. Only a small number have been identified to date, their primary characteristic being their gamma ray emission duration. The most studied ultra-long events include GRB 101225A and GRB 111209A. The low detection rate may be a result of low sensitivity of current detectors to long-duration events, rather than a reflection of their true frequency. A 2013 study, on the other hand, shows that the existing evidence for a separate ultra-long GRB population with a new type of progenitor is inconclusive, and further multi-wavelength observations are needed to draw a firmer conclusion. ## Energetics and beaming Gamma-ray bursts are very bright as observed from Earth despite their typically immense distances. An average long GRB has a bolometric flux comparable to a bright star of our galaxy despite a distance of billions of light years (compared to a few tens of light years for most visible stars). Most of this energy is released in gamma rays, although some GRBs have extremely luminous optical counterparts as well. GRB 080319B, for example, was accompanied by an optical counterpart that peaked at a visible magnitude of 5.8, comparable to that of the dimmest naked-eye stars despite the burst's distance of 7.5 billion light years. This combination of brightness and distance implies an extremely energetic source. Assuming the gamma-ray explosion to be spherical, the energy output of GRB 080319B would be within a factor of two of the rest-mass energy of the Sun (the energy which would be released were the Sun to be converted entirely into radiation). Gamma-ray bursts are thought to be highly focused explosions, with most of the explosion energy collimated into a narrow jet. The approximate angular width of the jet (that is, the degree of spread of the beam) can be estimated directly by observing the achromatic "jet breaks" in afterglow light curves: a time after which the slowly decaying afterglow begins to fade rapidly as the jet slows and can no longer beam its radiation as effectively. Observations suggest significant variation in the jet angle from between 2 and 20 degrees. Because their energy is strongly focused, the gamma rays emitted by most bursts are expected to miss the Earth and never be detected. When a gamma-ray burst is pointed towards Earth, the focusing of its energy along a relatively narrow beam causes the burst to appear much brighter than it would have been were its energy emitted spherically. When this effect is taken into account, typical gamma-ray bursts are observed to have a true energy release of about 10⁴⁴ J, or about 1/2000 of a Solar mass () energy equivalent – which is still many times the mass-energy equivalent of the Earth (about 5.5 × 10⁴¹ J). This is comparable to the energy released in a bright type Ib/c supernova and within the range of theoretical models. Very bright supernovae have been observed to accompany several of the nearest GRBs. Additional support for focusing of the output of GRBs has come from observations of strong asymmetries in the spectra of nearby type Ic supernovae and from radio observations taken long after bursts when their jets are no longer relativistic. Short (time duration) GRBs appear to come from a lower-redshift (i.e. less distant) population and are less luminous than long GRBs. The degree of beaming in short bursts has not been accurately measured, but as a population they are likely less collimated than long GRBs or possibly not collimated at all in some cases. ## Progenitors Because of the immense distances of most gamma-ray burst sources from Earth, identification of the progenitors, the systems that produce these explosions, is challenging. The association of some long GRBs with supernovae and the fact that their host galaxies are rapidly star-forming offer very strong evidence that long gamma-ray bursts are associated with massive stars. The most widely accepted mechanism for the origin of long-duration GRBs is the collapsar model, in which the core of an extremely massive, low-metallicity, rapidly rotating star collapses into a black hole in the final stages of its evolution. Matter near the star's core rains down towards the center and swirls into a high-density accretion disk. The infall of this material into a black hole drives a pair of relativistic jets out along the rotational axis, which pummel through the stellar envelope and eventually break through the stellar surface and radiate as gamma rays. Some alternative models replace the black hole with a newly formed magnetar, although most other aspects of the model (the collapse of the core of a massive star and the formation of relativistic jets) are the same. The closest analogs within the Milky Way galaxy of the stars producing long gamma-ray bursts are likely the Wolf–Rayet stars, extremely hot and massive stars, which have shed most or all of their hydrogen envelope. Eta Carinae, Apep, and WR 104 have been cited as possible future gamma-ray burst progenitors. It is unclear if any star in the Milky Way has the appropriate characteristics to produce a gamma-ray burst. The massive-star model probably does not explain all types of gamma-ray burst. There is strong evidence that some short-duration gamma-ray bursts occur in systems with no star formation and no massive stars, such as elliptical galaxies and galaxy halos. The favored theory for the origin of most short gamma-ray bursts is the merger of a binary system consisting of two neutron stars. According to this model, the two stars in a binary slowly spiral towards each other because gravitational radiation releases energy until tidal forces suddenly rip the neutron stars apart and they collapse into a single black hole. The infall of matter into the new black hole produces an accretion disk and releases a burst of energy, analogous to the collapsar model. Numerous other models have also been proposed to explain short gamma-ray bursts, including the merger of a neutron star and a black hole, the accretion-induced collapse of a neutron star, or the evaporation of primordial black holes. An alternative explanation proposed by Friedwardt Winterberg is that in the course of a gravitational collapse and in reaching the event horizon of a black hole, all matter disintegrates into a burst of gamma radiation. ### Tidal disruption events This new class of GRB-like events was first discovered through the detection of GRB 110328A by the Swift Gamma-Ray Burst Mission on 28 March 2011. This event had a gamma-ray duration of about 2 days, much longer than even ultra-long GRBs, and was detected in X-rays for many months. It occurred at the center of a small elliptical galaxy at redshift z = 0.3534. There is an ongoing debate as to whether the explosion was the result of stellar collapse or a tidal disruption event accompanied by a relativistic jet, although the latter explanation has become widely favoured. A tidal disruption event of this sort is when a star interacts with a supermassive black hole, shredding the star, and in some cases creating a relativistic jet which produces bright emission of gamma ray radiation. The event GRB 110328A (also denoted Swift J1644+57) was initially argued to be produced by the disruption of a main sequence star by a black hole of several million times the mass of the Sun, although it has subsequently been argued that the disruption of a white dwarf by a black hole of mass about 10 thousand times the Sun may be more likely. ## Emission mechanisms The means by which gamma-ray bursts convert energy into radiation remains poorly understood, and as of 2010 there was still no generally accepted model for how this process occurs. Any successful model of GRB emission must explain the physical process for generating gamma-ray emission that matches the observed diversity of light curves, spectra, and other characteristics. Particularly challenging is the need to explain the very high efficiencies that are inferred from some explosions: some gamma-ray bursts may convert as much as half (or more) of the explosion energy into gamma-rays. Early observations of the bright optical counterparts to GRB 990123 and to GRB 080319B, whose optical light curves were extrapolations of the gamma-ray light spectra, have suggested that inverse Compton scattering may be the dominant process in some events. In this model, pre-existing low-energy photons are scattered by relativistic electrons within the explosion, augmenting their energy by a large factor and transforming them into gamma-rays. The nature of the longer-wavelength afterglow emission (ranging from X-ray through radio) that follows gamma-ray bursts is better understood. Any energy released by the explosion not radiated away in the burst itself takes the form of matter or energy moving outward at nearly the speed of light. As this matter collides with the surrounding interstellar gas, it creates a relativistic shock wave that then propagates forward into interstellar space. A second shock wave, the reverse shock, may propagate back into the ejected matter. Extremely energetic electrons within the shock wave are accelerated by strong local magnetic fields and radiate as synchrotron emission across most of the electromagnetic spectrum. This model has generally been successful in modeling the behavior of many observed afterglows at late times (generally, hours to days after the explosion), although there are difficulties explaining all features of the afterglow very shortly after the gamma-ray burst has occurred. ## Rate of occurrence and potential effects on life Gamma ray bursts can have harmful or destructive effects on life. Considering the universe as a whole, the safest environments for life similar to that on Earth are the lowest density regions in the outskirts of large galaxies. Our knowledge of galaxy types and their distribution suggests that life as we know it can only exist in about 10% of all galaxies. Furthermore, galaxies with a redshift, z, higher than 0.5 are unsuitable for life as we know it, because of their higher rate of GRBs and their stellar compactness. All GRBs observed to date have occurred well outside the Milky Way galaxy and have been harmless to Earth. However, if a GRB were to occur within the Milky Way within 5,000 to 8,000 light-years and its emission were beamed straight towards Earth, the effects could be harmful and potentially devastating for its ecosystems. Currently, orbiting satellites detect on average approximately one GRB per day. The closest observed GRB as of March 2014 was GRB 980425, located 40 megaparsecs (130,000,000 ly) away (z=0.0085) in an SBc-type dwarf galaxy. GRB 980425 was far less energetic than the average GRB and was associated with the Type Ib supernova SN 1998bw. Estimating the exact rate at which GRBs occur is difficult; for a galaxy of approximately the same size as the Milky Way, estimates of the expected rate (for long-duration GRBs) can range from one burst every 10,000 years, to one burst every 1,000,000 years. Only a small percentage of these would be beamed towards Earth. Estimates of rate of occurrence of short-duration GRBs are even more uncertain because of the unknown degree of collimation, but are probably comparable. Since GRBs are thought to involve beamed emission along two jets in opposing directions, only planets in the path of these jets would be subjected to the high energy gamma radiation. Although nearby GRBs hitting Earth with a destructive shower of gamma rays are only hypothetical events, high energy processes across the galaxy have been observed to affect the Earth's atmosphere. ### Effects on Earth Earth's atmosphere is very effective at absorbing high energy electromagnetic radiation such as x-rays and gamma rays, so these types of radiation would not reach any dangerous levels at the surface during the burst event itself. The immediate effect on life on Earth from a GRB within a few kiloparsecs would only be a short increase in ultraviolet radiation at ground level, lasting from less than a second to tens of seconds. This ultraviolet radiation could potentially reach dangerous levels depending on the exact nature and distance of the burst, but it seems unlikely to be able to cause a global catastrophe for life on Earth. The long-term effects from a nearby burst are more dangerous. Gamma rays cause chemical reactions in the atmosphere involving oxygen and nitrogen molecules, creating first nitrogen oxide then nitrogen dioxide gas. The nitrogen oxides cause dangerous effects on three levels. First, they deplete ozone, with models showing a possible global reduction of 25–35%, with as much as 75% in certain locations, an effect that would last for years. This reduction is enough to cause a dangerously elevated UV index at the surface. Secondly, the nitrogen oxides cause photochemical smog, which darkens the sky and blocks out parts of the sunlight spectrum. This would affect photosynthesis, but models show only about a 1% reduction of the total sunlight spectrum, lasting a few years. However, the smog could potentially cause a cooling effect on Earth's climate, producing a "cosmic winter" (similar to an impact winter, but without an impact), but only if it occurs simultaneously with a global climate instability. Thirdly, the elevated nitrogen dioxide levels in the atmosphere would wash out and produce acid rain. Nitric acid is toxic to a variety of organisms, including amphibian life, but models predict that it would not reach levels that would cause a serious global effect. The nitrates might in fact be of benefit to some plants. All in all, a GRB within a few kiloparsecs, with its energy directed towards Earth, will mostly damage life by raising the UV levels during the burst itself and for a few years thereafter. Models show that the destructive effects of this increase can cause up to 16 times the normal levels of DNA damage. It has proved difficult to assess a reliable evaluation of the consequences of this on the terrestrial ecosystem, because of the uncertainty in biological field and laboratory data. #### Hypothetical effects on Earth in the past There is a very good chance (but no certainty) that at least one lethal GRB took place during the past 5 billion years close enough to Earth as to significantly damage life. There is a 50% chance that such a lethal GRB took place within two kiloparsecs of Earth during the last 500 million years, causing one of the major mass extinction events. The major Ordovician–Silurian extinction event 450 million years ago may have been caused by a GRB. Estimates suggest that approximately 20–60% of the total phytoplankton biomass in the Ordovician oceans would have perished in a GRB, because the oceans were mostly oligotrophic and clear. The late Ordovician species of trilobites that spent portions of their lives in the plankton layer near the ocean surface were much harder hit than deep-water dwellers, which tended to remain within quite restricted areas. This is in contrast to the usual pattern of extinction events, wherein species with more widely spread populations typically fare better. A possible explanation is that trilobites remaining in deep water would be more shielded from the increased UV radiation associated with a GRB. Also supportive of this hypothesis is the fact that during the late Ordovician, burrowing bivalve species were less likely to go extinct than bivalves that lived on the surface. A case has been made that the 774–775 carbon-14 spike was the result of a short GRB, though a very strong solar flare is another possibility. ## GRB candidates in the Milky Way No gamma-ray bursts from within our own galaxy, the Milky Way, have been observed, and the question of whether one has ever occurred remains unresolved. In light of evolving understanding of gamma-ray bursts and their progenitors, the scientific literature records a growing number of local, past, and future GRB candidates. Long duration GRBs are related to superluminous supernovae, or hypernovae, and most luminous blue variables (LBVs) and rapidly spinning Wolf–Rayet stars are thought to end their life cycles in core-collapse supernovae with an associated long-duration GRB. Knowledge of GRBs, however, is from metal-poor galaxies of former epochs of the universe's evolution, and it is impossible to directly extrapolate to encompass more evolved galaxies and stellar environments with a higher metallicity, such as the Milky Way. ## See also - Fast blue optical transient - Fast radio burst - Gamma-ray burst precursor - Horizons: Exploring the Universe - List of gamma-ray bursts - GRB 020813 - GRB 031203 - GRB 070714B - GRB 080916C - GRB 100621A - GRB 130427A - GRB 190114C - GRB 221009A - Relativistic jet - BOOTES - Gamma-ray Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence - Soft gamma repeater - Stellar evolution - Terrestrial gamma-ray flashes

Richard Feynman

American theoretical physicist (1918–1988)

Richard Phillips Feynman (/ˈfaɪnmən/; May 11, 1918 – February 15, 1988) was an American theoretical physicist, known for his work in the path integral formulation of quantum mechanics, the theory of quantum electrodynamics, the physics of the superfluidity of supercooled liquid helium, as well as his work in particle physics for which he proposed the parton model. For his contributions to the development of quantum electrodynamics, Feynman received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1965 jointly with Julian Schwinger and Shin'ichirō Tomonaga. Feynman developed a widely used pictorial representation scheme for the mathematical expressions describing the behavior of subatomic particles, which later became known as Feynman diagrams. During his lifetime, Feynman became one of the best-known scientists in the world. In a 1999 poll of 130 leading physicists worldwide by the British journal Physics World, he was ranked the seventh-greatest physicist of all time. He assisted in the development of the atomic bomb during World War II and became known to a wide public in the 1980s as a member of the Rogers Commission, the panel that investigated the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. Along with his work in theoretical physics, Feynman has been credited with pioneering the field of quantum computing and introducing the concept of nanotechnology. He held the Richard C. Tolman professorship in theoretical physics at the California Institute of Technology. Feynman was a keen popularizer of physics through both books and lectures, including a 1959 talk on top-down nanotechnology called There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom and the three-volume publication of his undergraduate lectures, The Feynman Lectures on Physics. Feynman also became known through his autobiographical books Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! and What Do You Care What Other People Think?, and books written about him such as Tuva or Bust! by Ralph Leighton and the biography Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman by James Gleick. ## Early life Feynman was born on May 11, 1918, in Queens, New York City, to Lucille (née Phillips; 1895–1981), a homemaker, and Melville Arthur Feynman (1890–1946), a sales manager. Feynman's father was born into a Jewish family in Minsk, Belarus (then part of the Russian Empire) and emigrated with his parents to the United States at the age of five. Feynman's mother was born in the United States into a Jewish family. Lucille's father had emigrated from Poland, and her mother also came from a family of Polish immigrants. She trained as a primary school teacher but married Melville in 1917, before taking up a profession. Feynman was a late talker and did not speak until after his third birthday. As an adult, he spoke with a New York accent strong enough to be perceived as an affectation or exaggeration, so much so that his friends Wolfgang Pauli and Hans Bethe once commented that Feynman spoke like a "bum". The young Feynman was heavily influenced by his father, who encouraged him to ask questions to challenge orthodox thinking, and who was always ready to teach Feynman something new. From his mother, he gained the sense of humor that he had throughout his life. As a child, he had a talent for engineering, maintained an experimental laboratory in his home, and delighted in repairing radios. This radio repairing was probably the first job Feynman had, and during this time he showed early signs of an aptitude for his later career in theoretical physics, when he would analyze the issues theoretically and arrive at the solutions. When he was in grade school, he created a home burglar alarm system while his parents were out for the day running errands. When Richard was five, his mother gave birth to a younger brother, Henry Phillips, who died at age four weeks. Four years later, Richard's sister Joan was born and the family moved to Far Rockaway, Queens. Though separated by nine years, Joan and Richard were close, and they both shared a curiosity about the world. Though their mother thought women lacked the capacity to understand such things, Richard encouraged Joan's interest in astronomy, and Joan eventually became an astrophysicist. ### Religion Feynman's parents were both from Jewish families, and his family went to the synagogue every Friday. However, by his youth, Feynman described himself as an "avowed atheist". Many years later, in a letter to Tina Levitan, declining a request for information for her book on Jewish Nobel Prize winners, he stated, "To select, for approbation the peculiar elements that come from some supposedly Jewish heredity is to open the door to all kinds of nonsense on racial theory", adding, "at thirteen I was not only converted to other religious views, but I also stopped believing that the Jewish people are in any way 'the chosen people'". Later in life, during a visit to the Jewish Theological Seminary, Feynman encountered the Talmud for the first time. He saw that it contained the original text in a little square on the page, and surrounding it were commentaries written over time by different people. In this way the Talmud had evolved, and everything that was discussed was carefully recorded. Despite being impressed, Feynman was disappointed with the lack of interest for nature and the outside world expressed by the rabbis, who cared about only those questions which arise from the Talmud. ## Education Feynman attended Far Rockaway High School, which was also attended by fellow Nobel laureates Burton Richter and Baruch Samuel Blumberg. Upon starting high school, Feynman was quickly promoted to a higher math class. An IQ test administered in high school estimated his IQ at 125—high but "merely respectable", according to biographer James Gleick. His sister Joan, who scored one point higher, later jokingly claimed to an interviewer that she was smarter. Years later he declined to join Mensa International, saying that his IQ was too low. When Feynman was 15, he taught himself trigonometry, advanced algebra, infinite series, analytic geometry, and both differential and integral calculus. Before entering college, he was experimenting with mathematical topics such as the half-derivative using his own notation. He created special symbols for logarithm, sine, cosine and tangent functions so they did not look like three variables multiplied together, and for the derivative, to remove the temptation of canceling out the $d$'s in $d/dx$. A member of the Arista Honor Society, in his last year in high school he won the New York University Math Championship. His habit of direct characterization sometimes rattled more conventional thinkers; for example, one of his questions, when learning feline anatomy, was "Do you have a map of the cat?" (referring to an anatomical chart). Feynman applied to Columbia University but was not accepted because of their quota for the number of Jews admitted. Instead, he attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he joined the Pi Lambda Phi fraternity. Although he originally majored in mathematics, he later switched to electrical engineering, as he considered mathematics to be too abstract. Noticing that he "had gone too far", he then switched to physics, which he claimed was "somewhere in between". As an undergraduate, he published two papers in the Physical Review. One of these, which was co-written with Manuel Vallarta, was entitled "The Scattering of Cosmic Rays by the Stars of a Galaxy". > Vallarta let his student in on a secret of mentor-protégé publishing: the senior scientist's name comes first. Feynman had his revenge a few years later, when Heisenberg concluded an entire book on cosmic rays with the phrase: "such an effect is not to be expected according to Vallarta and Feynman". When they next met, Feynman asked gleefully whether Vallarta had seen Heisenberg's book. Vallarta knew why Feynman was grinning. "Yes," he replied. "You're the last word in cosmic rays." The other was his senior thesis, on "Forces in Molecules", based on a topic assigned by John C. Slater, who was sufficiently impressed by the paper to have it published. Its main result is known as the Hellmann–Feynman theorem. In 1939, Feynman received a bachelor's degree and was named a Putnam Fellow. He attained a perfect score on the graduate school entrance exams to Princeton University in physics—an unprecedented feat—and an outstanding score in mathematics, but did poorly on the history and English portions. The head of the physics department there, Henry D. Smyth, had another concern, writing to Philip M. Morse to ask: "Is Feynman Jewish? We have no definite rule against Jews but have to keep their proportion in our department reasonably small because of the difficulty of placing them." Morse conceded that Feynman was indeed Jewish, but reassured Smyth that Feynman's "physiognomy and manner, however, show no trace of this characteristic". Attendees at Feynman's first seminar, which was on the classical version of the Wheeler–Feynman absorber theory, included Albert Einstein, Wolfgang Pauli, and John von Neumann. Pauli made the prescient comment that the theory would be extremely difficult to quantize, and Einstein said that one might try to apply this method to gravity in general relativity, which Sir Fred Hoyle and Jayant Narlikar did much later as the Hoyle–Narlikar theory of gravity. Feynman received a PhD from Princeton in 1942; his thesis advisor was John Archibald Wheeler. In his doctoral thesis entitled "The Principle of Least Action in Quantum Mechanics", Feynman applied the principle of stationary action to problems of quantum mechanics, inspired by a desire to quantize the Wheeler–Feynman absorber theory of electrodynamics, and laid the groundwork for the path integral formulation and Feynman diagrams. A key insight was that positrons behaved like electrons moving backwards in time. James Gleick wrote: > This was Richard Feynman nearing the crest of his powers. At twenty-three ... there may now have been no physicist on earth who could match his exuberant command over the native materials of theoretical science. It was not just a facility at mathematics (though it had become clear ... that the mathematical machinery emerging in the Wheeler–Feynman collaboration was beyond Wheeler's own ability). Feynman seemed to possess a frightening ease with the substance behind the equations, like Einstein at the same age, like the Soviet physicist Lev Landau—but few others. One of the conditions of Feynman's scholarship to Princeton was that he could not be married; nevertheless, he continued to see his high school sweetheart, Arline Greenbaum, and was determined to marry her once he had been awarded his PhD despite the knowledge that she was seriously ill with tuberculosis. This was an incurable disease at the time, and she was not expected to live more than two years. On June 29, 1942, they took the ferry to Staten Island, where they were married in the city office. The ceremony was attended by neither family nor friends and was witnessed by a pair of strangers. Feynman could kiss Arline only on the cheek. After the ceremony he took her to Deborah Hospital, where he visited her on weekends. ## Manhattan Project In 1941, with World War II raging in Europe but the United States not yet at war, Feynman spent the summer working on ballistics problems at the Frankford Arsenal in Pennsylvania. After the attack on Pearl Harbor brought the United States into the war, Feynman was recruited by Robert R. Wilson, who was working on means to produce enriched uranium for use in an atomic bomb, as part of what would become the Manhattan Project. At the time, Feynman had not earned a graduate degree. Wilson's team at Princeton was working on a device called an isotron, intended to electromagnetically separate uranium-235 from uranium-238. This was done in a quite different manner from that used by the calutron that was under development by a team under Wilson's former mentor, Ernest O. Lawrence, at the Radiation Laboratory of the University of California. On paper, the isotron was many times more efficient than the calutron, but Feynman and Paul Olum struggled to determine whether or not it was practical. Ultimately, on Lawrence's recommendation, the isotron project was abandoned. At this juncture, in early 1943, Robert Oppenheimer was establishing the Los Alamos Laboratory, a secret laboratory on a mesa in New Mexico where atomic bombs would be designed and built. An offer was made to the Princeton team to be redeployed there. "Like a bunch of professional soldiers," Wilson later recalled, "we signed up, en masse, to go to Los Alamos." Like many other young physicists, Feynman soon fell under the spell of the charismatic Oppenheimer, who telephoned Feynman long distance from Chicago to inform him that he had found a Presbyterian sanatorium in Albuquerque, New Mexico for Arline. They were among the first to depart for New Mexico, leaving on a train on March 28, 1943. The railroad supplied Arline with a wheelchair, and Feynman paid extra for a private room for her. There they spent their wedding anniversary. At Los Alamos, Feynman was assigned to Hans Bethe's Theoretical (T) Division, and impressed Bethe enough to be made a group leader. He and Bethe developed the Bethe–Feynman formula for calculating the yield of a fission bomb, which built upon previous work by Robert Serber. As a junior physicist, he was not central to the project. He administered the computation group of human computers in the theoretical division. With Stanley Frankel and Nicholas Metropolis, he assisted in establishing a system for using IBM punched cards for computation. He invented a new method of computing logarithms that he later used on the Connection Machine. An avid drummer, Feynman figured out how to get the machine to click in musical rhythms. Other work at Los Alamos included calculating neutron equations for the Los Alamos "Water Boiler", a small nuclear reactor, to measure how close an assembly of fissile material was to criticality. On completing this work, Feynman was sent to the Clinton Engineer Works in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, where the Manhattan Project had its uranium enrichment facilities. He aided the engineers there in devising safety procedures for material storage so that criticality accidents could be avoided, especially when enriched uranium came into contact with water, which acted as a neutron moderator. He insisted on giving the rank and file a lecture on nuclear physics so that they would realize the dangers. He explained that while any amount of unenriched uranium could be safely stored, the enriched uranium had to be carefully handled. He developed a series of safety recommendations for the various grades of enrichments. He was told that if the people at Oak Ridge gave him any difficulty with his proposals, he was to inform them that Los Alamos "could not be responsible for their safety otherwise". Returning to Los Alamos, Feynman was put in charge of the group responsible for the theoretical work and calculations on the proposed uranium hydride bomb, which ultimately proved to be infeasible. He was sought out by physicist Niels Bohr for one-on-one discussions. He later discovered the reason: most of the other physicists were too much in awe of Bohr to argue with him. Feynman had no such inhibitions, vigorously pointing out anything he considered to be flawed in Bohr's thinking. He said he felt as much respect for Bohr as anyone else, but once anyone got him talking about physics, he would become so focused he forgot about social niceties. Perhaps because of this, Bohr never warmed to Feynman. At Los Alamos, which was isolated for security, Feynman amused himself by investigating the combination locks on the cabinets and desks of physicists. He often found that they left the lock combinations on the factory settings, wrote the combinations down, or used easily guessable combinations like dates. He found one cabinet's combination by trying numbers he thought a physicist might use (it proved to be 27–18–28 after the base of natural logarithms, e = 2.71828 ...), and found that the three filing cabinets where a colleague kept research notes all had the same combination. He left notes in the cabinets as a prank, spooking his colleague, Frederic de Hoffmann, into thinking a spy had gained access to them. Feynman's \$380 () monthly salary was about half the amount needed for his modest living expenses and Arline's medical bills, and they were forced to dip into her \$3,300 () in savings. On weekends he borrowed a car from his friend Klaus Fuchs to drive to Albuquerque to see Arline. Asked who at Los Alamos was most likely to be a spy, Fuchs mentioned Feynman's safe-cracking and frequent trips to Albuquerque; Fuchs himself later confessed to spying for the Soviet Union. The FBI would compile a bulky file on Feynman, particularly in view of Feynman's Q clearance. Informed that Arline was dying, Feynman drove to Albuquerque and sat with her for hours until she died on June 16, 1945. He then immersed himself in work on the project and was present at the Trinity nuclear test. Feynman claimed to be the only person to see the explosion without the very dark glasses or welder's lenses provided, reasoning that it was safe to look through a truck windshield, as it would screen out the harmful ultraviolet radiation. The immense brightness of the explosion made him duck to the truck's floor, where he saw a temporary "purple splotch" afterimage. ## Cornell Feynman nominally held an appointment at the University of Wisconsin–Madison as an assistant professor of physics, but was on unpaid leave during his involvement in the Manhattan Project. In 1945, he received a letter from Dean Mark Ingraham of the College of Letters and Science requesting his return to the university to teach in the coming academic year. His appointment was not extended when he did not commit to returning. In a talk given there several years later, Feynman quipped, "It's great to be back at the only university that ever had the good sense to fire me." As early as October 30, 1943, Bethe had written to the chairman of the physics department of his university, Cornell, to recommend that Feynman be hired. On February 28, 1944, this was endorsed by Robert Bacher, also from Cornell, and one of the most senior scientists at Los Alamos. This led to an offer being made in August 1944, which Feynman accepted. Oppenheimer had also hoped to recruit Feynman to the University of California, but the head of the physics department, Raymond T. Birge, was reluctant. He made Feynman an offer in May 1945, but Feynman turned it down. Cornell matched its salary offer of \$3,900 per annum. Feynman became one of the first of the Los Alamos Laboratory's group leaders to depart, leaving for Ithaca, New York, in October 1945. Because Feynman was no longer working at the Los Alamos Laboratory, he was no longer exempt from the draft. At his induction physical, Army psychiatrists diagnosed Feynman as suffering from a mental illness and the Army gave him a 4-F exemption on mental grounds. His father died suddenly on October 8, 1946, and Feynman suffered from depression. On October 17, 1946, he wrote a letter to Arline, expressing his deep love and heartbreak. The letter was sealed and only opened after his death. "Please excuse my not mailing this," the letter concluded, "but I don't know your new address." Unable to focus on research problems, Feynman began tackling physics problems, not for utility, but for self-satisfaction. One of these involved analyzing the physics of a twirling, nutating disk as it is moving through the air, inspired by an incident in the cafeteria at Cornell when someone tossed a dinner plate in the air. He read the work of Sir William Rowan Hamilton on quaternions, and tried unsuccessfully to use them to formulate a relativistic theory of electrons. His work during this period, which used equations of rotation to express various spinning speeds, ultimately proved important to his Nobel Prize–winning work, yet because he felt burned out and had turned his attention to less immediately practical problems, he was surprised by the offers of professorships from other renowned universities, including the Institute for Advanced Study, the University of California, Los Angeles, and the University of California, Berkeley. Feynman was not the only frustrated theoretical physicist in the early post-war years. Quantum electrodynamics suffered from infinite integrals in perturbation theory. These were clear mathematical flaws in the theory, which Feynman and Wheeler had tried, unsuccessfully, to work around. "Theoreticians", noted Murray Gell-Mann, "were in disgrace". In June 1947, leading American physicists met at the Shelter Island Conference. For Feynman, it was his "first big conference with big men ... I had never gone to one like this one in peacetime." The problems plaguing quantum electrodynamics were discussed, but the theoreticians were completely overshadowed by the achievements of the experimentalists, who reported the discovery of the Lamb shift, the measurement of the magnetic moment of the electron, and Robert Marshak's two-meson hypothesis. Bethe took the lead from the work of Hans Kramers, and derived a renormalized non-relativistic quantum equation for the Lamb shift. The next step was to create a relativistic version. Feynman thought that he could do this, but when he went back to Bethe with his solution, it did not converge. Feynman carefully worked through the problem again, applying the path integral formulation that he had used in his thesis. Like Bethe, he made the integral finite by applying a cut-off term. The result corresponded to Bethe's version. Feynman presented his work to his peers at the Pocono Conference in 1948. It did not go well. Julian Schwinger gave a long presentation of his work in quantum electrodynamics, and Feynman then offered his version, entitled "Alternative Formulation of Quantum Electrodynamics". The unfamiliar Feynman diagrams, used for the first time, puzzled the audience. Feynman failed to get his point across, and Paul Dirac, Edward Teller and Niels Bohr all raised objections. To Freeman Dyson, one thing at least was clear: Shin'ichirō Tomonaga, Schwinger and Feynman understood what they were talking about even if no one else did, but had not published anything. He was convinced that Feynman's formulation was easier to understand, and ultimately managed to convince Oppenheimer that this was the case. Dyson published a paper in 1949, which added new rules to Feynman's that told how to implement renormalization. Feynman was prompted to publish his ideas in the Physical Review in a series of papers over three years. His 1948 papers on "A Relativistic Cut-Off for Classical Electrodynamics" attempted to explain what he had been unable to get across at Pocono. His 1949 paper on "The Theory of Positrons" addressed the Schrödinger equation and Dirac equation, and introduced what is now called the Feynman propagator. Finally, in papers on the "Mathematical Formulation of the Quantum Theory of Electromagnetic Interaction" in 1950 and "An Operator Calculus Having Applications in Quantum Electrodynamics" in 1951, he developed the mathematical basis of his ideas, derived familiar formulae and advanced new ones. While papers by others initially cited Schwinger, papers citing Feynman and employing Feynman diagrams appeared in 1950, and soon became prevalent. Students learned and used the powerful new tool that Feynman had created. Computer programs were later written to evaluate Feynman diagrams, enabling physicists to use quantum field theory to make high-precision predictions. Marc Kac adapted Feynman's technique of summing over possible histories of a particle to the study of parabolic partial differential equations, yielding what is now known as the Feynman–Kac formula, the use of which extends beyond physics to many applications of stochastic processes. To Schwinger, however, the Feynman diagram was "pedagogy, not physics". By 1949, Feynman was becoming restless at Cornell. He never settled into a particular house or apartment, living in guest houses or student residences, or with married friends "until these arrangements became sexually volatile". He liked to date undergraduates, hire prostitutes, and sleep with the wives of friends. He was not fond of Ithaca's cold winter weather, and pined for a warmer climate. Above all, at Cornell, he was always in the shadow of Hans Bethe. Despite all of this, Feynman looked back favorably on the Telluride House, where he resided for a large period of his Cornell career. In an interview, he described the House as "a group of boys that have been specially selected because of their scholarship, because of their cleverness or whatever it is, to be given free board and lodging and so on, because of their brains". He enjoyed the house's convenience and said that "it's there that I did the fundamental work" for which he won the Nobel Prize. ## Caltech years ### Personal and political life Feynman spent several weeks in Rio de Janeiro in July 1949. That year, the Soviet Union detonated its first atomic bomb, generating concerns about espionage. Fuchs was arrested as a Soviet spy in 1950 and the FBI questioned Bethe about Feynman's loyalty. Physicist David Bohm was arrested on December 4, 1950 and emigrated to Brazil in October 1951. Because of the fears of a nuclear war, a girlfriend told Feynman that he should also consider moving to South America. He had a sabbatical coming for 1951–1952, and elected to spend it in Brazil, where he gave courses at the Centro Brasileiro de Pesquisas Físicas. In Brazil, Feynman was impressed with samba music, and learned to play the frigideira, a metal percussion instrument based on a frying pan. He was an enthusiastic amateur player of bongo and conga drums and often played them in the pit orchestra in musicals. He spent time in Rio with his friend Bohm, but Bohm could not convince Feynman to investigate Bohm's ideas on physics. Feynman did not return to Cornell. Bacher, who had been instrumental in bringing Feynman to Cornell, had lured him to the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). Part of the deal was that he could spend his first year on sabbatical in Brazil. He had become smitten by Mary Louise Bell from Neodesha, Kansas. They had met in a cafeteria in Cornell, where she had studied the history of Mexican art and textiles. She later followed him to Caltech, where he gave a lecture. While he was in Brazil, she taught classes on the history of furniture and interiors at Michigan State University. He proposed to her by mail from Rio de Janeiro, and they married in Boise, Idaho, on June 28, 1952, shortly after he returned. They frequently quarreled and she was frightened by his violent temper. Their politics were different; although he registered and voted as a Republican, she was more conservative, and her opinion on the 1954 Oppenheimer security hearing ("Where there's smoke there's fire") offended him. They separated on May 20, 1956. An interlocutory decree of divorce was entered on June 19, 1956, on the grounds of "extreme cruelty". The divorce became final on May 5, 1958. > He begins working calculus problems in his head as soon as he awakens. He did calculus while driving in his car, while sitting in the living room, and while lying in bed at night. Mary Louise Bell, divorce complaint In the wake of the 1957 Sputnik crisis, the U.S. government's interest in science rose for a time. Feynman was considered for a seat on the President's Science Advisory Committee, but was not appointed. At this time, the FBI interviewed a woman close to Feynman, possibly his ex-wife Bell, who sent a written statement to J. Edgar Hoover on August 8, 1958: > I do not know—but I believe that Richard Feynman is either a Communist or very strongly pro-Communist—and as such is a very definite security risk. This man is, in my opinion, an extremely complex and dangerous person, a very dangerous person to have in a position of public trust ... In matters of intrigue Richard Feynman is, I believe immensely clever—indeed a genius—and he is, I further believe, completely ruthless, unhampered by morals, ethics, or religion—and will stop at absolutely nothing to achieve his ends. The U.S. government nevertheless sent Feynman to Geneva for the September 1958 Atoms for Peace Conference. On the beach at Lake Geneva, he met Gweneth Howarth, who was from Ripponden, Yorkshire, and working in Switzerland as an au pair. Feynman's love life had been turbulent since his divorce; his previous girlfriend had walked off with his Albert Einstein Award medal and, on the advice of an earlier girlfriend, had feigned pregnancy and extorted him into paying for an abortion, then used the money to buy furniture. When Feynman found that Howarth was being paid only \$25 a month, he offered her \$20 a week to be his live-in maid. Feynman knew that this sort of behavior was illegal under the Mann Act, so he had a friend, Matthew Sands, act as her sponsor. Howarth pointed out that she already had two boyfriends, but decided to take Feynman up on his offer, and arrived in Altadena, California, in June 1959. She made a point of dating other men, but Feynman proposed in early 1960. They were married on September 24, 1960, at the Huntington Hotel in Pasadena. They had a son, Carl, in 1962, and adopted a daughter, Michelle, in 1968. Besides their home in Altadena, they had a beach house in Baja California, purchased with the money from Feynman's Nobel Prize. Feynman tried marijuana and ketamine at John Lilly's sensory deprivation tanks, as a way of studying consciousness. He gave up alcohol when he began to show vague, early signs of alcoholism, as he did not want to do anything that could damage his brain. Despite his curiosity about hallucinations, he was reluctant to experiment with LSD. Feynman had synesthesia, and said that mathematical symbols had different colors for him: "When I see equations, I see the letters in colors. I don't know why. I see vague pictures of Bessel functions with light-tan j's, slightly violet-bluish n's, and dark brown x's flying around." There had been protests over his alleged sexism in 1968, and again in 1972. Although there is no evidence he supported discrimination against women in science, protestors "objected to his use of sexist stories about 'lady drivers' and clueless women in his lectures." Feynman recalled protesters entering a hall and picketing a lecture he was about to make in San Francisco, calling him a "sexist pig". Seeing the protesters, as Feynman later recalled the incident, he addressed institutional sexism by saying that "women do indeed suffer prejudice and discrimination in physics, and your presence here today serves to remind us of these difficulties and the need to remedy them". ### Physics At Caltech, Feynman investigated the physics of the superfluidity of supercooled liquid helium, where helium seems to display a complete lack of viscosity when flowing. Feynman provided a quantum-mechanical explanation for the Soviet physicist Lev Landau's theory of superfluidity. Applying the Schrödinger equation to the question showed that the superfluid was displaying quantum mechanical behavior observable on a macroscopic scale. This helped with the problem of superconductivity, but the solution eluded Feynman. It was solved with the BCS theory of superconductivity, proposed by John Bardeen, Leon Neil Cooper, and John Robert Schrieffer in 1957. Feynman, inspired by a desire to quantize the Wheeler–Feynman absorber theory of electrodynamics, laid the groundwork for the path integral formulation and Feynman diagrams. With Murray Gell-Mann, Feynman developed a model of weak decay, which showed that the current coupling in the process is a combination of vector and axial currents (an example of weak decay is the decay of a neutron into an electron, a proton, and an antineutrino). Although E. C. George Sudarshan and Robert Marshak developed the theory nearly simultaneously, Feynman's collaboration with Gell-Mann was seen as seminal because the weak interaction was neatly described by the vector and axial currents. It thus combined the 1933 beta decay theory of Enrico Fermi with an explanation of parity violation. Feynman attempted an explanation, called the parton model, of the strong interactions governing nucleon scattering. The parton model emerged as a complement to the quark model developed by Gell-Mann. The relationship between the two models was murky; Gell-Mann referred to Feynman's partons derisively as "put-ons". In the mid-1960s, physicists believed that quarks were just a bookkeeping device for symmetry numbers, not real particles; the statistics of the omega-minus particle, if it were interpreted as three identical strange quarks bound together, seemed impossible if quarks were real. The SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory deep inelastic scattering experiments of the late 1960s showed that nucleons (protons and neutrons) contained point-like particles that scattered electrons. It was natural to identify these with quarks, but Feynman's parton model attempted to interpret the experimental data in a way that did not introduce additional hypotheses. For example, the data showed that some 45% of the energy momentum was carried by electrically neutral particles in the nucleon. These electrically neutral particles are now seen to be the gluons that carry the forces between the quarks, and their three-valued color quantum number solves the omega-minus problem. Feynman did not dispute the quark model; for example, when the fifth quark was discovered in 1977, Feynman immediately pointed out to his students that the discovery implied the existence of a sixth quark, which was discovered in the decade after his death. After the success of quantum electrodynamics, Feynman turned to quantum gravity. By analogy with the photon, which has spin 1, he investigated the consequences of a free massless spin 2 field and derived the Einstein field equation of general relativity, but little more. The computational device that Feynman discovered then for gravity, "ghosts", which are "particles" in the interior of his diagrams that have the "wrong" connection between spin and statistics, have proved invaluable in explaining the quantum particle behavior of the Yang–Mills theories, for example, quantum chromodynamics and the electro-weak theory. He did work on all four of the forces of nature: electromagnetic, the weak force, the strong force and gravity. John and Mary Gribbin state in their book on Feynman that "Nobody else has made such influential contributions to the investigation of all four of the interactions". Partly as a way to bring publicity to progress in physics, Feynman offered \$1,000 prizes for two of his challenges in nanotechnology; one was claimed by William McLellan and the other by Tom Newman. Feynman was also interested in the relationship between physics and computation. He was also one of the first scientists to conceive the possibility of quantum computers. In the 1980s he began to spend his summers working at Thinking Machines Corporation, helping to build some of the first parallel supercomputers and considering the construction of quantum computers. In 1984–1986, he developed a variational method for the approximate calculation of path integrals, which has led to a powerful method of converting divergent perturbation expansions into convergent strong-coupling expansions (variational perturbation theory) and, as a consequence, to the most accurate determination of critical exponents measured in satellite experiments. At Caltech, he once chalked "What I cannot create I do not understand" on his blackboard. ### Machine technology Feynman had studied the ideas of John von Neumann while researching quantum field theory. His most famous lecture on the subject was delivered in 1959 at the California Institute of Technology, published under the title There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom a year later. In this lecture he theorized on future opportunities for designing miniaturized machines, which could build smaller reproductions of themselves. This lecture is frequently cited in technical literature on microtechnology, and nanotechnology. ### Pedagogy In the early 1960s, Feynman acceded to a request to "spruce up" the teaching of undergraduates at the California Institute of Technology, also called Caltech. After three years devoted to the task, he produced a series of lectures that later became The Feynman Lectures on Physics. Accounts vary about how successful the original lectures were. Feynman's own preface, written just after an exam on which the students did poorly, was somewhat pessimistic. His colleagues David L. Goodstein and Gerry Neugebauer said later that the intended audience of first-year students found the material intimidating while older students and faculty found it inspirational, so the lecture hall remained full even as the first-year students dropped away. In contrast, physicist Matthew Sands recalled the student attendance as being typical for a large lecture course. Converting the lectures into books occupied Matthew Sands and Robert B. Leighton as part-time co-authors for several years. Feynman suggested that the book cover should have a picture of a drum with mathematical diagrams about vibrations drawn upon it, in order to illustrate the application of mathematics to understanding the world. Instead, the publishers gave the books plain red covers, though they included a picture of Feynman playing drums in the foreword. Even though the books were not adopted by universities as textbooks, they continue to sell well because they provide a deep understanding of physics. Many of Feynman's lectures and miscellaneous talks were turned into other books, including The Character of Physical Law, QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter, Statistical Mechanics, Lectures on Gravitation, and the Feynman Lectures on Computation. Feynman wrote about his experiences teaching physics undergraduates in Brazil. The students' studying habits and the Portuguese language textbooks were so devoid of any context or applications for their information that, in Feynman's opinion, the students were not learning physics at all. At the end of the year, Feynman was invited to give a lecture on his teaching experiences, and he agreed to do so, provided he could speak frankly, which he did. Feynman opposed rote learning, or unthinking memorization, as well as other teaching methods that emphasized form over function. In his mind, clear thinking and clear presentation were fundamental prerequisites for his attention. It could be perilous even to approach him unprepared, and he did not forget fools and pretenders. In 1964, he served on the California State Curriculum Commission, which was responsible for approving textbooks to be used by schools in California. He was not impressed with what he found. Many of the mathematics texts covered subjects of use only to pure mathematicians as part of the "New Math". Elementary students were taught about sets, but: > It will perhaps surprise most people who have studied these textbooks to discover that the symbol ∪ or ∩ representing union and intersection of sets and the special use of the brackets { } and so forth, all the elaborate notation for sets that is given in these books, almost never appear in any writings in theoretical physics, in engineering, in business arithmetic, computer design, or other places where mathematics is being used. I see no need or reason for this all to be explained or to be taught in school. It is not a useful way to express one's self. It is not a cogent and simple way. It is claimed to be precise, but precise for what purpose? In April 1966, Feynman delivered an address to the National Science Teachers Association, in which he suggested how students could be made to think like scientists, be open-minded, curious, and especially, to doubt. In the course of the lecture, he gave a definition of science, which he said came about by several stages. The evolution of intelligent life on planet Earth—creatures such as cats that play and learn from experience. The evolution of humans, who came to use language to pass knowledge from one individual to the next, so that the knowledge was not lost when an individual died. Unfortunately, incorrect knowledge could be passed down as well as correct knowledge, so another step was needed. Galileo and others started doubting the truth of what was passed down and to investigate ab initio, from experience, what the true situation was—this was science. In 1974, Feynman delivered the Caltech commencement address on the topic of cargo cult science, which has the semblance of science, but is only pseudoscience due to a lack of "a kind of scientific integrity, a principle of scientific thought that corresponds to a kind of utter honesty" on the part of the scientist. He instructed the graduating class that "The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool. So you have to be very careful about that. After you've not fooled yourself, it's easy not to fool other scientists. You just have to be honest in a conventional way after that." Feynman served as doctoral advisor to 30 students. ### Case before the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission In 1977, Feynman supported his colleague Jenijoy La Belle, who had been hired as Caltech's first female professor in 1969, and filed suit with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission after she was refused tenure in 1974. The EEOC ruled against Caltech in 1977, adding that La Belle had been paid less than male colleagues. La Belle finally received tenure in 1979. Many of Feynman's colleagues were surprised that he took her side, but he had gotten to know La Belle and liked and admired her. ### Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! In the 1960s, Feynman began thinking of writing an autobiography, and he began granting interviews to historians. In the 1980s, working with Ralph Leighton (Robert Leighton's son), he recorded chapters on audio tape that Ralph transcribed. The book was published in 1985 as Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! and became a best-seller. Gell-Mann was upset by Feynman's account in the book of the weak interaction work, and threatened to sue, resulting in a correction being inserted in later editions. This incident was just the latest provocation in decades of bad feeling between the two scientists. Gell-Mann often expressed frustration at the attention Feynman received; he remarked: "[Feynman] was a great scientist, but he spent a great deal of his effort generating anecdotes about himself." Feynman has been criticized for a chapter in the book entitled "You Just Ask Them?", where he describes how he learned to seduce women at a bar he went to in the summer of 1946. A mentor taught him to ask a woman if she would sleep with him before buying her anything. He describes seeing women at the bar as "bitches" in his thoughts, and tells a story of how he told a woman named Ann that she was "worse than a whore" after Ann persuaded him to buy her sandwiches by telling him he could eat them at her place, but then, after he bought them, saying they actually could not eat together because another man was coming over. Later on that same evening, Ann returned to the bar to take Feynman to her place. Feynman states at the end of the chapter that this behaviour was not typical of him: "So it worked even with an ordinary girl! But no matter how effective the lesson was, I never really used it after that. I didn't enjoy doing it that way. But it was interesting to know that things worked much differently from how I was brought up." ### Challenger disaster Feynman played an important role on the Presidential Rogers Commission, which investigated the 1986 Challenger disaster. He had been reluctant to participate, but was persuaded by advice from his wife. Feynman clashed several times with commission chairman William P. Rogers. During a break in one hearing, Rogers told commission member Neil Armstrong, "Feynman is becoming a pain in the ass." During a televised hearing, Feynman demonstrated that the material used in the shuttle's O-rings became less resilient in cold weather by compressing a sample of the material in a clamp and immersing it in ice-cold water. The commission ultimately determined that the disaster was caused by the primary O-ring not properly sealing in unusually cold weather at Cape Canaveral. Feynman devoted the latter half of his 1988 book What Do You Care What Other People Think? to his experience on the Rogers Commission, straying from his usual convention of brief, light-hearted anecdotes to deliver an extended and sober narrative. Feynman's account reveals a disconnect between NASA's engineers and executives that was far more striking than he expected. His interviews of NASA's high-ranking managers revealed startling misunderstandings of elementary concepts. For instance, NASA managers claimed that there was a 1 in 100,000 probability of a catastrophic failure aboard the Shuttle, but Feynman discovered that NASA's own engineers estimated the probability of a catastrophe at closer to 1 in 200. He concluded that NASA management's estimate of the reliability of the Space Shuttle was unrealistic, and he was particularly angered that NASA used it to recruit Christa McAuliffe into the Teacher-in-Space program. He warned in his appendix to the commission's report (which was included only after he threatened not to sign the report), "For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled." ### Recognition and awards The first public recognition of Feynman's work came in 1954, when Lewis Strauss, the chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) notified him that he had won the Albert Einstein Award, which was worth \$15,000 and came with a gold medal. Because of Strauss's actions in stripping Oppenheimer of his security clearance, Feynman was reluctant to accept the award, but Isidor Isaac Rabi cautioned him: "You should never turn a man's generosity as a sword against him. Any virtue that a man has, even if he has many vices, should not be used as a tool against him." It was followed by the AEC's Ernest Orlando Lawrence Award in 1962. Schwinger, Tomonaga and Feynman shared the 1965 Nobel Prize in Physics "for their fundamental work in quantum electrodynamics, with deep-ploughing consequences for the physics of elementary particles". He was elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Society in 1965, received the Oersted Medal in 1972, and the National Medal of Science in 1979. He was elected a Member of the National Academy of Sciences, but ultimately resigned and is no longer listed by them. ## Death In 1978, Feynman sought medical treatment for abdominal pains and was diagnosed with liposarcoma, a rare form of cancer. Surgeons removed a "very large" tumor that had crushed one kidney and his spleen. Further operations were performed in October 1986 and October 1987. He was again hospitalized at the UCLA Medical Center on February 3, 1988. A ruptured duodenal ulcer caused kidney failure, and he declined to undergo the dialysis that might have prolonged his life for a few months. Feynman's wife Gweneth, sister Joan, and cousin Frances Lewine watched over him during the final days of his life until he died on February 15, 1988. When Feynman was nearing death, he asked his friend and colleague Danny Hillis why Hillis appeared so sad. Hillis replied that he thought Feynman was going to die soon. Feynman said that this sometimes bothered him, too, but added that he had told so many stories to so many people that he would not be completely gone even after his death. Near the end of his life, Feynman attempted to visit the Tuvan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (ASSR) in the Soviet Union, a dream thwarted by Cold War bureaucratic issues. The letter from the Soviet government authorizing the trip was not received until the day after he died. His daughter Michelle later made the journey. His burial was at Mountain View Cemetery and Mausoleum in Altadena, California. His last words were: "I'd hate to die twice. It's so boring." ## Popular legacy Aspects of Feynman's life have been portrayed in various media. Feynman was portrayed by Matthew Broderick in the 1996 biopic Infinity. Actor Alan Alda commissioned playwright Peter Parnell to write a two-character play about a fictional day in the life of Feynman set two years before Feynman's death. The play, QED, premiered at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles in 2001 and was later presented at the Vivian Beaumont Theater on Broadway, with both presentations starring Alda as Richard Feynman. Real Time Opera premiered its opera Feynman at the Norfolk (CT) Chamber Music Festival in June 2005. In 2011, Feynman was the subject of a biographical graphic novel entitled simply Feynman, written by Jim Ottaviani and illustrated by Leland Myrick. In 2013, Feynman's role on the Rogers Commission was dramatised by the BBC in The Challenger (US title: The Challenger Disaster), with William Hurt playing Feynman. In 2016, Oscar Isaac performed a public reading of Feynman's 1946 love letter to the late Arline. In the 2023 American film Oppenheimer, directed by Christopher Nolan and based on American Prometheus, Feynman is portrayed by actor Jack Quaid. Feynman is commemorated in various ways. On May 4, 2005, the United States Postal Service issued the "American Scientists" commemorative set of four 37-cent self-adhesive stamps in several configurations. The scientists depicted were Richard Feynman, John von Neumann, Barbara McClintock, and Josiah Willard Gibbs. Feynman's stamp, sepia-toned, features a photograph of Feynman in his thirties and eight small Feynman diagrams. The stamps were designed by Victor Stabin under the artistic direction of Carl T. Herrman. The main building for the Computing Division at Fermilab is named the "Feynman Computing Center" in his honor. Two photographs of Feynman were used in Apple Computer's "Think Different" advertising campaign, which launched in 1997. Sheldon Cooper, a fictional theoretical physicist from the television series The Big Bang Theory, is a Feynman fan who has emulated him on various occasions, once by playing the bongo drums. On January 27, 2016, co-founder of Microsoft Bill Gates wrote an article describing Feynman's talents as a teacher ("The Best Teacher I Never Had"), which inspired Gates to create Project Tuva to place the videos of Feynman's Messenger Lectures, The Character of Physical Law, on a website for public viewing. In 2015 Gates made a video in response to Caltech's request for thoughts on Feynman for the 50th anniversary of Feynman's 1965 Nobel Prize, on why he thought Feynman was special. At CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research, home of the Large Hadron Collider), a street on the Meyrin site is named "Route Feynman".

Arena (countermeasure)

Arena (Russian: Арена) or Kazt, is an active protection system (APS) developed at Russia's Kolomna-based Engineering Design Bureau for the purpose of protecting armoured fighting vehicles from destruction by light anti-tank weapons, anti-tank guided missiles (ATGM), and flyover top attack missiles. It uses a Doppler radar to detect incoming warheads. Upon detection, a defensive rocket is fired that detonates near the inbound threat, destroying it before it hits the vehicle. Arena is similar to Drozd, a Soviet active protection system from the late 1970s, which was installed on several T-55s during the Soviet–Afghan War. The system improved the vehicle's survivability rate, increasing it by up to 80%. Drozd was followed by Shtora in the late 1980s, which used an electro-optical dazzlers or expendable so (smoke/IR smoke) to confuse the seeker head or defeat the user. In late 1994 the Russian Army deployed many armoured fighting vehicles to Chechnya, where they were ambushed and suffered heavy casualties. The effectiveness of Chechen rocket-propelled grenades against Russian combat vehicles prompted the Kolomenskoye machine-building design bureau to devise the Arena active protection system in the early and mid-1990s. An export variant, Arena-E, was also developed. The system has been tested on the T-80UM-1, demonstrated at Omsk in 1997. ## Background The Soviet Union developed the first active protection system between 1977 and 1982, named Drozd (Russian: Дрозд). This system was designed as an alternative to passive or reactive armour, to defend against enemy anti-tank weapons. The system's development was stimulated in large part by the introduction of new high-explosive anti-tank warheads. Drozd was designed to destroy these warheads before they hit the armour of a vehicle being attacked. It was composed of three main parts: two launcher arrays placed on either side of the gun turret and an auxiliary power unit located to the rear of the turret. The arrays were controlled by two millimeter-wave radar antennae. The system used a 19 kilograms (42 lb), 107 millimeters (4.2 in) cone-shaped fragmentation warhead. Drozd could protect a tank between the elevations of −6 and 20 degrees along the vertical plane, and between 40 and 60 degrees along the horizontal plane. Although reported to offer an 80% increase in survival rate during its testing in Afghanistan, the radar was unable to adequately detect threats and the firing of its rockets caused unacceptably high levels of collateral damage. About 250 Drozd systems were manufactured, all of which were installed on T-55s belonging to the Soviet Union's naval infantry. In the late 1980s, the Soviet Army began development of the Shtora-1 electro-optical jammer. It was first mounted on a T-80U in 1989, and later showcased on a T-72B (renamed T-72BU and later T-90). Shtora-1 is designed to jam incoming anti-tank missiles using a one-kilowatt infrared radiator. In 1995, it was fitted on a Ukrainian T-84. The Shtora-1 system consists of an infra-red radiator interface station, composed of the jammer, modulator and control panel, a number of forward-firing grenade discharges capable of producing a smoke screen, a laser warning receiver and a general control panel. Shtora offers 360 degree all-around protection, between the elevations of −5 and 25 degrees. The system is activated when the laser warning system alerts the tank commander, who responds by pressing a button on his control panel which automatically orients the turret towards the threat. This triggers the grenade launch, creating a smoke screen to reduce the ability of the missile to lock-on the vehicle. The jammers are designed to jam the infra-red seekers on the inbound missiles. According to the manufacturers, Shtora decreases the chances of a tank being hit by an anti-tank missile, such as the Dragon, by a factor of 4–5:1. The large number of Russia's casualties during the First Chechen War prompted Russia to consider the development of a new active protection system. During the Battle of Grozny, for example, the Russian Army lost between 200 and 250 armoured fighting vehicles to Chechen rebels. Vehicles which were knocked-out included main battle tanks such as the T-72 and T-80, and lighter armoured vehicles such as the BMP-2. The majority of tanks deployed to Chechnya were not issued with explosive reactive armour, due to the "lack of time and funds", while some of those that were issued with reactive armour did not have the explosive charge to start the reaction. Some of the most dangerous threats to Russian armour were rocket-propelled grenades fired from buildings in Grozny. As a result of these vulnerabilities, Kolomenskoye developed the Arena active protection system, with the goal of providing Russian armour more reliable protection against these threats. ## System details The Arena system was primarily designed to defeat threats such as the rocket propelled grenade and the anti-tank missile, including newer anti-tank missiles with longer ranges. The active protection system can protect against missiles fired from both infantry carried rocket launchers and from helicopters, which attack the vehicle directly or by overflying it. Modern rocket propelled grenades can penetrate almost 1 metre (39 in) of steel armour, posing a serious threat to tanks operating in environments of asymmetric warfare. Therefore, increased tank protection requires either an increase in armour thickness and weight, or alternatively the use of an active protection system, like Arena. The system uses a multi-function Doppler radar, which can be turned on and off by the tank commander. In conjunction with radar input, a digital computer scans an arc around the tank for threats, and evaluates which of the tank's 26 quick-action projectiles it will release to intercept the incoming threat. In selecting the projectile to use for defeating the threat, the ballistic computer employs the information processed by the radar, including information such as flight parameters and velocity. On the T-80UM, the computer has a reaction time of 0.05 seconds and protects the tank over a 300-degree arc, everywhere but the rear side of the turret. On the T-72M1, Arena covers the frontal 260-degrees. Arena ordinarily covers an elevation from -85 degrees to +65 degrees. On the BMP-3M, the Arena-E covers the frontal 275 degrees from an elevation of -5 degrees to +15 degrees. The system engages targets within 50 metres (55 yd) of the vehicle it is defending, and the ammunition detonates at around 1.5 metres (1.6 yd) from the threat. It will engage any threat approaching the tank between the velocities of 70 metres per second (230 ft/s) and 700 metres per second (2,300 ft/s), and can disregard false targets, such as outgoing projectiles, birds and small caliber bullets. If the computer detects that the projectile is heading towards an already discharged panel it can rotate the turret to point an active panel at the threat. Arena works during the day and night, and the lack of electromagnetic interference allows the system to be used by multiple vehicles as a team. The 27-volt system requires approximately one kilowatt of power, and weighs around 1,100 kilograms (2,400 lb). Arena increases a tank's probability of surviving a rocket-propelled grenade by between 1.5–2 times. Shtora was a soft-kill system, designed to passively defeat anti-tank missiles by jamming their guidance systems. By contrast, Arena is a hard-kill system like Drozd, designed to destroy the warhead through the use of munitions before the missile can engage the vehicle being protected. ## Arena-M The modernized Arena-M's manufacturer claims it is able to intercept munitions coming from all aspects, including true top-attack missiles like the Javelin and that it will be installed on Russian T-80 and T-90 tanks. In 2023, Russian state news agency RIA Novosto reported that Russia would soon equip its T-90M and T-80BVM tanks with Arena-M. The report also said that Russia was also exploring installing the system T-72B3 and T-72B3M tanks. ## Development Arena evolved from the earlier Shater (Tent) active protection system first fitted to the Obiekt 476M. Arena was first fitted to the Obiekt 219E, a T-80B series experimental tank that later became known as the T80BM1. The existence of this program was revealed in 1992. The Arena active protection system was first tested at the Kubinka proving grounds in early 1995, successfully defending a Russian tank against an anti-tank guided missile. A Russian T-80UM-1, with Arena, was first demonstrated to the public at Omsk in late 1997. Arena was also mounted on the BMP-3M modernization package, developed by the Kurganmashzavod Joint Stock Company, although the package has received no export orders. As of 2011, Arena had not entered quantity production. ## Exports In 2011, Russia offered India the Arena system for use on the T-72. It is unknown whether India accepted any deliveries of Arena as of 2011. An export variant, named Arena-E (Арена-Э), is available, costing an estimated \$300,000. It weighs about 900 kilograms (2,000 lb). In 2007 South Korea and KBM Design Bureau reached an agreement to fit the Arena-E on the K2 main battle tank. The agreement was worth about .

Helium

Helium (from Greek: ἥλιος, romanized: helios, lit. 'sun') is a chemical element with the symbol He and atomic number 2. It is a colorless, odorless, tasteless, non-toxic, inert, monatomic gas and the first in the noble gas group in the periodic table. Its boiling point is the lowest among all the elements, and it does not have a melting point at standard pressure. It is the second-lightest and second most abundant element in the observable universe, after hydrogen. It is present at about 24% of the total elemental mass, which is more than 12 times the mass of all the heavier elements combined. Its abundance is similar to this in both the Sun and Jupiter, because of the very high nuclear binding energy (per nucleon) of helium-4, with respect to the next three elements after helium. This helium-4 binding energy also accounts for why it is a product of both nuclear fusion and radioactive decay. The most common isotope of helium in the universe is helium-4, the vast majority of which was formed during the Big Bang. Large amounts of new helium are created by nuclear fusion of hydrogen in stars. Helium was first detected as an unknown, yellow spectral line signature in sunlight during a solar eclipse in 1868 by Georges Rayet, Captain C. T. Haig, Norman R. Pogson, and Lieutenant John Herschel, and was subsequently confirmed by French astronomer Jules Janssen. Janssen is often jointly credited with detecting the element, along with Norman Lockyer. Janssen recorded the helium spectral line during the solar eclipse of 1868, while Lockyer observed it from Britain. Lockyer was the first to propose that the line was due to a new element, which he named after the Sun. The formal discovery of the element was made in 1895 by chemists Sir William Ramsay, Per Teodor Cleve, and Nils Abraham Langlet, who found helium emanating from the uranium ore, cleveite, which is now not regarded as a separate mineral species, but as a variety of uraninite. In 1903, large reserves of helium were found in natural gas fields in parts of the United States, by far the largest supplier of the gas today. Liquid helium is used in cryogenics (its largest single use, consuming about a quarter of production), and in the cooling of superconducting magnets, with its main commercial application in MRI scanners. Helium's other industrial uses—as a pressurizing and purge gas, as a protective atmosphere for arc welding, and in processes such as growing crystal to make silicon wafers—account for half of the gas produced. A small but well-known use is as a lifting gas in balloons and airships. As with any gas whose density differs from that of air, inhaling a small volume of helium temporarily changes the timbre and quality of the human voice. In scientific research, the behavior of the two fluid phases of helium-4 (helium I and helium II) is important to researchers studying quantum mechanics (in particular the property of superfluidity) and to those looking at the phenomena, such as superconductivity, produced in matter near absolute zero. On Earth, it is relatively rare—5.2 ppm by volume in the atmosphere. Most terrestrial helium present today is created by the natural radioactive decay of heavy radioactive elements (thorium and uranium, although there are other examples), as the alpha particles emitted by such decays consist of helium-4 nuclei. This radiogenic helium is trapped with natural gas in concentrations as great as 7% by volume, from which it is extracted commercially by a low-temperature separation process called fractional distillation. Terrestrial helium is a non-renewable resource because once released into the atmosphere, it promptly escapes into space. Its supply is thought to be rapidly diminishing. However, some studies suggest that helium produced deep in the Earth by radioactive decay can collect in natural gas reserves in larger-than-expected quantities, in some cases having been released by volcanic activity. ## History ### Scientific discoveries The first evidence of helium was observed on August 18, 1868, as a bright yellow line with a wavelength of 587.49 nanometers in the spectrum of the chromosphere of the Sun. The line was detected by French astronomer Jules Janssen during a total solar eclipse in Guntur, India. This line was initially assumed to be sodium. On October 20 of the same year, English astronomer, Norman Lockyer, observed a yellow line in the solar spectrum, which, he named the D₃ because it was near the known D₁ and D₂ Fraunhofer lines of sodium. He concluded that it was caused by an element in the Sun unknown on Earth. Lockyer and English chemist Edward Frankland named the element with the Greek word for the Sun, ἥλιος (helios). In 1881, Italian physicist Luigi Palmieri detected helium on Earth for the first time through its D₃ spectral line, when he analyzed a material that had been sublimated during a recent eruption of Mount Vesuvius. On March 26, 1895, Scottish chemist Sir William Ramsay isolated helium on Earth by treating the mineral cleveite (a variety of uraninite with at least 10% rare-earth elements) with mineral acids. Ramsay was looking for argon but, after separating nitrogen and oxygen from the gas, liberated by sulfuric acid, he noticed a bright yellow line that matched the D₃ line observed in the spectrum of the Sun. These samples were identified as helium by Lockyer and British physicist William Crookes. It was independently isolated from cleveite, in the same year, by chemists, Per Teodor Cleve and Abraham Langlet, in Uppsala, Sweden, who collected enough of the gas to accurately determine its atomic weight. Helium was also isolated by the American geochemist, William Francis Hillebrand, prior to Ramsay's discovery, when he noticed unusual spectral lines while testing a sample of the mineral uraninite. Hillebrand, however, attributed the lines to nitrogen. His letter of congratulations to Ramsay offers an interesting case of discovery, and near-discovery, in science. In 1907, Ernest Rutherford and Thomas Royds demonstrated that alpha particles are helium nuclei, by allowing the particles to penetrate the thin, glass wall of an evacuated tube, then creating a discharge in the tube, to study the spectrum of the new gas inside. In 1908, helium was first liquefied by Dutch physicist Heike Kamerlingh Onnes by cooling the gas to less than 5 K (−268.15 °C; −450.67 °F). He tried to solidify it, by further reducing the temperature, but failed, because helium does not solidify at atmospheric pressure. Onnes' student Willem Hendrik Keesom was eventually able to solidify 1 cm³ of helium in 1926 by applying additional external pressure. In 1913, Niels Bohr published his "trilogy" on atomic structure that included a reconsideration of the Pickering–Fowler series as central evidence in support of his model of the atom. This series is named for Edward Charles Pickering, who in 1896 published observations of previously unknown lines in the spectrum of the star ζ Puppis (these are now known to occur with Wolf–Rayet and other hot stars). Pickering attributed the observation (lines at 4551, 5411, and 10123 Å) to a new form of hydrogen with half-integer transition levels. In 1912, Alfred Fowler managed to produce similar lines from a hydrogen-helium mixture, and supported Pickering's conclusion as to their origin. Bohr's model does not allow for half-integer transitions (nor does quantum mechanics) and Bohr concluded that Pickering and Fowler were wrong, and instead assigned these spectral lines to ionised helium, He⁺. Fowler was initially skeptical but was ultimately convinced that Bohr was correct, and by 1915 "spectroscopists had transferred [the Pickering–Fowler series] definitively [from hydrogen] to helium." Bohr's theoretical work on the Pickering series had demonstrated the need for "a re-examination of problems that seemed already to have been solved within classical theories" and provided important confirmation for his atomic theory. In 1938, Russian physicist Pyotr Leonidovich Kapitsa discovered that helium-4 has almost no viscosity at temperatures near absolute zero, a phenomenon now called superfluidity. This phenomenon is related to Bose–Einstein condensation. In 1972, the same phenomenon was observed in helium-3, but at temperatures much closer to absolute zero, by American physicists Douglas D. Osheroff, David M. Lee, and Robert C. Richardson. The phenomenon in helium-3 is thought to be related to pairing of helium-3 fermions to make bosons, in analogy to Cooper pairs of electrons producing superconductivity. In 1961, Vignos and Fairbank reported the existence of a different phase of solid helium-4, designated the gamma-phase. It exists for a narrow range of pressure between 1.45 and 1.78 K. ### Extraction and use After an oil drilling operation in 1903 in Dexter, Kansas produced a gas geyser that would not burn, Kansas state geologist Erasmus Haworth collected samples of the escaping gas and took them back to the University of Kansas at Lawrence where, with the help of chemists Hamilton Cady and David McFarland, he discovered that the gas consisted of, by volume, 72% nitrogen, 15% methane (a combustible percentage only with sufficient oxygen), 1% hydrogen, and 12% an unidentifiable gas. With further analysis, Cady and McFarland discovered that 1.84% of the gas sample was helium. This showed that despite its overall rarity on Earth, helium was concentrated in large quantities under the American Great Plains, available for extraction as a byproduct of natural gas. This enabled the United States to become the world's leading supplier of helium. Following a suggestion by Sir Richard Threlfall, the United States Navy sponsored three small experimental helium plants during World War I. The goal was to supply barrage balloons with the non-flammable, lighter-than-air gas. A total of 5,700 m³ (200,000 cu ft) of 92% helium was produced in the program even though less than a cubic meter of the gas had previously been obtained. Some of this gas was used in the world's first helium-filled airship, the U.S. Navy's C-class blimp C-7, which flew its maiden voyage from Hampton Roads, Virginia, to Bolling Field in Washington, D.C., on December 1, 1921, nearly two years before the Navy's first rigid helium-filled airship, the Naval Aircraft Factory-built USS Shenandoah, flew in September 1923. Although the extraction process using low-temperature gas liquefaction was not developed in time to be significant during World War I, production continued. Helium was primarily used as a lifting gas in lighter-than-air craft. During World War II, the demand increased for helium for lifting gas and for shielded arc welding. The helium mass spectrometer was also vital in the atomic bomb Manhattan Project. The government of the United States set up the National Helium Reserve in 1925 at Amarillo, Texas, with the goal of supplying military airships in time of war and commercial airships in peacetime. Because of the Helium Act of 1925, which banned the export of scarce helium on which the US then had a production monopoly, together with the prohibitive cost of the gas, German Zeppelins were forced to use hydrogen as lifting gas, which would gain infamy in the Hindenburg disaster. The helium market after World War II was depressed but the reserve was expanded in the 1950s to ensure a supply of liquid helium as a coolant to create oxygen/hydrogen rocket fuel (among other uses) during the Space Race and Cold War. Helium use in the United States in 1965 was more than eight times the peak wartime consumption. After the Helium Acts Amendments of 1960 (Public Law 86–777), the U.S. Bureau of Mines arranged for five private plants to recover helium from natural gas. For this helium conservation program, the Bureau built a 425-mile (684 km) pipeline from Bushton, Kansas, to connect those plants with the government's partially depleted Cliffside gas field near Amarillo, Texas. This helium-nitrogen mixture was injected and stored in the Cliffside gas field until needed, at which time it was further purified. By 1995, a billion cubic meters of the gas had been collected and the reserve was US\$1.4 billion in debt, prompting the Congress of the United States in 1996 to discontinue the reserve. The resulting Helium Privatization Act of 1996 (Public Law 104–273) directed the United States Department of the Interior to empty the reserve, with sales starting by 2005. Helium produced between 1930 and 1945 was about 98.3% pure (2% nitrogen), which was adequate for airships. In 1945, a small amount of 99.9% helium was produced for welding use. By 1949, commercial quantities of Grade A 99.95% helium were available. For many years, the United States produced more than 90% of commercially usable helium in the world, while extraction plants in Canada, Poland, Russia, and other nations produced the remainder. In the mid-1990s, a new plant in Arzew, Algeria, producing 17 million cubic meters (600 million cubic feet) began operation, with enough production to cover all of Europe's demand. Meanwhile, by 2000, the consumption of helium within the U.S. had risen to more than 15 million kg per year. In 2004–2006, additional plants in Ras Laffan, Qatar, and Skikda, Algeria were built. Algeria quickly became the second leading producer of helium. Through this time, both helium consumption and the costs of producing helium increased. From 2002 to 2007 helium prices doubled. As of 2012, the United States National Helium Reserve accounted for 30 percent of the world's helium. The reserve was expected to run out of helium in 2018. Despite that, a proposed bill in the United States Senate would allow the reserve to continue to sell the gas. Other large reserves were in the Hugoton in Kansas, United States, and nearby gas fields of Kansas and the panhandles of Texas and Oklahoma. New helium plants were scheduled to open in 2012 in Qatar, Russia, and the US state of Wyoming, but they were not expected to ease the shortage. In 2013, Qatar started up the world's largest helium unit, although the 2017 Qatar diplomatic crisis severely affected helium production there. 2014 was widely acknowledged to be a year of over-supply in the helium business, following years of renowned shortages. Nasdaq reported (2015) that for Air Products, an international corporation that sells gases for industrial use, helium volumes remain under economic pressure due to feedstock supply constraints. ## Characteristics ### Atom #### In quantum mechanics In the perspective of quantum mechanics, helium is the second simplest atom to model, following the hydrogen atom. Helium is composed of two electrons in atomic orbitals surrounding a nucleus containing two protons and (usually) two neutrons. As in Newtonian mechanics, no system that consists of more than two particles can be solved with an exact analytical mathematical approach (see 3-body problem) and helium is no exception. Thus, numerical mathematical methods are required, even to solve the system of one nucleus and two electrons. Such computational chemistry methods have been used to create a quantum mechanical picture of helium electron binding which is accurate to within \< 2% of the correct value, in a few computational steps. Such models show that each electron in helium partly screens the nucleus from the other, so that the effective nuclear charge Z_eff which each electron sees is about 1.69 units, not the 2 charges of a classic "bare" helium nucleus. #### Related stability of the helium-4 nucleus and electron shell The nucleus of the helium-4 atom is identical with an alpha particle. High-energy electron-scattering experiments show its charge to decrease exponentially from a maximum at a central point, exactly as does the charge density of helium's own electron cloud. This symmetry reflects similar underlying physics: the pair of neutrons and the pair of protons in helium's nucleus obey the same quantum mechanical rules as do helium's pair of electrons (although the nuclear particles are subject to a different nuclear binding potential), so that all these fermions fully occupy 1s orbitals in pairs, none of them possessing orbital angular momentum, and each cancelling the other's intrinsic spin. Adding another of any of these particles would require angular momentum and would release substantially less energy (in fact, no nucleus with five nucleons is stable). This arrangement is thus energetically extremely stable for all these particles, and this stability accounts for many crucial facts regarding helium in nature. For example, the stability and low energy of the electron cloud state in helium accounts for the element's chemical inertness, and also the lack of interaction of helium atoms with each other, producing the lowest melting and boiling points of all the elements. In a similar way, the particular energetic stability of the helium-4 nucleus, produced by similar effects, accounts for the ease of helium-4 production in atomic reactions that involve either heavy-particle emission or fusion. Some stable helium-3 (two protons and one neutron) is produced in fusion reactions from hydrogen, but it is a very small fraction compared to the highly favorable helium-4. The unusual stability of the helium-4 nucleus is also important cosmologically: it explains the fact that in the first few minutes after the Big Bang, as the "soup" of free protons and neutrons which had initially been created in about 6:1 ratio cooled to the point that nuclear binding was possible, almost all first compound atomic nuclei to form were helium-4 nuclei. Owing to the relatively tight binding of helium-4 nuclei, its production consumed nearly all of the free neutrons in a few minutes, before they could beta-decay, and thus few neutrons were available to form heavier atoms such as lithium, beryllium, or boron. Helium-4 nuclear binding per nucleon is stronger than in any of these elements (see nucleogenesis and binding energy) and thus, once helium had been formed, no energetic drive was available to make elements 3, 4 and 5. It is barely energetically favorable for helium to fuse into the next element with a lower energy per nucleon, carbon. However, due to lack of intermediate elements, this process requires three helium nuclei striking each other nearly simultaneously (see triple alpha process). There was thus no time for significant carbon to be formed in the few minutes after the Big Bang, before the early expanding universe cooled to the temperature and pressure point where helium fusion to carbon was no longer possible. This left the early universe with a very similar ratio of hydrogen/helium as is observed today (3 parts hydrogen to 1 part helium-4 by mass), with nearly all the neutrons in the universe trapped in helium-4. All heavier elements (including those necessary for rocky planets like the Earth, and for carbon-based or other life) have thus been created since the Big Bang in stars which were hot enough to fuse helium itself. All elements other than hydrogen and helium today account for only 2% of the mass of atomic matter in the universe. Helium-4, by contrast, makes up about 23% of the universe's ordinary matter—nearly all the ordinary matter that is not hydrogen. ### Gas and plasma phases Helium is the second least reactive noble gas after neon, and thus the second least reactive of all elements. It is chemically inert and monatomic in all standard conditions. Because of helium's relatively low molar (atomic) mass, its thermal conductivity, specific heat, and sound speed in the gas phase are all greater than any other gas except hydrogen. For these reasons and the small size of helium monatomic molecules, helium diffuses through solids at a rate three times that of air and around 65% that of hydrogen. Helium is the least water-soluble monatomic gas, and one of the least water-soluble of any gas (CF₄, SF₆, and C₄F₈ have lower mole fraction solubilities: 0.3802, 0.4394, and 0.2372 x₂/10⁻⁵, respectively, versus helium's 0.70797 x₂/10⁻⁵), and helium's index of refraction is closer to unity than that of any other gas. Helium has a negative Joule–Thomson coefficient at normal ambient temperatures, meaning it heats up when allowed to freely expand. Only below its Joule–Thomson inversion temperature (of about 32 to 50 K at 1 atmosphere) does it cool upon free expansion. Once precooled below this temperature, helium can be liquefied through expansion cooling. Most extraterrestrial helium is plasma in stars, with properties quite different from those of atomic helium. In a plasma, helium's electrons are not bound to its nucleus, resulting in very high electrical conductivity, even when the gas is only partially ionized. The charged particles are highly influenced by magnetic and electric fields. For example, in the solar wind together with ionized hydrogen, the particles interact with the Earth's magnetosphere, giving rise to Birkeland currents and the aurora. ### Liquid phase Helium liquifies when cooled below 4.2 K at atmospheric pressure. Unlike any other element, however, helium remains liquid down to a temperature of absolute zero. This is a direct effect of quantum mechanics: specifically, the zero point energy of the system is too high to allow freezing. Pressures above about 25 atmospheres are required to freeze it. There are two liquid phases: Helium I is a conventional liquid, and Helium II, which occurs at a lower temperature, is a superfluid. #### Helium I Below its boiling point of 4.22 K (−268.93 °C; −452.07 °F) and above the lambda point of 2.1768 K (−270.9732 °C; −455.7518 °F), the isotope helium-4 exists in a normal colorless liquid state, called helium I. Like other cryogenic liquids, helium I boils when it is heated and contracts when its temperature is lowered. Below the lambda point, however, helium does not boil, and it expands as the temperature is lowered further. Helium I has a gas-like index of refraction of 1.026 which makes its surface so hard to see that floats of Styrofoam are often used to show where the surface is. This colorless liquid has a very low viscosity and a density of 0.145–0.125 g/mL (between about 0 and 4 K), which is only one-fourth the value expected from classical physics. Quantum mechanics is needed to explain this property and thus both states of liquid helium (helium I and helium II) are called quantum fluids, meaning they display atomic properties on a macroscopic scale. This may be an effect of its boiling point being so close to absolute zero, preventing random molecular motion (thermal energy) from masking the atomic properties. #### Helium II Liquid helium below its lambda point (called helium II) exhibits very unusual characteristics. Due to its high thermal conductivity, when it boils, it does not bubble but rather evaporates directly from its surface. Helium-3 also has a superfluid phase, but only at much lower temperatures; as a result, less is known about the properties of the isotope. Helium II is a superfluid, a quantum mechanical state (see: macroscopic quantum phenomena) of matter with strange properties. For example, when it flows through capillaries as thin as 10 to 100 nm it has no measurable viscosity. However, when measurements were done between two moving discs, a viscosity comparable to that of gaseous helium was observed. Current theory explains this using the two-fluid model for helium II. In this model, liquid helium below the lambda point is viewed as containing a proportion of helium atoms in a ground state, which are superfluid and flow with exactly zero viscosity, and a proportion of helium atoms in an excited state, which behave more like an ordinary fluid. In the fountain effect, a chamber is constructed which is connected to a reservoir of helium II by a sintered disc through which superfluid helium leaks easily but through which non-superfluid helium cannot pass. If the interior of the container is heated, the superfluid helium changes to non-superfluid helium. In order to maintain the equilibrium fraction of superfluid helium, superfluid helium leaks through and increases the pressure, causing liquid to fountain out of the container. The thermal conductivity of helium II is greater than that of any other known substance, a million times that of helium I and several hundred times that of copper. This is because heat conduction occurs by an exceptional quantum mechanism. Most materials that conduct heat well have a valence band of free electrons which serve to transfer the heat. Helium II has no such valence band but nevertheless conducts heat well. The flow of heat is governed by equations that are similar to the wave equation used to characterize sound propagation in air. When heat is introduced, it moves at 20 meters per second at 1.8 K through helium II as waves in a phenomenon known as second sound. Helium II also exhibits a creeping effect. When a surface extends past the level of helium II, the helium II moves along the surface, against the force of gravity. Helium II will escape from a vessel that is not sealed by creeping along the sides until it reaches a warmer region where it evaporates. It moves in a 30 nm-thick film regardless of surface material. This film is called a Rollin film and is named after the man who first characterized this trait, Bernard V. Rollin. As a result of this creeping behavior and helium II's ability to leak rapidly through tiny openings, it is very difficult to confine. Unless the container is carefully constructed, the helium II will creep along the surfaces and through valves until it reaches somewhere warmer, where it will evaporate. Waves propagating across a Rollin film are governed by the same equation as gravity waves in shallow water, but rather than gravity, the restoring force is the van der Waals force. These waves are known as third sound. ### Solid phases Helium remains liquid down to absolute zero at atmospheric pressure, but it freezes at high pressure. Solid helium requires a temperature of 1–1.5 K (about −272 °C or −457 °F) at about 25 bar (2.5 MPa) of pressure. It is often hard to distinguish solid from liquid helium since the refractive index of the two phases are nearly the same. The solid has a sharp melting point and has a crystalline structure, but it is highly compressible; applying pressure in a laboratory can decrease its volume by more than 30%. With a bulk modulus of about 27 MPa it is \~100 times more compressible than water. Solid helium has a density of 0.214±0.006 g/cm³ at 1.15 K and 66 atm; the projected density at 0 K and 25 bar (2.5 MPa) is 0.187±0.009 g/cm³. At higher temperatures, helium will solidify with sufficient pressure. At room temperature, this requires about 114,000 atm. Helium-4 and helium-3 both form several crystalline solid phases, all requiring at least 25 bar. They both form an α phase, which has a hexagonal close-packed (hcp) crystal structure, a β phase, which is face-centered cubic (fcc), and a γ phase, which is body-centered cubic (bcc). ### Isotopes There are nine known isotopes of helium of which two, helium-3 and helium-4, are stable. In the Earth's atmosphere, one atom is ³ He for every million that are ⁴ He. Unlike most elements, helium's isotopic abundance varies greatly by origin, due to the different formation processes. The most common isotope, helium-4, is produced on Earth by alpha decay of heavier radioactive elements; the alpha particles that emerge are fully ionized helium-4 nuclei. Helium-4 is an unusually stable nucleus because its nucleons are arranged into complete shells. It was also formed in enormous quantities during Big Bang nucleosynthesis. Helium-3 is present on Earth only in trace amounts. Most of it has been present since Earth's formation, though some falls to Earth trapped in cosmic dust. Trace amounts are also produced by the beta decay of tritium. Rocks from the Earth's crust have isotope ratios varying by as much as a factor of ten, and these ratios can be used to investigate the origin of rocks and the composition of the Earth's mantle. ³ He is much more abundant in stars as a product of nuclear fusion. Thus in the interstellar medium, the proportion of ³ He to ⁴ He is about 100 times higher than on Earth. Extraplanetary material, such as lunar and asteroid regolith, have trace amounts of helium-3 from being bombarded by solar winds. The Moon's surface contains helium-3 at concentrations on the order of 10 ppb, much higher than the approximately 5 ppt found in the Earth's atmosphere. A number of people, starting with Gerald Kulcinski in 1986, have proposed to explore the Moon, mine lunar regolith, and use the helium-3 for fusion. Liquid helium-4 can be cooled to about 1 K (−272.15 °C; −457.87 °F) using evaporative cooling in a 1-K pot. Similar cooling of helium-3, which has a lower boiling point, can achieve about 0.2 kelvin in a helium-3 refrigerator. Equal mixtures of liquid ³ He and ⁴ He below 0.8 K separate into two immiscible phases due to their dissimilarity (they follow different quantum statistics: helium-4 atoms are bosons while helium-3 atoms are fermions). Dilution refrigerators use this immiscibility to achieve temperatures of a few millikelvins. It is possible to produce exotic helium isotopes, which rapidly decay into other substances. The shortest-lived heavy helium isotope is the unbound helium-10 with a half-life of 2.6(4)×10⁻²² s. Helium-6 decays by emitting a beta particle and has a half-life of 0.8 second. Helium-7 and helium-8 are created in certain nuclear reactions. Helium-6 and helium-8 are known to exhibit a nuclear halo. ### Properties Table of thermal and physical properties of helium gas at atmospheric pressure: ## Compounds Helium has a valence of zero and is chemically unreactive under all normal conditions. It is an electrical insulator unless ionized. As with the other noble gases, helium has metastable energy levels that allow it to remain ionized in an electrical discharge with a voltage below its ionization potential. Helium can form unstable compounds, known as excimers, with tungsten, iodine, fluorine, sulfur, and phosphorus when it is subjected to a glow discharge, to electron bombardment, or reduced to plasma by other means. The molecular compounds HeNe, HgHe₁₀, and WHe₂, and the molecular ions He⁺ ₂, He²⁺ ₂, HeH⁺ , and HeD⁺ have been created this way. HeH⁺ is also stable in its ground state, but is extremely reactive—it is the strongest Brønsted acid known, and therefore can exist only in isolation, as it will protonate any molecule or counteranion it contacts. This technique has also produced the neutral molecule He₂, which has a large number of band systems, and HgHe, which is apparently held together only by polarization forces. Van der Waals compounds of helium can also be formed with cryogenic helium gas and atoms of some other substance, such as LiHe and He₂. Theoretically, other true compounds may be possible, such as helium fluorohydride (HHeF), which would be analogous to HArF, discovered in 2000. Calculations show that two new compounds containing a helium-oxygen bond could be stable. Two new molecular species, predicted using theory, CsFHeO and N(CH₃)₄FHeO, are derivatives of a metastable FHeO⁻ anion first theorized in 2005 by a group from Taiwan. If confirmed by experiment, the only remaining element with no known stable compounds would be neon. Helium atoms have been inserted into the hollow carbon cage molecules (the fullerenes) by heating under high pressure. The endohedral fullerene molecules formed are stable at high temperatures. When chemical derivatives of these fullerenes are formed, the helium stays inside. If helium-3 is used, it can be readily observed by helium nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy. Many fullerenes containing helium-3 have been reported. Although the helium atoms are not attached by covalent or ionic bonds, these substances have distinct properties and a definite composition, like all stoichiometric chemical compounds. Under high pressures helium can form compounds with various other elements. Helium-nitrogen clathrate (He(N₂)₁₁) crystals have been grown at room temperature at pressures ca. 10 GPa in a diamond anvil cell. The insulating electride Na₂He has been shown to be thermodynamically stable at pressures above 113 GPa. It has a fluorite structure. ## Occurrence and production ### Natural abundance Although it is rare on Earth, helium is the second most abundant element in the known Universe, constituting 23% of its baryonic mass. Only hydrogen is more abundant. The vast majority of helium was formed by Big Bang nucleosynthesis one to three minutes after the Big Bang. As such, measurements of its abundance contribute to cosmological models. In stars, it is formed by the nuclear fusion of hydrogen in proton–proton chain reactions and the CNO cycle, part of stellar nucleosynthesis. In the Earth's atmosphere, the concentration of helium by volume is only 5.2 parts per million. The concentration is low and fairly constant despite the continuous production of new helium because most helium in the Earth's atmosphere escapes into space by several processes. In the Earth's heterosphere, a part of the upper atmosphere, helium and other lighter gases are the most abundant elements. Most helium on Earth is a result of radioactive decay. Helium is found in large amounts in minerals of uranium and thorium, including uraninite and its varieties cleveite and pitchblende, carnotite and monazite (a group name; "monazite" usually refers to monazite-(Ce)), because they emit alpha particles (helium nuclei, He²⁺) to which electrons immediately combine as soon as the particle is stopped by the rock. In this way an estimated 3000 metric tons of helium are generated per year throughout the lithosphere. In the Earth's crust, the concentration of helium is 8 parts per billion. In seawater, the concentration is only 4 parts per trillion. There are also small amounts in mineral springs, volcanic gas, and meteoric iron. Because helium is trapped in the subsurface under conditions that also trap natural gas, the greatest natural concentrations of helium on the planet are found in natural gas, from which most commercial helium is extracted. The concentration varies in a broad range from a few ppm to more than 7% in a small gas field in San Juan County, New Mexico. As of 2021 the world's helium reserves were estimated at 31 billion cubic meters, with a third of that being in Qatar. In 2015 and 2016 additional probable reserves were announced to be under the Rocky Mountains in North America and in the East African Rift. ### Modern extraction and distribution For large-scale use, helium is extracted by fractional distillation from natural gas, which can contain as much as 7% helium. Since helium has a lower boiling point than any other element, low temperature and high pressure are used to liquefy nearly all the other gases (mostly nitrogen and methane). The resulting crude helium gas is purified by successive exposures to lowering temperatures, in which almost all of the remaining nitrogen and other gases are precipitated out of the gaseous mixture. Activated charcoal is used as a final purification step, usually resulting in 99.995% pure Grade-A helium. The principal impurity in Grade-A helium is neon. In a final production step, most of the helium that is produced is liquefied via a cryogenic process. This is necessary for applications requiring liquid helium and also allows helium suppliers to reduce the cost of long-distance transportation, as the largest liquid helium containers have more than five times the capacity of the largest gaseous helium tube trailers. In 2008, approximately 169 million standard cubic meters (SCM) of helium were extracted from natural gas or withdrawn from helium reserves with approximately 78% from the United States, 10% from Algeria, and most of the remainder from Russia, Poland and Qatar. By 2013, increases in helium production in Qatar (under the company Qatargas managed by Air Liquide) had increased Qatar's fraction of world helium production to 25%, and made it the second largest exporter after the United States. An estimated 54 billion cubic feet (1.5×10⁹ m³) deposit of helium was found in Tanzania in 2016. A large-scale helium plant was opened in Ningxia, China in 2020. In the United States, most helium is extracted from natural gas of the Hugoton and nearby gas fields in Kansas, Oklahoma, and the Panhandle Field in Texas. Much of this gas was once sent by pipeline to the National Helium Reserve, but since 2005 this reserve is being depleted and sold off, and is expected to be largely depleted by 2021, under the October 2013 Responsible Helium Administration and Stewardship Act (H.R. 527). The helium fields of the western United States are emerging as an alternate source of helium supply, particularly those of the 'Four Corners' region (the states of Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah). Diffusion of crude natural gas through special semipermeable membranes and other barriers is another method to recover and purify helium. In 1996, the U.S. had proven helium reserves, in such gas well complexes, of about 147 billion standard cubic feet (4.2 billion SCM). At rates of use at that time (72 million SCM per year in the U.S.; see pie chart below) this would have been enough helium for about 58 years of U.S. use, and less than this (perhaps 80% of the time) at world use rates, although factors in saving and processing impact effective reserve numbers. Helium is generally extracted from natural gas because it is present in air at only a fraction of that of neon, yet the demand for it is far higher. It is estimated that if all neon production were retooled to save helium, 0.1% of the world's helium demands would be satisfied. Similarly, only 1% of the world's helium demands could be satisfied by re-tooling all air distillation plants. Helium can be synthesized by bombardment of lithium or boron with high-velocity protons, or by bombardment of lithium with deuterons, but these processes are a completely uneconomical method of production. Helium is commercially available in either liquid or gaseous form. As a liquid, it can be supplied in small insulated containers called dewars which hold as much as 1,000 liters of helium, or in large ISO containers which have nominal capacities as large as 42 m³ (around 11,000 U.S. gallons). In gaseous form, small quantities of helium are supplied in high-pressure cylinders holding as much as 8 m³ (approx. 282 standard cubic feet), while large quantities of high-pressure gas are supplied in tube trailers which have capacities of as much as 4,860 m³ (approx. 172,000 standard cubic feet). ### Conservation advocates According to helium conservationists like Nobel laureate physicist Robert Coleman Richardson, writing in 2010, the free market price of helium has contributed to "wasteful" usage (e.g. for helium balloons). Prices in the 2000s had been lowered by the decision of the U.S. Congress to sell off the country's large helium stockpile by 2015. According to Richardson, the price needed to be multiplied by 20 to eliminate the excessive wasting of helium. In the paper Stop squandering helium published in 2012, it was also proposed to create an International Helium Agency that would build a sustainable market for "this precious commodity". ## Applications While balloons are perhaps the best known use of helium, they are a minor part of all helium use. Helium is used for many purposes that require some of its unique properties, such as its low boiling point, low density, low solubility, high thermal conductivity, or inertness. Of the 2014 world helium total production of about 32 million kg (180 million standard cubic meters) helium per year, the largest use (about 32% of the total in 2014) is in cryogenic applications, most of which involves cooling the superconducting magnets in medical MRI scanners and NMR spectrometers. Other major uses were pressurizing and purging systems, welding, maintenance of controlled atmospheres, and leak detection. Other uses by category were relatively minor fractions. ### Controlled atmospheres Helium is used as a protective gas in growing silicon and germanium crystals, in titanium and zirconium production, and in gas chromatography, because it is inert. Because of its inertness, thermally and calorically perfect nature, high speed of sound, and high value of the heat capacity ratio, it is also useful in supersonic wind tunnels and impulse facilities. ### Gas tungsten arc welding Helium is used as a shielding gas in arc welding processes on materials that at welding temperatures are contaminated and weakened by air or nitrogen. A number of inert shielding gases are used in gas tungsten arc welding, but helium is used instead of cheaper argon especially for welding materials that have higher heat conductivity, like aluminium or copper. ### Minor uses #### Industrial leak detection One industrial application for helium is leak detection. Because helium diffuses through solids three times faster than air, it is used as a tracer gas to detect leaks in high-vacuum equipment (such as cryogenic tanks) and high-pressure containers. The tested object is placed in a chamber, which is then evacuated and filled with helium. The helium that escapes through the leaks is detected by a sensitive device (helium mass spectrometer), even at the leak rates as small as 10⁻⁹ mbar·L/s (10⁻¹⁰ Pa·m³/s). The measurement procedure is normally automatic and is called helium integral test. A simpler procedure is to fill the tested object with helium and to manually search for leaks with a hand-held device. Helium leaks through cracks should not be confused with gas permeation through a bulk material. While helium has documented permeation constants (thus a calculable permeation rate) through glasses, ceramics, and synthetic materials, inert gases such as helium will not permeate most bulk metals. #### Flight Because it is lighter than air, airships and balloons are inflated with helium for lift. While hydrogen gas is more buoyant, and escapes permeating through a membrane at a lower rate, helium has the advantage of being non-flammable, and indeed fire-retardant. Another minor use is in rocketry, where helium is used as an ullage medium to backfill rocket propellant tanks in flight and to condense hydrogen and oxygen to make rocket fuel. It is also used to purge fuel and oxidizer from ground support equipment prior to launch and to pre-cool liquid hydrogen in space vehicles. For example, the Saturn V rocket used in the Apollo program needed about 370,000 m³ (13 million cubic feet) of helium to launch. #### Minor commercial and recreational uses Helium as a breathing gas has no narcotic properties, so helium mixtures such as trimix, heliox and heliair are used for deep diving to reduce the effects of narcosis, which worsen with increasing depth. As pressure increases with depth, the density of the breathing gas also increases, and the low molecular weight of helium is found to considerably reduce the effort of breathing by lowering the density of the mixture. This reduces the Reynolds number of flow, leading to a reduction of turbulent flow and an increase in laminar flow, which requires less work of breathing. At depths below 150 metres (490 ft) divers breathing helium–oxygen mixtures begin to experience tremors and a decrease in psychomotor function, symptoms of high-pressure nervous syndrome. This effect may be countered to some extent by adding an amount of narcotic gas such as hydrogen or nitrogen to a helium–oxygen mixture. Helium–neon lasers, a type of low-powered gas laser producing a red beam, had various practical applications which included barcode readers and laser pointers, before they were almost universally replaced by cheaper diode lasers. For its inertness and high thermal conductivity, neutron transparency, and because it does not form radioactive isotopes under reactor conditions, helium is used as a heat-transfer medium in some gas-cooled nuclear reactors. Helium, mixed with a heavier gas such as xenon, is useful for thermoacoustic refrigeration due to the resulting high heat capacity ratio and low Prandtl number. The inertness of helium has environmental advantages over conventional refrigeration systems which contribute to ozone depletion or global warming. Helium is also used in some hard disk drives. #### Scientific uses The use of helium reduces the distorting effects of temperature variations in the space between lenses in some telescopes, due to its extremely low index of refraction. This method is especially used in solar telescopes where a vacuum tight telescope tube would be too heavy. Helium is a commonly used carrier gas for gas chromatography. The age of rocks and minerals that contain uranium and thorium can be estimated by measuring the level of helium with a process known as helium dating. Helium at low temperatures is used in cryogenics, and in certain cryogenics applications. As examples of applications, liquid helium is used to cool certain metals to the extremely low temperatures required for superconductivity, such as in superconducting magnets for magnetic resonance imaging. The Large Hadron Collider at CERN uses 96 metric tons of liquid helium to maintain the temperature at 1.9 K (−271.25 °C; −456.25 °F). #### Medical uses Helium was approved for medical use in the United States in April 2020 for humans and animals. ## As a contaminant While chemically inert, helium contamination impairs the operation of microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) such that iPhones may fail. ## Inhalation and safety ### Effects Neutral helium at standard conditions is non-toxic, plays no biological role and is found in trace amounts in human blood. The speed of sound in helium is nearly three times the speed of sound in air. Because the natural resonance frequency of a gas-filled cavity is proportional to the speed of sound in the gas, when helium is inhaled, a corresponding increase occurs in the resonant frequencies of the vocal tract, which is the amplifier of vocal sound. This increase in the resonant frequency of the amplifier (the vocal tract) gives an increased amplification to the high-frequency components of the sound wave produced by the direct vibration of the vocal folds, compared to the case when the voice box is filled with air. When a person speaks after inhaling helium gas, the muscles that control the voice box still move in the same way as when the voice box is filled with air, therefore the fundamental frequency (sometimes called pitch) produced by direct vibration of the vocal folds does not change. However, the high-frequency-preferred amplification causes a change in timbre of the amplified sound, resulting in a reedy, duck-like vocal quality. The opposite effect, lowering resonant frequencies, can be obtained by inhaling a dense gas such as sulfur hexafluoride or xenon. ### Hazards Inhaling helium can be dangerous if done to excess, since helium is a simple asphyxiant and so displaces oxygen needed for normal respiration. Fatalities have been recorded, including a youth who suffocated in Vancouver in 2003 and two adults who suffocated in South Florida in 2006. In 1998, an Australian girl from Victoria fell unconscious and temporarily turned blue after inhaling the entire contents of a party balloon. Inhaling helium directly from pressurized cylinders or even balloon filling valves is extremely dangerous, as high flow rate and pressure can result in barotrauma, fatally rupturing lung tissue. Death caused by helium is rare. The first media-recorded case was that of a 15-year-old girl from Texas who died in 1998 from helium inhalation at a friend's party; the exact type of helium death is unidentified. In the United States only two fatalities were reported between 2000 and 2004, including a man who died in North Carolina of barotrauma in 2002. A youth asphyxiated in Vancouver during 2003, and a 27-year-old man in Australia had an embolism after breathing from a cylinder in 2000. Since then two adults asphyxiated in South Florida in 2006, and there were cases in 2009 and 2010, one a Californian youth who was found with a bag over his head, attached to a helium tank, and another teenager in Northern Ireland died of asphyxiation. At Eagle Point, Oregon a teenage girl died in 2012 from barotrauma at a party. A girl from Michigan died from hypoxia later in the year. On February 4, 2015, it was revealed that, during the recording of their main TV show on January 28, a 12-year-old member (name withheld) of Japanese all-girl singing group 3B Junior suffered from air embolism, losing consciousness and falling into a coma as a result of air bubbles blocking the flow of blood to the brain, after inhaling huge quantities of helium as part of a game. The incident was not made public until a week later. The staff of TV Asahi held an emergency press conference to communicate that the member had been taken to the hospital and is showing signs of rehabilitation such as moving eyes and limbs, but her consciousness has not yet been sufficiently recovered. Police have launched an investigation due to a neglect of safety measures. The safety issues for cryogenic helium are similar to those of liquid nitrogen; its extremely low temperatures can result in cold burns, and the liquid-to-gas expansion ratio can cause explosions if no pressure-relief devices are installed. Containers of helium gas at 5 to 10 K should be handled as if they contain liquid helium due to the rapid and significant thermal expansion that occurs when helium gas at less than 10 K is warmed to room temperature. At high pressures (more than about 20 atm or two MPa), a mixture of helium and oxygen (heliox) can lead to high-pressure nervous syndrome, a sort of reverse-anesthetic effect; adding a small amount of nitrogen to the mixture can alleviate the problem. ## See also - Abiogenic petroleum origin - Helium-3 propulsion - Leidenfrost effect - Superfluid - Tracer-gas leak testing method - Hamilton Cady

Baker Street and Waterloo Railway

Underground railway company in London

The Baker Street and Waterloo Railway (BS&WR), also known as the Bakerloo tube, was a railway company established in 1893 that built a deep-level underground "tube" railway in London. The company struggled to fund the work, and construction did not begin until 1898. In 1900, work was hit by the financial collapse of its parent company, the London & Globe Finance Corporation, through the fraud of Whitaker Wright, its main shareholder. In 1902, the BS&WR became a subsidiary of the Underground Electric Railways Company of London (UERL) controlled by American financier Charles Yerkes. The UERL quickly raised the funds, mainly from foreign investors. When first opened in 1906, the BS&WR's line served nine stations and ran completely underground in a pair of tunnels for 6 kilometres (4 miles) between its northern terminus at Baker Street and its southern terminus at Elephant and Castle with a depot on a short spur nearby at London Road. Extensions between 1907 and 1913 took the northern end of the line to the terminus of the Great Western Railway (GWR) at Paddington. Between 1915 and 1917, it was further extended to Queen's Park, where it came to the surface and connected with the London and North Western Railway (LNWR), and to Watford; a total distance of 33 kilometres (21 miles). Within the first year of opening it became apparent to the management and investors that the estimated passenger numbers for the BS&WR and the other UERL lines were over-optimistic. Despite improved integration and cooperation with the other tube railways and the later extensions, the BS&WR struggled financially. In 1933, the BS&WR was taken into public ownership along with the UERL. Today, the BS&WR's tunnels and stations operate as the London Underground's Bakerloo line. ## Establishment ### Origin, 1891–93 The idea of building an underground railway along the approximate route of the BS&WR had been put forward well before it came to fruition at the turn of the century. As early as 1865, a proposal was put forward for a Waterloo & Whitehall Railway, powered by pneumatic propulsion. Carriages would have been sucked or blown a distance of three-quarters of a mile (about 1 km) from Great Scotland Yard to Waterloo Station, travelling through wrought-iron tubes laid in a trench at the bottom of the Thames. The scheme was abandoned three years later after a financial panic caused its collapse. Sir William Siemens of Siemens Brothers served as electrical engineer for a later abortive scheme, the Charing Cross & Waterloo Electric Railway. It was incorporated by an Act of Parliament in 1882 and got as far as constructing a 60-foot (18 m) stretch of tunnel under the Victoria Embankment before running out of money. According to a pamphlet published by the BS&WR in 1906, the idea of constructing the line "originally arose from the desire of a few business men in Westminster to get to and from Lord's Cricket Ground as quickly as possible," to enable them to see the last hour's play without having to leave their offices too early. They realised that an underground railway line connecting the north and south of central London would provide "a long-felt want of transport facilities" and "would therefore prove a great financial success." They were inspired by the recent success of the City and South London Railway (C&SLR), the world's first deep-tube railway, which proved the feasibility of such an endeavour. This opened in November 1890 and carried large numbers of passengers in its first year of operation. In November 1891, notice was given of a private bill that would be presented to Parliament for the construction of the BS&WR. The railway was planned to run entirely underground from the junction of New Street (now Melcombe Street) and Dorset Square west of Baker Street to James Street (now Spur Road) on the south side of Waterloo station. From Baker Street, the route was to run eastwards beneath Marylebone Road, then curve to the south under Park Crescent and follow Portland Place, Langham Place and Regent Street to Piccadilly Circus. It was then to run under Haymarket, Trafalgar Square and Northumberland Avenue before passing under the River Thames to Waterloo station. A decision had not been made between the use of cable haulage or electric traction as the means of pulling the trains. Bills for three similarly inspired new underground railways were also submitted to Parliament for the 1892 parliamentary session, and, to ensure a consistent approach, a Joint Select Committee was established to review the proposals. The committee took evidence on various matters regarding the construction and operation of deep-tube railways, and made recommendations on the diameter of tube tunnels, method of traction, and the granting of wayleaves. After rejecting the construction of stations on land owned by the Crown Estate and the Duke of Portland between Oxford Circus and Baker Street, the Committee allowed the BS&WR bill to proceed for normal parliamentary consideration. The route was approved and the bill received royal assent on 28 March 1893 as the Baker Street and Waterloo Railway Act, 1893. Stations were permitted at Baker Street, Oxford Circus, Piccadilly Circus, Trafalgar Square, Embankment and Waterloo. The depot would have been at the south end of the line at James Street and Lower Marsh. ### Search for finance, 1893–1903 Although the company had permission to construct the railway, it still had to raise the capital for the construction works. The BS&WR was not alone; four other new tube railway companies were looking for investors – the Waterloo and City Railway (W&CR), the Charing Cross, Euston and Hampstead Railway (CCE&HR) and the Great Northern and City Railway (GN&CR) (the three other companies that were put forward in bills in 1892) and the Central London Railway (CLR, which received royal assent in 1891). The original tube railway, the C&SLR, was also raising funds to construct extensions to its existing line. Only the W&CR, which was the shortest line and was backed by the London and South Western Railway with a guaranteed dividend, was able to raise its funds without difficulty. For the BS&WR and the rest, and others that came later, much of the remainder of the decade saw a struggle to find finance in an uninterested market. Like most legislation of its kind, the act of 1893 imposed a time limit for the compulsory purchase of land and the raising of capital. To keep the powers alive, the BS&WR announced a new bill in November 1895, which included an application for an extension of time. The additional time and permission to raise an extra £100,000 of capital was granted when the Baker Street and Waterloo Railway Act, 1896 received royal assent on 7 August 1896. In November 1897, the BS&WR did a deal with the London & Globe Finance Corporation (L&GFC), a mining finance company operated by mining speculator Whitaker Wright and chaired by Lord Dufferin. The L&GFC was to fund and manage the construction, taking any profit from the process. The cost of construction was estimated to be £1,615,000 (equivalent to approximately £ today). The L&GFC replaced the BS&WR's directors with its own and let construction contracts. Wright made fortunes in America and Britain by promoting gold and silver mines and saw the BS&WR as a way of diversifying the L&GFC's holdings. In 1899, Wright fraudulently concealed large losses by one of the corporation's mines by manipulating the accounts of various L&GFC subsidiary companies. Expenditure for the BS&WR was also high, with the L&GFC having paid out approximately £650,000 (£ today) by November 1900. In its prospectus of November 1900, the company forecast that it would realise £260,000 a year from passenger traffic, with working expenses of £100,000, leaving £138,240 for dividends after the deduction of interest payments. Only a month later, however, Wright's fraud was discovered and the L&GFC and many of its subsidiaries collapsed. Wright himself subsequently committed suicide by taking cyanide during his trial at the Royal Courts of Justice. The BS&WR struggled on for a time, funding the construction work by making calls on the unpaid portion of its shares, but activity eventually came to a stop and the partly built tunnels were left derelict. Before its collapse, the L&GFC attempted to sell its interests in the BS&WR for £500,000 to an American consortium headed by Albert L. Johnson, but was unsuccessful. However, it attracted the interest of another American consortium headed by financier Charles Yerkes. After some months of negotiations with the L&GFC's liquidator, Yerkes purchased the company for £360,000 plus interest (£ today). He was involved in the development of Chicago's tramway system in the 1880s and 1890s. He came to London in 1900 and purchased a number of the struggling underground railway companies, The BS&WR became a subsidiary of the Underground Electric Railways Company of London (UERL) which Yerkes formed to raise funds to build the tube railways and to electrify the District Railway. The UERL was capitalised at £5 million with the majority of shares sold to overseas investors. Further share issues followed, which raised a total of £18 million by 1903 (equivalent to approximately £ today) for use across all of the UERL's projects. ### Planning the route, 1893–1904 #### BS&WR bill, 1896 While the BS&WR raised money, it continued to develop the plans for its route. The November 1895 bill sought powers to modify the planned route of the tunnels at the Baker Street end of the line and extend them approximately 200 metres (660 ft) beyond their previous end point at the south-eastern corner of Dorset Square to the south-eastern corner of Harewood Square. This area was to be the site of Marylebone station, the new London terminus of the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway's extension from the Midlands then under construction.Approval for the extension and a new station at Marylebone were included in the Baker Street and Waterloo Railway Act, 1896. #### New Cross & Waterloo Railway bill, 1898 On 26 November 1897, details of a bill proposed for the 1898 parliamentary session were published by the New Cross and Waterloo Railway (NC&WR), an independent company promoted by James Heath MP, which planned two separate sections of tube line that would connect directly to the BS&WR, extending the line south-east from Waterloo and east from around Marylebone Road. The southern of the NC&WR's two extensions was planned to connect with the BS&WR tunnels under Belvedere Road to the west of Waterloo station and head east under the mainline station to its own station under Sandell Street adjacent to Waterloo East station. The route was then planned to run under Waterloo Road, St George's Circus and London Road to Elephant and Castle. The route then followed New Kent Road and Old Kent Road as far as the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway's Old Kent Road station (closed in 1917). Intermediate stations were to be constructed at St George's Circus, Elephant and Castle (where the NC&WR station would interchange with the C&SLR's station below ground and link to the London, Chatham and Dover Railway's station above ground), in New Kent Road at Munton Road, at the junction of New Kent Road and Old Kent Road, and on Old Kent Road at the junctions with Mina Road, Bowles Road and Commercial Road (now Commercial Way). A power station was planned on the south side of Old Kent Road where it crossed the Grand Surrey Canal (now filled-in) at the junction with St James's Road. This would have provided a delivery route for fuel and a source of water. Tunnels were also planned to connect the BS&WR's proposed depot at Waterloo to the NC&WR's route enabling trains to enter and exit in two directions. The NC&WR's other planned extension was to branch from the BS&WR's curve under Park Crescent. It was then to curve eastwards under Regent's Park and then run under Longford Street and Drummond Street to end at a station on the west side of Seymour Street (now Eversholt Street) under Euston station. An intermediate station was planned for the junction of Drummond Street and Hampstead Road. The bill was deposited in Parliament, but no progress was made in the 1898 session and it disappeared afterwards, although the BS&WR presented a modified version of the Euston branch in a bill for the 1899 session. #### BS&WR bill, 1899 Construction work began in August 1898, although the BS&WR was continuing to develop new route plans. The bill for 1899, published on 22 November 1898, requested more time for the construction works and proposed two extensions to the railway and a modification to part of the previously approved route. The first extension, like the NC&WR's plan from the year before, was to branch from the already-approved route under Park Crescent, but then followed a more northerly route than the NC&WR, running under Regent's Park to cross the park's Outer Circle between Chester Road and Cumberland Gate where a station was to be constructed. The route then followed Cumberland Street West (now Nash Street), Cumberland Market, Cumberland Street East and Edward Street (both now Varndell Street), before ending at a station under Cardington Street on the west side of Euston station. The second extension was to continue the line west from Marylebone, running under Great James Street and Bell Street (now both Bell Street) to Corlett Street, then turning south to reach the Grand Junction Canal's Paddington Basin to the east of the GWR's Paddington station. A station was to be located directly under the east–west arm of the basin before the line turned north-west, running between the mainline station and the basin, before the two tunnels merged into one. The single tunnel was then to turn north-east, passing under the Regent's Canal to the east of Little Venice, before coming to the surface where a depot was to be built on the north side of Blomfield Road. The BS&WR also planned a power station at Paddington. The final change to the route was a modification at Waterloo to move the last section of the line southwards to end under Addington Street. The aim of these plans was, as the company put it in 1906, "to tap the large traffic of the South London Tramways, and to link up by a direct Line several of the most important Railway termini." The Metropolitan Railway (MR), London's first underground railway, which operated between Paddington and Euston over the northern section of the Inner Circle since 1863, saw the BS&WR's two northern extensions as competition for its own service and strongly objected. Parliament accepted the objections; when the Baker Street and Waterloo Railway Act, 1899 received royal assent on 1 August 1899, only the extension of time and the route change at Waterloo were approved #### BS&WR bill, 1900 In November 1899, the BS&WR announced a bill for the 1900 session. Again, an extension was proposed from Marylebone to Paddington, this time terminating to the east of the mainline station at the junction of Bishop's Road (now Bishop's Bridge Road) and Gloucester Terrace. A station was planned under Bishop's Road, linked to the mainline station by a subway under Eastbourne Terrace. From Waterloo, an extension was planned to run under Westminster Bridge Road and St George's Road to terminate at Elephant and Castle. The BS&WR would connect there with the C&SLR's station as the NC&WR planned two years earlier. A spur was to be provided to a depot and power station that were to be constructed on the site of the School for the Indigent Blind south of St George's Circus. The Paddington extension was aligned to allow a westward extension to continue to Royal Oak or Willesden, areas already served by the MR, which again opposed the plans. This time, the BS&WR was successful and royal assent for the extensions was granted in the Baker Street and Waterloo Railway Act, 1900 on 6 August 1900. #### Minor changes, 1902–04 To make up for the time lost following the collapse of the L&GFC and to restore the BS&WR's finances, the company published a bill in November 1901, which sought another extension of time and permission to change its funding arrangements. The bill was approved as the Baker Street and Waterloo Railway Act, 1902 on 18 November 1902. For the 1903 parliamentary session, the UERL announced bills for the BS&WR and its other tube railways, seeking permission to merge the three companies by transferring the BS&WR's and CCE&HR's powers to the Great Northern, Piccadilly and Brompton Railway (GNP&BR). The BS&WR bill also included requests for a further extension of time and for powers to compulsorily purchase land for an electrical sub-station at Lambeth. The merger was rejected by Parliament, but the land purchase and extension of time were permitted separately in the Baker Street and Waterloo Railway Act, 1903 and the Baker Street and Waterloo Railway (Extension of Time) Act, 1903, both given royal assent on 11 August 1903. In the 1904 Parliamentary session, the BS&WR sought and received permission for new stations at Lambeth, Regent's Park and Edgware Road. ### Construction, 1898–1906 Construction commenced in the summer of 1898 under the direction of Sir Benjamin Baker (who co-designed the Forth Bridge), W.R. Galbraith and R.F. Church. The works were carried out by Perry & Company of Tregedar Works, Bow. The main construction site was located at a substantial temporary staging pier erected in the River Thames a short distance south of the Hungerford Bridge. It was described at the time as "a small village of workshops and offices and an electrical generating station to provide the power for driving the machinery and for lighting purposes during construction." The 50-foot (15 m) wide stage was located 370 feet (110 m) from the Hungerford Bridge's first pier, 150 feet (46 m) from the north bank of the Thames. It was originally intended that the work should begin close to the south bank, with a bridge connecting the stage to College Street – a now-vanished road on the site of the present-day Jubilee Gardens. However, test borings showed that there was a deep depression in the gravel beneath the Thames, which it was speculated was the result of dredging carried out for the abortive Charing Cross & Waterloo Railway project. This led to the work site being relocated to the north side of the river. Two caissons were sunk into the river bed below the stage. From there, the tunnels were constructed in each direction using Barlow-Greathead tunnelling shields of a similar design to those used to construct the C&SLR. The north tunnel was constructed first, commencing in February 1899, followed by the south tunnel from March 1900. This was technically the most difficult stage of the project, as it necessitated tunnelling under the river. The tunnellers worked in an atmosphere of compressed air at up to 35 psi (240 kPa) to prevent water leaking into the excavations. On several occasions, however, the tunnel was breached and escaping air caused "blowouts", producing water spouts up to 2.5 feet (0.76 m) high above the surface of the river. One such blowout disrupted Doggett's Coat and Badge race. By using the river as the centre of tunnelling operations, the company was able to remove excavated soil onto barges and bring in required material the same way, thus avoiding having to transport large amounts of material through the streets. Tunnelling also took place from station sites, notably at Piccadilly Circus. The tunnellers worked with a remarkable degree of accuracy given the technology of the time; the tunnel being driven north from the Thames eventually reached the one being dug south from Piccadilly Circus, meeting under Haymarket, with a deviation of only three-quarters of an inch (1.9 cm). The tunnel linings were formed from cast iron segments 7⁄8 inch (2.22 cm) thick, which locked together to form a ring with an internal diameter of 12 feet (3.66 m). Once a ring was completed, grout was injected through holes in the segments to fill any voids between the outside edge of the ring and the excavated ground beyond, reducing subsidence. By November 1899 the northbound tunnel reached Trafalgar Square and work on some of the station sites was started, but the collapse of the L&GFC in 1900 led to works gradually coming to a halt. When the UERL was constituted in April 1902, 50 per cent of the tunnelling and 25 per cent of the station work was completed. With funds in place, work restarted and proceeded at a rate of 73 feet (22.25 m) per week, so that by February 1904 virtually all of the tunnels and underground parts of the stations between Elephant & Castle and Marylebone were complete and works on the station buildings were under way. The additional stations were incorporated as work continued elsewhere and Oxford Circus station was altered below ground following a Board of Trade inspection; at the end of 1905, the first test trains began running. Although the BS&WR had permission to continue to Paddington, no work was undertaken beyond Edgware Road. The BS&WR used a Westinghouse automatic signalling system operated through electric track circuits. This controlled signals based on the presence or absence of a train on the track ahead. Signals incorporated an arm that was raised when the signal was red. If a train failed to stop at a red signal, the arm activated a "tripcock" on the train, applying the brakes automatically. Stations were provided with surface buildings designed by architect Leslie Green in the UERL house-style. This consisted of two-storey steel-framed buildings faced with red glazed terracotta blocks, with wide semi-circular windows on the upper floor. They were designed with flat roofs to enable additional storeys to be constructed for commercial occupants, maximising the air rights of the property. Except for Embankment, which had a sloping passageway down to the platforms, each station was provided with between two and four lifts and an emergency spiral staircase in a separate shaft. At platform level, the wall tiling featured the station name and an individual geometric pattern and colour scheme designed by Green. It was originally intended that the electrical supply to the line and stations would be provided by a dedicated generating station at St George's Road, Southwark. This idea was abandoned in 1902 and electricity was instead provided by Lots Road Power Station, operated by the UERL. Six ventilation fans were installed along the line to draw 18,500 cubic feet per minute through the tunnels and out through exhausts placed on the roof of the stations. Fresh air was drawn back down from the surface via the lift and staircase shafts, thus replenishing the air in the tunnels. To reduce the risk of fire, the station platforms were built of concrete and iron and the sleepers were made from the fireproof Australian wood Eucalyptus marginata or jarrah. The design of the permanent way was a departure from that of London's previous tube railways, which used track laid on timber baulks across the tunnel with the bottom of the tube left open. This approach caused what the BS&WR's management regarded as an unacceptable level of vibrations. They resolved this by mounting the sleepers on supports made of sand and cement grout, with the sleeper ends resting on comparatively soft broken stone ballast underneath the running rails. A drain ran parallel with the rails underneath the middle of the track. The rails themselves were unusually short – only 35 feet (11 m) long – as this was the maximum length that could be brought in through the shafts and then turned horizontally to be carried into the tunnels. Power was supplied through third (positive) and fourth (negative) rails laid in the middle and outside of the track, as used on the District Railway. ## Opening The official opening of the BS&WR by Sir Edwin Cornwall, chairman of the London County Council, took place on 10 March 1906. Shortly after the line's opening, the London Evening News columnist "Quex" coined the abbreviated name "Baker-loo", which quickly caught on and began to be used officially from July 1906, appearing on contemporary maps of the tube lines. The nickname was, however, deplored by The Railway Magazine, which complained: "Some latitude is allowable, perhaps, to halfpenny papers, in the use of nicknames, but for a railway itself to adopt its gutter title, is not what we expect from a railway company. English railway officers have more dignity than to act in this manner." The railway had stations at: While construction was being finished, trains operated out of service beyond Baker Street, reversing at a crossover to the east of the station under construction at Marylebone. ### Rolling stock, fares and schedules The service was provided by a fleet of 108 carriages manufactured for the UERL in the United States by the American Car and Foundry Company and assembled in Manchester. They were transported to London by rail but because the BS&WR had no external railway connections, the carriages then had to be transported across the city on horse-drawn wagons to their destination at London Road depot. The carriages operated as electric multiple unit trains without separate locomotives. Passengers boarded and left the trains through folding lattice gates at each end of cars; these gates were operated by gate-men who rode on an outside platform and announced station names as trains arrived. The design was subsequently used for the GNP&BR and the CCE&HR, and became known on the Underground as the 1906 stock or Gate stock. Trains for the line were stabled at the London Road depot south of Kennington Road station. The line operated from 5:30 am to 12:30 am on weekdays (including Saturdays), and 7:30 am to 12 noon on Sundays. The standard one-way fare following the line's opening was 2d. ("workmen's tickets" at 2d. return were available up to 7:58 am) and a book of 25 tickets was available at 4s. However, the original flat fares were abandoned in July 1906 and replaced with graded fares of between 1d. and 3d. In November 1906, season tickets were introduced along with through tickets with the District Railway (interchanging at Charing Cross). It was not until December 1907 that it was possible to buy a through ticket onto the Central London Railway (via Oxford Circus). The BS&WR abolished its season tickets in October 1908 and replaced them with strip tickets, sold in sets of six, that could be used on the Bakerloo, Piccadilly and Hampstead tubes. The service frequency as of mid-1906 was as follows: Weekdays - From 5:30 am to 7:30 am: every 5 minutes - From 7:30 am to 11:30 pm: every 3 minutes - From 11:30 pm to 12:30 am: every 6 minutes Sundays - From 7:30 am to 11 am: every 6 minutes - From 11 am to 12 noon: every 3 minutes ## Co-operation and consolidation, 1906–10 Despite the UERL's success in financing and constructing the railway, its opening did not bring the financial success that had been expected. In the Bakerloo Tube's first twelve months of operation it carried 20.5 million passengers, less than sixty per cent of the 35 million that had been predicted during the planning of the line. The UERL's pre-opening predictions of passenger numbers for its other new lines proved to be similarly over-optimistic, as did the projected figures for the newly electrified DR – in each case, numbers achieved only around fifty per cent of their targets. 37,000 people used the line on the first day, but in the months following the line's opening only about 20,000–30,000 passengers a day used the service. The number of carriages used by the BS&WR was cut back to three per train at peak times and only two during off-peak hours. The Daily Mail reported in April 1906 that the rush-hour trains were carrying fewer than 100 people at a time. To add to the line's misfortunes, it suffered its first fatality only two weeks after opening when conductor John Creagh was crushed between a train and a tunnel wall at Kennington Road station on 26 March. The lower than expected passenger numbers were partly due to competition between the tube and sub-surface railway companies, but the introduction of electric trams and motor buses, replacing slower, horse-drawn road transport, took a large number of passengers away from the trains. The Daily Mirror noted at the end of April 1906 that the BS&WR offered poor value for money compared to the equivalent motor bus service, which cost only 1d. per journey, and that passengers disliked the distances that they had to walk between the trains and the lifts. Such problems were not limited to the UERL; all of London's seven tube lines and the sub-surface DR and Metropolitan Railway were affected to some degree. The reduced revenue generated from the lower passenger numbers made it difficult for the UERL and the other railways to pay back the capital borrowed, or to pay dividends to shareholders. From 1907, in an effort to improve their finances, the UERL, the C&SLR, the CLR and the GN&CR began to introduce fare agreements. From 1908, they began to present themselves through common branding as the Underground. The UERL's three tube railway companies were still legally separate entities, with their own management, shareholder and dividend structures. There was duplicated administration between the three companies and, to streamline the management and reduce expenditure, the UERL announced a bill in November 1909 that would merge the Bakerloo, the Hampstead and the Piccadilly Tubes into a single entity, the London Electric Railway (LER), although the lines retained their own individual branding. The bill received Royal Assent on 26 July 1910 as the London Electric Railway Amalgamation Act, 1910. ## Extensions ### Paddington, 1906–13 Having planned a westward extension in 1900 to Willesden Junction, the company had been unable to decide on a route beyond Paddington and had postponed further construction while it considered options. In November 1905, the BS&WR announced a bill for 1906 that replaced the route from Edgware Road to Paddington approved in 1900 with a new alignment. This had the tunnels crossing under the Paddington basin with the station under London Street. The tunnels were to continue south-east beyond the station as sidings, to end under the junction of Grand Junction Road and Devonport Street (now Sussex Gardens and Sussex Place). In a pamphlet published in 1906 to publicise the Paddington extension, the company proclaimed: > [I]t will thus be seen that the advantages which this line will afford for getting quickly and cheaply from one point of London to another are without parallel. It will link up many of the most important Railway termini, give a connection with twelve other Railway systems, and connect the vast tramway system of the South of London, thus bringing the Theatres and other places of amusement, as well as the chief shopping centres, within easy reach of outer London and the suburbs. The changes were permitted by the Baker Street and Waterloo Railway Act, 1906 on 4 August 1906, but the south-east alignment did not represent a suitable direction to continue the railway and no effort was made to construct the extension. In 1908, the Bakerloo Tube attempted to make the hoped-for extension into north-west London using the existing powers of the North West London Railway (NWLR), an unbuilt tube railway with permission to build a line from Cricklewood to Victoria station. The NWLR announced a bill in November 1908 seeking to construct a 757-metre (2,484 ft) connection between its unbuilt route beneath the Edgware Road and the Bakerloo Tube's Edgware Road station. The NWLR route to Victoria was to be abandoned south of the connection and the Bakerloo Tube's planned route to Paddington was to be built as a shuttle line from Edgware Road, which was to be provided with two additional platforms for shuttle use. The Bakerloo Tube was to construct the extension and operate the service over the combined route, which was to have stations at St John's Wood Road, Abercorn Place, Belsize Road (close to the LNWR station), Brondesbury (to interchange with the North London Railway's station and close to the MR's Kilburn station), Minster Road and Cricklewood. The Bakerloo Tube announced its own bill to make the necessary changes to its existing plans. The GWR objected to the reduction of the Bakerloo Tube's Paddington connection to a shuttle and the MR objected to the connection of the two lines, which would be in competition with its line through Kilburn. Parliament rejected the proposed connection and the changes to the NWLR's route and the company's permissions eventually expired without any construction work being carried out. The Bakerloo Tube bill was withdrawn. In November 1910, the LER (of which the Bakerloo Tube was now part) revived plans for the Paddington extension when it published a bill for the 1911 Parliamentary session. The new route ran 890 metres (2,920 ft) in a tight curve from Edgware Road station, initially heading south before turning to the north-west, which provided a more practical direction for a future extension. The bill was supported by the GWR with funding of £18,000. The London Electric Railway Act, 1911 received royal assent on 2 June 1911. Construction started in August 1911, and was completed in a little over two years. The extension opened on 1 December 1913, with the single new station at Paddington. Following their successful introduction at Earl's Court in 1911, the station was the first on the line to be designed to use escalators instead of lifts. ### Queen's Park and Watford, 1911–17 In 1907, the LNWR obtained parliamentary permission to improve its mainline services into London by the construction of a pair of new electrified tracks alongside its existing line between Watford Junction in Hertfordshire and Queen's Park, Kilburn and a new tube section beneath its lines from there to its terminus at Euston. At Euston, the tube tunnel was to end with an underground station on a 1,450-metre (4,760 ft) long loop beneath the mainline station. The LNWR began construction work on the surface section of the new tracks in 1909. By 1911, it had modified the plans to omit the underground section and to split its proposed electrified services into three. The first section was to follow the existing surface route into Euston on newly electrified tracks, the second section was to connect with the North London Railway at Chalk Farm and continue on electrified tracks from there to Broad Street station in the City of London. The third section involved the extension of the Bakerloo Tube from Paddington to Queen's Park. With the extension to Paddington still under construction, the LER published a bill in November 1911 for the continuation to Queen's Park. The extension was to continue north from Paddington, running past Little Venice to Maida Vale before curving north-west to Kilburn and then west to parallel the LNWR main line, before coming to the surface a short distance to the east of Queen's Park station. Three intermediate stations were to be provided: on Warwick Avenue at the junction with Warrington Avenue, Clifton Villas and Clifton Gardens; at the junction of Elgin and Randolph Avenues (named Maida Vale); and on Cambridge Avenue (named Kilburn Park). The LNWR gave a £1 million loan to the LER at 4% interest in perpetuity to help finance the extension. The bill received royal assent on 7 August 1912 as the London Electric Railway Act, 1912. Progress on the section from Paddington to Queen's Park was slowed by the start of World War I, so the line was not finished until early 1915. As at Paddington, the three below-ground stations were built to use escalators. Maida Vale and Kilburn Park were provided with buildings in the style of the earlier Leslie Green stations but without the upper storey, which was no longer required for housing lift gear. Warwick Avenue was accessed from a subway under the street. The LNWR rebuilt Queen's Park station with additional platforms for the Bakerloo Tube's and its own electric services and constructed two train sheds for rolling stock, one each side of the station. Although the tracks were completed to Queen's Park, delays to the completion of the stations caused the extension to open in stages: - Warwick Avenue, on 31 January 1915 - Maida Vale, on 6 June 1915 - Kilburn Park, on 31 January 1915 - Queen's Park, on 11 February 1915 North of Queen's Park, the LNWR had opened its new lines between Willesden Junction and Watford during 1912 and 1913, together with new stations at Harlesden, Stonebridge Park, North Wembley, Kenton and Headstone Lane. The new tracks between Queen's Park and Willesden Junction opened on 10 May 1915, when Bakerloo Tube services were extended there. On 16 April 1917, the tube service was extended to Watford Junction. North of Queen's Park, the Bakerloo Tube served the following stations: - Kensal Green - Willesden Junction - Harlesden - Stonebridge Park - Wembley for Sudbury (now Wembley Central) - North Wembley - Kenton - Harrow & Wealdstone - Headstone Lane - Pinner & Hatch End (later Hatch End for Pinner, now Hatch End) - Carpenders Park, opened 5 May 1919 - Bushey & Oxhey (now Bushey) - Watford High Street - Watford Junction For the extension to Queen's Park, the LER supplemented the existing rolling stock with 14 new carriages ordered from Brush Traction and Leeds Forge Company plus spare Gate stock carriages from the GNP&BR. These carriages, the 1914 stock, were the first to have doors in the sides of the carriages as well as the ends. For the longer extension to Watford, the LER and the LNWR ordered 72 new carriages from the Metropolitan Railway Carriage and Wagon Company. Manufacture of this rolling stock was delayed by the war, and, while it was waiting for delivery, the Bakerloo Tube used spare 1915 stock carriages ordered for an unfinished extension of the CLR to Ealing Broadway and more spare Gate stock carriages from the GNP&BR. Delivery of the carriages for the Watford service, known as the Watford Joint stock because ownership was shared with the LNWR, began in 1920; they were painted in the LNWR's livery to distinguish them from trains operating only on the Bakerloo Tube's tracks. ### Camberwell and south-east London The southern termination of the line at Elephant & Castle presented the opportunity for the line to be extended further, to serve Camberwell and other destinations in south-east London. In 1913, the Lord Mayor of London announced a proposal for the Bakerloo Tube to be extended to the Crystal Palace via Camberwell Green, Dulwich and Sydenham Hill, but nothing was done to implement the plan. In 1921, the LER costed an extension to Camberwell, Dulwich and Sydenham and in 1922 plans for an extension to Orpington via Loughborough Junction and Catford were considered. In 1928, a route to Rushey Green via Dulwich was suggested. Again, no action was taken, although the London and Home Counties Traffic Advisory Committee approved an extension to Camberwell in 1926. In 1931, an extension to Camberwell was approved as part of the London Electric Metropolitan District and Central London Railway Companies (Works) Act, 1931. The route was to follow Walworth Road and Camberwell Road south from Elephant and Castle, with stations at Albany Road and under Denmark Hill road at Camberwell. Elephant & Castle station was to be reconstructed with a third platform, a new ticket hall and escalators. However, financial constraints prevented any work from being started. ## Improvements, 1914–28 Overcrowding was a major problem at many stations where interchanges were made with other Underground lines and efforts were made in a number of places to improve passenger movements. In 1914, work was carried out to provide larger ticket halls and install escalators at Oxford Circus, Embankment and Baker Street. In 1923, further work at Oxford Circus provided a combined Bakerloo and CLR ticket hall and added more escalators serving the CLR platforms. In 1926, Trafalgar Square and Waterloo received escalators, the latter in conjunction with expansion of the station as part of the CCE&HR's extension to Kennington. Between 1925 and 1928, Piccadilly Circus station saw the greatest reconstruction. A large circular ticket hall was excavated below the road junction with multiple subway connections from points around the Circus and two flights of escalators down to the Bakerloo and Piccadilly platforms were installed. ## Move to public ownership, 1923–33 Despite closer co-operation and improvements made to the Bakerloo stations and to other parts of the network, the Underground railways continued to struggle financially. The UERL's ownership of the highly profitable London General Omnibus Company (LGOC) since 1912 had enabled the UERL group, through the pooling of revenue, to use profits from the bus company to subsidise the less profitable railways. However, competition from numerous small bus companies during the early 1920s eroded the profitability of the LGOC and had a negative impact on the profitability of the whole UERL group. To protect the UERL group's income, its chairman Lord Ashfield lobbied the government for regulation of transport services in the London area. Starting in 1923, a series of legislative initiatives were made in this direction, with Ashfield and Labour London County Councillor (later MP and Minister of Transport) Herbert Morrison at the forefront of debates as to the level of regulation and public control under which transport services should be brought. Ashfield aimed for regulation that would give the UERL group protection from competition and allow it to take substantive control of the LCC's tram system; Morrison preferred full public ownership. After seven years of false starts, a bill was announced at the end of 1930 for the formation of the London Passenger Transport Board (LPTB), a public corporation that would take control of the UERL, the Metropolitan Railway and all bus and tram operators within an area designated as the London Passenger Transport Area. The Board was a compromise – public ownership but not full nationalisation – and came into existence on 1 July 1933. On this date, the LER and the other Underground companies were liquidated. ## Legacy The plan for the extension to Camberwell was kept alive throughout the 1930s and, in 1940, the permission was used to construct sidings beyond Elephant & Castle. After the Second World War, the plans were revised again, with stations located under Walworth Road and Camberwell Green, and the extension appeared on tube maps in 1949. Rising construction costs caused by difficult ground conditions and restricted funds in the post-war austerity period led the scheme to be cancelled again in 1950. Various proposals have been evaluated since, including an extension to Peckham considered in the early 1970s, but the costs have always out-weighed the benefits. One of the LPTB's first acts in charge of the Bakerloo line was the opening of a new station at South Kenton on 3 July 1933. As part of the LPTB's New Works Programme announced in 1935, new tube tunnels were constructed from Baker Street to the former MR station at Finchley Road and the Bakerloo line took over the stopping service to Wembley Park and the MR's Stanmore branch. The service opened in November 1939 and remained part of the Bakerloo line until 1979 when it transferred to the Jubilee line. The Bakerloo line's Watford service frequency was gradually reduced and from 1965 ran only during rush hours. In 1982, the service beyond Stonebridge Park was ended as part of the fall-out of the cancellation of the Greater London Council's Fares Fair subsidies policy. A peak hours service was restored to Harrow & Wealdstone in 1984 and a full service was restored in 1989.

Jessie Murray

British psychoanalyst and suffragette

Jessie Margaret Murray (9 February 1867 – 25 September 1920) was a British psychoanalyst and suffragette. Born in India, she moved to the UK when she was 13. She undertook studies in medicine with the College of Preceptors and Worshipful Society of Apothecaries and at the University of Durham and University College London. She also attended lectures by the French psychologist Pierre Janet at the Collège de France, Paris. Murray was a member of the Women's Freedom League and Women's Tax Resistance League, two organisations that took direct action in their campaigns for women's suffrage. In 1910 she and the journalist Henry Brailsford took statements from the suffragettes who had been mistreated during the Black Friday demonstrations in November that year. Their published memorandum was presented to the Home Office, along with a formal request for a public inquiry. The Home Secretary, Winston Churchill, refused to establish one. After practising medicine from 1909, Murray and her close friend Julia Turner opened the Medico-Psychological Clinic in 1913, a pioneering entity that provided psychological evaluation and treatment, affordable for middle-class families. Several of the staff who worked and trained at the clinic became leading psychoanalysts. Murray was awarded an MD by the University of Durham in 1919. Shortly afterwards she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer; she died in September 1920, aged 53. The clinic Murray founded closed down in 1922 as a result of political in-fighting and financial problems. During its nine years of existence, through its training programme, it laid the foundation of psychological evaluation in the UK. Its practice of having students undergo their own therapy was later adopted by the International Psychoanalytical Association. ## Early life, education and professional training: 1867–1915 Jessie Margaret Murray was born in Hazaribagh, British India, on 9 February 1867 to Hugh Hildyard, a lieutenant of the Royal Artillery, and Frances Jane Murray. The couple also had two younger daughters while in India, Mary Ethel and Edith May. In about 1880 Frances Murray and her children travelled to Edinburgh, where they settled; by 1891 they were living in London. Five years later the family was living in Bayswater, West London, when Hugh, then a retired colonel, died. In 1898 Murray met Julia Turner, who was completing an undergraduate degree in classics at University College London. The two formed a close friendship; Elizabeth Valentine, Murray's biographer, considers the relationship was an "intimate friendship ... that showed many of the signs of a life partnership". The psychotherapist Marion Bower considers the two were probably a lesbian couple. Turner gave Murray private tuition, and she passed the first stage examinations of the College of Preceptors in 1899. In February 1900 she began studying at the London School of Medicine for Women and then enrolled as a student at the College of Medicine, Newcastle. In June 1908 she passed her examinations to become a Licentiate in Medicine and Surgery of the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries. The following year she was granted the degree of Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery at the University of Durham; her study included the field of psychological medicine. Some time later Murray attended the lectures of the French psychologist Pierre Janet at the Collège de France, Paris. She also studied at University College London between 1912 and 1915. ## Women's suffrage activism Murray was a member of the Women's Freedom League, a militant organisation for women's suffrage, founded in 1907, which eschewed violence in favour of non-violent tactics; Turner was also a member, and one of Turner's two sisters was a member of the Women's Social and Political Union. On Black Friday—18 November 1910—a suffragette demonstration of 300 women marchers was treated with violence, some of it sexual, by the Metropolitan Police and bystanders. Murray and the journalist Henry Brailsford collected 135 statements from demonstrators, nearly all of which described acts of violence against the women; 29 of the statements also included details of violence that included sexual indecency. Their findings were published and, in February 1911, their memorandum was presented to the Home Office, along with a formal request for a public inquiry. The Home Secretary, Winston Churchill, refused to establish one. From at least April 1910 Murray was a member of the Women's Tax Resistance League, a direct action organisation that used tax resistance to protest against the lack of votes for women. Murray hosted group meetings at her house and, in 1911, had property seized by bailiffs for non-payment of her taxes. She wrote on her demand "I, a member of the Tax Resistance League, hereby declare that I have conscientious objections to paying King's taxes so long as women are denied the suffrage. I maintain that taxation without representation is unconstitutional." Her debts were covered by the sale of a sideboard and chairs, although she refused to allow her property to be purchased back by her friends. In 1913 Murray donated 10s 6d to the Tax Resistance League; such funds were often used by the League to buy back seized property. ## Medico-Psychological Clinic From 1912 to 1914 Murray worked as a consulting physician at the Quinton Polyclinic, where they treated gastroenteritis in infants, eczema and other skin diseases by isotonised seawater. In 1913, while Murray was still consulting at the Polyclinic, she and Turner established the Medico-Psychological Clinic at 14 Endsleigh Street, London, where they both lived. The clinic was one of the first psychotherapeutic consultancies in Britain. Initially the clinic operated informally, opening only three afternoons a week, offering its services to those who could not afford an alternative; one of the clinic's aims was to provide treatment that could be afforded by middle-class patients. The practice soon grew and in July 1914 the clinic moved to its own premises at 30 Brunswick Square, London, after they received a £500 donation from the writer May Sinclair. The clinic used a variety of psychiatric methods and disciplines at a time when psychological experimentation was booming; the clinic called its approach "orthopsychics". As psychology was underdeveloped as a science at the time, there was a focus on recruiting from those with a general education, rather than with specialist psychiatric training. From July 1915 the clinic began a training programme for psychotherapists by forming a sister organisation, the Society for the Study of Orthopsychics. This was the first course in England for training psychoanalysts. Part of the training included students having to undergo their own therapy, a requirement that was later adopted by the International Psychoanalytical Association. The clinic initially focused on treating women patients, but as the First World War progressed they began admitting men too. In April 1917 the clinic expanded into a neighbouring house to provide an in-patient facility for rehabilitating soldiers suffering from shell shock. By 1919 a third adjacent house was occupied by the clinic. To raise funds to treat the increasing number of servicemen entering treatment, the clinic published a brochure, entitled "Special Appeal in Time of War", which described its approach: > ... in providing certain newer forms of treatment, the utility of which in the kind of cases indicated has frequently been demonstrated, but which for lack of suitable conditions have so far only been accessible to a very limited number of sufferers. These forms of treatment are often referred to collectively as Psychotherapy and include the various forms of mental analysis, and re-synthesis which are known as Psychological Analysis (Janet, Morton Prince, &c.), Psycho-Analysis (Freud and Jung, &c.), and as Therapeutic Conversation and Persuasion (Dejerine, Dubois, &c.), Re-Education and Suggestion in the hypnoidal and hypnotic state. Murray joined many of the professional networks associated with her field, and became a member of the British Medical Association, the Association of Registered Medical Women, the Psycho-Medical Society, the Medico-Psychological Association, the Royal Society of Medicine, the Society for Psychical Research, the British Association for the Advancement of Science (BAAS) and the Psychological Society. She was an early member of the British Society for the Study of Sex Psychology and spoke at the society's first quarterly meeting in January 1915 on "The Evolution of the Instincts". ## Final years In 1915 Murray met Marie Stopes, the pioneer in the field of family planning, at a BAAS meeting in Manchester, where both women presented papers. The two corresponded and attended the same medical meetings. In 1918 Stopes published her book Married Love, A New Contribution to the Solution of Sex Difficulties; Murray wrote the preface, in which she states: > The age-long conflict between the "lower" and the "higher" impulses, between the primitive animal nature and the specifically human developments of an altruistic and ethical order, are fought afresh in each soul and in every marriage. We need to realise more clearly that the lower is never—ought never to be—eliminated but rather subsumed by the higher. No true harmony can be hoped for so long as one factor or the other is ignored or repressed. In July 1919 Murray was awarded an MD by the University of Durham. Her thesis was on "Nervous Functional Diseases from the Point of View of Modern Clinical Psychology", which, according to Valentine, "discussed the value of psychological discoveries in the treatment and prevention of nervous and mental diseases". Soon after she was awarded her MD, Murray was diagnosed with ovarian cancer and retired from the clinic. Her position of co-director was taken by James Glover, who had joined the practice in 1918. He was medically trained and interested in psychoanalysis and had been rejected from military service because of his diabetes. Murray wrote her will in July 1919, leaving her estate to Turner, who was also named as the executrix. Murray died on 25 September 1920, aged 53; she was cremated, and her ashes buried in her mother's grave in Highgate Cemetery. Her obituary in The British Medical Journal described her as "a brilliant and many-sided personality". ## Impact The Medico-Psychological Clinic was pioneering, according to The Institute of Psychoanalysis. The gender studies academic Grace Lavery considers the clinic to have been "an important British landing strip for psychoanalytic thought". Because of the training regime the clinic introduced with the Society for the Study of Orthopsychics, it influenced the next generation of psychoanalysts. Many students and staff became leading psychoanalysts and early members of the British Psychological Society and the Tavistock Clinic. They included Marjorie Brierley, Mary Chadwick, Edward Glover, Susan Isaacs, Barbara Low, Sylvia Payne, Joan Riviere, Nina Searl and Ella Freeman Sharpe. The presence of James Glover (older brother to Edward) as a senior member of staff was part of the reason the clinic eventually closed down. In 1921 Glover travelled to Berlin for several months training and analysis with the German psychoanalyst Karl Abraham—a student and collaborator of Sigmund Freud. During his study he became a devotee of the Freudian school of analysis and returned to Britain determined to change the way the clinic was run. His brother Edward later described the "missionary zeal" with which his brother approached the task, banning any treatment except those on Freudian lines. The clinic had previously been run on non-partisan lines, using whichever discipline was deemed best for the patient, alongside medical treatment and changes in diet and exercise—although Murray, Turner and Sinclair had a personal preference for using Jungian analysis. The feminist writer Elaine Showalter sees the closure of the clinic as "a striking illustration of the way that male professionalism could crush the early experimentation of women in psychoanalysis". Glover also tried to get the clinic allied with the British Psychoanalytical Society (BPS) formed by Ernest Jones. Jones—also a follower of Freudian practices—was dismissive of the clinic and Murray, to the point that he was disingenuous in his description of the practice. He was also keen on closing it down; in 1920 he wrote to friends that the clinic had a "bad repute in the medical profession", and continued "all the therapists ... lay, ... [but] mostly women, and often badly neurotic women". Turner refused to join the BPS and the clinic split; Glover left with some of the staff and students. By 1922 Turner closed the clinic. Many of those who had not followed Glover joined the Tavistock Clinic. The clinic's finances were also unsound at the time of the closure, and it had debts of over £1,000 when the controlling company was liquidated. The hostel for shell-shocked soldiers was a large drain on finances. There were no endowments or major sponsors to keep it running, and charitable funding after the war was scant. After the closure of the clinic, Turner returned to her residence at Endsleigh Street and opened a practice. She published three books on psychology: The Psychology of Self-Consciousness (1923), The Dream and the Anxiety Hypothesis (1923) and Human Psychology as seen through the Dream (1924). The dedication in The Psychology of Self-Consciousness reads "To Jessie Margaret Murray M.D., B.S. (Durham) from whose inspired teaching and example is derived anything of value therein, this little book is dedicated." Turner died in 1946; her will closed with the words "It is my desire that my body be cremated and my ashes scattered upon the grave of my said dear friend Jessie Margaret Murray in Highgate Cemetery".

Postman's Park

Park in central London

Postman's Park is a public garden in central London, a short distance north of St Paul's Cathedral. Bordered by Little Britain, Aldersgate Street, St. Martin's Le Grand, King Edward Street, and the site of the former headquarters of the General Post Office (GPO), it is one of the largest open spaces in the City of London. Postman's Park opened in 1880 on the site of the former churchyard and burial ground of St Botolph's Aldersgate church and expanded over the next 20 years to incorporate the adjacent burial grounds of Christ Church Greyfriars and St Leonard, Foster Lane, together with the site of housing demolished during the widening of Little Britain in 1880; the ownership of the last location became the subject of a lengthy dispute between the church authorities, the General Post Office, the Treasury, and the City Parochial Foundation. A shortage of space for burials in London meant that corpses were often laid on the ground and covered over with soil, thus elevating the park above the streets which surround it. In 1900, the park became the location for George Frederic Watts's Memorial to Heroic Self-Sacrifice, a memorial to ordinary people who died while saving the lives of others and who might otherwise be forgotten, in the form of a loggia and long wall housing ceramic memorial tablets. Only four of the planned 120 memorial tablets were in place at the time of its opening, with a further nine tablets added during Watts's lifetime. Watts's wife, Mary Watts, took over the management of the project after Watts's death in 1904 and oversaw the installation of a further 35 memorial tablets in the following four years along with a small monument to Watts. Later she became disillusioned with the new tile manufacturer and, with her time and money increasingly occupied by the running of the Watts Gallery, she lost interest in the project, and only five further tablets were added during her lifetime. In 1972, key elements of the park, including the Memorial to Heroic Self-Sacrifice, were Grade II listed to preserve their character, upgraded to Grade II\* in 2018. Following the 2004 film Closer, based on the 1997 play Closer by Patrick Marber, Postman's Park experienced a resurgence of interest; key scenes of both were set in the park itself. In June 2009, a city worker, Jane Shaka (née Michele), via the Diocese of London added a new tablet to the Memorial, the first new addition for 78 years. In November 2013 a free mobile app, The Everyday Heroes of Postman’s Park, was launched which documents the lives and deaths of those commemorated on the memorial. ## Historical background The 13th-century church of St Leonard, Foster Lane, about 200 yards (180 m) north of St Paul's Cathedral on Foster Lane, was badly damaged in the 1666 Great Fire of London, and was not considered to be worth the cost of repair. Instead its parish was united with that of the nearby Christ Church Greyfriars, which was rebuilt after the fire to a design by Sir Christopher Wren; the incumbent from that time onwards has held the joint titles of Vicar of Christ Church Greyfriars and Rector of St Leonard, Foster Lane. Although destroyed in 1666, the ruins of St Leonard, Foster Lane, were not cleared until the early 19th century. Despite the unification of the parishes, they continued to operate separate burial grounds. That of Christ Church Greyfriars was a short distance north-east of the church, on the eastern side of King Edward Street, while St Leonard, Foster Lane's, was about 50 feet (15 m) further east. Immediately outside the London Wall at Aldersgate, a short distance north of St Leonard, Foster Lane on Little Britain, is the church of St Botolph's Aldersgate (sometimes referred to as "St Botolph Without Aldersgate", a reference to its position immediately outside the historic city gate). Although the original church, first mentioned in 1493, had survived the Great Fire, it was demolished between 1754 and 1757 and replaced in 1790 by the current building. St Botolph's Aldersgate was a wealthy parish, having been granted the assets of the nearby Cluniac priory and hospital during the 16th-century Dissolution of the Monasteries. The parish was historically a significant place of worship, possibly best known as the site of the evangelical conversions of John Wesley and Charles Wesley. To the immediate south-west of the church building, St Botolph's Aldersgate owned an irregularly shaped churchyard enclosed by Aldersgate Street to the east, the Christ Church Greyfriars burial ground to the west, housing and the burial ground of St Leonard, Foster Lane, to the south and housing along Little Britain to the north. The churchyard was used as a burial ground and as a public open space. As with other City churchyards, as the amount of available burial space in London failed to keep pace with the growing population it came to be used exclusively as a burial ground. Postman's Park has always been situated in the ward of Aldersgate. Its association with (and location within) that ward was reaffirmed in the most recent boundary review that took place in 2010; the ward boundary will be drawn around the southern edge of the park upon boundary changes effected in 2013. ## Closure of London's burial grounds The severe lack of burial space in London meant that graves would be frequently reused in London's burial grounds, and the difficulty of digging without disturbing existing graves led to bodies often simply being stacked on top of each other to fit the available space and covered with a layer of earth. Differing numbers of parishioners in each parish led to burial grounds being used at different rates, and by the mid-19th century, the ground level of the St Botolph's Aldersgate churchyard was 6 feet (1.8 m) above that of the Christ Church Greyfriars burial ground, and 4 feet (1.2 m) above that of the St Leonard, Foster Lane, burial ground. In 1831 and 1848, serious outbreaks of cholera had overwhelmed the crowded cemeteries of London, causing bodies to be stacked in heaps awaiting burial, and even relatively recent graves to be exhumed to make way for new burials. Public health policy at this time was generally shaped by the miasma theory, and the bad smells and risks of disease caused by piled bodies and exhumed rotting corpses caused great public concern. A Royal Commission established in 1842 to investigate the problem concluded that London's burial grounds were so overcrowded that it was impossible to dig a new grave without cutting through an existing one. Sir Edwin Chadwick testified that each year, 20,000 adults and 30,000 children were being buried in less than 218 acres (88 ha) of already overcrowded burial grounds; the Commission heard that one cemetery, Spa Fields in Clerkenwell, designed to hold 1,000 bodies, contained 80,000 graves, and that gravediggers throughout London were obliged to shred bodies in order to cram the remains into available grave space. ### The Burials Act 1851 In the wake of public concerns following the cholera epidemics and the findings of the Royal Commission, the Act to Amend the Laws Concerning the Burial of the Dead in the Metropolis (Burials Act) was passed in 1851. Under the Burials Act, new burials were prohibited in what were then the built-up areas of London. Seven large cemeteries had recently opened a short distance from London and temporarily became London's main burial grounds, and in 1849 the 2,200-acre (890 ha) Brookwood Cemetery in Brookwood, Surrey, with space for 240,000 graves, was opened by the London Necropolis Company. Connected to London by the London Necropolis Railway in 1854, it was at the time the world's largest cemetery. It was projected that, on the basis of one body per grave with each grave being reused after 10 years, Brookwood Cemetery would suffice to house the dead of London forever. With London's churchyards and burial grounds no longer used for new burials, in 1858 it was decided to convert the churchyard of St Botolph's Aldersgate to a public park. On 30 November 1858, the Churchwardens of St Botolph's Aldersgate announced that: > The Churchwardens of the above parish hereby give notice that they intend to plant, pave, or cover over the churchyard and burial-ground. Persons having relatives interred in the said churchyard or burial-ground will be permitted (under certain regulations) to remove and inter the remains of such relatives in any burial-ground or cemetery, without the city. Persons also, to the memory of whose relatives any tomb, monument, or inscription may have been erected therein, may (under the like regulations) cause such tomb or grave-stones to be removed and taken away; but such removal, in either case, must be at the expense of the persons causing the same to be done. Applications for either of the above purposes must be made, in writing, on or before Monday, the 20th day of December, 1858. ## Opening of the public park Progress in clearing and covering the burial ground was slow, and it was not until 28 October 1880 that the churchyard was reopened as a public park. Laid out with flower beds and gravel paths, the park became a popular place for local workers to spend breaks. In 1887, the burial ground of Christ Church Greyfriars was given to the parish of St Botolph's Aldersgate. The burial ground was cleared and the ground level raised by 6 feet (1.8 m) to allow its incorporation into the new park. At this time, the burial ground of St Leonard, Foster Lane was also cleared and raised to integrate it with the new park, although it was not formally merged with the park until 1890. A short distance south of the three burial grounds, on St. Martin's Le Grand, was the site of a collegiate church and sanctuary founded in 750 by Withu, King of Kent, expanded in 1056 by Ingebrian, Earl of Essex and issued with a Royal Charter in 1068 by William the Conqueror. The site of the church was cleared in 1818 in preparation for the construction of a new headquarters and central sorting office for the General Post Office (GPO), which opened in 1829. In 1873 and 1895 the GPO building was greatly expanded in size, with the 1895 extension bordering the southern edge of the park itself. The park became extremely popular with workers in the GPO building, and soon became known as "Postman's Park". ### The City Parochial Foundation and the north of the park Between the northern border of the former St Botolph's Aldersgate churchyard and Little Britain was a small, roughly triangular 300-square-yard (250 m²) piece of land. The site of housing owned by the parish of St Botolph's Aldersgate and demolished during the widening of Little Britain in 1880, it had been incorporated into the new park. However, being owned by the parish, in 1891 ownership was formally passed to the newly formed City Parochial Foundation (CPF), which felt itself obliged under charity law to maximise its income from the land. In October 1896, the CPF fenced off the land from the rest of the park, and announced that it intended to lease the land for building purposes, unless the authorities were willing to purchase the land for £12,000 (about £ as of 2023). The City of London had few open spaces, and the proposal to build on the north of the park was extremely unpopular with local residents, workers and social reformers. Henry Fitzalan-Howard, the Postmaster-General, persuaded the Government to contribute £5,000 towards the cost, and the clergy of St Botolph's Aldersgate launched an appeal in The Times for the remaining funds. Reginald Brabazon, 12th Earl of Meath, founder and Chairman of the Metropolitan Public Gardens Association (MPGA), decided to put the weight of his organisation behind the campaign, and through a combination of public donations and donations from the London County Council, Corporation of London and Kyrle Society, raised the remaining £7,000 in less than six months. At this point a dispute broke out over who would be responsible for the maintenance of the park. The £5,000 offer from the Treasury was conditional upon the CPF reassigning to the Post Office the £200 annual maintenance grant that it currently gave to St Botolph's Aldersgate; the CPF maintained that it was happy to do so on condition that the Post Office maintain the park in place of St Botolph's Aldersgate, but that the Post Office was unwilling to do so. With all parties unable to agree on responsibility for maintenance, on 19 February 1898 the Treasury withdrew its offer altogether, leaving the appeal £5,000 short. In the wake of the Treasury's withdrawal of funding, in May 1898 the churchwardens of St Botolph's Aldersgate brokered a compromise with the CPF. The disputed site was split into two parts, each priced at £6,000. The western section would be purchased immediately using £6,000 of the £7,000 already raised, with an option to purchase the eastern section if the remaining £5,000 could be raised within two years, after which the CPF would go ahead with building plans if the money could not be raised. As before, the MPGA supported and assisted the new fundraising campaign. However, although the campaign was initially boosted by a £1,000 donation from Octavia Hill, fundraising was slow, and by October 1898 only £2,000 had been raised. The churchwardens and the MPGA began to consider ideas for initiatives which would publicise the campaign and provide a reason to justify preserving the whole of the park. ## George Frederic Watts's memorial proposals The painter and sculptor George Frederic Watts and his second wife Mary Fraser Tytler had long been advocates of the idea of art as a force for social change. Watts had painted a series of portraits of those figures he considered to be a positive social influence, the "Hall of Fame", which was donated to the National Portrait Gallery. As the son of a piano maker, who reportedly despised the wealthy and powerful and twice refused a baronetcy, Watts had long considered a national monument to the bravery of ordinary people. In August 1866, he suggested to his patron Charles Rickards that he "erect a great statue to Unknown Worth", and proposed erecting a colossal bronze figure. Unable to secure funds, the memorial remained unrealised. On 5 September 1887, a letter was published in The Times from Watts, proposing a scheme to commemorate the Golden Jubilee of Queen Victoria. Entitled "Another Jubilee Suggestion", Watts proposed to "collect a complete record of the stories of heroism in every-day life". Watts cited the case of Alice Ayres, a servant who, trapped in a burning house, gave up the chance to jump to safety, instead first throwing a mattress out of the window to cushion the fall, before running back into the house three times to fetch her employer's children and throwing them out of a window onto the mattress to safety before herself being overcome by fumes and falling out of the window to her death. Watts by this stage had abandoned the idea of a colossal bronze figure, and proposed "a kind of Campo Santo", consisting of a covered way and marble wall inscribed with the names of everyday heroes, to be built in Hyde Park. Despite an offer of funding from John Passmore Edwards, Watts's suggestion was not taken up, leading Watts to comment that "if I had proposed a race course round Hyde Park, there would have been plenty of sympathisers". Watts continued to lobby for such a memorial, with both himself and Mary Watts redrafting their wills to leave the bulk of their estate to the purpose, and considered selling his home, New Little Holland House, to finance the project. ## Memorial to Heroic Self-Sacrifice In 1898 a friend of Watts suggested to Henry Gamble, Vicar of St Botolph's Aldersgate, that should the church manage to purchase the land owned by the CPF it would make a suitable site for Watts's memorial. Watts was approached, and agreed to the suggestion. On 13 October 1898 the appeal was relaunched, with the proposal that if the remaining £3,000 were raised, Watts would design and build a covered way, which in due course would be lined with memorial tablets to commemorate the bravery of ordinary people. Watts planned to build a covered way around three sides of a quadrangle, with the roof supported on stone or timber columns. The MPGA were not consulted about the proposal, and the following week Lord Meath wrote to The Times and the City Press to complain about the scheme. He argued that the MPGA had devoted large amounts of time and money to prevent the park from being built on, and that while Watts's proposal was "worthy of all encouragement and support", Postman's Park, at less than one acre (0.4 ha) and surrounded by tall buildings, was an inappropriate site. The three-sided design was abandoned, in favour of a 50-foot (15 m) long and 9-foot (2.7 m) tall wooden loggia with a tiled roof, designed by Ernest George. The supporting wall contained space for 120 memorial tablets. St Botolph's Aldersgate secured the necessary funds to complete the purchase of the CPF land, and Watts agreed to pay the £700 (about £ as of 2023) construction costs himself. Work began in 1899, and on 30 July 1900 the newly reunified park and Watts's Memorial to Heroic Self-Sacrifice (also known as the Wall of Heroes) were unveiled by Alfred Newton, Lord Mayor of London, and Mandell Creighton, Bishop of London. A short service was held in St Botolph's Aldersgate, after which a short speech was given by Creighton in which he observed that: > It was a good thing that the multitude who took their recreation in this open space should have some great thoughts on which to fix their hearts, some inscriptions before their eyes recalling to them the things which had been done by those who did their duty bravely, simply and straightforwardly in the place where God had placed them. Such were, indeed, the salt of the earth, and it was by producing characters such as theirs that a nation waxed strong. Watts himself, by now 83 years old, was too ill to attend the ceremony, and was represented by Mary Watts. ### William De Morgan memorial tablets Although Watts's plans for the memorial had envisaged names inscribed on the wall, in the event the memorial was designed to hold panels of hand-painted and glazed ceramic tiles. Watts was an acquaintance of William De Morgan, at that time one of the world's leading tile designers, and consequently found them easier and cheaper to obtain than engraved stone. The four initial memorial tablets, installed for the unveiling, each consisted of two large custom-made tiles, with each tablet costing £3 5s (about £ as of 2023) to produce. Only four tablets were installed by the time of the unveiling ceremony, and Watts already had concerns about the potential costs of installing the 120 tablets envisaged in the memorial's design. Costs were allayed by using standard 6-inch (15 cm) tiles for the next set of tablets, reducing the costs to a more manageable £2 per tablet. In 1902, nine further tablets were installed, intermittently spaced along the central of the five rows, including the memorial to Alice Ayres for which Watts had lobbied. The subjects of the 13 initial tiles had been personally selected by Watts, who had for many years maintained a list of newspaper reports of heroic actions potentially worthy of recognition. However, by this time he was in his eighties and in increasingly poor health, and in January 1904 the vicar and churchwardens of St Botolph's Aldersgate formed the Humble Heroes Memorial Committee to oversee the completion of the project, agreeing to defer to Watts regarding additions to the memorial. Watts strenuously objected to the name, as "not being applicable to anything as splendid as heroic self-sacrifice", and the committee was renamed the "Heroic Self Sacrifice Memorial Committee". On 1 July 1904 George Frederic Watts died at New Little Holland House, aged 87. He was hailed "The last great Victorian", and a memorial service was held in St Paul's Cathedral, 300 yards (270 m) south of Postman's Park, on 7 July 1904. On 11 July 1904 Mary Watts wrote to the Heroic Self Sacrifice Memorial Committee, stating that she intended to complete the memorial and offering to select 35 names from Watts's list of names and to raise the £62 (about £ as of 2023) necessary to finance the completion of the first two rows of tablets. Mary Watts selected eleven names to complete the first row, and De Morgan provided the tiles in October 1905. Unfortunately, five of the tiles were damaged during shipping and needed to be replaced. Henry Gamble and Mary Watts also commissioned a memorial plaque from T. H. Wren, a student of the school of arts and crafts established by Watts in Compton. The relief plaque depicts Watts holding a scroll marked "Heroes", and is captioned "The utmost for the highest" and "In memorial of George Frederic Watts, who desiring to honour heroic self-sacrifice placed these records here". Eventually, on 13 December 1905, the eleven tiles and Wren's memorial to Watts, placed in the centre of the monument, were unveiled by Arthur Winnington-Ingram, Bishop of London, completing the first row of tiles. With the first row of tablets complete, Mary Watts and the Heroic Self Sacrifice Memorial Committee decided to complete the next row as soon as possible. The Committee selected 24 names, 22 proposed by Watts before his death and two from press reports of 1905, and De Morgan was duly commissioned to produce the new set of tablets. ### Royal Doulton William De Morgan was unwilling to compromise on quality or embrace the trend towards mass production, and by this time his work was significantly more expensive than similar works by other designers. Consequently, his ceramics business was becoming increasingly unviable financially. In 1906 his first novel, Joseph Vance, was published and became a great success, prompting De Morgan to close the ceramics business in 1907 to concentrate on writing. Mary Watts attempted to replicate De Morgan's tile designs at Watts's pottery in Compton but was unable to do so, and investigated other tile manufacturers. It transpired that the only manufacturer able to supply suitable tiles was Royal Doulton, although they were unable or unwilling to replicate De Morgan's designs, and they were duly commissioned to manufacture the 24 tiles, delivered in May 1908. Mary Watts was unhappy with the design of the tiles, which were significantly different in colour and appearance from De Morgan's original tiles, and they were installed without ceremony on 21 August 1908, immediately below De Morgan's original row of tiles. In 1905 the Heroic Self Sacrifice Memorial Committee had suggested to Mary Watts that public funds be raised to complete the memorial, but she objected and promised to complete the 120 tablets at her own cost or provide funds in her will to do so. However, in 1910 she told the Committee that she was unable to fund the project, as she was devoting her time and money to the Watts Mortuary Chapel and the Watts Gallery in Compton. Work to fill the three empty rows of the memorial was abandoned. #### Post-First World War memorials to police officers On 13 June 1917, P.C. Alfred Smith, an officer of the Metropolitan Police, was patrolling Central Street in Finsbury, approximately 900 yards (820 m) directly north of Postman's Park. At about noon, fifteen German aircraft began a bombing raid, devastating the area. Around 150 women and girls working in the nearby Debenhams factory panicked in the explosions, and ran out into the street while the air raid was still in progress. PC Smith and the manager of the factory shepherded them back to safety in the building, but Smith was caught by the blast of one of the bombs and died. Following Smith's death J. Allen Baker, Member of Parliament for Finsbury East, launched a public fund to support Smith's widow and young son and to provide a suitable memorial to him, raising a total of £471 14s 2d (about £ as of 2023). On 13 June 1919, two years to the day after Smith's death, a memorial tablet to Smith made by Royal Doulton was unveiled at the start of the empty row directly above De Morgan's original tiles. After the addition of Smith's memorial tablet, no further changes were made to the memorial in the years following the First World War. Although Mary Watts had always been opposed to the idea of a public subscription, in 1927 T. H. Ellis, Parish Clerk of St Botolph's Aldersgate, approached her to propose public fundraising to complete the memorial. Mary Watts agreed and an appeal was launched in May 1929, aiming to raise funds to repair and restore the by now run-down loggia, and to install additional tablets. By this time Watts's work was out of fashion, and the appeal was not as successful as was hoped, raising only £250 (about £ as of 2023). Of this total £30 was spent on the restoration of the loggia, leaving £220 for placing future tablets. Disliking Royal Doulton's tiling designs, and with her time and money increasingly devoted to the maintenance of the Watts Gallery, Mary Watts by now was losing interest in the memorial and by 1930 had handed complete control to the Heroic Self Sacrifice Memorial Committee. Neither Mary Watts nor the committee had added new names to the list originally proposed by Watts, and thus there were no proposed names more recent than 1904, with the vast majority dating back to the 19th century. The Committee decided that rather than use these by now dated records, they would request suggestions from relevant public bodies. The British Medical Association was asked to suggest brave medical professionals, the Metropolitan Police Service to suggest brave police officers, and, in light of the park's name, the General Post Office was asked to suggest heroic postal workers. The Metropolitan Police suggested the names of three officers who had died while rescuing others, and on 15 October 1930 tablets to the three officers, manufactured by Royal Doulton to a similar design to their previous tablets, were added to the second row and unveiled by Hastings Lees-Smith, the Postmaster-General, in a ceremony also commemorating the 50th anniversary of the opening of the park, attended by Mary Watts and many police officers and relatives of those being commemorated. At this time, one of De Morgan's 1902 tablets was removed. Commemorating four workers who had died in an accident at the East Ham Sewage Works in 1895, Watts had mistakenly listed the incident as having taken place at the West Ham Sewage Works in 1885. The De Morgan tablet was removed and replaced with a Royal Doulton tablet giving the correct location and date. As the Doulton tablets were in such a different style to De Morgan's, the replacement tablet was installed in the second row next to the three new tablets to police officers, rather than in the space left by the original. ### Herbert Maconoghu Removing the original tablet to the victims of the East Ham Sewage Works accident had left an unsightly gap in the original row of tiles. In 1931, Mary Watts tracked down Fred Passenger, a former employee of De Morgan who had, after the closure of the business, set up his own ceramics business using De Morgan designs. Passenger was by this time working for a pottery business in Bushey Heath established by artist Ida Perrin, but Mary Watts persuaded him to produce a single panel in the style of De Morgan to fit into the empty space. Herbert Maconoghu, a schoolboy who had died in 1882 attempting to rescue two friends from drowning, had been one of the names originally suggested by Watts, and Passenger produced a tablet to Maconoghu in the style of the original central row, which was installed in April 1931. Maconoghu was actually Herbert Moore McConaghey, the son of Matthew and Martha McConaghey, and he was born in Mynpoorie in India where Matthew was working as a settlement officer for the Imperial Civil Service. ## Postman's Park after the death of Mary Watts Mary Watts died in 1938, and was buried alongside George Frederic Watts near the Watts Mortuary Chapel, which she had herself designed and built in Compton in 1901. Following her death, and with both George and Mary Watts increasingly out of fashion, the memorial was abandoned half-finished, with only 52 of the intended 120 spaces filled. In the years following Mary Watts's death there were occasional proposals to add new names to complete the memorial, but the Watts Gallery was hostile to the plans, considering the monument in its unfinished state to be a symbol of the Watts's values and beliefs, and that its status as a historic record of its time is what makes it of value in the present day. The nave of Christ Church Greyfriars was destroyed by bombing on 29 December 1940. By then the decline in the population of the City of London had reduced the congregation to less than 80, and the parishes of St Leonard, Foster Lane and Christ Church Greyfriars were merged with nearby St Sepulchre-without-Newgate. Although parts of the ruins were cleared during a widening of King Edward Street after the Second World War, the remains of the nave of Christ Church Greyfriars became a public memorial in 1989; the tower is now office space. St Botolph's Aldersgate remains open as a functioning church. Unusually for an English church, because of its location in a now mainly commercial area with few local residents, services are held on Tuesdays instead of the more traditional Sundays. On 4 January 1950, St Botolph's Aldersgate and the surviving ruins of Christ Church Greyfriars were both designated Grade I listed buildings. In 1934, a statue of Sir Robert Peel erected in Cheapside in 1855 was declared an obstruction to traffic and removed. A proposal that it be installed in front of the Bank of England fell through, and in 1952 it was erected in Postman's Park. In 1971 the Metropolitan Police requested that the statue be moved to the new Peel Centre police training complex, and the Corporation of London agreed. In place of Peel's statue, a large bronze sculpture of the Minotaur by Michael Ayrton was unveiled in 1973. Dominating the small park, in 1997 the Minotaur sculpture was moved to a new position on the raised walkway above London Wall. On 5 June 1972, the western entrance of Postman's Park and the elaborate Gothic drinking fountain attached to the railings were Grade II listed, protecting them from further development. At this time, the Memorial to Heroic Self-Sacrifice itself was also Grade II listed; although considered of little architectural merit, the register notes that it is "listed as a curiosity". During the 1980s, however, prior to the opening of the nearby Barbican Centre and the regeneration of the local area, the Park and Memorial remained relatively neglected and unknown to the wider public. It was during this period that the artist Susan Hiller made Monument (1980–81), based on the tablets and the park setting. A multimedia installation, Monument consists of enlarged photographic replicas of the tablets arranged into a new formation, in front of which viewers sit on a park bench with their back to the photographs while listening on headphones to a recording of the artist speaking on notions of death, memory and representation. The work was inspired by Hiller noticing how the very artefacts that were meant to have a commemorative function were habitually being ignored, as when she came to photograph the tablets “there were people sitting on park benches in front of them eating their lunches, who turned round over their shoulders to look, as if for the first time, at what I was photographing. And when they had seen the plaques they said things like ‘Oh! Isn’t it sad? Isn’t it dreadful?’ But what struck me was that they had sat in front of these perfectly visible objects for years and years, and the objects had been... invisible.” Monument is considered a key work of British conceptual art of the period, and has been part of the Tate's collection since 1994. The Memorial was upgraded to Grade II\* in 2018. ### Leigh Pitt Leigh Pitt, a print technician from Surrey, had died on 7 June 2007 rescuing nine-year-old Harley Bagnall-Taylor who was drowning in a canal in Thamesmead. His colleague, Jane Michele (now Jane Shaka) approached the Diocese of London to suggest that Pitt would make a suitable addition to the memorial, and despite previous opposition from the Watts Gallery to proposals to complete the memorial, on 11 June 2009 a memorial to Pitt was added to the Memorial to Heroic Self-Sacrifice, the first new tablet added to the memorial since that of Herbert Maconoghu 78 years earlier. A spokesman for the Diocese of London said that the Diocese would now consider suitable names to be added to the memorial in future. ### In Popular Culture Postman's Park came to increased public awareness in 2004 with the release of the BAFTA- and Golden Globe-winning film Closer, which stars Natalie Portman, Julia Roberts, Jude Law and Clive Owen, and is based on the 1997 play Closer by Patrick Marber. A key plot element in the film revolves around Postman's Park, in which it is revealed that the character Alice Ayres (played by Portman in the film) has in fact fabricated her identity based on Alice Ayres's tablet on the Memorial to Heroic Self-Sacrifice, which she sees during her first meeting with Dan Woolf (Jude Law) as, during a walk in Postman's Park at the memorial, he asks her for her name. The park features in the 2021 film The Last Letter from Your Lover as the location where the main protagonists meet. ## The Everyday Heroes of Postman’s Park mobile app In November 2013, a free mobile app called The Everyday Heroes of Postman’s Park was launched. The app provided detailed accounts of each of the fifty-four incidents recorded on the Memorial and revealed the lives of the sixty-two people commemorated. The app employed image recognition technology and the built-in camera on the device to scan each tablet and then deliver the relevant information about the person. The app was the result of collaboration between Prossimo Ventures Ltd and Dr John Price of the University of Roehampton, supported by Creativeworks London, a Knowledge Exchange Hub for the Creative Economy funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). The app could be used on a range of devices including iPhone, iPad and Android devices, but it is no longer available. ## The Friends of the Watts Memorial The Friends of the Watts Memorial was established in 2015 with the primary aims of protecting, preserving and promoting the Watts Memorial to Heroic Self-Sacrifice in Postman's Park London and, ultimately, to work towards completing it in full as its creator, the artist George Frederic Watts originally intended. The Friends is a not-for-profit organisation, run entirely by volunteers and governed by a constitution. The Friends work with various partners, including the Bishop of London's Office, the City of London Corporation and the Watts Gallery, to ensure that the Watts Memorial is maintained and conserved. It promotes and publicises the memorial, through planning and staging events, so as to raise its profile and increase public engagement and knowledge about it. The Friends also support the work of those who wish to research the history of the memorial or to undertake events related to it and it undertakes fundraising to support the conservation of the memorial and to facilitate its completion. ## Styles of tiling used on the Memorial to Heroic Self-Sacrifice The tablets are arranged on the second, third and fourth of the five rows, with 24 tablets to William De Morgan's original design in the third, central, row, the 24 tablets added in 1908 directly below in the fourth row, and more recent additions above the original tiles in the second row. The first and fifth of the five rows remain empty. The first four tablets, designed and manufactured by De Morgan and installed in 1900, were each made from two large custom-made tiles. Nine further De Morgan tablets, installed in 1902, were made using standard tiles to reduce costs, and were the last tiles whose installation was overseen by Watts. Eleven further De Morgan tablets, along with T. H. Wren's memorial to Watts, were added in 1905, completing the central row of tablets. All 24 tablets of the 4th row, designed and manufactured by Royal Doulton, were added as a single batch in August 1908. A single Royal Doulton tablet to PC Alfred Smith was added in June 1919, followed in October 1930 by similar Royal Doulton tablets to three further police officers, and a replacement tablet with the correct details of the East Ham Sewage Works incident of 1895. A single tablet made by Fred Passenger in the original De Morgan style, honouring schoolboy Herbert Maconoghu, was added in April 1931 to fill the gap in the centre row left by the removal of the original, incorrect tablet to the victims of the East Ham Sewage Works incident. In 2009 a 54th tablet was added, in the style of the Royal Doulton tiles, to commemorate print technician Leigh Pitt, the first addition to the wall for 78 years.

Alleyway (video game)

1989 video game

Alleyway (アレイウェイ, Areiuĕi) is a 1989 video game developed by Nintendo and Intelligent Systems and published by Nintendo as a global launch title for the Game Boy. It is a Breakout clone and one of the first four games developed and released for the system. The game was released first in Japan in 1989, in North America later that year, and in Europe in 1990. It was later re-released for the Nintendo 3DS Virtual Console in June 2011. The name Alleyway references the in-game gateway that the player's spaceship (represented as a paddle) must pass through. While Alleyway is a portable clone of Breakout, it adds several features, including alternating stages, bonus rounds, and hazards for the player at later levels. While the game's original box art featured an unidentifiable protagonist, later international releases of the game replaced the character with Mario. Alleyway was released with limited advertising, receiving moderate to low scores from reviewers who compared it to games like Arkanoid. ## Gameplay The player's objective in Alleyway is to clear all bricks in each stage using a ball and paddle while keeping the ball from falling into the pit below, similar to that of Breakout. The paddle's speed can be adjusted by holding either the B or A button on the controller while moving the paddle, which can move only horizontally at a fixed height. At the start of each life, the player can reposition the paddle before releasing the ball and commencing gameplay. When released, the ball will always begin at a 45° angle above the paddle aimed toward its center. The player starts the game with five paddles; each time the ball falls into the pit below the paddle, a paddle is removed and the ball is reset. The game ends when all the player's paddles are depleted. An additional paddle is granted for every 1000 points scored until the player has over 10,000 points. The player may have up to nine paddles at once. The game lacks a continue feature, though the high score will be retained until the game is reset or turned off. As there is no battery-backed SaveRAM or password feature, Alleyway can only be completed in one sitting on the Game Boy. This was later changed with the re-release of the game for the Nintendo 3DS's Virtual Console system, which allowed for in-game progress to be recorded to a single save state accessible at any time while playing the game. ### Ball behavior The ball will only travel at 15°, 30°, or 45° angles. If the ball hits a brick, the brick disappears and the ball ricochets in a different direction at the same angle. The ball's speed depends on the type of brick that it hits: gray and black bricks increase its speed, while white and square, indestructible bricks have no effect. A sound effect is also played when the ball collides with an object or wall, with walls producing the lowest pitch and black bricks the highest. The ball's direction and speed can be controlled by the paddle's velocity and point of contact. Changing direction the moment the ball comes into contact with the paddle, called a snap technique, will bounce the ball upward with increased speed. Moving the paddle quickly in the opposite direction than the ball is headed will result in the ball bouncing in the same horizontal direction as the paddle at a 15° angle. If the player contacts the ball with the body of the paddle before it falls into the pit below, it will bounce back into the playing field. However, if instead, either corner of the paddle collides with the ball at that moment, it will be knocked directly into the pit. Alleyway's ball cannot be locked in an infinite loop of ricochets. Whenever the ball starts to loop between objects such as the ceiling, indestructible blocks and/or the paddle itself, its velocity will change at a random point after the second cycle on its next collision. As a result, the ball will travel at a slightly raised or lowered angle depending on its current trajectory, and will break out of the loop. ### Levels The game features 24 levels, based on eight block patterns in groups of three. After every three regular stages, the player proceeds to a bonus stage, giving the game a total of 32 levels. Most levels follow a generic design, though one group is modeled after Mario's head as it appears next to the remaining paddles icon. The player progresses to the next level once all bricks are destroyed, where the same pattern of bricks appears but behaves differently. Every second stage is a Scrolling Block Screen, featuring bricks that move from left to right; every third is an Advancing Block Screen, where the bricks move downward the height of one regular brick in short bursts, increasing in speed as the ball bounces off the paddle. Any part of a brick below a height of ten bricks above the paddle is automatically removed; thus they cannot impede the player's movement but cannot contribute towards the player's score either. As the player progresses through patterns, new elements are added to the gameplay. After the fourth stage, if the ball comes into contact with the top of the area, the paddle's size is halved until the stage is cleared or a life is lost. From this point on, the third stage variant features hidden bricks above the ceiling that descend progressively, using a similar—or same—layout that must also be cleared, meaning the pattern must be cleared twice. In later levels, bricks in the second stage variant may not move at the same speed or in the same direction. After the twelfth stage, indestructible bricks are incorporated into the brick patterns. Bonus stages feature patterns based on various Nintendo Entertainment System Super Mario Bros. sprites, such as a Piranha Plant, Goomba or Bowser. Unlike regular levels, the ball will destroy blocks in these stages without ricocheting off them, and contact with the ceiling will not affect the paddle size. These stages are the only ones to feature background music during play, and cannot be paused. A timer is present for each bonus stage; it starts at 95 for the first and is reduced by five for each subsequent bonus stage completed beforehand. If the timer ends, the ball falls into the pit (no life is lost in this case), or all bricks are destroyed, the bonus stage ends. Destroying all bricks before the timer expires yields additional bonus points, which vary depending on the level. Once cleared, the brick pattern changes and gameplay reverts to the normal cycle. After finishing the final bonus round, the player is given a congratulations screen using the Mario graphic from the original Mario Bros. game. The game then loops back to the first stage, allowing for infinite play. ### Scoring Points are awarded for destroying bricks based on their shade, with one point awarded for the lightest and three for the darkest. The player may earn additional points for completing the bonus stages, with the bonus starting at 500 for the first and reaching 1500 for the last five. The player's highest obtained score is recorded until the game is turned off. The game only displays four digits of the player's score, yet it has a maximum value of 65,535. Scores of 10,000 and above are displayed as a combination of icons and the numerical display. For every 10,000 points, a sprite from the NES Super Mario Bros. game is shown below the numerical score. A fire flower is shown for 10,000 points, a mushroom for 20,000, and a starman for 30,000 points and above. The game stops changing the sprite after awarding the starman icon. As a result, the highest score that can be displayed is 39,999; however, the maximum score of 65,535 is shown as 35,535. Once the maximum score has been reached, the score will roll over only if the player completes a bonus stage. A rollover does not affect the recorded high score. ## Development Based on classic ball-and-paddle arcade games such as Breakout and Arkanoid, Alleyway was a launch title for the Game Boy in 1989 for Japan and North America, alongside Super Mario Land, Baseball, and Tetris, though only with the first two in Japan. The game's release predates Tetris' by two months, due to legal battles between Nintendo and Tengen over the Tetris property. On June 6, 2011, the game was re-released as a launch title for the Nintendo 3DS Virtual Console system via online distribution. It was first released in Japan, and then North America a year later. Alleyway marks one of the first appearances of Mario on the Game Boy system alongside Super Mario Land, although its original box and cartridge art showed an unidentified character in a spacesuit piloting the paddle. The artwork was changed to show Mario at the controls on the game's international release, but neither the manual nor the back of the box refer to the Nintendo mascot's presence in the game. Nintendo Power's preview made no mention of Mario in the title other than note of the pattern of bricks in Mario's shape for the first bonus level. Official confirmation of the pilot being Mario only came about in 1990 with Club Nintendo's preview of the game's European release. The game was one of the first titles made by the Nintendo R&D1 development team, alongside Tetris and Radar Mission. Years later, the game's designer Gunpei Yokoi would reuse much of Alleyway's source code (such as paddle behavior and adapted physics engine) for the Game Boy game Kirby's Block Ball while working with Shigeru Miyamoto's team. Alleyway was re-released for download onto the Nintendo Power cartridge, occupying one memory block on the device. Promotion of the title in Nintendo published material consisted of a segment taking up a third of the page the articles were on. Advertisements for Alleyway were grouped with those for the Game Boy itself and other titles for the system. Years after its initial release, a two-page section in the Super Game Boy Nintendo Strategy Guide bundled with the Super Game Boy accessory appeared, which gave advice and color codes for the game. ## Reception Although Alleyway sold well enough during its production run, it has not been re-released as a Nintendo Player's Choice title, and reviews of the game have been mostly mixed to negative. Mean Machines gave the game a score of 33%, criticizing its repetitiveness and stating "this variant doesn't have much more to offer than the original [Breakout]". The magazine's staff added "once you've finished a couple of screens, you'll be bored stiff" and compared the game to its predecessor, Arkanoid, regarding the lack of power-ups in Alleyway. Electronic Gaming Monthly staff also reviewed the game, with four separate reviews giving the game scores of 6/10, 6/10, 5/10, and 3/10. All four reviewers compared it to Arkanoid, complaining about the lack of enhancement over the Breakout format. GamesRadar shared the sentiment in their review of the 3DS re-release, with reviewer Nathan Meunier giving it a score of 5/10 and stating "Alleyway wasn't so hot when it first came out, and it still pales when put it side-by-side to other similarly priced offerings". He further added at times the game appeared to "hate" the player with its difficulty, though acknowledged that the addition of save states "takes some of the sting out of losing". Retro Gamer's Darran Jones called it "pretty piss-poor all the way back in 1989", noting the bland levels and lack of power-ups found in Arkanoid, and that many similar clones had outperformed it. Not all comments about the game have been negative. The two Electronic Gaming Monthly reviewers that gave the highest scores did state they felt the design was perfect for the Game Boy, one adding "It's also a very good game that combines some new features ... with the original Break-Out theme" and concluding "Alleyway is good—but a bit long". German magazine Power Play gave the game a rating of 48%, but also praised the game's level variety. The book Rules of Play discusses the game as an example of improved design over a base core mechanic, citing the inclusion of distinct sound effects for ball collision as a means to praise the player for destroying bricks, and the varied level designs as "well done" and giving the player "an element of discovery to the overall experience." Allgame noted that despite the simplicity and variety, "Alleyway is fun to play", further adding that games of its kind "always play well on the Game Boy".

I've Just Seen a Face

1965 song by the Beatles

"I've Just Seen a Face" is a song by the English rock band the Beatles. It was released in August 1965 on their album Help!, except in North America, where it appeared as the opening track on the December 1965 release Rubber Soul. Written and sung by Paul McCartney, the song is credited to the Lennon–McCartney partnership. The song is a cheerful love ballad, its lyrics discussing a love at first sight while conveying an adrenaline rush the singer experiences that makes him both enthusiastic and inarticulate. The song began as an uptempo country and western-style piano piece, originally titled "Auntie Gin's Theme". McCartney then added lyrics that may have been inspired by his relationship with actress Jane Asher. The Beatles completed the track on 14 June 1965 at EMI Studios in London on the same day they recorded "I'm Down" and "Yesterday". The recording fuses country and western with several other musical genres, including folk rock, folk, pop rock and bluegrass. With no bass guitar, it features three acoustic guitars, a brushed snare and maracas. Several reviewers have described "I've Just Seen a Face" in favourable terms, highlighting its rhyming lyricism and McCartney's vocal delivery, and described it as an overlooked song. Its replacement of "Drive My Car" on the North American version of Rubber Soul furthered the album's identity as a folk rock work, although some commentators view this change as masking the band's late-1965 creative developments. It was among the first Beatles songs McCartney played live with his group Wings, and versions from their 1975–76 world tour appear on the 1976 live album Wings over America and in the 1980 concert film Rockshow. The song has been covered by several bluegrass bands, including the Charles River Valley Boys, the Dillards and the New Grass Revival with Leon Russell. George Martin, Holly Cole and Brandi Carlile are among the other artists who have covered it. ## Background and inspiration Although the song is credited to the Lennon–McCartney songwriting partnership, John Lennon and Paul McCartney each identified "I've Just Seen a Face" as having been written entirely by McCartney. McCartney recalled writing it in the basement music room at 57 Wimpole Street in central London. The house was the family home of his girlfriend, actress Jane Asher, where McCartney lodged from November 1963. Working on a piano, he composed the melody first, beginning it as an uptempo country and western-inflected piece. After he played it on the piano at a family gathering, his aunt Gin enjoyed the tune, prompting him to give it the working title "Auntie Gin's Theme". He added fast-paced lyrics which may have been inspired by his relationship with Asher, turning the song into a cheerful love ballad. McCartney completed "I've Just Seen a Face" too late for inclusion in the Beatles' second feature film, Help!, most of the songs for which were recorded in February 1965. He presented it to the band in mid-June, soon after returning from holidaying in Portugal with Asher. During the holiday, he also wrote the lyrics to his ballad "Yesterday". Author Ian MacDonald comments that, since writing "Can't Buy Me Love" in early 1964, McCartney had fallen behind Lennon in output, Lennon being the primary writer of the Beatles' next four singles. Most of the sessions for the band's Help! album had also focused on Lennon compositions. In MacDonald's view, given McCartney's absorption in his relationship with Asher and the contrasting depth and originality of Lennon's writing since 1964, McCartney was motivated by the need to apply a renewed focus in his writing on Help!, to regain his equal status in the songwriting partnership. ## Composition ### Music "I've Just Seen a Face" is in the key of A major and is in 2/2 (cut time). The song begins with a ten measure intro. Split into three phrases, the intro uses triplets that are slower than the rest of the song to create a sense of acceleration, reinforced by a shortened third phrase which quickens the first verse's arrival. McCartney used the effect of slow triplets again later that year in "We Can Work It Out". The song's first chord is F-sharp minor, slightly away from the home key, and is similar to "Help!" in leaving its harmonic grounding ambiguous until the end of the intro. Following the intro, the song speeds up in tempo to what music scholar Terence J. O'Grady calls "an undanceable speed". The song uses four chords total; the twelve-measure verses use the common pop chord progression I–vi–IV–V, while the eight-measure refrains use the blues progression V–IV–I. The latter progression simulates descent (further suggested by the lyrics: "[V] falling, yes I am [IV] falling, and she keeps [I] calling ..."), and the inclusion of a melodic minor third on the first syllable of "calling" gives the refrain section a blues sound. Structurally, the song includes three different verses, an instrumental break and a reprise of the first verse. After the second verse, each section is separated from the other by a chorus. Like other Beatles songs, a triple repeat of the chorus signals the end of the song, though Pollack writes "[t]he repeat here of an entire eight bar chorus is rather unprecedented." The outro finishes by repeating a phrase from the end of the intro to provide a feeling of symmetry. #### Genre The composition fuses several different styles and is difficult to categorise. Musicologist Alan W. Pollack describes the song on the whole as folk rock, as does MacDonald, though Pollack characterises parts of the song differently, describing the first two verses as "pure pop-rock", the changes between verse and refrain in the second half as "folksy" and the triplet refrain in the outro as like an "R&B rave-up". Musicologist Walter Everett describes it as both folk and a "bluegrass-tinged ballad", suggesting it anticipates the "simple folk style" of McCartney's 1968 composition "Mother Nature's Son". O'Grady similarly highlights the song's folk-styled guitar contribution with underlying hints of bluegrass, comparing it to another of McCartney's 1965 compositions, "I'm Looking Through You". He further writes that both songs "[demonstrate] a split personality" through joining pop-rock with either folk or country-western. Author Chris Ingham writes "I've Just Seen a Face" indicates the Beatles' continued interest in country music, and music critic Richie Unterberger describes the "almost pure country" song as a continuation on the band's country-influenced work from the previous year, such as their album Beatles for Sale and the song "I'll Cry Instead" from A Hard Day's Night. At the same time, Unterberger counts the song as one of several Help! tracks that display the influence of folk rock on the Beatles. By contrast, O'Grady writes that the song's country-influenced vocals are sung over an instrumental accompaniment "devoid of any specific rock and roll gesture", and concludes it is the Beatles' "first authentically country-western (as opposed to country-rock or rockabilly) song". ### Lyrics Written in a conversational style, the lyrics of "I've Just Seen a Face" describe a love at first sight. Sung without pauses for breath or punctuation, the song conveys an adrenaline rush the singer experiences that makes him both enthusiastic and inarticulate. Author Jonathan Gould groups "I've Just Seen a Face" with several of McCartney's 1965 compositions that deal with face-to-face encounters, including "Tell Me What You See", "You Won't See Me", "We Can Work It Out" and "I'm Looking Through You". Musicologist Naphtali Wagner instead categorises it with later McCartney compositions that "explore ambiguous, elusive and altered states of consciousness", such as "Got to Get You into My Life" from Revolver (1966) and "Fixing a Hole" from Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967). The lyrics are constructed using an irregular rhyme scheme, using both run-on verses and alliterations. McCartney later described them as insistent in quality, "dragging you forward ... pulling you to the next line". Rhyming every two beats, the lyrics use a series of cascading rhymes ("I have never known/The like of this/I've been alone/And I have missed"). Appoggiaturas are used throughout for rhymes to line-up, such as "face" and "place" in the song's intro. The ends of stanzas are wordless, using vocal cadences like "lie-die-die-dat-'n'-die" that echo the descent of the song's instrumental intro (scale degrees –––––). ## Production ### Recording Having completed the filming of Help! on 11 May 1965, the Beatles recorded "I've Just Seen a Face" during the first of three sessions dedicated to filling out the album with songs not in the film. The session took place in EMI's Studio Two (now part of Abbey Road Studios) on 14 June, George Martin producing with assistance from balance engineer Norman Smith. During the same afternoon session, the band recorded McCartney's new rock and roll song "I'm Down" before breaking for dinner and returning to begin work on "Yesterday". The three songs of divergent styles reflected the range of McCartney's compositional abilities; author and musician John Kruth calls it "McCartney's famous marathon session". Taped on four-track recording equipment, the song consists of two backing tracks. On the first, George Harrison plays Lennon's Framus Hootenanny acoustic twelve-string guitar, McCartney his Epiphone Texan nylon-string guitar and Ringo Starr a snare drum with brushes. The second includes a lead vocal from McCartney and Lennon playing rhythm guitar with his Gibson J-160E acoustic. ### Overdubbing and mixing The band taped the basic track in six takes, overdubbing new parts onto take six. McCartney played a higher section in the intro with his Epiphone Texan and added a descant vocal, providing a contrapuntal backing during the refrains in a nasally country and western tone, similar to his backing vocal on another Help! track, "Act Naturally". Adding texture normally achieved with a tambourine, Starr overdubbed maracas on the choruses, while Harrison added a twelve-string acoustic guitar solo. Employing a technique used extensively during the Help! sessions, another guitar plays simultaneously during the guitar solo to provide a contrasting sound. Gould writes that, in shifting from cut time to common time during the solo, Harrison's playing is reminiscent of both jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt and the French jazz organisation Le Hot Club. Pollack characterises the solo as a "'countrified', rhythmically flat rendering", and O'Grady writes it "approximates Bluegrass style in rhythmic regularity". "I've Just Seen a Face" features no bass guitar part. Music critic Tim Riley suggests the instrument's absence, together with the guitar solo being played on the low-end of the guitar, keeps the song rooted in the country genre. On 18 June, Martin and Smith mixed several songs on Help! for mono and stereo, including "I've Just Seen a Face". The two mixes of the song are nearly identical to one another. As was typical for their pre-Rubber Soul work, the Beatles participated minimally in the album's mixing process. In 1987, for Help!'s first CD release, Martin remixed the song for stereo, adding a small amount of echo. ## Release EMI's Parlophone label released the Help! LP on 6 August 1965. "I've Just Seen a Face" appeared on side two along with six other tracks not in the film, sequenced between "Tell Me What You See" and "Yesterday". McCartney was pleased with the finished recording and it became one of his favourite Beatles songs. In keeping with the company's policy of reconfiguring the Beatles' albums, Capitol Records removed "I've Just Seen a Face" and the other non-film songs from the North American version of Help!, replacing them with several orchestral pieces from the film's soundtrack. On the band's next album, Rubber Soul, Capitol again altered the track listing; in addition to omitting four songs they deemed "electric", the company selected "I've Just Seen a Face" and Lennon's "It's Only Love" as the opening tracks of side one and side two, respectively. Capitol's approach was motivated by the popularity of folk rock in the United States, with singles such as Sonny & Cher's "I Got You Babe", Barry McGuire's "Eve of Destruction", the Byrds' cover of Bob Dylan's "Mr. Tambourine Man", Simon & Garfunkel's "The Sound of Silence" and the Mamas & the Papas' "California Dreamin'" all representative of the style in 1965. "I've Just Seen a Face" thereby replaced the Memphis sound-inspired "Drive My Car" and was followed by the acoustic song "Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)". Released on 6 December 1965, Capitol's version of Rubber Soul was dominated by acoustic-based songs. Many North American listeners therefore erroneously assumed that the Beatles had focused on folk music for an entire LP. Opening with "I've Just Seen a Face" gave Rubber Soul more conceptual unity, which reinforced perceptions of it as a folk or folk rock centred LP, at the cost of distorting the band's late-1965 creative developments and their original artistic intentions. ## Retrospective assessment and legacy Reviewing Help! for AllMusic, Stephen Thomas Erlewine describes "I've Just Seen a Face" as "an irresistible folk-rock gem" that is much better than two of McCartney's other contributions to the album, "The Night Before" and "Another Girl", a sentiment author Andrew Grant Jackson echoes. Journalist Alexis Petridis also disparages McCartney's other Help! contributions as filler – in particular, "Another Girl" and "Tell Me What You See" – but describes "I've Just Seen a Face" as the album's "one genuine overlooked gem". He sees it as "an English inversion of Help!'s much-noted Dylan influence", existing partway between the folk sound of Greenwich Village and that of skiffle. Writing for Pitchfork, Tom Ewing pairs the song with "Yesterday", describing both as a "personal breakthrough for McCartney", with each achieving a "deceptive lightness that would become trademark and millstone for their writer". He recognises "I've Just Seen a Face" as "a folksy country song [that demonstrates] the gift for pastiche that would help give the rest of the Beatles' career such convincing variety". Music critic Allan Kozinn groups it with "Yesterday", "It's Only Love" and "Wait" as songs recorded near the end of the Help! sessions that were a stylistic break from the rest of the album, their "sophistication, spirit and complexity of texture" having more in common with Rubber Soul. In 2010, Rolling Stone ranked "I've Just Seen a Face" at number 58 in a list of the Beatles' 100 greatest songs, and a 2014 readers' poll conducted by the magazine ranked it as the tenth best Beatles song from the pre-Rubber Soul era. McCartney biographer Peter Ames Carlin calls the song one of McCartney's most overlooked Beatles contributions, yet also one of his best, and Riley similarly counts it as McCartney's second best contribution to Help! after "Yesterday". Riley, Carlin and Everett each praise the song's lyricism, MacDonald commenting that its internal rhyming and fast-paced delivery "complements the music perfectly". In MacDonald's opinion the song elevates the second side of Help! with its "quickfire freshness" and he describes it as a "pop parallel" to several 1965 Swinging London films, such as The Knack ... and How to Get It, Darling and Catch Us If You Can. Music critic Rob Sheffield describes the North American Rubber Soul's sequencing of "I've Just Seen a Face" and "Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)" as a "magnificent one-two punch" which results in "the only case where the shamefully butchered U.S. LP might top the U.K. original". He judges the song the "most romantic [ever]", while managing to be "almost as funny as 'Drive My Car'". Describing the song as "fetching, vintage McCartney" and a "warm, cheerful folk-rock treasure", journalist Mark Hertsgaard admires its "thigh-slapping beat, sing-along melody, and cheerful, isn't-love-great lyrics"; he deems it "the musical equivalent of an armful of freshly picked daisies". Unterberger describes "I've Just Seen a Face" as "probably the most bluegrass-soaked rock song of the 1960s". John Kruth says its influence can be heard on "Go and Say Goodbye", the original opening track of Buffalo Springfield's 1966 debut album. Kruth argues that both songs helped acquaint rock fans with small doses of country music, setting up the turn from folk rock to country by the Byrds with their 1968 album Sweetheart of the Rodeo; in Kruth's opinion, the song's "deep wooden timbre" can be heard in the music of Crosby, Stills & Nash; James Taylor and Jackson Browne. Reflecting in 2006 on the Beatles' legacy and influence, journalist Greg Kot views the song's folk styling as exemplifying the Beatles' musical fluency and ability to master genres far removed from their rock music origins. ## McCartney live versions The song has remained a favourite of McCartney's in his post-Beatles career and is one of the few Beatles songs he played with his later band, Wings. An acoustic rendition of "I've Just Seen a Face" was among the five Beatles songs McCartney played during the 1975–76 Wings Over the World tour, being the first time he included Beatles songs in his live setlist. Beatles author Robert Rodriguez calls the pick unexpected, and McCartney explained contemporaneously that he picked the songs "at random ... I didn't want to get too precious about it". Journalist Nicholas Schaffner writes that their inclusion "electrified audiences", and Rodriguez similarly describes the Beatles section of the setlist as the "emotional highlight for most attendees". McCartney reflected at the time, "They're great tunes ... So I just decided in the end, this isn't such a big deal, I'll do them." In a retrospective assessment, Riley lauds McCartney for performing the song during the tour as though he were "sitting around on a porch harmonizing to a good old rural favorite". Live versions of the song from the tour were later included on the 1976 triple live album Wings over America and in the 1980 concert film Rockshow. McCartney performed "I've Just Seen a Face" in a 25 January 1991 set, played on acoustic and filmed by MTV for their series Unplugged. The performance was later included on his 1991 album Unplugged (The Official Bootleg). He has played the song live on several other occasions, including it in the setlist of his 2004 Summer Tour and 2011–12 On the Run tour, and it was included on the 2005 DVD Paul McCartney in Red Square. In 2015, during the Saturday Night Live 40th Anniversary Special, he and musician Paul Simon played an impromptu duet of the song. ## Cover versions ### Charles River Valley Boys The Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Charles River Valley Boys (CRVB) recorded a cover of "I've Just Seen a Face" for their 1966 album, Beatle Country, a collection of Lennon–McCartney compositions played as bluegrass and sung in a high lonesome style. James Field of the group later recalled hearing the song on the radio in the lead up to the US release of Rubber Soul and thinking "it instantly felt like bluegrass". In particular, the I–vi–IV–V progression and the chorus beginning on the dominant had "a drive perfectly suited for a straight-ahead bluegrass trio". He added: "The tempo (for us) is about 115 bpm, and if you listen to many bluegrass standards, a lot of them are in that range. Why? Because it's perfect for the banjo. You get a nice, bouncy roll, and you can make it ring." Banjoist Bob Siggins further stated: "I think the instantaneous 'feel' of the song was the tipoff for me ... additionally, the lyrics could easily be (and in fact became) bluegrass lyrics." With their usual setlist made up of old and new bluegrass and country songs, the band added an arrangement of "I've Just Seen a Face" to their set, along with the country-inflected Beatles song "What Goes On". Produced by Paul A. Rothchild and co-produced by Peter K. Siegel, recording for Beatle Country took place in September 1966 at Columbia's studio in Nashville, Tennessee. The CRVB's cover of "I've Just Seen a Face" changes the composition in several ways, including transposing it from the key of A to G. Structurally, the CRVB add extra instrumental breaks for banjo, mandolin and fiddle – a typical feature of bluegrass music, where each musician is allowed the chance to solo – as well as repeating the chorus an extra time, which musicologist Laura Turner writes serves to emphasise the "quintessential bluegrass technique" of close three-part harmonies. She describes the biggest differences between versions as their different textures and timbres, in particular the "incessant, 'walking' upright bass line that provides energetic drive, sparking mandolin tremolo, rolling banjo figures, and intricate, often double-stopped fiddle motifs that permeate the texture." Elektra released Beatle Country in November 1966. "I've Just Seen a Face" was the LP's opening track, and Field later characterised the song as the foundation piece of the entire album. A contemporary review in Cash Box magazine counts the cover as one of the five best tracks on the album, and a retrospective assessment by John Paul of the online magazine Spectrum Culture describes it as "like a lost bluegrass standard". When the Boston Bluegrass Union awarded the CRVB the Heritage Award in 2013, "I've Just Seen a Face" was among the songs the band performed during the award ceremony at the city's annual Joe Val Bluegrass Festival. ### Bluegrass groups Besides the Charles River Valley Boys, numerous bluegrass groups have covered the song. Doggett writes the tempo and chord changes of "I've Just Seen a Face" "[cry] out for a banjo and mandolin", and Turner argues it has been "key in stimulating a relationship between bluegrass and the music of the Beatles". The progressive bluegrass band the Dillards recorded a cover of the song between the British release of Help! and the North American release of Rubber Soul; they had hoped to issue the song in the US before the Beatles, though the recording went unreleased. They later recorded a cover for their 1968 album Wheatstraw Suite. Joining elements of traditional mountain music and modern country music, their version includes high harmonies, a banjo and a pedal steel guitar. Unterberger calls it "a respectable version" which "completed [the Dillards'] move from bluegrass into folk-country-rock", while Turner describes it as "relaxed in tempo and wistful", writing that its use of a pedal steel guitar is "a clear salute to the flourishing folk-rock scene". Kruth suggests that the finished recording influenced bands like the Byrds, the Grateful Dead and the Eagles. Sam Bush, mandolinist for the progressive bluegrass band New Grass Revival, recalled being uninterested in rock music before the mid-1960s, but found that "I've Just Seen a Face" allowed him to "relate to the Beatles for the first time", agreeing with a characterisation of it as "bluegrass without a banjo". New Grass Revival subsequently covered the song with musician Leon Russell for their 1981 live album, The Live Album, a version Turner calls "hard driving" and "erratic". Bush later covered the song as a solo artist for the 2013 Americana tribute album, Let Us in Americana: The Music of Paul McCartney. The group Bluegrass Association recorded the song for their 1974 album Strings Today ... And Yesterday, basing their arrangement on the Charles River Valley Boys' version. ### Other artists George Martin recorded an orchestral version of the song for his 1965 easy listening album, George Martin & His Orchestra Play Help!, credited under its original working title, "Auntie Gin's Theme". In a review of the album for AllMusic, Bruce Eder describes Martin's recordings as "tasteful but otherwise largely undistinguished". He credits the release of tracks under their working titles as one of the album's unique selling points, being "details that Beatles fanatics of the time simply devoured". The Grateful Dead performed the song in concert on 11 June 1969 in San Francisco, playing pseudonymously as Bobby Ace and the Cards from the Bottom of the Deck, and former Grateful Dead keyboardist Tom Constanten recorded a cover for his 1993 album Morning Dew. Hank Crawford, the alto saxophonist of Ray Charles, recorded a funk and reggae-inspired version of the song for his 1976 album Tico Rico. Canadian jazz singer Holly Cole covered the song for her 1997 album Dark Dear Heart. Released with a noir-style music video, the version reached number seven on Canada's RPM Top Singles Chart in November 1997. The 2007 jukebox musical romantic drama film Across the Universe features a cover of the song, later included on its associated soundtrack album. In the film, the lead character, Jude (Jim Sturgess), sings about Lucy (Evan Rachel Wood) at a bowling alley in what Kruth terms a "somewhat bizarre love-fantasy scene". Reviewing the soundtrack for AllMusic, Erlewine writes that Sturgess does "a credible job" on the song's "rockabilly revamp". American singer Brandi Carlile occasionally sings the song during live shows. Though Kruth disparages Carlile's version as "[not] particularly different or innovative", a 2010 ranking by Paste magazine of the 50 best Beatles covers placed it at 46, writing that she transforms the song into a "sing-along hoe-down". Kruth designates "I'll Just Bleed Your Face" as the song's "most bizarre" cover, recorded by Beatallica – a mashup group of heavy metal band Metallica and the Beatles – for their 2009 album Masterful Mystery Tour. ## Personnel According to Walter Everett, except where noted: - Paul McCartney – lead and harmony vocals, nylon-string guitar - John Lennon – acoustic rhythm guitar - George Harrison – acoustic twelve-string guitar - Ringo Starr – drums (with brushes), maracas

Ficus rubiginosa

Species of flowering plant in the family Moraceaea native to eastern Australia

Ficus rubiginosa, the rusty fig or Port Jackson fig (damun in the Dharug language), is a species of flowering plant native to eastern Australia in the genus Ficus. Beginning as a seedling that grows on other plants (hemiepiphyte) or rocks (lithophyte), F. rubiginosa matures into a tree 30 m (100 ft) high and nearly as wide with a yellow-brown buttressed trunk. The leaves are oval and glossy green and measure from 4 to 19.3 cm (1+1⁄2–7+1⁄2 in) long and 1.25 to 13.2 cm (1⁄2–5+1⁄4 in) wide. The fruits are small, round, and yellow, and can ripen and turn red at any time of year, peaking in spring and summer. Like all figs, the fruit is in the form of a syconium, an inverted inflorescence with the flowers lining an internal cavity. F. rubiginosa is exclusively pollinated by the fig wasp species Pleistodontes imperialis, which may comprise four cryptospecies. The syconia are also home to another fourteen species of wasp, some of which induce galls while others parasitise the pollinator wasps and at least two species of nematode. Many species of bird, including pigeons, parrots, and various passerines, eat the fruit. Ranging along the Australian east coast from Queensland to Bega in southern New South Wales (including the Port Jackson area, leading to its alternative name), F. rubiginosa grows in rainforest margins and rocky outcrops. It is used as a shade tree in parks and public spaces, and when potted is well-suited for use as an indoor plant or in bonsai. ## Taxonomy Ficus rubiginosa was described by French botanist René Louiche Desfontaines in 1804, from a type specimen whose locality is documented simply as "New Holland". In searching for the type specimen, Australian botanist Dale Dixon found one from the herbarium of Desfontaines at Florence Herbarium and one from the herbarium of Étienne Pierre Ventenat at Geneva. As Ventenat had used Desfontaines' name, Dixon selected the Florence specimen to be the type in 2001. The specific epithet rubiginosa related to the rusty coloration of the undersides of the leaves. Indeed, rusty fig is an alternate common name; others include Illawarra fig and Port Jackson fig. It was known as damun (pron. "tam-mun") to the Eora and Darug inhabitants of the Sydney basin. In 1806, German botanist Carl Ludwig Willdenow gave it the botanical name Ficus australis in Species Plantarum, but this is a nomen illegitimum as the species already had a validly published name. Italian botanist Guglielmo Gasparrini broke up the genus Ficus in 1844, placing the species in the genus Urostigma as U. rubiginosum. In 1862, Dutch botanist Friedrich Anton Wilhelm Miquel described Urostigma leichhardtii from material collected from Cape Cleveland, Queensland, noting it had affinities to F. rubiginosa. In 1867, he placed Urostigma as a subgenus in the reunited Ficus, which resulted in the taxon becoming Ficus leichhardtii. Miquel also described Ficus leichhardtii variety angustata from Whitsunday Island, later classified as F. shirleyana by Czech botanist Karel Domin. Queensland state botanist Frederick Manson Bailey described Ficus macrophylla variety pubescens in 1911 from Queensland, Domin later renaming it Ficus baileyana. All these taxa were found to be indistinguishable from (and hence reclassified as) F. rubiginosa by Dixon in 2001. In a study published in 2008, Nina Rønsted and colleagues analysed the DNA sequences from the nuclear ribosomal internal and external transcribed spacers, and the glyceraldehyde 3-phosphate dehydrogenase region, in the first molecular analysis of the section Malvanthera. They found F. rubiginosa to be most closely related to the rainforest species F. watkinsiana and two rock-growing (lithophytic) species of arid northern Australia (F. atricha and F. brachypoda). They classified these species in a new series Rubiginosae in the subsection Platypodeae. Relationships are unclear and it is uncertain into which direction the group radiated (into rainforest or into arid Australia). Joseph Maiden described variety lucida in 1902, and Bailey described variety glabrescens in 1913. Both had diagnosed their varieties on the basis of their hairlessness. Maiden described a taxon totally devoid of hair, while Bailey described his as nearly glabrous (hairless). As Bailey's description more closely matched Dixon's findings (that these variants were only partly and not completely hairless), Dixon retained Bailey's name and reclassified it as Ficus rubiginosa forma glabrescens in 2001 as it differed only in the lack of hairs on new growth from the nominate form. ## Description A spreading, densely-shading tree when mature, F. rubiginosa may reach 30 m (100 ft) or more in height, although it rarely exceeds 10 m (30 ft) in the Sydney region. The trunk is buttressed and can reach 1.5 m (4 ft 11 in) in diameter. The bark is yellow-brown. It can also grow as on other plants as a hemiepiphyte, or 1–5 m (3–16 ft) high lithophyte. Alternately arranged on the stems, the ovate (egg-shaped), obovate (reverse egg-shaped) or oval-shaped leaves are anywhere from 4–19.3 cm (1+5⁄8–7+5⁄8 in) long and 1.25–13.2 cm (1⁄2–5+1⁄4 in) wide, on 7–8.2 cm (2+3⁄4–3+1⁄4 in)-long petioles (stalks that join the leaves to stems). They are smooth or bear tiny rusty hairs. There are 16 to 62 pairs of lateral veins that run off the midvein at an angle of 41.5–84.0°, while distinct basal veins run off the midvein at an angle of 18.5–78.9°. As with all figs, the fruit (fig) is actually an inverted inflorescence (compound flower) known as a syconium, with tiny flowers arising from the fig's inner surface into a hollow cavity. F. rubiginosa is monoecious—both male and female flowers are found on the same plant, and in fact in the same fruit, although they mature at different times. Often growing in pairs, the figs are yellow initially and measure 4–10 mm (1⁄8–3⁄8 in) across. Ripening to red in colour, they are tipped with a small nipple and on a 2–5 mm (1⁄8–1⁄4 in) stalk. Fruits ripen throughout the year, although more so in spring and summer. Some trees have ripe and unripe fruit at the same time. It closely resembles its relative, the Moreton Bay fig (F. macrophylla). Having similar ranges in the wild, they are often confused. The smaller leaves, shorter fruit stalks, and rusty colour of the undersides of the leaves of F. rubiginosa are the easiest distinguishing features. It is also confused with the small-leaved fig (F. obliqua), the syconia of which are smaller, measuring 4–12 mm long and 4–11 mm in diameter, compared with 7–17 mm long and 8–17 mm diameter for F. rubiginosa. ## Distribution and habitat Ficus rubiginosa's range spans the entire eastern coastline of Australia, from the top of the Cape York Peninsula in north Queensland to the vicinity of Bega on the south coast of New South Wales. The range extends westwards to Porcupine Gorge National Park in Queensland and the far western plains in New South Wales. F. rubiginosa f. rubiginosa and F. rubiginosa f. glabrescens are found over most of the range, though the latter does not occur south past the New South Wales-Queensland border region. Lithophytic, hemiepiphytic, and tree forms can be found together in local populations of plants. F. rubiginosa is found in rainforest, rainforest margins, gullies, riverbank habitat, vine thickets, and rocky hillsides. It is found on limestone outcrops in Kanangra-Boyd National Park. Fig seedlings often grow from cracks in stone where seeds have been lodged, in locations such as cliffs and rock faces in natural environments, or in brickwork on buildings and elsewhere in the urban environment. The soils it grows on are often well-drained and low in nutrients. They are derived from sandstone, quartzite, and basalt. In the Sydney region, F. rubiginosa grows from sea level to 1000 m (3500 ft) altitude, in areas with an average yearly rainfall of 600–1,400 mm (24–55 in). F. rubiginosa is largely sympatric with F. obliqua, though its range extends further west into dryer regions than the latter species. Outside its native range, F. rubiginosa has naturalised to some degree in urban Melbourne and Adelaide in Australia, as well as New Zealand, Hawaii and California, and Mediterranean Europe. F. rubiginosa has been planted widely in Malta since the early 1990s but has not been observed to fruit. ## Ecology The fruit is consumed by many bird species including the rose-crowned fruit dove (Ptilinopus regina), wompoo fruit dove (P. magnificus), wonga pigeon (Leucosarcia melanoleuca), topknot pigeon (Lopholaimus antarcticus), Pacific koel (Eudynamys orientalis), Australasian swamphen (Porphyrio melanotus), Australian king parrot (Alisterus scapularis), Australasian figbird (Sphecotheres vieilloti), green catbird (Ailuroedus crassirostris), regent bowerbird (Sericulus chrysocephalus), satin bowerbird (Ptilonorhynchus violaceus) and pied currawong (Strepera graculina), as well as the mammalian grey-headed flying fox (Pteropus poliocephalus), and spectacled flying fox (Pteropus conspicillatus). It is one of several plant species used as food by the endangered Coxen's fig parrot. Many fruits drop onto the ground around the tree, though others are dispersed by animals that eat them. The thrips species Gynaikothrips australis feeds on the underside of new leaves of F. rubiginosa, as well as F. obliqua and F. macrophylla. As plant cells die, nearby cells are induced into forming meristem tissue, and a gall results and the leaves become distorted and curl over. The thrips begin feeding when the tree has flushes of new growth, and live for around six weeks. At other times, thrips reside on old leaves without feeding. The species pupates sheltered in the bark. The thrips remain in the galls at night, wander about in the daytime and return in the evening, possibly to different galls about the tree. Psyllids have almost defoliated trees in the Royal Botanic Gardens in Sydney in spring. P. imperialis crossed the waters between Australia and New Zealand some time between 1960 and 1972, and seedlings of the previously infertile trees of F. rubiginosa began appearing in brick and stone walls, and on other trees, particularly in parks and gardens around Auckland. They have been recorded as far south as Napier. P. imperialis has been transported to Hawaii, California, and Israel, where it has been observed to pollinate its host. They can live to 100 years or more and have been known to resprout after bushfire, bearing fruit within three years. ### Other life in the syconia As with many other Ficus species, the community of wasps inside the figs of F. rubiginosa is made up mostly of pollinator wasps. These develop deep inside the syconium, presumably protected there from parasites. Also present are much smaller numbers of other wasp species, which do not pollinate the fig. At least fourteen species have been recorded, of which four—two each belonging to the genera Sycoscapter and Philotrypesis—are common while others are rare. Investigation of F. rubiginosa syconia found that the fig seeds and parasitic wasps develop closer to the wall of the syconium. The wasps of the genera Sycoscapter and Philotrypesis are parasitic and are around the same size as the pollinator species. Their larvae are thought to feed on the larvae of the pollinator wasp. Male Sycoscapter and Philotrypesis wasps fight other males of the same species when they encounter each other in a F. rubiginosa fig. Several genera of uncommon larger wasp species enter the immature figs before other wasps and induce galls, which may impact on numbers of pollinator wasps in the fig later. An example of this is Pseudidarnes minerva, a metallic green wasp species. Nematodes of the genus Schistonchus are found in the syconia (and the pollinator wasps) of many species of fig, with F. rubiginosa hosting two species. They appear to be less species-specific than wasps. S. altermacrophylla is generally associated with F. rubiginosa though it has been recorded on several other fig species. ## Cultivation Ficus rubiginosa was first cultivated in the United Kingdom in 1789, where it is grown in glasshouses. It is commonly used as a large ornamental tree in eastern Australia, in the North Island of New Zealand, and also in Hawaii and California, where it is also listed as an invasive species in some areas. It is useful as a shade tree in public parks and on golf courses. Not as prodigious as other figs, F. rubiginosa is suited to slightly more confined areas, such as lining car parks or suburban streets. However, surface roots can be large and intrusive and the thin bark readily damaged when struck. Tolerant of acid or alkaline soils, it is hardy to US Hardiness Zones 10B and 11, reaching 10 m (30 ft) high in 30 years. Planting trees 8–12 m (30–40 ft) apart will eventually result in a continuous canopy. The trees are of great value in providing fruit for birds and mammals, though drop large quantities of fruit and leaves, leaving a mess underfoot. In a brief description, William Guilfoyle recorded a variegated fig from New South Wales "12–15 ft high" in 1911 as F. rubiginosa variety variegata. A variegated form is in cultivation on Australia's east coast, and in the United States. It is a chimera lacking in chlorophyll in the second layer of the leaf meristem. The leaves have an irregular central green patch along the midvein with irregular yellow and green elsewhere. Leaves that grow in winter generally have larger green patches than those that do in summer. The chimera is unstable, and branches of all-green growth appear sporadically. Despite the relatively large size of the leaves, it is popular for bonsai work as it is highly forgiving to work with and hard to kill; the leaves reduce readily by leaf-pruning in early summer. Described as the best tree for a beginner to work with, it is one of the most frequently used native species in Australia. Its bark remains smooth, and does not attain a rugged, aged appearance. Known as "Little Ruby", a narrow-leaved form with its origins somewhere north of Sydney is also seen in cultivation. F. rubiginosa is also suited for use as a houseplant in low, medium or brightly lit spaces, although a variegated form requires brighter light. It has gained the Royal Horticultural Society's Award of Garden Merit. It is easily propagated by cuttings or aerial layering. The light-coloured wood is soft and brittle. Lightweight, it has some value in the making of such items as toys and small boxes. ## See also - Ficus macrophylla

North Ronaldsay sheep

Breed of sheep from Scotland

The North Ronaldsay or Orkney is a breed of sheep from North Ronaldsay, the northernmost island of Orkney, off the north coast of Scotland. It belongs to the Northern European short-tailed sheep group of breeds, and has evolved without much cross-breeding with modern breeds. It is a smaller sheep than most, with the rams (males) horned and ewes (females) mostly hornless. It was formerly kept primarily for wool, but now the two largest flocks are feral, one on North Ronaldsay and another on the Orkney island of Auskerry. The Rare Breeds Survival Trust lists the breed as a priority on its 2021–2022 watchlist, and they are in danger of extinction, with fewer than 600 registered breeding females in the United Kingdom. The semi-feral flock on North Ronaldsay is the original flock that evolved to subsist almost entirely on seaweed – they are one of few mammals to do this. They are confined to the foreshore by a 1.8 m (6 ft) drystane dyke, which completely encircles the island, forcing the sheep to evolve this unusual characteristic. The wall was built as kelping (the production of soda ash from seaweed) on the shore became uneconomical. Sheep were confined to the shore to protect the fields and crofts inside, and afterwards subsisted largely on seaweed. This diet has caused a variety of adaptations in the sheep's digestive system. These sheep have to extract the trace element copper far more efficiently than other breeds as their diet has a limited supply of copper. This results in them being susceptible to copper toxicity, if fed on a grass diet, as copper is toxic to sheep in high quantities. Grazing habits have also changed to suit the sheep's environment. To reduce the chance of being stranded by an incoming tide, they graze at low tide and then ruminate at high tide. A range of fleece colours are exhibited, including grey, brown and red. Meat from the North Ronaldsay has a distinctive flavour, described as "intense" and "gamey", possibly in part due to the high iodine content in their diet of seaweed. ## History ### Origin The sheep are descended from the Northern European short-tailed sheep. Their arrival onto North Ronaldsay is not known precisely but it may have been as early as the Iron Age, or possibly even earlier, which would make them potentially the earliest ovines to arrive in Britain. Because of their isolated location, they have evolved without much admixture from imported Roman and European breeds. They share some characteristics, including their colour range and short tails, with Scandinavian sheep introduced when the islands were under Norse control, between the 9th and 15th centuries. ### Enclosure In 1832, a drystane dyke was erected on the island. Its construction was part of the response to the collapse of the kelping industry, which was the production of soda ash by the burning of seaweed. To provide a livelihood for those previously employed in kelping, the inland farmlands were reorganized, and the sheep kept away from the fields or crofts. Since then, the flocks on the island have been feral. The wall also unintentionally reduced the chances of crossbreeding, which would have diluted the gene pool of an already vulnerable breed. The wall circles the entire coast of the island, 19 km (12 mi), and is 1.8 metres (6 ft) high, making it one of the largest dry stone walls in the world. In 1999, Historic Scotland described it as a "unique and important structure" and designated it an 'A'-list site requiring conservation. This status affords it special protection; any development has to be approved with conservation in mind. Since the wall was erected, the human population of North Ronaldsay has fallen from 500 to around 50, and current residents lack the manpower to maintain the wall. Successive storms, the most damaging of which was in December 2012, have created large holes in the structure. The cost of repairs has been estimated at several million pounds. In 1902, it cost only 4 pence per hour to repair the wall, using stone taken from the shore. In 2015, Orkney Islands Council reported that some 4.7 km (3 mi) of the wall was in need of work, and that the rate of damage exceeded that of repair. ### Punds The punds, or pounds, also listed with Historic Scotland, are nine small enclosures situated across the island to contain the sheep for shearing, counting, lambing and slaughtering. The sheep are herded inside these punds twice a year, the only time they have access to grass feed. Between February and August, the sheep are brought into the punds, once for lambing and once for shearing. The lambs are born on the grass between February and May. At this time, the sheep are counted, lambs are given ear tags, and records are entered with the island's sheep court to record ownership. Shearing takes place in July and August, and the whole island community is involved in herding and shearing the sheep. Slaughtering takes place only in winter when the meat is needed, and when the animals are fatter and yield more meat, since seaweed is more abundant in winter. ### Sheep court In 1839, just after the wall was erected, the North Ronaldsay Sheep Court was created. A group of eleven appointed islanders were responsible for the maintenance of the wall, the health of the sheep flock, and recording ownership of the sheep. Today, the Sheep Court remains the regulatory body responsible for organising ownership of the sheep. ### Conservation The North Ronaldsay Sheep Fellowship is one of several organisations concerned with the survival of the breed. They maintain the flock book, established in 1974, which is the breed registry containing all purebred animals. This book reports that there are fewer than 600 breeding females and roughly 3700 sheep in total. The Rare Breeds Survival Trust (RBST) lists the North Ronaldsay as "vulnerable". Other island-based organisations include The North Ronaldsay Trust and the Orkney Sheep Foundation, who run an annual Sheep Festival (SheepFest) inviting volunteers to the island for a fortnight of sheepdyke rebuilding. There are only two main populations of the breed. The primary one is on the island of North Ronaldsay itself; the other is on the island of Auskerry, which was established in 1983 by Teresa Probert and Simon Brogan. Modern DNA analysis has shown little crossbreeding with other sheep breeds from mainland Britain. Testing carried out under the National Scrapie Plan looked for the ARQ allele, which protects against the scrapie disease and is present in modern selectively bred sheep, and found it in only 1.3 per cent of North Ronaldsay sheep. Further DNA studies comparing the bones of the North Ronaldsay with remains of North European short-tailed sheep found on a Skara Brae site dating from around 3000 BCE have shown a very close match, suggesting that the North Ronaldsay has not genetically mixed with other breeds. ## Characteristics ### Physical North Ronaldsays are very small sheep, an adaptation to the harsh, cold environment. Rams typically weigh around 30 kg (65 lb), and ewes rarely exceed 25 kg (55 lb), both standing around 41 cm (16 in) high at the withers (shoulders). The sheep are slow-growing and a full-size carcass may weigh only 13.6 kilograms (30 lb). The North Ronaldsay is a descendant of the primitive European short-tailed sheep breed. As the name of the descent parent would suggest, they have naturally short tails. Their bones are finer than other breeds and their head is dished (sloping inwards). Rams are all horned; these horns are typically ridged and spiraled. Only 20 per cent of the ewes are horned; the rest are polled (hornless). ### Diet North Ronaldsay sheep have a highly unusual diet consisting almost solely of seaweed. This has evolved due to their unique location, confined to the shoreline by a 1.8 m (6 ft) dry stone wall, leaving only seaweed for food. Apart from the marine iguana, native to the Galapagos Islands, it is the only land animal known to have such a diet. Studies have shown that, due to preference and availability, the sheep eat mainly brown kelps. This discovery led to suggestions that kelp may be of use as an alternative food source for other livestock. The grazing habits of the sheep have also adapted to their unusual diet: instead of grazing during the day and ruminating (digesting) at night as other sheep generally do, the North Ronaldsays graze as the tide uncovers the shore (twice in 24 hours), ruminating at high water. Feeding begins around 3.5 hours after high tide as the areas of kelp and seaweed are exposed. Four hours later, which is just after the low tide, feeding ends, allowing rumination to begin. This cycle reduces the chance of the sheep becoming stranded at sea by the incoming tide. In spring, mother ewes are taken to grasslands without access to seaweed for lambing, and are only returned to the shore around August. The other sheep (males and non-pregnant females) remain on the shore, primarily consuming seaweed, throughout the year. Unusually for sheep, the North Ronaldsay fattens in winter when storms throw larger amounts of kelp and seaweed onto the shore and food is abundant. The sheep's source of fresh water is limited to the few freshwater lochs and ponds along the seashore. This has led them to become very salt tolerant, as their diet is salt-rich, and access to fresh water is limited. Compared with other breeds of sheep, they can far better handle elements present in the sea salt. These empirical conclusions were drawn in a 1997 study, but the underlying biological mechanism has yet to be understood. #### Scientific analysis The sheep have evolved a somewhat different physiology from other sheep, due to their unusual diet: their digestive system has adapted to extract the sugars in seaweeds more efficiently. A 2005 study at the University of Liverpool found that they have a greater susceptibility to copper toxicity, when compared with a more traditional breed such as the Cambridge. This is because seaweed has a chemical which inhibits the absorption of copper, so the sheep have to absorb copper more efficiently to obtain the required amount. The levels of copper found in typical sheep feed, including grass, are toxic for this breed. Studies at the Universities of Liverpool and Minnesota suggest that they can extract four times more copper from their diet than more traditional breeds. Stable isotope ratio analysis of bone collagen and tooth enamel from seaweed-eating North Ronaldsay sheep have revealed elevated stable carbon isotope ratios (δ¹³C) compared to sheep feeding on C₃-vegetation. This difference in stable carbon isotope ratios (arising from dietary differences), discovered by studying North Ronaldsay sheep, is made use of in archaeological studies, which have shown the existence of seaweed-eating sheep on Orkney around 5000 years ago. ## Use ### Meat When the United Kingdom was in the European Union, lamb and mutton from the sheep could be marketed as "Orkney Lamb", which had Protected Designation of Origin status. The meat has a unique, rich flavour, which has been described as "intense and almost gamey", and has a darker colour than most mutton, due in part to the animals' iodine-rich diet. ### Wool Despite their slight size, North Ronaldsay sheep were historically raised for their wool. It comes in a variety of colours and is very similar to the Shetland breed, due to their common ancestor. More common typical colours are the whites and greys, but browns, beiges, reds (also called tanay) and blacks, with coarser hair, are all exhibited. A full fleece weighs about 1 kg (2 lb). The North Ronaldsay is a double-coated breed, meaning they have a wool undercoat and overcoat. The undercoat tends to be finer and soft, suitable for garments that would touch the skin, whereas the overcoat is coarser, with long hair that protects the sheep from the cold, wet weather of their natural environment. This fibre is more durable and tends to be used in overgarments. ## See also - List of domesticated Scottish breeds

William Wurtenburg

American football player and physician (1863–1957)

William Charles Wurtenburg (December 24, 1863 – March 26, 1957) was an American college football player and coach. Born and raised in Western New York to German parents, Wurtenburg attended the prestigious Phillips Exeter Academy, where he played football. He enrolled in classes at Yale University in 1886 and soon earned a spot on the school's football team. He played for Yale from 1886 through 1889, and again in 1891; two of those teams were later recognized as national champions. His 35-yard run in a close game in 1887 against rival Harvard earned him some fame. Wurtenburg received his medical degree from Yale's Sheffield Scientific School in 1893. The following year, the United States Naval Academy hired him to coach their football team. He led the squad to a 4–1–2 record for the season, including a 1–1–1 record against rival schools. He then accepted a coaching job at Dartmouth College, where for the next four years he led them to perfect records against both of their Triangular Football League opponents. They had a winning record the first year and a 5–2–1 record the second year. In 1899, his fifth season as coach, his team went 2–7 and lost both of its conference games. After ending his coaching career, Wurtenburg spent several years acting as a referee for Yale's football team. His final contribution to football was publishing a book about Yale football in the early 20th century. Around 1904, Wurtenburg began pursuing a career as a physician. He set up a medical office near his house in New Haven, Connecticut, and became an ear, nose and throat specialist. Wurtenburg maintained his medical office until at least 1920. He died in 1957 at the age of 93, in New Haven. ## Early life and college William Wurtenburg was born on December 24, 1863, in Clarksburg, a hamlet in Erie County, New York. He was the son of George M. Wurtenburg and Elizabeth Hochschild, who immigrated from Germany in 1848. William attended primary school in the Clarksville public school system. For secondary schooling he attended the Griffith Institute in Springville, New York and then Forestville Academy before gaining admittance to Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, New Hampshire. At Phillips Exeter, Wurtenburg competed in field events at the school's spring athletic events. In 1884, he was a well-recognized member of the school's competitive football team. He served as quarterback and team captain in 1885, leading the team to a 29–11 victory over rival Phillips Academy. In his senior year, 1886, he placed first in standing broad jump with weights and running broad jump, with jumps of about 12 and 18 feet (3.7 and 5.5 m), respectively. Upon graduation from Phillips Exeter, Wurtenburg entered Yale University. Wurtenburg began taking medical classes on his arrival at Yale, and joined the football team partway through his freshman year. By the following season, he was playing backup halfback to freshman Harmon S. Graves, although he occasionally filled in as a fullback. The 1887 squad, later recognized as the national champion, went 9–0 and outscored their opponents 515–12; this included a 106–0 shutout of Wesleyan. During this season Wurtenburg made his most famous play: with Yale leading rival Harvard by a score of 11–8 late in the season's final contest, Wurtenburg made "a brilliant run" of 35 yards and scored a touchdown, which secured the game for Yale. He was credited as one of the people who made the game "undoubtedly the finest ever played in America", according to writer Richard Melancthon Hurd. The following year Wurtenburg shifted into his former position at quarterback. He took the starting spot and became a leader of the team. Wurtenburg developed his own unique style at quarterback, regularly attempting "long, low, underhand passes" to his teammates to help set up scoring plays. That year, the Yale team shut out every single one of its opponents and was later recognized as a national champion. At the same time, Wurtenburg played on the school's baseball team, where he would regularly score three or four runs a game. In September of his graduating year, 1889, Wurtenburg announced that he would be entering the Sheffield Scientific School. At the Exeter Club's first annual banquet, held that year, Wurtenburg was asked to present a toast to represent the club's athletics. In 1890, he served as the co-editor of The Yale Banner, one of the school's yearbooks. Wurtenburg played his final season of football at the university in 1891, after apparently giving up his spot on the team following the 1889 season. However, he was thrown out of the final game of the season, against Princeton, and Frank Barbour was given a guaranteed starting-quarterback slot for the rest of the time Wurtenburg was at Yale. Wurtenburg graduated in 1893, when he received his Doctorate in Medicine (M.D.). ## Career and later life ### 1890s In 1894, Wurtenburg was hired to replace former Yale teammate John A. Hartwell as the head coach of the US Naval Academy football team. Hartwell's 1893 team had amassed a record of 5–3, including a win over rival Army and a loss to rival Penn. Wurtenburg began his coaching career on October 6, leading his team to a 6–6 tie with the Elizabeth Athletic Club of New Jersey at Worden Field on the Naval Academy campus in Annapolis. His first win as a coach came over two weeks later, on October 21, in a 12–0 shutout of rival Georgetown; it was followed by a defeat of the Carlisle Indian School. His first and only loss of the season came on October 27, at the hands of rival Penn in a 12–0 shutout. At about that time, Wurtenburg left the country and traveled to Germany to complete his medical studies. The team recovered and defeated Lehigh on November 3, then tied rival Penn State. The season ended two weeks after that match with a 30–6 defeat of Baltimore City College. The team did not compete against their major rival Army that year, after violent fights between fans the previous year; President Grover Cleveland banned the game, which would not be played again until it was reinstated in 1899 by Theodore Roosevelt. Sometime during November, Wurtenburg returned from Germany along with fellow Yale medical graduate A.S. Cheney, and announced his intention to practice medicine in New Haven. That year, he received certification, and he expressed interest in eye, throat, and ear treatment. Wurtenburg did not remain at the Naval Academy the following year and was replaced as head coach by Matthew McClung. He instead accepted a position as the head coach of the Dartmouth team, starting in the fall of 1895. The season began with a 50–0 shutout of his former school, Phillips Exeter. This was followed by a loss and a tie, which were succeeded by back-to-back wins. His team dropped two games to Yale and one to Army, but managed to defeat former Triangular Football League opponent MIT. After that, Wurtenburg led his team to three straight victories, including wins over both Triangular Football League opponents. Although the season ended with a loss to Brown, Dartmouth was awarded the Triangular Football League championship. On November 20 of that year, Wurtenburg married Anna Phillips, daughter of Jason W. Phillips, whom he met while at Chautauqua in 1893. The wedding took place at Springfield, in Phillips' home state of Ohio; it was called "a brilliant event" by the Boston Daily Globe and was attended by Ohio's governor-elect Asa S. Bushnell and his wife. After the wedding, they moved to a permanent residence in New Haven. He returned to coach Dartmouth the following year. He began by leading his team to a 30–0 shutout of the Worcester Athletic Club on October 3. His team dropped the next two games, both scoreless losses to Penn and Yale, but finished the month with a win. The second half of the season went much better, with Wurtenburg leading his squad to a 3–1 record, including a 42–0 total score against conference opponents. The team ended the season with a 5–2–1 record and a second consecutive conference championship. Wurtenburg retained his coaching position the next season, beginning the year with a blowout of Phillips Exeter, which was followed by three consecutive shutout losses. The team turned the season around in November, defeating Amherst and Williams by a combined score of 106–0 for a third consecutive championship. He ended the season with a 4–3 record and a secure position as the coach for the next year. In 1898, Wurtenburg's Dartmouth squad went 5–6, but outscored their opponents 205–137. Beginning the season with a win over Phillips Exeter, the team went 4–1 in October. Wurtenburg's team began the month with a shutout loss to Harvard, but recovered to win four straight games, defeating their conference opponents by a combined score of 74–12. In November and December, however, his team lost all five matches, managing only 28 points. In his final year as a coach, Wurtenburg suffered the worst record of his career. After winning the first two games of the season, his team dropped the remaining seven, only able to put up 12 points. He also suffered his first conference losses, falling to opponents Williams and Wesleyan by a combined score of 23–10. Wurtenburg was replaced as coach the following year by one of his former players, Frederick E. Jennings. After the conclusion of his coaching career, Wurtenburg opened up his first medical office, operating a short distance from his New Haven home. ### 1900s and death Even after the turn of the century, Wurtenburg remained involved with the Yale football program. In 1900, he participated in the annual football team's spring scrimmage, playing on the school's "varsity" team. He was repeatedly selected by the university to act as an official in their home games; he was the school's referee in 1900 and 1901, and returned to the position two years later, in 1903. He expanded his officiating role in 1904, when he served in three games. For one of those matches, Wurtenburg moved to the position of umpire. Sometime between 1915 and 1925, Wurtenburg collected a series of newspaper articles and self-published them in a book titled Scrapbook of Newspaper Clippings about Yale Football. At some point around 1904, Wurtenburg began to dedicate himself to a career as a physician. He received official membership in the American Medical Association and the New Haven Medical Society as a physician specializing in otorhinolaryngology, specifically in ear and nose treatment. By 1909, he had shifted his focus to the treatment of ear ailments, and occasionally served well-known locals. He retained his membership with the Connecticut State Medical Society until at least 1920, maintaining his Elm Street office the entire time. Wurtenburg died on March 26, 1957, in New Haven, at the age of 93. A year after his death, Yale established the William G. Wurtenberg Scholarship from his bequest. The scholarship "is to be awarded to a member of the senior class who demonstrates character, leadership qualities, and promise of future usefulness". Although rarely acknowledged for his influence on Dartmouth football, Wurtenburg is considered by his Dartmouth peers as having brought the program to prominence. Fred Crolius, captain of Wurtenburg's 1898 team, would later state that: > One man, whose influence more than any other one thing, succeeded in laying a foundation for Dartmouth's wonderful results, but whose name is seldom mentioned in that connection is Doctor Wurtenberg, who was brought up in the early Yale football school. He had the keenest sense of fundamental football and the greatest intensity of spirit in transmitting his hard earned knowledge. Four critical years he worked with us filling every one with his enthusiasm and those four years Dartmouth football gained such headway that nothing could stop its growth. ## Head coaching record

James A. Garfield

20th President of the United States

James Abram Garfield (November 19, 1831 – September 19, 1881) was the 20th president of the United States, serving from March 1881 until his assassination in September 1881. A lawyer and Civil War general, Garfield served nine terms in the United States House of Representatives and is the only sitting member of the House to be elected president. Before his candidacy for the presidency, he had been elected to the U.S. Senate by the Ohio General Assemblya position he declined when he became president-elect. Garfield was born into poverty in a log cabin and grew up in northeastern Ohio. After graduating from Williams College, he studied law and became an attorney. He was active in the Stone-Campbell Movement denomination. Garfield was elected as a Republican member of the Ohio State Senate in 1859, serving until 1861. He opposed Confederate secession, was a major general in the Union Army during the American Civil War, and fought in the battles of Middle Creek, Shiloh, and Chickamauga. Garfield was elected to Congress in 1862 to represent Ohio's 19th district. Throughout his congressional service, he firmly supported the gold standard and gained a reputation as a skilled orator. He initially agreed with Radical Republican views on Reconstruction but later favored a Moderate Republican–aligned approach to civil rights enforcement for freedmen. Garfield's aptitude for mathematics extended to a notable proof of the Pythagorean theorem, which he published in 1876. At the 1880 Republican National Convention, delegates chose Garfield, who had not sought the White House, as a compromise presidential nominee on the 36th ballot. In the 1880 presidential election, he conducted a low-key front porch campaign and narrowly defeated the Democratic nominee, Winfield Scott Hancock. Garfield's accomplishments as president included his assertion of presidential authority against senatorial courtesy in executive appointments, a purge of corruption in the Post Office, and his appointment of a Supreme Court justice. He advocated for agricultural technology, an educated electorate, and civil rights for African Americans. He also proposed substantial civil service reforms, which were passed by Congress in 1883 as the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act and signed into law by his successor, Chester A. Arthur. Garfield was a member of the intraparty "Half-Breed" faction who used the powers of the presidency to defy the powerful "Stalwart" Senator Roscoe Conkling from New York. He did this by appointing Blaine faction leader William H. Robertson to the lucrative post of Collector of the Port of New York. The ensuing political battle resulted in Robertson's confirmation and the resignations of Conkling and Thomas C. Platt from the Senate. On July 2, 1881, Charles J. Guiteau, a disappointed and delusional office seeker, shot Garfield at the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad Station in Washington. The wound was not immediately fatal, but an infection caused by his doctors' unsanitary methods in treating the wound killed Garfield on September 19, 1881. Due to his brief tenure in office, historians tend to rank Garfield as a below-average president, though he has earned praise for anti-corruption and pro–civil rights stances. ## Childhood and early life James Abram Garfield was born the youngest of five children on November 19, 1831, in a log cabin in Orange Township, now Moreland Hills, Ohio. Garfield's ancestor Edward Garfield migrated from Hillmorton, Warwickshire, England, to Massachusetts around 1630. James's father Abram was born in Worcester, New York, and came to Ohio to woo his childhood sweetheart, Mehitabel Ballou, only to find her married. He instead wed her sister Eliza, who was born in New Hampshire. James was named after an earlier son of Eliza and Abram who had died in infancy. In early 1833, Abram and Eliza Garfield joined the Church of Christ, a decision that influenced their youngest son's life. Abram died later that year, and James was raised in poverty in a household led by his strong-willed mother. He was her favorite child and the two remained close for the rest of his life. Eliza remarried in 1842, but soon left her second husband, Warren (or Alfred) Belden, and a scandalous divorce was awarded in 1850. James took his mother's side in the matter and noted Belden's 1880 death with satisfaction in his diary. Garfield also enjoyed his mother's stories about his ancestry, especially those about his Welsh great-great-grandfathers and an ancestor who served as a knight of Caerphilly Castle. Poor and fatherless, Garfield was mocked by his peers and became sensitive to slights throughout his life; he sought escape through voracious reading. He left home at age 16 in 1847 and was rejected for work on the only ship in port in Cleveland. Garfield instead found work on a canal boat, managing the mules that pulled it. Horatio Alger later used this labor to good effect when he wrote Garfield's campaign biography in 1880. After six weeks, illness forced Garfield to return home, and during his recuperation, his mother and a local school official secured his promise to forgo canal work for a year of school. In 1848, he began at Geauga Seminary, in nearby Chester Township, Geauga County, Ohio. Garfield later said of his childhood, "I lament that I was born to poverty, and in this chaos of childhood, seventeen years passed before I caught any inspiration ... a precious 17 years when a boy with a father and some wealth might have become fixed in manly ways." ## Education, marriage and early career Garfield attended Geauga Seminary from 1848 to 1850 and learned academic subjects for which he had not previously had time. He excelled as a student and was especially interested in languages and elocution. He began to appreciate the power a speaker had over an audience, writing that the speaker's platform "creates some excitement. I love agitation and investigation and glory in defending unpopular truth against popular error." Geauga was coeducational, and Garfield was attracted to one of his classmates, Lucretia Rudolph, whom he later married. To support himself at Geauga, he worked as a carpenter's assistant and teacher. The need to go from town to town to find work as a teacher aggravated Garfield, and he developed a dislike of what he called "place-seeking", which became, he said, "the law of my life." In later years, he astounded his friends by disregarding positions that could have been his with little politicking. Garfield had attended church more to please his mother than to worship God, but in his late teens he underwent a religious awakening. He attended many camp meetings, which led to his being born again on March 4, 1850, when he was baptized into Christ by being submerged in the icy waters of the Chagrin River. After he left Geauga, Garfield worked for a year at various jobs, including teaching jobs. Finding that some New Englanders worked their way through college, Garfield determined to do the same and sought a school that could prepare him for the entrance examinations. From 1851 to 1854, he attended the Western Reserve Eclectic Institute (later named Hiram College) in Hiram, Ohio, a school run by the Disciples. While there, he was most interested in the study of Greek and Latin, but was inclined to learn about and discuss any new thing he encountered. Securing a position on entry as janitor, he obtained a teaching position while he was still a student there. Lucretia Rudolph also enrolled at the Institute and Garfield wooed her while teaching her Greek. He developed a regular preaching circuit at neighboring churches and, in some cases, earned one gold dollar per service. By 1854, Garfield had learned all the Institute could teach him and was a full-time teacher. Garfield then enrolled at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts, as a third-year student; he received credit for two years' study at the Institute after passing a cursory examination. Garfield was also impressed with the college president, Mark Hopkins, who had responded warmly to Garfield's letter inquiring about admission. He said of Hopkins, "The ideal college is Mark Hopkins on one end of a log with a student on the other." Hopkins later said of Garfield in his student days, "There was a large general capacity applicable to any subject. There was no pretense of genius, or alternation of spasmodic effort, but a satisfactory accomplishment in all directions." After his first term, Garfield was hired to teach penmanship to the students of nearby Pownal, Vermont, a post Chester A. Arthur previously held. Garfield graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Williams in August 1856, was named salutatorian, and spoke at the commencement. His biographer Ira Rutkow writes that Garfield's years at Williams gave him the opportunity to know and respect those of different social backgrounds, and that, despite his origin as an unsophisticated Westerner, socially conscious New Englanders liked and respected him. "In short," Rutkow writes, "Garfield had an extensive and positive first experience with the world outside the Western Reserve of Ohio." Upon his return to Ohio, the degree from a prestigious Eastern college made Garfield a man of distinction. He returned to Hiram to teach at the Institute and in 1857 was made its principal, though he did not see education as a field that would realize his full potential. The abolitionist atmosphere at Williams had enlightened him politically, after which he began to consider politics as a career. He campaigned for Republican John C. Frémont in 1856. In 1858, he married Lucretia and they had seven children, five of whom survived infancy. Soon after the wedding, he registered to read law at the office of attorney Albert Gallatin Riddle in Cleveland, though he did his studying in Hiram. He was admitted to the bar in 1861. Local Republican leaders invited Garfield to enter politics upon the death of Cyrus Prentiss, the presumptive nominee for the local state senate seat. He was nominated at the party convention on the sixth ballot and was elected, serving from 1860 to 1861. Garfield's major effort in the state senate was an unsuccessful bill providing for Ohio's first geological survey to measure its mineral resources. ## Civil War After Abraham Lincoln's election as president, several Southern states announced their secession from the Union to form a new government, the Confederate States of America. Garfield read military texts while anxiously awaiting the war effort, which he regarded as a holy crusade against the Slave Power. In April 1861, the rebels bombarded Fort Sumter, one of the South's last federal outposts, beginning the Civil War. Although he had no military training, Garfield knew his place was in the Union Army. At Governor William Dennison's request, Garfield deferred his military ambitions to remain in the legislature, where he helped appropriate the funds to raise and equip Ohio's volunteer regiments. When the legislature adjourned Garfield spent the spring and early summer on a speaking tour of northeastern Ohio, encouraging enlistment in the new regiments. Following a trip to Illinois to purchase muskets, Garfield returned to Ohio and, in August 1861, received a commission as a colonel in the 42nd Ohio Infantry regiment. The 42nd Ohio existed only on paper, so Garfield's first task was to fill its ranks. He did so quickly, recruiting many of his neighbors and former students. The regiment traveled to Camp Chase, outside Columbus, Ohio, to complete training. In December, Garfield was ordered to bring the 42nd to Kentucky, where they joined the Army of the Ohio under Brigadier General Don Carlos Buell. ### Buell's command Buell quickly assigned Garfield the task of driving Confederate forces out of eastern Kentucky, giving him the 18th Brigade for the campaign, which, besides his own 42nd, included the 40th Ohio Infantry, two Kentucky infantry regiments and two cavalry units. They departed Catlettsburg, Kentucky, in mid-December, advancing through the valley of the Big Sandy River. The march was uneventful until Union forces reached Paintsville, Kentucky, on January 6, 1862, where Garfield's cavalry engaged the rebels at Jenny's Creek. Confederate troops under Brigadier General Humphrey Marshall held the town in numbers roughly equal to Garfield's own, but Garfield positioned his troops so as to deceive Marshall into believing the rebels were outnumbered. Marshall ordered his troops to withdraw to the forks of Middle Creek, on the road to Virginia, and Garfield ordered his troops to take up the pursuit. They attacked the rebel positions on January 9, 1862, in the Battle of Middle Creek, the only pitched battle Garfield commanded personally. At the fighting's end, the Confederates withdrew from the field and Garfield sent his troops to Prestonsburg to reprovision. In recognition of his success, Garfield was promoted to brigadier general. After Marshall's retreat, Garfield's command was the sole remaining Union force in eastern Kentucky and he announced that any men who had fought for the Confederacy would be granted amnesty if they returned to their homes, lived peaceably, and remained loyal to the Union. The proclamation was surprisingly lenient, as Garfield now believed the war was a crusade for eradication of slavery. Following a brief skirmish at Pound Gap, the last rebel units in the area were outflanked and retreated to Virginia. Garfield's promotion gave him command of the 20th Brigade of the Army of the Ohio, which received orders to join Major General Ulysses S. Grant's forces as they advanced on Corinth, Mississippi, in early 1862. Before the 20th Brigade arrived, however, Confederate forces under General Albert Sidney Johnston surprised Grant's men in their camps, driving them back. Garfield's troops received word of the battle and advanced quickly, joining the rest of the army on the second day to drive the Confederates back across the field and into retreat. The action, later known as the Battle of Shiloh, was the bloodiest of the war to date; Garfield was exposed to fire for much of the day, but emerged uninjured. Major General Henry W. Halleck, Grant's superior, took charge of the combined armies and advanced ponderously toward Corinth; when they arrived, the Confederates had fled. That summer, Garfield suffered from jaundice and significant weight loss. He was forced to return home, where his wife nursed him back to health. While he was home, Garfield's friends worked to gain him the Republican nomination for Congress, but he refused to campaign with the delegates. He returned to military duty that autumn and went to Washington to await his next assignment. During this period of idleness, a rumor of an extramarital affair caused friction in the Garfields' marriage until Lucretia eventually chose to overlook it. Garfield repeatedly received tentative assignments that were quickly withdrawn, to his frustration. In the meantime, he served on the court-martial of Fitz John Porter for his tardiness at the Second Battle of Bull Run. He was convinced of Porter's guilt and voted with his fellow generals to convict Porter. The trial lasted almost two months, from November 1862 to January 1863, and, by its end, Garfield had procured an assignment as chief of staff to Major General William S. Rosecrans. ### Chief of staff for Rosecrans Generals' chiefs of staff were usually more junior officers, but Garfield's influence with Rosecrans was greater than usual, with duties extending beyond communication of orders to actual management of his Army of the Cumberland. Rosecrans had a voracious appetite for conversation, especially when unable to sleep; in Garfield, he found "the first well read person in the Army" and the ideal candidate for discussions that ran deep into the night. They discussed everything, especially religion, and the two became close despite Garfield's being 12 years his junior. Rosecrans, who had converted from Methodism to Roman Catholicism, softened Garfield's view of his faith. Garfield recommended that Rosecrans replace wing commanders Alexander McCook and Thomas Crittenden, as he believed they were ineffective, but Rosecrans ignored the suggestion. With Rosecrans, Garfield devised the Tullahoma Campaign to pursue and trap Confederate General Braxton Bragg in Tullahoma. After initial Union success, Bragg retreated toward Chattanooga, where Rosecrans stalled and requested more troops and supplies. Garfield argued for an immediate advance, in line with demands from Halleck and Lincoln. After a council of war and lengthy deliberations, Rosecrans agreed to attack. At the ensuing Battle of Chickamauga on September 19 and 20, 1863, confusion among the wing commanders over Rosecrans's orders created a gap in the lines, resulting in a rout of the right flank. Rosecrans concluded that the battle was lost and fell back on Chattanooga to establish a defensive line. Garfield, however, thought part of the army had held and, with Rosecrans's approval, headed across Missionary Ridge to survey the scene. Garfield's hunch was correct. Consequently, his ride became legendary and Rosecrans's error reignited criticism about the latter's leadership. While Rosecrans's army had avoided disaster, they were stranded in Chattanooga, surrounded by Bragg's army. Garfield sent a telegram to Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton alerting Washington to the need for reinforcements to avoid annihilation. Lincoln and Halleck responded to the request for reinforcements by sending 20,000 troops to Garfield by rail within nine days. In the meantime, Grant was promoted to command of the western armies and quickly replaced Rosecrans with George H. Thomas. Garfield was ordered to report to Washington, where he was promoted to major general. According to historian Jean Edward Smith, Grant and Garfield had a "guarded relationship" since Grant promoted Thomas, rather than Garfield, to command of the Army of the Cumberland after Rosecrans's dismissal. ## Congressional career ### Election in 1862; Civil War years While he served in the Army in early 1862, friends of Garfield approached him about running for Congress from Ohio's newly redrawn and heavily Republican 19th district. He worried that he and other state-appointed generals would receive obscure assignments and running for Congress would allow him to resume his political career. That the new Congress would not hold its first regular session until December 1863 allowed him to continue his war service for a time. Home on medical leave, he refused to campaign for the nomination, leaving that to political managers who secured it at the local convention in September 1862 on the eighth ballot. In the October general election, he defeated D.B. Woods by a two-to-one margin for a seat in the 38th Congress. Days before his Congressional term began, Garfield lost his eldest daughter, three-year-old Eliza, and became anxious and conflicted, saying his "desolation of heart" might require his return to "the wild life of the army." He also assumed that the war would end before his joining the House, but it had not, and he felt strongly that he belonged in the field, rather than in Congress. He also thought he could expect a favorable command, so he decided to see President Lincoln. During their meeting, Lincoln recommended he take his House seat, as there was an excess of generals and a shortage of administration congressmen, especially those with knowledge of military affairs. Garfield accepted this recommendation and resigned his military commission to do so. Garfield met and befriended Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase, who saw Garfield as a younger version of himself. The two agreed politically and both were part of the Radical wing of the Republican Party. Once he took his seat in December 1863, Garfield was frustrated at Lincoln's reluctance to press the South hard. Many radicals, led in the House by Pennsylvania's Thaddeus Stevens, wanted rebel-owned lands confiscated, but Lincoln threatened to veto any bill that proposed to do so on a widespread basis. In debate on the House floor, Garfield supported such legislation and, discussing England's Glorious Revolution, hinted that Lincoln might be thrown out of office for resisting it. Garfield had supported Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation and marveled at the "strange phenomenon in the world's history, when a second-rate Illinois lawyer is the instrument to utter words which shall form an epoch memorable in all future ages." Garfield not only favored the abolition of slavery, but also believed the leaders of the rebellion had forfeited their constitutional rights. He supported the confiscation of Southern plantations and even exile or execution of rebellion leaders as a means to ensure a permanent end to slavery. Garfield felt Congress had an obligation "to determine what legislation is necessary to secure equal justice to all loyal persons, without regard to color." He was more supportive of Lincoln when he took action against slavery. Garfield showed leadership early in his congressional career; he was initially the only Republican vote to terminate the use of bounties in military recruiting. Some financially able recruits had used the bounty system to buy their way out of service (called commutation), which Garfield considered reprehensible. He gave a speech pointing out the flaws in the existing conscription law: 300,000 recruits had been called upon to enlist, but barely 10,000 had done so, with the remainder claiming exemption, providing money, or recruiting a substitute. Lincoln appeared before the Military Affairs committee on which Garfield served, demanding a more effective bill; even if it cost him reelection, Lincoln was confident he could win the war before his term expired. After many false starts, Garfield, with Lincoln's support, procured the passage of a conscription bill that excluded commutation. Under Chase's influence, Garfield became a staunch proponent of a dollar backed by a gold standard, and strongly opposed the "greenback". He also accepted the necessity of suspension of payment in gold or silver during the Civil War with strong reluctance. He voted with the Radical Republicans in passing the Wade–Davis Bill, designed to give Congress more authority over Reconstruction, but Lincoln defeated it with a pocket veto. Garfield did not consider Lincoln very worthy of reelection, but there seemed to be no viable alternative. "He will probably be the man, though I think we could do better", he said. Garfield attended the party convention and promoted Rosecrans as Lincoln's running mate, but delegates chose Military Governor of Tennessee Andrew Johnson. Lincoln was reelected, as was Garfield. By then, Chase had left the Cabinet and been appointed Chief Justice, and his relations with Garfield became more distant. Garfield took up the practice of law in 1865 to improve his personal finances. His efforts took him to Wall Street where, the day after Lincoln's assassination, a riotous crowd drew him into an impromptu speech to calm their passions: "Fellow citizens! Clouds and darkness are round about Him! His pavilion is dark waters and thick clouds of the skies! Justice and judgment are the establishment of His throne! Mercy and truth shall go before His face! Fellow citizens! God reigns, and the Government at Washington still lives!" The speech, with no mention or praise of Lincoln, was, according to Garfield biographer Robert G. Caldwell, "quite as significant for what it did not contain as for what it did." In the following years, Garfield had more praise for Lincoln; a year after Lincoln's death, Garfield said, "Greatest among all these developments were the character and fame of Abraham Lincoln," and in 1878 he called Lincoln "one of the few great rulers whose wisdom increased with his power". ### Reconstruction In 1864, the U.S. Senate passed the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery throughout the Union. The bill failed to pass the House by a two-thirds majority until January 31, 1865, when it was then sent to the states for ratification. The Amendment opened other issues concerning African American civil rights. Garfield asked, "[What] is freedom? Is it the bare privilege of not being chained?...If this is all, then freedom is a bitter mockery, a cruel delusion." Garfield supported black suffrage as firmly as he supported abolition. President Johnson sought the rapid restoration of the Southern states during the months between his accession and the meeting of Congress in December 1865; Garfield hesitantly supported this policy as an experiment. Johnson, an old friend, sought Garfield's backing and their conversations led Garfield to assume Johnson's differences with Congress were not large. When Congress assembled in December (to Johnson's chagrin, without the elected representatives of the Southern states, who were excluded), Garfield urged conciliation on his colleagues, although he feared that Johnson, a former Democrat, might join other Democrats to gain political control. Garfield foresaw conflict even before February 1866, when Johnson vetoed a bill to extend the life of the Freedmen's Bureau, charged with aiding the former slaves. By April, Garfield had concluded that Johnson was either "crazy or drunk with opium." The conflict between Congress and President Johnson was the major issue of the 1866 campaign, with Johnson taking to the campaign trail in a Swing Around the Circle and Garfield facing opposition within the Republican party in his home district. With the South still disenfranchised and Northern public opinion behind the Republicans, they gained a two-thirds majority in both houses of Congress. Garfield, having overcome his challengers at the district nominating convention, won reelection easily. Garfield opposed the proposed impeachment of Johnson initially when Congress convened in December 1866, but supported legislation to limit Johnson's powers, such as the Tenure of Office Act, which restricted Johnson's ability to remove presidential appointees. Distracted by committee duties, Garfield spoke about these bills rarely, but was a loyal Republican vote against Johnson. On January 7, 1867, Garfield voted in support of the resolution that launched the first impeachment inquiry against Johnson (run by the House Committee on the Judiciary). On December 7, 1867, he voted against the unsuccessful resolution to impeach Johnson that the House Committee on the Judiciary had sent the full House. On January 27, 1868, he voted to pass the resolution that authorized the second impeachment inquiry against Johnson (run by the House Select Committee on Reconstruction). Due to a court case, he was absent on February 24, 1868, when the House impeached Johnson, but gave a speech aligning himself with Thaddeus Stevens and others who sought Johnson's removal shortly thereafter. Garfield was present on March 2 and 3, 1868, when the House voted on specific articles of impeachment, and voted in support of all 11 articles. During the March 2 debate on the articles, Garfield argued that what he characterized as Johnson's attempts to render Ulysses S. Grant, William Tecumseh Sherman, and William H. Emory personal tools of his demonstrated Johnson's intent to disregard the law and override the Constitution, suggesting that Johnson's trial perhaps could be expedited to last only a day in order to hasten his removal. When Johnson was acquitted in his trial before the Senate, Garfield was shocked and blamed the outcome on the trial's presiding officer, Chief Justice Chase, his onetime mentor. By the time Grant succeeded Johnson in 1869, Garfield had moved away from the remaining radicals (Stevens, their leader, had died in 1868). By this time, many in the Republican Party wanted to remove the "Negro question" from national affairs. Garfield hailed the ratification of the 15th Amendment in 1870 as a triumph and favored Georgia's readmission to the Union as a matter of right, not politics. An influential Republican, Garfield said, "[The] Fifteen Amendment confers on the African race the care of its own destiny. It places their fortunes in their own hands." In 1871, Congress took up the Ku Klux Klan Act, which was designed to combat attacks on African Americans' suffrage rights. Garfield opposed the act, saying, "I have never been more perplexed by a piece of legislation." He was torn between his indignation at the Klan, whom he called "terrorists", and his concern for the power given the president to enforce the act through suspension of habeas corpus. ### Tariffs and finance Throughout his political career, Garfield favored the gold standard and decried attempts to increase the money supply through the issuance of paper money not backed by gold, and later, through the free and unlimited coinage of silver. In 1865, he was put on the House Ways and Means Committee, a long-awaited opportunity to focus on financial and economic issues. He reprised his opposition to the greenback, saying, "Any party which commits itself to paper money will go down amid the general disaster, covered with the curses of a ruined people." In 1868 Garfield gave a two-hour speech on currency in the House, which was widely applauded as his best oratory to that point; in it, he advocated a gradual resumption of specie payments, that is, the government paying out silver and gold, rather than paper money that could not be redeemed. Tariffs had been raised to high levels during the Civil War. Afterward, Garfield, who made a close study of financial affairs, advocated moving toward free trade, though the standard Republican position was a protective tariff that would allow American industries to grow. This break with his party likely cost him his place on the Ways and Means Committee in 1867, and though Republicans held the majority in the House until 1875, Garfield remained off that committee. Garfield came to chair the powerful House Appropriations Committee, but it was Ways and Means, with its influence over fiscal policy, that he really wanted to lead. One reason he was denied a place on Ways and Means was the opposition of the influential Republican editor Horace Greeley. Starting in January 1870, Garfield, then chairman of the House Banking Committee, led an investigation into the Black Friday Gold Panic scandal. In 1869, during Grant's first term in office, two New York conspirators, Jay Gould and James Fisk, launched a scheme to corner the gold market. The conspiracy was broken on Friday, September 24, 1869, when Grant and Treasury Secretary George Boutwell released gold into the market, causing widespread financial panic. During the investigation, rumors spread that Grant's family might have been involved. In order not to force Grant's wife to testify, Garfield had a private meeting with Grant at the White House. When Garfield showed Grant testimony about him and his family, Grant thanked Garfield but refused to read it or give a response. Grant personally resented Garfield for investigating Black Friday and his wife Julia concerning possible involvement in the scandal. Garfield's investigation and final majority report, released on September 12, 1870, were thorough but found no indictable offenses and exonerated Grant and Julia of wrongdoing. Garfield thought the scandal was enabled by the greenbacks that financed the speculation. Garfield was not at all enthused about President Grant's reelection in 1872—until Greeley, who emerged as the candidate of the Democrats and Liberal Republicans, became the only serious alternative. Garfield said, "I would say Grant was not fit to be nominated and Greeley is not fit to be elected." Both Grant and Garfield were overwhelmingly reelected. ### Crédit Mobilier scandal; salary grab The Crédit Mobilier of America scandal involved corruption in the financing of the Union Pacific Railroad, part of the transcontinental railroad which was completed in 1869. Union Pacific officers and directors secretly purchased control of the Crédit Mobilier of America company, then contracted with it to undertake construction of the railroad. The railroad paid the company's grossly inflated invoices with federal funds appropriated to subsidize the project, and the company was allowed to purchase Union Pacific securities at par value, well below the market rate. Crédit Mobilier showed large profits and stock gains, and distributed substantial dividends. The high expenses meant Congress was called upon to appropriate more funds. One of the railroad officials who controlled Crédit Mobilier was also a congressman, Oakes Ames of Massachusetts. He offered some of his colleagues the opportunity to buy Crédit Mobilier stock at par value, well below what it sold for on the market, and the railroad got its additional appropriations. The story broke in July 1872, in the middle of the presidential campaign. Among those named were Vice President Schuyler Colfax, Massachusetts Senator Henry Wilson (the Republican candidate for vice president), Speaker James G. Blaine of Maine, and Garfield. Greeley had little luck taking advantage of the scandal. When Congress reconvened after the election, Blaine, seeking to clear his name, demanded a House investigation. Evidence before the special committee exonerated Blaine. Garfield had said in September 1872 that Ames had offered him stock but he had repeatedly refused it. Testifying before the committee in January, Ames said he had offered Garfield ten shares of stock at par value, but that Garfield had never taken them or paid for them, though a year passed, from 1867 to 1868, before Garfield had finally refused. Appearing before the committee on January 14, 1873, Garfield confirmed much of this. Ames testified several weeks later that Garfield agreed to take the stock on credit, and that it was paid for by the company's huge dividends. The two men differed over \$300 that Garfield received and later paid back, with Garfield deeming it a loan and Ames a dividend. Garfield's biographers have been unwilling to exonerate him in the scandal. Allan Peskin writes, "Did Garfield lie? Not exactly. Did he tell the truth? Not completely. Was he corrupted? Not really. Even Garfield's enemies never claimed that his involvement in the affair influenced his behavior." Rutkow writes, "Garfield's real offense was that he knowingly denied to the House investigating committee that he had agreed to accept the stock and that he had also received a dividend of \$329." Caldwell suggests Garfield "told the truth [before the committee, but] certainly failed to tell the whole truth, clearly evading an answer to certain vital questions and thus giving the impression of worse faults than those of which he was guilty." That Crédit Mobilier was a corrupt organization had been a badly kept secret, even mentioned on the floor of Congress, and editor Sam Bowles wrote at the time that Garfield, in his positions on committees dealing with finance, "had no more right to be ignorant in a matter of such grave importance as this, than the sentinel has to snore on his post." Another issue that caused Garfield trouble in his 1874 reelection bid was the so-called "Salary Grab" of 1873, which increased the compensation for members of Congress by 50%, retroactive to 1871. As chairman of the Appropriations Committee, Garfield was responsible for shepherding the appropriations bill through the House; during the debate in February 1873, Massachusetts Representative Benjamin Butler offered the increase as an amendment, and despite Garfield's opposition, it passed the House and eventually became law. The law was very popular in the House, as almost half the members were lame ducks, but the public was outraged, and many of Garfield's constituents blamed him, though he personally refused to accept the increase. In a bad year for Republicans, who lost control of the House for the first time since the Civil War, Garfield had his closest congressional election, winning with only 57% of the vote. ### Floor leader; Hayes administration The Democratic takeover of the House of Representatives in 1875 meant the loss of Garfield's chairmanship of the Appropriations Committee, though the Democrats did put him on the Ways and Means Committee. With many of his leadership rivals defeated in the 1874 Democratic landslide, and Blaine elected to the Senate, Garfield was seen as the Republican floor leader, and the likely Speaker, should the party regain control of the chamber. Garfield thought the land grants given to expanding railroads was an unjust practice. He also opposed monopolistic practices by corporations, as well as the power sought by workers' unions. He supported the proposed establishment of the United States civil service as a means of ridding officials of the annoyance of aggressive office seekers. He especially wished to eliminate the practice of forcing government workers, in exchange for their positions, to kick back a percentage of their wages as political contributions. As the 1876 presidential election approached, Garfield was loyal to the candidacy of Senator Blaine, and fought for the former Speaker's nomination at the 1876 Republican National Convention in Cincinnati. When it became clear, after six ballots, that Blaine could not prevail, the convention nominated Ohio Governor Rutherford B. Hayes. Although Garfield had supported Blaine, he had kept good relations with Hayes, and wholeheartedly supported the governor. Garfield had hoped to retire from politics after his term expired to devote himself full-time to the practice of law, but to help his party, he sought re-election, and won it easily that October. Any celebration was short-lived, as Garfield's youngest son, Neddie, fell ill with whooping cough shortly after the congressional election, and soon died. When Hayes appeared to have lost the presidential election the following month to Democrat Samuel Tilden, the Republicans launched efforts to reverse the results in South Carolina, Louisiana, and Florida, where they held the governorship. If Hayes won all three states, he would take the election by a single electoral vote. Grant asked Garfield to serve as a "neutral observer" of the recount in Louisiana. The observers soon recommended to the state electoral commissions that Hayes be declared the winner—Garfield recommended the entire vote of West Feliciana Parish, which had given Tilden a sizable majority, be thrown out. The Republican governors of the three states certified that Hayes had won their states, to the outrage of Democrats, who had the state legislatures submit rival returns, and threatened to prevent the counting of the electoral vote—under the Constitution, Congress is the final arbiter of the election. Congress then established an Electoral Commission, consisting of eight Republicans and seven Democrats, to determine the winner. Despite his objection to the Commission, Garfield was appointed to it. He felt Congress should count the vote and proclaim Hayes victorious. Hayes emerged the victor by a party line vote of 8–7. In exchange for recognizing Hayes as president, Southern Democrats secured the removal of federal troops from the South, ending Reconstruction. Although an Ohio Senate seat would be vacated by the resignation of John Sherman to become Treasury Secretary, Hayes needed Garfield's expertise to protect him from the agenda of a hostile Congress, and asked him not to seek it. Garfield agreed. As Hayes's key legislator in the House, he gained considerable prestige and respect for his role there. When Congress debated the Bland–Allison Act, to have the government purchase large quantities of silver and strike it into legal tender dollar coins, Garfield opposed it as a deviation from the gold standard; it was enacted over Hayes's veto in February 1878. In 1876, Garfield purchased the property in Mentor that reporters later dubbed Lawnfield, where he conducted the first successful front porch campaign for the presidency. Hayes suggested that Garfield run for governor in 1879, seeing that as a road likely to take Garfield to the White House. Garfield preferred to seek election as a U.S. senator. Rivals were spoken of for the seat, such as Secretary Sherman, but he had presidential ambitions (for which he sought Garfield's support), and other candidates fell by the wayside. The General Assembly elected Garfield to the Senate in January 1880, though his term was not scheduled to commence until March 4, 1881. Garfield was never seated in the U.S. Senate. ### Legal career and other activities In 1865, Garfield became a partner in the law firm of a fellow Disciple of Christ, Jeremiah Black. They had much in common, except politics: Black was an avid Democrat, having served in the cabinet of President James Buchanan. The next year, Black was retained by some pro-Confederate northern civilians who had been found guilty of treason in a military court and sentenced to death. Black saw an opportunity to strike a blow against military courts and the Republicans. He had heard Garfield's military speeches, and learned of not only his oratory skills but also his resistance to expansive powers of military commissions. Black assigned the case to Garfield one week before arguments were to be made before the U. S. Supreme Court. When Black warned him of the political peril, Garfield responded, "It don't make any difference. I believe in English liberty and English law." In this landmark case, Ex parte Milligan, Garfield successfully argued that civilians could not be tried before military tribunals, despite a declaration of martial law, as long as civil courts were still operating. In his very first court appearance, Garfield's oral argument lasted over two hours, and though his wealthy clients refused to pay him, he had established himself as a preeminent lawyer. During Grant's first term, Garfield was discontented with public service and in 1872 again pursued opportunities in the law. But he declined a partnership offer from a Cleveland law firm when told his prospective partner was of "intemperate and licentious" reputation. In 1873, after Chase's death, Garfield appealed to Grant to appoint Justice Noah H. Swayne Chief Justice, but Grant appointed Morrison R. Waite. In 1871, Garfield traveled to Montana Territory to negotiate the removal of the Bitterroot Salish tribe to the Flathead Indian Reservation. Having been told that the people would happily move, Garfield expected an easy task. Instead, he found the Salish determined to stay in their Bitterroot Valley homeland. His attempts to coerce Chief Charlo to sign the agreement nearly brought about a military clash. In the end, he convinced two subchiefs to sign and move to the reservation with a few of the Salish people. Garfield never convinced Charlo to sign, although the official treaty document voted on by Congress bore his forged mark. In 1876, Garfield developed a trapezoid proof of the Pythagorean theorem, which was published in the New England Journal of Education. Mathematics historian William Dunham wrote that Garfield's trapezoid work was "really a very clever proof." According to the Journal, Garfield arrived at the proof "in mathematical amusements and discussions with other members of congress." After his conversion experience in 1850, religious inquiry was a high priority for Garfield. He read widely and moved beyond the confines of his early experience as a member of the Disciples of Christ. His new, broader perspective was rooted in his devotion to freedom of inquiry and his study of history. The intensity of Garfield's religious thought was also influenced by his experience in combat and his interaction with voters. ## Presidential election of 1880 ### Republican nomination Having just been elected to the Senate with John Sherman's support, Garfield was committed to Sherman for the 1880 Republican presidential nomination. Before the convention began, however, a few Republicans, including Wharton Barker of Philadelphia, thought Garfield the best choice for the nomination. Garfield denied any interest in the position, but the attention was enough to make Sherman suspicious of his lieutenant's ambitions. Besides Sherman, the early favorites for the nomination were Blaine, former President Grant; several other candidates attracted delegates as well. The Republican Party at the time was split into two factions: the "Stalwarts", who supported the existing federal government patronage system, and the "Half-Breeds", who wanted civil service reform. As the convention began, New York Senator Roscoe Conkling, floor leader for the Stalwarts, who supported former President Ulysses S. Grant, proposed that the delegates pledge to back the eventual nominee in the general election. When three West Virginia delegates declined to be so bound, Conkling sought to expel them from the convention. Garfield rose to defend the men, giving a passionate speech in defense of their right to reserve judgment. The crowd turned against Conkling, and he withdrew the motion. The performance delighted Garfield's boosters, who were then convinced he was the only one who could attract a majority of the delegates' votes. After speeches in favor of the other front-runners, Garfield rose to place Sherman's name in nomination; his speech was well-received, but the delegates mustered little excitement for Sherman as the next president. The first ballot showed Grant leading with 304 votes to Blaine's 284, and Sherman's 93 votes placed him in a distant third. Subsequent ballots demonstrated a deadlock between Grant and Blaine, with neither having the 379 votes needed for nomination. Jeremiah McLain Rusk, a member of the Wisconsin delegation, and Benjamin Harrison, an Indiana delegate, sought to break the deadlock by shifting a few of the anti-Grant votes to a dark horse candidate—Garfield. Garfield gained 50 votes on the 35th ballot, and a stampede began. Garfield protested to the Ohio delegation that he did not seek the nomination and would not betray Sherman, but they overruled his objections and cast their ballots for him. In the next round of voting, nearly all the Sherman and Blaine delegates shifted their support to Garfield, giving him 399 votes, and the Republican nomination. Most of the Grant forces backed the former president to the end, creating a disgruntled Stalwart minority in the party. To obtain that faction's support for the ticket, Chester A. Arthur, a former New York customs collector and member of Conkling's political machine, was chosen as the vice presidential nominee. ### Campaign against Hancock Even with a Stalwart on the ticket, animosity between the Republican factions carried over from the convention, so Garfield traveled to New York to meet with party leaders. After convincing the Stalwart crowd to put aside their differences and unite for the coming campaign, Garfield returned to Ohio, leaving the active campaigning to others, as was traditional at the time. Meanwhile, the Democrats settled on their nominee, Major General Winfield Scott Hancock of Pennsylvania, a career military officer. Hancock and the Democrats expected to carry the Solid South, while much of the North was considered safe territory for Garfield and the Republicans; most of the campaign focused on a few close states, including New York and Indiana. Practical differences between the candidates were few, but Republicans began the campaign with the familiar theme of waving the bloody shirt. They reminded Northern voters the Democratic Party was responsible for secession and four years of civil war, and Democrats would reverse the gains of that war, dishonor Union veterans, and pay Confederate veterans pensions out of the federal treasury. Fifteen years had passed since the end of the war, and with Union generals at the head of both tickets, the bloody shirt was of diminishing value in exciting the voters. With a few months to go before the election, the Republicans switched tactics to emphasize the tariff. Seizing on the Democratic platform's call for a "tariff for revenue only", Republicans told Northern workers a Hancock presidency would weaken the tariff protection that kept them in good jobs. Hancock made the situation worse when, attempting to strike a moderate stance, he said, "The tariff question is a local question." The Republican ploy proved effective in uniting the North behind Garfield. Ultimately, of the more than 9.2 million popular votes cast, fewer than 2,000 separated the two candidates. But in the Electoral College, Garfield had an easy victory over Hancock, 214 to 155. The election made Garfield the only sitting member of the House ever to be elected to the presidency. ## Presidency (1881) ### Cabinet and inauguration Before his inauguration, Garfield was occupied with assembling a cabinet that might engender peace between the party's Conkling and Blaine factions. Blaine's delegates had provided much of the support for Garfield's nomination, so the Maine senator received the place of honor as Secretary of State. Blaine was not only the president's closest advisor, but he was also obsessed with knowing all that took place in the White House, and allegedly posted spies there in his absence. Garfield nominated William Windom of Minnesota as Secretary of the Treasury, William H. Hunt of Louisiana as Secretary of the Navy, Robert Todd Lincoln as Secretary of War, and Samuel J. Kirkwood of Iowa as Secretary of the Interior. New York was represented by Thomas Lemuel James as Postmaster General. Garfield appointed Pennsylvania's Wayne MacVeagh, an adversary of Blaine's, as Attorney General. Blaine tried to sabotage the appointment by convincing Garfield to name an opponent of MacVeagh, William E. Chandler, as Solicitor General under MacVeagh. Only Chandler's rejection by the Senate forestalled MacVeagh's resignation over the matter. Because Garfield was distracted by cabinet maneuvering, his inaugural address was a "compendium of platitudes" and fell below expectations. At one high point, however, Garfield emphasized the civil rights of African-Americans, saying "Freedom can never yield its fullness of blessings so long as the law or its administration places the smallest obstacle in the pathway of any virtuous citizen." After discussing the gold standard, the need for education, and an unexpected denunciation of Mormon polygamy, the speech ended. The crowd applauded, but the speech, according to Peskin, "however sincerely intended, betrayed its hasty composition by the flatness of its tone and the conventionality of its subject matter." Garfield's appointment of James infuriated Conkling, a factional opponent of the Postmaster General, who demanded a compensatory appointment for his faction, such as the position of Secretary of the Treasury. The resulting squabble occupied much of Garfield's brief presidency. The feud with Conkling reached a climax when the president, at Blaine's instigation, nominated Conkling's enemy, Judge William H. Robertson, to be Collector of the Port of New York. This was one of the prize patronage positions below cabinet level and was then held by Edwin A. Merritt. Conkling raised the time-honored principle of senatorial courtesy in an attempt to defeat the nomination, to no avail. Garfield, who believed the practice was corrupt, would not back down and threatened to withdraw all nominations unless Robertson was confirmed, intending to "settle the question whether the president is registering clerk of the Senate or the Executive of the United States." Ultimately, Conkling and his New York colleague, Senator Thomas C. Platt, resigned their Senate seats to seek vindication but found only further humiliation when the New York legislature elected others in their places. Robertson was confirmed as Collector and Garfield's victory was clear. To Blaine's chagrin, the victorious Garfield returned to his goal of balancing the interests of party factions and nominated a number of Conkling's Stalwart friends to offices. With his cabinet complete, Garfield had to contend with myriad office seekers. He exclaimed, "My God! What is there in this place that a man should ever get into it." Garfield's family happily settled into the White House, but he found presidential duties exasperating. ### Refinance of national debt Garfield ordered the Secretary of the Treasury William Windom to refund (refinance) the national debt by calling in outstanding U.S. bonds paying 6% interest. Holders would have the option of accepting cash or new bonds at 3%, closer to the interest rates of the time. Taxpayers were saved an estimated \$10 million. By comparison, federal expenditures in 1881 were below \$261 million. ### Supreme Court nomination In 1880, President Hayes had nominated Stanley Matthews to the Supreme Court but the Senate declined to act on the nomination. In March 1881, Garfield re-nominated Matthews to the Court and the Senate confirmed Matthews by a vote of 24–23. According to The New York Times, "opposition to Matthews's Supreme Court appointment ... stemmed from his prosecution in 1859 of a newspaper editor who had assisted two runaway slaves." Because Matthews was "a professed abolitionist at the time, the matter was later framed as political expediency triumphing over moral principle." Matthews served on the Court until his death in 1889. ### Reforms Grant and Hayes had both advocated civil service reform, and by 1881 such reform associations had organized with renewed energy across the nation. Garfield sympathized with them, believing the spoils system damaged the presidency and often eclipsed more important concerns. Some reformers became disappointed when Garfield promoted limited tenure only to minor office seekers and gave appointments to his old friends. Corruption in the post office also cried out for reform. In April 1880, there had been a congressional investigation of corruption in the Post Office Department, where profiteering rings allegedly stole millions of dollars, securing bogus mail contracts on star routes. After obtaining contracts with the lowest bid, costs to run the mail routes would be escalated and profits would be divided among ring members. Shortly after taking office, Garfield received word of postal corruption by an alleged star route ringleader, Assistant Postmaster General Thomas J. Brady. Garfield demanded Brady's resignation and ordered prosecutions that ended in trials for conspiracy. When told that his party, including his campaign manager, Stephen W. Dorsey, was involved, Garfield directed that the corruption in the Post Office be rooted out "to the bone", regardless of where it might lead. Brady resigned and was indicted for conspiracy, though jury trials in 1882 and 1883 found Brady not guilty. ### Civil rights and education Garfield believed the key to improving the state of African American civil rights was government supported education. During Reconstruction, freedmen had gained citizenship and suffrage, which enabled them to participate in government, but Garfield believed their rights were being eroded by Southern white resistance and illiteracy, and he was concerned that blacks would become America's permanent "peasantry". He proposed a "universal" education system funded by the federal government. In February 1866, Garfield and Ohio School Commissioner Emerson Edward White drafted a bill for the National Department of Education. They believed that through the use of statistics they could push the US Congress to establish a federal agency for school reform. But Congress and the northern white public had lost interest in African-American rights, and Congress did not pass federal funding for universal education during Garfield's term. Garfield also worked to appoint several African Americans to prominent positions: Frederick Douglass, recorder of deeds in Washington; Robert Elliot, special agent to the Treasury; John M. Langston, Haitian minister; and Blanche K. Bruce, register to the Treasury. Garfield believed Southern support for the Republican Party could be gained by "commercial and industrial" interests rather than race issues and began to reverse Hayes's policy of conciliating Southern Democrats. He appointed William H. Hunt, a carpetbagger Republican from Louisiana, as Secretary of the Navy. To break the hold of the resurgent Democratic Party in the Solid South, Garfield took patronage advice from Virginia Senator William Mahone of the biracial independent Readjuster Party, hoping to add the independents' strength to the Republicans' there. ### Foreign policy and naval reform Garfield had little foreign policy experience, so he leaned heavily on Blaine. They agreed on the need to promote freer trade, especially within the Western Hemisphere. Garfield and Blaine believed increasing trade with Latin America would be the best way to keep the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from dominating the region. And by encouraging exports, they believed they could increase American prosperity. Garfield authorized Blaine to call for a Pan-American conference in 1882 to mediate disputes among the Latin American nations and to serve as a forum for talks on increasing trade. At the same time, they hoped to negotiate a peace in the War of the Pacific then being fought by Bolivia, Chile, and Peru. Blaine favored a resolution that would result in Peru yielding no territory, but Chile by 1881 had occupied the Peruvian capital of Lima, and rejected any settlement that restored the previous status quo. Garfield sought to expand American influence in other areas, calling for renegotiation of the Clayton–Bulwer Treaty to allow the United States to construct a canal through Panama without British involvement and attempting to reduce British influence in the strategically located Kingdom of Hawaii. Garfield's and Blaine's plans for the United States' involvement in the world stretched even beyond the Western Hemisphere, as he sought commercial treaties with Korea and Madagascar. Garfield also considered enhancing U.S. military strength abroad, asking Navy Secretary Hunt to investigate the navy's condition with an eye toward expansion and modernization. In the end, these ambitious plans came to nothing after Garfield was assassinated. Nine countries had accepted invitations to the Pan-American conference, but the invitations were withdrawn in April 1882 after Blaine resigned from the cabinet and Arthur, Garfield's successor, cancelled the conference. Naval reform continued under Arthur, on a more modest scale than Garfield and Hunt had envisioned, ultimately ending in the construction of the Squadron of Evolution. ## Assassination ### Guiteau and shooting Charles J. Guiteau had followed various professions in his life, but in 1880 had determined to gain federal office by supporting what he expected would be the winning Republican ticket. He composed a speech, "Garfield vs. Hancock", and got it printed by the Republican National Committee. One means of persuading the voters in that era was through orators expounding on the candidate's merits, but with the Republicans seeking more famous men, Guiteau received few opportunities to speak. On one occasion, according to Kenneth D. Ackerman, Guiteau was unable to finish his speech due to nerves. Guiteau, who considered himself a Stalwart, deemed his contribution to Garfield's victory sufficient to justify his appointment to the position of consul in Paris, despite the fact that he spoke no French, nor any foreign language. One medical expert has since described Guiteau as possibly a narcissistic schizophrenic; neuroscientist Kent Kiehl assessed him as a clinical psychopath. One of Garfield's more wearying duties was seeing office-seekers, and he saw Guiteau at least once. White House officials suggested to Guiteau that he approach Blaine, as the consulship was within the Department of State. Blaine also saw the public regularly, and Guiteau became a regular at these sessions. Blaine, who had no intention of giving Guiteau a position he was unqualified for and had not earned, simply said the deadlock in the Senate over Robertson's nomination made it impossible to consider the Paris consulship, which required Senate confirmation. Once the New York senators had resigned, and Robertson had been confirmed as Collector, Guiteau pressed his claim, and Blaine told him he would not receive the position. Guiteau came to believe he had lost the position because he was a Stalwart. He decided the only way to end the Republican Party's internecine warfare was for Garfield to die—though he had nothing personal against the president. Arthur's succession would restore peace, he felt, and lead to rewards for fellow Stalwarts, including Guiteau. The assassination of Abraham Lincoln was deemed a fluke due to the Civil War, and Garfield, like most people, saw no reason the president should be guarded; his movements and plans were often printed in the newspapers. Guiteau knew Garfield would leave Washington for a cooler climate on July 2, 1881, and made plans to kill him before then. He purchased a gun he thought would look good in a museum, and followed Garfield several times, but each time his plans were frustrated, or he lost his nerve. His opportunities dwindled to one—Garfield's departure by train for New Jersey on the morning of July 2. Guiteau concealed himself by the ladies' waiting room at the Sixth Street Station of the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad, from where Garfield was scheduled to depart. Most of Garfield's cabinet planned to accompany him at least part of the way. Blaine, who was to remain in Washington, came to the station to see him off. The two men were deep in conversation and did not notice Guiteau before he took out his revolver and shot Garfield twice, once in the back and once in the arm. Guiteau attempted to leave the station, but was quickly captured. As Blaine recognized him, Guiteau was led away, and said, "I did it. I will go to jail for it. I am a Stalwart and Arthur will be President." News of his motivation to benefit the Stalwarts reached many with the news of the shooting, causing rage against that faction. ### Treatment and death Garfield was struck by two shots; one glanced off his arm while the other pierced his back, shattering a rib and embedding itself in his abdomen. "My God, what is this?" he exclaimed. Among those at the station was Robert Todd Lincoln, who was deeply upset, thinking back to when his father Abraham Lincoln was assassinated 16 years earlier. Garfield was taken on a mattress upstairs to a private office, where several doctors examined him. At his request, Garfield was taken back to the White House, and his wife, then in New Jersey, was sent for. Blaine sent word to Vice President Arthur in New York City, who received threats against his life because of his animosity toward Garfield and Guiteau's statements. Although Joseph Lister's pioneering work in antisepsis was known to American doctors, few of them had confidence in it, and none of his advocates were among Garfield's treating physicians. The physician who took charge at the depot and then at the White House was Doctor Willard Bliss. A noted physician and surgeon, Bliss was an old friend of Garfield, and about a dozen doctors, led by Bliss, were soon probing the wound with unsterilized fingers and instruments. Garfield was given morphine for the pain, and asked Bliss to frankly tell him his chances, which Bliss put at one in a hundred. "Well, Doctor, we'll take that chance." Over the next few days, Garfield made some improvement, as the nation viewed the news from the capital and prayed. Although he never stood again, he was able to sit up and write several times, and his recovery was viewed so positively that a steamer was fitted out as a seagoing hospital to aid with his convalescence. He was nourished on oatmeal porridge (which he detested) and milk from a cow on the White House lawn. When told that Indian chief Sitting Bull, a prisoner of the army, was starving, Garfield said, "Let him starve..." initially, but a few moments later said, "No, send him my oatmeal." X-ray imaging, which could have assisted physicians in precisely locating the bullet in Garfield's body, would not be invented for another 14 years. Alexander Graham Bell tried to locate the bullet with a primitive metal detector, but was unsuccessful, though the device had been effective when tested on others. But Bliss limited its use on Garfield, ensuring he remained in charge. Because Bliss insisted the bullet rested someplace it did not, the detector could not locate it. Bell shortly returned after adjusting his device, which emitted an unusual tone in the area where Bliss believed the bullet was lodged. Bliss took this as confirmation that the bullet was where he declared it to be. Bliss recorded the test as a success, saying it was > "now unanimously agreed that the location of the ball has been ascertained with reasonable certainty, and that it lies, as heretofore stated, in the front wall of the abdomen, immediately over the groin, about five inches [130 mm] below and to the right of the navel." One means of keeping Garfield comfortable in Washington's summer heat was one of the first successful air conditioning units: air propelled by fans over ice and then dried reduced the temperature in the sickroom by 20 °F (11 °C). Engineers from the navy, and other scientists, worked together to develop it, though there were problems to solve, such as excessive noise and increased humidity. On July 23, Garfield took a turn for the worse when his temperature increased to 104 °F (40 °C); doctors, concerned by an abscess at the wound, inserted a drainage tube. This initially helped, and the bedridden Garfield held a brief cabinet meeting on July 29; members were under orders from Bliss to discuss nothing that might excite Garfield. Doctors probed the abscess, hoping to find the bullet; they likely made the infections worse. Garfield performed only one official act in August, signing an extradition paper. By the end of the month, he was much feebler than he had been, and his weight had decreased from 210 pounds (95 kg) to 130 pounds (59 kg). Garfield had long been anxious to escape hot, unhealthy Washington, and in early September the doctors agreed to move him to Elberon, part of Long Branch, New Jersey, where his wife had recovered earlier in the summer. He left the White House for the last time on September 5, traveling in a specially cushioned railway car; a spur line to the Francklyn Cottage, a seaside mansion given over to his use, was built in a night by volunteers. After arriving in Elberon the next day, Garfield was moved from the train car to a bedroom where he could see the ocean as officials and reporters maintained what became (after an initial rally) a death watch. Garfield's personal secretary, Joe Stanley Brown, wrote forty years later, "to this day I cannot hear the sound of the low slow roll of the Atlantic on the shore, the sound which filled my ears as I walked from my cottage to his bedside, without recalling again that ghastly tragedy." On September 18, Garfield asked Colonel A.F. Rockwell, a friend, if he would have a place in history. Rockwell assured him he would, and told Garfield he had much work still before him. But his response was, "No, my work is done." The following day, Garfield, then suffering also from pneumonia and hypertension, marveled that he could not pick up a glass despite feeling well, and went to sleep without discomfort. He awoke that evening around 10:15 p.m. complaining of great pain in his chest to his chief of staff General David Swaim, who was watching him, as he placed his hand over his heart. The president then requested a drink of water from Swaim. After finishing his glass, Garfield said, "Oh Swaim, this terrible pain—press your hand on it." As Swaim put his hand on Garfield's chest, Garfield's hands went up reflexively. Clutching his heart, he exclaimed, "Oh, Swaim, can't you stop this? Oh, oh, Swaim!" Those were Garfield's last words. Swaim ordered another attendant to send for Bliss, who found Garfield unconscious. Despite efforts to revive him, Garfield never awoke, and he was pronounced dead at about 10:30 p.m. Learning from a reporter of Garfield's death the following day, Chester A. Arthur took the presidential oath of office administered by New York Supreme Court Justice John R. Brady. According to some historians and medical experts, Garfield might have survived his wounds had the doctors attending him had at their disposal today's medical research, knowledge, techniques, and equipment. Standard medical practice at the time dictated that priority be given to locating the path of the bullet. Several of his doctors inserted their unsterilized fingers into the wound to probe for the bullet, a common practice in the 1880s. Historians agree that massive infection was a significant factor in Garfield's demise. Biographer Peskin said medical malpractice did not contribute to Garfield's death; the inevitable infection and blood poisoning that would ensue from a deep bullet wound resulted in damage to multiple organs and spinal fragmentation. Rutkow, a professor of surgery at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, has argued that starvation also played a role. Rutkow suggests "Garfield had such a nonlethal wound. In today's world, he would have gone home in a matter of two or three days." The conventional narrative regarding Garfield's post-shooting medical condition was challenged by Theodore Pappas and Shahrzad Joharifard in a 2013 article in The American Journal of Surgery. They argued that Garfield died from a late rupture of a splenic artery pseudoaneurysm, which developed secondary to the path of the bullet adjacent to the splenic artery. They also argued that his sepsis was actually caused by post-traumatic acute acalculous cholecystitis. Based on the autopsy report, the authors speculate that his gallbladder subsequently ruptured, leading to the development of a large bile-containing abscess adjacent to the gallbladder. Pappas and Joharifard say this caused the septic decline in Garfield's condition that was visible starting from July 23, 1881. Pappas and Joharifard also state that they don't believe that Garfield's doctors could have saved him even if they had been aware of his cholecystitis, since the first successful cholecystectomy (surgical removal of the gallbladder) was performed a year after Garfield's death. Guiteau was indicted on October 14, 1881, for the murder of the president. During his trial, Guiteau declared that he was not responsible for Garfield's death, admitting to the shooting but not the killing. In his defense, Guiteau wrote: "General Garfield died from malpractice. According to his own physicians, he was not fatally shot. The doctors who mistreated him ought to bear the odium of his death, and not his assailant. They ought to be indicted for murdering James A. Garfield, and not me." After a chaotic trial in which Guiteau often interrupted and argued, and in which his counsel used the insanity defense, the jury found him guilty on January 25, 1882, and he was sentenced to death by hanging. Guiteau may have had neurosyphilis, a disease that causes physiological mental impairment. He was executed on June 30, 1882. ## Funeral, memorials and commemorations Garfield's funeral train left Long Branch on the same special track that had brought him there, traveling over tracks blanketed with flowers and past houses adorned with flags. His body was transported to the Capitol and then continued on to Cleveland for burial. Shocked by his death, Marine Band leader John Philip Sousa composed the march "In Memoriam", which was played when Garfield's body was received in Washington, D.C. More than 70,000 citizens, some waiting over three hours, passed by Garfield's coffin as his body lay in state from September 21 to 23, 1881, at the United States Capitol rotunda; on September 25, in Cleveland, Garfield's casket was paraded down Euclid Avenue from Wilson Avenue to Public Square, with those in attendance including former presidents Grant and Hayes, and Generals William Sherman, Sheridan and Hancock. More than 150,000—a number equal to the city's population—likewise paid their respects, and Sousa's march was again played. Garfield's body was temporarily interred in the Schofield family vault in Cleveland's Lake View Cemetery until his permanent memorial was built. Memorials to Garfield were erected across the country. On April 10, 1882, seven months after Garfield's death, the U.S. Post Office Department issued a postage stamp in his honor. In 1884, sculptor Frank Happersberger completed a monument on the grounds of the San Francisco Conservatory of Flowers. In 1887, the James A. Garfield Monument was dedicated in Washington. Another monument, in Philadelphia's Fairmount Park, was erected in 1896. In Victoria, Australia, Cannibal Creek was renamed Garfield in his honor. On May 19, 1890, Garfield's body was permanently interred, with great solemnity and fanfare, in a mausoleum in Lake View Cemetery. Attending the dedication ceremonies were former President Hayes, President Benjamin Harrison, and future president William McKinley. Garfield's Treasury Secretary, William Windom, also attended. Harrison said Garfield was always a "student and instructor" and that his life works and death would "continue to be instructive and inspiring incidents in American history". Three panels on the monument display Garfield as a teacher, Union major general, and orator; another shows him taking the presidential oath, and a fifth shows his body lying in state at the Capitol rotunda in Washington, D.C. Garfield's murder by a deranged office-seeker awakened public awareness of the need for civil service reform legislation. Senator George H. Pendleton, a Democrat from Ohio, launched a reform effort that resulted in the Pendleton Act in January 1883. This act reversed the "spoils system" where office seekers paid up or gave political service to obtain or keep federally appointed positions. Under the act, appointments were awarded on merit and competitive examination. To ensure the reform was implemented, Congress and Arthur established and funded the Civil Service Commission. The Pendleton Act, however, covered only 10% of federal government workers. For Arthur, previously known for having been a "veteran spoilsman", civil service reform became his most noteworthy achievement. A marble statue of Garfield by Charles Niehaus was added to the National Statuary Hall Collection in the Capitol in Washington D.C., a gift from the State of Ohio in 1886. Garfield is honored with a life-size bronze sculpture inside the Cuyahoga County Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument in Cleveland, Ohio. On March 2, 2019, the National Park Service erected exhibit panels in Washington to mark the site of his assassination. ## Legacy and historical view For a few years after his assassination, Garfield's life story was seen as an exemplar of the American success story—that even the poorest boy might someday become President of the United States. Peskin wrote: "In mourning Garfield, Americans were not only honoring a president; they were paying tribute to a man whose life story embodied their own most cherished aspirations." As the rivalry between Stalwarts and Half-Breeds faded from the scene in the late 1880s and after, so too did memories of Garfield. In the 1890s, Americans became disillusioned with politicians, and looked elsewhere for inspiration, focusing on industrialists, labor leaders, scientists, and others as their heroes. Increasingly, Garfield's short time as president was forgotten. The 20th century saw no revival for Garfield. Thomas Wolfe deemed the presidents of the Gilded Age, including Garfield, "lost Americans" whose "gravely vacant and bewhiskered faces mixed, melted, swam together". The politicians of the Gilded Age faded from the public eye, their luster eclipsed by those who had influenced America outside of political office during that time; the robber barons, the inventors, those who had sought social reform, and others who had lived as America rapidly changed. Current events and more recent figures occupied America's attention. According to Ackerman, "the busy Twentieth Century has made Garfield's era seem remote and irrelevant, its leaders ridiculed for their very obscurity." Garfield's biographers, and those who have studied his presidency, tend to think well of him, and that his presidency saw a promising start before its untimely end. Historian Justus D. Doenecke, while deeming Garfield a bit of an enigma, chronicles his achievements: "by winning a victory over the Stalwarts, he enhanced both the power and prestige of his office. As a man, he was intelligent, sensitive, and alert, and his knowledge of how government worked was unmatched." Doenecke criticizes Garfield's dismissal of Merritt in Robertson's favor, and wonders if the president was truly in command of the situation even after the latter's confirmation. In 1931, Caldwell wrote: "If Garfield lives in history, it will be partly on account of the charm of his personality—but also because in life and in death, he struck the first shrewd blows against a dangerous system of boss rule which seemed for a time about to engulf the politics of the nation. Perhaps if he had lived he could have done no more." Rutkow writes that "James Abram Garfield's presidency is reduced to a tantalizing 'what if. In 2002, historian Bernard A. Weisberger said, "[Garfield] was, to some extent, a perfect moderate. He read widely (and unobtrusively) without its visibly affecting his Christianity, his Republicanism, or his general laissez-faire orthodoxy. He was not so much a scholar in politics as a politic scholar." Peskin believes Garfield deserves more credit for his political career than he has received: "True, his accomplishments were neither bold nor heroic, but his was not an age that called for heroism. His stormy presidency was brief, and in some respects, unfortunate, but he did leave the office stronger than he found it. As a public man he had a hand in almost every issue of national importance for almost two decades, while as a party leader he, along with Blaine, forged the Republican Party into the instrument that would lead the United States into the twentieth century."

Nick Drake

English singer-songwriter (1948–1974)

Nicholas Rodney Drake (19 June 1948 – 25 November 1974) was an English singer-songwriter known for his acoustic guitar-based songs. He did not find a wide audience during his lifetime, but his work gradually achieved wider notice and recognition, mostly posthumously. Drake signed to Island Records when he was 20 years old and a student at the University of Cambridge. He released his debut album, Five Leaves Left, in 1969. He recorded two more albums—Bryter Layter (1971) and Pink Moon (1972), which both sold poorly. Drake's reluctance to perform live, or be interviewed, contributed to his lack of success. There is no known video footage of the adult Drake; he was only ever captured in still photographs and in home movie footage from his childhood. Drake experienced depression, particularly during the latter part of his life, a fact often reflected in his lyrics. On completion of his third album, 1972's Pink Moon, he withdrew from both live performance and recording, retreating to his parents' home in rural Warwickshire. On 25 November 1974, Drake died from an overdose of a prescribed antidepressant; he was 26 years old. Whether his death was an accident or suicide has not been resolved. Drake's music remained available through the mid-1970s, but the 1979 release of the retrospective album Fruit Tree allowed his back catalogue to be reassessed. By the mid-1980s, Drake was being credited as an influence by such artists as Robert Smith of the Cure and Peter Buck of R.E.M. In 1985, The Dream Academy reached the UK and US charts with "Life in a Northern Town", a song written for and dedicated to Drake. By the early 1990s, he had come to represent the "doomed romantic" musician in the UK music press and was cited as an influence by artists including Kate Bush, Paul Weller, Aimee Mann, Beck, Robyn Hitchcock and the Black Crowes. The first Drake biography appeared in 1997, followed in 1998 by the documentary film A Stranger Among Us. ## 1948–1966: Early life Drake's father, Rodney Shuttleworth Drake (1908–1988), moved to Rangoon, Burma, in the early 1930s as an engineer with the Bombay Burmah Trading Corporation. In 1934, Rodney met Molly Lloyd (1916–1993), the daughter of a senior member of the Indian Civil Service. Rodney proposed in 1936, though they had to wait a year until she turned 21 before her family allowed them to marry. Nick was born in Burma on 19 June 1948. In 1951, the family returned to England to live in Warwickshire, at their home, Far Leys, in Tanworth-in-Arden, south of Birmingham. Rodney worked from 1952 as the chairman and managing director of Wolseley Engineering. Nick's older sister, Gabrielle, became a successful screen actress. Both parents wrote music. Recordings of Molly's songs, which have come to light since her death, are similar in tone and outlook to the later work of her son; they shared a similar fragile vocal delivery, and Gabrielle and biographer Trevor Dann noted a parallel foreboding and fatalism in their music. Encouraged by his mother, Drake learned to play piano at an early age and began to compose songs which he recorded on a reel-to-reel tape recorder that she kept in the family drawing-room. In 1957, Drake was sent to Eagle House School, a preparatory boarding school near Sandhurst, Berkshire. Five years later, he went to Marlborough College, a public school in Wiltshire which had also been attended by his father and grandfather. He developed an interest in sport, becoming an accomplished 100- and 200-yard sprinter, representing the school's Open Team in 1966. He played rugby for the C1 House team and was appointed a House Captain in his last two terms. School friends recall Drake as having been confident, often aloof, and "quietly authoritative". His father remembered: "In one of his reports [the headmaster] said that none of us seemed to know him very well. All the way through with Nick, people didn't know him very much." Drake played piano and learned clarinet and saxophone. He formed a band, the Perfumed Gardeners, with four schoolmates in 1964 or 1965. With Drake on piano and occasional alto sax and vocals, the group performed Pye International R&B covers and jazz standards, as well as Yardbirds and Manfred Mann songs. Chris de Burgh asked to join the band, but was rejected as his taste was "too poppy". Drake's attention to his studies deteriorated and, although he had accelerated a year in Eagle House, at Marlborough he neglected his studies in favour of music. In 1963 he attained seven GCE O-Levels, fewer than his teachers had been expecting, failing "Physics with Chemistry". In 1965, Drake paid £13 () for his first acoustic guitar, a Levin, and was soon experimenting with open tuning and finger-picking techniques. In 1966 Drake enrolled at a tutorial college in Five Ways, Birmingham, where he won a scholarship to study at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge. As his place at Cambridge was offered for September 1967 he had 10 months to fill so decided to spend six months at the University of Aix-Marseille, France, beginning in February 1967, where he began to practise guitar in earnest. To earn money, he would busk with friends in the town centre. Drake began to smoke cannabis, and he travelled with friends to Morocco; according to travelling companion Richard Charkin, "that was where you got the best pot". There is some evidence that he began using LSD while in Aix although this is debated, and lyrics written during this period—in particular for "Clothes of Sand"— might suggest an interest in hallucinogens. ## 1967–1969: Cambridge Drake returned to England in 1967 and moved into his sister's flat in Hampstead, London. That October, he enrolled at Cambridge to begin his studies in English literature. His tutors found him bright but unenthusiastic and unwilling to apply himself. His biographer, Trevor Dann, notes that he had difficulty connecting with staff and fellow students, and that matriculation photographs from this time portray a sullen young man. Cambridge placed emphasis on its rugby and cricket teams, but Drake had lost interest in sport, preferring to stay in his college room smoking cannabis and playing music. According to fellow student Brian Wells, "They were the rugger buggers and we were the cool people smoking dope." In January 1968, Drake met Robert Kirby, a music student who went on to write many of the string and woodwind arrangements for Drake's first two albums. By this time, Drake had discovered the British and American folk music scenes, and was influenced by performers such as Bob Dylan, Donovan, Van Morrison, Josh White and Phil Ochs (he later cited Randy Newman and the Beach Boys as influences). He began performing in local clubs and coffee houses around London, and in December 1967, while playing at a five-day event at the Roundhouse in Camden Town, made an impression on Ashley Hutchings, bass player with Fairport Convention. Hutchings recalls being impressed by Drake's guitar skill, but even more so by his image: "He looked like a star. He looked wonderful, he seemed to be 7 ft [tall]." Hutchings introduced Drake to the 25-year-old American producer Joe Boyd, owner of the production and management company Witchseason Productions, which at the time was licensed to Island Records. Boyd, who had discovered Fairport Convention and introduced John Martyn and the Incredible String Band to a mainstream audience, was a respected figure in the UK folk scene. He and Drake formed an immediate bond, and Boyd acted as a mentor to Drake throughout his career. Impressed by a four-track demo recorded in Drake's college room in early 1968, Boyd offered Drake a management, publishing, and production contract. Boyd recalled listening to a reel-to-reel home recording Drake had made: "Halfway through the first song, I felt this was pretty special. And I called him up, and he came back in, and we talked, and I just said, 'I'd like to make a record.' He stammered, 'Oh, well, yeah. Okay.' Nick was a man of few words." According to Drake's friend Paul Wheeler, Drake had already decided not to complete his third year at Cambridge and was excited about the contract. ## Career ### Five Leaves Left (1969) Drake recorded his debut album Five Leaves Left later in 1968, with Boyd as producer. He had to skip lectures to travel by train to the sessions in Sound Techniques studio, London. Inspired by John Simon's production of Leonard Cohen's 1967 album Songs of Leonard Cohen, Boyd was keen to record Drake's voice in a similar close and intimate style, "with no shiny pop reverb". He sought to include a string arrangement similar to Simon's, "without overwhelming ... or sounding cheesy". To provide backing, Boyd enlisted contacts from the London folk rock scene, including Fairport Convention guitarist Richard Thompson and Pentangle bassist Danny Thompson (no relation). Initial recordings did not go well: the sessions were irregular and rushed, taking place during studio downtime borrowed from Fairport Convention's production of their Unhalfbricking album. Tension arose as to the direction of the album: Boyd was an advocate of George Martin's approach of using the studio as an instrument, while Drake preferred a more organic sound. Dann observed that Drake appears "tight and anxious" on bootleg recordings from the sessions, and notes a number of Boyd's unsuccessful attempts at instrumentation. Both were unhappy with arranger Richard Anthony Hewson's contribution, which they felt was too mainstream for Drake's songs. Drake suggested his college friend Robert Kirby as a replacement. Though Boyd was sceptical about taking on an inexperienced amateur music student, he was impressed by Drake's uncharacteristic assertiveness and agreed to a trial. Kirby had previously presented Drake with some arrangements for his songs. While Kirby provided most arrangements for the album, its centrepiece, "River Man", which echoed the tone of Frederick Delius, was orchestrated by the veteran composer Harry Robertson. Post-production difficulties delayed the release by several months, and the album was poorly marketed and supported. In July, Melody Maker described Five Leaves Left as "poetic" and "interesting", though NME wrote in October that there was "not nearly enough variety to make it entertaining". It received little radio play outside shows by more progressive BBC DJs such as John Peel and Bob Harris. Drake was unhappy with the inlay sleeve, which printed songs in the wrong running order and reproduced verses omitted from the recorded versions. In an interview, his sister Gabrielle said: "He was very secretive. I knew he was making an album but I didn't know what stage of completion it was at until he walked into my room and said, 'There you are.' He threw it onto the bed and walked out!" ### Bryter Layter (1971) Drake ended his studies at Cambridge nine months before graduation and in late 1969 moved to London. His father remembered "writing him long letters, pointing out the disadvantages of going away from Cambridge ... a degree was a safety net, if you manage to get a degree, at least you have something to fall back on; his reply to that was that a safety net was the one thing he did not want." Drake spent his first few months in London drifting from place to place, occasionally staying at his sister's Kensington flat but usually sleeping on friends' sofas and floors. Eventually, in an attempt to bring some stability and a telephone into Drake's life, Boyd organised and paid for a ground floor bedsit in Belsize Park, Camden. On 5 August 1969, Drake pre-recorded four songs for the BBC's Night Ride show presented by John Peel ("Cello Song", "Three Hours", "River Man" and "Time of No Reply" ), which were broadcast after midnight on 6 August. Nick subsequently recorded Bryter Layter for another BBC radio broadcast, in April 1970. A month after the initial BBC recordings, on 24 September, he opened for Fairport Convention at the Royal Festival Hall in London, followed by appearances at folk clubs in Birmingham and Hull. According to the folk singer Michael Chapman, the audiences did not appreciate Drake and wanted "songs with choruses". Chapman said: "They completely missed the point. He didn't say a word the entire evening. It was actually quite painful to watch. I don't know what the audience expected, I mean, they must have known they weren't going to get sea-shanties and sing-alongs at a Nick Drake gig!" The experience reinforced Drake's decision to retreat from live appearances; the few concerts he did play were usually brief, awkward, and poorly attended. Drake seemed reluctant to perform and rarely addressed his audience. As many of his songs were played in different tunings, he frequently paused to retune between numbers. Although Five Leaves Left attracted little publicity, Boyd was keen to build on what momentum there was. Drake's second album, Bryter Layter (1971), again produced by Boyd and engineered by John Wood, introduced a more upbeat, jazzier sound. Disappointed by his debut's poor sales, Drake sought to move away from his pastoral sound and agreed to Boyd's suggestions to include bass and drum tracks. "It was more of a pop sound, I suppose," Boyd later said. "I imagined it as more commercial." Like its predecessor, the album featured musicians from Fairport Convention, as well as contributions from John Cale on two songs: "Northern Sky" and "Fly". Trevor Dann noted that while sections of "Northern Sky" sound more characteristic of Cale, the song was the closest Drake came to a release with chart potential. Bryter Layter was a commercial failure, and reviews were again mixed; Record Mirror praised Drake as a "beautiful guitarist—clean and with perfect timing, [and] accompanied by soft, beautiful arrangements", but Melody Maker described the album as "an awkward mix of folk and cocktail jazz". Soon after its release, Boyd sold Witchseason to Island Records and moved to Los Angeles to work with Warner Brothers to develop film soundtracks. The loss of his mentor, coupled with the album's poor sales, led Drake into further depression. His attitude to London had changed: he was unhappy living alone, and visibly nervous and uncomfortable performing at a series of concerts in early 1970. In June, Drake gave one of his final live appearances at Ewell Technical College, Surrey. Ralph McTell, who also performed that night, remembered: "Nick was monosyllabic. At that particular gig he was very shy. He did the first set and something awful must have happened. He was doing his song 'Fruit Tree' and walked off halfway through it." In 1971, Drake's family persuaded him to visit a psychiatrist at St Thomas' Hospital, London. He was prescribed antidepressants, but felt uncomfortable and embarrassed about taking them, and tried to hide the fact from his friends. He worried about their side effects and was concerned that they would react with his regular cannabis use. Island Records urged Drake to promote Bryter Layter through interviews, radio sessions, and live appearances. Drake, who by this time was smoking what Kirby described as "unbelievable amounts" of cannabis and exhibiting "the first signs of psychosis", refused. Disappointed by the reaction to Bryter Layter, he turned inwards and withdrew from family and friends. He rarely left his flat, and then only to play an occasional concert or to buy drugs. According to photographer Keith Morris, by 1971 Drake was a "hunched, dishevelled figure, staring vacantly...ignoring the overtures of a friendly labrador or gazing blankly over Hampstead Heath." His sister recalled: "This was a very bad time. He once said to me that everything started to go wrong from [this] time on, and I think that was when things started to go wrong." ### Pink Moon (1972) Although Island had not expected a third album, Drake approached Wood in October 1971 to begin work on what would be his final release. Sessions took place over two nights, with only Drake and Wood in the studio. The bleak songs of Pink Moon are short, and the eleven-track album lasts only 28 minutes, a length described by Wood as "just about right. You really wouldn't want it to be any longer." Drake had expressed dissatisfaction with the sound of Bryter Layter, and believed that the string, brass, and saxophone arrangements resulted in a sound that was "too full, too elaborate". Drake appears on Pink Moon accompanied only by his own carefully recorded guitar save for a piano overdub on the title track. Wood later said: "He was very determined to make this very stark, bare record. He definitely wanted it to be him more than anything. And I think, in some ways, Pink Moon is probably more like Nick is than the other two records." Drake delivered the tapes of Pink Moon to Chris Blackwell at Island Records, contrary to a popular legend which claims that he dropped them off at the receptionist's desk without saying a word. An advertisement for the album in Melody Maker in February opened with "Pink Moon—Nick Drake's latest album: the first we heard of it was when it was finished." Pink Moon sold fewer copies than its predecessors, although it received some favourable reviews. In Zigzag, Connor McKnight wrote: "Nick Drake is an artist who never fakes. The album makes no concession to the theory that music should be escapist. It's simply one musician's view of life at the time, and you can't ask for more than that." Blackwell felt Pink Moon had the potential to bring Drake to a mainstream audience; however, his staff were disappointed by Drake's unwillingness to promote it. A&R manager Muff Winwood recalled "tearing his hair out" in frustration and said that without Blackwell's enthusiastic support "the rest of us would have given him the boot". At Boyd's insistence, Drake agreed to an interview with Jerry Gilbert of Sounds Magazine. The "shy and introverted" Drake spoke of his dislike of live appearances and little else. "There wasn't any connection whatsoever," Gilbert said. "I don't think he made eye contact with me once." Disheartened and convinced he would be unable to write again, Drake retired from music. He toyed with the idea of a different career and considered the army. His three albums had together sold fewer than 4,000 copies. ### 1972–1974: Changes in life and health In the months following Pink Moon's release, Drake became increasingly asocial and distant. He returned to live at his parents' home in Tanworth-in-Arden, and while he resented the regression, he accepted that it was necessary. "I don't like it at home," he told his mother, "but I can't bear it anywhere else." His return was often difficult for his family, as Gabrielle said: "Good days in my parents' home were good days for Nick, and bad days were bad days for Nick. And that was what their life revolved around, really." Drake lived a frugal existence; his only income was a £20-a-week retainer from Island Records (). At one point he could not afford a new pair of shoes. He would disappear for days, sometimes arriving unannounced at friends' houses, uncommunicative and withdrawn. Robert Kirby described a typical visit: "He would arrive and not talk, sit down, listen to music, have a smoke, have a drink, sleep there the night, and two or three days later he wasn't there, he'd be gone. And three months later he'd be back." Nick's supervision partner at Cambridge, John Venning, saw him on an underground train in London and felt he was seriously depressed: "There was something about him which suggested that he would have looked straight through me and not registered me at all. So I turned around." John Martyn (who in 1973 wrote the title song of his album Solid Air about Drake) described Drake in this period as the most withdrawn person he had ever met. Drake would borrow his mother's car and drive for hours without purpose, until he ran out of petrol and had to ring his parents to ask to be collected. Friends recalled the extent to which his appearance had changed. During particularly bleak periods, he refused to wash his hair or cut his nails. Early in 1972, Drake had a nervous breakdown, and was hospitalised for five weeks. He was initially believed to have major depression, although his former therapist suggested he had schizophrenia. In February 1973, Drake contacted John Wood, saying he was ready to begin work on a fourth album. Boyd was in England at the time and agreed to attend the recordings. The initial session was followed by recordings in July 1974. In his 2006 autobiography, Boyd recalled being taken aback at Drake's anger and bitterness: "[He said that] I had told him he was a genius, and others had concurred. Why wasn't he famous and rich? This rage must have festered beneath that inexpressive exterior for years." Boyd and Wood noticed a deterioration in Drake's performance, requiring him to overdub his voice separately over the guitar. However, the return to the Sound Techniques studio raised Drake's spirits; his mother recalled, "We were so absolutely thrilled to think that Nick was happy because there hadn't been any happiness in Nick's life for years." By late 1974, Drake's weekly retainer from Island had ceased, and his depression meant that he remained in contact with only a few close friends. He had tried to stay in touch with Sophia Ryde, whom he had met in London in 1968. Ryde has been described by Drake's biographers as "the nearest thing" to a girlfriend in his life, but she used the description "best (girl) friend". In a 2005 interview, Ryde said that a week before he died, she had sought to end the relationship: "I couldn't cope with it. I asked him for some time. And I never saw him again." As with the relationship he had shared with fellow folk musician Linda Thompson, Drake's relationship with Ryde was not consummated. ## Death During the early hours of 25 November 1974, Drake died in his bedroom at Far Leys. According to his death certificate, issued on 24 December, he died after taking an overdose of amitriptyline, an antidepressant. He had gone to bed early after spending the afternoon visiting a friend. His mother said that around dawn he left his room for the kitchen. His family had heard him do this many times before, and presumed he was eating cereal. He returned to his room a short while later, where it is believed that he took an overdose of amitriptyline. The precise cause of death is unknown as no post-mortem examination was carried out. Drake had been accustomed to keeping his own hours; he frequently had difficulty sleeping and often stayed up through the night playing and listening to music, then slept late into the following morning. His mother later said: "I never used to disturb him at all. But it was about 12 o'clock, and I went in, because really it seemed it was time he got up. And he was lying across the bed. The first thing I saw was his long, long legs." According to Rodney Drake's personal diary, Nick's body was first discovered by their housemaid who looked in on Drake around 11.45 and called out to Molly who went in to discover he was dead. There was no suicide note, although a letter addressed to Ryde was found close to his bed. At the inquest on 18 December, the coroner stated that the cause of death was "Acute amitriptyline poisoning—self-administered when suffering from a depressive illness", and concluded a verdict of suicide. Although the verdict has been disputed by some of his friends and members of his family, there is a widely held view that, accidental or not, Drake had by then "given up on life". Rodney described his son's death as unexpected and extraordinary; however, in a 1979 interview he said he had been worried about Drake's depression, and that the family hid painkillers from him. Boyd recalled that Drake's parents had described his mood in the preceding weeks as positive and that he had planned to move back to London to restart his music career. Boyd believes that this uplift in spirits was followed by a "crash back into despair". Reasoning that Drake may have taken a high dosage of antidepressants to recapture this sense of optimism, he said he prefers to imagine Drake "making a desperate lunge for life rather than a calculated surrender to death". In 1975, the NME journalist Nick Kent wrote of the irony of Drake's death when he had begun to regain a sense of "personal balance". In contrast, Gabrielle said she would "rather he died because he wanted to end it than it to be the result of a tragic mistake. That would seem to me to be terrible: for it to be a plea for help that nobody hears." On 2 December 1974, after a service in the Church of St Mary Magdalene, Tanworth-in-Arden, Drake's remains were cremated at Solihull Crematorium and his ashes interred under an oak tree in the church's graveyard. The funeral was attended by around fifty mourners, including friends from Marlborough, Aix, Cambridge, London, Witchseason, and Tanworth. Referring to Drake's tendency to compartmentalise relationships, Brian Wells observed that many met each other for the first time that morning. His mother recalled "a lot of his young friends came up here. We'd never met many of them." ## Posthumous popularity There were no documentaries or compilation albums in the wake of Drake's death. His public profile remained low throughout the 1970s, although his name appeared occasionally in the music press. By this time, his parents were receiving an increasing number of fans at the family home. Following a 1975 NME article by Nick Kent, Island Records said they had no plans to reissue Drake's albums, but in 1979 Rob Partridge joined Island Records as press officer and commissioned the release of the Fruit Tree box set. The release compiled Drake's three studio albums, the four tracks he recorded with Wood in 1974 and an extensive biography written by the American journalist Arthur Lubow. Although sales were poor, Island Records did not delete the albums from its catalogue. By the mid-1980s, Drake was being cited as an influence by musicians such as Kate Bush, Paul Weller, the Black Crowes, Peter Buck of R.E.M. and Robert Smith of the Cure. The Cure's name derives from Drake's song "Time Has Told Me", which includes the line "a troubled cure for a troubled mind". Drake gained further exposure in 1985 when The Dream Academy included a dedication to Drake on the sleeve of its hit single "Life in a Northern Town". In 1986, a biography of Drake was published in Danish; an updated version with new interviews was published in English in 2012. By the end of the 1980s his name was appearing regularly in newspapers and music magazines in the UK, where he frequently was cast in the role of the "doomed romantic hero". The first biography of Drake, in English, was published in November 1997 by Patrick Humphries. On 20 June 1998, BBC Radio 2 broadcast a documentary, Fruit Tree: The Nick Drake Story, featuring interviews with Boyd, Wood, Gabrielle and Molly Drake, Paul Wheeler, Robert Kirby, and Ashley Hutchings, and narrated by Danny Thompson. In early 1999, BBC Two broadcast a 40-minute documentary, A Stranger Among Us—In Search of Nick Drake. The following year, Dutch director Jeroen Berkvens released the documentary A Skin Too Few: The Days of Nick Drake, featuring interviews with Boyd, Gabrielle Drake, Wood and Kirby. Later that year, The Guardian named Bryter Layter the best alternative album of all time. In 1999, "Pink Moon" was used in a Volkswagen commercial, boosting Drake's US album sales from about 6,000 copies in 1999 to 74,000 in 2000. The LA Times saw it as an example of how, following the consolidation of US radio stations, previously unknown music was finding audiences through advertising. Fans used the filesharing software Napster to circulate digital copies of Drake's music; according to The Atlantic, "The chronic shyness and mental illness that made it hard for Drake to compete with 1970s showmen like Elton John and David Bowie didn't matter when his songs were being pulled one by one out of the ether and played late at night in a dorm room." In November 2014, Gabrielle Drake published a companion to her brother's music. An authorised biography by Richard Morton Jack was published in June 2023, with a foreword by Gabrielle Drake. Over the following years, Drake's songs appeared in soundtracks of "quirky, youthful" films such as The Royal Tenenbaums, Serendipity and Garden State. Made to Love Magic, an album of outtakes and remixes released by Island Records in 2004, far exceeded Drake's lifetime sales. American musician Duncan Sheik released an album of songs inspired by Drake, Phantom Moon, in 2001. In 2017, Kele Okereke cited Pink Moon as an influence on his third solo album, Fatherland. Other contemporary artists influenced by Drake include José González, Bon Iver, Iron & Wine, Alexi Murdoch and Philip Selway of Radiohead. ## Musical and lyrical style Drake was obsessive about practising his guitar technique, and would stay up through the night writing and experimenting with alternative tunings. His mother remembered hearing him "bumping around at all hours. I think he wrote his nicest melodies in the early morning hours." Self-taught, he achieved his guitar style through the use of alternative tunings to create cluster chords, which are difficult to achieve on a guitar using standard tuning. Similarly, many of his vocal melodies rest on the extensions of chords, not just on notes of the triad. He sang in the baritone range, often quietly and with little projection. Drake was drawn to the works of William Blake, William Butler Yeats, and Henry Vaughan, whose influences are reflected in his lyrics. He also employed a series of elemental symbols and codes, largely drawn from nature. The moon, stars, sea, rain, trees, sky, mist, and seasons are all commonly used, influenced in part by his rural upbringing. Images related to summer figure centrally in his early work; from Bryter Layter on, his language is more autumnal, evoking a season commonly used to convey senses of loss and sorrow. Throughout, Drake writes with detachment, more as an observer than a participant, a point of view Rolling Stone's Anthony DeCurtis described "as if he were viewing his life from a great, unbridgeable distance". This perceived inability to connect has caused speculation about Drake's sexuality. Boyd has said he detects a virginal quality in Drake's lyrics and music, and notes that he never knew of him behaving in a sexual way with anyone, male or female. Kirby described Drake's lyrics as a "series of extremely vivid, complete observations, almost like a series of epigrammatic proverbs", though he doubts that Drake saw himself as "any sort of poet". Instead, Kirby believes that Drake's lyrics were crafted to "complement and compound a mood that the melody dictates in the first place". ## Legacy Drake received little critical success during his lifetime, but has since been widely acclaimed. Based on professional rankings of his albums and songs, the aggregate website Acclaimed Music lists him as the 101st most acclaimed recording artist in history. Rolling Stone included all three of his albums on its 2003 list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. On 4 April 2018, he was inducted into the Folk Hall of Fame at the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards. In 1994, Rolling Stone journalist Paul Evans said Drake's music "throbs with [an] aching beauty" similar to the 1968 Van Morrison album Astral Weeks. According to AllMusic critic Richie Unterberger, Drake was a "singular talent" who "produced several albums of chilling, somber beauty", now "recognized as peak achievements of both the British folk-rock scene and the entire rock singer/songwriter genre". Unterberger felt that Drake's following spanned generations "in the manner of the young Romantic poets of the 19th century who died before their time ... Baby boomers who missed him the first time around found much to revisit once they discovered him, and his pensive loneliness speaks directly to contemporary alternative rockers who share his sense of morose alienation." The American critic Robert Christgau wrote in Christgau's Record Guide: Rock Albums of the Seventies (1981): "Drake's jazzy folk-pop is admired by a lot of people who have no use for Kenny Rankin, and I prefer to leave open the possibility that he's yet another English mystic (romantic?) I'm too set in my ways to hear." ## Discography - Five Leaves Left (1969) - Bryter Layter (1971) - Pink Moon (1972)

Hygeberht

8th-century Archbishop of Lichfield

Hygeberht (died after 803) was the bishop of Lichfield from 779 and archbishop of Lichfield after the elevation of Lichfield to an archdiocese some time after 787, during the reign of the powerful Mercian king Offa. Little is known of Hygeberht's background, although he was probably a native of Mercia. Offa succeeded in having Lichfield elevated to an archbishopric, but the rise in Lichfield's status was unpopular with Canterbury, the other southern English archbishopric. Offa was probably motivated by a desire to increase the status of his kingdom and to free his kingdom's ecclesiastical affairs from the control of another kingdom's archbishopric, and possibly the need to secure the coronation of Offa's successor, which the archbishop of Canterbury had opposed. After Offa's death his distant relative Coenwulf became king, and petitioned the pope to have Lichfield returned to a simple bishopric. The pope agreed to do so in 803, by which time Hygeberht was no longer even considered a bishop: he is listed as an abbot at the council that oversaw the demotion of Lichfield in 803. The date of his death is unknown. ## Background Nothing is known of Hygeberht's ancestry or his upbringing, but given his close ties to the kingdom of Mercia, he was probably a Mercian by birth. He became bishop of Lichfield in 779. At a Mercian council he attended that year at Hartleford he was styled "electus praesul", or "bishop elect". Two years later he witnessed a charter of Offa's concerning an ecclesiastical claim on a church in Worcester. Perhaps as early as 786 the creation of a Mercian archbishopric was being discussed at Offa's court. A letter to the papacy written by Coenwulf, who succeeded Offa's son Ecgfrith to the Mercian throne, claimed that Offa's motives were his dislike of Jænberht, the archbishop of Canterbury, and of the men of Kent. At the Council of Chelsea held in 787, Offa secured the creation of an archbishopric for his kingdom centred on the diocese of Lichfield (in modern Staffordshire). Offa may have justified the move by suggesting that Jænberht planned to allow the Frankish king Charlemagne to use a landing site in Kent if the latter decided to invade, although this is only known from a 13th-century writer, Matthew Paris. Another concern was probably that of prestige, as having the main Mercian diocese held by an archbishop rather than a bishop would increase the kingdom's status. An archbishopric in Mercia would also reinforce the kingdom's independence and free it from ecclesiastical dependence on Canterbury in the kingdom of Kent, which Offa had recently brought under Mercian control. Jænberht supported the Kentish king Egbert II, who was not known as a firm supporter of Offa's; an archbishop at Canterbury who was either indifferent or in active opposition to Offa would be an impediment to Offa's ability to establish overlordship of Kent and other areas of England. By elevating another archbishop, Offa would reduce the political power of the archbishops of Canterbury. Elevation of a bishopric to an archbishopric was not unprecedented; in 735 the papacy had elevated another Anglo-Saxon bishopric to an archbishopric, when Ecgbert became the first archbishop of York. ## Council of Chelsea Two different versions of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle record the proceedings of the council. The Peterborough Manuscript (Version E) of the Chronicle records the council under the year 785, although the events took place in 787, and states that "here there was a contentious synod at Chelsea and Archbishop Jænberht relinquished some part of his bishopric, and Hygeberht was chosen by King Offa, and Ecgfrith consecrated as king." The Canterbury Manuscript (Version F) has the council under 785 also, and describes the council as "a full synod sat at Chelsey" but otherwise relates much the same events. The historian Nicholas Brooks sees the coupling of the elevation of Lichfield with the consecration of Ecgfrith, who was Offa's son, as significant. He argues that Offa desired to have Ecgfrith consecrated as his successor during Offa's lifetime, but was unable to get Jænberht to agree, and this was another factor in the creation of Lichfield as an archbishopric. Hygeberht consecrated Ecgfrith after Hygeberht's elevation to archiepiscopal status. Offa vowed at the council to donate 365 mancuses each year to the papacy, to provide for poor people in Rome and to provide lights for St. Peter's Basilica, stated to be a thanks-offering for his victories. C. J. Godfrey has argued that the donation was really in return for the papal approval of Offa's scheme to elevate the diocese of Lichfield to an archdiocese. Whatever Offa's motivation, historians have generally seen the gift as the beginning of Peter's Pence, an annual "tax" paid to Rome by the English Church. Although it appears that the Council of Chelsea approved Lichfield's elevation to an archdiocese, Hygeberht, who was present, remained a bishop at its conclusion; he signed the council's report still as a bishop. There is no indication that he played any significant part in the council nor in the actions that led to him becoming an archbishop. ## Archbishop In 788 Hygeberht traveled to Rome and received a pallium, the symbol of an archbishop's authority, from Pope Hadrian I. In one surviving charter of 788 Hygeberht is listed with the title of bishop, but another from late 788 gives him the title of archbishop. More charters from 789 and 792 also give him the title of archbishop, and he continued to be named as such on charters until 799. Throughout the early part of Hygeberht's episcopate, Jænberht of Canterbury was the senior archbishop and enjoyed precedence, although after Jænberht's death in 792 Hygeberht became the foremost prelate in southern England. It is unknown if Jænberht ever acknowledged Hygeberht's elevation as an archbishop, but there is no evidence that Jænberht contested the division of his archiepiscopal see and the creation of another archbishopric. Hygeberht consecrated Jænberht's successor Æthelhard, after Offa consulted Alcuin of York about proper procedure. Hygeberht then was considered the senior prelate in the south of England, as shown by him being listed before Æthelhard in any charters they both appear on. Canterbury retained as suffragans, or subordinates, the bishops of Winchester, Sherborne, Selsey, Rochester, and London. The dioceses of Worcester, Hereford, Leicester, Lindsey, Dommoc and Elmham were transferred to Lichfield. This listing, however, comes from the Gesta pontificum Anglorum of the later medieval chronicler William of Malmesbury, written in about 1120. Although the division is logical, William confuses Hygeberht with Hygeberht's successor Ealdwulf, and does not give a source for his list, which suggest that it may be untrustworthy. The creation of a third archbishopric was controversial, and the community at Canterbury Cathedral seems never to have accepted Hygeberht as an archbishop. The historian D. P. Kirby speculates that there were always some in the Mercian kingdom who disapproved of the elevation of Lichfield to an archdiocese. During Hygeberht's archbishopric, joint synods for the provinces of Lichfield and Canterbury were held, presided over by both archbishops. These gatherings were canonically irregular, as the usual procedure was for each province to hold its own synod. The reasons for holding joint councils are unclear; they may have been a manifestation of Offa's desire to supervise the entire southern church, or an attempt by the archbishops of Canterbury to retain some authority over the province of Lichfield. Offa died in July 796 and his son Ecgfrith 141 days later. Coenwulf, a distant relative, succeeded to the Mercian throne after Ecgfrith's death. Soon after his accession Coenwulf sought to replace the two archdioceses with one at London, arguing that Pope Gregory I's original plan had been that there be an archbishopric at London instead of at Canterbury. In 797 and 798 Coenwulf sent envoys to Rome to Pope Leo III, suggesting that a new archdiocese be created at London for Æthelhard. The king's envoys laid the blame for the problems encountered with the Lichfield archdiocese on Pope Hadrian I's incompetence. Displeased by criticism of the papacy, Leo ruled against the king's plan. In 801 Coenwulf put down a Kentish rebellion, allowing him to once more assert his authority in Canterbury and control the archbishopric. Finally, in 802, Pope Leo III granted that Hadrian's decision was invalid, after the English clergy told him it had been achieved by Offa's misrepresentation. Leo returned all jurisdiction to Canterbury, a decision announced by Æthelhard at the Council of Clovesho in 803. ## Resignation and death Hygeberht had resigned his see before Lichfield was demoted back to a bishopric. He was still named as archbishop in 799, but evidence suggests that he no longer controlled all of the suffragan bishops that he once had. Possibly, he was replaced at Lichfield; his successor Ealdwulf attended a council in 801, and was named bishop in the council's records. By the time that Æthelhard held another council at Clovesho in 803, Hygeberht was no longer even named as a bishop, and appears at that council as an abbot. Which abbey he was abbot of, and his exact date of death, are unknown. Hygeberht's contemporary at Canterbury, Æthelhard, was the first archbishop of Canterbury to require an affirmation of faith from his subordinate bishops when they were elected. The historian Eric John argues that this custom began because of the creation of the archbishopric of Lichfield.

Control (Janet Jackson album)

Control is the third studio album by American singer Janet Jackson, released on February 4, 1986, by A&M Records. Her collaborations with the songwriters and record producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis resulted in an unconventional sound: a fusion of rhythm and blues, rap vocals, funk, disco, and synthesized percussion that established Jackson, Jam and Lewis as the leading innovators of contemporary R&B. The distinctive triplet swing beat utilized on the record is also considered to be a precursor to the new jack swing genre. The album became Jackson's commercial breakthrough and enabled her to transition into the popular music market, with Control becoming one of the foremost albums of the 1980s and contemporary music. Containing autobiographical themes, a majority of the album's lyrics came as the result of a series of changes in her life: a recent annulment of her marriage to singer James DeBarge, severing her business affairs from her father and manager Joseph and the rest of the Jackson family, hiring the A&M executive John McClain as her new management, and her subsequent introduction to Jam and Lewis. The album has been praised by critics as both an artistic feat and as a personal testament of self-actualization. It has also been regarded as a template upon which numerous female artists have modeled their careers, particularly Black women. Following its release, Control became Jackson's first album to top the Billboard 200 albums chart in the United States and five of its commercial singles—"What Have You Done for Me Lately", "Nasty", "Control", "When I Think of You", and "Let's Wait Awhile"—peaked within the top five of the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart, making Jackson the first female artist to have five top five hits from one album on the Billboard Hot 100 chart; "When I Think of You" became the singer's first number one hit. Control also set a record for the longest continuous run of charting singles on the Hot 100, at 65 consecutive weeks. Music videos created to promote the album's singles showcased her dancing ability and became a catalyst for MTV's evolving demographics. The album remained on the Billboard 200 chart for over two years. It has been certified five times platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and has sold more than 10 million copies worldwide. Control went on to receive several accolades, including a nomination for the Grammy Award for Album of the Year and winning Producer of the Year, Non-Classical for Jam and Lewis in 1987. It is listed by the National Association of Recording Merchandisers and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as one of the 200 Definitive Albums of All Time, in addition to being included in several publications "best of" album lists. In 2016, it was selected for exhibition in the National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC). ## Background Joseph Jackson, patriarch of the Jackson family of musicians, was known for managing the careers of all nine of his children – most notably, the successful career of The Jackson 5. After arranging a recording contract with A&M in 1982 for a then 16-year-old Janet, he oversaw the entire production of her debut album, Janet Jackson, and its follow-up, Dream Street (1984); the latter of which was written and produced by her brothers Marlon and Michael, and Jesse Johnson. Best known as a television actress, she was initially reluctant to begin a recording career. She said, "I was coming off of a TV show that I absolutely hated doing, Fame. I didn't want to do [the first record, Janet Jackson]. I wanted to go to college. But I did it for my father ..." and elaborated that she was often in conflict with her producers. Amidst her professional struggles, she rebelled against her family's wishes by marrying James DeBarge of the family recording group DeBarge in 1984. The Jacksons disapproved of the relationship, citing DeBarge's immaturity and substance abuse. Jackson left her husband in January 1985 and was granted an annulment later that year. Jackson subsequently fired her father as her manager and employed John McClain, then A&M Records' senior vice president of artists and repertoire and general manager. Commenting on the decision, she stated, "I just wanted to get out of the house, get out from under my father, which was one of the most difficult things that I had to do, telling him that I didn't want to work with him again." Joseph Jackson resented John McClain for what he saw as an underhanded attempt to steal his daughter's career out from under him, stating, "I've worked hard for my family. The problem comes, though, when others come in behind you and try to steal them away. The wheels have already been set for Janet Jackson. Anyone who jumps on now will be getting a free ride." McClain responded by saying "I'm not trying to pimp Janet Jackson or steal her away from her father." He subsequently introduced her to the songwriting/production duo of James "Jimmy Jam" Harris III and Terry Lewis, former Prince associates and ex-members of The Time. ## Composition and production When Jam and Lewis agreed to produce Jackson's third studio album, they wanted to appeal primarily to the African American community, in addition to achieving crossover success on the pop music charts. Jam commented in an interview with Rolling Stone magazine, "We wanted to do an album that would be in every black home in America ... we were going for the black album of all time." Before their association with Jackson, Jam and Lewis had originally planned to record an album with tracks they wrote for Sharon Bryant, but she found their lyrics and sound to be too "rambunctious". The duo presented the same set of recordings to Jackson, who gave her input and took co-writing and co-production credits for the album's content. Jam and Lewis recalled that to collaborate with Jackson on the material, they spent the first week simply getting to know their new client. Lewis explained, "We got into her head. We saw what she was capable of, what she wanted to say, where she wanted to be, what she wanted to be. We put together some songs to fit her as we saw her, as she revealed herself to us. It was as simple as that." For the song "What Have You Done for Me Lately", which was originally penned for one of Jam and Lewis's own records, the lyrics were rewritten to convey Jackson's feelings about her recent annulment from James DeBarge. The song was chosen as the lead single for Control, as Jam and Lewis felt it best represented Jackson's outlook on life. "Nasty", which in Jackson's opinion was the most innovative song on the album, was inspired by her experience with street harassment in Minneapolis by a group of men outside the hotel she resided at during the recording of Control. She recalled, "They were emotionally abusive. Sexually threatening. Instead of running to Jimmy or Terry for protection, I took a stand. I backed them down. That's how songs like 'Nasty' and 'What Have You Done for Me Lately' were born, out of a sense of self-defense." Jimmy Jam wrote and played the keyboard arrangement, with Jackson playing the accompaniment. Background vocals were sung by Jackson, Jam and Lewis. The distinctive triplet swing beat of the song was developed by Jam on an Ensoniq Mirage keyboard. "Let's Wait Awhile" was centered on safe sex and abstinence, a subject of significant social commentary at the time. Jam commented that it is common practice for songwriters to use current events as a means of inspiration for lyrics and that the AIDS pandemic had raised awareness about sexually transmitted diseases. He commented, "The theme of the song ('Let's Wait Awhile') was Janet's idea. She's not a preachy person. She's not telling people how to live their lives. All she's doing is offering an opinion." Although Joseph Jackson initially demanded that his daughter's new album be recorded in Los Angeles so that he could keep an eye out for her, Jam and Lewis refused. They required the entire production of the album to be done at their own studio in Minneapolis, Minnesota, "far from the glitter and distractions of Hollywood and the interference of manager-fathers." Jam stated, "We required that they put her in our hands. We had to do it on our turf, with no bodyguards, no star trips and none of Joe Jackson's people hanging around making suggestions." Control was recorded at Flyte Tyme Studios, the site for Flyte Tyme Records, founded by Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis in Minneapolis. "There's a little radiator I used to sit on when we did the Control album," Jackson recalled in 1993. John McClain served as the executive producer. Jam and Lewis were the primary instrumentalists for the recording, including percussion, piano, drums, and also provided background vocals. Jackson accompanied Jam and Lewis on keyboard and took part in composing the arrangements. Stephen Holden of The New York Times observed the album was a prominent example of the developing relationship with musicians and modern technology, stating "... technology has altered the form, shape, scale and even the meaning of popular music ... The album wasn't created by a studio band, as were most pop-rock albums in the 1960s and '70s, but by the producers and the singer programming mechanized drum and keyboard textures." Jackson's father disapproved of the new material and image of Control, claiming it would never sell. In a cover story for Spin magazine titled "Damn It, Janet: The Battle for Control of Janet Jackson," Joseph was reported saying "[i]f Janet listens to me, she'll be as big as Michael." She and McClain disregarded his objections. Commenting on the final product, Jackson stated: "It's aggressive, cocky, very forward. It expresses exactly who I am and how I feel. I've taken control of my own life. This time I'm gonna do it my way." ## Album cover Fashion photographer and illustrator Tony Viramontes created the stylized cover for the new album and the singles "Nasty" and "Control". Jackson said of Viramontes, "He was very creative, and I believe one day his work will be iconic. He was such a joy to work with. I miss him." Author Dean Rhys Morgan in Bold, Beautiful and Damned: The World of Fashion Illustrator Tony Viramontes discusses how Jackson was "transformed from a former child star into an assured fashion forward figure with her trendsetting big hair and severe all black ensemble. Until this point, Jackson had been more a reflection than pioneer, more interpreter than innovator. This album was all about Janet and who she wanted to be." Alexander Fury wrote in The Independent, "the artwork created with Eighties illustrator Tony Viramontes for Control stands the test of time." ## Release and promotion Although A&M did not consider a full concert tour to promote Jackson's album, the label funded a three-week promotional tour across the United States in 13 cities following its release. In addition to the studio release, a remix album, Control: The Remixes, was released in select countries in November 1987. Jackson's lyrical expression has been noted as one of the key elements of the album's success. Author Dave Marsh in The Heart of Rock & Soul: The 1001 Greatest Singles Ever Made (1999) comments: "Certainly, Janet must have written her own lyrics, which went after men—in particular, not very well disguised stand-ins for her father and former husband—more venomously than another guy would have dared. Control, the resulting album, was one of the best-sellers of 1986–1987, producing five hit singles." Jesus Garber, then-director of A&M's black music marketing and promotion, noted that in addition to crossover promotion from black to pop music charts, music video was utilized to launch Jackson into superstardom. Eric Henderson of Slant Magazine credits the release of Control as "the birth of Janet the music video star, as six of the nine tracks were turned into popular videos that all but announced her as queen of the production dance number." Henderson commented that Jackson's dancing ability, trained by a then-unknown Paula Abdul, only served to propel her into further stardom. Charlie Minor, then-senior vice president of promotion for A&M stated: "The images completed the image of Janet Jackson with the buyer ... They gave her a face, dance, action identity with the songs, and a visual image of her as a rock 'n' roll star." Jonathan Cohen of Billboard magazine commented "[Jackson's] accessible sound and spectacularly choreographed videos were irresistible to MTV, and helped the channel evolve from rock programming to a broader, beat-driven musical mix." The video for "Nasty" received three nominations for the fifth annual 1987 MTV Video Music Awards, winning Best Choreography for Paula Abdul. ## Commercial performance Control debuted at number 84 on the Billboard 200 on March 8, 1986, and at number 26 on the Top R&B/Black Albums on March 1, 1986. After twenty weeks, it topped the Billboard 200 and the Top R&B/Black Albums chart, selling 250,000 copies in a single week, a record for an album by a female artist. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) first certified Control gold in April 1986, denoting 500,000 units shipped within the United States. Two months later, in June 1986, the album was RIAA certified platinum, denoting 1 million units shipped. Three years later, Control was RIAA certified fivefold platinum in October 1989. By 1990, Control had sold 5 million copies in the United States and as of December 2009, the album has sold 496,000 copies in the U.S. since 1991 according to Nielsen SoundScan, which does not count albums sold through clubs like the BMG Music, where she sold 883,000. Combined, it has sold over 6,379,000 copies in the U.S. Since its debut, Control has sold over 10 million copies worldwide. The album's lead single, "What Have You Done for Me Lately", peaked at number four on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart and at number one on the Hot Black Singles chart. The single was certified gold by the RIAA in November 1990. The song was compared favorably to similar recordings of female empowerment released by black women, such as "New Attitude" by Patti LaBelle, "Better Be Good to Me" by Tina Turner, and "Sisters Are Doin' It for Themselves" by Aretha Franklin. Oprah Winfrey commented: "What you're seeing in all the areas of arts and entertainment is black women internalizing the idea of black power and pride ... Black women started listening to their inner cues, rather than society or even the black community's idea of what they are supposed to be and can be." "Nasty", the album's second single, beat "What Have You Done for Me Lately" by one position, peaking at number three on the Hot 100 and at number one on the Hot Black Singles chart. It was certified gold in November 1990. Critic Jon Bream noted "the songwriters have slyly juxtaposed a nasty-sounding groove and the repetition of the word 'nasty' with a subtle antinasty message." "When I Think of You" reached number one on the Hot 100, becoming Jackson's first single to top the chart, and was certified gold in November 1990. The album's fourth single and title track, "Control", reached its peak position at number five on the Hot 100 and at number one on the Hot Black Singles chart, later certified gold by the RIAA in November 1990. "Let's Wait Awhile" reached the number two position on the Hot 100 and number one on the Hot Black Singles chart. Clarence Page of the Chicago Tribune commented in a similar vein to "Nasty", the ballad "throw[s] cold water on the passions of young love 'before we go too far'." Unlike its predecessors, "The Pleasure Principle" did not reach within the top five of the Hot 100, instead peaking at number fourteen. It did, however, become Jackson's fifth number one single on the Hot Black Singles chart. Each of the album's singles excluding "Let's Wait Awhile" peaked within the top five of the Billboard Club Play Singles. "Funny How Time Flies (When You're Having Fun)" was not released as a commercial single in the United States. It peaked at number 59 on the UK Singles Chart. ## Critical reception Upon its release, the album received universal acclaim from critics. Rolling Stone's Rob Hoerburger commented that the "sharp-tongued" Janet Jackson is "more concerned with identity than with playlists", as Control declares she is no longer the Jacksons' baby sister. Hoerburger expressed the view that tracks such as "Nasty" and "What Have You Done for Me Lately" erased the former "pop-ingénue image" of Jackson's first two albums, and that "Control is a better album than Diana Ross has made in five years and puts Janet in a position similar to the young Donna Summer's—unwilling to accept novelty status and taking her own steps to rise above it." Steven Ivory of Billboard expressed "[v]ocally, Jackson is more aggressive than ever. Indeed, her exhibition of sass and funkiness is certainly more provocative" in comparison to her previous work. NME wrote: "Jackson has gone a long way in shaking off the experience of being a shadow Jackson child. She is an artist in her own right." Newsweek stated "[i]n an era of big-voiced pop-soul divas ... her current hit album, is taut, funky, hard as nails, an alternative to the sentimental balladry and opulent arrangements of Patti LaBelle and Whitney Houston." In The Village Voice, Robert Christgau "scoffed at Janet's claims of autonomy", but applauded Jam & Lewis's beats as "their deepest ever" while finding Jackson's contribution entertaining enough. Los Angeles Times critic Connie Johnson wrote: "Though still a teen-ager, this singer's stance is remarkably nervy and mature. She has a snotty sort of assurance that permeates several cuts, plus the musical muscle to back it up." Jon Pareles of The New York Times notes Control takes obvious influence from Prince, describing "[t]he album's pacing, its clipped vocal lines—even the spoken introduction that starts things off" as pure Minneapolis sound; he adds "[b]ut where the Prince style is usually connected with heavy-breathing come-ons, Miss Jackson is cheerfully standoffish." For the 29th Annual Grammy Awards, Control received four nominations: Album of the Year, Best R&B Song for "What Have You Done for Me Lately", Best Female R&B Vocal Performance and Non-Classical Producer of the Year for Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis. Jam and Lewis won Producer of the Year. The album earned a record-breaking twelve nominations from the American Music Awards, winning four. Jackson also won three Soul Train Music Awards and six Billboard Music Awards. Later reviews continue to find the album favorable. Eric Henderson of Slant Magazine expressed that the misconception that Control is Jackson's debut album only confirmed the "quintessential statement on personal and artistic self-actualization" that it set out to accomplish. Henderson claimed critics who judged Jackson harshly for her thin voice "somehow missed the explosive 'gimme a beat' vocal pyrotechnics she unleashes all over "Nasty" ... Or that they completely dismissed how perfect her tremulous hesitance fits into the abstinence anthem "Let's Wait Awhile." However, Henderson also commented that the "Jam-Lewis formula wasn't completely infallible" as "You Can Be Mine" and "Funny How Time Flies (When You're Having Fun)", were two of the album's least impressive misfires. While William Ruhlmann of AllMusic commented Jackson "came across as an aggressive, independent woman", he asserts the album's true value is the production talents of Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis. In The New Rolling Stone Album Guide (2004), Laura Sinagra said that on Control, "Jam and Lewis perfected their melodic, full-blown funk attack", while Jackson "filled each track with a breathy believability" with vocal performances that ranged from yearning to seductive. In 2020, Rolling Stone ranked Control number 111 on the reboot of its list of 'The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time'. ## Accolades ## Legacy Control is widely considered to be the breakthrough in Jackson's career, establishing her independence and dominance in the realm of popular music. In The Sex Revolts: Gender, Rebellion, and Rock'n'roll (1996) author Simon Reynolds wrote that "Janet Jackson became a superstar with the immaculately designed soft-core feminism of Control." Jet magazine commented that although the Jackson family's musical legacy had given her an opportunity to tap into an international audience, Control was the turning point at which "her career took off and she became a bona fide superstar. Control showcased Janet as a person who was firmly and finally in control of her own life." Dennis Hunt of the Los Angeles Times wrote: "Previously, she had recorded two unsophisticated, kiddie soul albums. If you listened carefully to that kid stuff, there was a grown-up singer there somewhere struggling to get out. [Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis] liberated the real Janet Jackson." Lyrically, Jackson's album is said to exhibit a "politically driven feminist" message, as stated by Lilly Goren in You've Come A Long Way, Baby: Women, Politics, and Popular Culture (2009). Musically, according to Rickey Vincent, author of Funk: The Music, The People, and The Rhythm of The One (1996), Jam and Lewis's collaboration with her is said to be one of the high points of the 1980s, as they redefined dance music by mixing a youthful sound with industrial-strength beats. As documented by musicologist Richard J. Ripani, author of The New Blue Music: Changes in Rhythm & Blues, 1950–1999 (2006), Control is regarded as one of the most influential albums in the history of rhythm and blues and the first album to bridge the gap between R&B and rap music. Its success in both the mainstream R&B and pop music charts "led to the incorporation of many of the stylistic traits of rap over the next few years, and Janet Jackson was to continue to be one of the leaders in that development." Furthermore, the album's second single "Nasty" has been credited with influencing the new jack swing genre, pioneered by Teddy Riley. Laura Sinagra in The New Rolling Stone Album Guide wrote that the album impacted popular music with a "blockbuster momentum all its own", while Eric Henderson of Slant Magazine noted Control "was every bit the hit machine that her brother's Thriller was." Additionally, Control made Billboard Hot 100 history having the longest continuous run on the Hot 100 with singles from one album at 65 consecutive weeks, breaking her brother Michael's record by one week; Thriller by comparison charted singles for 64 consecutive weeks. Steve Morse of The Boston Globe commented: "All things considered, 1986 was a stellar year for the black female vocalist—the best, in fact, since the disco era of a decade back ... Black music crossed over to the pop charts in dramatic fashion, with Whitney Houston, Patti LaBelle and Janet Jackson each having No. 1 albums." In addition to stepping out of the Jackson family shadow, Control established Jackson as one of the preeminent female artists of popular music, rivaling fellow pop star Madonna, as critics began to acknowledge their influence on the record industry and younger artists. Continuum Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World Volume 8: Genres: North America (2012) documents that both women redefined house music, repackaging it "as part of a global metropolitan pop aesthetic." With regard to marketing singles, Paul Grein of Billboard reported: "10 or 20 years ago you would have had two singles from an album at the most. Now we're in an era where Madonna is on her fifth single from the album True Blue and Janet Jackson is on her sixth from the LP Control." Jackson subsequently became the first female artist to produce six top 40 hits on the Billboard Hot 100 from a single album. Los Angeles Times writer Paul Grein wrote a segment titled "The influence of Madonna and Janet Jackson", reporting Debbie Gibson's manager Doug Breitbart claimed "Madonna has brought back a really strong, melodic component to pop music", while Teen Beat editor Maggie Murphy remarked "Janet Jackson may have started this more than anyone else." Anthony DeCurtis, author of Present Tense: Rock & Roll and Culture (1992) wrote that "Madonna and Janet Jackson have produced videos that explore the female gaze," and described Jackson's music video for "Nasty" as feminist theory on film that deconstructs the objectification of women. Laura Sinagra documented that within two years of the release of Control, "a new crop of female singers (such as Paula Abdul and Karyn White) were charged with imitating Janet." Anthony DeCurtis of Rolling Stone remarked: "Control—with its quintuple-platinum sales and string of hit singles—established" a then-twenty-year-old Jackson "as one of the most popular recording artists in the world." The Guardian described the album's release as one of the 50 key events in the history of R&B and hip hop. Upon the 30th anniversary of the album's release, Julian Kimble of Billboard magazine wrote: "In hindsight, Control is both evolutionary and revolutionary. As Jackson’s first album to land atop the Billboard 200, it marked professional and personal breakthroughs. Distancing herself from the immense Jackson family shadow, she created one of the most influential projects across contemporary R&B and pop music. And not only was Jackson’s maiden voyage with producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis at the forefront of R&B, pop and hip-hop’s intersection, it birthed a novel sound in the process." Morgan Y. Evans for PopMatters wrote: "Janet Jackson's Control is worth reconsidering as, perhaps boldly, one of the top three or four pop records of the '80s...It is unquestionably the most coherent and powerful full album statement from any female solo pop artist during much of the '80s, some of Kate Bush's more eccentric triumphs that decade notwithstanding." Kyle Anderson of Entertainment Weekly commented: "The videos from Control were all over MTV, and Janet established herself as an instantly dominant pop figure talked about in the same sentences as Madonna and her older brother Michael." MTV's Meaghan Garvey asserted "it's hard to overstate the significance of Control, whether in terms of the pop landscape, the evolution of the music video as a vessel for promotion and expression, or Top 40 feminist anthems." She also argued "it's important to note that Control’s self-actualization anthems were expressions of black female pride. Control spawned a whopping six videos—great ones, at that—which played an immeasurable role in the shift toward visible black pop." Gerrick D. Kennedy of Los Angeles Times wrote that Jackson's continued influence is evident in the careers of Rihanna, Beyoncé, Ciara, FKA Twigs and Tinashe in that "all of them take cues from Jackson's blueprint. And all that began with Control." In 2016, a cassette of Control was added to the "Musical Crossroads" exhibition of the National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC). ## Track listing Notes' - signifies a co-producer ## Personnel - Janet Jackson – vocals, background vocals, keyboards, bells - Melanie Andrews – background vocals - Troy Anthony – saxophone - Jerome Benton – vocals - Spencer Bernard – synthesizer, guitar - Geoff Bouchieiz – guitar - Mark Cardenas – synthesizer - Roger Dumas – drums, programming - Jimmy Jam – synthesizer, percussion, piano, drums, vocals, background vocals - Jellybean Johnson – guitar, vocals - Lisa Keith – background vocals - Terry Lewis – percussion, vocals, background vocals - John McClain – executive producer - Monte Moir – synthesizer, guitar, drums - Nicholas Raths – acoustic and 12-string guitar - Gwendolyn Traylor – background vocals - Hami Wave – background vocals ## Charts ### Weekly charts ### Year-end charts ### All-time chart ## Certifications ## See also - List of best-selling albums by women

Alexander of Lincoln

12th century Bishop of Lincoln

Alexander of Lincoln (died February 1148) was a medieval English Bishop of Lincoln, a member of an important administrative and ecclesiastical family. He was the nephew of Roger of Salisbury, a Bishop of Salisbury and Chancellor of England under King Henry I, and he was also related to Nigel, Bishop of Ely. Educated at Laon, Alexander served in his uncle's diocese as an archdeacon in the early 1120s. Unlike his relatives, he held no office in the government before his appointment as Bishop of Lincoln in 1123. Alexander became a frequent visitor to King Henry's court after his appointment to the episcopate, often witnessing royal documents, and he served as a royal justice in Lincolnshire. Although Alexander was known for his ostentatious and luxurious lifestyle, he founded a number of religious houses in his diocese and was an active builder and literary patron. He also attended church councils and reorganised his diocese by increasing the number of archdeaconries and setting up prebends to support his cathedral clergy. Under Henry's successor, King Stephen, Alexander was caught up in the fall from favour of his family, and was imprisoned together with his uncle Roger in 1139. He subsequently briefly supported Stephen's rival, Matilda, but by the late 1140s Alexander was once again working with Stephen. He spent much of the late 1140s at the papal court in Rome, but died in England in early 1148. During his episcopate he began the rebuilding of his cathedral, which had been destroyed by fire. Alexander was the patron of medieval chroniclers Henry of Huntingdon and Geoffrey of Monmouth, and also served as an ecclesiastical patron of the medieval hermit Christina of Markyate and Gilbert of Sempringham, founder of the Gilbertines. ## Early life Alexander was a nephew of Roger, Bishop of Salisbury, probably the son of Roger's brother Humphrey. His mother's name, Ada, is known from the Lincoln Cathedral libri memoriales, or obituary books. Alexander's brother David was archdeacon of Buckingham in the diocese of Lincoln. Other relatives included Nigel, another nephew of Roger's; and Adelelm, later Treasurer of England, who was recorded as Roger's nephew but perhaps was his son. It is possible, although unproven, that Nigel was really Alexander's brother rather than his cousin. Roger's son Roger le Poer, who later became Chancellor of England, was also a cousin. Alexander's cousin Nigel had a son, Richard FitzNeal, who later became Treasurer of England and Bishop of London. Alexander also had a nephew William, who became an archdeacon, and a great-nephew named Robert de Alvers. Alexander's birthdate is unknown. Together with his cousin Nigel he was educated at Laon, under the schoolmaster Anselm of Laon, and returned to England at some unknown date. The historian Martin Brett feels that Alexander probably served as a royal chaplain early in his career, although no sources support this conjecture. Alexander was an archdeacon in the diocese of Salisbury by 1121, under his uncle. While occupying that office he was credited with writing a glossary of Old English legal terms in the Anglo Norman language, entitled the Expositiones Vocabulorum. Unlike his cousin Nigel, Alexander does not appear to have entered the king's household or administration before his appointment as a bishop, and only attested, or witnessed, one royal charter before his appointment to the episcopate in 1123. ## Bishop Alexander was nominated to the see of Lincoln in April 1123 and was consecrated bishop on 22 July 1123, at a ceremony held in Canterbury. He owed his appointment to his uncle's influence with King Henry I; the Peterborough version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle noted that Alexander's appointment to the episcopate was done entirely for the love of Roger. During his time as bishop Alexander secured the submission of St Albans Abbey to his diocese and founded a number of monasteries, including Haverholme Priory (a Gilbertine house), Dorchester on Thames (an Arrouaisian Order house), Louth Park, and Thame; Louth was one of the first Cistercian houses founded in England, and Dorchester was the refoundation of a former collegiate church. During Alexander's episcopate 13 Cistercian abbeys and seven nunneries were founded in his diocese. Alexander himself consecrated the church at Markyate used by the medieval mystic Christina of Markyate and her nuns, and it was he who consecrated her as a hermit at St Albans Abbey. Alexander also founded a hospital for lepers at Newark-on-Trent. Although Alexander was a frequent witness to royal charters and documents, there is no evidence that he held an official government position after his appointment as bishop, unlike his relatives Roger and Nigel. Nevertheless, Alexander subsequently appears to have become a regular presence at the royal court. He frequently attested royal charters after 1123, and probably acted as a royal justice in Lincolnshire and the town of Lincoln. He also held the royal castles at Newark, Sleaford and Banbury, and gave confirmations of grants to the church at Godstow. Alexander was probably at the 1125 church council held at Westminster by the papal legate John of Crema, and shortly afterwards accompanied the legate on his journey back to Rome. He was still in Rome in 1126, and may have helped to obtain a papal confirmation of his uncle's possession of Malmesbury Abbey, Abbotsbury Abbey, and Horton. At some point during his episcopate, an eighth archdeaconry was established in his diocese, for the West Riding area of Lindsey. Besides these reorganisations, Alexander had a number of clerics in his personal household, including Gilbert of Sempringham, who later founded the Gilbertine order. Other members of the bishop's household were Ralph Gubion, who became abbot of St Albans, and an Italian Bible scholar named Guido or Wido, who taught that subject while serving Alexander. Alexander presided over the organisation of his diocese into prebends to support the cathedral clergy; he established at least one new prebend and augmented two others. He also attended the church councils in 1127 and 1129 that were convened by William de Corbeil, the Archbishop of Canterbury. Later, during 1133 and 1134, he and the archbishop quarrelled, but the exact nature of their dispute is unknown. William and Alexander travelled to Normandy in 1134 to seek out King Henry to settle their dispute. ## Reign of Stephen After Henry's death in 1135 the succession was disputed between the king's nephews—Stephen and his elder brother Theobald II, Count of Champagne—and Henry's surviving legitimate child Matilda, usually known as the Empress Matilda because of her first marriage to the Holy Roman Emperor, Henry V. King Henry's only legitimate son, William, had died in 1120. After Matilda was widowed in 1125 she returned to her father, who married her to Geoffrey, Count of Anjou. All the magnates of England and Normandy were required to declare fealty to Matilda as Henry's heir, but after Henry I's death in 1135 Stephen rushed to England and had himself crowned, before Theobald or Matilda could react. The Norman barons accepted Stephen as Duke of Normandy, and Theobald contented himself with his possessions in France. But Matilda was less sanguine and secured the support of the Scottish king, David, her maternal uncle, and in 1138 that of her half-brother, Robert, Earl of Gloucester, an illegitimate son of Henry I. The election of Theobald of Bec to the Archbishopric of Canterbury was announced at the Council of Westminster in 1138. The medieval chronicler Gervase of Canterbury writes that 17 bishops attended the council, which implies that Alexander was present. After a failed expedition to Normandy in 1137, the influence of Alexander's uncle, Roger of Salisbury, waned at the court of King Stephen, but the king took no action against the family that might incite them to rebel. In early 1139 Stephen may have named William d'Aubigny as Earl of Lincoln, perhaps in an effort to limit Alexander's influence in Lincolnshire. In June 1139 a knight was killed during a fight in Oxford between a party of Roger of Salisbury's men and a group of noblemen. The king ordered Roger to attend his court to explain the circumstances of the incident and to surrender custody of his castles, which Roger refused to do, resulting in his and Alexander's arrest; Roger's other nephew, Nigel, evaded capture. Another possible explanation for the arrests is offered by the Gesta Stephani, a contemporary chronicle, which reported the king's fear that Roger and his nephews were plotting to hand their castles to the Empress Matilda. Stephen may alternatively have been attempting to assert his rights over the castles, and demonstrate his authority over powerful subjects. Alexander was imprisoned in Oxford, in conditions described by some medieval chroniclers as bad. Since the work of Henry of Huntingdon, who wrote in the years before 1154 and who regarded Stephen's actions as treachery against the clergy that earned him punishment from God, Alexander's arrest has been seen by many historians as a turning point in Stephen's reign. Writing in the 1870s, the historian William Stubbs felt that the arrest destroyed the royal administration, but modern historians have advanced differing explanations for the troubles that followed, not all of which are related to the bishop's arrest. After Roger and Alexander's arrests Nigel defied the king. The bishops' castles refused to surrender to the king, therefore Stephen threatened to starve Alexander and Roger until they did. Sleaford and Newark surrendered and were given into the custody of Robert, the Earl of Leicester. Earl Robert also seized some of Lincoln's episcopal estates that had been disputed between the earl and the bishop. Alexander subsequently excommunicated Earl Robert when the earl refused to return the castle to Alexander's custody. Alexander then successfully applied to Pope Innocent II in 1139 for support in his efforts to recover Newark castle from Earl Robert. Stephen's brother, Henry of Blois, Bishop of Winchester and one of the king's main supporters, had recently been appointed papal legate. Henry objected to Stephen's actions in arresting the bishops and confiscating their property, as they were in contravention of canon law. Henry called a legatine council, a church council convened by a papal legate, at Winchester to discuss the issue, which ended in nothing being done, although both sides threatened excommunication and stated they would appeal to Rome and the papacy for support. Alexander did not attend the council of Winchester, but his uncle did. He seems to have borne Stephen no ill will over the arrest, and worked with the king during Stephen's later reign. In 1141 Alexander and the citizens of the town of Lincoln requested that Stephen come to Lincoln and intercede with Ranulf de Gernon, the Earl of Chester, who was attempting to enforce what he regarded as his rights to Lincoln Castle. Stephen arrived and besieged Ranulf's wife and half-brother in the castle, but the earl escaped and sought aid from Robert of Gloucester, Matilda's half-brother and leading supporter. Following Robert's arrival in Lincoln a battle took place there on 2 February 1141, during which Stephen was captured by Matilda's forces. Alexander was present at Oxford in July 1141, when the Empress Matilda held court and attempted to consolidate her hold on England. The citizens of London objected to Matilda's rule when she arrived in their city, and drove her away; Robert of Gloucester was captured shortly afterwards. This reversal of the Empress' fortunes resulted in Stephen's release, after he was exchanged for Robert. The next few years, until 1148, saw a period of civil war in England, often called The Anarchy, when neither Matilda nor Stephen controlled the country. ## Patronage Alexander was a supporter of Gilbert of Sempringham's new monastic order of the Gilbertines, and he was also known as a patron of literature. He commissioned Geoffrey of Monmouth to compose the Prophecies of Merlin, which Geoffrey dedicated to him. Alexander was a patron of the medieval chronicler Henry of Huntingdon, and requested that Henry write his historical work. Alexander rebuilt Lincoln Cathedral after it had been destroyed by fire at an unknown date. He had the roof done with stone vaulting and began construction of the west front of the cathedral, which was finished under his successor. The only remaining major traces of Alexander's work on the west end are the carved doors and the frieze on the west front. The author of the Gesta Stephani claimed that Alexander's additions made Lincoln Cathedral "more beautiful than before and second to none in the realm". Traditionally, Alexander has been credited with the commissioning of the baptismal font in Lincoln Cathedral, made of Tournai marble. Recent scholarship, however, has cast doubt upon this theory and suggests that the font was carved on the orders of Alexander's successor, Robert de Chesney. Stephen granted to Alexander the land on which the Old Palace of the bishops stands in Lincoln, although it is unclear whether it was Alexander or his successor as bishop who began the construction of the existing building. Stephen's grant added to an earlier one by King Henry, of the Eastgate in Lincoln as an episcopal residence. Work commissioned by Alexander has survived at the three castles he built at Newark-on-Trent, Sleaford, and probably Banbury. Alexander's nickname, "the Magnificent", reflected his ostentatious and luxurious lifestyle. Henry of Huntingdon records that this was a contemporary nickname. Alexander was rebuked by Bernard of Clairvaux for his lifestyle. He may have been responsible for the education of an illegitimate son of King Henry's, as two charters of Alexander's are witnessed by a William, who is described as a son of the king. He also advanced the careers of his family, naming his relative Adelelm as Dean of Lincoln during his episcopate. Another member of his household was Robert Gubion, who later became abbot of St Albans Abbey. The medieval chronicler William of Newburgh wrote that Alexander founded a number of monasteries, "to remove the odium" that he had incurred because of his castle building. Alexander himself stated explicitly that his foundation of Louth was intended to secure the remission of his sins, as well as the salvation of King Henry I, his uncle Roger of Salisbury, and his parents. Alexander also played a part in the founding of Newhouse Abbey in about 1143. Although the actual foundation was by Peter of Goxhill, Alexander and his successor issued confirmation charters and took the new monastery into their protection. ## Death Alexander spent most of 1145 and 1146 at the papal court in Rome, although some time during that period he was in England as one of the witnesses to the peace accord signed between the earls of Chester and Leicester. He returned to the papal court, then at Auxerre, in 1147, but he was back in England by the time of his death the following year. Henry of Huntingdon says that Alexander picked up his last illness while travelling. Alexander died in February 1148, probably on the 20th, as that was the date on which his death was commemorated at Lincoln Cathedral, and he was buried at Lincoln on 25 February 1148. No tomb remains, but 12th-century documents record that Alexander left the cathedral a number of books, mostly biblical works.

L'incoronazione di Poppea

Opera by Claudio Monteverdi

L'incoronazione di Poppea (SV 308, The Coronation of Poppaea) is an Italian opera by Claudio Monteverdi. It was Monteverdi's last opera, with a libretto by Giovanni Francesco Busenello, and was first performed at the Teatro Santi Giovanni e Paolo in Venice during the 1643 carnival season. One of the first operas to use historical events and people, it describes how Poppaea, mistress of the Roman emperor Nero, is able to achieve her ambition and be crowned empress. The opera was revived in Naples in 1651, but was then neglected until the rediscovery of the score in 1888, after which it became the subject of scholarly attention in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Since the 1960s, the opera has been performed and recorded many times. The original manuscript of the score does not exist; two surviving copies from the 1650s show significant differences from each other, and each differs to some extent from the libretto. How much of the music is actually Monteverdi's, and how much the product of others, is a matter of dispute. None of the existing versions of the libretto, printed or manuscript, can be definitively tied to the first performance at the Teatro Santi Giovanni e Paolo, the precise date of which is unknown. Details of the original cast are few and largely speculative, and there is no record of the opera's initial public reception. Despite these uncertainties, the work is generally accepted as part of the Monteverdi operatic canon, his last and perhaps his greatest work. In a departure from traditional literary morality, it is the adulterous liaison of Poppea and Nerone which wins the day, although this triumph is demonstrated by history to have been transitory and hollow. In Busenello's version of the story all the major characters are morally compromised. Written when the genre of opera was only a few decades old, the music for L'incoronazione di Poppea has been praised for its originality, its melody, and for its reflection of the human attributes of its characters. The work helped to redefine the boundaries of theatrical music and established Monteverdi as the leading musical dramatist of his time. ## Historical context Opera as a dramatic genre originated around the turn of the 17th century, although the word itself was not in use before 1650. Precursors of musical drama included pastoral plays with songs and choruses, and the madrigal comedies of the late 16th century. Monteverdi had already established himself as a leading composer of madrigals before writing his first full-length operas in the years 1606–08, while he was in the service of Vincenzo Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua. These works, L'Orfeo and L'Arianna, deal respectively with the Greek myths of Orpheus and Ariadne. After a disagreement in 1612 with Vincenzo's successor, Duke Francesco Gonzaga, Monteverdi moved to Venice to take up the position of director of music at St Mark's Basilica, where he remained until his death in 1643. Amid his official duties at Venice, Monteverdi maintained an interest in theatrical music and produced several stage works, including the substantial Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda (The battle of Tancred and Clorinda) for the 1624–25 carnival. When the first public opera house in the world opened in Venice in 1637, Monteverdi, by then in his 70th year, returned to writing full-scale opera. He may have been influenced by the solicitations of Giacomo Badoaro, an aristocratic poet and intellectual who sent the elderly composer the libretto for Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria (The return of Ulysses). For the 1639–40 carnival season, Monteverdi revived L'Arianna at the Teatro San Moisè and later produced his setting of Il ritorno at the Teatro San Cassiano. For the following season he wrote Le nozze d'Enea in Lavinia (The marriage of Aeneas to Lavinia), now lost, which was performed at the third of Venice's new opera theatres, Teatro Santi Giovanni e Paulo. Another wealthy poet-librettist in the Venice milieu was Giovanni Francesco Busenello (1598–1659), like Badoaro a member of the intellectual society Accademia degli Incogniti. This group of free-thinking intellectuals had significant influence on the cultural and political life of Venice in the mid-17th century, and was particularly active in the promotion of musical theatre. Busenello had worked with Monteverdi's younger contemporary Francesco Cavalli, providing the libretto for Didone (1641), and according to theatre historian Mark Ringer was "among the greatest librettists in the history of opera". It is unclear how and when Busenello met Monteverdi, though both had served in the Gonzaga court. Ringer speculates that they drew joint inspiration from their experiences of the Gonzaga style of rule, "a mixture of artistic cultivation and brutality", and thus developed a shared artistic vision. ## Creation ### Libretto The main sources for the story told in Busenello's libretto are the Annals of Tacitus; book 6 of Suetonius's history The Twelve Caesars; books 61–62 of Dio Cassius's Roman History; and an anonymous play Octavia (once attributed to the real life Seneca), from which the opera's fictional nurse characters were derived. The main story is based on real people and events. According to the analyst Magnus Schneider, the character of Drusilla was taken from Girolamo Bargagli's 16th-century comedy The Pilgrim Woman. Busenello condensed historical events from a seven-year period (AD 58 to AD 65) into a single day's action, and imposed his own sequence. He was open about his intention to adapt history for his own purposes, writing in the preface to his libretto that "here we represent these actions differently." Thus he gave his characters different attributes from those of their historical counterparts: Nerone's cruelty is downplayed; the wronged wife Ottavia is presented as a murderous plotter; Seneca, whose death in reality had nothing to do with Nerone's liaison with Poppea, appears as more noble and virtuous than he was; Poppea's motives are represented as based on genuine love as much as on a lust for power; the depiction of Lucano as a drunken carouser disguises the real life poet Lucan's status as a major Roman poet with marked anti-imperial and pro-republican tendencies. The libretto has survived in numerous forms—two printed versions, seven manuscript versions or fragments, and an anonymous scenario, or summary, related to the original production. One of the printed editions relates to the opera's 1651 Naples revival; the other is Busenello's final version published in 1656 as part of a collection of his libretti. The manuscripts are all from the 17th century, though not all are specifically dated; some are "literary" versions unrelated to performances. The most significant of the manuscript copies is that discovered in Udine, Northern Italy, in 1997 by Monteverdi scholar Paolo Fabbri. This manuscript, according to music historian Ellen Rosand, "bristles with the immediacy of a performance", and is the only copy of the libretto that mentions Monteverdi by name. This, and other descriptive details missing from other copies, leads Rosand to speculate that the manuscript was copied during the course of a performance. This impression is reinforced, she says, by the inclusion of a paean of praise to the singer (Anna di Valerio according to Schneider) who played the role of Poppea. Although its dating is uncertain, the manuscript's affinity with the original scenario has led to speculation that the Udine version may have been compiled from the first performance. ### Composition Two versions of the musical score of L'incoronazione exist, both from the 1650s. The first was rediscovered in Venice in 1888, the second in Naples in 1930. The Naples score is linked to the revival of the opera in that city in 1651. Both scores contain essentially the same music, though each differs from the printed libretto and has unique additions and omissions. In each score the vocal lines are shown with basso continuo accompaniment; the instrumental sections are written in three parts in the Venice score, four parts in the Naples version, without in either case specifying the instruments. Conductor Nikolaus Harnoncourt, a leading Monteverdi interpreter, refers to the contemporary practice of leaving much of a score open, to allow for differing local performance conditions. Another convention made it unnecessary to write down detail that performers would take for granted. Neither Venice nor Naples score can be linked to the original performance; although the Venice version is generally regarded as the more authentic, modern productions tend to use material from both. The question of authorship—essentially of how much of the music is Monteverdi's—is a contentious one, which Rosand acknowledges might never be entirely resolved. Virtually none of the contemporary documentation mentions Monteverdi, and music by other composers has been identified in the scores, including passages found in the score of Francesco Sacrati's opera La finta pazza. A particular style of metric notation used in some passages of the L'incoronazione scores suggests the work of younger composers. The most debated areas of authorship are parts of the prologue, Ottone's music, the flirtation scene between Valetto and Damigella, and the coronation scene including the final "Pur ti miro" duet. Modern scholarship inclines to the view that L'incoronazione was the result of collaboration between Monteverdi and others, with the old composer playing a guiding role. Composers who may have assisted include Sacrati, Benedetto Ferrari and Francesco Cavalli. Ringer suggests that Monteverdi's age and health may have prevented him from completing the opera without help from younger colleagues; he speculates about an arrangement resembling "the workshop of Rubens, who might design a painting and handle the important details himself but leave the more mundane aspects ... to younger apprentice artists." The musicologist Alan Curtis believes that only a single collaborator was involved, and published his 1989 edition of L'incoronazione under the joint authorship of Monteverdi and Sacrati. The American musical analyst Eric Chafe's study of Monteverdi's tonal language supports the collaboration theory and postulates that some of the sections in question, including the prologue, the coronation scene and the final duet, reflect Monteverdi's intentions and may have been written under his direct supervision. ### Morality L'incoronazione di Poppea is frequently described as a story in which virtue is punished and greed rewarded, running counter to the normal conventions of literary morality. The musicologist Tim Carter calls the opera's characters and their actions "famously problematic", and its messages "at best ambiguous and at worst perverted", while Rosand refers to an "extraordinary glorification of lust and ambition". The critic Edward B. Savage asserts that despite the lack of a moral compass in virtually all the main characters, Busenello's plot is itself essentially moral, and that "this morality is sustained by the phenomenon of dramatic irony". From their knowledge of Roman history, audiences in Venice would have recognised that the apparent triumph of love over virtue, celebrated by Nerone and Poppea in the closing duet, was in reality hollow, and that not long after this event Nerone kicked the pregnant Poppea to death. They would have known, too, that Nerone himself committed suicide a few years later, and that others—Ottavia, Lucano, Ottone—also met untimely deaths. Seventeenth-century Rome, under autocratic papal rule, was perceived by republican Venetians as a direct threat to their liberties. Rosand has suggested that Venetian audiences would have understood the Poppea story in the context of their own times as a moral lesson demonstrating the superiority of Venice, and that "such immorality was only possible in a decaying society, not [in] a civilized nation". Rosand concludes that the opera's broad moral compass places it first in a long tradition of operatic works that embraces Mozart's Don Giovanni and Verdi's Don Carlos. Music analyst Clifford Bartlett writes that "Monteverdi's glorious music goes beyond Busenello's cynical realism, and presents human behaviour in a better light". ## Roles The score for L'incoronazione features 28 singing characters, including 7 ensemble parts, of which the two Amori may only have appeared in the 1651 Naples production. The original Venetian production evidently made use of extensive role-doubling, allowing the opera to be staged with no more than 11 singers: two female sopranos, three male sopranos (castratos), two contraltos (castratos), two tenors and two basses. Schneider has suggested the following reconstruction of the cast and the doubling plan from the 1643 premiere on the basis of an examination of, first, contemporary casting and doubling practices, secondly, the recently discovered correspondence of the impresario Marquess Cornelio Bentivoglio, and finally the libretto for La finta savia, which preceded Poppea on the stage of the Santi Giovanni e Paolo in the 1643 Carnival and was written for the same cast. <table> <thead> <tr class="header"> <th><p>width= 300|Role</p></th> <th><p>width= 180|Singer</p></th> <th><p>width= 100|Voice type</p></th> <th><p>width= 350|Appearances</p></th> </tr> </thead> <tbody> <tr class="odd"> <td><p>La Fortuna, Fortune<br /> Poppea, Poppaea, a most noble lady, mistress of Nero, raised by him to the seat of empire</p></td> <td><p>Anna di Valerio</p></td> <td><p>soprano</p></td> <td><p>Prologue<br /> Act 1: III, IV, X, XI; Act 2: XII, (XIII), XIV; Act 3: V, VIII</p></td> </tr> <tr class="even"> <td><p>La Virtù, Virtue<br /> Ottavia, Octavia, reigning Empress, who is repudiated by Nero<br /> Drusilla, a lady of court, in love with Otho</p></td> <td><p>Anna Renzi</p></td> <td><p>soprano</p></td> <td><p>Prologue<br /> Act 1: V, VI; Act 2: VII; Act 3: VI<br /> Act 1: XIII; Act 2: VIII, IX; Act 3: I, II, III, IV</p></td> </tr> <tr class="odd"> <td><p>Nerone, Nero, Roman Emperor</p></td> <td><p>Stefano Costa</p></td> <td><p>soprano</p></td> <td><p>Act 1: III, IX, X; Act 2: V; Act 3: III, IV, V, VIII</p></td> </tr> <tr class="even"> <td><p>Amore, Cupid<br /> Valletto, a valet, page of the Empress</p></td> <td><p>Rabacchio</p></td> <td><p>soprano</p></td> <td><p>Prologue; Act 2: XI, XII; Act 3: VIII<br /> Act 1: VI; Act 2: IV, VIII</p></td> </tr> <tr class="odd"> <td><p>Pallade, Pallas<br /> Damigella, a lady-in-waiting to the Empress<br /> Venere, Venus</p></td> <td><p>Ponzanino</p></td> <td><p>soprano</p></td> <td><p>Act 1: VIII<br /> Act 2: IV<br /> Act 3: VIII</p></td> </tr> <tr class="even"> <td><p>Ottone, Otho, a most noble lord</p></td> <td><p>Fritellino</p></td> <td><p>contralto</p></td> <td><p>Act 1: I, (X), XI, XII, XIII; Act 2: VI, VII, IX, XII; Act 3: IV</p></td> </tr> <tr class="odd"> <td><p>Arnalta, aged nurse and confidante of Poppaea<br /> Nutrice, the nurse of the Empress Octavia<br /> Famigliare I, first friend of Seneca</p></td> <td><p>Vecchia singer</p></td> <td><p>contralto</p></td> <td><p>Act 1: IV; Act 2: X, XII; Act 3: II, III, VII<br /> Act 1: V; Act 2: 8<br /> Act 2: III</p></td> </tr> <tr class="even"> <td><p>Soldato pretoriano I, first Praetorian soldier<br /> Famigliare II, second friend of Seneca<br /> Lucano, Lucan, poet, intimate of Nero</p></td> <td><p>Roman singer</p></td> <td><p>tenor</p></td> <td><p>Act 1: II<br /> Act 2: III<br /> Act 2: V</p></td> </tr> <tr class="odd"> <td><p>Soldato pretoriano II, second Praetorian soldier<br /> Liberto, a freedman, captain of the Praetorian Guard<br /> Tribuno, a tribune</p></td> <td><p>Captain Pompeo Conti</p></td> <td><p>tenor</p></td> <td><p>Act 1: II<br /> Act 2: II<br /> Act 3: VIII</p></td> </tr> <tr class="even"> <td><p>Seneca, philosopher, Nero's tutor<br /> Littore, a lictor</p></td> <td><p>Don Giacinto Zucchi</p></td> <td><p>bass</p></td> <td><p>Act 1: VI, VII, VIII, IX; Act 2: I, II, III<br /> Act 3: II, III, (IV)</p></td> </tr> <tr class="odd"> <td><p>Mercurio, Mercury<br /> Famigliare III, third friend of Seneca<br /> Console, a consul</p></td> <td><p>Florentine singer</p></td> <td><p>bass</p></td> <td><p>Act 2: I<br /> Act 2: III<br /> Act 3: VIII</p></td> </tr> </tbody> </table> ## Synopsis The action takes place in Imperial Rome around AD 60, in and around Poppea's villa and in various locations within the imperial palace. ### Prologue The goddesses of Fortune and Virtue dispute which of them has the most power over humankind. They are interrupted by the god of Love, who claims greater power than either: "I tell the virtues what to do, I govern the fortunes of men." When they have heard his story, he says, they will admit his superior powers. ### Act 1 Ottone arrives at Poppea's villa, intent on pursuing his love. Seeing the house guarded by the Emperor Nerone's soldiers he realises he has been supplanted, and his love song turns to a lament: "Ah, ah, perfidious Poppea!" He leaves, and the waiting soldiers gossip about their master's amorous affairs, his neglect of matters of state and his treatment of the Empress Ottavia. Nerone and Poppea enter and exchange words of love before Nerone departs. Poppea is warned by her nurse, Arnalta, to be careful of the empress's wrath and to distrust Nerone's apparent love for her, but Poppea is confident: "I fear no setback at all." The scene switches to the palace, where Ottavia bemoans her lot; "Despised queen, wretched consort of the emperor!" Her nurse suggests she take a lover of her own, advice which Ottavia angrily rejects. Seneca, Nerone's former tutor, addresses the empress with flattering words, and is mocked by Ottavia's page, Valleto, who threatens to set fire to the old man's beard. Left alone, Seneca receives a warning from the goddess Pallade that his life is in danger. Nerone enters and confides that he intends to displace Ottavia and marry Poppea. Seneca demurs; such a move would be divisive and unpopular. "I care nothing for the senate and the people," replies Nerone, and when the sage persists he is furiously dismissed. Poppea joins Nerone, and tells him that Seneca claims to be the power behind the imperial throne. This so angers Nerone that he instructs his guards to order Seneca to commit suicide. After Nerone leaves, Ottone steps forward and after failing to persuade Poppea to reinstate him in her affections, privately resolves to kill her. He is then comforted by a noblewoman, Drusilla; realising that he can never regain Poppea he offers to marry Drusilla, who joyfully accepts him. But Ottone admits to himself: "Drusilla is on my lips, Poppea is in my heart." ### Act 2 In his garden, Seneca learns from the god Mercurio that he is soon to die. The order duly arrives from Nerone, and Seneca instructs his friends to prepare a suicide bath. His followers try to persuade him to remain alive, but he rejects their pleading. "The warm current of my guiltless blood shall carpet with royal purple my road to death." At the palace Ottavia's page flirts with a lady-in-waiting, while Nerone and the poet Lucano celebrate the death of Seneca in a drunken, cavorting song contest, and compose love songs in honour of Poppea. Elsewhere in the palace, Ottone, in a long soliloquy, ponders how he could have thought to kill Poppea with whom he remains hopelessly in love. He is interrupted by a summons from Ottavia, who to his dismay orders him to kill Poppea. Threatening to denounce him to Nerone unless he complies, she suggests that he disguise himself as a woman to commit the deed. Ottone agrees to do as she bids, privately calling on the gods to relieve him of his life. He then persuades Drusilla to lend him her clothes. In the garden of Poppea's villa, Arnalta sings her mistress to sleep while the god of Love looks on. Ottone, now disguised as Drusilla, enters the garden and raises his sword to kill Poppea. Before he can do so, Love strikes the sword from his hand, and he runs away. His fleeing figure is seen by Arnalta and the now awakened Poppea, who believe that he is Drusilla. They call on their servants to give chase, while Love sings triumphantly "I protected her!" ### Act 3 Drusilla muses on the life of happiness before her, when Arnalta arrives with a lictor. Arnalta accuses Drusilla of being Poppea's assailant, and she is arrested. As Nerone enters, Arnalta denounces Drusilla, who protests her innocence. Threatened with torture unless she names her accomplices, Drusilla decides to protect Ottone by confessing her own guilt. Nerone commands her to suffer a painful death, at which point Ottone rushes in and reveals the truth: that he had acted alone, at the command of the Empress Ottavia, and that Drusilla was innocent of complicity. Nerone is impressed by Drusilla's fortitude, and in an act of clemency spares Ottone's life, ordering him banished. Drusilla chooses exile with him. Nerone now feels entitled to act against Ottavia and she is exiled, too. This leaves the way open for him to marry Poppea, who is overjoyed: "No delay, no obstacle can come between us now." Ottavia bids a quiet farewell to Rome, while in the throne room of the palace the coronation ceremony for Poppea is prepared. The Consuls and Tribunes enter, and after a brief eulogy place the crown on Poppea's head. Watching over the proceedings is the god of Love with his mother, Venere, and a divine chorus. Nerone and Poppea sing a rapturous love duet ("I gaze at you, I possess you") as the opera ends. ## Reception and performance history ### Early performances L'incoronazione di Poppea was first performed at the Teatro Santi Giovanni e Paolo, Venice, as part of the 1642–43 carnival season. The theatre, opened in 1639, had earlier staged the première of Monteverdi's opera Le Nozze d'Enea in Lavinia, and a revival of the composer's Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria. The theatre was later described by an observer: "... marvellous scene changes, majestic and grand appearances [of the performers] ... and a magnificent flying machine; you see, as if commonplace, glorious heavens, deities, seas, royal palaces, woods, forests ...". The theatre held about 900 people, and the stage was much bigger than the auditorium. The date of the first performance of L'incoronazione and the number of times the work was performed are unknown; the only date recorded is that of the beginning of the carnival, 26 December 1642. A surviving scenario, or synopsis, prepared for the first performances, gives neither the date nor the composer's name. The identity of only one of the première cast is known for certain: Anna Renzi, who played Ottavia. Renzi, in her early twenties, is described by Ringer as "opera's first prima donna" and was, according to a contemporary source, "as skillful in acting as she [was] excellent in music". On the basis of the casting of the opera which shared the theatre with L'incoronazione during the 1642–43 season, it is possible that Poppea was played by Anna di Valerio, and Nerone by the castrato Stefano Costa. There are no surviving accounts of the opera's public reception, unless the encomium to the singer playing Poppea, part of the libretto documentation discovered at Udine in 1997, relates to the first performance. There is only one documented early revival of L'incoronazione, in Naples in 1651. The fact that it was revived at all is noted by Carter as "remarkable, in an age where memories were short and large-scale musical works often had limited currency beyond their immediate circumstance." Thereafter there are no records of the work's performance for more than 250 years. ### Rediscovery After two centuries in which Monteverdi had been largely forgotten as a composer of opera, interest in his theatrical works revived in the late 19th century. A shortened version of Orfeo was performed in Berlin in 1881; a few years later the Venice score of L'incoronazione was rediscovered, leading to a surge of scholarly attention. In 1905, in Paris, the French composer Vincent d'Indy directed a concert performance of L'incoronazione, limited to "the most beautiful and interesting parts of the work." D'Indy's edition was published in 1908, and his version was staged at the Théâtre des Arts, Paris, on 5 February 1913, the first recorded theatrical performance of the work since 1651. The work was not received uncritically; the dramatist Romain Rolland, who had assisted d'Indy, wrote that Monteverdi had "sacrifice[d] freedom and musical beauty to beauty of line. Here we no longer have the impalpable texture of musical poetry that we admire in Orfeo." In April 1926 the German-born composer Werner Josten directed the opera's first American performance, at Smith College, Massachusetts where he was professor of music. His production was based on d'Indy's edition. The following year, on 27 October, L'incoronazione received its British première, with a performance at Oxford Town Hall by members of the Oxford University Opera Club using a score edited by Jack Westrup. In the 1930s several editions of the opera were prepared by leading contemporary musicians, including Gustav Mahler's son-in-law Ernst Krenek, Hans Redlich, Carl Orff (who left his version incomplete), and Gian Francesco Malipiero. Malipiero's edition was used to stage performances in Paris (1937) and Venice (1949). The Redlich edition was performed at Morley College, London on May 21, 1948, under the direction of Michael Tippett. Richard Strauss made reference to L'incoronazione in the Act III music lesson scene of his 1935 opera, Die schweigsame Frau, completely recomposing the Act 2, Scene 5 duet "Sento un certo non so che" in his own florid and late-Romantic idiom as one of many uses of preexisting musical material to set an appreciably antique atmosphere by the standards of the time. In that scene, the duet is used as an excuse for the title role to flirt with her husband, in disguise as a singing teacher. Until the 1960s performances of L'incoronazione were relatively rare in commercial opera theatres, but they became increasingly frequent in the decade that saw the quatercentenary of Monteverdi's birth. The 1962 Glyndebourne Festival anticipated the quatercentenary with a lavish production using a new edition by Raymond Leppard. This version, controversially, was adapted for a large orchestra, and though it was enthusiastically received it has subsequently been described by Carter as a "travesty", and its continuing use in some modern productions as indefensible. A version by Erich Kraack was conducted by Herbert von Karajan at the Vienna State Opera in 1963; the following decades saw performances at Lincoln Center in New York, Turin, Venice and a revival of the Leppard version at Glyndebourne. The Venice performance at La Fenice on 5 December 1980 was based on Alan Curtis's new edition, described by Rosand as "the first to attempt a scholarly collation and rationalization of the sources". The Curtis edition was used by Santa Fe Opera in August 1986, in a production which according to The New York Times "gave music precedence over musicology", resulting in a performance that was "rich and stunningly beautiful". ### Recent revivals The 350th anniversary of Monteverdi's death, celebrated in 1993, brought a further wave of interest in his works, and since that time performances of L'incoronazione have been given in opera houses and music festivals all over the world. In April 1994 the Juilliard School in New York presented a version based on Curtis's edition, with an orchestra that mixed baroque and modern elements. Allan Kozinn wrote in The New York Times that this production had done well to resolve daunting problems arising from Monteverdi's having left instrumentation and scoring details open, and from the numerous competing versions of the score. In 2000 the work was chosen by Opéra de Montréal as the company's first venture into baroque opera, with a performance directed by Renaud Doucet. Opera Canada reported that Doucet had found "a perfect rhetoric for a modern crowd, creating an atmosphere of moral ambivalence that the courtiers of Monteverdi's day would have taken for granted." Less successful, in the critics' eyes, was the innovative English National Opera (ENO) production directed by Chen Shi-Zheng in October 2007. According to The London Evening Standard critic Fiona Maddocks the cast was strong, but they all seemed to be playing in the wrong roles. For unexplained reasons much of the action took place underwater; at one point "a snorkeller flip-flops across the stage in a harness." Seneca "wore green Wellington boots and pushed a lawnmower". At the end of 2007, in his opera review of the year in The Daily Telegraph, Rupert Christiansen compared ENO's production unfavourably with a punk musical version of the opera that had been staged during that year's Edinburgh Festival. In May 2008 L'incoronazione returned to Glyndebourne in a new production by Robert Carsen, with Leppard's large-scale orchestration replaced by the period instruments of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment under Emmanuelle Haïm. The Organ's reviewer praised the vocal quality of the performers, found Haim's handling of the orchestra "a joy throughout" and declared the whole production "a blessed relief" after the previous year's ENO staging. On 19 August the Glyndebourne singers and the orchestra, led by Haim, presented a semi-staged version of the opera at the 2008 BBC Proms, at the Royal Albert Hall. Elsewhere the French-based ensemble Les Arts Florissants, under its director William Christie, presented the Monteverdi trilogy of operas (L'Orfeo, Il ritorno d'Ulisse and L'incoronazione) in the period 2008–10, with a series of performances at the Teatro Real in Madrid. In 2012 a new arrangement and interpretation of the original score was worked by Elena Kats-Chernin and commissioned for Barrie Kosky's Monteverdi Trilogy, conducted by André de Ridder, at the Komische Oper Berlin. This scoring was re-worked and premiered again in the same Kosky production in 2017. There are two versions of the Kats-Chernin composition, published by Boosey & Hawkes. ## Music Written early in the history of opera, L'incoronazione di Poppea broke new ground in matching music to stage action, and in its musical reproductions of the natural inflections of the human voice. Monteverdi uses all the means for vocal expression available to a composer of his time—aria, arioso, arietta, ensemble, recitative—although Ringer comments that in this work the boundaries between these forms are more than usually porous. These elements are woven into a continuous fabric which ensures that the music always serves the drama, while maintaining a tonal and formal unity throughout. The characters have strong emotions, fears and desires which are reflected in their music. Thus Poppea's and Nerone's scenes are generally lyrical, sung mainly in the forms of arioso and aria, while Ottavia sings only in dramatic recitative. Seneca's music is bold and compelling, while Ottone's is hesitant and limited in range, "entirely inappropriate for anyone aspiring to be a man of action" according to Carter. Within this arrangement Monteverdi creates enough melodies to ensure that the opera is musically as well as dramatically memorable. Monteverdi employs specific musical devices to signify moods and situations. For example, triple metre signifies the language of love for Nerone and Ottone (unfulfilled in the latter case); forceful arpeggios are used to represent conflict; and the interlacing of texts, written as separate verses by Busenello, indicates sexual tension in the scenes with Nerone and Poppea, and escalates the discord between Nerone and Seneca. The technique of "concitato genere"—rapid semiquavers sung on one note—is used to represent rage. Secret truths may be hinted at as, for example, when Seneca's friends plead with him to reconsider his suicide in a chromatic madrigal chorus which Monteverdi scholar Denis Arnold finds reminiscent of Monteverdi's Mantuan days, carrying a tragic power rarely seen in 17th century opera. This is followed, however, by a cheerful diatonic section by the same singers which, says Rosand, suggests a lack of real sympathy with Seneca's predicament. The descending tetrachord ostinato on which the final duet of the opera is built has been anticipated in the scene in which Nerone and Lucano celebrate Seneca's death, hinting at an ambivalence in the relationship between emperor and poet. According to Rosand: "in both cases it is surely the traditional association of that pattern with sexual love that is being evoked." Arnold asserts that the music of L'incoronazione has greater variety than any other opera by Monteverdi, and that the purely solo music is intrinsically more interesting than that of Il ritorno. The musical peaks, according to commentators, include the final duet (despite its doubtful authorship), Ottavia's act 1 lament, Seneca's farewell and the ensuing madrigal, and the drunken Nerone–Lucano singing competition, often performed with strong homoerotic overtones. Ringer describes this scene as arguably the most brilliant in the whole opera, with "florid, synchronous coloratura by both men creating thrilling, virtuosic music that seems to compel the listener to share in their joy." Rosand finds Nerone's solo aria that closes the scene something of an anticlimax, after such stimulation. Despite continuing debates about authorship, the work is almost always treated as Monteverdi's—although Rosand observes that some scholars attribute it to "Monteverdi" (in quotation marks). Ringer calls the opera "Monteverdi's last and arguably greatest work," a unified masterpiece of "unprecedented depth and individuality". Carter observes how Monteverdi's operas redefined the boundaries of theatrical music, and calls his contribution to 17th-century Venetian opera "remarkable by any standard". Harnoncourt reflects thus: "What is difficult to understand ... is the mental freshness with which the 74-year-old composer, two years before his death, was able to surpass his pupils in the most modern style and to set standards which were to apply to the music theatre of the succeeding centuries." ## List of musical items The table uses the numberings from the 1656 printed version of Busenello's libretto, and includes the two act 2 scenes for which no music exists in the surviving scores. Typically, "scenes" comprise recitative, arioso, aria and ensemble elements, with occasional instrumental (sinfonia) passages. The boundaries between these elements are often indistinct; Denis Arnold, commenting on the musical continuity, writes that "with few exceptions it is impossible to extricate the arias and duets from the fabric of the opera." ## Recording history The first recording of L'incoronazione, with Walter Goehr conducting the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich in a live stage performance, was issued in 1954. This LP version, which won a Grand Prix du Disque in 1954, is the only recording of the opera that predates the revival of the piece that began with the 1962 Glyndebourne Festival production. In 1963 Herbert von Karajan and the Vienna Staatsoper issued a version described by Gramophone as "far from authentic", while the following year John Pritchard and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra recorded an abridged version using Leppard's Glyndebourne orchestration. Leppard conducted a Sadler's Wells production, which was broadcast by the BBC and recorded on 27 November 1971. This is the only recording of the opera in English. Nikolaus Harnoncourt's 1974 version, the first recording without cuts, used period instruments in an effort to achieve a more authentic sound, although Denis Arnold has criticised Harnoncourt's "over-ornamentation" of the score, particularly his use of oboe and trumpet flourishes. Arnold showed more enthusiasm for Alan Curtis's 1980 recording, live from La Fenice in Venice. Curtis uses a small band of strings, recorders and continuo, with a trumpets reserved for the final coronation scene. Subsequent recordings have tended to follow the path of authenticity, with versions from baroque specialists including Richard Hickox and the City of London Baroque Sinfonia (1988), René Jacobs and Concerto Vocale (1990), and John Eliot Gardiner with the English Baroque Soloists. Sergio Vartolo's production of the opera at Pigna, Corsica, was recorded for Brilliant Classics in 2004. A feature of this recording is the casting of a soprano Nerone in acts I and III, and a tenor Nerone in act II, to allow for the differing vocal requirements of the role in these acts. Vartolo accepts that "a staged performance would almost certainly require a different approach". In more recent years, videotape and DVD versions have proliferated. The first was in 1979, a version directed by Harnoncourt with the Zurich Opera and chorus. Leppard's second Glyndebourne production, that of 1984, was released in DVD form in 2004. Since then, productions directed by Jacobs, Christophe Rousset and Marc Minkowski have all been released on DVD, along with Emmanuelle Haïm's 2008 Glyndebourne production in which the Festival finally rejects Leppard's big band version in favour of Haim's period instruments, to give an experience closer to that of the original audience. The 2010 production at the Teatro Real in Madrid, conducted by William Christie, was released on DVD in 2012. ## Editions Since the beginning of the 20th century the score of L'incoronazione has been edited frequently. Some editions, prepared for particular performances (e.g. Westrup's for the 1927 Oxford Town Hall performance) have not been published. The following are the main published editions since 1904. Years of publication often postdate the first performances from these editions. - Hugo Goldschmidt [de] (1904) Breitkopf & Härtel, Leipzig in Studien zur Geschichte der Italienischen Oper im 17 Jahrhundert) - Vincent d'Indy (Paris, 1908) - Gian Francesco Malipiero (Vienna, 1931 in Claudio Monteverdi: Tutte le opere'') - Ernst Krenek (Vienna, 1935) - Giacomo Benvenuti (Milan, 1937) - Giorgio Federico Ghedini (Milan, 1953) - Hans Redlich (Kassel, 1958) - Walter Goehr (Vienna and London, 1960) - Raymond Leppard (London, 1966) - Alan Curtis (London, 1989) - René Jacobs (Cologne, 1990); supposed to restore 'Urfassung', uses Malipiero 1931 edition as framework, commissioned by WDR - Hendrik Schulze (2017), Bärenreiter

McDonnell XF-85 Goblin

Experimental parasite fighter

The McDonnell XF-85 Goblin is an American prototype fighter aircraft conceived during World War II by McDonnell Aircraft. It was intended to deploy from the bomb bay of the giant Convair B-36 bomber as a parasite fighter. The XF-85's intended role was to defend bombers from hostile interceptor aircraft, a need demonstrated during World War II. McDonnell built two prototypes before the Air Force (USAAF) terminated the program. The XF-85 was a response to a USAAF requirement for a fighter to be carried within the Northrop XB-35 and B-36, then under development. This was to address the limited range of existing interceptor aircraft compared to the greater range of new bomber designs. The XF-85 was a diminutive jet aircraft featuring a distinctive potato-shaped fuselage and a forked-tail stabilizer design. The prototypes were built and underwent testing and evaluation in 1948. Flight tests showed promise in the design, but the aircraft's performance was inferior to the jet fighters it would have faced in combat, and there were difficulties in docking. The XF-85 was swiftly canceled, and the prototypes were thereafter relegated to museum exhibits. The 1947 successor to the USAAF, the United States Air Force (USAF), continued to examine the concept of parasite aircraft under three related projects following the cancellation: MX-106 "Tip Tow", FICON, and "Tom-Tom." ## Design and development During World War II, American bombers such as the Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress, Consolidated B-24 Liberator, and Boeing B-29 Superfortress were protected by long-range escort fighters such as the Republic P-47 Thunderbolt and North American P-51 Mustang. These fighters could not match the range of the Northrop B-35 or Convair B-36, the next generation of bombers developed by the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF). The development cost for longer-ranged fighters was high, while aerial refueling was still considered risky and technologically difficult. Pilot fatigue had also been a problem during long fighter escort missions in Europe and the Pacific, giving further impetus to innovative approaches. The USAAF considered a number of different options including the use of remotely piloted vehicles before choosing parasite fighters as the most viable B-36 defense. The concept of a parasite fighter had its origins in 1918, when the Royal Air Force examined the viability of Sopwith Camel parasite fighters operating from their 23-class airships. In the 1930s, the U.S. Navy had a short-lived operational parasite fighter, the Curtiss F9C Sparrowhawk, aboard the airships Akron and Macon. Starting in 1931, aircraft designer Vladimir Vakhmistrov conducted experiments in the Soviet Union as part of the Zveno project during which up to five fighters of various types were carried by Polikarpov TB-2 and Tupolev TB-3 bombers. In August 1941, these combinations flew the only combat missions ever undertaken by parasite fighters – TB-3s carrying Polikarpov I-16SPB dive bombers attacked the Cernavodă bridge and Constantsa docks, in Romania. After that attack, the squadron, based in the Crimea, carried out a tactical attack on a bridge over the river Dnieper at Zaporozhye, which had been captured by advancing German troops. Later in World War II, the Luftwaffe experimented with the Messerschmitt Me 328 as a parasite fighter, but problems with its pulsejet engines could not be overcome. Other late-war rocket-powered parasite fighter projects such as the Arado E.381 and Sombold So 344 were unrealized "paper projects". On 3 December 1942, the USAAF sent out a Request for Proposals (RfP) for a diminutive piston-engined fighter. By January 1944, the Air Technical Service Command refined the RfP and, in January 1945, the specifications were further revised in MX-472 to specify a jet-powered aircraft. Although a number of aerospace companies studied the feasibility of such aircraft, McDonnell was the only company to submit a proposal to the original 1942 request and later revised requirements. The company's Model 27 proposal was completely reworked to meet the new specifications. The initial concept for the Model 27 was for the fighter to be carried half-exposed under the B-29, B-35, or B-36. The USAAF rejected this proposal, citing increased drag, and hence reduced range for the composite bomber-fighter configuration. On 19 March 1945, McDonnell's design team led by Herman D. Barkey, submitted a revised proposal, the extensively redesigned Model 27D. The smaller aircraft had a potato-shaped fuselage, three fork-shaped vertical stabilizers, horizontal stabilizers with a significant dihedral, and 37° swept-back folding wings to allow it to fit in the confines of a bomb bay. The diminutive aircraft measured 14 ft 10 in (4.52 m) long; the folding wings spanned 21 ft (6.4 m). Only a limited fuel supply of 112 US gal (93 imp gal; 420 L) was deemed necessary for the specified 30-minute combat endurance. A hook was installed along the aircraft's center of gravity; in flight, it retracted to lie flat in the upper part of the nose. The aircraft had an empty weight just short of 4,000 pounds (1.8 t). To save weight, the fighter had no landing gear. During the testing program, a fixed steel skid under the fuselage and spring-steel "runners" at the underside of the wingtips were installed in case of an emergency landing. Despite the cramped quarters, the pilot was provided with a cordite ejection seat, bail-out oxygen bottle, and high-speed ribbon parachute. Four .50 in (12.7 mm) machine guns in the nose made up the aircraft's armament. In service, the parasite fighter would be launched and retrieved by a trapeze. With the trapeze fully extended, the engine would be airstarted and the release from the mother ship was accomplished by the pilot pulling the nose back to disengage from the hook. In recovery, the aircraft would approach the mother ship from underneath and link up with the trapeze using the retractable hook in the aircraft's nose. The anticipated production shift would see a mixed B-36 fleet with both "fighter carriers" and bombers employed on missions. There were plans that, from the 24th B-36 onward, provisions would be made to accommodate one XF-85, with a maximum of four per bomber envisioned. Up to 10 percent of the B-36s on order were to be converted to fighter carriers with three or four F-85s instead of a bomb load. On 9 October 1945, the USAAF signed a letter of intent covering the engineering development for two prototypes (US serial numbers 46-523/4), although the contract was not finalized until February 1947. After the successful conclusion of two reviews of a wooden mock-up in 1946 and 1947 by USAAF engineering staff, McDonnell constructed two prototypes in late 1947. The Model 27D was re-designated XP-85, but by June 1948, it was changed to XF-85 and given the name "Goblin". There were plans to acquire 30 production P-85s, but the USAAF took the cautious approach – if test results from the two prototypes were positive, production orders for more than 100 Goblins would be finalized later. ## Operational history During wind tunnel testing at Moffett Field, California, the first prototype XF-85 was accidentally dropped from a crane at a height of 40 ft (12 m), causing substantial damage to the forward fuselage, air intake, and lower fuselage. The second prototype had to be substituted for the remainder of the wind tunnel tests and the initial flight tests. As a production series B-36 was unavailable, all XF-85 flight tests were carried out using a converted EB-29B Superfortress mother ship that had a modified, "cutaway" bomb bay complete with trapeze, front airflow deflector, and an array of camera equipment and instrumentation. Since the EB-29B, named Monstro, was smaller than the B-36, the XF-85 would be flight tested half-exposed. To load the XF-85 into the host plane, a special "loading pit" was dug into the tarmac at South Base, Muroc Field, where all the flight tests originated. On 23 July 1948, the XF-85 flew the first of five captive flights, designed to test whether the EB-29B and its parasite fighter could fly "mated". The XF-85 was carried in a stowed position, but was sometimes tethered and extended into the airstream with the engine off, for the pilot to gain some feel for the aircraft in flight. McDonnell test pilot Edwin Foresman Schoch was assigned to the project, riding in the XF-85 while it was stowed aboard the EB-29B, before attempting a "free" flight on 23 August 1948. After Schoch was released from the bomber at a height of 20,000 ft (6,000 m), he completed a 10-minute proving flight at speeds between 180 and 250 mph (290–400 km/h), testing controls and maneuverability. When he attempted a hook-up, it became obvious the Goblin was extremely sensitive to the bomber's turbulence, as well as being affected by the air cushion created by the two aircraft operating in close proximity. Constant but gentle adjustments of throttle and trim were necessary to overcome the cushioning effect. After three attempts to hook onto the trapeze, Schoch miscalculated his approach and struck the trapeze so violently that the canopy was smashed and ripped free and his helmet and mask were torn off. He saved the prototype by making a belly landing on the reinforced skid at the dry lake bed at Muroc. All flight testing was suspended for seven weeks while the XF-85 was repaired and modified. Schoch used the down period to undertake a series of problem-free dummy dockings with a Lockheed P-80 Shooting Star fighter. After boosting the trim power by 50 percent, adjusting the aerodynamics, and other modifications, two further mated test flights were carried out before Schoch was able to make a successful release and hookup on 14 October 1948. During the fifth free flight on 22 October 1948, Schoch again found it difficult to hook the Goblin to the bomber's trapeze, aborting four attempts before hitting the trapeze bar and breaking the hook on the XF-85's nose. Again, a forced landing was successfully carried out at Muroc. With the first prototype's repairs completed, it also joined the flight test program, completing captive flights. While in flight, the Goblin was stable, easy to fly, and recoverable from spins, although initial estimates of a 648 mph (1,043 km/h) top speed proved optimistic. The first test flights revealed that turbulence during approach to the B-29 was significant, leading to the addition of upper and lower fins at the extreme rear fuselage, as well as two wingtip fins to compensate for the increased directional instability in docking. All the initial flights had the hook secured in a fixed position, but when the hook was stowed and later raised, the resulting buffeting added to the difficulty in attempting a hookup. To address the problem, small aerodynamic fairings were added to the hook well that reduced the buffeting when the hook was extended and retracted. When testing resumed, on the 18 March 1949 test flight, Schoch continued to have difficulty in hooking up, striking and damaging the trapeze's nose-stabilizing section, before resorting to another emergency belly landing. After repairs to the trapeze, Schoch flew the first prototype on 8 April 1949, completing a 30-minute free flight test, but after three attempts, abandoned his efforts and resorted to another belly landing at Muroc. Aware of the problems revealed in flight tests, McDonnell reviewed the program and proposed a new development based on a more conventional design promising a Mach 0.9 capability, using alternatively a 35° swept wing and delta wing. McDonnell also considered adding a telescoping extension to the docking trapeze that would extend the device below the turbulent air under the mother ship. Before any further work on the trapeze, other modifications to the XF-85, or continued design studies on its follow-up could be carried out, the USAF canceled the XF-85 program on 24 October 1949. Two main reasons contributed to the cancellation. The XF-85's deficiencies revealed in flight testing included a lackluster performance in relation to contemporary jet fighters, and the high demands on pilot skill experienced during docking revealed a critical shortcoming that was never fully corrected. The development of practical aerial refueling for conventional fighters used as bomber escort was also a factor in the cancellation. The two Goblins flew seven times, with a total flight time of 2 hours and 19 minutes with only three of the free flights ending in a successful hookup. Schoch was the only pilot who ever flew the aircraft. ## Further developments Despite cancellation of the XF-85, the USAF continued to examine the concept of parasite aircraft as defensive fighters through a series of projects. These included Project MX-106 "Tip Tow", Project FICON, and Project "Tom-Tom" – which involved fighter aircraft attached to bomber aircraft by their wingtips. Project FICON ("fighter conveyor") emerged as an effective Convair GRB-36D and Republic RF-84K Thunderflash combined bomber-reconnaissance-fighter, although the role was changed to that of strategic reconnaissance. Project FICON drew heavily on data from the abortive XF-85 project and closely followed McDonnell's recommendations in designing a more refined trapeze. A total of 10 converted B-36s and 25 reconnaissance fighters saw limited service with the Strategic Air Command in 1955–1956, before they were supplemented by more effective aircraft and satellite systems. ## Aircraft on display After the program's termination, the two XF-85 prototypes were stored, before being surplussed and relegated to museum display in 1950. - 46-0523 – National Museum of the United States Air Force at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio. Following the cancellation of the program, the aircraft was transferred to the museum on 23 August 1950 and was one of the first experimental aircraft to be displayed at the new Air Force Museum. For several decades, the aircraft was displayed alongside the museum's Convair B-36. In 2000, the aircraft was moved to the museum's Experimental Aircraft Hangar. Museum staff and visitors objected to this move, believing the aircraft should be displayed alongside the B-36 to properly represent its original design intentions. - 46-0524 – Strategic Air and Space Museum in Ashland, Nebraska. It was originally transferred to the Norton Air Force Base (near San Bernardino, California) in 1950, still in a damaged state after its last emergency landing. When the base museum was closed and its collection dispersed, the second XF-85 prototype languished in an unrestored condition as part of the Tallmantz private collection in California, until being acquired by Offutt AFB. It is now refurbished and displayed on its ground-handling trestle, nestled under the wing of a B-36J bomber (serial number 52-2217). ## Specifications ## See also

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari

1920 German silent horror film

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (German: Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari) is a 1920 German silent horror film, directed by Robert Wiene and written by Hans Janowitz and Carl Mayer. Considered the quintessential work of German Expressionist cinema, it tells the story of an insane hypnotist (Werner Krauss) who uses a somnambulist (Conrad Veidt) to commit murders. The film features a dark and twisted visual style, with sharp-pointed forms, oblique and curving lines, structures and landscapes that lean and twist in unusual angles, and shadows and streaks of light painted directly onto the sets. The script was inspired by various experiences from the lives of Janowitz and Mayer, both pacifists who were left distrustful of authority after their experiences with the military during World War I. The film makes use of a frame story, with a prologue and epilogue combined with a twist ending. Janowitz has said this device was forced upon the writers against their will. The film's design was handled by Hermann Warm, Walter Reimann and Walter Röhrig, who recommended a fantastic, graphic style over a naturalistic one. The film thematizes brutal and irrational authority. Writers and scholars have argued the film reflects a subconscious need in German society for a tyrant, and is an example of Germany's obedience to authority and unwillingness to rebel against deranged authority. Some critics have interpreted Caligari as representing the German war government, with Cesare symbolic of the common man conditioned, like soldiers, to kill. Other themes of the film include the destabilized contrast between insanity and sanity, the subjective perception of reality, and the duality of human nature. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari was released just as foreign film industries were easing restrictions on the import of German films following World War I, so it was screened internationally. Accounts differ as to its financial and critical success upon release, but modern film critics and historians have largely praised it as a revolutionary film. The film was voted number 12 on the prestigious Brussels 12 list at the 1958 World Expo. Critic Roger Ebert called it arguably "the first true horror film", and film reviewer Danny Peary called it cinema's first cult film and a precursor for arthouse films. Considered a classic, it helped draw worldwide attention to the artistic merit of German cinema and had a major influence on American films, particularly in the genres of horror and film noir. ## Plot In what appears to be a park, Francis sits on a bench with an older man and complains that spirits have driven him away from his family and home. When a dazed woman passes them, Francis explains she is his "fiancée" Jane and that they have suffered a great ordeal. Most of the rest of the film is a flashback of Francis' story, which takes place in Holstenwall, a shadowy village of twisted buildings and spiraling streets. Francis and his friend Alan, who are good-naturedly competing for Jane's affections, plan to visit the town fair. Meanwhile, a mysterious man named Dr. Caligari seeks a permit from the rude town clerk to present a spectacle at the fair, which features Cesare, a somnambulist. The clerk mocks and berates Caligari, but ultimately approves the permit. That night, the clerk is stabbed to death in his bed. The next morning, Francis and Alan visit Caligari's sideshow attraction, where he opens a coffin-like box to reveal the sleeping Cesare. On Caligari's order, Cesare awakens and answers questions from the audience. Despite Francis' protests, Alan asks, "How long shall I live?" To Alan's horror, Cesare answers, "The time is short. You die at dawn!" Later that night, a figure breaks into Alan's home and stabs him to death in his bed. A grief-stricken Francis investigates Alan's murder with help from Jane and her father, Dr. Olsen, who obtains police authorization to investigate the somnambulist. That night, the police apprehend a criminal in possession of a knife who is caught attempting to murder an elderly woman. When questioned by Francis and Dr. Olsen, the criminal confesses he tried to kill the elderly woman, but denies any part in the two previous deaths; he was merely taking advantage of the situation to divert blame away from himself. At night, Francis spies on Caligari and observes what appears to be Cesare sleeping in his box. However, the real Cesare sneaks into Jane's home as she sleeps. He raises a knife to stab her, but instead abducts her after a struggle, dragging her through the window onto the street. Chased by an angry mob, Cesare eventually drops Jane and flees; he soon collapses and dies. Francis confirms that the criminal who confessed to the elderly woman's murder is still locked away and could not have been Jane's attacker. Francis and the police investigate Caligari's sideshow and discover that the "Cesare" sleeping in the box is only a dummy. Caligari escapes in the confusion. Francis follows him and sees Caligari go into an insane asylum. Upon further investigation, Francis is shocked to learn that Caligari is the asylum's director. With help from the asylum staff, Francis studies the director's records and diary while the director is sleeping. The writings reveal his obsession with the story of an 18th-century mystic named Caligari, who used a somnambulist named Cesare to commit murders in northern Italian towns. The director, attempting to understand the earlier Caligari, experiments on a somnambulist admitted to the asylum, who becomes his Cesare. The asylum director screams, "I must become Caligari!" Francis and the doctors call the police to Caligari's office, where they show him Cesare's corpse. Caligari then attacks one of the staff. He is subdued, restrained in a straitjacket, and becomes an inmate in his own asylum. The narrative returns to the present, where Francis concludes his story. In a twist ending, Francis is depicted as an asylum inmate. Jane and Cesare are patients as well; Jane believes that she is a queen, while Cesare is not a somnambulist but awake, quiet, and not visibly dangerous. The man Francis refers to as "Dr. Caligari" is the asylum director. Francis attacks him and is restrained in a straitjacket, then placed in the same cell where Caligari was confined in Francis's story. The asylum director announces that, now that he understands Francis's delusion, he is confident that he can cure him. ## Cast - Werner Krauss as Dr. Caligari - Conrad Veidt as Cesare - Friedrich Fehér as Francis - Lil Dagover as Jane - Hans Heinz v. Twardowski as Alan - Rudolf Lettinger as Dr. Olsen ## Production ### Writing The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari was written by Hans Janowitz and Carl Mayer, both of whom were pacifists by the time they met following World War I. Janowitz served as an officer during the war, but the experience left him embittered with the military, which affected his writing. Mayer feigned madness to avoid military service during the war, which led him to intense examinations from a military psychiatrist. The experience left him distrustful of authority, and the psychiatrist served as a model for the Caligari character. Janowitz and Mayer were introduced in June 1918 by a mutual friend, actor Ernst Deutsch. Both writers were penniless at the time. Gilda Langer, an actress with whom Mayer was in love, encouraged Janowitz and Mayer to write a film together. She later became the basis for the Jane character. Langer also encouraged Janowitz to visit a fortune teller, who predicted that Janowitz would survive his military service during the war, but Langer would die. This prediction proved true, as Langer died unexpectedly in 1920 at the age of 23, and Janowitz said it inspired the scene in which Cesare predicts Alan's death at the fair. Although neither had any associations with the film industry, Janowitz and Mayer wrote a script over six weeks during the winter of 1918–19. In describing their roles, Janowitz called himself "the father who planted the seed, and Mayer the mother who conceived and ripened it". The Expressionist filmmaker Paul Wegener was among their influences. The story was partially inspired by a circus sideshow the two visited on Kantstrasse in Berlin, called "Man or Machine?", in which a man performed feats of great strength after becoming hypnotized. They first visualized the story of Caligari the night of that show. Several of Janowitz's past experiences influenced his writing, including memories of his hometown of Prague, and, as he put it, a mistrust of "the authoritative power of an inhuman state gone mad" due to his military service. Janowitz also believed he had witnessed a murder in 1913 near an amusement park on Hamburg's Reeperbahn, beside the Holstenwall, which served as another inspiration for the script. According to Janowitz, he observed a woman disappear into some bushes, from which a respectable-looking man emerged a few moments later, and the next day Janowitz learned the girl was murdered. Holstenwall later became the name of the town setting in Caligari. Janowitz and Mayer are said to have set out to write a story denouncing arbitrary authority as brutal and insane. Janowitz said it was only years after the film was released that he realized exposing the "authoritative power of an inhuman state" was the "subconscious intention" of the writers. Hermann Warm, who designed the film's sets, said Mayer had no political intentions when he wrote the film. Film historian David Robinson noted that Janowitz did not refer to anti-authority intentions in the script until many decades after Caligari was released, and he suggested Janowitz's recollection may have changed in response to later interpretations of the film. The film they wrote was entitled Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari, using the English spelling Cabinet rather than the German Kabinett. The completed script contained 141 scenes. Janowitz has claimed the name Caligari, which was not settled upon until after the script was finished, was inspired by a rare book called Unknown Letters of Stendhal, which featured a letter from the French novelist Stendhal referring to a French officer named Caligari he met at the La Scala theatre in Milan. However, no record of any such letter exists, and film historian John D. Barlow suggested Janowitz may have fabricated the story. The physical appearance of Caligari was inspired by portraits of the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer. The character's name is spelled Calligaris in the only known surviving script, although in some instances the final s is removed. Other character names are also spelled differently from the final film: Cesare appears as Caesare, Alan is Allan or sometimes Alland and Dr. Olfen is Dr. Olfens. Likewise, unnamed characters in the final film have names in the script, including the town clerk ("Dr. Lüders") and the house-breaker ("Jakob Straat"). The story of Caligari is told abstractly, like a fairy tale, and includes little description about or attention toward the psychological motivations of the characters, which is more heavily emphasized in the film's visual style. The original script shows few traces of the Expressionist influence prevalent in the film's sets and costumes. Through film director Fritz Lang, Janowitz and Mayer met with Erich Pommer, head of production at the Decla-Film studio in Weissensee, on 19 April 1919, to discuss selling the script. According to Pommer, he attempted to get rid of them, but they persisted until he agreed to meet with them. Pommer reportedly asked the writers to leave the script with him, but they refused, and instead Mayer read it aloud to him. Pommer and his assistant, Julius Sternheim, were so impressed that he refused to let them leave until a contract was signed, and he purchased the script from them that night. The writers had originally sought no fewer than 10,000 marks, but were given 3,500, with the promise of another 2,000 once the film went into production and 500 if it was sold for foreign release, which the producers considered unlikely. The contract, today preserved at Berlin's Bundesfilmarchiv, gave Pommer the right to make any changes to the script deemed appropriate. Pommer said he was drawn to the script because he believed it could be filmed inexpensively, and it bore similarities to films inspired by the macabre horror shows of the Grand Guignol theatre in Paris, which were popular at the time. Pommer later said: "They saw in the script an 'experiment'. I saw a relatively cheap film". #### Frame story The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari makes use of a "Rahmenerzählung", or frame story; a prologue and epilogue establish the main body of the film as a delusional flashback, a novel technique. Lang has said that, during early discussions about his possible involvement with the film, he suggested the addition of an opening scene with a "normal" style, which would lead the public into the rest of the film without confusion. It remains unclear whether Lang suggested the frame story structure or simply gave advice on how to write a frame story that was already agreed, and some writers, like David Robinson, have questioned whether Lang's recollection is correct. The director, Robert Wiene, was supportive of the changes. Janowitz has said he and Mayer were not privy to discussions about adding the frame story and strongly opposed its inclusion, believing it had deprived the film of its revolutionary and political significance; he wrote that it was "an illicit violation, a raping of our work" that turned the film "into a cliché ... in which the symbolism was to be lost". Janowitz says the writers sought legal action to stop the change but failed. He also says they did not see the finished film with the frame story until a preview was shown to studio heads, after which the writers "expressed our dissatisfaction in a storm of thunderous remonstrances". They had to be persuaded not to publicly protest against the film. In his 1947 book From Caligari to Hitler, Siegfried Kracauer argued, based largely on an unpublished typescript written and provided by Janowitz, that the film originally included no frame story and started with the fair coming to town and ended with Caligari becoming institutionalized. Kracauer argued that the frame story glorified authority and was added to turn a "revolutionary" film into a "conformistic" one. No surviving copies of the script were believed to exist until the early 1950s when actor Werner Krauss revealed he still had his copy. He refused to part with it; only in 1978, two decades after his death, was it purchased by the German film archive Deutsche Kinemathek. It remained unavailable for public consumption until 1995, when a full transcript was published. The script revealed that a frame story was part of the original Caligari screenplay, albeit a different one from that in the film. The original manuscript opens on an elegant terrace of a large villa, where Francis and Jane are hosting a party and the guests insist that Francis tell them a story that happened to him 20 years earlier. The conclusion to the frame story is missing from the script. Critics widely agree that the discovery of the screenplay strongly undermines Kracauer's theory, with some, like the German film historian Stephen Brockmann, even arguing it disproves his claims altogether. Others, like John D. Barlow, argue that it does not settle the issue, as the original screenplay's frame story simply serves to introduce the main plot, rather than subvert it as the final film's version does. ### Development Many details about the making of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari are in dispute and will probably remain unsettled due to the large number of people involved in the making of the film, many of whom recalled it differently or dramatized their own contributions to its production. Production of the film was delayed about four or five months after the script was purchased. Pommer originally chose Lang as the director of Caligari, and Lang even went so far as to hold preparatory discussions about the script with Janowitz, but he became unavailable due to his involvement with the filming of The Spiders, so Wiene was selected instead. According to Janowitz, Wiene's father, a successful theatre actor, had "gone slightly mad when he could no longer appear on the stage", and Janowitz believed that experience helped Wiene bring an "intimate understanding" to the source material of Caligari. Decla producer Rudolf Meinert introduced Hermann Warm to Wiene and provided Warm with the Caligari script, asking him to come up with proposals for the design. Warm believed "films must be drawings brought to life", and felt a naturalistic set was wrong for the subject of the film, instead recommending a fantastic, graphic style, in which the images would be visionary, nightmarish and out of the ordinary. Warm brought to the project his two friends, painters and stage designers Walter Reimann and Walter Röhrig, both of whom were associated with the Berlin art and literary magazine Der Sturm. The trio spent a full day and part of the night reading the script, after which Reimann suggested an Expressionist style, a style often used in his own paintings. They also conceived the idea of painting forms and shadows directly onto the sets to ensure a dark and unreal look. According to Warm, the three approached Wiene with the idea and he immediately agreed, although Wiene has made claims that he conceived the film's Expressionist style. Meinert agreed to the idea after one day's consideration, telling Warm, Reimann and Röhrig to make the sets as "crazy" and "eccentrically" as possible. He embraced the idea for commercial, not aesthetic reasons: Expressionism was fashionable at the time, so he concluded even if the film received bad reviews, the artistic style would garner attention and make it profitable. Wiene filmed a test scene to demonstrate Warm, Reimann and Röhrig's theories, and it so impressed the producers that the artists were given free rein. Pommer later said he was responsible for placing Warm, Reimann and Röhrig in charge of the sets, but Warm has claimed that, although Pommer was in charge of production at Decla when Caligari was made, he was not actually a producer on the film itself. Instead, he says Meinert was the film's true producer, and that it was he who gave Warm the manuscript. Warm claimed Meinert produced the film "despite the opposition of a part of the management of Decla". Meinert said Pommer had "not sanctioned" the film's abstract visual style. Nevertheless, Pommer claimed to have supervised Caligari, and that the film's Expressionistic style was chosen in part to differentiate it from competing Hollywood films. The predominant attitude at the time was that artistic achievement led to success in exports to foreign film markets. The dominance of Hollywood at the time, coupled with a period of inflation and currency devaluation, forced German film studios to seek projects that could be made inexpensively, with a combination of realistic and artistic elements so the films would be accessible to American audiences, yet also distinctive from Hollywood films. Pommer has claimed while Mayer and Janowitz expressed a desire for artistic experimentation in the film, his decision to use painted canvases as scenery was primarily a commercial one, as they would be a significant financial saving over building sets. Janowitz claims he attempted to commission the sets from designer and engraver Alfred Kubin, known for his heavy use of light and shadow to create a sense of chaos, but Kubin declined to participate in the project because he was too busy. In a conflicting story, however, Janowitz claimed he requested from Decla "Kubin paintings", and that they misread his instructions as "cubist painters" and hired Reimann and Röhrig as a result. David Robinson argues this story was probably an embellishment stemming from Janowitz's disdain for the two artists. Janowitz has claimed that he and Mayer conceived the idea of painting the sets on canvas, and that the shooting script included written directions that the scenery be designed in Kubin's style. However, the later rediscovery of the original screenplay refutes this claim, as it includes no such directions about the sets. This was also disputed in a 1926 article by Barnet Braverman in Billboard magazine, which claimed the script included no mention of an unconventional visual style, and that Janowitz and Mayer in fact strongly opposed the stylization. She claims Mayer later came to appreciate the visual style, but that Janowitz remained opposed to it years after the film's release. The set design, costumes and props took about two weeks to prepare. Warm worked primarily on the sets, while Röhrig handled the painting and Reimann was responsible for the costumes. Robinson noted the costumes in Caligari seem to resemble a wide variety of time periods. For example, Caligari and the fairground workers' costumes resemble the Biedermeier era, while Jane's embody Romanticism. Additionally, Robinson wrote, Cesare's costume and those of policemen in the film appear abstract, while many of the other characters' seem like ordinary German clothes from the 1920s. The collaborative nature of the film's production highlights the importance that both screenwriters and set designers held in German cinema of the 1920s, although film critic Lotte H. Eisner said sets held more importance than anything else in German films at that time. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari was the first German Expressionist film, although Brockmann and film critic Mike Budd claim it was also influenced by German Romanticism; Budd notes the film's themes of insanity and the outcry against authority are common among German Romanticism in literature, theatre and the visual arts. Film scholar Vincent LoBrutto said the theatre of Max Reinhardt and the artistic style of Die Brücke were additional influences on Caligari. ### Casting Janowitz originally intended the part of Cesare to go to his friend, actor Ernst Deutsch. Mayer wrote the part of Jane for Gilda Langer, but by the time the film was cast Langer's interests had moved on from Janowitz and Mayer to director Paul Czinner, leaving the role to be played by Lil Dagover. Janowitz claimed he wrote the part of Caligari specifically for Werner Krauss, whom Deutsch had brought to his attention during rehearsals for a Max Reinhardt play; Janowitz said only Krauss or Paul Wegener could have played the part. The parts of Caligari and Cesare ultimately went to Krauss and Conrad Veidt, respectively, who enthusiastically took part in many aspects of the production. Krauss suggested changes to his own make-up and costumes, including the elements of a top hat, cape and walking stick with an ivory handle for his character. The actors in Caligari were conscious of the need to adapt their make-up, costumes and appearance to match the visual style of the film. Much of the acting in German silent films at the time was already Expressionistic, mimicking the pantomimic aspects of Expressionist theatre. The performances of Krauss and Veidt in Caligari were typical of this style, as they both had experience in Expressionist-influenced theatre, and as a result, John D. Barlow said they appear more comfortable in their surroundings in the film than the other actors. Prior to filming, Kraus and Veidt appeared on stage in the winter of 1918 in an Expressionist drama, Reinhold Goering's Seeschlacht, at the Deutsches Theater. By contrast, Dagover had little experience in Expressionist theatre, and Barlow argues her acting is less harmonious with the film's visual style. Wiene asked the actors to make movements similar to dance, most prominently from Veidt, but also from Krauss, Dagover and Friedrich Feger, who played Francis. Krauss and Veidt are the only actors whose performances fully match the stylization of the sets, which they achieved by concentrating their movements and facial expressions. Barlow notes that "Veidt moves along the wall as if it had 'exuded' him ... more a part of a material world of objects than a human one", and Krauss "moves with angular viciousness, his gestures seem broken or cracked by the obsessive force within him, a force that seems to emerge from a constant toxic state, a twisted authoritarianism of no human scruple and total insensibility". Most of the other actors besides Krauss and Veidt have a more naturalistic style. Alan, Jane and Francis play the roles of an idyllically happy trio enjoying youth; Alan in particular represents the archetype of a sensitive 19th-century student. Mike Budd points out realist characters in stylized settings are a common characteristic in Expressionist theatre. However, David Robinson notes even the performances of the more naturalistic supporting roles in Caligari have Expressionist elements, like Hans-Heinz von Twardowski's "strange, tormented face" as Alan. He also cites Feher's "large angular movements", especially in the scene where he searches the deserted fairground. Other minor roles are Expressionistic in nature, like two policemen who sit facing each other at their desks and move with exaggerated symmetry, and two servants who awaken and rise from their beds in perfect synchronization. Vincent LoBrutto said of the acting in the film: ### Filming Shooting for The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari began at the end of December 1919 and concluded at the end of January 1920. It was shot entirely in a studio without any exterior shots, which was unusual for films of the time, but dictated by the decision to give the film an Expressionist visual style. The extent to which Mayer and Janowitz participated during filming is disputed: Janowitz claims the duo repeatedly refused to allow any script changes during production, and Pommer claimed Mayer was on the set for every day of filming. Hermann Warm, however, claimed they were never present for any of the shooting or involved in any discussions during production. Caligari was filmed in the Lixie-Film studio (formerly owned by Continental-Kunstfilm) at 9 Franz Joseph-Strasse (now Max Liebermannstraße), Weißensee, a north-eastern suburb of Berlin. Decla had been making films at the Lixie studio since October 1919, having previously released three titles, The Plague of Florence (Die Pest in Florenz) (1919) and the two parts of The Spiders (Die Spinnen). The relatively small size of the studio (built some five years earlier in 1914) meant most of the sets used in the film did not exceed six meters in width and depth. Certain elements from the original script had to be cut from the film due to the limited space, including a procession of gypsies, a handcart pushed by Caligari, Jane's carriage, and a chase scene involving horse-cabs. Likewise, the script called for a fairground scene with roundabouts, barrel organs, sideshow barkers, performers and menageries, none of which could be achieved in the restrictive space. Instead, the scenes use a painting of the Holstenwall town as a background; throngs of people walk around two spinning merry-go-round props, which creates the impression of a carnival. The script also made references to modern elements like telephones, telegrams and electric light, but they were eliminated during the filming, leaving the final film's setting with no indication of a specific time period. Several scenes from the script were cut during filming, most of which were brief time lapses or transitioning scenes, or title screens deemed unnecessary. One of the more substantial scenes to be cut involved the ghost of Alan at a cemetery. The scene with the town clerk berating Caligari deviated notably from the original script, which simply called for the clerk to be "impatient". He is far more abusive in the scene as it was filmed, and is perched atop an exaggeratedly high bench that towers over Caligari. Another deviation from the script comes when Caligari first awakens Cesare, one of the most famous moments in the film. The script called for Cesare to gasp and struggle for air, then shake violently and collapse in Caligari's arms. As it was filmed, there is no such physical struggling, and instead the camera zooms in on Cesare's face as he gradually opens his eyes. The original title cards for Caligari featured stylized, misshapen lettering with excessive underlinings, exclamation points and occasionally archaic spellings. The bizarre style, which matches that of the film as a whole, mimics the lettering of Expressionistic posters at the time. The original title cards were tinted in green, steely-blue and brown. Many modern prints of the film do not preserve the original lettering. Photography was provided by Willy Hameister, who went on to work with Wiene on several other films. The camerawork in Caligari is fairly simple and is used primarily to show the sets, mostly alternating between medium shots and straight-on angles, with occasionally abrupt close-ups to create a sense of shock. There are few long shots or panning movement within the cinematography. Likewise, there is very little interscene editing. Most scenes follow the other without intercutting, which gives Caligari more of a theatrical feel than a cinematic one. Heavy lighting is typically absent from the film, heightening the sense of darkness prevalent in the story. However, lighting is occasionally used to intensify the uneasiness created by the distortions of the sets. For example, when Cesare first awakens at the fair, a light is shone directly on a close-up of his heavily made-up face to create an unsettling glow. Additionally, lighting is used in a then-innovative way to cast a shadow against the wall during the scene in which Cesare kills Alan, so the viewer sees only the shadow and not the figures themselves. Lighting techniques like this became frequently used in later German films. ## Visual style The visual style of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is dark, twisted and bizarre; radical and deliberate distortions in perspective, form, dimension and scale create a chaotic and unhinged appearance. The sets are dominated by sharp-pointed forms and oblique and curving lines, with narrow and spiraling streets, and structures and landscapes that lean and twist in unusual angles, giving the impression they could collapse or explode at any given moment. Film critic Roger Ebert described it as "a jagged landscape of sharp angles and tilted walls and windows, staircases climbing crazy diagonals, trees with spiky leaves, grass that looks like knives". The sets are characterized by strokes of bold, black paint. The landscape of Holstenwall is painted on canvas, as opposed to a constructed set, and shadows and streaks of light are painted directly onto the sets, further distorting the viewer's sense of perspective and three-dimensionality. Buildings are clustered and interconnected in a cubist-like architecture, surrounded by dark and twisted back alleys. Lotte Eisner, author of The Haunted Screen, writes that objects in the film appear as if they are coming alive and "seem to vibrate with an extraordinary spirituality". Rudolf Kurtz, screenwriter and author of Expressionismus und Film, likewise wrote "the dynamic force of objects howls their desire to be created". The rooms have radically offset windows with distorted frames, doors that are not squared, and chairs that are too tall. Strange designs and figures are painted on the walls of corridors and rooms, and trees outside have twisted branches that sometimes resemble tentacles. German film professor Anton Kaes wrote, "The style of German Expressionism allowed the filmmakers to experiment with filmic technology and special effects and to explore the twisted realm of repressed desires, unconscious fears, and deranged fixations". The visual style of Caligari conveys a sense of anxiety and terror to the viewer, giving the impression of a nightmare or deranged sensibility, or a place transformed by evil, in a more effective way than realistic locations or conventional design concepts could. Siegfried Kracauer wrote that the settings "amounted to a perfect transformation of material objects into emotional ornaments". The majority of the film's story and scenes are memories recalled by an insane narrator, and as a result the distorted visual style takes on the quality of his mental breakdown, giving the viewers the impression that they are inside the mind of a madman. As with contemporary Expressionist paintings, the visual style of Caligari reflects an emotional reaction to the world, and the film's characters represent an emotional response to the terror of society as embodied by Caligari and Cesare. Often in the film, set pieces are emblematic of the emotional state of the characters in the scene. For example, the courtyard of the insane asylum during the frame story is vastly out of proportion. The characters seem too big for the small building, and the courtyard floor features a bizarre pattern, all of which represent the patients' damaged frames of mind. Likewise, the scene with the criminal in a prison cell features a set with long vertical painted shadows resembling arrowheads, pointing down at the squatting prisoner in an oppressive effect that symbolizes his broken-down state. Stephen Brockmann argues the fact that Caligari was filmed entirely in a studio enhances the madness portrayed by the film's visuals because "there is no access to a natural world beyond the realm of the tortured human psyche". The sets occasionally feature circular images that reflect the chaos of the film, presenting patterns of movement that seem to be going nowhere, such as the merry-go-round at the fair, moving at a titled angle that makes it appear at risk of collapsing. Other elements of the film convey the same visual motifs as the sets, including the costumes and make-up design for Caligari and Cesare, both of which are highly exaggerated and grotesque. Even the hair of the characters is an Expressionistic design element, especially Cesare's black, spiky, jagged locks. They are the only two characters in the film with Expressionistic make-up and costumes, making them appear as if they are the only ones who truly belong in this distorted world. Despite their apparent normalcy, however, Francis and the other characters never appear disturbed by the madness around them reflected in the sets; they instead react as if they are parts of a normal background. A select few scenes disrupt the Expressionistic style of the film, such as in Jane's and Alan's home, which include normal backgrounds and bourgeois furniture that convey a sense of security and tranquility otherwise absent from the film. Eisner called this a "fatal" continuity error, but John D. Barlow disagrees, arguing it is a common characteristic for dream narratives to have some normal elements in them, and that the normalcy of Jane's house in particular could represent the feeling of comfort and refuge Francis feels in her presence. Mike Budd argues while the Expressionistic visual style is jarring and off-putting at first, the characters start to blend more harmoniously as the film progresses, and the setting becomes more relegated into the background. Robinson suggested Caligari is not a true example of Expressionism at all, but simply a conventional story with some elements of the art form applied to it. He argues the story itself is not Expressionistic, and the film could have easily been produced in a traditional style, but that Expressionist-inspired visuals were applied to it as decoration. Similarly, Budd has called the film a conventional, classical narrative, resembling a detective story in Francis's search to expose Alan's killer, and said it is only the film's Expressionist settings that make the film transgressive. Hans Janowitz has entertained similar thoughts as well: "Was this particular style of painting only a garment in which to dress the drama? Was it only an accident? Would it not have been possible to change this garment, without injury to the deep effect of the drama? I do not know." ## Release Though often considered an art film by some modern critics and scholars, Caligari was produced and marketed the same way as a normal commercial production of its time period, able to target both the elite artistic market as well as a more commercial horror genre audience. The film was marketed extensively leading up to the release, and advertisements ran even before the film was finished. Many posters and newspaper advertisements included the enigmatic phrase featured in the film, "Du musst Caligari werden!", or "You must become Caligari!" Caligari premiered at the Marmorhaus theatre in Berlin on 26 February 1920, less than one month after it was completed. The filmmakers were so nervous about the release that Erich Pommer, on his way to the theatre, reportedly exclaimed, "It will be a horrible failure for all of us!" As with the making of the film, several urban legends surround the film's premiere. One, offered by writers Roger Manvell and Heinrich Fraenkel in The German Cinema, suggests the film was shelved "for lack of a suitable outlet", and was only shown at Marmorhaus because another film had fallen through. Another suggested the theatre pulled the film after only two performances because audiences demanded refunds and demonstrated against it so strongly. This story was told by Pommer, who claimed the Marmorhaus picked Caligari back up and ran it successfully for three months after he spent six months working on a publicity campaign for the film. David Robinson wrote that neither of these urban legends were true, and that the latter was fabricated by Pommer to increase his own reputation. On the contrary, Robinson said the premiere was highly successful, showing at the theatre for four weeks, an unusual amount for the time, and then returning two weeks later. He said it was so well received that women in the audience screamed when Cesare opened his eyes during his first scene, and fainted during the scene in which Cesare abducts Jane. Caligari was released at a time when foreign film industries had just started easing restrictions on the import of German films following World War I. The film was acquired for American distribution by the Goldwyn Distributing Company, and had its American premiere at the Capitol Theatre in New York City on 3 April 1921. It was given a live theatrical prologue and epilogue, which was not unusual for film premieres at major theatres at the time. In the prologue, the film is introduced by a character called "Cranford", who identifies himself as the man Francis speaks with in the opening scene. In the epilogue, Cranford returns and exclaims that Francis has fully recovered from his madness. Mike Budd believes these additions simplified the film and "adjusted [it] for mass consumption", though Robinson argued it was simply a normal theatrical novelty for the time. Capitol Theatre runner Samuel Roxy Rothafel commissioned conductor Ernö Rapée to compile a musical accompaniment that included portions of songs by composers Johann Strauss III, Arnold Schoenberg, Claude Debussy, Igor Stravinsky and Sergei Prokofiev. Rotafel wanted the score to match the dark mood of the film, saying: "The music had, as it were, to be made eligible for citizenship in a nightmare country". Caligari had its Los Angeles premiere at Miller's Theater on 7 May 1921, but the theatre was forced to pull it due to demonstrations by protestors. However, the protest was organized by the Hollywood branch of the American Legion due to fears of unemployment stemming from the import of German films into America, not over objections to the content of Caligari itself. After running in large commercial theatres, Caligari began to be shown in smaller theatres and film societies in major cities. Box office figures were not regularly published in the 1920s, so it has been difficult to assess the commercial success or failure of Caligari in the United States. Film historians Kristin Thompson and David B. Pratt separately studied trade publications from the time in an attempt to make a determination, but reached conflicting findings; Thompson concluded it was a box office success and Pratt concluded it was a failure. However, both agreed it was more commercially successful in major cities than in theatres in smaller communities, where tastes were considered more conservative. Caligari did not immediately receive a wide distribution in France due to fears over the import of German films, but film director Louis Delluc organized a single screening of it on 14 November 1921, at the Colisée cinema in Paris as part of a benefit performance for the Spanish Red Cross. Afterward, the Cosmograph company bought the film's distribution rights and premiered it at the Ciné-Opéra on 2 March 1922. Caligari played in one Paris theatre for seven consecutive years, a record that remained intact until the release of Emmanuelle (1974). According to Janowitz, Caligari was also shown in such European cities as London, Rome, Amsterdam, Stockholm, Brussels, Prague, Vienna, Budapest and Bucharest, as well as outside Europe in China, Japan, India and Turkey, and also in South American nations. ## Reception ### Critical response There are differing accounts as to how Caligari was first received by audiences and critics immediately after its release. Stephen Brockmann, Anton Kaes and film theorist Kristin Thompson say it was popular with both the general public and well-respected by critics. Robinson wrote, "The German critics, almost without exception, ranged from favourable to ecstatic". Kracauer said critics were "unanimous in praising Caligari as the first work of art on the screen", but also said it was "too high-brow to become popular in Germany". Barlow said it was often the subject of critical disapproval, which he believes is because early film reviewers attempted to assign fixed definitions to the young art of cinema, and thus had trouble accepting the bizarre and unusual elements of Caligari. Some critics felt it imitated a stage production too closely. Other commentators, like critic Herbert Ihering and novelist Blaise Cendrars, objected to the presentation of the story as a madman's delusion because they felt it belittled Expressionism as an artform. Theatre critic Helmut Grosse condemned the film's visual design as clichéd and derivative, calling it a "cartoon and [a] reproduction of designs rather than from what actually took place on stage". Several reviewers, like Kurt Tucholsky and Blaise Cendrars, criticized the use of real actors in front of artificially-painted sets, saying it created an inconsistent level of stylization. Critic Herbert Ihering echoed this point in a 1920 review: "If actors are acting without energy and are playing within landscapes and rooms which are formally 'excessive', the continuity of the principle is missing". While Robinson said the response from American critics was largely positive and enthusiastic, Kaes said American critics and audiences were divided: some praised its artistic value and others, particularly those distrustful of Germany following World War I, wished to ban it altogether. Some in the Hollywood film industry felt threatened by the potential rivalry and spoke out against Caligari's release, condemning it as a "foreign invasion". Nevertheless, the film remained popular in the United States. Several American reviewers compared it to an Edgar Allan Poe story, including in a 1921 review in Variety magazine, which praised the direction and "perfect tempo" of the film, as well as the sets that "squeeze and turn and adjust the eye, and through the eye the mentality". A New York Times review likened it to modernist art, comparing the film's sets to Marcel Duchamp's Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2, and said the film "gives dimensions and meaning to shape, making it an active part of the story, instead of merely the conventional and inert background", which was key to the film's "importance as a work of cinematography". Albert Lewin, a critic who eventually became a film director and screenwriter, called Caligari "the only serious picture, exhibited in America so far, that in anything like the same degree has the authentic thrills and shock of art". A story in a November 1921 edition of Exceptional Photoplays, an independent publication issued by the National Board of Review of Motion Pictures, said it "occupies the position of unique artistic merit", and said American films in comparison looked like they were made for "a group of defective adults at the nine-year-old level". Caligari was a critical success in France, but French filmmakers were divided in their opinions after its release. Abel Gance called it "superb" and wrote, "What a lesson to all directors!" and René Clair said it "overthrew the realist dogma" of filmmaking. Film critic and director Louis Delluc said the film has a compelling rhythm: "At first slow, deliberately laborious, it attempts to irritate. Then when the zigzag motifs of the fairground start turning, the pace leaps forward, agitato, accelerando, and leaves off only at the word 'End', as abruptly as a slap in the face." Jean Epstein, however, called it "a prize example of the abuse of décor in the cinema" and said it "represents a grave sickness of cinema". Likewise, Jean Cocteau called it "the first step towards a grave error which consists of flat photography of eccentric decors, instead of obtaining surprise by means of the camera". French critic Frédéric-Philippe Amiguet wrote of the film: "It has the odor of tainted food. It leaves a taste of cinders in the mouth." The Russian director Sergei Eisenstein especially disliked Caligari, calling it a "combination of silent hysteria, partially coloured canvases, daubed flats, painted faces, and the unnatural broken gestures and action of monstrous chimaeras". While early reviews were more divided, modern film critics and historians have largely praised Caligari as a revolutionary film. Film reviewer Roger Ebert called it arguably "the first true horror film", and critic Danny Peary called it cinema's first cult film and a precursor for arthouse films. In October 1958, Caligari was ranked as the twelfth-best film of all time during a poll organized at the Brussels World's Fair. With input from 117 film critics, filmmakers and historians from around the world, it was the first universal film poll in history. American film historian Lewis Jacobs said "its stylized rendition, brooding quality, lack of explanation, and distorted settings were new to the film world". Film historian and critic Paul Rotha wrote of it, "For the first time in the history of the cinema, the director has worked through the camera and broken with realism on the screen; that a film could be effective dramatically when not photographic and finally, of the greatest possible importance, that the mind of the audience was brought into play psychologically". Likewise, Arthur Knight wrote in Rogue: "More than any other film, (Caligari) convinced artists, critics and audiences that the movie was a medium for artistic expression". Entertainment Weekly included Caligari in their 1994 "Guide to the Greatest Movies Ever Made", calling it a "landmark silent film" and saying, "No other film's art direction has ever come up with so original a visualization of dementia". The film holds an approval rating of 96% on Rotten Tomatoes based on 80 reviews, with a weighted average of 9.30/10. The site's critics' consensus states: "Arguably the first true horror film, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari set a brilliantly high bar for the genre – and remains terrifying nearly a century after it first stalked the screen." Akira Kurosawa, the legendary Japanese director, named this movie as one of his 100 favorite films. ### Legacy Caligari is considered the quintessential work of German Expressionist cinema, and by far the most famous example of it. It is considered a classic film, often shown in introductory film courses, film societies and museums, and is one of the most famous German films from the silent era. Film scholar Lewis Jacobs called it the "most widely discussed film of the time". Caligari helped draw worldwide attention to the artistic merit of German cinema, while also bringing legitimacy to the cinema among literary intellectuals within Germany itself. Lotte Eisner has said it was in Expressionism, as epitomized in Caligari, that "the German cinema found its true nature". The term caligarism was coined as a result, referring to a style of similar films that focus on such themes as bizarre madness and obsession, particularly through the use of visual distortion. Expressionism was late in coming to cinema, and by the time Caligari was released, many German critics felt the art form had become commercialized and trivialized; such well-known writers as Kasimir Edschmid, René Schickele, and Yvan Goll had already pronounced the Expressionist movement dead by the time Caligari arrived in theatres. Few other purely Expressionistic films were produced, and Caligari was the only one readily accessible for several decades. Among the few films to fully embrace the Expressionist style were Genuine (1920) and Raskolnikow (1923), both directed by Wiene, as well as From Morn to Midnight (1920), Torgus (1921), Das Haus zum Mond (1921), Haus ohne Tür und ohne Fenster (1921) and Waxworks. While few other purely Expressionistic films were made, Caligari still had a major influence over other German directors, and many of the film's Expressionist elements – particularly the use of setting, light and shadow to represent the dark psychology of its characters – became prevalent in German cinema. Among the films to use these elements were Murnau's Nosferatu (1922) and The Last Laugh (1924), G. W. Pabst's Secrets of a Soul (1926), and Lang's Metropolis (1927) and M (1931). The success of Caligari also affected the way in which German films were produced during the 1920s. For example, the majority of major German films over the next few years moved away from location shooting and were fully filmed in studios, which assigned much more importance to designers in German cinema. Robinson argues this led to the rise of a large number of film designers – such as Hans Dreier, Rochus Gliese, Albin Grau, Otto Hunte, Alfred Junge, Erich Kettelhut and Paul Leni – and that effect was felt abroad as many of these talents later emigrated from Germany with the rise of the National Socialist German Workers Party. Additionally, the success of Caligari's collaborative effort – including its director, set designers and actors – influenced subsequent film production in Germany for many years, making teamwork a hallmark of German cinema in the Weimar Republic. The effect of Caligari was felt not just in German cinema, but internationally as well. Both Rotha and film historian William K. Everson wrote that the film probably had as much of a long-term effect on Hollywood directors as Battleship Potemkin (1925). In his book The Film Til Now, Rotha wrote that Caligari and Potemkin were the "two most momentous advances in the development of the cinema", and said Caligari "served to attract to the cinema audience many people who had hitherto regarded the film as the low watermark of intelligence". Caligari influenced the style and content of Hollywood films in the 1920s and early 1930s, particularly in films such as The Bells (1926), The Man Who Laughs (1928) and Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932), and had a major influence on American horror films of the 1930s, some of which featured an antagonist using Caligari-like supernatural abilities to control others, such as Dracula (1931), Svengali (1931) and The Mad Genius (1931). Kaes said both Caligari's stylistic elements, and the Cesare character in particular, influenced the Universal Studios horror films of the 1930s, which often prominently featured some sort of monster, such as Frankenstein (1931), The Mummy (1932), The Black Cat (1934), and Bride of Frankenstein (1935). The Expressionism of Caligari also influenced American avant-garde film, particularly those that used fantastic settings to illustrate an inhuman environment overpowering an individual. Early examples include The Fall of the House of Usher (1928), The Last Moment (1928) and The Life and Death of 9413: a Hollywood Extra (1928). LoBrutto wrote, "Few films throughout motion picture history have had more influence on the avant-garde, art, and student cinema than Caligari". Caligari and German Expressionism heavily influenced the American film noir period of the 1940s and '50s, both in visual style and narrative tone. Noir films tended to portray everyone, even the innocent, as the object of suspicion, a common thread in Caligari. The genre also employs several Expressionistic elements in its dark and shadowy visual style, stylized and abstract photography, and distorted and expressive make-up and acting. Caligari also influenced films produced in the Soviet Union, such as Aelita (1924) and The Overcoat (1926). Observers have noted the black and white films of Ingmar Bergman bear a resemblance to the German films of the 1920s, and film historian Roy Armes has called him "the true heir" of Caligari. Bergman himself, however, has downplayed the influence of German Expressionism on his work. Caligari has also affected stage theatre. Siegfried Kracauer wrote that the film's use of the iris shot has been mimicked in theatrical productions, with lighting used to single out a lone actor. Caligari continues to be one of the most discussed and debated films from the Weimar Republic. Two major books have played a large part in shaping the perception of the film and its effect on cinema as a whole: Siegfried Kracauer's From Caligari to Hitler (1947) and Lotte Eisner's The Haunted Screen (1974). From Caligari to Hitler based its claims about the film largely on an unpublished typescript by Hans Janowitz called Caligari: The Story of a Famous Story, which gave Janowitz and Carl Mayer principal credit for the making of Caligari. Mike Budd wrote of Kracauer's book: "Perhaps no film or period has been so thoroughly understood through a particular interpretation as has Caligari, and Weimar cinema generally, through Kracauer's social-psychological approach". Prior to the publication of From Caligari to Hitler, few critics had derived any symbolic political meaning from the film, but Kracauer's argument that it symbolized German obedience toward authority and a premonition of the rise of Adolf Hitler drastically changed attitudes about Caligari. Many of his interpretations of the film are still embraced, even by those who have strongly disagreed with his general premise, and even as certain claims Kracauer made have been disproven, such as his statement that the original script included no frame story. Eisner's book, meanwhile, placed Caligari into historical context by identifying how it influenced Expressionist features in other films of the 1920s. Film historian David Robinson claimed Wiene, despite being the director of Caligari, is often given the least amount of credit for its production. He believes this is in part because Wiene died in 1938, closer to the release of the film than any other major collaborators, and was therefore unable to defend his involvement in the work while others took credit. In fact, Robinson argues Caligari ultimately hurt Wiene's reputation because his subsequent films did not match its success, so he is often wrongly considered "a one-film director" for whom Caligari was "a lucky fluke". Japanese visual kei rock band Cali Gari derived their name from the film. ## Themes and interpretations ### Authority and conformity Caligari, like a number of Weimar films that followed it, thematizes brutal and irrational authority by making a violent and possibly insane authority figure its antagonist. Kracauer said Caligari was symbolic of the German war government and fatal tendencies inherent in the German system, saying the character "stands for an unlimited authority that idolizes power as such, and, to satisfy its lust for domination, ruthlessly violates all human rights and values". Likewise, John D. Barlow described Caligari as an example of the tyrannical power and authority that had long plagued Germany, while Cesare represents the "common man of unconditional obedience". Janowitz has claimed Cesare represents the common citizen who is conditioned to kill or be killed, just as soldiers are trained during their military service, and that Caligari is symbolic of the German government sending those soldiers off to die in the war. The control Caligari wields over the minds and actions of others results in chaos and both moral and social perversion. Cesare lacks any individuality and is simply a tool of his master; Barlow writes that he is so dependent on Caligari that he falls dead when he strays too far from the source of his sustenance, "like a machine that has run out of fuel". In his book From Caligari to Hitler, Kracauer argues the Caligari character is symptomatic of a subconscious need in German society for a tyrant, which he calls the German "collective soul". Kracauer argues Caligari and Cesare are premonitions of Adolf Hitler and his rule over Germany, and that his control over the weak-willed, puppet-like somnambulist prefigures aspects of the mentality that allowed the Nazi Party to rise. He calls Caligari's use of hypnotism to impose his will foreshadowing of Hitler's "manipulation of the soul". Kracauer described the film as an example of Germany's obedience to authority and failure or unwillingness to rebel against deranged authority, and reflects a "general retreat" into a shell that occurred in post-war Germany. Cesare symbolizes those who have no mind of their own and must follow the paths of others; Kracauer wrote he foreshadows a German future in which "self-appointed Caligaris hypnotized innumerable Cesares into murder". Barlow rejects Kracauer's claims that the film glorifies authority "just because it has not made a preachy statement against it", and said the connection between Caligari and Hitler lies in the mood the film conveys, not an endorsement of such tyrant on the film's part. Everyday reality in Caligari is dominated by tyrannical aspects. Authorities sit atop high perches above the people they deal with and hold offices out of sight at the end of long, forbidding stairways. Most of the film's characters are caricatures who fit neatly into prescribed social roles, such as the outraged citizens chasing a public enemy, the authoritarian police who are deferential to their superiors, the oft-harassed bureaucratic town clerk, and the asylum attendants who act like stereotypical "little men in white suits". Only Caligari and Cesare are atypical of social roles, instead serving as, in Barlow's words, "abstractions of social fears, the incarnations of demonic forces of a nightmarish world the bourgeoisie was afraid to acknowledge, where self-assertion is pushed to willful and arbitrary power over others". Kracauer wrote the film demonstrates a contrast between the rigid control, represented by such characters as Caligari and the town clerk, and chaos, represented by the crowds of people at the fair and the seemingly never-ending spinning of the merry-go-rounds. He said the film leaves no room for middle ground between these two extremes, and that viewers are forced to embrace either insanity or authoritarian rigidity, leaving little space for human freedom. Kracauer writes: "Caligari exposes the soul wavering between tyranny and chaos, and facing a desperate situation: any escape from tyranny seems to throw it into a state of utter confusion". Caligari is not the only symbol of arrogant authority in the film. In fact, he is a victim of harsh authority himself during the scene with the dismissive town clerk, who brushes him off and ignores him to focus on his paperwork. Film historian Thomas Elsaesser argues that Caligari's murderous rampage through Cesare can be seen as a rebellious, anti-authoritarian streak in response to such experiences as these, even in spite of his own authoritarianism. The Expressionistic set design in this scene further amplifies the power of the official and the weakness of his supplicant; the clerk towers in an excessively high chair over the small and humiliated Caligari. The scene represents class and status differences, and conveys the psychological experience of being simultaneously outraged and powerless in the face of a petty bureaucracy. Another common visual motif is the use of stairways to illustrate the hierarchy of authority figures, such as the multiple stairs leading up to police headquarters, and three staircases ascending to Caligari in the asylum. Francis expresses resentment of all forms of authority, particularly during the end of the frame story, when he feels he has been institutionalized because of the madness of the authorities, not because there is anything wrong with him. Francis can be seen, at least within the main narrative, as a symbol of reason and enlightenment triumphing over the irrational tyrant and unmasking the absurdity of social authority. But Kracauer contended the frame story undermines that premise. He argues if not for the frame story, the tale of Francis's efforts against Caligari would have been a praiseworthy example of independence and rebellion against authority. However, with the addition of the frame story, which places the veracity of Francis's claims into question, Kracauer argues the film glorifies authority and turns a reactionary story into an authoritarian film: "The result of these modifications was to falsify the action and to ultimately reduce it to the ravings of a madman." Kracauer believed these changes were not necessarily intentional, but rather an "instinctive submission to the necessities of the screen" because commercial films had to "answer to mass desires". Fritz Lang disagreed with Kracauer's argument, and instead believes the frame story makes the film's revolutionary inclinations more convincing, not less. David Robinson said, as time passed, filmgoers have been less inclined to interpret the film as a vindication of authority because modern audiences have grown more skeptical of authority in general, and are more inclined to believe Francis's story and interpret the asylum director as wrongly committing Francis to silence him. ### Point of view and perception of reality Another major theme of Caligari is, Stephen Brockmann writes, "the destabilized contrast between insanity and sanity and hence the destabilization of the very notion of sanity itself". By the end of the film, according to Brockman, viewers realize the story they have been watching has been told from the perspective of an insane narrator, and therefore they cannot accept anything they have seen as reliable. The film's unusual visual abstractions and other stylized elements serve to show the world as one experienced by a madman. Similarly, the film has been described as portraying the story as a nightmare and the frame story as the real world. John D. Barlow said the film exemplifies a common Expressionist theme that "the ultimate perception of reality will appear distorted and insane to the healthy and practical mind". The film serves as a reminder that any story told through a flashback subjectivizes the story from the perspective of the narrator. At the end of the film, the asylum director gives no indication that he means Francis ill will, and in fact he seems, to Barlow, to truly care for his patients. But Francis nevertheless believes he is being persecuted, so in the story as told from his perspective, Caligari takes on the role of persecutor. However, the Expressionistic visual elements of the film are present not only in the main narrative, but also in the epilogue and prologue scenes of the frame story, which are supposed to be an objective account of reality. For example, the frame story scenes still have trees with tentacle-like branches and a high, foreboding wall in the background. Strange leaf and line patterns are seen on the bench Francis sits upon, flame-like geometric designs can be seen on the walls, and his asylum cell has the same distorted shape as in the main narrative. If the primary story were strictly the delusions of a madman, the frame story would be completely devoid of those elements, but the fact they are present makes it unclear whether that perspective can be taken as reliable either. Instead, the film offers no true or normal world to oppose to that of the twisted and nightmarish world as described by Francis. As a result, after the film's closing scene, it can be seen as ambiguous whether Francis or the asylum director is truly the insane one, or whether both are insane. Likewise, the final shot of the film, with an iris that fades to a close-up on the asylum director's face, further creates doubt over whether the character is actually sane and trustworthy. In Brockman's words, "In the end, the film is not just about one unfortunate madman; it is about an entire world that is possibly out of balance". Mike Budd notes that, during the scene in which asylum doctors restrain Francis, his movements closely mimic those of Caligari from a similar scene during the main story. Budd says this suggests a "dream logic of repetition" that throws further confusion on which perspective is reality. Beyond Francis's individual circumstances, the use of the narrator's perspective in Dr. Caligari can be seen as reflective of a worldview of the screenwriters. Mayer and Janowitz were pacifists opposed to what Eisner described as the willingness of Germans to commit themselves to the dark forces, such as demoniac magic and supernatural powers, that led to death on the battlefield. Although he does not think it possible to reduce the narrative or the film to the beliefs of its makers, Eisner claims Francis can be seen as embodying the politics of Expressionism's anti-naturalism, through which a protagonist does not see the world objectively, but has "visions" that are abstracted from individuality and psychology. The framing device of an insane asylum, for Eisner, has a broader connotation as a statement on social reality in the context of the "state of exception". Here, Eisner claims, the militarist and imperialist tendency of monopoly capitalism is combined with what Sigmund Freud would later refer to as the longing for protection by a tyrannical father figure, or what Kracauer characterized as "asocial authority". ### Double life Duality is another common theme in Caligari. Caligari is portrayed in the main narrative as an insane tyrant, and in the frame story as a respected authority and director of a mental institution. As a result of this duality, it is possible for the viewer to suspect a malevolent aspect of him at the conclusion of the film, even despite evidence indicating he is a kind and caring man. Even within the main narrative alone, Caligari lives a double life: holding a respectable position as the asylum director, but becoming a hypnotist and murderer at night. Additionally, the character is actually a double of the "real" Caligari, an 18th-century mystic whom the film character becomes so obsessed with that he desires to penetrate his innermost secrets and "become Caligari". Francis also takes on a double life of sorts, serving as the heroic protagonist in the main narrative and a patient in a mental institution in the frame story. Anton Kaes described the story Francis tells as an act of transference with his psychiatrist, as well as a projection of his feelings that he is a victim under the spell of the all-powerful asylum director, just as Cesare is the hypnotized victim of Caligari. The Cesare character serves as both a persecutor and a victim, as he is both a murderer and the unwilling slave of an oppressive master. Siegfried Kracauer said by coupling a fantasy in which Francis overthrows a tyrannical authority with a reality in which authority triumphs over Francis, Caligari reflects a double aspect of German life, suggesting they reconsider their traditional belief in authority even as they embrace it. A contrast between levels of reality exists not only in the characterizations, but in the presentation of some of the scenes as well. This, Barlow writes, "reveals a contrast between external calm and internal chaos". For example, flashback scenes when Francis reads Caligari's diary, in which the doctor is shown growing obsessed with learning hypnotic powers, take place as Caligari is sleeping peacefully in the present. Another example is the fair, which on the surface appears to represent fun and escapism, but reveals a lurking sense of chaos and disaster in the form of Caligari and Cesare. The visual elements of the film also convey a sense of duality, particularly in the contrasts between black and white. This is especially prevalent in the sets, where black shadows are set against white walls, but also in other elements like the costumes and make-up. For instance, Caligari wears mostly black, but white streaks are present in his hair and on his gloves. Cesare's face is a ghostly white, but the darks of his eyes are heavily outlined in black. Likewise, Jane's white face contrasts with her deep, dark eyes. ### Reflection on post-World War 1 Germany Critics have suggested that Caligari highlights some of the neuroses prevalent in Germany and the Weimar Republic when the film was made, particularly in the shadow of World War I, at a time when extremism was rampant, reactionaries still controlled German institutions, and citizens feared the harm the Treaty of Versailles would have on the economy. Siegfried Kracauer wrote that the paranoia and fear portrayed in the film were signs of things to come in Germany, and that the film reflected a tendency in Germans to "retreat into themselves" and away from political engagement following the war. Vincent LoBrutto wrote that the film can be seen as a social or political analogy of "the moral and physical breakdown of Germany at the time, with a madman on the loose wreaking havoc on a distorted and off-balanced society, a metaphor for a country in chaos". Anton Kaes, who called Caligari "an aggressive statement about war psychiatry, murder and deception", wrote that Alan's question to Cesare, "How long have I to live?" reflected the trauma German citizens experienced during the war, as that question was often on the minds of soldiers and of family members back home concerned about their loved ones in the military. Francis's despair after Alan's murder can likewise be compared to that of the many soldiers who survived the war but saw their friends die on the battlefield. Kaes noted other parallels between the film and war experiences, noting that Cesare attacked Alan at dawn, a common time for attacks during the war. Thomas Elsaesser called Caligari an "outstanding example of how 'fantastic' representations in German films from the early 1920s seem to bear the imprint of pressures from external events, to which they refer only through the violence with which they disguise and disfigure them". ## Sequels, remakes and musical works ### Film Several unsuccessful attempts were made to produce sequels and remakes in the decades following Caligari's release. Robert Wiene bought the rights to Caligari from Universum Film AG in 1934 with the intention of filming a sound remake, which never materialized before Wiene's death in 1938. He intended to cast Jean Cocteau as Cesare, and a script, believed to be written by Wiene, indicated the Expressionist style would have been replaced with a French surrealist style. In 1944, Erich Pommer and Hans Janowitz each separately attempted to obtain the legal rights to the film, with hopes of a Hollywood remake. Pommer attempted to argue he had a better claim to the rights because the primary value of the original film came not from the writing, but "in the revolutionary way the picture was produced". However, both Janowitz and Pommer ran into complications related to the invalidity of Nazi law in the United States, and uncertainty over the legal rights of sound and silent films. Janowitz wrote a treatment for a remake, and in January 1945 was offered a minimum guarantee of \$16,000 against a five-percent royalty for his rights to the original film for a sequel to be directed by Fritz Lang, but the project never came to fruition. Later, Janowitz planned a sequel called Caligari II, and unsuccessfully attempted to sell the property to a Hollywood producer for \$30,000. Around 1947, Hollywood agent Paul Kohner and German filmmaker Ernst Matray also planned a Caligari sequel; Matray and his wife Maria Solveg wrote a screenplay called The Return of Caligari. That script would have reimagined Caligari as a former Nazi officer and war criminal, but the film was never produced. In 1960, independent Hollywood producer Robert Lippert acquired the rights to Caligari from Matray and Universum Film AG for \$50,000, and produced a film called The Cabinet of Caligari, which was released in 1962. Screenwriter Robert Bloch did not intend to write a Caligari remake, and in fact the title was forced upon his untitled screenplay by director Roger Kay. The film had few similarities to the original Caligari except for its title and a plot twist at the end, in which it is revealed the story was simply the delusion of the protagonist, who believed she was being held captive by a character named Caligari. Instead, he was her psychiatrist, and he cures her at the end of the film. A quasi-sequel, called Dr. Caligari, was released in 1989, directed by Stephen Sayadian and starring Madeleine Reynal as the granddaughter of the original Caligari, now running an asylum and performing bizarre hormonal experiments on its patients. The sex-driven story ultimately had little in common with the original film. In 1992, theatre director Peter Sellars released his only feature film, The Cabinet of Dr. Ramirez, an experimental film loosely based on Caligari. However, the storyline was created as the film was being made, so it has few similarities with the original film. The film was screened only at the 1992 Sundance Film Festival and never theatrically released. An independent film remake of Caligari edited, written and directed by David Lee Fisher was released in 2005, in which new actors were placed in front of the actual backdrops from the original film. The actors performed in front of a green screen, then their performances were superimposed in front of matte shots based on the original sets. Doug Jones played the role of Cesare. ### Music and stage Numerous musicians have composed new scores to accompany the film. The Club Foot Orchestra premiered a score penned by ensemble founder and artistic director Richard Marriott in 1987. The Israeli Electronica group TaaPet composed a soundtrack for the film and performed it several times through Israel in 2000. The British composer and musician Geoff Smith composed a new soundtrack for the film in 2003. The Dutch psychedelic band Monomyth composed a new score and performed it during a screening of Caligari at the Imagine Film Festival in the Netherlands in April 2016. Bertelsmann/BMG commissioned Timothy Brock to adapt his 1996 score for string orchestra for a 2014 restoration; Brock conducted the premiere in Brussels on 15 September 2014. In 2012, the Chatterbox Audio Theatre recorded a live soundtrack, including dialogue, sound effects, and music for Caligari, which was released on YouTube on 30 October 2013. Two new scores were recorded for a 2016 DVD release of Caligari: a traditional score by Timothy Brock performed by the Brussels Philharmonic, and an electroacoustic score by Edison Studio, a collective of composers. In 1981, Bill Nelson was asked by the Yorkshire Actors Company to create a soundtrack for a stage adaptation of the film. That music was later recorded for his 1982 album Das Kabinet (The Cabinet Of Doctor Caligari). In 1983, the German TV station ZDF commissioned composer Peter Michael Hamel to create a new score for a restoration of the film, based on a 1921 print. The version with Hamel's music premiered on ZDF in May 1983, and was subsequently broadcast during the 1980s and 1990s on TV stations in a number of European countries, including Spain and Poland. Caligari was adapted into an opera in 1997 by composer John Moran. It premiered at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in a production by Robert McGrath. Joseph Kahn and Rob Zombie directed a music video for the 1999 single "Living Dead Girl" with imagery directly inspired by The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, with Zombie's wife Sheri Moon Zombie playing the Cesare part. In 2015, Indian scenographer and director Deepan Sivaraman adapted the film into an hour-long mixed-media piece with the performance studies students at Ambedkar University Delhi as part of a course entitled "Space and Spectatorship". Scottish Opera's Connect Company commissioned composer Karen MacIver and librettist Allan Dunn to produce an opera based on The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, which was first performed in 2016. Though it shared the same story as the film, the setting was changed to Glasgow Green and Gartloch in Glasgow, Scotland. In 2020, Spanish post-rock band Toundra released their own soundtrack to the movie. It was released exactly 100 years after the original film premiere. The album consists of 7 songs, which match the film structure - opening title sequence, plus six film acts. The songs are also the same length as the acts, so the music can be synchchonized to the film. ### Audio adaptations In 1998, an audio adaptation of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari written and directed by Yuri Rasovsky was released by Tangled Web Audio on audio cassette. The cast included John de Lancie, Kaitlin Hopkins, and Robertson Dean. The dramatization won the Independent Publisher Book Award for Best Direct-to-Audio Production in 1998. In 2008, BBC Radio 3 broadcast an audio adaptation by Amanda Dalton entitled Caligari, starring Luke Treadaway, Tom Ferguson, Sarah McDonald Hughes, Terence Mann, and countertenor Robin Blaze as Cesare. Caligari was an entirely silent character in this adaptation.

1991–92 Gillingham F.C. season

During the 1991–92 English football season, Gillingham F.C. competed in the Football League Fourth Division, the fourth tier of the English football league system. It was the 60th season in which Gillingham competed in the Football League, and the 42nd since the club was voted back into the league in 1950. The team began the season with a 4–0 victory over Scunthorpe United but their form was inconsistent; not until February did they manage to win two consecutive league games. After a season spent largely in the middle of the league table, Gillingham finished 11th out of 22 teams in the Fourth Division. Gillingham also competed in three knock-out competitions. The team were eliminated in the first round of both the FA Cup and Football League Cup. Gillingham progressed from the initial group stage of the Associate Members' Cup but lost in the first round proper. The team played a total of 51 competitive matches, winning 17, drawing 14 and losing 20, although a win and a draw were expunged when Aldershot were expelled from the Football League in March. David Crown was the team's top goalscorer, with 22 in the Fourth Division and 24 in all competitions, not including an expunged goal. Paul Clark and Steve Lovell made the most appearances, playing in every game. The highest attendance recorded at the club's home ground, Priestfield Stadium, was 7,328, for a game against Brentford in the FA Cup. ## Background and pre-season The 1991–92 season was Gillingham's 60th season playing in the Football League and the 42nd since the club was elected back into the League in 1950 after being voted out in 1938. It was the club's third consecutive season in the Football League Fourth Division, the fourth tier of the English football league system. In the previous two seasons since being relegated from the Third Division, Gillingham had finished 14th and 15th out of 24 teams. In the 1991–92 season, the Fourth Division unusually had an odd number of teams due to league expansion and re-organisation, beginning the season with 23 members. At the start of the season, Damien Richardson was the club's manager, a post he had held since April 1989. His assistant manager was fellow former Gillingham player Ron Hillyard, and Alan Walker was the team captain. Richardson signed two veteran players, both aged 32, prior to the start of the season. Karl Elsey, a midfielder who had played for Gillingham between 1985 and 1988, returned to the club on a free transfer from fellow Fourth Division team Maidstone United. Paul Clark, a defender who had played nearly 400 Football League matches, also arrived without a transfer fee, having been released by Southend United of the Second Division. The club adopted a new kit design in its traditional colours of blue and white; the shirts were plain blue, replacing the previous season's unusual design featuring diagonal white stripes, and were worn with white shorts and socks. The second-choice kit, to be worn in the event of a clash of colours with the opposition, featured black and white stripes, the first-choice colours worn when the club was formed in 1893. The team prepared for the new season with a number of friendly matches, including a 4–1 victory over a West Ham United team which included a mix of the First Division team's regular starters and reserves. Three days later, Steve Russell, goalkeeper for Gillingham's youth team, found himself in the unusual position of playing two complete games in one day; having played for the youth team in the morning, he was selected for the first team against Dover Athletic in the afternoon after Harvey Lim failed a last-minute fitness test. ## Fourth Division ### August–December Gillingham's first match of the season was at their home ground, Priestfield Stadium, against Scunthorpe United; Elsey and Clark both made their debut and Elsey scored the opening goal in a 4–0 victory. After a draw away to York City and a weekend with no scheduled game due to the uneven number of teams in the division, Gillingham lost for the first time in the league with a 2–0 defeat away to Hereford United on 4 September, finishing the game with ten men after Lee Palmer was sent off. Gillingham defeated Scarborough 2–0 on 7 September with two goals in the last six minutes of the game, after which they were 10th in the league table, but then gained only one point from the next five games to slip to 19th. The run included defeats to Wrexham, Blackpool, Crewe Alexandra and Chesterfield, although they were able to hold second-placed Barnet to a 3–3 draw. The performances of Lim in particular were questioned, so Richardson signed goalkeeper Keith Branagan on loan from Millwall, but Branagan was injured in a reserve team game and only played one match for the first team before returning to his parent club. Gillingham ended their winless league run on 12 October, beating Halifax Town 3–0; David Crown scored twice. Two weeks later Crown scored the team's first hat-trick of the season as they beat Northampton Town 3–1 at Priestfield; midfielder Neil Smith, recently signed on loan from Tottenham Hotspur, made his debut. After impressing with his performances during the loan spell, he joined the club on a permanent basis for a transfer fee of , which was reported to have been financed by the payment which the club received from Sky Sports after one of Gillingham's games was broadcast live. Gillingham extended their unbeaten league run to six games with draws against Carlisle United, Cardiff City and Maidstone United, after which they were 13th in the table. The game against Maidstone, Gillingham's local rivals, drew an attendance of 6,716, Gillingham's largest home crowd of the season for a Fourth Division match. The team's unbeaten run came to an end with a 4–3 defeat away to Mansfield Town on 23 November. Gillingham defeated Aldershot 3–1 on 30 November, ending a run of seven games without a win in all competitions, and then drew twice more, against Rotherham United and York City. Crown scored in all three matches to take his total of league goals for the season so far to 13, nearly half the total scored by the entire team. The team's final match of 1991 was on 26 December against the same opponents they had faced in the first game of the season, Scunthorpe United; Gillingham lost 2–0, which left them 15th in the league table. ### January–May Gillingham began the new year with a 2–1 victory at home to Hereford United on 1 January. The team beat Walsall 4–0 on 11 January, Crown scoring his second hat-trick of the season, but then conceded four in a defeat to promotion-chasing Burnley. A win over Doncaster Rovers on 1 February left Gillingham 13th in the table. On 15 February, the team followed two consecutive goalless draws by beating Rotherham United, who were fifth in the table, 5–1 at Priestfield; Steve Lovell scored the team's third hat-trick of the season. It was the first time that Gillingham had scored five goals in a game since September 1989. A week later, Gillingham won 1–0 away to Walsall, the first time during the season that the team had won two consecutive league matches, however their unbeaten league run ended with a 3–1 defeat at home to Lincoln City on 29 February. On 3 March, Gillingham achieved a 3–0 victory over Burnley, who had not lost for seven games and would go on to win the Fourth Division championship; Crown scored the first goal, the first of four consecutive league games in which he scored. A week later, defender Richard Green, recently signed on loan from Swindon Town, scored twice on his Gillingham debut as the team defeated Cardiff City 3–2 at Ninian Park. It would prove to be Gillingham's final league win away from home until October 1993, a run of 30 consecutive away league games without a victory. The team failed to win in the next three games but ended the month with consecutive home victories over Mansfield Town and Wrexham, which took them up to 10th in the league table. Another loan signing, Watford's Rod Thomas, made his debut against Mansfield. Three days before that game, Aldershot were expelled from the Football League after the club went into liquidation; all their results up to that point in the season were expunged from the league table, meaning that Gillingham lost the four points they had acquired from a win and a draw against Aldershot. On 11 April, Gillingham defeated Blackpool 3–2 at Priestfield despite finishing the game with nine players. Both Crown and Lim were sent off, leading to defender Joe Dunne taking over in goal; Dunne was selected because he had played Gaelic football as a youth in his native Ireland, which Richardson felt would help with his ability to catch and handle the ball. It was the team's only win in five matches played in April, during which they lost away to Scarborough and Barnet and at home to Crewe Alexandra. Gillingham's final match of the season was at home to Halifax Town. Lovell, who had scored only four league goals before Christmas, scored twice in a 2–0 victory, giving him seven in the last nine games of the season and a total of sixteen for the season. His second goal against Halifax was his 100th for the club. Gillingham finished 11th out of 22 remaining teams in the Fourth Division, 12 points below the promotion play-off places; a review of the season published in the Rothmans Football Yearbook stated that "Gillingham's consistency was simply one of being an average team in the middle of the table". ### Match details Key - In result column, Gillingham's score shown first - H = Home match - A = Away match - pen. = Penalty kick - o.g. = Own goal Results a\. Result expunged following Aldershot's expulsion from the Football League ### Partial league table ## Cup matches ### FA Cup As a Fourth Division team, Gillingham entered the 1991–92 FA Cup in the first round and were paired with Brentford, who were top of the Third Division. The match at Brentford's Griffin Park stadium ended in a 3–3 draw after Gillingham had trailed 3–1 with less than 20 minutes remaining, necessitating a replay at Priestfield. The second match drew an attendance of 7,328, the largest recorded at Priestfield during the season. Captain Walker scored a goal, following on from two he had scored in the initial match, but Gillingham lost 3–1 and were eliminated from the competition. #### Match details Key - In result column, Gillingham's score shown first - H = Home match - A = Away match - pen. = Penalty kick - o.g. = Own goal Results ### Football League Cup Gillingham entered the 1991–92 Football League Cup in the first round and their opponents were Portsmouth of the Second Division. The tie was played over two legs, with the first at Portsmouth's Fratton Park ground and the second at Priestfield. Teenaged forward Peter Beadle came on as a substitute and scored for Gillingham in the first leg but his team lost 2–1. Seven days later, Portsmouth won the second leg 4–3 and thus won the tie by an aggregate score of 6–4, ending Gillingham's participation in the League Cup. #### Match details Key - In result column, Gillingham's score shown first - H = Home match - A = Away match - pen. = Penalty kick - o.g. = Own goal Results ### Associate Members' Cup The 1991–92 Associate Members' Cup, a tournament exclusively for Third and Fourth Division teams, began with a preliminary round in which the teams were drawn into groups of three, contested on a round-robin basis. Gillingham's group also contained their local rivals Maidstone United as well as Fulham of the Third Division. Gillingham's first match resulted in a 2–0 defeat away to Fulham; as the Third Division side had already beaten Maidstone they were now guaranteed to top the group and qualify for the first round proper, leaving the game between the two Kent-based teams to determine the second qualifier. Gillingham defeated Maidstone 4–2 in front of a crowd of 2,300, the lowest attendance at Priestfield during the season, to reach the first round. The random draw for the first round paired Gillingham with Fulham again. The game again took place at Fulham's Craven Cottage ground and the result was identical to the earlier meeting between the two sides, Fulham winning 2–0 to eliminate Gillingham from the competition. #### Match details Key - In result column, Gillingham's score shown first - H = Home match - A = Away match - pen. = Penalty kick - o.g. = Own goal Results ## Players Twenty-eight players made at least one appearance for Gillingham during the season. Clark and Lovell made the most; both players were ever-present during the season, playing in all 51 games, including the two which were expunged following Aldershot's expulsion from the Football League in March. Lim, O'Connor, Walker, and Crown all made more than 40 appearances. Two players, both goalkeepers, played only once during the season. Branagan made one league appearance in October and Tim Dalton played in one League Trophy game. Both left the club without making any further appearances. Thirteen players scored at least one goal for Gillingham during the season. Crown was the top goalscorer, with 22 goals in Football League matches and a total of 24 in all competitions; these figures do not include a goal which he scored against Aldershot. Lovell, the team's top scorer for the previous four seasons, scored 16; no other player scored more than 7. ## Aftermath Walker was voted into the Professional Footballers' Association Team of the Year for the Fourth Division by his fellow professionals, the first Gillingham player to be honoured in five years. He did not receive the club's player of the year award, however, which went to Clark. Several players left the club at the conclusion of the season, including Beadle, who joined Tottenham Hotspur of the Premier League for a transfer fee of , a new record for the highest fee received by Gillingham for a player. The teams in the Football League First Division, the highest level of the sport in England, broke away at the conclusion of the season to form the new FA Premier League; as a result, the Football League was reduced from four divisions to three, placing Gillingham in the new Third Division. After a mid-table finish in the 1991–92 season, Gillingham struggled the following season and, by October, the team were close to the bottom of the Third Division; Richardson was dismissed from his job as the club's manager. Glenn Roeder was appointed as his replacement in a player-manager capacity. The team's performances remained poor and, with two games remaining, Gillingham still faced the possibility of finishing bottom of the division and being relegated out of the Football League. Victory over Halifax Town in the penultimate match of the season, however, ensured that Gillingham would stay in the Third Division, and the team remained there until they gained promotion to the Second Division in 1996.

Muhammad I of Granada

First ruler of the Emirate from c. 1238 to 1273

Abu Abdullah Muhammad ibn Yusuf ibn Nasr (Arabic: أبو عبد الله محمد بن يوسف بن نصر; 1195 – 22 January 1273), also known as Ibn al-Ahmar (Arabic: ابن الأحمر, "Son of the Red") and by his honorific al-Ghalib billah (Arabic: الغالب بالله, "The Victor by the Grace of God"), was the first ruler of the Emirate of Granada, the last independent Muslim state on the Iberian Peninsula, and the founder of its ruling Nasrid dynasty. He lived during a time when Iberia's Christian kingdoms—especially Portugal, Castile and Aragon—were expanding at the expense of the Islamic territory in Iberia, called Al-Andalus. Muhammad ibn Yusuf took power in his native Arjona in 1232 when he rebelled against the de facto leader of Al-Andalus, Ibn Hud. During this rebellion, he was able to take control of Córdoba and Seville briefly, before he lost both cities to Ibn Hud. Forced to acknowledge Ibn Hud's suzerainty, Muhammad was able to retain Arjona and Jaén. In 1236, he betrayed Ibn Hud by helping Ferdinand III of Castile take Córdoba. In the years that followed, Muhammad was able to gain control over southern cities, including Granada (1237), Almería (1238), and Málaga (1239). In 1244, he lost Arjona to Castile. Two years later, in 1246, he agreed to surrender Jaén and accept Ferdinand's overlordship in exchange for a 20-year truce. In the 18 years that followed, Muhammad consolidated his domain by maintaining relatively peaceful relations with the Crown of Castile; in 1248; he even helped the Christian kingdom take Seville from the Muslims. But in 1264, he turned against Castile and assisted in the unsuccessful rebellion of Castile's newly conquered Muslim subjects. In 1266 his allies in Málaga, the Banu Ashqilula, rebelled against the emirate. When these former allies sought assistance from Alfonso X of Castile, Muhammad was able to convince the leader of the Castilian troops, Nuño González de Lara, to turn against Alfonso. By 1272 Nuño González was actively fighting Castile. The emirate's conflict with Castile and the Banu Ashqilula was still unresolved in 1273 when Muhammad died after falling off his horse. He was succeeded by his son, Muhammad II. The Emirate of Granada, which Muhammad founded, and the Nasrid royal house, lasted for two more centuries until it was annexed by Castile in 1492. His other legacy was the construction of the Alhambra, his residence in Granada. His successors would continue to build the palace and fortress complex and reside there, and it has lasted to the present day as the architectural legacy of the emirate. ## Origin and early life Muhammad ibn Yusuf was born in 1195 in the town of Arjona, then a small frontier Muslim town south of the Guadalquivir, now in Spain's province of Jaén. He came from a humble background, and, in the words of the Castilian First General Chronicle, initially he had "no other occupation than following the oxen and the plough". His clan was known as the Banu Nasr or the Banu al-Ahmar. According to later Granadan historian and vizier Ibn al-Khatib, the clan was descended from a prominent companion of the Islamic prophet Muhammad known as Sa'd ibn Ubadah of the Banu Khazraj tribe; Sa'd's descendants migrated to Spain and settled in Arjona as farmers. During his early life he became known for his leadership activity on the frontiers and for his ascetic image, which he maintained even after becoming a ruler. Muhammad was also known as Ibn al-Ahmar, or by his kunya Abu Abdullah. ## Family Muhammad I was married to a paternal first cousin (a bint 'amm marriage), Aisha bint Muhammad, likely in 1230 or before, when he was still in Arjona. Their first son was Faraj (1230 or 1231–1256), whose early death was recorded to cause Muhammad considerable sadness. Their other children include Yusuf (birth unknown), who also died during Muhammad I's lifetime; Muhammad (the future Muhammad II, 1235 or 1236–1302) and two daughters Mu'mina and Shams. He also has a brother, Ismail (d. 1257), whom he appointed as governor of Malaga, and who was the male-line ancestor of a line of future sultans of Granada starting from Ismail I. ## Background The early thirteenth century was a period of great loss for the Muslims of the Iberian Peninsula. The Almohad caliphate, which had dominated Al-Andalus or the Muslim Iberia, was split by a dynastic struggle after Caliph Yusuf II died in 1224 without an heir. Al-Andalus broke up into multiple small kingdoms or taifas. One of the taifa leaders was Muhammad ibn Yusuf ibn Hud (d. 1238), who revolted against the Almohads and nominally proclaimed the authority of the Abbasid caliphate but in practice ruled independently from Murcia. His growing strength made him the de facto leader of Al-Andalus, and briefly Muhammad's overlord. Despite his popularity and his success in Al-Andalus, Ibn Hud had suffered defeats against the Christians, including at Alanje in 1230 and at Jerez in 1231, followed by the loss of Badajoz and Extremadura. In the north of the peninsula there were several Christian kingdoms: Castile, León (in a union with Castile since 1231), Portugal, Navarre, and a union of kingdoms known as the Crown of Aragon. They had been expanding south—taking formerly Muslim-ruled territories—in a process called the Reconquista or "the reconquest". All of the kingdoms had sizable Muslim minorities. By the mid-thirteenth century, Castile was the largest kingdom of the peninsula. Its king, Ferdinand III (r. 1217–1252) took advantage of the addition of León to his realm and of the Muslims' disunity to launch a southward expansion into Muslim territories, eventually conquering Córdoba (1236) and Seville (1248). ## Rise to power The defeats suffered by Ibn Hud eroded his credibility; rebellions broke out in parts of his domain, including Muhammad's small town of Arjona. On 16 July 1232, a mosque assembly in Arjona declared the town's independence. This proclamation took place on 26 Ramadan 629 in the Islamic calendar, after the final Friday prayer of the holy month. The assembly elected Muhammad, who was known for his piety and his martial reputation in previous conflicts against the Christians, as the town's leader. Muhammad also had the support of his clan, the Banu Nasr, and an allied Arjonan clan known as the Banu Ashqilula. In the same year, Muhammad took Jaén—an important city close to Arjona. With help from Ibn Hud's rivals, the Banu al-Mawl, Muhammad briefly seized control of the former disputed seat of Córdoba. He also took Seville in 1234 with help from the Banu al-Bajji family, but he was only able to hold it for one month. Both Córdoba and Seville, dissatisfied with Muhammad's ruling style, returned to Ibn Hud's rule shortly after Muhammad's takeover. After these failures, Muhammad once again declared his allegiance to Ibn Hud and kept his rule over a small region containing Arjona, Jaén, Porcuna, Guadix, and Baeza. Muhammad turned against Ibn Hud again in 1236. He allied himself with Ferdinand and helped the Castilians take Córdoba and end centuries of Muslim rule in the city. In the following years, Muhammad took control of important cities in the south. In May 1237 (Ramadan 634 AH), by invitation of the city's notables, he took Granada, which he then made his capital. He also took Almería in 1238 and Málaga in 1239. He did not take these southern cities by force, but through political maneuvering and the consent of the inhabitants. ## Ruler of Granada ### Settling in Granada Muhammad entered Granada in May 1238 (Ramadan 635). According to Ibn al-Khatib, he entered the city dressed like a sufi, in a plain wool cap, coarse clothes and sandals. He took up residence in the alcazaba (castle) built by the Zirids of Granada in the 11th century. He then inspected an area known as al-Hamra, where there was a small fortress, and laid the foundations there for his future residence and fortress. Soon work began on defensive structures, an irrigation dam, and a dike. The construction would last into the reigns of his successors, and the complex would be known as the Alhambra and would become the residence of all Nasrid rulers up to the surrender of Granada in 1492. He pressured his tax collectors to collect the necessary funds for the construction, going as far as executing Almería's tax-gatherer Abu Muhammad ibn Arus to enforce his demands. He also used money sent by the Hafsid ruler of Tunis—intended for defense against the Christians—to extend the city's mosque. ### Initial conflict with Castile By the end of the 1230s, Muhammad had become the most powerful Muslim ruler in Iberia. He controlled the major cities of the south, including Granada, Almería, Málaga and Jaén. In the early 1240s, Muhammad came into conflict with his former allies, the Castilians, who were invading Muslim territories. Contemporary sources disagree about the cause of this hostility: the Christian First General Chronicle blamed it on Muslim raiding, while Muslim historian Ibn Khaldun blamed it on Christian invasions of Muslim territories. In 1242, Muslim forces successfully raided Andújar and Martos near Jaén. In 1244, Castile besieged and captured Muhammad's hometown of Arjona. In 1245, Ferdinand III of Castile besieged the heavily fortified Jaén. Ferdinand did not want to risk assaulting the city, so his tactic was to cut it off from the rest of the Muslim territory and starve it into submission. Muhammad tried to send supplies to this important city, but these efforts were thwarted by the besiegers. Due to Muhammad's difficulty in defending and relieving Jaén, he agreed to terms with Ferdinand. In exchange for peace, Muhammad surrendered the city and agreed to pay Ferdinand an annual tribute of 150,000 maravedíes—an amount that became Ferdinand's most important source of income. This agreement was made in March 1246, seven months into the siege of Jaén. As part of the agreement he was required to kiss Ferdinand's hand to signify his vassalage, and promised him "counsel and aid". Castilian sources tended to emphasize this event as an act of feudal submission and considered Muhammad and his successors as vassals of Castile in the feudal sense. On the other hand, Muslim sources avoided mentions of any vassal-lord relation and tended to frame the relationship as between equals with certain obligations. After the agreement, the Castilians entered the city and expelled its Muslim inhabitants. ### Peace The peace agreement with Castile largely held for almost twenty years. In 1248, Muhammad demonstrated his commitment to Ferdinand by sending a contingent to help the Castilian conquest of the Muslim-held Seville. In 1252, Ferdinand died and was succeeded by Alfonso X. In 1254, Muhammad attended a Cortes, or an assembly of Alfonso's vassals, at the royal palace in Toledo, where he renewed his promise of loyalty and tributes, as well as paying homage to Alfonso's newborn daughter Berengaria. During his reign, Alfonso was more interested in other enterprises—including a series of unsuccessful campaigns in Muslim North Africa—rather than renewing the conflict with Granada. Muhammad met with Alfonso at the latter's court in Seville every year, and paid his annual tributes. Muhammad used the ensuing peace to consolidate his new emirate. Though small in size, the Emirate of Granada was relatively wealthy and densely populated. Its economy was focused on agriculture, especially silk and dried fruit; it traded with Italy and northern Europe. Islamic literature, art and architecture continued to flourish. The mountains and desert that separate the kingdom from Castile provided natural defenses, but its western ports and the northwestern route to Granada were less defensible. During his rule, Muhammad placed loyal men in castles and cities. His brother Isma'il was governor of Málaga until 1257. Following Isma'il's death in 1257, Muhammad appointed his nephew, Abu Muhammad ibn Ashqilula, as governor of Málaga. ### Rift with Castile Peace between Granada and Castile lasted until the early 1260s, when various actions by Castile alarmed Muhammad. As part of his crusade against Muslim North Africa, Alfonso built up his military presence in Cadiz and El Puerto de Santa María close to Granadan territory. Castile conquered the Muslim-held Jerez de la Frontera in 1261 near the Granadan border and installed a garrison there. In 1262, Castile conquered the Kingdom of Niebla, another Muslim enclave in Spain. In May 1262, during a meeting in Jaén, Alfonso requested that Muhammad hand the port cities of Tarifa and Algeciras to him. The demand for these strategically important ports was very worrying to Muhammad, and although he verbally agreed he kept delaying the transfer. Further, in 1263 Castile expelled the Muslim inhabitants of Écija and resettled the town with Christians. In light of these actions, Muhammad was worried that he would become Alfonso's next target. He began talks with Abu Yusuf Yaqub, the Marinid Sultan in Morocco, who then sent troops to Granada, numbering between 300 and 3,000 according to different sources. In 1264, Muhammad and 500 knights traveled to the Castilian court at Seville to discuss an extension of the 1246 truce. Alfonso invited them to lodge at the former Abbadid palace next to the city's mosque. During the night, the Castilians locked and barricaded the area. Muhammad perceived this as a trap, ordered his men to break out and returned to Granada. Alfonso argued that the barricade was to protect the entourage from Christian thieves, but Muhammad was angered, and ordered troops in his border towns to prepare for war. He declared himself vassal of Muhammad I al-Mustansir, the Hafsid sultan of Tunis. ### Revolt of the Mudéjars The peace was broken in either late April or early May 1264. Muhammad attacked Castile, and at the same time Muslims in the territories recently conquered by Castile ("Mudéjars") rebelled; partially over Alfonso's forced relocation policy and partially at Muhammad's instigation. Initially, Murcia, Jerez, Utrera, Lebrija, Arcos and Medina Sidonia were taken into Muslim control, but counterattacks by James I of Aragon and Alfonso retook these territories, and Alfonso invaded Granada's territory in 1265. Muhammad soon sued for peace, and the resulting settlement was devastating for the rebels: the Muslims of Andalusia suffered mass expulsions, replaced by Christians. For Granada, the defeat had mixed consequences. On the one hand, it was soundly defeated, and according to the peace treaty signed at Alcalá de Benzaide had to pay an annual tribute of 250,000 maravedíes to Castile—much larger than what had been paid before the rebellion. On the other hand, the treaty ensured its survival, and it emerged as the sole independent Muslim state in the peninsula. Muslims who were expelled by Castile immigrated to Granada, bolstering the emirate's population. ### Conflict with the Banu Ashqilula The Banu Ashqilula were a clan and—like the Nasrids—were also from Arjona. They had been the Nasrids' most important allies during their rise to power. They supported Muhammad's appointment as leader of Arjona in 1232 and helped with the acquisition of cities like Seville and Granada. Both families intermarried, and Muhammad appointed members of the Banu Ashqilula as governors in his territories. The Banu Ashqilula's center of power was in Málaga, where Muhammad's nephew Abu Muhammad ibn Ashqilula was governor. Their military strength was the backbone of Granada's power. By 1266, while Granada was still fighting Castile in the Mudéjar revolt, the Banu Ashqilula started a rebellion against Muhammad I. Sources are scarce regarding the beginning of the rebellion and historians disagree about the cause of the rift between the two families. Professor of Hispano-Islamic history Rachel Arié suggested that contributing factors may have been the 1257 declaration of Muhammad's sons—Muhammad and Yusuf—as heirs and his 1266 decision to marry one of his granddaughter Fatima to a Nasrid cousin instead of one of the Banu Ashqilula. According to Arié, these decisions alarmed the Banu Ashqilula because Muhammad had previously promised to share power with them and these decisions excluded them from the Nasrid dynasty's inner circle. In contrast, another historian of Islamic Spain, María Jesús Rubiera Mata rejected these explanations; she argued that the Banu Ashqilula were worried about Muhammad's decision to invite North African forces during the 1264 Revolt of the Mudéjars because the new military power threatened the Banu Ashqilula's position as the strongest military power in the Emirate. Muhammad besieged Málaga but failed to overpower the Banu Ashqilula military strength. The Banu Ashqilula sought assistance from Alfonso X of Castile, who was happy to support the rebellion to undermine Muhammad's authority. Alfonso sent 1,000 soldiers under Nuño González de Lara and Muhammad was forced to break off the siege of Málaga. The danger of fighting at multiple fronts contributed to Muhammad's decision to finally seek peace with Alfonso. In the resulting agreement of Alcalá de Benzaide, Muhammad renounced his claims over Jerez and Murcia—territories not under his control—and promised to pay an annual tribute of 250,000 maravedies. In exchange, Alfonso abandoned his alliance with the Banu Ashqilula and acknowledged Muhammad's authority over them. Alfonso was reluctant to enforce the last point and did not move against the Banu Ashqilula. Muhammad countered by convincing Nuño González, the commander of the Castilian forces sent to support the Banu Ashqilula, to rebel against Alfonso. Nuño González, who had grievances against his king, agreed; in 1272 he and his Castilian noble allies began operations against Castile from Granada. Muhammad had successfully deprived Castile of Nuño González's forces and gained allies in his conflict against the Banu Ashqilula. The Banu Ashqilula agreed to negotiate under the mediation of Al-Tahurti from Morocco. Before these efforts bore fruit, Muhammad suffered fatal injuries after falling from a horse on 22 January 1273 (29 Jumada al-Thani 671 AH), near the city of Granada during a minor military expedition. He was buried in a cemetery on the Sabika Hill, east of the Alhambra. An epitaph was inscribed on his headstone and was recorded by Ibn al-Khatib and other historical sources. He was succeeded by his son Muhammad II as he had planned. Later that year, Muhammad II and Alfonso negotiated a truce—albeit short-lived—between Granada and Castile as well as the Banu Ashqilula. ## Succession By the time of his death in 1273, Muhammad had already secured the succession for his son, also named Muhammad, known by the epithet al-Faqih (the canon-lawyer). On his deathbed, Muhammad I advised his heir to seek protection from the Marinid dynasty against the Christian kingdoms. The son, now Muhammad II, was already 38 years old and experienced in the matters of state and war. He was able to continue Muhammad I's policies and would rule until his death in 1302. ## Legacy Muhammad's main legacy was the founding of the Emirate of Granada under the rule of the Nasrid dynasty, which on his death was the only independent Muslim state remaining in the Iberian peninsula, and would last for little over two centuries before its fall in 1492. The emirate spanned 240 miles (390 km) between Tarifa in the west and eastern frontiers beyond Almería, and was around 60 to 70 miles (97 to 113 km) wide from the sea to its northern frontiers. During his lifetime, the Muslims of al-Andalus suffered severe setbacks, including the loss of the Guadalquivir valley, which included the major cities of Córdoba and Seville as well as Muhammad's hometown of Arjona. According to professor of Spanish history L. P. Harvey, he "managed to snatch from disaster ... a relatively secure refuge for Islam in the peninsula". His rule was characterized both by his "unheroic" part in the fall of Muslim cities like Seville and Jaén, as well his vigilance and political astuteness which ensured the survival of Granada. He was willing to enter into compromises, including accepting vassalage to Castile, as well as to switch alliances between Christians and Muslims, to preserve the emirate's independence. The Encyclopaedia of Islam comments that while his rule did not have any "spectacular victories", he did create a stable regime in Granada and start the construction of the Alhambra, a "lasting memorial to the Nasrids". The Alhambra is today a UNESCO World Heritage Site. His religious views appeared to transform during his career. In the beginning, he displayed an outward image of an ascetic religious frontiersman, like a typical Islamic mystic. He maintained this outlook during his early rule in Granada, but as his rule stabilized, he began to embrace the mainstream Sunni orthodoxy and enforced the doctrines of the Maliki fuqaha. This transformation and his commitment to mainstream Islam brought Granada into line with the rest of the Islamic world, and were continued by his successors.

Saturn

Sixth planet from the Sun

Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun and the second-largest in the Solar System, after Jupiter. It is a gas giant with an average radius of about nine and a half times that of Earth. It has only one-eighth the average density of Earth, but is over 95 times more massive. Saturn's interior is thought to be composed of a rocky core, surrounded by a deep layer of metallic hydrogen, an intermediate layer of liquid hydrogen and liquid helium, and finally, a gaseous outer layer. Saturn has a pale yellow hue due to ammonia crystals in its upper atmosphere. An electrical current within the metallic hydrogen layer is thought to give rise to Saturn's planetary magnetic field, which is weaker than Earth's, but which has a magnetic moment 580 times that of Earth due to Saturn's larger size. Saturn's magnetic field strength is around one-twentieth of Jupiter's. The outer atmosphere is generally bland and lacking in contrast, although long-lived features can appear. Wind speeds on Saturn can reach 1,800 kilometres per hour (1,100 miles per hour). The planet has a prominent ring system, which is composed mainly of ice particles, with a smaller amount of rocky debris and dust. At least 146 moons are known to orbit the planet, of which 63 are officially named; this does not include the hundreds of moonlets in its rings. Titan, Saturn's largest moon and the second largest in the Solar System, is larger (while less massive) than the planet Mercury and is the only moon in the Solar System to have a substantial atmosphere. ## Name and symbol Saturn is named after the Roman god of wealth and agriculture and father of Jupiter. Its astronomical symbol () has been traced back to the Greek Oxyrhynchus Papyri, where it can be seen to be a Greek kappa-rho ligature with a horizontal stroke, as an abbreviation for Κρονος (Cronus), the Greek name for the planet (). It later came to look like a lower-case Greek eta, with the cross added at the top in the 16th century to Christianize this pagan symbol. The Romans named the seventh day of the week Saturday, Sāturni diēs ("Saturn's Day"), for the planet Saturn. ## Physical characteristics Saturn is a gas giant composed predominantly of hydrogen and helium. It lacks a definite surface, though it is likely to have a solid core. Saturn's rotation causes it to have the shape of an oblate spheroid; that is, it is flattened at the poles and bulges at its equator. Its equatorial radius is more than 10% larger than its polar radius: 60,268 km versus 54,364 km. Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune, the other giant planets in the Solar System, are also oblate but to a lesser extent. The combination of the bulge and rotation rate means that the effective surface gravity along the equator, 8.96 m/s², is 74% of what it is at the poles and is lower than the surface gravity of Earth. However, the equatorial escape velocity of nearly 36 km/s is much higher than that of Earth. Saturn is the only planet of the Solar System that is less dense than water—about 30% less. Although Saturn's core is considerably denser than water, the average specific density of the planet is 0.69 g/cm³ due to the atmosphere. Jupiter has 318 times Earth's mass, and Saturn is 95 times Earth's mass. Together, Jupiter and Saturn hold 92% of the total planetary mass in the Solar System. ### Internal structure Despite consisting mostly of hydrogen and helium, most of Saturn's mass is not in the gas phase, because hydrogen becomes a non-ideal liquid when the density is above 0.01 g/cm³, which is reached at a radius containing 99.9% of Saturn's mass. The temperature, pressure, and density inside Saturn all rise steadily toward the core, which causes hydrogen to be a metal in the deeper layers. Standard planetary models suggest that the interior of Saturn is similar to that of Jupiter, having a small rocky core surrounded by hydrogen and helium, with trace amounts of various volatiles. Analysis of the distortion shows that Saturn is substantially more centrally condensed than Jupiter and therefore contains a significantly larger amount of material denser than hydrogen near its centre. Saturn's central regions contain about 50% hydrogen by mass, while Jupiter's contain approximately 67% hydrogen. This core is similar in composition to Earth, but is more dense. The examination of Saturn's gravitational moment, in combination with physical models of the interior, has allowed constraints to be placed on the mass of Saturn's core. In 2004, scientists estimated that the core must be 9–22 times the mass of Earth, which corresponds to a diameter of about 25,000 km. However, measurements of Saturn's rings suggest a much more diffuse core with a mass equal to about 17 Earths and a radius equal to around 60% of Saturn's entire radius. This is surrounded by a thicker liquid metallic hydrogen layer, followed by a liquid layer of helium-saturated molecular hydrogen that gradually transitions to a gas with increasing altitude. The outermost layer spans 1,000 km and consists of gas. Saturn has a hot interior, reaching 11,700 °C at its core, and radiates 2.5 times more energy into space than it receives from the Sun. Jupiter's thermal energy is generated by the Kelvin–Helmholtz mechanism of slow gravitational compression, but such a process alone may not be sufficient to explain heat production for Saturn, because it is less massive. An alternative or additional mechanism may be generation of heat through the "raining out" of droplets of helium deep in Saturn's interior. As the droplets descend through the lower-density hydrogen, the process releases heat by friction and leaves Saturn's outer layers depleted of helium. These descending droplets may have accumulated into a helium shell surrounding the core. Rainfalls of diamonds have been suggested to occur within Saturn, as well as in Jupiter and ice giants Uranus and Neptune. ### Atmosphere The outer atmosphere of Saturn contains 96.3% molecular hydrogen and 3.25% helium by volume. The proportion of helium is significantly deficient compared to the abundance of this element in the Sun. The quantity of elements heavier than helium (metallicity) is not known precisely, but the proportions are assumed to match the primordial abundances from the formation of the Solar System. The total mass of these heavier elements is estimated to be 19–31 times the mass of the Earth, with a significant fraction located in Saturn's core region. Trace amounts of ammonia, acetylene, ethane, propane, phosphine, and methane have been detected in Saturn's atmosphere. The upper clouds are composed of ammonia crystals, while the lower level clouds appear to consist of either ammonium hydrosulfide (NH₄SH) or water. Ultraviolet radiation from the Sun causes methane photolysis in the upper atmosphere, leading to a series of hydrocarbon chemical reactions with the resulting products being carried downward by eddies and diffusion. This photochemical cycle is modulated by Saturn's annual seasonal cycle. Cassini observed a series of cloud features found in northern latitudes, nicknamed the "String of Pearls". These features are cloud clearings that reside in deeper cloud layers. #### Cloud layers Saturn's atmosphere exhibits a banded pattern similar to Jupiter's, but Saturn's bands are much fainter and are much wider near the equator. The nomenclature used to describe these bands is the same as on Jupiter. Saturn's finer cloud patterns were not observed until the flybys of the Voyager spacecraft during the 1980s. Since then, Earth-based telescopy has improved to the point where regular observations can be made. The composition of the clouds varies with depth and increasing pressure. In the upper cloud layers, with the temperature in the range 100–160 K and pressures extending between 0.5–2 bar, the clouds consist of ammonia ice. Water ice clouds begin at a level where the pressure is about 2.5 bar and extend down to 9.5 bar, where temperatures range from 185 to 270 K. Intermixed in this layer is a band of ammonium hydrosulfide ice, lying in the pressure range 3–6 bar with temperatures of 190–235 K. Finally, the lower layers, where pressures are between 10 and 20 bar and temperatures are 270–330 K, contains a region of water droplets with ammonia in aqueous solution. Saturn's usually bland atmosphere occasionally exhibits long-lived ovals and other features common on Jupiter. In 1990, the Hubble Space Telescope imaged an enormous white cloud near Saturn's equator that was not present during the Voyager encounters, and in 1994 another smaller storm was observed. The 1990 storm was an example of a Great White Spot, a short-lived phenomenon that occurs once every Saturnian year, roughly every 30 Earth years, around the time of the northern hemisphere's summer solstice. Previous Great White Spots were observed in 1876, 1903, 1933 and 1960, with the 1933 storm being the best observed. The latest giant storm was observed in 2010. In 2015, researchers used Very Large Array telescope to study Saturnian atmosphere, and reported that they found "long-lasting signatures of all mid-latitude giant storms, a mixture of equatorial storms up to hundreds of years old, and potentially an unreported older storm at 70°N". The winds on Saturn are the second fastest among the Solar System's planets, after Neptune's. Voyager data indicate peak easterly winds of 500 m/s (1,800 km/h). In images from the Cassini spacecraft during 2007, Saturn's northern hemisphere displayed a bright blue hue, similar to Uranus. The color was most likely caused by Rayleigh scattering. Thermography has shown that Saturn's south pole has a warm polar vortex, the only known example of such a phenomenon in the Solar System. Whereas temperatures on Saturn are normally −185 °C, temperatures on the vortex often reach as high as −122 °C, suspected to be the warmest spot on Saturn. #### Hexagonal cloud patterns A persisting hexagonal wave pattern around the north polar vortex in the atmosphere at about 78°N was first noted in the Voyager images. The sides of the hexagon are each about 14,500 km (9,000 mi) long, which is longer than the diameter of the Earth. The entire structure rotates with a period of (the same period as that of the planet's radio emissions) which is assumed to be equal to the period of rotation of Saturn's interior. The hexagonal feature does not shift in longitude like the other clouds in the visible atmosphere. The pattern's origin is a matter of much speculation. Most scientists think it is a standing wave pattern in the atmosphere. Polygonal shapes have been replicated in the laboratory through differential rotation of fluids. HST imaging of the south polar region indicates the presence of a jet stream, but no strong polar vortex nor any hexagonal standing wave. NASA reported in November 2006 that Cassini had observed a "hurricane-like" storm locked to the south pole that had a clearly defined eyewall. Eyewall clouds had not previously been seen on any planet other than Earth. For example, images from the Galileo spacecraft did not show an eyewall in the Great Red Spot of Jupiter. The south pole storm may have been present for billions of years. This vortex is comparable to the size of Earth, and it has winds of 550 km/h. ### Magnetosphere Saturn has an intrinsic magnetic field that has a simple, symmetric shape—a magnetic dipole. Its strength at the equator—0.2 gauss (μT)—is approximately one twentieth of that of the field around Jupiter and slightly weaker than Earth's magnetic field. As a result, Saturn's magnetosphere is much smaller than Jupiter's. When Voyager 2 entered the magnetosphere, the solar wind pressure was high and the magnetosphere extended only 19 Saturn radii, or 1.1 million km (712,000 mi), although it enlarged within several hours, and remained so for about three days. Most probably, the magnetic field is generated similarly to that of Jupiter—by currents in the liquid metallic-hydrogen layer called a metallic-hydrogen dynamo. This magnetosphere is efficient at deflecting the solar wind particles from the Sun. The moon Titan orbits within the outer part of Saturn's magnetosphere and contributes plasma from the ionized particles in Titan's outer atmosphere. Saturn's magnetosphere, like Earth's, produces aurorae. ## Orbit and rotation The average distance between Saturn and the Sun is over 1.4 billion kilometers (9 AU). With an average orbital speed of 9.68 km/s, it takes Saturn 10,759 Earth days (or about 29+1⁄2 years) to finish one revolution around the Sun. As a consequence, it forms a near 5:2 mean-motion resonance with Jupiter. The elliptical orbit of Saturn is inclined 2.48° relative to the orbital plane of the Earth. The perihelion and aphelion distances are, respectively, 9.195 and 9.957 AU, on average. The visible features on Saturn rotate at different rates depending on latitude, and multiple rotation periods have been assigned to various regions (as in Jupiter's case). Astronomers use three different systems for specifying the rotation rate of Saturn. System I has a period of (844.3°/d) and encompasses the Equatorial Zone, the South Equatorial Belt, and the North Equatorial Belt. The polar regions are considered to have rotation rates similar to System I. All other Saturnian latitudes, excluding the north and south polar regions, are indicated as System II and have been assigned a rotation period of (810.76°/d). System III refers to Saturn's internal rotation rate. Based on radio emissions from the planet detected by Voyager 1 and Voyager 2, System III has a rotation period of (810.8°/d). System III has largely superseded System II. A precise value for the rotation period of the interior remains elusive. While approaching Saturn in 2004, Cassini found that the radio rotation period of Saturn had increased appreciably, to approximately . An estimate of Saturn's rotation (as an indicated rotation rate for Saturn as a whole) based on a compilation of various measurements from the Cassini, Voyager and Pioneer probes is . Studies of the planet's C Ring yield a rotation period of . In March 2007, it was found that the variation of radio emissions from the planet did not match Saturn's rotation rate. This variance may be caused by geyser activity on Saturn's moon Enceladus. The water vapor emitted into Saturn's orbit by this activity becomes charged and creates a drag upon Saturn's magnetic field, slowing its rotation slightly relative to the rotation of the planet. An apparent oddity for Saturn is that it does not have any known trojan asteroids. These are minor planets that orbit the Sun at the stable Lagrangian points, designated L₄ and L₅, located at 60° angles to the planet along its orbit. Trojan asteroids have been discovered for Mars, Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune. Orbital resonance mechanisms, including secular resonance, are believed to be the cause of the missing Saturnian trojans. ## Natural satellites Saturn has 146 known moons, 63 of which have formal names. It is estimated that there are another 100±30 outer irregular moons larger than 3 km (2 mi) in diameter. In addition, there is evidence of dozens to hundreds of moonlets with diameters of 40–500 meters in Saturn's rings, which are not considered to be true moons. Titan, the largest moon, comprises more than 90% of the mass in orbit around Saturn, including the rings. Saturn's second-largest moon, Rhea, may have a tenuous ring system of its own, along with a tenuous atmosphere. Many of the other moons are small: 131 are less than 50 km in diameter. Traditionally, most of Saturn's moons have been named after Titans of Greek mythology. Titan is the only satellite in the Solar System with a major atmosphere, in which a complex organic chemistry occurs. It is the only satellite with hydrocarbon lakes. On 6 June 2013, scientists at the IAA-CSIC reported the detection of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in the upper atmosphere of Titan, a possible precursor for life. On 23 June 2014, NASA claimed to have strong evidence that nitrogen in the atmosphere of Titan came from materials in the Oort cloud, associated with comets, and not from the materials that formed Saturn in earlier times. Saturn's moon Enceladus, which seems similar in chemical makeup to comets, has often been regarded as a potential habitat for microbial life. Evidence of this possibility includes the satellite's salt-rich particles having an "ocean-like" composition that indicates most of Enceladus's expelled ice comes from the evaporation of liquid salt water. A 2015 flyby by Cassini through a plume on Enceladus found most of the ingredients to sustain life forms that live by methanogenesis. In April 2014, NASA scientists reported the possible beginning of a new moon within the A Ring, which was imaged by Cassini on 15 April 2013. ## Planetary rings Saturn is probably best known for the system of planetary rings that makes it visually unique. The rings extend from 6,630 to 120,700 kilometers (4,120 to 75,000 mi) outward from Saturn's equator and average approximately 20 meters (66 ft) in thickness. They are composed predominantly of water ice, with trace amounts of tholin impurities and a peppered coating of approximately 7% amorphous carbon. The particles that make up the rings range in size from specks of dust up to 10 m. While the other gas giants also have ring systems, Saturn's is the largest and most visible. There are two main hypotheses regarding the origin of the rings. One hypothesis is that the rings are remnants of a destroyed moon of Saturn, for which a research team at MIT has proposed the name "Chrysalis". The second hypothesis is that the rings are left over from the original nebular material from which Saturn was formed. Some ice in the E ring comes from the moon Enceladus's geysers. The water abundance of the rings varies radially, with the outermost ring A being the most pure in ice water. This abundance variance may be explained by meteor bombardment. Beyond the main rings, at a distance of 12 million km from the planet is the sparse Phoebe ring. It is tilted at an angle of 27° to the other rings and, like Phoebe, orbits in retrograde fashion. Some of the moons of Saturn, including Pandora and Prometheus, act as shepherd moons to confine the rings and prevent them from spreading out. Pan and Atlas cause weak, linear density waves in Saturn's rings that have yielded more reliable calculations of their masses. ## History of observation and exploration The observation and exploration of Saturn can be divided into three phases: (1) pre-modern observations with the naked eye, (2) telescopic observations from Earth beginning in the 17th century, and (3) visitation by space probes, in orbit or on flyby. In the 21st century, telescopic observations continue from Earth (including Earth-orbiting observatories like the Hubble Space Telescope) and, until its 2017 retirement, from the Cassini orbiter around Saturn. ### Pre-telescopic observation Saturn has been known since prehistoric times, and in early recorded history it was a major character in various mythologies. Babylonian astronomers systematically observed and recorded the movements of Saturn. In ancient Greek, the planet was known as Φαίνων Phainon, and in Roman times it was known as the "star of Saturn". In ancient Roman mythology, the planet Phainon was sacred to this agricultural god, from which the planet takes its modern name. The Romans considered the god Saturnus the equivalent of the Greek god Cronus; in modern Greek, the planet retains the name Cronus—Κρόνος: Kronos. The Greek scientist Ptolemy based his calculations of Saturn's orbit on observations he made while it was in opposition. In Hindu astrology, there are nine astrological objects, known as Navagrahas. Saturn is known as "Shani" and judges everyone based on the good and bad deeds performed in life. Ancient Chinese and Japanese culture designated the planet Saturn as the "earth star" (土星). This was based on Five Elements which were traditionally used to classify natural elements. In ancient Hebrew, Saturn is called Shabbathai. Its angel is Cassiel. Its intelligence or beneficial spirit is 'Agȋȇl (Hebrew: אגיאל, romanized: ʿAgyal), and its darker spirit (demon) is Zȃzȇl (Hebrew: זאזל, romanized: Zazl). Zazel has been described as a great angel, invoked in Solomonic magic, who is "effective in love conjurations". In Ottoman Turkish, Urdu, and Malay, the name of Zazel is 'Zuhal', derived from the Arabic language (Arabic: زحل, romanized: Zuhal). ### Telescopic pre-spaceflight observations Saturn's rings require at least a 15-mm-diameter telescope to resolve and thus were not known to exist until Christiaan Huygens saw them in 1655 and published about this in 1659. Galileo, with his primitive telescope in 1610, incorrectly thought of Saturn's appearing not quite round as two moons on Saturn's sides. It was not until Huygens used greater telescopic magnification that this notion was refuted, and the rings were truly seen for the first time. Huygens also discovered Saturn's moon Titan; Giovanni Domenico Cassini later discovered four other moons: Iapetus, Rhea, Tethys and Dione. In 1675, Cassini discovered the gap now known as the Cassini Division. No further discoveries of significance were made until 1789 when William Herschel discovered two further moons, Mimas and Enceladus. The irregularly shaped satellite Hyperion, which has a resonance with Titan, was discovered in 1848 by a British team. In 1899 William Henry Pickering discovered Phoebe, a highly irregular satellite that does not rotate synchronously with Saturn as the larger moons do. Phoebe was the first such satellite found and it takes more than a year to orbit Saturn in a retrograde orbit. During the early 20th century, research on Titan led to the confirmation in 1944 that it had a thick atmosphere – a feature unique among the Solar System's moons. ### Spaceflight missions #### Pioneer 11 flyby Pioneer 11 made the first flyby of Saturn in September 1979, when it passed within 20,000 km of the planet's cloud tops. Images were taken of the planet and a few of its moons, although their resolution was too low to discern surface detail. The spacecraft also studied Saturn's rings, revealing the thin F-ring and the fact that dark gaps in the rings are bright when viewed at high phase angle (towards the Sun), meaning that they contain fine light-scattering material. In addition, Pioneer 11 measured the temperature of Titan. #### Voyager flybys In November 1980, the Voyager 1 probe visited the Saturn system. It sent back the first high-resolution images of the planet, its rings and satellites. Surface features of various moons were seen for the first time. Voyager 1 performed a close flyby of Titan, increasing knowledge of the atmosphere of the moon. It proved that Titan's atmosphere is impenetrable in visible wavelengths; therefore no surface details were seen. The flyby changed the spacecraft's trajectory out from the plane of the Solar System. Almost a year later, in August 1981, Voyager 2 continued the study of the Saturn system. More close-up images of Saturn's moons were acquired, as well as evidence of changes in the atmosphere and the rings. Unfortunately, during the flyby, the probe's turnable camera platform stuck for a couple of days and some planned imaging was lost. Saturn's gravity was used to direct the spacecraft's trajectory towards Uranus. The probes discovered and confirmed several new satellites orbiting near or within the planet's rings, as well as the small Maxwell Gap (a gap within the C Ring) and Keeler gap (a 42 km-wide gap in the A Ring). #### Cassini–Huygens spacecraft The Cassini–Huygens space probe entered orbit around Saturn on 1 July 2004. In June 2004, it conducted a close flyby of Phoebe, sending back high-resolution images and data. Cassini's flyby of Saturn's largest moon, Titan, captured radar images of large lakes and their coastlines with numerous islands and mountains. The orbiter completed two Titan flybys before releasing the Huygens probe on 25 December 2004. Huygens descended onto the surface of Titan on 14 January 2005. Starting in early 2005, scientists used Cassini to track lightning on Saturn. The power of the lightning is approximately 1,000 times that of lightning on Earth. In 2006, NASA reported that Cassini had found evidence of liquid water reservoirs no more than tens of meters below the surface that erupt in geysers on Saturn's moon Enceladus. These jets of icy particles are emitted into orbit around Saturn from vents in the moon's south polar region. Over 100 geysers have been identified on Enceladus. In May 2011, NASA scientists reported that Enceladus "is emerging as the most habitable spot beyond Earth in the Solar System for life as we know it". Cassini photographs have revealed a previously undiscovered planetary ring, outside the brighter main rings of Saturn and inside the G and E rings. The source of this ring is hypothesized to be the crashing of a meteoroid off Janus and Epimetheus. In July 2006, images were returned of hydrocarbon lakes near Titan's north pole, the presence of which were confirmed in January 2007. In March 2007, hydrocarbon seas were found near the North pole, the largest of which is almost the size of the Caspian Sea. In October 2006, the probe detected an 8,000 km diameter cyclone-like storm with an eyewall at Saturn's south pole. From 2004 to 2 November 2009, the probe discovered and confirmed eight new satellites. In April 2013 Cassini sent back images of a hurricane at the planet's north pole 20 times larger than those found on Earth, with winds faster than 530 km/h (330 mph). On 15 September 2017, the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft performed the "Grand Finale" of its mission: a number of passes through gaps between Saturn and Saturn's inner rings. The atmospheric entry of Cassini ended the mission. #### Possible future missions The continued exploration of Saturn is still considered to be a viable option for NASA as part of their ongoing New Frontiers program of missions. NASA previously requested for plans to be put forward for a mission to Saturn that included the Saturn Atmospheric Entry Probe, and possible investigations into the habitability and possible discovery of life on Saturn's moons Titan and Enceladus by Dragonfly. ## Observation Saturn is the most distant of the five planets easily visible to the naked eye from Earth, the other four being Mercury, Venus, Mars and Jupiter. (Uranus, and occasionally 4 Vesta, are visible to the naked eye in dark skies.) Saturn appears to the naked eye in the night sky as a bright, yellowish point of light. The mean apparent magnitude of Saturn is 0.46 with a standard deviation of 0.34. Most of the magnitude variation is due to the inclination of the ring system relative to the Sun and Earth. The brightest magnitude, −0.55, occurs near in time to when the plane of the rings is inclined most highly, and the faintest magnitude, 1.17, occurs around the time when they are least inclined. It takes approximately 29.4 years for the planet to complete an entire circuit of the ecliptic against the background constellations of the zodiac. Most people will require an optical aid (very large binoculars or a small telescope) that magnifies at least 30 times to achieve an image of Saturn's rings in which clear resolution is present. When Earth passes through the ring plane, which occurs twice every Saturnian year (roughly every 15 Earth years), the rings briefly disappear from view because they are so thin. Such a "disappearance" will next occur in 2025, but Saturn will be too close to the Sun for observations. Saturn and its rings are best seen when the planet is at, or near, opposition, the configuration of a planet when it is at an elongation of 180°, and thus appears opposite the Sun in the sky. A Saturnian opposition occurs every year—approximately every 378 days—and results in the planet appearing at its brightest. Both the Earth and Saturn orbit the Sun on eccentric orbits, which means their distances from the Sun vary over time, and therefore so do their distances from each other, hence varying the brightness of Saturn from one opposition to the next. Saturn also appears brighter when the rings are angled such that they are more visible. For example, during the opposition of 17 December 2002, Saturn appeared at its brightest due to a favorable orientation of its rings relative to the Earth, even though Saturn was closer to the Earth and Sun in late 2003. From time to time, Saturn is occulted by the Moon (that is, the Moon covers up Saturn in the sky). As with all the planets in the Solar System, occultations of Saturn occur in "seasons". Saturnian occultations will take place monthly for about a 12-month period, followed by about a five-year period in which no such activity is registered. The Moon's orbit is inclined by several degrees relative to Saturn's, so occultations will only occur when Saturn is near one of the points in the sky where the two planes intersect (both the length of Saturn's year and the 18.6-Earth year nodal precession period of the Moon's orbit influence the periodicity). ## See also - Statistics of planets in the Solar System

Never Forget You (Mariah Carey song)

1994 single by Mariah Carey

"Never Forget You" is a song recorded by American singer Mariah Carey for her third studio album Music Box (1993). Carey co-wrote the slow jam with Babyface and the pair produced it with Daryl Simmons. Columbia Records released the song on January 21, 1994, as the B-side to "Without You" and promoted it to American urban contemporary radio stations as the album's fourth single. The lyrics lament the end of a romance. Strings, synthesizers, and percussion characterize the composition; Jermaine Dupri altered them for remixes. Music critics deemed "Never Forget You" unremarkable and derivative. The song's level of emotion and Carey's vocal performance were further topics of commentary. "Never Forget You" peaked at numbers one and three on the US urban contemporary radio charts published by Radio & Records and Gavin Report, respectively. It also reached number three on Billboard Hot 100 Singles and number seven on Billboard Hot R&B Singles. Combined with "Without You", the single sold 600,000 copies in the US throughout 1994. ## Background and release After the 1992 release of her first extended play, MTV Unplugged, Mariah Carey began to work on her third studio album Music Box (1993). She resumed recording with previous collaborators Walter Afanasieff, David Cole, and Robert Clivillés, and began new relationships with producers Dave Hall and Babyface. The latter was known for his traditional ballad productions. According to author Marc Shapiro, this aligned with the album's intended musical identity of "leaning toward the basic R&B feel while not forgetting the orchestration and polish". Columbia Records released Music Box on August 31, 1993. The label promoted the sixth track, Carey–Babyface collaboration "Never Forget You", as the album's fourth single and serviced it to American urban contemporary radio stations in January 1994. It is also the B-side to the third single, "Without You", which was released on January 21, 1994. Columbia issued the song in several formats: 7-inch vinyl, 12-inch vinyl, cassette, maxi cassette, CD, and maxi CD. "Never Forget You" is Carey's first single without a music video. Billboard writer Andrew Hampp thought this indicates the release was inconsequential to her and Columbia. ## Composition and lyrics "Never Forget You" is a pop and R&B slow jam. Carey and Babyface wrote the lyrics in which the narrator softy laments the end of a romance: "No, I'll never forget you / I'll never let you out of my heart / You will always be here with me / I'll hold on to your memories, baby." The pair composed the music and then produced the song with Daryl Simmons. It features strings, synthesizers, and percussion prominently. Babyface plays the drums and keyboards and Koyo performs the bass. Carey and Babyface provide background vocals; the former's are overdubbed in the chorus. Jim Zumpano, Dana Jon Chappelle, and Jim Caruana engineered the track at Right Track Recording in New York City, after which Mick Guzauski mixed it in Sony Music Studios. Like every song on Music Box, "Never Forget You" was mastered by Bob Ludwig at Gateway in Portland, Maine. According to sheet music published by Hal Leonard, the song is composed in time signature with a "moderately slow" tempo. It has a swung rhythm every sixteenth note and lasts for three minutes and 45 seconds. Carey biographer Chris Nickson felt that the waltz time evokes "an air of partners gliding around the dancefloor in memories". Jermaine Dupri produced remixes of "Never Forget You" at KrossWire Studio in Atlanta, Georgia. Carey had wanted to collaborate with him after hearing his work on the 1992 Kris Kross single "Jump". Phil Tan and Jamie Seyberth engineered the tracks and Dupri and Tan mixed them at Hollywood's Larrabee Sound Studios. ## Critical reception Music critics deemed "Never Forget You" forgettable and unoriginal. They compared it to Babyface's other compositions such as Boyz II Men's "End of the Road" (1992). David Browne of Entertainment Weekly said "Never Forget You" squanders Babyface's abilities. New York Times writer Deborah Frost suggested it "seems designed to showcase his skills as a pop charmer rather than [Carey's]". Critics evaluated the song's level of emotion; several described it as genuine. Bill Speed and John Martinucci from the Gavin Report called it "a ballad that puts you into a sentimental mood before you can say 'I like this'". Toledo Blade writer Stewart Walker thought it showcased "Carey as one of those rare artists who can actually convey her feelings to her listeners". In contrast, Dayton Daily News critic Dave Larsen derided "Never Forget You" as overblown and Mike Joyce of The Washington Post felt that "even Aretha Franklin would be hard pressed to make an emotional statement" given the lyrics. Carey's vocal performance was another topic of commentary. Cleveland.com's Troy L. Smith considered it the song's highlight. Richmond Times-Dispatch writer Patrick McCarty said she "spirals to unnerving heights with volume and shrieks to spare"; Fort Worth Star-Telegram writer Dave Ferman reckoned her voice was more restrained than on songs from her previous albums. Billboard writers Andrew Hampp and Princess Gabbara complimented Carey's harmonies with Babyface. According to Julianne Shepherd of Vibe, "her piercing vocals amplify [his] signature indelible melodies". ## Chart performance "Never Forget You" is one of the best-performing songs produced by Babyface in the 1990s. Combined with "Without You", the single sold 600,000 copies in the United States throughout 1994. An urban radio success, "Never Forget You" peaked at numbers one and three on charts published by Radio & Records and Gavin Report, respectively. At the time of the single's release, Billboard allowed an A-side and B-side to chart together if both received radio airplay. "Never Forget You" received some spins from pop radio stations and charted with "Without You" on Hot 100 Singles beginning February 12, 1994. The single peaked at number three in the week ending March 19, 1994. It is Carey's 13th-best performing title on the chart as of 2018 and remains her sole double-sided appearance. On Hot R&B Singles, "Never Forget You" debuted at number 94 in the February 5, 1994, Billboard issue. "Without You" was listed with it from March 12, 1994, and the pair reached number seven in the week ending April 9, 1994. The peaks on both the Hot R&B and Hot 100 charts were the second lowest of Carey's career at the time. ## Track listings 1994 US maxi cassette/maxi CD single 1. "Never Forget You" (Radio Edit) – 3:35 2. "Never Forget You" (Extended) – 5:17 3. "Never Forget You" (Album Version) – 3:45 4. "Never Forget You" (Instrumental) – 3:34 5. "Without You" (Album Version) – 3:34 1994 US 12-inch vinyl single A1. "Never Forget You" (Extended) – 5:17 A2. "Never Forget You" (Radio Edit) – 3:35 A3. "Never Forget You" (Instrumental) – 3:34 B1. "Never Forget You" (Album Version) – 3:45 B2. "Without You" (Album Version) – 3:34 2020 MC30 digital EP 1. "Never Forget You" (Radio Edit) – 3:35 2. "Never Forget You" (Extended) – 5:17 3. "Never Forget You" (Instrumental) – 3:34 ## Credits ### Album version Locations Personnel ### Dupri remixes Locations Personnel

John Le Mesurier

English actor (1912–1983)

John Le Mesurier (/lə ˈmɛʒərə/, born John Elton Le Mesurier Halliley; 5 April 1912 – 15 November 1983) was an English actor. He is probably best remembered for his comedic role as Sergeant Arthur Wilson in the BBC television situation comedy Dad's Army (1968–1977). A self-confessed "jobbing actor", Le Mesurier appeared in more than 120 films across a range of genres, normally in smaller supporting parts. Le Mesurier became interested in the stage as a young adult and enrolled at the Fay Compton Studio of Dramatic Art in 1933. From there he took a position in repertory theatre and made his stage debut in September 1934 at the Palladium Theatre in Edinburgh in the J. B. Priestley play Dangerous Corner. He later accepted an offer to work with Alec Guinness in a John Gielgud production of Hamlet. He first appeared on television in 1938 as Seigneur de Miolans in the BBC broadcast of The Marvellous History of St Bernard. During the Second World War Le Mesurier was posted to British India, as a captain with the Royal Tank Regiment. Following the war, he returned to acting and made his film debut in 1948, starring in the second feature comedy short Death in the Hand, opposite Esme Percy and Ernest Jay. Le Mesurier had a prolific film career, appearing mostly in comedies, usually in roles portraying figures of authority such as army officers, policemen and judges. As well as Hancock's Half Hour, Le Mesurier appeared in Tony Hancock's two principal films, The Rebel and The Punch and Judy Man. In 1971, Le Mesurier received his only award: a British Academy of Film and Television Arts "Best Television Actor" award for his lead performance in Dennis Potter's television play Traitor; it was one of his few lead roles. He took a relaxed approach to acting and felt that his parts were those of "a decent chap all at sea in a chaotic world not of his own making." Le Mesurier was married three times, most notably to the actress Hattie Jacques. A heavy drinker of alcohol for most of his life, Le Mesurier died in 1983, aged 71, from a stomach haemorrhage, brought about as a complication of cirrhosis of the liver. After his death, critics reflected that, for an actor who normally took minor roles, the viewing public were "enormously fond of him". ## Biography ### Early life Le Mesurier was born John Elton Le Mesurier Halliley, in Bedford on 5 April 1912. His parents were Charles Elton Halliley, a solicitor, and Amy Michelle (née Le Mesurier), whose family were from Alderney in the Channel Islands; both families were affluent, with histories of government service or work in the legal profession. While John was an infant the family settled in Bury St Edmunds, in West Suffolk. He was sent to school, first to Grenham House in Kent, and later to Sherborne School in Dorset, where one of his fellow pupils was the mathematician Alan Turing. Le Mesurier disliked both schools intensely, citing insensitive teaching methods and an inability to accept individualism. He later wrote: "I resented Sherborne for its closed mind, its collective capacity for rejecting anything that did not conform to the image of manhood as portrayed in the ripping yarns of a scouting manual". From an early age Le Mesurier had been interested in acting and performing; as a child he had frequently been taken to the West End of London to watch Ralph Lynn and Tom Walls perform in the series of farces at the Aldwych Theatre. In his childhood in Bury St Edmunds, the family lived less than 300 yards from the Theatre Royal, and his autobiography records meeting actors from that theatre as his earliest childhood memory. These experiences fuelled an early desire to make a career on the stage. After leaving school he was initially persuaded to follow his father's line of work, as an articled clerk at Greene & Greene, a firm of solicitors in Bury St Edmunds; in his spare time he took part in local amateur dramatics. In 1933 he decided to leave the legal profession, and in September he enrolled at the Fay Compton Studio of Dramatic Art; a fellow student was the actor Alec Guinness, with whom he became close friends. In July 1934, the studio staged their annual public revue in which both Le Mesurier and Guinness took part; among the judges for the event were John Gielgud, Leslie Henson, Alfred Hitchcock and Ivor Novello. Le Mesurier received a Certificate of Fellowship, while Guinness won the Fay Compton prize. After the revue, rather than remain at the studio for further tuition, Le Mesurier took an opportunity to join the Edinburgh-based Millicent Ward Repertory Players at a salary of £3.10s (£3.50) a week. ### Career #### 1934–1946 The Millicent Ward repertory company typically staged evening performances of three-act plays; the works changed each week, and rehearsals were held during the daytime for the following week's production. Under his birth name John Halliley, Le Mesurier made his stage debut in September 1934 at the Palladium Theatre, Edinburgh in the J. B. Priestley play Dangerous Corner, along with three other newcomers to the company. The reviewer for The Scotsman thought that Le Mesurier was well cast in the role. Appearances in While Parents Sleep and Cavalcade were followed by a break, as problems arose with the lease of the theatre. Le Mesurier then accepted an offer to appear with Alec Guinness in a John Gielgud production of Hamlet, which began in Streatham in the spring of 1935 and later toured the English provinces. Le Mesurier understudied Anthony Quayle's role of Guildenstern, and otherwise appeared in the play as an extra. In July 1935, Le Mesurier was hired by the Oldham repertory company, based at the Coliseum Theatre; his first appearance with them was in a version of the Wilson Collison play, Up in Mabel's Room; he was sacked after one week for missing a performance after oversleeping. In September 1935, he moved to the Sheffield Repertory Theatre to appear in Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary, and also played Malvolio in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. Le Mesurier later commented on the slow progress of his career: "had I known it was going to take so long, I might well have given the whole thing up". In 1937 he joined the Croydon Repertory Theatre, where he appeared in nine productions in 1936 and 1937. During this period Le Mesurier changed his professional name from John Halliley to John Le Mesurier; his biographer Graham McCann observes that "he never bothered, at least in public, to explain the reason for his decision". Le Mesurier used his new name for the first time in the September 1937 production of Love on the Dole. Le Mesurier first appeared on television in 1938, thus becoming one of the medium's pioneering actors. His initial appearance was in a production of The Marvellous History of St Bernard in which he appeared as Seigneur de Miolans in a play adapted from a 15th-century manuscript by Henri Ghéon. Alongside the television appearance, he continued to appear on stage in Edinburgh and Glasgow with the Howard and Wyndham Players, at least until late 1938 when he returned to London and re-joined Croydon Repertory Theatre. His second spell with the troupe ended a few months later when, from May to October 1939 he appeared in Gaslight, first in London and subsequently on tour. The reviewer in The Manchester Guardian considered that Le Mesurier gave "a faultless performance", and that "the character is not overemphasised. One may praise it best by saying that Mr. Le Mesurier gives one a really uncomfortable feeling in the stomach". From November to December 1939, Le Mesurier toured Britain in a production of Goodness, How Sad, during which time he met the director's daughter, June Melville, whom he married in April 1940. After spending January and February 1940 in French Without Tears at the Grand Theatre in Blackpool, he returned to London where he was employed by the Brixton Theatre, appearing in a series of productions. In his time in repertory, Le Mesurier took on a variety of roles across several genres; his biographer Graham McCann observed that his range included "comedies and tragedies, thrillers and fantasies, tense courtroom dramas and frenzied farces, Shakespeare and Ibsen, Sheridan and Wilde, Molière and Shaw, Congreve and Coward. The range was remarkable". In September 1940 Le Mesurier's rented home was hit by a German bomb, destroying all his possessions, including his call-up papers. In the same bombing raid, the theatre in Brixton in which he was working was also hit. A few days later he reported for basic training with the Royal Armoured Corps; in June 1941 he was commissioned into the Royal Tank Regiment. He served in Britain until 1943 when he was posted to British India where he spent the rest of the war. Le Mesurier later claimed that he had had "a comfortable war, with captaincy thrust upon me, before I was demobbed in 1946". #### 1946–1959 On his return to Britain, Le Mesurier returned to acting; he initially struggled for work, finding only a few minor roles. In February 1948 he made his film debut in the second feature comedy short Death in the Hand, which starred Esme Percy and Ernest Jay. He followed this with equally small roles in the 1949 film Old Mother Riley's New Venture—where his name was misspelt on the credits as "Le Meseurier"—and the 1950 crime film Dark Interval. During the same period he also frequently appeared on stage in Birmingham. Le Mesurier undertook several roles on television in 1951, including that of Doctor Forrest in The Railway Children, the blackmailer Eduardo Lucas in Sherlock Holmes: The Second Stain, and Joseph in the nativity play A Time to be Born. The same year Tony Hancock joined Le Mesurier's second wife, Hattie Jacques (the couple had married in 1949 following his divorce from June Melville earlier that year) in the radio series Educating Archie. Le Mesurier and Hancock became friends; they would often go for drinking sessions around Soho, where they ended up in jazz clubs. After Hancock left Educating Archie in 1952 after one season, the friendship continued, and Jacques joined the cast of Hancock's Half Hour during the fourth radio series in 1956. In 1952, as well as appearing in the films Blind Man's Bluff and Mother Riley Meets the Vampire, Le Mesurier also appeared as the doctor in Angry Dust at the New Torch Theatre, London. Parnell Bradbury, writing in The Times, thought Le Mesurier had played the role extraordinarily well; Harold Hobson, writing in The Sunday Times, thought that "the trouble with Mr. John Le Mesurier's Dr. Weston is that he approaches the man too snarlingly ... [it is] a notion of genius that would be unacceptable anywhere outside Victorian melodrama". In 1953, he had a role as a bureaucrat in the short film The Pleasure Garden, which won the Prix du Film de Fantaisie Poétique at the Cannes Film Festival in 1954. After a long run of small roles in second features, his 1955 portrayal of the registrar in Roy Boulting's comedy Josephine and Men, "jerked him out of the rut", according to Philip Oakes. Following his appearance in Josephine and Men, John and Roy Boulting cast Le Mesurier as a psychiatrist in their 1956 Second World War film, Private's Progress. The cast featured many leading British actors of the time, including Ian Carmichael and Richard Attenborough. Dilys Powell, reviewing for The Sunday Times, thought that the cast was "embellished" by Le Mesurier's presence, among others. Later in 1956 Le Mesurier again appeared alongside Attenborough, with small roles in Jay Lewis's The Baby and the Battleship and Roy Boulting's Brothers in Law, the latter of which also featured Carmichael and Terry-Thomas. He was also active in television, in a variety of roles in episodes of Douglas Fairbanks Presents, a series of short dramas. Le Mesurier's friendship with Tony Hancock provided a further source of work when Hancock asked him to be one of the regular supporting actors in Hancock's Half Hour, when it moved from radio to television. Le Mesurier subsequently appeared in seven episodes of the show between 1957 and 1960, and then in an episode of a follow-up series entitled Hancock. In 1958 he appeared in ten films, among them Roy Boulting's comedy Happy Is the Bride, about which Dilys Powell wrote in The Sunday Times: "[M]y vote for the most entertaining contributions ... goes to the two fathers, John Le Mesurier and Cecil Parker". In 1959, the busiest year of his career, Le Mesurier took part in 13 films, including I'm All Right Jack, which was the most successful of Le Mesurier's credited films that year; he also had an uncredited role as a doctor in Ben-Hur. #### 1960–1968 Le Mesurier appeared in nine films in 1960, as well as nine television programmes, including episodes of Hancock's Half Hour, Saber of London and Danger Man. His work the following year included a part in Peter Sellers's directorial debut Mr. Topaze, a film which failed both critically and commercially. He provided the voice of Mr. Justice Byrne in a recording of excerpts from the transcript of R v Penguin Books Ltd.—the court case concerning the publication of D. H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover—which also featured Michael Hordern and Maurice Denham. J.W. Lambert, reviewing for The Sunday Times, wrote that Le Mesurier gave "precisely the air of confident incredulity which the learned gentleman exhibited in court". Later that year he played Hancock's office manager in the first of Tony Hancock's two principal film vehicles, The Rebel. In 1962 he appeared in Wendy Toye's comedy film We Joined the Navy before reuniting with Peter Sellers in Only Two Can Play, Sidney Gilliat's film of the novel That Uncertain Feeling by Kingsley Amis; Powell noted with pleasure "the armour of his gravity pierced by polite bewilderment". She compared Le Mesurier with the well-known American straight-face comedian, John McGiver. After appearing in another Sellers film in 1962—Waltz of the Toreadors—Le Mesurier joined him in the 1963 comedy The Wrong Arm of the Law. Powell again reviewed the pair's film, commenting that "I thought I knew by now every shade in the acting of John Le Mesurier (not that I could ever get tired of any of them); but there seems a new shade here". The same year, he appeared in a third Sellers film, The Pink Panther, as a defence lawyer, and in the second and last of Tony Hancock's starring vehicles, The Punch and Judy Man. Le Mesurier played Sandman in the latter film; Powell wrote that the role "allowed a gentler and subtler character than usual". He also appeared in a series of advertisements for Homepride flour in 1964, providing the voice-over for the animated character Fred the Flourgrader; he continued as the voice until 1983. In a change from his usual comedic roles, Le Mesurier portrayed the Reverend Jonathan Ives in Jacques Tourneur's 1965 science fiction film, City Under the Sea, before returning to comedy in Where the Spies Are, a comedy-adventure film directed by Val Guest, which starred David Niven. In 1966 Le Mesurier also played the role of Colonel Maynard in the ITV sitcom George and the Dragon, with Sid James and Peggy Mount. The programme ran to four series between 1966 and 1968, totalling 26 episodes. He also took a role in four episodes of a Coronation Street spin-off series, Pardon the Expression, in which he starred opposite Arthur Lowe. #### 1968–1977 In 1968 Le Mesurier was offered a role in a new BBC situation comedy playing an upper-middle-class Sergeant Arthur Wilson in Dad's Army; he was the second choice after Robert Dorning. Le Mesurier was unsure about taking the part as he was finishing the final series of George and the Dragon and did not want another long-term television role. He was persuaded both by an increase in his fee—to £262 10s (£262.50) per episode—and by the casting of his old friend Clive Dunn as Corporal Jones. Le Mesurier was initially unsure of how to portray his character, and was advised by series writer Jimmy Perry to make the part his own. Le Mesurier decided to base the character on himself, later writing that "I thought, why not just be myself, use an extension of my own personality and behave rather as I had done in the army? So I always left a button or two undone, and had the sleeve of my battle dress slightly turned up. I spoke softly, issued commands as if they were invitations (the sort not likely to be accepted) and generally assumed a benign air of helplessness". Perry later observed that "we wanted Wilson to be the voice of sanity; he has become John". Nicholas de Jongh, in a tribute written after Le Mesurier's death, suggested that it was in the role of Wilson that Le Mesurier became a star. His interaction with Arthur Lowe's character Captain George Mainwaring was described by The Times as "a memorable part of one of television's most popular shows". Tise Vahimagi, writing for the British Film Institute's Screenonline, agreed, and commented that "it was the hesitant exchanges of one-upmanship between Le Mesurier's Wilson, a figure of delicate gentility, and Arthur Lowe's pompous, middle class platoon leader Captain Mainwaring, that added to its finest moments". Le Mesurier enjoyed making the series, particularly the fortnight the cast would spend in Thetford each year filming the outside scenes. The programme lasted for nine series over nine years, and covered eighty episodes, ending in 1977. During the filming of the series in 1969, Le Mesurier was flown to Venice over a series of weekends to appear in the film Midas Run, an Alf Kjellin-directed crime film that also starred Richard Crenna, Anne Heywood and Fred Astaire. Le Mesurier became friends with Astaire during the filming and they often dined together in a local cafe while watching horse-racing on television. In 1971 Norman Cohen directed a feature film of Dad's Army; Le Mesurier also appeared as Wilson in a stage adaptation, which toured the UK in 1975–76. Following the success of Dad's Army, Le Mesurier recorded the single "A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square" with "Hometown" on the reverse side (the latter with Arthur Lowe). This, and an album, Dad's Army, featuring the whole cast, was released on the Warner label in 1975. In between his performances in Dad's Army, Le Mesurier acted in films, including the role of the prison governor opposite Noël Coward in the 1969 Peter Collinson-directed The Italian Job. The cinema historian Amy Sargeant likened Le Mesurier's role to the "mild demeanour" of his Sergeant Wilson character. In 1970, Le Mesurier appeared in Ralph Thomas's Doctor in Trouble as the purser; he also made an appearance in Vincente Minnelli's On a Clear Day You Can See Forever, a romantic fantasy musical. In 1971 Le Mesurier played the lead role in Dennis Potter's television play Traitor, in which he portrayed a "boozy British aristocrat who became a spy for the Soviets"; his performance won him a British Academy of Film and Television Arts "Best Television Actor" award. Writing for the British Film Institute, Sergio Angelini considered "Le Mesurier is utterly compelling throughout in an atypical role". Chris Dunkley, writing in The Times, described the performance as "a superbly persuasive portrait, made vividly real by one of the best performances Mr Mesurier [sic] has ever given". The reviewer for The Sunday Times agreed, saying that Le Mesurier, "after a lifetime supporting other actors with the strength of a pit-prop, gets the main part; he looks, sounds and feels exactly right". Reviewing for The Guardian, Nancy Banks-Smith called the role "his Hamlet", and said that it was worth waiting for. Although delighted to have won the award, Le Mesurier commented that the aftermath proved "something of an anticlimax. No exciting offers of work came in". Le Mesurier made a cameo appearance in Val Guest's 1972 sex comedy Au Pair Girls, and starred alongside Warren Mitchell and Dandy Nichols in Bob Kellett's The Alf Garnett Saga. In 1974 he played a police inspector in a similar Val Guest comedy, Confessions of a Window Cleaner, alongside Robin Askwith and Antony Booth. The following year he also narrated Bod, an animated children's programme from the BBC; there were thirteen episodes in total. #### 1977–1983 In 1977 Le Mesurier portrayed Jacob Marley in a BBC television adaptation of A Christmas Carol, which starred Michael Hordern as Ebenezer Scrooge; Sergio Angelini, writing for the British Film Institute about Le Mesurier's portrayal, considered that "although never frightening, he does exert a strong sense of melancholy, his every move and inflection seemingly tinged with regret and remorse". In 1979 he portrayed Sir Gawain in Walt Disney's Unidentified Flying Oddball, directed by Russ Mayberry, and co-starring Dennis Dugan, Jim Dale and Kenneth More. The film, an adaptation of Mark Twain's novel A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, was hailed by Time Out as "an intelligent film with a cohesive plot and an amusing script" and cited it as "one of the better Disney attempts to hop on the sci-fi bandwagon". The reviewers praised the cast, particularly Kenneth More's Arthur and Le Mesurier's Gawain, which they said were "rather touchingly portrayed as friends who have grown old together". Le Mesurier played The Wise Old Bird in the 1980 BBC Radio 4 series The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and appeared on the same station as Bilbo Baggins in the 1981 radio version of The Lord of the Rings. In the spring of 1980 he took the role of David Bliss alongside Constance Cummings—as Judith Bliss—in a production of Noël Coward's 1920s play Hay Fever. Writing for The Observer, Robert Cushman thought that Le Mesurier played the role with "deeply grizzled torpor", while Michael Billington, reviewing for The Guardian, saw him as a "grey, gentle wisp of a man, full of half-completed gestures and seraphic smiles". He took on the role of Father Mowbray in Granada Television's 1981 adaptation of Brideshead Revisited. He guest-starred in episodes of the British comedy television series The Goodies, and in an early episode of Hi-de-Hi!. His final film appearance was also Peter Sellers's final cinema role, The Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu, which was completed just months before Sellers's death in July 1980. In 1982 Le Mesurier reprised the role of Arthur Wilson for It Sticks Out Half a Mile, a radio sequel to Dad's Army, in which Wilson had become the bank manager of the Frambourne-on-Sea branch, while Arthur Lowe's character, Captain George Mainwaring, was trying to apply for a loan to renovate the local pier. The death of Lowe in April 1982 meant that only a pilot episode was recorded, and the project was suspended. It was revived later that year with Lowe's role replaced by two other Dad's Army cast members: Pike, played by Ian Lavender, and Hodges, played by Bill Pertwee. A pilot and twelve episodes were subsequently recorded, and broadcast in 1984. Le Mesurier also teamed up with another ex-Dad's Army colleague, Clive Dunn, to record a novelty single, "There Ain't Much Change from a Pound These Days"/"After All These Years", which had been written by Le Mesurier's stepson, David Malin. The single was released on KA Records in 1982. He appeared opposite Anthony Hopkins in a four-part television series, A Married Man, in March 1983, before undertaking the narration on the short film The Passionate Pilgrim, an Eric Morecambe vehicle, which was Morecambe's last film before his death. ### Personal life In 1939, Le Mesurier accepted a role in the Robert Morley play Goodness, How Sad!, directed by June Melville—whose father Frederick owned several theatres, including the Lyceum, Prince's and Brixton. Melville and Le Mesurier soon began a romance, and were married in April 1940. Le Mesurier was conscripted into the army in September 1940; after his demobilisation in 1946, he discovered that his wife had become an alcoholic: "She became careless about appointments and haphazard professionally". As a result, the couple separated and were divorced in 1949. In June 1947, Le Mesurier went with fellow actor Geoffrey Hibbert to the Players' Theatre in London, where among the performers was Hattie Jacques. Le Mesurier and Jacques began to see each other regularly; Le Mesurier was still married, albeit estranged from his wife. In 1949, when his divorce came through, Jacques proposed to Le Mesurier, asking him, "Don't you think it's about time we got married?". The couple married in November 1949 and had two sons, Robin and Kim. Jacques began an affair in 1962 with her driver, John Schofield, who gave her the attention and support that Le Mesurier did not. When Jacques decided to move Schofield into the family home, Le Mesurier moved into a separate room and tried to repair the marriage. He later commented about this period: "I could have walked out, but, whatever my feelings, I loved Hattie and the children and I was certain—I had to be certain—that we could repair the damage". The affair caused a downturn in his health; he collapsed on holiday in Tangier in 1963 and was hospitalised in Gibraltar. He returned to London to find the situation between his wife and her lover was unchanged, which caused a relapse. During the final stages of the breakdown of his marriage, Le Mesurier met Joan Malin at the Establishment club in Soho in 1963. The following year he moved out of his marital house, and that day proposed to Joan, who accepted his offer. Le Mesurier allowed Jacques to bring a divorce suit on grounds of his own infidelity, to ensure that the press blamed him for the break-up, thus avoiding any negative publicity for Jacques. Le Mesurier and Malin married in March 1966. A few months after they were married, Joan began a relationship with Tony Hancock, and left Le Mesurier to move in with the comedian. Hancock was a self-confessed alcoholic by this time, and was verbally and physically abusive to Joan during their relationship. After a year together, with Hancock's violence towards her worsening, Joan attempted suicide; she subsequently realised that she could no longer live with Hancock and returned to her husband. Despite this, Le Mesurier remained friends with Hancock, calling him "a comic of true genius, capable of great warmth and generosity, but a tormented and unhappy man". Without Le Mesurier's knowledge, Joan resumed her affair with Hancock and, when the comic moved to Australia in 1968, she planned to follow him if he was able to overcome his alcoholism. She abandoned these plans and remained with Le Mesurier after Hancock committed suicide on 25 June 1968. Le Mesurier was a heavy drinker, but was never noticeably drunk. In 1977 he collapsed in Australia and flew home, where he was diagnosed with cirrhosis of the liver and ordered to stop drinking. Until then he had not considered himself an alcoholic; he accepted that "it was the cumulative effect over the years that had done the damage". It was a year and a half before he drank alcohol again, when he avoided spirits and drank only beer. Jacques claimed that his calculated vagueness was the result of his dependence on cannabis, although according to Le Mesurier the drug was not to his taste; he smoked it only during his period of abstinence from alcohol. Le Mesurier's favoured pastime was visiting the jazz clubs around Soho, such as Ronnie Scott's, and he observed that "listening to artists like Bill Evans, Oscar Peterson or Alan Clare always made life seem that little bit brighter". Towards the end of his life Le Mesurier wrote his autobiography, A Jobbing Actor; the book was published in 1984, after his death. Le Mesurier's health visibly declined from July 1983 when he was hospitalised for a short time after suffering a haemorrhage. When the condition recurred later in the year he was taken to Ramsgate Hospital; after saying to his wife, "It's all been rather lovely", he slipped into a coma and died on 15 November 1983, aged 71. His remains were cremated, and the ashes buried at the Church of St. George the Martyr, Church Hill, Ramsgate. His epitaph reads: "John Le Mesurier. Much loved actor. Resting." His self-penned death notice in The Times of 16 November 1983 stated that he had "conked out" and that he "sadly misses family and friends". After Le Mesurier's death fellow comedian Eric Sykes commented: "I never heard a bad word said against him. He was one of the great drolls of our time". Le Mesurier's fellow Dad's Army actor Bill Pertwee mourned the loss of his friend, saying, "It's a shattering loss. He was a great professional, very quiet but with a lovely sense of humour". Director Peter Cotes, writing in The Guardian, called him one of Britain's "most accomplished screen character actors", while The Times obituarist observed that he "could lend distinction to the smallest part". The Guardian reflected on Le Mesurier's popularity, observing that "No wonder so many whose lives were very different from his own came to be so enormously fond of him". A memorial service was held on 16 February 1984 at the "Actors' Church", St Paul's, Covent Garden, at which Bill Pertwee gave the eulogy. ## Approach to acting Le Mesurier took a relaxed approach to acting, saying, "You know the way you get jobbing gardeners? Well, I'm a jobbing actor ... as long as they pay me I couldn't care less if my name is billed above or below the title". Le Mesurier played a wide range of parts, and became known as "an indispensable figure in the gallery of second-rank players which were the glory of the British film industry in its more prolific days". He felt his characterisations owed "a lot to my customary expression of bewildered innocence" and tried to stress for many of his roles that his parts were those of "a decent chap all at sea in a chaotic world not of his own making". Philip French of The Observer considered that when playing a representative of bureaucracy, Le Mesurier "registered something ... complex. A feeling of exasperation, disturbance, anxiety [that] constantly lurked behind that handsome bloodhound face". The impression he gave in these roles became an "inimitable brand of bewildered persistence under fire which Le Mesurier made his own". The Times noted of him that although he was best known for his comedic roles, he, "could be equally effective in straight parts", as evidenced by his BAFTA-award-winning role in Traitor. Director Peter Cotes agreed, adding, "he had depths unrealised through the mechanical pieces in which he generally appeared"; while Philip Oakes considered that, "single-handed, he has made more films watchable, even absorbing, than anyone else around". ## Portrayals Le Mesurier's second and third marriages have been the subject of two BBC Four biographical films, the 2008 Hancock and Joan on Joan Le Mesurier's affair with Tony Hancock—with Le Mesurier played by Alex Jennings—and the 2011 Hattie on Jacques's affair with John Schofield—with Le Mesurier played by Robert Bathurst. In We're Doomed! The Dad's Army Story, a 2015 comedy drama about the making of Dad's Army, Le Mesurier was portrayed by Julian Sands. Le Mesurier was portrayed by Anton Lesser in the BBC Radio 4 drama Dear Arthur, Love John on 7 May 2012. ## Filmography and other works

Angelina Jolie

American actress (born 1975)

Angelina Jolie (/dʒoʊˈliː/; born Angelina Jolie Voight; June 4, 1975) is an American actress, filmmaker, author and humanitarian. The recipient of numerous accolades, including an Academy Award and three Golden Globe Awards, she has been named Hollywood's highest-paid actress multiple times. Jolie made her screen debut as a child alongside her father, Jon Voight, in Lookin' to Get Out (1982), and her film career began in earnest a decade later with the low-budget production Cyborg 2 (1993), followed by her first leading role in a major film in Hackers (1995). She starred in the biographical television films George Wallace (1997) and Gia (1998) and won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in the 1999 drama Girl, Interrupted. Her starring role as the titular video game heroine in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001) established her as a leading Hollywood actress. She continued her action-star career with Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005), Wanted (2008), Salt (2010), and The Tourist (2010), and received critical acclaim for her performances in the dramas A Mighty Heart (2007) and Changeling (2008); the latter earned her a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress. Her biggest commercial successes include the fantasy picture Maleficent (2014), its 2019 sequel, and the superhero film Eternals (2021). She has performed a voice role in the animation film series Kung Fu Panda since 2008. Jolie has also directed and written the war dramas In the Land of Blood and Honey (2011), Unbroken (2014), and First They Killed My Father (2017). Jolie is known for her humanitarian efforts, for which she has received a Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award and made an honorary Dame Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George, among other honors. She promotes various causes, including conservation, education, and women's rights, and is most noted for her advocacy on behalf of refugees as a Special Envoy for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, a position she held until 2022. Jolie has undertaken over a dozen field missions globally to refugee camps and war zones; her visited countries include Cambodia, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Syria, Sudan, Yemen, and Ukraine. As a public figure, Jolie has been cited as one of the most powerful and influential people in the American entertainment industry. She has been cited as the world's most beautiful woman by various media outlets. Her personal life, including her relationships, marriages, and health, has been the subject of wide publicity. She is divorced from actors Jonny Lee Miller, Billy Bob Thornton and Brad Pitt. She has six children with Pitt, three of whom were adopted internationally. ## Early life and education Angelina Jolie Voight was born on June 4, 1975, at Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles, California, to actors Jon Voight and Marcheline Bertrand. She is the sister of actor James Haven as well as the niece of singer-songwriter Chip Taylor and geologist and volcanologist Barry Voight. Her godparents are actors Jacqueline Bisset and Maximilian Schell. On her father's side, Jolie is of German and Slovak descent. Jolie has claimed to have distant Indigenous (Iroquois) ancestry through her French-Canadian mother. However, her father says Jolie is "not seriously Iroquois", saying it is something he and Bertrand made up to make Bertrand seem more "exotic". Following her parents' separation in 1976, she and her brother lived with their mother, who had abandoned her acting ambitions to focus on raising her children. Jolie's mother raised her as a Catholic but did not require her to go to church. As a child, she often watched films with her mother and it was this, rather than her father's successful career, that inspired her interest in acting, though she had a bit part in Voight's Lookin' to Get Out (1982) at age seven. When Jolie was six years old, Bertrand and her live-in partner, filmmaker Bill Day, moved the family to Palisades, New York; they returned to Los Angeles five years later. Jolie then decided she wanted to act and enrolled at the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute, where she trained for two years and appeared in several stage productions. Jolie first attended Beverly Hills High School, where she felt isolated among the children of some of the area's affluent families because her mother managed on a more modest income. She was teased by other students, who targeted her for being extremely thin and for wearing glasses and braces. Her early attempts at modeling, at her mother's insistence, proved unsuccessful. She then transferred to Moreno High School, an alternative school, where she became a "punk outsider", wearing all-black clothing, going out moshing, and engaging in knife play with her live-in boyfriend. She dropped out of her acting classes and aspired to become a funeral director, taking at-home courses to study embalming. At age 16, after the relationship had ended, Jolie graduated from high school and rented her own apartment before returning to theater studies, though in 2004 she referred to this period with the observation, "I am still at heart—and always will be—just a punk kid with tattoos." As a teenager, Jolie found it difficult to emotionally connect with other people, and as a result she self-harmed, later commenting, "For some reason, the ritual of having cut myself and feeling the pain, maybe feeling alive, feeling some kind of release, it was somehow therapeutic to me." She also struggled with insomnia and an eating disorder and began using drugs; by age 20, she had used "just about every drug possible," particularly heroin. Jolie had episodes of depression and planned to commit suicide twice—at age 19 and again at 22, when she attempted to hire a hitman to kill her. When she was 24, she experienced a nervous breakdown and was admitted for 72 hours to UCLA Medical Center's psychiatric ward. Two years later, after adopting her first child, Jolie found stability in her life, later stating, "I knew once I committed to Maddox, I would never be self-destructive again." Jolie has had a lifelong dysfunctional relationship with her father, which began when Voight left the family when his daughter was less than a year old. She has said that from then on their time together was sporadic and usually carried out in front of the press. They reconciled when they appeared together in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001), but their relationship again deteriorated. Jolie petitioned the court to legally remove her surname, Voight, in favor of her middle name, which she had long used as a stage name; the name change was granted on September 12, 2002. Voight then went public with their estrangement during an appearance on Access Hollywood, in which he claimed Jolie had "serious mental problems." At that point, her mother and brother also broke off contact with him. They did not speak for six and a half years but began rebuilding their relationship in the wake of Bertrand's death from ovarian cancer on January 27, 2007 before going public with their reconciliation three years later. ## Career ### Early work (1991–1997) Jolie committed to acting professionally at the age of 16, but initially found it difficult to pass auditions, often being told that her demeanor was "too dark." She appeared in five of her brother's student films, made while he attended the USC School of Cinema-Television, as well as in several music videos, namely Lenny Kravitz's "Stand by My Woman" (1991), Antonello Venditti's "Alta Marea" (1991), The Lemonheads's "It's About Time" (1993), and Meat Loaf's "Rock and Roll Dreams Come Through" (1993). She began to learn from her father, as she noticed his method of observing people to become like them. Their relationship during this time was less strained, with Jolie realizing that they were both "drama queens". Jolie began her professional film career in 1993, when she played her first leading role in the direct-to-video science-fiction sequel Cyborg 2, as a near-human robot designed for corporate espionage and assassination. She was so disappointed with the film that she did not audition again for a year. Following a supporting role in the independent film Without Evidence (1995), she starred in her first major studio film, Hackers (1995). The New York Times critic Janet Maslin wrote that Jolie's character "stands out ... because she scowls even more sourly than [her co-stars] and is that rare female hacker who sits intently at her keyboard in a see-through top." Hackers failed to make a profit at the box office, but developed a cult following after its video release. The role in Hackers is considered Jolie's breakthrough. After starring in the modern-day Romeo and Juliet adaptation Love Is All There Is (1996), Jolie appeared in the road movie Mojave Moon (1996). In Foxfire (1996) she played Legs, a drifter who unites four teenage girls against a teacher who has sexually harassed them. Jack Mathews of the Los Angeles Times wrote of her performance, "It took a lot of hogwash to develop this character, but Jolie, Jon Voight's knockout daughter, has the presence to overcome the stereotype. Though the story is narrated by Maddy, Legs is the subject and the catalyst." In 1997, Jolie starred with David Duchovny in the thriller Playing God, set in the Los Angeles underworld. The film was not well received by critics; Chicago Sun-Times critic Roger Ebert wrote that Jolie "finds a certain warmth in a kind of role that is usually hard and aggressive; she seems too nice to be [a mobster's] girlfriend, and maybe she is." Her next work, as a frontierswoman in the CBS miniseries True Women (1997), was even less successful; writing for The Philadelphia Inquirer, Robert Strauss dismissed her as "horrid, a fourth-rate Scarlett O'Hara" who relies on "gnashed teeth and overly pouted lips." Jolie also starred in the music video for the Rolling Stones's "Anybody Seen My Baby?" as a stripper who leaves mid-performance to wander New York City. ### Rise to prominence (1998–2000) Jolie's career prospects began to improve after she won a Golden Globe Award for her performance in TNT's George Wallace (1997), about the life of the segregationist Alabama Governor and presidential candidate George Wallace, played by Gary Sinise. Jolie portrayed Wallace's second wife, Cornelia, a performance Lee Winfrey of The Philadelphia Inquirer considered a highlight of the film. George Wallace was very well received by critics and won, among other awards, the Golden Globe Award for Best Miniseries or Television Film. Jolie also received a nomination for an Emmy Award for her performance. Jolie portrayed supermodel Gia Carangi in HBO's Gia (1998). The film chronicles the destruction of Carangi's life and career as a result of her addiction to heroin, and her decline and death from AIDS in the mid-1980s. Vanessa Vance of Reel.com retrospectively noted, "Jolie gained wide recognition for her role as the titular Gia, and it's easy to see why. Jolie is fierce in her portrayal—filling the part with nerve, charm, and desperation—and her role in this film is quite possibly the most beautiful train wreck ever filmed." For the second consecutive year, Jolie won a Golden Globe Award and was nominated for an Emmy Award. She also won her first Screen Actors Guild Award. In accordance with Lee Strasberg's method acting, Jolie preferred to stay in character in between scenes during many of her early films. While shooting Gia, she told her husband, Jonny Lee Miller, that she would not be able to phone him: "I'd tell him: 'I'm alone; I'm dying; I'm gay; I'm not going to see you for weeks.'" After Gia wrapped, she briefly gave up acting, because she felt that she had "nothing else to give." She separated from Miller and moved to New York, where she took night classes at New York University to study directing and screenwriting. Encouraged by her Golden Globe Award win for George Wallace and the positive critical reception of Gia, Jolie resumed her career. Following the previously filmed gangster film Hell's Kitchen (1998), Jolie returned to the screen in Playing by Heart (1998), part of an ensemble cast that included Sean Connery, Gillian Anderson, and Ryan Phillippe. The film received predominantly positive reviews, and Jolie was praised in particular; San Francisco Chronicle critic Peter Stack wrote, "Jolie, working through an overwritten part, is a sensation as the desperate club crawler learning truths about what she's willing to gamble." She won the Breakthrough Performance Award from the National Board of Review. In 1999, Jolie starred in the comedy-drama Pushing Tin, alongside John Cusack, Billy Bob Thornton, and Cate Blanchett. The film met with mixed reception from critics, and Jolie's character—Thornton's seductive wife—was particularly criticized; writing for The Washington Post, Desson Howe dismissed her as "a completely ludicrous writer's creation of a free-spirited woman who weeps over hibiscus plants that die, wears lots of turquoise rings and gets real lonely when Russell spends entire nights away from home." Jolie then co-starred with Denzel Washington in The Bone Collector (1999), playing a police officer who reluctantly helps Washington's quadriplegic detective track down a serial killer. The film grossed \$151.5 million worldwide, but was critically unsuccessful. Terry Lawson of the Detroit Free Press concluded, "Jolie, while always delicious to look at, is simply and woefully miscast." Jolie next took the supporting role of Lisa, a sociopathic patient in a psychiatric hospital, in Girl, Interrupted (1999), an adaptation of Susanna Kaysen's memoir of the same name. She won her third Golden Globe Award, her second Screen Actors Guild Award, and an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in 2000. For Variety, Emanuel Levy noted, "Jolie is excellent as the flamboyant, irresponsible girl who turns out to be far more instrumental than the doctors in Susanna's rehabilitation." In 2000, Jolie appeared in her first summer blockbuster, Gone in 60 Seconds, which became her highest-grossing film to that point, earning \$237.2 million internationally. She had a minor role as the mechanic ex-girlfriend of a car thief played by Nicolas Cage; The Washington Post writer Stephen Hunter criticized that "all she does in this movie is stand around, cooling down, modeling those fleshy, pulsating muscle-tubes that nest so provocatively around her teeth." Jolie later explained that the film had been a welcome relief after her emotionally demanding role in Girl, Interrupted. ### Worldwide recognition (2001–2004) Although widely praised for her acting and performances, Jolie had rarely found films that appealed to a wide audience, but 2001's Lara Croft: Tomb Raider made her an international superstar. An adaptation of the popular Tomb Raider video games, the film required her to learn an English accent and undergo extensive martial arts training to play the archaeologist-adventurer Lara Croft. Although the film generated mostly negative reviews, Jolie was generally praised for her physical performance; Newsday's John Anderson commented, "Jolie makes the title character a virtual icon of female competence and coolth." The film was an international hit, earning \$274.7 million worldwide, and launched her global reputation as a female action star. Jolie next starred opposite Antonio Banderas as his mail-order bride in Original Sin (2001), the first of a string of films that were poorly received by critics and audiences alike. The New York Times critic Elvis Mitchell questioned Jolie's decision to follow her Oscar-winning performance with "soft-core nonsense." The romantic comedy Life or Something Like It (2002), though equally unsuccessful, marked an unusual choice for Jolie. Salon magazine's Allen Barra considered her ambitious newscaster character a rare attempt at playing a conventional women's role, noting that her performance "doesn't get off the ground until a scene where she goes punk and leads a group of striking bus workers in singing 'Satisfaction'". Despite her lack of box office success, Jolie remained in demand as an actress; in 2002, she established herself among Hollywood's highest-paid actresses, earning \$10–15 million per film for the next five years. Jolie reprised her role as Lara Croft in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider – The Cradle of Life (2003), which was not as lucrative as the original, earning \$156.5 million at the international box office. She also starred in the music video for Korn's "Did My Time", which was used to promote the sequel. Her next film was Beyond Borders (2003), in which she portrayed a socialite who joins an aid worker played by Clive Owen. Though unsuccessful with audiences, the film stands as the first of several passion projects Jolie has made to bring attention to humanitarian causes. Beyond Borders was a critical failure; Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times acknowledged Jolie's ability to "bring electricity and believability to roles," but wrote that "the limbo of a hybrid character, a badly written cardboard person in a fly-infested, blood-and-guts world, completely defeats her." In 2004, Jolie appeared in four films. She first starred in the thriller Taking Lives as an FBI profiler summoned to help Montreal law enforcement hunt down a serial killer. The film received mixed reviews; The Hollywood Reporter critic Kirk Honeycutt concluded, "Jolie plays a role that definitely feels like something she has already done, but she does add an unmistakable dash of excitement and glamour." Jolie made a brief appearance as a fighter pilot in Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, a science fiction adventure shot entirely with actors in front of a bluescreen, and voiced her first family film, the DreamWorks animation Shark Tale. Her supporting role as Queen Olympias in Oliver Stone's Alexander, about the life of Alexander the Great, was met with mixed reception, particularly concerning her Slavic accent. Commercially, the film failed in North America, which Stone attributed to disapproval of the depiction of Alexander's bisexuality, but it succeeded internationally, grossing \$167.3 million. ### Established actress (2005–2010) In 2005, Jolie returned to major box office success with the action-comedy Mr. & Mrs. Smith, in which she starred opposite Brad Pitt as a bored married couple who find out that they are both secret assassins. The film received mixed reviews, but was generally lauded for the chemistry between the two leads; Star Tribune critic Colin Covert noted, "While the story feels haphazard, the movie gets by on gregarious charm, galloping energy and the stars' thermonuclear screen chemistry." With box office takings of \$478.2 million worldwide, Mr. & Mrs. Smith was the seventh-highest grossing picture of the year and remained Jolie's highest-grossing live-action film for the next decade. Following a supporting role as the neglected wife of a CIA officer in Robert De Niro's The Good Shepherd (2006), Jolie starred as Mariane Pearl in the documentary-style drama A Mighty Heart (2007). Based on Pearl's memoir of the same name, the film chronicles the kidnapping and murder of her husband, The Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, in Pakistan. Although the multiracial Pearl had personally chosen Jolie for the role, the casting drew racial criticism and accusations of blackface. The resulting performance was widely praised; Ray Bennett of The Hollywood Reporter described it as "well-measured and moving," played "with respect and a firm grasp on a difficult accent." She received nominations for a Golden Globe Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award. Jolie also played Grendel's mother in the epic Beowulf (2007), created through motion capture. The film was critically and commercially well-received, earning \$196.4 million worldwide. In 2008, Jolie was the highest-paid actress, earning \$15–\$20 million per film. While other actresses had taken salary cuts during the time, Jolie's perceived box office appeal allowed her to command as much as \$20 million plus a percentage. She starred alongside James McAvoy and Morgan Freeman in the action film Wanted (2008), which proved an international success, earning \$341.4 million worldwide. The film received predominantly favorable reviews; writing for The New York Times, Manohla Dargis noted that Jolie was "perfectly cast as a super-scary, seemingly amoral assassin," adding that "she cuts the kind of disciplinarian figure who can bring boys of all ages to their knees or at least into their theater seats." Jolie next took the lead role in Clint Eastwood's drama Changeling (2008). Based in part on the Wineville Chicken Coop Murders, the film centers on Christine Collins, who is reunited with her kidnapped son in 1928 Los Angeles, only to realize the boy is an imposter. Chicago Tribune critic Michael Phillips noted, "Jolie really shines in the calm before the storm, the scenes when one patronizing male authority figure after another belittles her at their peril." She received nominations for a Golden Globe Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award, a BAFTA Award, and an Academy Award for Best Actress. Jolie also voiced Tigress in the DreamWorks animation Kung Fu Panda (2008), the first work in a major family franchise, later reprising her voice role in the sequels Kung Fu Panda 2 (2011) and Kung Fu Panda 3 (2016). After her mother's death in 2007, Jolie appeared in fewer films, later explaining that her motivation to be an actress had stemmed from her mother's acting ambitions. Her first film in two years was the 2010 thriller Salt, in which she starred as a CIA agent who goes on the run after she is accused of being a KGB sleeper agent. Originally written as a male character with Tom Cruise attached to star, agent Salt underwent a gender change after a Columbia Pictures executive suggested Jolie for the role. With revenues of \$293.5 million, Salt became an international success. The film received generally positive reviews, with Jolie's performance in particular earning praise. Empire critic William Thomas remarked, "When it comes to selling incredible, crazy, death-defying antics, Jolie has few peers in the action business." Jolie starred opposite Johnny Depp in the thriller The Tourist (2010). The film was a critical failure. Roger Ebert defended Jolie's performance, stating that she "does her darndest" and "plays her femme fatale with flat-out, drop-dead sexuality." Despite commercially underperforming in the US, the film succeeded at the international box office, cementing Jolie's appeal to international audiences. She received a Golden Globe Award nomination for her performance, which prompted speculation that it had been given merely to ensure her high-profile presence at the awards ceremony. ### Expansion to directing (2011–2017) After directing the documentary A Place in Time (2007), which was distributed through the National Education Association, Jolie made her feature directorial debut with In the Land of Blood and Honey (2011), a love story between a Serb soldier and a Bosniak prisoner, set during the 1992–95 Bosnian War. She conceived the film to rekindle attention for the survivors, after twice visiting Bosnia and Herzegovina in her role as a UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador. To ensure authenticity, she cast only actors from the former Yugoslavia—including stars Goran Kostić and Zana Marjanović—and incorporated their wartime experiences into her screenplay. Upon release, the film received mixed reviews; Todd McCarthy of The Hollywood Reporter wrote, "Jolie deserves significant credit for creating such a powerfully oppressive atmosphere and staging the ghastly events so credibly, even if it is these very strengths that will make people not want to watch what's onscreen." The film was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film, and Jolie was named an honorary citizen of Sarajevo for raising awareness of the war. After a three-and-a-half-year absence from the screen, Jolie starred in Maleficent (2014), a live-action re-imagining of Disney's 1959 animation Sleeping Beauty. Critical reception was mixed, but Jolie's performance in the titular role was singled out for praise; The Hollywood Reporter critic Sherri Linden found her to be the "heart and soul" of the film, adding that she "doesn't chew the estimable scenery in Maleficent—she infuses it, wielding a magnetic and effortless power." In its opening weekend, Maleficent earned nearly \$70 million at the North American box office and over \$100 million in other markets, marking Jolie's appeal to audiences of all demographics in both action and fantasy films, genres usually dominated by male actors. The film went on to gross \$757.8 million worldwide, becoming the fourth-highest-grossing film of the year and Jolie's highest-grossing film ever. Jolie next completed her second directorial venture, Unbroken (2014), a film about Louis Zamperini (1917–2014), a former Olympic track star and World War II soldier who survived a plane crash and spent two years in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp. She also served as producer under her Jolie Pas banner. Based on Laura Hillenbrand's biography of the same name, the film was scripted by the Coen brothers and starred Jack O'Connell. After a positive early reception, Unbroken was considered a likely Best Picture and Best Director contender, but it ultimately received mixed reviews and little award recognition, though it was named one of the best films of the year by the National Board of Review and the American Film Institute. Variety magazine's Justin Chang noted the film's "impeccable craftsmanship and sober restraint", but deemed it "an extraordinary story told in dutiful, unexceptional terms." Financially, Unbroken was successful at the box office worldwide. Jolie's next directorial effort was the marital drama By the Sea (2015), in which she starred opposite her husband, Brad Pitt, marking their first collaboration since 2005's Mr. & Mrs. Smith. Based on her screenplay, the film was a deeply personal project for Jolie, who drew inspiration from her own mother's life. Critics, however, dismissed it as a "vanity project", as part of an overall poor reception. Writing for The Washington Post, Stephanie Merry noted its dearth of genuine emotion, stating, "By the Sea is dazzlingly gorgeous, as are its stars. But peeling back layer upon layer of exquisite ennui reveals nothing but emptiness, sprinkled with stilted sentiments." Despite starring two of Hollywood's leading actors, the film received only a limited release. As Jolie preferred to dedicate herself to her humanitarian work, her cinematic output remained infrequent. First They Killed My Father (2017), a drama set during Cambodia's Khmer Rouge era, again enabled her to combine both interests. In addition to directing the film, she co-wrote the screenplay with her longtime friend Loung Ung, whose memoirs about the regime's child labor camps served as its source material. Intended primarily for a Cambodian audience, the film was produced directly for Netflix, which allowed for the use of an exclusively Khmer cast and script. Labeling Jolie as a "skilled and sensitive filmmaker", Rafer Guzmán of Newsday commended her for "convincingly depict[ing] the illogical hell of the Khmer Rouge era". It received nominations for the Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film and BAFTA Award for Best Film Not in the English Language. ### Varying critical receptions (2019–present) Jolie reprised the role of Maleficent in the Disney fantasy sequel Maleficent: Mistress of Evil (2019), which received unfavorable reviews from critics but performed moderately well commercially, with a global gross of \$490 million. The following year, she appeared alongside David Oyelowo as grieving parents to the title characters of Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan in the fantasy film Come Away. Jolie starred as a smokejumper in Taylor Sheridan's action thriller Those Who Wish Me Dead. The film was released in May 2021, garnering moderate reviews. The Independent's Clarisse Loughrey wrote Jolie's "bare-knuckled performance ... easily outclasses the film that contains it". Jolie next played Thena, a warrior with post-traumatic stress disorder, in the Marvel Cinematic Universe superhero film Eternals. Released in November 2021, the film generated divergent responses from audiences and critics. Reviewing the film for The Washington Post, Ann Hornaday highlighted the "touching naivete" in Jolie's portrayal. Jolie's next project is a film adaptation of the novel Without Blood by Alessandro Baricco, which she directed, wrote, and produced. It stars Salma Hayek and Demián Bichir. She is set to star in Pablo Larraín's biographical film about opera singer Maria Callas, titled Maria. She is attached to produce and star in the thriller film The Kept, an adaptation of the James Scott novel. ## Humanitarian work ### UNHCR ambassadorship Jolie first witnessed the effects of a humanitarian crisis while filming Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001) in war-torn Cambodia, an experience she later credited with having brought her a greater understanding of the world. Upon her return home, Jolie contacted the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) for information on international trouble spots. To learn more about the conditions in these areas, she began visiting refugee camps around the world. In February 2001, she went on her first field visit, an 18-day mission to Sierra Leone and Tanzania; she later expressed her shock at what she had witnessed. In the following months, Jolie returned to Cambodia for two weeks and met with Afghan refugees in Pakistan, where she donated \$1 million in response to an international UNHCR emergency appeal, the largest donation UNHCR had ever received from a private individual. She covered all costs related to her missions and shared the same rudimentary working and living conditions as UNHCR field staff on all of her visits. Jolie was named a UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador at UNHCR headquarters in Geneva on August 27, 2001. Over the next decade, she went on more than 40 field missions, meeting with refugees and internally displaced persons in over 30 countries. In 2002, when asked what she hoped to accomplish, she stated, "Awareness of the plight of these people. I think they should be commended for what they have survived, not looked down upon." To that end, her 2001–02 field visits were chronicled in her book Notes from My Travels, which was published in October 2003 in conjunction with the release of her humanitarian drama Beyond Borders. Jolie aimed to visit what she termed "forgotten emergencies", crises that media attention had shifted away from. She became noted for traveling to war zones, such as Sudan's Darfur region during the Darfur conflict, the Syrian-Iraqi border during the Second Gulf War, where she met privately with U.S. troops and other multi-national forces, and the Afghan capital Kabul during the war in Afghanistan, where three aid workers were murdered in the midst of her first visit. To aid her travels, she began taking flying lessons in 2004 with the aim of ferrying aid workers and food supplies around the world. Jolie acquired a pilot license in 2004; as of May 2014, she owns a Cirrus SR22 aircraft and a Cessna 208 Caravan aircraft. On April 17, 2012, after more than a decade of service as a UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador, Jolie was promoted to the rank of Special Envoy to High Commissioner António Guterres, the first to take on such a position within the organization. In her expanded role, she was given authority to represent Guterres and UNHCR at the diplomatic level, with a focus on major refugee crises. In the months following her promotion, she made her first visit as Special Envoy—her third over all—to Ecuador, where she met with Colombian refugees, and she accompanied Guterres on a week-long tour of Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey, and Iraq, to assess the situation of refugees from neighboring Syria. Since then, Jolie has been on over a dozen field missions around the world to meet with refugees and undertake advocacy on their behalf. Jolie resigned from the ambassadorship in December 2022. In her announcement, she pledged to continue to advocate for refugees. ### Conservation and community development In an effort to connect her Cambodian-born adopted son with his heritage, Jolie purchased a house in his country of birth in 2003. The traditional home sat on 39 hectares in the northwestern province Battambang, adjacent to Samlout national park in the Cardamom mountains, which had become infiltrated with poachers who threatened endangered species. She purchased the park's 60,000 hectares and turned the area into a wildlife reserve named for her son, the Maddox Jolie Project. In recognition of her conservation efforts, King Norodom Sihamoni awarded her Cambodian citizenship on July 31, 2005. In November 2006, Jolie expanded the scope of the project—renamed the Maddox Jolie-Pitt Foundation (MJP)—to create Asia's first Millennium Village, in accordance with UN development goals. She was inspired by a meeting with the founder of Millennium Promise, noted economist Jeffrey Sachs, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, where she was an invited speaker in 2005 and 2006. Together they filmed a 2005 MTV special, The Diary of Angelina Jolie & Dr. Jeffrey Sachs in Africa, which followed them on a trip to a Millennium Village in western Kenya. By mid-2007, some 6,000 villagers and 72 employees—some of them former poachers employed as rangers—lived and worked at MJP, in ten villages previously isolated from one another. The compound includes schools, roads, and a soy milk factory, all funded by Jolie. Her home functions as the MJP field headquarters. After filming Beyond Borders (2003) in Namibia, Jolie became patron of the Harnas Wildlife Foundation, a wildlife orphanage and medical center in the Kalahari desert. She first visited the Harnas farm during production of the film, which features vultures rescued by the foundation. In December 2010, Jolie and her partner, Brad Pitt, established the Shiloh Jolie-Pitt Foundation to support conservation work by the Naankuse Wildlife Sanctuary, a nature reserve also located in the Kalahari. In name of their Namibian-born daughter, they have funded large-animal conservation projects as well as a free health clinic, housing, and a school for the San Bushmen community at Naankuse. Jolie and Pitt support other causes through the Jolie-Pitt Foundation, established in September 2006. ### Child immigration and education Jolie has pushed for legislation to aid child immigrants and other vulnerable children in both the U.S. and developing nations, including the "Unaccompanied Alien Child Protection Act of 2005." She began lobbying humanitarian interests in the U.S. capital from 2003 onwards, explaining, "As much as I would love to never have to visit Washington, that's the way to move the ball." Since October 2008, she has co-chaired Kids in Need of Defense (KIND), a network of leading U.S. law firms that provide free legal aid to unaccompanied minors in immigration proceedings across the U.S. Founded in a collaboration between Jolie and the Microsoft Corporation, by 2013, KIND had become the principal provider of pro bono lawyers for immigrant children. Jolie had previously, from 2005 to 2007, funded the launch of a similar initiative, the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants' National Center for Refugee and Immigrant Children. Jolie has also advocated for children's education. Since its founding at the Clinton Global Initiative's annual meeting in September 2007, she has co-chaired the Education Partnership for Children of Conflict, which provides policy and funding to education programs for children in conflict-affected regions. In its first year, the partnership supported education projects for Iraqi refugee children, youth affected by the Darfur conflict, and girls in rural Afghanistan, among other affected groups. The partnership has worked closely with the Council on Foreign Relations' Center for Universal Education—founded by the partnership's co-chair, noted economist Gene Sperling—to establish education policies, which resulted in recommendations made to UN agencies, G8 development agencies, and the World Bank. Since April 2013, all proceeds from Jolie's high-end jewelry collection, Style of Jolie, have benefited the partnership's work. Jolie additionally launched the Malala Fund, a grant system established by Pakistani education activist Malala Yousafzai, at the 2013 Women in the World Summit; she personally contributed over \$200,000 to the cause. Jolie has funded a school and boarding facility for girls at Kakuma refugee camp in northwestern Kenya, which opened in 2005, and two primary schools for girls in the returnee settlements Tangi and Qalai Gudar in eastern Afghanistan, which opened in March 2010 and November 2012 respectively. In addition to the facilities at the Millennium Village she established in Cambodia, Jolie had built at least ten other schools in the country by 2005. In February 2006, she opened the Maddox Chivan Children's Center, a medical and educational facility for children affected by HIV, in the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh. In Sebeta, Ethiopia, the birthplace of her eldest daughter, she funds a sister facility, the Zahara Children's Center, which treats and educates children who have HIV or tuberculosis. Both centers are run by the Global Health Committee. Jolie is the executive producer of the BBC program My World which aims to teach teenagers how to think critically about what they read and how to tell high-quality journalism from bad. She and Amnesty International released a children's rights book titled Know Your Rights and Claim Them on September 2, 2021. She co-authored the book with British human rights lawyer Geraldine Van Bueren. ### Human rights and women's rights After Jolie joined the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) in June 2007, she hosted a symposium on international law and justice at CFR headquarters and funded several CFR special reports, including "Intervention to Stop Genocide and Mass Atrocities." In January 2011, she established the Jolie Legal Fellowship, a network of lawyers and attorneys who are sponsored to advocate the development of human rights in their countries. Its member attorneys, called Jolie Legal Fellows, have facilitated child protection efforts in Haiti in the wake of the 2010 earthquake and promoted the development of an inclusive democratic process in Libya following the 2011 revolution. Jolie has fronted a campaign against sexual violence in military conflict zones by the UK government, which made the issue a priority of its 2013 G8 presidency. In May 2012, she launched the Preventing Sexual Violence Initiative (PSVI) with Foreign Secretary William Hague, who was inspired to campaign on the issue by her Bosnian war drama In the Land of Blood and Honey (2011). PSVI was established to complement wider UK government work by raising awareness and promoting international co-operation. Jolie spoke on the subject at the G8 foreign ministers meeting, where the attending nations adopted a historic declaration, and before the UN security council, which responded by adopting its broadest resolution on the issue to date. In June 2014, she co-chaired the four-day Global Summit to End Sexual Violence in Conflict, the largest-ever meeting on the subject, which resulted in a protocol endorsed by 151 nations. Through her work on the PSVI, Jolie met foreign policy experts Chloe Dalton and Arminka Helic, who served as special advisers to Hague. Their collaboration resulted in the 2015 founding of Jolie Pitt Dalton Helic, a partnership dedicated to women's rights and international justice, among other causes. In May 2016, Jolie was appointed a visiting professor at the London School of Economics to contribute to a postgraduate degree program at the university's Centre on Women, Peace and Security, which she had launched with Hague the previous year. In February 2022, Jolie with her daughter Zahara visited Washington, D.C. for the Senate introduction of the Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act, a bill designed to prevent and respond to domestic violence, sexual assault, dating violence, and stalking. She worked closely with the bill's sponsors and advocates. She's also an advocate for Kayden's Law, a law focuses on trauma-informed court processes, legal standards and judicial training that minimizes the risk of harm to children. Jolie is an advocate for the passage of the Justice for All Reauthorization Act of 2022, a law created to improve crime victims' right to evidence and agency reports, forensic science, end the rape kit backlog, and address racial disparities in wrongful convictions in America's criminal legal system. In September 2020, Jolie made a donation to two young boys who were running a lemonade stand in London to raise money for the people of Yemen, as the country was on the brink of humanitarian crisis caused by the Saudi-led coalition and Houthi rebels. In March 2022, a month into the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Jolie visited Ukrainian children at the Vatican Children's Hospital Bambino Gesù. According to the clinic, Jolie commented, "I am praying for an end to the war. This is the only way to end the suffering and the flight from the conflict zone. It's terrifying to see children paying the price in lost lives, compromised health and trauma." In May 2022, Jolie visited Lviv, Ukraine to meet with more displaced and hospitalized children. ### Recognition and honors Jolie has received wide recognition for her humanitarian work. In August 2002, she received the inaugural Humanitarian Award from the Church World Service's Immigration and Refugee Program, and in October 2003, she was the first recipient of the Citizen of the World Award by the United Nations Correspondents Association. She was awarded the Global Humanitarian Award by the UNA-USA in October 2005, and she received the Freedom Award from the International Rescue Committee in November 2007. In October 2011, UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres presented Jolie with a gold pin reserved for the most long-serving staff, in recognition of her decade as a UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador. In November 2013, Jolie received the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, an honorary Academy Award, from the Board of Governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. In June 2014, she was appointed an Honorary Dame Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George (DCMG) for her services to the UK's foreign policy and campaigning to end sexual violence in war zones. Queen Elizabeth II presented Jolie with the insignia of her honorary damehood during a private ceremony the following October. ## Personal life ### Relationships and marriages Jolie had a serious boyfriend for two years from the age of 14. Her mother allowed them to live together in her home, of which Jolie later said, "I was either going to be reckless on the streets with my boyfriend or he was going to be with me in my bedroom with my mom in the next room. She made the choice, and because of it, I continued to go to school every morning and explored my first relationship in a safe way." She has compared the relationship to a marriage in its emotional intensity, and said that the breakup compelled her to dedicate herself to her acting career at age 16. During filming of Hackers (1995), Jolie had a romance with actor Jonny Lee Miller, her first lover since the relationship in her early teens. They were not in touch for months after production ended, but eventually reconnected and married soon after in March 1996. She attended her wedding in black rubber pants and a white T-shirt, upon which she had written the groom's name in her blood. Although the relationship ended the following year, Jolie remained on good terms with Miller, whom she called "a solid man and a solid friend". Their divorce, initiated by Jolie in February 1999, was finalized shortly before she remarried the next year. Prior to her marriage to Miller, Jolie began a relationship with model and actress Jenny Shimizu on the set of Foxfire (1996). In 1997, she said, "I would probably have married Jenny if I hadn't married my husband. I fell in love with her the first second I saw her." According to Shimizu, their relationship lasted several years and continued even while Jolie was romantically involved with other people. In a 1997 interview with the lesbian magazine Girlfriends, she was asked how she felt about being a sex symbol to both men and women; she responded "It's great because I love men and women." In 2003, when asked if she was bisexual, Jolie answered, "Of course. If I fell in love with a woman tomorrow, would I feel that it's okay to want to kiss and touch her? If I fell in love with her? Absolutely! Yes!" After a two-month courtship, Jolie married actor Billy Bob Thornton on May 5, 2000, in Las Vegas. They had met on the set of Pushing Tin (1999) but did not pursue a relationship at that time, as Thornton was engaged to actress Laura Dern, while Jolie was reportedly dating actor Timothy Hutton, her co-star in Playing God (1997). As a result of their frequent public declarations of passion and gestures of love—most famously wearing one another's blood in vials around their necks—their marriage became a favorite topic of the entertainment media. Jolie and Thornton announced the adoption of a child from Cambodia in March 2002 but abruptly separated three months later. Their divorce was finalized on May 27, 2003. When asked about the sudden dissolution of their marriage, Jolie stated, "It took me by surprise, too, because overnight, we totally changed. I think one day we had just nothing in common. And it's scary but ... I think it can happen when you get involved and you don't know yourself yet." Jolie was involved in a prominent scandal when she was accused of causing the divorce of actors Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston in October 2005. She said she fell in love with Pitt during the filming of Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005), but dismissed allegations of an affair, saying, "To be intimate with a married man, when my own father cheated on my mother, is not something I could forgive. I could not look at myself in the morning if I did that. I wouldn't be attracted to a man who would cheat on his wife." Neither Jolie nor Pitt would publicly comment on the nature of their relationship until January 2006, when she confirmed they were expecting their first child together. During their 12-year relationship, the couple were dubbed "Brangelina"—a portmanteau coined by the media—and were the subject of worldwide media coverage. They became known as one of Hollywood's most glamorous couples. Their family grew to include six children, three of whom were adopted, before they announced their engagement in April 2012. Jolie and Pitt were legally married on August 14, 2014, and had their wedding on August 23, 2014, at their estate Château Miraval in Correns, France. She subsequently took on the name "Angelina Jolie Pitt". After two years of marriage, the couple separated on September 15, 2016. On September 19, Jolie filed for divorce citing irreconcilable differences. They were declared legally single on April 12, 2019. After Pitt sued Jolie for selling her share of a winery they owned to a third party, she filed a countersuit, in which she alleged that he physically and verbally abused her and their children on a plane in 2016. ### Children Jolie has six children. Of the children, three were adopted internationally, while three are biological. On March 10, 2002, Jolie adopted her first child, seven-month-old Maddox Chivan, from an orphanage in Battambang, Cambodia. He was born as Rath Vibol on August 5, 2001, in a local village. After twice visiting Cambodia, while filming Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001) and on a UNHCR field mission, Jolie returned in November 2001 with her then-husband, Billy Bob Thornton, where they met and subsequently applied to adopt Maddox. The adoption process was halted the following month when the U.S. government banned adoptions from Cambodia amid allegations of child trafficking. Although Jolie's adoption facilitator was later convicted of visa fraud and money laundering, her adoption of Maddox was deemed lawful. Once the process was finalized, she took custody of Maddox in Namibia, where she was filming Beyond Borders (2003). Jolie and Thornton announced the adoption together, but she adopted Maddox alone, becoming a single parent following her separation from Thornton three months later. Jolie adopted her second child, six-month-old Zahara Marley, from an orphanage in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on July 6, 2005. Zahara was born as Yemsrach on January 8, 2005, in Awasa. Jolie initially believed Zahara to be an AIDS orphan, based on official testimony from her grandmother, but Zahara's birth mother later came forward in the media. She explained that she had abandoned her family when Zahara became sick, and said she thought Zahara was "very fortunate" to have been adopted by Jolie. Jolie was accompanied by her then-partner, Brad Pitt, when she traveled to Ethiopia to take custody of Zahara. She later indicated that they had together made the decision to adopt from Ethiopia, having first visited the country earlier that year. After Pitt announced his intention to adopt her children, she filed a petition to legally change their surname from Jolie to Jolie-Pitt, which was granted on January 19, 2006. Pitt adopted Maddox and Zahara soon after. In an attempt to avoid the unprecedented media frenzy surrounding their relationship, Jolie and Pitt traveled to Namibia for the birth of their first biological child. On May 27, 2006, she gave birth to Shiloh Nouvel, in Swakopmund. Shiloh's middle name is homage to French architect Jean Nouvel. During labor, Jolie had fits of hysteric laughter due to the administration of morphine. They sold the first pictures of Shiloh through the distributor Getty Images with the aim of benefiting charity, rather than allowing paparazzi to take the photographs. People and Hello! magazines purchased the North American and British rights to the images for \$4.1 and \$3.5 million, respectively, a record in celebrity photojournalism at that time, with all proceeds donated to UNICEF. On March 15, 2007, Jolie adopted her fourth child, three-year-old Pax Thien, from an orphanage in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Pax was born as Pham Quang Sang on November 29, 2003, in HCMC, and was abandoned soon after birth. After visiting the orphanage with Pitt in November 2006, Jolie applied for adoption as a single parent, because Vietnam's adoption regulations do not allow unmarried couples to co-adopt. After their return to the United States, she petitioned the court to change Pax Thien's surname from Jolie to Jolie-Pitt, which was approved on May 31. Pitt subsequently adopted Pax on February 21, 2008. At the 2008 Cannes Film Festival, Jolie confirmed that she was expecting twins. For the two weeks she spent in a seaside hospital in Nice, France, reporters and photographers camped outside on the promenade. She gave birth to twins Knox Léon and Vivienne Marcheline, on July 12, 2008. Knox Léon was named after two of the twins' ancestors and Vivienne Marcheline was named in honor of Jolie's mother. The first pictures of Knox and Vivienne were jointly sold to People and Hello! for a reported \$14 million—the most expensive celebrity photographs ever taken. All proceeds were donated to the Jolie-Pitt Foundation. ### Cancer prevention treatment On February 16, 2013, at age 37, Jolie underwent a preventive double mastectomy after learning she had an 87% risk of developing breast cancer due to a defective BRCA1 gene. Her maternal family history warranted genetic testing for BRCA mutations: her mother, actress Marcheline Bertrand, had breast cancer and died of ovarian cancer, while her grandmother died of ovarian cancer. Her aunt, who had the same BRCA1 defect, died of breast cancer three months after Jolie's operation. Following the mastectomy, which lowered her chances of developing breast cancer to under five percent, Jolie had reconstructive surgery involving implants and allografts (transplantations from a donor). Two years later, in March 2015, after annual test results indicated possible signs of early ovarian cancer, she underwent a preventive salpingo-oophorectomy (removal of an ovary and its fallopian tube), as she had a fifty percent risk of developing ovarian cancer due to the same genetic anomaly. Despite hormone replacement therapy, the surgery brought on premature menopause. After completing each operation, Jolie discussed her mastectomy and oophorectomy in op-eds published by The New York Times, with the aim of helping other women make informed health choices. She detailed her diagnosis, surgeries, and personal experiences, and described her decision to undergo preventive surgery as a proactive measure for the sake of her six children. Jolie further wrote: "On a personal note, I do not feel any less of a woman. I feel empowered that I made a strong choice that in no way diminishes my femininity." Jolie's announcement of her mastectomy attracted widespread publicity and discussion on BRCA mutations and genetic testing. Her decision was met with praise from various public figures, while health campaigners welcomed her raising awareness of the options available to at-risk women. Dubbed "The Angelina Effect" by a Time cover story, Jolie's influence led to a "global and long-lasting" increase in BRCA gene testing: the number of referrals tripled in Australia and doubled in the United Kingdom, parts of Canada, and India, as well as significantly increased in other European countries and the United States. Researchers in Canada and the United Kingdom found that despite the large increase, the percentage of mutation carriers remained the same, meaning Jolie's message had reached those most at risk. In her first op-ed, Jolie had advocated for wider accessibility of BRCA gene testing and acknowledged the high costs, which were later greatly reduced after the U.S. Supreme Court, in a June 2013 ruling, invalidated BRCA gene patents held by Myriad Genetics. ## Reception ### Public image As the daughter of actor Jon Voight, Jolie appeared in the media from an early age. After embarking on her own career, she earned a reputation as a "wild child", which contributed to her early success in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Celebrity profiles routinely covered her fascination with blood and knives, experiences with drugs, and her sex life, particularly her bisexuality and interest in sadomasochism. In 2000, when asked about her outspokenness, she stated: "I say things that other people might go through. That's what artists should do—throw things out there and not be perfect and not have answers for anything and see if people understand." Another contributing factor to her controversial image were tabloid rumors of incest that began when Jolie, upon winning her Oscar for Girl, Interrupted, kissed her brother on the lips and said, "I'm so in love with my brother right now." She dismissed the rumors, saying, "It was disappointing that something so beautiful and pure could be turned into a circus," and explained that, as children of divorced parents, she and James relied on one another for emotional support. Jolie's reputation began to change positively after she, at age 26, became a Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, later commenting, "In my early 20s I was fighting with myself. Now I take that punk in me to Washington, and I fight for something important." Owing to her extensive activism, her Q Score—a marketing industry measure of celebrities' likability—nearly doubled to 25 between 2000 and 2006. Her recognizability grew accordingly; by 2006, she was familiar to 81% of Americans, compared to 31% in 2000. She became noted for her ability to positively influence her public image through the media, without employing a publicist or an agent. Her Q Score remained above average even when, in 2005, she was accused of ending Brad Pitt's marriage to Jennifer Aniston, at which point her public persona became an unlikely combination of alleged homewrecker, mother, sex symbol, and humanitarian. A decade later, Jolie was found to be the most admired woman in the world in global surveys conducted by YouGov in 2015 and 2016. Jolie's general influence and wealth are extensively documented. In a 2006 global industry survey by ACNielsen in 42 international markets, Jolie, together with Pitt, was found to be the favorite celebrity endorser for brands and products worldwide. Jolie was the face of St. John and Shiseido from 2006 to 2008, and a decade later became a spokesmodel for Guerlain. Her 2011 endorsement deal with Louis Vuitton, reportedly worth \$10 million, was a record for a single advertising campaign. Jolie was among the Time 100, a list of the most influential people in the world as published by Time, in 2006 and 2008. She was named the world's most powerful celebrity in Forbes's Celebrity 100 issue in 2009, and, though ranked lower overall, was listed as the most powerful actress from 2006 to 2008 and 2011 to 2013. Forbes additionally cited her as Hollywood's highest-paid actress in 2009, 2011, and 2013, with estimated annual earnings of \$27 million, \$30 million, and \$33 million respectively. ### Appearance Jolie's public image is strongly tied to her perceived beauty and sex appeal. Many media outlets, including Vogue, People, and Vanity Fair, have cited her as the world's most beautiful woman, while others such as Esquire, FHM, and Empire have named her the sexiest woman alive; both titles have often been based on public polls in which Jolie places far ahead of other celebrity women. Her most recognizable physical features are her many tattoos, eyes, and in particular her full lips, which The New York Times considered as defining a feature as Kirk Douglas' chin or Bette Davis' eyes. Among her estimated 20 tattoos are the Latin proverb quod me nutrit me destruit ("what nourishes me destroys me"), the Tennessee Williams quote "A prayer for the wild at heart, kept in cages", four Buddhist Sanskrit prayers of protection, a 12-inch tiger, and geographical coordinates of where she first met her adopted children. Over time, she has covered or lasered several of her tattoos, including "Billy Bob", the name of her second husband. Professionally, Jolie's status as a sex symbol has been considered both an asset and a hindrance. Some of her most commercially successful films, including Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001) and Beowulf (2007), overtly relied at least in part on her sex appeal, with Empire stating that her "pneumatic figure", "feline eyes", and "bee-stung lips" have greatly contributed to her appeal to cinema audiences. Conversely, Salon writer Allen Barra agreed with critics who suggested that Jolie's "dark and intense sexuality" has limited her in the types of roles she can be cast in, thus rendering her unconvincing in many conventional women's roles, while Clint Eastwood, who directed her Oscar-nominated performance in Changeling (2008), opined that having "the most beautiful face on the planet" sometimes harmed her dramatic credibility with audiences. Beyond her career, Jolie's appearance has been credited with influencing popular culture at large. In 2002, AfterEllen founder Sarah Warn observed that many women of all sexual orientations had publicly expressed their attraction to Jolie, which she considered a new development in American culture, adding that "there are many beautiful women in Hollywood, and few generate the same kind of overwhelming interest across genders and sexual orientations that she does". Jolie's physical attributes became highly sought-after among western women seeking cosmetic surgery; by 2007, she was considered "the gold standard of beauty", with her full lips remaining the most imitated celebrity feature well into the 2010s. After a 2011 repeat survey by Allure found that Jolie most represented the American beauty ideal, compared to model Christie Brinkley in 1991, writer Elizabeth Angell credited society with having "branched out beyond the Barbie-doll ideal and embraced something quite different". In 2013, Jeffrey Kluger of Time agreed that Jolie has for many years symbolized the feminine ideal, and opined that her frank discussion of her double mastectomy redefined beauty. Jolie is considered a style icon and trendsetter for celebrity fashion. She first began making red carpet appearances at age ten. In the 1990s, she established an enduring partnership with Versace. In her early film career, she became known for wearing gothic styles and leather, "coquette" looks. Around this time, her style was regarded as dark, vampish, dramatic, and alluring. Her sequined Randolph Duke gown at the 1999 Golden Globe Awards was regarded as her fashion debut. Jolie wore a white satin dress by Marc Bouwer to the 76th Academy Awards, which drew critical praise and comparisons to the fashion of several classic film stars. As she transitioned to directorial and humanitarian work, her style grew more sophisticated, minimalist, and glamorous, with looks associated with Old Hollywood. In the 2010s, Jolie wore satin gowns, diamond jewelry, and Grecian silhouettes. She attended the 84th Academy Awards in a black velvet gown, designed by Versace, which has been deemed one of the most significant gowns in fashion history and pop culture, with Jolie's posing becoming the subject of Internet memes. Jolie prefers to invest in quality pieces, and in the 2020s, adopted more sustainable fashion while dressing. ## Filmography Jolie has appeared in over thirty film productions since 1982. According to the review aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes and infotainment website Screen Rant, her most critically acclaimed and commercially successful films are Playing by Heart (1998), Gia (1998), Gone in 60 Seconds (2000), Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001), Lara Croft: Tomb Raider – The Cradle of Life (2003), Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (2004), Alexander (2004), Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005), Beowulf (2007), A Mighty Heart (2007), Changeling (2008), Kung Fu Panda (2008), Wanted (2008), Salt (2010), The Tourist (2010), Maleficent (2014), and Maleficent: Mistress of Evil (2019). Her television projects comprise CBS miniseries True Women and TNT's George Wallace. Jolie has directed a number of films, such as In the Land of Blood and Honey (2011), Unbroken (2014), By the Sea (2015), and First They Killed My Father (2017). Her producing and executive producing credits include In the Land of Blood and Honey (2011), Unbroken (2014), Maleficent (2014), First They Killed My Father (2017) and Maleficent: Mistress of Evil (2019). Jolie served as a screenwriter for In the Land of Blood and Honey (2011), By the Sea (2015) and First They Killed My Father (2017). ## Awards and nominations | Year | Award | Category | Film | Result | |------|---------------------------|-----------------------------------------------------------------|--------------------------------|--------| | 1998 | Emmy Award | Outstanding Supporting Actress – Miniseries or Movie | George Wallace | | | 1998 | Golden Globe Award | Best Supporting Actress – Series, Miniseries or Television Film | | | | 1998 | Emmy Award | Outstanding Lead Actress – Miniseries or Movie | Gia | | | 1999 | Golden Globe Award | Best Actress – Miniseries or Television Film | | | | 1999 | Screen Actors Guild Award | Outstanding Female Actor – Miniseries or Television Movie | | | | 2000 | Academy Award | Best Supporting Actress | Girl, Interrupted | | | 2000 | Golden Globe Award | Best Supporting Actress – Motion Picture | | | | 2000 | Screen Actors Guild Award | Outstanding Supporting Female Actor | | | | 2008 | Golden Globe Award | Best Actress – Motion Picture Drama | '' | | | 2008 | Screen Actors Guild Award | Outstanding Leading Female Actor | | | | 2009 | Academy Award | Best Actress | Changeling | | | 2009 | BAFTA Award | Best Leading Actress | | | | 2009 | Golden Globe Award | Best Actress – Motion Picture Drama | | | | 2009 | Screen Actors Guild Award | Outstanding Leading Female Actor | | | | 2011 | Golden Globe Award | Best Actress – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy | The Tourist | | | 2012 | Golden Globe Award | Best Foreign Language Film | In the Land of Blood and Honey | | | 2018 | BAFTA Award | Best Film Not in the English Language | First They Killed My Father | | | 2018 | Golden Globe Award | Best Foreign Language Film | | | | | | | | | ## See also - Aptostichus angelinajolieae'' - List of oldest and youngest Academy Award winners and nominees - White Marc Bouwer dress of Angelina Jolie

No Panties

"No Panties" is a song by American rapper Trina, featuring American singer Tweet, from Trina's second studio album Diamond Princess (2002). Slip-n-Slide and Atlantic released it as the album's lead single on July 16, 2002. A hip hop song, it was written by Missy Elliott who co-produced it with Nisan Stewart. Trina raps throughout the song while Tweet, one of Elliott's protégés, performs the hook. Prior to recording the single, Trina was already close friends with Elliott and Tweet. The track was mixed in Miami, Florida. Dave Meyers directed the song's music video in Los Angeles, which portrays Trina and Tweet going on a shopping spree. The song is about only having sex with men who have money. While this sexually explicit content was the focus of critical discussion, some music journalists identified "No Panties" with female empowerment, and Tweet said its message was refusing one-night stands and only having sex in a relationship. According to Trina, the title and concept was inspired by a saying often repeated by millennials. "No Panties" received positive reviews from critics who listed it as a highlight from Diamond Princess. Tweet was singled out for praise, while the explicit lyrics attracted some criticism. Retrospective articles discussed how Trina became associated with a highly-sexualized image through songs like "No Panties". In the US, the single peaked at number 88 on the Billboard chart for Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs. In the UK, it reached number 45 in the UK Singles Chart. ## Production and recording Missy Elliott contributed to two songs for Trina's second studio album Diamond Princess (2002): "No Panties" and "Rewind That Back". Elliott is a featured artist on "Rewind That Back", while she wrote "No Panties" and produced it with Nisan Stewart. Trina and Elliot are close friends, and had previously worked together for "One Minute Man" (2001); they would reunite for "I Got a Bottle" (2009), and a remix of "I'm Better" (2017). Alvin Speights engineered "No Panties", with assistance from Brian Kraz. The track was mixed at the Circle House Studio in Miami, Florida, and mastered by Brian Gardner. The song features vocals by Tweet, who was one of Elliott's protégés. Before Tweet recorded her own music or was promoted as a singer, Elliot had introduced her to Trina. Trina provided Tweet with advice on the music industry, and the two became close friends. ## Music and lyrics "No Panties" is a two-minute, 42-second hip hop song. The Herald Sun's Cyclone Wehner described it as a "techno-hop romp". While reviewing Diamond Princess for The Northern Echo, Andrew White stated that explicit hip hop tracks such as "Nasty Bitch" and "No Panties" represented the album's overall tone. Trina raps in what Rolling Stone's Arion Berger characterized as a "choppy, workmanlike rhyme flow", and Tweet sings the chorus. In "No Panties", Trina and Tweet say they will only have sex with men who have money. This is demonstrated in the chorus: "No panties coming off / My love is gonna cost / Ain't no way you're gonna get up in this for free". Trina said the song's title and concept were based on a saying often repeated by millennials. When discussing the track's sexually explicit lyrics, Billboard editor Chuck Taylor wrote that they contained "explicit bodily functions, obscenities, and sexual activities reeled off like a porn movie". Steve Jones for USA Today noted that Trina "uses booty as currency to accumulate power and pleasure" throughout Diamond Princess. While discussing the response to "No Panties", Tweet recounted being "told that I am always somewhere with my panties off" since in her 2002 single "Call Me", she sings about not wearing underwear while meeting her love. She interpreted the chorus for "No Panties" as about only having sex with men while in a committed relationship rather than one-night stands. Billboard's Rashaun Hall thought the song was about instructing men on how to please a woman. Some critics associated "No Panties" with female empowerment. The Scripps Howard News Service's Chuck Campbell viewed it as a "woman's manifesto", and a writer for the Knight Ridder Tribune News Service compared its "assertion of independent women" to TLC's 1999 single "No Scrubs". ## Release and promotion Slip-n-Slide and Atlantic released "No Panties" as the lead single from Diamond Princess on July 16, 2002. The song was issued as a 12-inch single and a CD single, and it was also made available as a digital download. One of the vinyl and CD releases contained the explicit, clean, instrumental, and acappella versions, while another had an alternative tracklist including the bonus track "Get It" —featuring Deuce Poppi—as its B-side. A remix by Seth Vogt was also made available as a CD single. "No Panties" reached number 88 on the Billboard chart for Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs dated August 10, 2002. The single peaked at number 45 in the UK Singles Chart for the week of December 10, 2002. Trina has had one other song, "Here We Go", on the chart since then. Retrospective articles have named "No Panties" and its follow-up single "B R Right" the most commercially successful songs from Diamond Princess. Dave Meyers directed the music video for "No Panties" in Los Angeles. In the video, Trina and Tweet go on a shopping spree while scenes with men, a Mercedes-Benz, expensive clothing, and diamonds are interspersed. When interviewed at the BET Awards 2002, Trina described the concept as "a real glamorous thing about me and Tweet getting real glammed up". In the Edmonton Journal, Sandra Sperounes noted that the video does not include women without panties despite the song's title, calling it a "case of false advertising". The music video uses the clean version of the single, which Chuck Taylor described as incomprehensible due to the amount of edits and explicit language removed. Atlantic uploaded the video to its YouTube channel on October 26, 2009. Its filming was included on the DVD Trina: Live & Uncut (2006). ## Critical reception "No Panties" received a positive response from critics, several of whom cited it as a highlight of Diamond Princess, including an AllMusic critic, Frank Pearn Jr. of The Morning Call, and the Miami New Times's Ryan Pfeffer. Arion Berger praised Trina's style of rapping on the song, and referring to its title, she wrote: "Who needs 'em? She's got everything else: soul, sass and a dirty mouth." In a 2014 article, a XXL writer cited Trina as one of the best female rappers, and named "No Panties" as one of her most notable songs. While reviewing Trina's career in a 2017 article, Pfeffer identified it as becoming the anthem of the album.Tweet was praised by critics. Chuck Campbell believed she was the perfect choice for the song. Vibe'''s Laura Checkoway described Tweet as having a "frisky partnership" with Trina. Checkoway pointed to "No Panties", along with Tweet's 2002 singles "Oops (Oh My)" and "Call Me", as signs of her commercial success. Some critics disliked "No Panties" for its sexually explicit lyrics. While negatively reviewing Diamond Princess, Slant Magazine's Sal Cinquemani dismissed the single as not "even remotely as erotic" as "Oops (Oh My)". Chuck Taylor panned it as one of "the most tasteless records that has ever been pressed to plastic", and wrote that it provides another example to "blast the entertainment industry for irresponsibly marketing to youths". In 2005, a writer for Spin jokingly included "No Panties" on a list of songs that "insist on giving way too much information". Wes Woods II of The Desert Sun thought it sounded too much like an Elliott song, and believed Trina was mostly overshadowed by her collaborators throughout Diamond Princess. Retrospective articles have discussed how the single established a trend in Trina's career. In 2010, ethnomusicologist Eileen M. Hayes said Trina became associated with a sexy image and songs like "No Panties" and "69 Ways". In a 2014 Newsweek article, Victoria Bekiempis wrote that she developed a "larger-than-life rapper persona" by recording tracks with titles like "No Panties" and "Killin You Hoes". Three years later, SF Weekly's Jessie Schiewe highlighted "B R Right" and "No Panties" as the "most salacious and sexually explicit" songs from Diamond Princess. Schiewe argued that they established Trina as an "artist who wasn't afraid of talking about sex or being ashamed of her body and what she likes". ## Track listings ## Credits and personnel Credits adapted from the liner notes of Diamond Princess'': ### Recording locations - Mixed at the Circle House Studio in Miami, Florida ### Personnel - Missy Elliott – writer, producer - Brian Gardner – mastering - Brian Kraz – assistant audio engineer - Alvin Speights – audio engineer - Nisan Stewart – producer - Tweet – featured artist

Portrait Diptych of Dürer's Parents

Two late-15th century portrait panels by Albrecht Dürer

Portrait Diptych of Dürer's Parents (or Dürer's Parents with Rosaries) is the collective name for two late-15th century portrait panels by the German painter and printmaker Albrecht Dürer. They show the artist's parents, Barbara Holper (c. 1451–1514) and Albrecht Dürer the Elder (c. 1427–1502), when she was around 39 and he was 63 years. The portraits are unflinching records of the physical and emotional effects of ageing. The Dürer family was close, and Dürer may have intended the panels either to display his skill to his parents or as keepsakes while he travelled soon after as a journeyman painter. They were created either as pendants, that is conceived as a pair and intended to hang alongside each other, or diptych wings. However, this formation may have been a later conception; Barbara's portrait seems to have been executed some time after her husband's and it is unusual for a husband to be placed to the viewer's right in paired panels. His father's panel is considered the superior work and has been described as one of Dürer's most exact and honest portraits. They are among four paintings or drawings Dürer made of his parents, each of which unsentimentally examines the deteriorating effects of age. His later writings contain eulogies for both parents, from which the love and respect he felt toward them are evident. Each panel measured 47.5 cm x 39.5 cm (18.7 in x 15.6 in), but the left hand panel has been cut down. They have been separated since at least 1628, until Barbara's portrait—long considered lost—was reattributed in 1977. The panels were reunited in the Germanisches Nationalmuseum's 2012 exhibition "The Early Dürer". ## Sources and influences The three-quarter view was widely used in southern German portraiture of the late-15th century. Rosary beads were often included to indicate the piety and modesty of the sitters, although by the 16th century religious motifs and sentiments like this were falling out of fashion. Dürer distinguishes himself from his contemporaries through his tight and detailed focus on his parents' faces, a technique that draws comparison to the work of the first generation of Early Netherlandish painters active 50 years earlier. Albrecht the Elder had travelled to Flanders and from working with Netherlandish artists had acquired a strong appreciation for the work of both Jan van Eyck and Rogier van der Weyden. That he passed on this influence to his son is evident from the early use of silverpoint, a medium which according to Erwin Panofsky requires "an exceptional degree of confidence, accuracy and sensitive feeling for its successful handling". Dürer would have been aware of Hans Pleydenwurff's portrait of the ageing Count Georg von Lowenstein, through his teacher Michael Wolgemut. Pleydenwurff's portrait was in turn likely influenced by van Eyck's 1438 Portrait of Cardinal Niccolò Albergati. Juliane von Fircks [de] believes the portrait of Dürer's father took from Pleydenwurff's portrait, which she describes as a "highly detailed representation of [a] white haired old man, who defies the pains of growing old with an alert mind and an inner animation". Von Fircks notes that Dürer's 1484 self-portrait was created with the use of a mirror while his most iconic work is a self-portrait; the 1500 Self-Portrait at Twenty-Eight. From these she concludes that the "accurate observation and documentary recording" of both his own and his parents' appearances over time was not just a compulsion, but that is indicative of a deeper interest in the effects of time and age on human appearance. Although Dürer was fascinated by the effects of ageing on others, he seems to have had some hesitancy at examining how it might affect him personally. The self-portraits tend to be idealised and the 1500 portrait was his last. Later self-portraits are far more understated and executed in a 'secondary' media, such as his drawings of the Man of Sorrows and nude drawing of 1505, which depicted an emaciated body during the time of the plague. ## Description Albrecht the Elder was 62 or 63 when his panel was painted early in 1490. Barbara's portrait may have been completed soon after, when she would have been around 39. Their son was around 18 and had just completed his apprenticeship with Michael Wolgemut, and would soon leave for Nuremberg to travel as a journeyman painter. The father panel was painted first; for aesthetic reasons Dürer may have waited a year or two until his mother looked older. The sitters are presented in three-quarter view before flat, nondescript lacquer-like green backgrounds, which although lushly coloured, are thinly layered. Each has a white ground and light red imprimatura with lead content. The sitter's form and pose echo and in many ways counterbalance each other. Brand Philip draws attention to the similarities of the panels' linear construction, especially the manner in which the folds and lines of their clothing form triangular shapes. The train of Barbara's headdress across her chest corresponds with the opening of Albrecht's fur-lined coat. It was more usual in pendant portraits of this type for the male to be on the left-hand side; the positioning here may be an indication that Dürer originally intended his father's panel to stand alone, given that Barbara's was painted some time later. Albrecht the Elder's panel is regarded as the superior of the two works. This may in part be attributed to differing contemporary treatments of male and female portraits; men were allowed more individuality, while female portraits were bound by stereotypes and were not as daring, for example showing evidence of ageing. In either case, the father painting is far more closely detailed, especially in the lining of clothing, which is summary in Barbara's panel, compared to the long seam of her husband's gown. This contrast in detail can also be seen in the treatment of the rosaries, which are given prominence and a glowing red colour in his panel, but are small and relegated in hers. Albrecht the Elder's panel is usually, but not always, thought to be the first of the two to be executed and, if so, is the earliest extant example of his son's painting. In contrast, a number of art historians have noted that his mother's portrait contains bland passages, especially around the eyes and may be a near-contemporary copy of a lost original. Lotte Brand Philip believes the clumsiness in the mother panel indicated that Dürer painted it first, as a youthful attempt at portraiture, and that Albrecht the Elder might have later "commissioned" his own portrait to pair with Barbara's. Recent technical examination of the two panels confirms that Barbara's portrait was painted later than her husband's. ### Barbara Holper Barbara Holper was the daughter of Hieronymus Holper, under whom Albrecht the Elder served his apprenticeship as a goldsmith. The two men became friends, and when she came of age Holper gave his daughter into marriage when Dürer senior was 40 and she was 15. The couple were compatible, well-matched and fond of each other. Yet their son's writings detail their difficult lives and many setbacks; three of their 18 children survived into adulthood – 17 of whom had been born by the time of this portrait. After her husband died Barbara was destitute and went to live with her son. After she in turn died in 1514, her son wrote "This my pious Mother ... often had the plague and many other severe and strange illnesses, and she suffered great poverty, scorn, contempt, mocking words, terrors, and great adversities. Yet she bore no malice. Also she died hard ... I felt so grieved for her that I cannot express it." Barbara is shown wearing a red dress and a matte white bonnet which fully covers her hair, indicating her marital status. Her headdress is draped with a long scarf or train which stretches down her neck and across her left shoulder, contrasting in colour and shape against the black headwear of her husband. The lines of her face contain touches of white paint to give a highlighting and enlivening effect; they are especially evident around her eyes, the bridge of her nose and around her upper lip. Barbara was attractive in her youth; her son described her as having been "comely and of erect bearing". However, by the time of this portrait the effects of time and losing so many children weigh heavily on her face. The panel was grounded with white paint, while the composition seems to have changed significantly from the imprimatura. Faint traces of the original figuration are visible in parts of the background and in the darkened areas of her hood. At some point the panel was cut down at the left side, shifting the compositional balance and removing a portion of her shoulder and headdress. The panel closely resembles Dürer's 1514 drawing Portrait of the artist's mother at the age of 63. David Price writes of the drawing's "rough depiction of her flesh emaciated by old age", and the "existential piety in the cast of Barbara Dürer's right eye, which, almost unnaturally, directs her vision heavenward". Although Barbara is some 25 years older in the later drawing and by then terminally ill, the facial resemblance and pose are unmistakable. However, there is a dramatic difference between the relatively young looking 39-year-old woman in the diptych and the aged and terminally ill widow in the 1514 drawing. A family resemblance can be detected between both works and Dürer's Vienna self-portrait; most evidently around the mouth. Kemperdick concludes that these passages are so closely modeled that it is reasonable to presume they were drawn by the same hand, but is conservative in saying definitively that the sitters were related by blood, as Dürer was very young, and though precociously talented, to some extent still reliant on facial "types". ### Albrecht Dürer the Elder Dürer's father wears a dark shirt, russet coat and a black hat lined with fur. His skin is slack at the mouth and chin, and he has small, intelligent eyes, which Von Fircks describes as "dark and serious". Their curves echo those of the heavy lids beneath. His eyes are lined with crow's feet and shadowed with brown hatched paint. His facial features are built from brush strokes more typical of drawing than painting—at this young age Dürer was a far more skilled draughtsman than painter. Technical analysis carried out in 2013 by Dagmar Hirschfelder revealed a detailed background which was over-painted by the artist. The abandoned interior space consisted of a corner of a room with an arched window looking out to a countryside view. This type of interior can be traced to the Netherlandish tradition, and is rare in German portraiture of the period. Albrecht the Elder's lips are thin and tightly pursed and his mouth is broad and down-turned, yet his features are those of a handsome man. Marcel Brion described him as appearing "mild and thoughtful", an impression reinforced by the uncomplicated design of the painting. This view is reinforced by the relative drabness or simplicity of his clothes, which seem intended to convey a reserved, ascetic piousness. Dürer presents his father more like a low-ranking ecclesiastic than a tradesman: a calm, considerate and straightforward man dressed up in his best, albeit modest, clothes. After his father's death in 1502, Dürer wrote that Albrecht the Elder "passed his life in great toil and stern hard labour, having nothing for his support save what he earned with his hand for himself, his wife and his children ... He underwent manifold afflictions, trials and adversities. But he won just praise from all who knew him ... he was also of few words, and was a God-fearing man." Martin Conway describes the portrayal of a dignified man marked by a grave expression and deep "furrows ploughed by seventy years of labour and sorrow". Conway believed the strength of the portrait is in part achieved through Dürer's ability to convey this hardship, while at the same time presenting a man still imbued with traces of pride, and possessing "a kind old face". Noting the obvious affection between the father and son as well as the half smile of the older man, he wonders if that grin might have been born of Albrecht the Elder's satisfaction that his toil has been rewarded by a son of such talent, who was now about to set out on the world for his wanderjahr. A contributing factor to this pride is that Albrecht the Elder trained his son in his own profession, as a jeweller, but at one point came to regret the choice of apprenticeship as the younger man was so obviously suited to drawing and painting. However, his son learned many skills during that period and it gave him a discipline with his hands that became a defining factor of his work, especially in his ability as an engraver. Conway described the panel as indicating "an astonishing depth of psychological insight" for an artist not yet 20 years old. In its simple design and detail it shares many of the characteristics of, and is a key precursor to, Dürer's mature work. He portrayed his father again in 1497, when the older man would have been around 70. He has aged noticeably in the intervening seven years: his skin is saggier, the wrinkles deeper and more pronounced. In this later portrait Dürer seems at pains to convey these effects of ageing, which are all too evident on his father's face. According to Brion, his eyes have lost their "distant, mystic" appearance and now seem less contented. Conway agrees, seeing traces of haggardly agitation, but holds that the two paintings convey a similar overall highly favourable and compassionate impression of the man. ### The panels Each canvas is mounted on two boards of equal width, which have been cut vertically and appear have come from the same tree. Tree-ring dating of the wood suggests it was felled around 1482. Wood intended for use in panel painting was generally allowed to mature for around 10 years, giving an approximate dates of 1490–92 for the works. The panels are covered with canvas made of fine but loosely woven linen, and underpainted in white paint. Whether Dürer prepared the panels himself or purchased them already prepared is unknown. The father panel is signed and dated on both sides, in what may be the oldest extant instance of Dürer's signature monogram of a large open A and small d. However this inscription and the 1490 date are later additions. The Florence canvas is in relatively poor condition: retouching has largely removed Dürer's top layer of brushwork and left the paint hard and dry. Barbara's panel underwent a restoration in 1974, when the surface was cleaned and partially revarnished, with repairs to damage on the reverse sustained from woodboring. The reverse of Albrecht's panel contains a rendition of the allied Dürer and Holper families' coats of arms, which are shown beneath a winged Moor wearing a red dress. The Dürer family are represented by a crest showing an open door, a pun on the word Dürer (Thürer meaning 'doormaker'). Albrecht the Elder was born in the Hungarian village of Ajtó. Ajtos is Hungarian for "door"—when his parents moved to Germany their name changed from Tür to Düre. The Holper crest features a stag, but its significance is lost. The back of Barbara's panel contains imagery of a dragon in a lightning storm set against a rocky landscape or cliff. ## Provenance and attribution After the painter's death in 1528, the portraits were held by his brother, and then his brother's widow before they passed into the collection of Willibald Imhoff, a grandson of Dürer's friend Willibald Pirckheimer. Inventories from the Imhoff collection from 1573 to 1574, 1580 and 1588 list both panels. The next surviving Imhoff inventory, of 1628, again lists the mother's portrait, but it disappears after a mention in the 1633–58 account books of Hans Hieronymus Imhoff, after which its whereabouts became unknown. Dürer expert Matthias Mende described the missing portrait of Barbara Holper as "among the most severe losses in the Dürer oeuvre". In 1977, art historian Lotte Brand Philip proposed that Unknown Woman in a Coif, held by the Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg, was the original portrait of Barbara Holper. The Nuremberg panel was previously thought to have originated from a member of Wolgemut's workshop, a Franconian artist in his circle, or the anonymous Mainz painter Master W. B. Brand Philip's attribution was based on striking similarities in composition and its shared tone, theme, and size with the father panel at the Uffizi. In both works the sitters are holding rosary beads, and Dürer attentively describes their hands. Both portraits show the sitter in the same pose, against a similarly coloured background. Both are lit from the upper left. The boards are identically cut in width and depth, although 3 cm was removed from the left edge of Barbara's panel. Brand Philip noted the similarities between the panel and Dürer's 1514 charcoal drawing Portrait of the Artist's Mother at the Age of 63. Fedja Anzelewsky agreed with the attribution, noting that both portraits bear, on their reverse, the catalogue number recorded in the Imhoff inventories, as well as "precisely the same design of masses of dark clouds". Anzelewsky speculated that the father's portrait, which was not listed in the 1628 Imhoff inventory, had been broken off and sold to Rudolph II of Austria. Hans Hieronymus Imhoff's lukewarm description of Barbara's portrait—"the mother of Albrecht Dürer in oil colors on wood, [but] there are many who do not believe it to be a work of Dürer"—led Brand Philip to conclude that Albrecht's panel was likely sold individually as the more accomplished and marketable of the two. The attribution is widely accepted today. In 2013 Stephan Kemperdick noted the sophistication of the Nuremberg portrait and that its three-dimensional modeling of the head displays a level of skill beyond Wolgemut and his circle. The two panels were reunited in 2012 during a Dürer exhibition in Nuremberg having been separated since sometime between 1588 and 1628. ## See also - List of paintings by Albrecht Dürer

SMS König Albert

Battleship of the German Imperial Navy

SMS König Albert was the fourth vessel of the Kaiser class of dreadnought battleships of the Imperial German Navy. König Albert's keel was laid on 17 July 1910 at the Schichau-Werke dockyard in Danzig. She was launched on 27 April 1912 and was commissioned into the fleet on 31 July 1913. The ship was equipped with ten 30.5-centimeter (12 in) guns in five twin turrets, and had a top speed of 22.1 knots (40.9 km/h; 25.4 mph). König Albert was assigned to III Battle Squadron and later IV Battle Squadron of the High Seas Fleet for the majority of her career, including World War I. Along with her four sister ships, Kaiser, Friedrich der Grosse, Kaiserin, and Prinzregent Luitpold, König Albert participated in most of the major fleet operations of World War I, though she was in drydock for maintenance during the Battle of Jutland between 31 May and 1 June 1916. As a result, she was the only battleship actively serving with the fleet that missed the largest naval battle of the war. The ship was also involved in Operation Albion, an amphibious assault on the Russian-held islands in the Gulf of Riga, in late 1917. After Germany's defeat in the war and the signing of the Armistice in November 1918, König Albert and most of the capital ships of the High Seas Fleet were interned by the Royal Navy in Scapa Flow. The ships were disarmed and reduced to skeleton crews while the Allied powers negotiated the final version of the Treaty of Versailles. On 21 June 1919, days before the treaty was signed, the commander of the interned fleet, Rear Admiral Ludwig von Reuter, ordered the fleet to be scuttled to ensure that the British would not be able to seize the ships. König Albert was raised in July 1935 and subsequently broken up for scrap in 1936. ## Design The ship was 172.40 m (565 ft 7 in) long overall and displaced a maximum of 27,000 metric tons (26,570 long tons) at full load. She had a beam of 29 m (95 ft 2 in) and a draft of 9.10 m (29 ft 10 in) forward and 8.80 m (28 ft 10 in) aft. König Albert was powered by three sets of Schichau turbines, supplied with steam by sixteen coal-fired boilers. The powerplant produced a top speed of 22.1 knots (40.9 km/h; 25.4 mph). She carried 3,600 metric tons (3,500 long tons) of coal, which enabled a maximum range of 7,900 nautical miles (14,600 km; 9,100 mi) at a cruising speed of 12 knots (22 km/h; 14 mph). She had a crew of 41 officers and 1,043 enlisted. König Albert was armed with a main battery of ten 30.5 cm SK L/50 guns in five twin turrets. The ship disposed of the inefficient hexagonal turret arrangement of previous German battleships; instead, three of the five turrets were mounted on the centerline, with two of them arranged in a superfiring pair aft. The other two turrets were placed en echelon amidships, such that both could fire on the broadside. The ship was also armed with a secondary battery of fourteen 15 cm (5.9 in) SK L/45 guns in casemates amidships. For close-range defense against torpedo boats, she carried eight 8.8 cm (3.5 in) SK L/45 guns in casemates. The ship was also armed with four 8.8 cm L/45 anti-aircraft guns. The ship's armament was rounded out by five 50 cm (19.7 in) torpedo tubes, all mounted in the hull; one was in the bow, and the other four were on the broadside. Her main armored belt was 350 mm (13.8 in) thick in the central citadel, and was composed of Krupp cemented armor (KCA). Her main battery gun turrets were protected by 300 mm (11.8 in) of KCA on the sides and faces. König Albert's conning tower was heavily armored, with 400 mm (15.7 in) sides. ## Service history Ordered under the contract name Ersatz Ägir as a replacement for the obsolete coastal defense ship SMS Ägir, König Albert was laid down at the Schichau-Werke dockyard in Danzig on 17 July 1910. She was launched on 27 April 1912; Princess Mathilde of Saxony christened the ship, and her brother, the last king of Saxony, Friedrich August III gave the speech. Following the completion of fitting-out work, the ship was commissioned into the fleet on 31 July 1913. Although König Albert was the last ship in her class to be launched, she was the third to be commissioned, owing to turbine damage on Kaiserin and delays on Prinzregent Luitpold's diesel engine. The ship was selected to form part of the special Detached Division, alongside her sister Kaiser and the light cruiser Strassburg. The Division was placed under the command of Konteradmiral (Rear Admiral) Hubert von Rebeur-Paschwitz and sent on a tour of South America, with the goals of testing the new turbine propulsion system and representing the growing power of the Imperial Navy. The three ships left Wilhelmshaven on 9 December 1913 and steamed for German West Africa, where they made several stops, including Lomé, Togo, and Victoria and Duala, Kamerun. The Division then proceeded to German South-West Africa, making stops in Swakopmund and Lüderitzbucht, and South Africa, stopping in Saint Helena en route. On 15 February 1914, the Division reached Rio de Janeiro, which ceremonially greeted the visiting German warships. From Rio de Janeiro, Strassburg went to Buenos Aires, Argentina, while König Albert and Kaiser steamed to Montevideo, Uruguay. Strassburg then rejoined the battleships in Montevideo, and all three then rounded Cape Horn and steamed to Valparaíso, Chile. Between 2 and 11 April they remained in Valparaiso, which marked the furthest point of their journey. On the return voyage, the three ships made additional stops, including in Bahía Blanca, Argentina, before returning to Rio de Janeiro. The Division then began the trip back to Germany, stopping in Cape Verde, Madeira, and Vigo. The ships reached Kiel on 17 June 1914, after having traveled some 20,000 nautical miles (37,000 km; 23,000 mi) without incident. On 24 June, the Detached Division was dissolved, and König Albert and Kaiser joined their classmates in III Battle Squadron of the High Seas Fleet. ### World War I Throughout the first two years of the war, the High Seas Fleet, including König Albert, conducted a number of sweeps and advances into the North Sea. The first occurred on 2–3 November 1914, though no British forces were encountered. Admiral Friedrich von Ingenohl, the commander of the High Seas Fleet, adopted a strategy in which the battlecruisers of Rear Admiral Franz von Hipper's I Scouting Group raided British coastal towns to lure out portions of the Grand Fleet where they could be destroyed by the High Seas Fleet. The raid on Scarborough, Hartlepool and Whitby on 15–16 December 1914 was the first such operation. On the evening of 15 December, the German battle fleet of some twelve dreadnoughts—including König Albert and her four sisters—and eight pre-dreadnoughts came to within 10 nmi (19 km; 12 mi) of an isolated squadron of six British battleships. However, skirmishes between the rival destroyer screens in the darkness convinced Ingenohl that he was faced with the entire British Grand Fleet. Under orders from Kaiser Wilhelm II to avoid risking the fleet unnecessarily, Ingenohl broke off the engagement and turned back toward Germany. Following the loss of SMS Blücher at the Battle of Dogger Bank in January 1915, the Kaiser removed Ingenohl from his post on 2 February. Admiral Hugo von Pohl replaced him as commander of the fleet. Pohl conducted a series of fleet advances in 1915 in which König Albert took part; in the first one on 29–30 March, the fleet steamed out to the north of Terschelling and returned without incident. Another followed on 17–18 April, where König Albert and the rest of the fleet covered a mining operation by II Scouting Group. Three days later, on 21–22 April, the High Seas Fleet advanced toward the Dogger Bank, though again failed to meet any British forces. On 15 May, a bushing came loose in the ship's starboard turbine, which forced the crew to turn the engine off and decouple it. The center and port side shafts were still capable of propelling the ship at 18 knots (33 km/h; 21 mph), however. On 29–30 May, the fleet attempted to conduct a sweep in the North Sea, but inclement weather forced Pohl to cancel the operation some 50 nmi (93 km; 58 mi) off Schiermonnikoog. The fleet remained in port until 10 August, when it sortied to Helgoland to cover the return of the auxiliary cruiser Möwe. A month later, on 11–12 September, the fleet covered another mine-laying operation off the Swarte Bank. The last operation of the year, conducted on 23–24 October, was an advance in the direction of Horns Reef which concluded without result. On 11 January 1916, Admiral Reinhard Scheer replaced the ailing Pohl, who was suffering from liver cancer. Scheer proposed a more aggressive policy designed to force a confrontation with the Grand Fleet; he received approval from the Kaiser in February. The first of Scheer's operations was conducted the following month, on 5–7 March, with an uneventful sweep of the Hoofden. On 25–26 March, Scheer attempted to attack British forces that had raided Tondern, but failed to locate them. Another advance to Horns Reef followed on 21–22 April. On 24 April, the battlecruisers of I Scouting Group conducted a raid on the English coast. König Albert and the rest of the fleet sailed in distant support. The battlecruiser Seydlitz struck a mine while en route to the target, and had to withdraw. The other battlecruisers bombarded the town of Lowestoft unopposed, but during the approach to Yarmouth, they encountered the British cruisers of the Harwich Force. A short artillery duel ensued before the Harwich Force withdrew. Reports of British submarines in the area prompted the retreat of I Scouting Group. At this point, Scheer, who had been warned of the sortie of the Grand Fleet from its base in Scapa Flow, also withdrew to safer German waters. After the raid on Yarmouth, several of the III Squadron battleships developed problems with their condensers. This included König Albert; tubing needed to be replaced in all three main condensers, which necessitated extensive dockyard work. The ship went into drydock in the Imperial Dockyard in Wilhelmshaven on 29 May, two days before the rest of the fleet departed for the Battle of Jutland. Work on the ship was not completed until 15 June, and as a result, König Albert was the only German dreadnought in active service to miss the battle. On 18 August 1916, König Albert took part in an operation to bombard Sunderland. Admiral Scheer attempted a repeat of the original 31 May plan: the two serviceable German battlecruisers—Moltke and Von der Tann—augmented by three faster dreadnoughts, were to bombard the coastal town of Sunderland in an attempt to draw out and destroy Vice Admiral David Beatty's battlecruisers. Scheer would trail behind with the rest of the fleet and provide support. During the action of 19 August 1916, Scheer turned north after receiving a false report from a zeppelin about a British unit in the area. As a result, the bombardment was not carried out, and by 14:35, Scheer had been warned of the Grand Fleet's approach and so turned his forces around and retreated to German ports. Another fleet operation took place on 18–19 October, though it ended without encountering any British units. Unit training in the Baltic was then conducted, and on the return voyage III Squadron was diverted to assist in the recovery of a pair of U-boats stranded on the Danish coast. The fleet was reorganized on 1 December; the four König-class battleships remained in III Squadron, along with the newly commissioned Bayern, while the five Kaiser-class ships, including König Albert, were transferred to IV Squadron. König Albert saw no major operations in the first half of 1917, and on 18 August she went into drydock at the Imperial Dockyard in Kiel for periodic maintenance, which lasted until 23 September. #### Operation Albion In early September 1917, following the German conquest of the Russian port of Riga, the German naval command decided to eliminate the Russian naval forces that still held the Gulf of Riga. On 18 September, the Admiralstab (the Navy High Command) issued the order for a joint operation with the army to capture Ösel and Moon Islands. The naval component, organized as a Special Unit (Sonderverband), was to comprise the flagship, Moltke, along with III and IV Battle Squadrons of the High Seas Fleet. Along with nine light cruisers, three torpedo boat flotillas, and dozens of mine warfare ships, the entire force numbered some 300 ships, supported by over 100 aircraft and six zeppelins. Opposing the Germans were the old Russian pre-dreadnoughts Slava and Tsesarevich, the armored cruisers Bayan and Admiral Makarov, the protected cruiser Diana, 26 destroyers, and several torpedo boats and gunboats. The garrison on Ösel numbered some 14,000 men. The operation began on the morning of 12 October, when Moltke and the III Squadron ships engaged Russian positions in Tagga Bay while König Albert and the rest of IV Squadron shelled Russian gun batteries on the Sworbe Peninsula on Ösel. The coastal artillery in both locations were quickly silenced by the battleships' heavy guns. On the morning of the 14th, König Albert, Friedrich der Grosse, and Kaiserin were detached to support German troops advancing toward Anseküll. König Albert and Kaiserin were assigned to suppress a Russian battery at Zerel, though heavy fog delayed them from engaging the target. The Russians opened fire first, which was quickly returned by the two ships. Friedrich der Grosse came to the two ships' assistance and the three battleships fired a total of 120 large-caliber shells at the battery at Zerel over the span of an hour. The battleships' gunfire prompted most of the Russian gun crews to flee their posts. On the night of 15 October, König Albert and Kaiserin were sent to replenish their coal stocks in Putzig. On the 19th, they were briefly joined in Putzig by Friedrich der Grosse, which continued on to Arensburg with Moltke. The next morning, Vice Admiral Schmidt ordered the special naval unit to be dissolved; in a communique to the naval headquarters, Schmidt noted that "Kaiserin and König Albert can immediately be detached from Putzig to the North Sea." The two ships then proceeded to Kiel via Danzig, where they transited the Kaiser Wilhelm Canal back to the North Sea. After returning to the North Sea on 23 October, König Albert served as the flagship for a force of heavy ships, including Kaiserin, Nassau, Rheinland, and the battlecruiser Derfflinger, supporting a mine-sweeping operation in the German Bight. Afterward she resumed guard duty in the Bight. ### Fate König Albert and her four sisters were to have taken part in a final fleet action at the end of October 1918, days before the Armistice was to take effect. The bulk of the High Seas Fleet was to have sortied from their base in Wilhelmshaven to engage the British Grand Fleet; Scheer—by now the Grand Admiral (Großadmiral) of the fleet—intended to inflict as much damage as possible on the British navy, in order to retain a better bargaining position for Germany, despite the expected casualties. However, many of the war-weary sailors felt the operation would disrupt the peace process and prolong the war. On the morning of 29 October 1918, the order was given to sail from Wilhelmshaven the following day. Starting on the night of 29 October, sailors on Thüringen and then on several other battleships mutinied. The ship remained on picket duty in the Bight until 10 November. This kept her away from the mutinous vessels, until she returned to port and her crew joined the mutiny. The unrest ultimately forced Hipper and Scheer to cancel the operation. Informed of the situation, the Kaiser stated "I no longer have a navy." Following the capitulation of Germany in November 1918, most of the High Seas Fleet, under the command of Rear Admiral Ludwig von Reuter, were interned in the British naval base in Scapa Flow. Prior to the departure of the German fleet, Admiral Adolf von Trotha made it clear to Reuter that he could not allow the Allies to seize the ships, under any conditions. The fleet rendezvoused with the British light cruiser Cardiff, which led the ships to the Allied fleet that was to escort the Germans to Scapa Flow. This consisted of some 370 British, American, and French warships. Once the ships were interned, their guns were disabled through the removal of their breech blocks, and their crews were reduced to 200 officers and enlisted men. The fleet remained in captivity during the negotiations that ultimately produced the Treaty of Versailles. Reuter believed that the British intended to seize the German ships on 21 June 1919, which was the deadline for Germany to have signed the peace treaty. Unaware that the deadline had been extended to the 23rd, Reuter ordered the ships to be sunk at the next opportunity. On the morning of 21 June, the British fleet left Scapa Flow to conduct training maneuvers, and at 11:20 Reuter transmitted the order to his ships. König Albert capsized and sank at 12:54. On 31 July 1935, the ship was raised and broken up for scrap over the following year in Rosyth.

Milorad Petrović

Yugoslav general

Milorad Petrović (Serbian Cyrillic: Милорад Петровић; 18 April 1882 – 12 June 1981) was an Armijski đeneral (lieutenant general) in the Royal Yugoslav Army who commanded the 1st Army Group during the April 1941 German-led Axis invasion of Yugoslavia of World War II. Petrović was commissioned into the Royal Serbian Army in 1901 and served in multiple staff positions during the Balkan Wars. During World War I, he served in various staff roles at the army and divisional level during the Serbian Campaign and later on the Macedonian front. Following the war, he took part in military operations along the disputed northern border of the nascent Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, which was renamed the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in 1929. During the interwar period, Petrović was steadily promoted, performing key roles at the Ministry of the Army and Navy. He reached the rank of armijski đeneral in 1937. At the time of the 27 March 1941 Yugoslav coup d'état, he was the military commander of the Yugoslav capital, Belgrade. In the wake of the coup, Petrović urged immediate mobilisation, but this did not occur until 3 April, by which time Adolf Hitler had already issued orders for Yugoslavia's invasion. Petrović was appointed to command the 1st Army Group, responsible for the country's northern borders with Germany, Italy and Hungary. His formations were only partially mobilised by the time the invasion began on 6 April, and significant fifth column activities affected them from the outset. On 10 April, two determined armoured thrusts by the Germans caused the 1st Army Group to disintegrate, and the following day, Petrović was captured by fifth columnists. He was soon handed over to the Germans and spent the rest of the war in a prisoner of war camp in Germany. After the war, Petrović chose to return to the newly established communist-led Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia, and settled in Belgrade. He was the lifelong president of a veterans' association for those who had participated in the Royal Serbian Army's 1915 withdrawal to the Greek island of Corfu. He lived in Belgrade until his death in 1981, aged 99. ## Early life and military career Milorad Petrović was born in the village of Sumrakovac, in the Zaječar district of eastern Serbia, on 18 April 1882. He was the son of the merchant Vatko Petrović and his wife Jovica. Milorad had a brother who became a judge in Priština. After completing his primary and secondary education, Milorad was appointed as an officer cadet in the Royal Serbian Army, and attended the Military Academy in Belgrade, where he underwent general staff training. In 1901, he was commissioned in the rank of poručnik (lieutenant). His initial posting to the 15th Infantry Regiment was followed by stints at the Musketry School and the 18th Infantry Regiment. On 4 October 1908, he was posted to command a company of the 4th Infantry Regiment. At the beginning of the First Balkan War in 1912, he was appointed an orderly officer at the Serbian Supreme Command, and later that year was promoted to the rank of kapetan prve klase (captain first class). The following year he was moved to the operations section of the Supreme Command, and remained in this position until the end of the Second Balkan War. In 1913, he was promoted to the rank of major and commanded troops at Skopje's central railway station during a revolt by recently conquered ethnic Albanians. Petrović married Jovanka Stojančević, a medical student from Zagreb, whose father Šime was a judge in the Supreme Court of Cassation in Belgrade. The couple had three children; two daughters, Milica and Mirjana; and a son, Branislav. Branislav qualified as a lawyer and then worked as a correspondent for Reuters, The Guardian and Agence France-Presse in Belgrade. Petrović went by the nickname Lord. ## World War I When World War I broke out in 1914, Petrović was in command of the troops guarding the Belgrade Main railway station. In November and December 1914, during the third Austro-Hungarian offensive into Serbia, Petrović was a staff officer at the headquarters of the First Army commanded by Armijski đeneral (lieutenant general) Živojin Mišić. During his time in this position, the First Army fought the Battle of Kolubara, a decisive victory for the Serbs. In 1915, Petrović was an assistant chief of staff on the headquarters of the Infantry Division Timočka, and was promoted to the rank of potpukovnik (lieutenant colonel). Between December 1915 and February 1916, after the Royal Serbian Army's long withdrawal through Montenegro, he commanded an army camp at Valona in Albania. By 10 February 1916, the Royal Serbian Army had evacuated from Albania to the Greek island of Corfu, and there it regrouped. The Macedonian front emerged in 1916, during which a multinational Allied force attempted to assist the Royal Serbian Army in pushing back the Bulgarian Army, which was supported by other members of the Central Powers. At this time, Petrović returned to his previous role in the Infantry Division Timočka. The following year he held the position of assistant chief quartermaster of the division, and in 1918 he was posted as chief of staff of the Infantry Division Drinska. Following the war, Serbia united with the nascent State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs to form the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. In 1919, Petrović participated in military operations in parts of the former Duchy of Carinthia, which was disputed between the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes and the rump state of German-Austria. ## Interwar period On 4 May 1920, Petrović was appointed as the chief of staff of the Savska divisional district, but on 6 November he was posted as assistant chief of staff of the 3rd Army. This was followed on 24 November 1921 with appointment as the chief of the operations staff at the Supreme Command in Belgrade. From 23 January 1922 until 20 October 1923, he was also a tactics instructor for the senior school of the Military Academy, in addition to his duties at the Supreme Command. On 17 September 1923, he was placed in command of the 9th Infantry Regiment. On 3 March 1924, he was posted as acting chief of staff to the Chief of the General Staff at the Ministry of the Army and Navy. Initially he served under Armijski đeneral Milan Milovanović, but Milovanović was soon replaced by Armijski đeneral Petar Pešić. On 28 June 1927, Petrović was promoted to brigadni đeneral (brigadier general) but remained in his role as acting chief of staff. In October 1929, the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes became the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. On 16 September 1930, Petrović was appointed as acting commander of the Timočka divisional district based in Zaječar, and on 20 April 1932 he was posted as acting second assistant to the Minister of Army and Navy. This was followed by promotion to diviziski đeneral (major general) on 17 December. In 1937 he was appointed as first assistant to the Minister of Army and Navy. On 27 November 1937, Petrović was appointed to command the 1st Army district based in Novi Sad, and was promoted to armijski đeneral on 1 December 1938. From 12 September 1940 until 27 March 1941 he was the commander of all troops in Belgrade. ## Axis invasion of Yugoslavia After unrelenting political pressure from German leader Adolf Hitler, formerly neutral Yugoslavia signed the German-Italian-Japanese alliance known as the Tripartite Pact on 25 March 1941. On 27 March, a military coup d'état overthrew the government that had signed the pact, and a new government was formed under the commander of the Royal Yugoslav Army Air Force, Armijski đeneral Dušan Simović. It included members who fell into three groups: those who were strongly opposed to the Axis and prepared to face war with Germany; those who advocated peace with Germany; and those that were uncommitted. The first group included Petrović, who urged an immediate general mobilisation. This was not initiated by the new government until 3 April 1941, out of fear of offending Hitler and thus precipitating war. However, on the same day as the coup, Hitler issued Führer Directive 25 which called for Yugoslavia to be treated as a hostile state, and on 3 April, issued Führer Directive 26, detailing the plan of attack and command structure for a German-led Axis invasion, which was to commence on 6 April. Petrović was appointed to command the 1st Army Group prior to the Axis invasion of Yugoslavia. His command consisted of the 4th Army of Armijski đeneral Petar Nedeljković, responsible for the Yugoslav–Hungarian border and deployed behind the Drava river between Varaždin and Slatina, and the 7th Army of Diviziski đeneral Dušan Trifunović, which was responsible for the defence of the northwestern border with Italy and Germany. Petrović's army group reserve, consisting of the 1st Cavalry Division, was located around and to the south of Zagreb. The Yugoslav historian Velimir Terzić describes the mobilisation of all formations of the 1st Army Group on 6 April as "only partial", and notes that there was a limited response to mobilisation of both men and animals. On the first day of their invasion of Yugoslavia the Germans seized bridges over the Drava river in both armies' sectors and several mountain passes in the 7th Army sector. In the 4th Army sector, the formation and expansion of German bridgeheads across the Drava were facilitated by fifth-column elements of the Croatian-nationalist Ustaše. Revolts of Croat soldiers broke out in all three divisions of the 4th Army in the first few days, causing significant disruption to mobilisation and deployment. The rest of 1st Army Group was also weakened by fifth-column activities within its major units, and Petrović's chief of staff and chief of operations aided both Ustaše and Slovene separatists in the 4th and 7th Army sectors, respectively. The revolts within the 4th Army were of great concern to Trifunović due to the danger to his right flank, but Petrović did not permit him to withdraw from border areas until the night of 7/8 April, which was followed by the German capture of Maribor as they continued to expand their bridgeheads. The 4th Army also began to withdraw southwards on 9 April, and on 10 April it quickly ceased to exist as an operational formation in the face of two determined armoured thrusts by the XXXXVI Motorised Corps, one of which captured Zagreb that evening. Italian offensive operations also began, with thrusts towards Ljubljana and down the Adriatic coast, capturing over 30,000 Yugoslav troops near Delnice. When fifth columnists arrested Petrović and the staffs of 1st Army Group, 4th Army and 7th Army on 11 April, the 1st Army Group effectively ceased to exist. On 12 April, a German armoured column linked up with the Italians near the Adriatic coast, encircling the remnants of the withdrawing 7th Army. Remnants of the 4th Army attempted to establish defensive positions in northeastern Bosnia, but were quickly brushed aside by German armoured units as they drove towards Sarajevo. The Yugoslav Supreme Command unconditionally surrendered on 18 April. The Ustaše quickly handed Petrović over to the Germans, who sent him to a prisoner of war camp in Germany. He remained there for the rest of the war. ## Post-war At the end of the war, Petrović was liberated from internment in Germany and given the option of returning to the new communist-led Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia, which had replaced the Kingdom of Yugoslavia following the victory of the Yugoslav Partisans in 1945. In July 1946, Petrović opted to return to Yugoslavia. He was the lifelong president of a veterans' association for those who had participated in the Royal Serbian Army's 1915 withdrawal to Corfu. He also published a two-volume work about the withdrawal, entitled Across Albania. In the early 1960s, Petrović became acquainted with the journalist David Binder, who was stationed as a New York Times foreign correspondent in Belgrade. The two met through Petrović's daughter Mirjana, who was working as Binder's secretary, and became close friends. Despite his advancing years, Petrović remained physically active well into his nineties, taking daily swims in the Sava. He lived in Belgrade until his death on 12 June 1981, aged 99.

Sam Loxton with the Australian cricket team in England in 1948

1948 season of Australian cricketer

Sam Loxton was a member of Donald Bradman's famous Australian cricket team, which toured England in 1948. Bradman's men went undefeated in their 34 matches; this unprecedented feat by a Test side touring England earned them the sobriquet The Invincibles. A batting all rounder, Loxton played as a right-handed middle-order batsman and a right-arm fast medium bowler who reinforced the frontline pace attack of Ray Lindwall, Keith Miller and Bill Johnston. Starting the tour as a fringe player, Loxton was omitted for the pre-Test fixtures against Worcestershire and the Marylebone Cricket Club, where Australia traditionally fielded their full-strength team. He was overlooked for the first two Tests; reserve opening batsman Bill Brown played out of position in the middle-order. However, Brown struggled in the unfamiliar role, and Loxton scored 159 not out against Gloucestershire to oust the former from his position for the Third Test at Old Trafford. Loxton scored 36 to help Australia avoid the follow on and salvage a draw, before making his most notable contribution in the Fourth Test at Headingley. He took 3/55 in the first innings and scored a counter-attacking 93 on the third day to keep Australia in the game; they went on to win after a world record-breaking run-chase on the final day. Loxton also played in the Fifth Test and ended the series with 144 runs at a batting average of 48.00 and three wickets at a bowling average of 49.33. In the tour matches, Loxton sometimes opened the bowling when Bradman sought to rest Lindwall and Miller to save their energy for the Tests, and he occasionally batted above the middle-order. Loxton was the most economical, but the least incisive of the bowlers, and he never took more than three wickets in an innings. He played 22 first-class matches and scored 973 runs at 57.23 with three centuries, and took 32 wickets at 21.71. He was eighth in the run-scoring aggregates, but was productive when given an opportunity, ranking fifth in the Australian averages. Loxton was the eighth-leading wicket-taker; all seven frontline bowlers ahead of him took at least 50 wickets. Noted for his energetic and combative approach, Loxton was twice forced out of action for his troubles; he pulled a groin while searching for extra pace with the ball early in the tour, and towards the end of the season, he hit a ball into his face and broke his nose. ## Background After serving in World War II, Loxton was demobilised and rose through the cricketing ranks to make his first-class debut in 1946–47. He was an all rounder—a right-handed middle-order batsman and a right-arm fast bowler. During the 1947–48 Australian season, India toured Australia for five Tests, and the home team dominated, taking an unassailable 3–0 series lead after the first four matches. The Australian selectors then decided to use the Fifth Test at the Melbourne Cricket Ground to give opportunities to players on the fringes of the national team to show their capabilities ahead of the 1948 tour of England. Loxton was one of several debutants, and he seized his chance. He scored 80 and took three wickets as an all rounder in the Australian victory, and was rewarded with inclusion in the 17-man touring party. ## Early tour Australia traditionally fielded its first-choice team in the tour opener, which was usually against Worcestershire. Bradman and his co-selectors felt that Loxton was not among the 11 strongest players, so he was not selected against Worcestershire. Loxton's debut had come about because first-choice opener Arthur Morris had been rested from the Fifth Test so that the selectors could trial potential players for the 1948 tour. Sid Barnes had opened in that match with Bill Brown. Morris and Barnes were Bradman's preferred pair and they opened against Worcestershire, while Brown, who was on his third tour of England, was played out of position in the middle-order, pushing Loxton out of the team. Loxton looked on as Brown made 25 and Australia won by an innings. In the next match against Leicestershire, Loxton was given his first chance on English soil. Batting at No. 7, he managed only four before being trapped leg before wicket by Australian expatriate left arm orthodox spinner Vic Jackson, as Australia amassed 448. He then opened the bowling and castled home captain Les Berry for one to leave the hosts at 1/1 and take his first wicket on English soil. He also took two catches, both from the bowling of fellow Victorian Doug Ring as the hosts fell for 130. Loxton again opened the bowling in the second innings as Australia enforced the follow on and dismissed the hosts for 147 to seal another innings win. Loxton took 1/11 and 0/12 from six and seven overs respectively. The Australians then proceeded to play Yorkshire, on a damp pitch that suited slower bowling. Loxton bowled only one over, which was a maiden, before pulling his groin while trying to attain more pace, as the hosts were bowled out for 71. He was unable to bat or bowl again in the game as Australia replied with 101 and then removed the hosts for 89 to leave themselves a target of 60 for victory. Australia came closest to losing for the whole tour. They fell to 6/31, effectively seven down with Loxton unable to bat, before scraping home without further loss, although both batsmen at the crease survived chances. Due to his injury, Loxton was rested for the next two matches against Surrey at The Oval in London and Cambridge University. Australia won both matches by an innings. In the following match against Essex, Loxton returned as Australia won the toss, batted first and went on to score a world record of 721 first-class runs in one day's play. Loxton came in at 4/452 and put on 56 with Ron Hamence and 166 with Ron Saggers in 65 minutes before falling at 6/664 for 120. Loxton's innings was noted for its hooking and driving and took around 80 minutes. During the innings, Loxton also passed 1,000 first-class career runs. Australia collapsed after Loxton's departure, losing their last five wickets for 57 late on the first day. Australia then proceeded to victory by an innings and 451 runs, their biggest winning margin for the tour. Loxton was not required to bowl in the first innings as the hosts fell for 83 in 36.5 overs. In the second innings, Loxton was given the new ball and bowled 12 overs without success, conceding 28 runs before Essex were all out for 187. In the next match against Oxford University, Loxton came in at 4/206 and anchored the innings, remaining unbeaten on 79 as Australia were bowled out for 431. He featured in partnerships with Colin McCool and Doug Ring, who both made fifties. He then took the new ball in both innings, taking 1/14 and 1/16 from five and eight overs respectively in another innings victory. When Oxford batted, Philip Whitcombe struck a delivery from Ernie Toshack to Loxton, and took a few steps out of his crease. Loxton prepared to throw at the Whitcombe's stumps in a run out attempt, but did not release, while Whitcombe stood his ground outside the crease. In those days, the fielding standards were lower, with weaker and less accurate throws and Whitcombe was only a metre or two outside his crease, while Loxton was around thirty away. The next delivery from Toshack was again hit to Loxton, and Whitcombe again wandered outside his crease. This time Loxton threw the ball and hit the stumps directly, running out the batsman, who was unable to comprehend what had happened and shook his head. The next match was against the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) at Lord's. The MCC fielded seven players who would represent England in the Tests, and were basically a full strength Test team, while Australia fielded their first-choice team. It was a chance for all players to gain a psychological advantage over their opponents for the Tests. Loxton had scored 203 runs in three innings at an average of 101.50, but was not selected, nor was middle-order batsman Harvey, who had scored a century in the previous Test against India. Harvey struggled to adapt to English conditions at the start of his first tour and made only 83 runs at 16.60 in five innings on tour. Brown, who had scored 527 runs at 75.28 for the season so far, including three centuries in his last three innings, was played out of position in the middle-order, even though he had batted as an opener in every tour match other than against Worcestershire. Due to the rotation policy in the tour matches, only two of the three openers Brown, Morris and Barnes played in any one game while the other rested, except when Bradman tried to fit all three in a full-strength team by having Brown in the middle-order. The team was exactly the same as for the opening fixture against Worcestershire. Barring one change in the bowling department, the same team went on to be selected for the First Test, with the top six batsmen in the same position. Brown made only 26 as Australia amassed 552 and won by an innings. The MCC match was followed by Australia's first non-victory of the tour, which was against Lancashire. Loxton top-scored with 39 as Australia batted first and were bowled out for 204 after the first day was washed out. He then took 0/18 from eight overs and made 52 in the second innings before being run out while batting with Harvey as the match ended in a draw. In the second innings, Loxton attempted to attack the bowling of Malcolm Hilton—who had troubled Bradman in the first innings—in an attempt to throw him off his game. However, Hilton had the last laugh and removed Bradman for the second time. In the following match against Nottinghamshire, Loxton took a total of 0/21 from 12 overs and was run out for 16 as Australia played out another draw. In the next fixture against Hampshire, Australia had another scare. On a drying pitch, Loxton took 1/2, ending the resistance of top-scorer John Arnold for 48 as Australia removed the hosts for 195. He then made a duck as Australia suffered a middle-order collapse and were dismissed for 117. It was the first time that Bradman's men had conceded a first innings lead during the campaign. Loxton then took 0/6 from five overs as Hampshire were bowled out for 103 to leave Australia a victory target of 182 in 175 minutes. He was not required as Australia's top-order batted steadily to take an eight-wicket win. The final match before the First Test was against Sussex. Loxton opened the bowling and took 3/13 from 10 overs as the hosts fell for 86 in 46.4 overs. Australia then declared at 5/549 before he could bat. Loxton was not asked to bowl as Sussex were out for 138 to seal another innings victory. Former Australian Test batsman Jack Fingleton said that Sussex's display was "as depressing a batting performance as the tour knew". ## First Test Up to this point, Brown had scored 800 runs on tour at an average of 72.72, while Loxton had made 310 runs at 51.66. Harvey had scored only 296 runs at 42.29. The other five places in the top six were firmly entrenched in the hands of Barnes, Morris, Bradman, Hassett and Miller, who had all played in those positions regularly since the end of World War II. Brown gained selection out of position in the middle order in the First Test at Trent Bridge, while Loxton and Harvey watched from the sidelines. There was a chance one of them would receive a last-minute call-up as Barnes was ill with food poisoning in the week leading up to the Test, but the opener recovered. Brown made only 17 as Australia won by eight wickets. Between Tests, Loxton played in the match against Northamptonshire, which started the day after Trent Bridge. With pace spearhead Ray Lindwall injured and Keith Miller rested following a marathon effort in the opening Test, Loxton opened the bowling and took 2/22 from 15 overs the hosts were dismissed for 119. He made only 17 with the bat and took 0/7, again opening in the second innings as Australia cruised to victory by an innings. Loxton was rested for the second match before the Second Test, against Yorkshire; Brown scored a century in a drawn match. ## Second Test Australia opted to field an unchanged line-up for the Second Test at Lord's. Brown managed only 24 and 32 in the middle order as Australia won by 409 runs. Including the matches against Worcestershire and the MCC, he had totalled 123 runs at 24.60 in his five innings in the middle-order. O'Reilly criticised the selection of Brown, who was noticeably uncomfortable in the unfamiliar role. He said that although Brown had made an unbeaten double century on his previous Test at Lord's in 1938, Loxton and Harvey had better claims to selection. The next match was against Surrey and started the day after the Test. Bradman wanted to allow his leading players a lighter workload after their effort at Lord's, and Miller had an unauthorised night of partying and did not return to the team hotel until dawn, so Loxton opened the bowling, and he took two quick wickets to leave the hosts at 2/14. Loxton ended with 2/37 from 25 overs, sending down the most deliveries among the Australians, as the hosts were all out for 221. He made eight with the bat and again opened the bowling in the second innings, taking 1/53 from 18 overs. Australia needed 122 in the final innings to win, and Loxton and Harvey were promoted after the latter offered to open. Bradman's men wanted to finish the run-chase quickly so they could watch the Australian John Bromwich play in the Wimbledon final. Harvey and Loxton, who were roommates during the tour, made the runs in only 58 minutes in 20.1 overs, with Loxton unbeaten on 47, to complete a 10-wicket win. The following match against Gloucestershire at Bristol was the last before the Third Test and Loxton's final chance to push his claims for Test duties. Australia reached 7/774 declared, its highest score of the tour, laying the foundation for a victory by an innings and 363 runs. Loxton came in at 4/466 and put on 63 with Harvey, before his fellow Victorian was out for 95. He then added 104 with Colin McCool and 105 with Ian Johnson. Loxton was on 159 when Johnson lost his wicket, which prompted acting captain Lindsay Hassett to declare the innings closed. Loxton's innings involved a series of powerful strokes that went for six and he was particularly noted for using his feet to charge and attack the off spin of Tom Goddard. The Gloucestershire bowler had been touted as a possible Test selection, because the other England bowlers had failed to contain Australia's batsman in the first two matches, but his chances of selection were ended with the tourists' assault at Bristol. Immediately after the declaration, Loxton opened the bowling and ended with 1/22 from as Gloucestershire were all out for 269. Hassett enforced the follow on and Loxton again started proceedings with the ball, but only for two overs. The home side were bowled out for 132 to complete another Australian victory. ## Third Test Australia and England reassembled at Old Trafford for the Third Test. Following his unbeaten 159 in the previous match and Brown's struggles when playing in the middle-order, Loxton took Brown's position. Brown had scored 25, 26, 17, 24 and 32 in the middle-order in the matches against Worcestershire, the MCC and the first two Tests. As fast bowling all rounder Keith Miller had been struggling with a back injury that prevented him from bowling from time to time, Loxton was seen as a necessary reinforcement for the frontline bowlers. England captain Norman Yardley won the toss and elected to bat, and Loxton bowled first change, sending down seven overs for the loss of 18 runs. The Australians themselves opened with Ray Lindwall and Bill Johnston taking the new ball, but Bradman had misjudged the breeze and needed to swap his bowlers' ends. For this purpose, Loxton bowled a solitary over, his first in Ashes cricket. He was erratic in his length and bowled three long hops outside leg stump at the debutant George Emmett, who ignored the opportunity to attack and let the balls pass. On the second morning, English tailender Alec Bedser had reached 37. His partner Denis Compton hit a ball into the covers and Bradman and Loxton collided in an attempt to field the ball and prevent a run. Compton called Bedser through for a run on the misfield, but Loxton recovered and threw the ball to the wicket-keeper's end. Bedser was a long way short of the crease and was run out. The wicket ended an innings of 145 minutes, in which Bedser scored 37 in a 121-run partnership. England then lost their last three wickets for 26 runs to be all out for 363. On the third day, Loxton and wicket-keeper Don Tallon both came to the crease with Australia in difficulty at 5/139. Tallon and Loxton added a further 43 before the gloveman was caught behind from Bill Edrich. Lindwall came to the crease to join Loxton at 6/172 as Australia faced the prospect of being forced to follow on. The pair added a further 36 before Loxton was bowled by Dick Pollard, leaving Australia 7/208, still five runs behind the follow on mark, which they scraped past to end with 221. Loxton again bowled first change in the second innings, taking 0/29 from eight overs as England reached 3/174 at the end of the third day. Loxton narrowly missed out on a catch when opener Cyril Washbrook had appeared unsettled by some short-pitched bowling from the Australians. A few uncontrolled hook shots flew in the air, and one of these barely evaded Loxton at fine leg. The fourth day was washed out and England declared without further batting after rain delayed the start on the final day. Play began after the tea break, and Australia needed to score 317 in the last session, while England required ten wickets for victory. Loxton did not bat as Australia reached 1/92 from 61 overs when the match was finally ended by a series of periodic rain interruptions. After the Test, Loxton bowled first change in the first innings against Middlesex. He took 3/33 from 21 overs as the hosts were bowled out for 203. Loxton removed Leslie Compton, his younger brother and England Test batsman Denis, and Jim Sims in the space of five runs to reduce Middlesex from 5/182 to 8/188. He had a heavier workload than normal in the first innings, as leading paceman Lindwall had turned up inebriated on the first morning and therefore lacked energy and penetration. Loxton then joined Morris at the crease, with Australia in difficulty at 3/53. They put on 172 in 115 minutes before Morris was out for 109, and Loxton followed him at 5/271 for the top-score of 123, having punished the bowlers in a hard-hitting display. Australia then collapsed to be all out for 317. Loxton took 1/15 in the second innings to help seal victory by ten wickets in Australia's only county match before the Fourth Test. ## Fourth Test The teams headed to Headingley in Leeds for the Fourth Test. Harvey came in for the injured Barnes, joining Loxton in the middle-order. Brown was not recalled to join Morris at the top of the order; instead, Hassett was promoted as a makeshift opener. England won the toss and elected to bat on an ideal batting pitch that was expected to be unhelpful for fast bowling. Opener Len Hutton was dropped by Hassett on 25, after flicking the ball behind square leg from Loxton's bowling. This proved to be costly, as Hutton reached 81 before falling at 1/168. England were 2/268 at the end of the first day. Former Australian Test batsman Jack Fingleton said that Australia's day went "progressively downhill" and said that it was the country's worst day of bowling since World War II, citing the proliferation of full tosses. On the second morning, the nightwatchman Alec Bedser was attacking Australia. He took 14 from one Ernie Toshack over, before taking another 14 from an Ian Johnson over soon after to reach 47. Loxton was brought on and Bedser hit a ball back near his grasp, but it narrowly evaded him. Bedser reached 79 and England 2/423 when he finally fell, triggering a collapse. At 6/486, Loxton bowled Ken Cranston for 10 to take his first Ashes wicket. Cranston opted to not play at a ball that went straight into his leg stump. Loxton then removed Godfrey Evans and Jim Laker in quick succession as England fell to 496/9. Evans fell meekly, prodding a ball straight to Hassett at silly mid-on, prompting O'Reilly to say that Loxton was "lucky to be on deck when the English tail were falling over themselves in their nervous speed to commit hara-kiri". In contrast, Laker edged Loxton down the leg side and it took a diving, low catch from Saggers to complete the dismissal. Umpire Baldwin asked his colleague Chester at square leg to confirm that the ball had carried on the full before sending Laker back to the pavilion. Miller then took the final wicket without further addition to the score. Loxton ended with 3/55 from 26 overs, the second best economy rate among the Australians. On the third morning, Loxton came to the crease to join Harvey with the score at 4/189. Australia had been in trouble after losing two quick wickets to be 3/68, but Miller and Harvey counterattacked, adding 121 runs in 90 minutes, their batting likened by Wisden to a "hurricane". Fingleton said that he had never "known a more enjoyable hour" of "delectable cricket". Harvey was unperturbed by Miller's departure, hitting 11 from three consecutive balls. Australia went to lunch at 4/204, with Harvey on 70. After lunch, Australia scored slowly as Loxton struggled to come to grips with the bowling. Yardley took the new ball in an attempt to trouble the batsmen, but instead, Loxton began to settle in as the ball came onto the bat more quickly. He lofted Pollard to the leg side, almost for six, and then hit three boundaries off another over from the same bowler. Harvey accelerated as well, and 80 minutes into the session, reached his century to a loud reception as Australia passed 250. On each occasion, umpire Frank Chester walked to the edge of the playing field and tried to inspect where the ball landed amongst the crowd, trying to see if the point of impact was beyond the original playing arena. They were ruled as sixes in any case and some thought Chester's actions to be more for theatrical than umpiring purposes. Loxton then dominated the scoring with a display of power hitting. He brought up his 50 by hitting Cranston into the pavilion for six, eliciting spontaneous applause from the English players. It also brought up a century stand, which yielded 105 in only 95 minutes. Harvey was out for 112 from 183 balls, but not before the high run rate during the partnership had helped to swing the match back from England's firm control. Harvey's departure at 5/294 meant that the first of the bowlers, Johnson, entered the ground. This did not deter Loxton, who was particularly severe on Laker, lifting him into the crowd for four more sixes. Loxton hit two over the leg side followed by consecutive off drives into the gallery. Johnson scored 10 before falling with the score at 6/329. Fifteen runs later, Yardley bowled Loxton for 93. Loxton appeared disappointed at playing such a wild cross-batted swing with a maiden Test century beckoning. Lindwall then made 77 to propel Australia to 458 on the fourth day, just 38 runs in arrears. In the second innings, Loxton took 0/29 from ten overs, and England batted on for five minutes on the final morning, adding three runs in two overs before Yardley declared at 8/365. Batting into the final day allowed Yardley to ask the groundsman to use a heavy roller. This would help to break up the wicket and make the surface more likely to spin, therefore making life more difficult for Australia's batsmen. Yardley's declaration left Australia to chase 404 runs for victory. At the time, this would have been the highest ever fourth innings score to result in a Test victory for the batting side. Australia had only 345 minutes to reach the target, but they completed their task with 15 minutes to spare and seven wickets in hand to seal the series 3–0, with Loxton not required to bat. After the Headingley Test, Loxton came in at 5/344 and made an attacking 51 as Australia batted first and made 456 against Derbyshire. He then took 1/27 from 17.4 overs in the first innings. Australia enforced the follow on and Loxton took the first wicket before returning to take two tail-end wickets and end with 3/16 from 13.4 overs as Australia won by an innings. Loxton was the most economical of the Australian wicket-takers. After six consecutive matches, Loxton was rested for the rain-affected draw against Glamorgan, which did not reach the second innings. The hosts were bowled out for 197 and Australia reached 3/215 when inclement weather ended the match. Loxton returned in the next match and claimed both openers to end with 2/27 from 19 overs as Warwickshire were bowled out for 138 in their first innings. He then made a duck as Australia struggled to 254 in reply. Loxton bowled six overs and took 0/15 in the second innings before Australia won by nine wickets. Australia then faced and drew with Lancashire for the second time on the tour. Loxton did little, scoring two in his only innings and taking a match total of 1/32, his victim being Test batsman Jack Ikin. In the non-first-class game against Durham, a rain-affected draw that did not reach the second innings, Loxton made 15 in Australia's 282 and then took 1/8 from six overs as the hosts reached 5/73 before rain washed out the match after the first day. ## Fifth Test Australia then headed to The Oval for the Fifth Test. Yardley won the toss and elected to bat on a rain-affected pitch. England were dismissed for 52 in 42.1 overs on the first afternoon; Loxton bowled only two overs for one run as the frontline pacemen made light work of the hosts. His other notable action in the field occurred when Len Hutton the first runs of the match, a single in the first over. This had almost turned into a five when Loxton fired in a wide return, but Barnes managed to prevent from going for four overthrows. Loxton came in on the second day with the score at 5/265 and accompanied the centurion Morris for 39 further runs before Edrich had him caught behind for 15. He appeared uncomfortable with the outswingers and leg cutters of Bedser, and was beaten several times, before Edrich dismissed him. Australia ended at 389. Loxton was economical in the second innings, taking 0/16 from 10 overs as Australia dismissed the hosts for 188 to seal the series 4–0 with another innings victory. ## Later tour matches Seven matches remained on Bradman's quest to go through a tour of England without defeat. Loxton made 16 of 361 as Australia batted first against Kent. He came on late in the first innings and took three of the last four wickets as the hosts fell for 51 in just 23 overs. Loxton bowled all his victims as the hosts fell from 5/48 to 51 all out. It was a similar tale in the second innings, as Loxton removed opener Jack Davies for a duck and ended with 1/12 from six overs as the hosts fell for 124 in only 32.5 overs. Australia had won the match by an innings within two days. In the next fixture against the Gentlemen of England, Loxton made only 17 as Australia eventually declared at 5/610 against a team that featured eight Test players. Loxton then took a match total of 0/37 from 21 overs as Australia completed another innings victory. Loxton was rested for the next match against Somerset, which the tourists won by an innings. Loxton then returned against the South of England. He came in at 5/427 and struck an unbeaten 67 in 75 minutes, before Australia declared at 7/522. He took 1/17 from 11 overs, removing Charlie Barnett as the hosts were bowled out for 298 in their first innings when rain ended the match. Australia's biggest challenge in the post-Test tour matches was against the Leveson-Gower's XI. During the last Australian campaign in 1938, this team was effectively a full-strength England outfit, but this time Bradman insisted that only six current England Test players be allowed to play. Bradman then fielded a full-strength team, with the only difference from the Fifth Test line-up being the inclusion of Johnson at the expense of Doug Ring. The bowlers skittled the hosts for 177, with Loxton taking 0/12. Loxton came in at 2/327 and made 12, before sweeping a ball from Freddie Brown into his own face and breaking his nose. He retired hurt and took no further part in the match. Australia declared at 8/469 and the hosts were 2/75 when the match ended in a draw after multiple rain delays. The tour ended with two non-first-class matches against Scotland. Following his injury, Loxton played in neither; Australia won both by an innings. While in Scotland, Loxton's nose was operated on in Edinburgh. Following his injury, Loxton eschewed the sweep shot and advised students to do the same, exhorting them to move onto the front foot to drive instead. ## Role A batting all-rounder, Loxton played as a right-handed middle-order batsman and a right-arm fast medium bowler who reinforced the frontline pace attack of Lindwall, Miller and Bill Johnston. When fit, the trio all bowled before Loxton in the Tests. With medium pacer Ernie Toshack and off spinner Ian Johnson also playing in the Third and Fourth Tests, Loxton was the sixth bowler. In the Fifth Test, Johnson was replaced by leg spinner Ring and the injured Toshack was replaced by a batsman, so Loxton became the fifth bowler. Of the seven regular bowlers, Loxton was the only one who was not a frontline bowler, and as such he had the worst average, the second-worst economy rate and the third-worst strike rate. Loxton ended the Test series with 144 runs at 48.00 and three wickets at 49.33, having bowled 63 overs. Loxton batted at No. 6 or No. 7 during the Tests, and was the last batsman in the batting order before the wicket-keeper and the bowlers. In the tour matches, Loxton sometimes opened the bowling when Bradman sought to rest Lindwall and Miller in order to conserve their energy for the Tests, such as in both innings of the match against Northamptonshire and the second match against Surrey. In his 22 first-class innings, he batted twice at No. 4 and opened in one innings, but he was otherwise invariably in the middle-order between No. 5 and No. 7.^N- Loxton was the most economical of those who bowled more than 70 overs, but also the least incisive, taking a wicket every 67.75 balls, and he never took more than three wickets in an innings, which he managed on three occasions. He played 22 first-class matches and scored 973 runs at 57.23 with three centuries and took 32 wickets at 21.71. Loxton was eighth in the run-scoring aggregates, but was given less opportunities than the other frontline batsmen who scored more heavily; whereas he had 22 innings, they all had at least 26 innings and tended to bat higher in the order. However, Loxton was productive when given a chance, ranking fifth in the averages. Loxton was the eighth-leading wicket-taker; all seven ahead of him took at least 50 wickets. Wisden Cricketers' Almanack summed up his contribution thus: > A fine driving batsman with a fierce square cut, Loxton achieved little as a bowler, but he played his part as an all-rounder, one of many in the team; in addition to his batting feats, he kept the game alive by his unlimited enthusiasm. Whether in stopping the ball or hurling down the wicket from almost any angle, he won the admiration of all who appreciated keenness in the field.

Leek Town F.C.

Association football club in England

Leek Town Football Club is an English football club based in Leek, Staffordshire, playing in the . The team, nicknamed "The Blues", play their home games at Harrison Park. The club was founded in 1946 and played in a variety of local leagues including the Staffordshire County League, Manchester League, Mid-Cheshire League and Cheshire County League, before becoming a founder member of the North West Counties League in 1982 and from there progressing to the Northern Premier League in 1987. In 1997 they were Northern Premier League champions and gained promotion to the Football Conference, the highest level of English non-league football, spending two seasons at that level before being relegated. Leek Town reached the final of the FA Trophy in 1990, having progressed all the way from the first qualifying round, but lost in the final at Wembley Stadium 3–0 to Barrow. ## History Football was played in Leek from at least 1876, with an earlier side called simply Leek F.C. having been part of The Combination in the 1890s, but the current Leek Town club traces its lineage to the formation of a team called Leek Lowe Hamil in 1946 (although the club's official history does not mention it, some sources state that the club was initially known as Abbey Green Rovers before adopting the Lowe Hamil name). The club began life playing in the local Leek and Moorlands League, playing on a field adjoining a pub, before joining the Staffordshire County League in 1947. In 1949–50 Lowe Hamil were champions of this league, becoming the first (and to date only) team to win the title without losing a single match (some sources state this title win occurred in 1950–51). In 1951 the team switched to the Manchester League, adopting the name Leek Town at the same time, and won the championship at the first attempt, after which the team relocated once more to the Mid-Cheshire League, where again they played for just one season. In 1954 the team joined the Birmingham & District League but resigned in the middle of the 1956–57 season due to financial difficulties, after which they had another brief spell in the Manchester League, which was also curtailed due to monetary problems, before eventually returning to the Staffordshire County League. In 1968 a new committee was formed, under which the club emerged from the doldrums. Manager Paul Ogden took over in 1969 and led the club to two Staffordshire County League championships, followed in quick succession by two Manchester League titles. After the second Manchester League win, Leek joined the Cheshire County League, where they were league champions at the second attempt in the 1974–75 season, but after Ogden left in 1975 to take over as manager of Northwich Victoria a series of managers came and went in quick succession without being able to maintain this level of success. In 1982 the Cheshire County League merged with the Lancashire Combination to form the new North West Counties League, where Leek spent five relatively unsuccessful seasons. During their spell in this league former England player Mike Pejic took over as manager, Leek's most high-profile appointment to date, but he had only a short reign before moving to Northwich Victoria. Following Kevin Lewis' brief reign Neil Baker took over in 1986 and was to lead the club to some of its greatest successes to date. Leek were chosen to be among the founder members of the new Northern Premier League Division One in 1987 and in 1989–90 won the Division One title to gain promotion to the Premier Division, the highest level at which they had ever played. In the same season they progressed through eight rounds of the FA Trophy, including a quarter-final win over Darlington, that season's Conference champions, to reach the final at Wembley Stadium but were defeated 3–0 by Barrow. In 1993–94 Leek finished second in the Northern Premier League Premier Division, which should have been sufficient for promotion to the Football Conference. However, they were refused promotion due to financial irregularities. To compound their problems, they were shifted from the Northern Premier League to the Southern League; the resulting travel costs proved a severe drain on the club. After one season the club was allowed to return to the Northern Premier League. In 1996–97 Leek claimed the Northern Premier League title by ten points and were this time granted promotion to the Conference. In their first season at this level they narrowly managed to avoid relegation but could not repeat the feat the following year and were relegated back to the Northern Premier League Premier Division. In 2000–01 the Blues were relegated to Division One, but regained their place in the Premier Division when the league was restructured due to the formation of Conference North in 2004. The club achieved several mid-table finishes in the league but struggled off the pitch. On 21 June 2006 it was announced that the club was in such severe financial peril that it was facing a winding-up order, but on 11 June the following year it was confirmed that a new consortium had taken over the club and secured its future. In the 2007–08 season Leek finished in the bottom four, resulting in relegation to Division One South. Between the 2011–12 and 2014–15 seasons the club qualified for the play-offs for promotion back to the Premier Division three times, but missed out each time. In 2011–12 Leek lost in the final to Ilkeston. Two seasons later the team lost at the semi-final stage to Belper Town, and in 2015–16 Leek lost in the final to Sutton Coldfield Town. Due to league re-organisations, since 2015 Leek have played in Division One South, Division One West, and Division One South East. In the 2018–19 season Leek again made the play-offs and defeated Ramsbottom United in the semi-finals but lost in the final to Radcliffe. Both the subsequent two seasons were abandoned due to the COVID-19 pandemic. ## Colours and crest Leek's home colours have traditionally been all blue, and their away colours all yellow, both colours which reflect the town's coat of arms, which is predominantly blue and gold. The club has also used a blue and white kit similar to that of Blackburn Rovers, and away kits in other colours such as red and black, or lime green. The team's shirts were sponsored for a number of years by butter manufacturer Kerrygold, whose headquarters are in the town. The club's crest features a garb and a Staffordshire knot, both of which are elements of the town's arms, as well as a caduceus, a symbol which appears on token coins issued in Leek in the 18th century. ## Stadium and supporters Harrison Park lies on the outskirts of Leek and has been the team's home since 1948, when the club purchased what was then called Hamil Park for £1,250. Changing rooms were constructed in the 1950s (previously the players had been obliged to change in a nearby pub), along with the first covered accommodation for spectators, and floodlights (which had previously belonged to the defunct Rugby Town) were erected in 1972, soon after which the stadium was renamed Harrison Park after former club chairman Geoff Harrison. In 1998 the ground was flooded when a nearby reservoir overflowed and the river which runs alongside the ground burst its banks. The ground has a capacity of 3,600 spectators, with 625 seats. There is a clubhouse for the use of supporters as well as a club shop. The highest attendance figure recorded at Harrison Park came when the club played near-neighbours Macclesfield Town in an FA Cup 2nd qualifying round match in the 1973–74 season in front of a crowd of 3,512. When Leek played in the Conference National, the average home attendance was around 600. Since the club dropped from that level, attendances have been more modest; in the 2018–19 season Leek's average attendance was 351. ## Statistics and records Leek's highest ever finish in the English football league system was a 19th-place finish in Conference National (level 5) in 1997–98, the first of two seasons the team played at that level. The Blues have only twice progressed beyond the qualifying rounds of the FA Cup, reaching the first round in 1993–94 and the second round in 1990–91, when they held Chester City to a draw at home but lost 4–0 in the replay. Leek reached the final of the FA Trophy in 1989–90 but lost 3–0 to Barrow at Wembley Stadium. ## Managers Despite their relatively short history, over 30 men have managed The Blues. Paul Ogden has had six separate spells in charge. ## Current staff As of September 2023 ## Honours ## Rivalries Leek's main local rivals are Buxton, the two sides having been historic Northern Premier League rivals throughout the 1990s. Matlock Town and Kidsgrove Athletic are also considered local rivals to the Blues.

Delaware Tercentenary half dollar

1937 commemorative American coin

The Delaware Tercentenary half dollar (also known as the Swedish Delaware half dollar) is a commemorative fifty-cent piece struck by the United States Bureau of the Mint to commemorate the 300th anniversary of the first successful European settlement in Delaware. The reverse features the Swedish ship Kalmar Nyckel, which brought early settlers to Delaware, and the obverse depicts Old Swedes Church, which has been described as being the oldest Protestant church in the United States still used as a place of worship. While the coins are dated "1936" on the obverse and the reverse also has the dual date of "1638" and "1938", the coins were actually struck in 1937. Authorizing legislation for the coin passed Congress in early 1936. Although there was no opposition, the legislation was changed to add protections for collectors against abuses, such as low mintages or strikings at multiple mints, which marked some commemorative coins at that time. Once the coin was authorized, the Delaware Swedish Tercentenary Commission (DSTC) held a competition to design the coin, judged by Mint Chief Engraver John R. Sinnock and sculptor Robert Tait McKenzie, which was won by Carl L. Schmitz. The coins were produced at the Philadelphia Mint in March 1937, and were then sold to the public by the DSTC for \$1.75 each. Of the 25,000 coins minted for sale, 20,978 were sold, and the profits used to help fund the tercentenary celebrations. The Delaware Tercentenary half dollar sells in the low hundreds of dollars, though exceptional specimens have sold for more. ## Background The first attempt at European settlement in what is now Delaware occurred in 1631 near Lewes; the incipient colony was destroyed by Native Americans of the Lenape and Nanticoke tribes. The Swedes tried in 1638 with two ships, the Kalmar Nyckel and the Fogel Grip, an expedition commanded by Peter Minuit, famed for his purchase of Manhattan Island but later dismissed by the Dutch. They settled at the present site of Wilmington. The colony of New Sweden, established to profit from the fur trade, was on land claimed by the Dutch in New Jersey and the English in Maryland; the conflict over the next years was primarily with the latter. Intermittent warfare ended with the arrival of an overwhelming Dutch fleet in 1655. In 1664, though, the English conquered New Netherland, the Dutch possessions in the Middle Atlantic states, and in 1682, Delaware was granted to William Penn, the new proprietor of Pennsylvania. Delaware became one of the original Thirteen Colonies, and, in 1787, was the first state to ratify the Constitution. Until 1954, the entire mintage of each commemorative coin issues issue was sold by the government at face value to a group named by Congress in authorizing legislation, who then tried to sell the coins at a profit to the public. The new pieces then entered the secondary market, and in early 1936 all earlier commemoratives sold at a premium to their issue prices. The apparent easy profits to be made by purchasing and holding commemoratives attracted many to the coin collecting hobby, where they sought to purchase the new issues. The growing market for such pieces led to many commemorative coin proposals in Congress, to mark anniversaries and benefit (it was hoped) worthy causes. Unlike other commemoratives of the time, the reason for minting the Delaware half dollar was not greed; it was felt that the 300th anniversary of the first settlement in Delaware, the first state, was worthy of commemoration. The designated organization to purchase the Delaware half dollars was the Delaware Swedish Tercentenary Commission (DSTC), acting through its president. ## Legislation A joint resolution authorizing 20,000 commemorative half dollars for the 300th anniversary of Swedish settlement in Delaware was introduced into the United States Senate by Joseph F. Guffey of Pennsylvania on March 4, 1936. It was referred to the Committee on Banking and Currency. and was one of several commemorative coin bills to be considered on March 11, 1936, by a subcommittee led by Colorado's Alva B. Adams. Senator Adams had heard of the commemorative coin abuses of the mid-1930s, when issuers increased the number of coins needed for a complete set by having them issued at different mints with different mint marks; authorizing legislation placed no prohibition on this. Lyman W. Hoffecker, a Texas coin dealer and official of the American Numismatic Association, testified and told the subcommittee that some issues, like the Oregon Trail Memorial half dollar, first struck in 1926, had been issued over the course of years with different dates and mint marks. Other issues had been entirely bought up by single dealers, and some low-mintage varieties of commemorative coins were selling at high prices. The many varieties and inflated prices for some issues that resulted from these practices angered coin collectors trying to keep their collections current. No further action was taken on that joint resolution, but on March 16, Guffey and Delaware's Daniel O. Hastings introduced a new one. Among the changes made were requiring that the president of the Delaware Tercentenary Commission sign off on coin orders from the Mint, rather than requiring the chairman of the commission's coinage committee to be the one responsible. Nevertheless, when Adams reported the joint resolution back to the Senate on March 26, he attached an amendment entirely rewriting the bill, and explained in an accompanying report, "The bil above referred to contains certain provisions which the committee recommend be eliminated not only from such bil but also from all subsequent bills relating to the issuance of commemorative coins. One of these provisions would have allowed the coins to be issued at several mints and another provision would have permitted the coins to be issued at such times and in such amounts as the committee or other body in charge of the commemorative exercises might determine." He stated that "the committee recommend that the issuance of the coins be limited to one mint to be selected by the Director of the Mint and that not less than 5,000 such coins be issued at any one time". The joint resolution was brought to the Senate floor on March 27, 1936, the first of six coinage bills being considered one after the other. Like the others, it was amended and passed without recorded discussion or dissent. In the House of Representatives, the bill was referred to the Committee on Coinage, Weights, and Measures. That committee reported back on April 16, with an amendment that raised the minimum mintage to 25,000. On April 30, J. George Stewart of Delaware brought the bill to the House floor and it passed without discussion or dissent. As the two houses had not passed identical versions, this sent the bill back to the Senate. On May 4, Adams moved that the Senate agree to the House amendment, which it did; the bill became law, authorizing not fewer than 25,000 half dollars, with the signature of President Franklin D. Roosevelt on May 15, 1936. The bill was signed despite the fact that the Treasury Department opposed it and prepared a draft veto message; that department feared that the many commemorative coin issues would cause public confusion and embolden counterfeiters. The striking was only allowed to take place at a single mint, all pieces to be dated 1936 and to be issued by the Mint within a year of the bill's enactment, thus not later than May 15, 1937. ## Preparation On May 18, 1936, the DSTC's general secretary, George Ryden, wrote to the Assistant Director of the Mint, Mary M. O'Reilly, requesting procedural information, stating that the commission might order as many as 50,000 coins in two tranches, and informing her that the DSTC planned to elect the design for the coin by open competition. This was not the usual way of proceeding for a committee charged with finding a design for a commemorative, who more usually picked an artist by other means, such as by the committee choosing a local artist or asking the Mint for a recommendation. The competition was judged by Mint Chief Engraver John R. Sinnock and noted sculptor Dr. Robert Tait McKenzie. Over 40 entries were submitted, all vying for both a \$500 prize and the honor of being the final design for the coin, and one by Carl L. Schmitz, an American of German and French descent, was chosen. Schmitz chose the Kalmar Nyckel as his subject for one side of the coin, and the Old Swedes Church in Wilmington for the other. The designs were received by the Commission of Fine Arts (CFA) and on November 5, 1936 prints of them were sent to its sculptor-member, Lee Lawrie. The commission was charged by a 1921 executive order by President Warren G. Harding with rendering advisory opinions on public artworks, including coins. The DSTC was withholding the name of the artist pending CFA approval of the designs, and in a letter of November 9 to the CFA secretary, H.R. Caemmerer, Lawrie stated, "these models seem to me to be made by one who understands the business—they are excellent." He was unsure what the designs represented, though, and asked for clarification. DSTC chairman C.L. Ward responded to Caemmerer on November 14, disclosing Schmitz's name, explaining the designs, and wanting modifications to the shape of the church. On December 14, the CFA approved the design, subject to Ward's concerns being addressed. Schmitz modified his models, which were reduced to coin-sized hubs by the Medallic Art Company of New York. ## Design Mint records consider the side with the church as the obverse, though the DSTC considered it to be the side with the ship; numismatic author Q. David Bowers wrote that collectors have come to agree with the Mint, though Anthony Swiatek, in his 2012 volume on commemoratives, note that some collectors and dealers dissent. Consecrated in 1699, Old Swedes Church has been described as the oldest Protestant church building in the United States still used for worship. Swiatek and Walter Breen, in their earlier volume, note that the church is depicted as it appeared, not in 1699, but following the addition of a tower and belfry in 1802. Above the church the Sun is depicted with its rays piercing the clouds; Swiatek and Breen suggested this symbolic of divine protection despite adversity. The year 1936 appears, as required by the authorizing law, and between the year and the church is the motto, IN GOD WE TRUST. Ringing the design are the name of the issuing country, and the coin's denomination. The reverse depicts the Kalmar Nyckel—the name means "Key of Kalmar". The depiction on the coin is based on a Swedish-made copy of the model of the ship in the Marinmuseum, the Swedish Naval Museum. The artist's initials, CLS, are to the right of the ship. Under the waves beneath the ship are LIBERTY and E PLURIBUS UNUM, along with the anniversary dates. The year of minting, 1937, does not appear on the coin despite the presence of the dates 1936 and 1938. Separating the dates beneath the ship from each other and from the words DELAWARE TERCENTENARY that otherwise ring the design are three diamonds. These symbolize the three counties (Kent, New Castle and Sussex) of Delaware, "The Diamond State". In his 1938 monograph on commemorative coins, David Bullowa wrote of the Delaware half dollar, "The design of this coin is effective and simple. The legends are particularly clear, and the coin as a whole is very tastefully wrought." Art historian Cornelius Vermeule wrote of the Delaware half dollar in his book on American coins and medals, "the design comes off with boldness and simplicity. Ships and architecture can offer more pitfalls than they do joys, but Schmitz, wisely, has presented plain solids and solid, yet unusual lettering. Even the triad of standard [national] mottoes are apportioned to both sides, to their exergues, in such a manner as to avoid irritation. Although offering nothing new, this coin speaks forcefully amid its contemporaries." ## Distribution A total of 25,015 coins were minted in March 1937 at the Philadelphia Mint, with the 15 pieces above the even thousands set aside for inspection and testing at the following year's meeting of the annual Assay Commission. The coins were sold by the DSTC through the Equitable Trust Company of Wilmington at \$1.75 per piece. Coins that had been ordered in advance were distributed in late March and in April. Of the 25,000 coins minted, 20,978 were sold, and the 4,022 remaining pieces returned to the Mint for redemption and melting. Proceeds from the coin were used to fund local celebrations of the anniversary, which were held in Sweden and in the United States in 1938. Sweden also issued a commemorative coin for the anniversary, a 2-kronor coin depicting the Kalmar Nyckel. These were promoted by American coin dealers such as Wayte Raymond of New York, who was involved in the US distribution of the Swedish coin, as collectable alongside the Delaware half dollar. There were also several privately produced medals, and a new stamp from the United States Post Office Department was issued at Wilmington on June 27, 1938. By 1940 the Delaware piece sold for about \$1.50 in uncirculated condition, though this went up to \$2.75 by 1950, \$18 by 1960, and \$350 by 1985. The deluxe edition of R. S. Yeoman's A Guide Book of United States Coins, published in 2020, lists the coin for between \$210 and \$350, depending on condition. Two exceptional specimens sold for \$7,475 in 2008 and in 2011. The original coin holders in which up to five Delaware half dollars were sent to purchasers are worth from \$75 to \$125, and if accompanied by original mailing envelope up to \$200, depending on condition.

Mother and Child Reunion (Degrassi: The Next Generation)

"Mother and Child Reunion" is the two-part pilot episode of the Canadian teen drama television series Degrassi: The Next Generation, which premiered on October 14, 2001 on the CTV Television Network. The episode was written by story editor Aaron Martin and series co-creator/creative consultant Yan Moore, and directed by Bruce McDonald. As with the majority of Degrassi: The Next Generation episodes, "Mother and Child Reunion" takes its title from a pop song, "Mother and Child Reunion", written and performed by Paul Simon. Degrassi: The Next Generation is the fourth series in the fictional Degrassi universe created in 1979. The preceding series, Degrassi High, ended in 1991, although a television movie, School's Out, aired in 1992 and wrapped up the storylines of the characters. "Mother and Child Reunion" reunited some of those characters in a ten-year high school reunion, while also introducing a new generation of Degrassi Community School students: Emma Nelson, Manny Santos, J.T. Yorke and Toby Isaacs. The episode received mixed reviews from the mass media, with the Ottawa Citizen saying that it offers "nothing new to viewers familiar with the groundbreaking preceding series", and The Seattle Times saying it "soft-pedals through the issues", although the acting from the new generation of children was lauded as "stellar ... solid [and] believable" by Canoe.ca's AllPop. It was nominated for two Gemini Awards and two Directors Guild of Canada Awards, winning in the "Outstanding Achievement in a Television Series – Children's" category. ## Plot ### Part One Archie "Snake" Simpson (played by Stefan Brogren), a former student of Degrassi High, and now teacher at Degrassi Community School, has arranged a mixed reunion for the classes of 1990 and 1991. Spike Nelson (Amanda Stepto), Caitlin Ryan (Stacie Mistysyn), and Lucy Fernandez (Anais Granofsky), who also attended Degrassi High, plan on attending and try to persuade Joey Jeremiah (Pat Mastroianni) to join them. Joey, however, is reticent as he is still dealing with his grief over the death of his wife. Along with Caitlin's fiancé Keith (Don McKellar), the five friends go out to a bar for the night, reminiscing about the past and discussing their present lives. Spike's daughter, Emma (played by Miriam McDonald) is told by her online boyfriend, Jordan, that he is coming to Toronto for a school field trip, and asks her if she would like to meet him for the first time. Her friends, Manny Santos (Cassie Steele), J.T. Yorke (Ryan Cooley) and Toby Isaacs (Jake Goldsbie) warn her of the potential dangers of meeting somebody she only knows from the Internet, and tell her that he could be an Internet stalker, pointing out that schools do not take field trips in the middle of summer. However, Emma is undeterred, convinced that Jordan is just a normal boy with whom she shares the same interests. ### Part Two At the reunion party, Joey and Caitlin meet Alison Hunter (Sara Holmes), another Degrassi High attendee. As the evening progresses, Joey overhears Keith and Alison flirting with each other and Keith reveals he does not want to marry Caitlin. When Joey confronts Keith, their argument turns into a physical altercation, and Alison has to tell Caitlin about Keith's hesitance over getting married. Joey and Caitlin have a heart-to-heart discussion about their past and their relationships, and after ten years, finally make amends after she forgives him for his affair with Tessa Campanelli, while Wheels (Neil Hope) apologizes to Lucy for crippling her while driving drunk nine years ago for which she forgives as she realized how he's been through since the death of his adoptive parents. While her mother attends the reunion, Emma visits Jordan at his hotel, where she meets his teacher, Mr. Nystrom (Jeff Gruich). He takes her up to Jordan's hotel room, but as they enter, Emma sees that it is completely empty except for a video camera which has been set up. She immediately becomes suspicious and tries to escape, but Nystrom blocks her access to the bedroom door. She locks herself in the bathroom, and comes to the startling realization that Nystrom is Jordan. Nystrom apologizes and tells Emma he will let her go, but when she comes out of the bathroom, he grabs and restrains her. Unable to get in contact with Emma, Manny tells Toby and J. T. that she is afraid that Emma may have gone to meet Jordan. They hack into Emma's email account and realize that Jordan has told her a number of lies. After discovering which hotel Emma is meeting Jordan at, they rush to the school to inform Spike. As Nystrom attempts to rape Emma, Spike and Snake arrive just in time to save her. Emma manages to break free from Nystrom and rushes out of the hotel room. Snake restrains Nystrom until the police arrive to take him away. ## Production Linda Schuyler had co-created The Kids of Degrassi Street in 1979 with Kit Hood, and Yan Moore was a writer on that series. As the children grew up, the Degrassi franchise developed into Degrassi Junior High and Degrassi High. In 1999 two episodes of Jonovision, a CBC Television talk show aimed at teenagers, reunited some of the cast members from the series. At the same time, Schuyler and Moore were developing a new television drama. When the Jonovision reunion episode proved to be popular, Schuyler and Moore wondered about reuniting the characters, too. As the months passed, they began thinking about what might have happened to the characters of Degrassi High and realized that the character Emma Nelson, born at the end of Degrassi Junior High's second season, would soon be entering junior high school. Stephen Stohn, Schuyler's husband suggested Degrassi: The Next Generation as the name for the new sequel series, borrowing the concept from Star Trek: The Next Generation, of which he was a fan. The new series was offered a place on a number of television networks, with CTV and CBC (the franchise's former network) vying as the top contenders. CTV won through, offering \$10 million for a fifteen-episode season. The project was greenlit in May 2000, with the originally planned reunion episode serving as the pilot to the new series. CTV announced the new series at its annual press conference in June 2001, and said the pilot would air in the fall. In contrast to the previous Degrassi series, which were filmed on and around De Grassi Street in Toronto, Ontario, Degrassi Junior High used Vincent Massey Public School, then known as Daisy Avenue Public School, as its primary filming location, and Centennial College was used in Degrassi High. Degrassi: The Next Generation is filmed at Epitome Pictures' studios in Toronto. A 100,000-square-foot (9,300 m²) former printing factory was converted in 1997 for Epitome, consisting of four soundstages and a backlot. The exterior of Degrassi Community School was located on the studio's backlot, and used the same colours and glass pattern as Degrassi High'''s Centennial College. Production on "Mother and Child Reunion" began earlier than expected, as CTV initially planned to launch the series in January 2002. At the eleventh hour the broadcaster decided to bring it forward to October 2001 to coincide with the back-to-school season. The episode was written by series co-creator Moore, also credited as creative consultant, and script editor Aaron Martin. Co-creator Schuyler, with her husband and Epitome Pictures partner Stohn, served as executive producers. The line producer was David Lowe. "Mother and Child Reunion" was directed by Bruce McDonald, who had previously directed the films Roadkill (1989), Highway 61 (1991), Hard Core Logo (1996), and the television series Queer As Folk (2001–2005). Epitome Pictures sought funding from the Government of Canada, through its two Crown corporations, Telefilm Canada and the Canadian Television Fund, which provide financial support to Canadian audiovisual productions. Filming began on July 3, before Epitome Pictures could finalize their contracts with Telefilm and the Television Fund. Other financial contributors included Royal Bank of Canada, Cogeco, Shaw Communications, and Bell Canada. To appeal to Degrassi's established audience, a number of references to events which occurred in Degrassi Junior High, Degrassi High and School's Out were written into the episode. Throughout those two series, Joey would frequently wear a fedora which became that character's trademark prop. The fedora made a reappearance in this episode, and was worn by Manny, Spike, Snake, Caitlin and Lucy, but not Joey, and it appeared in every scene which featured a character from the old series. Prior to the episode airing, a website was created with a "virtual school" in which fans could "enrol" in order to receive regular emails from their character "classmates" and discuss ongoing plots, in an effort to provide a complete viewing experience for the audience. As the broadcast date of the episode neared, more content was added to the website to make it appear as if it were a true school reunion website. The website was actually seen on screen when the characters Spike and Caitlin were reminiscing about their high school days. "Mother and Child Reunion" aired on the terrestrial television network CTV on October 14, 2001, and was advertised as a television special. In the United States, it was broadcast on July 1, 2002, on the Noggin cable channel during its programming block for teenagers, The N; it served as the final episode of season one. In Australia, the episode aired on the terrestrial network ABC TV on August 1, 2002. The episode has been released on DVD as part of the complete first season DVD boxset, which was released in Canada on October 19, 2004, in the U.S. on September 28, 2004, and in Australia on September 8, 2010. The episode is also available at iTunes Stores to download and watch on home computers and certain iPod models, and at Zune Marketplace for the Xbox 360 and Zune media players. ## References to the original series The two-part episode would also follow up on plotlines of the original series. The accident in the telemovie School's Out when Wheels hit Lucy while drunk driving was discussed twice, first at the bar when the characters were discussing their lives, and a second time when Wheels came to the reunion to apologize to Lucy. Finally, Joey and Caitlin made amends; their relationship had ended when he cheated on her with Tessa Campanelli in School's Out. Snake, who had been dating a girl named Pam by the end of School's Out, is still angry at Wheels for the accident. Lucy's eyesight is restored (whether in one or both eyes is unclear) and, having completed extensive physical therapy, she is able to walk well with the use of a cane; at the same time, she has completed an honours bachelor's degree, a master's degree and most of the work for a Ph.D. Joey and Caitlin have gone their separate ways and not seen each other in many years (though it is unclear if Alexa and Simon's wedding was the last time). Joey is now a used car dealer and a widowed father of a young daughter. His prediction for Caitlin, however, has come true: she lives in Los Angeles and is famous as the host of an environmental-political television series. At the reunion, Caitlin breaks up with her new fiancé Keith; as she takes off her ring while sitting alone with Joey, she asks him, "Bring back any memories?" Alexa and Simon are still married, as evidenced by the characters sitting together and her actress Irene Courakos being credited as "Alexa Dexter" vice "Alexa Pappadopoulos." An interview of original cast members done in-character was included as a bonus feature on the Season 1 DVD. In the interviews, Alison Hunter says she is a waitress and wants to become a star in Hollywood. Dwayne Myers says that while he is HIV positive, he is AIDS free, and hopes to live ten more years. Kathleen Mead is shown being jealous of Caitlin's success after high school. She says she is pitching an idea for a new television show called "Mead in Canada." Diana Economopoulos is now Diana Platt; she and her husband are accountants. She has two children and brags about her website. Yick Yu says that he and Arthur Kobalewsky are co-owners of a web design company. Alexa and Simon Dexter live around Ottawa with their two children and Alexa now a quintessential soccer mom is pregnant with their third. Ricky is a lawyer and is helping write copyright laws for the internet. Rainbow is a documentary filmmaker. Liz O'Rourke says she is now working with the mentally disabled (although she is later revealed to be a midwife in the episode "Father Figure"). Trish Skye says she had problems but has been clean and sober for two years; she works at a funeral home and is a freelance writer. In the same video, Spike mentions that she bought out her mother's hair salon and comments on the "weird déjà vu" of Emma now attending Degrassi; Snake also appears and notes that he is a teacher at the titular school, and still single. ## Cast Producers were able to bring back a number of actors from Degrassi High to guest star as their characters for the reunion storyline. Stefan Brogren, Pat Mastroianni, Stacie Mistysyn and Amanda Stepto agreed early on to return for the episode to play their characters Archie "Snake" Simpson, Joey Jeremiah, Caitlin Ryan and Christine "Spike" Nelson respectively, and appeared at the CTV press conference in June to publicize the new series. Brogren and Stepto signed contracts to appear in the entire season. Dan Woods also returned to play Dan Raditch, now principal of Degrassi Community School. By the time "Mother and Child Reunion" began to shoot, twelve more former Degrassi High cast members had agreed to appear: Danah Jean Brown (Trish Skye), Darrin Brown (Dwayne Myers), Michael Carry (Simon Dexter), Irene Courakos (Alexa Pappadopoulos), Chrissa Erodotou (Diana Economopoulos), Anais Granofsky (Lucy Fernandez), Rebecca Haines (Kathleen Mead), Sara Holmes (Alison Hunter), Neil Hope (Derek "Wheels" Wheeler), Kyra Levy (Maya Goldberg), Cathy Keenan (Liz O'Rourke), and Siluck Saysanasy (Yick Yu) all reprised their roles. For the new generation of students, the producers chose from six hundred auditionees, all of whom were children in an attempt to provide a group of characters that the target audience of teenagers could relate to, rather than actors in their twenties pretending to be teenagers, something other shows of the same period and target audience such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Dawson's Creek were doing. Miriam McDonald first auditioned in October 2000 to play Emma Nelson, Spike's daughter, and was selected for the role after a callback and three screen tests. Ryan Cooley appeared as J.T. Yorke, Jake Goldsbie as Toby Isaacs, and Cassie Steele as Manny Santos. All signed their contracts just days before appearing at the CTV press conference. Christina Schmidt appeared briefly as Terri McGreggor, and Melissa McIntyre appeared in just one scene as Ashley Kerwin; she had no lines to speak in this episode. Cassie Steele's sister, Alex Steele, made her first appearance as Angela Jeremiah, Joey's six-year-old daughter. She returned with Mastroianni to the series at the beginning of season two to take on more permanent roles. Film director Kevin Smith, who had been a fan of Degrassi from the early 1990s when he worked at a convenience store in Leonardo, New Jersey, has paid homage to Degrassi by making reference to it in several of his films. For example, he named a Clerks character Caitlin Bree after Caitlin Ryan, his favorite Degrassi character, wrote Shannen Doherty's character Rene wearing a Degrassi jacket throughout his Mallrats film, and had Jason Lee's character in Chasing Amy specifically mention Degrassi Junior High as the television show he would rather be watching, instead of going out. At the press conference for the new series, Schuyler announced that Smith would appear in "Mother and Child Reunion" as Caitlin's boyfriend, but due to scheduling conflicts he was unable to film the role and it was passed on to Don McKellar. Smith and his View Askewniverse sidekick Jason Mewes later guest starred in Degrassi: The Next Generation for three episodes of season four, two episodes of season five, and four episodes of season eight. ## Reception "Mother and Child Reunion" received mixed reviews from the media. Stephanie McGrath of Canoe.ca's AllPop acknowledged Miriam McDonald's portrayal of Emma Nelson as "stellar acting abilities in a super creepy storyline ... high on tension, low on cheese [and] top-notch", and continued, "The young actors actually showed up their classic Degrassi counter-parts in the pilot episode. Their acting was solid, believable and age-appropriate, while some of the older crowd's dialogue sounded a bit stilted and over-rehearsed. Slightly wooden acting aside, it was still good to see Joey, Caitlin and the gang together again. Emma's story-line demonstrates that the creative forces behind The Next Generation haven't lost touch with teens yet, showing that one instalment of Degrassi: The Next Generation is worth 20 episodes of Dawson's Creek." Tony Atherton of the Ottawa Citizen had mixed feelings of the new incarnation, saying it "has a cleaner, more polished look, has lost its edge [and offers] nothing new to viewers familiar with the groundbreaking preceding series, nor to anyone else who has watched the deluge of teen dramas since", adding that because there is "little ground left to break in teen drama there is a sense of déjà vu with regards to the plots and characters". He did, however, praise the show for having "the same simple narrative told from a kid's viewpoint, and the same regard for unvarnished reality [as Degrassi Junior High and Degrassi High]. It is light years from far-fetched high-school melodramas like Boston Public and Dawson's Creek ... is every bit as good as its beloved predecessor. In fact, in some respects it is even better". When the series began in the U.S., The Seattle Times' Melanie McFarland was unsure whether its success and popularity in Canada would continue across the border. "As popular as Degrassi was, it was still a mere cult hit in the United States; the crowd that had access to it initially on PBS might not be able to tune into Noggin. Soft-pedaling through the issues might work for today's family of viewers, but what's gentle enough for Mom and Dad's peace of mind might not be enough to hook Junior or the original Degrassi's older fans". She was, however, "happy Noggin chose Degrassi students to navigate teen perils instead of digging up Screech and the gang [characters from Saved by the Bell''] for another nauseating go-round". "Mother and Child Reunion" was nominated for two Directors Guild of Canada Awards, winning in the "Outstanding Achievement in a Television Series – Children's" category, and picked up two Gemini Award nominations in the categories for "Best Photography in a Dramatic Program or Series" and "Best Short Dramatic Program".

Shadow the Hedgehog (video game)

2005 video game

is a 2005 platform game developed by Sega Studios USA (the former United States division of Sonic Team) and published by Sega as part of the Sonic the Hedgehog series. The game follows Shadow the Hedgehog, a creation of Doctor Eggman's grandfather, as he attempts to learn about his past while suffering from amnesia. Shadow the Hedgehog reintroduces third-person shooter elements from Sonic Adventure and Sonic Adventure 2, but greatly expands on the concept and introduces nonlinear gameplay to the Sonic franchise. To defeat enemies and progress through the game, Shadow can use a variety of weapons from each faction and complete missions that will determine the game's plot and subsequently playable levels. The development team wanted to make a game featuring Shadow to capitalize on the character's popularity and resolve plot mysteries that began with his introduction in Sonic Adventure 2. It was written and directed by Takashi Iizuka, produced by Yuji Naka, and scored by Jun Senoue. Iizuka, who targeted a younger audience with previous Sonic games, strove to attract an older audience with Shadow the Hedgehog; Shadow's character also allowed the team to use elements otherwise inappropriate for the series. The game was revealed at the March 2005 Walk of Game event, and it was released for the GameCube, PlayStation 2, and Xbox in North America and in Europe in November 2005 and in Japan the following month. It received generally negative reviews from critics, who criticized its controls, mature themes, level design, and addition of guns and other weapons to traditional Sonic gameplay. However, some praised its replay value. Despite this, the game was commercially successful, selling 2.06 million copies by March 2007. It is the first game in the series to utilize the voice actors from the 4Kids dub of Sonic X. It is also the first Sonic game to receive an E10+ rating from the ESRB, due to its mild use of profanity and fantasy action violence. ## Gameplay Shadow the Hedgehog is a platform game that incorporates elements from the third-person shooter genre and elements from the action-adventure genre. Like previous games in the Sonic series, basic gameplay involves running quickly, collecting rings, tricky platforming and destroying enemies. Shadow collects rings as a form of health; when he is attacked by an enemy or takes damage from the environment, ten of his rings bounce away from and form into a circle around him. When Shadow has no rings and takes damage from an enemy he dies, loses a life and goes back to the last checkpoint. Each level is completed by undertaking a mission, and each mission is labelled "Hero," "Dark," or "Normal". The "Hero" missions involve completing tasks for the Sonic series' heroic characters, or Doctor Eggman on one occasion, and the "Dark" missions involve completing tasks for Black Doom or Doctor Eggman. The "Normal" missions involve reaching the Chaos Emerald or Goal Ring at the end of the stage. Examples of non-neutral mission objectives include killing all enemies in the stages, destroying an aircraft flying to the end of the level, or activating or destroying objects in the stage. All enemies attack Shadow regardless of the mission chosen. The mission types selected affect the plot, the levels played, and the ending received out of ten possibilities. Each level features cutscenes that advance the story, and seven levels also feature boss battles. There are 326 possible paths to take in Shadow the Hedgehog, and each pathway is individually named. New gameplay features distinguish Shadow the Hedgehog from previous Sonic games. For example, Shadow can pick up and use guns to combat enemies, adding an element of third-person shooter gameplay that in past games were the simple lock-on and fire mechanic. Parts of the scenery, such as traffic signs, can also be used as weapons. Another new feature is the ability to drive vehicles, such as motorcycles and an alien aircraft. Although Shadow can outrun the game's vehicles, the latter have unique capabilities, such as crushing enemies and traversing otherwise impassable acid-covered areas. As in most Sonic series games, the Chaos Emeralds play a major role; they help Shadow remember his past and allow him to perform Chaos Control and Chaos Blast. Chaos Control allows Shadow to move more quickly in levels and slows time in boss battles, and Chaos Blast creates an explosion that destroys or severely damages all nearby enemies. Shadow can perform Chaos Control after the player fills the Hero Gauge by defeating Black Arms soldiers (or by doing other heroic acts such as; putting out fires and healing wounded soldiers), and he can perform Chaos Blast after filling the Dark Gauge by defeating G.U.N. soldiers (or other evil acts such as; healing the enemies or destroying scenery). The game includes a two-player mode that retains the single-player mechanics but is set in one of three specially designed stages and uses a vertically split screen to separate each player's view. Each player chooses one of the available characters—Shadow, two metallic versions of him, and palette-swapped variants of each. The combatants attack each other and steal each other's rings until one is eliminated. Additionally, in single-player mode, a second player may take control of Shadow's hero sidekick characters (you cannot control Doom's Eye or Dr. Eggman) in the stages, however this feature isn't in the Xbox version of the game. ## Synopsis ### Characters Shadow the Hedgehog, the game's titular protagonist, was created 50 years before the game's events by Prof. Gerald Robotnik in an orbital military research space colony known as the ARK. Robotnik was trying to unlock the secrets of eternal life on the government's orders and create the "Ultimate Life Form." To that end, Robotnik designed Shadow to harness the powers of the Chaos Emeralds. He saw G.U.N raid the ARK and shoot Robotnik’s granddaughter Maria Robotnik, killing her. At the end of Sonic Adventure 2, his first in-game appearance, Shadow was presumed dead, but he returned in Sonic Heroes and suffers amnesia. The Guardian Units of Nations (G.U.N.) is the military of Earth's government, the United Federation, and it is directed by the G.U.N. Commander, who has a hatred of Shadow. When completing "Hero" missions, Shadow usually helps G.U.N. and heroic characters from the Sonic series, including Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, Amy, Rouge, Omega, Vector, Charmy, and Espio. Their aim is to protect Earth from both Doctor Eggman and the Black Arms, an army of various related alien species that invade Earth from the Black Comet. Black Doom, the leader of the Black Arms, sends an extension of himself called "Doom's Eye" to watch Shadow and help him complete missions. When completing "Dark" missions, Shadow helps either Black Doom or Doctor Eggman, each of whom wants the Chaos Emeralds for himself. In one "Hero" mission of Sky Troops, Shadow assists Doctor Eggman in battling the Black Arms. ### Plot Shadow suffers from amnesia, only able to remember two things: his name and his attempt to escape the Space Colony ARK with his creator's granddaughter Maria, who was killed by G.U.N. soldiers. Having walked through a room filled with androids that look like him during the events of Sonic Heroes, Shadow wonders if he, too, is an android. While Shadow is reminiscing outside the city of Westopolis, an alien race called the Black Arms drops out of the sky and invades the city. Black Doom, the Black Arms' leader, contacts Shadow and tells him of an old promise made to bring the Chaos Emeralds to him. Stunned that Black Doom knows his name, Shadow searches for the Chaos Emeralds to learn about his past. The game progresses through the Westopolis level and five more levels from the different paths Shadow may take. As missions are completed, Shadow learns more about his past and regains memories. He can choose to help Doctor Eggman, the Black Arms, or G.U.N. and the series' heroic characters, or he can choose to help neither and keep the Chaos Emeralds for himself. The missions completed determine which one of ten possible endings will be seen after Shadow collects all the Chaos Emeralds and defeats one of the game's final bosses. The possible ending events range from helping the heroes destroy the Black Arms or to help Black Doom destroy the planet. Completing all ten endings unlocks the game's true ending. After collecting all the Chaos Emeralds, Black Doom uses Chaos Control to bring the Black Comet to the Earth's surface. Black Doom explains that the Black Arms intend to use humans as an energy source, and the Black Comet begins to release a nerve gas into the Earth's atmosphere that causes total paralysis to those who inhale it. Immune to the paralyzation, Shadow confronts Black Doom where he discovers that Professor Gerald Robotnik created the ARK's Eclipse Cannon to destroy the Black Comet. During their confrontation, Black Doom reveals that Shadow was created using his blood, and he attempts to use mind control on Shadow, but fails. Black Doom then transforms into a giant beast form called Devil Doom; in response, Shadow uses the Chaos Emeralds to transform into Super Shadow and confronts Devil Doom. During the battle, Doctor Eggman confirms to Shadow that he is the original and not an android. Shadow defeats Devil Doom and uses Chaos Control to teleport the Black Comet back into Earth's orbit, where he obliterates it using the Eclipse Cannon. His friends are elated, as are people at G.U.N. headquarters. Shadow is then seen in the ARK's observation deck holding up a photograph of Maria and Gerald. Recalling Maria's last words to him, "Goodbye forever... Shadow the Hedgehog", Shadow discards the photograph and walks away. ## Development Shadow the Hedgehog was developed by Sega Studios USA, the now-defunct United States division of Sega's Sonic Team, and published by Sega. Sega first revealed the game and its tagline ("Hero or villain? You decide.") at the March 8, 2005 inauguration of Sonic the Hedgehog into the Walk of Game. Sega formally announced development of the game for the GameCube, PlayStation 2, and Xbox video game consoles on March 23, 2005. The same year, Sega released the game in North America on November 15, 2005, in Europe on November 18, 2005, and Japan on December 15, 2005. Sonic Team's Takashi Iizuka and series co-creator Yuji Naka led the game’s development, with Iizuka serving as writer and director and Naka as producer. Iizuka, who had worked on the Sonic the Hedgehog series since 1993, targeted a younger audience with previous Sonic games and wanted to attract an older audience with Shadow the Hedgehog. The game's development team wanted to make a game featuring Shadow to resolve plot mysteries that began with the character's introduction in Sonic Adventure 2. The team felt that Shadow's design—inspired by films such as Underworld, Constantine, and the Terminator series—would make the story darker and allow for elements, such as vehicles and weapons, otherwise considered inappropriate for a Sonic game. Naka stated in an interview with GameSpy that he wanted to use Shadow as the game's main character due to his popularity among fans and being the best fit for a "gun action" game. The game features several CGI-animated cutscenes produced by Blur Studio. The music of Shadow the Hedgehog was composed by Jun Senoue, with additional work by Yutaka Minobe, Tomoya Ohtani, and Mariko Nanba. Lost and Found: Shadow the Hedgehog Vocal Trax is a video game soundtrack album released on CD on February 22, 2006. The album contains seven vocal songs from the game, one of which is a remix rather than the original. Another soundtrack, Shadow the Hedgehog: Original Soundtrax, was also released on February 22, 2006. It contains both vocal and instrumental tracks from the game. In Japan, Shadow the Hedgehog was promoted through a collaboration with Japanese hip hop group M-flo, whose song "Tripod Baby" was remixed and featured in the commercial under the title "Tripod Baby (Shadow the Hedgehog Mix)". In addition to this, an alternate music video for "Tripod Baby" featuring the remix included new scenes with Shadow. Uniquely, the game contains profanities, particularly the frequent use of the words "damn" and "hell" spoken by Shadow and other characters such as Espio, the G.U.N. Commander, Knuckles, and Sonic. The decision to include profanity and firearms was made early in development as it focused on a more mature tone. The ESRB ultimately assigned the game an E10+ rating for "fantasy violence" and "mild language". The game was also the first in the Sonic series to use the 4Kids cast from Sonic X following the death of Doctor Eggman's previous voice actor, Deem Bristow. This cast continued to be used until late 2010 when all cast members except for Mike Pollock were replaced before the release of Sonic Free Riders. ## Reception Shadow the Hedgehog on GameCube received "mixed or average" reviews while the PlayStation 2 and Xbox versions received "generally unfavorable" reviews from critics on review aggregator Metacritic, many of which were highly critical of its gameplay mechanics and differences from other Sonic games. However, it was voted the best game of 2005 in the Official Jetix Magazine Reader Awards and named the "Best Platformer" of 2005 by Nintendo Power readers (receiving more votes than the staff's choice, Sonic Rush). Shadow the Hedgehog was also a commercial success: Sega reported 1.59 million units sold from its release to March 2006 and 470,000 units sold in the U.S. from March 2006 to March 2007, for total sales of at least 2.06 million. The game was later released as a part of three budget lines: Greatest Hits and Platinum Range for the PlayStation 2 (representing sales of at least 400,000 in North America and Europe, respectively) and Player's Choice for the GameCube (250,000 in North America). Many critics derided the game's sense of maturity for a Sonic game, especially the addition of guns and other weapons. Game Informer staff writer Matt Helgeson said, "not only is this new 'adult' interpretation of Sonic painfully dumb, it’s also ill-advised and almost feels like a betrayal to longtime fans." Eurogamer staff writer Tom Bramwell felt that "the game's other selling point – its darker edge – [is] not really meant for us." G4's X-Play and GameSpy staff writer Patrick Klepek thought similarly. In contrast, Nintendo Power staff writer Steve Thomason rated the game 8.0 out of 10, stating, "this darker take on the Sonic universe succeeds for the most part, giving the series a bit of an edge without going overboard on violence." In addition, Official Xbox Magazine reassured readers, "Don't worry, Shadow the Hedgehog isn't half as 'urban' or quite as 'gangsta' as it first seems." Helgeson panned the game's "laughable" plot, saying it "makes no sense," and that various Sonic conventions undermined its attempts to be "mature" or "edgy". Reviewers also noted the game's controls, especially Shadow's homing attack causing unexpected character deaths. Game Informer's Matt Helgeson complained that the attack "frequently sends you careening off into nothingness, resulting in cheap death after cheap death." Nintendo Power, X-Play, Eurogamer, Official Xbox Magazine, and GameSpy agreed. Other complaints focused on the mechanics of weapons and vehicles. Greg Mueller of GameSpot felt that the guns were nearly useless because of a lack of a target lock or manual aim, combined with an ineffective auto-aim. IGN staff writer Matt Casamassina, 1UP.com staff writer Greg Sewart, Game Informer, X-Play, GameSpy, and London's The Times also criticized the mechanics of Shadow's weapons, vehicles, and other aspects of the game's controls. However, Thomason said that "blasting Shadow's foes with the wide variety of weapons at his disposal is just plain fun." The level design received mixed comments. Mueller called some levels "extremely frustrating". Helgeson stated that the fast-paced "levels are poorly designed", and Andrew Reiner, who wrote a second-opinion review for Game Informer, called the level design "disastrous". Official Xbox Magazine was more mixed, balancing the possibility of getting lost in the large levels with the likely appeal of these stages to 3D Sonic gamers, particularly those who had enjoyed Sonic Heroes. GameTrailers found that "the levels are either dark and urban, or bright and psychedelic. Either way, they fit in well to the Sonic universe. They are loaded with speed ramps, loops and an assortment of other boosts that rocket Shadow like a pinball." Bettenhausen included "the classic run-like-hell roller coaster design philosophy" of some stages in his limited praise. Casamassina disliked the "stupid level design", saying that "[j]ust because they dazzled players six years ago does not mean that Sonic Team can copy and paste exactly the same loops and spins into each new franchise iteration and expect everyone to be happy with the outcome." GameSpy observed that "the areas are much less open than in previous Sonic games, but the level designers haven't taken advantage of the constraints." Nintendo Power singled out the difficulty of the missions that require the player to locate objects. Critics praised the game's replay value, applauding the many possible paths that a player may take through the game. GameTrailers stated, "this choose-your-own-adventure style gives the game replay value that many platformers lack." The Australian publication Herald Sun, Nintendo Power, and Official Xbox Magazine thought similarly. GameSpot praised the variety of alternate endings, but concluded that "the gameplay isn't fun enough to warrant playing the game through multiple times." Bettenhausen thought that the morality system felt artificial, but said that it extended the game's replay value.

Niandra LaDes and Usually Just a T-Shirt

Niandra LaDes and Usually Just a T-Shirt is the debut album by the American musician John Frusciante, released on November 22, 1994, by American Recordings. Frusciante was previously a member of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, but left in 1992 after he became overwhelmed by their newfound popularity. He became severely depressed, developed a serious drug addiction, and isolated himself in his home to record music. Niandra LaDes and Usually Just a T-Shirt combines avant-garde and stream-of-consciousness styles, with guitar, piano and effects on a four-track recorder. It was met with confusion and a mixed response from fans and critics, and sold 15,000 copies by 1996. Two years later, Frusciante rehabilitated and rejoined the Red Hot Chili Peppers. ## Background Frusciante joined the Red Hot Chili Peppers in 1988 at the age of 18, and released his first album with the group, Mother's Milk, the following year. The follow-up album, Blood Sugar Sex Magik, was recorded in an empty mansion where the band decided to live for the duration of recording. Frusciante adapted well to the environment, and often spent his time alone painting, listening to music, and recording songs that would eventually make up the first half of the album, Niandra LaDes. Blood Sugar Sex Magik was released on September 24, 1991, and was an instant success. The album peaked at number three in the U.S. and went on to sell more than thirteen million copies worldwide. Soon after the album's release, Frusciante became overwhelmed by the band's newfound popularity. He felt that the Red Hot Chili Peppers were too famous, and wished they were still playing small nightclubs like they were before he had joined. During Blood Sugar Sex Magik's promotional tour, Frusciante began using heroin and cocaine heavily. He and vocalist Anthony Kiedis often argued before and after performances. According to Kiedis, Frusciante purposely sabotaged the Saturday Night Live performance of "Under the Bridge" by playing the wrong intro for the song and out of key. His relationship with the band had become progressively more strained, and he abruptly quit during the Japanese leg of their world tour in 1992. ## Writing and recording After leaving the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Frusciante continued to write and record solo material. He had been doing so since the age of nine, but had never considered releasing his material to the public. That was until several of his friends – including Johnny Depp, Perry Farrell, Gibby Haynes and Red Hot Chili Peppers bandmate Flea – encouraged him to release the material he wrote in his spare time during the Blood Sugar Sex Magik sessions. Frusciante began working on final cuts of the songs he had been writing, and producing them at his home. According to Frusciante, each song was completed in one take. During this period, Frusciante's use of heroin became more extreme; he began viewing drugs as the only way to "make sure you stay in touch with beauty instead of letting the ugliness of the world corrupt your soul". During a 1994 interview, a visibly intoxicated Frusciante noted that he wrote the album in order to create "interesting music", which he felt no longer existed. He felt contemporary artists were not writing material he deemed worth listening to and the mainstream population were settling for mediocrity. Drugs were another significant topic on which Frusciante based Niandra LaDes and Usually Just a T-Shirt. According to Frusciante, he "was stoned for every single note [he] played on the album". He increased his drug use to cope with worsening depression that was caused by leaving the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and his subsequent isolation. Several songs on the album deal with his dislike for the Red Hot Chili Peppers' success, such as the album's eleventh track, "Blood on My Neck From Success". All the music on the record was written by Frusciante, save for the cover of hardcore punk band Bad Brains' song "Big Takeover". The track was intentionally slowed down and recorded melodically because of a pastime in which Frusciante sang punk songs in different tempos: "It was just something I had been walking around thinking of in my head. Sometimes I'll walk around singing punk rock songs to myself, but as if they were regular songs instead of punk rock songs, you know, slow it down and make a melody instead of just yelling them out. And then the idea occurred me to record it like a Led Zeppelin ballad with mandolins and stuff." River Phoenix, a friend of Frusciante's, contributed guitar and backing vocals to two songs that were intended be included on the record, but were ultimately left off following his death in October. Niandra LaDes and Usually Just a T-Shirt incorporates Frusciante's avant-garde style of song composition, with his stream-of-consciousness methodology. It features minimal orchestration, and Frusciante's vocals have a "fragile, wispy quality" as described by AllMusic. CMJ New Music Monthly called it "probably the most fucked-up album ever released by someone who had once played in stadiums." Frusciante recorded, mixed, produced and mastered the entire record by himself on a four-track tape, and released it on Rick Rubin's label, American Recordings. Warner Bros., the Red Hot Chili Peppers' label, originally held the rights to the album because of the leaving-artist clause in Frusciante's Red Hot Chili Peppers contract. Because he was living as a recluse, the label gladly handed the rights over to Rubin, who released the album under his label. ## Cover art and title The cover art of Niandra LaDes and Usually Just a T-Shirt is a sepia photograph of Frusciante in drag. According to Toni Oswald, Frusciante's partner at the time of the album's making, this choice was inspired by Rrose Sélavy, the feminine pseudonym of Marcel Duchamp—the French painter and writer whom Oswald and Frusciante both deeply admired. Frusciante devised the name "Niandra LaDes" as his own feminine alter ego. The phrase "Usually Just a T-Shirt" meanwhile derives from a clothes-exchanging ritual that Oswald and Frusciante often took part in when Frusciante was away on tour; after Frusciante asked what Oswald would wear with his clothes, she would reply, "Usually just a t-shirt." The phrase "To Clara" in the lower right refers to Clara Balzary, the first daughter of Flea. ## Release, reception, and aftermath Niandra LaDes and Usually Just a T-Shirt was initially previewed by Billboard magazine, who said that "Chili Peppers fans might be daunted by the album's elusive experimentalism." A representative of American Recordings did not foresee the album as being viable in any mainstream music stores, and some retailers went as far as to ban it from being sold. After the album was released, Frusciante played three small performances, and participated in a few magazine interviews to promote the album, explaining in one interview that people would be able to understand his work only if "their heads are capable of tripping out". At one point shortly after release, Frusciante began searching for a string quartet to play the album with him on tour. The idea was eventually discarded when he could not find a band that "understands why Ringo Starr is such a great drummer, can play Stravinsky, and also smokes pot". The concept of a tour was ultimately abandoned as well, due to Frusciante's diminishing health. Niandra LaDes and Usually Just a T-Shirt was met with general confusion and a mixed response from fans and critics. David Wild of Rolling Stone wrote: "All in all, [the album is] a mess – but definitely a fascinating, often lovely mess. As one might expect of an album titled Niandra Lades and Usually Just a T-shirt, this is twisted, cool stuff." Marina Zogbi of Entertainment Weekly described Frusciante's guitar play as "hauntingly lovely," and said: "There's a fine line between brilliant and unlistenable, and Frusciante squarely straddles it here." The Boston Herald noted that while the album was "a stark display of Frusciante's acoustic guitar virtuosity" and "eerily beautiful", the singing was "terrible; his high notes will drive the neighborhood dogs into a frenzy". Retrospective appraisal is generally more positive. In a 2003 review by Rolling Stone, critic Christian Hoard wrote: "[the album] sounds like a string of four-track demos. The first part of the album is slightly more tuneful than the more ambient, experimental second section [...] Mostly what you get are Frusciante's acoustic-guitar scratchings and stream-of-conscious ramblings." Steve Huey of AllMusic, who rated the album four out of five stars, said that "[the album was] an intriguing and unexpected departure from Frusciante's work with the Chili Peppers [and that] the sparse arrangements of the first half help set the stage for the gossamer guitar work later on." He went on to say that Usually Just a T-Shirt (the latter half of the album) contained "pleasant psychedelic instrumentals with plenty of backward-guitar effects". Ned Raggett, also of AllMusic, noted that "there's nothing quite so stunning as [Frusciante's] magnificent remake of Bad Brains' 'The Big Takeover'." Adam Williams of PopMatters said the album "fall[s] somewhere between madness and brilliance". He went on to compare Frusciante to Syd Barrett, and felt it was a "hint at a deeply cerebral artist looking within for inspiration and creativity". Frusciante's drug addiction worsened as the years progressed. An article published by the Phoenix New Times described him as "a skeleton covered in thin skin". He participated in an interview with Dutch public broadcast station VPRO, the first media appearance he made since leaving the Red Hot Chili Peppers. In the interview Frusciante speaks of the positive effects drugs have had on his mind and proudly admits to being a "junkie". He went on to confess addictions to heroin and crack cocaine, but ultimately described himself as being in the best health of his life. Niandra LaDes and Usually Just a T-Shirt sold 15,000 copies by 1996; two years later Frusciante rehabilitated and rejoined the Red Hot Chili Peppers. In 2017, record label Superior Viaduct reissued Niandra LaDes and Usually Just a T-Shirt on vinyl. ## Track listing All tracks are written by John Frusciante, except "Big Takeover", written by Bad Brains. Niandra LaDes 1. "As Can Be" – 2:57 2. "My Smile Is a Rifle" – 3:48 3. "Head (Beach Arab)" – 2:05 4. "Big Takeover" – 3:18 5. "Curtains" – 2:30 6. "Running Away into You" – 2:12 7. "Mascara" – 3:40 8. "Been Insane" – 1:41 9. "Skin Blues" – 1:46 10. "Your Pussy's Glued to a Building on Fire" – 3:17 11. "Blood on My Neck from Success" – 3:09 12. "Ten to Butter Blood Voodoo" – 1:59 Usually Just a T-Shirt 1. <li value=13> "Untitled \#1" – 0:34 2. "Untitled \#2" – 4:21 3. "Untitled \#3" – 1:50 4. "Untitled \#4" – 1:38 5. "Untitled \#5" – 1:30 6. "Untitled \#6" – 1:29 7. "Untitled \#7" – 1:42 8. "Untitled \#8" – 7:55 9. "Untitled \#9" – 7:04 10. "Untitled \#10" – 0:25 11. "Untitled \#11" – 1:51 12. "Untitled \#12" – 5:27 13. "Untitled \#13" – 1:52 Note: Cassette versions of the album include the additional tracks "Ants" as track seven on side one (Niandra LaDes) and "Untitled \#0" as track one on side two (Usually Just a T-Shirt).

Piano music of Gabriel Fauré

Piano music written by Gabriel Fauré (1845–1924)

The French composer Gabriel Fauré (1845–1924) wrote in many genres, including songs, chamber music, orchestral pieces, and choral works. His compositions for piano, written between the 1860s and the 1920s, include some of his best known works. Fauré's major sets of piano works are thirteen nocturnes, thirteen barcarolles, six impromptus, and four valses-caprices. These sets were composed during several decades in his long career, and display the change in his style from uncomplicated youthful charm to a final enigmatic, but sometimes fiery introspection, by way of a turbulent period in his middle years. His other notable piano pieces, including shorter works, or collections composed or published as a set, are Romances sans paroles, Ballade in F major, Mazurka in B major, Thème et variations in C minor, and Huit pièces brèves. For piano duet, Fauré composed the Dolly Suite and, together with his friend and former pupil André Messager, an exuberant parody of Wagner in the short suite Souvenirs de Bayreuth. Much of Fauré's piano music is difficult to play, but is rarely virtuosic in style. The composer disliked showy display, and the predominant characteristic of his piano music is a classical restraint and understatement. ## Introduction Although for much of his career he made his living as a church organist, Fauré greatly preferred the piano. He never underestimated the challenges in composing for the instrument; he wrote, "In piano music there's no room for padding – one has to pay cash and make it consistently interesting. It's perhaps the most difficult genre of all." Although his publishers insisted on descriptive titles, Fauré said that his own preference would be for utilitarian labels such as "Piano piece No. X". His works for the piano are marked by a classical French lucidity; he was unimpressed by pianistic display, commenting of keyboard virtuosi, "the greater they are, the worse they play me." Even a virtuoso such as Franz Liszt said that he found Fauré's music hard to play: at his first attempt he said to Fauré, "I've run out of fingers". Fauré's years as an organist influenced the way he laid out his keyboard works, often using arpeggiated figures, with themes distributed between the two hands, requiring fingerings more natural for organists than pianists. This tendency may have been even stronger because Fauré was ambidextrous, and he was not always inclined to follow the convention that the melody is in the right hand and the accompaniment in the left. His old friend and former teacher Camille Saint-Saëns wrote to him in 1917, "Ah! if there is a god for the left hand, I should very much like to know him and make him an offering when I am disposed to play your music; the 2nd Valse-Caprice is terrible in this respect; I have however managed to get to the end of it by dint of absolute determination." As a man, Fauré was said to possess "that mysterious gift that no other can replace or surpass: charm", and charm is a conspicuous feature of many of his early compositions. His early piano works are influenced in style by Chopin, and throughout his life he composed piano works using similar titles to those of Chopin, notably nocturnes and barcarolles. An even greater influence was Schumann, whose piano music Fauré loved more than any other. The authors of The Record Guide (1955) wrote that Fauré learnt restraint and beauty of surface from Mozart, tonal freedom and long melodic lines from Chopin, "and from Schumann, the sudden felicities in which his development sections abound, and those codas in which whole movements are briefly but magically illuminated." When Fauré was a student at the École Niedermeyer his tutor had introduced him to new concepts of harmony, no longer outlawing certain chords as "dissonant". By using unresolved mild discords and colouristic effects, Fauré anticipated the techniques of Impressionist composers. In later years Fauré's music was written under the shadow of the composer's increasing deafness, becoming gradually less charming and more austere, marked by what the composer Aaron Copland called "intensity on a background of calm." The critic Bryce Morrison has noted that pianists frequently prefer to play the accessible earlier piano works, rather than the later music, which expresses "such private passion and isolation, such alternating anger and resignation" that listeners are left uneasy. The Fauré scholar Jean-Michel Nectoux writes: > Fauré's stylistic evolution can ... be observed in his works for piano. The elegant and captivating first pieces, which made the composer famous, show the influence of Chopin, Saint-Saëns, and Liszt. The lyricism and complexity of his style in the 1890s are evident in the Nocturnes nos. 6 and 7, the Barcarolle no. 5 and the Thème et variations. Finally, the stripped-down style of the final period informs the last nocturnes (nos.10–13), the series of great barcarolles (nos. 8–11) and the astonishing Impromptu no. 5. ## Nocturnes The nocturnes, along with the barcarolles, are generally regarded as the composer's greatest piano works. Fauré greatly admired the music of Chopin, and was happy to compose in forms and patterns established by the earlier composer. Morrison notes that Fauré's nocturnes follow Chopin's model, contrasting serene outer sections with livelier or more turbulent central episodes. The composer's son Philippe commented that the nocturnes "are not necessarily based on rêveries or on emotions inspired by the night. They are lyrical, generally impassioned pieces, sometimes anguished or wholly elegiac." Nocturne No. 1 in E minor, Op. 33/1 (c.1875) Nectoux rates the first nocturne as one of the best of the composer's early works. It is dedicated, like Fauré's song "Après un rêve", to his friend and early patron Marguerite de Saint-Marceaux. Morrison calls the piece "cloistered and elegiac." Though published as the composer's Op. 33/1 in 1883, it was written considerably earlier. It opens with a slow, pensive melody, followed by a more agitated second theme and another melody in C major, and ends with the return of the opening theme. The pianist and academic Sally Pinkas writes that the work contains many hallmarks of Fauré's style, including "undulating rhythms, syncopation of the accompaniment against the melody and layered textures are already in evidence." Nocturne No. 2 in B major, Op. 33/2 (c.1880) The second nocturne opens with a bell-like passage, andantino espressivo, recalling – although Fauré said it was unconscious – the sound of distant bells that he heard frequently when a boy. Nectoux singles out "the light footed episode in alternating fifths and sixths" and its extremely delicate passagework, and points to the influence of Fauré's former teacher Saint-Saëns in the allegro ma non troppo toccata section. Saint-Saëns himself declared the piece "absolutely entrancing." Nocturne No. 3 in A major, Op. 33/3 (c.1882) In the third nocturne, Morrison notes that the composer's fondness for syncopation is at its gentlest, "nostalgia lit by passion." Like its predecessors, it is in tripartite form. An expansive melody with syncopated left-hand accompaniment leads into a middle section in which a dolcissimo theme metamorphoses into bursts of passion. The return of the opening section is concluded by a gentle coda that introduces new harmonic subtleties. Nocturne No. 4 in E major, Op. 36 (c.1884) The fourth nocturne, dedicated to the Comtesse de Mercy-Argenteau, contrasts a lyrical opening section and an episode in E minor with a sombre theme recalling the tolling of a bell. The first theme returns and is followed by a short coda. The pianist Alfred Cortot, generally a great admirer of Fauré, found the piece "rather too satisfied with its languor." Nocturne No. 5 in B major, Op. 37 (c.1884) By contrast with its predecessor, the fifth nocturne is more animated, with unexpected shifts into remote keys. Nectoux writes of its undulating outline, and the "almost improvisatory, questioning character" of the opening. Nocturne No. 6 in D major, Op. 63 (1894) The sixth nocturne, dedicated to Eugène d'Eichthal, is widely held to be one of the finest of the series. Cortot said, "There are few pages in all music comparable to these." Morrison calls it "among the most rich and eloquent of all Fauré's piano works." The pianist and writer Nancy Bricard calls it "one of the most passionate and moving works in piano literature." Fauré wrote it after a six-year break from composing for the piano. The piece begins with an emotional, outpouring phrase, with echoes of Fauré's song cycle La bonne chanson. The second theme, at first seemingly tranquil, has what the composer Charles Koechlin calls a persistent inquietude, emphasised by the syncopated accompaniment. The initial theme returns, and is followed by a substantial development of a gentle, contemplative melody. A recapitulation of the principal theme takes the piece to its conclusion. Copland wrote that it was with this work that Fauré first fully emerged from the shadow of Chopin, and he said of the piece, "The breath and dignity of the opening melody, the restless C sharp minor section which follows (with the peculiar syncopated harmonies so often and so well used by Fauré), the graceful fluidity of the third idea: all these elements are brought to a stormy climax in the short development section; then, after a pause, comes the return of the consoling first page." Nocturne No. 7 in C minor, Op. 74 (1898) The seventh nocturne departs from the A–B–A form of Fauré's earlier nocturnes; in Pinkas's view is it constructed more like a ballade than a nocturne. It opens with a slow (molto lento) theme of harmonic ambiguity, followed by a second theme, equally ambiguous in key, though nominally in D major. The central section is in F major, and the re-emergence of the first theme brings the piece to a conclusion. Morrison finds in this piece a sense of bleakness, and of the composer's struggle against despair. Pinkas, however, regards the work as a "contrast between ambiguity and joy, ending in reassurance." It is sometimes known as the "English" nocturne, having been composed while Fauré was staying in the UK, and being dedicated to the English pianist Adela Maddison. This nocturne starts with an unusual time signature: . Nocturne No. 8 in D major, Op. 84/8 (1902) Fauré did not intend the eighth nocturne to appear under that designation. His publisher collected eight short piano pieces together and published them as 8 pièces brèves, allocating each of them a title unauthorised by the composer. The nocturne, the last piece in the set of eight, is shorter and less complex than its immediate predecessor, consisting of a song-like main theme with a delicate semiquaver accompaniment in the left hand. Nocturne No. 9 in B minor, Op. 97 (1908) The ninth nocturne, dedicated to Cortot's wife, Clotilde Bréal, is the first of three that share a directness and sparseness in contrast with the more elaborate structures and textures of their predecessors. The left-hand accompaniment to the melodic line is simple and generally unvaried, and the harmony looks forward to later composers of the 20th century, using a whole tone scale. Most of the piece is inward-looking and pensive, presaging the style of Fauré's final works, although it ends optimistically in a major key. Nocturne No. 10 in E minor, Op. 99 (1908) Like its immediate predecessor, the tenth nocturne is on a smaller scale than those of Fauré's middle period. In contrast with the ninth, however, the tenth is darker and angrier. The composer applies the A–B–A form less rigorously than in earlier nocturnes, and the opening bars of the piece recur intermittently throughout, eventually building to a fierce climax, described by Morrison as "a slow central climb ... that inhabits a world of nightmare." The piece ends with a calm coda. It is dedicated to Madame Brunet-Lecomte. Nocturne No. 11 in F minor, Op. 104/1 (1913) The eleventh nocturne was written in memory of Noémi Lalo; her widower, Pierre Lalo, was a music critic and a friend and supporter of Fauré. Morrison suggests that its funereal effect of tolling bells may also reflect the composer's own state of anguish, with deafness encroaching. The melodic line is simple and restrained, and except for a passionate section near the end is generally quiet and elegiac. Nocturne No. 12 in E minor, Op. 107 (1915) With the twelfth nocturne Fauré returned to the scale and complexity of his middle-period works, but both melodically and harmonically it is much harder to comprehend. There are deliberate dissonances and harmonic ambiguities that Pinkas describes as "taking tonality to its limit while still maintaining a single key." Morrison writes that "the ecstatic song of No. 6 is transformed in a central section where lyricism is soured by dissonance, held up, as it were, to a distorting mirror." The work is in Fauré's customary nocturne form, A–B–A, but with a reiteration of the material of the second section, harmonically transformed, followed by a coda that draws on material from the opening section. Nocturne No. 13 in B minor, Op. 119 (1921) Fauré scholars are generally agreed that the last nocturne – which was the last work he wrote for the piano – is among the greatest of the set. Nectoux writes that along with the sixth, it is "incontestably the most moving and inspired of the series." Bricard calls it "the most inspired and beautiful in the series." For Pinkas, the work "achieves a perfect equilibrium between late-style simplicity and full-textured passionate expression." The work opens in a "pure, almost rarefied atmosphere" (Nectoux), with a "tone of noble, gentle supplication ... imposing gravity and ... rich expressive four part writing." This is followed by an allegro, "a true middle section in a virtuoso manner, ending in a bang" (Pinkas). The repeat of the opening section completes the work. ## Barcarolles Barcarolles were originally folk songs sung by Venetian gondoliers. In Morrison's phrase, Fauré's use of the term was more convenient than precise. Fauré was not attracted by fanciful titles for musical pieces, and maintained that he would not use even such generic titles as "barcarolle" if his publishers did not insist. His son Philippe recalled, "he would far rather have given his Nocturnes, Impromptus, and even his Barcarolles the simple title Piano Piece no. so-and-so." Nevertheless, following the precedents of Chopin and most conspicuously Mendelssohn, Fauré made extensive use of the barcarolle, in what his biographer Jessica Duchen calls "an evocation of the rhythmic rocking and lapping of water around appropriately lyrical melodies." Fauré's ambidexterity is reflected in the layout of many of his piano works, notably in the barcarolles, where the main melodic line is often in the middle register, with the accompaniments in the high treble part of the keyboard as well as in the bass. Duchen likens the effect of this in the barcarolles to that of a reflection shining up through the water. Like the nocturnes, the barcarolles span nearly the whole of Fauré's composing career, and they similarly display the evolution of his style from the uncomplicated charm of the early pieces to the withdrawn and enigmatic quality of the late works. All are written with compound time signatures (6/8, 9/8, or 6/4). Barcarolle No. 1 in A minor, Op. 26 (1880) The first barcarolle was dedicated to the pianist Caroline de Serres (Mme. Caroline Montigny-Rémaury) and premiered by Saint-Saëns at a concert of the Société Nationale de Musique in 1882. The piece begins with an uncomplicated melody in a traditional lilting Venetian style in 6/8 time. It develops into a more elaborate form before the introduction of the second theme, in which the melodic line is given in the middle register with delicate arpeggiated accompaniments in the treble and bass. Morrison comments that even in this early work, conventional sweetness is enlivened by subtle dissonance. Barcarolle No. 2 in G major, Op. 41 (1885) The second barcarolle, dedicated to the pianist Marie Poitevin, is a longer and more ambitious work than the first, with what Morrison calls an Italianate profusion of detail. Duchen writes of the work as complex and questing, harmonically and melodically, and points to the influence of Saint-Saëns, Liszt and even, unusually for Fauré, of Wagner. The work opens in 6/8 time like the first, but Fauré varies the time signature to an unexpected 9/8 in the middle of the piece. Barcarolle No. 3 in G major, Op. 42 (1885) The third barcarolle is dedicated to Henriette Roger-Jourdain, wife of Fauré's friend, the painter Roger-Joseph Jourdain [fr]. It opens with a simple phrase that is quickly elaborated into trills reminiscent of Chopin. The middle section, like that of the first, keeps the melody in the middle register with delicate arpeggiated ornaments above and below. The pianist Marguerite Long said that these ornaments "crown the theme like sea foam." Barcarolle No. 4 in A major, Op. 44 (1886) One of the best-known of the set, the fourth barcarolle is "tuneful, quite short, perhaps more direct than the others." (Koechlin). Barcarolle No. 5 in F minor, Op. 66 (1894) Dedicated to Mme la Baronne V. d'Indy, the fifth barcarolle was written after a five-year period in which Fauré composed nothing for the piano. Orledge calls it powerful, agitated and virile. It is the first of Fauré's piano works in which there are no identifiable sections; its changes are in metre, not in tempo. Barcarolle No. 6 in E major, Op. 70 (1896) Koechlin brackets the sixth and seventh of the set together as a contrasting pair. Both pieces show "an economy of writing", the sixth "more moderate and tranquil in expression". The Fauré scholar Roy Howat writes of a "sensuous insouciance" with an underlying virtuosity and wit under the "deceptively nonchalant surface". Barcarolle No. 7 in D minor, Op. 90 (1905) The seventh barcarolle contrasts with its predecessor in being more restless and sombre, recalling Fauré's "Crépuscule" from his song cycle La chanson d'Ève. Barcarolle No. 8 in D major, Op. 96 (1906) Dedicated to Suzanne Alfred-Bruneau, the eighth barcarolle opens in with a cheerful theme, which soon gives way to melancholy. The second episode, in C minor, marked cantabile, is succeeded by an abrupt ending with a fortissimo chord. Barcarolle No. 9 in A minor, Op. 101 (1909) The ninth barcarolle, in Koechlin's view, "recalls, as in a hazy remoteness, the happiness of the past". Nectoux writes that it consists of "a series of harmonic or polyphonic variations on a strange, sombre, syncopated theme, whose monotony recalls some sailor's song". Barcarolle No. 10 in A minor, Op. 104/2 (1913) Dedicated to Madame Léon Blum, the tenth barcarolle stays more closely within conventional tonality than its predecessor, "with a certain sedate gravity ... the monotony appropriate to a grey evening" (Koechlin). The melancholy theme is reminiscent of Mendelssohn's Venetian themes from Songs Without Words, but is developed in a way characteristic of Fauré, with "increasingly animated rhythms and, at certain points, excessively complex textures" (Nectoux). Barcarolle No. 11 in G minor, Op. 105 (1913) Dedicated to Laura, daughter of the composer Isaac Albéniz. The eleventh and twelfth of the set can be viewed as another contrasting pair. The eleventh is severe in mood and in rhythm, reflecting the prevailing austerity of Fauré's later style. Barcarolle No. 12 in E major, Op. 106bis (1915) Dedicated to Louis Diémer, the twelfth barcarolle is an allegretto giocoso. It opens in what was by now for Fauré a rare uncomplicated theme, in the traditional Venetian manner, but is developed in more subtle rhythms. Despite the increasing complexity of the polyphonic lines, Fauré keeps the melody prominent, and the piece ends with it transformed into "a theme of almost triumphal character" (Nectoux). Barcarolle No. 13 in C major, Op. 116 (1921) The last of the set is dedicated to Magda Gumaelius. Koechlin writes of it: "bare, superficially almost dry, but at heart most expressive with that deep nostalgia for vanished bright horizons: sentiments that the composer suggests in passing rather than comments on in loquacious or theatrical oratory; he seemed to desire to preserve the soothing and illusory serenity of the mirage." ## Impromptus Impromptu No. 1 in E major, Op. 25 (1881) Cortot compared the first impromptu to a rapid barcarolle, redolent of "sunlit water", combining "stylised coquetry and regret". Impromptu No. 2 in F minor, Op. 31 (1883) Dedicated to Mlle Sacha de Rebina, the second impromptu maintains an airy tarantella rhythm. It is scored less richly than the first of the set, giving it a lightness of texture. Impromptu No. 3 in A major, Op. 34 (1883) The third impromptu is the most popular of the set. Morrison calls it "among Fauré's most idyllic creations, its principal idea dipping and soaring above a gyrating, moto perpetuo accompaniment". It is marked by a combination of dash and delicacy. Impromptu No. 4 in D major, Op. 91 (1906) Dedicated to "Madame de Marliave" (Marguerite Long), the fourth impromptu was Fauré's return to the genre in his middle period. Unlike much of his music of the period, it avoids a dark mood, but Fauré had by now moved on from the uncomplicated charm of the first three of the set. His mature style is displayed in the central section, a contemplative andante, which is followed by a more agitated section that concludes the work. Impromptu No. 5 in F minor, Op. 102 (1909) Nectoux describes this impromptu as "a piece of sheer virtuosity celebrating, not without humour, the beauties of the whole-tone scale." Morrison, however, writes that the work "seethes with unrest". Impromptu in D major, Op. 86 bis (Transcription of the Impromptu for harp, Op. 86, 1904) The last work in the published set was written before numbers four and five. It was originally a harp piece, composed for a competition at the Paris Conservatoire in 1904. Cortot made a transcription for piano, published in 1913 as Fauré's Op. 86 bis. The outer sections are light and brilliant, with a gentler central section, marked meno mosso. ## Valses-caprices The four valses-caprices are not a cycle, but rather two sets of two, the first from Fauré's early period and the second from his middle period. Morrison calls all four "more 'caprice' than 'waltz'", and comments that they combine and develop the scintillating style of Chopin and Saint-Saëns waltzes. They show Fauré at his most playful, presenting variations before the theme is heard and darting in and out of unexpected keys. Aaron Copland, though generally a keen admirer of Fauré's music, wrote, "the several Valses-Caprices, in spite of their admirable qualities, seem to me essentially foreign to Faure's esprit. His is too orderly, too logical a mind to be really capricious." Cortot, by contrast, spoke approvingly of their "sensual grace ... perfect distinction ... impassioned tenderness." Valse-caprice No. 1 in A major, Op. 30 (1882); and Valse-caprice No. 2 in D major, Op. 38 (1884): Chopin's influence is marked in the first two pieces. Orledge observes that the right-hand figuration at the end of No. 1 is remarkably similar to that at the end of Chopin's Waltz in E minor. In No. 2 Nectoux detects the additional influence of Liszt (Au bord d'une source) in the opening bars. In the closing bars of No. 2, Orledge finds a resemblance to the end of Chopin's Grande Valse Brillante, Op, 18. Valse-caprice No. 3 in G major, Op. 59 (1887–93); and Valse-caprice No. 4 in A major, Op. 62 (1893–94): Orledge writes that the second two valses-caprices are subtler and better integrated than the first two; they contain "more moments of quiet contemplation and more thematic development than before." There still remain touches of virtuosity and traces of Liszt, and these two valses-caprices are, in Orledge's words, the only solo pieces in the middle period to end in a loud and spectacular manner. No. 3 is dedicated to Mme. Philippe Dieterlen, No. 4 to Mme. Max Lyon. ## Other solo piano works ### Romances sans paroles, Op. 17 Fauré wrote these three "songs without words" while still a student at the École Niedermeyer, in about 1863. They were not published until 1880, but they then became some of his most popular works. Copland considered them immature pieces, which "should be relegated to the indiscretions every young composer commits." Later critics have taken a less severe view; Morrison describes the Romances as "an affectionate and very Gallic tribute to Mendelssohn's urbanity, agitation and ease." The commentator Keith Anderson writes that although they were a popular French counterpart to Mendelssohn's Songs without Words, Fauré's own voice is already recognisable. Instead of placing the slowest piece in the middle of the set and ending with the lively A minor piece, Fauré, already with musical views of his own, switches the expected order, and the set ends pianissimo, fading to nothing. Andante quasi allegretto The first romance, in A major, has as an opening theme an uncomplicated melody with Mendelssohnian syncopations. The theme is presented first in the higher and then in the middle register, before flowing evenly to its conclusion. Allegro molto The second romance, in A minor, an exuberant piece, has a strong semiquaver figure supporting the theme, and running high into the treble and low into the bass. This was later to become one of Fauré's most recognisable characteristics. After a lively display, the piece ends quietly. Andante moderato The final piece of the set, in A major, is a serene andante, with a flowing tune in the Mendelssohnian style. After gentle variation, it equally gently fades to silence at the end. ### Ballade in F major, Op. 19 The Ballade, dedicated to Camille Saint-Saëns, dates from 1877, and is considered one of the three masterpieces of his youth, along with the first violin sonata and the first piano quartet. It is one of Fauré's most substantial works for solo piano, but is better known in a version for piano and orchestra that he made in 1881 at Liszt's suggestion. Playing for a little over 14 minutes, it is second in length only to the Thème et variations. Fauré first conceived the music as a set of individual pieces, but then decided to make them into a single work by carrying the main theme of each section over into the following section as a secondary theme. The work opens with the F major theme, an andante cantabile, which is followed by a faster section, marked allegro moderato, in E minor. The third section is an andante introducing a third theme. In the last section, an allegro, a return of the second theme brings the work to a conclusion in which Nectoux comments, the treble sings with particular delicacy. Marcel Proust knew Fauré, and the Ballade is thought to have been the inspiration for the sonata by Proust's character Vinteuil that haunts Swann in In Search of Lost Time. Debussy, reviewing an early performance of the Ballade, compared the music with the attractive soloist, straightening her shoulder-straps during the performance: "I don't know why, but I somehow associated the charm of these gestures with the music of Fauré himself. The play of fleeting curves that is its essence can be compared to the movements of a beautiful woman without either suffering from the comparison." Morrison describes the Ballade as "a reminder of halcyon, half-remembered summer days and bird-haunted forests". ### Mazurka in B major, Op. 32 The Mazurka was composed in the mid-1870s but not published until 1883. It is a tribute to Chopin, and contains echoes of the earlier composer's music. Chopin, however, composed more than 60 mazurkas, and Fauré wrote only this one. Morrison regards it as an experiment on Fauré's part. The piece owes little to Polish folk-dance rhythms, and may have had a Russian influence through Fauré's friendship with Sergei Taneyev at around the time of its composition. ### Pavane, Op. 50 The Pavane (1887) was conceived and originally written as an orchestral piece. Fauré published the version for piano in 1889. In the form of an ancient dance, the piece was written to be played more briskly than it has generally come to be performed in its familiar orchestral guise. The conductor Sir Adrian Boult heard Fauré play the piano version several times and noted that he took it at a tempo no slower than crochet=100. Boult commented that the composer's sprightly tempo emphasised that the Pavane was not a piece of German romanticism. ### Thème et variations in C minor, Op. 73 Written in 1895, when he was 50, this is among Fauré's most extended compositions for piano, with a performance time of about 15 minutes. Although it has many passages that reflect the influence of Schumann's Symphonic Studies, in Jessica Duchen's words "its harmonies and pianistic idioms" are unmistakably those of Fauré. As in the earlier Romances sans paroles, Op. 17, Fauré does not follow the conventional course of ending with the loudest and most extrovert variation; the variation nearest to that description is placed next to last, and is followed by a gentle conclusion, "a typically Faurean understated finish." Copland wrote of the work: > Certainly it is one of Faure's most approachable works. Even at first hearing it leaves an indelible impression. The "Theme" itself has the same fateful, march-like tread, the same atmosphere of tragedy and heroism, that we find in the introduction of Brahms's First Symphony. And the variety and spontaneity of the eleven variations which follow bring to mind nothing less than the Symphonic Etudes. How many pianists, I wonder, have not regretted that the composer disdained the easy triumph of closing on the brilliant, dashing tenth variation. No, poor souls, they must turn the page and play that last, enigmatic (and most beautiful) one, which seems to leave the audience with so little desire to applaud. ### Prelude to Pénélope Fauré's opera based on the legend of Ulysses and Penelope was first performed in 1913, after which the composer published a version of the prelude transcribed for piano. The piece, in G minor, contrasts a gravely noble andante moderato theme representing Penelope with a forthright theme for Ulysses. The polyphonic writing transfers effectively from the orchestral original to the piano. ### 8 Pièces brèves, Op. 84 Fauré did not intend these pieces to be published as a set; they were composed as individual works between 1869 and 1902. When Hamelle, his publishers, insisted on issuing them together as "Eight Short Pieces" in 1902, the composer successfully demanded that none of the eight must be allocated its own title. When he moved on to another publisher, Hamelle ignored his earlier instructions and issued subsequent editions with titles for each piece. Nectoux comments that the labelling of the eighth piece as "Nocturne No. 8" is particularly questionable (see Nocturne [No. 8], below). In the first decade of the 21st century the publisher Peters issued a new critical edition of the Eight Pieces with the spurious titles removed. The eight pieces take less than three minutes each in performance. Capriccio in E major: Dedicated to Madame Jean Leonard Koechlin. Morrison calls it "capricious indeed", and notes a harmonic twist at the end "as nonchalant as it is acrobatic". It was originally written as a sight-reading test for students at the Paris Conservatoire, of which Fauré was the professor of composition from 1896 and director from 1905 to 1920. Fantaisie in A major: Koechlin calls this piece a pleasant feuillet d'album. Fugue in A minor: This, like the other fugue in the set, is a revised version of a fugue Fauré composed at the start of his career, when he was a church organist in Rennes. They are both, in Koechlin's view "in a pleasant and correct style, obviously less rich than those in the Well-Tempered Clavier, and more careful, but whose reserve conceals an incontestable mastery". Adagietto in E minor: An andante moderato, "serious, grave, at once firm and pliant, attaining real beauty" (Koechlin). Improvisation in C minor: Orledge calls this piece a middle period "song without words". It was composed as a sight-reading test for the Conservatoire. Fugue in E minor: See Fugue in A minor, above. Allégresse in C major: "A bubbling perpetuum mobile whose surging romantic feelings are only just kept under restraint" (Orledge). "A song, pure and gay, uplifted to a sunlit sky, a youthful outpouring, full of happiness." (Koechlin). Nocturne [No. 8] in D major: As noted above, this piece stands apart from the larger-scale works to which Fauré gave the title "nocturne". It would not be listed among them were it not for the publisher's unauthorised use of the title in this case. It is the longest of the eight pieces of Op. 84, but is much shorter and simpler than the other 12 nocturnes, consisting of a song-like main theme with a delicate semiquaver accompaniment in the left hand. ### 9 Préludes, Op. 103 The nine préludes are among the least known of Fauré's major piano compositions. They were written while the composer was struggling to come to terms with the onset of deafness in his mid-sixties. By Fauré's standards this was a time of unusually prolific output. The préludes were composed in 1909 and 1910, in the middle of the period in which he wrote the opera Pénélope, barcarolles Nos. 8–11 and nocturnes Nos. 9–11. In Koechlin's view, "Apart from the Préludes of Chopin, it is hard to think of a collection of similar pieces that are so important". The critic Michael Oliver wrote, "Fauré's Préludes are among the subtlest and most elusive piano pieces in existence; they express deep but mingled emotions, sometimes with intense directness ... more often with the utmost economy and restraint and with mysteriously complex simplicity." Jessica Duchen calls them "unusual slivers of magical inventiveness." The complete set takes between 20 and 25 minutes to play. The shortest of the set, No. 8, lasts barely more than a minute; the longest, No. 3, takes between four and five minutes. Prélude No. 1 in D major Andante molto moderato. The first prélude is in the manner of a nocturne. Morrison refers to the cool serenity with which it opens, contrasted with the "slow and painful climbing" of the middle section. Prélude No. 2 in C minor Allegro. The moto perpetuo of the second prélude is technically difficult for the pianist; even the most celebrated Fauré interpreter can be stretched by it. Koechlin calls it "a feverish whirling of dervishes, concluding in a sort of ecstasy, with the evocation of some fairy palace." Prélude No. 3 in G minor Andante. Copland considered this prélude the most immediately accessible of the set. "At first, what will most attract you, will be the third in G-minor, a strange mixture of the romantic and classic." The musicologist Vladimir Jankélévitch wrote, "it might be a barcarolle strangely interrupting a theme of very modern stylistic contour". Prélude No. 4 in F major Allegretto moderato. The fourth prélude is among the gentlest of the set. The critic Alain Cochard writes that it "casts a spell on the ear through the subtlety of a harmony tinged with the modal and its melodic freshness." Koechlin calls it "a guileless pastorale, flexible, with succinct and refined modulations". Prélude No. 5 in D minor Allegro. Cochard quotes the earlier writer Louis Aguettant's description of this prélude as "This fine outburst of anger (Ce bel accès de colère)". The mood is turbulent and anxious; the piece ends in quiet resignation reminiscent of the "Libera me" of the Requiem. Prélude No. 6 in E minor Andante. Fauré is at his most classical in this prélude, which is in the form of a canon. Copland wrote that it "can be placed side by side with the most wonderful of the Preludes of the Well-Tempered Clavichord." Prélude No. 7 in A major Andante moderato. Morrison writes that this prélude, with its "stammering and halting progress" conveys an inconsolable grief. After the opening andante moderato, it becomes gradually more assertive, and subsides to conclude in the subdued mood of the opening. The rhythm of one of Fauré's best-known songs, "N'est-ce-pas?" from La bonne chanson, runs through the piece. Prélude No. 8 in C minor Allegro. In Copland's view this is, with the third, the most approachable of the Préludes, "with its dry, acrid brilliance (so rarely found in Faure)." Morrison describes it as "a repeated-note scherzo" going "from nowhere to nowhere." Prélude No. 9 in E minor Adagio. Copland described this prélude as "so simple – so absolutely simple that we can never hope to understand how it can contain such great emotional power." The prélude is withdrawn in mood; Jankélévitch wrote that it "belongs from beginning to end to another world." Koechlin notes echoes of the "Offertoire" of the Requiem throughout the piece. ## For two pianists Souvenirs de Bayreuth Subtitled Fantasie en forme de quadrille sur les thèmes favoris de l'Anneau de Nibelung ("Fantasy in the form of a quadrille on favourite themes from Der Ring des Nibelungen"). Fauré admired the music of Wagner and was familiar with the smallest details of his scores, but he was one of the few composers of his generation not to come under Wagner's musical influence. From 1878, Fauré and his friend and ex-pupil André Messager made trips abroad to see Wagner operas. They saw Das Rheingold and Die Walküre at Cologne Opera; the complete Ring cycle in Munich and London; and Die Meistersinger in Munich and at Bayreuth, where they also saw Parsifal. They frequently performed as a party piece their joint composition, the irreverent Souvenirs de Bayreuth, written in about 1888. This short, skittish piano work for four hands sends up themes from The Ring. It consists of five short sections in which Wagner's themes are transformed into dance rhythms. The manuscript (in the Bibliothèque nationale, Paris) is in Messager's hand. Suite d'orchestre, Op. 20 Between 1867 and 1873, Fauré wrote a symphonic work for full orchestra. The piece was first heard in 1873 when Fauré and Saint-Saëns performed it in a two-piano version, but that transcription has not survived. Léon Boëllmann made a new transcription of the first movement in 1893. Dolly Suite, Op. 56 The Dolly Suite is a six-section work for piano duet. It was inspired by Hélène, nicknamed "Dolly", daughter of the singer Emma Bardac with whom Fauré was intimately associated in the 1890s. The opening piece was a present for Dolly's first birthday, and Fauré added the other five pieces to mark her subsequent birthdays and other family occasions. Unusually for Fauré, who generally favoured strictly functional titles, the movements of the suite have whimsical titles associated with Dolly and her family. Its six movements take about fifteen minutes to perform. The first is a Berceuse, or cradle-song. "Mi-a-ou", despite a title suggesting a cat, in fact represents the infant Dolly's attempts to pronounce the name of her brother Raoul; after "Le jardin de Dolly", the "Kitty Valse", again confounds its feline title, being a sketch of the family's pet dog. After the gentle "Tendresse", the suite ends with a lively evocation of Spain, which, Orledge notes, is one of Fauré's few purely extrovert pieces. Masques et bergamasques, Op. 112 From the orchestral suite drawn from his music for the stage presentation Masques et bergamasques, Fauré made a transcription for piano duet, which was published in 1919. Like the orchestral suite, it consists of four movements, titled "Ouverture", "Menuet", "Gavotte" and "Pastorale". ## Recordings Fauré made piano rolls of his music for several companies between 1905 and 1913. The rolls that survive are of the "Romance sans paroles" No. 3, Barcarolle No. 1, Prelude No. 3, Nocturne No. 3, Thème et variations, Valses-caprices Nos 1, 3 and 4, and piano versions of the Pavane, and the "Sicilienne" from Fauré's music for Pelléas and Mélisande. Several of these rolls have been transferred to CD. Recordings on disc were few until the 1940s. A survey by John Culshaw in December 1945 singled out recordings of piano works played by Kathleen Long, including the Nocturne No. 6, Barcarolle No. 2, the Thème et Variations, Op. 73, and the Ballade Op. 19 in its orchestral version. Fauré's music began to appear more frequently in the record companies' releases in the 1950s. In the LP and particularly the CD era, the record companies built up a substantial catalogue of Fauré's piano music, performed by French and non-French musicians. The piano works were first recorded largely complete in the mid-1950s by Germaine Thyssens-Valentin, with later sets being made by Grant Johannesen (1961), Évelyne Crochet (1964), Jean Doyen (1966–1969), Jean-Philippe Collard (1974), Paul Crossley (1984–85), Jean Hubeau (1988–89), and Kathryn Stott (1995). Recital selections of major piano works have been recorded by many pianists including Vlado Perlemuter (1989), Pascal Rogé (1990), and Kun-Woo Paik (2002).

Sahure

Egyptian pharaoh, second ruler of the Fifth Dynasty, 25th century BC

Sahure (also Sahura, meaning "He who is close to Re") was a pharaoh of ancient Egypt and the second ruler of the Fifth Dynasty (c. 2465 – c. 2325 BC). He reigned for about 13 years in the early 25th century BC during the Old Kingdom Period. Sahure's reign marks the political and cultural high point of the Fifth Dynasty. He was probably the son of his predecessor Userkaf with Queen Neferhetepes II, and was in turn succeeded by his son Neferirkare Kakai. During Sahure's rule, Egypt had important trade relations with the Levantine coast. Sahure launched several naval expeditions to modern-day Lebanon to procure cedar trees, slaves and exotic items. His reign may have witnessed the flourishing of the Egyptian navy, which included a high-seas fleet as well as specialized racing boats. Relying on this, Sahure ordered the earliest attested expedition to the land of Punt, which brought back large quantities of myrrh, malachite and electrum. Sahure is shown celebrating the success of this venture in a relief from his mortuary temple which shows him tending a myrrh tree in the garden of his palace named "Sahure's splendor soars up to heaven". This relief is the only one in Egyptian art depicting a king gardening. Sahure sent further expeditions to the turquoise and copper mines in Sinai. He also ordered military campaigns against Libyan chieftains in the Western Desert, bringing back livestock to Egypt. Sahure had a pyramid built for himself in Abusir, thereby abandoning the royal necropolises of Saqqara and Giza, where his predecessors had built their monuments. This decision was possibly motivated by the presence of the sun temple of Userkaf in Abusir, the first such temple of the Fifth Dynasty. The Pyramid of Sahure is much smaller than the pyramids of the preceding Fourth Dynasty but the decoration and architecture of his mortuary temple is more elaborate. The valley temple, causeway and mortuary temple of his pyramid complex were once adorned by over 10,000 m² (110,000 sq ft) of exquisite polychrome reliefs, representing the highest form reached by this art during the Old Kingdom period. The Ancient Egyptians recognized this particular artistic achievement and tried to emulate the reliefs in the tombs of subsequent kings and queens. The architects of Sahure's pyramid complex introduced the use of palmiform columns (columns whose capital has the form of palm leaves), which would soon become a hallmark of ancient Egyptian architecture. The layout of his mortuary temple was also innovative and became the architectural standard for the remainder of the Old Kingdom period. Sahure is also known to have constructed a sun temple called "The Field of Ra", and although it is yet to be located it is presumably also in Abusir. Sahure was the object of a funerary cult, the food offerings for which were initially provided by agricultural estates set up during his reign. This official, state-sponsored cult endured until the end of the Old Kingdom. Subsequently, during the Middle Kingdom period, Sahure was venerated as a royal ancestor figure but his cult no longer had dedicated priests. During the New Kingdom, Sahure was equated with a form of the goddess Sekhmet for unknown reasons. The cult of "Sekhmet of Sahure" had priests and attracted visitors from all over Egypt to Sahure's temple. This unusual cult, which was celebrated well beyond Abusir, persisted up until the end of the Ptolemaic period nearly 2500 years after Sahure's death. ## Family ### Parentage Excavations at the pyramid of Sahure in Abusir under the direction of Miroslav Verner and Tarek El-Awady in the early 2000s provide a picture of the royal family of the early Fifth Dynasty. In particular, reliefs from the causeway linking the valley and mortuary temples of the pyramid complex reveal that Sahure's mother was queen Neferhetepes II. She was the wife of pharaoh Userkaf, as indicated by the location of her pyramid immediately adjacent to that of Userkaf, and bore the title of "king's mother". This makes Userkaf the father of Sahure in all likelihood. This is further reinforced by the discovery of Sahure's cartouche in the mortuary temple of Userkaf at Saqqara, indicating that Sahure finished the structure started most probably by his father. This contradicts older, alternative theories according to which Sahure was the son of queen Khentkaus I, believed to be the wife of the last pharaoh of the preceding Fourth Dynasty, Shepseskaf and a brother to either Userkaf or Neferirkare. ### Children Sahure is known to have been succeeded by Neferirkare Kakai, who until 2005 was believed to be his brother. That year, a relief originally adorning the causeway of Sahure's pyramid and showing Sahure seated in front of two of his sons, Ranefer and Netjerirenre, was discovered by Verner and another Egyptologist, Tarek El-Awady. Next to Ranefer's name the text "Neferirkare Kakai king of Upper and Lower Egypt" had been added, indicating that Ranefer was Sahure's son and had assumed the throne under the name "Neferirkare Kakai" at the death of his father. Since both Ranefer and Netjerirenre are given the titles of "king's eldest son", Verner and El-Awady speculate that they may have been twins with Ranefer born first. They propose that Netjerirenre may have later seized the throne for a brief reign under the name "Shepseskare", although this remains conjectural. The same relief further depicts queen Meretnebty, who was thus most likely Sahure's consort and the mother of Ranefer and Netjerirenre. Three more sons, Khakare, Horemsaf, and Nebankhre are shown on reliefs from Sahure's mortuary temple, but the identity of their mother(s) is unknown. Netjerirenre bore several religious titles corresponding to high-ranking positions in the court and which suggest that he may have acted as a vizier for his father. This is debated, as Michel Baud points out that at the time of Sahure, the eviction of royal princes from the vizierate was ongoing if not already complete. ## Reign ### Chronology #### Relative chronology The relative chronology of Sahure's reign is well established by historical records, contemporary artifacts and archeological evidence, which agree that he succeeded Userkaf and was in turn succeeded by Neferirkare Kakai. An historical source supporting this order of succession is the Aegyptiaca (Αἰγυπτιακά), a history of Egypt written in the 3rd century BC during the reign of Ptolemy II (283–246 BC) by Manetho. No copies of the Aegyptiaca have survived and it is now known only through later writings by Sextus Julius Africanus and Eusebius. According to the Byzantine scholar George Syncellus, Africanus wrote that the Aegyptiaca mentioned the succession "Usercherês → Sephrês → Nefercherês" at the start of the Fifth Dynasty. Usercherês, Sephrês (in Greek, Σεφρής), and Nefercherês are believed to be the Hellenized forms for Userkaf, Sahure and Neferirkare, respectively. Manetho's reconstruction of the early Fifth Dynasty is in agreement with those given on two more historical sources, the Abydos king list where Sahure's cartouche is on the 27th entry, and the Saqqara Tablet where Sahure's name is given on the 33rd entry. These lists of kings were written during the reigns of Seti I and Ramses II, respectively. #### Reign length The Turin canon, a king list written during the Nineteenth Dynasty in the early Ramesside era (1292–1189 BC), credits him with a reign of twelve years five months and twelve days. In contrast, the near contemporary royal annal of the Fifth Dynasty known as the Palermo Stone records his second, third, fifth and sixth years on the throne as well as his final 13th or 14th year of reign and even records the day of his death as the 28th of Shemu I, which corresponds to the end of the ninth month. Taken together these pieces of information indicate that the royal annal of the Fifth Dynasty recorded a reign of 13 years 5 months and 12 days for Sahure, only one year more than given by the Turin Canon and close to the 13 years figure given in Manetho's Aegyptiaca. Sahure appears in two further historical records: on the third entry of the Karnak king list, which was made during the reign of Thutmose III (1479–1425 BC) and on the 26th entry of the Saqqara Tablet dating to the reign of Ramses II (1279–1213 BC). Neither of these sources give his reign length. The absolute dates of Sahure's reign are uncertain but most scholars date it to the first half of the 25th century BC, see note 1 for details. ### Foreign activities #### Trade and tribute Historical records and surviving artifacts suggest that contacts with foreign lands were numerous during Sahure's reign. Furthermore, these contacts seem to have been mostly economic rather than military in nature. Reliefs from his pyramid complex show the return of a naval expedition to Lebanon, the boats laden with the trunks of precious cedar trees. Other ships are represented loaded with "Asiatics", both adults and children who were either slaves, or merchants, greeting Sahure: > Hail to thee, O Sahure! God of the living, we behold thy beauty!. The same relief strongly suggests that interpreters were on board the ships, tasked with translations to facilitate trade with foreign lands. A relief, unique to Egyptian art, depicts several Syrian brown bears, presumably brought back from the Levantine coast by seagoing ships as well. These bears appear in association with 12 red-painted one-handled jars from Syria. The Egyptologists Karin Sowada and William Stevenson Smith have proposed that, taken together, the bears and jars are likely to constitute a tribute. Trade contacts with Byblos took place during Sahure's reign. Excavations of the temple of Baalat-Gebal yielded an alabaster bowl inscribed with Sahure's name. The layout of the fourth phase of this temple might even have been influenced by the architecture of Sahure's valley temple, although this remains debated. There is further corroborating evidence for trade with the wider Levant during the Fifth Dynasty, several stone vessels being inscribed with cartouches of pharaohs of this dynasty discovered in Lebanon. So much so that the archeologist Gregory Mumford points to the fact that "Sahure is [the] best attested [king] for international relations" and has the highest number of texts inscribed in Sinai proportionally to his reign length. In his last year, Sahure sent the first documented expedition to the fabled land of Punt, probably along the Somalian coast. The expedition, which is conjectured to have departed Egypt from the harbor of Mersa Gawasis, is reported on the Palermo Stone where it is said to have come back with 80,000 of an unspecified measure of myrrh, along with malachite, 6000 measures of electrum and 2600 or 23,020 staves, possibly made of ebony. In his last year Sahure sent another expedition abroad, this time to the copper and turquoise mines of Wadi Maghareh and Wadi Kharit in Sinai, which had been active since at least the beginning of the Third Dynasty. This expedition, also mentioned by the Palermo stone, brought back over 6000 units of turquoise to Egypt and produced two reliefs in Sinai, one of which shows Sahure in the traditional act of smiting Asiatics and boasting "The Great God smites the Asiatics of all countries". In parallel with these activities, diorite quarries near Abu Simbel were exploited throughout Sahure's reign. #### Military campaigns Sahure's military career is known primarily from reliefs in his mortuary complex. It apparently consisted of campaigns against Libyans from Tjemehu, a land possibly located in the northern Western desert. These campaigns are said to have yielded livestock in huge numbers and Sahure is shown smiting local chieftains. The historical veracity of these depictions remains in doubt as such representations are part of the standard iconography meant to exalt the king. The same scene of the Libyan attack was used two hundred years later in the mortuary temple of Pepi II (2284–2184 BC) and in the temple of Taharqa at Kawa, built some 1800 years after Sahure's lifetime. In particular, the same names are quoted for the local chieftains. Therefore, it is possible that Sahure too was copying an even earlier representation of this scene. Nonetheless, several overseers of the Western Nile Delta region were nominated by Sahure, a significant decision as these officials occupied an administrative position that existed only irregularly during the Old Kingdom period and which likely served to provide "traffic regulation across the Egypto-Libyan border". At the same time, Sahure's mortuary temple presents the earliest known mention of pirates raiding the Nile Delta, possibly from the coast of Epirus. Sahure's pretensions regarding the lands and riches surrounding Egypt are encapsulated in several reliefs from his mortuary temple which show the god Ash telling the king "I will give you all that is in this [Libya] land", "I give you all hostile peoples with all the provisions that there are in foreign lands" and "I grant thee all western and eastern foreign lands with all the Iunti and the Montiu bowmen who are in every land". ### Activities in Egypt #### Religious activities The majority of Sahure's activities in Egypt recorded on the Palermo stone are religious in nature. This royal annal records that in the "year of the first time of traveling around", Sahure journeyed to the Elephantine fortress, where he may have received the submission of the Nubian chiefs in a ceremonial act connected with the commencement of his reign. The fashioning of six statues of the king as well as the subsequent opening of the mouth ceremonies are also reported. During Sahure's fifth year on the throne, the Palermo stone mentions the making of a divine barge, possibly in Heliopolis, the appointment of 200 priests and the exact quantity of daily offerings of bread and beer to Ra (138, 40 and 74 measures in three temples), Hathor (4 measures), Nekhbet (800 measures) and Wadjet (4800 measures) fixed by the king. Also reported are gifts of lands to temples of between 1 and 204 arouras (0.7 to nearly 140 acres). Concerning Lower Egypt, the stone register corresponding to this reign gives the earliest known mention of the city of Athribis in the Delta region. Further indication of religious activities lies in that Sahure is the earliest known king to have used the Egyptian title of Nb írt-ḫt. This title, possibly meaning "Lord of doing effective things", indicates that he personally performed physical cultic activities to ensure the existence and persistence of the Maat, the Egyptian concept of order and justice. This title remained in use until the time of Herihor, some 1500 years later. Sahure's reign is also the earliest during which the ceremony of the "driving of the calves" is known to have taken place. This is significant in the context of the progressive emergence of the cult of Osiris throughout the Fifth Dynasty, as this ceremony subsequently became an integral part of the Osiris myth. In subsequent times, the ceremony corresponded to Seth's threshing of Osiris by driving calves trampling fields of barley. Sahure reorganized the cult of his mother, Nepherhetepes II, whose mortuary complex had been built by Userkaf in Saqqara. He added an entrance portico with four columns to her temple, so that the entrance was not facing Userkaf's pyramid any more. #### Building and mining activities Archeological evidence suggests that Sahure's building activities were mostly concentrated in Abusir and its immediate vicinity, where he constructed his pyramid and where his sun temple is probably located. Also nearby was the palace of Sahure, called Uetjes Neferu Sahure, "Sahure's splendor soars up to heaven". The palace is known from an inscription on beef tallow containers discovered in February 2011 in Neferefre's mortuary temple. A second palace, "The Crown of Sahure appears", is known from an inscription in the tomb of his chief physician. Both palaces, if they were different buildings, were likely on the shores of the Abusir lake. The stones for Sahure's buildings and statues were quarried throughout Egypt. For example, the limestone cladding of the pyramid comes from Tura, while the black basalt used for the flooring of Sahure's mortuary temple comes from Gebel Qatrani, near the Faiyum in Middle Egypt. South of Egypt, a stele bearing Sahure's name was discovered in the diorite quarries located in the desert north-west of Abu Simbel in Lower Nubia. Further mining and quarrying expeditions may be inferred from indirect evidence. An inscription of Sahure in the Wadi Abu Geridah in the Eastern desert as well as other Old Kingdom inscriptions there suggest that iron ore was mined in the vicinity since the times of the Fourth Dynasty. The lower half of a statue with the name of the king was discovered in 2015 in Elkab, a location possibly connected with expeditions to the Eastern desert and south of Egypt to Nubia. Sahure's cartouche has been found in graffiti in Tumas and on seal impressions from Buhen at the second cataract of the Nile in Lower Nubia. #### Development of the Egyptian Navy Sahure's reign may have been a time of development for the Egyptian navy. His expeditions to Punt and Byblos demonstrate the existence of a high seas navy and reliefs from his mortuary complex are described by Shelley Wachsmann as the "first definite depictions of seagoing ships in Egypt", some of which must have been 100-cubits long (c. 50 m, 170 ft). Because of this, Sahure has been credited by past scholars with establishing the Egyptian navy. It is recognized today that this is an overstatement: fragmentary reliefs from Userkaf's temple depict numerous boats, while a high seas navy must have existed as early as the Third Dynasty. The oldest known sea harbor, Wadi al-Jarf on the Red Sea was operating under Khufu. Finally, there is the distinct possibility that some of the reliefs are copied from earlier examples. Nonetheless, Sahure remains the earliest known ruler to have depicted, and thus possibly made use of, sea power for transporting troops over the Mediterranean sea, to Syria. The extensive nautical scenes from Sahure's mortuary complex are sufficiently detailed to show that specialized racing boats for the military and perhaps for ceremonial training were built at the time. They also give the earliest depiction of specific rope uses aboard ships, such as that of a hogging-truss. They permit precise estimates regarding shipbuilding, for example indicating that the mid-ship freeboard for seagoing vessels was of 1 m (3.3 ft), and that the masts employed at the time were bipodal, resembling an inverted Y. Further rare depictions include the king standing in the stern of a sailing boat with a highly decorated sail, and one of only two reliefs from ancient Egypt showing men aboard a ship paddling in a wave pattern, possibly during a race. ### Court life #### Officials Several high officials serving Sahure during his lifetime are known from their tombs as well as from the decoration of the mortuary temple of the king. Niankhsekhmet, chief physician of Sahure and first known rhinologist in history, reports that he asked the king that a false door be made for his [Niankhsekhmet's] tomb, to which the king agreed. Sahure had the false door made of fine Tura limestone, carved and painted blue in his audience-hall, and made personal daily inspections of the work. The king wished a long life to his physician, telling him: > As my nostrils enjoy health, as the gods love me, may you depart into the cemetery at an advanced old age as one revered. A similar though much less detailed anecdote is reported by Khufuankh, who was overseer of the palace and singer of the king. Other officials include Hetepka, who was keeper of the diadem and overseer of the hairdressers of the king, Pehenewkai, priest of the cult of Userkaf during the reigns of Sahure and Neferirkare Kakai, then vizier for the latter; Persen, a mortuary priest in the funerary cult of Sahure's mother Nepherhetepes; and Washptah, a priest of Sahure, then vizier of Neferirkare Kakai. The high-official Ptahshepses, probably born during the reign of Menkaure, was high priest of Ptah and royal manicure under Sahure, later promoted to vizier by Nyuserre Ini. Two viziers of Sahure are known: Sekhemkare, royal prince, son of Khafre and vizier under Userkaf and Sahure; and Werbauba, vizier during Sahure's reign, attested in the mortuary temple of the king. #### Evolution of the high offices Sahure pursued Userkaf's policy of appointing non-royal people to high offices. This is best exemplified by the office of vizier, which was exclusively held by princes of royal blood with the title of "King's son" since the mid-Fourth Dynasty and up until the early Fifth Dynasty. Toward the end of this period princes were progressively excluded from the highest office, an evolution undoubtedly correlated with changes in the nature of kingship. This process, possibly initiated by Menkaure because of dynastic disputes, seems to have been completed by Sahure's time as from then onwards no royal prince was promoted to vizier. Those already in post were allowed to keep their status and so in the early part of Sahure's reign vizier Sekhemkare was a "King's son" while his successor, Werbauba, seems to have been non-royal. In response to this change, the state administration began its expansion as it included more and more non-royal people. Concurrently with these developments, architectural and artistic innovations relating to tombs of private individuals can be dated to Sahure's reign. These including torus molding and cornices for false doors, first found in Persen's tomb. This feature would subsequently become common and here demonstrates the particularly high esteem in which Persen must have been held by the king. Another innovation is the depiction of small unusual offerings such as that of seven sacred oils on false doors, first found in Niankhsekhmet's tomb. The canonical list of offerings was also developed during or shortly before Sahure's time in the tombs of the royal family, and spread to those of non-royal high-officials – the earliest of whom was Seshemnefer I – under Sahure. ## Sun temples ### Sekhetre Sahure built or started to build a temple dedicated to the sun god Ra, the second such temple of the Fifth Dynasty. Yet to be located, it is known to have existed thanks to an inscription on the Palermo stone where it is called Sekhetre (also spelt Sekhet Re), meaning "The Field of Ra" as well as mentions of it in 24 tombs of administration officials. A few limestone blocks bearing reliefs which once adorned the temple have been found embedded in the walls of the mortuary complex of Nyuserre Ini, Sahure's fourth successor. This suggests either that these blocks were leftovers from the construction of the temple, or as Wener Kaiser has posited, that Nyuserre dismantled Sahure's temple, using it as a quarry for construction materials because it was largely unfinished. Indeed, the rather meager evidence for the Sekhetre leads Miroslav Verner to propose that it never fully functioned as a sun temple. New analyses of the verso of the Palermo stone performed in 2018 by the Czech Institute of Archeology enabled the reading of further inscriptions mentioning precisely the architecture of the temple as well as lists of donations it received, establishing firmly that it was a distinct entity from the earlier sun temple of Userkaf, the Nekhenre but leaving its ultimate fate uncertain. Further precision as to the architecture of the temple may be inferred from the absence of the obelisk determinative in some hieroglyphic variants of the name Sekhetre and its presence in others. For Anthony Spalinger this possibly indicates that Sahure's sun temple was effectively built and acquired such an obelisk at some point after its construction, perhaps after Sahure's reign. ### Nekhenre Userkaf was the first king to build a sun temple in Abusir. Known to the ancient Egyptians as the Nekhenre, or "Fortress of Re", it was unfinished at his death. Construction works continued in at least four building phases, the first of which may have taken place under Sahure, and then under his successors Neferirkare Kakai and Nyuserre Ini. ## Pyramid complex Sahure built a pyramid complex for his tomb and funerary cult, named Khaba Sahura, which is variously translated as "The Rising of the Ba Spirit of Sahure", "The Ba of Sahure appears", "Sahure's pyramid where the royal soul rises in splendor", or "In glory comes forth the soul of Sahure". The builders and artisans who worked on Sahure's mortuary complex lived in an enclosed pyramid town located next to the causeway leading up to Sahure's pyramid and mortuary temple. The town later flourished under Nyuserre and seems to have still been in the existence during the First Intermediate Period. In terms of the size, volume, and the cheap construction techniques employed, Sahure's pyramid exemplifies the decline of pyramid building. At the same time, the quality and variety of the stones employed in other parts of the complex increased, and the mortuary temple is considered to be the most sophisticated one built up to that time. With its many architectural innovations, such as the use of palmiform columns, the overall layout of Sahure's complex would serve as the template for all mortuary complexes constructed from Sahure's reign until the end of the Sixth Dynasty, some 300 years later. The highly varied colored reliefs decorating the walls of the entire funerary complex display a quality of workmanship and a richness of conception that reach their highest level of the entire Old Kingdom period. ### Location Sahure chose to construct his pyramid complex in Abusir, thereby abandoning both Saqqara and Giza, which had been the royal necropolises up to that time. A possible motivation for Sahure's decision was the presence of the sun temple of Userkaf, something which supports the hypothesis that Sahure was Userkaf's son. Following Sahure's choice, Abusir became the main necropolis of the early Fifth Dynasty, as pharaohs Neferirkare Kakai, Neferefre, Nyuserre Ini and possibly Shepseskare built their pyramids there. In their wake, many smaller tombs belonging to members of the royal family were built in Abusir, with the notable exceptions of those of the highest-ranking members, many of whom chose to be buried in Giza or Saqqarah. ### Mortuary temple Sahure's mortuary temple was extensively decorated with an estimated 10,000 m² (110,000 sq ft) of fine reliefs. This extensive decoration seems to have been completed within Sahure's lifetime. The walls of the entire 235 m (771 ft)-long causeway were also covered with polychrome bas-reliefs. Miroslav Bárta describes the reliefs as "the largest collection known from the third millennium BCE". Many surviving fragments of the reliefs which decorated the walls of the mortuary complex are of very high quality and much more elaborate than those from preceding mortuary temples. Several of the depictions are unique in Egyptian art. These include a relief showing Sahure tending a myrrh tree (Commiphora myrrha) in his palace in front of his family; a relief depicting Syrian brown bears and another showing the bringing of the pyramidion to the main pyramid and the ceremonies following the completion of the complex. The high craftmanship of the reliefs is here manifested by the finely rounded edges of all figures, so that they simultaneously blend in with the background and stand out clearly. Reliefs are sufficiently detailed to permit the identification of the animals shown, such as hedgehogs and jerboas, and even show personified plants such as corn represented as a man with corn-ears instead of hair. The many reliefs of the mortuary, causeway and valley temples also depict, among other things, Sahure hunting wild bulls and hippopotamuses, Sahure being suckled by Nekhbet, the earliest depictions of a king fishing and fowling, a counting of foreigners by or in front of the goddess Seshat, which Egyptologist Mark Lehner believes was "meant to ward off any evil or disorder", the god Sopdu "Lord of the Foreign Countries" leading bound Asiatic captives, and the return of an Egyptian fleet from Asia, perhaps Byblos. Some of the low relief-cuttings in red granite are still in place at the site. Among the seminal innovations of Sahure's temple are the earliest relief depictions of figures in adoration, either standing or squatting with both arms raised, their hands open and their palms facing down. The mortuary temple featured the first palmiform columns of any Egyptian temple, massive granite architraves inscribed with Sahure's titulary overlaid with copper, lion-headed waterspouts, black basalt flooring and granite dados. ### Pyramid The pyramid of Sahure reached 47 m (154 ft) at the time of its construction, much smaller than the pyramids of the preceding Fourth Dynasty. Its inner core is made of roughly hewn stones organized in steps and held together in many sections with a thick mortar of mud. This construction technique, much cheaper and faster to execute than the stone-based techniques hitherto employed, fared much worse over time. Owing to this, Sahure's pyramid is now largely ruined and amounts to little more than a pile of rubble showing the crude filling of debris and mortar constituting the core, which became exposed after the casing stones were stolen in antiquity. While the core was under construction, a corridor was left open leading into the shaft where the grave chamber was built separately and later covered by leftover stone blocks and debris. This construction strategy is clearly visible in later unfinished pyramids, in particular the Pyramid of Neferefre. This technique also reflects the older style from the Third Dynasty seemingly coming back into fashion after being temporarily abandoned by the builders of the five great pyramids at Dahshur and Giza during the Fourth Dynasty. The entrance at the north side is a short descending corridor lined with red granite followed by a passageway ending at the burial chamber with its gabled roof comprising large limestone beams of several tons each. Today all of these beams are fractured, which weakens the pyramid structure. Fragments of a basalt sarcophagus, likely Sahure's, were found here in the burial chamber when it was first entered by John Shae Perring in the mid 19th century. The mortuary complex immediately around the pyramid also includes a second smaller cult pyramid which must have stood nearly 12 m (39 ft) high, originally built for the Ka of the king. ## Legacy ### Artistic and architectural legacy The painted reliefs covering the walls of Sahure's mortuary temple were recognized as an artistic achievement of the highest degree by the Ancient Egyptians. A New Kingdom inscription found in Abusir for example poetically compares the temple to the heaven lit by full moon. Subsequent generations of artists and craftsmen tried to emulate Sahure's reliefs, using them as templates for the tombs of later kings and queens of the Old Kingdom period. The layout of Sahure's high temple was also novel and it became the standard template for all subsequent pyramid complexes of the Old Kingdom. Some of its architectural elements, such as its palmiform columns, became hallmarks of Egyptian architecture. This trend continued to hold in later times. For example, in the Middle Kingdom, Senusret I had reliefs for his temple directly copied from those of Sahure. He also chose to follow the innovative layout of Sahure's complex once again. At the time, Senusret I's decision was in stark contrast with the burial customs of the 11th Dynasty pharaohs, who were buried in saff tombs. These consisted of an open courtyard fronting a row of entrances into subterranean corridors and chambers dug in the hillsides of El-Tarif and Deir el-Bahari, near Thebes. ### Cults #### Old Kingdom Sahure was the object of a funerary cult from the time of his death and which continued until the end of the Old Kingdom, some 300 years later. At least 22 agricultural estates were established to produce the goods necessary for providing the offerings to be made for this cult. Decorated reliefs from the upper part of the causeway represent the procession of over 150 personified funerary domains created by and for Sahure, demonstrating the existence of a sophisticated economic system associated with the king's funerary cult. The enormous quantities of offerings pouring into the mortuary and sun temples of Sahure benefitted other cults as well, such as that of Hathor, which had priests officiating on the temple premises. Several priests serving the mortuary cult or in Sahure's sun temple during the later Fifth and Sixth Dynasties are known thanks to inscriptions and artifacts from their tombs in Saqqara and Abusir. These include Tjy, overseer of the sun temples of Sahure, Neferirkare, Neferefre and Nyuserre; Neferkai priest of Sahure's funerary cult; Khabauptah priest of Sahure, Neferirkare, Neferefre, and Niuserre, Atjema, priest of the sun temple of Sahure during the Sixth Dynasty; Khuyemsnewy, who served as priest of the mortuary cult of Sahure during the reigns of Neferirkare and Nyuserre; Nikare, priest of the cult of Sahure and overseer of the scribes of the granary during the Fifth Dynasty. Further priests are known, such as Senewankh, serving in the cults of Userkaf and Sahure and buried in a mastaba in Saqqara; Sedaug, a priest of the cult of Sahure, priest of Ra in the sun-temple of Userkaf and holder of the title of royal acquaintance; Tepemankh, priest of the cults of kings of the Fourth to early Fifth Dynasty including Userkaf and Sahure, buried in a mastaba at Abusir. #### Middle Kingdom No priest serving in the funerary cult of Sahure is known from the Middle Kingdom period. Evidence from this period rather come from works undertaken in the Karnak temple by 12th Dynasty pharaoh Senusret I (fl. 20th century BC), who dedicated statues of Old Kingdom kings including one of Sahure. The statue and the accompanying group of portraits of deceased kings indicates the existence of a generic cult of royal ancestor figures, a "limited version of the cult of the divine" as Jaromir Málek writes. The statue of Sahure, now in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo (catalog number CG 42004), is made of black granite and is 50 cm (20 in) tall. Sahure is shown enthroned, wearing a pleated skirt and a round curly wig. Both sides of the throne bear inscriptions identifying the work as a portrait of Sahure made on the orders of Senusret I. Sahure's legacy had endured sufficiently by the Middle Kingdom period that he is mentioned in a story of the Westcar Papyrus, probably written during the 12th Dynasty although the earliest extent copy dates to the Seventeenth Dynasty. The papyrus tells the mythical story of the origins of the Fifth Dynasty, presenting kings Userkaf, Sahure and Neferirkare Kakai as three brothers, sons of Ra and a woman named Rededjet destined to supplant Khufu's line. #### New Kingdom: emergence of Sekhmet of Sahure As a deceased king, Sahure continued to receive religious offerings during the New Kingdom as part of the standard cult of the royal ancestors. For example, Sahure is present on the Karnak king list, a list of kings inscribed on the walls of the Akhmenu, the Karnak temple of Thutmose III. Unlike other ancient Egyptian king lists, the kings there are not listed in chronological order. Rather, the purpose of the list was purely religious, its aim being to name the deceased kings to be honored in the Karnak temple. In the second part of the Eighteenth Dynasty and during the Nineteenth Dynasty numerous visitors left inscriptions, stelae and statues in the temple. These activities were related to a cult then taking place in the mortuary temple of Sahure since the time of Thutmose III. This cult was devoted to the deified king in a form associated with the goddess Sekhmet named "Sekhmet of Sahure". For example, the scribe Ptahemuia and fellow scribes visited Sahure's temple in the 30th year of Ramses II's reign (c. 1249 BC) to ask Sekhmet to grant them a long life of 110 years. The reason for the appearance of this cult during the New Kingdom is unknown. In any case, the cult of Sekhmet of Sahure was not a purely local phenomenon as traces of it were found in the Upper Egyptian village of Deir el-Medina, where it was celebrated during two festivals taking place every year, on the 16th day of the first month of Peret and on the 11th day of the fourth month of that season. During the same period, prince Khaemwaset, a son of Ramses II, undertook works throughout Egypt on pyramids and temples which had fallen into ruin, possibly to appropriate stones for his father's construction projects while ensuring a minimal restoration for cultic purposes. Inscriptions on the stone cladding of the pyramid of Sahure show that it was the object of such works at this time. This renewed attention had negative consequences as the first wave of dismantlement of the Abusir monuments, particularly for the acquisition of valuable Tura limestone, arrived with it. Sahure's mortuary temple may have been spared at this time due to the presence of the cult of Sekhmet. The cult's influence likely waned after the end of Ramses II's reign, becoming a site of local worship only. #### Third intermediate, late and Ptolemaic periods During the Twenty-fifth Dynasty (744–656 BC) at the end of the Third Intermediate Period, some of Sahure's temple reliefs were copied by Taharqa, including images of the king crushing his enemies as a sphinx. Shortly after, under the Twenty-sixth Dynasty (664–525 BC) of the Late Period, a statue of Sahure was among a group of statues of Old Kingdom kings hidden in a cachette of the Karnak temple, testifying to some form of cultic interest up to that time. In parallel, a new period of dismantlement of the pyramids of Abusir took place, yet Sahure's was once again spared. This might be because of the cult of Sekhmet of Sahure the temple hosted well into the Ptolemaic period (332–30 BC), albeit with a very reduced influence. Several graffiti dating from the reigns of Amasis II (570–526 BC), Darius II (423–404 BC) and up until the Ptolemaic period attest to continued cultic activities on the site. For example, a certain Horib was "Priest of Sekhmet of the temple of Sekhmet of Sahure" under the Ptolemaic dynasty. The dismantlement of Sahure's pyramid started in earnest in the Roman period, as shown by the abundant production of mill-stones, presence of lime production facilities and worker shelters in the vicinity.

Opeth

Swedish progressive metal band

Opeth are a Swedish progressive metal band from Stockholm, formed in 1990. In addition to progressive metal, the band incorporates folk, blues, classical, and jazz elements into its usually lengthy compositions, as well as strong influences from death metal, especially in their early works. Songs may include acoustic guitar passages, Mellotrons, death growls, and strong dynamic shifts. The band rarely made live appearances supporting their first four albums, but since their first world tour in support of the 2001 album Blackwater Park, they have had several other major world tours. The group have been through several personnel changes since early in their history, including the replacement of every original member. Lead vocalist, guitarist and primary songwriter Mikael Åkerfeldt has been Opeth's driving force since the departure of founder and lead vocalist David Isberg in 1992. Opeth have released 13 studio albums, four live DVDs, four live albums (three that are in conjunction with DVDs), and two boxsets. The band released its debut album Orchid in 1995. With their eighth studio album, Ghost Reveries (2005), the band achieved chart success in several dozen countries, including Top Ten in Sweden. Their ninth studio album, Watershed (2008), topped the Finnish albums chart in its first week of release, and reached 23 on the US Billboard 200 chart. As of November 2009, the band have sold over 1.5 million copies of their albums and DVDs worldwide, including 300,000 collective SoundScans of their albums Blackwater Park, Damnation, and Deliverance in the United States. ## History ### Formation (1990–1993) Opeth was formed as a death metal band in the spring of 1990 in Stockholm, Sweden, by David Isberg, with some friends from Täby; Isberg was the lead vocalist. The band name was taken from the Wilbur Smith novel The Sunbird, in which Opet is the name of a fictional city. Isberg asked former Eruption band member and guitarist Mikael Åkerfeldt to join Opeth as a bassist, replacing Martin Persson. When Åkerfeldt showed up to practice on the day after Isberg invited him, it became clear that Isberg had not told the band members, including the band's current bassist, that Åkerfeldt would be joining the band. An ensuing argument led to all members but Isberg and Åkerfeldt leaving to form a new project. At this time Opeth declared themselves to be the "most evil band in the world". Isberg and Åkerfeldt recruited drummer Anders Nordin, bassist Nick Döring, and guitarist Andreas Dimeo. Unsatisfied with Opeth's slow progress, Döring and Dimeo left the band after their first performance, and were replaced by guitarist Kim Pettersson and bassist Johan De Farfalla. After the next show, De Farfalla left Opeth to spend time with his girlfriend in Germany, and was initially replaced by Mattias Ander, before Åkerfeldt's friend Peter Lindgren took on the role of bassist. Rhythm guitarist Kim Pettersson left following the band's next performance, and Lindgren switched to guitar, with Stefan Guteklint taking over the role of bassist. The following year, David Isberg left the band citing "creative differences". Following Isberg's departure, Åkerfeldt took over vocal duties and he, Lindgren, and Nordin spent the next year writing and rehearsing new material. The group began to rely less on the blast beats and aggression typical of death metal, and incorporated acoustic guitars and guitar harmonies into their music; developing the core sound of Opeth. Bassist Guteklint was dismissed by the band after they signed their first record deal with Candlelight Records in 1994. Opeth initially employed former member De Farfalla as a session bassist for their demo recordings, and he went on to join on a full-time basis following the release of Opeth's debut album, "Orchid", in 1995. ### Orchid, Morningrise, and My Arms, Your Hearse (1994–1998) Opeth recorded its debut album, Orchid, with producer Dan Swanö in April 1994. Because of distribution problems with the newly formed Candlelight Records, the album was not released until 15 May 1995, and only in Europe. Orchid tested the boundaries of traditional death metal, featuring acoustic guitars, piano, and clean vocals. After a few live shows in the United Kingdom, Opeth returned to the studio in March 1996 to begin work on a second album, again produced by Dan Swanö. The album, titled Morningrise, was released in Europe on 24 June 1996. With only five songs, but lasting 66 minutes, it features Opeth's longest song, the 20-minute "Black Rose Immortal". Opeth toured the UK in support of Morningrise, followed by a 26-date Scandinavian tour with Cradle of Filth. While on tour, Opeth attracted the attention of Century Media Records, who signed the band and released the first two albums in the United States in 1997. In 1997, after the tour, Åkerfeldt and Lindgren dismissed De Farfalla for personal reasons, without the consent of Nordin. When Åkerfeldt informed Nordin, who was on a vacation in Brazil, Nordin left the band and remained in Brazil for personal reasons. Former Eternal members, drummer Martín López (formerly of Amon Amarth) and bassist Martín Méndez, responded to an ad at a music shop placed by Åkerfeldt. López and Méndez were fans of the band and took the ads down themselves so no other musicians could apply for the job. Åkerfeldt and Lindgren did not want the Martíns to join at first, due to them already knowing each other; they felt that they wanted two strangers so that there wouldn't be two camps in the band, but eventually hired both. López made his debut with Opeth playing on a cover version of Iron Maiden's "Remember Tomorrow", which was included on the album A Call to Irons: A Tribute to Iron Maiden. With a larger recording budget from Century Media, Opeth began work on its third album, with noted Swedish producer Fredrik Nordström, at Studio Fredman in August 1997. Although Opeth had Méndez, due to time constraints Åkerfeldt played bass on the album. My Arms, Your Hearse was released to critical acclaim on 18 August 1998. ### Still Life and Blackwater Park (1999–2001) In 1999 the ownership of Candlelight Records changed hands with owner and friend of the band Lee Barrett leaving the company. Opeth signed with UK label Peaceville Records in Europe, which was distributed by Music For Nations. Opeth reserved time at Studio Fredman to begin work on its next album, but recording was postponed while the studio was relocated. Due to time constraints, the band was able to rehearse only twice before entering the studio. Delays with the album's artwork pushed the release back an additional month and Still Life was released on 18 October 1999. Due to problems with the band's new distribution network, the album was not released in the United States until February 2001. Still Life was the first album recorded with Méndez, and also the first Opeth album to bear any kind of caption on the front cover upon its initial release, including the band's logo. Allmusic called Still Life a "formidable splicing of harsh, often jagged guitar riffs with graceful melodies." As explained by Åkerfeldt, Still Life is a concept album: "The main character is kind of banished from his hometown because he hasn't got the same faith as the rest of the inhabitants there. The album pretty much starts off when he is returning after several years to hook up with his old 'babe.' The big bosses of the town know that he's back... A lot of bad things start happening." Following a few live dates in Europe, Opeth returned to Studio Fredman to begin work on its next album, with Porcupine Tree's Steven Wilson producing. The band sought to recreate the recording experience of Still Life, and again entered the studio with minimal rehearsals, and no lyrics written. "This time it was tough," Åkerfeldt said, "I feel pleasantly blown away by the immense result, though. It was indeed worth the effort." Wilson also pushed the band to expand its sound, incorporating new sounds and production techniques. "Steve guided us into the realms of 'strange' noises for guitars and voice", Åkerfeldt said. Opeth released its fifth studio album, Blackwater Park, on 21 February 2001. AllMusic has stated that the album "keeps with Opeth's tradition by transcending the limits of death/black metal and repeatedly shattering the foundations of conventional songwriting". In support of Blackwater Park, Opeth embarked on its first world tour, headlined Europe for the first time, and made an appearance at the 2001 Wacken Open Air festival in Germany, playing to a crowd of 60,000. ### Deliverance and Damnation (2002–2004) Opeth returned to Sweden after touring in support of Blackwater Park, and began writing for the next album. At first, Åkerfeldt had trouble putting together new material: "I wanted to write something heavier than we'd ever done, still I had all these great mellow parts and arrangements which I didn't want to go to waste." Jonas Renkse of Katatonia, a long-time friend of Åkerfeldt, suggested writing music for two separate albums—one heavy and one soft. Excited at the prospect, Åkerfeldt agreed without consulting his bandmates or record label. While his bandmates liked the idea of recording two separate albums, Åkerfeldt had to convince the label: "I had to lie somewhat ... saying that we could do this recording very soon, it won't cost more than a regular single album." With most of the material written, the band rehearsed just once before entering Nacksving Studios in 2002, and again with producer Steven Wilson in Studio Fredman. Under pressure to complete both albums simultaneously, Åkerfeldt said the recording process was "the toughest test of our history." After recording basic tracks, the band moved production to England to first mix the heavy album, Deliverance, with Andy Sneap at Backstage Studios. "Deliverance was so poorly recorded, without any organisation whatsoever," Åkerfeldt claimed, that Sneap "is credited as a 'saviour' in the sleeve, as he surely saved much of the recording." Deliverance was released on 4 November 2002, and debuted at number 19 on the US Top Independent Albums chart, marking the band's first US chart appearance. AllMusic stated, "Deliverance is altogether more subtle than any of its predecessors, approaching listeners with haunting nuances and masterful dynamics rather than overwhelming them with sheer mass and complexity." Opeth performed a one-off concert in Stockholm, then returned to the UK to finish recording vocals for the second of the two albums, Damnation, at Steven Wilson's No Man's Land Studios. Although Åkerfeldt believed the band could not finish both albums, Opeth completed Deliverance and Damnation in just seven weeks of studio time, which was the same amount spent on Blackwater Park alone. Damnation was released on 14 April 2003, and garnered the band its first appearance on the US Billboard 200 at number 192. The album also won the 2003 Swedish Grammy Award for Best Hard Rock Performance. On 1 January 2016, Opeth re-released both Deliverance and Damnation in one package, containing CD and DVD versions, along with new mixing. The band embarked on its biggest tour yet, playing nearly 200 shows in 2003 and 2004. Opeth performed three special shows in Europe with two song lists each—one acoustic set and one heavy set. The band recorded its first DVD, Lamentations (Live at Shepherd's Bush Empire 2003), at Shepherd's Bush Empire in London, England. The DVD features a two-hour performance, including the entire Damnation album, several songs from Deliverance and Blackwater Park, and a one-hour documentary about the recording of Deliverance and Damnation. Lamentations was certified Gold (over 50,000 sales) by the Canadian Recording Industry Association. Opeth was scheduled to perform in Jordan without a crew due to the fear of terrorist attacks in the Middle East. Opeth's tour manager distributed 6,000 tickets for the concert, but before the band left for Jordan, drummer Lopez called Åkerfeldt stating he was having an anxiety attack and could not perform, forcing the band to cancel the show. In early 2004, Lopez was sent home from Canada after more anxiety attacks on tour. Opeth decided against cancelling the remainder of the tour, with Lopez's drum technician filling in for two concerts. Lopez promised that he would return to the tour as soon as he could, but two shows later Opeth asked Strapping Young Lad drummer Gene Hoglan to fill in. Lopez returned to Opeth for the Seattle show on the final leg of the Deliverance and Damnation tour. ### Ghost Reveries (2005–2007) Opeth returned home in 2004 to start writing new material for its eighth album, and by the end of the year, they had finished writing it. After touring with the band on keyboards for more than a year, Per Wiberg officially became a member of the band. European label, Music For Nations, closed its doors in 2005, and after negotiations with various labels, the band signed with Roadrunner Records. Åkerfeldt said the primary reason for signing with Roadrunner was the label's wide distribution, ensuring the album would be available at larger-chain retailers. When news leaked that the band was signed to Roadrunner, who predominantly worked with trend-oriented rock and metal, some fans accused the band of selling out. "To be honest," Åkerfeldt said, "that's such an insult after 15 years as a band and 8 records. I can't believe we haven't earned each and every Opeth fan's credibility after all these years. I mean, our songs are 10 minutes long!" The band rehearsed for three weeks before entering the studio, the first time the band rehearsed since the 1998 album, My Arms, Your Hearse. During rehearsal, keyboardist Wiberg joined Opeth as a full-time member. Opeth recorded at Fascination Street Studios in Örebro, Sweden, from 18 March to 1 June 2005, and released the resulting Ghost Reveries on 30 August 2005, to critical acclaim and commercial success. The album debuted at number 64 in the US, and number nine in Sweden, higher than any previous Opeth release. Keith Bergman of Blabbermouth.net gave the album ten out of ten, one of only 21 albums to achieve a perfect rating from the site. Rod Smith of Decibel magazine called Ghost Reveries "achingly beautiful, sometimes unabashedly brutal, often a combination of both". On 12 May 2006, Martin Lopez announced that he had officially parted ways with Opeth due to health problems, and was replaced by Martin Axenrot. Opeth toured on the main stage of Gigantour in 2006, alongside Megadeth. Ghost Reveries was re-released on 31 October 2006, with a bonus cover song (Deep Purple's "Soldier of Fortune"), a DVD featuring a 5.1 surround sound mix of the album and a documentary on the making of the record. A recording of Opeth's live performance at the Camden Roundhouse, in London, on 9 November 2006, was released as the double live album The Roundhouse Tapes, which topped the Finnish DVD chart. On 17 May 2007, Peter Lindgren announced he would be leaving Opeth after 16 years. "The decision has been the toughest I've ever made but it is the right one to make at this point in my life," Lindgren said. "I feel that I simply have lost some of the enthusiasm and inspiration needed to participate in a band that has grown from a few guys playing the music we love to a worldwide industry." Ex-Arch Enemy guitarist Fredrik Åkesson replaced Lindgren, as Åkerfeldt explained "Fredrik was the only name that popped up thinking about a replacement for Peter. In my opinion he's one of the top three guitar players out of Sweden. We all get along great as we've known each other for maybe four years and he already has the experience to take on the circus-like lifestyle we lead as members of Opeth." ### Watershed and In Live Concert at the Royal Albert Hall (2008–2010) Opeth entered Fascination Street Studios in November 2007 to record their ninth studio album, with Åkerfeldt producing. By January 2008, Opeth had recorded 13 songs, including three cover songs. The finished album, Watershed, features seven tracks, with cover songs used as bonus tracks on different versions of the album. Watershed was released on 3 June 2008. Åkerfeldt described the songs on the album as "a bit more energetic". Opeth toured in support of Watershed, including headlining the UK Defenders of the Faith tour with Arch Enemy, an appearance at Wacken Open Air, and the Progressive Nation tour with headliner Dream Theater. Watershed was Opeth's highest-charting album to date, debuting at number 23 on the US Billboard 200, on the Australian ARIA album charts at number seven and at number one on Finland's official album chart. Opeth went on a worldwide tour in support of Watershed. From September to October, the band toured North America backed by High on Fire, Baroness, and Nachtmystium. They returned to tour Europe for the rest of the year with Cynic and The Ocean. In 2010, Opeth wrote and recorded the new track, "The Throat of Winter", which appeared on the digital EP soundtrack of the video game, God of War III. Åkerfeldt described the song as "odd" and "not very metal." To celebrate their 20th anniversary, Opeth performed a six-show, worldwide tour called Evolution XX: An Opeth Anthology, from 30 March through 9 April 2010. Blackwater Park was performed in its entirety, along with several songs never before performed. The concert of 5 April 2010, at the Royal Albert Hall in London, England was filmed for a DVD and live album package titled In Live Concert at the Royal Albert Hall. The set was released on 21 September 2010, in 2-DVD and 2-DVD/3-CD configurations. For the DVD the concert was split into two sets. The first set consists of the entire Blackwater Park album, while the second set contains one song from every album excluding Blackwater Park, in chronological order representing the twenty years of "evolution" in their music. Åkerfeldt stated, "I can't believe it, but, fuck, we're celebrating 20 years. I've been in this band ever since I was 16. It's insane." A special edition of Blackwater Park was released in March 2010 to coincide with the tour. ### Heritage (2011–2013) In September 2010, Mikael Åkerfeldt stated that he was writing for a new Opeth album. The band announced on their website that they would start recording their tenth album on 31 January 2011, at the Atlantis/Metronome studios in Stockholm, once again with Jens Bogren (engineering) and Steven Wilson from Porcupine Tree as co-producer. Shortly after mixing was complete on the new album in April 2011, Per Wiberg left the band. Åkerfeldt said the band, "came to the decision that we should find a replacement for Per right after the recordings of the new album, and this came as no surprise to Per. He had, in turn, been thinking about leaving, so you could say it was a mutual decision. There's no bad blood, just a relationship that came to an end, and that's that." Opeth's tenth album, Heritage, was released on 14 September 2011, to generally favorable reviews. The album sold 19,000 copies in the United States in its first week of release and debuted at number 19 on the Billboard 200 chart. Heritage debuted at number four in the band's native country of Sweden. Heritage became the second Opeth album to not feature any death growls and had a much more progressive style than their previous albums, a direction that Åkerfeldt was already interested in pursuing with Opeth. The first two songs Åkerfeldt wrote for Heritage were in the style of Watershed. After hearing the songs for the first time, Martín Méndez told Åkerfeldt that he would be disappointed if the album continued in that direction. Relieved that Méndez was not interested in doing another conventional Opeth album, Åkerfeldt scrapped the two songs and started the writing process over in a different style. In the press release for Heritage, Mikael Åkerfeldt revealed that he felt as though he had been building to write the album since he was 19 years old. In a review for Allmusic, Thom Jurek called Heritage the band's most adventurous album, describing the songs as "drenched in instrumental interludes, knotty key and chord changes, shifting time signatures, clean vocals, and a keyboard-heavy instrumentation that includes Mellotrons, Rhodes pianos, and Hammond organs". Opeth supported Heritage with a tour that would last for over 200 tour dates. The tour was the band's first with new keyboardist, Joakim Svalberg, who played on the opening track of the album. During the tour, Opeth played with bands such as Katatonia, Pain of Salvation, Mastodon, Ghost and Anathema all over the world in countries such as the United States, Europe, Turkey, India, Japan, Greece, Israel, Latin America and Sweden. The tour concluded with "Melloboat 2013". ### Pale Communion (2014–2015) On 26 August 2014, Opeth released its eleventh studio album, titled Pale Communion. Åkerfeldt began working on new material as far back as August 2012. In January 2014 he stated, "We've been looking at [tracking the next album at] Rockfield Studios in Wales where Queen recorded "Bohemian Rhapsody", but we haven't made a decision yet, but it will be an expensive album. There's a lot going on, lots of string arrangements that we haven't had in the past." Despite fearing that the band's new musical direction would split Opeth's fanbase, when asked if it will it be heavier or softer than Heritage, Åkerfeldt said, "Maybe a little bit heavier, not death metal heavy, but hard rock/heavy metal heavy. There's also lots of progressive elements and acoustic guitars, but also more sinister-sounding riffs." Åkerfeldt also produced the new album which will include string instrumentation, something that he became interested in doing when working on Storm Corrosion. The band members in Opeth felt rejuvenated after creating Heritage which resulted in closer relationships between them. The Guardian reviewed Pale Communion positively, calling it "strange, intricate prog-metal genius" somewhat flawed by Åkerfeldt's indulgent vocal styling. The album saw Opeth's highest chart positions in the history of the band with Pale Communion debuting at number 19 in the US, number 3 in Sweden, and number 14 in the United Kingdom. It sold 13,000 copies in its first week of release in the US. Pale Communion was supported with more touring from Opeth. In 2015, Opeth played several concerts to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the band. At these special shows, the band was doing two sets. The first set is 2005's Ghost Reveries as a ten-year anniversary celebration of the album. The second set spanned the rest of the band's career, celebrating their 25th anniversary. Åkerfeldt expressed excitement for the concerts. ### Sorceress, Garden Of The Titans, and In Cauda Venenum (2016–2020) On 15 June 2016, Nuclear Blast Entertainment announced the signing of Opeth. Three days later, on 18 June, Opeth released a 30-second teaser for their new album, Sorceress. A month later, on 18 July, the band confirmed the album would be released on 30 September, in addition to revealing the artwork and track list. Mikael Åkerfeldt described it as, "A fine little record. My favorite in our discography right now. Of course. That's how it should be, right? It's both fresh and old, both progressive and rehashed. Heavy and calm. Just the way we like it." The album was the first project under Moderbolaget Records, a joint venture between Opeth and Nuclear Blast. Moderbolaget means "the parent company" in Swedish. On 25 July 2016, in the build up towards the album release, the band posted the first Sorceress: Studio Report on their YouTube channel. In the behind-the-scenes studio tour, it is confirmed that the band had returned to Rockfield Studios where they previously recorded Pale Communion. At the end of the video, there is a 20-second excerpt of a track believed to be from the album featuring heavily down-tuned guitars. On 1 August 2016, the band released a lyric video for the title-track 'Sorceress' on their YouTube channel. On 4 September 2016, Opeth released a lyric video for the second single titled 'Will O the Wisp,' again through their YouTube channel and website. Opeth's video for "Era" was nominated for "Video of the Year" at the 2017 Progressive Music Awards, where they ultimately won "International Band of the Year". On 2 October 2017, Åkerfeldt said he has been thinking about doing something "twisted" and different for the next studio album, which could be released by mid-to-late 2019. On 20 November 2017, guitarist Fredrik Åkesson stated that the band will not have any gigs in the upcoming months, until the 2018 summer festivals. During this break the band will focus on writing songs for the new album. On 11 July 2018, during an interview with FaceCulture, Åkesson said "I've recorded a lot of solos so far. And Mikael Åkerfeldt has almost already written 12 songs for the new album, so we have more material than enough for an album". On 22 May 2019, the band announced their thirteenth studio album, In Cauda Venenum, due for release on 27 September 2019. On 12 July 2019, Opeth released the first single from In Cauda Venenum entitled "Heart in Hand" in both English and Swedish. ### Departure of Axenrot, addition of Väyrynen and upcoming 14th studio album (2021–present) On 16 November 2021, it was announced that longtime drummer Martin Axenrot had left the band due to conflict of interests and his refusal to get vaccinated against COVID-19, and was replaced by Sami Karppinen for the North American tour. On 9 September 2022, it was announced Waltteri Väyrynen, formerly of Paradise Lost, as well as Alexi Laiho's project Bodom After Midnight, was the band's new drummer. ## Musical style and influences As Opeth's primary songwriter and lyricist, vocalist/guitarist Mikael Åkerfeldt heads the direction of Opeth's sound. He was influenced at a young age by the 1970s progressive rock bands King Crimson, Yes, Genesis, Camel, P.F.M., Hawkwind, and Gracious, and by heavy metal bands such as Iron Maiden, Slayer, Death, Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, Celtic Frost, King Diamond, Morbid Angel, Voivod, and, most importantly, Judas Priest. Åkerfeldt considers Judas Priest's Sad Wings of Destiny (1976) the best metal album of all time, and notes that there was a time when he listened only to Judas Priest. While warming up before Opeth concerts, Åkerfeldt frequently sings "Here Come the Tears" from Judas Priest's third album Sin After Sin (1977). Åkerfeldt later discovered progressive rock and folk music, both of which had a profound impact on the sound of the band. Opeth's distinct sound mixes death metal with progressive rock. Steve Huey of AllMusic refers to Opeth's "epic, progressive death metal style". Ryan Ogle of Blabbermouth described Opeth's sound as incorporating "the likes of folk, funk, blues, '70s rock, goth and a laundry list of other sonic oddities into their trademark progressive death style." In his review of Opeth's 2001 album Blackwater Park, AllMusic's Eduardo Rivadavia wrote, "Tracks start and finish in seemingly arbitrary fashion, usually traversing ample musical terrain, including acoustic guitar and solo piano passages, ambient soundscapes, stoner rock grooves, and Eastern-tinged melodies—any of which are subject to savage punctuations of death metal fury at any given moment." Åkerfeldt commented on the diversity of Opeth's music: > I don't see the point of playing in a band and going just one way when you can do everything. It would be impossible for us to play just death metal; that is our roots, but we are now a mishmash of everything, and not purists to any form of music. It's impossible for us to do that, and quite frankly I would think of it as boring to be in a band that plays just metal music. We're not afraid to experiment, or to be caught with our pants down, so to speak. That's what keeps us going. More recently, Opeth have abandoned their death metal sound resulting in a mellower progressive rock sound. When talking about Heritage, guitarist Fredrik Åkesson stated: > In the beginning it took me a little while to get used to the new idea of the sound, not having any screaming vocals and stuff like that. But I think the album was necessary for us to do. Maybe the band wouldn't have continued if we hadn't done Heritage. I think the old Opeth fans understand this album. There's always going to be some haters, but you can't be loved by everyone. Opeth has always been about not repeating ourself. A lot of people don't think Heritage is metal but I think it's metal to go somewhere people don't expect. It doesn't mean we're not embracing the past sound of Opeth. Vocally, Åkerfeldt shifts between traditional death metal vocals for heavy sections, and clean, sometimes whispered or soft-spoken vocals over mellower passages. While his death growls were dominant on early releases, later efforts incorporate more clean vocals, with Damnation, Heritage, Pale Communion, Sorceress and In Cauda Venenum featuring only clean singing. Rivadavia noted that "Åkerfeldt's vocals run the gamut from bowel-churning grunts to melodies of chilling beauty—depending on each movement section's mood." ## Legacy A number of artists and bands have cited Opeth as an influence, among which are Mayan (a project of Mark Jansen from Epica), Luc Lemay of Gorguts, Soen (a band of former Opeth drummer Martin Lopez), Tor Oddmund Suhrke of Leprous, Disillusion, Caligula's Horse, Klimt 1918, Daniel Droste of Ahab, Becoming the Archetype, Nucleus Torn, Alex Vynogradoff of Kauan, Wastefall, Eric Guenther of The Contortionist, Thomas MacLean and To-Mera, The Man-Eating Tree, Nahemah, Vladimir Agafonkin of Obiymy Doshchu, Schizoid Lloyd, Native Construct, Maxime Côté of Catuvolcus, Bilocate, and Jinjer. In addition, other artists have been quoted expressing admiration for their work including Steven Wilson, Seven Lions, John Petrucci, Mike Portnoy, Ihsahn, Simone Simons of Epica, Oliver Palotai of Kamelot, Jim Matheos of Fates Warning, and Haken. ## Band members Current members ## Discography - Orchid (1995) - Morningrise (1996) - My Arms, Your Hearse (1998) - Still Life (1999) - Blackwater Park (2001) - Deliverance (2002) - Damnation (2003) - Ghost Reveries (2005) - Watershed (2008) - Heritage (2011) - Pale Communion (2014) - Sorceress (2016) - In Cauda Venenum (2019)

Ficus aurea

Species of strangler fig

Ficus aurea, commonly known as the Florida strangler fig (or simply strangler fig), golden fig, or higuerón, is a tree in the family Moraceae that is native to the U.S. state of Florida, the northern and western Caribbean, southern Mexico and Central America south to Panama. The specific epithet aurea was applied by English botanist Thomas Nuttall who described the species in 1846. Ficus aurea is a strangler fig. In figs of this group, seed germination usually takes place in the canopy of a host tree with the seedling living as an epiphyte until its roots establish contact with the ground. After that, it enlarges and strangles its host, eventually becoming a free-standing tree in its own right. Individuals may reach 30 m (100 ft) in height. Like all figs, it has an obligate mutualism with fig wasps: figs are only pollinated by fig wasps, and fig wasps can only reproduce in fig flowers. The tree provides habitat, food and shelter for a host of tropical lifeforms including epiphytes in cloud forests and birds, mammals, reptiles and invertebrates. F. aurea is used in traditional medicine, for live fencing, as an ornamental and as a bonsai. ## Description Ficus aurea is a tree which may reach heights of 30 m (98 ft). It is monoecious: each tree bears functional male and female flowers. The size and shape of the leaves is variable. Some plants have leaves that are usually less than 10 cm (4 in) long while others have leaves that are larger. The shape of the leaves and of the leaf base also varies—some plants have leaves that are oblong or elliptic with a wedge-shaped to rounded base, while others have heart-shaped or ovate leaves with cordate to rounded bases. F. aurea has paired figs which are green when unripe, turning yellow as they ripen. They differ in size (0.6–0.8 cm [0.2–0.3 in], about 1 cm [0.4 in], or 1.0–1.2 cm [0.4–0.5 in] in diameter); figs are generally sessile, but in parts of northern Mesoamerica figs are borne on short stalks known as peduncles. ## Taxonomy With about 750 species, Ficus (Moraceae) is one of the largest angiosperm genera (David Frodin of Chelsea Physic Garden ranked it as the 31st largest genus). Ficus aurea is classified in the subgenus Urostigma (the strangler figs) and the section Americana. Recent molecular phylogenies have shown that subgenus Urostigma is polyphyletic, but have strongly supported the validity of section Americana as a discrete group (although its exact relationship to section Galoglychia is unclear). Thomas Nuttall described the species in the second volume of his 1846 work The North American Sylva with specific epithet aurea ('golden' in Latin). In 1768, Scottish botanist Philip Miller described Ficus maxima, citing Carl Linnaeus' Hortus Cliffortianus (1738) and Hans Sloane's Catalogus plantarum quæ in insula Jamaica (1696). Sloane's illustration of the species, published in 1725, depicted it with figs borne singly, a characteristic of the Ficus subgenus Pharmacosycea. As a member of the subgenus Urostigma, F. aurea has paired figs. However, a closer examination of Sloane's description led Cornelis Berg to conclude that the illustration depicted a member of the subgenus Urostigma (since it had other diagnostic of that subgenus), almost certainly F. aurea, and that the illustration of singly borne figs was probably artistic license. Berg located the plant collection upon which Sloane's illustration was based and concluded that Miller's F. maxima was, in fact, F. aurea. In his description of F. aurea, which was based on plant material collected in Florida, Thomas Nuttall considered the possibility that his plants belonged to the species that Sloane had described, but came to the conclusion that it was a new species. Under the rules of botanical nomenclature, the name F. maxima has priority over F. aurea since Miller's description was published in 1768, while Nuttall's description was published in 1846. In their 1914 Flora of Jamaica, William Fawcett and Alfred Barton Rendle linked Sloane's illustration to the tree species that was then known as Ficus suffocans, a name that had been assigned to it in August Grisebach's Flora of the British West Indian Islands. Gordon DeWolf agreed with their conclusion and used the name F. maxima for that species in the 1960 Flora of Panama. Since this use has become widespread, Berg proposed that the name Ficus maxima be conserved in the way DeWolf had used it, a proposal that was accepted by the nomenclatural committee. Reassigning the name Ficus maxima did not leave F. aurea as the oldest name for this species, as German naturalist Johann Heinrich Friedrich Link had described Ficus ciliolosa in 1822. Berg concluded that the species Link described was actually F. aurea, and since Link's description predated Nuttall's by 24 years, priority should have been given to the name F. ciliolosa. Since the former name was widely used and the name F. ciliolosa had not been, Berg proposed that the name F. aurea be conserved. In response to this, the nomenclatural committee ruled that rather than conserving F. aurea, that it would be better to reject F. ciliolosa. Conserving F. aurea would mean that precedence would be given to that name over all others. By simply rejecting F. ciliolosa, the committee left open the possibility that the name F. aurea could be supplanted by another older name, if one were to be discovered. ### Synonyms In 1920, American botanist Paul C. Standley described three new species based on collections from Panama and Costa Rica—Ficus tuerckheimii, F. isophlebia and F. jimenezii. DeWolf concluded that they were all the same species, and Berg synonymised them with F. aurea. These names have been used widely for Mexican and Central American populations, and continue to be used by some authors. Berg suspected that Ficus rzedowskiana Carvajal and Cuevas-Figueroa may also belong to this species, but he had not examined the original material upon which this species was based. Berg considered F. aurea to be a species with at least four morphs. "None of the morphs", he wrote, "can be related to certain habitats or altitudes." Thirty years earlier, William Burger had come to a very different conclusion with respect to Ficus tuerckheimii, F. isophlebia and F. jimenezii—he rejected DeWolf's synonymisation of these three species as based on incomplete evidence. Burger noted that the three taxa occupied different habitats which could be separated in terms of rainfall and elevation. ## Reproduction and growth Figs have an obligate mutualism with fig wasps, (Agaonidae); figs are only pollinated by these wasps, and they can only reproduce in fig flowers. Generally, each fig species depends on a single species of wasp for pollination. The wasps are similarly dependent on their fig species in order to reproduce. Ficus aurea is pollinated by Pegoscapus mexicanus (Ashmead). Figs have complicated inflorescences called syconia. Flowers are entirely contained within an enclosed structure. Their only connection with the outside is through a small pore called ostiole. Monoecious figs like F. aurea have both male and female flowers within the syconium. Female flowers mature first. Once mature, they produce a volatile chemical attractant. Female wasps squeeze their way through the ostiole into the interior of the syconium. Inside the syconium, they pollinate the flowers, lay their eggs in some of them, and die. The eggs hatch and the larvae parasitise the flowers in which they were laid. After four to seven weeks (in F. aurea), adult wasps emerge. Males emerge first, mate with the females, and cut exit holes through the walls of the fig. The male flowers mature around the same time as the female wasps emerge. The newly emerged female wasps actively pack their bodies with pollen from the male flowers before leaving through the exit holes the males have cut and fly off to find a syconium in which to lay their eggs. Over the next one to five days, figs ripen. The ripe figs are eaten by various mammals and birds which disperse the seeds. ### Phenology Figs flower and fruit asynchronously. Flowering and fruiting is staggered throughout the population. This fact is important for fig wasps—female wasps need to find a syconium in which to lay their eggs within a few days of emergence, something that would not be possible if all the trees in a population flowered and fruited at the same time. This also makes figs important food resources for frugivores (animals that feed nearly exclusively on fruit); figs are one of the few fruit available at times of the year when fruit are scarce. Although figs flower asynchronously as a population, in most species flowering is synchronised within an individual. Newly emerged female wasps must move away from their natal tree in order to find figs in which to lay their eggs. This is to the advantage of the fig, since it prevents self-pollination. In Florida, individual F. aurea trees flower and fruit asynchronously. Within-tree asynchrony in flowering is likely to raise the probability of self-pollination, but it may be an adaptation that allows the species to maintain an adequate population of wasps at low population densities or in strongly seasonal climates. Flowering phenology in Ficus has been characterised into five phases. In most figs, phase A is followed almost immediately by phase B. However, in F. aurea immature inflorescences can remain dormant for more than nine months. ### Growth Ficus aurea is a fast-growing tree. As a hemiepiphyte it germinates in the canopy of a host tree and begins life as an epiphyte before growing roots down to the ground. F. aurea is also a strangler fig (not all hemiepiphytic figs are stranglers)—the roots fuse and encircle the host tree. This usually results in the death of the host, since it effectively girdles the tree. Palms, which lack secondary growth, are not affected by this, but they can still be harmed by competition for light, water and nutrients. Following Hurricane Andrew in 1992, F. aurea trees regenerated from root suckers and standing trees. ## Distribution Ficus aurea ranges from Florida, across the northern Caribbean to Mexico, and south across Central America. It is present in central and southern Florida and the Florida Keys, The Bahamas, the Caicos Islands, Hispaniola, Cuba, Jamaica, the Cayman Islands, San Andrés (a Colombian possession in the western Caribbean), southern Mexico, Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Costa Rica and Panama. It grows from sea level up to 1,800 m (5,500 ft) above sea level, in habitats ranging from Bahamian dry forests, to cloud forest in Costa Rica. Ficus aurea is found in central and southern Florida as far north as Volusia County; it is one of only two native fig species in Florida. The species is present in a range of south Florida ecosystems, including coastal hardwood hammocks, cabbage palm hammocks, tropical hardwood hammocks and shrublands, temperate hardwood hammocks and shrublands and along watercourses. In The Bahamas, F. aurea is found in tropical dry forests on North Andros, Great Exuma and Bimini. F. aurea occurs in 10 states in Mexico, primarily in the south, but extending as far north as Jalisco. It is found in tropical deciduous forest, tropical semi-evergreen forest, tropical evergreen forest, cloud forest and in aquatic or subaquatic habitats. ## Ecology Ficus aurea is a strangler fig—it tends to establish on a host tree which it gradually encircles and "strangles", eventually taking the place of that tree in the forest canopy. While this makes F. aurea an agent in the mortality of other trees, there is little to indicate that its choice of hosts is species specific. However, in dry forests on Great Exuma in The Bahamas, F. aurea establishes exclusively on palms, in spite of the presence of several other large trees that should provide suitable hosts. Eric Swagel and colleagues attributed this to the fact that humus accumulates on the leaf bases of these palms and provides a relatively moist microclimate in a dry environment, facilitating seedling survival. Figs are sometimes considered to be potential keystone species in communities of fruit-eating animals because of their asynchronous fruiting patterns. Nathaniel Wheelwright reports that emerald toucanets fed on unripe F. aurea fruit at times of fruit scarcity in Monteverde, Costa Rica. Wheelwright listed the species as a year-round food source for the resplendent quetzal at the same site. In the Florida Keys, F. aurea is one of five fruit species that dominate the diet fed by white-crowned pigeons to their nestlings. F. aurea is also important in the diet of mammalian frugivores—both fruit and young leaves are consumed by black howler monkeys in Belize. The interaction between figs and fig wasps is especially well-known (see section on reproduction, above). In addition to its pollinators (Pegoscapus mexicanus), F. aurea is exploited by a group of non-pollinating chalcidoid wasps whose larvae develop in its figs. These include gallers, inquilines and kleptoparasites as well as parasitoids of both the pollinating and non-pollinating wasps. The invertebrates within F. aurea syconia in southern Florida include a pollinating wasp, P. mexicanus, up to eight or more species of non-pollinating wasps, a plant-parasitic nematode transported by the pollinator, mites, and a predatory rove beetle whose adults and larvae eat fig wasps. Nematodes: Schistonchus aureus (Aphelenchoididae) is a plant-parasitic nematode associated with the pollinator Pegoscapus mexicanus and syconia of F. aurea. Mites: belonging to the family Tarsonemidae (Acarina) have been recognized in the syconia of F. aurea and F. citrifolia, but they have not been identified even to genus, and their behavior is undescribed. Rove beetles: Charoxus spinifer is a rove beetle (Coleoptera: Staphylinidae) whose adults enter late-stage syconia of F. aurea and F. citrifolia. Adults eat fig wasps; larvae develop within the syconia and prey on fig wasps, then pupate in the ground. As a large tree, F. aurea can be an important host for epiphytes. In Costa Rican cloud forests, where F. aurea is "the most conspicuous component" of intact forest, trees in forest patches supported richer communities of epiphytic bryophytes, while isolated trees supported greater lichen cover. Florida International University ecologist Suzanne Koptur reported the presence of extrafloral nectaries on F. aurea figs in the Florida Everglades. Extrafloral nectaries are structures which produce nectar but are not associated with flowers. They are usually interpreted as defensive structure and are often produced in response to attack by insect herbivores. They attract insects, primarily ants, which defend the nectaries, thus protecting the plant against herbivores. ## Uses Ficus aurea, amongst other related Ficus species, has been a source of bark for preparing amate, the bark paper used for codices in the Mesoamerican civilizations. The oldest example dates back to 75 CE and was found in a shaft tomb culture site in Huitzilapa, Jalisco in Mexico. The fruit of Ficus aurea is edible and was used for food by the Native Americans and early settlers in Florida; it is still eaten occasionally as a backyard source of native fruit. The latex was used to make a chewing gum, and aerial roots may have been used to make lashings, arrows, bowstrings and fishing lines. The fruit was used to make a rose-coloured dye. F. aurea was also used in traditional medicine in The Bahamas and Florida. Allison Adonizio and colleagues screened F. aurea for anti-quorum sensing activity (as a possible means of anti-bacterial action), but found no such activity. Individual F. aurea trees are common on dairy farms in La Cruz, Cañitas and Santa Elena in Costa Rica, since they are often spared when forest is converted to pasture. In interviews, farmers identified the species as useful for fence posts, live fencing and firewood, and as a food species for wild birds and mammals. Ficus aurea is used as an ornamental tree, an indoor tree and as a bonsai. Like other figs, it tends to invade built structures and foundations, and needs to be removed to prevent structural damage. Although young trees are described as "rather ornamental", older trees are considered to be difficult to maintain (because of the adventitious roots that develop off branches) and are not recommended for small areas. However, it was considered a useful tree for "enviroscaping" to conserve energy in south Florida, since it is "not as aggressive as many exotic fig species," although it must be given enough space.

Battle of Bicocca

Battle during the Italian War of 1521–26

The Battle of Bicocca or La Bicocca (Italian: Battaglia della Bicocca) was fought on 27 April 1522, during the Italian War of 1521–26. A combined French and Venetian force under Odet de Foix, Vicomte de Lautrec, was decisively defeated by an Imperial–Spanish and Papal army under the overall command of Prospero Colonna. Lautrec then withdrew from Lombardy, leaving the Duchy of Milan in Imperial hands. Having been driven from Milan by an Imperial advance in late 1521, Lautrec had regrouped, attempting to strike at Colonna's lines of communication. When the Swiss mercenaries in French service did not receive their pay, however, they demanded an immediate battle, and Lautrec was forced to attack Colonna's fortified position in the park of the Arcimboldi Villa Bicocca, north of Milan. The Swiss pikemen advanced over open fields under heavy artillery fire to assault the Imperial positions, but were halted at a sunken road backed by earthworks. Having suffered massive casualties from the fire of Spanish arquebusiers, the Swiss retreated. Meanwhile, an attempt by French cavalry to flank Colonna's position proved equally ineffective. The Swiss, unwilling to fight further, marched off to their cantons a few days later, and Lautrec retreated into Venetian territory with the remnants of his army. The battle is noted chiefly for marking the end of the Swiss dominance among the infantry of the Italian Wars, and of the Swiss method of assaults by massed columns of pikemen without support from other troops. It was also one of the first engagements in which firearms played a decisive role on the battlefield. ## Prelude At the start of the war in 1521, Holy Roman Emperor Charles V and Pope Leo X moved jointly against the Duchy of Milan, the principal French possession in Lombardy. A large Papal force under Federico II Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua, together with Spanish troops from Naples and some smaller Italian contingents, concentrated near Mantua. The German forces which Charles sent south to aid this venture passed through Venetian territory near Valeggio unmolested; the combined Papal, Spanish, and Imperial army then proceeded into French territory under the command of Prospero Colonna. For the next several months, Colonna fought an evasive war of maneuver against the French, besieging cities but refusing to give battle. By the autumn of 1521, Lautrec, who was holding a line along the Adda river to Cremona, began to suffer massive losses from desertion, particularly among his Swiss mercenaries. Colonna took the opportunity this offered and, advancing close to the Alps, crossed the Adda at Vaprio; Lautrec, lacking infantry and assuming the year's campaign to be over, withdrew to Milan. Colonna, however, had no intention of stopping his advance; in late November, he launched a surprise attack on the city, overwhelming the Venetian troops defending one of the walls. Following some abortive street-fighting, Lautrec withdrew to Cremona with about 12,000 men. By January 1522, the French had lost Alessandria, Pavia, and Como; and Francesco II Sforza, bringing further German reinforcements, had slipped past a Venetian force at Bergamo to join Colonna in Milan. Lautrec had meanwhile been reinforced by the arrival of 16,000 fresh Swiss pikemen and some further Venetian forces, as well as additional companies of French troops under the command of Thomas de Foix-Lescun and Pedro Navarro; he had also secured the services of the condottiere Giovanni de' Medici, who brought his Black Bands into the French service. The French proceeded to attack Novara and Pavia, hoping to draw Colonna into a decisive battle. Colonna, leaving Milan, fortified himself in the monastery of Certosa south of the city. Considering this position to be too strong to be easily assaulted, Lautrec attempted instead to threaten Colonna's lines of communication by sweeping around Milan to Monza, cutting the roads from the city into the Alps. Lautrec was suddenly confronted, however, with the intransigence of the Swiss, who formed the largest contingent of the French army. The Swiss complained that they had not received any of the pay promised them since their arrival in Lombardy, and their captains, led by Albert von Stein, demanded that Lautrec attack the Imperial army immediately—else the mercenaries would abandon the French and return to their cantons. Lautrec reluctantly acquiesced and marched south towards Milan. ## Battle ### Dispositions Colonna had meanwhile relocated to a formidable new position: the manor park of Bicocca, about four miles (6 km) north of Milan. The park was situated between a large expanse of marshy ground to the west and the main road into Milan to the east; along this road ran a deep wet ditch, which was crossed by a narrow stone bridge some distance south of the park. The north side of the park was bordered by a sunken road, which Colonna deepened, constructing an earthen rampart on the southern bank. The entire length of the north side of the park was less than 600 yards (550 m), allowing Colonna to place his troops quite densely; immediately behind the rampart were four ranks of Spanish arquebusiers, commanded by Fernando d'Ávalos, and behind them were blocks of Spanish pikemen and German landsknechts under Georg Frundsberg. The Imperial artillery, placed on several platforms jutting forward from the earthworks, was able to sweep the fields north of the park as well as parts of the sunken road itself. Most of the Imperial cavalry was placed at the south end of the park, far behind the infantry; a separate force of cavalry was positioned to the south, guarding the bridge. On the evening of 26 April, Lautrec sent a force under the Sieur de Pontdormy to reconnoiter the Imperial positions. Colonna, having observed the French presence, sent messengers to Milan to request reinforcements; Sforza arrived the next morning with 6,400 additional troops, joining the cavalry near the bridge to the south of Colonna's camp. At dawn on 27 April, Lautrec began his attack, sending the Black Bands to push aside the Spanish pickets and clear the ground before the Imperial positions. The French advance was headed by two columns of Swiss, each comprising about 4,000 to 7,000 men, accompanied by some artillery; this party was to assault the entrenched front of the Imperial camp directly. Lescun, meanwhile, led a body of cavalry south along the Milan road, intending to flank the camp and strike at the bridge to the rear. The remainder of the French army, including the French infantry, the bulk of the heavy cavalry, and the remnants of the Swiss, formed up in a broad line some distance behind the two Swiss columns; behind this was a third line, composed of the Venetian forces under Francesco Maria della Rovere, the Duke of Urbino. ### The Swiss attack The overall command of the Swiss assault was given to Anne de Montmorency. As the Swiss columns advanced towards the park, he ordered them to pause and wait for the French artillery to bombard the Imperial defences, but the Swiss refused to obey. Perhaps the Swiss captains doubted that the artillery would have any effect on the earthworks; historian Charles Oman suggests that it is more likely they were "inspired by blind pugnacity and self-confidence". In any case, the Swiss moved rapidly towards Colonna's position, leaving the artillery behind; there was apparently some rivalry between the two columns, as one, commanded by Arnold Winkelried of Unterwalden, was composed of men from the rural cantons, while the other, under Albert von Stein, consisted of the contingents from Bern and the urban cantons. The advancing Swiss quickly came into range of the Imperial artillery; unable to take cover on the level fields, they began to take substantial casualties, and as many as a thousand Swiss may have been killed by the time the columns reached the Imperial lines. The Swiss came to a sudden halt as the columns reached the sunken road in front of the park; the depth of the road and the height of the rampart behind it—together higher than the length of the Swiss pikes—effectively blocked their advance. Moving down into the road, the Swiss suffered massive casualties from the fire of d'Avalos's arquebusiers. Nevertheless, the Swiss made a series of desperate attempts to breach the Imperial line; some managed to reach the top of the rampart, only to be met by the landsknechts, who had come up from behind the arquebusiers. One of the Swiss captains was apparently killed by Frundsberg in single combat; and the Swiss, unable to form up atop the earthworks, were pushed back down into the sunken road. After attempting to move forward for about half an hour, the remnants of the Swiss columns retreated back towards the main French line Their total losses numbered more than 3,000, and included Winkelried, von Stein, and twenty other captains; of the French nobles who had accompanied them, only Montmorency survived. ### Denouement Lescun, with about 400 heavy cavalry under his command, had meanwhile reached the bridge south of the park and fought his way across it and into the Imperial camp beyond. Colonna responded by detaching some cavalry under Antonio de Leyva to halt the French advance, while Sforza came up the road towards the bridge, aiming to surround Lescun. Pontdormy held off the Milanese, allowing Lescun to extricate himself from the camp; the French cavalry then retraced its path and rejoined the main body of the army. Despite the urging of d'Avalos and several other Imperial commanders, Colonna refused to order a general attack on the French, pointing out that much of Lautrec's army—including his cavalry—was still intact. Colonna suggested that the French were already beaten, and would soon withdraw; this assessment was shared by Frundsberg. Nevertheless, some small groups of Spanish arquebusiers and light cavalry attempted to pursue the withdrawing Swiss, only to be beaten back by the Black Bands, which were covering the removal of the French artillery from the field. Colonna's judgement proved to be accurate; the Swiss were unwilling to make another assault, and marched for home on 30 April. Lautrec, believing that his resulting weakness in infantry made a further campaign impossible, retreated to the east, crossing the Adda into Venetian territory at Trezzo. Having reached Cremona, Lautrec departed for France, leaving Lescun in command of the remnants of the French army. ## Aftermath Lautrec's departure heralded a complete collapse of the French position in northern Italy. No longer menaced by the French army, Colonna and d'Avalos marched on Genoa, capturing it after a brief siege. Lescun, learning of the loss of Genoa, arranged an agreement with Sforza by which the Castello Sforzesco in Milan, which still remained in French hands, surrendered, and the remainder of the French forces withdrew over the Alps. The Venetians, under the newly elected Doge Andrea Gritti, were no longer interested in continuing the war; in July 1523, Gritti concluded the Treaty of Worms with Charles V, removing the Republic from the fighting. The French would make two further attempts to regain Lombardy before the end of the war, but neither would be successful; the terms of the Treaty of Madrid, which Francis was forced to sign after his defeat at the Battle of Pavia, would leave Italy in Imperial hands. Another effect of the battle was the changed attitude of the Swiss. Francesco Guicciardini wrote of the aftermath of Bicocca: > They went back to their mountains diminished in numbers, but much more diminished in audacity; for it is certain that the losses which they suffered at Bicocca so affected them that in the coming years they no longer displayed their wonted vigour. While Swiss mercenaries would continue to take part in the Italian Wars, they no longer possessed the willingness to make headlong attacks that they had at Novara in 1513 or Marignano in 1515; their performance at the Battle of Pavia in 1525 would surprise observers by its lack of initiative. More generally, the battle made apparent the decisive role of small arms on the battlefield. Although the full capabilities of the arquebus would not be demonstrated until the Battle of the Sesia (where arquebusiers would prevail against heavy cavalry on open ground) two years later, the weapon nevertheless became a sine qua non for any army which did not wish to grant a massive advantage to its opponents. While the pikeman would continue to play a vital role in warfare, it would be equal to that of the arquebusier; together, the two types of infantry would be combined into the so-called "pike and shot" units that would endure until the development of the bayonet at the end of the seventeenth century. The offensive doctrine of the Swiss—a "push of pike" unsupported by firearms—had become obsolete, and offensive doctrines in general were increasingly replaced with defensive ones; the combination of the arquebus and effective field fortification had made frontal assaults on entrenched positions too costly to be practical, and they were not attempted again for the duration of the Italian Wars. As a result of the battle, the word bicoca—meaning a bargain, or something acquired at little cost—entered the Spanish language.

Calutron

Mass spectrometer

A calutron is a mass spectrometer originally designed and used for separating the isotopes of uranium. It was developed by Ernest Lawrence during the Manhattan Project and was based on his earlier invention, the cyclotron. Its name was derived from California University Cyclotron, in tribute to Lawrence's institution, the University of California, where it was invented. Calutrons were used in the industrial-scale Y-12 uranium enrichment plant at the Clinton Engineer Works in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. The enriched uranium produced was used in the Little Boy atomic bomb that was detonated over Hiroshima on 6 August 1945. The calutron is a type of sector mass spectrometer, an instrument in which a sample is ionized and then accelerated by electric fields and deflected by magnetic fields. The ions ultimately collide with a plate and produce a measurable electric current. Since the ions of the different isotopes have the same electric charge but different masses, the heavier isotopes are deflected less by the magnetic field, causing the beam of particles to separate into several beams by mass, striking the plate at different locations. The mass of the ions can be calculated according to the strength of the field and the charge of the ions. During World War II, calutrons were developed to use this principle to obtain substantial quantities of high-purity uranium-235, by taking advantage of the small mass difference between uranium isotopes. Electromagnetic separation for uranium enrichment was abandoned in the post-war period in favor of the more complicated, but more efficient, gaseous diffusion method. Although most of the calutrons of the Manhattan Project were dismantled at the end of the war, some remained in use to produce isotopically enriched samples of naturally occurring elements for military, scientific and medical purposes. ## Origins News of the discovery of nuclear fission by German chemists Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann in 1938, and its theoretical explanation by Lise Meitner and Otto Frisch, was brought to the United States by Niels Bohr. Based on his liquid drop model of the nucleus, he theorized that it was the uranium-235 isotope and not the more abundant uranium-238 that was primarily responsible for fission with thermal neutrons. To verify this Alfred O. C. Nier at the University of Minnesota used a mass spectrometer to create a microscopic amount of enriched uranium-235 in April 1940. John R. Dunning, Aristid von Grosse and Eugene T. Booth were then able to confirm that Bohr was correct. Leo Szilard and Walter Zinn soon confirmed that more than one neutron was released per fission, which made it almost certain that a nuclear chain reaction could be initiated, and therefore that the development of an atomic bomb was a theoretical possibility. There were fears that a German atomic bomb project would develop one first, especially among scientists who were refugees from Nazi Germany and other fascist countries. At the University of Birmingham in Britain, the Australian physicist Mark Oliphant assigned two refugee physicists—Otto Frisch and Rudolf Peierls—the task of investigating the feasibility of an atomic bomb, ironically because their status as enemy aliens precluded their working on secret projects like radar. Their March 1940 Frisch–Peierls memorandum indicated that the critical mass of uranium-235 was within an order of magnitude of 10 kg, which was small enough to be carried by a bomber of the day. The British Maud Committee then unanimously recommended pursuing the development of an atomic bomb. Britain had offered to give the United States access to its scientific research, so the Tizard Mission's John Cockcroft briefed American scientists on British developments. He discovered that the American project was smaller than the British, and not as far advanced. A disappointed Oliphant flew to the United States to speak to the American scientists. These included Ernest Lawrence at the University of California's Radiation Laboratory in Berkeley. The two men had met before the war, and were friends. Lawrence was sufficiently impressed to commence his own research into uranium. Uranium-235 makes up only about 0.72% of natural uranium, so the separation factor of any uranium enrichment process needs to be higher than 1250 to produce 90% uranium-235 from natural uranium. The Maud Committee had recommended that this be done by a process of gaseous diffusion, but Oliphant had pioneered another technique in 1934: electromagnetic separation. This was the process that Nier had used. The principle of electromagnetic separation is that charged ions are deflected by a magnetic field, and lighter ones are deflected more than heavy ones. The reason the Maud Committee, and later its American counterpart, the S-1 Section of the Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD), had passed over the electromagnetic method was that while the mass spectrometer was capable of separating isotopes, it produced very low yields. The reason for this was the so-called space charge limitation. Positive ions have positive charge, so they tend to repel each other, which causes the beam to scatter. Drawing on his experience with the precise control of charged-particle beams from his work with his invention, the cyclotron, Lawrence suspected that the air molecules in the vacuum chamber would neutralize the ions, and create a focused beam. Oliphant inspired Lawrence to convert his old 37-inch (94 cm) cyclotron into a giant mass spectrometer for isotope separation. The 37-inch cyclotron at Berkeley was dismantled on 24 November 1941, and its magnet used to create the first calutron. Its name came from California University and cyclotron. The work was initially funded by the Radiation Laboratory from its own resources, with a \$5,000 grant from the Research Corporation. In December Lawrence received a \$400,000 grant from the S-1 Uranium Committee. The calutron consisted of an ion source, in the form of a box with a slit in it and hot filaments inside. Uranium tetrachloride was ionized by the filament, and then passed through a 0.04-by-2-inch (1.0 by 50.8 mm) slot into a vacuum chamber. The magnet was then used to deflect the ion beam by 180°. The enriched and depleted beams went into collectors. When the calutron was first operated on 2 December 1941, just days before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor brought the United States into World War II, a uranium beam intensity of 5 microamperes (μA) was received by the collector. Lawrence's hunch about the effect of the air molecules in the vacuum chamber was confirmed. A nine-hour run on 14 January 1942 with a 50 μA beam produced 18 micrograms (μg) of uranium enriched to 25% uranium-235, about ten times as much as Nier had produced. By February, improvements in the technique allowed it to generate a 1,400 μA beam. That month, 75 μg samples enriched to 30% were shipped to the British and the Metallurgical Laboratory in Chicago. Other researchers also investigated electromagnetic isotope separation. At Princeton University, a group led by Henry D. Smyth and Robert R. Wilson developed a device known as an isotron. Using a klystron, they were able to separate isotopes using high-voltage electricity rather than magnetism. Work continued until February 1943, when, in view of the greater success of the calutron, work was discontinued and the team was transferred to other duties. At Cornell University a group under Lloyd P. Smith that included William E. Parkins, and A. Theodore Forrester devised a radial magnetic separator. They were surprised that their beams were more precise than expected, and, like Lawrence, deduced that it was a result of stabilization of the beam by air in the vacuum chamber. In February 1942, their team was consolidated with Lawrence's in Berkeley. ## Research While the process had been demonstrated to work, considerable effort was still required before a prototype could be tested in the field. Lawrence assembled a team of physicists to tackle the problems, including David Bohm, Edward Condon, Donald Cooksey, A. Theodore Forrester, Irving Langmuir, Kenneth Ross MacKenzie, Frank Oppenheimer, J. Robert Oppenheimer, William E. Parkins, Bernard Peters and Joseph Slepian. In November 1943 they were joined by a British Mission headed by Oliphant that included fellow Australian physicists Harrie Massey and Eric Burhop, and British physicists such as Joan Curran and Thomas Allibone. Lawrence had a large cyclotron under construction at Berkeley, one with a 184-inch (470 cm) magnet. This was converted into a calutron that was switched on for the first time on 26 May 1942. Like the 37-inch version, it looked like a giant C when viewed from above. The operator sat in the open end, whence the temperature could be regulated, the position of the electrodes adjusted, and even components replaced through an airlock while it was running. The new, more powerful calutron was not used to produce enriched uranium, but for experiments with multiple ion sources. This meant having more collectors, but it multiplied the throughput. The problem was that the beams interfered with each other, producing a series of oscillations called hash. An arrangement was devised that minimized the interference, resulting in reasonably good beams being produced, in September 1942. Robert Oppenheimer and Stan Frankel invented the magnetic shim, a device used to adjust the homogeneity of a magnetic field. These were sheets of iron about 3 feet (1 m) in width that were bolted to the top and bottom of the vacuum tank. The effect of the shims was to slightly increase the magnetic field in such a way as to help focus the ion beam. Work would continue on the shims through 1943. The main calutron patents were Methods of and apparatus for separating materials (Lawrence), Magnetic shims (Oppenheimer and Frankel), and Calutron system (Lawrence). Burhop and Bohm later studied the characteristics of electric discharges in magnetic fields, today known as Bohm diffusion. Their papers on the properties of plasmas under magnetic containment would find usage in the post-war world in research into controlled nuclear fusion. Other technical problems were more mundane but no less important. Although the beams had low intensity, they could, over many hours of operation, still melt the collectors. A water cooling system was therefore added to the collectors and the tank liner. Procedures were developed for cleaning the "gunk" that condensed inside the vacuum tank. A particular problem was blockage of the slits by "crud", which caused the ion beams to lose focus, or stop entirely. The chemists had to find a way of producing quantities of uranium tetrachloride (UCl ₄) from uranium oxide. (Nier had used uranium bromide.) Initially, they produced it by using hydrogen to reduce uranium trioxide (UO ₃) to uranium dioxide (UO ₂), which was then reacted with carbon tetrachloride (CCl ₄) to produce uranium tetrachloride. Charles A. Kraus proposed a better method for large-scale production that involved reacting the uranium oxide with carbon tetrachloride at high temperature and pressure. This produced uranium pentachloride (UCl ₅) and phosgene (COCl ₂). While nowhere near as nasty as the uranium hexafluoride used by the gaseous diffusion process, uranium tetrachloride is hygroscopic, so work with it had to be undertaken in gloveboxes that were kept dry with phosphorus pentoxide (P ₄O ₁₀). The presence of phosgene, a lethal gas responsible for 85,000 deaths as a chemical weapon during World War I, required that the chemists wear gas masks when handling it. Of the \$19.6 million spent on research and development of the electromagnetic process, \$18 million (92 percent) was spent at the Radiation Laboratory in Berkeley, and further work conducted at Brown University, Johns Hopkins University and Purdue University, and by the Tennessee Eastman corporation. During 1943, the emphasis shifted from research to development, engineering, and the training of workers to operate the production facilities at the Clinton Engineer Works in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. By the middle of 1944, there were nearly 1,200 people working at the Radiation Laboratory. ## Design Much of the great progress on the electromagnetic process can be attributed to Lawrence's leadership style. His audacity, optimism and enthusiasm were contagious. His staff put in long hours, and University of California administrators sliced through red tape despite not knowing what the project was about. Government officials began to view the development of atomic bombs in time to affect the outcome of the war as a genuine possibility. Vannevar Bush, the director of the OSRD, which was overseeing the project, visited Berkeley in February 1942, and found the atmosphere there "stimulating" and "refreshing". On 9 March 1942, he reported to the president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, that it might be possible to produce enough material for a bomb by mid-1943, based on new estimates from Robert Oppenheimer that the critical mass of a sphere of pure uranium-235 was between 2.0 and 2.5 kilograms. The experiments with the 184-inch magnet led to the construction of a prototype calutron called the XA. It contained a rectangular, three-coil magnet with a horizontal field in which the calutron tanks could stand side by side, with four vacuum tanks, each with a double source. At the 25 June 1942 meeting of the S-1 Executive Committee, which had superseded the S-1 Uranium Committee on 19 June, there was a proposal to build the electromagnetic plant at Oak Ridge, where the other Manhattan Project uranium separation facilities would be located, for reasons of economy and security. Lawrence lodged an objection due to his desire to have the electromagnetic separation plant located much nearer to Berkeley. The Shasta Dam area in California remained under consideration for the electromagnetic plant until September 1942, by which time Lawrence had dropped his objection. The 25 June meeting also designated Stone & Webster as the primary contractor for the design and engineering. The Army assumed responsibility for the Manhattan Project on 17 September 1942, with Brigadier General Leslie R. Groves, Jr., as director, although the Army did not formally take over the contracts with the University of California from the OSRD until 1 May 1943. Major Thomas T. Crenshaw, Jr., became California Area Engineer in August 1942, with Captain Harold A. Fidler, who soon replaced him, as his assistant. Crenshaw established his office in the Donner Laboratory at the University of California. In September 1942, the S-1 Executive Committee recommended that a five-tank pilot plant be built along with a 200-tank section of a production plant. Between October 1942 and November 1943, Groves paid monthly visits to the Radiation Laboratory in Berkeley. Reports indicated that compared to the alternatives of a gaseous diffusion plant or a plutonium-producing nuclear reactor, an electromagnetic plant would take longer and require more scarce materials to build, and need more manpower and more electricity to operate. The cost of a kilogram of fissile material would therefore be much greater. On the other hand, while the alternative processes still faced considerable technical obstacles, the electromagnetic process was proven to work, and could be built in stages that would immediately start producing fissile material. Groves cancelled the pilot plant on 14 November, in favor of proceeding immediately with the production plant. The Radiation Laboratory forwarded the preliminary designs for a production plant to Stone & Webster before the end of the year, but one important issue remained unsettled. Oppenheimer contended that weapons-grade uranium would have to be 90% pure uranium-235. Edward Lofgren and Martin Kamen thought that this could not be achieved without a second stage of enrichment. The two stages became known as Alpha and Beta. In March 1943, Groves approved the construction of five Alpha and two Beta racetracks. In September, he authorized four more Alpha racetracks, which became known as Alpha II, along with two more Beta racetracks to process their product. ## Construction Construction of the electromagnetic plant at Oak Ridge, codenamed Y-12, commenced 18 February 1943. The facility would eventually comprise nine major process buildings and 200 other structures covering almost 80 acres (32 ha) of floor space. The 825-acre (334 ha) site in Bear Creek Valley southwest of the Oak Ridge township was selected in the hope that the surrounding ridge lines might contain a major explosion or nuclear accident. Problems with the substratum required the excavation crews to perform more blasting and excavation to provide adequate foundations for the heavy machinery in the facilities. Supplies and materials of all kinds poured in: 2,157 carloads of electrical equipment, 1,219 of heavy equipment, 5,389 of lumber, 1,407 of pipe and fittings, 1,188 of steel, 257 of valves, and 11 of welding electrodes. The racetracks required 85,000 vacuum tubes. Where possible, off-the-shelf components were used, but all too many components of the calutrons were unique. Two purchasing departments were established, one in Boston near Stone & Webster for facility equipment, and the other at Oak Ridge for construction supplies. The Chief Engineer of the Manhattan District, Colonel James C. Marshall, and his deputy, Lieutenant Colonel Kenneth D. Nichols, discovered that the electromagnetic isotope separation process would require 5,000 short tons (4,500 tonnes) of copper, which was in desperately short supply. However, they realized that silver could be substituted, in an 11:10 ratio of copper:silver. On 3 August 1942, Nichols met with the Under Secretary of the Treasury, Daniel W. Bell, and asked for the transfer of silver bullion from the West Point Bullion Depository. Nichols later recalled the conversation: > He explained the procedure for transferring the silver and asked, "How much do you need?" I replied, "Six thousand tons." 'How many troy ounces is that?" he asked. In fact I did not know how to convert tons to troy ounces, and neither did he. A little impatient, I responded, "I don't know how many troy ounces we need but I know I need six thousand tons—that is a definite quantity. What difference does it make how we express the quantity?" He replied rather indignantly, "Young man, you may think of silver in tons, but the Treasury will always think of silver in troy ounces." Eventually, 14,700 short tons (13,300 tonnes; 430,000,000 troy ounces) of silver were used, then worth over \$600 million. Nichols had to provide a monthly accounting to the Treasury. The 1,000-troy-ounce (31 kg) silver bars were taken under guard to the Defense Plant Corporation in Carteret, New Jersey, where they were cast into cylindrical billets, and then to Phelps Dodge in Bayway, New Jersey, where they were extruded into strips 0.625 inches (15.9 mm) thick, 3 inches (7.6 cm) wide and 40 feet (12 m) long. Some 258 carloads were shipped under guard by rail to Allis-Chalmers in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where they were wound onto magnetic coils and sealed into welded casings. Finally, they moved by unguarded flatcars to the Clinton Engineer Works. There, special procedures were instituted for handling the silver. When they had to drill holes in it, they did so over paper so that the filings could be collected. After the war, all the machinery was dismantled and cleaned and the floorboards beneath the machinery were ripped up and burned to recover minute amounts of silver. In the end, 155,645.39 troy ounces (4,841.113 kg) or less than 0.036% was lost. In May 1970, the last 67 short tons (61 tonnes; 2,000,000 troy ounces) of silver was replaced with copper and returned to the Treasury. The XAX racetrack with two tanks and three coils was ready to train workers in August 1943. Bugs were discovered, but were not aggressively followed up. The first Alpha process building, 9201-1, was completed on 1 November 1943. When the first racetrack was started up for testing on schedule in November, the 14-ton vacuum tanks crept out of alignment by as much as 3 inches (8 cm) because of the power of the magnets and had to be fastened more securely. A more serious problem arose when the magnetic coils started shorting out. In December Groves ordered a magnet broken open, and handfuls of rust were found inside. Moisture was also a problem in its own right, as was the winding of the wire, which was too tight. Groves ordered the racetracks to be torn down and the magnets sent back to the factory to be cleaned and rewound. Rigid standards for preparation and cleanliness were instituted to prevent a recurrence of these problems. Training for the Beta tracks shifted from the XAX to the XBX training and development racetrack in November 1943. A second Alpha I racetrack became operational in January 1944. The first Beta racetrack and the third and first Alpha racetracks, now repaired, became operational in March 1944, and the fourth Alpha racetrack in April 1944. A third building, 9201-3, contained a fifth racetrack that incorporated some modifications, and was known as Alpha I1⁄2. This became operational on 3 June 1944. Work on the Alpha and Beta chemistry buildings, 9202 and 9203, commenced in February 1943, and was completed in September. Work on the Beta process building, 9204-1, began in May 1943, and was ready for operation on 13 March 1944, but was not completed until September 1944. Groves authorized Alpha II in September 1943. This consisted of two new Alpha process buildings, 9201-4 and 9201-5, another Beta, 9204-2, an extension to the Alpha chemistry building, and a new Beta chemistry building, 9206. When 9206 opened, the old Beta chemistry building, 9203, was converted into a laboratory. Work started on the new Alpha II process buildings on 2 November 1943; the first racetrack was completed in July 1944, and all four were operational by 1 October 1944. The Alpha II racetracks were configured in a linear layout rather than an oval, although they were still called racetracks. In all, there were 864 Alpha calutrons, arranged in nine racetracks of 96. There were only 36 calutrons in each Beta racetrack, for a total of 288 calutrons, although only 216 of them were ever operated. Work on the new Beta process building commenced on 20 October 1943. Equipment installation began on 1 April 1944, and it was ready for use on 10 September 1944. A third Beta process building, 9204-3, was authorized in May 1944 to process the output of the K-25 gaseous diffusion plant. It was completed on 15 May 1945. A fourth Beta process building, 9204-4, was authorized on 2 April 1945 and was completed by 1 December 1945. A new group of Alpha chemistry buildings known as the 9207 group was commenced in June 1944, but work was halted in June 1945 before they were completed. Along with these main buildings, there were offices, workshops, warehouses and other structures. There were two steam plants for heating, and a power plant for electricity. ## Operations The Alpha racetracks were a 24-fold magnification of the XA calutron that could hold 96 calutron Alpha tanks. The calutrons were upright and arrayed facing each other in pairs of inner and outer machines. To minimize magnetic losses, and to economize on steel consumption, the assembly was curved into an oval shape that formed a closed magnetic loop 122 feet (37 m) long, 77 feet (23 m) wide and 15 feet (4.6 m) high, in the shape of a racetrack; hence the name. The two Alpha I buildings, 9201-1 and 9201-2, each contained two racetracks, with only one in the Alpha I1⁄2, 9201-3. The Beta racetracks were smaller, linear in shape, and optimized for recovery rather than production, with only 36 instead of 96 process bins. The four Alpha II racetracks were also linear in configuration. They incorporated many improvements, the most important being that they had four sources instead of just two. They also had improved magnets and vacuum systems. Tennessee Eastman was hired to manage Y-12 on the usual cost plus fixed fee basis, with a fee of \$22,500 per month plus \$7,500 per racetrack for the first seven racetracks and \$4,000 per additional racetrack. Workers were recruited in the Knoxville area. The typical recruit was a young woman, a recent graduate of a local high school. Training was initially conducted at the University of Tennessee. Training switched to Berkeley from April to September 1943, where it was conducted on the XA calutron and a 1:16 scale model of the Alpha racetrack, and then to Oak Ridge when the XAX calutron became available. Some 2,500 operators would be required once all the Alpha II calutrons were available. The Tennessee Eastman payroll at Y-12 ballooned from 10,000 in mid-1944 to 22,482 in August 1945. For security reasons, the trainees were not informed of the purpose of the equipment they were taught to operate. The calutrons were initially operated by scientists from Berkeley to remove bugs and achieve a reasonable operating rate. Then the Tennessee Eastman operators took over. Nichols compared unit production data, and pointed out to Lawrence that the young "hillbilly" girl operators were outproducing his Ph.Ds. They agreed to a production race and Lawrence lost, a morale boost for the "Calutron Girls" (called Cubicle Operators at the time) and their supervisors. The women were trained like soldiers not to reason why, while "the scientists could not refrain from time-consuming investigation of the cause of even minor fluctuations of the dials". For a while, the calutrons suffered from a series of debilitating breakdowns and equipment failures, exacerbated by a shortage of spare parts. Hopes that the Alpha II racetracks would be more reliable soon faded, as they were plagued by insulator failures. These problems were gradually overcome. The first shipments of enriched uranium to the Manhattan Project's Los Alamos Laboratory were made in March 1944, consisting of Alpha product enriched to 13 to 15 percent uranium-235. While of no use in a bomb, it was urgently required for experiments with enriched uranium. The last shipment of Alpha product was made on 11 May 1944. On 7 June 1944, Y-12 made its first delivery of weapons-grade Beta product, enriched to as high as 89% uranium-235. A major problem was that of loss of feed material and product. Only 1 part in 5,825 of the feed material became finished product. About 90 percent was splattered over the feed bottles or vacuum tanks. The problem was particularly acute with the enriched feed of the Beta calutrons. Extraordinary efforts were made to recover product, including burning the carbon receiver liners to recover the uranium in them. Despite everything, some 17.4 percent of Alpha product and 5.4 percent of Beta product was lost. Frank Spedding from the Manhattan Project's Ames Laboratory and Philip Baxter from the British Mission were sent to advise on improvements to recovery methods. The death of a worker from exposure to phosgene also prompted a search for a safer production process. In February 1945, slightly enriched 1.4 percent uranium-235 feed material began arriving from the S-50 liquid thermal diffusion plant. Shipments of product from S-50 were discontinued in April. S-50 product was fed into K-25 instead. In March 1945, Y-12 began receiving feed enriched to 5 percent from K-25. The output of these plants was in the form of uranium hexafluoride (UF ₆). It was converted to uranium trioxide, which then went into the usual process for conversion to uranium tetrachloride. On 5 August 1945, K-25 started producing feed enriched to 23 percent, enough to be fed straight into the Beta racetracks. The remaining Alpha product was then fed into K-25. By September 1945, the calutrons had produced 88 kilograms of product with an average enrichment of 84.5 percent, and the Beta racetracks turned out another 953 kilograms enriched to 95 percent by the end of the year. Enriched uranium from the calutrons provided the fissile component of the Little Boy atomic bomb used in the atomic bombing of Hiroshima in August 1945. With the war over, the Alpha tracks began to suspend operations on 4 September 1945, and ceased operation completely on 22 September. The last two Beta tracks went into full operation in November and December 1945, processing feed from K-25 and the new K-27 gaseous diffusion plant. By May 1946, studies suggested that the gaseous diffusion plants could fully enrich the uranium by themselves without accidentally creating a critical mass. After a trial demonstrated that this was the case, Groves ordered all but one Beta track shut down in December 1946. The total cost of the electromagnetic project up to the end of the Manhattan Project on 31 December 1946 was \$673 million (equivalent to \$ in ). ## Postwar years The workforce at Y-12 dropped from a wartime peak of 22,482 on 21 August 1945 to less than 1,700 in 1949. All the calutrons were removed and dismantled, except for the XAX and XBX training tracks in Building 9731, and the Beta 3 racetracks in Building 9204–3. In 1947, Eugene Wigner, the director of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), asked the Atomic Energy Commission for permission to use the Beta calutrons to produce isotopes for physics experiments. Permission was granted, and a wide range of isotopes was produced. Lithium-6 from the Beta calutrons was used for research into thermonuclear weapons. Many other isotopes were used for peaceful scientific and medical purposes. The Beta 3 racetracks were transferred to the ORNL in March 1950. By the mid-1950s, the Beta calutrons had produced quantities of all the naturally occurring stable isotopes except those of osmium, which had to wait until April 1960. The calutrons continued to produce isotopes until 1998. As of 2015, they are still on standby. ## Other countries ### Soviet Union and China Like the United States, the Soviet Union (USSR) carried out research on multiple enrichment technologies for the Soviet atomic bomb project. A trial electromagnetic process was carried out in 1946 with a calutron using a magnet taken from Germany. A site was chosen for an electromagnetic plant at Sverdlovsk-45 in 1946. The pilot plant, known as Plant 418, was completed in 1948. A more efficient design was developed in which the particle beams were bent by 225° instead of 180° as in the American calutron. It was used to complete the uranium enrichment process after technical difficulties were encountered with the gaseous diffusion process. Uranium enriched to about 40 percent uranium-235 was brought to Sverdlovsk-45 for final enrichment to between 92 and 98 percent. After the problems with the gaseous diffusion process were resolved in 1950, it was decided not to proceed with a full-scale electromagnetic plant. As of 2009, it remains operational. In 1969, a research calutron known as S-2 was built at Arzamas-16 for high-efficiency separation of isotopes of heavy elements like plutonium. Four research and production calutrons were built at the China Institute of Atomic Energy in Beijing of identical design to those of the USSR in the early 1960s. ### United Kingdom In 1945, the British atomic bomb project built a 180° calutron, similar in design to an American Beta calutron, at the Atomic Energy Research Establishment at Harwell, Oxfordshire. Owing to the success of the gaseous diffusion plant at Capenhurst, electromagnetic separation was not pursued by the United Kingdom, and the calutron was used to separate isotopes for research. The 180° design was not ideal for this purpose, so Harwell built a 90° calutron, HERMES, the "Heavy Elements and Radioactive Material Electromagnetic Separator". It was inspired by France's SIDONIE and PARIS separators at the Laboratoire René Bernas of the University of Paris IX in Orsay, and PARSIFAL at the military research laboratory of the Commissariat à l'énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives in Bruyères-le-Châtel. ### Israel, Japan, and France Israel, Japan and France also built some research calutrons, including the SOLIS and MEIRA separators at the Soreq Nuclear Research Center. There is also CERN's Isotope Separator On-Line Detector (ISOLDE), which was built in 1967. ### India A calutron at the Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics at Bidhan Nagar in India was used to produce plutonium for India's first nuclear test on 18 May 1974. ### Iraq After the 1990–91 Gulf War, UNSCOM determined that Iraq had been pursuing a calutron program to enrich uranium. Iraq chose to develop the electromagnetic process over more modern, economic, and efficient methods of enrichment because calutrons were easier to build, with fewer technical challenges, and the components required to build them were not subject to export controls. At the time the program was discovered, Iraq was estimated to be two or three years away from producing enough material for nuclear weapons. The program was destroyed in the Gulf War. Consequently, the Nuclear Suppliers Group added the electromagnetic separation equipment to its guidelines for transfers of nuclear-related dual-use equipment, material and technology.

Weight Gain 4000

"Weight Gain 4000" is the third episode of the first season of the American animated television series South Park. It first aired on Comedy Central in the United States on August 27, 1997. In the episode, the residents of South Park excitedly prepare for a visit by celebrity Kathie Lee Gifford, whom the boys' third-grade teacher Mr. Garrison plans to assassinate because of a childhood grudge. In the meantime, Cartman becomes extremely obese after constantly eating a bodybuilding supplement called Weight Gain 4000. The episode was written and directed by series co-founders Trey Parker and Matt Stone. After the South Park pilot episode, "Cartman Gets an Anal Probe", drew poor test audience results, Comedy Central requested a script for one more new episode before deciding whether or not to commit to a full series. The resulting script for "Weight Gain 4000" helped the network decide to pick up the show. It was the first South Park episode created completely using computers rather than construction paper. Although some reviewers criticized the episode for its profanity and other material deemed offensive at the time of its original broadcast, several others felt "Weight Gain 4000" was a significant improvement over the pilot, particularly for its satirical element regarding American consumerism. The episode introduced such recurring characters as Jimbo Kern, Mayor McDaniels, Bebe Stevens and Clyde Donovan. The show's portrayal of Kathie Lee Gifford was the first time a celebrity was spoofed in South Park. ## Plot South Park Elementary teacher Mr. Garrison announces that Cartman has won the school's "Save Our Fragile Planet" essay contest, much to the anger of his classmate Wendy Testaburger, who immediately suspects him of cheating. The rest of the town becomes a flurry of excitement upon learning celebrity television host Kathie Lee Gifford will come to South Park to present Cartman with an award on national television. Mayor McDaniels plans a big event to showcase the town, with hopes of furthering her own career. Mr. Garrison directs rehearsals for a play with the schoolchildren depicting the history of South Park, which is to be shown at the event. Mayor McDaniels is horrified, however, to learn the historically accurate play includes children playing pioneers who attack and brutally beat the students portraying Native Americans. Garrison later gets fired for badmouthing Gifford. Unbeknownst to the rest of town, Mr. Garrison relives a traumatic childhood memory in which a young Gifford defeated him in a national talent show. Mr. Garrison is manipulated by his hand puppet, Mr. Hat, to assassinate Gifford out of revenge. He purchases a large rifle from Jimbo's gun shop and plots to shoot Gifford. Meanwhile, Cartman is excited to appear on live television, and Mayor McDaniels instructs him to get into shape for Gifford's visit. Seeing a television commercial for a bodybuilding supplement called "Weight Gain 4000", Cartman asks his mother to buy it for him. Cartman becomes extremely fat from the product, although he believes he is in excellent shape and the excess weight is strictly muscle. Back at the school, Wendy looks through Mr. Garrison's papers and confirms Cartman indeed cheated on the contest by writing his name on a copy of Walden by Henry David Thoreau. Wendy also learns about Mr. Garrison's assassination plan, and enlists the help of her friend Stan to stop him. Gifford arrives, and most of the town attends the celebratory event, where Chef sings a song to seduce her. Mr. Garrison takes his position in a tall book depository, but he is frustrated to see that Gifford is hidden behind a bulletproof glass bubble. Wendy and Stan arrive and try unsuccessfully to stop Mr. Garrison, saying that they understand his pain, but when Stan accidentally reignites Garrison's anger, he decides to go through with the assassination. Just as he is about to fire, Cartman's new immense weight causes the stage to collapse, catapulting Gifford off it, and causing the bullet to hit Kenny in the head. Kenny is propelled through the air and impaled on a flagpole. Gifford's bodyguards whisk Gifford away, costing a disappointed Cartman his chance to be on television. Wendy takes to the stage and reveals that Cartman cheated on his essay, but the townspeople are too upset about Gifford's departure to care. Mr. Garrison is taken to a mental hospital, where Mr. Hat is placed into a straitjacket. Mr. Garrison apologizes to the kids for costing the town a chance to be on television, although Kyle explains to him that Cartman is now appearing on talk show Geraldo because of his tremendous obesity. Meanwhile, Chef is lying in bed with Gifford post-coital while watching Geraldo. ## Production "Weight Gain 4000" was written and directed by series co-creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone. It first aired on Comedy Central in the United States on August 27, 1997.The South Park pilot, "Cartman Gets an Anal Probe", did not do well with test audiences, and Comedy Central executives were unsure whether they wanted to order any additional episodes. However, they paid Parker and Stone to write another script when Internet buzz began to generate about the duo and their work on The Spirit of Christmas, the 1995 animated short film that served as a precursor to South Park. The network opted not to commit to a full Comedy Central series until they could read the newly commissioned script. The result was "Weight Gain 4000", which the two South Park creators wrote while they were working on their 1997 comedy-action film, Orgazmo. In writing the script, the duo sought to give Comedy Central executives an idea of what the series would be like and how each show could differ from the others. Parker and Stone also said they would not write another script until the network signed off on the full show with a season of at least six episodes. Comedy Central liked the script and agreed to commit to a series. While "Cartman Gets an Anal Probe" was created almost entirely with construction paper, "Weight Gain 4000" was the first South Park episode made completely using computers. It was created in little over a month in a studio in Westwood, California, by about 15 animators using PowerAnimator, the Alias Systems Corporation animation program most commonly known as "Alias", which would be used in subsequent episodes. In the future, South Park shows would be created within a week of their broadcast dates and require about 40 animators. "Weight Gain 4000" was animated in chronological order from beginning to end. Although Parker and Stone sought to improve the details and textures of the characters and overall animation, they also specifically chose Alias because it would allow the animation to maintain the deliberately crude visual style they first created with construction paper in The Spirit of Christmas and "Cartman Gets an Anal Probe". The South Park creators and animators said they were still developing the characters and trying to figure out the future direction of the show with "Weight Gain 4000", which was more slow-paced than the series would eventually become. The 30-page script was shorter than in later episodes, which would average between 45 and 50 pages. The child protagonists also spoke slower. While recording their voice performances, the actors read the lines slowly and the dialogue was then sped up to create the characters' distinctive voices. At that time, Parker and Stone had not mastered the pace at which they needed to speak. The crowd shots in "Weight Gain 4000" took a particularly long time to animate due to the large number of people featured, and the animators were especially proud of the use of depth and motion in the perspective of the crosshairs in Mr. Garrison's rifle scope as he tried to assassinate Kathie Lee Gifford. Mr. Garrison's hatred for Gifford was foreshadowed in "Cartman Gets an Anal Probe", where the sentence "I'm not positive, but I think Cathy [sic] Lee Gifford is much older than she claims to be", can be seen on his classroom's chalkboard. During a flashback scene in "Weight Gain 4000", an eight-year-old Mr. Garrison is shown to already be bald on top with gray hair on the side of his ears. This led to an inconsistency in the first season episode "Cartman's Mom is a Dirty Slut", in which he has a full head of hair during a flashback. ## Themes Describing the general tone of the show, Teri Fitsell of The New Zealand Herald explains that "South Park is a vicious social satire that works by spotlighting not the immorality of these kids but their amorality, and contrasting it with the conniving hypocrisy of the adults who surround them." The humor of the show comes from the disparity between the cute appearance of the characters and their crude behavior. However, Parker and Stone said in an early interview that the show's language is realistic. "There are so many shows where little kids are good and sweet, and it's just not real ... Don't people remember what they were like in third grade? We were little bastards." Although these elements were established in "Cartman Gets an Anal Probe" and the Spirit of Christmas precursor cartoons, "Weight Gain 4000" further pushed the conventions of television, and especially of animated television entertainment. In addition to a continued stream of profanities and the promiscuous activities of Chef, an elementary school employee, the episode presents the character of Mr. Garrison as more and more unhinged. Although entrusted with the care of an elementary school class, Mr. Garrison demonstrates a questionable gender identity, poor teaching and unusual relationship with his Mr. Hat hand puppet. "Weight Gain 4000" served as a commentary on American consumerism, the equation of personal happiness with consumption and the purchase of material possessions. This satire is particularly demonstrated by Cartman's blind faith in the Weight Gain 4000 bodybuilding supplement product despite strong evidence that the product fails at its primary function. Specifically, the product promises to build muscle, and Cartman believes it has fulfilled this function even after he only becomes extremely overweight. This blind faith is also illustrated by the complete disregard Cartman demonstrates for warnings that Weight Gain 4000 carries a risk of permanent damage to the liver and kidneys. The tremendous amount of product Cartman buys is further indicative of American purchasing habits. Cartman's impulse to buy a bodybuilding supplement based on a single commercial has been described as a satire of the concept of "identity shopping". The concept involves the obtaining of an identity through what one owns, wears or buys, just as Cartman seeks to remake himself as a bodybuilder by buying Weight Gain 4000. "Weight Gain 4000" also satirizes the obsession with celebrity prevalent among most Americans, particularly through the town's overly enthusiastic reaction to Kathie Lee Gifford's appearance. Additionally, Anglican theologian Paul F. M. Zahl has suggested Cartman's addiction to food in the episode, combined with his blind faith in the Weight Gain 4000 supplement and his insistence to "follow your dreams", reflects the idea that many people falsely cling to the notion of free will when they in fact lack any self-control whatsoever. Zahl wrote, "The two writers of South Park see through the myth of 'free will.'" ## Cultural references and impact "Weight Gain 4000" introduced several characters who would maintain important recurring roles throughout the rest of the series. Among them were Jimbo Kern, Mayor McDaniels, and Wendy's best friend Bebe Stevens. It also introduces Clyde Donovan, a student from Mr. Garrison's class who would eventually play significant roles in future seasons, although he was not identified by name. The characters demonstrate the wide range of often-extreme personalities among the adult residents of South Park, as well as serving as individual satires. McDaniels, who imagines herself an instant star upon being seen on television with Gifford, is portrayed as more caring about her own fame than the needs of her constituents, and the neglect with which Jimbo sells a gun to an obviously unstable Mr. Garrison serves as a satire of gun control. Jimbo and his friend Ned (who was introduced in "Volcano") were inspired by caricatures Parker used to draw during high school. In creating McDaniels, Parker and Stone envisioned a sophisticated mayor who was convinced she was better than the other residents of South Park. The episode also marked the first reference to Jesus and Pals, the public-access television talk show hosted by Jesus Christ. The fictional show is mentioned twice in the background during commercials on television sets, although footage from the show itself is not shown until "Big Gay Al's Big Gay Boat Ride" later in the season. Jesus and Pals, and the idea of Jesus as a South Park resident, are references to the original The Spirit of Christmas cartoon. Debbie Liebling, who served as a South Park producer at the time of the episode's broadcast, said the inclusion of a television show hosted by Jesus helped convey for audiences the idea of South Park as a place where "anything can happen". Kathie Lee Gifford, then a television hostess on the morning talk show Live with Regis and Kathie Lee, was the first of many celebrities to be spoofed in a South Park episode. The South Park creators said they chose Gifford completely at random, not based on any particular reason or distaste for her. Shortly after "Weight Gain 4000" aired, the tabloid The Globe hired Suzen Johnson to film herself seducing Frank Gifford, Kathie Lee's husband, for a newspaper story. The incident was the first of what Parker and Stone called the "South Park Curse", in which something tragic or embarrassing supposedly happens to a celebrity shortly before or after they were featured in South Park. Actress Karri Turner provided the voice of Gifford in "Weight Gain 4000", marking her first and only guest appearance on South Park. Gifford appears at a parade hidden inside a bulletproof glass bubble. The bubble was inspired by an appearance Pope John Paul II made in the Popemobile during a trip to Denver, which was attended by Parker and Stone. They thought the design of the Popemobile, which has a bulletproof booth built into the back of a modified truck, was "hilarious". The design of the trophy that Gifford was to give to Cartman is a reference to Parker and Stone's 1997 film Orgazmo. The line "Beefcake", which Eric Cartman enthusiastically screams after hearing it on a Weight Gain 4000 commercial, became a well-known catchphrase following the episode's broadcast, and clothing items with Cartman shouting the line became very popular. One of the earliest and largest South Park fan sites was called www.beef-cake.com. Matt Stone and site creator Taison Tan decided to shut the site down in April 2001 when the official site South Park Studios launched. South Park: Chef's Luv Shack, a 1999 video game from developer Acclaim, included a mini-game called "Beefcake", in which players control a Cartman character who moves back and forth between the screen eating cans of Weight Gain 4000 that are thrown down at him. The salesmen from "Weight Gain 4000" are featured as antagonists in the mini-game. The "beefcake" commercial featured in the episode is also briefly seen in the third season episode "Two Guys Naked in a Hot Tub", when Stan is quickly flipping through channels on his television. ## Release and reception When "Weight Gain 4000" premiered, many writers in the mainstream media were still debating the longevity and overall quality of South Park. With the series still in its earliest stages, the episode continued to shock many with its frequent use of profanities by children and the apparent instability of school teacher Mr. Garrison. Audiences were especially shocked by the violence depicted among children during a South Park history play, which included the use of guns and portrayed the bloody slaughter of Native Americans at the hands of white settlers. Audiences were also shocked and offended by Chef's sexually suggestive song about Gifford. Nevertheless, several reviewers declared "Weight Gain 4000" a significant improvement over the pilot, "Cartman Gets an Anal Probe", and felt it went in a much more satirical direction. Jeff Simon of The Buffalo News, who did not like "Cartman Gets an Anal Probe", felt "Weight Gain 4000" proved the series could be funny. He specifically complimented the episode's commentary on American consumerism. Simon wrote, "It's all very bitter social satire, and if it weren't on Comedy Central, believe me, no one in networkland would think it ready for prime time. And you know what else? It's funny." Likewise, The Washington Post critic Tom Shales strongly criticized "Cartman Gets an Anal Probe", but said the second episode was funny and included "cleverly intertwined" plot-lines. Shales said, "[It] suggests the show may be an attempt at satire and not just poopy humor ... Yes, it's still sick and still twisted, but somehow this episode at least appears to have some comic ingenuity behind it, whereas the first was just a smutfest." In 2006, "Weight Gain 4000" was identified by Winnipeg Free Press as one of the ten most memorable South Park episodes, and ranked twelfth in a list of the top 25 greatest Cartman moments, as determined by voters on the Comedy Central website. The Daily Record in Scotland listed the episode's ending, and the "Beefcake!" line, as one of the six most memorable moments in the series. "Weight Gain 4000" was released, alongside five other episodes, in a three-VHS set on May 5, 1998, marking the first time South Park was made available on video. It was released on the "Volume II" video, along with "Big Gay Al's Big Gay Boat Ride"; other featured episodes included "Cartman Gets an Anal Probe", "Volcano", "An Elephant Makes Love to a Pig" and "Death". "Weight Gain 4000", along with the other 12 episodes from the first season, was also included in the DVD release "South Park: The Complete First Season", which was released on November 12, 2002. Parker and Stone recorded commentary tracks for each episode, but they were not included with the DVDs due to "standards" issues with some of the statements. They refused to allow the tracks to be edited and censored, so they were released in a CD separately from the DVDs. In 2008, the duo made "Weight Gain 4000" and all other South Park episodes available to watch for free on the show's official website, "South Park Studios".

Comet Hyakutake

Comet that passed close to Earth in March 1996

Comet Hyakutake (formally designated C/1996 B2 (Hyakutake)) is a comet discovered on 31 January 1996. It was dubbed the Great Comet of 1996; its passage to within 0.1 AU (15 Gm) of the Earth on 25 March was one of the closest cometary approaches of the previous 200 years. Reaching an apparent visual magnitude of zero and spanning nearly 80°, Hyakutake appeared very bright in the night sky and was widely seen around the world. The comet temporarily upstaged the much anticipated Comet Hale–Bopp, which was approaching the inner Solar System at the time. Hyakutake is a long-period comet that passed perihelion on 1 May 1996. Before its most recent passage through the Solar System, its orbital period was about 17,000 years, but the gravitational perturbation of the giant planets has increased this period to 70,000 years. This is the first comet to have an X-ray emission detected, which is most likely the result of ionised solar wind particles interacting with neutral atoms in the coma of the comet. The Ulysses spacecraft fortuitously crossed the comet's tail at a distance of more than 500 million km (3.3 AU; 310 million mi) from the nucleus, showing that Hyakutake had the longest tail known for a comet. ## Discovery The comet was discovered on 30 January 1996, by Yuji Hyakutake, an amateur astronomer from southern Japan. He had been searching for comets for years and had moved to Kagoshima Prefecture partly for the dark skies in nearby rural areas. He was using a powerful set of binoculars with 150 mm (6 in) objective lenses to scan the skies on the night of the discovery. This comet was actually the second Comet Hyakutake; Hyakutake had discovered comet C/1995 Y1 several weeks earlier. While re-observing his first comet (which never became visible to the naked eye) and the surrounding patch of sky, Hyakutake was surprised to find another comet in almost the same position as the first had been. Hardly believing a second discovery so soon after the first, Hyakutake reported his observation to the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan the following morning. Later that day, the discovery was confirmed by independent observations. At the time of its discovery, the comet was shining at magnitude 11.0 and had a coma approximately 2.5 arcminutes across. It was approximately 2 astronomical units (AU) from the Sun. Later, a precovery image of the comet was found on a photograph taken on January 1, when the comet was about 2.4 AU from the Sun and had a magnitude of 13.3. ## Orbit When the first calculations of the comet's orbit were made, scientists realized that it was going to pass just 0.1 AU from Earth on 25 March. Only four comets in the previous century had passed closer. Comet Hale–Bopp was already being discussed as a possible "great comet"; the astronomical community eventually realised that Hyakutake might also become spectacular because of its close approach. Moreover, Comet Hyakutake's orbit meant that it had last been to the inner Solar System approximately 17,000 years earlier. Because it had probably passed close to the Sun several times before, the approach in 1996 would not be a maiden arrival from the Oort cloud, a place where comets with orbital periods of millions of years come from. Comets entering the inner Solar System for the first time may brighten rapidly before fading as they near the Sun, because a layer of highly volatile material evaporates. This was the case with Comet Kohoutek in 1973; it was initially touted as potentially spectacular, but only appeared moderately bright. Older comets show a more consistent brightening pattern. Thus, all indications suggested Comet Hyakutake would be bright. Besides approaching close to Earth, the comet would also be visible throughout the night to northern hemisphere observers at its closest approach because of its path, passing very close to the pole star. This would be an unusual occurrence, because most comets are close to the Sun in the sky when the comets are at their brightest, leading to the comets appearing in a sky not completely dark. ## Earth passage Hyakutake became visible to the naked eye in early March 1996. By mid-March, the comet was still fairly unremarkable, shining at 4th magnitude with a tail about 5 degrees long. As it neared its closest approach to Earth, it rapidly became brighter, and its tail grew in length. By March 24, the comet was one of the brightest objects in the night sky, and its tail stretched 35 degrees. The comet had a notably bluish-green colour. The closest approach occurred on 25 March at a distance of 0.1 AU (15 million km; 39 LD). Hyakutake was moving so rapidly across the night sky that its movement could be detected against the stars in just a few minutes; it covered the diameter of a full moon (half a degree) every 30 minutes. Observers estimated its magnitude as around 0, and tail lengths of up to 80 degrees were reported. Its coma, now close to the zenith for observers at mid-northern latitudes, appeared approximately 1.5 to 2 degrees across, roughly four times the diameter of the full moon. The comet's head appeared distinctly blue-green, possibly due to emissions from diatomic carbon (C₂) combined with sunlight reflected from dust grains. Because Hyakutake was at its brightest for only a few days, it did not have time to permeate the public imagination in the way that Comet Hale–Bopp did the following year. Many European observers in particular did not see the comet at its peak because of unfavourable weather conditions. ## Perihelion and afterwards After its close approach to the Earth, the comet faded to about 2nd magnitude. It reached perihelion on 1 May 1996, brightening again and exhibiting a dust tail in addition to the gas tail seen as it passed the Earth. By this time, however, it was close to the Sun and was not seen as easily. It was observed passing perihelion by the SOHO Sun-observing satellite, which also recorded a large coronal mass ejection being formed at the same time. The comet's distance from the Sun at perihelion was 0.23 AU, well inside the orbit of Mercury. After its perihelion passage, Hyakutake faded rapidly and was lost to naked-eye visibility by the end of May. Its orbital path carried it rapidly into the southern skies, but following perihelion it became much less monitored. The last known observation of the comet took place on November 2. Hyakutake had passed through the inner Solar System approximately 17,000 years ago; gravitational interactions with the gas giants during its 1996 passage stretched its orbit greatly, and barycentric fits to the comet's orbit predict it will not return to the inner Solar System again for approximately 70,000 years. ## Scientific results ### Spacecraft passes through the tail The Ulysses spacecraft made an unexpected pass through the tail of the comet on 1 May 1996. Evidence of the encounter was not noticed until 1998. Astronomers analysing old data found that Ulysses' instruments had detected a large drop in the number of protons passing, as well as a change in the direction and strength of the local magnetic field. This implied that the spacecraft had crossed the 'wake' of an object, most likely a comet; the object responsible was not immediately identified. In 2000, two teams independently analyzed the same event. The magnetometer team realized that the changes in the direction of the magnetic field mentioned above agreed with the "draping" pattern expected in a comet's ion, or plasma tail. The magnetometer team looked for likely suspects. No known comets were located near the satellite, but looking further afield, they found that Hyakutake, 500 million km (3.3 AU) away, had crossed Ulysses' orbital plane on 23 April 1996. The solar wind had a velocity at the time of about 750 km/s (470 mi/s), at which speed it would have taken eight days for the tail to be carried out to where the spacecraft was situated at 3.73 AU, approximately 45 degrees out of the ecliptic plane. The orientation of the ion tail inferred from the magnetic field measurements agreed with the source lying in Comet Hyakutake's orbital plane. The other team, working on data from the spacecraft's ion composition spectrometer, discovered a sudden large spike in detected levels of ionised particles at the same time. The relative abundances of chemical elements detected indicated that the object responsible was definitely a comet. Based on the Ulysses encounter, the comet's tail is known to have been at least 570 million km (360 million miles; 3.8 AU) long. This is almost twice as long as the previous longest-known cometary tail, that of the Great Comet of 1843, which was 2 AU long. This record was broken in 2002 by comet 153P/Ikeya–Zhang, which had a tail-length of at least 7.46 AU. ### Composition Terrestrial observers found ethane and methane in the comet, the first time either of these gases had been detected in a comet. Chemical analysis showed that the abundances of ethane and methane were roughly equal, which may imply that its ices formed in interstellar space, away from the Sun, which would have evaporated these volatile molecules. Hyakutake's ices must have formed at temperatures of 20 K or less, indicating that it probably formed in a denser-than-average interstellar cloud. The amount of deuterium in the comet's water ices was determined through spectroscopic observations. It was found that the ratio of deuterium to hydrogen (known as the D/H ratio) was about 3×10⁻⁴, which compares to a value in Earth's oceans of about 1.5×10⁻⁴. It has been proposed that cometary collisions with Earth might have supplied a large proportion of the water in the oceans, but the high D–H ratio measured in Hyakutake and other comets such as Hale–Bopp and Halley's Comet have caused problems for this theory. ### X-ray emission One of the great surprises of Hyakutake's passage through the inner Solar System was the discovery that it was emitting X-rays, with observations made using the ROSAT satellite revealing very strong X-ray emission. This was the first time a comet had been seen to do so, but astronomers soon found that almost every comet they looked at was emitting X-rays. The emission from Hyakutake was brightest in a crescent shape surrounding the nucleus with the ends of the crescent pointing away from the Sun. The cause of the X-ray emission is thought to be a combination of two mechanisms. Interactions between energetic solar wind particles and cometary material evaporating from the nucleus is likely to contribute significantly to this effect. Reflection of solar X-rays is seen in other Solar System objects such as the Moon, but a simple calculation assuming even the highest X-ray reflectivity possible per molecule or dust grain is not able to explain the majority of the observed flux from Hyakutake, as the comet's atmosphere is very tenuous and diffuse. Observations of comet C/1999 S4 (LINEAR) with the Chandra satellite in 2000 determined that X-rays observed from that comet were produced predominantly by charge exchange collisions between highly charged carbon, oxygen and nitrogen minor ions in the solar wind, and neutral water, oxygen and hydrogen in the comet's coma. ### Nucleus size and activity Radar results from the Arecibo Observatory indicated that the comet nucleus was about 4.8 km (3 mi) across, and surrounded by a flurry of pebble-sized particles ejected at a few metres per second. This size measurement corresponded well with indirect estimates using infrared emission and radio observations. The small size of the nucleus (Halley's Comet is about 15 km (9.3 mi) across, while Comet Hale–Bopp was about 60 km (37 mi) across) implies that Hyakutake must have been very active to become as bright as it did. Most comets undergo outgassing from a small proportion of their surface, but most or all of Hyakutake's surface seemed to have been active. The dust production rate was estimated to be about 2×10³ kg/s at the beginning of March, rising to 3×10⁴ kg/s as the comet approached perihelion. During the same period, dust ejection velocities increased from 50 m/s to 500 m/s. Observations of material being ejected from the nucleus allowed astronomers to establish its rotation period. As the comet passed the Earth, a large puff or blob of material was observed being ejected in the sunward direction every 6.23 hours. A second smaller ejection with the same period confirmed this as the rotation period of the nucleus. ## See also - Lists of comets

Pioneer Helmet

Anglo-Saxon helmet from the late seventh century found in Wollaston, Northamptonshire

The Pioneer Helmet (also known as the Wollaston Helmet or Northamptonshire Helmet) is an Anglo-Saxon boar-crested helmet from the late seventh century found in Wollaston, Northamptonshire, United Kingdom. It was discovered during a March 1997 excavation before the land was to be mined for gravel and was part of the grave of a young man. Other objects in the grave, such as a hanging bowl and a pattern welded sword, suggest that it was the burial mound of a high-status warrior. The sparsely decorated nature of the helmet, a utilitarian iron fighting piece, belies its rarity. It is one of just six Anglo-Saxon helmets yet discovered, joined by finds from Benty Grange (1848), Sutton Hoo (1939), Coppergate (1982), Shorwell (2004) and Staffordshire (2009); its basic form is nearly identical to that of the richer Coppergate helmet found in York. Like these, the Pioneer Helmet is an example of the "crested helmets" that flourished in England and Scandinavia from the sixth through eleventh centuries. The distinctive feature of the helmet is the boar mounted atop its crest. Boar-crested helmets are a staple of Anglo-Saxon imagery, evidence of a Germanic tradition in which the boar invoked the protection of the gods. The Pioneer Helmet is one of three—together with the Benty Grange helmet and the detached Guilden Morden boar—known to have survived. These boar crests recall a time when such decoration may have been common; the Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf, in which boar-adorned helmets are mentioned five times, speaks of a funeral pyre "heaped with boar-shaped helmets forged in gold," forging a link between the warrior hero of legend and the Pioneer Helmet of reality. The helmet was named after Pioneer Aggregates UK Ltd, who funded its excavation and conservation. It was unveiled at the New Walk Museum in Leicester, and as of 2018 is on display at the Royal Armouries Museum in Leeds. ## Description The helmet has the same basic form as the Anglo-Saxon Coppergate helmet, but is a utilitarian piece with little decoration, and is larger, perhaps to allow for additional padding. It originally consisted of an iron skull cap, from which hung two cheek guards. The form of neck protection that the helmet afforded, if any, is uncertain, owing to ploughing damage to the helmet. The cap of the helmet was constructed from twelve individual components riveted together. The basic form was created by four pieces: a brow band joined by a nose-to-nape band, and, on either side, a lateral band reaching from the side of the brow band to the top of the nose-to-nape band. Cutouts at the front of the brow and nose-to-nape bands functioned as eye-holes, and a 5 mm (0.20 in) wide strip of metal was riveted along the edge of the openings, perhaps to provide balance or decoration. Four subtriangular infill plates were riveted inside to cover the resulting holes. Finally, three narrow C-sectioned strips were added to provide additional strength, one each running the length of the nose-to-nape and lateral bands. The nasal is not a separate component, but rather is a continuation of the nose-to-nape bands. Atop the helmet was set the boar. It was affixed to the C-sectioned nose-to-nape strip, and was forged from a single rod of iron. Its back was bent downwards to form the hind legs, while the front of the rod was split, one part bent to form the forelegs, the other part continuing forward to form the boar's snout. Beyond very minor details—the snout was made to be slightly triangular, the hind was somewhat flattened, and slight grooves in the forelegs suggested individual limbs—the boar was not decorated. Beneath the cap hung two cheek guards. The sinister cheek guard, which is all that remains other than minor fragments of the dexter, was 110 mm (4.3 in) long and 86 mm (3.4 in) wide at the top. It was curved inward both laterally and longitudinally other than the upper rear edge which was bent outwards, either intentionally to improve the articulation of the joint, or by damage incurred during use. Two strips of metal were then bent in half, with one folded around the brow band and one around the cheek guard, and attached by a single rivet through each. These encased a narrow loop of wire which held the cheek guards to the cap. A single rivet was also attached to the middle of the guard, probably to facilitate the attachment of leather strips used to draw tight the cheek guards. The form of neck protection on the helmet, if any, is unclear. The bottom of the back of the helmet is largely missing, although the portion that survives appears to have at least two perforations. These would most likely have been used to attach a neck guard, perhaps like the one made of camail on the Coppergate helmet, yet no such remains were found. A series of unexplained iron rods found near the helmet could theoretically have been used as stiffeners for an organic neck guard, such as one made of leather, but such an arrangement has no known parallels; it is instead thought that the rods were more likely belt stiffeners. ## Discovery The helmet was discovered over Easter in March 1997 in Wollaston, near Wellingborough, Northamptonshire. Excavations in the area had taken place for years on behalf of various aggregate companies before the land was exploited for gravel, and had uncovered an extensive network of Iron Age and Roman farms. The evidence for post-Roman habitation, however, had been limited to two fragments of a brooch, and two separate collections of pottery, when metal detector surveying discovered a copper alloy hanging bowl and a millefiori-decorated mount in what turned out to be a grave. The hanging bowl was detected by Steve Critchley, working alongside the archaeologist Ian Meadows. Meadows immediately recognised the bowl for what it was, and began an excavation. The grave was in the shape of an elongated oval 2.8 m (9.2 ft) long and 1.3 m (4.3 ft) wide, and may have originally been a tumulus. It was only 8 m (26 ft) from a main contemporary roadway and was likely intended to have been seen by those passing by. Owing to ensuing years of cultivation and ploughing of the fields, the grave was only 15 cm (0.5 ft) deep when excavated. Various artefacts were therefore damaged, and any originally placed higher in the grave, such as a shield or spearheads, may have been completely destroyed. The grave was excavated with brushes and wooden tools, revealing a number of bone fragments, including part of a skull; these were used to suggest that the body was that of a man seventeen to twenty-five years old, laid in a supine position with his head on a pillow and knees slightly raised. Also found were three iron buckles, a small iron knife, a small copper alloy hook, and a series of iron rods of unknown function. A pattern welded sword was also found, and together with the hanging bowl and helmet, marks the grave as one for a person of high social status. The helmet lay next to where the left hip of the body would have rested. It was on its sinister side, with almost the entirety of the dexter side lost through ploughing. Prior to its deposition the nasal had been bent inwards, fracturing the metal, perhaps in a "ritual killing" of the object; a custom known to many cultures, including Anglo-Saxons and Vikings, the practice involves the deliberate breaking of objects before burial for reasons ranging from the releasing of an object's spirit, to the deterrence of grave robbing. When found it was at first thought to be a bucket. Archaeologists covered it in cling film, then wrapped it in plaster of Paris bandages and raised it in a soil block. This was taken to the conservation laboratory at the Newarke Houses Museum in Leicester, where it was analysed, and later conserved, by Anthony "Rolly" Read. The plaster-covered soil block was first x-rayed, revealing the boar-crested helmet within. The remaining half of the helmet was broken into many pieces—between 100 and 200 overall—including some which were deposited within the helmet itself. These fragments were reassembled using the cellulose nitrate adhesive HMG; the surviving cheek guard, alone, was reassembled from eighteen fragments. The helmet was then dried out and taken to the Leicester General Hospital, where it was subjected to digital x-rays and CT scans. Using this information it was then cleaned, and samples of organic materials—principally textiles and leather, perhaps from the helmet's lining, as well as possible feathers on the brow band—were taken. It was then reassembled into seven larger parts, cleaned again, and finally reconstructed into one piece. Missing sections within the remaining half were then filled in and painted, and in the last step, the boar was affixed to the apex using epoxy. Newspapers as far away as Australia and New Zealand published accounts of the discovery in April, hailing it as "the find of the decade". The helmet was placed on public display on 23 December 1997. The Wollaston burial was on private land owned by Peter Gammidge and John Minney, and the helmet is now owned by Gammidge and the family of the late Minney. It was termed the "Pioneer Helmet" after Pioneer Aggregates UK Ltd (now owned by Hanson), who fully funded the conservation, and who had over time spent more than £400,000 funding archaeology in the area. The helmet was displayed until March 1998 at the New Walk Museum in Leicester, the site of its unveiling. Currently it is on display at the Royal Armouries Museum in Leeds, West Yorkshire. ## Typology The Pioneer Helmet is dated to the late seventh century on the basis of the style of belt buckles found in the grave, which were current around 675. This suggests a terminus post quem (earliest possible date) for the burial, although not necessarily the helmet's exact date of manufacture or deposition. It is of Anglo-Saxon origin, one of only six such helmets known along with those from Benty Grange, Sutton Hoo, York, Shorwell, and Staffordshire. Like these examples—with the exception of the Frankish Shorwell helmet—the Pioneer Helmet is broadly classed as one of the "crested helmets" known in Northern Europe in the sixth through eleventh centuries AD. These are each characterised by a rounded cap and usually a prominent nose-to-nape crest. Except for an outlier fragment found in Kyiv, all crested helmets originate from England or Scandinavia, and are distinct from the continental spangenhelm and lamellenhelm from the same period.

Triton (moon)

Largest moon of Neptune

Triton is the largest natural satellite of the planet Neptune, and was the first Neptunian moon to be discovered, on October 11, 1846, by English astronomer William Lassell. It is the only large moon in the Solar System with a retrograde orbit, an orbit in the direction opposite to its planet's rotation. Because of its retrograde orbit and composition similar to Pluto, Triton is thought to have been a dwarf planet, captured from the Kuiper belt. At 2,710 kilometers (1,680 mi) in diameter, it is the seventh-largest moon in the Solar System, the only satellite of Neptune massive enough to be in hydrostatic equilibrium, the second-largest planetary moon in relation to its primary (after Earth's Moon), and larger than Pluto. Triton is one of the few moons in the Solar System known to be geologically active (the others being Jupiter's Io and Europa, and Saturn's Enceladus and Titan) as well as suspected to contain an internal, active layer of liquid ocean, similar to the aforementioned moons. As a consequence, its surface is relatively young, with few obvious impact craters. Intricate cryovolcanic and tectonic terrains suggest a complex geological history. Triton has a surface of mostly frozen nitrogen, a mostly water-ice crust, an icy mantle and a substantial core of rock and metal. The core makes up two-thirds of its total mass. The mean density is 2.061 g/cm³, reflecting a composition of approximately 15–35% water ice. During its 1989 flyby of Triton, Voyager 2 found surface temperatures of 38 K (−235 °C) and also discovered active geysers erupting sublimated nitrogen gas, contributing to a tenuous nitrogen atmosphere less than 1⁄70,000 the pressure of Earth's atmosphere at sea level. Voyager 2 remains the only spacecraft to have visited Triton. As the probe was only able to study about 40% of the moon's surface, future missions (dubbed "Trident") have been proposed to NASA via their Discovery Program to revisit the Neptune system with a focus on Triton; and its subsurface ocean. ## Discovery and naming Triton was discovered by British astronomer William Lassell on October 10, 1846, just 17 days after the discovery of Neptune. When John Herschel received news of Neptune's discovery, he wrote to Lassell suggesting he search for possible moons. Lassell discovered Triton eight days later. Lassell also claimed for a period to have discovered rings. Although Neptune was later confirmed to have rings, they are so faint and dark that it is not plausible he saw them. A brewer by trade, Lassell spotted Triton with his self-built 61 cm (24 in) aperture metal mirror reflecting telescope (also known as the "two-foot" reflector). This telescope was donated to the Royal Observatory, Greenwich in the 1880s, but was eventually dismantled. Triton is named after the Greek sea god Triton (Τρίτων), the son of Poseidon (the Greek god corresponding to the Roman Neptune). The name was first proposed by Camille Flammarion in his 1880 book Astronomie Populaire, and was officially adopted many decades later. Until the discovery of the second moon Nereid in 1949, Triton was commonly referred to as "the satellite of Neptune". Lassell did not name his discovery; he later successfully suggested the name Hyperion, previously chosen by John Herschel, for the eighth moon of Saturn when he discovered it. ## Orbit and rotation Triton is unique among all large moons in the Solar System for its retrograde orbit around its planet (i.e. it orbits in a direction opposite to the planet's rotation). Most of the outer irregular moons of Jupiter and Saturn also have retrograde orbits, as do some of Uranus's outer moons. However, these moons are all much more distant from their primaries, and are small in comparison; the largest of them (Phoebe) has only 8% of the diameter (and 0.03% of the mass) of Triton. Triton's orbit is associated with two tilts, the obliquity of Neptune's rotation to Neptune's orbit, 30°, and the inclination of Triton's orbit to Neptune's rotation, 157° (an inclination over 90° indicates retrograde motion). Triton's orbit precesses forward relative to Neptune's rotation with a period of about 678 Earth years (4.1 Neptunian years), making its Neptune-orbit-relative inclination vary between 127° and 173°. That inclination is currently 130°; Triton's orbit is now near its maximum departure from coplanarity with Neptune's. Triton's rotation is tidally locked to be synchronous with its orbit around Neptune: it keeps one face oriented toward the planet at all times. Its equator is almost exactly aligned with its orbital plane. At present, Triton's rotational axis is about 40° from Neptune's orbital plane, and hence as Neptune orbits the Sun, Triton's polar regions take turns facing the Sun, resulting in seasonal changes as one pole, then the other moves into the sunlight. Such changes were observed in 2010. Triton's revolution around Neptune has become a nearly perfect circle with an eccentricity of almost zero. Viscoelastic damping from tides alone is not thought to be capable of circularizing Triton's orbit in the time since the origin of the system, and gas drag from a prograde debris disc is likely to have played a substantial role. Tidal interactions also cause Triton's orbit, which is already closer to Neptune than the Moon is to Earth, to gradually decay further; predictions are that 3.6 billion years from now, Triton will pass within Neptune's Roche limit. This will result in either a collision with Neptune's atmosphere or the breakup of Triton, forming a new ring system similar to that found around Saturn. ## Capture The current understanding of moons in retrograde orbits means they cannot form in the same region of the solar nebula as the planets they orbit. Therefore Triton must have been captured from elsewhere in the solar system. Astrophysicists believe it might have originated in the Kuiper belt, a ring of small icy objects extending from just inside the orbit of Neptune to about 50 AU from the Sun. Thought to be the point of origin for the majority of short-period comets observed from Earth, the belt is also home to several large, planet-like bodies including Pluto, which is now recognized as the largest in a population of Kuiper belt objects (the plutinos) locked in resonant orbits with Neptune. Triton is only slightly larger than Pluto and is nearly identical in composition, which has led to the hypothesis that the two share a common origin. The proposed capture of Triton may explain several features of the Neptunian system, including the extremely eccentric orbit of Neptune's moon Nereid and the scarcity of moons as compared to the other giant planets. Triton's initially eccentric orbit would have intersected the orbits of irregular moons and disrupted those of smaller regular moons, dispersing them through gravitational interactions. Triton's eccentric post-capture orbit would have also resulted in tidal heating of its interior, which could have kept Triton fluid for a billion years; this inference is supported by evidence of differentiation in Triton's interior. This source of internal heat disappeared following tidal locking and circularization of the orbit. Two types of mechanisms have been proposed for Triton's capture. To be gravitationally captured by a planet, a passing body must lose sufficient energy to be slowed down to a speed less than that required to escape. An early theory of how Triton may have been slowed was by collision with another object, either one that happened to be passing by Neptune (which is unlikely), or a moon or proto-moon in orbit around Neptune (which is more likely). A more recent hypothesis suggests that, before its capture, Triton was part of a binary system. When this binary encountered Neptune, it interacted in such a way that the binary dissociated, with one portion of the binary expelled, and the other, Triton, becoming bound to Neptune. This event is more likely for more massive companions. This hypothesis is supported by several lines of evidence, including binaries being very common among the large Kuiper belt objects. The event was brief but gentle, saving Triton from collisional disruption. Events like this may have been common during the formation of Neptune, or later when it migrated outward. However, simulations in 2017 showed that after Triton's capture, and before its orbital eccentricity decreased, it probably did collide with at least one other moon, and caused collisions between other moons. ## Physical characteristics Triton is the seventh-largest moon and sixteenth-largest object in the Solar System and is modestly larger than the dwarf planets Pluto and Eris. It is also the largest retrograde moon in the solar system. It comprises more than 99.5% of all the mass known to orbit Neptune, including the planet's rings and thirteen other known moons, and is also more massive than all known moons in the Solar System smaller than itself combined. Also, with a diameter 5.5% that of Neptune, it is the largest moon of a gas giant relative to its planet in terms of diameter, although Titan is bigger relative to Saturn in terms of mass (the ratio of Triton's mass to that of Neptune is approximately 1:4788). It has a radius, density (2.061 g/cm³), temperature and chemical composition similar to that of Pluto. Triton's surface is covered with a transparent layer of annealed frozen nitrogen. Only 40% of Triton's surface has been observed and studied, but it may be entirely covered in such a thin sheet of nitrogen ice. Like Pluto's, Triton's crust consists of 55% nitrogen ice with other ices mixed in. Water ice comprises 15–35% and frozen carbon dioxide (dry ice) the remaining 10–20%. Trace ices include 0.1% methane and 0.05% carbon monoxide. There could also be ammonia ice on the surface, as there are indications of ammonia dihydrate in the lithosphere. Triton's mean density implies that it probably consists of about 30–45% water ice (including relatively small amounts of volatile ices), with the remainder being rocky material. Triton's surface area is 23 million km², which is 4.5% of Earth, or 15.5% of Earth's land area. Triton has an unusually high albedo, reflecting 60–95% of the sunlight that reaches it, and it has changed only slightly since the first observations. By comparison, the Moon reflects only 11%. Triton's reddish color is thought to be the result of methane ice, which is converted to tholins under exposure to ultraviolet radiation. Because Triton's surface indicates a long history of melting, models of its interior posit that Triton is differentiated, like Earth, into a solid core, a mantle and a crust. Water, the most abundant volatile in the Solar System, comprises Triton's mantle, enveloping a core of rock and metal. There is enough rock in Triton's interior for radioactive decay to maintain a liquid subsurface ocean to this day, similar to what is thought to exist beneath the surface of Europa and several other icy outer Solar System worlds. This is not thought to be adequate to power convection in Triton's icy crust. However, the strong obliquity tides are believed to generate enough additional heat to accomplish this and produce the observed signs of recent surface geological activity. The black material ejected is suspected to contain organic compounds, and if liquid water is present on Triton, it has been speculated that this could make it habitable for some form of life. ## Atmosphere Triton has a tenuous nitrogen atmosphere, with trace amounts of carbon monoxide and small amounts of methane near its surface. Like Pluto's atmosphere, the atmosphere of Triton is thought to have resulted from the evaporation of nitrogen from its surface. Its surface temperature is at least 35.6 K (−237.6 °C) because Triton's nitrogen ice is in the warmer, hexagonal crystalline state, and the phase transition between hexagonal and cubic nitrogen ice occurs at that temperature. An upper limit in the low 40s (K) can be set from vapor pressure equilibrium with nitrogen gas in Triton's atmosphere. This is colder than Pluto's average equilibrium temperature of 44 K (−229.2 °C). Triton's surface atmospheric pressure is only about 1.4–1.9 Pa (0.014–0.019 mbar). Turbulence at Triton's surface creates a troposphere (a "weather region") rising to an altitude of 8 km. Streaks on Triton's surface left by geyser plumes suggest that the troposphere is driven by seasonal winds capable of moving material over a micrometer in size. Unlike other atmospheres, Triton's lacks a stratosphere and instead has a thermosphere from altitudes of 8 to 950 km and an exosphere above that. The temperature of Triton's upper atmosphere, at 95±5 K, is higher than that at its surface, due to heat absorbed from solar radiation and Neptune's magnetosphere. A haze permeates most of Triton's troposphere, thought to be composed largely of hydrocarbons and nitriles created by the action of sunlight on methane. Triton's atmosphere also has clouds of condensed nitrogen that lie between 1 and 3 km from its surface. In 1997, observations from Earth were made of Triton's limb as it passed in front of stars. These observations indicated the presence of a denser atmosphere than was deduced from Voyager 2 data. Other observations have shown an increase in temperature by 5% from 1989 to 1998. These observations indicated Triton was approaching an unusually warm southern hemisphere summer season that happens only once every few hundred years. Theories for this warming include a change of frost patterns on Triton's surface and a change in ice albedo, which would allow more heat to be absorbed. Another theory argues that temperature changes are a result of the deposition of dark, red material from geological processes. Because Triton's Bond albedo is among the highest in the Solar System, it is sensitive to small variations in spectral albedo. ## Surface features All detailed knowledge of the surface of Triton was acquired from a distance of 40,000 km by the Voyager 2 spacecraft during a single encounter in 1989. The 40% of Triton's surface imaged by Voyager 2 revealed blocky outcrops, ridges, troughs, furrows, hollows, plateaus, icy plains and a few craters. Triton is relatively flat; its observed topography never varies beyond a kilometer. The impact craters observed are concentrated almost entirely in Triton's leading hemisphere. Analysis of crater density and distribution has suggested that in geological terms, Triton's surface is extremely young, with regions varying from an estimated 50 million years old to just an estimated 6 million years old. Fifty-five percent of Triton's surface is covered with frozen nitrogen, with water ice comprising 15–35% and frozen CO₂ forming the remaining 10–20%. The surface shows deposits of tholins, organic chemical compounds that may be precursors to the origin of life. ### Cryovolcanism One of the largest cryovolcanic features found on Triton is Leviathan Patera, a caldera-like feature roughly 100 km in diameter seen near the equator. Surrounding this caldera is a volcanic dome that stretches for roughly 2,000 km along its longest axis, indicating that Leviathan is the second largest volcano in the solar system by area, after Alba Mons. This feature is also connected to two enormous cryolava lakes seen northwest of the caldera. Because the cryolava on Triton is believed to be primarily water ice with some ammonia, these lakes would qualify as stable bodies of surface liquid water while they were molten. This is the first place such bodies have been found apart from Earth, and Triton is the only icy body known to feature cryolava lakes, although similar cryomagmatic extrusions can be seen on Ariel, Ganymede, Charon, and Titan. The Voyager 2 probe in 1989 observed a handful of geyser-like eruptions of nitrogen gas and entrained dust from beneath the surface of Triton in plumes up to 8 km high. Triton is thus, along with Earth, Io, Europa and Enceladus, one of the few bodies in the Solar System on which active eruptions of some sort have been observed. The best-observed examples are named Hili and Mahilani (after a Zulu water sprite and a Tongan sea spirit, respectively). All the geysers observed were located between 50° and 57°S, the part of Triton's surface close to the subsolar point. This indicates that solar heating, although very weak at Triton's great distance from the Sun, plays a crucial role. It is thought that the surface of Triton probably consists of a translucent layer of frozen nitrogen overlying a darker substrate, which creates a kind of "solid greenhouse effect". Solar radiation passes through the thin surface ice sheet, slowly heating and vaporizing subsurface nitrogen until enough gas pressure accumulates for it to erupt through the crust. A temperature increase of just 4 K above the ambient surface temperature of 37 K could drive eruptions to the heights observed. Although commonly termed "cryovolcanic", this nitrogen plume activity is distinct from Triton's larger-scale cryovolcanic eruptions, as well as volcanic processes on other worlds, which are powered by internal heat. CO₂ geysers on Mars are thought to erupt from its south polar cap each spring in the same way as Triton's geysers. Each eruption of a Triton geyser may last up to a year, driven by the sublimation of about 100 million m³ (3.5 billion cu ft) of nitrogen ice over this interval; dust entrained may be deposited up to 150 km downwind in visible streaks, and perhaps much farther in more diffuse deposits. Voyager 2's images of Triton's southern hemisphere show many such streaks of dark material. Between 1977 and the Voyager 2 flyby in 1989, Triton shifted from a reddish color, similar to Pluto, to a far paler hue, suggesting that lighter nitrogen frosts had covered older reddish material. The eruption of volatiles from Triton's equator and their deposition at the poles may redistribute enough mass over 10,000 years to cause polar wander. ### Polar cap, plains and ridges Triton's south polar region is covered by a highly reflective cap of frozen nitrogen and methane sprinkled by impact craters and openings of geysers. Little is known about the north pole because it was on the night side during the Voyager 2 encounter, but it is thought that Triton must also have a north polar ice cap. The high plains found on Triton's eastern hemisphere, such as Cipango Planum, cover over and blot out older features, and are therefore almost certainly the result of icy lava washing over the previous landscape. The plains are dotted with pits, such as Leviathan Patera, which are probably the vents from which this lava emerged. The composition of the lava is unknown, although a mixture of ammonia and water is suspected. Four roughly circular "walled plains" have been identified on Triton. They are the flattest regions so far discovered, with a variance in altitude of less than 200 m. They are thought to have formed from the eruption of icy lava. The plains near Triton's eastern limb are dotted with black spots, the maculae. Some maculae are simple dark spots with diffuse boundaries, and others comprise a dark central patch surrounded by a white halo with sharp boundaries. The maculae typically have diameters of about 100 km and widths of the halos of between 20 and 30 km. There are extensive ridges and valleys in complex patterns across Triton's surface, probably the result of freeze–thaw cycles. Many also appear to be tectonic and may result from an extension or strike-slip faulting. There are long double ridges of ice with central troughs bearing a strong resemblance to Europan lineae (although they have a larger scale), and which may have a similar origin, possibly shear heating from strike-slip motion along faults caused by diurnal tidal stresses experienced before Triton's orbit was fully circularized. These faults with parallel ridges expelled from the interior cross complex terrain with valleys in the equatorial region. The ridges and furrows, or sulci, such as Yasu Sulci, Ho Sulci, and Lo Sulci, are thought to be of intermediate age in Triton's geological history, and in many cases to have formed concurrently. They tend to be clustered in groups or "packets". ### Cantaloupe terrain Triton's western hemisphere consists of a strange series of fissures and depressions known as "cantaloupe terrain" because it resembles the skin of a cantaloupe melon. Although it has few craters, it is thought that this is the oldest terrain on Triton. It probably covers much of Triton's western half. Cantaloupe terrain, which is mostly dirty water ice, is only known to exist on Triton. It contains depressions 30–40 km in diameter. The depressions (cavi) are probably not impact craters because they are all of the similar size and have smooth curves. The leading hypothesis for their formation is diapirism, the rising of "lumps" of less dense material through a stratum of denser material. Alternative hypotheses include formation by collapses, or by flooding caused by cryovolcanism. ### Impact craters Due to constant erasure and modification by ongoing geological activity, impact craters on Triton's surface are relatively rare. A census of Triton's craters imaged by Voyager 2 found only 179 that were incontestably of impact origin, compared with 835 observed for Uranus's moon Miranda, which has only three percent of Triton's surface area. The largest crater observed on Triton thought to have been created by an impact is a 27-kilometer-diameter (17 mi) feature called Mazomba. Although larger craters have been observed, they are generally thought to be volcanic. The few impact craters on Triton are almost all concentrated in the leading hemisphere—that facing the direction of the orbital motion—with the majority concentrated around the equator between 30° and 70° longitude, resulting from material swept up from orbit around Neptune. Because it orbits with one side permanently facing the planet, astronomers expect that Triton should have fewer impacts on its trailing hemisphere, due to impacts on the leading hemisphere being more frequent and more violent. Voyager 2 imaged only 40% of Triton's surface, so this remains uncertain. However, the observed cratering asymmetry exceeds what can be explained based on the impactor populations, and implies a younger surface age for the crater-free regions (≤ 6 million years old) than for the cratered regions (≤ 50 million years old). ## Observation and exploration The orbital properties of Triton were already determined with high accuracy in the 19th century. It was found to have a retrograde orbit, at a very high angle of inclination to the plane of Neptune's orbit. The first detailed observations of Triton were not made until 1930. Little was known about the satellite until Voyager 2 flew by in 1989. Before the flyby of Voyager 2, astronomers suspected that Triton might have liquid nitrogen seas and a nitrogen/methane atmosphere with a density as much as 30% that of Earth. Like the famous overestimates of the atmospheric density of Mars, this proved incorrect. As with Mars, a denser atmosphere is postulated for its early history. The first attempt to measure the diameter of Triton was made by Gerard Kuiper in 1954. He obtained a value of 3,800 km. Subsequent measurement attempts arrived at values ranging from 2,500 to 6,000 km, or from slightly smaller than the Moon (3,474.2 km) to nearly half the diameter of Earth. Data from the approach of Voyager 2 to Neptune on August 25, 1989, led to a more accurate estimate of Triton's diameter (2,706 km). In the 1990s, various observations from Earth were made of the limb of Triton using the occultation of nearby stars, which indicated the presence of an atmosphere and an exotic surface. Observations in late 1997 suggest that Triton is heating up and the atmosphere has become significantly denser since Voyager 2 flew past in 1989. New concepts for missions to the Neptune system to be conducted in the 2010s were proposed by NASA scientists on numerous occasions over the last decades. All of them identified Triton as being a prime target and a separate Triton lander comparable to the Huygens probe for Titan was frequently included in those plans. No efforts aimed at Neptune and Triton went beyond the proposal phase and NASA's funding for missions to the outer Solar System is currently focused on the Jupiter and Saturn systems. A proposed lander mission to Triton, called Triton Hopper, would mine nitrogen ice from the surface of Triton and process it to be used as a propellant for a small rocket, enabling it to fly or 'hop' across the surface. Another concept, involving a flyby, was formally proposed in 2019 as part of NASA's Discovery Program under the name Trident. Neptune Odyssey is a mission concept for a Neptune orbiter with a focus on Triton being studied as a possible large strategic science mission by NASA that would launch in 2033 and arrive at the Neptune system in 2049. ## Maps ## See also - List of natural satellites - List of geological features on Triton - Neptune in fiction - Triton Hopper, a proposed lander to Triton - Triton's sky

Cologne War

1583–88 religious war in Germany

The Cologne War (German: Kölner Krieg, Kölnischer Krieg, Truchsessischer Krieg; 1583–88) was a conflict between Protestant and Catholic factions that devastated the Electorate of Cologne, a historical ecclesiastical principality of the Holy Roman Empire, within present-day North Rhine-Westphalia, in Germany. The war occurred within the context of the Protestant Reformation in Germany and the subsequent Counter-Reformation, and concurrently with the Dutch Revolt and the French Wars of Religion. Also called the Seneschal's War (Truchsessischer Krieg) or the Seneschal Upheaval (Truchsessischer Wirren) and occasionally the Sewer War, the conflict tested the principle of ecclesiastical reservation, which had been included in the religious Peace of Augsburg (1555). This principle excluded, or "reserved", the ecclesiastical territories of the Holy Roman Empire from the application of cuius regio, eius religio, or "whose rule, his religion", as the primary means of determining the religion of a territory. It stipulated instead that if an ecclesiastical prince converted to Protestantism, he would resign from his position rather than force the conversion of his subjects. In December 1582, Gebhard Truchsess von Waldburg, the Prince-elector of Cologne, converted to Protestantism. The principle of ecclesiastical reservation required his resignation. Instead, he declared religious parity for his subjects and, in 1583, married Agnes von Mansfeld-Eisleben, intending to convert the ecclesiastical principality into a secular, dynastic duchy. A faction in the Cathedral Chapter elected another archbishop, Ernst of Bavaria. Initially, troops of the competing archbishops of Cologne fought over control of sections of the territory. Several of the barons and counts holding territory with feudal obligations to the Elector also held territory in nearby Dutch provinces; Westphalia, Liege, and the Southern, or Spanish Netherlands. Complexities of enfeoffment and dynastic appanage magnified a localized feud into one including supporters from the Electorate of the Palatinate and Dutch, Scots, and English mercenaries on the Protestant side, and Bavarian and papal mercenaries on the Catholic side. The conflict coincided with the Dutch Revolt, 1568–1648, encouraging the participation of the rebellious Dutch provinces and the Spanish. In 1586, the conflict expanded further, with the direct involvement of Spanish troops and Italian mercenaries on the Catholic side, and financial and diplomatic support from Henry III of France and Elizabeth I of England on the Protestant side. The war concluded with victory of the Catholic archbishop Ernst, who expelled the Protestant archbishop Gebhard from the Electorate. This outcome consolidated Wittelsbach authority in north-west Germany and encouraged a Catholic revival in the states along the lower Rhine. More broadly, the conflict set a precedent for foreign intervention in German religious and dynastic matters, which would be widely followed during the Thirty Years' War (1618–48). ## Background ### Religious divisions in the Holy Roman Empire Prior to the 16th century, the Catholic Church had been the sole official Christian faith in the Holy Roman Empire. Martin Luther's initial agenda called for the reform of the Church's doctrines and practices, but after his excommunication from the Church his ideas became embodied in an altogether separate religious movement, Lutheranism. Initially dismissed by Holy Roman Emperor Charles V as an inconsequential argument between monks, the idea of a reformation of the Church's doctrines, considered infallible and sacrosanct by Catholic teaching, accentuated controversy and competition in many of the territories of the Holy Roman Empire and quickly devolved into armed factions that exacerbated existing social, political, and territorial grievances. These tensions were embodied in such alliances as the Protestant Schmalkaldic League, through which many of the Lutheran princes agreed to protect each other from encroachment on their territories and local authority; in retaliation, the princes that remained loyal to the Catholic Church formed the Holy League. By the mid-1530s, the German-speaking states of the Holy Roman Empire had devolved into armed factions determined by family ties, geographic needs, religious loyalties, and dynastic aspirations. The religious issue both accentuated and masked these secular conflicts. Princes and clergy alike understood that institutional abuses hindered the practices of the faithful, but they disagreed on the solution to the problem. The Protestants believed a reform of doctrine was needed (especially regarding the Church's teachings on justification, indulgences, Purgatory, and the Papacy) while those that remained Catholic wished to reform the morals of the clergy only, without sacrificing Catholic doctrine. Pope Paul III convened a council to examine the problem in 1537 and instituted several internal, institutional reforms intended to obviate some of the most flagrant prebendary abuses, simony, and nepotism; despite efforts by both the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V and the Roman Pontiff, unification of the two strands of belief foundered on different concepts of "Church" and the principle of justification. Catholics clung to the traditional teaching that the Catholic Church alone is the one true Church, while Protestants insisted that the Church Christ founded was invisible and not tied to any single religious institution on earth. Regarding justification, the Lutherans insisted that it occurred by faith alone, while the Catholics upheld the traditional Catholic doctrine that justification involves both faith and active charity. The Schmalkaldic League called its own ecumenical council in 1537, and set forward several precepts of faith. When the delegates met in Regensburg in 1540–41, representatives agreed on the doctrine of faith and justification, but could not agree on sacraments, confession, absolution, and the definition of the church. Catholic and Lutheran adherents seemed further apart than ever; in only a few towns and cities were Lutherans and Catholics able to live together in even a semblance of harmony. By 1548, political disagreements overlapped with religious issues, making any kind of agreement seem remote. In 1548 Charles declared an interreligio imperialis (also known as the Augsburg Interim) through which he sought to find some common ground for religious peace. This effort alienated both Protestant and Catholic princes and the papacy; even Charles, whose decree it was, was unhappy with the political and diplomatic dimensions of what amounted to half of a religious settlement. The 1551–52 sessions convened by Pope Julius III at the supposedly ecumenical Council of Trent solved none of the larger religious issues but simply restated Catholic teaching and condemned Protestant teaching as heresies. ### Overcoming religious division Charles' interim solution failed. He ordered a general Diet in Augsburg at which the various states would discuss the religious problem and its solution. He himself did not attend, and delegated authority to his brother, Ferdinand, to "act and settle" disputes of territory, religion, and local power. At the conference, Ferdinand cajoled, persuaded, and threatened the various representatives into agreement on three important principles. The principle of cuius regio, eius religio provided for internal religious unity within a state: The religion of the prince became the religion of the state and all its inhabitants. Those inhabitants who could not conform to the prince's religion were allowed to leave, an innovative idea in the 16th century; this principle was discussed at length by the various delegates, who finally reached agreement on the specifics of its wording after examining the problem and the proposed solution from every possible angle. The second principle covered the special status of the ecclesiastical states, called the ecclesiastical reservation, or reservatum ecclesiasticum. If the prelate of an ecclesiastic state changed his religion, the men and women living in that state did not have to do so. Instead, the prelate was expected to resign from his post, although this was not spelled out in the agreement. The third principle, known as Ferdinand's Declaration, exempted knights and some of the cities from the requirement of religious uniformity, if the reformed religion had been practiced there since the mid-1520s, allowing for a few mixed cities and towns where Catholics and Lutherans had lived together. It also protected the authority of the princely families, the knights, and some of the cities to determine what religious uniformity meant in their territories. Ferdinand inserted this at the last minute, on his own authority. ### Remaining problems After 1555, the Peace of Augsburg became the legitimating legal document governing the co-existence of the Lutheran and Catholic faiths in the German lands of the Holy Roman Empire, and it served to ameliorate many of the tensions between followers of the so-called Old Faith and the followers of Luther, but it had two fundamental flaws. First, Ferdinand had rushed the article on ecclesiastical reservation through the debate; it had not undergone the scrutiny and discussion that attended the widespread acceptance and support of cuius regio, eius religio. Consequently, its wording did not cover all, or even most, potential legal scenarios. The Declaratio Ferdinandei was not debated in plenary session at all; using his authority to "act and settle," Ferdinand had added it at the last minute, responding to lobbying by princely families and knights. While these specific failings came back to haunt the Empire in subsequent decades, perhaps the greatest weakness of the Peace of Augsburg was its failure to take into account the growing diversity of religious expression emerging in the evangelical (Lutheran) and Reformed traditions. Other confessions had acquired popular, if not legal, legitimacy in the intervening decades and by 1555, the reforms proposed by Luther were no longer the only possibilities of religious expression: Anabaptists, such as the Frisian Menno Simons (1492–1559) and his followers; the followers of John Calvin, who were particularly strong in the southwest and the northwest; and the followers of Huldrych Zwingli were excluded from considerations and protections under the Peace of Augsburg. According to the Augsburg agreement, their religious beliefs remained heretical. ### Charles V's abdication In 1556, amid great pomp, and leaning on the shoulder of one of his favorites (the 24-year-old William, Count of Nassau and Orange), Charles gave away his lands and his offices. The Spanish Empire, which included Spain, the Netherlands, Naples, Milan, and Spain's possessions in the Americas, went to his son, Philip. His brother, Ferdinand, who had negotiated the treaty in the previous year, was already in possession of the Austrian lands and was also the obvious candidate to succeed Charles as Holy Roman Emperor. Charles' choices were appropriate. Philip was culturally Spanish: he was born in Valladolid and raised in the Spanish court, his native tongue was Spanish, and he preferred to live in Spain. Ferdinand was familiar with, and to, the other princes of the Holy Roman Empire. Although he too had been born in Spain, he had administered his brother's affairs in the Empire since 1531. Some historians maintain Ferdinand had also been touched by the reformed philosophies, and was probably the closest the Holy Roman Empire ever came to a Protestant emperor; he remained at least nominally a Catholic throughout his life, although reportedly he refused last rites on his deathbed. Other historians maintain that while Ferdinand was a practicing Catholic, unlike his brother he considered religion to be outside the political sphere. Charles' abdication had far-reaching consequences in imperial diplomatic relations with France and the Netherlands, particularly in his allotment of the Spanish kingdom to Philip. In France, the kings and their ministers grew increasingly uneasy about Habsburg encirclement and sought allies against Habsburg hegemony from among the border German territories; they were even prepared to ally with some of the Protestant kings. In the Netherlands, Philip's ascension in Spain raised particular problems; for the sake of harmony, order, and prosperity, Charles had not oppressed the Reformation as harshly there as did Philip, and Charles had even tolerated a high level of local autonomy. An ardent Catholic and rigidly autocratic prince, Philip pursued an aggressive political, economic, and religious policy toward the Dutch, resulting in their rebellion shortly after he became king. Philip's militant response meant the occupation of much of the upper provinces by troops of, or hired by, Habsburg Spain and the constant ebb and flow of Spanish men and provisions over the Spanish road from northern Italy, through the Burgundian lands, into and from Flanders. ## Cause of the war As an ecclesiastical principality of the Holy Roman Empire, the Electorate of Cologne (German: Kurfürstentum Köln or Kurköln) included the temporal possessions of the Archbishop of Cologne (German: Erzbistum Köln): the so-called Oberstift (the southern part of the Electorate), the northern section, called the Niederstift, the fiefdom of Vest Recklinghausen and the Duchy of Westphalia, plus several small uncontiguous territories separated from the Electorate by the neighboring Duchies of Cleves, Berg, Julich and Mark. Encircled by the electoral territory, Cologne was part of the archdiocese but not among the Elector's temporal possessions. The Electorate was ruled by an archbishop prince-elector of the empire. As an archbishop, he was responsible for the spiritual leadership of one of the richest sees in the Empire, and entitled to draw on its wealth. As a prince-prelate, he stood in the highest social category of the Empire, with specific and expansive legal, economic, and juridical rights. As an Elector, he was one of the men who elected the Holy Roman Emperor from among a group of imperial candidates. The Electorate obtained its name from the city, and Cologne had served as the capital of the archbishopric until 1288. After that, the archbishop and Prince-elector used the smaller cities of Bonn, 30 kilometers (19 mi) south of Cologne, and Brühl, 12 km (7.5 mi) south of Cologne, on the Rhine River, as his capital and residence; by 1580, both his residence and the capital were located in Bonn. Although the city of Cologne obtained its status as a free imperial city in 1478, the Archbishop of Cologne retained judicial rights in the city; he acted as a Vogt, or reeve, and reserved the right of blood justice, or Blutgericht; only he could impose the so-called blood punishments, which included capital punishments, but also physical punishments that drew blood. Regardless of his position as judge, he could not enter the city of Cologne except under special circumstances, and between the city council and the elector-archbishop, a politically and diplomatically precarious and usually adversarial relationship developed over the centuries. (See also History of Cologne for more details.) The position of archbishop was usually held by a scion of nobility, and not necessarily a priest; this widespread practice allowed younger sons of noble houses to find prestigious and financially secure positions without the requirements of priesthood. The archbishop and prince-elector was chosen by the cathedral chapter, the members of which also served as his advisers. As members of a cathedral chapter, they participated in the Mass, or sang the Mass; in addition, they performed other duties as needed. They were not required to be priests but they could, if they wished, take Holy orders. As prebendaries, they received stipends from cathedral income; depending on the location and wealth of the cathedral, this could amount to substantial annual income. In the Electorate, the Chapter included 24 canons of various social ranks; they each had a place in the choir, based on their rank, which in turn was usually derived from the social standing of their families. ### Election of 1577 When his nephew, Arnold, died without issue, Salentin von Isenburg-Grenzau (1532–1610) resigned from the office of Elector (September 1577) and, in December, married Antonia Wilhelmine d'Arenburg, sister of Charles d'Ligne, Prince of Arenberg. Salentin's resignation required the election of a new archbishop and prince-elector from among the Cathedral Chapter. Two candidates emerged. Gebhard (1547–1601) was the second son of William, Truchsess of Waldburg, known as William the younger, and Johanna von Fürstenberg. He was descended from the Jacobin line of the House of Waldburg; his uncle was a cardinal, and his family had significant imperial contacts. The second candidate, Ernst of Bavaria (1554–1612), was the third son of Albert V, Duke of Bavaria. As a member of the powerful House of Wittelsbach, Ernst could marshal support from his extensive family connections throughout the Catholic houses of the empire; he also had contacts in important canonic establishments at Salzburg, Trier, Würzburg, and Münster that could exert collateral pressure. Ernst had been a canon at Cologne since 1570. He had the support of the neighboring Duke of Jülich and several allies within the Cathedral Chapter. Although supported by both the papacy and his influential father, a 1571 effort to secure for him the office of coadjutor of the electorate of Cologne had failed once Salentin had agreed to abide by the Trentine proceedings; as the coadjutor bishop, Ernst would have been well-positioned to present himself as Salentin's logical successor. Since then, however, he had advanced in other sees, becoming bishop of Liège, Freising, and Hildesheim, important strongholds of Counter-Reformation Catholicism. He was a career cleric, not necessarily qualified to be an archbishop on the basis of his theological erudition, but by his family connections. His membership in several chapters extended the family influence, and his status as a prebendary gave him a portion of revenues from several cathedrals. He had been educated by Jesuits and the papacy considered collaboration with his family as a means to limit the spread of Lutheranism and Calvinism in the northern provinces. Also a younger son, Gebhard had prepared for an ecclesiastical career with a broad, Humanist education; apart from his native German, he had learned several languages (including Latin, Italian, French), and studied history and theology. After studying at the universities of Dillingen, Ingolstadt, Perugia, Louvain, and elsewhere, he began his ecclesiastical career in 1560 at Augsburg. His conduct at Augsburg caused some scandal; the bishop, his uncle, petitioned the Duke of Bavaria to remonstrate with him about it, which apparently led to some improvement in his behavior. In 1561, he became a deacon at Cologne Cathedral (1561–77), a canon of St. Gereon, the basilica in Cologne (1562–67), a canon in Strassburg (1567–1601), in Ellwangen (1567–83), and in Würzburg (1569–70). In 1571, he became deacon of Strassburg Cathedral, a position he held until his death. In 1576, by papal nomination, he also became provost of the Cathedral in Augsburg. Similar to his opponent, these positions brought him influence and wealth; they had little to do with his priestly character. If the election had been left to the papacy, Ernst would have been the choice, but the Pope was not a member of the Cathedral Chapter and Gebhard had the support of several of the Catholic, and all the Protestant, canons in the Chapter. In December 1577, he was chosen Elector and Archbishop of Cologne after a spirited contest with the papacy's candidate, Ernst: Gebhard won the election by two votes. Although it was not required of him, Gebhard agreed to undergo priestly ordination; he was duly consecrated in March 1578, and swore to uphold the Council of Trent's decrees. ### Gebhard's conversion Agnes von Mansfeld-Eisleben (1551–1637) was a Protestant canoness at the cloister in Gerresheim, today a district of Düsseldorf. Her family was a cadet line of the old House of Mansfeld which, by the mid-16th century, had lost much of its affluence, but not its influence. The Mansfeld-Eisleben line retained significant authority in its district; several of Agnes' cousins and uncles had signed the Book of Concord, and the family exercised considerable influence in Reformation affairs. She had been raised in Eisleben, the town in which Martin Luther had been born. The family's estates were located in Saxony, but Agnes' sister lived in the city of Cologne, married to the Freiherr (or Baron), Peter von Kriechingen. Although a member of the Gerresheim cloister, Agnes was free during her days to go where she wished. Reports differ on how she came to Gebhard's notice. Some say he saw her on one of her visits to her sister in Cologne. Others claim he noticed her during a religious procession. Regardless, in late 1579 or early 1580, she attracted Gebhard's notice. He sought her out, and they started a liaison. Two of her brothers, Ernst and Hoyer Christoph, soon visited Gebhard at the archbishop's residence to discuss a marriage. "Gebhard's Catholic belief, which was by no means based on his innermost conviction, started to waver when he had to decide whether to renounce the bishop's mitre and stay faithful to the woman he loved, or to renounce his love and remain a member of the church hierarchy." While he considered this, rumors of his possible conversion flew throughout the Electorate. The mere possibility of Gebhard's conversion caused consternation in the Electorate, in the Empire, and in such European states as England and France. Gebhard considered his options, and listened to his advisers, chief among them his brother Karl, Truchsess von Waldburg (1548–1593), and Adolf, Count von Neuenahr (1545–1589). His opponents in the Cathedral Chapter enlisted external support from the Wittelsbachs in Bavaria and from the Pope. Diplomats shuttled from court to court through the Rhineland, bearing pleas to Gebhard to consider the outcome of a conversion, and how it would destroy the Electorate. These diplomats assured him of support for his cause should he convert and hold the Electorate and threats to destroy him if he did convert. The magistrates of Cologne vehemently opposed any possible conversion and the extension of parity to Protestants in the archdiocese. His Protestant supporters told Gebhard that he could marry the woman and keep the Electorate, converting it into a dynastic duchy. Throughout the Electorate, and on its borders, his supporters and opponents gathered their troops, armed their garrisons, stockpiled foodstuffs, and prepared for war. On 19 December 1582, Gebhard announced his conversion, from, as he phrased it, the "darkness of the papacy to the Light" of the Word of God. ### Implications of his conversion The conversion of the Archbishop of Cologne to Protestantism triggered religious and political repercussions throughout the Holy Roman Empire. His conversion had widespread implications for the future of the Holy Roman Empire's electoral process established by the Golden Bull of 1356. In this process, seven Imperial Electors—the four secular electors of Bohemia, Brandenburg, the Palatinate, and Saxony; and the three ecclesiastical electors of Mainz, Trier, and Cologne—selected an emperor. The presence of at least three inherently Catholic electors, who collectively governed some of the most prosperous ecclesiastical territories in the Empire, guaranteed the delicate balance of Catholics and Protestants in the voting; only one other elector needed to vote for a Catholic candidate, ensuring that future emperors would remain in the so-called Old Faith. The possibility of one of those electors shifting to the Protestant side, and of that elector producing an heir to perpetuate this shift, would change the balance in the electoral college in favor of the Protestants. The conversion of the ecclesiastic see to a dynastic realm ruled by a Protestant prince challenged the principle of ecclesiastical reservation, which was intended to preserve the ecclesiastical electorates from this very possibility. The difficulties of such a conversion had been faced before: Hermann von Wied, a previous prince-elector and archbishop in Cologne, had also converted to Protestantism, but had resigned from his office. Similarly, Gebhard's predecessor, Salentin von Isenburg-Grenzau had indeed married in 1577, but had resigned from the office prior to his marriage. Furthermore, the reason for his marriage—to perpetuate his house—differed considerably from Gebhard's. The House of Waldburg was in no apparent danger of extinction; Gebhard was one of six brothers, and only one other had chosen an ecclesiastical career. Unlike his abdicating predecessors, when Gebhard converted, he proclaimed the Reformation in the city of Cologne itself, angering Cologne's Catholic leadership and alienating the Catholic faction in the Cathedral Chapter. Furthermore, Gebhard adhered not to the teachings of Martin Luther, but to those of John Calvin, a form of religious observation not approved by the Augsburg conventions of 1555. Finally, he made no move to resign from his position as Prince-elector. Affairs became further complicated when, on 2 February 1583, also known as Candlemas, Gebhard married Agnes von Mansfeld-Eisleben in a private house in Rosenthal, outside of Bonn. After the ceremony, the couple processed to the Elector's palace in Bonn, and held a great feast. Unbeknownst to them, while they celebrated their marriage, Frederick, Duke of Saxe-Lauenburg (1554–1586), who was also a member of the Cathedral Chapter, and his soldiers approached the fortified Kaiserswerth, across the river, and took the castle after a brief fight. When the citizens of Cologne heard the news, there was a great public exultation. Two days after his marriage, Gebhard invested his brother Karl with the duties of Statthalter (governor) and charged him with the rule of Bonn. He and Agnes then traveled to Zweibrücken and, from there, to the territory of Dillingen, near Solms-Braunfels, where the Count, a staunch supporter, would help him to raise funds and troops to hold the territory; Adolf, Count von Neuenahr returned to the Electorate to prepare for its defense. Gebhard clearly intended to transform an important ecclesiastical territory into a secular, dynastic duchy. This problematic conversion would then bring the principle of cuius regio, eius religio into play in the Electorate. Under this principle, all of Gebhard's subjects would be required to convert to his faith: his rule, his religion. Furthermore, as a relatively young man, heirs would be expected. Gebhard and his young wife presented the very real possibility of successfully converting a rich, diplomatically important, and strategically placed ecclesiastical territory of a prince-prelate into a dynastic territory that carried with it one of the coveted offices of imperial elector. Pope Gregory XIII excommunicated him in March 1583, and the Chapter deposed him, by electing in his place the 29-year-old canon, Ernst of Bavaria, brother of the pious William V, Duke of Bavaria. Ernst's election ensured the involvement of the powerful House of Wittelsbach in the coming contest. ## Course of the war The war had three phases. Initially it was a localized feud between supporters of Gebhard and those of the Catholic core of the Cathedral Chapter. With the election of Ernst of Bavaria as a competing archbishop, what had been a local conflict expanded in scale: Ernst's election guaranteed the military, diplomatic, and financial interest of the Wittelsbach family in the Electorate of Cologne's local affairs. After the deaths of Louis VI, Elector Palatine in 1583 and William the Silent in 1584, the conflict shifted gears again, as the two evenly matched combatants sought outside assistance to break the stalemate. Finally, the intervention of Alexander Farnese, Duke of Parma, who had at his command the Spanish Army of Flanders, threw the balance of power in favor of the Catholic side. By 1588, Spanish forces had pushed Gebhard from the Electorate. In 1588 he took refuge in Strassburg, and the remaining Protestant strongholds of the Electorate fell to Parma's forces in 1589. ### Cathedral feud Although Gebhard had gathered some troops around him, he hoped to recruit support from the Lutheran princes. Unfortunately for him, he had converted to another branch of the Reformed faith; such cautious Lutheran princes as Augustus I, Elector of Saxony, balked at extending their military support to Calvinists and the Elector Palatine was unable to persuade them to join the cause. Gebhard had three primary supporters. His brother, Karl, had married Eleonore, Countess of Hohenzollern (1551–after 1598), and Gebhard could hope that this family alliance with the power-hungry Hohenzollerns would help his cause. Another long-time ally and supporter Adolf, Count von Neuenahr, was a successful and cunning military commander whose army secured the northern part of the territory. Finally, John Casimir (1543–1592), the brother of the Elector Palatine, had expressed his support, and made a great show of force in the southern part of the Electorate. In the first months after Gebhard's conversion, two competing armies rampaged throughout the southern portion of the Electoral territory in the destruction of the so-called Oberstift. Villages, abbeys and convents and several towns, were plundered and burned, by both sides; Linz am Rhein and Ahrweiler avoided destruction by swearing loyalty to Salentin. In the summer of 1583, Gebhard and Agnes took refuge, first at Vest in Vest Recklinghausen, a fief of the Electorate, and then in the Duchy of Westphalia, at Arensberg castle. In both territories, Gebhard set in motion as much of the Reformation as he could, although his soldiers indulged in a bout of iconoclasm and plundering. Initially, despite a few setbacks, military action seemed to go in Gebhard's favor, until October 1583, when the Elector Palatine died, and Casimir disbanded his army and returned to his brother's court as guardian for the new duke, his 10-year-old nephew. In November 1583, from his castle Arensberg in Westphalia, he wrote to Francis Walsingham, adviser and spymaster to Queen Elizabeth: "Our needs are pressing, and you [Walsingham] and the Queen's other virtuous counsellors we believe can aid us; moreover, since God has called us to a knowledge of Himself, we have heard from our counsellors that you love and further the service of God." On the same day, Gebhard wrote also to the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London, presenting his case: "Verily, the Roman Antichrist moves every stone to oppress us and our churches...." Two days later, he wrote a more lengthy letter to the Queen: "We therefore humbly pray your Majesty to lend us 10,000 angelots, and to send it speedily, that we may preserve our churches this winter from the invasion of the enemy; for if we lost Bonn, they would be in the greatest danger, while if God permits us to keep it, we hope, by his grace, that Antichrist and his agents will be foiled in their damnable attempts against those who call upon the true God." Godesburg, a fortress a few kilometers from the Elector's capital city of Bonn, was taken by storm in late 1583 after a brutal month-long siege; when Bavarian cannonades failed to break the bastions, sappers tunneled under the thick walls and blew up the fortifications from below. The Catholic Archbishop's forces still could not break through the remains of the fortifications, so they crawled through the garderobe sluices (hence the name, Sewer War). Upon taking the fortress, they killed every defender except four, a Captain of the Guard who could prove he was a citizen of Cologne, the son of an important Cologne politician, the commander, and his wife. The 5 mi (8 km) of road between Godesberg and Bonn was filled with so many troops that it looked like a military camp. At the same time, in one of the few set battles of the war, Gebhard's supporters won at Aalst (French: Alost) over the Catholic forces of the Frederick of Saxe-Lauenburg, who had raised his own army and had entered the fray of his own accord a few months earlier. The Catholics offered Gebhard a great sum of money, which he refused, demanding instead, the restoration of his state. When further negotiations among the Electors and the Emperor at Frankfurt am Main, then at Muhlhausen in Westphalia, failed to reach an agreement settling the dispute, the Pope arranged for the support of several thousand Spanish troops in early 1584. ### Engagement of outside military forces The election of Ernst of Bavaria expanded the local feud into a more German-wide phenomenon. The pope committed 55,000 crowns to pay soldiers to fight for Ernst, and another 40,000 directly into the coffers of the new Archbishop. Under the command of his brother, Ernst's forces pushed their way into Westphalia, threatening Gebhard and Agnes at their stronghold at Arensburg. Gebhard and Agnes escaped to the rebellious provinces of the Netherlands with almost 1000 cavalry, where Prince William gave them a haven in Delft. There, Gebhard solicited the impecunious William for troops and money. After William's assassination in July 1584, Gebhard wrote to Queen Elizabeth requesting assistance. Elizabeth responded toward the end of 1585, directing him to contact Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester, her deputy with the rebellious Dutch, and recently commissioned as the commander-in-chief of her army in the Netherlands. Elizabeth had her own problems with adherents of her cousin Mary, Queen of Scots, and the Spanish. ### Stalemate By late 1585, although Ernst's brother had made significant inroads into the Electorate of Cologne, both sides had reached an impasse. Sizable portions of the population subscribed to the Calvinist doctrine; to support them, Calvinist Switzerland and Strassburg furnished a steady stream of theologians, jurists, books, and ideas. The Calvinist barons and counts understood the danger of Spanish intervention: it meant the aggressive introduction of the Counter-Reformation in their territories. France, in the person of Henry III, was equally interested, since the encirclement of his Kingdom by Habsburgs was cause for concern. Another sizable portion of the electorate's populace adhered to the old faith, supported by Wittelsbach-funded Jesuits. The supporters of both sides committed atrocities of their own: in the city of Cologne, the mere rumor of Gebhard's approaching army caused rioters to murder several people suspected of sympathizing with the Protestant cause. Ernst depended on his brother and the Catholic barons in the Cathedral Chapter to hold the territory he acquired. In 1585, Münster, Paderborn, and Osnabrück succumbed to Ferdinand's energetic pursuit in the eastern regions of the electorate, and a short time later, Minden. With their help, Ernst could hold Bonn. Support from the city of Cologne itself was also secure. To oust Gebhard, though, Ernst ultimately had to appeal for aid to Alexander Farnese, Duke of Parma, who commanded Spanish forces in the Netherlands, namely the Army of Flanders. Parma was more than willing to help. The Electorate, strategically important to Spain, offered another land route by which to approach the rebellious northern Provinces of the Netherlands. Although the Spanish road from Spain's holdings on the Mediterranean shores led to its territories in what is today Belgium, it was a long, arduous march, complicated by the provisioning of troops and the potentially hostile populations of the territories through which it passed. An alternative route on the Rhine promised better access to the Habsburg Netherlands. Furthermore, the presence of a Calvinist electorate almost on the Dutch border could delay their efforts to bring the rebellious Dutch back to the Spanish rule and the Catholic confession. Philip II and his generals could be convinced to support Ernst's cause for such considerations. Indeed, the process of intervention had started earlier. In 1581, Philip's forces, paid for by papal gold, had taken Aachen, which Protestants had seized; by the mid–1580s, the Duke of Parma's forces, encouraged by the Wittelsbachs and the Catholics in Cologne, had secured garrisons throughout the northern territories of the Electorate. By 1590, these garrisons gave Spain access to the northern provinces and Philip felt comfortable enough with his military access to the provinces, and with their isolation from possible support by German Protestants, to direct more of his attention to France, and less to his problems with the Dutch. On the other side of the feud, to hold the territory, Gebhard needed the full support of his military brother and the very able Neuenahr. To push Ernst out, he needed additional support, which he had requested from Delft and from England. It was clearly in the interests of England and the Dutch to offer assistance; if the Dutch could not tie up the Spanish army in Flanders, and if that army needed a navy to supply it, Philip could not focus his attention on the English and the French. His own diplomats had sought to present his case as one of pressing concern to all Protestant princes: in November 1583, one of his advisers, Dr. Wenceslaus Zuleger, wrote to Francis Walsingham: "I assure you if the Elector of Cologne is not assisted, you will see that the war in the Low Countries will shortly spread over the whole of Germany." The support Gebhard received, in the form of troops from the Earl of Leicester, and from the Dutch, in the form of the mercenary Martin Schenck, had mixed results. Leicester's troops, professional and well-led, performed well but their usefulness was limited: Elizabeth's instructions to help Gebhard had not come with financial support and Leicester had sold his own plate and had exhausted his own personal credit while trying to field an army. Martin Schenck had seen considerable service in Spain's Army of Flanders, for the French king and for Parma himself. He was a skilled and charismatic soldier, and his men would do anything for him; reportedly, he could sleep in his saddle, and seemed indomitable in the field. Unfortunately, Schenck was little more than a land-pirate, a free-booter, and rascal, and ultimately he did Gebhard more harm than good, as his behavior in Westphalia and at the Battle of Werl demonstrated. #### Sack of Westphalia In late February 1586, Friedrich Cloedt, whom Gebhard had placed in command of Neuss, and Martin Schenck went to Westphalia at the head of 500 foot and 500 horse. After plundering Vest Recklinghausen, on 1 March they captured Werl through trickery. They loaded a train of wagons with soldiers and covered them with salt. When the wagons of salt were seen outside the city gates, they were immediately admitted, salt being a valued commodity. The "salted soldiers" then over-powered the guard and captured the town. Some of the defenders escaped to the citadel, and could not be dislodged. Claude de Berlaymont, also known as Haultpenne after the name of his castle, collected his own force of 4000 and besieged Schenck and Cloedt in Werl. Attacked from the outside by Haultpenne, and from the inside by the soldiers in the citadel, Schenck and Cloedt broke out of the city with their soldiers on 3 March. Unable to break through the lines, they retreated into the city once more, but several of their soldiers did not make it into the city, and plundered the neighboring villages; 250 local residents were killed. On 8 March, Schenck and Cloedt loaded their wagons, this time with booty, took 30 magistrates as hostages, and attacked Haultpenne's force, killing about 500 of them, and losing 200 of their own. Included in the hostages were the Bürgermeister Johann von Pappen and several other high-ranking officials; although von Pappen died during the retreat, the remaining hostages were released after the payment of a high ransom. Schenck retreated to Venlo and Cloedt returned to the city of Neuss. ### Spanish intervention To some extent, the difficulties both Gebhard and Ernst faced in winning the war were the same the Spanish had in subduing the Dutch Revolt. The protraction of the Spanish and Dutch war—80 years of bitter fighting interrupted by periodic truces while both sides gathered resources—lay in the kind of war it was: enemies lived in fortified towns defended by Italian-style bastions, which meant the towns had to be taken and then fortified and maintained. For both Gebhard and Ernst, as for the Spanish commanders in the nearby Lowlands, winning the war meant not only mobilizing enough men to encircle a seemingly endless cycle of enemy artillery fortresses, but also maintaining the army one had and defending all one's own possessions as they were acquired. The Cologne War, similar to the Dutch Revolt in that respect, was also a war of sieges, not of assembled armies facing one another on the field of battle, nor of maneuver, feint, and parry that characterized wars two centuries earlier and later. These wars required men who could operate the machinery of war, which meant extensive economic resources for soldiers to build and operate the siege works, and a political and military will to keep the machinery of war operating. The Spanish faced another problem, distance, which gave them a distinct interest in intervening in the Cologne affair: the Electorate lay on the Rhine River, and the Spanish road. #### Razing of Neuss Gebhard's supporter, Adolf von Neuenahr, surrounded Neuss in March 1586, and persuaded Ernst's small garrison to capitulate. He refortified and restocked the city and placed young Friedrich Cloedt in command of a garrison of 1600 men, mostly Germans and Dutch soldiers. The town's fortifications were substantial; 100 years earlier it had resisted a lengthy siege by Charles the Bold (1433–1477) of Burgundy, and between the fortifications, the natural defenses of rivers, and the garrison, it could withstand all but the most determined assaults. In July 1586, the Duke of Parma approached and surrounded the city; by some irony, Agnes' cousin, Karl von Mansfeld and his troops were a part of the Spanish force assembled against Neuss. Parma had an impressive force at his command; in addition to Mansfeld's 2000 troops, he had another 6000 or so foot and Tercios, 2000 well-mounted, experienced Italian, Spanish, and German soldiers, and some 45 cannons, which he distributed on the redoubt across the river and on the heights a short distance from the city walls. According to the protocols of war generally accepted in 1586, Parma requested the capitulation of the city prior to the cannonade. Cloedt declined to capitulate, politely. The next day, being the feast of St. James, and the patron day for the Spanish, the bombardment was not initiated, although mendacious reports circulated in the Spanish camp that the Protestants had roasted two Spanish soldiers alive on the Catholic Holy day, a desecration which fanned their enthusiasm for the impending battle. The following day, Parma's artillery pounded at the walls for 3 hours with iron cannonballs weighing 30–50 pounds; in total, his artillery fired more than 2700 rounds. The Spanish made several attempts to storm the city, each repelled by Cloedt's 1600 soldiers. The ninth assault breached the outer wall. The Spanish and Italian forces entered the town from opposite ends and met in the middle. Cloedt, gravely injured (his leg was reportedly almost ripped off and he had five other serious wounds), had been carried into the town. Parma's troops discovered Cloedt, being nursed by his wife and his sister. Although Parma was inclined to honor the garrison commander with a soldier's death by sword, Ernst demanded his immediate execution. The dying man was hanged from the window, with several other officers in his force. Parma made no effort to restrain his soldiers. On their rampage through the city, Italian and Spanish soldiers slaughtered the rest of the garrison, even the men who tried to surrender. Once their blood-lust was satiated, they began to plunder. Civilians who had taken refuge in the churches were initially ignored, but when the fire started, they were forced into the streets and trapped by the rampaging soldiers. Contemporary accounts refer to children, women, and old men, their clothes smoldering, or in flames, trying to escape the conflagration, only to be trapped by the enraged Spanish; if they escaped the flames and the Spanish, they were cornered by the enraged Italians. Parma wrote to King Philip that over 4000 lay dead in the ditches (moats). English observers confirmed this report, and elaborated that only eight buildings remained standing. ### Siege warfare runs its course Parma had gone to Neuss prepared for a major assault, and the resources of Spain's Army of the Netherlands quickly changed the balance in favor of Ernst. In 1586, Ernst's allies had secured Vest Recklinghausen, even though they had failed to catch the elusive Schenck, and they had reduced Neuss to a pile of rubble, proving their overwhelming fire-power. In 1587, they encircled and took the fortified towns in the Oberstift, recapturing Bonn, Godesberg, and Linz am Rhein, and dozens of smaller fortified towns, villages, and farmsteads throughout the countryside. Throughout, soldiers from both parties marauded and plundered throughout the countryside, searching either for important officials, booty, or other valuables. On 12 November 1587, one of Walsingham's informants wrote, the "soldiers of Vartendonc (Martin Schenck) go out daily on excursions, doing very great harm in all places, for they have free passage every where. The other evening they went with 180 horse to above Bonn, between Orchel and Linz (am Rhein), to make prisoner Count Salatin d'Issemburg (Salentin von Isenburg), but their design did not succeed, as he withdrew into a castle." In early 1588, Gebhardt's supporters once more acquired Bonn; one of Walsingham's observers in the Palatinate, in Heidelberg, reported that the Prince of Taxis had been slain outside of Bonn, with 300 Spanish soldiers. By Spring 1588, Gebhard had run out of options. In 1583, he had refused the settlement offered to him after the conferences at Frankfurt and in Westphalia, counting on the support of the other Protestant electors. When their support did not materialize, he pursued diplomatic options with the French, the Dutch, and the English; these also were of limited help. After the destruction of Neuss in 1586, and the loss of most of the southern part of the Electorate in 1587, Rheinberg and its environs were the only territories of the Electorate he could claim, and much of this slipped from his grasp in 1588. He had exhausted his diplomatic, financial, and military possibilities. His health problems (referred to as Gelenkenschmerz, or joint pain) prohibited him from riding, which limited his ability to travel. In the spring of 1588, he relinquished his claim on the Electorate to the protection of Neuenahr and Martin Schenck, and retired to Strassburg. Neuenahr and Schenck continued to fight for him, but the former died in an artillery explosion in 1589, and the latter was killed at Nijmegen that summer. Without them to defend his claim on the Electorate, Rheinberg, Gebhard's last outpost in the northern Electorate, fell to Parma's force in 1589. ## Aftermath After Gebhard's expulsion, Ernst assumed full charge of the Electorate of Cologne. In his later years, a nuncio at Cologne took responsibilities for the financial administration of the archdiocese, and Ernst's nephew, Ferdinand of Bavaria, was elected to the Cathedral Chapter, the Wittelsbach heir-apparent. When Ernst died in 1612, the Cathedral Chapter duly elected his nephew to the position and Wittelsbachs held the Electorate until 1761. Ernst's victory, both in winning the election in 1583, and in convincing the assembly of other electors to accept him in 1585, confirmed him as the new archbishop of Cologne and gave the Wittelsbach family a foothold on the northern Rhine. Ernst's rule, and that of his four Wittelsbach successors, strengthened the position of his family in Imperial politics. The victory of the Catholic party further consolidated the Counter-Reformation in the northwest territories of the Holy Roman Empire, especially in the bishoprics of Münster, Paderborn, Osnabrück, and Minden, which were bordered by Protestant territories. Once Ernst's brother or such allies as the Duke of Parma regained control, Jesuits efficiently identified any recalcitrant Protestants and converted them to Catholicism. The Counter-Reformation was thoroughly applied in the lower Rhineland, with the goal that every Protestant, whether Lutheran or Calvinist, would be brought to the Catholic fold. For their efforts, the Spanish acquired important bridgeheads on the Rhine River, securing a land route to the rebellious northern provinces, which helped to extend an already long war of secession well into the next century. The German tradition of local and regional autonomy differed structurally and culturally from the increasingly centralized authority of such other European states as France, England, and Spain. This difference made them vulnerable to the unabashed intervention of Spanish, French, Italian, Dutch, English, and Scots mercenaries and the influence of papal gold and changed the dynamic of internal German confessional and dynastic disputes. The great "players" of the Early Modern European political stage realized that they could enhance their own positions vis-a-vis one another by assisting, promoting, or undermining local and regional competition among the German princes, as they did in the localized feud between Gebhard and Ernst. Conversely, German princes, dukes, and counts realized that they could gain an edge over their competitors by promoting the interests of powerful neighbors. The scale of the engagement of such external mercenary armies as Spain's Army of Flanders set a precedent to internationalize contests of local autonomy and religious issues in the German states, a problem not settled until the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. Even after that settlement, German states remained vulnerable to both external intervention and the religious division exemplified in the Cologne war.

McKinley Birthplace Memorial gold dollar

Commemorative gold coin featuring President McKinley

The McKinley Birthplace Memorial gold dollar was a commemorative coin struck by the United States Bureau of the Mint in 1916 and 1917, depicting the 25th President of the United States, William McKinley. The coin's obverse was designed by Charles E. Barber, Chief Engraver of the Mint, and the reverse by his assistant, George T. Morgan. As McKinley had appeared on a version of the 1903-dated Louisiana Purchase Exposition dollar, the 1916 release made him the first person to appear on two issues of U.S. coins. The coins were to be sold at a premium to finance the National McKinley Birthplace Memorial at Niles, Ohio, and were vended by the group constructing it. The issue was originally proposed as a silver dollar; this was changed when it was realized it would not be appropriate to honor a president who had supported the gold standard with such a piece. The coins were poorly promoted, and did not sell well. Despite an authorized mintage of 100,000, only about 30,000 were minted. Of these, 20,000 were sold, many of these at a reduced price to Texas coin dealer B. Max Mehl. The remaining 10,000 pieces were returned to the Mint for melting. ## Background William McKinley was born in Niles, Ohio, in 1843. He left college to work as a teacher, and enlisted in the Union Army when the American Civil War broke out in 1861. He served throughout the war, ending it as a brevet major. Afterwards, he attended law school and was admitted to the bar. He settled in Canton, Ohio, and after practicing there, was elected to Congress in 1876. In 1890, he was defeated for re-election, but was elected governor the following year, serving two two-year terms. With the aid of his close adviser Mark Hanna, he secured the Republican nomination for president in 1896, amid a deep economic depression. He defeated his Democratic rival, William Jennings Bryan, after a front porch campaign in which he advocated "sound money", that is, the gold standard unless modified by international agreement. This contrasted to "free silver", pushed by Bryan in his campaign. McKinley was president during the Spanish–American War of 1898, in which the U.S. victory was quick and decisive. As part of the peace settlement, Spain turned over to the United States its overseas colonies of Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines. With the nation prosperous, McKinley defeated Bryan again in the 1900 presidential election. President McKinley was assassinated by Leon Czolgosz in September 1901, and was succeeded by Vice President Theodore Roosevelt. In the years after McKinley's death, several memorials were built to him, including a large structure housing his remains at Canton. Another memorial was built at his birthplace in Niles under the auspices of the National McKinley Birthplace Memorial Association (the Association). Designed by the firm of McKim, Mead, and White, the Greek Classic memorial was built of Georgia marble and was dedicated in 1917. Housing a museum, library, and auditorium, as well as a statue of McKinley and busts of his associates, it remains open to the public, free of charge. ## Inception and preparation The McKinley Birthplace Memorial dollar was proposed as a fundraiser for the construction of the site in Niles. In February 1915, the Association's head, Joseph G. Butler, Jr., met with Ohio Congressman William A. Ashbrook, chairman of the House Committee on Coinage, Weights, and Measures, to propose a silver dollar in honor of McKinley. Ashbrook was willing, and the two men saw Treasury Secretary William G. McAdoo and Acting Director of the Mint Frederic Dewey, who envisioned no difficulty. Accordingly, Ashbrook introduced a bill in the final days of the 63rd Congress, which took no action on it. When the 64th Congress opened in December 1915, Ashbrook reintroduced his bill, H.R. 2. A hearing was held before Ashbrook's committee on January 13. Originally, the bill called for mintage of 100,000 silver dollars in commemoration of McKinley, but at the hearing, Butler requested that they be gold instead, stating, "if you will recall the fact, McKinley was elected in 1896 mainly on the question of the gold standard." The gold dollar had not been struck as a circulating coin since 1889. Asked a question from New York Congressman James W. Husted as to whether a gold dollar would be too small to be a souvenir, Butler responded, "No; I do not think so. I think, on the other hand, a silver dollar might be too large. I think we can dispose of gold dollars very much easier. Mr. Husted, and you know gold dollars are rather scarce just now." Ashbrook agreed, and stated: > my understanding is that these dollars will be sold at not less than \$2 each which would make a profit of at least \$100,000. I think there will be no trouble about disposing of them at that price. I understand they will be on sale in this memorial, and visitors who go to see it very largely will not leave the building without buying one, and will be willing to pay at least \$2. I might say in that connection that any gold dollar coined by the United States is worth at least \$2 at this time. They all command a premium, and there is no reason why this dollar would not sell for at least \$2 and likely more. Ohio Senator Warren G. Harding was present at the House committee meeting and spoke in favor of the bill, arguing that "this assistance on the part of the Federal Government will cost nothing more than the making of the dies". On being told that the dies, per the legislation, would be at the Association's expense, Harding replied, "I did not notice that. Then, it essentially costs the Government nothing whatever to render this mark of tribute and assistance." The committee reported the bill favorably on January 18, amending the bill to allow for the 100,000 gold dollars, to be purchased by the Association at par and sold at a profit to help build the memorial. The report indicated that the committee members "believe it is a deserved testimonial to the worth and service of a great man who lost his life while serving our Nation as its Chief Executive". The bill passed the House on February 7, 1916, and the Senate on February 15. It was enacted when President Woodrow Wilson signed it on February 23, 1916. The act provided that no more than 100,000 pieces be struck, with the necessary gold bullion to be acquired in the open market. The Association could purchase the coins at face value. The act required that the pieces be struck at the Philadelphia Mint, one of only two pieces of authorizing legislation in the classic commemorative coin series (through 1954) that specified the place of striking (the Panama–Pacific issue of 1915 had to be struck in San Francisco). The act also required that the dies be destroyed after the coining was done, something numismatists Anthony Swiatek and Walter Breen questioned as duplicating provisions in the Coinage Act of 1873. The designs were prepared in-house at the Philadelphia Mint by Chief Engraver Charles E. Barber, who designed the obverse and his assistant, George T. Morgan, who prepared the reverse. They did not seek outside artists to submit proposals. Numismatic author Q. David Bowers suggested that this was because Secretary McAdoo had sought non-employees to propose designs for the five Panama–Pacific coins along with those sketches prepared by Barber and his assistants, and the Mint's engravers had prepared only two of the five, and that because the artist assigned one, Evelyn Beatrice Longman, had fallen ill. When the McKinley designs were submitted to the Commission of Fine Arts on March 31, 1916, it recommended changes, though Don Taxay, who so stated, does not say what they were. In any event, no alteration was made, and the designs were approved. ## Design The obverse of the dollar features an unadorned bust of McKinley, facing left, with the name of the country above and "McKinley Dollar" (in all capitals) below. McKinley, who had appeared on one version of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition dollar (issued beginning in 1903), thus became the first person to appear on two different issues of American coinage. The earlier pieces had also been designed by Barber, and the later coins, according to Bowers, "present an image so different that the uninformed observer would not know that the same man was being depicted". Bowers suggested that Barber might have been trying to create "a distinctively new version". Taxay agreed, opining that Barber's "chief concern seems to have been in making the portrait of McKinley as different as possible from that on the Louisiana Purchase coins". The reverse, designed by Morgan, is intended to be a facing view of the McKinley birthplace memorial in Niles, but according to Swiatek and Breen, "the most charitable view must characterize it as inaccurate and incompetently done". Above the building is "McKinley Birthplace/Niles Ohio", and beneath it the date and "Memorial". Art historian Cornelius Vermeule, in his volume on U.S. coins, disliked the McKinley pieces. "When Barber and Morgan collaborated ... the results were almost always oppressive. The McKinley Memorial dollars of 1916 and 1917 bear witness to these stylistic judgments, the unclothed bust on the obverse looking tastelessly Roman and the classical, colonnaded Memorial Building placed across a reverse further constricted by too much, too large lettering." ## Distribution and collecting The Philadelphia Mint struck 20,000 gold dollars in August and October 1916, plus 26 extra reserved for inspection and testing at the 1917 meeting of the United States Assay Commission. In February 1917, 10,000 more (plus 14 assay coins) were minted, again at Philadelphia. The Association sold these to the public at \$3 each, the same price at which the Louisiana Purchase pieces, which sold poorly, had been vended. The McKinley Memorial pieces were ill-publicized, and few were sold at full price. Texas coin dealer B. Max Mehl purchased 10,000 pieces at an unknown price, selling them for years afterwards at \$2.50 each. The Washington Post reported on July 30, 1916 that the gold dollars had been released and were being "gobbled up as souvenirs". Nevertheless, according to Mehl in his 1937 volume on commemoratives, "the Committee in charge apparently realized that the number of collectors in the country could not and would not absorb an issue of 100,000 coins at \$3.00 each" and some 10,000 coins "were disposed of at a greatly reduced price to the 'Texas Dealer' [that is, himself] who in turn distributed them extensively among collectors of the country at a reduced price". A total of 10,023 were returned by the Committee to the Mint for melting. It is uncertain how many of each year were melted, as the Mint did not keep records of this. Mehl estimated that the Committee sold 15,000 of the 1916 and 5,000 of the 1917 (including the sale to him), meaning that about 5,000 of each were melted. Bowers deemed these figures "probably correct", given Mehl's personal dealings with the Committee. Bowers calculated that 8,000 of the 1916 were sold by the Committee to collectors and the public, plus 7,000 to Mehl. He opined that 2,000 of the 1917 were sold by the Committee at full price, plus 3,000 to Mehl. Swiatek, in his 2012 book on commemoratives, estimated that between a third and half of the melted pieces were dated 1917. According to R. S. Yeoman's 2015 edition of A Guide Book of United States Coins, the 1916 is catalogued for \$500 in slightly-worn AU-50 (almost uncirculated) to \$1,850 in near-pristine MS-66. The 1917 is listed at \$550 in AU-50 and \$3,250 in MS-66. A 1916 in MS-68 condition was sold by Heritage Auctions in 2009 for \$16,100. ## References and bibliography Sources [1916 establishments in Pennsylvania](Category:1916_establishments_in_Pennsylvania "wikilink") [Cultural depictions of William McKinley](Category:Cultural_depictions_of_William_McKinley "wikilink") [Currencies introduced in 1916](Category:Currencies_introduced_in_1916 "wikilink") [Early United States commemorative coins](Category:Early_United_States_commemorative_coins "wikilink") [United States gold coins](Category:United_States_gold_coins "wikilink") [Works by George T. Morgan](Category:Works_by_George_T._Morgan "wikilink")

Elfin woods warbler

Small bird of the New World warbler family endemic to Puerto Rico

The elfin woods warbler (Setophaga angelae) is a species of bird endemic to Puerto Rico, where it is local and uncommon. Discovered in 1968 and described in 1972, it is the most recently described New World warbler (family Parulidae). The species name, angelae, is a tribute to Angela Kepler, one of its discoverers. These birds are insectivores, as they feed by gleaning small insects off the habitat leaves. Due to its small populations and restricted habitats, conservation efforts were begun in 1982 to protect this species, but as of 2005, the warbler was still in need of protection. The species is not in immediate danger as the majority of its habitat is protected forest, but introduced species (such as rats and small Asian mongooses), habitat reduction, and natural disasters represent potential threats to the population. ## Discovery, taxonomy and naming The elfin woods warbler is one of many species in the genus Setophaga of the New World warbler family Parulidae. It was first observed in 1968 by Cameron and Angela Kepler while they were conducting observations on two Puerto Rican endemic birds, the Puerto Rican amazon and the Puerto Rican tody. On May 18, 1971, a specimen was captured in El Yunque National Forest, which at the time was believed to be its only location. A year later, Cameron Kepler and Kenneth Parkes described the species and named it Dendroica angelae, making it the most recently-discovered New World warbler. It is the first species described in the Caribbean since 1927 and the first Puerto Rican species described in the 20th century. Although the species was initially placed in the genus Dendroica, phylogenetic studies in 2010 using mitochondrial DNA sequences from New World warblers led to a revision of warbler genera. As a result, the study's authors recommended subsuming the genus Dendroica into the genus Setophaga. The same studies showed that the elfin woods warbler is most closely related to the arrowhead warbler, which is endemic to Jamaica, and the plumbeous warbler, which is endemic to the islands of Dominica and Guadeloupe. In 2011, the American Ornithologists' Union reorganized the classification of the family Parulidae and transferred species in Dendroica to Setophaga. This revised classification was subsequently adopted by the International Ornithologists' Union. The genus name is a combination of the Ancient Greek words ses, meaning "moth", and phagos, meaning "eating". The specific name, angelae, is a tribute to Angela Kepler. Elfin-woods warbler is an alternative spelling, and Reinita de Bosque Enano is the Spanish name. ## Description The elfin woods warbler is a small passerine, averaging 12.5 cm (5 in) in length and 8.4 g (0.30 oz) in weight. Its upperparts are predominantly black with white areas, and its underparts are white with black streaks. Other identifying characteristics are dark brown eyes, white patches on its ears and neck, an incomplete white eyering, a white eyestripe, and two white spots on its outer tail feathers. Like other Antillean warblers (Adelaide's warbler, Saint Lucia warbler, plumbeous warbler, and arrowhead warbler), it has a long bill and short, round wings (53.8 mm or 2.12 in average). Among Setophaga species, only Adelaide's warbler has a shorter average wing length. Juveniles differ from adults, retaining a grayish-green back for approximately a year and partially molting from July to October. ### Similar species The elfin woods warbler can be confused with the black-and-white warbler, a non-breeding visitor that occurs in Puerto Rico from mid-September to early May. The main physical distinction between the two is in the face. The elfin woods warbler has an incomplete white , while the black-and-white warbler has a bold white above the eye, and the lower half of a white eye-ring. The elfin woods warbler has an entirely black while the black-and-white warbler's is bisected by a white stripe. The latter species tends to forage on larger branches, while the elfin woods warbler forages in the canopy and on smaller branch tips. ### Voice The elfin woods warbler's song and call are difficult to hear. The species has a subtle voice and its call and song resemble those of the bananaquit, the most abundant bird in Puerto Rico. The song is a series of "short, rapidly uttered, rather unmusical notes on one pitch, swelling in volume and terminating with a short series of distinct double syllables sounding slightly lower in pitch" while the call has been described as "a single, short, metallic chip". ## Behavior ### Breeding The elfin woods warbler breeds from March to June. Both parents are involved in the construction of the nest and in feeding the chicks. Nests are built close to the tree trunk within dry aerial leaf litter, usually Cecropia leaves (a material used by no other Parulidae species), in Bulbophyllum wadsworthii trees. Nests are well-concealed and located 1.3 to 7.6 meters (4.3 to 24.9 ft) above ground level. In 2003 a nest with four chicks was found inside a tree stump of Colorado tree, Cyrilla racemiflora, at Maricao. The nest was at about 15 feet above ground level, with little cover in a secondary forest area. Nests are cup-shaped and made from small roots and twigs, dry leaves of Chusquea abietifolia and B. wadsworthii, and dry Panicum maximum leaves. The interior is made from fibers of C. abietifolia, dry leaves and other plant matter. Females lay two or three white eggs with red-brown spots. The chick's diet consists of insects—parents have been observed offering lepidopteran and orthopteran adults and lepidopteran larvae to hatchlings. ### Feeding The elfin woods warbler is commonly found foraging the middle canopy for insects. While searching for food it often flocks with other birds, such as black-and-white warblers, Puerto Rican tanagers and Lesser Antillean pewees. Three maneuvers used for catching prey—gleaning, sally-hovering and probing—have been described. Gleaning is described as a hunting maneuver made by a standing or moving bird. Sally-hovering is a hunting maneuver made by a bird in flight. Probing is a maneuver in which the bird, by digging with its beak, forages the substrate looking for food in a manner similar to chickens. Gleaning, especially off leaves, is the maneuver used with more frequency by the elfin woods warbler while probing is the least used. ## Distribution and habitat When first discovered, the elfin woods warbler was believed to exclusively occur in the high elevation, from 640 to 1,030 meters (2,100 to 3,380 ft), dwarf or elfin forests of the El Yunque National Forest in eastern Puerto Rico. The wind-clipped trees in these forests rarely exceed 5 meters (16 ft) in height and are characterized by stiff, thick twigs, leathery leaves and impenetrable, dense undergrowth ideal for hiding from predators. Later studies showed that the species migrated to lower elevations, between 370 and 600 meters (1,210 and 1,970 ft), in Tabonuco and Palo Colorado forests. Three more populations were discovered in the Maricao State Forest (1972, largest known population), the Carite State Forest (1977) and the Toro Negro State Forest (late 1970s). The species is presumed extirpated from two locales, occurring only at El Yunque National Forest and the Maricao State Forest. The elfin forest at El Yunque National Forest is characterized by high rainfall and humidity, low temperatures and insolation, and constant winds. It is found at mountain summits and is primarily composed of dense shrub and small trees with moss and epiphyte growth in its plants and floor. The species richness is low when compared to other types of forests (tabonuco, palo Colorado and palma sierra forests) found in the Luquillo Mountains. The elfin forest at the Maricao State Forest, located in western Puerto Rico, receives an annual average rainfall of 2,250 millimeters (90 in), a high amount considering that a rainforest, by definition, receives a minimum of 1,700 millimeters (67 in) annually. Since its soil has low water-holding capacity its vegetation is more xeric than expected. The species's highest density occurs in Podocarpus forests in the Maricao State Forest. Little information is available on the elfin forests at Toro Negro and Carite. ## Status and conservation ### Population In September 1989, Hurricane Hugo struck the central and eastern region of Puerto Rico, affecting three of the four known populations of the elfin woods warbler; the El Yunque National Forest, Toro Negro, and Carite populations were all impacted. A survey conducted two years later in the Toro Negro Forest, located in the Cordillera Central, did not find any individuals. Surveys conducted since then suggest that, for reasons yet unknown, the populations at Carite and Toro Negro were likely extirpated. Continued monitoring of the elfin woods warbler populations is achieved through bird counts performed every three to four years by the Puerto Rican Breeding Bird Survey (PRBBS). A survey conducted in 2001 found three individuals at the Maricao State Forest. An IUCN assessment of the elfin woods warbler, prepared in 2000, estimated a stable population of 600 mature individuals. In 2020 the population was estimated to comprise at least 1800 mature individuals, a figure which equates to at least 2700 individual birds. ### Threats The elfin woods warbler faces two main threats: predation, and the destruction or alteration of suitable habitat. The pearly-eyed thrasher, the Puerto Rican sharp-shinned hawk and the now extirpated white-necked crow are all confirmed native predators. Unconfirmed but potential native predators include two endemic snakes and several carnivores known from fossil records. Introduced species, such as domestic cats and dogs, black rats, and small Asian mongooses, are also potential nest predators. These introduced species have proliferated in the Maricao State Forest and El Yunque National Forest due to the presence of facilities built mainly for communication purposes. Both natural and human factors contribute to the destruction of the elfin woods warbler's habitat. The construction of communication towers, logging, and the expansion of roads and trails have all caused habitat destruction within the warbler's range. Natural disasters such as forest fires and hurricanes have also decimated habitat. ### Protection The elfin woods warbler was placed on the United States federal candidate list for the Endangered Species Act in 1999, and the announcement was published on the Federal Register of October 25, 1999, Volume 64, No. 205, pages 57535–57547. The USFWS started to consider the need to protect the elfin woods warbler in 1982. In 2005, a group of scientists, scholars, artists and environmentalists petitioned the Bush administration to admit 225 species, including the elfin woods warbler, to Endangered Species Act protections. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) first evaluated the status of the elfin woods warbler in 1988. At the time, it was given a classification of lower risk/least concern. Its status was changed to lower risk/near threatened in 1994, to vulnerable in 2000, and to endangered in 2017. The organization justified the warbler's move to endangered status due to the combination of its very small range and its continuing decline due to habitat destruction and degradation. ## See also - Fauna of Puerto Rico - List of birds of Puerto Rico - List of endemic fauna of Puerto Rico - List of Vieques birds - El Toro Wilderness

Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss

1992 first-person role-playing video game

Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss is a first-person role-playing video game developed by Blue Sky Productions (later Looking Glass Studios) and published by Origin Systems. Released in March 1992, the game is set in the fantasy world of the Ultima series. It takes place inside the Great Stygian Abyss: a large cave system that contains the remnants of a failed utopian civilization. The player assumes the role of the Avatar—the Ultima series's protagonist—and attempts to find and rescue a baron's kidnapped daughter. Ultima Underworld has been cited as the first role-playing game to feature first-person action in a 2.5D environment. Its design combines simulation elements with concepts from earlier role-playing video games, including Wizardry and Dungeon Master, which led the game's designers to call it a "dungeon simulation". As such, the game is non-linear and allows for emergent gameplay. Ultima Underworld sold nearly 500,000 units, and was placed on numerous hall of fame lists. It influenced game developers such as Bethesda Softworks and Valve, and it was an inspiration behind the games Deus Ex and BioShock. The game had a sequel, Ultima Underworld II: Labyrinth of Worlds (1993), and a new game in the series, Underworld Ascendant, was released in late 2018. ## Gameplay Ultima Underworld is a role-playing video game (RPG) that takes place from a first-person perspective in a three-dimensional environment. The player's goal is to adventure through a large, multi-level dungeon, in which the entire game is set. The player uses a freely movable mouse cursor to interact with the game's world, and with the icon-based interface on the heads-up display (HUD). Each icon has a specific effect; for example, the player uses the Look icon to examine objects closely, while the Fight icon causes the player character to ready their weapon. The player's progression through the game is non-linear: areas may be explored, and puzzles and quests finished, in any order. An automatically filling map, to which the player may add notes, records what the player has seen above a minimum level of brightness. The player character may carry light sources to extend the line of sight in varying amounts. Exploratory actions include looking up and down, jumping, and swimming. The player begins the game by creating a character, for whom traits such as gender, class and skills may be selected. Skills range from fighting with an axe, to bartering, to picking locks. By participating in combat, quests and exploration, the character gains experience points. When certain amounts of experience points are accumulated, the character levels up, gaining additional hit points and mana. Experience is required to recite mantras at shrines in the game. Each mantra is a statement—such as "Om Cah"—that increases proficiency in a specific skill when typed. Simple mantras are provided in the game's manual, while more complex ones are hidden throughout the game. An inventory on the HUD lists the items and weapons carried by the player character; capacity is limited by weight. Players equip items via a paper doll system, wherein items are clicked-and-dragged onto a representation of the player character. Combat occurs in real-time, and the player character may use both melee and ranged weapons. The player attacks by holding the cursor over the game screen and clicking, depressing the button longer to inflict greater damage. Some weapons allow for different types of attacks depending on where the cursor is held; for example, clicking near the bottom of the screen may result in a jab, while clicking in the middle produces a slash. Simulated dice rolls occur behind the scenes to determine weapon accuracy. Enemies sometimes try to escape when near death, and the game's stealth mechanics may occasionally be used to avoid combat altogether. The player may cast spells by selecting an appropriate combination of runestones. Like mantras, runestones must be found in the game world before use. There are over forty spells, some undocumented; their effects range from causing earthquakes to flight. The developers intended Ultima Underworld to be a realistic and interactive "dungeon simulation", rather than a straightforward role-playing video game. For example, many objects in the game have no actual use, while a lit torch may be used on corn to create popcorn. Weapons deteriorate with use, and the player character must eat and rest; light sources burn out unless extinguished before sleeping. A physics system allows, among other things, for items to bounce when thrown against surfaces. The game contains non-player characters (NPCs) with whom the player may interact by selecting dialogue choices from a menu. Most NPCs have possessions, and are willing to trade them. The game was designed to give players "a palette of strategies" with which to approach situations, and its simulation systems allow for emergent gameplay. ## Plot ### Setting Ultima Underworld is set in Britannia, the fantasy world of the Ultima series. Specifically, the game takes place inside a large, underground dungeon called the Great Stygian Abyss. The dungeon's entrance lies on the Isle of the Avatar, an island ruled by Baron Almric. The Abyss first appeared in Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar, in which it contains the player's final goal, the Codex of Ultimate Wisdom. Ultima Underworld is set after the events of Ultima VI: The False Prophet; in the time between the two games, a man named Cabirus attempted to create a utopian colony inside the Abyss. The eight settlements of the Ultima series each embody one of eight virtues, and Cabirus wished to create a ninth that embodied all virtues. To achieve this, he united diverse cultures and races in peaceful co-existence and planned to promote harmony by giving each group one of eight virtue-imbued magical artifacts. However, he died before distributing the artifacts, and left no instructions for doing so. As a result, the colony collapsed into anarchy and war, and the artifacts were lost. At the time of Ultima Underworld, the Abyss contains the remnants of Cabirus's colony, inhabited by fractious groups of humans, goblins, trolls and others. ### Story Before the beginning of the game, the Abyss-dwelling wizard brothers Garamon and Tyball accidentally summon a demon, the Slasher of Veils, while experimenting with inter-dimensional travel. Garamon is used as bait to lure the demon into a room imbued with virtue. However, the demon offers Tyball great power if he betrays Garamon. Tyball agrees, but the betrayal fails; Garamon is killed, but seals the demon inside the room. Because he lacks virtue, Tyball cannot re-enter by himself, and plans to sacrifice Baron Almric's daughter, Arial, at the doorway to gain entrance. In the game's introduction, the ghost of Garamon haunts the Avatar's dreams with warnings of a great danger in Britannia. The Avatar allows Garamon to take him there, where he watches Tyball kidnap Arial. Tyball escapes, leaving the Avatar to be caught by the Baron's guards. The guards take him to the Baron, who banishes him to the Great Stygian Abyss to rescue Arial. After the introduction, the Avatar explores the dungeon and finds remnants of Cabirus's colony. A few possible scenarios include deciding the fate of two warring goblin tribes, learning a language, and playing an instrument to complete a quest. The Avatar eventually defeats Tyball and frees Arial. However, as he dies, Tyball reveals that he had decided to contain the Slasher of Veils, whose prison he had been weakening, within Arial as a way to prevent it from destroying the world. Arial asks the Avatar to prevent the Slasher of Veils from being unleashed, and magically teleports back to the surface to evacuate its inhabitants. With help from Garamon's ghost, the Avatar gathers the eight talismans of Cabirus and throws them in the volcano at the base of the Abyss; Garamon uses the energy they release to open a portal and send the Slasher of Veils into another dimension. The Avatar is sucked through the portal into a chaotic alternate dimension, but escapes back to the Isle of the Avatar and makes it on board the Baron's ship as the volcano erupts. As the game ends, Garamon's spirit reveals that he teleported the inhabitants of the Abyss to another cave. ## Development Ultima Underworld was conceived in 1989 by Origin Systems employee Paul Neurath. He had just completed work on Space Rogue, a hybrid title that features sequences both of 2D tile-based role-playing and of 3D space flight simulation. According to Neurath, Space Rogue "took the first, tentative steps in exploring a blend of RPG and simulation elements, and this seemed to me a promising direction." He felt that the way it combined the elements was jarring, however, and believed that he could create a more immersive experience. Neurath had enjoyed role-playing video games like Wizardry, but found that their simple, abstract visuals were an obstacle to the suspension of disbelief. He believed that Dungeon Master'''s detailed first-person presentation was a "glimpse into the future", and he sought to create a fantasy role-playing game that built on its example. In early 1990, Neurath wrote a design document for a game titled Underworld, which described such elements as "goblins on the prows of rowboats tossed in the waves, shooting arrows at the player above on a rope bridge swinging in the wind." He contracted former Origin employee Doug Wike to create concept art. Wike created a brief, hand-drawn animation with Deluxe Paint Animation, which depicted the game's interface and a creature moving toward the player. The animation defined the game's direction, and it was used as a reference point for the game's tone and features throughout development. That spring, Neurath founded the company Blue Sky Productions in Salem, New Hampshire, with the intention to create Underworld. Among the company's first employees was Doug Church, who was studying at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The team was thus composed of Doug Church as programmer, Doug Wike as lead artist and Paul Neurath as lead designer. Development began in May 1990. An early difficulty was the implementation of texture mapping. Neurath had experimented unsuccessfully with the concept on an Apple II computer in the late 1980s, but he believed that the more powerful IBM PCs of the time might be able to process it. He contacted Lerner Research programmer Chris Green—an acquaintance from his past work with Ned Lerner—who created a working algorithm. Using the Space Rogue engine, Green's algorithm, assembly code from Lerner Research's Car and Driver and original programming, the Blue Sky team completed a prototype of Underworld after roughly a month of work. Neurath described the prototype as "fast, smooth, and [featuring] true texture mapped walls, though the ceiling and floor were flat shaded and the corridors and rooms were all 10' [3.0 m] high—it looked a lot like Wolfenstein-3D in fact." The team demonstrated it at the June 1990 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) and impressed Origin Systems. Origin producer Warren Spector later said, "I remember Paul showing me that demo ... at CES and being totally floored by it. None of us had ever seen anything like it." The two companies reached a publishing agreement that summer, and Origin suggested that the game be reworked to fit into the Ultima universe. The team agreed, and the game was renamed Ultima Underworld. While Spector had hoped to produce the game, he was not assigned to the role; and he later said that he "sort of watched [the other producer] jealously from the sidelines." After the game was renamed, Doug Church recruited Dan Schmidt, a college friend who had just graduated from MIT, as a programmer. The team abandoned the Space Rogue engine and created a new one that could display a believable 3D world—one with varying heights and texture-mapped floors and ceilings. Church estimated that the first year of production was dedicated to creating the game's technological base. However, Neurath stated that the team spent "comparatively little" time on the game's technology, and that "most was spent working on game features, mechanics, and world building". Their ultimate goal was to create the "finest dungeon game, a game that was tangibly better than any of the long line of dungeon games that came before it." Each member of the small team assumed multiple roles; for example, the game's first two levels were designed by Paul Neurath, while the rest were built by artists, designers and programmers. According to Schmidt, Neurath contracted a writer to create the game's story and dialogue, but the relationship was a "mismatch"; and so the team decided to write the plot themselves. Alongside his programming work, Church co-wrote the game's story with Dan Schmidt, and he gradually took on project leader responsibilities. Writing duties for each level were given to the person who created that level; Schmidt's role was to edit the dialogue of each level to fit with that of the others. Schmidt also created the game's sound effects, which were synthesized—no recorded sounds were used—in a graphical sound editor. Neurath, who Church said was "very day to day at the beginning of the project", became more involved with the company's business and finances. Church explained that the core of the project was its "dynamic creation". He noted that the team had "no set of rules ... or pre-written plan", but rather worked organically toward the general idea of creating a "dungeon simulation". Church believed that the game's Ultima series heritage was extremely helpful, as it gave the team an anchor for their experiments. According to Church, because the team was young and inexperienced, they were "improvising almost the whole time". He said that they would "just write something" that seemed interesting, but would then "get it half done, and we'd say, 'Eh? That's not working.'" He believed that this iterative method was useful overall, but that it entailed an abnormally large workload: it resulted in the creation of "four movement systems before we were done, several combat systems, and so forth". Certain failed experiments meant that the team created "[AI] code for many ideas which turned out to be largely irrelevant to the actual gameplay". During the first year of the game's development, Church believed that Origin had little faith in the team's ability to complete the game. He later said, "They didn't pay any attention at all, frankly." While Origin CEO Richard Garriott helped the team in fitting the game into the Ultima franchise, Warren Spector later said that the company seemed "blasé" about Ultima Underworld "for the first several months after ORIGIN and Blue Sky signed the deal", despite his own belief that it was a "change-the-world project". Neurath opined that this was due to the team's status as outsiders, whose company was "some 1,500 miles distant" from their publisher. The team was advanced \$30,000 to create the game, but its final cost was \$400,000. The game was funded partly by Ned Lerner, and by Neurath's royalties from Space Rogue. Throughout the game's production, the studio was run on a tight budget. Roughly a year into development, the team discovered that their second producer—the first having quit Origin near the beginning of development—had left the project. Neurath later said that "neither [producer] had much involvement" in the game, and that, following the second's departure, the team spent time without any producer at all. Rumors circulated that Origin planned to cancel the project. Following a proposal by the team around this time, Spector, who had previously worked with Neurath on Space Rogue, assumed the role of producer. Church later described this event as "a big win for everyone". Spector began to interact regularly with the team by phone and to visit the studio in person. Neurath later said, "Warren understood immediately what we were trying to accomplish with the game, and became our biggest champion within Origin. Had not Warren stepped in this role at that stage, I'm not sure Ultima Underworld would have ever seen the light of day." Church said that Spector helped the team polish the game and "make it real", and that Spector's past experience in the industry enabled him to keep the team focused on completing the game. He explained that Spector "had that ability to help me and the rest of the guys reset, from the big-picture view of someone who has done it before." The final four months of the game's development constituted "crunch time". During this period, Neurath rented an extremely small basement office space in a Somerville, Massachusetts social services building: he sought to circumvent the long commute that several team members had been making from Massachusetts. Furniture consisted of inexpensive folding tables and "uncomfortable red deck chairs". Development took place during the winter, but the room was drafty and poorly heated. The team hired college friends such as Marc LeBlanc to bug test the game, and Spector stayed at the studio for roughly a month and a half, according to Church. Spector later said that "in that little office, that team created some serious magic. I mean, the sense of doing something incredible was palpable". Neurath summarized, "Despite the austere working environment, the game came together amazingly well in the final stretch, and we delivered the Gold Master just about two years after we had started." The game was released in March 1992. ### Technology Ultima Underworld's game engine was written by a small team. Chris Green provided the game's texture mapping algorithm, which was applied to walls, floors and ceilings. The engine allowed for transparencies, walls at 45 degree angles, multiple tile heights and inclined surfaces, and other aspects. Ultima Underworld was the first video game to implement many of these effects. The game was also the first indoor, real-time, 3D first-person game to allow the player to look up and down, and to jump. Ultima Underworld uses two-dimensional sprites for characters, but also features 3D objects, as the team believed that it "had to do 3D objects in order to have reasonable visuals". The game uses physics to calculate the motion of thrown objects. During the game's alpha testing phase, part of the programming team worked to create a smooth lighting model. The game's advanced technology caused the engine to run slowly, and its system requirements were extremely high. Doug Church later downplayed the importance of the game's technology, stating that technological advancement "is somewhat inevitable in our field ... [and] sadly, as an industry we seem to know much less about design, and how to continue to extend and grow design capabilities". Instead, he claimed that Ultima Underworld's most important achievement was its incorporation of simulation elements into a role-playing game. ## Reception Ultima Underworld was not an immediate commercial success, which caused Origin to decrease its marketing support. However, its popularity increased via word of mouth in the years following its release. Sales eventually reached nearly 500,000 copies, with praise for its 3D presentation and automapping feature. In 1993 the game won the Origins Award for Best Fantasy or Science Fiction Computer Game of 1992, and was nominated for an award at the Game Developers Conference. ACE called Ultima Underworld "the next true evolutionary step in the RPG genre", and noted that its simulation-style dungeon was "frighteningly realistic". The magazine thought that the game's sprite character models "detract from the dense atmosphere a bit", but ended the review by stating, "If you've got a PC, then you've got to have Ultima Underworld." Dragon Magazine opined that "to say this is the best dungeon game we've ever played is quite an understatement," and it "will leave you wondering how other game entertainments can ever stack up against the new standards Abyss sets." Computer Gaming World's Allen Greenberg in 1992 described it as "an ambitious project" but "not without its share of problems." He praised the game's "enjoyable story and well-crafted puzzles", but disliked its "robotic" controls and "confusing" perspectives, and stated that "far more impressive sounds and pictures have been produced for other dungeon games". He summarized the game as "an enjoyable challenge with a unique game-playing engine to back it up." Scorpia was also positive, stating that despite flaws "Ultima Underworld is an impressive first product. The meticulous construction of a real-world dungeon environment is outstanding. [It] may be a dungeon trek, but it is certainly the dungeon trek of the future". In 1993 she praised the "superb graphics" of "a definite must for game players". The magazine later awarded the game "Role-Playing Game of the Year". Computer Shopper enjoyed its storyline and characters, and believed that the game "makes you feel as if you've entered a virtual reality". Despite describing its interface as "not truly intuitive", the reviewer finished by calling the game "addictive" and "a fine value". The Chicago Tribune awarded it Best Game of the Year, and called it "an amazing triumph of the imagination" and "the creme de la creme of dungeon epics". The game was also well received by non-English publications. The Swedish Datormagazin considered the game to be "in a class by itself". In Germany, Power Play praised its "technical perfection" and "excellent" story, while Play Time lauded its graphical and aural presentation, and awarded it Game of the Month. Finland's Pelit stated, "Ultima Underworld is something totally new in the CRPG field. The Virtual Fantasy of the Abyss left reviewers speechless." Ultima Underworld was inducted into many hall of fame lists, including those compiled by GameSpy, IGN and Computer Gaming World. PC Gamer US ranked the game and its sequel 20th on their 1997 The 50 Best Games Ever list, citing "strong character interaction, thoughtful puzzles, unprecedented control, and genuine roleplaying in ways that have yet to be duplicated". In 2004, readers of Retro Gamer voted Ultima Underworld as the 62nd top retro game: the staff called it "easily one of the best entries in the long-running Ultima series." In 1998, PC Gamer declared it the 18th-best computer game ever released, and the editors called it "Light-years ahead of their time, and still regarded as some of the best roleplaying games ever created". A poll conducted in May 2023 by GQ among a team of video game journalists listed it as the 95th-best video game of all time. ## Legacy Ultima Underworld is considered the first example of an immersive sim, a genre that combines elements from other genres to create a game with strong player agency and emergent gameplay, and has influenced many games since its release. The game's influence has been found in BioShock (2007), and that game's designer, Ken Levine, has stated that "all the things that I wanted to do and all the games that I ended up working on came out of the inspiration I took from [Ultima Underworld]." Gears of War designer Cliff Bleszinski also cited it as an early influence, stating that it had "far more impact on me than Doom". Other games influenced by Ultima Underworld include The Elder Scrolls: Arena, Deus Ex, Deus Ex: Invisible War, Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines, and Half-Life 2. Toby Gard stated that, when designing Tomb Raider, he "was a big fan of ... Ultima Underworld and I wanted to mix that type of game with the sort of polygon characters that were just being showcased in Virtua Fighter." Ultima Underworld was also the basis for Looking Glass Technologies' later System Shock. Id Software's use of texture mapping in Catacomb 3-D, a precursor to Wolfenstein 3D, was influenced by Ultima Underworld. Conflicting accounts exist regarding the extent of this influence, however. In the book Masters of Doom, author David Kushner asserts that the concept was discussed only briefly during a 1991 telephone conversation between Paul Neurath and John Romero. However, Doug Church has said that John Carmack saw the game's summer 1990 software convention demo, and recalled a comment from Carmack that he could write a faster texture mapper. Paul Neurath has recounted the incident similarly, with both Carmack and Romero present. Despite the technology developed for Ultima Underworld, Origin opted to continue using traditional top-down, 2D graphics for future mainline Ultima games. The engine was re-used and enhanced for Ultima Underworld's 1993 sequel, Ultima Underworld II: Labyrinth of Worlds. Looking Glass Studios planned to create a third Ultima Underworld, but Origin rejected their pitches. After Electronic Arts (EA) rejected Arkane Studios' pitch for Ultima Underworld III, the studio instead created a spiritual successor: Arx Fatalis. In the early 2000s, Paul Neurath approached EA to discuss a port of Ultima Underworld to the Pocket PC. EA rejected the suggestion, but allowed him to look for possible developers; Neurath found that ZIO Interactive enthusiastically supported the idea, and EA eventually licensed the rights to the company. Doug Church and Floodgate Entertainment assisted with portions of its Pocket PC development, and the port was released in 2002. GOG.com released an emulated version in June 2011 for Windows and in October 2012 for Mac OS X. In 2015, Otherside Entertainment, a new developer founded by Paul Neurath and other Looking Glass and Irrational veterans, announced a new entry in the series, entitled Underworld Ascendant. The new title is an officially licensed part of the series set in the Stygian Abyss, but this licensing agreement does not extend to the Ultima name or greater IP, effectively orphaning Underworld from the Ultima'' series.

Oswald Watt

Australian aviation pioneer

Walter Oswald Watt, OBE (11 February 1878 – 21 May 1921) was an Australian aviator and businessman. He served as a pilot during World War I with, firstly, the French Foreign Legion and, secondly, the Australian Flying Corps (AFC). The son of a Scottish-Australian merchant and politician, Watt was born in England and moved to Sydney when he was one year old, returning to Britain at the age of eleven for education at Bristol and Cambridge. In 1900 he returned to Australia, and enlisted in the Militia, before acquiring cattle stations in New South Wales and Queensland. He was also a partner in the family shipping firm. The first Australian to qualify for a Royal Aero Club flying certificate, in 1911, Watt joined the Aviation Militaire of the French Foreign Legion as a pilot on the outbreak of World War I. He transferred to the Australian Flying Corps in 1916, quickly progressing from flight commander with No. 1 Squadron in Egypt to commanding officer of No. 2 Squadron on the Western Front. By February 1918, he had been promoted to lieutenant colonel and taken command of the AFC's 1st Training Wing in England. A recipient of France's Legion of Honour and Croix de Guerre, and twice mentioned in despatches during the war, Watt was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1919. He left the military to pursue business interests in Australia, and was lauded for his generosity to other returned airmen. In 1921, at the age of 43, he died by accidental drowning at Bilgola Beach, New South Wales. He is commemorated by the Oswald Watt Gold Medal for outstanding achievement in Australian aviation, and the Oswald Watt Fund at the University of Sydney. ## Early career Born on 11 February 1878 in Bournemouth, England, Oswald Watt was the youngest son of John Brown Watt, a Scot who had migrated to New South Wales in 1842 and became a successful merchant and politician, frequently representing his state on overseas missions. Oswald's Australian-born mother, Mary Jane, died when he was one and shortly afterwards the family relocated to Sydney. Oswald was sent back to England at the age of eleven to complete his schooling at Clifton College, Bristol, before going on to study at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he received a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1899. Returning to Sydney in 1900, he was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the New South Wales Scottish Rifles, a Militia unit, and in 1902 was appointed an aide-de-camp to the Governor of New South Wales. On 27 September that year, he married Muriel Williams at St. John's Anglican Church in Toorak, Victoria; the couple had one son. Watt's family was wealthy, and he was able to establish himself as a grazier by purchasing several cattle stations in New South Wales and Queensland. Travelling abroad again, he obtained his Master of Arts degree from Cambridge in 1904. In October the following year he was promoted to captain in the Scottish Rifles. On a subsequent trip to England he took flying lessons at the Bristol aviation school on Salisbury Plain, where his fellow students included Eric Harrison. Watt attained his Royal Aero Club certificate, no. 112, on 1 August 1911, becoming the first Australian citizen so qualified. Upon his return to Australia later that year, he publicly declared that the time was "rapidly approaching when an aero corps [would] have to be inaugurated" as part of the country's "military defence scheme". In March 1912, Watt recommended a location in Canberra near the Royal Military College, Duntroon, as a base for the Army's proposed Central Flying School. Owing to its altitude and nearby mountainous terrain, the site was rejected by the school's nominated commanding officer, Lieutenant Henry Petre. Petre eventually chose 297 hectares at Point Cook, Victoria, an area suitable for seaplanes as well as land-based aircraft, to become the "birthplace of Australian military aviation". Watt also advocated manufacturing foreign-designed aircraft under licence in Australia, but this would not be pursued until after World War I. In 1913 he was divorced on the grounds of "misconduct" with actress Ivy Schilling, and lost custody of his son in the judgment. He then went to Egypt, where he purchased and practised flying a Blériot XI monoplane; while there he met leading French aviators Louis Blériot and Roland Garros. ## World War I In May 1914, the francophile Watt left Egypt with his aeroplane and took up employment at the Blériot factory and airfield in Buc, outside Paris. Fired by the widely held conviction that Britain would stay out of a European conflict, Watt offered his services and his plane to the French government on 2 August, the day France declared war on Germany. This gesture was welcomed and he joined the Aviation Militaire section of the Foreign Legion as a pilot. Though he was ranked an ordinary soldier, his colleagues in Bleriot Squadron No. 30 referred to him as "Capitaine" in deference to his previous status in the Australian Militia. Posted to Maurice Farman Squadron No. 44 in April 1915, he earned the Legion of Honour badge after he and his observer crash-landed in no man's land and succeeded in making their way back to French lines with valuable intelligence under intense fire from German positions. Soon afterwards, Watt was awarded the Croix de Guerre—with palm leaves personally presented by General Joffre—and promoted to the provisional rank of captain. He was not eligible to command a French unit because he was a foreigner. Watt always proclaimed his antipodean connection while serving France, painting a kangaroo on the nose of his plane, which he named Advance Australia. Considered a no-nonsense type, he once introduced himself to a British pilot with the words "I am an Australian and I haven't got any manners". The French recognised that Watt's talents were not being fully utilised due to his ineligibility to lead a squadron, and recommended that he transfer to the Australian Flying Corps. Watt did so on 1 March 1916, with the rank of captain. Posted to Egypt in May, he was made commander of B Flight, No. 1 Squadron, and took charge of the unit's first contingent of Royal Aircraft Factory B.E.2s the following month. No. 1 Squadron was engaged mainly in aerial reconnaissance and army co-operation duties, but the two-seat B.E.2 proved inferior to German Fokkers and Rumplers in speed, time-to-climb, and manoeuvrability. In September 1916, Watt was promoted to major and given command of No. 2 Squadron, which was formed in Kantara. He was mentioned in despatches by General Archibald Murray, Commander-in-Chief of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force, on 13 October; the commendation was promulgated in the London Gazette on 1 December. No. 2 Squadron's personnel was composed largely of former Lighthorsemen, as well as thirteen mechanics from the Australian Flying Corps' first combat formation, the Mesopotamian Half Flight, led by Flight Sergeant George Mackinolty. Watt personally trained the force in England commencing in January 1917, before deploying it to the Western Front that September. He was "a born leader of men", according to one officer; another recalled that "In the things that mattered, his men knew he stood for absolute obedience. They also knew that when discipline could be safely relaxed he would be quick to grant them some relief from the strain." In the vicinity of Saint-Quentin on 2 October, No. 2 Squadron became the first AFC unit in Europe to see aerial combat when one of its patrols engaged some German two-seaters, which managed to escape. Because the Airco DH.5s in the squadron were handicapped as fighters by engine problems and low speed, the squadron was employed mainly in ground support duties. During the Battle of Cambrai that commenced on 20 November 1917, Watt led his pilots on daring low-level bombing and strafing attacks against enemy fortifications and lines of communication. Their loss rate reached 30%, but morale remained high. After visiting the squadron, the Royal Flying Corps' Major General Hugh Trenchard described its airmen as "really magnificent" and Charles Bean, war correspondent and future editor of the Official History of Australia in the War of 1914–1918, commented on their "remarkably high level of conduct and general tone". Six of Watt's officers were awarded the Military Cross for gallantry during the battle, prompting General Sir William Birdwood to send him a personal message of congratulation on 16 December, declaring: "... This is indeed a magnificent record for your squadron, and one of which I am sure everyone of you must rightly be extremely proud; I doubt if it has been beaten anywhere ..." By this time, No. 2 Squadron had begun converting to Royal Aircraft Factory S.E.5s, though it could achieve little in the winter months due to inclement weather. Watt himself, now almost forty, was beginning to show the strain of frontline command. Bean found him looking "very worn" and noticed him shivering even while seated in front of the mess hall fire. In February 1918, Watt was promoted to lieutenant colonel and given command of the AFC's 1st Training Wing (Nos. 5, 6, 7 and 8 Squadrons) headquartered at Tetbury in Gloucestershire, England; the wing's role was to train replacement pilots for the four operational AFC squadrons in Palestine and France. Watt proposed moving the wing to France, but it remained in England. He was mentioned in despatches by Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig on 7 April, and the commendation was gazetted on 28 May. Shortly after the end of hostilities in November 1918, novelist William John Locke visited 1st Training Wing and found that "there was not one [of Watt's men] who ... did not confide to me his pride in serving under a leader so distinguished". A pilot later opined that as well as having "courage, determination, and an immense capacity for work", Watt possessed "the greatest factor in leadership, a genius for endearing himself (without conscious effort) to all who served under him". ## Post-war career and legacy Watt was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire on 1 January 1919, in recognition of his war service. He returned to Australia on 6 May with the rest of 1st Training Wing's personnel, aboard the troopship Kaisar-i-Hind, on which he was the ranking officer. Leaving the AFC soon afterwards, he was elected president of the New South Wales section of the Australian Aero Club. He also served as senior delegate on a committee of veteran military pilots examining applications for appointment to a proposed independent Australian air service. Watt was esteemed as a man who did not forget old comrades, providing former AFC members with financial aid and helping them re-establish themselves in civilian life. He maintained an interest in commercial flying but refused an offer to take up the position of controller of civil aviation in 1920 owing to his business interests, which included partnership in the family shipping firm of Gilchrist, Watt & Sanderson Ltd, and directorships of mining, rubber, and art corporations. He also turned down invitations to stand for parliament, and to join the fledgling Royal Australian Air Force. Oswald Watt drowned at Bilgola Beach, near Newport, New South Wales, on 21 May 1921. Cuts and bruising on his body indicated that he had slipped on rocks, struck his head, and rolled unconscious into relatively shallow water. Survived by his 15-year-old son, he was accorded a military funeral two days later at St Jude's Church, Randwick. Members of the AFC, Royal Air Force, and Australian Aero Club formed a guard of honour at the service, one of the largest in the suburb's history, which also included representatives of the Royal Australian Navy and Australian Army. Among the tributes was a floral wreath from an anonymous group of French admirers, and another that was dropped by parachute from a low-flying plane. On 31 May, Watt's body was cremated and his ashes interred in the family vault at St Jude's. In his will, Watt left two bequests to the Australian Aero Club, one of which was used to establish the Oswald Watt Gold Medal for outstanding achievement in Australian aviation. Winners of the award have included Charles Kingsford Smith, Bert Hinkler, Henry Millicer, Ivor McIntyre, Jon Johanson and Andy Thomas. He also bequeathed a sum to the Royal Military College, Duntroon, to award annually a set of binoculars for the best cadet essay on military aviation or aeronautics. The award was founded as the Oswald Watt Prize later in 1921. Most of the residue of Watt's estate went to the University of Sydney. Considered one of the university's great benefactors, he was commemorated by the Oswald Watt Fund. In May 1923, the Oswald Watt Wing of the Havilah Home for Orphans, Wahroonga, was opened by the Governor-General of Australia. Watt was acknowledged as both a source and a reviewer by F.M. Cutlack in the latter's volume on the Australian Flying Corps that was first published in 1923 as part of the Official History of Australia in the War of 1914–1918. During World War I, Oswald Watt had been the only AFC officer to command a wing apart from Lieutenant Colonel Richard Williams, who was later to become known as the "Father of the RAAF". In 2001, military historian Alan Stephens noted that "had fate drawn him to a post-war career in the Air Force instead of to business and an untimely death, 'Toby' Watt might have challenged Richard Williams as the RAAF's dominant figure in its formative years".

Noble gas

Group of low-reactive, gaseous chemical elements

The noble gases (historically also the inert gases; sometimes referred to as aerogens) make up a class of chemical elements with similar properties; under standard conditions, they are all odorless, colorless, monatomic gases with very low chemical reactivity. The six naturally occurring noble gases are helium (He), neon (Ne), argon (Ar), krypton (Kr), xenon (Xe), and the radioactive radon (Rn). Oganesson (Og) is a synthetically produced highly radioactive element. Although IUPAC has used the term "noble gas" interchangeably with "group 18" and thus included oganesson, it may not be significantly chemically noble and is predicted to break the trend and be reactive due to relativistic effects. Because of the extremely short 0.7 ms half-life of its only known isotope, its chemistry has not yet been investigated. For the first six periods of the periodic table, the noble gases are exactly the members of group 18. Noble gases are typically highly unreactive except when under particular extreme conditions. The inertness of noble gases makes them very suitable in applications where reactions are not wanted. For example, argon is used in incandescent lamps to prevent the hot tungsten filament from oxidizing; also, helium is used in breathing gas by deep-sea divers to prevent oxygen, nitrogen and carbon dioxide toxicity. The properties of the noble gases can be well explained by modern theories of atomic structure: Their outer shell of valence electrons is considered to be "full", giving them little tendency to participate in chemical reactions, and it has been possible to prepare only a few hundred noble gas compounds. The melting and boiling points for a given noble gas are close together, differing by less than 10 °C (18 °F); that is, they are liquids over only a small temperature range. Neon, argon, krypton, and xenon are obtained from air in an air separation unit using the methods of liquefaction of gases and fractional distillation. Helium is sourced from natural gas fields that have high concentrations of helium in the natural gas, using cryogenic gas separation techniques, and radon is usually isolated from the radioactive decay of dissolved radium, thorium, or uranium compounds. Noble gases have several important applications in industries such as lighting, welding, and space exploration. A helium-oxygen breathing gas is often used by deep-sea divers at depths of seawater over 55 m (180 ft). After the risks caused by the flammability of hydrogen became apparent in the Hindenburg disaster, it was replaced with helium in blimps and balloons. ## History Noble gas is translated from the German noun Edelgas, first used in 1898 by Hugo Erdmann to indicate their extremely low level of reactivity. The name makes an analogy to the term "noble metals", which also have low reactivity. The noble gases have also been referred to as inert gases, but this label is deprecated as many noble gas compounds are now known. Rare gases is another term that was used, but this is also inaccurate because argon forms a fairly considerable part (0.94% by volume, 1.3% by mass) of the Earth's atmosphere due to decay of radioactive potassium-40. Pierre Janssen and Joseph Norman Lockyer had discovered a new element on 18 August 1868 while looking at the chromosphere of the Sun, and named it helium after the Greek word for the Sun, ἥλιος (hḗlios). No chemical analysis was possible at the time, but helium was later found to be a noble gas. Before them, in 1784, the English chemist and physicist Henry Cavendish had discovered that air contains a small proportion of a substance less reactive than nitrogen. A century later, in 1895, Lord Rayleigh discovered that samples of nitrogen from the air were of a different density than nitrogen resulting from chemical reactions. Along with Scottish scientist William Ramsay at University College, London, Lord Rayleigh theorized that the nitrogen extracted from air was mixed with another gas, leading to an experiment that successfully isolated a new element, argon, from the Greek word ἀργός (argós, "idle" or "lazy"). With this discovery, they realized an entire class of gases was missing from the periodic table. During his search for argon, Ramsay also managed to isolate helium for the first time while heating cleveite, a mineral. In 1902, having accepted the evidence for the elements helium and argon, Dmitri Mendeleev included these noble gases as group 0 in his arrangement of the elements, which would later become the periodic table. Ramsay continued his search for these gases using the method of fractional distillation to separate liquid air into several components. In 1898, he discovered the elements krypton, neon, and xenon, and named them after the Greek words κρυπτός (kryptós, "hidden"), νέος (néos, "new"), and ξένος (ksénos, "stranger"), respectively. Radon was first identified in 1898 by Friedrich Ernst Dorn, and was named radium emanation, but was not considered a noble gas until 1904 when its characteristics were found to be similar to those of other noble gases. Rayleigh and Ramsay received the 1904 Nobel Prizes in Physics and in Chemistry, respectively, for their discovery of the noble gases; in the words of J. E. Cederblom, then president of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, "the discovery of an entirely new group of elements, of which no single representative had been known with any certainty, is something utterly unique in the history of chemistry, being intrinsically an advance in science of peculiar significance". The discovery of the noble gases aided in the development of a general understanding of atomic structure. In 1895, French chemist Henri Moissan attempted to form a reaction between fluorine, the most electronegative element, and argon, one of the noble gases, but failed. Scientists were unable to prepare compounds of argon until the end of the 20th century, but these attempts helped to develop new theories of atomic structure. Learning from these experiments, Danish physicist Niels Bohr proposed in 1913 that the electrons in atoms are arranged in shells surrounding the nucleus, and that for all noble gases except helium the outermost shell always contains eight electrons. In 1916, Gilbert N. Lewis formulated the octet rule, which concluded an octet of electrons in the outer shell was the most stable arrangement for any atom; this arrangement caused them to be unreactive with other elements since they did not require any more electrons to complete their outer shell. In 1962, Neil Bartlett discovered the first chemical compound of a noble gas, xenon hexafluoroplatinate. Compounds of other noble gases were discovered soon after: in 1962 for radon, radon difluoride (RnF ₂), which was identified by radiotracer techniques and in 1963 for krypton, krypton difluoride (KrF ₂). The first stable compound of argon was reported in 2000 when argon fluorohydride (HArF) was formed at a temperature of 40 K (−233.2 °C; −387.7 °F). In October 2006, scientists from the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory successfully created synthetically oganesson, the seventh element in group 18, by bombarding californium with calcium. ## Physical and atomic properties The noble gases have weak interatomic force, and consequently have very low melting and boiling points. They are all monatomic gases under standard conditions, including the elements with larger atomic masses than many normally solid elements. Helium has several unique qualities when compared with other elements: its boiling point at 1 atm is lower than those of any other known substance; it is the only element known to exhibit superfluidity; and, it is the only element that cannot be solidified by cooling at atmospheric pressure (an effect explained by quantum mechanics as its zero point energy is too high to permit freezing) – a pressure of 25 standard atmospheres (2,500 kPa; 370 psi) must be applied at a temperature of 0.95 K (−272.200 °C; −457.960 °F) to convert it to a solid while a pressure of about 115 kbar is required at room temperature. The noble gases up to xenon have multiple stable isotopes. Radon has no stable isotopes; its longest-lived isotope, ²²²Rn, has a half-life of 3.8 days and decays to form helium and polonium, which ultimately decays to lead. Melting and boiling points increase going down the group. The noble gas atoms, like atoms in most groups, increase steadily in atomic radius from one period to the next due to the increasing number of electrons. The size of the atom is related to several properties. For example, the ionization potential decreases with an increasing radius because the valence electrons in the larger noble gases are farther away from the nucleus and are therefore not held as tightly together by the atom. Noble gases have the largest ionization potential among the elements of each period, which reflects the stability of their electron configuration and is related to their relative lack of chemical reactivity. Some of the heavier noble gases, however, have ionization potentials small enough to be comparable to those of other elements and molecules. It was the insight that xenon has an ionization potential similar to that of the oxygen molecule that led Bartlett to attempt oxidizing xenon using platinum hexafluoride, an oxidizing agent known to be strong enough to react with oxygen. Noble gases cannot accept an electron to form stable anions; that is, they have a negative electron affinity. The macroscopic physical properties of the noble gases are dominated by the weak van der Waals forces between the atoms. The attractive force increases with the size of the atom as a result of the increase in polarizability and the decrease in ionization potential. This results in systematic group trends: as one goes down group 18, the atomic radius, and with it the interatomic forces, increases, resulting in an increasing melting point, boiling point, enthalpy of vaporization, and solubility. The increase in density is due to the increase in atomic mass. The noble gases are nearly ideal gases under standard conditions, but their deviations from the ideal gas law provided important clues for the study of intermolecular interactions. The Lennard-Jones potential, often used to model intermolecular interactions, was deduced in 1924 by John Lennard-Jones from experimental data on argon before the development of quantum mechanics provided the tools for understanding intermolecular forces from first principles. The theoretical analysis of these interactions became tractable because the noble gases are monatomic and the atoms spherical, which means that the interaction between the atoms is independent of direction, or isotropic. ## Chemical properties The noble gases are colorless, odorless, tasteless, and nonflammable under standard conditions. They were once labeled group 0 in the periodic table because it was believed they had a valence of zero, meaning their atoms cannot combine with those of other elements to form compounds. However, it was later discovered some do indeed form compounds, causing this label to fall into disuse. ### Electron configuration Like other groups, the members of this family show patterns in its electron configuration, especially the outermost shells resulting in trends in chemical behavior: The noble gases have full valence electron shells. Valence electrons are the outermost electrons of an atom and are normally the only electrons that participate in chemical bonding. Atoms with full valence electron shells are extremely stable and therefore do not tend to form chemical bonds and have little tendency to gain or lose electrons. However, heavier noble gases such as radon are held less firmly together by electromagnetic force than lighter noble gases such as helium, making it easier to remove outer electrons from heavy noble gases. As a result of a full shell, the noble gases can be used in conjunction with the electron configuration notation to form the noble gas notation. To do this, the nearest noble gas that precedes the element in question is written first, and then the electron configuration is continued from that point forward. For example, the electron notation of phosphorus is 1s² 2s² 2p⁶ 3s² 3p³, while the noble gas notation is [Ne] 3s² 3p³. This more compact notation makes it easier to identify elements, and is shorter than writing out the full notation of atomic orbitals. The noble gases cross the boundary between blocks—helium is an s-element whereas the rest of members are p-elements—which is unusual among the IUPAC groups. All other IUPAC groups contain elements from one block each. This causes some inconsistencies in trends across the table, and on those grounds some chemists have proposed that helium should be moved to group 2 to be with other s² elements, but this change has not generally been adopted. ### Compounds The noble gases show extremely low chemical reactivity; consequently, only a few hundred noble gas compounds have been formed. Neutral compounds in which helium and neon are involved in chemical bonds have not been formed (although some helium-containing ions exist and there is some theoretical evidence for a few neutral helium-containing ones), while xenon, krypton, and argon have shown only minor reactivity. The reactivity follows the order Ne \< He \< Ar \< Kr \< Xe \< Rn ≪ Og. In 1933, Linus Pauling predicted that the heavier noble gases could form compounds with fluorine and oxygen. He predicted the existence of krypton hexafluoride (KrF ₆) and xenon hexafluoride (XeF ₆), speculated that XeF ₈ might exist as an unstable compound, and suggested that xenic acid could form perxenate salts. These predictions were shown to be generally accurate, except that XeF ₈ is now thought to be both thermodynamically and kinetically unstable. Xenon compounds are the most numerous of the noble gas compounds that have been formed. Most of them have the xenon atom in the oxidation state of +2, +4, +6, or +8 bonded to highly electronegative atoms such as fluorine or oxygen, as in xenon difluoride (XeF ₂), xenon tetrafluoride (XeF ₄), xenon hexafluoride (XeF ₆), xenon tetroxide (XeO ₄), and sodium perxenate (Na ₄XeO ₆). Xenon reacts with fluorine to form numerous xenon fluorides according to the following equations: : Xe + F₂ → XeF₂ : Xe + 2F₂ → XeF₄ : Xe + 3F₂ → XeF₆ Some of these compounds have found use in chemical synthesis as oxidizing agents; XeF ₂, in particular, is commercially available and can be used as a fluorinating agent. As of 2007, about five hundred compounds of xenon bonded to other elements have been identified, including organoxenon compounds (containing xenon bonded to carbon), and xenon bonded to nitrogen, chlorine, gold, mercury, and xenon itself. Compounds of xenon bound to boron, hydrogen, bromine, iodine, beryllium, sulphur, titanium, copper, and silver have also been observed but only at low temperatures in noble gas matrices, or in supersonic noble gas jets. Radon is more reactive than xenon, and forms chemical bonds more easily than xenon does. However, due to the high radioactivity and short half-life of radon isotopes, only a few fluorides and oxides of radon have been formed in practice. Radon goes further towards metallic behavior than xenon; the difluoride RnF₂ is highly ionic, and cationic Rn²⁺ is formed in halogen fluoride solutions. For this reason, kinetic hindrance makes it difficult to oxidize radon beyond the +2 state. Only tracer experiments appear to have succeeded in doing so, probably forming RnF₄, RnF₆, and RnO₃. Krypton is less reactive than xenon, but several compounds have been reported with krypton in the oxidation state of +2. Krypton difluoride is the most notable and easily characterized. Under extreme conditions, krypton reacts with fluorine to form KrF₂ according to the following equation: : Kr + F₂ → KrF₂ Compounds in which krypton forms a single bond to nitrogen and oxygen have also been characterized, but are only stable below −60 °C (−76 °F) and −90 °C (−130 °F) respectively. Krypton atoms chemically bound to other nonmetals (hydrogen, chlorine, carbon) as well as some late transition metals (copper, silver, gold) have also been observed, but only either at low temperatures in noble gas matrices, or in supersonic noble gas jets. Similar conditions were used to obtain the first few compounds of argon in 2000, such as argon fluorohydride (HArF), and some bound to the late transition metals copper, silver, and gold. As of 2007, no stable neutral molecules involving covalently bound helium or neon are known. Extrapolation from periodic trends predict that oganesson should be the most reactive of the noble gases; more sophisticated theoretical treatments indicate greater reactivity than such extrapolations suggest, to the point where the applicability of the descriptor "noble gas" has been questioned. Oganesson is expected to be rather like silicon or tin in group 14: a reactive element with a common +4 and a less common +2 state, which at room temperature and pressure is not a gas but rather a solid semiconductor. Empirical / experimental testing will be required to validate these predictions. (On the other hand, flerovium, despite being in group 14, is predicted to be unusually volatile, which suggests noble gas-like properties.) The noble gases—including helium—can form stable molecular ions in the gas phase. The simplest is the helium hydride molecular ion, HeH⁺, discovered in 1925. Because it is composed of the two most abundant elements in the universe, hydrogen and helium, it was believed to occur naturally in the interstellar medium, and it was finally detected in April 2019 using the airborne SOFIA telescope. In addition to these ions, there are many known neutral excimers of the noble gases. These are compounds such as ArF and KrF that are stable only when in an excited electronic state; some of them find application in excimer lasers. In addition to the compounds where a noble gas atom is involved in a covalent bond, noble gases also form non-covalent compounds. The clathrates, first described in 1949, consist of a noble gas atom trapped within cavities of crystal lattices of certain organic and inorganic substances. The essential condition for their formation is that the guest (noble gas) atoms must be of appropriate size to fit in the cavities of the host crystal lattice. For instance, argon, krypton, and xenon form clathrates with hydroquinone, but helium and neon do not because they are too small or insufficiently polarizable to be retained. Neon, argon, krypton, and xenon also form clathrate hydrates, where the noble gas is trapped in ice. Noble gases can form endohedral fullerene compounds, in which the noble gas atom is trapped inside a fullerene molecule. In 1993, it was discovered that when C ₆₀, a spherical molecule consisting of 60 carbon atoms, is exposed to noble gases at high pressure, complexes such as He@C ₆₀ can be formed (the @ notation indicates He is contained inside C ₆₀ but not covalently bound to it). As of 2008, endohedral complexes with helium, neon, argon, krypton, and xenon have been created. These compounds have found use in the study of the structure and reactivity of fullerenes by means of the nuclear magnetic resonance of the noble gas atom. Noble gas compounds such as xenon difluoride (XeF ₂) are considered to be hypervalent because they violate the octet rule. Bonding in such compounds can be explained using a three-center four-electron bond model. This model, first proposed in 1951, considers bonding of three collinear atoms. For example, bonding in XeF ₂ is described by a set of three molecular orbitals (MOs) derived from p-orbitals on each atom. Bonding results from the combination of a filled p-orbital from Xe with one half-filled p-orbital from each F atom, resulting in a filled bonding orbital, a filled non-bonding orbital, and an empty antibonding orbital. The highest occupied molecular orbital is localized on the two terminal atoms. This represents a localization of charge that is facilitated by the high electronegativity of fluorine. The chemistry of the heavier noble gases, krypton and xenon, are well established. The chemistry of the lighter ones, argon and helium, is still at an early stage, while a neon compound is yet to be identified. ## Occurrence and production The abundances of the noble gases in the universe decrease as their atomic numbers increase. Helium is the most common element in the universe after hydrogen, with a mass fraction of about 24%. Most of the helium in the universe was formed during Big Bang nucleosynthesis, but the amount of helium is steadily increasing due to the fusion of hydrogen in stellar nucleosynthesis (and, to a very slight degree, the alpha decay of heavy elements). Abundances on Earth follow different trends; for example, helium is only the third most abundant noble gas in the atmosphere. The reason is that there is no primordial helium in the atmosphere; due to the small mass of the atom, helium cannot be retained by the Earth's gravitational field. Helium on Earth comes from the alpha decay of heavy elements such as uranium and thorium found in the Earth's crust, and tends to accumulate in natural gas deposits. The abundance of argon, on the other hand, is increased as a result of the beta decay of potassium-40, also found in the Earth's crust, to form argon-40, which is the most abundant isotope of argon on Earth despite being relatively rare in the Solar System. This process is the basis for the potassium-argon dating method. Xenon has an unexpectedly low abundance in the atmosphere, in what has been called the missing xenon problem; one theory is that the missing xenon may be trapped in minerals inside the Earth's crust. After the discovery of xenon dioxide, research showed that Xe can substitute for Si in quartz. Radon is formed in the lithosphere by the alpha decay of radium. It can seep into buildings through cracks in their foundation and accumulate in areas that are not well ventilated. Due to its high radioactivity, radon presents a significant health hazard; it is implicated in an estimated 21,000 lung cancer deaths per year in the United States alone. Oganesson does not occur in nature and is instead created manually by scientists. For large-scale use, helium is extracted by fractional distillation from natural gas, which can contain up to 7% helium. Neon, argon, krypton, and xenon are obtained from air using the methods of liquefaction of gases, to convert elements to a liquid state, and fractional distillation, to separate mixtures into component parts. Helium is typically produced by separating it from natural gas, and radon is isolated from the radioactive decay of radium compounds. The prices of the noble gases are influenced by their natural abundance, with argon being the cheapest and xenon the most expensive. As an example, the adjacent table lists the 2004 prices in the United States for laboratory quantities of each gas. ## Applications Noble gases have very low boiling and melting points, which makes them useful as cryogenic refrigerants. In particular, liquid helium, which boils at 4.2 K (−268.95 °C; −452.11 °F), is used for superconducting magnets, such as those needed in nuclear magnetic resonance imaging and nuclear magnetic resonance. Liquid neon, although it does not reach temperatures as low as liquid helium, also finds use in cryogenics because it has over 40 times more refrigerating capacity than liquid helium and over three times more than liquid hydrogen. Helium is used as a component of breathing gases to replace nitrogen, due its low solubility in fluids, especially in lipids. Gases are absorbed by the blood and body tissues when under pressure like in scuba diving, which causes an anesthetic effect known as nitrogen narcosis. Due to its reduced solubility, little helium is taken into cell membranes, and when helium is used to replace part of the breathing mixtures, such as in trimix or heliox, a decrease in the narcotic effect of the gas at depth is obtained. Helium's reduced solubility offers further advantages for the condition known as decompression sickness, or the bends. The reduced amount of dissolved gas in the body means that fewer gas bubbles form during the decrease in pressure of the ascent. Another noble gas, argon, is considered the best option for use as a drysuit inflation gas for scuba diving. Helium is also used as filling gas in nuclear fuel rods for nuclear reactors. Since the Hindenburg disaster in 1937, helium has replaced hydrogen as a lifting gas in blimps and balloons due to its lightness and incombustibility, despite an 8.6% decrease in buoyancy. In many applications, the noble gases are used to provide an inert atmosphere. Argon is used in the synthesis of air-sensitive compounds that are sensitive to nitrogen. Solid argon is also used for the study of very unstable compounds, such as reactive intermediates, by trapping them in an inert matrix at very low temperatures. Helium is used as the carrier medium in gas chromatography, as a filler gas for thermometers, and in devices for measuring radiation, such as the Geiger counter and the bubble chamber. Helium and argon are both commonly used to shield welding arcs and the surrounding base metal from the atmosphere during welding and cutting, as well as in other metallurgical processes and in the production of silicon for the semiconductor industry. Noble gases are commonly used in lighting because of their lack of chemical reactivity. Argon, mixed with nitrogen, is used as a filler gas for incandescent light bulbs. Krypton is used in high-performance light bulbs, which have higher color temperatures and greater efficiency, because it reduces the rate of evaporation of the filament more than argon; halogen lamps, in particular, use krypton mixed with small amounts of compounds of iodine or bromine. The noble gases glow in distinctive colors when used inside gas-discharge lamps, such as "neon lights". These lights are called after neon but often contain other gases and phosphors, which add various hues to the orange-red color of neon. Xenon is commonly used in xenon arc lamps, which, due to their nearly continuous spectrum that resembles daylight, find application in film projectors and as automobile headlamps. The noble gases are used in excimer lasers, which are based on short-lived electronically excited molecules known as excimers. The excimers used for lasers may be noble gas dimers such as Ar₂, Kr₂ or Xe₂, or more commonly, the noble gas is combined with a halogen in excimers such as ArF, KrF, XeF, or XeCl. These lasers produce ultraviolet light, which, due to its short wavelength (193 nm for ArF and 248 nm for KrF), allows for high-precision imaging. Excimer lasers have many industrial, medical, and scientific applications. They are used for microlithography and microfabrication, which are essential for integrated circuit manufacture, and for laser surgery, including laser angioplasty and eye surgery. Some noble gases have direct application in medicine. Helium is sometimes used to improve the ease of breathing of people with asthma. Xenon is used as an anesthetic because of its high solubility in lipids, which makes it more potent than the usual nitrous oxide, and because it is readily eliminated from the body, resulting in faster recovery. Xenon finds application in medical imaging of the lungs through hyperpolarized MRI. Radon, which is highly radioactive and is only available in minute amounts, is used in radiotherapy. Noble gases, particularly xenon, are predominantly used in ion engines due to their inertness. Since ion engines are not driven by chemical reactions, chemically inert fuels are desired to prevent unwanted reaction between the fuel and anything else on the engine. Oganesson is too unstable to work with and has no known application other than research. ## Discharge color The color of gas discharge emission depends on several factors, including the following: - discharge parameters (local value of current density and electric field, temperature, etc. – note the color variation along the discharge in the top row); - gas purity (even small fraction of certain gases can affect color); - material of the discharge tube envelope – note suppression of the UV and blue components in the bottom-row tubes made of thick household glass. ## See also - Noble gas (data page), for extended tables of physical properties. - Noble metal, for metals that are resistant to corrosion or oxidation. - Inert gas, for any gas that is not reactive under normal circumstances. - Industrial gas - Neutronium - Octet rule

Homer's Enemy

"Homer's Enemy" is the twenty-third episode of the eighth season of the American animated television series The Simpsons. It was first broadcast on the Fox network in the United States on May 4, 1997. "Homer's Enemy" was directed by Jim Reardon and written by John Swartzwelder, based on an idea pitched by executive producer Bill Oakley. In the episode, Frank Grimes is hired as a new employee at the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant. Despite Homer's attempts to befriend him, Grimes is provoked by Homer's laziness and incompetence. He decides to make Homer his enemy, and tries to expose his flaws through public humiliation. In the subplot, Bart buys a run-down factory for a dollar. The episode explores the comic possibilities of a realistic character with a strong work ethic hired for a job where he has to work alongside a man like Homer. Grimes was partially modeled after Michael Douglas's character in the film Falling Down. Hank Azaria voiced Frank Grimes and based some of the character's mannerisms on actor William H. Macy. Frank Welker guest stars as the voice of the dog whom Burns wants as his executive vice president. In its original broadcast on the Fox network, "Homer's Enemy" acquired a 7.7 Nielsen rating. It was viewed in approximately 7.5 million homes, finishing the week ranked 56th. "Homer's Enemy" is considered to be one of the darkest episodes of The Simpsons, and it split critical opinion. It is a favorite of several members of the production staff, including Bill Oakley, Josh Weinstein and Matt Groening, but it is one of the least favorites of Mike Reiss. ## Plot After spending most of his life alone and working hard to make ends meet, Frank Grimes is hired at the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant after Mr. Burns learns of Grimes's hardship in a human-interest piece on the local news. Originally scouted to become the SNPP's Executive Vice-President, Grimes is later assigned to Sector 7G after another local news story moves Burns to hire a heroic dog to the EVP position instead. In 7G, Grimes must work alongside Homer Simpson and his two friends Lenny and Carl, quickly becoming aghast at Homer's laziness and incompetence, particularly after learning that he is the plant's safety inspector. When Grimes prevents Homer from accidentally drinking a flask of sulfuric acid by knocking it from his hands, Mr. Burns admonishes Grimes and reduces his salary, as the spilled acid destroyed a wall. Outraged, Grimes declares that he and Homer are now enemies. At Moe Szyslak's suggestion, Homer invites Grimes to his house for a lobster dinner, hoping to make amends. However, Grimes only grows more incensed by Homer's ability to live a comparatively more comfortable and successful life despite his sloth and ignorance, while Grimes has worked hard his entire life and has little to show for it. Denouncing Homer as a fraud, Grimes leaves in a fit of rage. Meanwhile, after being dragged along to city hall by Marge for the purchase of a personalized license plate, Bart buys an abandoned factory for a dollar at a foreclosure auction. He and Milhouse spend their days wrecking the building until it collapses one night during Milhouse's watch, causing the rats in the building to swarm into Moe's Tavern. Homer attempts to follow Marge's suggestion by acting as a model employee to impress Grimes, but his efforts fail as he is just as incompetent as before. Grimes rants to Lenny and Carl about Homer's obvious incompetence, but they insist that, despite his faults, Homer is a decent person. Instead of calming down, Grimes decides to prove Homer's lack of intelligence by tricking him into entering a children's contest to design a nuclear power plant in an attempt to humiliate him in front of everyone. Grimes's plan backfires when Homer's derivative model wins the contest and, when Homer's co-workers applaud rather than ridicule him, Grimes has a nervous breakdown and runs amok in the plant, mocking Homer's habits by imitating them. When Grimes gets carried away by grabbing hold of high-voltage wires without safety gloves, he is fatally electrocuted. At Grimes's funeral, Homer falls asleep and talks in his dream, making Reverend Lovejoy and the attendees laugh as Grimes's coffin is lowered into the earth. ## Production "Homer's Enemy" was written by John Swartzwelder, directed by Jim Reardon and executive produced by Bill Oakley and Josh Weinstein. One of the goals of Oakley and Weinstein was to create several episodes in each season that would "push the envelope conceptually." The idea for the episode was first conceived by Bill Oakley, who thought that Homer should have an enemy. The thought evolved into the concept of a "real world" co-worker who would either love or hate Homer. The writers chose the latter as they thought it would have funnier results. "Homer's Enemy" explores the comic possibilities of a realistic character with a strong work ethic placed alongside Homer in a work environment. In an essay for the book Leaving Springfield, Robert Sloane describes the episode as "an incisive consideration of The Simpsons'''s world. Although The Simpsons is known for its self-reflectivity, the show had never looked at (or critiqued) itself as directly as it does in ['Homer's Enemy']." In the episode, Homer is portrayed as an everyman and the embodiment of the American spirit; however, in some scenes his negative characteristics and silliness are prominently highlighted. By the close of the episode, Grimes, a hard-working and persevering "real American hero," is relegated to the role of antagonist; the viewer is intended to be pleased that Homer has emerged victorious. In an interview with Simpsons fan site NoHomers.net, Josh Weinstein said: > We wanted to do an episode where the thinking was "What if a real life, normal person had to enter Homer's universe and deal with him?" I know this episode is controversial and divisive, but I just love it. It really feels like what would happen if a real, somewhat humorless human had to deal with Homer. There was some talk [on NoHomers.net] about the ending—we just did that because [(1)] it's really funny and shocking, (2) we like the lesson of "sometimes, you just can't win"—the whole Frank Grimes episode is a study in frustration and hence Homer has the last laugh and (3) we wanted to show that in real life, being Homer Simpson could be really dangerous and life threatening, as Frank Grimes sadly learned. The animators and character designers had a lot of discussion about what Frank Grimes should look like. He was originally designed as a "burly ex-marine guy with a crew cut", but would later be modeled after Michael Douglas in the movie Falling Down and director Jim Reardon's college roommate. Hank Azaria provided the voice of Frank Grimes, even though such a role would normally have been performed by a guest star. Among few others, the producers considered asking Nicolas Cage to play Grimes but decided Azaria was more suitable because the role involved a great deal of frustration and required extensive knowledge of the show. Azaria felt that the role should instead go to William H. Macy. According to Azaria, "I based the character on William Macy. I can't really copy him vocally, but I tried to get as close as I could and copy his rhythms and the way he has that sort of seething passion underneath that total calm exterior." The producers worked a lot with Azaria to help him perfect the role, and gave him more guidance than they normally would. Azaria felt that it was the role on which he worked the hardest, adding "I think it's the one we did the most takes on, the most emotional, it felt like the one I worked on the hardest from a performance point of view, in preparation and in execution." Josh Weinstein has expressed regret about killing off Grimes after only one episode, describing him as "such an amazing character." In an interview with The Believer, producer George Meyer said, "Grimes's cardinal sin was that he shined a light on Springfield. He pointed out everything that was wrongheaded and idiotic about that world. And the people who do that tend to become martyrs. He said things that needed to be said, but once they were said, we needed to destroy that person. I'll admit, we took a certain sadistic glee in his downfall. He was such a righteous person, and that somehow made his demise more satisfying." Lisa has few speaking lines in the episode, due to Yeardley Smith getting the flu after recording all of her lines in "In Marge We Trust". The subplot, where Bart buys a factory, was added so that there would be some lighter scenes to split up the main plot. According to Weinstein, "We wanted to have a Bart or Lisa kids' story to contrast the heaviness and reality of Frank Grimes." ## Reception In its original broadcast on the Fox network, "Homer's Enemy" acquired a 7.7 Nielsen rating. It was viewed in approximately 7.5 million homes, finishing the week ranked 56th. The Simpsons was the sixth-highest-rated show on Fox the week it was broadcast, behind The X-Files, a broadcast of the film The Mask, Melrose Place, King of the Hill and Beverly Hills, 90210. In Australia, the episode premiered on June 29, 1997, while in the UK it premiered on August 10, 1997. According to Josh Weinstein, when the episode was first broadcast, many fans felt it was too dark, lacked humor and that Homer was portrayed as overly bad-mannered. Weinstein considers this episode one of the most controversial of the seasons he ran, as it involves sharp observational humor that he thinks many fans "didn't get." Weinstein also talks about a "generation gap"—he believes the episode was originally panned by viewers, but has since become a favorite among fans who grew up with the show. Warren Martyn and Adrian Wood, authors of I Can't Believe It's a Bigger and Better Updated Unofficial Simpsons Guide, described the episode as "one of the series' darkest episodes [that] ends on a real downer but is nevertheless also one of the wittiest and cleverest in ages." Similarly, comedian Rick Mercer called it a "great episode, and one of the darkest ever produced." Many critics have listed "Homer's Enemy" as one of the best episodes of the series, including John Orvted of Vanity Fair, Entertainment.ie, Screen Rant, The Guardian, and Time. IGN ranked Frank Grimes as number 17 on a list of "The Top 25 Simpsons Peripheral characters", making him the least-frequently shown character to appear in that list. Several members of the staff have included the episode among their favorites. In a 2000 Entertainment Weekly article, Matt Groening ranked it as his sixth favorite Simpsons episode. It is also a personal favorite of Josh Weinstein, who cites the scene when Grimes visits the Simpson home as one of his favorite scenes, while The Office creator Ricky Gervais has called it "the most complete episode." In her autobiography My Life as a 10-Year-Old Boy, Nancy Cartwright, the voice of Bart, praises Azaria's performance as Grimes, and uses it as an example of how "Accent, pitch, pacing, range and intention" can allow an actor to voice many characters. She writes, > Sometimes [in voice acting], it isn't even a big change from your regular voice, but the attitude behind it makes all the difference. [...] We were going to have a guest star play Frank Grimes. [...] Hank, at the table-read, just filling in, created such a beautifully crafted character, beautifully psychotic, that no one was used to replace him. However, former Simpsons executive producer Mike Reiss listed "Homer's Enemy" as one of his two least favorite episodes, stating, "I just think the episode was in bad taste." Likewise, Jon Bonné of MSNBC used "Homer's Enemy" as an example of a bad episode of the eighth season and wrote "even now [in 2000], when subsequent episodes have debased Homer in new and innovative ways, the Grimes episode stands out as painful to watch." In August 2014, writing for The Verge, Chris Plante listed "Homer's Enemy" as one of his favorite episodes of The Simpsons, and Homer falling asleep and talking in his dream at Grimes's funeral as one of the funniest moments in the show, but he cited the latter as the moment the series jumped the shark, because of the impact it "has on the show's character [Homer], and through that character, the world." As of 2023, the episode held an average rating of 9.3 (out of a possible 10) from user reviews on IMDb, the highest for the series. In a roundtable discussion in The A.V. Club, Erik Adams says the episode "saves itself from its own cruelty, however. It’s an expertly written Simpsons installment with a simple starting point—who could dislike Homer Simpson?—and a well-paced, hilarious, multiple-part answer to that question." Noel Murray writes that "There’s an element of nose-thumbing to 'Homer’s Enemy,' which may explain why it rubs some Simpsons fans the wrong way. But that defiant attitude is fairly exhilarating, too. The final injustice for Frank Grimes is that at his funeral, Reverend Lovejoy says that Frank liked to be called 'Grimey,' which he most definitely did not. That was just Homer’s lazy nickname for him. It’s another example of how everything falls into place around Homer, and how the only way to respond to that reality is either to laugh it off or to get yourself buried." ## Legacy Despite his minimal screen time in the series overall, Frank Grimes has since been referenced many times in the show, often showing his tombstone, and occasionally mentioning him by name. In the season fourteen episode "The Great Louse Detective", it is revealed that he fathered a son named Frank Grimes Jr., who tries and fails to kill Homer. The footage of Grimes's death is also shown during the episode. He also appears in season twenty-six, as an angel with a halo in the opening sequence of "My Fare Lady", as Homer is exiting his work place. In the non-canon season twenty-eight episode "Treehouse of Horror XXVII", the ghost of Frank Grimes joins Sideshow Bob's army of the Simpsons' enemies. During the nuclear power plant design contest, one of the entrants is Ralph Wiggum, whose entry is rejected by Mr. Burns. When Ralph does not leave the stage, Chief Wiggum says "Ralphie, get off the stage, sweetheart." This line was later used as the chorus in the song "Ralph Wiggum" by the Bloodhound Gang. In February 2000, the cast of The Simpsons performed a live reading of the episode script at the US Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen, Colorado. In an interview with GamesRadar+ in January 2023, Rick and Morty writer Jeff Loveness, who went to write the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) feature films Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (2023) and Avengers: The Kang Dynasty'' (2026), cited "Homer's Enemy" and the Frank Grimes character for inspiring the former film's portrayal of M.O.D.O.K., portrayed by Corey Stoll.

Premiere (The O.C.)

"Premiere" (also known as "Pilot") is the series premiere of the television series The O.C., which premiered on the Fox network on August 5, 2003. Written by series creator Josh Schwartz and directed by executive producer Doug Liman, the episode depicts the introduction of troubled teenager Ryan Atwood (Benjamin McKenzie) into the wealthy lifestyle of the Cohen family in Newport Beach, Orange County, California. The casting directors, Patrick J. Rush and Alyson Silverberg, began selecting the principal cast eight to ten weeks before filming started. The role of Ryan was particularly hard to cast. Seth Cohen (Adam Brody) was based on Schwartz's experiences at the University of Southern California as a "neurotic Jewish kid from the East Coast in a land of water polo players". Other central characters in the episode are Seth's parents—Sandy (Peter Gallagher) and Kirsten (Kelly Rowan)—and teenage next-door neighbor Marissa Cooper (Mischa Barton). The series premiere led the first half-hour of its time slot in viewership. It was generally well received by critics, and earned Schwartz a Writers Guild of America Award nomination for Best Screenplay in an Episodic Drama. Rush and Silverberg received an Artios Award nomination for excellence of casting in the Dramatic Pilot category. Originally broadcast and released in a 1.33:1 aspect ratio, it was remastered in a widescreen ratio for the series DVD, released in November 2007. The episode was released on MiniDVD on April 26, 2005, and is available to purchase from video on demand services. ## Plot A cold open shows Trey Atwood (Bradley Stryker) and his brother Ryan (Ben McKenzie) stealing a car. The police chase and arrest the boys, resulting in a prison term for Trey and a short stay in juvenile hall for the underage Ryan. A conversation between Ryan and his public defender, Sandy Cohen (Peter Gallagher), establishes Ryan as a smart boy with a rough upbringing; he has three truancies and two suspensions, but his SAT I scores are in the ninety-eighth percentile. When Ryan's mother, Dawn (Daphne Ashbrook), collects Ryan, Sandy gives his business card to the boy. At home in Chino, Dawn asks Ryan to leave, and her boyfriend, A.J. (Ron Del Barrio), expels him from the house. Standing at a payphone with nowhere to go, Ryan calls Sandy for help. As Sandy drives Ryan to his house in Newport Beach, the opening credits and the theme tune play—unlike the other episodes, there is no title sequence. While Sandy tries to convince his wife, Kirsten (Kelly Rowan) to allow Ryan to stay in the pool house for a night, Ryan meets the girl next door, Marissa Cooper (Mischa Barton). When her boyfriend Luke (Chris Carmack) picks her up, Marissa invites Ryan to attend a fashion show fundraiser the following night. On a sailing trip the next day, the Cohens' son, Seth (Adam Brody) reveals to Ryan that he has a crush on Summer (Rachel Bilson) and would like to sail to Tahiti with her, but that she never pays him any attention. Later, Marissa leaves for the fashion show with her mother Julie (Melinda Clarke), her father Jimmy (Tate Donovan), and her younger sister Kaitlin (Shailene Woodley). The Cohens and Ryan also attend the show. Summer invites Ryan to a party after the show, and Ryan convinces Seth to join him. For the first time, Seth is introduced to the sex-, drug-, and alcohol-fueled side of Newport. He experiences the wildness of a party for the first time, while Ryan flirts with Marissa. Luke takes a girl to the beach. Later at the party, Ryan rebuffs an intoxicated Summer, but Seth misinterprets the encounter and reveals Ryan's real background. Seth walks down the beach, and is bullied by a group of water polo players that includes Luke. Ryan defends Seth by punching Luke, but Luke's friends intervene and beat up Ryan and Seth. After returning to the Cohens, Ryan sees that Marissa's friends left her passed out on her drive; he carries her to the Cohens' pool house to sleep. When Kirsten finds Seth and Ryan asleep in the pool house the next morning, she is unhappy with Ryan's new influence and insists to Sandy that Ryan leave. Sandy drives Ryan back to Chino, but when they find his home empty, they return to Newport. ## Production ### Conception In 2002, Schwartz met with Joseph "McG" McGinty Nichol and Stephanie Savage of production company Wonderland Sound and Vision. They told Schwartz they wanted to create a television show based in McG's hometown of Newport Beach. Savage suggested producing a police or extreme sports 21 Jump Street-style show, but Schwartz knew little about the genre. Having had experience with people from Newport Beach during his time at the University of Southern California, Schwartz came back to them with his own characters. The show was pitched to Fox and Warner Bros in August 2002. Fox targeted a summer launch for the show, and Doug Liman was brought in to direct the premiere after McG withdrew due his scheduling conflicts with Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle. The show was confirmed for the 2003–2004 schedule in May, and an August 5, 2003 broadcast date was selected in June. ### Casting Casting directors Patrick J. Rush and Alyson Silverberg began casting the main roles eight to ten weeks before filming began, with input from Schwartz, McG and Savage. Rush and Silverberg were later nominated in the Dramatic Pilot category of the Casting Society of America's Artios Awards. In February 2003, Peter Gallagher became the first actor cast, playing Sandy Cohen. Kelly Rowan auditioned five times before being cast as Sandy's wife, Kirsten, in March 2003. Rush found the role of Ryan Atwood particularly hard to cast, as the producers wanted the "perfect" actor. Benjamin McKenzie was only invited to audition for the role after Warner Bros. made them aware of the actor following his unsuccessful audition for a UPN sitcom. McKenzie joined the cast in March 2003. He lacked working experience and later described his selection as "a tremendous leap of faith" on the producers' part. The role of Seth Cohen was derived from Schwartz's experiences at the University of Southern California as a "neurotic Jewish kid from the East Coast in a land of water polo players". Adam Brody first read for the part of Ryan, but found the bad-boy image did not suit him. In a recall for the role of Seth, Brody lost the producers' interest by ad-libbing much of the script; he joined the cast in March 2003 after a second interview. Mischa Barton, who had met McG on Fastlane, portrayed Marissa Cooper. She was cast in February 2003. Tate Donovan, who played Jimmy Cooper, was cast in March 2003. Melinda Clarke guest-starred as Julie Cooper, but read for the role of Kirsten in her audition as there were not enough scripted lines for Julie at the time. Rachel Bilson, who was recommended to Schwartz after an unsuccessful audition for Everwood, guest-starred as Summer Roberts, whom the producers had envisaged as a tall Californian blonde. Clarke and Bilson joined as regular cast members later in the season. Chris Carmack, who played Luke Ward, was credited as a guest star for the episode; he joined the regular cast in the next episode. ### Filming Although the show is set in Newport Beach, financial penalties imposed for filming outside the "Thirty Mile Zone" forced production to the Manhattan Beach, Los Angeles County region. The scenes set in Ryan's hometown of Chino were filmed in Los Angeles. The show was predominantly shot on 35 mm film stock. Unusually for the show, a scene in the Atwood home in Chino was shot using a hand-held camera by Liman. Savage said this ensured the show "doesn't feel like glossy soap opera". The Cohen family home was shot on location in Malibu. A mock pool house was built for use in the pilot, and taken down after filming completed. The Cohen's home was recreated on a soundstage at Raleigh Studios in Manhattan Beach for filming during the rest of the series; external shots of the house remained in use. The fashion show was filmed at the Wilshire Ebell Theatre; though it did not advance the story, Schwartz described it as necessary to show the world in which the characters lived. The party at Holly's beach house following the fashion show was filmed at a beach house in Malibu over three consecutive nights. ## Broadcast and distribution The episode premiered at 9:00 p.m. (EDT) on August 5, 2003 on Fox, and was simulcast in Canada on CTV. Fox gave the show an early summer premiere to try to establish an audience before the network switched to coverage of post-season baseball in October, and ahead of "the clutter of the fall preview weeks". In the United Kingdom, the episode first aired at 9:00 p.m. (GMT) on March 7, 2004 on Channel 4, and in Australia on the Nine Network. The episode was released on MiniDVD on April 26, 2005, after release plans with other Warner Bros. titles for March were discarded. Although the premiere was originally broadcast and released in a 1.33:1 aspect ratio, it was remastered in a widescreen ratio for the Region 1 complete series DVD release. The Region 2 release retained the original aspect ratio. The episode is available on video on demand service Amazon Unbox in the United States, and from the iTunes Store in the United States and United Kingdom. ## Reception The pilot episode attracted 7.46 million viewers in the United States, second in its time slot behind the season finale of Last Comic Standing. The O.C. received a rating/share of 6.8/11 in the first half-hour, ranking first between 9 and 9:30 p.m., but lost the lead in the second half-hour with a rating of 6.7/10. The episode received the highest rating of the night in the 12- to 17-year-old demographic, but in its target audience demographic of 18- to 49-year-olds, it received a less-than-expected Nielsen Rating of 2.9/8. The show built on the audience of lead-in show American Juniors, and Fox said that they were "fairly happy with the show's performance". Schwartz received a Writers Guild of America Award nomination for Best Screenplay in an Episodic Drama, with casting directors Rush and Silverberg nominated in the Dramatic Pilot category of the Artios Awards. The episode was criticized by City Manager Glen Rojas for its "negative portrayal" of Chino. Entertainment Weekly'''s Carina Chocano praised The O.C. for being different, claiming that it was "refreshingly free of both [Aaron] Spelling-style camp and the twee earnestness that has characterized more recent teen dramas". Robert Bianco of USA Today drew comparisons with the successful Fox show Beverly Hills, 90210, saying that "The O.C. is better-written and better-acted by a cast that just might be, incredibly enough, even better-looking". He praised the cast's skill and attractiveness as well as the show's ability to "come up with a few smart deviations from the genre norm". Nancy Franklin of The New Yorker criticized the plot for being too predictable, but praised Adam Brody as Seth, stating that "he talks too much and too fast, he mumbles, and he projects zero physical confidence. In short, his character is adorable." Rob Owen of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette felt that "[Benjamin] McKenzie, at times, is prone to overdramatizing scenes", and considered the young characters "so detestable and yet bland" that it made the show "almost painful" to watch. He nevertheless affirmed that the show had "positive attributes" that made it enjoyable. Andrew Grossman of The Boston Globe commented that "Brody is instantly likable as Seth" and that Barton "does a nice job with Marissa's torn-between-two-worlds angst", but stated that Ryan "doesn't seem to have many clear personality traits". Tim Goodman of the San Francisco Chronicle called the episode "superb" and described McKenzie as "essentially playing James Dean". He compared the actor to Russell Crowe and noted that McKenzie "pull[ed] the whole thing off with aplomb". ## Popular culture Luke's line, "Welcome to the O.C., bitch", which he says after beating up Ryan, became a tagline for the show. TV Land placed the line as 83rd in its 100 Greatest TV Quotes and Catchphrases in 2006. Hadley Freeman of The Guardian noted that the teen-focused show made many cultural references due to a "renewed interest in the teen market", adding that the use of cropped tops, micro-minis, and beaded flip-flops showed a "decidedly West Coast approach to fashion". The episode's cultural references to fashion included Julie Cooper's question to her pre-pubescent daughter, "Do you like my hair this straight or is it too Avril Lavigne?", while another mother complains, "What are you doing putting my daughter in Calvin Klein? She was supposed to be in Vera Wang!" Teenage misfit Seth complains that "Every day's a fashion show for these kids". The episode generated interest in the program's music and was regarded as "the show to be heard on". Michael Peck from TV Guide said that he received a large quantity of mail that inquired about the song "Into Dust" by Mazzy Star, which played when Ryan carried Marissa into his bedroom. Other featured music was The All-American Rejects' 2003 hit, "Swing, Swing", and "Hands Up" by The Black Eyed Peas from their 2003 multi-platinum album, Elephunk''. Among Schwartz's favorite musical moments from the show was Joseph Arthur's "Honey and the Moon", which Schwartz claimed helped him write the pilot. The title track "California" introduced the band Phantom Planet into the mainstream.

Amanita phalloides

Poisonous mushroom (death cap)

Amanita phalloides (/æməˈnaɪtə fəˈlɔɪdiːz/), commonly known as the death cap, is a deadly poisonous basidiomycete fungus, one of many in the genus Amanita. Widely distributed across Europe, but introduced to other parts of the world since the late twentieth century, A. phalloides forms ectomycorrhizas with various broadleaved trees. In some cases, the death cap has been introduced to new regions with the cultivation of non-native species of oak, chestnut, and pine. The large fruiting bodies (mushrooms) appear in summer and autumn; the caps are generally greenish in colour with a white stipe and gills. The cap colour is variable, including white forms, and is thus not a reliable identifier. These toxic mushrooms resemble several edible species (most notably Caesar's mushroom and the straw mushroom) commonly consumed by humans, increasing the risk of accidental poisoning. Amatoxins, the class of toxins found in these mushrooms, are thermostable: they resist changes due to heat, so their toxic effects are not reduced by cooking. A. phalloides is one of the most poisonous of all known mushrooms. It is estimated that as little as half a mushroom contains enough toxin to kill an adult human. It has been involved in the majority of human deaths from mushroom poisoning, possibly including Roman Emperor Claudius in AD 54 and Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI in 1740. It has been the subject of much research and many of its biologically active agents have been isolated. The principal toxic constituent is α-Amanitin, which causes liver and kidney failure. ## Taxonomy The death cap is named in Latin as such in the correspondence between the English physician Thomas Browne and Christopher Merrett. Also, it was described by French botanist Sébastien Vaillant in 1727, who gave a succinct phrase name "Fungus phalloides, annulatus, sordide virescens, et patulus"—a recognizable name for the fungus today. Though the scientific name phalloides means "phallus-shaped", it is unclear whether it is named for its resemblance to a literal phallus or the stinkhorn mushrooms Phallus. In 1821, Elias Magnus Fries described it as Agaricus phalloides, but included all white amanitas within its description. Finally, in 1833, Johann Heinrich Friedrich Link settled on the name Amanita phalloides, after Persoon had named it Amanita viridis 30 years earlier. Although Louis Secretan's use of the name A. phalloides predates Link's, it has been rejected for nomenclatural purposes because Secretan's works did not use binomial nomenclature consistently; some taxonomists have, however, disagreed with this opinion. Amanita phalloides is the type species of Amanita section Phalloideae, a group that contains all of the deadly poisonous Amanita species thus far identified. Most notable of these are the species known as destroying angels, namely A. virosa, A. bisporigera and A. ocreata, as well as the fool's mushroom (A. verna). The term "destroying angel" has been applied to A. phalloides at times, but "death cap" is by far the most common vernacular name used in English. Other common names also listed include "stinking amanita" and "deadly amanita". A rarely appearing, all-white form was initially described A. phalloides f. alba by Max Britzelmayr, though its status has been unclear. It is often found growing amid normally colored death caps. It has been described, in 2004, as a distinct variety and includes what was termed A. verna var. tarda. The true A. verna fruits in spring and turns yellow with KOH solution, whereas A. phalloides never does. ## Description The death cap has a large and imposing epigeous (aboveground) fruiting body (basidiocarp), usually with a pileus (cap) from 5 to 15 centimetres (2 to 5+7⁄8 inches) across, initially rounded and hemispherical, but flattening with age. The color of the cap can be pale-green, yellowish-green, olive-green, bronze, or (in one form) white; it is often paler toward the margins, which can have darker streaks; it is also often paler after rain. The cap surface is sticky when wet and easily peeled -- a troublesome feature, as that is allegedly a feature of edible fungi. The remains of the partial veil are seen as a skirtlike, floppy annulus usually about 1 to 1.5 cm (3⁄8 to 5⁄8 in) below the cap. The crowded white lamellae (gills) are free. The stipe is white with a scattering of grayish-olive scales and is 8 to 15 cm (3+1⁄8 to 5+7⁄8 in) long and 1 to 2 cm (3⁄8 to 3⁄4 in) thick, with a swollen, ragged, sac-like white volva (base). As the volva, which may be hidden by leaf litter, is a distinctive and diagnostic feature, it is important to remove some debris to check for it. Spores: 7-12 x 6-9 μm. Smooth, ellipsoid, amyloid. The smell has been described as initially faint and honey-sweet, but strengthening over time to become overpowering, sickly-sweet and objectionable. Young specimens first emerge from the ground resembling a white egg covered by a universal veil, which then breaks, leaving the volva as a remnant. The spore print is white, a common feature of Amanita. The transparent spores are globular to egg-shaped, measure 8–10 μm (0.3–0.4 mil) long, and stain blue with iodine. The gills, in contrast, stain pallid lilac or pink with concentrated sulfuric acid. ### Biochemistry The species is now known to contain two main groups of toxins, both multicyclic (ring-shaped) peptides, spread throughout the mushroom tissue: the amatoxins and the phallotoxins. Another toxin is phallolysin, which has shown some hemolytic (red blood cell–destroying) activity in vitro. An unrelated compound, antamanide, has also been isolated. Amatoxins consist of at least eight compounds with a similar structure, that of eight amino-acid rings; they were isolated in 1941 by Heinrich O. Wieland and Rudolf Hallermayer of the University of Munich. Of the amatoxins, α-Amanitin is the chief component and along with β-amanitin is likely responsible for the toxic effects. Their major toxic mechanism is the inhibition of RNA polymerase II, a vital enzyme in the synthesis of messenger RNA (mRNA), microRNA, and small nuclear RNA (snRNA). Without mRNA, essential protein synthesis and hence cell metabolism grind to a halt and the cell dies. The liver is the principal organ affected, as it is the organ which is first encountered after absorption in the gastrointestinal tract, though other organs, especially the kidneys, are susceptible. The RNA polymerase of Amanita phalloides is insensitive to the effects of amatoxins, so the mushroom does not poison itself. The phallotoxins consist of at least seven compounds, all of which have seven similar peptide rings. Phalloidin was isolated in 1937 by Feodor Lynen, Heinrich Wieland's student and son-in-law, and Ulrich Wieland of the University of Munich. Though phallotoxins are highly toxic to liver cells, they have since been found to add little to the death cap's toxicity, as they are not absorbed through the gut. Furthermore, phalloidin is also found in the edible (and sought-after) blusher (A. rubescens). Another group of minor active peptides are the virotoxins, which consist of six similar monocyclic heptapeptides. Like the phallotoxins, they do not induce any acute toxicity after ingestion in humans. The genome of the death cap has been sequenced. ### Similarity to edible species A. phalloides is similar to the edible paddy straw mushroom (Volvariella volvacea) and A. princeps, commonly known as "white Caesar". Some may mistake juvenile death caps for edible puffballs or mature specimens for other edible Amanita species, such as A. lanei, so some authorities recommend avoiding the collecting of Amanita species for the table altogether. The white form of A. phalloides may be mistaken for edible species of Agaricus, especially the young fruitbodies whose unexpanded caps conceal the telltale white gills; all mature species of Agaricus have dark-colored gills. In Europe, other similarly green-capped species collected by mushroom hunters include various green-hued brittlegills of the genus Russula and the formerly popular Tricholoma equestre, now regarded as hazardous owing to a series of restaurant poisonings in France. Brittlegills, such as Russula heterophylla, R. aeruginea, and R. virescens, can be distinguished by their brittle flesh and the lack of both volva and ring. Other similar species include A. subjunquillea in eastern Asia and A. arocheae, which ranges from Andean Colombia north at least as far as central Mexico, both of which are also poisonous. ## Distribution and habitat The death cap is native to Europe, where it is widespread. It is found from the southern coastal regions of Scandinavia in the north, to Ireland in the west, east to Poland and western Russia, and south throughout the Balkans, in Greece, Italy, Spain, and Portugal in the Mediterranean basin, and in Morocco and Algeria in north Africa. In west Asia, it has been reported from forests of northern Iran. There are records from further east in Asia but these have yet to be confirmed as A. phalloides. By the end of the 19th century, Charles Horton Peck had reported A. phalloides in North America. In 1918, samples from the eastern United States were identified as being a distinct though similar species, A. brunnescens, by George Francis Atkinson of Cornell University. By the 1970s, it had become clear that A. phalloides does occur in the United States, apparently having been introduced from Europe alongside chestnuts, with populations on the West and East Coasts. A 2006 historical review concluded the East Coast populations were inadvertently introduced, likely on the roots of other purposely imported plants such as chestnuts. The origins of the West Coast populations remained unclear, due to scant historical records, but a 2009 genetic study provided strong evidence for the introduced status of the fungus on the west coast of North America. Observations of various collections of A. phalloides, from conifers rather than native forests, have led to the hypothesis that the species was introduced to North America multiple times. It is hypothesized that the various introductions led to multiple genotypes which are adapted to either oaks or conifers. A. phalloides were conveyed to new countries across the Southern Hemisphere with the importation of hardwoods and conifers in the late twentieth century. Introduced oaks appear to have been the vector to Australia and South America; populations under oaks have been recorded from Melbourne and Canberra (where two people died in January 2012, of four who were poisoned) and Adelaide, as well as Uruguay. It has been recorded under other introduced trees in Argentina. Pine plantations are associated with the fungus in Tanzania and South Africa, and it is also found under oaks and poplars in Chile. A number of deaths in India have been attributed to it. ## Ecology It is ectomycorrhizally associated with several tree species and is symbiotic with them. In Europe, these include hardwood and, less frequently, conifer species. It appears most commonly under oaks, but also under beeches, chestnuts, horse-chestnuts, birches, filberts, hornbeams, pines, and spruces. In other areas, A. phalloides may also be associated with these trees or with only some species and not others. In coastal California, for example, A. phalloides is associated with coast live oak, but not with the various coastal pine species, such as Monterey pine. In countries where it has been introduced, it has been restricted to those exotic trees with which it would associate in its natural range. There is, however, evidence of A. phalloides associating with hemlock and with genera of the Myrtaceae: Eucalyptus in Tanzania and Algeria, and Leptospermum and Kunzea in New Zealand, suggesting that the species may have invasive potential. It may have also been anthropogenically introduced to the island of Cyprus, where it has been documented to fruit within Corylus avellana plantations. ## Toxicity As the common name suggests, the fungus is highly toxic, and is responsible for the majority of fatal mushroom poisonings worldwide. Its biochemistry has been researched intensively for decades, and 30 grams (1.1 ounces), or half a cap, of this mushroom is estimated to be enough to kill a human. On average, one person dies a year in North America from death cap ingestion. The toxins of the death cap mushrooms primarily target the liver, but other organs, such as the kidneys, are also affected. Symptoms of death cap mushroom toxicity usually occur 6 to 12 hours after ingestion. Symptoms of ingestion of the death cap mushroom may include nausea and vomiting, which is then followed by jaundice, seizures, and coma which will lead to death. The mortality rate of ingestion of the death cap mushroom is believed to be around 10–30%. Some authorities strongly advise against putting suspected death caps in the same basket with fungi collected for the table and to avoid even touching them. Furthermore, the toxicity is not reduced by cooking, freezing, or drying. Poisoning incidents usually result from errors in identification. Recent cases highlight the issue of the similarity of A. phalloides to the edible paddy straw mushroom (Volvariella volvacea), with East- and Southeast-Asian immigrants in Australia and the West Coast of the U.S. falling victim. In an episode in Oregon, four members of a Korean family required liver transplants. Many North American incidents of death cap poisoning have occurred among Laotian and Hmong immigrants, since it is easily confused with A. princeps ("white Caesar"), a popular mushroom in their native countries. Of the 9 people poisoned in Australia's Canberra region between 1988 and 2011, three were from Laos and two were from China. In January 2012, four people were accidentally poisoned when death caps (reportedly misidentified as straw fungi, which are popular in Chinese and other Asian dishes) were served for dinner in Canberra; all the victims required hospital treatment and two of them died, with a third requiring a liver transplant. ### Signs and symptoms Death caps have been reported to taste pleasant. This, coupled with the delay in the appearance of symptoms—during which time internal organs are being severely, sometimes irreparably, damaged—makes it particularly dangerous. Initially, symptoms are gastrointestinal in nature and include colicky abdominal pain, with watery diarrhea, nausea, and vomiting, which may lead to dehydration if left untreated, and, in severe cases, hypotension, tachycardia, hypoglycemia, and acid–base disturbances. These first symptoms resolve two to three days after the ingestion. A more serious deterioration signifying liver involvement may then occur—jaundice, diarrhea, delirium, seizures, and coma due to fulminant liver failure and attendant hepatic encephalopathy caused by the accumulation of normally liver-removed substance in the blood. Kidney failure (either secondary to severe hepatitis or caused by direct toxic kidney damage) and coagulopathy may appear during this stage. Life-threatening complications include increased intracranial pressure, intracranial bleeding, pancreatic inflammation, acute kidney failure, and cardiac arrest. Death generally occurs six to sixteen days after the poisoning. Mushroom poisoning is more common in Europe than in North America. Up to the mid-20th century, the mortality rate was around 60–70%, but this has been greatly reduced with advances in medical care. A review of death cap poisoning throughout Europe from 1971 to 1980 found the overall mortality rate to be 22.4% (51.3% in children under ten and 16.5% in those older than ten). This was revised to around 10–15% in surveys reviewed in 1995. ### Treatment Consumption of the death cap is a medical emergency requiring hospitalization. The four main categories of therapy for poisoning are preliminary medical care, supportive measures, specific treatments, and liver transplantation. Preliminary care consists of gastric decontamination with either activated carbon or gastric lavage; due to the delay between ingestion and the first symptoms of poisoning, it is common for patients to arrive for treatment many hours after ingestion, potentially reducing the efficacy of these interventions. Supportive measures are directed towards treating the dehydration which results from fluid loss during the gastrointestinal phase of intoxication and correction of metabolic acidosis, hypoglycemia, electrolyte imbalances, and impaired coagulation. No definitive antidote is available, but some specific treatments have been shown to improve survivability. High-dose continuous intravenous penicillin G has been reported to be of benefit, though the exact mechanism is unknown, and trials with cephalosporins show promise. Some evidence indicates intravenous silibinin, an extract from the blessed milk thistle (Silybum marianum), may be beneficial in reducing the effects of death cap poisoning. A long-term clinical trial of intravenous silibinin began in the US in 2010. Silibinin prevents the uptake of amatoxins by liver cells, thereby protecting undamaged liver tissue; it also stimulates DNA-dependent RNA polymerases, leading to an increase in RNA synthesis. According to one report based on a treatment of 60 patients with silibinin, patients who started the drug within 96 hours of ingesting the mushroom and who still had intact kidney function all survived. As of February 2014 supporting research has not yet been published. SLCO1B3 has been identified as the human hepatic uptake transporter for amatoxins; moreover, substrates and inhibitors of that protein—among others rifampicin, penicillin, silibinin, antamanide, paclitaxel, ciclosporin and prednisolone—may be useful for the treatment of human amatoxin poisoning. N-Acetylcysteine has shown promise in combination with other therapies. Animal studies indicate the amatoxins deplete hepatic glutathione; N-acetylcysteine serves as a glutathione precursor and may therefore prevent reduced glutathione levels and subsequent liver damage. None of the antidotes used have undergone prospective, randomized clinical trials, and only anecdotal support is available. Silibinin and N-acetylcysteine appear to be the therapies with the most potential benefit. Repeated doses of activated carbon may be helpful by absorbing any toxins returned to the gastrointestinal tract following enterohepatic circulation. Other methods of enhancing the elimination of the toxins have been trialed; techniques such as hemodialysis, hemoperfusion, plasmapheresis, and peritoneal dialysis have occasionally yielded success, but overall do not appear to improve outcome. In patients developing liver failure, a liver transplant is often the only option to prevent death. Liver transplants have become a well-established option in amatoxin poisoning. This is a complicated issue, however, as transplants themselves may have significant complications and mortality; patients require long-term immunosuppression to maintain the transplant. That being the case, the criteria have been reassessed, such as onset of symptoms, prothrombin time (PT), serum bilirubin, and presence of encephalopathy, for determining at what point a transplant becomes necessary for survival. Evidence suggests, although survival rates have improved with modern medical treatment, in patients with moderate to severe poisoning, up to half of those who did recover suffered permanent liver damage. A follow-up study has shown most survivors recover completely without any sequelae if treated within 36 hours of mushroom ingestion. ## Notable victims Several historical figures may have died from A. phalloides poisoning (or other similar, toxic Amanita species). These were either accidental poisonings or assassination plots. Alleged victims of this kind of poisoning include Roman Emperor Claudius, Pope Clement VII, the Russian tsaritsa Natalia Naryshkina, and Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI. R. Gordon Wasson recounted the details of these deaths, noting the likelihood of Amanita poisoning. In the case of Clement VII, the illness that led to his death lasted five months, making the case inconsistent with amatoxin poisoning. Natalya Naryshkina is said to have consumed a large quantity of pickled mushrooms prior to her death. It is unclear whether the mushrooms themselves were poisonous or if she succumbed to food poisoning. Charles VI experienced indigestion after eating a dish of sautéed mushrooms. This led to an illness from which he died 10 days later—symptomatology consistent with amatoxin poisoning. His death led to the War of the Austrian Succession. Noted Voltaire, "this mushroom dish has changed the destiny of Europe." The case of Claudius's poisoning is more complex. Claudius was known to have been very fond of eating Caesar's mushroom. Following his death, many sources have attributed it to his being fed a meal of death caps instead of Caesar's mushrooms. Ancient authors, such as Tacitus and Suetonius, are unanimous about poison having been added to the mushroom dish, rather than the dish having been prepared from poisonous mushrooms. Wasson speculated the poison used to kill Claudius was derived from death caps, with a fatal dose of an unknown poison (possibly a variety of nightshade) being administered later during his illness. Other historians have speculated that Claudius may have died of natural causes. ## See also - List of Amanita species - List of deadly fungi

The Legend of Bhagat Singh

2002 Indian film directed by Rajkumar Santoshi

The Legend of Bhagat Singh is a 2002 Indian Hindi-language biographical period film directed by Rajkumar Santoshi. The film is about Bhagat Singh, a revolutionary who fought for Indian independence along with fellow members of the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association. It features Ajay Devgan as the titular character along with Sushant Singh, D. Santosh and Akhilendra Mishra as the other lead characters. Raj Babbar, Farida Jalal and Amrita Rao play supporting roles. The film chronicles Singh's life from his childhood where he witnesses the Jallianwala Bagh massacre until the day he was hanged to death before the official trial dated 24th March 1931. The film was produced by Kumar and Ramesh Taurani's Tips Industries on a budget of ₹200–250 million (about US\$4.2–5.2 million in 2002). The story and dialogue were written by Santoshi and Piyush Mishra respectively, while Anjum Rajabali drafted the screenplay. K. V. Anand, V. N. Mayekar and Nitin Chandrakant Desai were in charge of the cinematography, editing and production design respectively. Principal photography took place in Agra, Manali, Mumbai and Pune from January to May 2002. The soundtrack and film score is composed by A. R. Rahman, with the songs "Mera Rang De Basanti" and "Sarfaroshi Ki Tamanna" being well-received in particular. The Legend of Bhagat Singh was released on 7 June 2002 to generally positive reviews, with the direction, story, screenplay, technical aspects, and the performances of Devgan and Sushant receiving the most attention. However, the film underperformed at the box office, grossing only ₹129 million (US\$2.7 million in 2002). It went on to win two National Film Awards – Best Feature Film in Hindi and Best Actor for Devgn – and three Filmfare Awards from eight nominations. ## Plot Some officials take three dead bodies covered in white cloth to throw them near a river and burn it but are stopped by the villagers and unveil the bodies. Tragedy strikes when an old woman named Vidyavati also unveils a body only to find her son under the cloth and is terrified to see her son in that condition. A great strike was held on 24th March mourning the death of those three youngsters. Meanwhile, at Malir station in Karachi, Mahatma Gandhi arrives at the station and sees his supporters praising him, except for those youngsters shouting insults against him for not saving the three youngsters, it was revealed that they were Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev and Rajguru respectively. They gift him a crafted black rose and explain to him the reason, Gandhiji tells them that he appreciates their feelings for the country and he could have given his life to save them, but they were on the wrong path of patriotism and didn't want to live. A youngster disagrees with his reply and says that his intention was similar to that of the British government who never wanted to free the three young revolutionaries, and added that Gandhiji never tried his best to free them. Gandhiji also says that he never supports the path of violence. The youngsters still disagreed and concluded that history will ask this question to him forever, continuing the insults for Gandhiji and praising Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev, and Rajguru. Bhagat Singh's father, Kishan Singh secretly greets him. The story later rewinds to past events. Bhagat Singh was born on 28 September 1907, at Banga village of Lyallpur district in Punjab Province of British India. He witnesses some British officials torturing people who were not even guilty, the young Bhagat also hears that the British officials cussed them "Bloody Indians" when he was on his father's lap who was going back after witnessing all the atrocities. At the age of 12, Bhagat takes a solemn vow to free India from the British Raj after witnessing the aftermath of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre. Soon after the massacre, he learns of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi's satyagraha policies and begins to support the non-cooperation movement, in which thousands of people burn British-made clothing and abandon school, college studies, and government jobs. In February 1922, Gandhi calls off the movement after the Chauri Chaura incident. Feeling betrayed by Gandhi, Bhagat decides to become a revolutionary, and, as an adult, he goes to Cawnpore and joins the Hindustan Republican Association, a revolutionary organization, in its struggle for India's independence, ending up in prison for his activities. Singh's father, Kishen Singh, bails him out on a fee of ₹60,000 so that he can get him to run a dairy farm and marry a girl named Mannewali. Bhagat runs away from home, leaving a note saying that his love for the country comes first. When Lala Lajpat Rai is beaten (lathi charged) to death by the police while protesting against the Simon Commission, Bhagat, along with Shivram Hari Rajguru, Sukhdev Thapar and Chandra Shekhar Azad, killed John P. Saunders (who is mistaken for James A. Scott who ordered Lala Lajpat Rai's beatdown), a British police officer, on 17 December 1928. Two days later the incident, they were in disguise to escape from the police who started an identification process with the witnesses of the murder to arrest them. Later, in Calcutta, they start to think that their efforts have gone waste and decide to make a plan for an explosion. After meeting Jatindra Nath Das who reluctantly agrees, they learn the bomb-making process and check whether it is successful. Azad starts to worry whether anything may happen to Bhagat, Bhagat is later consoled by Sukhdev and Azad reluctantly agrees. On 8 April 1929, when the British proposed the Trade Disputes and Public Safety Bills, Bhagat, along with Batukeshwar Dutt, initiate a bombing of the Central Legislative Assembly. He and Dutt throw the bombs on empty benches due to their intention to avoid causing casualties. They are subsequently arrested and tried publicly. Bhagat then gives a speech about his ideas of revolution, stating that he wanted to tell the world about the freedom fighters himself rather than let the British misrepresent them as violent people, citing this as the reason for bombing the assembly. Bhagat soon becomes more popular than Gandhi among the Indian populace, in particular the younger generation, laborers, and farmers. In Lahore Central Jail, Bhagat and all of the other fellow prisoners, including Sukhdev and Rajguru, undertake a 116-day hunger strike to improve the conditions of Indian political prisoners. On the 63rd day, one of Bhagat's partners Jatin Das, dies of cholera in police custody as he could not bear the disease anymore. Meanwhile, Azad, whom the British had repeatedly failed to capture, is ambushed at the Alfred Park in Allahabad on 27 February 1931. The police surround the entire park leading to a shootout; refusing to be captured by the British, Azad commits suicide with the last remaining bullet in his Colt pistol. Fearing the growing popularity of the hunger strike amongst the Indian public nationwide, Lord Irwin (the Viceroy of British India) order the re-opening of the Saunders' murder case, which leads to capital death sentences being imposed on Bhagat, Sukhdev, and Rajguru. The Indians hope that Gandhi will use his pact with Irwin as an opportunity to save Bhagat, Sukhdev, and Rajguru's lives. Irwin refuses Gandhi's request for their release. Gandhi reluctantly agrees to sign a pact that includes the clause: "Release of political prisoners except for the ones involved in violence". Bhagat, Sukhdev, and Rajguru are hanged in secrecy on 23rd March 1931 even before their trial on 24th March 1931. ## Cast - Ajay Devgan as Bhagat Singh - Nakshdeep Singh as young Bhagat - Sushant Singh as Sukhdev Thapar - D. Santosh as Shivaram Rajguru - Akhilendra Mishra as Chandra Shekhar Azad - Raj Babbar as Kishen Singh Sandhu, Bhagat's father - Farida Jalal as Vidyawati Kaur Sandhu, Bhagat's mother - Amrita Rao as Mannewali, Bhagat's fiance - Mukesh Tewari as Khan Bahadur Mohammad Akbar, Deputy jailor at Lahore Central Jail - Surendra Rajan as Mohandas Karamchand "M. K." Gandhi alias "Mahatma Gandhi" - Saurabh Dubey as Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru - Swaroop Kumar as Motilal Nehru - Arun Patwardhan as Madan Mohan Malviya - Kenneth Desai as Subhash Chandra Bose - Sitaram Panchal as Lala Lajpat Rai - Bhaswar Chatterjee as Batukeshwar Dutt alias "B. K. Dutt" - Amit Dhawan as Bhagwati Charan Vora - Harsh Khurana as Jai Gopal - Kapil Sharma as Shiv Verma - Indrani Banerjee as Durgawati Devi a.k.a. "Durga Bhabhi" - Amitabh Bhattacharjee as Jatindra Nath Das a.k.a. "Jatin Das" - Shish Khan as Prem Dutt - Sanjay Sharma as Ajay Ghosh - Raja Tomar as Mahabir Singh - Deepak Kumar Bandhu as Ramsaran Das - Niraj Shah as Gaya Prasad - Pradeep Bajpai as Kishori Lal - Aditya Verma as Des Raj - Romie Jaspal as Sachindranath Sanyal - Sunil Grover as Jaidev Kapoor - Abir Goswami as Phanindra Nath Ghosh - Pramod Pathak as Mahour - Aashu Mohil as Hans Raj Vohra - Manu Malik as Agya Ram - Navin Bhaskar as Kawalnath Tiwari - Shreyas Pandit as Surendra Nath Pandey - Rakesh Awan as Markand - Kiran Randhawa as police officer - Ganesh Yadav as Ram Prasad Bismil - Tony Mirchandani as Ashfaqulla Khan - Padam Singh as Thakur Roshan Singh - Ashok Sharma as Rajendra Lahiri - Mahesh Raja as Sachindranath Bakshi - Vikky as Mukundilal - Piyush Chakravorthy as Banwarilal - Vasudevan as Murari Sharma - Narendra Rawal as Manmath Nath Gupta - Shamsher Singh as Arjan Singh - Oshima Rekhi as Jai Kaur - Sukhmani Kohli as Amar Kaur - Ankush as Kulbir Singh - Karanbir Singh as Kultar Singh - Renu Soni as Baddi Chachi - Anita as Choti Chachi - Gurucharan Channi as Chattar Singh - Mahajan Prashant as Justice Rai Sahib - Hayat Asif as Justice Asaf Ali - Sardar Sohi as Leader at Jallianwala Bagh - Rajesh Tripathi as Veerbhadra Tiwari - Lalit Tiwari as Professor Amarnath Vidyalankar - Shehzad Khan as Horse-cart driver Khairu - Gil Alon as Viceroy Lord Irwin - Ryan Jonathan as Herbert Emerson, Home Member, His Majesty's Government - Conrad as Assistant Superintendent of Police John P. Saunders - Tim as Superintendent of Police James Alexander Scott - Richard as Reginald Dyer, who ordered Gurkha soldiers to open fire on an unarmed gathering of people at Jallianwala Bagh in 1919. ## Production ### Development In 1998, the film director Rajkumar Santoshi read several books on the socialist revolutionary, Bhagat Singh, and felt that a biopic would help revive interest in him. Although Manoj Kumar made a film about Bhagat in 1965, titled Shaheed, Santoshi felt that despite being "a great source of inspiration on the lyrics and music front", it did not "dwell on Bhagat Singh's ideology and vision". In August 2000, the screenwriter Anjum Rajabali mentioned to Santoshi about his work on Har Dayal, whose revolutionary activities inspired Udham Singh. Santoshi then persuaded Rajabali to draft a script based on Bhagat's life as he was inspired by Udham Singh. Santoshi gave Rajabali a copy of Shaheed Bhagat Singh, K. K. Khullar's biography of the revolutionary. Rajabali said that reading the book "created an intense curiosity in me about the mind of this man. I definitely wanted to know more about him." His interest in Bhagat intensified after he read The Martyr: Bhagat Singh's Experiments in Revolution (2000) by journalist Kuldip Nayar. The following month, Rajabali formally began his research on Bhagat while admitting to Santoshi that it was "a difficult task". Gurpal Singh, a Film and Television Institute of India graduate, and internet blogger Sagar Pandya assisted him. Santoshi received input from Kultar Singh, Bhagat's younger brother, who told the director he would have his full co-operation if the film accurately depicted Bhagat's ideologies. Rajabali wanted to "recreate the world that Bhagat Singh lived in", and his research required him to "not only understand the man, but also the influences on him, the politics of that era". In an interview with Sharmila Taliculam of Rediff.com in the year 2000, Rajabali said that the film would "deal with Bhagat Singh, the man, rather than the freedom fighter". Many aspects of Bhagat's life, including his relationship with fiancée Mannewali, were derived from Piyush Mishra's 1994 play Gagan Damama Bajyo; Mishra was subsequently credited with writing the film's dialogues. A. G. Noorani's 1996 book, The Trial of Bhagat Singh: Politics of Justice, provided the basis for the trial sequences. Gurpal obtained additional information from 750 newspaper clippings of The Tribune dated from September 1928 to March 1931, and from Bhagat's prison notebooks. These gave Rajabali "an idea of what had appealed to the man, the literary and intellectual influences that impacted him in that period". By the end of the year 2000, Santoshi and Rajabali completed work on the script and showed it to Kumar and Ramesh Taurani of Tips Industries; both were impressed by it. The Taurani brothers agreed to produce the film under their banner and commence filming after Santoshi had finished his work on Lajja (2001). ### Casting Sunny Deol was initially cast as Bhagat, but he left the project owing to schedule conflicts and differences with Santoshi over his remuneration. Santoshi then preferred to cast new faces instead of established actors but was not pleased with the performers who auditioned. Ajay Devgn (then known as Ajay Devgan) was finally chosen for the lead character because Santoshi felt he had "the eyes of a revolutionary. His introvert nature conveys loud and clear signals that there is a volcano inside him ready to burst." After Devgn performed a screen test dressed as Bhagat, Santoshi was "pleasantly surprised" to see Devgn's face closely resemble Singh's and cast him in the part. The Legend of Bhagat Singh marked Devgn's second collaboration with Santoshi after Lajja. Devgn called the film "the most challenging assignment" in his career. He had not watched Shaheed before signing up for the project. To prepare for the role, Devgn studied all the references Santoshi and Rajabali had procured to develop the film's script. He also lost weight to more closely resemble Bhagat. > Whatever we have read in school and learnt in history is not even 1% of the kind of person he [Bhagat] was. I don't think he got his due ... When Rajkumar Santoshi narrated the script to me, I was taken aback because this man had done so much and his motive was not just independence of India. He had predicted the challenges that we face in our country today. From riots to corruption, he had predicted that and he wanted to fight that. Santoshi chose Akhilendra Mishra to play Azad as he also resembled his character. In addition to reading Shiv Verma's Sansmritiyan, Mishra read Bhagwan Das Mahore's and Sadashiv Rao Malkapurkar's accounts of the revolutionary. Because of his astrological beliefs, he even obtained Azad's horoscope to determine his personality. In an interview with Rediff.com's Lata Khubchandani, Mishra mentioned that while informing his father about his role of Azad, he revealed to him that they originally hailed from Kanpur, the same place where Azad's ancestors were from. This piece of information encouraged Mishra to play Azad. Sushant Singh and D. Santosh (in his cinematic debut) were cast as Bhagat's friends and fellow members of the Hindustan Republican Association, Sukhdev Thapar and Shivaram Rajguru. Santoshi believed their faces resembled those of the two revolutionaries. To learn about their characters, Sushant, like Mishra, read Sansmritiyan while Santosh visited Rajguru's family members. The actors were also chosen according to their characters' backgrounds. This was true in the case of Santosh and also Amitabh Bhattacharjee, who played Jatin Das, the man who devised the bomb for Bhagat and Batukeshwar Dutt. Santosh and Bhattacharjee were from Maharashtra and West Bengal like Rajguru and Das. Raj Babbar and Farida Jalal were cast as Bhagat's parents, Kishen Singh and Vidyawati Kaur, while Amrita Rao played Mannewali, Bhagat's fiancée. ### Filming Principal photography began in January 2002 and was completed in May. The first schedule of filming took place in Agra and Manali following which the unit moved to the Film City studio in Mumbai. According to the film's cinematographer, K. V. Anand, around 85 sets were constructed at Film City by Nitin Chandrakant Desai who was in charge of the production design, and "99 percent of the background" featured in the film was sets. Desai used sepia tint throughout the film to create a period feel. Additional scenes depicting the massacre of 1919 were filmed at a set constructed to look like the Bagh as it was 83 years ago; some of them were shot between 9 pm and 6 am. The scenes at the Bagh set and other surrounding locations of Amritsar at the beginning of the film feature Nakshdeep Singh as the younger Bhagat. Santoshi selected Nakshdeep after receiving photographs of the boy from his father, Komal Singh, who played Mannewali's father. Kultar stayed with the production unit for seven days during the outdoor location shooting in Pune. Both Santoshi and Devgn appreciated the interactions they had with Kultar, noting that he provided "deep insights into his brother's life". Kultar was pleased with the sincerity of the cast and crew and shared private letters written by Bhagat with them. The song "Pagdi Sambhal Jatta" was the last part to be filmed. A sequence in the song featuring Devgn appearing between two factions of backup Bhangra dancers took three takes to be completed. The Legend of Bhagat Singh was made on a budget of ₹200 – 250 million (about US\$4.15 – 5.18 million in 2002). ## Music A. R. Rahman composed the soundtrack and score for The Legend of Bhagat Singh, marking his second collaboration with Santoshi after Pukar. Sameer wrote the lyrics for the songs. In an interview with Arthur J. Pais of Rediff.com, Rahman said that Santoshi wanted him to compose songs that would stand apart from his other projects like Lagaan (2001) and Zubeidaa (2001). Rahman took care to compose the tunes for "Mera Rang De Basanti" in a slow-paced manner to avoid comparisons with the songs in Shaheed, which he and Santoshi found to be fast-paced. Rahman followed the same procedure for "Sarfaroshi Ki Tamanna". He created a softer tune, saying that the "song is pictured on men who have fasted for over a month. How can I compose a high-sounding tune for that song?" Despite this, Rahman admitted that "Des Mere Des" had "some strains" from Lagaan's music. Rahman took "Santoshi's commitment to the film" as a source of inspiration to make an album that was "flavorsome [sic] and different." Rahman experimented with Punjabi music more than he had done before on his previous soundtracks, receiving assistance from Sukhwinder Singh and Sonu Nigam. The soundtrack was completed within two months, with "Des Mere Des" recorded in an hour. The soundtrack, marketed by Tips, was released on 8 May 2002 in New Delhi. The songs, especially "Mera Rang De Basanti" and "Sarfaroshi Ki Tamanna", received favourable reviews. A review carried by The Hindu said that while "Sarfaroshi Ki Tamanna" had a "forceful" impact, "Mera Rang De Basanti" and "Pagdi Sambhal Jatta" were "not the boom-boom types but subtly tuned". The review praised Rahman's ability "to impart the sombre and poignant mood" in all the album's songs "so well that despite being subdued, it retains the patriotic fervour". Seema Pant of Rediff.com said that "Mera Rang De Basanti" and "Mahive Mahive" were "well rendered" by their respective singers and called "Sura So Pahchaniye" an "intense track, both lyrically as well as composition wise". Pant praised Sukhwinder Singh's "exquisite rendition" of "Pagdi Sambhal Jatta" and described the duet version of "Sarfaroshi Ki Tamanna" as having "been beautifully composed". She appreciated how the "tabla, santoor and flute gives this slow and soft number a classical touch." A critic from Sify said the music is "good". While Pant and the Sify reviewer concurred with Rahman that "Des Mere Des" was similar to Lagaan's music, the review in The Hindu compared the song to "Bharat Hum Ko Jaan Se Pyaara Hain" ("Thamizha Thamizha") from Roja (1992). ## Release The Legend of Bhagat Singh was released on 7 June 2002 coinciding with the release of Sanjay Gadhvi's romance, Mere Yaar Ki Shaadi Hai, and another film based on Bhagat, 23rd March 1931: Shaheed, which featured Bobby Deol as the revolutionary. A week before the film's release, Article 51 A Forum, a non-governmental organisation in Delhi, believed The Legend of Bhagat Singh to be historically inaccurate, criticising the inclusion of Mannewali as Bhagat's widow, and stating the films were made "without any research or devotion" and the filmmakers were just looking at the box-office prospects to "make spicy films based on imaginary episodes". Kumar Taurani defended his film saying that he did not add Rao "for ornamental value", noting he would have opted for an established actress instead if that were the case. A press statement issued by Tips Industries said: "This girl from Manawali village loved Bhagat Singh so totally that she remained unmarried till death and was known as Bhagat Singh's widow." The chief operating officer of Tips Industries, Raju Hingorani, pointed out that Kultar had authenticated the film, stating: "With his backing, why must we be afraid of other allegations?" On 29 May 2002, a 14-page petition was filed by Paramjit Kaur, the daughter of Bhagat's youngest brother, Rajinder Singh, at the Punjab and Haryana High Court to stay the release of both The Legend of Bhagat Singh and 23rd March 1931: Shaheed, alleging that they "contained distorted versions" of the freedom fighter's life. Kaur's lawyer, Sandeep Bhansal, argued that Bhagat singing a duet with Mannewali and wearing garlands were "untrue and amounted to distortion of historical facts". Two days later, the petition came up for hearing before the Judges Justice J. L. Gupta and Justice Narinder Kumar Sud; both refused to stay the films' release, observing that the petition was moved "too late and it would not be proper to stop the screening of the films". ## Reception ### Critical response The Legend of Bhagat Singh received generally positive critical feedback, with praise for its direction, story, screenplay, cinematography, production design and the performances of Devgn and Sushant. Chitra Mahesh praised Santoshi's direction, noting in her review for The Hindu that he "shows some restraint in handling the narrative". She appreciated the film's technical aspects and Devgn's rendition, calling his interpretation of Bhagat "powerful, without being strident". Writing for The Times of India, Dominic Ferrao commended Devgn, Sushant, Babbar and Mishra, saying that they all come "off with flying colours". A review carried by Sify labelled the film "slick and commendable"; it also termed Devgn's portrayal of Bhagat as "fabulous" but felt he "overrides" the character and that "the supporting characters make more impact than him." In a comparative analysis of The Legend of Bhagat Singh with 23rd March 1931: Shaheed, Ziya-Us-Salam of The Hindu found the former to be a better film because of the "clearly etched out" supporting characters, while opining Devgn was more "restrained and credible" than Bobby Deol. Salam admired Sushant's performance, opining that he has "a fine screen presence, good timing and an ability to hold his own in front of more celebrated actors". In a more mixed comparison, Rediff.com's Amberish K. Diwanji, despite finding The Legend of Bhagat Singh and Devgn to be the better film and actor like Salam, criticised the "constant shouting and mouthing of dialogues". He responded negatively to the inclusion of Bhagat's fiancée, pointing out the film took liberties in using this "slim" piece of information "just to have a girl sing." Diwanji, however, commended the narrative structure of The Legend of Bhagat Singh, saying that the film captured the revolutionary's life and journey well, thereby making it "worth watching and give[ing] it relevant historical background." Among overseas reviewers, Dave Kehr of The New York Times complimented the placement of the film's song sequences, especially that of "Sarfaroshi Ki Tamanna" and "Mere Rang De Basanti". Kehr called Devgn's interpretation of Bhagat "glowering" while praising Sushant's "urbane and unpredictable" rendition of Sukhdev. Although Variety's Derek Elley found The Legend of Bhagat Singh to be "drawn with more warmth" and approved of Devgn's and Sushant's performances, he was not pleased with the "choppy" screenplay in the film's first half. He concluded his review by saying that the film "has a stronger lead [thespian] and richer gallery of characters that triumph over often unsubtle direction". Some of the criticism was also directed towards the treatment of Gandhi. Mahesh notes that he "appears in rather poor light" and was depicted as making "little effort" to secure a pardon for Bhagat, Sukhdev and Rajguru. Diwanji concurs with Mahesh while also saying that the Gandhi–Irwin Pact as seen in the film would make the audience think that Gandhi "condemned the trio to be hanged by inking the agreement" while pointing out the agreement itself "had a different history and context." Kehr believed the film's depiction of Gandhi was its "most interesting aspect". He described Surendra Rajan's version of Gandhi as "a faintly ridiculous poseur, whose policies play directly into the hands of the British" and in that aspect, he was very different from "the serene sage" portrayed by Ben Kingsley in Richard Attenborough's Gandhi (1982). Like Diwanji, Elley also notes how the film denounces Gandhi by blaming him "for not trying very hard" to prevent Bhagat's execution. ### Box office The Legend of Bhagat Singh had an average opening in its first week, grossing ₹57.1 million (US\$1.18 million in 2002) worldwide, with ₹33 million (US\$684,221 in 2002) in India alone. The film failed to cover its budget thus underperforming at the box office, collecting only ₹129.35 million (US\$2.68 million in 2002) by the end of its theatrical run. Shubhra Gupta of Business Line attributed the film's commercial failure to its release on the same day as 23rd March 1931: Shaheed, opining that "the two Bhagats ate into each other's business". ## Accolades At the 50th National Film Awards, The Legend of Bhagat Singh won the Best Feature Film in Hindi and Devgn received the Best Actor award. The film received three nominations at the 48th Filmfare Awards and won three—Best Background Score (Rahman), Best Film (Critics) (Kumar Taurani, Ramesh Taurani) and Best Actor (Critics) (Devgn). ## Legacy Since its release, The Legend of Bhagat Singh has been considered one of Santoshi's best works. Devgan said in December 2014 that The Legend of Bhagat Singh along with Zakhm (1998) were the best films he ever worked on in his career. He also revealed he had not seen such a good script since. In 2016, the film was included in Hindustan Times's list of "Bollywood's Top 5 Biopics". The Legend of Bhagat Singh was added in both the SpotBoyE and The Free Press Journal lists of Bollywood films that can be watched to celebrate India's Independence Day in 2018. The following year, Daily News and Analysis and Zee News also listed it among the films to watch on Republic Day. ## See also - List of artistic depictions of Mahatma Gandhi ## Film

Operation Hardboiled

1942 military deception operation

Operation Hardboiled was a Second World War military deception. Undertaken by the Allies in 1942, it was the first attempt at deception by the London Controlling Section (LCS) and was designed to convince the Axis powers that the Allies would soon invade German-occupied Norway. The LCS had recently been established to plan deception across all theatres, but had struggled for support from the unenthusiastic military establishment. The LCS had little guidance in strategic deception, an activity pioneered by Dudley Clarke the previous year, and was unaware of the extensive double agent system controlled by MI5. As a result, Hardboiled was planned as a real operation rather than a fictional one. Clarke had already found this approach to be wasteful in time and resources, preferring to present a "story" using agents and wireless traffic. Resistance to the operation by the chosen units meant that much of the preparation was not completed. Adolf Hitler ordered the reinforcement of Scandinavia in March and April 1942, before Hardboiled was shelved in May. It is unclear to what extent the operation contributed to his decision. Despite its limited impact, the operation gave the LCS experience in planning deceptions, and laid the groundwork for future exploitation of Hitler's belief that Northern Europe was strategically important. ## Background Strategic deception was a new topic for the Allies, having been pioneered in 1941 in Cairo by Dudley Clarke and his Advanced Headquarters 'A' Force. Following a presentation in September by Clarke, the Joint Planning Staff of the British War Ministry decided that a special organisation should be set up to plan and execute deception operations. They recommended that a "controlling section" be set up to oversee strategic deception planning, which would then be put into practice at the operational level by the armed services. The idea was approved and Clarke was offered the role. After he declined, the Chiefs of Staff chose Colonel Oliver Stanley, the former Secretary of State for War, as the new Controlling Officer. Stanley had great difficulty in convincing the Allied military establishment, which was sceptical of strategic deception and resistant to the idea of a central planning authority, to take part in an operation. Despite obtaining a few staff officers, the London Controlling Section (LCS) was, in the words of one member, in a state of "near impotence". In December 1941 Stanley received permission to plan the LCS's first operation, following several months of pressure on the Allied command. ## Planning Hardboiled had no specific goal for the Allies, other than to convince the Germans of an imminent invasion threat against Norway. Clarke had already established that deception operations should have a clear idea of what the enemy was supposed to do (rather than what they were expected to think). Stanley was unaware of this, not being in communication with Clarke's department in Cairo. As a result, the objective for Hardboiled was chosen because the resources existed and it would not affect real future operations (planners had already rejected Norway as a viable target), rather than for any strategic advantage it brought the Allies. Stanley also lacked knowledge of the extensive double agent network under the control of the Twenty Committee, having merely been told that MI5 had an avenue through which to pass information to the enemy. As such, the department were unaware that no uncontrolled German operatives were active in the UK, and so incorrectly believed any deception would have to be highly realistic to appear genuine. Stanley at first proposed that the notional target should be Narvik or Trondheim. Allied commanders decided these were implausible targets because of their northern location and an amphibious landing at Stavanger was chosen, based on planning for Operation Dynamite (a previously considered, and rejected, invasion of the country). The date of the fictional invasion was set for 1 May 1942. Hardboiled was planned as a real operation, involving actual training and troop movements, culminating in the embarkation of a fake invasion. The plan relied on German intelligence, rumour and leaks to convey the deception to the enemy. Clarke and 'A' Force had already discovered in previous operations that realistic training was wasteful, having found that much of the effort could be falsified using agents and wireless traffic. The LCS lacked guidance from Cairo and so made many of the same mistakes. Before the operation could go into action, Stanley had one final objection; he found the codename Hardboiled "silly". LCS member Dennis Wheatley had picked it from a book of codewords, and explained to Stanley (who was unaware) that the name had been randomly selected so as to bear no relation to the operation's aims. ## Operation The Royal Marines Division were earmarked for Hardboiled, trained in mountain warfare, and given cold weather equipment. Realistic invasion plans were drawn up and Norwegian currency was stockpiled. These preparations met with considerable resistance from the armed forces, who considered the operation to be a waste of effort. The need for soldiers in real operations and training meant that, in the end, a lot of the preparation never occurred. The LCS attempted passive deception as part of Hardboiled. Agents canvassed Norwegian refugees for information about Stavanger and for possible interpreters. The hope was that rumours would reach neutral countries and filter back to the German intelligence network. Some deception was also passed on via agents. ## Impact Hardboiled soon petered out as the Royal Marines were required for an amphibious operation in Madagascar in July 1942. It had appeared effective, as during April and May the Germans had reinforced the region. Historian Joshua Levine notes that Hitler had a "near-obsession with defence of Scandinavia" during this period and that it is unclear how much the operation had contributed to his strategy. Michael Howard, who wrote the official British history of strategic deception, attributes the lacklustre response to severe setbacks the Allies were then facing on every front, and writes that it is difficult to imagine the Germans believing that a major offensive operation was being planned. The operation did not give the Allies any tactical or strategic advantage; Howard notes that it provided experience for the planners in handling deception and for the Twenty Committee in proving the worth of double agents. Terry Crowdy, writing in 2008, argued that any experience that the LCS attained was limited by the lack of guidance from Cairo and knowledge of double agents. Dudley Clarke had already shown that the most effective method of deception involved the use of agents and faked wireless traffic, rather than major training and troop movements. Hardboiled was the first deception plan aimed at Norway. It led into several others, including Operation Tindall and Operation Solo, culminating in the 1944 Operation Fortitude North, one of the Allies' largest and most successful deceptions. In May 1942, John Bevan replaced Stanley as head of the LCS, after the latter had asked Winston Churchill for permission to re-enter politics. At the same time, the committee was given much broader powers. Hardboiled was sidelined by the new regime, and had been dropped entirely from the LCS programme by the end of May.

1975 Australian constitutional crisis

Governor-General dismissal of PM Whitlam

The 1975 Australian constitutional crisis, also known simply as the Dismissal, culminated on 11 November 1975 with the dismissal from office of the prime minister, Gough Whitlam of the Australian Labor Party (ALP), by Governor-General Sir John Kerr, who then commissioned the leader of the Opposition, Malcolm Fraser of the Liberal Party, as prime minister. It has been described as the greatest political and constitutional crisis in Australian history. The Labor Party under Gough Whitlam came to power in the election of 1972, ending 23 consecutive years of Liberal-Country Coalition government. Labor won a majority in the House of Representatives of 67 seats to the Coalition's 58 seats, but faced a hostile Senate. In May 1974, after the Senate voted to reject six of Labor's non-supply bills, Whitlam advised then-Governor General, Sir Paul Hasluck, to call a double dissolution election. The election saw Labor re-elected with its House of Representatives majority reduced from 9 to 5 seats, although it gained seats in the Senate. With the two houses of Parliament still deadlocked, pursuant to section 57 of the Australian Constitution, Whitlam was able to narrowly secure passage of the six "trigger bills" of the earlier double dissolution election in a joint sitting of Parliament on 6–7 August 1974, the only such sitting held in Australia's history. Whitlam's tenure in office proved highly turbulent and controversial, and in October 1975, the Opposition under Malcolm Fraser used its control of the Senate to defer passage of appropriation bills needed to finance government expenditure, which had already been passed by the House of Representatives. Fraser and the Opposition stated that they would continue to block supply in the Senate unless Whitlam called a fresh election for the House of Representatives, and urged Governor-General Sir John Kerr, who had been appointed governor-general on Whitlam's advice in July 1974, to dismiss Whitlam unless Whitlam acceded to their demand. Whitlam believed that Kerr would not dismiss him as prime minister, and Kerr did nothing to make Whitlam believe that he might be dismissed. On 11 November 1975, the crisis came to a head as Whitlam went to seek Kerr's approval to call a half-Senate election in an attempt to break the parliamentary deadlock. Kerr did not accept Whitlam's request, and instead dismissed him as prime minister and appointed the leader of the Opposition, Malcolm Fraser, as caretaker prime minister on the understanding that Fraser would immediately call a general election. Acting quickly before all ALP parliamentarians became aware of the change of government, Fraser and his parliamentary allies were able to secure passage of the supply bills through the Senate and advised Kerr to dissolve Parliament for a double dissolution election. Fraser and his Liberal-Country Coalition were elected with a massive majority in the federal election held the following month. The events of the Dismissal led to only minor constitutional change. The Senate retained its power to block supply, and the governor-general the power to dismiss government ministers; however, these powers have not since been used to force a government from office. Though denied by both Kerr and Whitlam, unsubstantiated allegations have been made about CIA involvement in the Whitlam dismissal. Kerr was widely criticised by Labor supporters for his actions, resigned early as governor-general, and lived much of his remaining life abroad. ## Background ### Constitutional As established by the Constitution of Australia, the Parliament of Australia is composed of two houses, the House of Representatives and the Senate, together with the monarch. The monarch is represented through the governor-general, who has the executive power granted in the Constitution, as well as rarely exercised reserve powers. The reserve powers are those exercised by the governor-general without requiring advice, which is usually signified by the phrase "Governor-General in Council". Under The Australian Constitution the governor-general acts "with the advice of the Federal Executive Council" in the appointment of government ministers, although ministers serve at his pleasure, and the Executive Council is appointed by the governor-general alone. The governor-general is ordinarily bound by convention to act only upon the advice of the government and the prime minister, but can act independently and against advice in exercising the reserve powers. The governor-general can be removed by the King on the advice of the Australian prime minister. As Liberal Party leader Malcolm Fraser, who played a large part in the crisis, put it, "The Queen has tenure, and she couldn't be sacked. But a Governor-General holds office at pleasure, and if he ceases to please then he can be removed by a Prime Minister". As in most Westminster system parliaments, Australia's government is ordinarily formed by the party enjoying the confidence of the lower House of Parliament, the House of Representatives. However, Australia's Parliament also has a powerful upper house, the Senate, which must pass any legislation initiated by the House of Representatives if it is to become law. The composition of the Senate, in which each state has an equal number of senators regardless of that state's population, was originally designed to attract the Australian colonies into one Federation. The Constitution forbids the Senate from originating or amending a money bill, but places no limitation on the Senate's ability to defeat one. In 1970, Gough Whitlam, as Leader of the Opposition, stated of a budget bill, "Let me make it clear at the outset that our opposition to this Budget is no mere formality. We intend to press our opposition by all available means on all related measures in both Houses. If the motion is defeated, we will vote against the Bills here and in the Senate. Our purpose is to destroy this Budget and destroy the Government which has sponsored it". The federal Senate had never blocked supply before 1975, even when it had been controlled by the opposition. In 1947, in response to the federal Chifley government's attempt to nationalise the banks, the coalition-controlled upper house of the Parliament of Victoria blocked the state budget in order to force a premature election. Labor Premier John Cain called a snap election and was defeated. Prior to the 1975 crisis, the governor-general's power to dismiss a prime minister against the incumbent's will under Section 64 of the Constitution had never been exercised. However, in 1904 Labour Prime Minister Chris Watson advised an early election, but Governor-General Lord Northcote refused, triggering Watson's resignation and the appointment of Opposition Leader George Reid as prime minister. Twice since Federation, conflicts between state premiers and state governors, who perform analogous functions to the prime minister and governor-general respectively at the state level, had resulted in the departure of one or the other. In 1916, New South Wales Premier William Holman was expelled from the Australian Labor Party for supporting conscription. He managed to hold on to power with the aid of opposition parties and consulted the Governor, Sir Gerald Strickland, proposing to pass legislation to extend the term of the lower house of the state legislature by a year. When Strickland objected, stating that such a course was unfair to Labor, Holman had him replaced. In 1932 the New South Wales Labor premier, Jack Lang, refused to pay money owed to the Federal government, which froze the state's bank accounts, causing Lang to order that payments to the state government be only in cash. The governor, Sir Philip Game, wrote to Lang, warning him that ministers were breaking the law, and that if they continued, he would have to obtain ministers who could carry on government within legal bounds. Lang replied that he would not resign, and Game dismissed his government and commissioned the leader of the Opposition, Bertram Stevens, to form a caretaker government pending a new election, in which Labor was defeated. Among the powers granted to the governor-general is the power to dissolve both houses of Parliament under Section 57 of the Constitution in the event that the House of Representatives twice passes a bill at least three months apart and the Senate refuses to pass it. In both instances where those circumstances arose prior to the Whitlam government, in 1914 and 1951, the governor-general dissolved Parliament for a "double dissolution" election on the advice of the prime minister. ### Political Gough Whitlam's Labor government was elected in 1972 after 23 years of rule by a coalition formed by the Liberal and Country parties. The ALP Government enjoyed a nine-seat majority in the House of Representatives, but did not control the Senate, which had been elected in 1967 and 1970 (as Senate elections were then out of synchronisation with House of Representatives elections). In accordance with pre-election promises, it instituted a large number of policy changes, and offered much legislation. The Opposition, which still controlled the Senate, allowed some Government bills to pass the Senate, and blocked others. In April 1974, faced with attempts by the Opposition under Billy Snedden to block supply (appropriation bills) in the Senate, Whitlam obtained the concurrence of the governor-general, Sir Paul Hasluck, to a double dissolution. Labor was returned at the election on 18 May with a reduced House majority of five seats. The Coalition and Labor each had 29 Senate seats, with the balance of power held by two independents. Snedden later told author Graham Freudenberg when being interviewed for the book A Certain Grandeur – Gough Whitlam in Politics: "The pressure [to block supply] was on me from Anthony. We thought you had a chance of getting control of the Senate at the half-Senate election or at least enough to get a redistribution through. With a gerrymander, you'd be in forever." Hasluck had been governor-general since 1969, and his term was shortly due to expire. Whitlam wanted him to remain a further two years, but Hasluck declined, citing the refusal of his wife, Alexandra, to remain at Yarralumla longer than the originally agreed five years. Whitlam offered the post to businessman Ken Myer, who turned it down. Whitlam then offered the position to his treasurer, Frank Crean, and his own deputy, Lance Barnard, neither of whom was keen to move on from parliament. Finally, Whitlam turned to his fifth choice, Sir John Kerr, the chief justice of New South Wales. Kerr was reluctant to give up the chief justiceship, in which he intended to remain another ten years, for the governor-general's post, which traditionally lasted five years. At Kerr's request, Whitlam informally agreed that if both men were still in office in five years, Kerr would be reappointed. Whitlam also secured legislation to address Kerr's financial concerns about the position, including authorising a pension for the governor-general or his widow. The leader of the Opposition, Billy Snedden, was enthusiastic about the appointment and also agreed to reappoint Kerr in five years, were he prime minister at the time. Kerr then agreed to take the post, was duly appointed by Queen Elizabeth II, and was sworn in on 11 July 1974. Six of the bills that had been the subject of the double dissolution were introduced in Parliament a third time and, as expected, were again rejected by the Senate. Section 57 of the Constitution provides that, after a double dissolution election, if bills that had been rejected twice by the Senate in the previous parliament were again passed by the House and again rejected by the Senate, they could then be put to a joint sitting of both houses. On 30 July, Whitlam gained Kerr's agreement for a joint sitting, which was set for 6–7 August 1974. The joint sitting, the only one in Australia's history under Section 57, passed all six bills, including the enabling legislation for Medibank. ### Controversy and vacancies In December 1974, Whitlam was anxious to find new sources of money to finance his development plans. After a meeting at the prime minister's residence, The Lodge, Whitlam and three of his ministers (Deputy Prime Minister and Treasurer Jim Cairns, Attorney-General Senator Lionel Murphy, and Minister for Minerals and Energy Rex Connor) signed a letter of authority for Connor to borrow up to US\$4 billion. This letter was described by author and journalist Alan Reid as the "death warrant of the Whitlam ALP government". Connor and other ministers had made contact with a hitherto obscure Pakistani financier, Tirath Khemlani, as early as November 1974. Khemlani was said to have contacts in the newly enriched Arab oil nations. None of the efforts to secure a loan, whether through Khemlani or by other routes, bore fruit, but, as information about the "Loans Affair" trickled out, the government lost support. In February 1975, Whitlam decided to appoint Senator Murphy a justice of the High Court of Australia, even though Murphy's Senate seat would not be up for election if a half-Senate election were held. Under proportional representation, Labor could win three of the five New South Wales seats, but if Murphy's seat was also contested, it was most unlikely to win four out of six. Thus, appointing Murphy would almost certainly cost the ALP a Senate seat at the next half-Senate election. Whitlam appointed Murphy anyway. By convention, senators appointed by the state legislature to fill casual vacancies were from the same political party as the former senator. The New South Wales premier, Tom Lewis, a member of the Liberal Party, felt that this convention only applied to vacancies caused by deaths or ill-health, and arranged for the legislature to elect Cleaver Bunton, former mayor of Albury and an independent. By March 1975, many Liberal parliamentarians felt that Snedden was doing an inadequate job as Leader of the Opposition and that Whitlam was dominating him in the House of Representatives. Malcolm Fraser challenged Snedden for the leadership on 21 March, and defeated him by 37 votes to 27. At a press conference after winning the leadership, Fraser stated: > The question of supply—let me deal with it this way. I generally believe if a government is elected to power in the lower House and has the numbers and can maintain the numbers in the lower House, it is entitled to expect that it will govern for the three-year term unless quite extraordinary events intervene ... Having said that ... if we do make up our minds at some stage that the Government is so reprehensible that an Opposition must use whatever power is available to it, then I'd want to find a situation in which Mr Whitlam woke up one morning finding the decision had been made and finding that he had been caught with his pants well and truly down. Whitlam's original deputy prime minister, Lance Barnard, had been challenged and defeated for his post by Cairns in June 1974 shortly after the May 1974 election. Whitlam then offered Barnard a diplomatic post; in early 1975 Barnard agreed to this. If the appointment went through, Barnard's resignation from the House of Representatives would trigger a by-election in his Tasmanian electorate of Bass. ALP officials felt that, given the party's weakened state, Barnard should remain in Parliament and be given no preferment if he resigned; party president and future Prime Minister Bob Hawke described the decision to appoint Barnard as "an act of lunacy". Barnard had been losing support over the last several elections, and the Liberals needed only a swing of 4% to take Bass off Labor. The Liberals had a candidate, Kevin Newman, who had been nursing the electorate; Labor had no candidate selected and a bitter preselection in the offing. Barnard resigned and was appointed the ambassador to Sweden. The election on 28 June proved a disaster for Labor, with Newman winning the seat on a swing of over 17%. The next week, Whitlam fired Cairns for misleading Parliament regarding the Loans Affair amid innuendo about his relationship with his Principal Private Secretary, Junie Morosi. He was replaced as deputy by Frank Crean. At the time of Cairns' dismissal, one Senate seat was vacant, following the death on 30 June of Queensland ALP Senator Bertie Milliner. The state Labor party nominated Mal Colston, who was the highest unelected candidate on the party's Queensland list in 1974. This resulted in deadlock in Brisbane; the unicameral Queensland legislature twice voted against Colston, and the party refused to submit any alternative candidates. Queensland Country Party Premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen had evidence that Colston, a schoolteacher by trade, had set a school on fire during a labour dispute, though the police had refused to prosecute. After the legislature voted Colston down a second time, Bjelke-Petersen instructed his majority in the legislature to elect a low-level union official, Albert Field, who had contacted his office and expressed a willingness to serve. In interviews, Field made it clear he would not support Whitlam. Field was expelled from the ALP for standing against Colston, and Labor senators boycotted his swearing-in. Whitlam argued that because of the vacancies being filled as they were, the Senate was "corrupted" and "tainted", with the Opposition enjoying a majority they did not win at the ballot box. When Labor learned that Field had not given the required three weeks' notice to the Queensland Department of Education, it challenged his appointment in the High Court, arguing that he was still technically a public servant–and thus ineligible to serve in the Senate. With Field on leave throughout the remainder of the crisis, the Coalition refused to provide a "pair" to account for his absence, giving it an effective majority of 30–29 in the Senate. Whitlam remarked that if Milliner had not died or had he been replaced by a [pro Whitlam] senator, the crisis would not have happened. ## Deadlock ### Deferral of supply On 10 October, the High Court ruled that the act passed at the joint sitting that gave the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) and the Northern Territory two senators each was valid. A half-Senate election needed to be held by June 1976; most senators-elect would take their seats on 1 July, but the territorial senators and those filling Field's and Bunton's seats would take their places at once. The ruling meant that it was possible for the ALP to gain a temporary majority in the Senate, at least until 1 July 1976. To do so, the ALP would have to win Field's and Bunton's seats, and one seat in each territory, and have the second ACT seat fall to either a Labor candidate or an independent, former Liberal Prime Minister John Gorton, now estranged from his party. If this happened, Labor would have an effective 33–31 margin, would be able to pass supply if that was still an issue, and also could pass electoral redistribution laws (which had been passed by the House, though twice defeated by the Senate) that would give it an advantage at the next election. The journalist and author Alan Reid described the position of the Government and Opposition as the crisis became acute in mid-October: > While it was possibly an overstatement to describe the 1975 position as a choice between evils, neither of the two major political groupings reached the 15 October 1975 crunch position with completely clean hands. Fraser and the Liberal-CP senators ... lacked the numbers to defer the Budget until the arrival in the Senate of Albert Patrick Field, whose arrival was not due to any decision by the Australian voters but to a decision by one of the rulers, the Whitlam-hating Bjelke-Petersen ... Whitlam for his part had decided even before the Budget was deferred to embark upon the bold, Cromwellian project of changing the Australian Constitution, not through the vote of the mass electorate ... but through prodigious personal exertions backed by the support of his parliamentary followers. In the wake of the High Court ruling, and with the appropriation bills due to be considered by the Senate on 16 October, Fraser was undecided whether to block supply. His biographer, Philip Ayres, contends that, had there been no further government scandals, he would not have done so. Khemlani, however, had alleged – contrary to government statements – that Connor had never revoked his authority to obtain loans and had been in regular contact with him even into mid-1975. On 13 October, the Melbourne Herald printed documents in support of Khemlani's allegations, and on the following day, Connor resigned. Fraser determined to block supply, convened a shadow cabinet meeting and received the unanimous support of the Coalition frontbench. At a press conference, Fraser cited the poor state of the economy and the continuing scandals as reasons for his decision. Without the passage of fresh appropriations, supply would be exhausted on 30 November. On 15 October the Governor of Queensland, Sir Colin Hannah, gave a speech denigrating the Whitlam government, in violation of the convention that state governors remain neutral. Hannah held a dormant commission as Administrator of the Commonwealth to act as Governor-General in the event of Kerr's death, resignation, or absence from Australia. Whitlam immediately contacted Buckingham Palace to arrange for Hannah's dormant commission to be revoked, a process which took ten days to complete. Although Whitlam later alleged that he never contemplated dismissing Kerr during the crisis, on 16 October, while speaking with Kerr and visiting Malaysian Prime Minister Tun Abdul Razak, he told Kerr that if the crisis continued, "It could be a question of whether I get to the Queen first for your recall, or whether you get in first with my dismissal". Kerr saw the statement as a threat; Whitlam later stated the comment was "flippant" and designed to turn the conversation to another subject. On 16 and 17 October, the Senate, with the unanimous support of the Coalition majority, deferred the appropriation bills. The Coalition took the position that Kerr could dismiss Whitlam if the Government could not secure supply. Whitlam's former solicitor-general Bob Ellicott, now a Liberal member of the House, issued a legal opinion on 16 October stating that the Governor-General had the power to dismiss Whitlam, and should do so forthwith if Whitlam could not state how he would obtain supply. Ellicott indicated that Whitlam was treating Kerr as if he had no discretion but to follow prime ministerial advice, when in fact the Governor-General could and should dismiss a ministry unable to secure supply. Ellicott stated that Kerr > should ask the Prime Minister if the Government is prepared to advise him to dissolve the House of Representatives and the Senate or the House of Representatives alone as a means of assuring that the disagreement between the two Houses is resolved. If the Prime Minister refuses to do either, it is then open to the Governor-General to dismiss his present Ministers and seek others who are prepared to give him the only proper advice open. This he should proceed to do. ### Consultations and negotiations Kerr's major confidante and secret adviser regarding the dismissal was a member of the High Court and friend of Kerr, Sir Anthony Mason whose role was not revealed until 2012 when Whitlam's biographer Jenny Hocking detailed Kerr's archival record of their extensive consultations. Kerr described Mason as playing "a most significant part in my thinking" and wrote of confiding in Mason "to fortify myself for the action I was to take". Mason's role included drafting a letter of dismissal for Kerr and he also claimed to have advised Kerr that he should "as a matter of fairness" warn Whitlam of his intention to dismiss him, which Kerr refused to do. Mason writes that his discussions with Kerr began in August 1975 and concluded on the afternoon of 11 November 1975. He declined Kerr's requests to allow his role to be publicly known. Kerr rang Whitlam on Sunday 19 October, asking permission to consult with the Chief Justice of the High Court, Sir Garfield Barwick, concerning the crisis. Whitlam advised Kerr not to do so, noting that no Governor-General had consulted with a Chief Justice under similar circumstances since 1914, when Australia was at a much earlier stage of her constitutional development. Whitlam also noted that in all of the recent unsuccessful High Court challenges to Whitlam government legislation, Barwick had been in the minority in finding against the government. On 21 October, Kerr phoned Whitlam regarding the Ellicott opinion, and asked, "It's all bullshit, isn't it?". Whitlam agreed with Kerr's view. Kerr then requested that the Government provide him with a written legal opinion rebutting Ellicott's views. Kerr would receive no written advice from the Government until 6 November. Journalist and author Paul Kelly, who wrote two books on the crisis, paints this delay as a major mistake by Whitlam, given Kerr's judicial background. Kerr also asked on 21 October for Whitlam's permission to interview Fraser, which the Prime Minister readily granted, and the two men met that night. Fraser told Kerr that the Opposition were determined to block supply. Fraser indicated that the Opposition's decision to defer the appropriation bills, rather than defeating them, was a tactical decision, since then the bills would remain in the control of the Senate and could be passed at any time. He stated that the Coalition agreed with the Ellicott opinion, and proposed to continue deferring supply while it awaited events. The media were not told of the substance of the conversation, and instead reported that Kerr had reprimanded Fraser for blocking supply, causing the Governor-General's office to issue a denial. Throughout the crisis, Kerr did not tell Whitlam of his increasing concerns, nor did he suggest that he might dismiss Whitlam. He believed nothing he said would influence Whitlam, and feared that, if Whitlam perceived him as a possible opponent, the Prime Minister would procure his dismissal from the Queen. Accordingly, though Kerr dealt with Whitlam in an affable manner, he did not confide his thinking to the Prime Minister. Labor Senator Tony Mulvihill later related that "Whitlam would come back to each caucus meeting and say, 'I saw His Excellency ... No worry. He's got to do it his way.' ... at no time did he hint that the Governor-General was frowning." There was intense public interest and concern at the stalemate, and Fraser and his Liberals acted to shore up support. Liberal frontbenchers worked to build unity for the tactic in state organisations. The former longtime Premier of South Australia Sir Thomas Playford was speaking out against the blocking of supply, causing South Australia Senator Don Jessop to waver in his support for the tactic. Fraser was able to co-ordinate a wave of communications from party members which served to neutralise both men. Fraser sought the backing of the retired longtime Liberal Prime Minister, Sir Robert Menzies, and went to see Menzies in person, taking with him a 1947 statement by Menzies supporting the blocking of supply in the upper house of the Victorian Parliament. He did not have to use the paper; Menzies stated that he found the tactic distasteful, but in this case necessary. The former Prime Minister issued a statement in support of Fraser's tactics. Kerr invited Whitlam and Minister for Labour Senator Jim McClelland to lunch on 30 October, immediately preceding an Executive Council meeting. At that meal, Kerr proposed a possible compromise. If the Opposition were to allow supply to pass, Whitlam would not advise a half-Senate election until May or June 1976, and the Senate would not convene until 1 July, thus obviating the threat of a possible temporary Labor majority. Whitlam, who was determined to destroy both Fraser's leadership and the Senate's right to block supply, refused any compromise. ### Decision > Because of the federal nature of our Constitution and because of its provisions the Senate undoubtedly has constitutional power to refuse or defer supply to the Government. Because of the principles of responsible government a Prime Minister who cannot obtain supply, including money for carrying on the ordinary services of government, must either advise a general election or resign. If he refuses to do this I have the authority and indeed the duty under the Constitution to withdraw his Commission as Prime Minister. The position in Australia is quite different from a position in the United Kingdom. Here the confidence of both Houses on supply is necessary to ensure its provision. In the United Kingdom the confidence of the House of Commons alone is necessary. But both here and in the United Kingdom the duty of the Prime Minister is the same in a most important aspect – if he cannot get supply he must resign or advise an election. Fraser chaired a summit of leaders of the Coalition parties on 2 November. The resulting communiqué urged the Coalition senators to continue deferring supply. It also threatened, should Kerr grant Whitlam a half-Senate election, that the Coalition state premiers would advise their governors not to issue writs, thus blocking the election from taking place in the four states with non-Labor premiers. After the meeting, Fraser proposed a compromise: that the Opposition would concede supply if Whitlam agreed to hold a House of Representatives election at the same time as the half-Senate election. Whitlam rejected the idea. On 22 October, Whitlam had asked the Attorney-General, Kep Enderby, to have a paper drafted rebutting the Ellicott opinion for presentation to Kerr. Enderby delegated this task to the Solicitor-General, Maurice Byers, and other officials. On 6 November, Enderby was to see Kerr to give him a legal opinion regarding the Government's alternative plans in case supply ran out. Vouchers were to be issued to Commonwealth employees and contractors instead of cheques, to be redeemed from banks after the crisis ended—transactions which were to be rejected by major banks as "tainted with illegality". Enderby decided to present Kerr with the rebuttal to Ellicott. When Enderby reviewed the document, he found that, while it argued for the Government's position, it recognised both that the Senate had the constitutional right to block supply, and that the reserve powers were still extant—matters with which Enderby did not agree. He presented Kerr with the rebuttal, but crossed out Byers' signature on it and told Kerr of his disagreement. Enderby told Kerr that the Byers rebuttal was "background" for formal written advice, to be presented by Whitlam. Later that day, Kerr met with Fraser again. The Opposition leader told him that if Kerr did not dismiss Whitlam, the Opposition planned to criticise him in Parliament for failing to carry out his duty. Kerr concluded on 6 November that neither Government nor Opposition would yield and had received advice that day from Treasurer Bill Hayden that supply would run out on 27 November. The Governor-General decided that, as Whitlam could not secure supply, and would not resign or advise an election for the House of Representatives, he would have to sack him. As Kerr feared that Whitlam might advise the Queen to dismiss him, he considered it important that Whitlam be given no hint of the impending action. Kerr later stated that were Whitlam to seek his dismissal, it would involve the Queen in politics. Seeking confirmation of his decision, he contacted Chief Justice Barwick, met with him and asked for his views of a dismissal of Whitlam. Barwick furnished him with written advice containing his view that a governor-general could and should dismiss a prime minister who was unable to obtain supply. Barwick specified that the prime minister should also not have refused either to resign or to advise a general election, with which Kerr agreed. On 9 November, Fraser contacted Whitlam and invited him to negotiations with the Coalition aimed at settling the dispute. Whitlam agreed, and a meeting was set for 9 am on Tuesday 11 November, at Parliament House. That Tuesday was also the deadline for an election to be called if it were to be held before Christmas. Both Government and Opposition leaders were in Melbourne on the night of 10 November for the Lord Mayor's banquet. To ensure the Opposition leaders could reach Canberra in time for the meeting, Whitlam brought them back in his VIP aircraft, which arrived in Canberra at midnight. ## Dismissal ### Meeting at Yarralumla At 9 a.m. on 11 November, Whitlam, together with deputy prime minister Frank Crean and Leader of the House Fred Daly, met with Fraser and Country Party leader Doug Anthony. No compromise could be reached. Whitlam informed the Coalition leaders that he would be advising Kerr to hold a half-Senate election on 13 December, and he would not be seeking interim supply for the period before the election. Thinking it unlikely that Kerr would grant the election without supply, Fraser warned Whitlam that the Governor-General might make up his own mind about the matter. Whitlam was dismissive and after the meeting broke, telephoned Kerr to tell him that he needed an appointment to advise him to hold a half-Senate election. Both men were busy in the morning, Kerr with Remembrance Day commemorations, and Whitlam with a caucus meeting and a censure motion in the House which the Opposition had submitted. The two discussed a meeting for 1:00 p.m., though Kerr's office later called Whitlam's and confirmed the time as 12:45. Word of this change did not reach the Prime Minister. Whitlam announced the request for a half-Senate election to his caucus, which approved it. After hearing from Whitlam, Kerr called Fraser. According to Fraser, Kerr asked him whether he, if commissioned prime minister, could secure supply, would immediately thereafter advise a double-dissolution election, and would refrain from new policies and investigations of the Whitlam government pending the election. Fraser stated that he agreed. Kerr denied the exchange took place via telephone, though both men agree those questions were asked later in the day before Kerr commissioned Fraser as prime minister. According to Kerr, Fraser was supposed to come to Yarralumla at 1.00 pm. Whitlam was delayed in leaving Parliament House, while Fraser left slightly early, with the result that Fraser arrived at Yarralumla first. He was taken into an anteroom, and his car was moved. Whitlam maintained that the purpose in moving Fraser's car was to ensure that the Prime Minister was not tipped off by seeing it, stating, "Had I known Mr. Fraser was already there, I would not have set foot in Yarralumla". Kelly doubted Whitlam would have recognised Fraser's car, which was an ordinary Ford LTD from the car pool. According to Fraser biographer Philip Ayres, "A white car pulled up at the front would signify nothing in particular—it would simply be in the way". Whitlam arrived just before 1:00 p.m. and was taken to Kerr's office by an aide. He brought with him the formal letter advising a half-Senate election, and after the two men were seated, attempted to give it to Kerr. According to Kerr, he interrupted Whitlam and asked if, as a result of the failure to find a compromise between party leaders, he intended to govern without parliamentary supply, to which the Prime Minister answered, "Yes". In their accounts of their meeting, both men agree that Kerr then told Whitlam about the decision to withdraw his commission as prime minister under Section 64 of the Constitution. Kerr later wrote that at this point Whitlam got to his feet, looked at the office's phones, and stated, "I must get in touch with the Palace at once". According to Kerr, this indicated that Whitlam would not try to negotiate with him about a general election but contact the Queen for his recall, which gave him the final reason to carry out the dismissal; he answered that it was too late to get in touch with the Palace because Whitlam was not prime minister any more. Whitlam, however, later disputed that such words were spoken, and stated that he asked Kerr whether he had consulted the Palace, to which Kerr replied that he did not need to, and that he had the advice of Barwick. Both accounts agree that Kerr then handed Whitlam a letter of dismissal and statement of reasons, stating that they would both have to live with this, to which Whitlam replied, "You certainly will". The dismissal concluded with Kerr wishing Whitlam luck in the election, and offering his hand, which the former prime minister took. After Whitlam left, Kerr called Fraser in, informed him of the dismissal, and asked if he would form a caretaker government, to which Fraser agreed. Fraser later stated that his overwhelming sensation at the news was relief. Fraser left to return to Parliament House, where he conferred with Coalition leaders, while Kerr joined the luncheon party that had been waiting for him, apologising to his guests and offering the excuse that he had been busy dismissing the Government. ### Parliamentary strategy Whitlam returned to The Lodge, where he had lunch. When his aides arrived, he informed them of his sacking. Whitlam drafted a resolution for the House, expressing confidence in his Government. No ALP Senate leaders were at The Lodge, nor did Whitlam and his party contact any when they drove back to Parliament House, confining their strategy to the House of Representatives. Prior to Whitlam's dismissal, the Labor leadership decided to introduce a motion that the Senate pass the appropriation bills. With ALP senators unaware of Whitlam's sacking, that plan went ahead. Senator Doug McClelland, manager of the ALP Government's business in the Senate, informed Coalition Senate leader Reg Withers of Labor's intent at about 1.30 pm. Withers then attended a leadership meeting where he learned of Fraser's appointment and assured the new prime minister he could secure supply. When the Senate convened, the ALP Senate leader, Ken Wriedt, made the motion to pass the appropriation bills. As Wriedt did so, he was told that the government had been sacked, which he initially refused to believe. Authoritative word did not reach Wriedt until 2.15 pm, by which time it was too late to withdraw the motion and instead obstruct his party's appropriation bill to hinder Fraser. At 2.24 pm, Labor's appropriation bills passed the Senate, fulfilling Fraser's first promise of providing supply. In the House, desultory debate on Fraser's censure motion ended with it being amended by the ALP majority into a condemnation of Fraser and passed on a party line vote. By 2.34 pm, when Fraser rose and announced that he had been commissioned as prime minister, word of the dismissal had spread through the House. Fraser announced his intent to advise a double dissolution, and moved that the House adjourn. His motion was defeated. Fraser's new government suffered repeated defeats in the House, which passed a motion of no confidence in him, and asked the Speaker, Gordon Scholes, to urge the Governor-General to recommission Whitlam. Scholes, attempting to communicate this to the Governor-General, was initially told that an appointment might not be possible that day, but after stating that he would reconvene the House and tell them of the refusal, was given an appointment with Kerr for 4.45 pm. ### Dissolution After the appropriation bills were approved by both Houses, they were sent over to Yarralumla where Kerr gave them Royal Assent. With supply assured, Kerr then received Fraser, who advised him that 21 bills (including the electoral redistribution bills) which had been introduced since the last election fulfilled the double dissolution provisions of Section 57. Fraser asked that both Houses be dissolved for an election on 13 December. Kerr signed the proclamation dissolving Parliament, and sent his Official Secretary, David Smith, to proclaim the dissolution from the front steps of Parliament House. At 4.45, Kerr received Scholes, and informed him of the dissolution. Kerr wrote that "nothing else of relevance" took place between the two men, but Scholes's account is that he accused Kerr of bad faith for making an appointment to receive the Speaker, and then not waiting to hear from him before dissolving Parliament. Whitlam later stated that it would have been wiser for Scholes to take the appropriation bills with him, rather than having them sent ahead. Kerr's action was based on the advice he had received from two High Court judges (Mason and Chief Justice Barwick) and the Crown Law Officers (Byers and Clarence Harders, the Secretary of the Attorney-General's Department). As Scholes and Kerr spoke, Smith reached Parliament House. The dismissal was by then publicly known, and an angry crowd of ALP supporters had gathered, filling the steps and spilling over both into the roadway and into Parliament House itself. Many of the demonstrators were ALP staffers; others were from the Australian National University. Smith was forced to enter Parliament House through a side door and make his way to the steps from the inside. He read the proclamation, though the boos of the crowd drowned him out, and concluded with the traditional "God save the Queen". Former Prime Minister Whitlam, who had been standing behind Smith, then addressed the crowd: > Well may we say "God save the Queen", because nothing will save the Governor-General! The Proclamation which you have just heard read by the Governor-General's Official Secretary was countersigned Malcolm Fraser, who will undoubtedly go down in Australian history from Remembrance Day 1975 as Kerr's cur. They won't silence the outskirts of Parliament House, even if the inside has been silenced for a few weeks ... Maintain your rage and enthusiasm for the campaign for the election now to be held and until polling day. ## Aftermath ### Campaign The news that Whitlam had been dismissed spread across Australia during the afternoon, triggering immediate protest demonstrations. On 12 November, Scholes wrote to the Queen, asking her to restore Whitlam as prime minister. The reply from her private secretary, Sir Martin Charteris, dated 17 November 1975, stated: > As we understand the situation here, the Australian Constitution firmly places the prerogative powers of the Crown in the hands of the Governor-General as the representative of the Queen of Australia. The only person competent to commission an Australian Prime Minister is the Governor-General, and The Queen has no part in the decisions which the Governor-General must take in accordance with the Constitution. Her Majesty, as Queen of Australia, is watching events in Canberra with close interest and attention, but it would not be proper for her to intervene in person in matters which are so clearly placed within the jurisdiction of the Governor-General by the Constitution Act. On 12 November 1975, the First Fraser Ministry was sworn in by Kerr. By some accounts, Kerr sought reassurance at that meeting that the Coalition senators would not have given in before supply ran out, "The Senate would never have caved in, would it?" According to those accounts, Senator Margaret Guilfoyle laughed and said to a colleague, "That's all he knows". Guilfoyle later stated that, if she did make such a remark, it was not meant to imply that the Coalition senators would have broken. However, Kelly lists four Coalition senators who stated, in subsequent years, that they would have crossed the floor and voted for the appropriation bills. Labor believed it had a chance of winning the election, and that the dismissal would be an electoral asset for them. However, some Labor strategists believed the party was heading for a disaster, with few economic accomplishments to point to and an electorate whose emotions would have cooled before polling day. Nonetheless, Whitlam, who began campaigning almost immediately after the dismissal, was met with huge crowds wherever he went; 30,000 people overspilled the Sydney Domain for the official campaign launch on 24 November. That evening, Whitlam made a major speech at Festival Hall in Melbourne before 7,500 people and a national TV audience, calling 11 November "Fraser's day of shame—a day that will live in infamy". Polls were released at the end of the first week of campaigning, and showed a nine-point swing against Labor. Whitlam's campaign did not believe it at first, but additional polling made it clear that the electorate was turning against the ALP. The Coalition attacked Labor for the economic conditions, and released television commercials "The Three Dark Years" showing images from the Whitlam government scandals. The ALP campaign, which had concentrated on the issue of Whitlam's dismissal, did not begin to address the economy until its final days. By that time Fraser, confident of victory, was content to sit back, avoid specifics and make no mistakes. There was little violence in the campaign, but three letter bombs were placed in the post; one wounded two people in Bjelke-Petersen's office, while the other two, addressed to Kerr and Fraser, were intercepted and defused. During the campaign, the Kerrs purchased a Sydney apartment, as Sir John was prepared to resign in the event that the ALP triumphed. In the 13 December election, the Coalition won a record victory, with 91 seats in the House of Representatives to the ALP's 36 and a 35–27 majority in the expanded Senate. ### Reactions The dismissal is considered the greatest political and constitutional crisis in Australia's history. In 1977, the Fraser government proposed four constitutional amendments via referendum, three of which passed—the last time that the Australian Constitution has been amended. One of the amendments requires that a senator appointed to fill a casual vacancy be from the same party as the former senator. The Senate retains the power to block supply; the Governor-General retains the power to dismiss ministers (including the Prime Minister). However, these powers have not since been used to force a government from office. In the wake of the dismissal, the ALP turned its anger on Kerr. Demonstrations marked his appearances, while the remaining ALP parliamentarians boycotted his opening of the new parliament. Whitlam, now Leader of the Opposition, refused all invitations to events at Yarralumla, which the Kerrs continued to extend until his refusal of an invitation during the Queen's 1977 visit caused them to feel that no further efforts need be made. Whitlam never spoke with Kerr again. Even ALP parliamentarians who had been friends of Kerr broke off their relationships, feeling Kerr had betrayed the party and had ambushed Whitlam. Lady Kerr stated that she and her husband confronted a "new irrational scene swarming with instant enemies". Whitlam repeatedly castigated Kerr for his role in the dismissal. When Kerr announced his resignation as governor-general on 14 July 1977, Whitlam commented: "How fitting that the last of the Bourbons should bow out on Bastille Day". After Kerr resigned as governor-general, he still sought a government position, reasoning that it had been his intent to remain for ten years as governor-general. However, Fraser's attempt to appoint Kerr as ambassador to UNESCO (a position later held by Whitlam) provoked such public outcry that the nomination was withdrawn. The Kerrs spent the next several years living in Europe, and when he died in Australia in 1991, his death was not announced until after he was buried. In 1991, Whitlam stated that no future governor-general was likely to act as Kerr did lest he also became the subject of "contempt and isolation". In 1997 he said that the letter of dismissal "had the shortcomings of being ex tempore, ex parte, ad hoc and sub rosa". In 2005, Whitlam called Kerr "a contemptible person". On the other hand, Country Party leader and deputy prime minister Doug Anthony said: "I can't forgive Gough for crucifying him". Sir Garfield Barwick was not spared Whitlam's invective; the former Prime Minister described him as "evil". Though denied by both Kerr and Whitlam, unsubstantiated allegations have been made about CIA involvement in the Whitlam dismissal. Whitlam resigned as ALP leader after the party suffered its second successive electoral defeat in 1977. Fraser served over seven years as Prime Minister, and left the Liberal leadership after the Coalition was defeated in the March 1983 election. Years later, Whitlam and Fraser put aside their differences; Whitlam wrote in 1997 that Fraser "did not set out to deceive me". The two campaigned together in support of the 1999 referendum that would have made Australia a republic. According to Whitlam speechwriter Graham Freudenberg, "the residual rage over the conduct of the Queen's representative found a constructive outlet in the movement for the Australian Republic". Freudenberg summed up Kerr's fate after the dismissal: > The beneficiaries of the Dismissal scarcely bothered to defend Kerr and in the end abandoned him. In the personal sense, Sir John Kerr himself became the real victim of the Dismissal, and history has accorded a brutal if poignant truth to Whitlam's declaration on the steps of Parliament House on 11 November 1975: "Well may we say 'God Save the Queen' – because nothing will save the Governor-General". ### Assessment In his 1995 survey of the events of the crisis, November 1975, Kelly places blame on Fraser for initiating the crisis and on Whitlam for using the crisis to try to break Fraser and the Senate. However, he places the most blame on Kerr, for failing to be candid with Whitlam about his intentions, and for refusing to offer a clear, final warning before dismissing him. According to Kelly, > [Kerr] should have unflinchingly and courageously met his responsibility to the Crown and to the Constitution. He should have spoken frankly with his Prime Minister from the start. He should have warned wherever and whenever appropriate. He should have realised that, whatever his fears, there was no justification for any other behaviour. Kerr's predecessor as governor-general, Sir Paul Hasluck, believed that the fundamental reason for the crisis was the lack of trust and confidence between Whitlam and Kerr, and that the proper role of the governor-general had been to provide counsel, advice and warning. Future Labor Prime Minister Paul Keating, who was Minister for Northern Australia in Whitlam's ministry, called the dismissal a "coup" and raised the idea to "arrest [Kerr]" and "lock him up", adding that he would not have "[taken] it lying down" if he was prime minister, during a 2013 interview with Kerry O'Brien. ## Royal involvement Neither Whitlam nor Kerr ever suggested there had been any covert royal involvement. According to Whitlam's biographer Jenny Hocking, Kerr's papers in the National Archives of Australia reveal that he discussed with the Prince of Wales (now Charles III) his reserve powers and the possibility that he would dismiss the Whitlam government, in September 1975. Kerr asked what would happen if he dismissed Whitlam and the prime minister retaliated by dismissing him. According to Kerr, Charles had responded: "But surely, Sir John, the Queen should not have to accept advice that you should be recalled at the very time when you were considering having to dismiss the government". Kerr writes in his journal that Prince Charles informed the Queen's Private Secretary, Sir Martin Charteris, of this. Charteris then wrote to Kerr to say that, should this "contingency" arise, "although the Queen would try to delay things, in the end she would have to take the Prime Minister's advice". Heseltine confirmed this account. Among the documents Hocking cites from Kerr's papers is a list prepared by Kerr of key points on the dismissal which includes his discussion with Prince Charles and "Charteris' advice to me on dismissal". Paul Kelly has rejected Hocking's allegations. He wrote that the September 1975 conversation is not mentioned in Kerr's other memoirs, that it would have taken place before the crisis began, and that it would have only revealed Kerr's paranoia about being dismissed by Whitlam. Kelly noted accounts of surprise at the palace when they heard of Kerr's decision. Beginning in 2012, Hocking attempted to gain the release of correspondence between the Queen's advisors and Kerr regarding the dismissal, held by the National Archives. In 2016, Hocking launched a Federal Court action against the National Archives seeking the release of the "Palace letters", correspondence between Kerr, the Queen and Charteris held by the Archives but not available for view. The action was lost in the Full Court, but on 29 May 2020 Hocking's appeal to the High Court succeeded: and in a majority 6:1 decision the High Court held that the Palace letters are "Commonwealth records" (not personal property) and therefore available for public release under the provisions of the Archives Act 1983. On 14 July 2020, the letters were released online without redaction. They revealed that, although Kerr had corresponded with Charteris about whether he had the constitutional authority to dismiss Whitlam, he had not informed the Queen in advance of his decision to do so. However, the letters also revealed that Kerr had discussed the possibility of dismissing Whitlam as early as July 1975. Also, on 2 October 1975, Sir Martin Charteris confirmed in a letter that Kerr had discussed with Prince Charles the possibility that Whitlam could ask the Queen to dismiss Kerr. ## Popular culture The 1983 miniseries The Dismissal dramatised the events of the crisis. It featured Max Phipps as Whitlam, John Meillon as Kerr and John Stanton as Fraser. ## See also - , New South Wales, 1932 - Easter Crisis of 1920 in Denmark - King–Byng Affair, a similar Canadian constitutional crisis in 1926 - 1953 Pakistani constitutional coup - 2008–09 Canadian parliamentary dispute - 2011–12 Papua New Guinean constitutional crisis - Tuvaluan constitutional crisis of 2013 - 2018 Sri Lankan constitutional crisis - Government shutdowns in the United States - Alleged CIA involvement in the Whitlam dismissal

Europa (moon)

Smallest Galilean moon of Jupiter

Europa /jʊˈroʊpə/ , or Jupiter II, is the smallest of the four Galilean moons orbiting Jupiter, and the sixth-closest to the planet of all the 95 known moons of Jupiter. It is also the sixth-largest moon in the Solar System. Europa was discovered independently by Simon Marius and Galileo Galilei and was named (by Marius) after Europa, the Phoenician mother of King Minos of Crete and lover of Zeus (the Greek equivalent of the Roman god Jupiter). Slightly smaller than Earth's Moon, Europa is made of silicate rock and has a water-ice crust and probably an iron–nickel core. It has a very thin atmosphere, composed primarily of oxygen. Its white-beige surface is striated by light tan cracks and streaks, but craters are relatively few. In addition to Earth-bound telescope observations, Europa has been examined by a succession of space-probe flybys, the first occurring in the early 1970s. In September 2022, the Juno spacecraft flew within about 320km (200 miles) of Europa for a more recent close-up view. Europa has the smoothest surface of any known solid object in the Solar System. The apparent youth and smoothness of the surface have led to the hypothesis that a water ocean exists beneath the surface, which could conceivably harbor extraterrestrial life. The predominant model suggests that heat from tidal flexing causes the ocean to remain liquid and drives ice movement similar to plate tectonics, absorbing chemicals from the surface into the ocean below. Sea salt from a subsurface ocean may be coating some geological features on Europa, suggesting that the ocean is interacting with the sea floor. This may be important in determining whether Europa could be habitable. In addition, the Hubble Space Telescope detected water vapor plumes similar to those observed on Saturn's moon Enceladus, which are thought to be caused by erupting cryogeysers. In May 2018, astronomers provided supporting evidence of water plume activity on Europa, based on an updated analysis of data obtained from the Galileo space probe, which orbited Jupiter from 1995 to 2003. Such plume activity could help researchers in a search for life from the subsurface Europan ocean without having to land on the moon. The Galileo mission, launched in 1989, provides the bulk of current data on Europa. No spacecraft has yet landed on Europa, although there have been several proposed exploration missions. The European Space Agency's Jupiter Icy Moon Explorer (JUICE) is a mission to Ganymede launched on April 14, 2023 that will include two flybys of Europa. NASA's Europa Clipper is expected to be launched in October 2024, with a complementary lander possible based on its findings. ## Discovery and naming Europa, along with Jupiter's three other large moons, Io, Ganymede, and Callisto, was discovered by Galileo Galilei on 8 January 1610, and possibly independently by Simon Marius. The first reported observation of Io and Europa was made by Galileo on 7 January 1610 using a 20×-magnification refracting telescope at the University of Padua. However, in that observation, Galileo could not separate Io and Europa due to the low magnification of his telescope, so that the two were recorded as a single point of light. The following day, 8 January 1610 (used as the discovery date for Europa by the IAU), Io and Europa were seen for the first time as separate bodies during Galileo's observations of the Jupiter system. Europa is the namesake of Europa, daughter of the king of Tyre, a Phoenician noblewoman in Greek mythology. Like all the Galilean satellites, Europa is named after a lover of Zeus, the Greek counterpart of Jupiter. Europa was courted by Zeus and became the queen of Crete. The naming scheme was suggested by Simon Marius, who attributed the proposal to Johannes Kepler: > Jupiter is much blamed by the poets on account of his irregular loves. Three maidens are especially mentioned as having been clandestinely courted by Jupiter with success. Io, daughter of the River Inachus, Callisto of Lycaon, Europa of Agenor. Then there was Ganymede, the handsome son of King Tros, whom Jupiter, having taken the form of an eagle, transported to heaven on his back, as poets fabulously tell... I think, therefore, that I shall not have done amiss if the First is called by me Io, the Second Europa, the Third, on account of its majesty of light, Ganymede, the Fourth Callisto... The names fell out of favor for a considerable time and were not revived in general use until the mid-20th century. In much of the earlier astronomical literature, Europa is simply referred to by its Roman numeral designation as Jupiter II (a system also introduced by Galileo) or as the "second satellite of Jupiter". In 1892, the discovery of Amalthea, whose orbit lay closer to Jupiter than those of the Galilean moons, pushed Europa to the third position. The Voyager probes discovered three more inner satellites in 1979, so Europa is now counted as Jupiter's sixth satellite, though it is still referred to as Jupiter II. The adjectival form has stabilized as Europan. ## Orbit and rotation Europa orbits Jupiter in just over three and a half days, with an orbital radius of about 670,900 km. With an orbital eccentricity of only 0.009, the orbit itself is nearly circular, and the orbital inclination relative to Jupiter's equatorial plane is small, at 0.470°. Like its fellow Galilean satellites, Europa is tidally locked to Jupiter, with one hemisphere of Europa constantly facing Jupiter. Because of this, there is a sub-Jovian point on Europa's surface, from which Jupiter would appear to hang directly overhead. Europa's prime meridian is a line passing through this point. Research suggests that the tidal locking may not be full, as a non-synchronous rotation has been proposed: Europa spins faster than it orbits, or at least did so in the past. This suggests an asymmetry in internal mass distribution and that a layer of subsurface liquid separates the icy crust from the rocky interior. The slight eccentricity of Europa's orbit, maintained by the gravitational disturbances from the other Galileans, causes Europa's sub-Jovian point to oscillate around a mean position. As Europa comes slightly nearer to Jupiter, Jupiter's gravitational attraction increases, causing Europa to elongate towards and away from it. As Europa moves slightly away from Jupiter, Jupiter's gravitational force decreases, causing Europa to relax back into a more spherical shape, and creating tides in its ocean. The orbital eccentricity of Europa is continuously pumped by its mean-motion resonance with Io. Thus, the tidal flexing kneads Europa's interior and gives it a source of heat, possibly allowing its ocean to stay liquid while driving subsurface geological processes. The ultimate source of this energy is Jupiter's rotation, which is tapped by Io through the tides it raises on Jupiter and is transferred to Europa and Ganymede by the orbital resonance. Analysis of the unique cracks lining Europa yielded evidence that it likely spun around a tilted axis at some point in time. If correct, this would explain many of Europa's features. Europa's immense network of crisscrossing cracks serves as a record of the stresses caused by massive tides in its global ocean. Europa's tilt could influence calculations of how much of its history is recorded in its frozen shell, how much heat is generated by tides in its ocean, and even how long the ocean has been liquid. Its ice layer must stretch to accommodate these changes. When there is too much stress, it cracks. A tilt in Europa's axis could suggest that its cracks may be much more recent than previously thought. The reason for this is that the direction of the spin pole may change by as much as a few degrees per day, completing one precession period over several months. A tilt could also affect the estimates of the age of Europa's ocean. Tidal forces are thought to generate the heat that keeps Europa's ocean liquid, and a tilt in the spin axis would cause more heat to be generated by tidal forces. Such additional heat would have allowed the ocean to remain liquid for a longer time. However, it has not yet been determined when this hypothesized shift in the spin axis might have occurred. ## Physical characteristics Europa is slightly smaller than the Moon. At just over 3,100 kilometres (1,900 mi) in diameter, it is the sixth-largest moon and fifteenth-largest object in the Solar System. Though by a wide margin the least massive of the Galilean satellites, it is nonetheless more massive than all known moons in the Solar System smaller than itself combined. Its bulk density suggests that it is similar in composition to the terrestrial planets, being primarily composed of silicate rock. ### Internal structure It is estimated that Europa has an outer layer of water around 100 km (62 mi) thick – a part frozen as its crust and a part as a liquid ocean underneath the ice. Recent magnetic-field data from the Galileo orbiter showed that Europa has an induced magnetic field through interaction with Jupiter's, which suggests the presence of a subsurface conductive layer. This layer is likely to be a salty liquid-water ocean. Portions of the crust are estimated to have undergone a rotation of nearly 80°, nearly flipping over (see true polar wander), which would be unlikely if the ice were solidly attached to the mantle. Europa probably contains a metallic iron core. ### Surface features Europa is the smoothest known object in the Solar System, lacking large-scale features such as mountains and craters. However, according to one study, Europa's equator may be covered in icy spikes called penitentes, which may be up to 15 meters high, due to direct overhead sunlight on the equator, causing the ice to sublime, forming vertical cracks. Although the imaging available from the Galileo orbiter does not have the resolution for confirmation, radar and thermal data are consistent with this interpretation. The prominent markings crisscrossing Europa appear to be mainly albedo features that emphasize low topography. There are few craters on Europa, because its surface is tectonically too active and therefore young. Europa's icy crust has an albedo (light reflectivity) of 0.64, one of the highest of all moons. This indicates a young and active surface: based on estimates of the frequency of cometary bombardment that Europa experiences, the surface is about 20 to 180 million years old. There is currently no full scientific consensus among the sometimes contradictory explanations for the surface features of Europa. The ionizing radiation level at the surface of Europa is equivalent to a dose of about 5.4 Sv (540 rem) per day, an amount that would cause severe illness or death in human beings exposed for a single Earth-day (24 hours). The duration of a Europan day is approximately 3.5 times that of a day on Earth. #### Lineae Europa's most striking surface features are a series of dark streaks crisscrossing the entire globe, called lineae (English: lines). Close examination shows that the edges of Europa's crust on either side of the cracks have moved relative to each other. The larger bands are more than 20 km (12 mi) across, often with dark, diffuse outer edges, regular striations, and a central band of lighter material. The most likely hypothesis is that the lineae on Europa were produced by a series of eruptions of warm ice as Europa's crust slowly spreads open to expose warmer layers beneath. The effect would have been similar to that seen in Earth's oceanic ridges. These various fractures are thought to have been caused in large part by the tidal flexing exerted by Jupiter. Because Europa is tidally locked to Jupiter, and therefore always maintains approximately the same orientation towards Jupiter, the stress patterns should form a distinctive and predictable pattern. However, only the youngest of Europa's fractures conform to the predicted pattern; other fractures appear to occur at increasingly different orientations the older they are. This could be explained if Europa's surface rotates slightly faster than its interior, an effect that is possible due to the subsurface ocean mechanically decoupling Europa's surface from its rocky mantle and the effects of Jupiter's gravity tugging on Europa's outer ice crust. Comparisons of Voyager and Galileo spacecraft photos serve to put an upper limit on this hypothetical slippage. A full revolution of the outer rigid shell relative to the interior of Europa takes at least 12,000 years. Studies of Voyager and Galileo images have revealed evidence of subduction on Europa's surface, suggesting that, just as the cracks are analogous to ocean ridges, so plates of icy crust analogous to tectonic plates on Earth are recycled into the molten interior. This evidence of both crustal spreading at bands and convergence at other sites suggests that Europa may have active plate tectonics, similar to Earth. However, the physics driving these plate tectonics are not likely to resemble those driving terrestrial plate tectonics, as the forces resisting potential Earth-like plate motions in Europa's crust are significantly stronger than the forces that could drive them. #### Chaos and lenticulae Other features present on Europa are circular and elliptical lenticulae (Latin for "freckles"). Many are domes, some are pits and some are smooth, dark spots. Others have a jumbled or rough texture. The dome tops look like pieces of the older plains around them, suggesting that the domes formed when the plains were pushed up from below. One hypothesis states that these lenticulae were formed by diapirs of warm ice rising up through the colder ice of the outer crust, much like magma chambers in Earth's crust. The smooth, dark spots could be formed by meltwater released when the warm ice breaks through the surface. The rough, jumbled lenticulae (called regions of "chaos"; for example, Conamara Chaos) would then be formed from many small fragments of crust, embedded in hummocky, dark material, appearing like icebergs in a frozen sea. An alternative hypothesis suggests that lenticulae are actually small areas of chaos and that the claimed pits, spots and domes are artefacts resulting from over-interpretation of early, low-resolution Galileo images. The implication is that the ice is too thin to support the convective diapir model of feature formation. In November 2011, a team of researchers from the University of Texas at Austin and elsewhere presented evidence in the journal Nature suggesting that many "chaos terrain" features on Europa sit atop vast lakes of liquid water. These lakes would be entirely encased in Europa's icy outer shell and distinct from a liquid ocean thought to exist farther down beneath the ice shell. Full confirmation of the lakes' existence will require a space mission designed to probe the ice shell either physically or indirectly, for example, using radar. Work published by researchers from Williams College suggests that chaos terrain may represent sites where impacting comets penetrated through the ice crust and into an underlying ocean. ### Subsurface ocean The scientific consensus is that a layer of liquid water exists beneath Europa's surface, and that heat from tidal flexing allows the subsurface ocean to remain liquid. Europa's surface temperature averages about 110 K (−160 °C; −260 °F) at the equator and only 50 K (−220 °C; −370 °F) at the poles, keeping Europa's icy crust as hard as granite. The first hints of a subsurface ocean came from theoretical considerations of tidal heating (a consequence of Europa's slightly eccentric orbit and orbital resonance with the other Galilean moons). Galileo imaging team members argue for the existence of a subsurface ocean from analysis of Voyager and Galileo images. The most dramatic example is "chaos terrain", a common feature on Europa's surface that some interpret as a region where the subsurface ocean has melted through the icy crust. This interpretation is controversial. Most geologists who have studied Europa favor what is commonly called the "thick ice" model, in which the ocean has rarely, if ever, directly interacted with the present surface. The best evidence for the thick-ice model is a study of Europa's large craters. The largest impact structures are surrounded by concentric rings and appear to be filled with relatively flat, fresh ice; based on this and on the calculated amount of heat generated by Europan tides, it is estimated that the outer crust of solid ice is approximately 10–30km (6–19mi) thick, including a ductile "warm ice" layer, which could mean that the liquid ocean underneath may be about 100 km (60 mi) deep. This leads to a volume of Europa's oceans of 3×10¹⁸m³, between two or three times the volume of Earth's oceans. The thin-ice model suggests that Europa's ice shell may be only a few kilometers thick. However, most planetary scientists conclude that this model considers only those topmost layers of Europa's crust that behave elastically when affected by Jupiter's tides. One example is flexure analysis, in which Europa's crust is modeled as a plane or sphere weighted and flexed by a heavy load. Models such as this suggest the outer elastic portion of the ice crust could be as thin as 200 metres (660 ft). If the ice shell of Europa is really only a few kilometers thick, this "thin ice" model would mean that regular contact of the liquid interior with the surface could occur through open ridges, causing the formation of areas of chaotic terrain. Large impacts going fully through the ice crust would also be a way that the subsurface ocean could be exposed. #### Composition The Galileo orbiter found that Europa has a weak magnetic moment, which is induced by the varying part of the Jovian magnetic field. The field strength at the magnetic equator (about 120 nT) created by this magnetic moment is about one-sixth the strength of Ganymede's field and six times the value of Callisto's. The existence of the induced moment requires a layer of a highly electrically conductive material in Europa's interior. The most plausible candidate for this role is a large subsurface ocean of liquid saltwater. Since the Voyager spacecraft flew past Europa in 1979, scientists have worked to understand the composition of the reddish-brown material that coats fractures and other geologically youthful features on Europa's surface. Spectrographic evidence suggests that the darker, reddish streaks and features on Europa's surface may be rich in salts such as magnesium sulfate, deposited by evaporating water that emerged from within. Sulfuric acid hydrate is another possible explanation for the contaminant observed spectroscopically. In either case, because these materials are colorless or white when pure, some other material must also be present to account for the reddish color, and sulfur compounds are suspected. Another hypothesis for the colored regions is that they are composed of abiotic organic compounds collectively called tholins. The morphology of Europa's impact craters and ridges is suggestive of fluidized material welling up from the fractures where pyrolysis and radiolysis take place. In order to generate colored tholins on Europa there must be a source of materials (carbon, nitrogen, and water) and a source of energy to make the reactions occur. Impurities in the water ice crust of Europa are presumed both to emerge from the interior as cryovolcanic events that resurface the body, and to accumulate from space as interplanetary dust. Tholins bring important astrobiological implications, as they may play a role in prebiotic chemistry and abiogenesis. The presence of sodium chloride in the internal ocean has been suggested by a 450 nm absorption feature, characteristic of irradiated NaCl crystals, that has been spotted in HST observations of the chaos regions, presumed to be areas of recent subsurface upwelling. #### Sources of heat Europa receives thermal energy from tidal heating, which occurs through the tidal friction and tidal flexing processes caused by tidal acceleration: orbital and rotational energy are dissipated as heat in the core of the moon, the internal ocean, and the ice crust. ##### Tidal friction Ocean tides are converted to heat by frictional losses in the oceans and their interaction with the solid bottom and with the top ice crust. In late 2008, it was suggested Jupiter may keep Europa's oceans warm by generating large planetary tidal waves on Europa because of its small but non-zero obliquity. This generates so-called Rossby waves that travel quite slowly, at just a few kilometers per day, but can generate significant kinetic energy. For the current axial tilt estimate of 0.1 degree, the resonance from Rossby waves would contain 7.3×10¹⁸ J of kinetic energy, which is two thousand times larger than that of the flow excited by the dominant tidal forces. Dissipation of this energy could be the principal heat source of Europa's ocean. ##### Tidal flexing Tidal flexing kneads Europa's interior and ice shell, which becomes a source of heat. Depending on the amount of tilt, the heat generated by the ocean flow could be 100 to thousands of times greater than the heat generated by the flexing of Europa's rocky core in response to the gravitational pull from Jupiter and the other moons circling that planet. Europa's seafloor could be heated by the moon's constant flexing, driving hydrothermal activity similar to undersea volcanoes in Earth's oceans. Experiments and ice modeling published in 2016, indicate that tidal flexing dissipation can generate one order of magnitude more heat in Europa's ice than scientists had previously assumed. Their results indicate that most of the heat generated by the ice actually comes from the ice's crystalline structure (lattice) as a result of deformation, and not friction between the ice grains. The greater the deformation of the ice sheet, the more heat is generated. ##### Radioactive decay In addition to tidal heating, the interior of Europa could also be heated by the decay of radioactive material (radiogenic heating) within the rocky mantle. But the models and values observed are one hundred times higher than those that could be produced by radiogenic heating alone, thus implying that tidal heating has a leading role in Europa. #### Plumes The Hubble Space Telescope acquired an image of Europa in 2012 that was interpreted to be a plume of water vapour erupting from near its south pole. The image suggests the plume may be 200 km (120 mi) high, or more than 20 times the height of Mt. Everest., though recent observations and modeling suggest that typical Europan plumes may be much smaller. It has been suggested that if plumes exist, they are episodic and likely to appear when Europa is at its farthest point from Jupiter, in agreement with tidal force modeling predictions. Additional imaging evidence from the Hubble Space Telescope was presented in September 2016. In May 2018, astronomers provided supporting evidence of water plume activity on Europa, based on an updated critical analysis of data obtained from the Galileo space probe, which orbited Jupiter between 1995 and 2003. Galileo flew by Europa in 1997 within 206 km (128 mi) of the moon's surface and the researchers suggest it may have flown through a water plume. Such plume activity could help researchers in a search for life from the subsurface Europan ocean without having to land on the moon. The tidal forces are about 1,000 times stronger than the Moon's effect on Earth. The only other moon in the Solar System exhibiting water vapor plumes is Enceladus. The estimated eruption rate at Europa is about 7000 kg/s compared to about 200 kg/s for the plumes of Enceladus. If confirmed, it would open the possibility of a flyby through the plume and obtain a sample to analyze in situ without having to use a lander and drill through kilometres of ice. In November 2020, a study was published in the peer-reviewed scientific journal Geophysical Research Letters suggesting that the plumes may originate from water within the crust of Europa as opposed to its subsurface ocean. The study's model, using images from the Galileo space probe, proposed that a combination of freezing and pressurization may result in at least some of the cryovolcanic activity. The pressure generated by migrating briny water pockets would thus, eventually, burst through the crust thereby creating these plumes. The theory that cryovolcanism on Europa could be triggered by freezing and pressurization of liquid pockets in the icy crust was first proposed by researchers at the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa in 2003, who were the first to model this process. A press release from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory referencing the November 2020 study suggested that plumes sourced from migrating liquid pockets could potentially be less hospitable to life. This is due to a lack of substantial energy for organisms to thrive off of, unlike proposed hydrothermal vents on the subsurface ocean floor. ### Atmosphere The atmosphere of Europa can be categorized as thin and tenuous (often called an exosphere), primarily composed of oxygen and trace amounts of water vapor. However, this quantity of oxygen is produced in a non-biological manner. Given that Europa’s surface is icy, and subsequently very cold; as solar ultraviolet radiation and charged particles (ions and electrons) from the Jovian magnetospheric environment collide with Europa's surface, water vapor is created and instantaneously separated into oxygen and hydrogen constituents. As it continues to move, the hydrogen is light enough to pass through the surface gravity of the atmosphere leaving behind only oxygen. The surface-bounded atmosphere forms through radiolysis, the dissociation of molecules through radiation. This accumulated oxygen atmosphere can get to a height of 190 km above the surface of Europa. Molecular oxygen is the densest component of the atmosphere because it has a long lifetime; after returning to the surface, it does not stick (freeze) like a water or hydrogen peroxide molecule but rather desorbs from the surface and starts another ballistic arc. Molecular hydrogen never reaches the surface, as it is light enough to escape Europa's surface gravity. Europa is one of the few moons in our solar system with a quantifiable atmosphere, along with Titan, Io, Triton, Ganymede and Callisto. Europa is also one of the three formations, among planets and moons, to contain oxygen within its atmosphere. Europa is also one of several moons in our solar system with very large quantities of ice (volatiles), otherwise known as "icy moons."Europa is also considered to be geologically active due to the constant release of hydrogen-oxygen mixture into space. As a result of the moon’s particle venting, the atmosphere requires continuous replenishment. Europa also contains a small magnetosphere (approximately 25% of Ganymede’s). However, this magnetosphere varies in size as Europa orbits through Jupiter's magnetic field. This confirms that a conductive element, such as a large ocean, likely lies below its icy surface. As multiple studies have been conducted over Europa’s atmosphere, several findings conclude that not all oxygen molecules are released into the atmosphere. This unknown percentage of oxygen may be absorbed into the surface and sink into the subsurface. Because the surface may interact with the subsurface ocean (considering the geological discussion above), this molecular oxygen may make its way to the ocean, where it could aid in biological processes. One estimate suggests that, given the turnover rate inferred from the apparent \~0.5 Gyr maximum age of Europa's surface ice, subduction of radiolytically generated oxidizing species might well lead to oceanic free oxygen concentrations that are comparable to those in terrestrial deep oceans. Through the slow release of oxygen and hydrogen, a neutral torus around Europa’s orbital plane is formed. This "neutral cloud" has been detected by both the Cassini and Galileo spacecraft, and has a greater content (number of atoms and molecules) than the neutral cloud surrounding Jupiter's inner moon Io. This torus was officially confirmed using Energetic Neutral Atom (ENA) imaging. Europa’s torus ionizes through the process of neutral particles exchanging electrons with its charged particles. Since Europa’s magnetic field rotates faster than its orbit velocity, these ions are left in the path of its magnetic field trajectory, forming a plasma. It has been theorized that these ions are responsible for the plasma within Jupiter's magnetosphere. #### Discovery of atmosphere The atmosphere of Europa was first discovered in 1995 by Hall Al. and the Goddard High Resolution Spectrograph of the Hubble telescope. This observation was then confirmed in 1997 by the Galileo probe, built by Hughes Aircraft Company and operated by NASA. The Galileo probe flew only three miles above the estimated maximum atmospheric line (190 km from Europa's surface). Still, it then changed course to collide with Jupiter's atmosphere to prevent unwanted impact on Europa's surface. It has been speculated that there will be several more future missions to Europa in hopes of further studying the atmosphere, chemical composition, and possibility of extraterrestrial life below the icy surface. #### Climate and weather Despite the presence of a gas torus, Europa has no weather producing clouds. As a whole, Europa has no wind, precipitation, or presence of sky color as its gravity is too low to hold an atmosphere substantial enough for these phenomena. Europa's gravity is approximately 13% of Earth's. The temperature on Europa varies from −160 °C at the equatorial line, to −220 °C at either of its poles. Europa's subsurface ocean is thought to be subsequently warm however. It is theorized that because of radioactive and tidal heating (as mentioned in the sections above), there are points in the depths of Europa's ocean that may only be slightly cooler than that of Earth's oceans. Studies have also concluded that Europa's ocean would have been rather acidic at first, with large concentrations of sulfate, calcium, and carbon dioxide. But over the course of 4.5 billion years, it became full of chloride, thus resembling our 1.94% chloride oceans on Earth. ## Exploration Exploration of Europa began with the Jupiter flybys of Pioneer 10 and 11 in 1973 and 1974 respectively. The first closeup photos were of low resolution compared to later missions. The two Voyager probes traveled through the Jovian system in 1979, providing more-detailed images of Europa's icy surface. The images caused many scientists to speculate about the possibility of a liquid ocean underneath. Starting in 1995, the Galileo space probe orbited Jupiter for eight years, until 2003, and provided the most detailed examination of the Galilean moons to date. It included the "Galileo Europa Mission" and "Galileo Millennium Mission", with numerous close flybys of Europa. In 2007, New Horizons imaged Europa, as it flew by the Jovian system while on its way to Pluto. In 2022, the Juno orbiter flew by Europa at a distance of 352 km (219 mi). ### Future missions Conjectures regarding extraterrestrial life have ensured a high profile for Europa and have led to steady lobbying for future missions. The aims of these missions have ranged from examining Europa's chemical composition to searching for extraterrestrial life in its hypothesized subsurface oceans. Robotic missions to Europa need to endure the high-radiation environment around Jupiter. Because it is deeply embedded within Jupiter's magnetosphere, Europa receives about 5.40 Sv of radiation per day. In 2011, a Europa mission was recommended by the U.S. Planetary Science Decadal Survey. In response, NASA commissioned Europa lander concept studies in 2011, along with concepts for a Europa flyby (Europa Clipper), and a Europa orbiter. The orbiter element option concentrates on the "ocean" science, while the multiple-flyby element (Clipper) concentrates on the chemistry and energy science. On 13 January 2014, the House Appropriations Committee announced a new bipartisan bill that includes \$80 million funding to continue the Europa mission concept studies. - In 2012, Jupiter Icy Moon Explorer (JUICE) was selected by the European Space Agency (ESA) as a planned mission. That mission includes 2 flybys of Europa, but is more focused on Ganymede. - Europa Clipper – In July 2013 an updated concept for a flyby Europa mission called Europa Clipper was presented by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and the Applied Physics Laboratory (APL). In May 2015, NASA announced that it had accepted development of the Europa Clipper mission, and revealed the instruments it will use. The aim of Europa Clipper is to explore Europa in order to investigate its habitability, and to aid selecting sites for a future lander. The Europa Clipper would not orbit Europa, but instead orbit Jupiter and conduct 45 low-altitude flybys of Europa during its envisioned mission. The probe would carry an ice-penetrating radar, short-wave infrared spectrometer, topographical imager, and an ion- and neutral-mass spectrometer. - Europa Lander (NASA) is a recent concept mission under study. 2018 research suggests Europa may be covered in tall, jagged ice spikes, presenting a problem for any potential landing on its surface. ### Old proposals In the early 2000s, Jupiter Europa Orbiter led by NASA and the Jupiter Ganymede Orbiter led by the ESA were proposed together as an Outer Planet Flagship Mission to Jupiter's icy moons called Europa Jupiter System Mission, with a planned launch in 2020. In 2009 it was given priority over Titan Saturn System Mission. At that time, there was competition from other proposals. Japan proposed Jupiter Magnetospheric Orbiter. Jovian Europa Orbiter was an ESA Cosmic Vision concept study from 2007. Another concept was Ice Clipper, which would have used an impactor similar to the Deep Impact mission—it would make a controlled crash into the surface of Europa, generating a plume of debris that would then be collected by a small spacecraft flying through the plume. Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter (JIMO) was a partially developed fission-powered spacecraft with ion thrusters that was cancelled in 2006. It was part of Project Prometheus. The Europa Lander Mission proposed a small nuclear-powered Europa lander for JIMO. It would travel with the orbiter, which would also function as a communication relay to Earth. Europa Orbiter – Its objective would be to characterize the extent of the ocean and its relation to the deeper interior. Instrument payload could include a radio subsystem, laser altimeter, magnetometer, Langmuir probe, and a mapping camera. The Europa Orbiter received a go-ahead in 1999 but was canceled in 2002. This orbiter featured a special ice-penetrating radar that would allow it to scan below the surface. More ambitious ideas have been put forward including an impactor in combination with a thermal drill to search for biosignatures that might be frozen in the shallow subsurface. Another proposal put forward in 2001 calls for a large nuclear-powered "melt probe" (cryobot) that would melt through the ice until it reached an ocean below. Once it reached the water, it would deploy an autonomous underwater vehicle (hydrobot) that would gather information and send it back to Earth. Both the cryobot and the hydrobot would have to undergo some form of extreme sterilization to prevent detection of Earth organisms instead of native life and to prevent contamination of the subsurface ocean. This suggested approach has not yet reached a formal conceptual planning stage. ## Habitability So far, there is no evidence that life exists on Europa, but Europa has emerged as one of the most likely locations in the Solar System for potential habitability. Life could exist in its under-ice ocean, perhaps in an environment similar to Earth's deep-ocean hydrothermal vents. Even if Europa lacks volcanic hydrothermal activity, a 2016 NASA study found that Earth-like levels of hydrogen and oxygen could be produced through processes related to serpentinization and ice-derived oxidants, which do not directly involve volcanism. In 2015, scientists announced that salt from a subsurface ocean may likely be coating some geological features on Europa, suggesting that the ocean is interacting with the seafloor. This may be important in determining if Europa could be habitable. The likely presence of liquid water in contact with Europa's rocky mantle has spurred calls to send a probe there. The energy provided by tidal forces drives active geological processes within Europa's interior, just as they do to a far more obvious degree on its sister moon Io. Although Europa, like the Earth, may possess an internal energy source from radioactive decay, the energy generated by tidal flexing would be several orders of magnitude greater than any radiological source. Life on Europa could exist clustered around hydrothermal vents on the ocean floor, or below the ocean floor, where endoliths are known to inhabit on Earth. Alternatively, it could exist clinging to the lower surface of Europa's ice layer, much like algae and bacteria in Earth's polar regions, or float freely in Europa's ocean. If Europa's ocean is too cold, biological processes similar to those known on Earth could not take place. If it is too salty, only extreme halophiles could survive in that environment. In 2010, a model proposed by Richard Greenberg of the University of Arizona proposed that irradiation of ice on Europa's surface could saturate its crust with oxygen and peroxide, which could then be transported by tectonic processes into the interior ocean. Such a process could render Europa's ocean as oxygenated as our own within just 12 million years, allowing the existence of complex, multicellular lifeforms. Evidence suggests the existence of lakes of liquid water entirely encased in Europa's icy outer shell and distinct from a liquid ocean thought to exist farther down beneath the ice shell, as well as pockets of water that form M shaped ice ridges when the water freezes on the surface – like in Greenland. If confirmed, the lakes and pockets of water could be yet another potential habitat for life. Evidence suggests that hydrogen peroxide is abundant across much of the surface of Europa. Because hydrogen peroxide decays into oxygen and water when combined with liquid water, the authors argue that it could be an important energy supply for simple life forms. Clay-like minerals (specifically, phyllosilicates), often associated with organic matter on Earth, have been detected on the icy crust of Europa. The presence of the minerals may have been the result of a collision with an asteroid or comet. Some scientists have speculated that life on Earth could have been blasted into space by asteroid collisions and arrived on the moons of Jupiter in a process called lithopanspermia. ## See also - Colonization of Europa - Jupiter's moons in fiction - List of craters on Europa - List of geological features on Europa - List of lineae on Europa - Snowball Earth hypothesis

Aries (constellation)

Zodiac constellation in the northern hemisphere

Aries is one of the constellations of the zodiac. It is located in the Northern celestial hemisphere between Pisces to the west and Taurus to the east. The name Aries is Latin for ram. Its old astronomical symbol is (♈︎). It is one of the 48 constellations described by the 2nd century astronomer Ptolemy, and remains one of the 88 modern constellations. It is a mid-sized constellation ranking 39th in overall size, with an area of 441 square degrees (1.1% of the celestial sphere). Aries has represented a ram since late Babylonian times. Before that, the stars of Aries formed a farmhand. Different cultures have incorporated the stars of Aries into different constellations including twin inspectors in China and a porpoise in the Marshall Islands. Aries is a relatively dim constellation, possessing only four bright stars: Hamal (Alpha Arietis, second magnitude), Sheratan (Beta Arietis, third magnitude), Mesarthim (Gamma Arietis, fourth magnitude), and 41 Arietis (also fourth magnitude). The few deep-sky objects within the constellation are quite faint and include several pairs of interacting galaxies. Several meteor showers appear to radiate from Aries, including the Daytime Arietids and the Epsilon Arietids. ## History and mythology Aries is now recognized as an official constellation, albeit as a specific region of the sky, by the International Astronomical Union. It was originally defined in ancient texts as a specific pattern of stars, and has remained a constellation since ancient times; it now includes the ancient pattern and the surrounding stars. In the description of the Babylonian zodiac given in the clay tablets known as the MUL.APIN, the constellation, now known as Aries, was the final station along the ecliptic. The MUL.APIN was a comprehensive table of the rising and settings of stars, which likely served as an agricultural calendar. Modern-day Aries was known as ^MULLÚ.ḪUN.GÁ, "The Agrarian Worker" or "The Hired Man". Although likely compiled in the 12th or 11th century BC, the MUL.APIN reflects a tradition that marks the Pleiades as the vernal equinox, which was the case with some precision at the beginning of the Middle Bronze Age. The earliest identifiable reference to Aries as a distinct constellation comes from the boundary stones that date from 1350 to 1000 BC. On several boundary stones, a zodiacal ram figure is distinct from the other characters. The shift in identification from the constellation as the Agrarian Worker to the Ram likely occurred in later Babylonian tradition because of its growing association with Dumuzi the Shepherd. By the time the MUL.APIN was created—in 1000 BC—modern Aries was identified with both Dumuzi's ram and a hired labourer. The exact timing of this shift is difficult to determine due to the lack of images of Aries or other ram figures. In ancient Egyptian astronomy, Aries was associated with the god Amun-Ra, who was depicted as a man with a ram's head and represented fertility and creativity. Because it was the location of the vernal equinox, it was called the "Indicator of the Reborn Sun". During the times of the year when Aries was prominent, priests would process statues of Amon-Ra to temples, a practice that was modified by Persian astronomers centuries later. Aries acquired the title of "Lord of the Head" in Egypt, referring to its symbolic and mythological importance. Aries was not fully accepted as a constellation until classical times. In Hellenistic astrology, the constellation of Aries is associated with the golden ram of Greek mythology that rescued Phrixus and Helle on orders from Hermes, taking Phrixus to the land of Colchis. Phrixus and Helle were the son and daughter of King Athamas and his first wife Nephele. The king's second wife, Ino, was jealous and wished to kill his children. To accomplish this, she induced famine in Boeotia, then falsified a message from the Oracle of Delphi that said Phrixus must be sacrificed to end the famine. Athamas was about to sacrifice his son atop Mount Laphystium when Aries, sent by Nephele, arrived. Helle fell off of Aries's back in flight and drowned in the Dardanelles, also called the Hellespont in her honour. Historically, Aries has been depicted as a crouched, wingless ram with its head turned towards Taurus. Ptolemy asserted in his Almagest that Hipparchus depicted Alpha Arietis as the ram's muzzle, though Ptolemy did not include it in his constellation figure. Instead, it was listed as an "unformed star", and denoted as "the star over the head". John Flamsteed, in his Atlas Coelestis, followed Ptolemy's description by mapping it above the figure's head. Flamsteed followed the general convention of maps by depicting Aries lying down. Astrologically, Aries has been associated with the head and its humors. It was strongly associated with Mars, both the planet and the god. It was considered to govern Western Europe and Syria and to indicate a strong temper in a person. The First Point of Aries, the location of the vernal equinox, is named for the constellation. This is because the Sun crossed the celestial equator from south to north in Aries more than two millennia ago. Hipparchus defined it in 130 BC. as a point south of Gamma Arietis. Because of the precession of the equinoxes, the First Point of Aries has since moved into Pisces and will move into Aquarius by around 2600 AD. The Sun now appears in Aries from late April through mid-May, though the constellation is still associated with the beginning of spring. Medieval Muslim astronomers depicted Aries in various ways. Astronomers like al-Sufi saw the constellation as a ram, modelled on the precedent of Ptolemy. However, some Islamic celestial globes depicted Aries as a nondescript four-legged animal with what may be antlers instead of horns. Some early Bedouin observers saw a ram elsewhere in the sky; this constellation featured the Pleiades as the ram's tail. The generally accepted Arabic formation of Aries consisted of thirteen stars in a figure along with five "unformed" stars, four of which were over the animal's hindquarters and one of which was the disputed star over Aries's head. Al-Sufi's depiction differed from both other Arab astronomers' and Flamsteed's, in that his Aries was running and looking behind itself. The obsolete constellations of Aries (Apes/Vespa/Lilium/Musca (Borealis)) all centred on the same the northern stars. In 1612, Petrus Plancius introduced Apes, a constellation representing a bee. In 1624, the same stars were used by Jakob Bartsch as for Vespa, representing a wasp. In 1679, Augustin Royer used these stars for his constellation Lilium, representing the fleur-de-lis. None of these constellations became widely accepted. Johann Hevelius renamed the constellation "Musca" in 1690 in his Firmamentum Sobiescianum. To differentiate it from Musca, the southern fly, it was later renamed Musca Borealis but it did not gain acceptance and its stars were ultimately officially reabsorbed into Aries. The asterism involved was 33, 35, 39, and 41 Arietis. In 1922, the International Astronomical Union defined its recommended three-letter abbreviation, "Ari". The official boundaries of Aries were defined in 1930 by Eugène Delporte as a polygon of 12 segments. Its right ascension is between 1^h 46.4^m and 3^h 29.4^m and its declination is between 10.36° and 31.22° in the equatorial coordinate system. ### In non-Western astronomy In traditional Chinese astronomy, stars from Aries were used in several constellations. The brightest stars—Alpha, Beta, and Gamma Arietis—formed a constellation called Lou (婁), variously translated as "bond", "lasso", and "sickle", which was associated with the ritual sacrifice of cattle. This name was shared by the 16th lunar mansion, the location of the full moon closest to the autumnal equinox. This constellation has also been associated with harvest-time as it could represent a woman carrying a basket of food on her head. 35, 39, and 41 Arietis were part of a constellation called Wei (胃), which represented a fat abdomen and was the namesake of the 17th lunar mansion, which represented granaries. Delta and Zeta Arietis were a part of the constellation Tianyin (天陰), thought to represent the Emperor's hunting partner. Zuogeng (左更), a constellation depicting a marsh and pond inspector, was composed of Mu, Nu, Omicron, Pi, and Sigma Arietis. He was accompanied by Yeou-kang, a constellation depicting an official in charge of pasture distribution. In a similar system to the Chinese, the first lunar mansion in Hindu astronomy was called "Aswini", after the traditional names for Beta and Gamma Arietis, the Aswins. Because the Hindu new year began with the vernal equinox, the Rig Veda contains over 50 new-year's related hymns to the twins, making them some of the most prominent characters in the work. Aries itself was known as "Aja" and "Mesha". In Hebrew astronomy Aries was named "Taleh"; it signified either Simeon or Gad, and generally symbolizes the "Lamb of the World". The neighboring Syrians named the constellation "Amru", and the bordering Turks named it "Kuzi". Half a world away, in the Marshall Islands, several stars from Aries were incorporated into a constellation depicting a porpoise, along with stars from Cassiopeia, Andromeda, and Triangulum. Alpha, Beta, and Gamma Arietis formed the head of the porpoise, while stars from Andromeda formed the body and the bright stars of Cassiopeia formed the tail. Other Polynesian peoples recognized Aries as a constellation. The Marquesas islanders called it Na-pai-ka; the Māori constellation Pipiri may correspond to modern Aries as well. In indigenous Peruvian astronomy, a constellation with most of the same stars as Aries existed. It was called the "Market Moon" and the "Kneeling Terrace", as a reminder of when to hold the annual harvest festival, Ayri Huay. ## Features ### Stars Aries has three prominent stars forming an asterism, designated Alpha, Beta, and Gamma Arietis by Johann Bayer. Alpha (Hamal) and Beta (Sheratan) are commonly used for navigation. There is also one other star above the fourth magnitude, 41 Arietis (Bharani). α Arietis, called Hamal, is the brightest star in Aries. Its traditional name is derived from the Arabic word for "lamb" or "head of the ram" (ras al-hamal), which references Aries's mythological background. With a spectral class of K2 and a luminosity class of III, it is an orange giant with an apparent visual magnitude of 2.00, which lies 66 light-years from Earth. Hamal has a luminosity of and its absolute magnitude is −0.1. β Arietis, also known as Sheratan, is a blue-white star with an apparent visual magnitude of 2.64. Its traditional name is derived from "sharatayn", the Arabic word for "the two signs", referring to both Beta and Gamma Arietis in their position as heralds of the vernal equinox. The two stars were known to the Bedouin as "qarna al-hamal", "horns of the ram". It is 59 light-years from Earth. It has a luminosity of and its absolute magnitude is 2.1. It is a spectroscopic binary star, one in which the companion star is only known through analysis of the spectra. The spectral class of the primary is A5. Hermann Carl Vogel determined that Sheratan was a spectroscopic binary in 1903; its orbit was determined by Hans Ludendorff in 1907. It has since been studied for its eccentric orbit. γ Arietis, with a common name of Mesarthim, is a binary star with two white-hued components, located in a rich field of magnitude 8–12 stars. Its traditional name has conflicting derivations. It may be derived from a corruption of "al-sharatan", the Arabic word meaning "pair" or a word for "fat ram". However, it may also come from the Sanskrit for "first star of Aries" or the Hebrew for "ministerial servants", both of which are unusual languages of origin for star names. Along with Beta Arietis, it was known to the Bedouin as "qarna al-hamal". The primary is of magnitude 4.59 and the secondary is of magnitude 4.68. The system is 164 light-years from Earth. The two components are separated by 7.8 arcseconds, and the system as a whole has an apparent magnitude of 3.9. The primary has a luminosity of and the secondary has a luminosity of ; the primary is an A-type star with an absolute magnitude of 0.2 and the secondary is a B9-type star with an absolute magnitude of 0.4. The angle between the two components is 1°. Mesarthim was discovered to be a double star by Robert Hooke in 1664, one of the earliest such telescopic discoveries. The primary, γ¹ Arietis, is an Alpha2 Canum Venaticorum variable star that has a range of 0.02 magnitudes and a period of 2.607 days. It is unusual because of its strong silicon emission lines. The constellation is home to several double stars, including Epsilon, Lambda, and Pi Arietis. ε Arietis is a binary star with two white components. The primary is of magnitude 5.2 and the secondary is of magnitude 5.5. The system is 290 light-years from Earth. Its overall magnitude is 4.63, and the primary has an absolute magnitude of 1.4. Its spectral class is A2. The two components are separated by 1.5 arcseconds. λ Arietis is a wide double star with a white-hued primary and a yellow-hued secondary. The primary is of magnitude 4.8 and the secondary is of magnitude 7.3. The primary is 129 light-years from Earth. It has an absolute magnitude of 1.7 and a spectral class of F0. The two components are separated by 36 arcseconds at an angle of 50°; the two stars are located 0.5° east of 7 Arietis. π Arietis is a close binary star with a blue-white primary and a white secondary. The primary is of magnitude 5.3 and the secondary is of magnitude 8.5. The primary is 776 light-years from Earth. The primary itself is a wide double star with a separation of 25.2 arcseconds; the tertiary has a magnitude of 10.8. The primary and secondary are separated by 3.2 arcseconds. Most of the other stars in Aries visible to the naked eye have magnitudes between 3 and 5. δ Ari, called Boteïn, is a star of magnitude 4.35, 170 light-years away. It has an absolute magnitude of −0.1 and a spectral class of K2. ζ Arietis is a star of magnitude 4.89, 263 light-years away. Its spectral class is A0 and its absolute magnitude is 0.0. 14 Arietis is a star of magnitude 4.98, 288 light-years away. Its spectral class is F2 and its absolute magnitude is 0.6. 39 Arietis (Lilii Borea) is a similar star of magnitude 4.51, 172 light-years away. Its spectral class is K1 and its absolute magnitude is 0.0. 35 Arietis is a dim star of magnitude 4.55, 343 light-years away. Its spectral class is B3 and its absolute magnitude is −1.7. 41 Arietis, known both as c Arietis and Nair al Butain, is a brighter star of magnitude 3.63, 165 light-years away. Its spectral class is B8 and it has a luminosity of . Its absolute magnitude is −0.2. 53 Arietis is a runaway star of magnitude 6.09, 815 light-years away. Its spectral class is B2. It was likely ejected from the Orion Nebula approximately five million years ago, possibly due to supernovae. Finally, Teegarden's Star is the closest star to Earth in Aries. It is a red dwarf of magnitude 15.14 and spectral class M6.5V. With a proper motion of 5.1 arcseconds per year, it is the 24th closest star to Earth overall. Aries has its share of variable stars, including R and U Arietis, Mira-type variable stars, and T Arietis, a semi-regular variable star. R Arietis is a Mira variable star that ranges in magnitude from a minimum of 13.7 to a maximum of 7.4 with a period of 186.8 days. It is 4,080 light-years away. U Arietis is another Mira variable star that ranges in magnitude from a minimum of 15.2 to a maximum of 7.2 with a period of 371.1 days. T Arietis is a semiregular variable star that ranges in magnitude from a minimum of 11.3 to a maximum of 7.5 with a period of 317 days. It is 1,630 light-years away. One particularly interesting variable in Aries is SX Arietis, a rotating variable star considered to be the prototype of its class, helium variable stars. SX Arietis stars have very prominent emission lines of Helium I and Silicon III. They are normally main-sequence B0p—B9p stars, and their variations are not usually visible to the naked eye. Therefore, they are observed photometrically, usually having periods that fit in the course of one night. Similar to Alpha2 Canum Venaticorum variables, SX Arietis stars have periodic changes in their light and magnetic field, which correspond to the periodic rotation; they differ from the Alpha2 Canum Venaticorum variables in their higher temperature. There are between 39 and 49 SX Arietis variable stars currently known; ten are noted as being "uncertain" in the General Catalog of Variable Stars. ### Deep sky objects NGC 772 is a spiral galaxy with an integrated magnitude of 10.3, located southeast of β Arietis and 15 arcminutes west of 15 Arietis. It is a relatively bright galaxy and shows obvious nebulosity and ellipticity in an amateur telescope. It is 7.2 by 4.2 arcminutes, meaning that its surface brightness, magnitude 13.6, is significantly lower than its integrated magnitude. NGC 772 is a class SA(s)b galaxy, which means that it is an unbarred spiral galaxy without a ring that possesses a somewhat prominent bulge and spiral arms that are wound somewhat tightly. The main arm, on the northwest side of the galaxy, is home to many star forming regions; this is due to previous gravitational interactions with other galaxies. NGC 772 has a small companion galaxy, NGC 770, that is about 113,000 light-years away from the larger galaxy. The two galaxies together are also classified as Arp 78 in the Arp peculiar galaxy catalog. NGC 772 has a diameter of 240,000 light-years and the system is 114 million light-years from Earth. Another spiral galaxy in Aries is NGC 673, a face-on class SAB(s)c galaxy. It is a weakly barred spiral galaxy with loosely wound arms. It has no ring and a faint bulge and is 2.5 by 1.9 arcminutes. It has two primary arms with fragments located farther from the core. 171,000 light-years in diameter, NGC 673 is 235 million light-years from Earth. NGC 678 and NGC 680 are a pair of galaxies in Aries that are only about 200,000 light-years apart. Part of the NGC 691 group of galaxies, both are at a distance of approximately 130 million light-years. NGC 678 is an edge-on spiral galaxy that is 4.5 by 0.8 arcminutes. NGC 680, an elliptical galaxy with an asymmetrical boundary, is the brighter of the two at magnitude 12.9; NGC 678 has a magnitude of 13.35. Both galaxies have bright cores, but NGC 678 is the larger galaxy at a diameter of 171,000 light-years; NGC 680 has a diameter of 72,000 light-years. NGC 678 is further distinguished by its prominent dust lane. NGC 691 itself is a spiral galaxy slightly inclined to our line of sight. It has multiple spiral arms and a bright core. Because it is so diffuse, it has a low surface brightness. It has a diameter of 126,000 light-years and is 124 million light-years away. NGC 877 is the brightest member of an 8-galaxy group that also includes NGC 870, NGC 871, and NGC 876, with a magnitude of 12.53. It is 2.4 by 1.8 arcminutes and is 178 million light-years away with a diameter of 124,000 light-years. Its companion is NGC 876, which is about 103,000 light-years from the core of NGC 877. They are interacting gravitationally, as they are connected by a faint stream of gas and dust. Arp 276 is a different pair of interacting galaxies in Aries, consisting of NGC 935 and IC 1801. NGC 821 is an E6 elliptical galaxy. It is unusual because it has hints of an early spiral structure, which is normally only found in lenticular and spiral galaxies. NGC 821 is 2.6 by 2.0 arcminutes and has a visual magnitude of 11.3. Its diameter is 61,000 light-years and it is 80 million light-years away. Another unusual galaxy in Aries is Segue 2, a dwarf and satellite galaxy of the Milky Way, recently discovered to be a potential relic of the epoch of reionization. ### Meteor showers Aries is home to several meteor showers. The Daytime Arietid meteor shower is one of the strongest meteor showers that occurs during the day, lasting from 22 May to 2 July. It is an annual shower associated with the Marsden group of comets that peaks on 7 June with a maximum zenithal hourly rate of 54 meteors. Its parent body may be the asteroid Icarus. The meteors are sometimes visible before dawn, because the radiant is 32 degrees away from the Sun. They usually appear at a rate of 1–2 per hour as "earthgrazers", meteors that last several seconds and often begin at the horizon. Because most of the Daytime Arietids are not visible to the naked eye, they are observed in the radio spectrum. This is possible because of the ionized gas they leave in their wake. Other meteor showers radiate from Aries during the day; these include the Daytime Epsilon Arietids and the Northern and Southern Daytime May Arietids. The Jodrell Bank Observatory discovered the Daytime Arietids in 1947 when James Hey and G. S. Stewart adapted the World War II-era radar systems for meteor observations. The Delta Arietids are another meteor shower radiating from Aries. Peaking on 9 December with a low peak rate, the shower lasts from 8 December to 14 January, with the highest rates visible from 8 to 14 December. The average Delta Arietid meteor is very slow, with an average velocity of 13.2 kilometres (8.2 mi) per second. However, this shower sometimes produces bright fireballs. This meteor shower has northern and southern components, both of which are likely associated with 1990 HA, a near-Earth asteroid. The Autumn Arietids also radiate from Aries. The shower lasts from 7 September to 27 October and peaks on 9 October. Its peak rate is low. The Epsilon Arietids appear from 12 to 23 October. Other meteor showers radiating from Aries include the October Delta Arietids, Daytime Epsilon Arietids, Daytime May Arietids, Sigma Arietids, Nu Arietids, and Beta Arietids. The Sigma Arietids, a class IV meteor shower, are visible from 12 to 19 October, with a maximum zenithal hourly rate of less than two meteors per hour on 19 October. ### Planetary systems Aries contains several stars with extrasolar planets. HIP 14810, a G5 type star, is orbited by three giant planets (those more than ten times the mass of Earth). HD 12661, like HIP 14810, is a G-type main sequence star, slightly larger than the Sun, with two orbiting planets. One planet is 2.3 times the mass of Jupiter, and the other is 1.57 times the mass of Jupiter. HD 20367 is a G0 type star, approximately the size of the Sun, with one orbiting planet. The planet, discovered in 2002, has a mass 1.07 times that of Jupiter and orbits every 500 days. In 2019, scientists conducting the CARMENES survey at the Calar Alto Observatory announced evidence of two Earth-mass exoplanets orbiting Teegarden's star, located in Aries, within its habitable zone. The star is a small red dwarf with only around a tenth of the mass and radius of the Sun. It has a large radial velocity. ## See also - Aries (Chinese astronomy)

Battle Birds

American air-war pulp magazine (1932–1935)

Battle Birds was an American air-war pulp magazine, published by Popular Publications. It was launched at the end of 1932, but did not sell well, and in 1934 the publisher turned it into an air-war hero pulp titled Dusty Ayres and His Battle Birds. Robert Sidney Bowen, an established pulp writer, provided the lead novel each month, and also wrote the short stories that filled out the issue. Bowen's stories were set in the future, with the United States menaced by an Asian empire called the Black Invaders. The change was not successful enough to be extended beyond the initial plan of a year, and Bowen wrote a novel in which, unusually for pulp fiction, Dusty Ayres finally defeated the invaders, to end the series. The magazine ceased publication with the July/August 1935 issue. It restarted in 1940, under the original title, Battle Birds, and lasted for another four years. All the cover art was painted by Frederick Blakeslee. ## Publication history In the summer of 1927, Aviation Stories and Mechanics was launched. It was the first magazine to specialize in fiction about flying, and pulp magazine historian Robert Sampson suggests that Charles Lindbergh's flight across the Atlantic in May that year was part of the reason for public interest in aviation. Other similar magazines quickly appeared, including Air Stories and Wings, which focused on adventure stories involving flying. The first magazine to concentrate on aerial warfare was Dell Magazine's War Birds, which appeared in early 1928. In 1930 Popular Publications was started by Harry Steeger and Harold Goldsmith; the new company launched four pulp magazines that year, one of which was an air-war pulp titled Battle Aces. In 1932 they added a second title, Battle Birds, with the first issue dated December 1932. In late 1933 Battle Aces was relaunched as a hero pulp titled G-8 and His Battle Aces, with the lead novels written by a single author, Robert J. Hogan. Robert Sidney Bowen, a pulp writer who was selling war fiction prolifically to multiple pulp magazines in the early 1930s, met with Steeger for lunch in 1933. Bowen was finding it tiresome to quickly write story after story with a different setting for each one, and told Steeger he wanted to be the author of a hero pulp magazine, like Hogan. Steeger agreed, and over lunch they settled on changing Battle Birds, which was selling poorly, to a hero pulp with Bowen as the author. They agreed on a year's trial, and for the run to be extended if the magazine sold well. ## Contents To avoid having the new magazine compete with G-8 and His Battle Aces, Bowen's stories were set in the future, with America at war with another power. To avoid having the war against an existing country, they decided to make the enemy a future power rising in Asia that had conquered the entire world except for the United States. Bowen's hero was named Dusty Ayres, and the magazine was retitled Dusty Ayres and His Battle Birds starting with the July 1934 issue. Ayres was America's top pilot, and along with three friends, Jack Horner, Curley Brooks and Biff Bolton, he fought the Asian Black Invaders. The enemy's leader, Fire Eyes, wore a plain green mask with two slits for eyes, through which sparks of fire could be seen. His lead pilot, Ayres' frequent antagonist, was known as The Black Hawk. Bowen also wrote all the short stories for Dusty Ayres, unlike other hero pulps where several different authors usually provided the short fiction. The new magazine initially did well enough to inspire Dell Magazines to similarly transform War Birds into Terence X. O'Leary's War Birds in early 1935, adding a science-fictional background. Dusty Ayres only lasted for a year; Bowen wrote a final novel in which the evil empire was defeated (unusually for a pulp series), and the magazine ceased publication with the August 1935 issue. Science fiction historian Mike Ashley suggests that Dusty Ayres was popular but that the setting was too limited for the series to continue for long; fellow historian Robert Weinberg asserts instead that sales were too low for the title to survive. Sam Moskowitz, another historian of the genre, describes the Dusty Ayres series as "fascinatingly imaginative in the art as well as the stories", but considers the writing weaker than that of contemporary pulps such as Operator \#5. The Dusty Ayres version of the magazine included a letter column, and starting in the February 1935 issue there was a competition column called "Planes of Tomorrow", to choose the best reader-submitted design for a future airplane. The magazine was relaunched in February 1940 under the original Battle Birds title, lasting for another four years in that incarnation. The cover artist for all issues of both Battle Birds and Dusty Ayres was Frederick Blakeslee, an expert painter of airplanes who delighted in making the planes in his covers accurate, though for Dusty Ayres he was given the freedom to invent futuristic designs. Robert Lesser, in his history of pulp magazine art, comments that during World War II the air-war magazine artists "realized that they were no longer painting fiction but recording fact", and gives as an example Blakeslee's cover for the October 1942 cover of Battle Birds, which depicted the US Air Force dive-bombing Japanese aircraft carriers at the Battle of Midway. Lesser also quotes a letter to Battle Birds from a US private working as ground crew, asking for a Blakeslee painting that they could hang in their barracks for morale; according to the response in the magazine, Popular agreed and sent them a painting. ## Bibliographic details Battle Birds was published by Popular Publications. It began as a monthly, running from December 1932 to July 1934, and remained monthly after the title changed to Dusty Ayres and His Battle Birds in July 1934. It lasted for twelve issues under the new title; the last two issues were bimonthly, dated May/June and July/August 1935. There was then a gap of several years until February 1940 when the title changed back to Battle Birds. The next issue, March 1940, inaugurated a bimonthly run that lasted until the final issue, dated May 1944, with a couple of irregularities: May 1941 was followed by August 1941, and December 1942 was followed by March 1943. The volume numbering was consecutive until the end of the Dusty Ayres period: there were seven volumes of four issues each, followed by one volume of three issues. The volume numbering restarted at 1/1 with the February 1940 issue; this time there were five volumes of four issues, and a final volume of six issues. The magazine was pulp format throughout. It began at 128 pages and 10 cents, the price rising to 15 cents in September 1933 and dropping back to 10 cents in February 1940 when the title reverted to Battle Birds. The page count also dropped at that time, first to 112 pages, and eventually to 82 pages by the final issue. When the magazine was relaunched in February 1940, it was under Popular's Fictioneers imprint. The editor for the first run of Battle Birds is not known; Rogers Terrill edited the Dusty Ayres issues, and Harry Steeger edited the magazine from 1940 on. In 1965 and 1966, Corinth Books published about fifty paperback editions of novels and short stories drawn from several magazines, including four Dusty Ayres novels, and a collection of Bowen's short stories from the magazine: - Black Lightning (originally published in the July 1934 issue) - Crimson Doom (August 1934) - Purple Tornado (September 1934) - The Telsa Raiders (July/August 1935) - Battle Birds Versus the Black Invaders (short stories)

Government of the Han dynasty

Governance during the Chinese Han dynasty (202 BC–220 AD)

The Han dynasty (202 BC – 220 AD) was the second imperial dynasty of China, following the Qin dynasty (221–207 BC). It was divided into the periods of Western (Former) Han (202 BC – 9 AD) and Eastern (Later) Han (25–220 AD), briefly interrupted by the Xin dynasty (9–23 AD) of Wang Mang. The capital of Western Han was Chang'an, and the capital of Eastern Han was Luoyang. The emperor headed the government, promulgating all written laws, serving as commander-in-chief of the armed forces, and presiding as the chief executive official. He appointed all government officials who earned a salary of 600 bushels of grain or more (though these salaries were largely paid in coin cash) with the help of advisors who reviewed each nominee. The empress dowager could either be the emperor's actual or symbolic mother, and was in practice more respected than the emperor, as she could override his decisions. The emperor's executive powers could also be practiced by any official upon whom he bestowed the Staff of Authority. These powers included the right to execute criminals without the imperial court's permission. Near the beginning of the dynasty, semi-autonomous regional kings rivaled the emperor's authority. This autonomy was greatly diminished when the imperial court enacted reforms following the threats to central control like the Rebellion of the Seven States. The end of the Han dynasty came about during a time of civil, military and religious upheaval, which resulted in the period of Three Kingdoms. The highest officials in the central bureaucracy, who provided advisory, censorial, executive, and judicial roles in governing the empire, consisted of cabinet members known as the Excellencies, heads of large specialized ministries known as the Nine Ministers, and various metropolitan officials of the capital region. Distinguished salary-ranks were granted to officials in the bureaucracy, nobles of the imperial family, concubines of the harem, and military officers of the armed forces. Local government divisions, in descending order by size, were the province, commandery, county, and district. Local fiefs of the nobility included the kingdom, which was modeled largely upon the regular commandery, as well as the marquessate, modelled largely upon the regular county. Although the central government's monopolies on salt, iron, and liquor eventually failed and were relinquished back to private production, the government successfully nationalized the issuing of coin currency through its imperial mint, which lasted from 113 BC until the end of the dynasty. The conscription system for commoners as non-professional soldiers was reduced in size in favor of a volunteer army and a substitution tax by Eastern Han. A small professional standing army existed throughout Western and Eastern Han. During times of crisis, the volunteer army increased in size, but large militias were raised and certain officer titles were revived for temporary use. ## Salaries During the Han dynasty, the power a government official exercised was determined by his annual salary-rank, measured in grain units known as dan, shi or shih (石, a unit of volume, approximately 35 litres (0.99 US bsh)). However, approximately half an official's salary in grain was made in payments of cash coins, the standard of which, after 119 BC, was the wushu (五銖) coin measuring 3.2 g (0.11 oz). The other half of an official's salary consisted of unhusked grain and husked grain measured in hu (觳, approximately 20 L / 676 oz); since one hu of unhusked grain was equal to 100 coins and one hu of husked grain was equal to 160 coins, the conversion ratio for unhusked grain to husked grain was 10 to 6 (see table below). The most senior officials in central government earned a 10,000-dan salary. The officials who oversaw nine specialized ministries each earned the Fully 2,000-dan rank, while the magistrate of a county earned a 600-dan rank. Occasionally, emperors bestowed luxurious gifts of wine, foodstuffs, and silk clothes upon high officials. These gifts, in some generous cases, could equal as much as half the value of the officials' standard annual salary. Aged officials were often retired from service and given a pension. Below is a table outlining salaries measured in coin cash, unhusked grain, and husked grain for the highest to lowest-paid officials in Han officialdom: ## Central government ### Emperor #### Qin's imperial model Qin Shi Huang, the first ruler of the Qin dynasty, established China's imperial system of government in 221 BC after unifying the Seven Warring States through conquest, bringing to an end the Warring States period. For a time, the rulers of the warring states claimed nominal allegiance to an overlord king of the Zhou dynasty (c. 1050 – 256 BC), yet the Zhou kings' political power and prestige was less than that of later Chinese emperors. The imperial system fell apart after the fall of Qin in 206 BC. However, following Han's victory over Chu, the King of Han reestablished the imperial system and is known posthumously as Emperor Gaozu (r. 202–195 BC). The Han system of imperial government borrowed many of its core features from the regime established by the Qin dynasty. For example, Gaozu's Chancellor Xiao He (d. 193 BC) integrated much of the statutes of the Qin law code into the newly compiled Han law code. Yet Gaozu's establishment of central control over only a third of the empire—the other two-thirds of territory was controlled by semi-autonomous kingdoms—strayed from Qin's imperial model which gave the emperor direct control over all of China. However, a series of reforms eventually stripped away any vestiges of the kingdoms' independence. Han emperors thereafter enjoyed full and direct control over China, as had the first Qin emperor. The Han court's gradual move towards reestablishing central control can also be seen in its monetary policy. While the Qin regime installed a nationwide standard currency, the early Western Han regime oscillated between abolishing and legalizing private mints, commandery-level mints, and kingdom-level mints issuing various coins. In 113 BC the Han court finally established the central government's monopoly control over the issuance of a standard, nationwide currency. #### Roles, rights, and responsibilities The emperor, who enjoyed paramount social status, was the head of the government administration. His rule was virtually absolute, although civil officials, representing the competing interests of different state organs, scrutinized his decisions. Although the Grand Commandant had a nominal role as commander-in-chief, the emperor served as the commander-in-chief of the armed forces. The emperor had the sole right to appoint central government officials whose salary-rank was 600-dan or higher. The emperor also appointed the leading officials at the provincial, commandery, and county levels of government. Appointees to office were usually recommended men from the commanderies, family relatives of high officials, or student graduates of the Imperial University. This institution was established in 124 BC, and provided a Confucian-based education for those entering civil service. The emperor had the exclusive right to modify the law code and issue new laws in the form of imperial edicts (zhao 詔) and decrees (ling 令). However, he often accepted the decisions and reforms suggested by his chief judicial minister, the Commandant of Justice. The emperor also acted as the supreme judge. Any lawsuits which a county administration, then commandery administration, and then Minister of Justice could not resolve were deferred to the emperor. The emperor's role as supreme judge could be temporarily duplicated by any official he designated in times of emergency or in distant borderlands where central government had little influence. This entailed a symbolic conferral of power, which was embodied in the Staff of Authority (Jiezhang 節杖). Roughly 2 m (6 ft) in height and decorated with ribbons, the Staff of Authority was often granted to an official with a specific errand, such as acting on behalf of the emperor as ambassador to a foreign country, appointing civilians to office, or immediately promoting a deserving military officer on the field of battle. Moreover, it granted its bearer the authority to sentence criminals and political rebels with execution without notifying the court first. During the Qin dynasty, the first Qin emperor's legitimacy to rule was ultimately decided by his ability to conquer others. However, by the time of Wang Mang's (r. 9–23 AD) reign, the Mandate of Heaven was considered the only legitimate source of imperial authority. This concept was given greater prominence after the state officially sponsored the worship of Heaven over that of the Five Powers in 31 BC. Moreover, the philosophy of the scholar Dong Zhongshu (179–104 BC), which held that a dynasty's rule on earth was bound to greater cosmological cycles in the universe, was officially sponsored by the Han court from Emperor Wu's (r. 141–87 BC) reign onward. The emperor was expected to behave according to proper ritual, ethics, and morals, lest he incur the wrath of Heaven and bring an end to his reign. He became the highest priest in the land. By performing certain religious rites and rituals, the emperor acted as a sacred link between Heaven and Earth. #### Court conferences Although the emperor held supreme power, he more often sought the advice of his cabinet and other ministers before making decisions and when revoking them. He often assembled leading officials for debates or discussions on policy, known as court conferences (tingyi 廷議). Various issues were debated at these gatherings, such as installment of new emperors, enfeoffment of nobles, the establishment of new ancestral temples, reforms to the state religion, the monetary or tax systems, management of government monopolies on salt and iron (when they existed during Western Han), the introduction of new laws or the repeal of old ones, complex lawsuits, or whether or not to declare war on a foreign country or accept peaceful negotiation. Although the emperor could reject the decisions reached by his court conference, he did so at the risk of alienating his leading ministers. More often than not, he was forced to accept the majority consensus of his ministers, whose individual opinions were equally tallied regardless of their standing or salary-rank. ### Empress dowager When the emperor died without officially appointing a successor, his widow, the empress dowager, had the sole right to appoint one of the late emperor's surviving sons or relatives to the position. Most often the successor chosen in this fashion was a minor, thus the empress dowager served as regent over the government. A high-status male relative, usually a father or brother, would assume control of the Imperial Secretariat. Even when an emperor reached his majority and became an active ruler, he often sought the advice and acceptance of the empress dowager on policy decisions; she also had the right to override his decisions. The empress dowager was protected by the Minister of the Guards, yet if her faction—the consort clan— was removed from power, he was then responsible for keeping her under house arrest. ### Grand Tutor The post of Grand Tutor (Taifu 太傅), although given the highest civil status below the emperor, was not regularly occupied. The role was considered an honorary rather than substantive office. In Western Han, a Grand Tutor was supposedly appointed at the beginning of each emperor's reign, and was not replaced until that emperor's death. However, only four Grand Tutors were appointed between 202 BC – 6 AD. In contrast, during Eastern Han, every emperor, except Emperor Huan of Han (r. 146–168 AD), had a new Grand Tutor appointed at the beginning of their reigns. The Grand Tutor's salary-rank was unspecified in literary sources, although it was likely higher than the 10,000-dan rank. The Grand Tutor was nominally in charge of providing a young emperor with moral guidance, but it is doubtful that this role was ever taken seriously or formally conducted. The post often served to deliberately block someone from obtaining a more important post, such as one of the Excellencies, while Grand Tutors were usually elder statesmen chosen for their age rather than merits (so they would die off quickly after being appointed). ### Excellencies #### Title variations The Excellencies (gong, literally translated as "dukes") were the foremost officials in central government who formed the cabinet during both Western and Eastern Han. For most of Western Han, the Excellencies were the Chancellor (Chengxiang 丞相), the Imperial Counselor (Yushi dafu 御史大夫), and the Grand Commandant (Taiwei 太尉). The Great Commandant's post was irregularly filled, and it was retitled to Grand Marshal (Da sima 大司馬) in 119 BC. In 8 BC, the post of Imperial Counselor was abolished in favor of a Grand Excellency of Works (da sikong 大司空), and by 1 BC the Chancellor's post was abolished and replaced by the Grand Excellency Over the Masses (da situ 大司徒). On 8 June, 51 AD the prefix "Grand" (大) was removed from the titles of the Excellency over the Masses and Excellency of Works, while the Grand Marshal was reinstated with the original title of Grand Commandant, and would remain so for the rest of Eastern Han. The exact salary figures for the Excellencies before 8 BC are unknown, although from that year forward they were given a 10,000-dan salary-rank, in addition to periodic gifts which further boosted their incomes. #### Chancellor During Western Han, the Chancellor was the chief civil official. The duties of the chancellery were divided between a Right Chancellor (右丞相) and Left Chancellor (左丞相) between 196 and 180 BC. After 180 BC, the Left Chancellor's post was merely titular and its incumbent had no real authority. The Western Han Chancellor oversaw state finances, logistics for military campaigns, registers for land and population, maps of the empire's territories, annual provincial reports, high-profile lawsuits, and drafted the government budget. The Chancellor could directly appoint officials who were ranked 600-dan or below, while he was also able to recommend nominees to the emperor for recruitment to the senior roles in central government. The Chancellor was held responsible for the actions of officials he recommended and appointed, yet he could also punish inadequate officials without the emperor's consent. Whenever the emperor was absent from a court conference but sought its advice, he relied on the chancellor to direct it and inform him of the resulting majority opinion. If the attending ministers were split into opposing factions of roughly equal size, the chancellor would listen to the positions of both sides and count the exact number of ministers who supported either opposing opinion. The Palace Writers (Zhongshu 中書) were originally palace eunuch secretaries (Zhongshu guan 中書官) from Emperor Wu's reign until 29 BC, when they were staffed by regular officials. They usurped much of the Chancellor's powers by the end of the Western Han. The position of Chancellor was abolished for much of Eastern Han and replaced by the Excellency over the Masses. However, in 208 AD the Excellency of Works Cao Cao (155–220 AD) assumed the revived post of Chancellor while acting as the de facto ruler over the court of Emperor Xian (r. 189–220 AD). Cao Cao also abolished the Grand Commandant and Excellency of Works while reinstating the Imperial Counselor. #### Imperial Counselor During Western Han the Imperial Counselor, also known as the Grandee Secretary and Imperial Secretary, was considered the second-ranking official below the Chancellor. Like the Chancellor, he exercised censorial powers over provincial officials who also sent him annual reports. His primary duty was to uphold disciplinary procedures for officials; he could investigate even those attached to the chancellery and the imperial palace. Since one of his main functions was to prevent abuse of authority, his jurisdiction over officialdom tended to overlap with that of the Chancellor's. His subordinates included the Imperial Clerks (Shiyushi 侍御史; also known as Attending Secretaries), led by the Palace Assistant Imperial Clerk (Yushi zhongcheng 御史中丞; also known as the Palace Assistant Secretary). They were often sent out into the provinces to investigate possible wrongdoing on the part of local officials. The Imperial Counselor transmitted and received imperial edicts to and from the chancellery and also presented officials' memorials to the throne. During Western Han, the Palace Assistant Imperial Clerk's office was located within the walls of the palace. He had the authority to investigate attendants and eunuchs of the palace and to reject improperly written memorials before submission to the Imperial Counselor. The Masters of Writing under the Minister Steward then processed these memorials before they were sent to the throne. The Palace Assistant Imperial Clerk's proximity to the emperor during Eastern Han allowed him to surpass the authority of his nominal superior, the Excellency of Works, yet his Western-Han-era power to inspect local provincial authorities was removed. The Minister Steward—who was supervised by the Imperial Counselor (and later Excellency of Works)—became the Palace Assistant Imperial Clerk's new superior by early Eastern Han. The Palace Assistant Imperial Clerk also managed the Imperial Library in both Western and Eastern Han, this duty being transferred to a subordinate of the Minister of Ceremonies in 159 AD. #### Grand Commandant The Grand Commandant (also known as the Commander-in-Chief) was the head commander of the military in Western Han, yet his office was irregularly filled (from 205–202 BC, from 196–195 BC, from 189–177 BC, from 154–150 BC, and in 140 BC). After 119 BC, the generals Huo Qubing (d. 117 BC) and Wei Qing (d. 106 BC) simultaneously held the title until their deaths, but when the post was revived in 87 BC it became politicized when conferred as a regent's title for Huo Guang (d. 68 BC). The regent was thus considered one of the Three Excellencies, although he was not technically part of the cabinet. The Grand Commandant's office witnessed significant changes during the Eastern Han. Wang Mang separated the regent's role from the Grand Commandant's post during the Xin dynasty (9–23 AD), since he did not want an active regent for his regime. This was retained by Eastern Han, while the third Grand Commandant of Eastern Han appointed in 51 AD transformed his ministry into a primarily civilian one. Although the Eastern-Han Grand Commandant shared the same salary-rank as the other two Excellencies who were nominally considered his equals, he was nonetheless given de facto privilege as the most senior civil official. However, his censorial jurisdiction now overlapped with the other two Excellencies (i.e. he was able to investigate the same officials in central and local government), who shared an advisory role to the emperor (policy suggestions could be submitted independently or jointly by all three cabinet members). His various bureaus handled appointment, promotion, and demotion of officials, population registers and agriculture, the upkeep of transportation facilities, post offices, and couriers, civil law cases, granary storage, and military affairs. He was also given formal powers to supervise three of the Nine Ministers: the Minister of Ceremonies, Minister of the Household, and Minister of the Guards. #### Excellency over the Masses The Excellency over the Masses (also known as the Minister over the Masses) shared the same censorial and advisory roles as the other two Excellencies, the Excellency of Works and Grand Commandant. Like his previous counterpart, the Chancellor, he must have been responsible for drawing up the annual budget, although contemporary sources fail to mention this point. Aside from the court conference, the Great Conference of leading officials across the empire was conducted by his ministry. The Chancellor's bureaus were also retained by the Excellency over the Masses, and were nearly identical to that of the new Eastern-Han Grand Commandant's bureaus. He was given formal powers to supervise three of the Nine Ministers: the Minister Coachman, Minister of Justice, and Minister Herald. #### Excellency of Works The Excellency of Works, also known as the Minister of Works, was less powerful than his previous counterpart, the Imperial Counselor. This official's advisory and censorial responsibilities coincided with those of two other Excellencies, forming a tripartite cabinet arrangement. Unlike the abolished Imperial Counselor, he was given the specialized role of overseeing public works projects throughout the empire. The Excellency of Works was responsible for the construction of city walls, towns, canals, irrigation ditches, dykes and dams, and other structural engineering projects. The Court Architect supervised only imperial building projects. The Excellency of Works made annual reports to the throne about the progress of local administrations' conduct of construction projects. He was given formal powers to supervise three of the Nine Ministers: the Minister of the Imperial Clan, Minister of Finance, and Minister Steward. ### Nine Ministers The Nine Ministers, who were supervised by the Three Excellencies but not direct subordinates of the cabinet, each headed a specialized government ministry and held a salary-rank of Fully 2,000-dan. Along with the tripartite cabinet members, these ministers usually attended court conferences. #### Minister of Ceremonies The Minister of Ceremonies (Taichang 太常) also known as Grand Master of Ceremonies, was the chief official in charge of religious rites, rituals, prayers, and the maintenance of ancestral temples and altars. The role's title was changed to Upholder of Ceremonies (Fengchang 奉常) from 195 to 144 BC before reverting to the original title. Although his main concern was to link the emperor with the supernatural world and Heaven, he was also given the task of setting educational standards for the Imperial University (est. 124 BC) and the academic chairs (boshi 博士) who specialized in the Five Classics, the canon of Confucianism. One of the Minister of Ceremonies' many subordinates was the Court Astronomer (Taishi ling 太史令; also known as the Prefect Grand Astrologer), who made astronomical observations and drafted the annual lunisolar calendar. The Court Astronomer also upheld a literacy test of 9,000 characters for nominees aspiring to become subordinate officials for either the Minister Steward or Palace Assistant Imperial Clerk. These nominees were often recommended subordinates of commandery-level Administrators. Other subordinates of the Minister of Ceremonies reported illegal acts at ancestral temples, prepared sacrificial offerings of food and wine at shrines and temples, and arranged for the music and dancing that accompanied ceremonies. #### Minister of the Household The Minister of the Household (Guangluxun 光祿勳), also known as Superintendent of the Household and Supervisor of Attendants, was originally titled the Prefect of the Gentlemen of the Palace (Lang zhongling 郎中令) before 104 BC. He was responsible for the emperor's security within the palace grounds, external imperial parks, and wherever the emperor made an outing by chariot. However, to ensure that the emperor's entire safety was not entrusted to a single officer, the subordinates of the Minister of the Guards were given sole right to patrol the palaces' entrances and walls while the eunuchs guarded the emperor's private apartments and harem. Three of the five cadet corps commanded by the Minister of the Household were actually armed civilian nominees serving a period of probation before appointment to a government office; the other two corps were composed of imperial bodyguards who were never appointed to civilian offices. The former were often recommended by commandery-level Administrators as Filial and Incorrupt, while others could be relatives of high officials in central government. The Minister of the Household oversaw subordinate court advisors (Yi Lang 議郎/议郎) who advised the emperor and engaged in scholarly debates. They were allowed to openly criticize the emperor, participate in provincial inspections, and conduct mourning ceremonies for recently deceased kings and marquesses while installing their successors. Internuncios (Yezhe 謁者), led by a Supervisor of the Internuncios (Yezhe puye 謁者僕射), were subordinates of the Minister of the Household who participated in state ceremonies, condoled on behalf of the emperor for recently deceased officials, inspected public works and military camps along the frontiers, and acted as diplomats to the semi-autonomous fiefs and non-Han-Chinese peoples along the borders. #### Minister of the Guards The Minister of the Guards (Weiwei 衛尉) was also known as Commandant of the Guards), and briefly as the Prefect of the Palace Grandees (Zhong da fuling 中大夫令) during Emperor Jing of Han's reign (r. 157–141 BC) before reverting to the original title. This Minister was responsible for securing and patrolling the walls, towers, and gates of the imperial palaces. The duties of his ministry were carried out by prefects, one of whom controlled the gates where nominees for office were received and officials sent memorials to the throne. To control and monitor the flow of traffic through the palace gates, the prefects used a complex passport system involving wooden and metal tallies. During an emergency, the tallies were collected and no-one was allowed to enter unless they breached the gates by force. The guards were conscripted peasants who served for a year's term as soldiers and were invited to attend a celebratory feast hosted by the emperor before demobilization. #### Minister Coachman The Minister Coachman (Taipu 太僕), also known as the Grand Coachman, was responsible for the maintenance of imperial stables, horses, carriages and coachhouses for the emperor and his palace attendants, and for the supply of horses for the armed forces. His latter duty entailed the supervising of large breeding grounds of frontier pastures, tended by tens of thousands of government slaves. By the reign of Emperor Wu of Han (r. 141–87 BC) these contained 300,000 warhorses intended for use in campaigns against the nomadic Xiongnu Confederation. Some of the Minister Coachman's subordinates managed stables outside the capital city. These stables housed Ferghana horses that were imported or gathered as tribute from Central Asian countries. In Eastern Han—possibly due to the Coachman's influence over the transport of arms—a prefect in charge of manufacturing bows, crossbows, swords, and armor for the military was transferred from the Minister Steward's ministry to that of the Minister Coachman. #### Minister of Justice The Minister of Justice (Tingwei 廷尉), also known as the Commandant of Justice, and was known as the Grand Judge (Dali 大理) between 144 BC and 137 BC and again between 1 BC and c. 25 AD. He was the chief official in charge of upholding, administering, and interpreting the law. Only the emperor, in his role as judge, was superior to this minister. The Minister of Justice was the supreme civil-appointed judge for cases deferred to the capital from provincial lawsuits. His judicial powers, however, were similar to those of the Chancellor. He could recommend changes to the law code and the granting of general amnesties to those charged with crimes. His ministry was responsible for maintaining the Imperial Prison, where trials were conducted, and carrying out executions. It is unknown whether he oversaw all of the twenty-six prisons in Western Han Chang'an, which were built to house convicted ex-officials. However, during Eastern Han, the Imperial Prison in Luoyang was the only prison managed by the Minister of Justice. #### Minister Herald The Minister Herald (Dahonglu 大鴻臚) was also known as the Grand Herald; he was also called the Director of Guests (Dianke 典客) between 202 BC and 144 BC and Prefect Grand Usher (Daxingling 大行令) between 144 BC and 104 BC. He was the chief official in charge of receiving honored guests, such as nobles and foreign ambassadors, at the imperial court. Alongside the Minister of the Imperial Clan, his ministry oversaw the inheritance of titles and fiefs by condoling on behalf of the emperor at kings' funerals and memorializing the posthumous names of kings and marquises. The Minister Herald's office received the annual reports from the commanderies and kingdoms when they arrived in the capital at the beginning of the year, before passing them on to the Excellencies. His subordinates acted as seating guides and ushers for officials, nobles, and foreign delegates at imperial ceremonies and sacrifices. One of his subordinates maintained living quarters for officials in the commanderies and kingdoms who were traveling to the capital. While the Minister Herald had always conducted the formal reception of foreign envoys and enlisted the aid of interpreters, his powers in matters of foreign affairs were expanded further when the post of Director of Dependent States was abolished in 28 BC. However, by Eastern Han his duties involving the affairs of Dependent States were transferred to local administrations along the borders. #### Minister of the Imperial Clan While eight of the Nine Ministers could be of commoner origin, the post of Minister of the Imperial Clan (Zongzheng 宗正), also known as the Director of the Imperial Clan, was always occupied by a member of the imperial family. He oversaw the imperial court's interactions with the empire's nobility and extended imperial family, such as granting fiefs and titles. His ministry was responsible for record-keeping of all nobles, a register being updated at the beginning of each year. When a serious infraction was committed by a member of the imperial family, the Minister of the Imperial Clan was the first high official to be notified before the emperor, who made the ultimate decision about any possible legal action. This minister's subordinates heard grievances of imperial family members and informed them about new ordinances. Unlike kings and marquesses, who were not responsible to any of the Nine Ministers, imperial princesses and their fiefs were kept under surveillance by the Minister of the Imperial Clan. #### Minister of Finance The Minister of Finance (Da sinong 大司農) was also called the Grand Minister of Agriculture, and before 144 BC, was known as Clerk of the Capital for Grain (Zhisu neishi 治粟內史). This minister was the central government's treasurer for the official bureaucracy and the armed forces. While the Chancellor drafted the state budget, the Minister of Finance was responsible for funding it. He was in charge of storing the poll taxes, which were gathered in coin cash, and land tax, which was gathered as a proportion of farmers' annual crop yields. He was also responsible for setting the standards for units of measurement. In addition to reviewing tax collections, he could implement policies for price control exacted on certain commercial commodities. During Western Han, the Minister of Finance's powers were limited to the public treasury, the Minister Steward being responsible for the emperor's private wealth. However, in Eastern Han, the responsibilities for the public treasury and the emperor's private wealth were amalgamated and entrusted solely to the Minister of Finance, which later proved disastrous when handled by irresponsible emperors such as Ling (r. 168–189 AD). During Western Han, the Minister of Finance managed the government's monopolized salt and iron agencies, which were abolished during Eastern Han and transferred to local administrations and private entrepreneurship. He also managed the government's brief monopoly over liquor from 98–81 BC, before it was returned to private production. Although the Minister Steward and then the Superintendent of Waterways and Parks managed the imperial mint for issuing standard coins during Western Han, in Eastern Han the imperial mint was transferred to the office of the Minister of Finance. #### Minister Steward The Minister Steward (Shaofu 少府), also known as the Privy Treasurer and Small Treasurer, served the emperor exclusively, providing him with entertainment and amusements, proper food and clothing, medicine and physical care, valuables and equipment. For this purpose he was given responsibility for the emperor's personal finances during Western Han, yet this responsibility was transferred to the Minister of Finance during Eastern Han. Although he was not a castrated eunuch, many of his subordinates were, since his ministry managed the imperial harem housing concubines. His secretaries were headed by a Prefect of the Masters of Writing (Shangshu ling 尚書令). The secretaries were responsible for relaying all written messages to the emperor, official correspondence with Excellencies, senior ministers, provincial authorities, common people who submitted memorials to the throne, and non-Han-Chinese peoples within and outside the empire. Since the Masters of Writing were not eunuchs, and thus not allowed into the imperial harem, Emperor Wu established an all-eunuch office of secretaries for the inner palace, which was abolished in 29 BC. The Minister Steward had many subordinates, including the Court Physician (Taiyi ling 太醫令), also known as the Prefect Grand Physician, who checked the emperor's health every morning and accompanied him on imperial hunting trips. The Court Provisioner (Taiguan ling 太官令), also known as the Prefect Grand Provisioner, was responsible for managing the kitchen, its cooks, and supplying food for the emperor. Other subordinates managed the weaving houses which supplied the clothes for the emperor, the workshops which produced wares, utensils, and funerary items for the emperor, and the imperial parks and gardens where the emperor could hunt and attend outings. The Bureau of Music (Yuefu 樂府) was overseen by the Minister Steward and was in charge of musical performances at imperial ceremonies and entertaining the emperor with folk songs gathered from throughout the empire; it was disbanded in 7 BC and its musicians transferred to the Minister of Ceremonies. ### Staffs of the heir apparent, empress, and harems When a Liu-family relative of an emperor—usually a princely son—was designated as his heir apparent, he was provided living quarters within the palace and a personal staff which was not disbanded until he became the next emperor. During Western Han, the staff had two divisions: one was led by educators of the heir apparent, known as the Grand Tutor of the Heir Apparent (ranked 2000–dan) and Junior Tutor of the Heir Apparent (ranked 2000–dan), the other led by a Supervisor of the Household (ranked 2,000-dan). During Eastern Han, the Grand Tutor of the Heir Apparent lost his administrative role but remained the chief educator and was promoted in rank to Fully 2,000-dan; the Junior Tutor remained an administrator with a salary-rank of 2,000-dan. The post of Supervisor of the Household was abolished. Other Western Han staff offices of the heir apparent were abolished during Eastern Han, such as the Chief of the Kitchen and the Household Prison of the Heir Apparent. If he reached adulthood, the heir apparent could be married to a principal wife who led a harem of his concubines. The empress, the legal wife of the emperor, also had an area of the palace separate from that of the emperor's private apartments, where the empress was expected to spend every fifth night with the emperor. Both the empress and the heir apparent received an income from the taxes of forty counties. She also had a Supervisor of the Household (ranked 2,000-dan), and many other subordinates, either male eunuchs or female maids, who took care of domestic needs. The concubines of the harem were subordinates of the empress and were ranked below her in fourteen grades by the reign of Emperor Yuan of Han (r. 49–33). However, the founder of Eastern Han abolished the fourteen salary-ranks in favor of three ranks with no definite salary; instead, the concubines were irregularly granted gifts. The chief concubine of Western Han, the Brilliant Companion, shared the same salary-rank as the Chancellor, while the concubine ranked just below her, the Favorite Beauty, shared the same salary-rank as any one of the Nine Ministers. ### Metropolitan offices The metropolitan areas of both Western Han Chang'an and Eastern Han Luoyang were governed and secured by several officials and officers. The county and municipal divisions of the capital cities were governed by a Prefect (Ling 令). The Prefect was also responsible for a prison and could arrest officials of high rank. The Colonel of the City Gates (Chengmen xiaowei 城門校衛) commanded the garrisons at the twelve city gates, each guarded by a captain, in both Western Han Chang'an and Eastern Han Luoyang. #### Bearer of the Mace The Bearer of the Mace (Zhi jinwu 執金吾), also known as the Bearer of the Gilded Mace and Commandant of the Capital (Zhongwei 中尉) before 104 BC, maintained law and order in the capital city —excluding the imperial palaces. During the Western Han, his salary-rank was fully 2,000-dan; thus his prestige was similar to that of the Nine Ministers. However, during the Eastern Han his salary-rank was reduced from fully 2,000-dan to equivalent to 2,000-dan. While his subordinates were on constant patrol, the Bearer of the Mace personally inspected the city three times each month. He was responsible for the military arsenal as well as disaster relief efforts during floods and fires. The Bearer of the Mace had a large staff of subordinates during the Western Han, whose posts were abolished or transferred elsewhere during the Eastern Han. This included the abolition of the Captains of the Standard Bearers, and the emperor's entourage became responsible for clearing the roadways when the emperor left the palace and hoisting colored standards to signal his return. #### Court Architect The Court Architect (Jiangzuo dajiang 將作大匠) was in charge of the construction, maintenance, and repair of imperial palace halls, government halls, temples, grave tumuli, buildings in funerary parks, roads leading out of the capital, and flood control works. His salary-rank was 2,000-dan. He directed the efforts of conscripted corvée laborers until this duty was transferred to the ministry of the newly created Excellency of Works in 8 BC. The Court Architect's subordinates were responsible for gathering timber for carpenters and stone for masons. Although his office existed at the establishment of Eastern Han, it was abolished in 57 AD and his duties were transferred to an Internuncio in the Ministry of the Household. However, the post was reinstated in 76 AD with the original salary-rank, yet many of his subordinates remained abolished. Since most buildings were constructed from wood, with ceramic roof tiles, a large workforce was needed to maintain buildings that fell into disrepair. The restoration of the Imperial University during Emperor Shun's (r. 125–144 AD) reign required 100,000 laborers to work for a year under the supervision of the Court Architect. #### Colonel Director of Retainers The Colonel Director of Retainers (Sili xiaowei 司隸校尉), also known as Colonel of Censure and Colonel Director of Convict-Laborers, was originally called the Director of Retainers (Sili 司隸). His task was to supervise 1,200 convicts in their construction of roads and canals. In 91 BC, an unsuccessful five-day rebellion in Chang'an was instigated by Crown Prince Liu Ju (d. 91 BC) and his mother Empress Wei Zifu (d. 91 BC), who had been accused of witchcraft and black magic. For this event, Emperor Wu prefixed "colonel" to the Director of Retainers' title in 89 BC, promoting him to the salary-rank 2,000-dan, and granted him the Staff of Authority, allowing him to arrest and punish those allegedly practicing witchcraft. Following the crisis, the Colonel Director of Retainers retained his privileged possession of the Staff of Authority and was granted the same investigative and censorial powers as the Chancellor and Imperial Counselor over officialdom. He routinely inspected the conduct of officials in the capital region and seven nearby commanderies. His investigative powers matched those of a provincial Inspector, although his Staff of Authority made him more powerful than the latter. The Colonel Director of Retainers was a personal servant of the emperor, answering only to him, allowing the emperor to greatly enhance his control over the bureaucracy. However, the Staff of Authority was removed from the Colonel in 45 BC, limiting his powers to inspection, investigation, and impeachment and he was distinguished from a provincial Inspector only by a higher salary-rank. The office of Colonel Director of Retainers was abolished in 9 BC, and reinstated once more as the Director of Retainers in 7 BC. He was now a subordinate of the new Excellency of Works and supervised convicts in public works projects, like his early Western Han counterpart. In Eastern Han, the Colonel Director of Retainers was reappointed without the Staff of Authority, with powers to inspect the capital region, but his salary-rank was reduced from 2000–dan to Equivalent to 2000–dan. #### Superintendent of Waterways and Parks The Superintendent of Waterways and Parks (Shuiheng duwei 水衡都尉) was also known as the Chief Commandant of Waterways and Parks, and was once a subordinate of the Minister Steward until 115 BC, when he, and other former subordinates of that ministry, became independent officers. His salary-rank was equivalent to 2000–dan. The Superintendent of Waterways and Parks managed a large imperial hunting park located outside Chang'an, including its palaces, rest stops, granaries, and cultivated patches of fruit and vegetable gardens, which, along with game meat, provided food for the emperor's household. He also collected taxes from commoners using the park's grounds and transmitted these funds to the Minister Steward, who managed the emperor's finances. One of the Superintendent's subordinates supervised convicted criminals in their care of the park's hunting dogs. In 115 BC the central government's mint was transferred from the Minister Steward's ministry to the park managed by the Superintendent of Waterways and Parks. In 113 BC the central government closed all commandery-level mints; private minting had previously been outlawed in 144 BC. The Superintendent's imperial mint in the park outside Chang'an had the sole right to issue coinage throughout the empire. However, Emperor Guangwu of Han (r. 25–57 AD) abolished the Superintendent of Waterways and Parks and revived his post annually during autumn to conduct a ritual sacrifice. The imperial mint became the responsibility of the Minister of Finance and the imperial park located outside Eastern-Han Luoyang was administered by a prefect. #### Director of Dependent States The Director of Dependent States (Dian shuguo 典屬國), whose salary-rank was 2,000-dan, was responsible for embassies to foreign countries and nomadic peoples along Han's borders and the annual exchange of hostages—usually foreign princes—submitted to the Han court. Dependent States (Shuguo 屬國) were first established in 121 BC and composed mostly non-Han-Chinese nomadic tribes and confederations who surrendered after negotiation or armed conflict and accepted Han suzerainty. They served as a buffer between Han territory and hostile tribes, such as the Xiongnu, and as a means to quell tribes in the Ordos Desert. The Han court appointed a Commandant (Duwei 都尉), also known as Chief Commandant, ranked Equivalent to 2,000-dan, to govern the non-Han-Chinese populations of each Dependent State. The Director of Dependent States' title was abolished in 28 BC; his duties and his subordinates, the Commandants, became the responsibilities of the Minister Herald. The Protectorate of the Western Regions, established in 60 BC, which conducted foreign affairs with the oasis city-states in the Tarim Basin of Central Asia, was not the responsibility of the Director of Dependent States. ## Local government The Han Empire was divided by hierarchical political divisions in the following descending order: provinces (zhou), commanderies (jun), and counties (xian). This model of local government was adopted from the previous government structure of the Qin dynasty. ### Provincial authorities A Han province consisted of a group of commanderies, the administrations of which were subject to scrutiny and inspection by centrally appointed officials. These were the Inspectors (Cishi 刺史), also known as the Circuit Inspector, who were first appointed in 106 BC at a salary-rank of 600-dan. In Western Han they were supervised by the Palace Assistant Imperial Clerk and were subordinates of the Imperial Counselor. Aside from the province-sized capital region, known as Sili Province, which was entrusted to the Colonel Director of Retainers from 89–9 BC, there were thirteen provinces during Western Han. Eventually, the title of Inspector was changed to Governor (Mu 牧; literally "Shepherd"), a post with a considerably higher salary-rank of 2,000-dan. From 5–1 BC, this post was reverted to Inspector, but was once again re-titled Governor, who was now responsible to all Three Excellencies. During early Eastern Han, the loss of Han's control over the Ordos Desert prompted the Han court to reduce the provinces to twelve—excluding the capital region—in 35 AD. In that year, the Inspectors-cum-Governors were still appointed by the central government, but their staffs were recruited from local administrations where they were transferred. By 42 AD, the title Governor once more became Inspector, who remained the head of provincial authorities until 188 AD. In 188 AD, at the urging of the official Liu Yan, Emperor Ling reinstated the office of Governor, yet some of the provinces were still administered by Inspectors; this arrangement remained in place until the end of the Han dynasty in 220 AD. A key difference between the roles was that an Inspector had no executive powers and only an advisory role, whereas a Governor could execute decisions on his own behalf. There were exceptions to this rule. If banditry or rebellion simultaneously arose in several commanderies under his jurisdiction at once, the Inspector was authorized to raise troops throughout all commanderies under his watch and lead this united force as commander to quell the disruption. Both the Inspector and Governor were responsible for inspecting commandery-level Administrators and their staffs, as well as the semi-autonomous kingdoms and their staffs. They evaluated officials on criteria of competence, honesty, obedience to the imperial court, adherence to the law, their treatment of convicts, and any signs of extortion, nepotism, or factionalism. These reports were submitted to the Palace Assistant Imperial Clerk and Imperial Counselor during Western Han, but by Eastern Han these reports were submitted to each of the Three Excellencies. The reports were then used to promote, demote, dismiss, or prosecute local officials. ### Commandery administration There were thirteen commanderies, including the capital region, and ten kingdoms at the beginning of Western Han. Many kingdoms were reduced in size and the empire's territory expanded through conquest. By 2 AD there were eighty-three commanderies and twenty kingdoms containing an aggregate total of approximately 58 million people according to the census. A commandery consisted of a group of counties and was governed by an Administrator (Taishou 太守), also known as Grand Administrator, who was appointed by the central government and earned a 2,000-dan salary-rank. The Administrator was the civil and military leader of the commandery. He was not allowed to govern over his native commandery. An Administrator was assisted by one or several Commandants (Duwei 都尉) also known as Chief Commandant, who handled all local military affairs such as raising militias, suppressing bandit groups, and building beacon towers. The Commandants' salary-rank was Equivalent to 2,000-dan. After 30 AD, all Commandants who were not located in distant frontier commanderies were abolished, yet if the commandery was located along borders where raids and armed incursions by hostile nomadic groups were frequent, he was still appointed. A Commandant in an interior commandery could only be appointed temporarily to deal with crises as they arose. Each commandery also had secretaries, a treasurer, and an Official in Charge of Accounts who submitted annual reports to the imperial court on the Administrator's performance. Many of the Administrators' duties were seasonal, such as inspections of counties every spring to check on agriculture and maintain roads, bridges, dikes and other public works. In the fall he sent subordinates into the counties to report whether local criminal lawsuits had been conducted fairly. He was responsible for recommending worthy nominees, known as Filial and Incorrupt, to the capital at the end each year during winter; the nominees would then be considered for an appointment to a central or local government office. This followed a system of quotas for each of the commanderies that was first established during Emperor Wu's reign, when two Filial and Incorrupt men from each commandery were sent to the capital. This was changed in 92 AD to one man for every 200,000 households in a commandery. After the Commandants of interior commanderies were abolished, the Administrators assumed their duties, yet they were still not allowed to raise militias, mobilize troops, or send troops outside their commandery without permission from the central government. ### County administration The nationwide census conducted in 2 AD, listed 1,587 counties. The Han county was the smallest political division containing a centrally appointed official. In larger counties of about 10,000 households he was known as the Prefect (Ling 令); in smaller counties he was known as the Chief (Zhang 長). Depending on the size of the county, the Prefect's salary-rank was 600-dan or 1,000-dan, while a Chief was ranked at 300-dan or 500-dan. Due to their judicial role, historian Rafe de Crespigny does not differentiate between Prefects and Chiefs, referring to both as magistrate. The county's head civil servants, usually respected scholars or elders in their local communities, were appointed directly by the Magistrate. A county Magistrate was in charge of maintaining law and order, storing grain in case of famine, registering the populace for taxation, mobilizing conscripted commoners for corvée labor projects, supervising public works, renovating schools, and performing rituals. They were also given the duty to act as judge for all lawsuits brought to the county court. The judicial jurisdictions of the commandery Administrator and county Magistrate overlapped, so it was generally agreed that whoever arrested a criminal first would try him or her. Under Emperor Wu, commanderies and kingdoms operated public schools, and although counties could operate their own public schools, not all of them did. The county was further divided into districts, each consisting of at least several hamlets grouped together; typically a community of approximately one hundred families. A chief of police was assigned to each district by the county Magistrate. A county Magistrate heavily relied on the cooperation of local elders and leaders at the district level; these carried out much of the day-to-day affairs of arbitrating disputes in their communities, collecting taxes, and fighting crime. ### Kingdoms, marquisates, and fiefs of princesses A Han kingdom was much like a commandery in size and administration, except it was officially, and after 145 BC, nominally, the fief of a relative to the emperor, including brothers, uncles, nephews, and sons—excluding the heir apparent. The policy of awarding kingdoms only to imperial relatives was gradually adopted by the founder Emperor Gaozu of Han (r. 202–195 BC), as many of the early kings were non-relatives who were leading officers during the Chu-Han contention (206–202 BC). Kingdoms were usually inherited by the king's eldest son born to his queen. The number of kingdoms fluctuated between Western and Eastern Han, but there were never fewer than eight nor greater than twenty-five. In the early Western Han, the kingdoms accounted for approximately two-thirds of the empire. The imperial court ruled over the commanderies located in the western third of the empire, while kings ruled their fiefs with little or no central government intervention. The administrative staffs of each kingdom paralleled the model of central government, as each kingdom had a Grand Tutor (ranked 2000–dan), Chancellor (2,000-dan), and Imperial Secretary (2,000-dan). No kingdom was allowed to have a Grand Commandant, since they were not allowed to initiate war campaigns on their own behalf. Although the kingdoms' Chancellors were appointed by the imperial court, the king had the right to appoint all other officials in his fief. The power of the kings declined after the Rebellion of the Seven States in 154 BC; the number of kingdoms and their sizes were reduced. An imperial edict in 145 BC removed the kings' rights to appoint officials above the salary-rank of 400-dan, and all officials ranked higher than this were appointed directly by the central government. Excluding the kingdom-level Minister Coachman, the kingdoms' Nine Ministers and Imperial Counselors were abolished. The Chancellor, now the equivalent of a commandery Administrator, was retained, although he was still appointed by the central government. After these reforms, the kings were no longer administrative heads and merely took a portion of the taxes collected by the government in their kingdoms as personal income. Charles Hucker notes that after this transformation of kingdoms and marquessates into virtual commanderies and counties, respectively, a "... fully centralized government was achieved" for the first time since the Qin dynasty. Han society below the level of kings was divided into twenty ranks, which awarded certain privileges such as exemption from certain laws, the nineteenth being a marquess and the twentieth being a full marquess—the difference being the former was only given a pension while the latter was given a marquessate (houguo 侯國)—typically the size of a county. If the kings' sons were grandsons of the emperor, they were made full marquesses; if not, they were considered commoners. However, this rule was changed in 127 BC so that all the kings' sons were made full marquesses. It is unknown whether early Western-Han marquessates enjoyed the same level of autonomy as early Western-Han kingdoms; by 145 BC, all marquessates' staff were appointed by the central government. The marquess had no administrative role over his marquessate; he merely collected a portion of the tax revenues. His Chancellor was the equivalent of a county Prefect. The emperor's sisters and daughters were made either senior princesses, who shared the same rank as kings, or princesses, who shared the same rank as full marquesses; a princess's fief was typically the size of a county. The husband of a princess was ranked as a marquess. The daughters of kings were also princesses, but their fiefs were typically the smaller size of county districts, and could not be inherited by sons. Unlike the fiefs of kings and marquesses, the staffs of the princesses' fiefs answered directly to one of the Nine Ministers: the Minister of the Imperial Clan. ## Military ### Conscripted soldiers and militias Upon reaching the age of twenty-three, male commoners became eligible for conscription into the armed forces (zhengzu 正卒) for one year of training and one year of service; the year of service could be served until the age of fifty-six. Conscripts were trained, and would serve in one of three branches of the military: infantry, cavalry, or naval marine. The year of service could take the form of soldiering at frontier garrisons protecting the borders against nomadic enemies, serving as guards in the courts of kings or as guards under the Minister of the Guards in the capital. By 155 BC, the minimum age for conscription was lowered to twenty. During Emperor Zhao of Han's (r. 87–74 BC) reign, the minimum age was raised to twenty-three, but after his reign it was once again reduced to twenty. Although this system of conscription survived into Eastern Han, conscription could be avoided upon payment of a commutable tax. The government also exempted those who presented authorities with a slave, a horse, or grain. In the system of twenty ranks bestowed on commoners and nobles alike, those of the ninth rank and above were exempt from military service. To compensate for the loss of manpower, the Eastern Han government favored the recruitment of a largely volunteer army. Many other soldiers in Eastern Han were convicted criminals who commuted their sentences by joining the army. Mercenaries eventually comprised much of the capital guard, while foreign nomadic tribes were often employed to guard the frontiers. After their year of active service, Western Han-era soldiers were demobilized and sent home, where they were obligated to join the local militia that convened every eighth month of the year. This obligation was intended to curb local and regional warlordism that nonetheless became prevalent by the end of Han. Militias dismissed members who reached the age of fifty-six. By Eastern Han, the obligation upon retired soldiers to join local militias was removed. ### Standing army and army reserves The non-professional conscripted soldiers who served a one-year term under the Minister of the Guards belonged to the Southern Army (Nanjun 南軍). Non-conscripted, professional soldiers belonged to a standing army known as the Northern Army (Beijun 北軍). The Northern Army's main purpose was to defend the capital, but it was sometimes required to repel foreign invasions. The Northern Army is first mentioned in Han records in about 180 BC, yet little is known of its command structure at that time. Several decades later, Emperor Wu reformed the Northern Army's officer corps so that its command was shared by five Colonels (Xiaowei 校尉) who each ranked 2,000-dan and commanded a regiment. Emperor Wu also appointed three other Colonels, ranked 2,000-dan, whose forces were considered an extension of the Northern Army yet were stationed far outside the capital at strategic passes. Each of the eight Colonels was assisted by a Major (Sima 司馬) who was ranked at 1,000-dan. Professional soldiers could also be found in agricultural garrisons established in the Western Regions, such as those led by the Wu and Ji Colonels (Wuji xiaowei 戊己校尉), who were ranked Equivalent to 600-dan and were based at the Turpan oasis. During Eastern Han, the conscripted army largely gave way to a volunteer army. The conscripted army under the Minister of the Guards was no longer referred to as the Southern Army. The Northern Army was retained, although it was reformed so that there were five Colonels instead of eight. The Eastern Han-era Colonels of the Northern Army were also demoted to the rank of Equivalent to 2,000-dan. According to Eastern Han-era sources, the Northern Army was a relatively small fighting force of between 3,500 and 4,200 professional soldiers, each regiment consisting of approximately 750 soldiers and 150 junior officers. To aid this force, Emperor Guangwu established a 1,000-soldier unit of army reserves in Liyang County along the Yellow River in 43 AD, while two other reserve units were created in 110 AD; these were headed by a Commandant (the same title used for the commandery-level military officer). The main purpose of these reserve units was to position Han troops at strategic passes to guard the lower Wei River against Xiongnu, Wuhuan, and Tibetan tribes. ### Wartime militia and officers During peacetime and war, the command structure of the Northern Army remained the same. However, during times of great conflict and crisis, the raising of large militias required the appointment of many new officers with various titles, which were often bestowed as honorary titles to officials during times of peace. Large divisions were led by a General (Jiangjun 將軍) whose rank depended on status; divisions were divided into a number of regiments commanded by a Colonel, and sometimes by a Major. Regiments were divided into companies and led by Captains, who ranked Equivalent to 2,000-dan, while companies were further divided into platoons. ## See also - Comparative studies of the Roman and Han empires - Translation of Han dynasty titles

Hydrus

Constellation in the southern celestial hemisphere

Hydrus /ˈhaɪdrəs/ is a small constellation in the deep southern sky. It was one of twelve constellations created by Petrus Plancius from the observations of Pieter Dirkszoon Keyser and Frederick de Houtman and it first appeared on a 35-cm (14 in) diameter celestial globe published in late 1597 (or early 1598) in Amsterdam by Plancius and Jodocus Hondius. The first depiction of this constellation in a celestial atlas was in Johann Bayer's Uranometria of 1603. The French explorer and astronomer Nicolas Louis de Lacaille charted the brighter stars and gave their Bayer designations in 1756. Its name means "male water snake", as opposed to Hydra, a much larger constellation that represents a female water snake. It remains below the horizon for most Northern Hemisphere observers. The brightest star is the 2.8-magnitude Beta Hydri, also the closest reasonably bright star to the south celestial pole. Pulsating between magnitude 3.26 and 3.33, Gamma Hydri is a variable red giant 60 times the diameter of the Sun. Lying near it is VW Hydri, one of the brightest dwarf novae in the heavens. Four star systems in Hydrus have been found to have exoplanets to date, including HD 10180, which could bear up to nine planetary companions. ## History Hydrus was one of the twelve constellations established by the Dutch astronomer Petrus Plancius from the observations of the southern sky by the Dutch explorers Pieter Dirkszoon Keyser and Frederick de Houtman, who had sailed on the first Dutch trading expedition, known as the Eerste Schipvaart, to the East Indies. It first appeared on a 35-cm (14 in) diameter celestial globe published in late 1597 (or early 1598) in Amsterdam by Plancius with Jodocus Hondius. The first depiction of this constellation in a celestial atlas was in the German cartographer Johann Bayer's Uranometria of 1603. De Houtman included it in his southern star catalogue the same year under the Dutch name De Waterslang, "The Water Snake", it representing a type of snake encountered on the expedition rather than a mythical creature. The French explorer and astronomer Nicolas Louis de Lacaille called it l’Hydre Mâle on the 1756 version of his planisphere of the southern skies, distinguishing it from the feminine Hydra. The French name was retained by Jean Fortin in 1776 for his Atlas Céleste, while Lacaille Latinised the name to Hydrus for his revised Coelum Australe Stelliferum in 1763. ## Characteristics Irregular in shape, Hydrus is bordered by Mensa to the southeast, Eridanus to the east, Horologium and Reticulum to the northeast, Phoenix to the north, Tucana to the northwest and west, and Octans to the south; Lacaille had shortened Hydrus' tail to make space for this last constellation he had drawn up. Covering 243 square degrees and 0.589% of the night sky, it ranks 61st of the 88 constellations in size. The three-letter abbreviation for the constellation, as adopted by the International Astronomical Union in 1922, is "Hyi". The official constellation boundaries, as set by Belgian astronomer Eugène Delporte in 1930, are defined by a polygon of 12 segments. In the equatorial coordinate system, the right ascension coordinates of these borders lie between and , while the declination coordinates are between −57.85° and −82.06°. As one of the deep southern constellations, it remains below the horizon at latitudes north of the 30th parallel in the Northern Hemisphere, and is circumpolar at latitudes south of the 50th parallel in the Southern Hemisphere. Herman Melville mentions it and Argo Navis in Moby Dick "beneath effulgent Antarctic Skies", highlighting his knowledge of the southern constellations from whaling voyages. A line drawn between the long axis of the Southern Cross to Beta Hydri and then extended 4.5 times will mark a point due south. Hydrus culminates at midnight around 26 October. ## Features ### Stars Keyzer and de Houtman assigned fifteen stars to the constellation in their Malay and Madagascan vocabulary, with a star that would be later designated as Alpha Hydri marking the head, Gamma the chest and a number of stars that were later allocated to Tucana, Reticulum, Mensa and Horologium marking the body and tail. Lacaille charted and designated 20 stars with the Bayer designations Alpha through to Tau in 1756. Of these, he used the designations Eta, Pi and Tau twice each, for three sets of two stars close together, and omitted Omicron and Xi. He assigned Rho to a star that subsequent astronomers were unable to find. Beta Hydri, the brightest star in Hydrus, is a yellow star of apparent magnitude 2.8, lying 24 light-years from Earth. It has about 104% of the mass of the Sun and 181% of the Sun's radius, with more than three times the Sun's luminosity. The spectrum of this star matches a stellar classification of G2 IV, with the luminosity class of 'IV' indicating this is a subgiant star. As such, it is a slightly more evolved star than the Sun, with the supply of hydrogen fuel at its core becoming exhausted. It is the nearest subgiant star to the Sun and one of the oldest stars in the solar neighbourhood. Thought to be between 6.4 and 7.1 billion years old, this star bears some resemblance to what the Sun may look like in the far distant future, making it an object of interest to astronomers. It is also the closest bright star to the south celestial pole. Located at the northern edge of the constellation and just southwest of Achernar is Alpha Hydri, a white sub-giant star of magnitude 2.9, situated 72 light-years from Earth. Of spectral type F0IV, it is beginning to cool and enlarge as it uses up its supply of hydrogen. It is twice as massive and 3.3 times as wide as the Sun and 26 times more luminous. A line drawn between Alpha Hydri and Beta Centauri is bisected by the south celestial pole. In the southeastern corner of the constellation is Gamma Hydri, a red giant of spectral type M2III located 214 light-years from Earth. It is a semi-regular variable star, pulsating between magnitudes 3.26 and 3.33. Observations over five years were not able to establish its periodicity. It is around 1.5 to 2 times as massive as the Sun, and has expanded to about 60 times the Sun's diameter. It shines with about 655 times the luminosity of the Sun. Located 3° northeast of Gamma is the VW Hydri, a dwarf nova of the SU Ursae Majoris type. It is a close binary system that consists of a white dwarf and another star, the former drawing off matter from the latter into a bright accretion disk. These systems are characterised by frequent eruptions and less frequent supereruptions. The former are smooth, while the latter exhibit short "superhumps" of heightened activity. One of the brightest dwarf novae in the sky, it has a baseline magnitude of 14.4 and can brighten to magnitude 8.4 during peak activity. BL Hydri is another close binary system composed of a low-mass star and a strongly magnetic white dwarf. Known as a polar or AM Herculis variable, these produce polarized optical and infrared emissions and intense soft and hard X-ray emissions to the frequency of the white dwarf's rotation period—in this case 113.6 minutes. There are two notable optical double stars in Hydrus. Pi Hydri, composed of Pi¹ Hydri and Pi² Hydri, is divisible in binoculars. Around 476 light-years distant, Pi¹ is a red giant of spectral type M1III that varies between magnitudes 5.52 and 5.58. Pi² is an orange giant of spectral type K2III and shining with a magnitude of 5.7, around 488 light-years from Earth. Eta Hydri is the other optical double, composed of Eta¹ and Eta². Eta¹ is a blue-white main sequence star of spectral type B9V that was suspected of being variable, and is located just over 700 light-years away. Eta² has a magnitude of 4.7 and is a yellow giant star of spectral type G8.5III around 218 light-years distant, which has evolved off the main sequence and is expanding and cooling on its way to becoming a red giant. Calculations of its mass indicate it was most likely a white A-type main sequence star for most of its existence, around twice the mass of the Sun. A planet, Eta2 Hydri b, greater than 6.5 times the mass of Jupiter was discovered in 2005, orbiting around Eta² every 711 days at a distance of 1.93 astronomical units (AU). Three other systems have been found to have planets, most notably the Sun-like star HD 10180, which has seven planets, plus possibly an additional two for a total of nine—as of 2012 more than any other system to date, including the Solar System. Lying around 127 light-years (39 parsecs) from the Earth, it has an apparent magnitude of 7.33. GJ 3021 is a solar twin—a star very like the Sun—around 57 light-years distant with a spectral type G8V and magnitude of 6.7. It has a Jovian planet companion (GJ 3021 b). Orbiting about 0.5 AU from its star, it has a minimum mass 3.37 times that of Jupiter and a period of around 133 days. The system is a complex one as the faint star GJ 3021B orbits at a distance of 68 AU; it is a red dwarf of spectral type M4V. HD 20003 is a star of magnitude 8.37. It is a yellow main sequence star of spectral type G8V a little cooler and smaller than the Sun around 143 light-years away. It has two planets that are around 12 and 13.5 times as massive as the Earth with periods of just under 12 and 34 days respectively. ### Deep-sky objects Hydrus contains only faint deep-sky objects. IC 1717 was a deep-sky object discovered by the Danish astronomer John Louis Emil Dreyer in the late 19th century. The object at the coordinate Dreyer observed is no longer there, and is now a mystery. It was very likely to have been a faint comet. PGC 6240, known as the White Rose Galaxy, is a giant spiral galaxy surrounded by shells resembling rose petals, located around 345 million light years from the Solar System. Unusually, it has cohorts of globular clusters of three distinct ages suggesting bouts of post-starburst formation following a merger with another galaxy. The constellation also contains a spiral galaxy, NGC 1511, which lies edge on to observers on Earth and is readily viewed in amateur telescopes. Located mostly in Dorado, the Large Magellanic Cloud extends into Hydrus. The globular cluster NGC 1466 is an outlying component of the galaxy, and contains many RR Lyrae-type variable stars. It has a magnitude of 11.59 and is thought to be over 12 billion years old. Two stars, HD 24188 of magnitude 6.3 and HD 24115 of magnitude 9.0, lie nearby in its foreground. NGC 602 is composed of an emission nebula and a young, bright open cluster of stars that is an outlying component on the eastern edge of the Small Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy to the Milky Way. Most of the cloud is located in the neighbouring constellation Tucana. ## See also - Hydrus (Chinese astronomy)

John Whittle

Australian recipient of the VC (1882–1946)

John Woods Whittle, VC, DCM (3 August 1882 – 2 March 1946) was an Australian recipient of the Victoria Cross, the highest decoration for gallantry "in the face of the enemy" that can be awarded to members of the British and British Commonwealth armed forces. Whittle was serving as a sergeant in the First World War when he was decorated with the Victoria Cross following two separate actions against German forces during their retreat to the Hindenburg Line in 1917. In the latter action, he attacked a machine gun crew, killing the group and seizing the gun. Born in Tasmania, Whittle completed twelve months active service during the Second Boer War, before returning to Australia and enlisting in the Royal Navy, where he served for five years as a stoker. Re-enlisting in the army, he was posted to the Army Service Corps, artillery, and Tasmanian Rifle Regiment before the outbreak of the First World War. Transferring to the Australian Imperial Force in 1915, Whittle joined the 12th Battalion in Egypt and embarked for the Western Front the following year. During an attack on the village of La Barque, Whittle rushed a German trench and forced the men from the position; he was awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal as a result. Wounded three times during the war, Whittle was the subject of two courts-martial for unruly behaviour. In October 1918, he returned to Australia at the invitation of the Prime Minister of Australia to assist in recruitment. Discharged from the military in December 1918, he later moved to Sydney. In 1934, Whittle was presented with a Certificate of Merit after saving a drowning boy. He died in 1946, aged 63. ## Early life Whittle was born on 2 August 1882 at Huon Island, Tasmania, to Henry Whittle, a labourer, and his wife Catherine (née Sullivan). He grew up in Hobart, and was living there when he enlisted as a private in the 4th Tasmanian (2nd Imperial Bushman) Contingent during 1899, for service in the Second Boer War. The unit embarked for South Africa on 27 March 1901, and arrived four weeks later. The contingent spent the following twelve months on active duty, which included action in the Cape Colony, before returning to Australia on 25 June 1902. Soon after his return to Australia, Whittle enlisted in the Royal Navy as a stoker. He spent five years as a sailor, during which time he was attached to several ships on the Australia Station, including HMS Challenger and . Discharged from the navy in 1907, Whittle joined the Australian Army and was posted to the Army Service Corps; he was to serve in this position for three and a half years. During this time, Whittle married Emily Margaret Roland in a Catholic ceremony at the archbishop's house, Hobart, on 23 July 1909. Following his marriage, Whittle transferred briefly to the artillery, serving with the 31st Battery, Australian Field Artillery. He was then posted to the Tasmanian Rifle Regiment, and remained with this unit until the outbreak of the First World War. ## First World War ### Early war service On 6 August 1915, Whittle transferred to the Australian Imperial Force to see active service overseas during the war. Allotted as a reinforcement to the 26th Battalion as a private, he embarked from Melbourne on 27 October aboard HMAT Ulysses bound for Egypt. Appointed acting corporal soon after arrival, he was reallocated to the 12th Battalion with the rank of private on 1 March 1916, following a period of divisional reorganisation and expansion to the Australian forces which were now stationed in Egypt. Whittle was promoted to the substantive rank of corporal two weeks later. Embarking for the Western Front, the 12th Battalion joined the British Expeditionary Force upon arrival in France on 7 April 1916. Eight days later, Whittle was promoted to lance sergeant. Posted to the Fleurbaix sector of France, the 12th Battalion was engaged in minor operations until July. During this time, Whittle was wounded on 18 June, suffering a gunshot wound to his right arm. Initially admitted to the 3rd Field Ambulance, the injury necessitated treatment in England and Whittle was transferred to the 1st Auxiliary Hospital, Harefield. He rejoined the 12th Battalion on 16 September following recuperation. Following its involvement at Pozières from July to September 1916, the 12th Battalion moved to the Ypres sector in Belgium, where Whittle was promoted to sergeant on 14 October. In late November, Whittle was admitted to hospital suffering from an illness; on 18 December, he rejoined his unit, which had returned to action on the Somme. During the German retreat to the Hindenburg Line, Whittle took part in the 12th Battalion's attack on the villages of La Barque and Ligny-Thilloy as a member of Captain James Newland's A Company on 26–27 February 1917. At Bark Trench, a position on the north side of the centre of La Barque, the company encountered a German strongpoint and Newland was wounded. Rallying his men, Whittle rushed the post and started bombing the occupants with grenades. He then chased the Germans as they began to retreat down the trench line, before they were forced from the position. For his efforts during the assault, Whittle was awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal, the recommendation of which cited his "... conspicuous gallantry in the presence of the enemy". The announcement of the award was published in a supplement to the London Gazette on 26 April 1917. ### Victoria Cross By early April 1917, three German-held outpost villages remained between the area to the south of the I Anzac Corps position and the Hindenburg Line. An attack to capture the villages of Boursies, Demicourt and Hermies by the 1st Australian Division was formulated to commence on 9 April, the day the British offensive opened at Arras. For his gallantry in two separate actions during this engagement, Whittle was awarded the Victoria Cross. On 8 April, the 12th Battalion was tasked with the capture of the village of Boursies. The attack was to act as a feint to mislead the German forces on the direction from which Hermies was to be assaulted. Whittle had been placed in command of the left platoon in Newland's A Company for the attack, which commenced at 03:00. Advancing, the company was subjected to heavy machine gun fire from a derelict mill approximately 400 metres (440 yd) short of the village and began to suffer heavy casualties. Gathering a party of men, Newland led a bombing attack which was able to dislodge the Germans from the position and secure the area. Continuing their advance, the company was able to reach its objectives, where Whittle was placed in command of a post just beyond the mill. Throughout the day, the Australians came under heavy shellfire from the Germans. At 22:00, the German forces launched a severe counter-attack against the mill under the cover of an intense barrage of artillery and bombs. Advancing down the main road, they managed to enter the trench Whittle was holding. Gathering all available men, Whittle charged the Germans and was able to restabilise the position. Newland arrived soon after, and the two men worked together until the position was re-established. The 12th Battalion was relieved on 10 April by the 11th Battalion, having succeeded in capturing Boursies at the cost of 240 casualties, of which 70 were killed or missing. Following a four-day reprieve away from the frontline, the 12th Battalion relieved the 9th Battalion at Lagnicourt on 14 April. Around dawn the following day, the Germans launched a fierce counter-attack against the 1st Australian Division's line. Breaking through the Australian line, the Germans forced back the 12th Battalion's D Company, which was to the left of Newland's A Company. Soon surrounded and under attack on three sides, Newland withdrew the company to a sunken road which had been held by Captain Percy Cherry during the capture of the village three weeks earlier, and lined the depleted company out in a defensive position on both banks. Establishing his platoon in position, Whittle noticed a group of Germans moving a machine gun into position to enfilade the road. As the gunners began to set up the weapon, Whittle, under heavy rifle fire, jumped from the road and single-handedly rushed the crew. Using his bombs, he succeeded in killing the entire group before collecting the gun and taking it back to A Company's position. As reinforcements from the 9th Battalion began to arrive, Newland was able to repulse a third attack by the Germans. Reorganising the 9th and 12th Battalions, a combined counter-attack was able to be launched and the line recaptured by approximately 11:00. The 12th Battalion had suffered 125 casualties during the engagement, including 66 killed or missing. Whittle and Newland were both subsequently awarded a Victoria Cross for their actions that day; the pair were the only two permanent members of the Australian military to receive the decoration during the war. The full citation for Whittle's Victoria Cross appeared in a supplement to the London Gazette on 8 June 1917, reading: > War Office, 8th June, 1917. > > His Majesty the KING has been graciously pleased to approve of the award of the Victoria Cross to the undermentioned Officers, Non-commissioned Officers and Men: — > > No. 2902 Sjt. John Woods Whittle, Inf. Bn., Aus. Imp. Force. > > For conspicuous bravery and devotion to duty on two occasions. > > When in command of a platoon the enemy, under cover of an intense artillery barrage, attacked the small trench he was holding. Owing to weight of numbers the enemy succeeded in entering the trench, and it was owing to Sjt. Whittle personally collecting all available men and charging the enemy that the position was regained. > > On a second occasion when the enemy broke through the left of our line Sjt. Whittle's own splendid example was the means of keeping the men well in hand. His platoon were suffering heavy casualties and the enemy endeavoured to bring up a machine gun to enfilade the position. Grasping the situation he rushed alone across the fire-swept ground and attacked the hostile gun crew with bombs before the gun could be got into action. > > He succeeded in killing the whole crew and in bringing back the machine gun to our position. ### Later war service In late April 1917, Whittle spent three days in a field hospital receiving treatment for psoriasis, before embarking for England on attachment to a training battalion. Joining the unit on 6 May, he once again underwent an eight-day furlough in a military hospital later in the month. During this time, Whittle attended an investiture ceremony in the forecourt of Buckingham Palace on 21 July, where he was decorated by King George V with his Victoria Cross and Distinguished Conduct Medal. Re-embarking for France on 25 August, Whittle rejoined the 12th Battalion which had subsequently moved to Belgium in preparation for another offensive at Ypres. On 1 October, he was the subject of a General Court Martial in the field, charged with two offences committed on 27 September: 1. Drunkenness while on active service; 2. Conduct to the prejudice of good order and Military Discipline while on active service, in that when the commanding officer was addressing a parade he called out words to the effect of: "But we are good soldiers though". He was found guilty of both offences, and sentenced to be reduced to the rank of corporal. Following four days detention during the trial, Whittle re-joined the 12th Battalion on 8 October. The 12th Battalion spent the next two months engaged in minor operations in Belgium, before once again transferring to the trenches in France during December. During this time, Whittle was re-promoted to the rank of sergeant. With the commencement of the German spring offensive of 1918, the 12th Battalion assisted in repulsing the assault in the months of March and April. While engaged in this operation, Whittle was wounded on 19 March and admitted to a field hospital suffering shrapnel wounds to his right hand. Recovering from the wound, he returned to the 12th Battalion in April. Later that month, Whittle was charged with conduct to the prejudice of good order and Military Discipline a second time for mutilating his pay book; he was reprimanded by the battalion's commanding officer as a result. In June 1918, Whittle was posted to the 2nd Army Central School for a five-week stint. Returning to the 12th Battalion in mid-July, Whittle was wounded in action for the third time; suffering shrapnel wounds to his right elbow, he was admitted to the 3rd Australian Field Ambulance on 25 July. Evacuated to England, he was admitted to the Central Military Hospital, Eastbourne, before transferring to the 3rd Australian Auxiliary Hospital, Dartford, two weeks later. During this time, Billy Hughes, as Prime Minister of Australia, invited several of Australia's Victoria Cross recipients of the war to return to Australia and assist in a recruiting drive; Whittle was among a group of ten who accepted the offer. The party embarked aboard HMAT Medic on 24 August, bound for Melbourne. Arriving seven weeks later, Whittle returned to Tasmania and assisted with recruiting on the island during the last few weeks of the war. Following the Armistice, he was discharged from the Australian Imperial Force on 15 December 1918. ## Later life After his discharge from the Australian Imperial Force, Whittle re-settled in Hobart with his family. He briefly re-enlisted in the 40th Battalion during 1921, before moving to Sydney, where he gained employment as an inspector on the staff of an insurance company. Whittle later worked in several other jobs, including a period of service with Tooth's Brewery in Sydney. On 11 November 1929, he attended the New South Wales Dinner for recipients of the Victoria Cross in Sydney, before briefly re-enlisting in the Australian Army once again the following year. On 7 February 1934, Whittle was walking through University Park when he was accosted by a small boy who said that his younger brother had fallen into the lake. Rushing to the area, Whittle dived into the weed-choked lake and began searching for the boy. Finding him unconscious, Whittle brought the boy to the bank and applied artificial respiration for approximately half an hour; the child later came around and was taken to hospital. Whittle left the scene and proceeded home in a taxi without leaving his name, but his identity was subsequently discovered and he was presented with a Certificate of Merit by the Royal Life Saving Society. Whittle himself was ill for a fortnight due to swallowing some of the foul water in the ornamental lake. During the Second World War, Whittle's son, Ivan Ernest, served as a private in the 2/33rd Australian Infantry Battalion. He was killed on 7 September 1943 when a B-24 Liberator bomber crashed into his battalion's marshalling yard at Port Moresby, New Guinea. Just over two years later, and aged 63, John Whittle died of a cerebral haemorrhage at his home in Glebe on 2 March 1946. Survived by his wife, second son and three daughters, he was buried in Rookwood Cemetery.

Katamari Damacy

2004 video game

(lit. 'Clump Spirit') is a third-person puzzle-action video game developed and published by Namco for the PlayStation 2. It was released in Japan in March 2004 and in North America in September 2004. Designer Keita Takahashi struggled to pitch the game to Namco's superiors, eventually seeking student aid from the Namco Digital Hollywood Game Laboratory to develop the project for less than 1 million. As director, Takahashi emphasized concepts of novelty, ease of understanding, and enjoyment. The game's plot concerns a diminutive prince on a mission to rebuild the stars, constellations, and Moon, which were inadvertently destroyed by his father, the King of All Cosmos. This is achieved by rolling a magical, highly adhesive ball called a katamari around various locations, collecting increasingly larger objects, ranging from thumbtacks to human beings to mountains, until the ball has grown large enough to become a star. Katamari Damacy's story, settings and characters are highly stylized and surreal, often both celebrating and satirizing facets of Japanese culture. Katamari Damacy was well received in Japan and North America, becoming a surprise hit and winning several awards. Its success led to the creation of the greater Katamari franchise, and inspired numerous subsequent games imitating its quirky, colorful charm. Some critics have hailed it as a cult classic and one of the greatest video games of all time, praising its gameplay, replay value, humor, originality, and shibuya-kei soundtrack. A high-definition remaster of the game, was released on Windows and Nintendo Switch in December 2018, on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in November 2020, and on Google Stadia in September 2021. ## Synopsis In a drunken stupor, an eccentric, god-like entity called the King of All Cosmos destroys all the stars, Earth's Moon and other such celestial bodies in the universe, save for Earth itself. Despite acknowledging his mistake, the King charges his five-centimeter-tall son, the Prince, to go to Earth with a "katamari"—a magical ball that allows anything smaller than it to stick to it and make it grow—and collect enough material for him to recreate the stars and the Moon. The Prince is successful, and the universe is returned to normal. A side-story follows the Hoshino family as the Prince works at his tasks. The father, an astronaut, is unable to go to the Moon after it is wiped out by the King, and the daughter, whose name is Michiru, "senses" the Prince's work—she can feel when each constellation returns to the sky. Ultimately, the family, along with their house and town, are rolled up in the katamari that is used to remake the Moon. ## Gameplay The player controls the Prince as he rolls the katamari around houses, gardens, and towns in order to meet certain parameters set by the King of All Cosmos. The player uses the two analog sticks on the DualShock controller in a manner similar to the classic arcade game Battlezone to control the direction the katamari rolls. Other controls can be triggered by the player to gain a quick burst of speed, flip the Prince to the other side of the katamari and more. Objects that are smaller than the katamari will stick to it when the player comes into contact with them, while greater objects can be hurdles; colliding at high speed with any may cause objects to fall off the katamari, slowing the player's progress. The game uses size, weight, and surface area to determine if an object will stick to the katamari. This allows slender objects, such as pencils, that are longer than the katamari is wide, to be picked up, and these will alter how the katamari rolls until more objects are picked up. Animals such as cats will chase the katamari, knocking things from it, but once the katamari is great enough, it will scare the animals away, and they can be rolled up once they are chased down. As objects stick to the katamari, the katamari will grow, eventually allowing objects that were once hurdles to be picked up, and creating access to areas that were formerly blocked. In this manner, the player might start the game by picking up thumbtacks and ants, and slowly work up to the point where the katamari is picking up buildings, mountains, and clouds. The typical mission given by the King of All Cosmos is the "Make a Star" mode, where the player needs to grow the katamari to a specific size within a given time frame. Other missions have more specific collecting rules, such as collecting as many items (swans, crabs, pairs) as possible within a given time, or collecting the largest item possible (such as a cow or bear). The player can attempt a score attack mode for any level, where the goal is to make the largest katamari possible in the time allotted. Certain levels can unlock an "eternal mode" by creating an exceptionally large katamari. In eternal modes, the player can explore the level with no time limit. Each level features two secret items that can be found. The first item is a royal present that contains an object that the Prince can wear. Most gifts are non-functional, but one includes a camera that can be used to take in-game screenshots. In the two-player mode, a player can choose to play as either the Prince or one of his numerous Cousins. The screen is split vertically; player one on the left and player two on the right. Players compete simultaneously in a small arena to collect the most objects within three minutes. The playing field is replenished with new objects periodically. Players can ram into each other, knocking items from their opponents' katamaris, and if one player leads by a fair amount, then it is possible to roll up the opponent's katamari. ## Development Keita Takahashi had studied art and entered the Musashino Art University to study sculpting in 1995. During his studies, he came to a philosophy that his art needed to combine practical elements along with a bit of whimsy and humor. After graduation, Takahashi no longer had the desire to pursue sculpting as a full-time career, and saw the potential to become involved in video games as a means to continue his art interest in a larger medium. Joining Namco as an artist around 1999, Takahashi worked on a number of smaller projects for the publisher. One of these was called Action Drive, inspired by Crazy Taxi but with more spy-based elements atop the driving gameplay. During this, Takahashi came up with the ideas of the characters that would be central to Katamari Damacy: the King, the Queen, and the Prince of all Cosmos. His idea would have been that the queen had been kidnapped by agents on Earth, and the lazy King sends the Prince to rescue her. To do this, the player would use the diminutive Prince's head, shaped like a hammer, to stun humans, after which the Prince would then "drive" the humans around by putting a steering wheel on the back of the human's head. Takahashi felt this would lead to interesting and creative gameplay, allowing the player to create havoc as the Prince followed the misguided suggestions from the King, but the project leader rejected the idea. Action Drive was eventually cancelled. While working on other projects, Takahashi continued to try to think of game ideas, seeking to grow beyond being just an artist for Namco. Takahashi cited two concepts that led to the inspiration of Katamari Damacy. The first was a prototype shown by Sony Computer Entertainment called Densen (Japanese for "power line") that had the player as a young girl traverse floating islands of various homes connected by power lines. The game, though never released, gave Takahashi the idea that the ordinary world could be made interesting with only small changes to perception, and that a game could be fun without the need to cause violence. The second idea was from the game of tamakorogashi played in Japanese school's undōkai or sports days. In tamakorogashi, students attempt to push a giant ball into a goal. Both those ideas led to him thinking of a game where spinning a ball would roll ordinary stuff into it, making the ball larger and larger over time. The evening he conceived of this idea, he spoke to a friend, one of the game designers in Namco, to see if it made for a good game idea, who agreed it had potential. The next day, he spoke to his former boss, Mitsutoshi Ozaki, about the concept, further adding a way to reuse the King and Prince characters he had previously proposed, who also agreed it would make for a great game. However, as Takahashi was in Namco's art department and not in game design, there was no easy route for him to propose this idea to Namco's superiors. Ozaki suggested a novel approach for Takahashi through the Namco Digital Hollywood Game Laboratory. At the time, Namco had been following in the model that Konami had used in 1997: Konami established the Konami Computer Entertainment School to help educate new game developers which were eventually hired in Konami, and several of the experimental ideas founded by the School during this time became products within the Konami Games & Music Division (later, Bemani) that were highly successful, including Beatmania, GuitarFreaks, and Dance Dance Revolution. Namco hoped the Digital Hollywood Game Laboratory would follow a similar path. At the time, Masaya Nakamura was principal of this school, and oversaw one senior thesis class where the students were being trained on 3D modeling towards producing a game prototype with the help of other Namco employees, which could potentially be made into a full game. Ozaki suggested to Takahashi that he could have the students of this class create the 3D objects needed to populate his game world. Takahashi took Ozaki's advice, joining the project to help produce the prototype for his game. Alongside about ten students from the Digital Hollywood program, he had been able to gain some visual design artists from Namco to help with the prototype but had difficulty in getting any game development engineers, due to the low priority of the school. He was fortunate to find that some of the engineers from Namco's arcade game division were going to be laid off, and he was able to convince three of them to join his team to retain their jobs within Namco. One initial difficulty faced in developing the prototype was their choice of platform, the PlayStation 2. At the time the project started, Sony had just announced the specifications for the console, which was built from the ground-up to support 3D graphics via the Emotion Engine. However, Sony had not provided any updated software development kits, believing that developers would be able to figure out the hardware. As a result, the console was difficult to develop for at its launch. In contrast, Nintendo had recently announced the GameCube and that it would provide more developer-friendly features in contrast to the previous Nintendo 64 console. Thus, Takahashi's team decided to develop for the GameCube for their prototype even though the final game was expected to be a PlayStation 2 release. In creating the prototype, Takahashi had envisioned that while the ball the player rolled around would grow as they rolled over objects, it would also shrink if they collided with obstacles and lost objects from it. This would have been tied to an interactive music track, which would have started off simple with a small ball and become more complex and full as it got larger. Technically, the team found they could not implement this shrinking mechanic due to memory limitations, and further found that with the interactive music concept, it was not fun to shrink back down and hear the music regress to a simpler form. The shrinking concept as well as the interactive music approach were subsequently dropped. The prototype was completed within about six months, in time for the year's Japan Media Arts Festival for exhibition. Takahashi also presented the game for an internal review, leading Namco to green light the game's full development. Full work on Katamari Damacy began in late 2001. Namco assigned Now Production, based in Osaka, to help bring the game to the PlayStation 2. Takahashi was initially concerned about having to work with an external studio in a different location, but found that the Namco and Now Production teams worked well together. The full team consisted of about twenty members between the two companies, and Namco had allocated a budget of about (about at the time of production) for the game; this was about the tenth of the cost of budget allocated for Namco's blockbuster titles such as Ridge Racer or Soulcalibur. The full game took a year and a half to develop, with eight months of prototyping from the Digital Hollywood version. Takahashi said that the team was aiming for four key points in developing the game: novelty, ease of understanding, enjoyment, and humor. Iwatani compared the game to Namco's Pac-Man, which focused on simplicity and innovation and served as a template for future games from the company. At one point during development, Takahashi "proactively ignored" advice from Namco to increase the complexity of the game. The core gameplay of Katamari Damacy is the subject of U.S. Patent 7,402,104, "Game performing method, game apparatus, storage medium, data signal and program". The patent, issued in 2009, primarily describes how the game maintains the roughly spherical nature of the katamari when objects are picked up, though extends to concepts such as tracking objects collected based on temperature or weight values, which were modes included with later games of the series. ### Music The music in Katamari Damacy was widely hailed as imaginative and original (winning both IGN's and GameSpot's "Soundtrack of the Year 2004" awards) and was considered one of the game's best features. The soundtrack was released in Japan as Katamari Fortissimo Damacy. Its eclectic composition featured elements of traditional electronic video game music, as well as heavy jazz and samba influences (Shibuya-kei). Most of the tracks were composed by Yuu Miyake, and many feature vocals from popular J-pop singers, such as Yui Asaka from the Sukeban Deka 3 TV series, and anime voice actors, including Nobue Matsubara and Ado Mizumori. One track is sung and written by Charlie Kosei, composer of the Lupin III soundtrack. ## Release A single-level demonstration of the final version of Katamari Damacy was exhibited at the 2003 Tokyo Game Show (TGS). The demo was critically praised by the press, with GameSpot's Jeff Gerstmann describing it as a "good dose of weird fun". Sony expressed strong interest in pushing the game's release forward based on the TGS response, offering to handle the game's promotion in exchange. Sony advertised the game on numerous billboards and posters across Japan, and created an infamous television ad of a businessman, waiting for an appointment, rolling up office furniture and staff. The original prototype game's cover artwork featured the large red ball used in tamakorogashi, but for the game's final release, Takahashi developed the game's cover art, showing a large katamari on the verge of rolling over a city, emphasizing the scale of the game. The game was released in Japan on March 18, 2004, priced at about , roughly two-thirds of the cost of most major titles at the time. Namco had estimated that the game would sell over 500,000 units in Japan during its first year, and while the game did not make that metric, it had stayed as one of the top ten games sold in Japan through its first nine weeks on the market, with more than 100,000 units sold during that period, which was considered impressive for a new intellectual property. The public reaction to the game was positive enough that Namco ordered a sequel by December 2004. At this point, Namco had not considered any Western release for the game. Katamari Damacy was first shown in the United States at the Experimental Gameplay Workshop during the March 2004 Game Developers Conference. A group of Western developers from the International Game Developers Association had previously brought Mojib-Ribbon to the 2003 Experimental Gameplay Workshop after seeing it demonstrated at the 2002 TGS, and had been at the 2003 TGS to look for a similar title to exhibit in 2004. Discovering Katamari Damacy as an ideal title to exhibit, the group arranged with Namco to have Takahashi come to the United States to present the game. The press reaction to the session was described as "electric", but they were disappointed to learn from Takahashi that there were no plans for a Western release. Media attention to the game from the Workshop, often called "Namco's snowball simulator", led to more pressure on Namco for a Western release. Takahashi was again invited to come present the game at E3 2004. Players wanting the game to release in the West also wrote to Namco for a release. By July 2004, Namco officially announced the game's release in North America for September 2004. The game was never officially released in Europe, though its subsequent sequels would receive European releases. In the Japanese language, Katamari (塊) means "clump" or "clod" and Damashii is the rendaku form of tamashii (魂) which means "soul" or "spirit". Therefore, the phrase approximates to "clump spirit". The two kanji that form the name look similar (sharing the same right-side element 鬼), in a kind of visual alliteration. The name is officially transliterated as Katamari Damacy in most releases. Game creator Keita Takahashi said that the title suddenly popped into his head from the start and never changed during development. ## Reception Katamari Damacy enjoyed moderate success in Japan. The game was sold at about two-thirds of the price of a new game at the time. It was the top selling game the week of its release with 32,000 units sold, and sold over 155,000 copies in Japan by the end of 2004. However, Namco originally estimated that over 500,000 units would be sold in Japan. The game was not released in PAL territories such as Europe and Australia since publishers thought it was too "quirky" for these markets; however, Electronic Arts picked up both sequels, We Love Katamari and Me & My Katamari, for release in Europe. The North American release of the game was very well received by professional reviewers, was mentioned and praised on TechTV, and was a featured sidebar in the May 23, 2004, edition of Time magazine. Time continued to praise the game in its November 22, 2004 "Best games of the year" special, calling it "the most unusual and original game to hit PlayStation2". Most retailers underestimated the demand for such a quirky game, and only purchased a few copies of this sleeper hit; it rapidly sold out nationwide, with sales surpassing 120,000 units in North America. It also won the U.S. award for "Excellence in Game Design" at the 2005 Game Developers Choice Awards, and G4 awarded Katamari Damacy its "Best Innovation" prize in its G-Phoria of that year. Katamari Damacy was one of the recipients of the 2004 Good Design Award in Japan, the first time a video game has won this award. During the 8th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards, the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences awarded Katamari Damacy with "Outstanding Innovation in Console Gaming" and "Outstanding Achievement in Game Design", as well as receiving nominations for "Game of the Year", "Console Game of the Year", and "Outstanding Achievement in Original Music Composition". GameSpot named it the best PlayStation 2 game of September 2004. It later won the publication's year-end "Best Puzzle/Rhythm Game", "Best Original Music" and "Most Innovative Game" awards across all platforms. In 2015, the game placed 13th on USgamer's The 15 Best Games Since 2000 list. In 2019, it was ranked 49th on The Guardian newspaper's The 50 Best Video Games of the 21st Century list. Although the game has rapidly achieved a cult following and has been praised by many reviewers, it also has its share of criticism. A common complaint is that the game is relatively short and repetitive—it can be completed in under ten hours, and the gameplay stays virtually the same all the way through. However, others, such as Electronic Gaming Monthly reviewer Mark McDonald (who gave the game 8.5 out of ten with his EGM staff), argue that the game's limitations are made up for by its strengths: "Sure, you're basically doing the same thing each mission, but Katamari's elegant controls, killer soundtrack, and wicked humor make it perfectly suited for replay." As a well-executed, non-traditional game, Katamari Damacy has been influential in the game development community. Since its release, a number of other games have been inspired by Katamari, such as The Wonderful End of the World and Donut County. ## Legacy Katamari Damacy has spawned numerous sequels on the PlayStation 2 and newer game consoles. The game's direct sequel on the PlayStation 2, We Love Katamari, was released internationally in 2005 and 2006. Its story is self-referential, following on the success of the first game, most of the levels are based on requests from newfound fans of the King and the Prince. Though sharing the same mechanics, We Love Katamari introduces new gameplay features, such as co-operative play, and new goals, such as collecting the most valuable objects, that would continue through its sequels. On July 29, 2012, the game was included in an exhibit at the New York Museum of Modern Art, entitled "Century of the Child: Growing by Design". Here, the game was used to demonstrate the change in toys and "playthings" over the 20th century, specifically praising the game for its "quirky manipulations of scale" that makes it accessible for all ages. Vice president of marketing for Namco Bandai Games America, Inc. Carlson Choi described the inclusion of Katamari Damacy to the exhibit as "a testament to the creative designs embodied in Namco Bandai's games ... in addition to being a validation of video games as a modern form of interactive art." On November 29 the same year, the game was included in the permanent collection of video games of the Museum of Modern Art. Curator Paola Antonelli selected Katamari Damacy among the first fourteen games to be displayed in the museum, which was chosen according to a variety of criteria, including "visual quality, elegance of the code and design of playing behavior." A high-definition remaster of the game made with the Unity game engine, titled Katamari Damacy Reroll, was released on the Nintendo Switch and Windows on December 7, 2018. Known as Katamari Damacy Encore in Japan, it is the first title in Bandai Namco Games Encore series of remasters. The game includes support for the Switch's gyro controls in addition to its traditional control scheme. Reroll was nominated for the Freedom Tower Award for Best Remake at the 2020 New York Game Awards. A PlayStation 4 and Xbox One version was released in Japan on November 19, and worldwide on November 20, 2020. A version for Amazon Luna was made available on March 4, 2021, and a Stadia version was released worldwide on September 7, 2021. In a retrospective in 2019, Edge noted that playing the game 15 years after its initial release reveals how influential the game has been for independent games following it, and added that "Takahashi's breakout game shot through with what we think of these days as the indie spirit: it is playful and tremendously funny, deeply weird and a game with real heart."