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work about his childhood in Algeria and its publication in 1994 sparked a widespread reconsideration of Camus's allegedly unrepentant colonialism. Political stance Camus was a moralist; he claimed morality should guide politics. While he did not deny that morals change over time, he rejected the classical Marxist view that historical material relations define morality. Camus was also strongly critical of Marxism-Leninism, especially in the case of the Soviet Union, which he considered totalitarian. Camus rebuked those sympathetic to the Soviet model and their "decision to call total servitude freedom". A proponent of libertarian socialism, he claimed the USSR was not socialist, and the United States was not liberal. His critique of the USSR caused him to clash with others on the political left, most notably with his on-again, off-again friend Jean-Paul Sartre. Active in the French Resistance to the Nazi occupation of France during World War II, Camus wrote for and edited the famous Resistance journal Combat. Of the French collaboration with the German occupiers, he wrote: "Now the only moral value is courage, which is useful here for judging the puppets and chatterboxes who pretend to speak in the name of the people." After France's liberation, Camus remarked, "This country does not need a Talleyrand, but a Saint-Just." The reality of the postwar tribunals soon changed his mind: Camus publicly reversed himself and became a lifelong opponent of capital punishment. Camus leaned towards anarchism, a tendency that intensified in the 1950s, when he came to believe that the Soviet model was morally bankrupt. Camus was firmly against any kind of exploitation, authority, property, the State, and centralization. Philosophy professor David Sherman considers Camus an anarcho-syndicalist. Graeme Nicholson considers Camus an existentialist anarchist. The anarchist André Prudhommeaux first introduced him at a meeting of the Cercle des Étudiants Anarchistes ("Anarchist Student Circle") in 1948 as a sympathiser familiar with anarchist thought. Camus wrote for anarchist publications such as Le Libertaire (The Libertarian), La Révolution prolétarienne (The Proletarian Revolution), and Solidaridad Obrera ("Workers' Solidarity"), the organ of the anarcho-syndicalist Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT) ("National Confederation of Labor"). Camus kept a neutral stance during the Algerian Revolution (1954–62). While he was against the violence of the National Liberation Front (FLN) he acknowledged the injustice and brutalities imposed by colonialist France. He was supportive of Pierre Mendès' Unified Socialist Party (PSU) and its approach to the crisis; Mendes advocated reconciliation. Camus also supported a like-minded Algerian militant, Aziz Kessous. Camus traveled to Algeria to negotiate a truce between the two belligerents but was met with distrust by all parties. In one famous and often misquoted incident, Camus confronted an Algerian critic during his 1957 Nobel Prize acceptance speech in Stockholm, rejecting the false equivalence of justice with revolutionary terrorism: “People are now planting bombs in the tramways of Algiers. My mother might be on one of those tramways. If that is justice, then I prefer my mother.” Camus' critics have labelled the response as reactionary and a result of a colonialist attitude. He was sharply critical of the proliferation of nuclear weapons and the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In the 1950s, Camus devoted his efforts to human rights. In 1952, he resigned from his work for UNESCO when the UN accepted Spain, under the leadership of the caudillo General Francisco Franco, as a member. Camus maintained his pacifism and resisted capital punishment anywhere in the world. He wrote an essay against capital punishment in collaboration with Arthur Koestler, the writer, intellectual, and founder of the League Against Capital Punishment entitled Réflexions sur la peine capitale (Reflections on capital punishment), published by Calmann-Levy in 1957. Role in Algeria Born in Algeria to French parents, Camus was familiar with the institutional racism of France against Arabs and Berbers, but he was not part of a rich elite. He lived in very poor conditions as a child but was a citizen of France and as such was entitled to citizens' rights; members of the country's Arab and Berber majority were not. Camus was a vocal advocate of the "new Mediterranean Culture". This was his vision of embracing the multi-ethnicity of the Algerian people, in opposition to "Latiny", a popular pro-fascist and antisemitic ideology among other Pieds-Noirs—or French or Europeans born in Algeria. For Camus, this vision encapsulated the Hellenic humanism which survived among ordinary people around the Mediterranean Sea. His 1938 address on "The New Mediterranean Culture" represents Camus's most systematic statement of his views at this time. Camus also supported the Blum–Viollette proposal to grant Algerians full French citizenship in a manifesto with arguments defending this assimilative proposal on radical egalitarian grounds. In 1939, Camus wrote a stinging series of articles for the Alger républicain on the atrocious living conditions of the inhabitants of the Kabylie highlands. He advocated for economic, educational and political reforms as a matter of emergency. In 1945, following the Sétif and Guelma massacre after Arab revolts against French mistreatment, Camus was one of only a few mainland journalists to visit the colony. He wrote a series of articles reporting on conditions, and advocating for French reforms and concessions to the demands of the Algerian people. When the Algerian War began in 1954, Camus was confronted with a moral dilemma. He identified with the Pieds-Noirs such as his own parents and defended the French government's actions against the revolt. He argued the Algerian uprising was an integral part of the "new Arab imperialism" led by Egypt, and an "anti-Western" offensive orchestrated by Russia to "encircle Europe" and "isolate the United States". Although favoring greater Algerian autonomy or even federation, though not full-scale independence, he believed the Pieds-Noirs and Arabs could co-exist. During the war, he advocated a civil truce that would spare the civilians. It was rejected by both sides who regarded it as foolish. Behind the scenes, he began working for imprisoned Algerians who faced the death penalty. His position drew much criticism from the left and later postcolonial literary critics, such as Edward Said, who were opposed to European imperialism, and charged that Camus's novels and short stories are plagued with colonial depictions - or conscious erasures - of Algeria's Arab population. In their eyes, Camus was no longer the defender of the oppressed. Camus once confided that the troubles in Algeria "affected him as others feel pain in their lungs." Philosophy Existentialism Even though Camus is mostly connected to absurdism, he is routinely categorized as an existentialist, a term he rejected on several occasions. Camus himself said his philosophical origins lay in ancient Greek philosophy, Nietzsche, and 17th-century moralists whereas existentialism arises from 19th- and early 20th-century philosophy such as Kierkegaard, Karl Jaspers, and Heidegger. He also said his work, The Myth of Sisyphus, was a criticism of various aspects of existentialism. Camus was rejecting existentialism as a philosophy, but his critique was mostly focused on Sartrean existentialism, and to a lesser extent on religious existentialism. He thought that the importance of history held by Marx and Sartre was incompatible with his belief in human freedom. David Sherman and others also suggest the rivalry between Sartre and Camus also played a part in his rejection of existentialism. David Simpson argues further that his humanism and belief in human nature set him apart from the existentialist doctrine that existence precedes essence. On the other hand, Camus focused most of his philosophy around existential questions. The absurdity of life, the inevitable ending (death) is highlighted in his acts. His belief was that the absurd—life being void of meaning, or man's inability to know that meaning if it were to exist—was something that man should embrace. His anti-Christianity, his commitment to individual moral freedom and responsibility are only a few of the similarities with other existential writers. More importantly, Camus addressed one of the fundamental questions of existentialism: the problem of suicide. He wrote: "There is only one really serious philosophical question, and that is suicide." Camus viewed the question of suicide as arising naturally as a solution to the absurdity of life. Absurdism Many existentialist writers have addressed the Absurd, each with their own interpretation of what it is and what makes it important. Kierkegaard explains that the absurdity of religious truths prevents us from reaching God rationally. Sartre recognizes the absurdity of individual experience. Camus's thoughts on the Absurd begin with his first cycle of books and the literary essay The Myth of Sisyphus, (Le Mythe de Sisyphe), his major work on the subject. In 1942, he published the story of a man living an absurd life in L'Étranger. He also wrote a play about the Roman emperor Caligula, pursuing an absurd logic, which was not performed until 1945. His early thoughts appeared in his first collection of essays, L'Envers et l'endroit (Betwixt and Between) in 1937. Absurd themes were expressed with more sophistication in his second collection of essays, Noces (Nuptials), in 1938 and Betwixt and Between. In these essays, Camus reflects on the experience of the Absurd. Aspects of the notion of the Absurd can be found in The Plague. Camus follows Sartre's definition of the Absurd: "That which is meaningless. Thus man's existence is absurd because his contingency finds no external justification". The Absurd is created because man, who is placed in an unintelligent universe, realises that human values are not founded on a solid external component; or as Camus himself explains, the Absurd is the result of the "confrontation between human need and the unreasonable silence of the world." Even though absurdity is inescapable, Camus does not drift towards nihilism. But the realization of absurdity leads to the question: Why should someone continue to live? Suicide is an option that Camus firmly dismisses as the renunciation of human values and freedom. Rather, he proposes we accept that absurdity is a part of our lives and live with it. The turning point in Camus's attitude to the Absurd occurs in a collection of four letters to an anonymous German friend, written between July 1943 and July 1944. The first was published in the Revue Libre in 1943, the second in the Cahiers de Libération in 1944, and the third in the newspaper Libertés, in 1945. The four letters were published as Lettres à un ami allemand (Letters to a German Friend) in 1945, and were included in the collection Resistance, Rebellion, and Death. Camus regretted the continued reference to himself as a "philosopher of the absurd". He showed less interest in the Absurd shortly after publishing Le Mythe de Sisyphe. To distinguish his ideas, scholars sometimes refer to the Paradox of the Absurd, when referring to "Camus's Absurd". Revolt Camus is known for articulating the case for revolting against any kind of oppression, injustice, or whatever disrespects the human condition. He is cautious enough, however, to set the limits on the rebellion. L'Homme révolté (The Rebel) explains in detail his thoughts on the issue. There, he builds upon the absurd (described in The Myth of Sisyphus) but goes further. In the introduction, where he examines the metaphysics of rebellion, he concludes with the phrase "I revolt, therefore we exist" implying the recognition of a common human condition. Camus also delineates the difference between revolution and rebellion and notices that history has shown that the rebel's revolution might easily end up as an oppressive regime; he therefore places importance on the morals accompanying the revolution. Camus poses a crucial question: Is it possible for humans to act in an ethical and meaningful manner, in a silent universe? According to him the answer is yes, as the experience and awareness of the Absurd creates the moral values and also sets the limits of our actions. Camus separates the modern form of rebellion into two modes. First, there is the metaphysical rebellion, which is "the movement by which man protests against his condition and against the whole of creation." The other mode, historical rebellion, is the attempt to materialize the abstract spirit of metaphysical rebellion and change the world. In this attempt, the rebel must balance between the evil of the world and the intrinsic evil which every revolt carries, and not cause any unjustifiable suffering. Legacy Camus's novels and philosophical essays are still influential. After his death, interest in Camus followed the rise (and diminution) of the New Left. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, interest in his alternative road to communism resurfaced. He is remembered for his skeptical humanism and his support for political tolerance, dialogue, and civil rights. Although Camus has been linked to anti-Soviet communism, reaching as far as
a poor French agricultural worker, died in the Battle of the Marne in 1914 during World War I. Camus never knew him. Camus, his mother and other relatives lived without many basic material possessions during his childhood in the Belcourt section of Algiers. He was a second-generation French in Algeria, a French territory from 1830 until 1962. His paternal grandfather, along with many others of his generation, had moved to Algeria for a better life during the first decades of the 19th century. Hence, he was called —a slang term for French who were born in Algeria—and his identity and his poor background had a substantial effect on his later life. Nevertheless, Camus was a French citizen and enjoyed more rights than Arab and Berber Algerians under indigénat. During his childhood, Camus developed a love for football and swimming. Under the influence of his teacher Louis Germain, Camus gained a scholarship in 1924 to continue his studies at a prestigious lyceum (secondary school) near Algiers. In 1930, he was diagnosed with tuberculosis. Because it is a transmitted disease, he moved out of his home and stayed with his uncle Gustave Acault, a butcher, who influenced the young Camus. It was at that time that Camus turned to philosophy, with the mentoring of his philosophy teacher Jean Grenier. He was impressed by ancient Greek philosophers and Friedrich Nietzsche. During that time, he was only able to study part-time. To earn money, he took odd jobs: as a private tutor, car parts clerk, and assistant at the Meteorological Institute. In 1933, Camus enrolled at the University of Algiers and completed his licence de philosophie (BA) in 1936; after presenting his thesis on Plotinus. Camus developed an interest in early Christian philosophers, but Nietzsche and Arthur Schopenhauer had paved the way towards pessimism and atheism. Camus also studied novelist-philosophers such as Stendhal, Herman Melville, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, and Franz Kafka. In 1933, he also met Simone Hié, then a partner of a friend of Camus, who would become his first wife. Camus played goalkeeper for the Racing Universitaire d'Alger junior team from 1928 to 1930. The sense of team spirit, fraternity, and common purpose appealed to Camus enormously. In match reports, he was often praised for playing with passion and courage. Any football ambitions disappeared when he contracted tuberculosis at the age of 17. Camus drew parallels among football, human existence, morality, and personal identity. For him, the simplistic morality of football contradicted the complicated morality imposed by authorities such as the state and Church. Formative years In 1934, aged 20, Camus was in a relationship with Simone Hié. Simone suffered from an addiction to morphine, a drug she used to ease her menstrual pains. His uncle Gustave did not approve of the relationship, but Camus married Hié to help her fight her addiction. He subsequently discovered she was in a relationship with her doctor at the same time and the couple later divorced. Camus joined the French Communist Party (PCF) in early 1935. He saw it as a way to "fight inequalities between Europeans and 'natives' in Algeria," even though he was not a Marxist. He explained: "We might see communism as a springboard and asceticism that prepares the ground for more spiritual activities." Camus left the PCF a year later. In 1936, the independence-minded Algerian Communist Party (PCA) was founded, and Camus joined it after his mentor Grenier advised him to do so. Camus's main role within the PCA was to organise the Théâtre du Travail ("Workers' Theatre"). Camus was also close to the Parti du Peuple Algérien (Algerian People's Party (PPA)), which was a moderate anti-colonialist/nationalist party. As tensions in the interwar period escalated, the Stalinist PCA and PPA broke ties. Camus was expelled from the PCA for refusing to toe the party line. This series of events sharpened his belief in human dignity. Camus's mistrust of bureaucracies that aimed for efficiency instead of justice grew. He continued his involvement with theatre and renamed his group Théâtre de l'Equipe ("Theatre of the Team"). Some of his scripts were the basis for his later novels. In 1938, Camus began working for the leftist newspaper Alger républicain (founded by Pascal Pia) as he had strong anti-fascist feelings, and the rise of fascist regimes in Europe was worrying him. By then, Camus had developed strong feelings against authoritative colonialism as he witnessed the harsh treatment of the Arabs and Berbers by French authorities. Alger républicain was banned in 1940 and Camus flew to Paris to take a new job at Paris-Soir as editor-in-chief. In Paris, he almost completed his "first cycle" of works dealing with the absurd and the meaningless—the novel L'Étranger (The Outsider (UK), or The Stranger (US)), the philosophical essay Le Mythe de Sisyphe (The Myth of Sisyphus) and the play Caligula. Each cycle consisted of a novel, an essay and a theatrical play. World War II, Resistance and Combat Soon after Camus moved to Paris, the outbreak of World War II began to affect France. Camus volunteered to join the army but was not accepted because he had suffered from tuberculosis. As the Germans were marching towards Paris, Camus fled. He was laid off from Paris-Soir and ended up in Lyon, where he married pianist and mathematician Francine Faure on 3 December 1940. Camus and Faure moved back to Algeria (Oran) where he taught in primary schools. Because of his tuberculosis, he moved to the French Alps on medical advice. There he began writing his second cycle of works, this time dealing with revolt—a novel La Peste (The Plague) and a play Le Malentendu (The Misunderstanding). By 1943 he was known because of his earlier work. He returned to Paris where he met and became friends with Jean-Paul Sartre. He also became part of a circle of intellectuals including Simone de Beauvoir, André Breton, and others. Among them was the actress María Casares, who would later have an affair with Camus. Camus took an active role in the underground resistance movement against the Germans during the French Occupation. Upon his arrival in Paris, he started working as a journalist and editor of the banned newspaper Combat. He continued writing for the paper after the liberation of France. Camus used a pseudonym for his Combat articles and used false ID cards to avoid being captured. During that period he composed four Lettres à un Ami Allemand (Letters to a German Friend), explaining why resistance was necessary. Post-World War II After the War, Camus lived in Paris with Faure, who gave birth to twins, Catherine and Jean in 1945. Camus was now a celebrated writer known for his role in the Resistance. He gave lectures at various universities in the United States and Latin America during two separate trips. He also visited Algeria once more, only to leave disappointed by the continued oppressive colonial policies, which he had warned about many times. During this period he completed the second cycle of his work, with the essay L'Homme révolté (The Rebel). Camus attacked totalitarian communism while advocating libertarian socialism and anarcho-syndicalism. Upsetting many of his colleagues and contemporaries in France with his rejection of communism, the book brought about the final split with Sartre. His relations with the Marxist Left deteriorated further during the Algerian War. Camus was a strong supporter of European integration in various marginal organisations working towards that end. In 1944, he founded the Comité français pour la féderation européenne—(CFFE (French Committee for the European Federation))—declaring that Europe "can only evolve along the path of economic progress, democracy, and peace if the nation-states become a federation." In 1947–48, he founded the Groupes de Liaison Internationale (GLI) a trade union movement in the context of revolutionary syndicalism (syndicalisme révolutionnaire). His main aim was to express the positive side of surrealism and existentialism, rejecting the negativity and the nihilism of André Breton. Camus also raised his voice against the Soviet intervention in Hungary and the totalitarian tendencies of Franco's regime in Spain. Camus had numerous affairs, particularly an irregular and eventually public affair with the Spanish-born actress María Casares, with whom he had extensive correspondence. Faure did not take this affair lightly. She had a mental breakdown and needed hospitalisation in the early 1950s. Camus, who felt guilty, withdrew from public life and was slightly depressed for some time. In 1957, Camus received the news that he was to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. This came as a shock to
and grandeur being woven into her plots. The descriptions of the fictional Chimneys, Stonygates, and other houses in her stories are mostly Abney Hall in various forms." During World War II, Christie worked in the pharmacy at University College Hospital (UCH), London, where she updated her knowledge of poisons. Her later novel The Pale Horse was based on a suggestion from Harold Davis, the chief pharmacist at UCH. In 1977, a thallium poisoning case was solved by British medical personnel who had read Christie's book and recognised the symptoms she described. The British intelligence agency MI5 investigated Christie after a character called Major Bletchley appeared in her 1941 thriller N or M?, which was about a hunt for a pair of deadly fifth columnists in wartime England. MI5 was concerned that Christie had a spy in Britain's top-secret codebreaking centre, Bletchley Park. The agency's fears were allayed when Christie told her friend, the codebreaker Dilly Knox, "I was stuck there on my way by train from Oxford to London and took revenge by giving the name to one of my least lovable characters." Christie was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1950. In honour of her many literary works, Christie was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 1956 New Year Honours. She was co-president of the Detection Club from 1958 to her death in 1976. In 1961, she was awarded an honorary Doctor of Literature degree by the University of Exeter. In the 1971 New Year Honours, she was promoted to Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE), three years after her husband had been knighted for his archaeological work. After her husband's knighthood, Christie could also be styled Lady Mallowan. From 1971 to 1974, Christie's health began to fail, but she continued to write. Her last novel was Postern of Fate in 1973. Textual analysis suggested that Christie may have begun to suffer from Alzheimer's disease or other dementia at about this time. Personal qualities In 1946, Christie said of herself: "My chief dislikes are crowds, loud noises, gramophones and cinemas. I dislike the taste of alcohol and do not like smoking. I do like sun, sea, flowers, travelling, strange foods, sports, concerts, theatres, pianos, and doing embroidery." Christie's works of fiction contain some character stereotypes seen as objectionable in modern times, but in real life, many of her biases were positive. After four years of war-torn London, Christie hoped to return some day to Syria, which she described as a "gentle fertile country and its simple people, who know how to laugh and how to enjoy life; who are idle and gay, and who have dignity, good manners, and a great sense of humour, and to whom death is not terrible". Christie was a lifelong, "quietly devout" member of the Church of England, attended church regularly, and kept her mother's copy of The Imitation of Christ by her bedside. After her divorce, she stopped taking the sacrament of communion. The Agatha Christie Trust For Children was established in 1969, and shortly after Christie's death a charitable memorial fund was set up to "help two causes that she favoured: old people and young children". Christie's obituary in The Times notes that "she never cared much for the cinema, or for wireless and television." Further, Dame Agatha's private pleasures were gardeningshe won local prizes for horticultureand buying furniture for her various houses. She was a shy person: she disliked public appearances: but she was friendly and sharp-witted to meet. By inclination as well as breeding she belonged to the English upper middle-class. She wrote about, and for, people like herself. That was an essential part of her charm. Death and estate Death and burial Christie died peacefully on 12 January 1976 at age 85 from natural causes at her home at Winterbrook House. When her death was announced, two West End theatresthe St. Martin's, where The Mousetrap was playing, and the Savoy, which was home to a revival of Murder at the Vicaragedimmed their outside lights in her honour. She was buried in the nearby churchyard of St Mary's, Cholsey, in a plot she had chosen with her husband 10 years before. The simple funeral service was attended by about 20 newspaper and TV reporters, some having travelled from as far away as South America. 30 wreaths adorned Christie's grave, including one from the cast of her long-running play The Mousetrap and one sent "on behalf of the multitude of grateful readers" by the Ulverscroft Large Print Book Publishers. Mallowan, who remarried in 1977, died in 1978 and was buried next to Christie. Estate and subsequent ownership of works Christie was unhappy about becoming "an employed wage slave", and for tax reasons set up a private company in 1955, Agatha Christie Limited, to hold the rights to her works. In about 1959 she transferred her 278-acre home, Greenway Estate, to her daughter, Rosalind Hicks. In 1968, when Christie was almost 80, she sold a 51% stake in Agatha Christie Limited (and the works it owned) to Booker Books (better known as Booker Author's Division), which by 1977 had increased its stake to 64%. Agatha Christie Limited still owns the worldwide rights for more than 80 of Christie's novels and short stories, 19 plays, and nearly 40 TV films. In the late 1950s, Christie had reputedly been earning around £100,000 (approximately ) per year. Christie sold an estimated 300 million books during her lifetime. At the time of her death in 1976, "she was the best-selling novelist in history." One estimate of her total earnings from more than a half-century of writing is $20 million (approximately $ million in ). As a result of her tax planning, her will left only £106,683 (approximately ) net, which went mostly to her husband and daughter along with some smaller bequests. Her remaining 36% share of Agatha Christie Limited was inherited by Hicks, who passionately preserved her mother's works, image, and legacy until her own death 28 years later. The family's share of the company allowed them to appoint 50% of the board and the chairman, and retain a veto over new treatments, updated versions, and republications of her works. In 2004, Hicks' obituary in The Telegraph noted that she had been "determined to remain true to her mother's vision and to protect the integrity of her creations" and disapproved of "merchandising" activities. Upon her death on 28 October 2004, the Greenway Estate passed to her son Mathew Prichard. After his stepfather's death in 2005, Prichard donated Greenway and its contents to the National Trust. Christie's family and family trusts, including great-grandson James Prichard, continue to own the 36% stake in Agatha Christie Limited, and remain associated with the company. In 2020, James Prichard was the company's chairman. Mathew Prichard also holds the copyright to some of his grandmother's later literary works including The Mousetrap. Christie's work continues to be developed in a range of adaptations. In 1998, Booker sold its shares in Agatha Christie Limited (at the time earning £2,100,000, approximately annual revenue) for £10,000,000 (approximately ) to Chorion, whose portfolio of authors' works included the literary estates of Enid Blyton and Dennis Wheatley. In February 2012, after a management buyout, Chorion began to sell off its literary assets. This included the sale of Chorion's 64% stake in Agatha Christie Limited to Acorn Media UK. In 2014, RLJ Entertainment Inc. (RLJE) acquired Acorn Media UK, renamed it Acorn Media Enterprises, and incorporated it as the RLJE UK development arm. In late February 2014, media reports stated that the BBC had acquired exclusive TV rights to Christie's works in the UK (previously associated with ITV) and made plans with Acorn's co-operation to air new productions for the 125th anniversary of Christie's birth in 2015. As part of that deal, the BBC broadcast Partners in Crime and And Then There Were None, both in 2015. Subsequent productions have included The Witness for the Prosecution but plans to televise Ordeal by Innocence at Christmas 2017 were delayed because of controversy surrounding one of the cast members. The three-part adaptation aired in April 2018. A three-part adaptation of The A.B.C. Murders starring John Malkovich and Rupert Grint began filming in June 2018 and was first broadcast in December 2018. A two-part adaptation of The Pale Horse was broadcast on BBC1 in February 2020. Death Comes as the End will be the next BBC adaptation. Works Works of fiction Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple Christie's first published book, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, was released in 1920 and introduced the detective Hercule Poirot, who appeared in 33 of her novels and more than 50 short stories. Over the years, Christie grew tired of Poirot, much as Conan Doyle did with Sherlock Holmes. By the end of the 1930s, Christie wrote in her diary that she was finding Poirot "insufferable", and by the 1960s she felt he was "an egocentric creep". Thompson believes Christie's occasional antipathy to her creation is overstated, and points out that "in later life she sought to protect him against misrepresentation as powerfully as if he were her own flesh and blood." Unlike Conan Doyle, she resisted the temptation to kill her detective off while he was still popular. She married off Poirot's "Watson", Captain Arthur Hastings, in an attempt to trim her cast commitments. Miss Jane Marple was introduced in a series of short stories that began publication in December 1927 and were subsequently collected under the title The Thirteen Problems. Marple was a genteel, elderly spinster who solved crimes using analogies to English village life. Christie said, "Miss Marple was not in any way a picture of my grandmother; she was far more fussy and spinsterish than my grandmother ever was," but her autobiography establishes a firm connection between the fictional character and Christie's step-grandmother Margaret Miller ("Auntie-Grannie") and her "Ealing cronies". Both Marple and Miller "always expected the worst of everyone and everything, and were, with almost frightening accuracy, usually proved right". Marple appeared in 12 novels and 20 stories. During the Second World War, Christie wrote two novels, Curtain and Sleeping Murder, featuring Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple, respectively. Both books were sealed in a bank vault, and she made over the copyrights by deed of gift to her daughter and her husband to provide each with a kind of insurance policy. Christie suffered a heart attack and a serious fall in 1974, after which she was unable to write. Her daughter authorised the publication of Curtain in 1975, and Sleeping Murder was published posthumously in 1976. These publications followed the success of the 1974 film version of Murder on the Orient Express. Shortly before the publication of Curtain, Poirot became the first fictional character to have an obituary in The New York Times, which was printed on page one on 6August 1975. Christie never wrote a novel or short story featuring both Poirot and Miss Marple. In a recording discovered and released in 2008, Christie revealed the reason for this: "Hercule Poirot, a complete egoist, would not like being taught his business or having suggestions made to him by an elderly spinster lady. Hercule Poirota professional sleuthwould not be at home at all in Miss Marple's world." In 2013, the Christie family supported the release of a new Poirot story, The Monogram Murders, written by British author Sophie Hannah. Hannah later published three more Poirot mysteries, Closed Casket in 2016, The Mystery of Three Quarters in 2018., and The Killings at Kingfisher Hill in 2020. Formula and plot devices Christie has been called the "Duchess of Death", the "Mistress of Mystery", and the "Queen of Crime". Early in her career, a reporter noted that "her plots are possible, logical, and always new." According to Hannah, "At the start of each novel, she shows us an apparently impossible situation and we go mad wondering 'How can this be happening?' Then, slowly, she reveals how the impossible is not only possible but the only thing that could have happened." She developed her storytelling techniques during what has been called the "Golden Age" of detective fiction. Author Dilys Winn called Christie "the doyenne of Coziness", a sub-genre which "featured a small village setting, a hero with faintly aristocratic family connections, a plethora of red herrings and a tendency to commit homicide with sterling silver letter openers and poisons imported from Paraguay". At the end, in a Christie hallmark, the detective usually gathers the surviving suspects into one room, explains the course of their deductive reasoning, and reveals the guilty party; there are exceptions where it is left to the guilty party to explain all (such as And Then There Were None and Endless Night). Christie did not limit herself to quaint English villagesthe action might take place on a small island (And Then There Were None), an aeroplane (Death in the Clouds), a train (Murder on the Orient Express), a steamship (Death on the Nile), a smart London flat (Cards on the Table), a resort in the West Indies (A Caribbean Mystery), or an archaeological dig (Murder in Mesopotamia)but the circle of potential suspects is usually closed and intimate: family members, friends, servants, business associates, fellow travellers. Stereotyped characters abound (the , the stolid policeman, the devoted servant, the dull colonel), but these may be subverted to stymie the reader; impersonations and secret alliances are always possible. There is always a motivemost often, money: "There are very few killers in Christie who enjoy murder for its own sake." Professor of Pharmacology Michael C. Gerald noted that "in over half her novels, one or more victims are poisoned, albeit not always to the full satisfaction of the perpetrator." Guns, knives, garrottes, tripwires, blunt instruments, and even a hatchet were also used, but "Christie never resorted to elaborate mechanical or scientific means to explain her ingenuity," according to John Curran, author and literary adviser to the Christie estate. Many of her clues are mundane objects: a calendar, a coffee cup, wax flowers, a beer bottle, a fireplace used during a heat wave. According to crime writer P. D. James, Christie was prone to making the unlikeliest
of fun!" As Mary Westmacott Christie published six mainstream novels under the name Mary Westmacott, a pseudonym which gave her the freedom to explore "her most private and precious imaginative garden". These books typically received better reviews than her detective and thriller fiction. Of the first, Giant's Bread published in 1930, a reviewer for The New York Times wrote, "...her book is far above the average of current fiction, in fact, comes well under the classification of a 'good book'. And it is only a satisfying novel that can claim that appellation." It was publicized from the very beginning that "Mary Westmacott" was a pen name of a well-known author, although the identity behind the pen name was kept secret; the dust jacket of Giant's Bread mentions that the author had previously written "under her real name...half a dozen books that have each passed the thirty thousand mark in sales." (In fact, though this was technically true, it disguised Christie's identity through understatement. By the publication of Giant's Bread, Christie had published 10 novels and two short story collections, all of which had sold considerably more than 30,000 copies.) After Christie's authorship of the first four Westmacott novels was revealed by a journalist in 1949, she wrote two more, the last in 1956. The other Westmacott titles are: Unfinished Portrait (1934), Absent in the Spring (1944), The Rose and the Yew Tree (1948), A Daughter's a Daughter (1952), and The Burden (1956). Non-fiction works Christie published few non-fiction works. Come, Tell Me How You Live, about working on an archaeological dig, was drawn from her life with Mallowan. The Grand Tour: Around the World with the Queen of Mystery is a collection of correspondence from her 1922 Grand Tour of the British empire, including South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada. Agatha Christie: An Autobiography was published posthumously in 1977 and adjudged the Best Critical / Biographical Work at the 1978 Edgar Awards. Titles Many of Christie's works from 1940 onward have titles drawn from literature, with the original context of the title typically printed as an epigraph. The inspirations for some of Christie's titles include: William Shakespeare's works: Sad Cypress, By the Pricking of My Thumbs, There is a Tide..., Absent in the Spring, and The Mousetrap, for example. Osborne notes that "Shakespeare is the writer most quoted in the works of Agatha Christie"; The Bible: Evil Under the Sun, The Burden, and The Pale Horse; Other works of literature: The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side (from Tennyson's "The Lady of Shalott"), The Moving Finger (from Edward FitzGerald's translation of the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám), The Rose and the Yew Tree (from T. S. Eliot's Four Quartets), Postern of Fate (from James Elroy Flecker's "Gates of Damascus"), Endless Night (from William Blake's "Auguries of Innocence"), N or M? (from the Book of Common Prayer), and Come, Tell Me How You Live (from Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass). Christie biographer Gillian Gill said, "Christie's writing has the sparseness, the directness, the narrative pace, and the universal appeal of the fairy story, and it is perhaps as modern fairy stories for grown-up children that Christie's novels succeed." Reflecting a juxtaposition of innocence and horror, numerous Christie titles were drawn from well-known children's nursery rhymes: And Then There Were None (from "Ten Little Niggers"), One, Two, Buckle My Shoe (from "One, Two, Buckle My Shoe"), Five Little Pigs (from "This Little Piggy"), Crooked House (from "There Was a Crooked Man"), A Pocket Full of Rye (from "Sing a Song of Sixpence"), Hickory Dickory Dock (from "Hickory Dickory Dock"), and Three Blind Mice (from "Three Blind Mice"). Critical reception Christie is regularly referred to as the "Queen of Crime" or "Queen of Mystery", and is considered a master of suspense, plotting, and characterisation. In 1955, she became the first recipient of the Mystery Writers of America's Grand Master Award. She was named "Best Writer of the Century" and the Hercule Poirot series of books was named "Best Series of the Century" at the 2000 Bouchercon World Mystery Convention. In 2013, she was voted "best crime writer" in a survey of 600 members of the Crime Writers' Association of professional novelists. However, the writer Raymond Chandler criticised the artificiality of her books, as did writer Julian Symons. The literary critic Edmund Wilson described her prose as banal and her characterisations as superficial. In 2011, Christie was named the second most financially successful crime writer of all time in the United Kingdom, after Ian Fleming, by digital crime drama TV channel Alibi with total earnings around £100 million. In 2012, Christie was among the people selected by the artist Peter Blake to appear in a new version of his most famous work, the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album cover, "to celebrate the British cultural figures he most admires". In 2015, in honor of the 125th anniversary of her birthday, 25 contemporary mystery writers and one publisher gave their views on Christie's works. Many of the authors had read Christie's novels first, before other mystery writers, in English or in their native language, influencing their own writing, and nearly all still viewed her as the "Queen of Crime" and creator of the plot twists used by mystery authors. Nearly all had one or more favourites among Christie's mysteries and found her books still good to read nearly 100 years after her first novel was published. Just one of the 25 authors held with Wilson's views. Book sales In her prime, Christie was rarely out of the bestseller list. She was the first crime writer to have 100,000 copies of 10 of her titles published by Penguin on the same day in 1948. , Guinness World Records listed Christie as the best-selling fiction writer of all time. , her novels had sold more than two billion copies in 44 languages. Half the sales are of English-language editions, and half are translations. According to Index Translationum, , she was the most-translated individual author. Christie is one of the most-borrowed authors in UK libraries. She is also UK's best-selling spoken-book author. In 2002, 117,696 Christie audiobooks were sold, in comparison to 97,755 for J. K. Rowling, 78,770 for Roald Dahl and 75,841 for J. R. R. Tolkien. In 2015, the Christie estate claimed And Then There Were None was "the best-selling crime novel of all time", with approximately 100 million sales, also making it one of the highest-selling books of all time. More than two million copies of her books were sold in English in 2020. Legacy In 2016, one hundred years after Christie wrote her first detective story, the Royal Mail released six stamps in her honour, featuring The Mysterious Affair at Styles, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Murder on the Orient Express, And Then There Were None, The Body in the Library, and A Murder is Announced. The Guardian reported that, "Each design incorporates microtext, UV ink and thermochromic ink. These concealed clues can be revealed using either a magnifying glass, UV light or body heat and provide pointers to the mysteries' solutions." Her characters and her face appeared on the stamps of many countries like Dominica and the Somali Republic. In 2020, Christie was commemorated on a £2 coin by the Royal Mint for the first time to mark the centenary of her first novel The Mysterious Affair at Styles. Adaptations Christie's works have been adapted for cinema and television. The first was the 1928 British film The Passing of Mr. Quin. Poirot's first film appearance was in 1931 in Alibi, which starred Austin Trevor as Christie's sleuth. Margaret Rutherford played Marple in a series of films released in the 1960s. Christie liked her acting, but considered the first film "pretty poor" and thought no better of the rest. She felt differently about the 1974 film Murder on the Orient Express, directed by Sidney Lumet, which featured major stars and high production values; her attendance at the London premiere was one of her last public outings. In 2016, a new film version was released, directed by Kenneth Branagh, who also starred, wearing "the most extravagant mustache moviegoers have ever seen". The television adaptation Agatha Christie's Poirot (1989–2013), with David Suchet in the title role, ran for 70 episodes over 13 series. It received nine BAFTA award nominations and won four BAFTA awards in 1990–1992. The television series Miss Marple (1984–1992), with Joan Hickson as "the BBC's peerless Miss Marple", adapted all 12 Marple novels. The French television series (2009–2012, 2013–2020), adapted 36 of Christie's stories. Christie's books have also been adapted for BBC Radio, a video game series, and graphic novels. Interests and influences Pharmacology During the First World War, Christie took a break from nursing to train for the Apothecaries Hall Examination. While she subsequently found dispensing in the hospital pharmacy monotonous, and thus less enjoyable than nursing, her new knowledge provided her with a background in potentially toxic drugs. Early in the Second World War, she brought her skills up to date at Torquay Hospital. As Michael C. Gerald puts it, her "activities as a hospital dispenser during both World Wars not only supported the war effort but also provided her with an appreciation of drugs as therapeutic agents and poisons... These hospital experiences were also likely responsible for the prominent role physicians, nurses, and pharmacists play in her stories." There were to be many medical practitioners, pharmacists, and scientists, naïve or suspicious, in Christie's cast of characters; featuring in Murder in Mesopotamia, Cards on the Table, The Pale Horse, and Mrs. McGinty's Dead, among many others. Gillian Gill notes that the murder method in Christie's first detective novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, "comes right out of Agatha Christie's work in the hospital dispensary". In an interview with journalist Marcelle Bernstein, Christie stated, "I don't like messy deaths... I'm more interested in peaceful people who die in their own beds and no one knows why." With her expert knowledge, Christie had no need of poisons unknown to science, which were forbidden under Ronald Knox's "Ten Rules for Detective Fiction". Arsenic, aconite, strychnine, digitalis, thallium, and other substances were used to dispatch victims in the ensuing decades. Archaeology In her youth, Christie showed little interest in antiquities. After her marriage to Mallowan in 1930, she accompanied him on annual expeditions, spending three to four months at a time in Syria and Iraq at excavation sites at Ur, Nineveh, Tell Arpachiyah, Chagar Bazar, Tell Brak, and Nimrud. The Mallowans also took side trips whilst travelling to and from expedition sites, visiting Italy, Greece, Egypt, Iran, and the Soviet Union, among other places. Their experiences travelling and living abroad are reflected in novels such as Murder on the Orient Express, Death on the Nile, and Appointment with Death. For the 1931 digging season at Nineveh, Christie bought a writing table to continue her own work; in the early 1950s, she paid to add a small writing room to the team's house at Nimrud. She also devoted time and effort each season in "making herself useful by photographing, cleaning, and recording finds; and restoring ceramics, which she especially enjoyed". She also provided funds for the expeditions. Many of the settings for Christie's books were inspired by her archaeological fieldwork in the Middle East; this is reflected in the detail with which she describes themfor instance, the temple of Abu Simbel as depicted in Death on the Nilewhile the settings for They Came to Baghdad were places she and Mallowan had recently stayed. Similarly, she drew upon her knowledge of daily life on a dig throughout Murder in Mesopotamia. Archaeologists and experts in Middle Eastern cultures and artefacts featured in her works include Dr Eric Leidner in Murder in Mesopotamia and Signor Richetti in Death on the Nile. After the Second World War, Christie chronicled her time in Syria in Come, Tell Me How You Live, which she described as "small beera very little book, full of everyday doings and happenings". From 8November 2001 to March 2002, The British Museum presented a "colourful and episodic exhibition" called Agatha Christie and Archaeology: Mystery in Mesopotamia which illustrated how her activities as a writer and as the wife of an archaeologist intertwined. In popular culture BBC television released Agatha Christie: A Life in Pictures in 2004, in which she is portrayed by Olivia Williams, Anna Massey, and Bonnie Wright (at different stages in her life). ITV's Perspectives: "The Mystery of Agatha Christie" (2013) is hosted by David Suchet. Some of Christie's fictional portrayals have explored and offered accounts of her disappearance in 1926. The film Agatha (1979), with Vanessa Redgrave, has Christie sneaking away to plan revenge against her husband; Christie's heirs sued unsuccessfully to prevent the film's distribution. The Doctor Who episode "The Unicorn and the Wasp" (17 May 2008), with Fenella Woolgar, portrays Christie in her early writing career and explains her disappearance as the result of having suffered a temporary breakdown owing to a brief psychic link being formed between her and an alien wasp called the Vespiform. The film Agatha and the Truth of Murder (2018) sends her under cover to solve the murder of Florence Nightingale's goddaughter, Florence Nightingale Shore. A fictionalised account of Christie's disappearance is also the central theme of a Korean musical, Agatha. The Christie Affair, a Christie-like mystery story of love and revenge by author Nina de Gramont, was a 2022 novel loosely based on Christie's disappearance. Other portrayals, such as the Hungarian film, Kojak Budapesten (1980), create their own scenarios involving Christie's criminal skill. In the TV play, Murder by the Book (1986), Christie (Dame Peggy Ashcroft) murders one of her fictional-turned-real characters, Poirot. Christie features as a character in Gaylord Larsen's Dorothy and Agatha and The London Blitz Murders by Max Allan Collins. The American television program Unsolved Mysteries devoted a segment to her famous disappearance, with Agatha portrayed by actress Tessa Pritchard. A young Agatha is depicted in the Spanish historical television series Gran Hotel (2011) in which she finds inspiration to write her new novel while aiding local detectives. In the alternative history television film Agatha and the Curse of Ishtar (2018), Christie becomes involved in a
hope. Later, Paneloux attends at the bedside of Othon's stricken son and prays that the boy may be spared. After the boy's death, Paneloux tells Rieux that although the death of an innocent child in a world ruled by a loving God cannot be rationally explained, it should nonetheless be accepted. Paneloux joins the team of volunteer workers and preaches another sermon saying that the death of the innocent child is a test of faith. Since God willed the child's death, so the Christian should will it, too. A few days after preaching this sermon, Paneloux is taken ill. He refuses to call for a doctor, trusting in God alone, and dies. Since his symptoms did not seem to resemble those of the plague, Rieux records his death as a "doubtful case." Minor characters The Narrator: the narrator presents himself at the outset of the book as witness to the events and privy to documents, but does not identify himself until the ending of the novel. The Prefect: The Prefect believes at first that the talk of plague is a false alarm, but on the advice of his medical association, he authorizes limited measures to combat it. When they do not work, he tries to avoid responsibility, saying he will ask the government for orders. Then, he takes responsibility for tightening up the regulations relating to the plague and issues the order to close the town. Dr. Castel: Dr. Castel is one of Rieux's medical colleagues and is much older than Rieux. He realizes after the first few cases that the disease is bubonic plague and is aware of the seriousness of the situation. He works hard to make an antiplague serum, but as the epidemic continues, he shows increasing signs of wear and tear. M. Othon: M. Othon is a magistrate in Oran. He is tall and thin and, as Tarrou observes in his journal, "his small, beady eyes, narrow nose, and hard, straight mouth make him look like a well-brought-up owl." Othon treats his wife and children unkindly, but after his son dies of the plague, his character softens. After he finishes his time at the isolation camp, where he is sent because his son is infected, he wants to return there because it would make him feel closer to his lost son. However, before Othon can do this, he contracts the plague and dies. Jacques Othon: Philippe Othon is M. Othon's young son. When he contracts the plague, he is the first to receive Dr. Castel's antiplague serum. But the serum is ineffective, and the boy dies after a long and painful struggle. Mme. Rieux: Mme. Rieux is Dr. Rieux's mother, who comes to stay with him when his sick wife goes to the sanatorium. She is a serene woman who, after taking care of the housework, sits quietly in a chair. She says that at her age, there is nothing much left to fear. Dr. Richard: Dr. Richard is chairman of the Oran Medical Association. He is slow to recommend any action to combat the plague for fear of public alarm. He does not want even to admit that the disease is the plague, referring instead to a "special type of fever." M. Michel: M. Michel is the concierge of the building in which Rieux lives. An old man, he is the first victim of the plague. Raoul: Raoul is the man who agrees, for a fee of ten thousand francs, to arrange for Rambert to escape. He introduces Rambert to Gonzales. Gonzales: Gonzales is the smuggler who makes the arrangements for Rambert's escape and bonds with him over football. Asthma Patient: the asthma patient receives regular visits from Dr. Rieux. He is a seventy-five-year-old Spaniard with a rugged face, who comments on events in Oran that he hears about on the radio and in the newspapers. He sits in his bed all day and measures the passing of time by putting peas from one jug into another. Louis: Louis is one of the sentries who take part in the plan for Rambert to escape. Marcel: Marcel, Louis's brother, is also a sentry who is part of the escape plan for Rambert. Garcia: Garcia is a man who knows the group of smugglers in Oran. He introduces Rambert to Raoul. Plot summary The book begins with an epigraph quoting Daniel Defoe, author of A Journal of the Plague Year. Part one In the town of Oran, thousands of rats, initially unnoticed by the populace, begin to die in the streets. Hysteria develops soon afterward, causing the local newspapers to report the incident. Authorities responding to public pressure order the collection and cremation of the rats, unaware that the collection itself was the catalyst for the spread of the bubonic plague. The main character, Dr. Bernard Rieux, lives comfortably in an apartment building when strangely the building's concierge, M. Michel, a confidante, dies from a fever. Dr. Rieux consults his colleague, Dr. Castel, about the illness until they come to the conclusion that a plague is sweeping the town. They both approach fellow doctors and town authorities about their theory but are eventually dismissed on the basis of one death. However, as more deaths quickly ensue, it becomes apparent that there is an epidemic. Meanwhile, Rieux's wife has been sent to a sanatorium in another city, to be treated for an unrelated chronic illness. Authorities, including the Prefect, are slow to accept that the situation is serious and quibble over the appropriate action to take. Official notices enacting control measures are posted, but the language used is optimistic and downplays the seriousness of the situation. A "special ward" is opened at the hospital, but its 80 beds are filled within three days. As the death toll begins to rise, more desperate measures are taken. Homes are quarantined; corpses and burials are strictly supervised. A supply of plague serum finally arrives, but there is enough to treat only existing cases, and the country's emergency reserves are depleted. When the daily number of deaths jumps to 30, the town is sealed, and an outbreak of plague is officially declared. Part two The town is sealed off. The town gates are shut, rail travel is prohibited, and all mail service is suspended. The use of telephone lines is restricted only to "urgent" calls, leaving short telegrams as the only means of communicating with friends or family outside the town. The separation affects daily activity and depresses the spirit of the townspeople, who begin to feel isolated and introverted, and the plague begins to affect various characters. One character, Raymond Rambert, devises a plan to escape the city to join his wife in Paris after city officials refused his request to leave. He befriends some underground criminals so that they may smuggle him out of the city. Another character, Father Paneloux, uses the plague as an opportunity to advance his stature in the town by suggesting that the plague was an act of God punishing the citizens' sinful nature. His diatribe falls on the ears of many citizens of the town, who turned to religion in droves but would not have done so under normal circumstances. Cottard, a criminal remorseful enough to attempt suicide but fearful of being arrested, becomes wealthy as a major smuggler. Meanwhile, Jean Tarrou, a vacationer; Joseph Grand, a civil engineer; and Dr. Rieux, exhaustively treat patients in their homes and in the hospital. Rambert informs Tarrou of his escape plan, but when Tarrou tells him that there are others in the city, including Dr. Rieux, who have loved ones outside the city whom they are not allowed to see, Rambert becomes sympathetic and offers to help Rieux fight the epidemic until he leaves town. Part three In mid-August, the situation continues to worsen. People try to escape the town, but some are shot by armed sentries. Violence and looting break out on a small scale, and the authorities respond by declaring martial law and imposing a curfew. Funerals are conducted with more speed, no ceremony and little concern for the feelings of the families of the deceased. The inhabitants passively endure their increasing feelings of exile and separation. Despondent, they waste away emotionally as well as physically. Part four In September and October, the town remains at the mercy of the plague. Rieux hears from the sanatorium that his wife's condition is worsening. He also hardens his heart regarding the plague victims so that he can continue to do his work. Cottard, on the other hand, seems to flourish during the plague because it gives him a sense of being connected to others, since everybody faces the same danger. Cottard and Tarrou attend a performance of Gluck's opera Orpheus and Eurydice, but the actor portraying Orpheus collapses with plague symptoms during the performance. After extended negotiations with guards, Rambert finally has a chance to escape, but he decides to stay, saying that he would feel ashamed of himself if he left. Towards the end of October, Castel's new antiplague serum is tried for the first time, but it cannot save the life of Othon's young son, who suffers greatly, as Paneloux, Rieux, and Tarrou tend to his bedside in horror. Paneloux, who has joined the group of volunteers fighting the plague, gives a second sermon. He addresses the problem of an innocent child's suffering and says it is a test of a Christian's faith since it requires him either to deny everything or believe everything. He urges the congregation not to give up the struggle but to do everything possible to fight the plague. A few days after the sermon, Paneloux is taken ill. His symptoms do not conform to those of the plague, but the disease still proves fatal. Tarrou and Rambert visit one of the isolation camps, where they meet Othon. When Othon's period of quarantine ends, he chooses to stay in the camp as a volunteer because this will make him feel less separated from his dead son. Tarrou tells Rieux the story of his life and, to take their mind off the epidemic, the two men go swimming together in the sea. Grand catches the plague and instructs Rieux to burn all his papers. However, Grand makes an unexpected recovery, and deaths from the plague start to decline. Part five By late January the plague is in full retreat, and the townspeople begin to celebrate the imminent opening of the town gates. Othon, however, does not escape death from the disease. Cottard is distressed by the ending of the epidemic from which he has profited by shady dealings. Two government employees approach him, and he flees. Despite the epidemic's ending, Tarrou contracts the plague and dies after a heroic struggle. Rieux is later informed via telegram that his wife has also died. In February, the town gates open and people are reunited with their loved ones from other cities. Rambert is reunited with his wife. Cottard goes mad and shoots at people from his home, and is soon arrested after a brief skirmish with the police. Grand begins working on his novel again. The narrator of the chronicle says that he is Dr. Rieux and states that he tried to present an objective view of the events. He reflects on the epidemic and declares he wrote the chronicle "to simply say what we learn in the midst of plagues : there are more things to admire in men than to despise". Critical analysis Germaine Brée has characterised the struggle of the characters against the plague as "undramatic and stubborn", and in contrast to the ideology of "glorification of power" in the novels of André Malraux, whereas Camus' characters "are obscurely engaged in saving, not destroying, and this in the name of no ideology". Lulu Haroutunian has discussed Camus' own medical history, including a bout with tuberculosis, and how it informs the novel. Marina Warner notes its larger philosophical themes of "engagement", "paltriness and generosity", "small heroism and large cowardice", and "all kinds of profoundly humanist problems, such as love and goodness, happiness and mutual connection". Thomas L Hanna and John Loose have separately discussed themes related to Christianity in the novel, with particular respect to Father Paneloux and
describe the disease. He urges the authorities to take action to stop the spread of the epidemic. However, at first, along with everyone else, the danger the town faces seems unreal to him. He feels uneasy but does not realise the gravity of the situation. Within a short while, he grasps what is at stake and warns the authorities that unless steps are taken immediately, the epidemic could kill off half the town's population of two hundred thousand within a couple of months.During the epidemic, Rieux heads an auxiliary hospital and works long hours treating the victims. He injects serum and lances the abscesses, but there is little more that he can do, and his duties weigh heavily upon him. He never gets home until late, and he has to distance himself from the natural pity that he feels for the victims; otherwise, he would not be able to go on. It is especially hard for him when he visits a victim in the person's home because he knows that he must immediately call for an ambulance and have the person removed from the house. Often, the relatives plead with him not to do so since they know they may never see the person again.Rieux works to combat the plague simply because he is a doctor and his job is to relieve human suffering. He does not do it for any grand, religious purpose, like Paneloux (Rieux does not believe in God), or as part of a high-minded moral code, like Tarrou. He is a practical man, doing what needs to be done without any fuss, but he knows that the struggle against death is something that he can never win. Jean Tarrou: Jean Tarrou arrived in Oran some weeks before the plague broke out for unknown reasons. He is not there on business since he appears to have private means. Tarrou is a good-natured man who smiles a lot. Before the plague came, he liked to associate with the Spanish dancers and musicians in the city. He also keeps a diary, full of his observations of life in Oran, which the Narrator incorporates into the narrative.It is Tarrou who first comes up with the idea of organising teams of volunteers to fight the plague. He wants to do so before the authorities begin to conscript people, and he does not like the official plan to get prisoners to do the work. He takes action, prompted by his own code of morals; he feels that the plague is everybody's responsibility and that everyone should do their duty. What interests him, he tells Rieux, is how to become a saint even though he does not believe in God.Later in the novel, Tarrou tells Rieux, with whom he has become friends, the story of his life. His father, although a kind man in private, was also an aggressive prosecuting attorney who tried death penalty cases, arguing strongly for the death penalty to be imposed. As a young boy, Tarrou attended one day of a criminal proceeding in which a man was on trial for his life. However, the idea of capital punishment disgusted him. After he left home before 18, his main interest in life was his opposition to the death penalty, which he regarded as state-sponsored murder. However, years of activism have left him disillusioned.When the plague epidemic is virtually over, Tarrou becomes one of its last victims but puts up a heroic struggle before dying. Raymond Rambert: Raymond Rambert is a journalist who is visiting Oran to research a story on the standards of living in the Arab colony of Oran. When the plague strikes, he finds himself trapped in a city with which he feels he has no connection. He misses his girlfriend who is in Paris and uses all his ingenuity and resourcefulness to persuade the city bureaucracy to allow him to leave. When that fails, he contacts smugglers, who agree to help him escape for a fee of ten thousand francs. However, there is a hitch in the arrangements, and by the time another escape plan is arranged, Rambert has changed his mind. He decides to stay in the city and continue to help fight the plague, saying that he would feel ashamed of himself if he pursued a merely private happiness. He now feels that he belongs in Oran, and that the plague is everyone's business, including his. Joseph Grand: Joseph Grand is a fifty-year-old clerk for the city government. He is tall and thin. Poorly paid, he lives an austere life, but he is capable of deep affection. In his spare time, Grand polishes up his Latin, and he is also writing a book, but he is such a perfectionist that he continually rewrites the first sentence and can get no further. One of his problems in life is that he can rarely find the correct words to express what he means. Grand tells Rieux that he married while still in his teens, but overwork and poverty took their toll (Grand did not receive the career advancement that he had been promised), and his wife Jeanne left him. He tried but failed to write a letter to her, and he still grieves for his loss.Grand is a neighbor of Cottard, and it is he who calls Rieux for help, when Cottard tries to commit suicide. When the plague takes a grip on the town, Grand joins the team of volunteers, acting as general secretary, recording all the statistics. Rieux regards him as "the true embodiment of the quiet courage that inspired the sanitary groups." Grand catches the plague himself and asks Rieux to burn his manuscript, but then makes an unexpected recovery. At the end of the novel, Grand says he is much happier; he has written to Jeanne and made a fresh start on his book. Cottard: Cottard lives in the same building as Grand. He does not appear to have a job and is described as having private means although he describes himself as "a traveling salesman in wines and spirits." Cottard is an eccentric figure, silent and secretive, who tries to hang himself in his room. He is anxious for Rieux not to report the incident, as he is under investigation by the authorities for an unstated crime. Cottard's personality changes after the outbreak of plague. Whereas he was aloof and mistrustful before, he now becomes agreeable and tries hard to make friends. He appears to relish the coming of the plague, and Tarrou thinks it is because he finds it easier to live with his own fears now that everyone else is in a state of fear, too. Cottard also avoids arrest by the police during the chaos caused by the plague. Cottard takes advantage of the crisis to make money by selling contraband cigarettes and inferior liquor.As the quarantine of the city comes to an end, Cottard anticipates being arrested after life returns to normal. He experiences severe mood swings; sometimes he is sociable, but at other times, he shuts himself up in his room. On the day the city gates are reopened, he shoots at random at people on the street, wounding some and killing a dog. The police arrest him. Father Paneloux: Father Paneloux is a learned, well-respected Jesuit priest. He is well known for having given a series of lectures in which he championed a pure form of Christian doctrine and chastised his audience about their laxity. During the first stage of the plague outbreak, Paneloux preaches a sermon at the cathedral. He has a powerful way of speaking, and he insists to the congregation that the plague is a scourge sent by God to those who have hardened their hearts against Him. However, Paneloux also claims that God is present to offer succor and hope. Later, Paneloux attends at the bedside of Othon's stricken son and prays that the boy may be spared. After the boy's death, Paneloux tells Rieux that although the death of an innocent child in a world ruled by a loving God cannot be rationally explained, it should nonetheless be accepted. Paneloux joins the team of volunteer workers and preaches another sermon saying that the death of the innocent child is a test of faith. Since God willed the child's death, so the Christian should will it, too. A few days after preaching this sermon, Paneloux is taken ill. He refuses to call for a doctor, trusting in God alone, and dies. Since his symptoms did not seem to resemble those of the plague, Rieux records his death as a "doubtful case." Minor characters The Narrator: the narrator presents himself at the outset of the book as witness to the events and privy to documents, but
there is an obligation to perform the 'right' action, regardless of actual consequences. This approach is epitomized by Immanuel Kant's notion of the Categorical Imperative, which was the centre to Kant's ethical theory based on duty. Another key deontological theory is Natural Law, which was heavily developed by Thomas Aquinas and is an important part of the Catholic Church's teaching on Morals. Threshold deontology holds that rules ought to govern up to a point despite adverse consequences; but when the consequences become so dire that they cross a stipulated threshold, consequentialism takes over. Virtue ethics, derived from Aristotle's and Confucius's notions, which asserts that the right action will be that chosen by a suitably 'virtuous' agent. Sometimes, these normative ethical theories clash which poses challenges when trying to resolve real-world ethical dilemmas. One approach which attempts to overcome the seemingly impossible divide between deontology and utilitarianism (of which the divide is caused by the opposite takings of an absolute and relativist moral view) is case-based reasoning, also known as casuistry. Casuistry does not begin with theory, rather it starts with the immediate facts of a real and concrete case. While casuistry makes use of ethical theory, it does not view ethical theory as the most important feature of moral reasoning. Casuists, like Albert Jonsen and Stephen Toulmin (The Abuse of Casuistry 1988), challenge the traditional paradigm of applied ethics. Instead of starting from theory and applying theory to a particular case, casuists start
notions, which asserts that the right action will be that chosen by a suitably 'virtuous' agent. Sometimes, these normative ethical theories clash which poses challenges when trying to resolve real-world ethical dilemmas. One approach which attempts to overcome the seemingly impossible divide between deontology and utilitarianism (of which the divide is caused by the opposite takings of an absolute and relativist moral view) is case-based reasoning, also known as casuistry. Casuistry does not begin with theory, rather it starts with the immediate facts of a real and concrete case. While casuistry makes use of ethical theory, it does not view ethical theory as the most important feature of moral reasoning. Casuists, like Albert Jonsen and Stephen Toulmin (The Abuse of Casuistry 1988), challenge the traditional paradigm of applied ethics. Instead of starting from theory and applying theory to a particular case, casuists start with the particular case itself and then ask what morally significant features (including both theory and practical considerations) ought to be considered for that particular case. In their observations of medical ethics committees, Jonsen and Toulmin note that a consensus on particularly problematic moral cases often emerges when participants focus on the facts of the case, rather than on ideology or theory. Thus, a Rabbi, a Catholic priest, and an agnostic might agree that, in this particular case, the best approach is to withhold extraordinary medical care, while disagreeing on the reasons that support their individual positions. By focusing on cases and not on theory, those engaged in moral debate increase the possibility of agreement. See also Bioethics Business ethics Effective altruism Ethical codes Ethics
languages and computational software packages, the absolute value of x is generally represented by abs(x), or a similar expression. The vertical bar notation also appears in a number of other mathematical contexts: for example, when applied to a set, it denotes its cardinality; when applied to a matrix, it denotes its determinant. Vertical bars denote the absolute value only for algebraic objects for which the notion of an absolute value is defined, notably an element of a normed division algebra, for example a real number, a complex number, or a quaternion. A closely related but distinct notation is the use of vertical bars for either the Euclidean norm or sup norm of a vector although double vertical bars with subscripts respectively) are a more common and less ambiguous notation. Definition and properties Real numbers For any the absolute value or modulus is denoted , with a vertical bar on each side of the quantity, and is defined as The absolute value is thus always either a positive number or zero, but never negative. When itself is negative then its absolute value is necessarily positive From an analytic geometry point of view, the absolute value of a real number is that number's distance from zero along the real number line, and more generally the absolute value of the difference of two real numbers is the distance between them. The notion of an abstract distance function in mathematics can be seen to be a generalisation of the absolute value of the difference (see "Distance" below). Since the square root symbol represents the unique positive square root, when applied to a positive number, it follows that This is equivalent to the definition above, and may be used as an alternative definition of the absolute value of real numbers. The absolute value has the following four fundamental properties (a, b are real numbers), that are used for generalization of this notion to other domains: Non-negativity, positive definiteness, and multiplicativity are readily apparent from the definition. To see that subadditivity holds, first note that with its sign chosen to make the result positive. Now, since it follows that, whichever of is the value one has for all Consequently, , as desired. Some additional useful properties are given below. These are either immediate consequences of the definition or implied by the four fundamental properties above. Two other useful properties concerning inequalities are: These relations may be used to solve inequalities involving absolute values. For example: The absolute value, as "distance from zero", is used to define the absolute difference between arbitrary real numbers, the standard metric on the real numbers. Complex numbers Since the complex numbers are not ordered, the definition given at the top for the real absolute value cannot be directly applied to complex numbers. However, the geometric interpretation of the absolute value of a real number as its distance from 0 can be generalised. The absolute value of a complex number is defined by the Euclidean distance of its corresponding point in the complex plane from the origin. This can be computed using the Pythagorean theorem: for any complex number where and are real numbers, the absolute value or modulus is and is defined by the Pythagorean addition of and , where and denote the real and imaginary parts respectively. When the is zero, this coincides with the definition of the absolute value of the When a complex number is expressed in its polar form its absolute value Since the product of any complex number and its with the same absolute value, is always the non-negative real number the absolute value of a complex number is the square root which is therefore called the absolute square or squared modulus This generalizes the alternative definition for reals: The complex absolute value shares the four fundamental properties given above for the real absolute value. Absolute value function The real absolute value function is continuous everywhere. It is differentiable everywhere except for . It is monotonically decreasing on the interval and monotonically increasing on the interval . Since a real number and its opposite have the same absolute value, it is an even function, and is hence not invertible. The real absolute value function is a piecewise linear, convex function. For both real and complex numbers the absolute value function is idempotent (meaning that the absolute value of any absolute value is itself). Relationship to the sign function The absolute value function of a real number returns its value irrespective of its sign, whereas the sign (or signum) function returns a number's sign irrespective of its value. The following equations show the relationship between these two functions: or and for , Derivative The real absolute value function has a derivative for every , but is not differentiable at . Its derivative for is given by the step function: The real absolute value function is an example of a continuous function that achieves a global minimum where the derivative does not exist. The subdifferential of at is the interval . The complex absolute value function is continuous everywhere but complex differentiable nowhere because it violates the Cauchy–Riemann equations. The second derivative of with respect to is zero everywhere except zero, where it does not exist. As a generalised function, the second derivative may be taken as two times the Dirac delta function. Antiderivative The antiderivative (indefinite integral) of the real absolute value function is where
properties concerning inequalities are: These relations may be used to solve inequalities involving absolute values. For example: The absolute value, as "distance from zero", is used to define the absolute difference between arbitrary real numbers, the standard metric on the real numbers. Complex numbers Since the complex numbers are not ordered, the definition given at the top for the real absolute value cannot be directly applied to complex numbers. However, the geometric interpretation of the absolute value of a real number as its distance from 0 can be generalised. The absolute value of a complex number is defined by the Euclidean distance of its corresponding point in the complex plane from the origin. This can be computed using the Pythagorean theorem: for any complex number where and are real numbers, the absolute value or modulus is and is defined by the Pythagorean addition of and , where and denote the real and imaginary parts respectively. When the is zero, this coincides with the definition of the absolute value of the When a complex number is expressed in its polar form its absolute value Since the product of any complex number and its with the same absolute value, is always the non-negative real number the absolute value of a complex number is the square root which is therefore called the absolute square or squared modulus This generalizes the alternative definition for reals: The complex absolute value shares the four fundamental properties given above for the real absolute value. Absolute value function The real absolute value function is continuous everywhere. It is differentiable everywhere except for . It is monotonically decreasing on the interval and monotonically increasing on the interval . Since a real number and its opposite have the same absolute value, it is an even function, and is hence not invertible. The real absolute value function is a piecewise linear, convex function. For both real and complex numbers the absolute value function is idempotent (meaning that the absolute value of any absolute value is itself). Relationship to the sign function The absolute value function of a real number returns its value irrespective of its sign, whereas the sign (or signum) function returns a number's sign irrespective of its value. The following equations show the relationship between these two functions: or and for , Derivative The real absolute value function has a derivative for every , but is not differentiable at . Its derivative for is given by the step function: The real absolute value function is an example of a continuous function that achieves a global minimum where the derivative does not exist. The subdifferential of at is the interval . The complex absolute value function is continuous everywhere but complex differentiable nowhere because it violates the Cauchy–Riemann equations. The second derivative of with respect to is zero everywhere except zero, where it does not exist. As a generalised function, the second derivative may be taken as two times the Dirac delta function. Antiderivative The antiderivative (indefinite integral) of the real absolute value function is where is an arbitrary constant
the sound. Noise An analog signal is subject to electronic noise and distortion introduced by communication channels, recording and signal processing operations, which can progressively degrade the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). As the signal is transmitted, copied, or processed, the unavoidable noise introduced in the signal path will accumulate as a generation loss, progressively and irreversibly degrading the SNR, until in extreme cases, the signal can be overwhelmed. Noise can show up as hiss and intermodulation distortion in audio signals, or snow in video signals. Generation loss is irreversible as there is no reliable method to distinguish the noise from the signal. In contrast, although converting an analog signal to digital form introduces a low-level quantization noise into the signal due to finite resolution of digital systems, once in digital form, the signal can be transmitted, stored, or processed without introducing significant additional noise or distortion. Noise accumulation in analog systems can be minimized by electromagnetic shielding, balanced lines, low-noise amplifiers and high-quality electrical components. In analog systems, it is
representing some other quantity, i.e., "analogous" to another quantity. For example, in an analog audio signal, the instantaneous signal voltage varies continuously with the pressure of the sound waves. In contrast, a digital signal represents the original time-varying quantity as a sampled sequence of quantized values. This imposes some bandwidth and dynamic range constraints on the representation but, unlike the analog signal, can avoid further electronic noise and distortion. The term analog signal usually refers to electrical signals; however, mechanical, pneumatic, hydraulic, and other systems may also convey or be considered analog signals. Representation An analog signal uses some property of the medium to convey the signal's information. For example, an aneroid barometer uses rotary position as the signal to convey pressure information. In an electrical signal, the voltage, current, or frequency of the signal may be varied to represent the information. Any information may be conveyed by an analog signal; such a signal may be
The APG IV system of 2016 places Dasypogonaceae in this order, after studies showing Dasypogonaceae as sister to Arecaceae. However, this decision has been called into question. Historical taxonomical systems The Cronquist system of 1981 assigned the order to the subclass Arecidae in the class Liliopsida (= monocotyledons). The Thorne system (1992) and the Dahlgren system assigned
the accepted name for the order including these plants was Principes. Taxonomy The APG IV system of 2016 places Dasypogonaceae in this order, after studies showing Dasypogonaceae as sister to Arecaceae. However, this decision has been called into question. Historical taxonomical systems The Cronquist system of 1981 assigned the order to the subclass Arecidae in the class Liliopsida (= monocotyledons). The Thorne system (1992) and the Dahlgren system assigned the order to the superorder Areciflorae, also
the novel on the periphery of events. In novels such as Taken at the Flood, After the Funeral, and Hickory Dickory Dock, he is even less in evidence, frequently passing the duties of main interviewing detective to a subsidiary character. In Cat Among the Pigeons, Poirot's entrance is so late as to be almost an afterthought. Whether this was a reflection of his age or of Christie's distaste for him, is impossible to assess. Crooked House (1949) and Ordeal by Innocence (1957), which could easily have been Poirot novels, represent a logical endpoint of the general diminution of his presence in such works. Towards the end of his career, it becomes clear that Poirot's retirement is no longer a convenient fiction. He assumes a genuinely inactive lifestyle during which he concerns himself with studying famous unsolved cases of the past and reading detective novels. He even writes a book about mystery fiction in which he deals sternly with Edgar Allan Poe and Wilkie Collins. In the absence of a more appropriate puzzle, he solves such inconsequential domestic riddles as the presence of three pieces of orange peel in his umbrella stand. Poirot (and, it is reasonable to suppose, his creator) becomes increasingly bemused by the vulgarism of the up-and-coming generation's young people. In Hickory Dickory Dock, he investigates the strange goings-on in a student hostel, while in Third Girl (1966) he is forced into contact with the smart set of Chelsea youths. In the growing drug and pop culture of the sixties, he proves himself once again but has become heavily reliant on other investigators (especially the private investigator, Mr. Goby) who provide him with the clues that he can no longer gather for himself. Notably, during this time his physical characteristics also change dramatically, and by the time Arthur Hastings meets Poirot again in Curtain, he looks very different from his previous appearances, having become thin with age and with obviously dyed hair. Death On the ITV television series, Poirot died in October 1949 from complications of a heart condition at the end of Curtain: Poirot's Last Case. This took place at Styles Court, the scene of his first English case in 1916. In Christie's novels, he lived into the early 1970s, perhaps even until 1975 when Curtain was published. In both the novel and the television adaptation, he had moved his amyl nitrite pills out of his own reach, possibly because of guilt. He thereby became the murderer in Curtain, although it was for the benefit of others. Poirot himself noted that he wanted to kill his victim shortly before his own death so that he could avoid succumbing to the arrogance of the murderer, concerned that he might come to view himself as entitled to kill those whom he deemed necessary to eliminate. The "murderer" that he was hunting had never actually killed anyone, but he had manipulated others to kill for him, subtly and psychologically manipulating the moments where others desire to commit murder so that they carry out the crime when they might otherwise dismiss their thoughts as nothing more than a momentary passion. Poirot thus was forced to kill the man himself, as otherwise he would have continued his actions and never been officially convicted, as he did not legally do anything wrong. It is revealed at the end of Curtain that he fakes his need for a wheelchair to fool people into believing that he is suffering from arthritis, to give the impression that he is more infirm than he is. His last recorded words are "Cher ami!", spoken to Hastings as the Captain left his room. (The TV adaptation adds that as Poirot is dying alone, he whispers out his final prayer to God in these words: "Forgive me... forgive...") Poirot was buried at Styles, and his funeral was arranged by his best friend Hastings and Hastings' daughter Judith. Hastings reasoned, "Here was the spot where he had lived when he first came to this country. He was to lie here at the last." Poirot's actual death and funeral occurred in Curtain, years after his retirement from the active investigation, but it was not the first time that Hastings attended the funeral of his best friend. In The Big Four (1927), Poirot feigned his death and subsequent funeral to launch a surprise attack on the Big Four. Recurring characters Captain Arthur Hastings Hastings, a former British Army officer, first meets Poirot during Poirot's years as a police officer in Belgium and almost immediately after they both arrive in England. He becomes Poirot's lifelong friend and appears in many cases. Poirot regards Hastings as a poor private detective, not particularly intelligent, yet helpful in his way of being fooled by the criminal or seeing things the way the average man would see them and for his tendency to unknowingly "stumble" onto the truth. Hastings marries and has four children – two sons and two daughters. As a loyal, albeit somewhat naïve companion, Hastings is to Poirot what Watson is to Sherlock Holmes. Hastings is capable of great bravery and courage, facing death unflinchingly when confronted by The Big Four and displaying unwavering loyalty towards Poirot. However, when forced to choose between Poirot and his wife in that novel, he initially chooses to betray Poirot to protect his wife. Later, though, he tells Poirot to draw back and escape the trap. The two are an airtight team until Hastings meets and marries Dulcie Duveen, a beautiful music hall performer half his age, after investigating the Murder on the Links. They later emigrated to Argentina, leaving Poirot behind as a "very unhappy old man". However, Poirot and Hastings reunite during the novels The Big Four, Peril at End House, The ABC Murders, Lord Edgware Dies, and Dumb Witness, when Hastings arrives in England for business, with Poirot noting in ABC Murders that he enjoys having Hastings over because he feels that he always has his most interesting cases with Hastings. The two collaborate for the final time in Curtain: Poirot's Last Case when the seemingly-crippled Poirot asks Hastings to assist him in his final case. When the killer they are tracking nearly manipulates Hastings into committing murder, Poirot describes this in his final farewell letter to Hastings as the catalyst that prompted him to eliminate the man himself, as Poirot knew that his friend was not a murderer and refused to let a man capable of manipulating Hastings in such a manner go on. Mrs Ariadne Oliver Detective novelist Ariadne Oliver is Agatha Christie's humorous self-caricature. Like Christie, she is not overly fond of the detective whom she is most famous for creating–in Ariadne's case, Finnish sleuth Sven Hjerson. We never learn anything about her husband, but we do know that she hates alcohol and public appearances and has a great fondness for apples until she is put off them by the events of Hallowe'en Party. She also has a habit of constantly changing her hairstyle, and in every appearance by her much is made of her clothes and hats. Her maid Maria prevents the public adoration from becoming too much of a burden on her employer but does nothing to prevent her from becoming too much of a burden on others. She has authored more than 56 novels and greatly dislikes people modifying her characters. She is the only one in Poirot's universe to have noted that "It’s not natural for five or six people to be on the spot when B is murdered and all have a motive for killing B." She first met Poirot in the story Cards on the Table and has bothered him ever since. Miss Felicity Lemon Poirot's secretary, Miss Felicity Lemon, has few human weaknesses. The only mistakes she makes within the series are a typing error during the events of Hickory Dickory Dock and the mis-mailing of an electricity bill, although she was worried about strange events surrounding her sister at the time. Poirot described her as being "Unbelievably ugly and incredibly efficient. Anything that she mentioned as worth consideration usually was worth consideration." She is an expert on nearly everything and plans to create the perfect filing system. She also worked for the government statistician-turned-philanthropist Parker Pyne. Whether this was during one of Poirot's numerous retirements or before she entered his employment is unknown. In The Agatha Christie Hour, she was portrayed by Angela Easterling, while in Agatha Christie's Poirot she was portrayed by Pauline Moran. On a number of occasions, she joins Poirot in his inquiries or seeks out answers alone at his request. Chief Inspector James Harold Japp Japp is a Scotland Yard Inspector and appears in many of the stories trying to solve cases that Poirot is working on. Japp is outgoing, loud, and sometimes inconsiderate by nature, and his relationship with the refined Belgian is one of the stranger aspects of Poirot's world. He first met Poirot in Belgium in 1904, during the Abercrombie Forgery. Later that year they joined forces again to hunt down a criminal known as Baron Altara. They also meet in England where Poirot often helps Japp and lets him take credit in return for special favours. These favours usually entail Poirot being supplied with other interesting cases. In Agatha Christie's Poirot, Japp was portrayed by Philip Jackson. In the film, Thirteen at Dinner (1985), adapted from Lord Edgware Dies, the role of Japp was taken by the actor David Suchet, who would later star as Poirot in the ITV adaptations. Major novels The Poirot books take readers through the whole of his life in England, from the first book (The Mysterious Affair at Styles), where he is a refugee staying at Styles, to the last Poirot book (Curtain), where he visits Styles before his death. In between, Poirot solves cases outside England as well, including his most famous case, Murder on the Orient Express (1934). Hercule Poirot became famous in 1926 with the publication of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, whose surprising solution proved controversial. The novel is still among the most famous of all detective novels: Edmund Wilson alludes to it in the title of his well-known attack on detective fiction, "Who Cares Who Killed Roger Ackroyd?" Aside from Roger Ackroyd, the most critically acclaimed Poirot novels appeared from 1932 to 1942, including Murder on the Orient Express (1934); The ABC Murders (1935); Cards on the Table (1936); and Death on the Nile (1937), a tale of multiple homicide upon a Nile steamer. Death on the Nile was judged by detective novelist John Dickson Carr to be among the ten greatest mystery novels of all time. The 1942 novel Five Little Pigs (a.k.a. Murder in Retrospect), in which Poirot investigates a murder committed sixteen years before by analysing various accounts of the tragedy, has been called "the best Christie of all" by critic and mystery novelist Robert Barnard. In 2014, the Poirot canon was added to by Sophie Hannah, the first author to be commissioned by the Christie estate to write an original story. The novel was called The Monogram Murders, and was set in the late 1920s, placing it chronologically between The Mystery of the Blue Train and Peril at End House. A second Hannah-penned Poirot came out in 2016, called Closed Casket, and a third, The Mystery of Three Quarters, in 2018. Portrayals Stage The first actor to portray Hercule Poirot was Charles Laughton. He appeared on the West End in 1928 in the play Alibi which had been adapted by Michael Morton from the novel The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. In 1932, the play was performed as The Fatal Alibi on Broadway. Another Poirot play, Black Coffee opened in London at the Embassy Theatre on 8 December 1930 and starred Francis L. Sullivan as Poirot. Another production of Black Coffee ran in Dublin, Ireland from 23 to 28 June 1931, starring Robert Powell. American playwright Ken Ludwig adapted Murder on the Orient Express into a play, which premiered at the McCarter Theatre in Princeton, New Jersey on 14 March 2017. It starred Allan Corduner in the role of Hercule Poirot. Film Austin Trevor Austin Trevor debuted the role of Poirot on screen in the 1931 British film Alibi. The film was based on the stage play. Trevor reprised the role of Poirot twice, in Black Coffee and Lord Edgware Dies. Trevor said once that he was probably cast as Poirot simply because he could do a French accent. Notably, Trevor's Poirot did not have a moustache. Leslie S. Hiscott directed the first two films, and Henry Edwards took over for the third. Tony Randall Tony Randall portrayed Poirot in The Alphabet Murders, a 1965 film also known as The ABC Murders. This was more a satire of Poirot than a straightforward adaptation and was greatly changed from the original. Much of the story, set in modern times, was played for comedy, with Poirot investigating the murders while evading the attempts
murderer to escape justice through suicide and then withheld the truth to spare the feelings of the murderer's relatives. In The Augean Stables, he helped the government to cover up vast corruption. In Murder on the Orient Express, Poirot allowed the murderers to go free after discovering that twelve different people participated in the murder, each one stabbing the victim in a darkened carriage after drugging him into unconsciousness so that there was no way for anyone to definitively determine which of them actually delivered the killing blow. The victim had committed a disgusting crime which led to the deaths of at least five people, and there was no question of his guilt, but he had been acquitted in America in a miscarriage of justice. Considering it poetic justice that twelve jurors had acquitted him and twelve people had stabbed him, Poirot produced an alternative sequence of events to explain the death involving an unknown additional passenger on the train, with the medical examiner agreeing to doctor his own report to support this theory. After his cases in the Middle East, Poirot returned to Britain. Apart from some of the so-called Labours of Hercules (see next section) he very rarely went abroad during his later career. He moved into Styles Court towards the end of his life. While Poirot was usually paid handsomely by clients, he was also known to take on cases that piqued his curiosity, although they did not pay well. Poirot shows a love of steam trains, which Christie contrasts with Hastings' love of autos: this is shown in The Plymouth Express, The Mystery of the Blue Train, Murder on the Orient Express, and The ABC Murders (in the TV series, steam trains are seen in nearly all of the episodes). Retirement That’s the way of it. Just a case or two, just one case more – the Prima Donna’s farewell performance won’t be in it with yours, Poirot. Confusion surrounds Poirot's retirement. Most of the cases covered by Poirot's private detective agency take place before his retirement to grow marrows, at which time he solves The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. It has been said that the twelve cases related in The Labours of Hercules (1947) must refer to a different retirement, but the fact that Poirot specifically says that he intends to grow marrows indicates that these stories also take place before Roger Ackroyd, and presumably Poirot closed his agency once he had completed them. There is specific mention in "The Capture of Cerberus" of the twenty-year gap between Poirot's previous meeting with Countess Rossakoff and this one. If the Labours precede the events in Roger Ackroyd, then the Ackroyd case must have taken place around twenty years later than it was published, and so must any of the cases that refer to it. One alternative would be that having failed to grow marrows once, Poirot is determined to have another go, but this is specifically denied by Poirot himself. Also, in "The Erymanthian Boar", a character is said to have been turned out of Austria by the Nazis, implying that the events of The Labours of Hercules took place after 1937. Another alternative would be to suggest that the Preface to the Labours takes place at one date but that the labours are completed over a matter of twenty years. None of the explanations is especially attractive. In terms of a rudimentary chronology, Poirot speaks of retiring to grow marrows in Chapter 18 of The Big Four (1927) which places that novel out of published order before Roger Ackroyd. He declines to solve a case for the Home Secretary because he is retired in Chapter One of Peril at End House (1932). He has certainly retired at the time of Three Act Tragedy (1935) but he does not enjoy his retirement and repeatedly takes cases thereafter when his curiosity is engaged. He continues to employ his secretary, Miss Lemon, at the time of the cases retold in Hickory Dickory Dock and Dead Man's Folly, which take place in the mid-1950s. It is, therefore, better to assume that Christie provided no authoritative chronology for Poirot's retirement but assumed that he could either be an active detective, a consulting detective, or a retired detective as the needs of the immediate case required. One consistent element about Poirot's retirement is that his fame declines during it so that in the later novels he is often disappointed when characters (especially younger characters) recognise neither him nor his name: "I should, perhaps, Madame, tell you a little more about myself. I am Hercule Poirot." The revelation left Mrs Summerhayes unmoved. "What a lovely name," she said kindly. "Greek, isn't it?" Post–World War II Poirot is less active during the cases that take place at the end of his career. Beginning with Three Act Tragedy (1934), Christie had perfected during the inter-war years a subgenre of Poirot novel in which the detective himself spent much of the first third of the novel on the periphery of events. In novels such as Taken at the Flood, After the Funeral, and Hickory Dickory Dock, he is even less in evidence, frequently passing the duties of main interviewing detective to a subsidiary character. In Cat Among the Pigeons, Poirot's entrance is so late as to be almost an afterthought. Whether this was a reflection of his age or of Christie's distaste for him, is impossible to assess. Crooked House (1949) and Ordeal by Innocence (1957), which could easily have been Poirot novels, represent a logical endpoint of the general diminution of his presence in such works. Towards the end of his career, it becomes clear that Poirot's retirement is no longer a convenient fiction. He assumes a genuinely inactive lifestyle during which he concerns himself with studying famous unsolved cases of the past and reading detective novels. He even writes a book about mystery fiction in which he deals sternly with Edgar Allan Poe and Wilkie Collins. In the absence of a more appropriate puzzle, he solves such inconsequential domestic riddles as the presence of three pieces of orange peel in his umbrella stand. Poirot (and, it is reasonable to suppose, his creator) becomes increasingly bemused by the vulgarism of the up-and-coming generation's young people. In Hickory Dickory Dock, he investigates the strange goings-on in a student hostel, while in Third Girl (1966) he is forced into contact with the smart set of Chelsea youths. In the growing drug and pop culture of the sixties, he proves himself once again but has become heavily reliant on other investigators (especially the private investigator, Mr. Goby) who provide him with the clues that he can no longer gather for himself. Notably, during this time his physical characteristics also change dramatically, and by the time Arthur Hastings meets Poirot again in Curtain, he looks very different from his previous appearances, having become thin with age and with obviously dyed hair. Death On the ITV television series, Poirot died in October 1949 from complications of a heart condition at the end of Curtain: Poirot's Last Case. This took place at Styles Court, the scene of his first English case in 1916. In Christie's novels, he lived into the early 1970s, perhaps even until 1975 when Curtain was published. In both the novel and the television adaptation, he had moved his amyl nitrite pills out of his own reach, possibly because of guilt. He thereby became the murderer in Curtain, although it was for the benefit of others. Poirot himself noted that he wanted to kill his victim shortly before his own death so that he could avoid succumbing to the arrogance of the murderer, concerned that he might come to view himself as entitled to kill those whom he deemed necessary to eliminate. The "murderer" that he was hunting had never actually killed anyone, but he had manipulated others to kill for him, subtly and psychologically manipulating the moments where others desire to commit murder so that they carry out the crime when they might otherwise dismiss their thoughts as nothing more than a momentary passion. Poirot thus was forced to kill the man himself, as otherwise he would have continued his actions and never been officially convicted, as he did not legally do anything wrong. It is revealed at the end of Curtain that he fakes his need for a wheelchair to fool people into believing that he is suffering from arthritis, to give the impression that he is more infirm than he is. His last recorded words are "Cher ami!", spoken to Hastings as the Captain left his room. (The TV adaptation adds that as Poirot is dying alone, he whispers out his final prayer to God in these words: "Forgive me... forgive...") Poirot was buried at Styles, and his funeral was arranged by his best friend Hastings and Hastings' daughter Judith. Hastings reasoned, "Here was the spot where he had lived when he first came to this country. He was to lie here at the last." Poirot's actual death and funeral occurred in Curtain, years after his retirement from the active investigation, but it was not the first time that Hastings attended the funeral of his best friend. In The Big Four (1927), Poirot feigned his death and subsequent funeral to launch a surprise attack on the Big Four. Recurring characters Captain Arthur Hastings Hastings, a former British Army officer, first meets Poirot during Poirot's years as a police officer in Belgium and almost immediately after they both arrive in England. He becomes Poirot's lifelong friend and appears in many cases. Poirot regards Hastings as a poor private detective, not particularly intelligent, yet helpful in his way of being fooled by the criminal or seeing things the way the average man would see them and for his tendency to unknowingly "stumble" onto the truth. Hastings marries and has four children – two sons and two daughters. As a loyal, albeit somewhat naïve companion, Hastings is to Poirot what Watson is to Sherlock Holmes. Hastings is capable of great bravery and courage, facing death unflinchingly when confronted by The Big Four and displaying unwavering loyalty towards Poirot. However, when forced to choose between Poirot and his wife in that novel, he initially chooses to betray Poirot to protect his wife. Later, though, he tells Poirot to draw back and escape the trap. The two are an airtight team until Hastings meets and marries Dulcie Duveen, a beautiful music hall performer half his age, after investigating the Murder on the Links. They later emigrated to Argentina, leaving Poirot behind as a "very unhappy old man". However, Poirot and Hastings reunite during the novels The Big Four, Peril at End House, The ABC Murders, Lord Edgware Dies, and Dumb Witness, when Hastings arrives in England for business, with Poirot noting in ABC Murders that he enjoys having Hastings over because he feels that he always has his most interesting cases with Hastings. The two collaborate for the final time in Curtain: Poirot's Last Case when the seemingly-crippled Poirot asks Hastings to assist him in his final case. When the killer they are tracking nearly manipulates Hastings into committing murder, Poirot describes this in his final farewell letter to Hastings as the catalyst that prompted him to eliminate the man himself, as Poirot knew that his friend was not a murderer and refused to let a man capable of manipulating Hastings in such a manner go on. Mrs Ariadne Oliver Detective novelist Ariadne Oliver is Agatha Christie's humorous self-caricature. Like Christie, she is not overly fond of the detective whom she is most famous for creating–in Ariadne's case, Finnish sleuth Sven Hjerson. We never learn anything about her husband, but we do know that she hates alcohol and public appearances and has a great fondness for apples until she is put off them by the events of Hallowe'en Party. She also has a habit of constantly changing her hairstyle, and in every appearance by her much is made of her clothes and hats. Her maid Maria prevents the public adoration from becoming too much of a burden on her employer but does nothing to prevent her from becoming too much of a burden on others. She has authored more than 56 novels and greatly dislikes people modifying her characters. She is the only one in Poirot's universe to have noted that "It’s not natural for five or six people to be on the spot when B is murdered and all have a motive for killing B." She first met Poirot in the story Cards on the Table and has bothered him ever since. Miss Felicity Lemon Poirot's secretary, Miss Felicity Lemon, has few human weaknesses. The only mistakes she makes within the series are a typing error during the events of Hickory Dickory Dock and the mis-mailing of an electricity bill, although she was worried about strange events surrounding her sister at the time. Poirot described her as being "Unbelievably ugly and incredibly efficient. Anything that she mentioned as worth consideration usually was worth consideration." She is an expert on nearly everything and plans to create the perfect filing system. She also worked for the government statistician-turned-philanthropist Parker Pyne. Whether this was during one of Poirot's numerous retirements or before she entered his employment is unknown. In The Agatha Christie Hour, she was portrayed by Angela Easterling, while in Agatha Christie's Poirot she was portrayed by Pauline Moran. On a number of occasions, she joins Poirot in his inquiries or seeks out answers alone at his request. Chief Inspector James Harold Japp Japp is a Scotland Yard Inspector and appears in many of the stories trying to solve cases that Poirot is working on. Japp is outgoing, loud, and sometimes inconsiderate by nature, and his relationship with the refined Belgian is one of the stranger aspects of Poirot's world. He first met Poirot in Belgium in 1904, during the Abercrombie Forgery. Later that year they joined forces again to hunt down a criminal known as Baron Altara. They also meet in England where Poirot often helps Japp and lets him take credit in return for special favours. These favours usually entail Poirot being supplied with other interesting cases. In Agatha Christie's Poirot, Japp was portrayed by Philip Jackson. In the film, Thirteen at Dinner (1985), adapted from Lord Edgware Dies, the role of Japp was taken by the actor David Suchet, who would later star as Poirot in the ITV adaptations. Major novels The Poirot books take readers through the whole of his life in England, from the first book (The Mysterious Affair at Styles), where he is a refugee staying at Styles, to the last Poirot book (Curtain), where he visits Styles before his death. In between, Poirot solves cases outside England as well, including his most famous case, Murder on the Orient Express (1934). Hercule Poirot became famous in 1926 with the publication of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, whose surprising solution proved controversial. The novel is still among the most famous of all detective novels: Edmund Wilson alludes to it in the title of his well-known attack on detective fiction, "Who Cares Who Killed Roger Ackroyd?" Aside from Roger Ackroyd, the most critically acclaimed Poirot novels appeared from 1932 to 1942, including Murder on the Orient Express (1934); The ABC Murders (1935); Cards on the Table (1936); and Death on the Nile (1937), a tale of multiple homicide upon a Nile steamer. Death on the Nile was judged by detective novelist John Dickson Carr to be among the ten greatest mystery novels of all time. The 1942 novel Five Little Pigs (a.k.a. Murder in Retrospect), in which Poirot investigates a murder committed sixteen years before by analysing various accounts of the tragedy, has been called "the best Christie of all" by critic and mystery novelist Robert Barnard. In 2014, the Poirot canon was added to by Sophie Hannah, the first author to be commissioned by the Christie estate to write an original story. The novel was called The Monogram Murders, and was set in the late 1920s, placing it chronologically between The Mystery of the Blue Train and Peril at End House. A second Hannah-penned Poirot came out in 2016, called Closed Casket, and a third, The Mystery of Three Quarters, in 2018. Portrayals Stage The first actor to portray Hercule Poirot was Charles Laughton. He appeared on the West End in 1928 in the play Alibi which had been adapted by Michael Morton from the novel The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. In 1932, the play was performed as The Fatal Alibi on Broadway. Another Poirot play, Black Coffee opened in London at the Embassy Theatre on 8 December 1930 and starred Francis L. Sullivan as Poirot. Another production of Black Coffee ran in Dublin, Ireland from 23 to 28 June 1931, starring Robert Powell. American playwright Ken Ludwig adapted Murder on the Orient Express into a play, which premiered at the McCarter Theatre in Princeton, New Jersey on 14 March 2017. It starred Allan Corduner in the role of Hercule Poirot. Film Austin Trevor Austin Trevor debuted the role of Poirot on screen in the 1931 British film Alibi. The film was based on the stage play. Trevor reprised the role of Poirot twice, in Black Coffee and Lord Edgware Dies. Trevor said once that he was probably cast as Poirot simply because he could do a French accent. Notably, Trevor's Poirot did not have a moustache. Leslie S. Hiscott directed the first two films, and Henry Edwards took over for the third. Tony Randall Tony Randall portrayed Poirot in The Alphabet Murders, a 1965 film also known as The ABC Murders. This was more a satire of Poirot than a straightforward adaptation and was greatly changed from the original. Much of the story, set in modern times, was played for comedy, with Poirot investigating the murders while evading the attempts by Hastings (Robert Morley) and the police to get him out of England and back to Belgium. Albert Finney Albert Finney played Poirot in 1974 in the cinematic version of Murder on the Orient Express. As of today, Finney is the only actor to receive an Academy Award nomination for playing Poirot, though he did not win. Peter Ustinov Peter Ustinov played Poirot six times, starting with Death on the Nile (1978). He reprised the role in Evil Under the Sun (1982) and Appointment with Death (1988). Christie's daughter Rosalind Hicks observed Ustinov during a rehearsal and said, "That's not Poirot! He isn't at all like that!" Ustinov overheard and remarked "He is now!" He appeared again as Poirot in three television films: Thirteen at Dinner (1985), Dead Man's Folly (1986), and Murder in Three Acts (1986). Earlier adaptations were set during the time in which the novels were written, but these television films were set in the contemporary era. The first of these was based on Lord Edgware Dies and was made by Warner Bros. It also starred Faye Dunaway, with David Suchet as Inspector Japp, just before Suchet began to play Poirot. David Suchet considers his performance as Japp to be "possibly the worst performance of [his] career". Kenneth Branagh In 2017, Kenneth Branagh directed and starred in another film adaptation of Murder on the Orient Express. Branagh returned for the sequel, Death on the Nile. Other Anatoly Ravikovich, Zagadka Endkhauza (End House Mystery) (1989; based on "Peril at End House") Television David Suchet David Suchet starred as Poirot in the ITV series Agatha Christie's Poirot from 1989 until June 2013, when he announced that he was bidding farewell to the role. "No one could've guessed then that the series would span a quarter-century or that the classically trained Suchet would complete the entire catalogue of whodunits featuring the eccentric Belgian investigator, including 33 novels and dozens of short stories." His final appearance was in an adaptation of Curtain: Poirot's Last Case, aired on 13 November 2013. The writers of the "Binge!" article of Entertainment Weekly Issue #1343–44 (26 December 2014 –
Crack'd from Side to Side, it is mentioned that the nephew is now an adult and has a successful career. The effects of ageing are seen on Miss Marple, such as needing a holiday after illness in A Caribbean Mystery, but she is if anything more agile in Nemesis, set only sixteen months later. Miss Marple's background is described in some detail, albeit in glimpses across the novels and short stories in which she appears. She has a very large family, including a sister, the mother of Raymond, and Mabel Denham, a young woman who was accused of poisoning her husband Geoffrey (The Thumb Mark of St. Peter). In "Introducing Chief Inspector Wexford", an afterword to the 2007 re-issue of Ruth Rendell's first novel From Doon With Death, Daniel Mallory quoted her (from a 1990 interview) about "the hated Agatha" and "that awful Marple woman"; Rendell said of St. Mary Mead that she "can hardly bear to say the name of that village where one finds a lot of normal, law-abiding people living ordinary, blameless lives, who suddenly decide to murder their aunt. Well, I don’t believe that." Bibliography Miss Marple Series The Murder at the Vicarage (1930, Novel) The Body in the Library (1942, Novel) The Moving Finger (1943, Novel) A Murder Is Announced (1950, Novel) They Do It with Mirrors (1952, Novel) - also published as Murder With Mirrors A Pocket Full of Rye (1953, Novel) 4.50 from Paddington (1957, Novel) - also published as What Mrs. McGillicuddy Saw! The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side (1962, Novel) A Caribbean Mystery (1964, Novel) At Bertram's Hotel (1965, Novel) Nemesis (1971, Novel) Sleeping Murder (1976, Novel) Miss Marple short story collections The Thirteen Problems (1932 short story collection featuring Miss Marple, also published as The Tuesday Club Murders) The Regatta Mystery and Other Stories (1939, Collection) Three Blind Mice and Other Stories (1950, Collection) The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding (1960, Collection) Double Sin and Other Stories (1961, Collection) Miss Marple's Final Cases and Two Other Stories (short stories collected posthumously, also published as Miss Marple's Final Cases, but only six of the eight stories actually feature Miss Marple) (written between 1939 and 1954, published 1979) Miss Marple: The Complete Short Stories, published 1985, includes 20 from 4 sets: The Tuesday Club Murders, The Regatta Mystery, Three Blind Mice and Other Stories, and Double Sin and Other Stories. Miss Marple also appears in "Greenshaw's Folly", a short story included as part of the Poirot collection The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding (1960). Four stories in the Three Blind Mice collection (1950) feature Miss Marple: "Strange Jest", "Tape-Measure Murder", "The Case of the Caretaker", and "The Case of the Perfect Maid". The Autograph edition of Miss Marple's Final Cases includes the eight in the original plus "Greenshaw's Folly". Books about Miss Marple The Life and Times of Miss Jane Marple – a biography by Anne Hart Stage A stage adaptation of Murder at the Vicarage, by Moie Charles and Barbara Toy, was first seen at Northampton on 17 October 1949; it was directed by Reginald Tate, starred the 35-year-old Barbara Mullen as Miss Marple, and after touring, reached the Playhouse Theatre in London's West End on 14 December. Having run till late March 1950, it then went on tour again. In July 1974, Mullen (by then 60) returned to the role in another national tour of the same play, culminating 12 months later when the show opened at London's Savoy Theatre on 28 July 1975. At the end of March 1976 the Miss Marple role was taken over by Avril Angers, after which the production transferred to the Fortune Theatre on 5 July. The role then passed to Muriel Pavlow in June 1977 and to Gabrielle Hamilton late the following year; the production finally closed in October 1979. On 21 September 1977, while Murder at the Vicarage was still running at the Fortune, a stage adaptation by Leslie Darbon of A Murder Is Announced opened at the Vaudeville Theatre, with Dulcie Gray as Miss Marple. The show ran to the end of September 1978 and then went on tour. Films Margaret Rutherford Jane Marple had to wait thirty-two years after her first appearance in 1930 for her first big-screen appearance, the first in a sequence of films starring Margaret Rutherford. These were successful light comedies, but were disappointing to Christie herself. Nevertheless, Agatha Christie dedicated the novel The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side to Rutherford. Rutherford presented the character as a bold and eccentric old lady, different from the prim and birdlike character Christie created in her novels. As penned by Christie, Miss Marple has never worked for a living, but the character as portrayed by Margaret Rutherford briefly works as a cook-housekeeper, a stage actress, a sailor and criminal reformer, and is offered the chance to run a riding establishment-cum-hotel. Her education and genteel background are hinted at when she mentions her awards at marksmanship, fencing, and equestrianism (although these hints are played for comedic value). Rutherford played in four movies directed by George Pollock: Murder, She Said (1961) was the first of four British MGM productions starring Rutherford. This film was based on the 1957 novel 4:50 from Paddington (U.S. title, What Mrs. McGillicuddy Saw!), and the changes made in the plot were typical of the series. In the film, Mrs. McGillicuddy is cut from the plot. Miss Marple herself sees an apparent murder committed on a train running alongside hers. Likewise, it is Miss Marple herself who poses as a maid to find out the facts of the case, not a young friend of hers who has made a business of it. Actress Joan Hickson, who played Marple in the 1984-1992 television adaptations, has a role as a housekeeper in this movie. Murder at the Gallop (1963), based on the 1953 Hercule Poirot novel After the Funeral (in this film, she is identified as Miss JTV Marple, though there was no indication as to what the extra initials might stand for). Murder Most Foul (1964), based on the 1952 Poirot novel Mrs McGinty's Dead. Murder Ahoy! (1964). The last film is not based on any Christie work but displays a few plot elements from They Do It With Mirrors (viz., the ship is used as a reform school for wayward boys and one of the teachers uses them as a crime force), and there is a kind of salute to The Mousetrap. The music to all four films was composed and conducted by Ron Goodwin. The same theme is used on all four films with slight variations in each. The main theme has a distinct 1960s feel to it and is known to be a highly complex piece of music due to the quick playing of the violin. The score was written within a couple of weeks by Goodwin who was approached by Pollock after Pollock had heard about him from Stanley Black. Black had worked with Pollock on "Stranger in Town" in 1957 and had previously used Goodwin as his orchestrator. Rutherford, who was 68 years old when the first film was shot in February 1961, insisted that she wear her own clothes during the filming of the movie, as well as having her real-life husband, Stringer Davis, appear alongside her as the character 'Mr Stringer'. The Rutherford films are frequently repeated on television in Germany, and in that country Miss Marple is generally identified with Rutherford's quirky portrayal. Rutherford also appeared briefly as Miss Marple in the parodic Hercule Poirot adventure The Alphabet Murders (1965). Angela Lansbury In 1980, Angela Lansbury played Miss Marple in The Mirror Crack'd (EMI, directed by Guy Hamilton), based on Christie's 1962 novel. The film featured an all-star cast that included Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson, Geraldine Chaplin, Tony Curtis, and Kim Novak. Edward Fox appeared as Inspector Craddock, who did Miss Marple's legwork. Lansbury's Marple was a crisp, intelligent woman who moved stiffly and spoke in clipped tones. Unlike most incarnations of Miss Marple, this one smoked
and last-written novels, and many characters grow and age. An example would be the Vicar's nephew: in The Murder at the Vicarage, the Reverend Mr Clement's nephew Dennis is a teenager; in The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side, it is mentioned that the nephew is now an adult and has a successful career. The effects of ageing are seen on Miss Marple, such as needing a holiday after illness in A Caribbean Mystery, but she is if anything more agile in Nemesis, set only sixteen months later. Miss Marple's background is described in some detail, albeit in glimpses across the novels and short stories in which she appears. She has a very large family, including a sister, the mother of Raymond, and Mabel Denham, a young woman who was accused of poisoning her husband Geoffrey (The Thumb Mark of St. Peter). In "Introducing Chief Inspector Wexford", an afterword to the 2007 re-issue of Ruth Rendell's first novel From Doon With Death, Daniel Mallory quoted her (from a 1990 interview) about "the hated Agatha" and "that awful Marple woman"; Rendell said of St. Mary Mead that she "can hardly bear to say the name of that village where one finds a lot of normal, law-abiding people living ordinary, blameless lives, who suddenly decide to murder their aunt. Well, I don’t believe that." Bibliography Miss Marple Series The Murder at the Vicarage (1930, Novel) The Body in the Library (1942, Novel) The Moving Finger (1943, Novel) A Murder Is Announced (1950, Novel) They Do It with Mirrors (1952, Novel) - also published as Murder With Mirrors A Pocket Full of Rye (1953, Novel) 4.50 from Paddington (1957, Novel) - also published as What Mrs. McGillicuddy Saw! The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side (1962, Novel) A Caribbean Mystery (1964, Novel) At Bertram's Hotel (1965, Novel) Nemesis (1971, Novel) Sleeping Murder (1976, Novel) Miss Marple short story collections The Thirteen Problems (1932 short story collection featuring Miss Marple, also published as The Tuesday Club Murders) The Regatta Mystery and Other Stories (1939, Collection) Three Blind Mice and Other Stories (1950, Collection) The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding (1960, Collection) Double Sin and Other Stories (1961, Collection) Miss Marple's Final Cases and Two Other Stories (short stories collected posthumously, also published as Miss Marple's Final Cases, but only six of the eight stories actually feature Miss Marple) (written between 1939 and 1954, published 1979) Miss Marple: The Complete Short Stories, published 1985, includes 20 from 4 sets: The Tuesday Club Murders, The Regatta Mystery, Three Blind Mice and Other Stories, and Double Sin and Other Stories. Miss Marple also appears in "Greenshaw's Folly", a short story included as part of the Poirot collection The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding (1960). Four stories in the Three Blind Mice collection (1950) feature Miss Marple: "Strange Jest", "Tape-Measure Murder", "The Case of the Caretaker", and "The Case of the Perfect Maid". The Autograph edition of Miss Marple's Final Cases includes the eight in the original plus "Greenshaw's Folly". Books about Miss Marple The Life and Times of Miss Jane Marple – a biography by Anne Hart Stage A stage adaptation of Murder at the Vicarage, by Moie Charles and Barbara Toy, was first seen at Northampton on 17 October 1949; it was directed by Reginald Tate, starred the 35-year-old Barbara Mullen as Miss Marple, and after touring, reached the Playhouse Theatre in London's West End on 14 December. Having run till late March 1950, it then went on tour again. In July 1974, Mullen (by then 60) returned to the role in another national tour of the same play, culminating 12 months later when the show opened at London's Savoy Theatre on 28 July 1975. At the end of March 1976 the Miss Marple role was taken over by Avril Angers, after which the production transferred to the Fortune Theatre on 5 July. The role then passed to Muriel Pavlow in June 1977 and to Gabrielle Hamilton late the following year; the production finally closed in October 1979. On 21 September 1977, while Murder at the Vicarage was still running at the Fortune, a stage adaptation by Leslie Darbon of A Murder Is Announced opened at the Vaudeville Theatre, with Dulcie Gray as Miss Marple. The show ran to the end of September 1978 and then went on tour. Films Margaret Rutherford Jane Marple had to wait thirty-two years after her first appearance in 1930 for her first big-screen appearance, the first in a sequence of films starring Margaret Rutherford. These were successful light comedies, but were disappointing to Christie herself. Nevertheless, Agatha Christie dedicated the novel The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side to Rutherford. Rutherford presented the character as a bold and eccentric old lady, different from the prim and birdlike character Christie created in her novels. As penned by Christie, Miss Marple has never worked for a living, but the character as portrayed by Margaret Rutherford briefly works as a cook-housekeeper, a stage actress, a sailor and criminal reformer, and is offered the chance to run a riding establishment-cum-hotel. Her education and genteel background are hinted at when she mentions her awards at marksmanship, fencing, and equestrianism (although these hints are played for comedic value). Rutherford played in four movies directed by George Pollock: Murder, She Said (1961) was the first of four British MGM productions starring Rutherford. This film was based on the 1957 novel 4:50 from Paddington (U.S. title, What Mrs. McGillicuddy Saw!), and the changes made in the plot were typical of the series. In the film, Mrs. McGillicuddy is cut from the plot. Miss Marple herself sees an apparent murder committed on a train running alongside hers. Likewise, it is Miss Marple herself who poses as a maid to find out the facts of the case, not a young friend of hers who has made a business of it. Actress Joan Hickson, who played Marple in the 1984-1992 television adaptations, has a role as a housekeeper in this movie. Murder at the Gallop (1963), based on the 1953 Hercule Poirot novel After the Funeral (in this film, she is identified as Miss JTV Marple, though there was no indication as to what the extra initials might stand for). Murder Most Foul (1964), based on the 1952 Poirot novel Mrs McGinty's Dead. Murder Ahoy! (1964). The last film is not based on any Christie work but displays a few plot elements from They Do It With Mirrors (viz., the ship is used as a reform school for wayward boys and one of the teachers uses them as a crime force), and there is a kind of salute to The Mousetrap. The music to all four films was composed and conducted by Ron Goodwin. The same theme is used on all four films with slight variations in each. The main theme has a distinct 1960s feel to it and is known to be a highly complex piece of music due to the quick playing of the violin. The score was written within a couple of weeks by Goodwin who was approached by Pollock after Pollock had heard about him from Stanley Black. Black had worked with Pollock on "Stranger in Town" in 1957 and had previously used Goodwin as his orchestrator. Rutherford, who was 68 years old when the first film was shot in February 1961, insisted that she wear her own clothes during the filming of the movie, as well as having her real-life husband, Stringer Davis, appear alongside her as the character 'Mr Stringer'. The Rutherford films are frequently repeated on television in Germany, and in that country Miss Marple is generally identified
Gregorian calendar, the fifth in the early Julian, the first of four months to have a length of 30 days, and the second of five months to have a length of less than 31 days. April is commonly associated with the season of autumn in parts of the Southern Hemisphere, and spring in parts of the Northern Hemisphere, where it is the seasonal equivalent to October in the Southern Hemisphere and vice versa. History The Romans gave this month the Latin name Aprilis but the derivation of this name is uncertain. The traditional etymology is from the verb aperire, "to open", in allusion to its being the season when trees and flowers begin to "open", which is supported by comparison with the modern Greek use of άνοιξη (ánixi) (opening) for spring. Since some of the Roman months were named in honor of divinities, and as April was sacred to the goddess Venus, her Veneralia being held on the first day, it has been suggested that Aprilis was originally her month Aphrilis, from her equivalent Greek goddess name Aphrodite (Aphros), or from the Etruscan name Apru. Jacob Grimm suggests the name of a hypothetical god or hero, Aper or Aprus. April was the second month of the earliest Roman calendar, before Ianuarius and Februarius were added by King Numa Pompilius about 700 BC. It became the fourth month of the calendar year (the year when twelve months are displayed in order) during the time of the decemvirs about 450 BC, when it also was given 29 days. The 30th day was added during the reform of the calendar undertaken by Julius Caesar in the mid-40s BC, which produced the Julian calendar. The Anglo-Saxons called April ēastre-monaþ. The Venerable Bede says in The Reckoning of Time that this month ēastre is the root of the word Easter. He further states that the month was named after a goddess Eostre whose feast was in that month. It is also attested by Einhard in his work, Vita Karoli Magni. St George's day is the twenty-third of the month; and St Mark's Eve, with its superstition that the ghosts of those who are doomed to die within the year will be seen to pass into the church, falls on the twenty-fourth. In China the symbolic of the earth by the emperor and princes of the blood took place in their third month, which frequently corresponds to April. In Finnish April is huhtikuu, meaning slash-and-burn moon, when gymnosperms for beat and burn clearing of farmland were felled. In Slovene, the most established traditional name is mali traven, meaning the month when plants start growing. It was first written in 1466 in the Škofja Loka manuscript. The month Aprilis had 30 days; Numa Pompilius made it 29 days long; finally Julius Caesar’s calendar reform made it again 30 days long, which was not changed in the calendar revision of Augustus Caesar in 8 BC. Additionally in the Spanish colony, Las Islas Filipinas (now known as the Philippines), the month Aprilis had a significant meaning to the life of the natives as it was associated to the influence of the Chinese during the Spanish colonial period. The importance of this aspect to the lives of the natives was formerly associated to an event called "Abril na Ikaw" as it is closely linked to the famous trader, April Yu. In Ancient Rome, the festival of Cerealia was held for seven days from mid-to-late April, but exact dates are uncertain. Feriae Latinae was also held in April, with the date varying. Other ancient Roman observances include Veneralia (April 1), Megalesia (April 10–16), Fordicidia (April 15), Parilia (April 21), Vinalia Urbana, Robigalia, and Serapia were celebrated on (April 25). Floralia was held April 27 during the Republican era, or April 28 on the Julian calendar, and lasted until May 3. However, these dates do not correspond to the modern Gregorian calendar. The Lyrids meteor shower appears on April 16 – April 26 each year, with the peak generally occurring on April 22. Eta Aquariids meteor shower also appears in April. It is visible from about April 21 to about May 20 each year with peak activity on or around May 6. The Pi Puppids appear on April 23, but only in years around the parent comet's perihelion date. The Virginids also shower at various dates in April. The "Days of April" (journées d'avril) is a name appropriated in French history to a series of insurrections at Lyons, Paris and elsewhere, against the government of Louis Philippe in 1834, which led to violent repressive measures, and to a famous trial known as the procès d'avril. April symbols April's birthstone is the diamond. The birth flower is typically listed as either the Daisy (Bellis perennis) or the Sweet Pea. The zodiac signs for the month of April are Aries (until April 20) and Taurus (April 20 onwards). April observances This list does not necessarily imply either official status nor general observance. Month-long observances In Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox tradition, April is the Month of the Resurrection of the Lord. April and March are the months in which is celebrated the moveable Feast of Easter Sunday. National Pet Month (United Kingdom) United States Arab American Heritage Month Autism Awareness Month Cancer Control Month Community College Awareness Month Confederate History Month (Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas, Virginia) Donate Life Month Financial Literacy Month Jazz Appreciation Month Mathematics and Statistics Awareness Month National Poetry Month National Poetry Writing Month Occupational Therapy Month National Prevent Child Abuse Month National Volunteer Month Parkinson's Disease Awareness Month Rosacea Awareness Month Sexual Assault Awareness Month United States Food months Fresh Florida Tomato Month National Food Month National Grilled Cheese Month National Pecan Month National Soft Pretzel Month National Soyfoods Month Non-Gregorian observances: 2021 (All Baha'i, Islamic, and Jewish observances begin at the sundown prior to the date listed, and end at sundown of the date in question unless otherwise noted.) List of observances set by the Bahá'í calendar List of observances set by the Chinese calendar List of observances set by the Hebrew calendar List of observances set by the Islamic calendar List of observances set by the Solar Hijri calendar Movable observances, 2021 dates Youth Homelessness Matters Day National Health Day (Kiribati): April 6 Oral, Head and Neck Cancer Awareness Week (United States): April 13–19 National Park Week (United States): April 18–26 Crime Victims' Rights Week (United States): April 19–25 National Volunteer Week: April 19–25 European Immunization Week: April 20–26 Day of Silence (United States): April 24 Pay It Forward Day: April 28 (International observance) Denim Day: April 29 (International observance) Day of Dialogue (United States) Vaccination Week In The Americas See: List of movable Western Christian observances See: List of movable Eastern Christian observances First Wednesday: April 1 National Day of Hope (United States) First Saturday: April 4 Ulcinj Municipality Day (Ulcinj, Montenegro) First Sunday: April 5 Daylight saving time ends (Australia and New Zealand) Geologists Day (former Soviet Union countries) Kanamara Matsuri (Kawasaki, Japan) Opening Day (United States) First full week: April 5–11 National Library Week (United States) National Library Workers Day (United States) (Tuesday of National Library week, April 4) National Bookmobile Day (Wednesday of National Library week, April 5) National Public Health Week (United States) National Public Safety Telecommunicators Week (United States) Second Wednesday: April 8 International Day of Pink Second Thursday: April 9 National Former Prisoner of War Recognition Day (United States) Second Friday of April: April 10 Fast and Prayer Day (Liberia) Air Force Day (Russia) Kamakura Matsuri at Tsurugaoka Hachiman (Kamakura, Japan), lasts until third Sunday. Second
Arab American Heritage Month Autism Awareness Month Cancer Control Month Community College Awareness Month Confederate History Month (Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas, Virginia) Donate Life Month Financial Literacy Month Jazz Appreciation Month Mathematics and Statistics Awareness Month National Poetry Month National Poetry Writing Month Occupational Therapy Month National Prevent Child Abuse Month National Volunteer Month Parkinson's Disease Awareness Month Rosacea Awareness Month Sexual Assault Awareness Month United States Food months Fresh Florida Tomato Month National Food Month National Grilled Cheese Month National Pecan Month National Soft Pretzel Month National Soyfoods Month Non-Gregorian observances: 2021 (All Baha'i, Islamic, and Jewish observances begin at the sundown prior to the date listed, and end at sundown of the date in question unless otherwise noted.) List of observances set by the Bahá'í calendar List of observances set by the Chinese calendar List of observances set by the Hebrew calendar List of observances set by the Islamic calendar List of observances set by the Solar Hijri calendar Movable observances, 2021 dates Youth Homelessness Matters Day National Health Day (Kiribati): April 6 Oral, Head and Neck Cancer Awareness Week (United States): April 13–19 National Park Week (United States): April 18–26 Crime Victims' Rights Week (United States): April 19–25 National Volunteer Week: April 19–25 European Immunization Week: April 20–26 Day of Silence (United States): April 24 Pay It Forward Day: April 28 (International observance) Denim Day: April 29 (International observance) Day of Dialogue (United States) Vaccination Week In The Americas See: List of movable Western Christian observances See: List of movable Eastern Christian observances First Wednesday: April 1 National Day of Hope (United States) First Saturday: April 4 Ulcinj Municipality Day (Ulcinj, Montenegro) First Sunday: April 5 Daylight saving time ends (Australia and New Zealand) Geologists Day (former Soviet Union countries) Kanamara Matsuri (Kawasaki, Japan) Opening Day (United States) First full week: April 5–11 National Library Week (United States) National Library Workers Day (United States) (Tuesday of National Library week, April 4) National Bookmobile Day (Wednesday of National Library week, April 5) National Public Health Week (United States) National Public Safety Telecommunicators Week (United States) Second Wednesday: April 8 International Day of Pink Second Thursday: April 9 National Former Prisoner of War Recognition Day (United States) Second Friday of April: April 10 Fast and Prayer Day (Liberia) Air Force Day (Russia) Kamakura Matsuri at Tsurugaoka Hachiman (Kamakura, Japan), lasts until third Sunday. Second Sunday: April 12 Children's Day (Peru) Week of April 14: April 12–18 Pan-American Week (United States) Third Wednesday: April 15 Administrative Professionals' Day (New Zealand) Third Thursday: April 16 National High Five Day (United States) Third Saturday: April 18 Record Store Day (International observance) Last full week of April: April 19–25 Administrative Professionals Week (Malaysia, North America) World Immunization Week Week of April 23: April 19–25 Canada Book Week (Canada) Week of the New Moon: April 19–25 National Dark-Sky Week (United States) Third Monday: April 20 Patriots' Day (Massachusetts, Maine, United States) Queen's Official Birthday (Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha) Sechseläuten (Zürich, Switzerland) Wednesday of last full week of April: April 22 Administrative Professionals' Day (Hong Kong, North America) First Thursday after April 18: April 23 First Day of Summer (Iceland) Fourth Thursday: April 23 Take Our Daughters And Sons To Work Day (United States) Last Friday: April 24 Arbor Day (United States) Día de la Chupina (Rosario, Argentina) Last Friday in April to first Sunday in May: April 24-May 3 Arbour Week in Ontario Last Saturday: April 25 Children's Day (Colombia) National Rebuilding Day (United States) National Sense of Smell Day (United States) World Tai Chi and Qigong Day Last Sunday: April 26 Flag Day (Åland, Finland) Turkmen Racing Horse Festival (Turkmenistan) April 27 (moves to April 26 if April 27 is on a Sunday): April 27 Koningsdag (Netherlands) Last Monday: April 27 Confederate Memorial Day (Alabama, Georgia (U.S. state), and Mississippi, United States) Last Wednesday: April 29 International Noise Awareness Day Fixed observances April 1 April Fools' Day Arbor Day (Tanzania) Civil Service Day (Thailand) Cyprus National Day (Cyprus) Edible Book Day Fossil Fools Day Kha b-Nisan (Assyrian people) National Civil Service Day (Thailand) Odisha Day (Odisha, India) Start of Testicular Cancer Awareness week (United States), April 1–7 Season for Nonviolence January 30 – April 4 April 2 International Children's Book Day (International observance) Malvinas Day (Argentina) National Peanut Butter and Jelly Day (United States) Thai Heritage Conservation Day (Thailand) Unity of Peoples of Russia and Belarus Day (Belarus) World Autism Awareness Day (International observance) April 3 April 4 Children's Day (Hong Kong, Taiwan) Independence Day (Senegal) International Day for Mine Awareness and Assistance in Mine Action Peace Day (Angola) April 5 Children's Day (Palestinian territories) National Caramel Day (United States) Sikmogil (South Korea) April 6 Chakri Day (Thailand) National Beer Day (United Kingdom) New Beer's Eve (United States) Tartan Day (United States & Canada) April 7 Flag Day (Slovenia) Genocide Memorial Day (Rwanda), and its related observance: International Day of Reflection on the 1994 Rwanda Genocide (United Nations) Motherhood and Beauty Day (Armenia) National Beer Day (United States) No Housework Day Sheikh Abeid Amani Karume Day (Tanzania) Women's Day (Mozambique) World Health Day (International observance) April 8 Buddha's Birthday (Japan only, other countries follow different calendars) Feast of the First Day of the Writing of the Book of the Law (Thelema) International Romani Day (International observance) Trading Cards for Grown-ups Day April 9 Anniversary of the German Invasion of Denmark (Denmark) Baghdad Liberation Day (Iraqi Kurdistan) Constitution Day (Kosovo) Day of National Unity (Georgia) Day of the Finnish Language (Finland) Day of Valor or Araw ng Kagitingan (Philippines) Feast of the Second Day of the Writing of the Book of the Law (Thelema) International Banshtai Tsai Day Martyr's Day (Tunisia) National Former Prisoner of War Recognition Day (United States) Remembrance for Haakon Sigurdsson (The Troth) Vimy Ridge Day (Canada) April 10 Day of the Builder (Azerbaijan) Feast of the Third Day of the Writing of the Book of the Law (Thelema) Siblings Day (International observance) April 11 Juan Santamaría Day, anniversary of his death in the Second Battle of Rivas. (Costa Rica) International Louie Louie Day National Cheese Fondue Day (United States) World Parkinson's Day April 12 Children's Day (Bolivia and Haiti) Commemoration of first human in space by Yuri Gagarin: Cosmonautics Day (Russia) International Day of Human Space Flight Yuri's Night (International observance) Halifax Day (North Carolina) National Grilled Cheese Sandwich Day (United States) National Redemption Day (Liberia) Walk on Your Wild Side Day April 13 Jefferson's Birthday (United States) Katyn Memorial Day (Poland) Teacher's Day (Ecuador) First day of Thingyan (Myanmar) (April 13–16) Unfairly Prosecuted Persons Day (Slovakia) April 14 ʔabusibaree (Okinawa Islands, Japan) Ambedkar Jayanti (India) Black Day (South Korea) Commemoration of Anfal Genocide Against the Kurds (Iraqi Kurdistan) Dhivehi Language Day (Maldives) Day of Mologa (Yaroslavl Oblast, Russia) Day of the Georgian language (Georgia (country)) Season of Emancipation (April 14 to August 23) (Barbados) N'Ko Alphabet Day (Mande speakers) Pohela Boishakh (Bangladesh) Pana Sankranti (Odisha, India) Puthandu (Tamils) (India, Malaysia, Singapore, Sri Lanka) Second day of Songkran (Thailand) (Thailand) Pan American Day (several countries in the Americas) The first day of Takayama Spring Festival (Takayama, Gifu, Japan) Vaisakh (Punjab (region)), (India and Pakistan) Youth Day (Angola) April 15 Day of the Sun (North Korea). Hillsborough Disaster Memorial (Liverpool, England) Jackie Robinson Day (United States) National Banana Day (United States) Pohela Boishakh (West Bengal, India) (Note: celebrated on April 14 in Bangladesh) Last day of Songkran (Thailand) (Thailand) Tax Day, the official deadline for filing an individual tax return (or requesting an extension). (United States, Philippines) Universal Day of Culture World Art Day April 16 Birthday of José de Diego (Puerto Rico, United States) Birthday of Queen Margrethe II (Denmark) Emancipation Day (Washington, D.C., United States) Foursquare Day (International observance) Memorial Day for the Victims of the Holocaust (Hungary) National Healthcare Decisions Day (United States) Remembrance of Chemical Attack on Balisan and Sheikh Wasan (Iraqi Kurdistan) World Voice Day April 17 Blah Blah Blah Day Evacuation Day (Syria) FAO Day (Iraq) Flag Day (American Samoa) Malbec World Day National Cheeseball Day (United States) National Espresso Day (Italy) Women's Day (Gabon) World Hemophilia Day April 18 Anniversary of the Victory over the Teutonic Knights in the Battle of the Ice, 1242 (Russia) Army Day (Iran) Coma Patients' Day (Poland) Friend's Day (Brazil) Independence Day (Zimbabwe) International Day For Monuments and Sites Invention Day (Japan) Pet Owner's Independence Day April 19 Army Day (Brazil) Beginning of the Independence Movement (Venezuela) Bicycle Day Dutch-American Friendship Day (United States) Holocaust Remembrance Day (Poland) Indian Day (Brazil) King Mswati III's birthday (Swaziland) Landing of the 33 Patriots Day (Uruguay) National Garlic Day (United States) National Rice Ball Day (United States) Primrose Day (United Kingdom) April 20 420 (cannabis culture) (International) UN Chinese Language Day (United Nations) April 21 A&M Day (Texas A&M University)
Day (Manitoba, Canada) Commerce Day (Iceland) Emancipation Day (Anguilla, Antigua, The Bahamas, British Virgin Islands, Dominica, Grenada, Saint Kitts and Nevis) Farmer's Day (Zambia) Kadooment Day (Barbados) Labor Day (Samoa) National Day (Jamaica) Picnic Day (Northern Territory, Australia) Somers' Day (Bermuda) Youth Day (Kiribati) 1st Tuesday National Night Out (United States) 1st Friday International Beer Day 2nd Saturday Sports Day (Russia) Sunday on or closest to August 9 National Peacekeepers' Day (Canada) 2nd Sunday Children's Day (Argentina, Chile, Uruguay) Father's Day (Brazil, Samoa) Melon Day (Turkmenistan) Navy Day (Bulgaria) National Day (Singapore) 2nd Monday Heroes' Day (Zimbabwe) Victory Day (Hawaii and Rhode Island, United States) 2nd Tuesday Defence Forces Day (Zimbabwe) 3rd Saturday National Honey Bee Day (United States) Independence Day (India) 3rd Sunday Children's Day (Argentina, Peru) Grandparents Day (Hong Kong) 3rd Monday Discovery Day (Yukon, Canada) Day of Hearts (Haarlem and Amsterdam, Netherlands) National Mourning Day (Bangladesh) 3rd Friday Hawaii Admission Day (Hawaii, United States) Last Thursday National Burger Day (United Kingdom) Last Sunday Coal Miner's Day (some former Soviet Union countries) National Grandparents Day (Taiwan) Last Monday Father's Day (South Sudan) National Heroes' Day (Philippines) Liberation Day (Hong Kong) Late Summer Bank Holiday (England, Northern Ireland and Wales) Fixed Gregorian observances Season of Emancipation (Barbados) (April 14 to August 23) International Clown Week (August 1–7) World Breastfeeding Week (August 1–7) August 1 Armed Forces Day (China) Armed Forces Day (Lebanon) Azerbaijani Language and Alphabet Day (Azerbaijan) Emancipation Day (Barbados, Guyana, Jamaica, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, St. Lucia, Trinidad and Tobago, Turks and Caicos Islands) Imbolc (Neopaganism, Southern Hemisphere only) Lammas (England, Scotland, Neopaganism, Northern Hemisphere only) Lughnasadh (Gaels, Ireland, Scotland, Neopaganism, Northern Hemisphere only) Minden Day (United Kingdom) National Day (Benin) National Milkshake Day (United States) Official Birthday and Coronation Day of the King of Tonga (Tonga) Pachamama Raymi (Quechua people in Ecuador and Peru) Parents' Day (Democratic Republic of the Congo) Procession of the Cross and the beginning of Dormition Fast (Eastern Orthodoxy) Statehood Day (Colorado) Swiss National Day (Switzerland) Victory Day (Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam) World Scout Scarf Day Yorkshire Day (Yorkshire, England) August 2 Airmobile Forces Day (Ukraine) Day of Azerbaijani cinema (Azerbaijan) Our Lady of the Angels Day (Costa Rica) Paratroopers Day (Russia) Republic Day (North Macedonia) August 3 Anniversary of the Killing of Pidjiguiti (Guinea-Bissau) Armed Forces Day (Equatorial Guinea) Esther Day (United States) Flag Day (Venezuela) Independence Day (Niger) Arbor Day (Niger) National Guard Day (Venezuela) National Watermelon Day (United States) National White Wine Day (United States) August 4 Coast Guard Day (United States) Constitution Day (Cook Islands) Matica slovenská Day (Slovakia) Revolution Day (Burkina Faso) August 5 Dedication of the Basilica of St Mary Major (Catholic Church) Independence Day (Burkina Faso) National Underwear Day (United States) Victory and Homeland Thanksgiving Day and the Day of Croatian defenders (Croatia) August 6 Feast of the Transfiguration Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan's Accession Day. (United Arab Emirates) Hiroshima Peace Memorial Ceremony (Hiroshima, Japan) Independence Day (Bolivia) Independence Day (Jamaica) Russian Railway Troops Day (Russia) August 7 Assyrian Martyrs Day (Assyrian community) Battle of Boyacá Day (Colombia) Emancipation Day (Saint Kitts and Nevis) Independence Day (Ivory Coast) Republic Day (Ivory Coast) Youth Day (Kiribati) August 8 Ceasefire Day (Iraqi Kurdistan) Father's Day (Taiwan) Happiness Happens Day (International observance) International Cat Day Namesday of Queen Silvia of Sweden, (Sweden) Nane Nane Day (Tanzania) Signal Troops Day (Ukraine) August 9 Battle of Gangut Day (Russia) International Day of the World's Indigenous People (United Nations) National Day (Singapore) National Women's Day (South Africa) Remembrance for Radbod, King of the Frisians (The Troth) August 10 Argentine Air Force Day (Argentina) Constitution Day (Anguilla) Declaration of Independence of Quito (Ecuador) International Biodiesel Day National S'more Day (United States) August 11 Flag Day (Pakistan) Independence Day (Chad) Mountain Day (Japan) August 12 Glorious Twelfth (United Kingdom) HM the Queen's Birthday and National Mother's Day (Thailand) International Youth Day (United Nations) Russian Railway Troops Day (Russia) Sea Org Day (Scientology) World Elephant Day August 13 Independence Day (Central African Republic) International Lefthanders Day National Filet Mignon Day (United States) Women's Day (Tunisia) August 14 Anniversary Day (Tristan da Cunha) Commemoration of Wadi al-Dahab (Morocco) Day of the Defenders of the Fatherland (Abkhazia) Engineer's Day (Dominican Republic) Falklands Day (Falkland Islands) Independence Day (Pakistan) National Creamsicle Day (United States) Pramuka Day (Indonesia) August 15 Feast Day of the Assumption of Mary (Catholic holy days of obligation, a public holiday in many countries. Ferragosto (Italy) Māras (Latvia) Mother's Day (Antwerp and Costa Rica) National Acadian Day (Acadians) Virgin of Candelaria, patron of the Canary Islands. (Tenerife, Spain) Feast of the Dormition of the Theotokos (Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox and Eastern Catholic Churches) Navy Day (Romania) Armed Forces Day (Poland)**The first day of Flooding of the Nile, or Wafaa El-Nil (Egypt and Coptic Church) The main day of Bon Festival (Japan), and its related observances: Awa Dance Festival (Tokushima Prefecture) Constitution Day (Equatorial Guinea) End-of-war Memorial Day, when the National Memorial Service for War Dead is held. (Japan) Founding of Asunción (Paraguay) Independence Day (Korea) Gwangbokjeol (South Korea) Jogukhaebangui nal, "Fatherland Liberation Day" (North Korea) Independence Day (India) Independence Day (Republic of the Congo) National Day (Liechtenstein) National
with the peak usually around July 28–29. The Perseids, a major meteor shower, typically takes place between July 17 and August 24, with the days of the peak varying yearly. The star cluster of Messier 30 is best observed around August. Among the aborigines of the Canary Islands, especially among the Guanches of Tenerife, the month of August received in the name of Beñesmer or Beñesmen, which was also the harvest festival held this month. August symbols August's birthstones are the peridot, sardonyx, and spinel. Its birth flower is the gladiolus or poppy, meaning beauty, strength of character, love, marriage and family. The Western zodiac signs for the month of August are Leo (until August 22) and Virgo (from August 23 onwards). Observances This list does not necessarily imply either official status or general observance. Non-Gregorian observances: 2020 dates (All Baha'i, Islamic, and Jewish observances begin at the sundown prior to the date listed, and end at sundown of the date in question unless otherwise noted.) List of observances set by the Bahá'í calendar List of observances set by the Chinese calendar List of observances set by the Hebrew calendar List of observances set by the Islamic calendar List of observances set by the Solar Hijri calendar Month-long observances American Adventures Month (celebrating vacationing in the Americas) Children's Eye Health and Safety Month Digestive Tract Paralysis (DTP) Month Get Ready for Kindergarten Month Happiness Happens Month Month of Philippine Languages or Buwan ng Wika (Philippines) Neurosurgery Outreach Month Psoriasis Awareness Month Spinal Muscular Atrophy Awareness Month What Will Be Your Legacy Month United States month-long observances National Black Business Month National Children's Vision and Learning Month National Immunization Awareness Month National Princess Peach Month National Water Quality Month National Win with Civility Month Food Months in the United States National Catfish Month National Dippin' Dots Month Family Meals Month National Goat Cheese Month. National Panini Month Peach Month Sandwich Month Moveable Gregorian observances National Science Week (Australia) See also Movable Western Christian observances See also Movable Eastern Christian observances Second to last Sunday in July and the following two weeks Construction Holiday (Quebec) 1st Saturday Food Day (Canada) Mead Day (United States) National Mustard Day (United States) 1st Sunday Air Force Day (Ukraine) American Family Day (Arizona, United States) Children's Day (Uruguay) Friendship Day (United States) International Forgiveness Day Railway Workers' Day (Russia) First Full week of August National Farmer's Market Week 1st Monday August Public Holiday (Ireland) Children's Day (Tuvalu) Civic Holiday (Canada) British Columbia Day (British Columbia, Canada) Natal Day (Nova Scotia, Canada) New Brunswick Day (New Brunswick, Canada) Saskatchewan Day (Saskatchewan, Canada Terry Fox Day (Manitoba, Canada) Commerce Day (Iceland) Emancipation Day (Anguilla, Antigua, The Bahamas, British Virgin Islands, Dominica, Grenada, Saint Kitts and Nevis) Farmer's Day (Zambia) Kadooment Day (Barbados) Labor Day (Samoa) National Day (Jamaica) Picnic Day (Northern Territory, Australia) Somers' Day (Bermuda) Youth Day (Kiribati) 1st Tuesday National Night Out (United States) 1st Friday International Beer Day 2nd Saturday Sports Day (Russia) Sunday on or closest to August 9 National Peacekeepers' Day (Canada) 2nd Sunday Children's Day (Argentina, Chile, Uruguay) Father's Day (Brazil, Samoa) Melon Day (Turkmenistan) Navy Day (Bulgaria) National Day (Singapore) 2nd Monday Heroes' Day (Zimbabwe) Victory Day (Hawaii and Rhode Island, United States) 2nd Tuesday Defence Forces Day (Zimbabwe) 3rd Saturday National Honey Bee Day (United States) Independence Day (India) 3rd Sunday Children's Day (Argentina, Peru) Grandparents Day (Hong Kong) 3rd Monday Discovery Day (Yukon, Canada) Day of Hearts (Haarlem and Amsterdam, Netherlands) National Mourning Day (Bangladesh) 3rd Friday Hawaii Admission Day (Hawaii, United States) Last Thursday National Burger Day (United Kingdom) Last Sunday Coal Miner's Day (some former Soviet Union countries) National Grandparents Day (Taiwan) Last Monday Father's Day (South Sudan) National Heroes' Day (Philippines) Liberation Day (Hong Kong) Late Summer Bank Holiday (England, Northern Ireland and Wales) Fixed Gregorian observances Season of Emancipation (Barbados) (April 14 to August 23) International Clown Week (August 1–7) World Breastfeeding Week (August 1–7) August 1 Armed Forces Day (China) Armed Forces Day (Lebanon) Azerbaijani Language and Alphabet Day (Azerbaijan) Emancipation Day (Barbados, Guyana, Jamaica, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, St. Lucia, Trinidad and Tobago, Turks and Caicos Islands) Imbolc (Neopaganism, Southern Hemisphere only) Lammas (England, Scotland, Neopaganism, Northern Hemisphere only) Lughnasadh (Gaels, Ireland, Scotland, Neopaganism, Northern Hemisphere only) Minden Day (United Kingdom) National Day (Benin) National Milkshake Day (United States) Official Birthday and Coronation Day of the King of Tonga (Tonga) Pachamama Raymi (Quechua people in Ecuador and Peru) Parents' Day (Democratic Republic of the Congo) Procession of the Cross and the beginning of Dormition Fast (Eastern Orthodoxy) Statehood Day (Colorado) Swiss National Day (Switzerland) Victory Day (Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam) World Scout Scarf Day Yorkshire Day (Yorkshire, England) August 2 Airmobile Forces Day (Ukraine) Day of Azerbaijani cinema (Azerbaijan) Our Lady of the Angels Day (Costa Rica) Paratroopers Day (Russia) Republic Day (North Macedonia) August 3 Anniversary of the Killing of Pidjiguiti (Guinea-Bissau) Armed Forces Day (Equatorial Guinea) Esther Day (United States) Flag Day (Venezuela) Independence Day (Niger) Arbor Day (Niger) National Guard Day (Venezuela) National Watermelon Day (United States) National White Wine Day (United States) August 4 Coast Guard Day (United States) Constitution Day (Cook Islands) Matica slovenská Day (Slovakia) Revolution Day (Burkina Faso) August 5 Dedication of the Basilica of St Mary Major (Catholic Church) Independence Day (Burkina Faso) National Underwear Day (United States) Victory and Homeland Thanksgiving Day and the Day of Croatian defenders (Croatia) August 6 Feast of the Transfiguration Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan's Accession Day. (United Arab Emirates) Hiroshima Peace Memorial Ceremony (Hiroshima, Japan) Independence Day (Bolivia) Independence Day (Jamaica) Russian Railway Troops Day (Russia) August 7 Assyrian Martyrs Day (Assyrian community) Battle of Boyacá Day (Colombia) Emancipation Day (Saint
The Torah generally depicts the siblings, Moses, Aaron, and Miriam, as the leaders of Israel after the Exodus, a view also reflected in the biblical Book of Micah. Numbers 12, however, reports that on one occasion, Aaron and Miriam complained about Moses' exclusive claim to be the 's prophet. Their presumption was rebuffed by God who affirmed Moses' uniqueness as the one with whom the spoke face to face. Miriam was punished with a skin disease (tzaraath) that turned her skin white. Aaron pleaded with Moses to intercede for her, and Miriam, after seven days' quarantine, was healed. Aaron once again escaped any retribution. According to Numbers 16–17, a Levite named Korah led many in challenging Aaron's exclusive claim to the priesthood. When the rebels were punished by being swallowed up by the earth, Eleazar, the son of Aaron, was commissioned to take charge of the censers of the dead priests. And when a plague broke out among the people who had sympathized with the rebels, Aaron, at the command of Moses, took his censer and stood between the living and the dead till the plague abated (). To emphasize the validity of the Levites' claim to the offerings and tithes of the Israelites, Moses collected a rod from the leaders of each tribe in Israel and laid the twelve rods overnight in the tent of meeting. The next morning, Aaron's rod was found to have budded and blossomed and produced ripe almonds. The following chapter then details the distinction between Aaron's family and the rest of the Levites: while all the Levites (and only Levites) were devoted to the care of the sanctuary, charge of its interior and the altar was committed to the Aaronites alone. Death Aaron, like Moses, was not permitted to enter Canaan with the Israelites because the two brothers showed impatience at Meribah (Kadesh) in the last year of the desert pilgrimage, when Moses brought water out of a rock to quench the people's thirst. Although they had been commanded to speak to the rock, Moses struck it with the staff twice, which was construed as displaying a lack of deference to the . There are two accounts of the death of Aaron in the Torah. Numbers says that soon after the incident at Meribah, Aaron with his son Eleazar and Moses ascended Mount Hor. There Moses stripped Aaron of his priestly garments and transferred them to Eleazar. Aaron died on the summit of the mountain, and the people mourned for him thirty days. The other account is found in Deuteronomy 10:6, where Aaron died at Moserah and was buried. There is a significant amount of travel between these two points, as the itinerary in Numbers 33:31–37 records seven stages between Moseroth (Mosera) and Mount Hor. Aaron died on the 1st of Av and was 123 at the time of his death. Descendants Aaron married Elisheba, daughter of Amminadab and sister of Nahshon of the tribe of Judah. The sons of Aaron were Nadab, Abihu, Eleazar and Itamar; only the latter two had progeny. A descendant of Aaron is an Aaronite, or Kohen, meaning Priest. Any non-Aaronic Levite—i.e., descended from Levi but not from Aaron—assisted the Levitical priests of the family of Aaron in the care of the tabernacle; later of the temple. The Gospel of Luke records that both Zechariah and Elizabeth and therefore their son John the Baptist were descendants of Aaron. Family tree Historicity In religious traditions Jewish rabbinic literature The older prophets and prophetical writers beheld in their priests the representatives of a religious form inferior to the prophetic truth; men without the spirit of God and lacking the will-power requisite to resist the multitude in its idolatrous proclivities. Thus Aaron, the first priest, ranks below Moses: he is his mouthpiece, and the executor of the will of God revealed through Moses, although it is pointed out that it is said fifteen times in the Torah that "the Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron." Under the influence of the priesthood that shaped the destinies of the nation under Persian rule, a different ideal of the priest was formed, according to Malachi 2:4-7, and the prevailing tendency was to place Aaron on a footing equal with Moses. "At times Aaron, and at other times Moses, is mentioned first in Scripture—this is to show that they were of equal rank," says the Mekhilta of Rabbi Ishmael, which strongly implies this when introducing in its record of renowned men the glowing description of Aaron's ministration. In fulfillment of the promise of peaceful life, symbolized by the pouring of oil upon his head, Aaron's death, as described in the aggadah, was of a wonderful tranquility. Accompanied by Moses, his brother, and by Eleazar, his son, Aaron went to the summit of Mount Hor, where the rock suddenly opened before him and a beautiful cave lit by a lamp presented itself to his view. Moses said, "Take off your priestly raiment and place it upon your son Eleazar! and then follow me." Aaron did as commanded; and they entered the cave, where was prepared a bed around which angels stood. "Go lie down upon thy bed, my brother," Moses continued; and Aaron obeyed without a murmur. Then his soul departed as if by a kiss from God. The cave closed behind Moses as he left; and he went down the hill with Eleazar, with garments rent, and crying: "Alas, Aaron, my brother! thou, the pillar of supplication of Israel!" When the Israelites cried in bewilderment, "Where is Aaron?" angels were seen carrying Aaron's bier through the air. A voice was then heard saying: "The law of truth was in his mouth, and iniquity was not found on his lips: he walked with me in righteousness, and brought many back from sin" He died on the first of Av. The pillar of cloud which proceeded in front of Israel's camp disappeared at Aaron's death. The seeming contradiction between Numbers 20:22 et seq. and Deuteronomy 10:6 is solved by the rabbis in the following manner: Aaron's death on Mount Hor was marked by the defeat of the people in a war with the king of Arad, in consequence of which the Israelites fled, marching seven stations backward to Mosera, where they performed the rites of mourning for Aaron; wherefore it is said: "There [at Mosera] died Aaron." The rabbis particularly praise the brotherly sentiment between Aaron and Moses. When Moses was appointed ruler and Aaron high priest, neither betrayed any jealousy; instead they rejoiced in each other's greatness. When Moses at first declined to go to Pharaoh, saying: "O my Lord, send, I pray, by the hand of him whom you will send", he was unwilling to deprive Aaron of the high position the latter had held for so many years; but the Lord reassured him, saying: "Behold, when he sees you, he will be glad in his heart." Indeed, Aaron was to find his reward, says Shimon bar Yochai; for that heart which had leaped with joy over his younger brother's rise to glory greater than his was decorated with the Urim and Thummim, which were to "be upon Aaron's heart when he goeth in before the Lord". Moses and Aaron met in gladness of heart, kissing each other as true brothers, and of them it is written: "Behold how good and how pleasant [it is] for brethren to dwell together in unity!" Of them it is said: "Mercy and truth are met together; righteousness and peace have kissed [each other]"; for Moses stood for righteousness and Aaron for peace. Again, mercy was personified in Aaron, according to Deuteronomy 33:8, and truth in Moses, according to Numbers 12:7. When Moses poured the oil of anointment upon the head of Aaron, Aaron modestly shrank back and said: "Who knows whether I have not cast some blemish upon this sacred oil so as to forfeit this high office." Then the Shekhinah spoke the words: "Behold the precious ointment upon the head, that ran down upon the beard of Aaron, that even went down to the skirts of his garment, is as pure as the dew of Hermon." According to Tanhuma, Aaron's activity as a prophet began earlier than that of Moses. Hillel held Aaron up as an example, saying: "Be of the disciples of Aaron, loving peace and pursuing peace; love your fellow creatures and draw them nigh unto the Law!" This is further illustrated by the tradition that Aaron was an ideal priest of the people, far more beloved for his kindly ways than was Moses. While Moses was stern and uncompromising, brooking no wrong, Aaron went about as peacemaker, reconciling man and wife when he saw them estranged, or a man with his neighbor when they quarreled, and winning evil-doers back into the right way by his friendly intercourse. As a result, Aaron's death was more intensely mourned than Moses': when Aaron died the whole house of Israel wept, including the women, while Moses was bewailed by "the sons of Israel" only. Even in the making of the Golden Calf the rabbis find extenuating circumstances for Aaron. His fortitude and silent submission to the will of God on the loss of his two sons are referred to as an excellent example to men how to glorify God in the midst of great affliction. Especially significant are the words represented as being spoken by God after the princes of the Twelve Tribes had brought their dedication offerings into the newly reared Tabernacle: "Say to thy brother Aaron: Greater than the gifts of the princes is thy
was to place Aaron on a footing equal with Moses. "At times Aaron, and at other times Moses, is mentioned first in Scripture—this is to show that they were of equal rank," says the Mekhilta of Rabbi Ishmael, which strongly implies this when introducing in its record of renowned men the glowing description of Aaron's ministration. In fulfillment of the promise of peaceful life, symbolized by the pouring of oil upon his head, Aaron's death, as described in the aggadah, was of a wonderful tranquility. Accompanied by Moses, his brother, and by Eleazar, his son, Aaron went to the summit of Mount Hor, where the rock suddenly opened before him and a beautiful cave lit by a lamp presented itself to his view. Moses said, "Take off your priestly raiment and place it upon your son Eleazar! and then follow me." Aaron did as commanded; and they entered the cave, where was prepared a bed around which angels stood. "Go lie down upon thy bed, my brother," Moses continued; and Aaron obeyed without a murmur. Then his soul departed as if by a kiss from God. The cave closed behind Moses as he left; and he went down the hill with Eleazar, with garments rent, and crying: "Alas, Aaron, my brother! thou, the pillar of supplication of Israel!" When the Israelites cried in bewilderment, "Where is Aaron?" angels were seen carrying Aaron's bier through the air. A voice was then heard saying: "The law of truth was in his mouth, and iniquity was not found on his lips: he walked with me in righteousness, and brought many back from sin" He died on the first of Av. The pillar of cloud which proceeded in front of Israel's camp disappeared at Aaron's death. The seeming contradiction between Numbers 20:22 et seq. and Deuteronomy 10:6 is solved by the rabbis in the following manner: Aaron's death on Mount Hor was marked by the defeat of the people in a war with the king of Arad, in consequence of which the Israelites fled, marching seven stations backward to Mosera, where they performed the rites of mourning for Aaron; wherefore it is said: "There [at Mosera] died Aaron." The rabbis particularly praise the brotherly sentiment between Aaron and Moses. When Moses was appointed ruler and Aaron high priest, neither betrayed any jealousy; instead they rejoiced in each other's greatness. When Moses at first declined to go to Pharaoh, saying: "O my Lord, send, I pray, by the hand of him whom you will send", he was unwilling to deprive Aaron of the high position the latter had held for so many years; but the Lord reassured him, saying: "Behold, when he sees you, he will be glad in his heart." Indeed, Aaron was to find his reward, says Shimon bar Yochai; for that heart which had leaped with joy over his younger brother's rise to glory greater than his was decorated with the Urim and Thummim, which were to "be upon Aaron's heart when he goeth in before the Lord". Moses and Aaron met in gladness of heart, kissing each other as true brothers, and of them it is written: "Behold how good and how pleasant [it is] for brethren to dwell together in unity!" Of them it is said: "Mercy and truth are met together; righteousness and peace have kissed [each other]"; for Moses stood for righteousness and Aaron for peace. Again, mercy was personified in Aaron, according to Deuteronomy 33:8, and truth in Moses, according to Numbers 12:7. When Moses poured the oil of anointment upon the head of Aaron, Aaron modestly shrank back and said: "Who knows whether I have not cast some blemish upon this sacred oil so as to forfeit this high office." Then the Shekhinah spoke the words: "Behold the precious ointment upon the head, that ran down upon the beard of Aaron, that even went down to the skirts of his garment, is as pure as the dew of Hermon." According to Tanhuma, Aaron's activity as a prophet began earlier than that of Moses. Hillel held Aaron up as an example, saying: "Be of the disciples of Aaron, loving peace and pursuing peace; love your fellow creatures and draw them nigh unto the Law!" This is further illustrated by the tradition that Aaron was an ideal priest of the people, far more beloved for his kindly ways than was Moses. While Moses was stern and uncompromising, brooking no wrong, Aaron went about as peacemaker, reconciling man and wife when he saw them estranged, or a man with his neighbor when they quarreled, and winning evil-doers back into the right way by his friendly intercourse. As a result, Aaron's death was more intensely mourned than Moses': when Aaron died the whole house of Israel wept, including the women, while Moses was bewailed by "the sons of Israel" only. Even in the making of the Golden Calf the rabbis find extenuating circumstances for Aaron. His fortitude and silent submission to the will of God on the loss of his two sons are referred to as an excellent example to men how to glorify God in the midst of great affliction. Especially significant are the words represented as being spoken by God after the princes of the Twelve Tribes had brought their dedication offerings into the newly reared Tabernacle: "Say to thy brother Aaron: Greater than the gifts of the princes is thy gift; for thou art called upon to kindle the light, and, while the sacrifices shall last only as long as the Temple lasts, thy light shall last forever." Christianity In the Eastern Orthodox and Maronite churches, Aaron is venerated as a saint whose feast day is shared with his brother Moses and celebrated on September 4. (Those churches that follow the traditional Julian calendar celebrate this day on September 17 of the modern Gregorian calendar). Aaron is also commemorated with other Old Testament saints on the Sunday of the Holy Fathers, the Sunday before Christmas. Aaron is commemorated as one of the Holy Forefathers in the Calendar of Saints of the Armenian Apostolic Church on July 30. He is commemorated on July 1 in the modern Latin calendar and in the Syriac Calendar. Latter-day Saints In The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Aaronic order is the lesser order of priesthood, comprising the grades (from lowest to highest) of deacon, teacher, and priest. The chief office of the Aaronic priesthood is the presiding bishopric; the head of the priesthood is the bishop. Each ward includes a quorum of one or more of each office of the Aaronic priesthood. In the Community of Christ, the Aaronic order of priesthood is regarded as an appendage to the Melchisedec order, and consists of the priesthood offices of deacon, teacher, and priest. While differing in responsibilities, these offices, along with those of the Melchisidec order, are regarded as equal before God. Islam Aaron (Arabic: هارون, Hārūn) is mentioned in the Quran as a prophet of God. The Quran praises Aaron repeatedly, calling him a "believing servant" as well as one who was "guided" and one of the "victors". Aaron is important in Islam for his role in the events of the Exodus, in which, according to the Quran and Islamic belief, he preached with his elder brother, Moses to the Pharaoh of the Exodus. Aaron's significance in Islam, however, is not limited to his role as the helper of Moses. Islamic tradition also accords Aaron the role of a patriarch, as tradition records that the priestly descent came through Aaron's lineage, which included the entire House of Amran. Baháʼí Faith In the Baháʼí Faith, although his father is described as both an apostle and a prophet, Aaron is merely described as a prophet. The Kitáb-i-Íqán describes Imran as his father. Art history Aaron appears paired with Moses frequently in Jewish and Christian art, especially in the illustrations of manuscript and printed Bibles. He can usually be distinguished by his priestly vestments, especially his turban or miter and jeweled breastplate. He frequently holds a censor or, sometimes, his flowering rod. Aaron also appears in scenes depicting the wilderness Tabernacle and its altar, as already in the third-century frescos in the synagogue at Dura-Europos in Syria. An eleventh-century portable silver altar from Fulda, Germany depicts Aaron with his censor, and is located in the Musée de Cluny in Paris. This is also how
be placed in geosynchronous orbit. 1968 – In the downtown district of Richmond, Indiana, a double explosion kills 41 and injures 150. 1968 – Pierre Elliott Trudeau wins the Liberal Party leadership election, and becomes Prime Minister of Canada soon afterward. 1970 – Newhall massacre: Four California Highway Patrol officers are killed in a shootout. 1972 – Vietnam War: Easter Offensive: American forces begin sustained air strikes and naval bombardments. 1973 – Launch of Pioneer 11 spacecraft. 1973 – The American League of Major League Baseball begins using the designated hitter. 1984 – Members of Cameroon's Republican Guard unsuccessfully attempt to overthrow the government headed by Paul Biya. 1992 – The Bosnian War begins. 1994 – The Rwandan genocide begins when the aircraft carrying Rwandan president Juvénal Habyarimana and Burundian president Cyprien Ntaryamira is shot down. 1997 – In Greene County, Tennessee, the Lillelid murders occur. 1998 – Nuclear weapons testing: Pakistan tests medium-range missiles capable of reaching India. 2004 – Rolandas Paksas becomes the first president of Lithuania to be peacefully removed from office by impeachment. 2005 – Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani becomes Iraqi president; Shiite Arab Ibrahim al-Jaafari is named premier the next day. 2008 – The 2008 Egyptian general strike starts led by Egyptian workers later to be adopted by April 6 Youth Movement and Egyptian activists. 2009 – A 6.3 magnitude earthquake strikes near L'Aquila, Italy, killing 307. 2010 – Maoist rebels kill 76 CRPF officers in Dantewada district, India. 2011 – In San Fernando, Tamaulipas, Mexico, over 193 victims of Los Zetas were exhumed from several mass graves. 2012 – Azawad declares itself independent from the Republic of Mali. 2017 – U.S. military launches 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles at an air base in Syria. Russia describes the strikes as an "aggression", adding they significantly damage US-Russia ties. 2018 – A bus carrying the Humboldt Broncos junior ice hockey team collides with a semi-truck in Saskatchewan, Canada, killing 16 people and injuring 13 others. Births Pre–1600 1135 – Maimonides, Jewish philosopher, Torah scholar, physician and astronomer (March 30 also proposed, d. 1204) 1342 – Infanta Maria, Marchioness of Tortosa 1483 – Raphael, Italian painter and architect (d. 1520) 1573 – Margaret of Brunswick-Lüneburg, German noble (d. 1643) 1601–1900 1632 – Maria Leopoldine of Austria (d. 1649) 1651 – André Dacier, French scholar and academic (d. 1722) 1660 – Johann Kuhnau, German organist and composer (d. 1722) 1664 – Arvid Horn, Swedish general and politician, Governor of Västerbotten County (d. 1742) 1671 – Jean-Baptiste Rousseau, French poet and playwright (d. 1741) 1672 – André Cardinal Destouches, French composer (d. 1749) 1706 – Louis de Cahusac, French playwright and composer (d. 1759) 1708 – Johann Georg Reutter, Austrian organist and composer (d. 1772) 1725 – Pasquale Paoli, French soldier and politician (d. 1807) 1726 – Gerard Majella, Italian saint (d. 1755) 1741 – Nicolas Chamfort, French author and playwright (d. 1794) 1766 – Wilhelm von Kobell, German painter and educator (d. 1853) 1773 – James Mill, Scottish historian, economist, and philosopher (d. 1836) 1787 – Celestina Cordero, Puerto Rican educator (d. 1862) 1810 – Philip Henry Gosse, English biologist and academic (d. 1888) 1812 – Alexander Herzen, Russian philosopher and author (d. 1870) 1815 – Robert Volkmann, German organist, composer, and conductor (d. 1883) 1818 – Aasmund Olavsson Vinje, Norwegian journalist and poet (d. 1870) 1820 – Nadar, French photographer, journalist, and author (d. 1910) 1823 – Joseph Medill, Canadian-American publisher and politician, 26th Mayor of Chicago (d. 1899) 1824 – George Waterhouse, English-New Zealand politician, 7th Prime Minister of New Zealand (d. 1906) 1826 – Gustave Moreau, French painter and academic (d. 1898) 1844 – William Lyne, Australian politician, 13th Premier of New South Wales (d. 1913) 1851 – Guillaume Bigourdan, French astronomer and academic (d. 1932) 1852 – Will Crooks, English trade unionist and politician (d. 1921) 1855 – Charles Huot, Canadian painter and illustrator (d. 1930) 1857 – Arthur Wesley Dow, American painter and photographer (d. 1922) 1860 – René Lalique, French sculptor and jewellery designer (d. 1945) 1861 – Stanislas de Guaita, French poet and author (d. 1897) 1864 – William Bate Hardy, English biologist and academic (d. 1934) 1866 – Felix-Raymond-Marie Rouleau, Canadian cardinal (d. 1931) 1869 – Levon Shant, Armenian author, poet, and playwright (d. 1951) 1878 – Erich Mühsam, German author, poet, and playwright (d. 1934) 1881 – Karl Staaf, Swedish pole vaulter and hammer thrower (d. 1953) 1884 – J. G. Parry-Thomas, Welsh race car driver and engineer (d. 1927) 1886 – Athenagoras I of Constantinople (d. 1972) 1886 – Walter Dandy, American physician and neurosurgeon (d. 1946) 1886 – Osman Ali Khan, Asaf Jah VII, Indian ruler (d. 1967) 1888 – Hans Richter, Swiss painter, illustrator, and director (d. 1976) 1888 – Gerhard Ritter, German historian and academic (d. 1967) 1890 – Anthony Fokker, Dutch engineer and businessman, founded Fokker Aircraft Manufacturer (d. 1939) 1892 – Donald Wills Douglas, Sr., American businessman, founded the Douglas Aircraft Company (d. 1981) 1892 – Lowell Thomas, American journalist and author (d. 1981) 1895 – Dudley Nichols, American director, producer, and screenwriter (d. 1960) 1898 – Jeanne Hébuterne, French painter and author (d. 1920) 1900 – Leo Robin, American composer and songwriter (d. 1984) 1901–present 1901 – Pier Giorgio Frassati, Italian activist (d. 1925) 1902 – Julien Torma, French author, poet, and playwright (d. 1933) 1903 – Mickey Cochrane, American baseball player and manager (d. 1962) 1903 – Harold Eugene Edgerton, American engineer and academic (d. 1990) 1904 – Kurt Georg Kiesinger, German lawyer, politician and Chancellor of Germany (d. 1988) 1904 – Erwin Komenda, Austrian car designer and engineer (d. 1966) 1908 – Marcel-Marie Desmarais, Canadian preacher, missionary, and author (d. 1994) 1909 – William M. Branham, American minister and theologian (d. 1965) 1909 – Hermann Lang, German race car driver (d. 1987) 1910 – Barys Kit, Belarusian-American rocket scientist (d. 2018) 1911 – Feodor Felix Konrad Lynen, German biochemist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1979) 1911 – Phyllis Tate, British composer (d. 1987) 1913 – Shannon Boyd-Bailey McCune, American geographer and academic (d. 1993) 1915 – Tadeusz Kantor, Polish director, painter, and set designer (d. 1990) 1916 – Phil Leeds, American actor (d. 1998) 1916 – Vincent Ellis McKelvey, American geologist and author (d. 1987) 1917 – Leonora Carrington, English-Mexican painter and author (d. 2011) 1918 – Alfredo Ovando Candía, Bolivian general and politician, 56th President of Bolivia (d. 1982) 1919 – Georgios Mylonas, Greek politician, 11th Greek Minister of Culture (d. 1998) 1920 – Jack Cover, American pilot and physicist, invented the Taser gun (d. 2009) 1920 – Edmond H. Fischer, Swiss-American biochemist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 2021) 1921 – Wilbur Thompson, American shot putter (d. 2013) 1922 – Gordon Chater, English-Australian comedian and actor (d. 1999) 1923 – Herb Thomas, American race car driver (d. 2000) 1926 – Sergio Franchi, Italian-American singer and actor (d. 1990) 1926 – Gil Kane, Latvian-American author and illustrator (d. 2000) 1926 – Ian Paisley, Northern Irish evangelical minister and politician, 2nd First Minister of Northern Ireland (d. 2014) 1926 – Randy Weston, American jazz pianist and composer (d. 2018) 1927 – Gerry Mulligan, American saxophonist, clarinet player, and composer (d. 1996) 1928 – James Watson, American biologist, geneticist, and zoologist, Nobel Prize laureate 1929 – Willis Hall, English playwright and author (d. 2005) 1929 – Joi Lansing, American model, actress and nightclub singer (d. 1972) 1929 – André Previn, American pianist, composer, and conductor (d. 2019) 1931 – Ram Dass, American author and educator (d. 2019) 1931 – Ivan Dixon, American actor, director, and producer (d. 2008) 1932 – Connie Broden, Canadian ice hockey player (d. 2013) 1932 – Helmut Griem, German actor and director (d. 2004) 1933 – Roy Goode, English lawyer and academic 1933 – Tom C. Korologos, American journalist and diplomat, United States Ambassador to Belgium 1933 – Eduardo Malapit, American lawyer and politician, Mayor of Kauai (d. 2007) 1934 – Enrique Álvarez Félix, Mexican actor (d. 1996) 1934 – Anton Geesink, Dutch martial artist and wrestler (d. 2010) 1934 – Guy Peellaert, Belgian painter, illustrator, and photographer (d. 2008) 1935 – Douglas Hill, Canadian author and critic (d. 2007) 1936 – Helen Berman, Dutch-Israeli painter and illustrator 1936 – Jean-Pierre Changeux, French neuroscientist, biologist, and academic 1937 – Merle Haggard, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (d. 2016) 1937 – Tom Veivers, Australian cricketer and politician 1937 – Billy Dee Williams, American actor, singer, and writer 1938 – Paul Daniels, English magician and television host (d. 2016) 1938 – Roy Thinnes, American television and film actor 1939 – André Ouellet, Canadian lawyer and politician, 1st Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs 1939 – John Sculley, American businessman, co-founded Zeta Interactive 1940 – Homero Aridjis, Mexican journalist, author, and poet 1940 – Pedro Armendáriz, Jr., Mexican-American actor and producer (d. 2011) 1941 – Christopher Allsopp, English economist and academic 1941 – Phil Austin, American comedian, actor, and screenwriter (d. 2015) 1941 – Hans W. Geißendörfer, German director and producer 1941 – Don Prudhomme, American race car driver and manager 1941 – Gheorghe Zamfir, Romanian flute player and composer 1942 – Barry Levinson, American actor, director, producer, and screenwriter 1942 – Anita Pallenberg, Italian-English model, actress, and fashion designer (d. 2017) 1943 – Max Clifford, English journalist and publicist (d. 2017) 1943 – Roger Cook, New Zealand-English journalist and academic 1943 – Ian MacRae, New Zealand rugby player 1943 – Mitchell Melton, American lawyer and politician (d. 2013) 1944 – Felicity Palmer, English operatic soprano 1945 – Rodney Bickerstaffe, English trade union leader (d. 2017) 1945 – Peter Hill, English journalist 1946 – Paul Beresford, New Zealand-English dentist and politician 1947 – John Ratzenberger, American actor and director 1947 – André Weinfeld, French-American director, producer, and screenwriter 1947 – Mike Worboys, English mathematician and computer scientist 1949 – Alyson Bailes, English academic and diplomat (d. 2016) 1949 – Patrick Hernandez, French singer-songwriter 1949 – Ng Ser Miang, Singaporean athlete, entrepreneur and diplomat 1949 – Horst Ludwig Störmer, German physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate 1950 – Claire Morissette, Canadian cycling activist (d. 2007) 1950 – Cleo Odzer, American anthropologist and author (d. 2001) 1951 – Bert Blyleven, Dutch-American baseball player and sportscaster 1951 – Jean-Marc Boivin, French skier, mountaineer, and pilot (d. 1990) 1951 – Pascal Rogé, French pianist 1952 – Udo Dirkschneider, German singer-songwriter 1952 – Marilu Henner, Greek-Polish American actress and author 1952 – Michel Larocque, Canadian ice hockey player and manager (d. 1992) 1953 – Patrick Doyle, Scottish actor and composer 1953 – Christopher Franke, German-American drummer and songwriter 1955 – Rob Epstein, American director and producer 1955 – Michael Rooker, American actor, director, and producer 1955 – Cathy Jones, Canadian actress, comedian, and writer 1956 – Michele Bachmann, American lawyer and politician 1956 – Normand Corbeil, Canadian composer (d. 2013) 1956 – Mudassar Nazar, Pakistani cricketer 1956 – Lee Scott, English politician 1956 – Sebastian Spreng, Argentinian-American painter and journalist 1956 – Dilip Vengsarkar, Indian cricketer and coach 1957 – Giorgio Damilano, Italian race walker and coach 1957 – Maurizio Damilano, Italian race walker and coach 1957 – Jaroslava Maxová, Czech soprano and educator 1957 – Paolo Nespoli, Italian soldier, engineer, and astronaut 1958 – Graeme Base, Australian author and illustrator 1959 – Gail Shea, Canadian politician 1960 – Warren Haynes, American singer-songwriter and guitarist 1960 – Richard Loe, New Zealand rugby player 1960 – John Pizzarelli, American singer-songwriter and guitarist
Cahusac, French playwright and composer (d. 1759) 1708 – Johann Georg Reutter, Austrian organist and composer (d. 1772) 1725 – Pasquale Paoli, French soldier and politician (d. 1807) 1726 – Gerard Majella, Italian saint (d. 1755) 1741 – Nicolas Chamfort, French author and playwright (d. 1794) 1766 – Wilhelm von Kobell, German painter and educator (d. 1853) 1773 – James Mill, Scottish historian, economist, and philosopher (d. 1836) 1787 – Celestina Cordero, Puerto Rican educator (d. 1862) 1810 – Philip Henry Gosse, English biologist and academic (d. 1888) 1812 – Alexander Herzen, Russian philosopher and author (d. 1870) 1815 – Robert Volkmann, German organist, composer, and conductor (d. 1883) 1818 – Aasmund Olavsson Vinje, Norwegian journalist and poet (d. 1870) 1820 – Nadar, French photographer, journalist, and author (d. 1910) 1823 – Joseph Medill, Canadian-American publisher and politician, 26th Mayor of Chicago (d. 1899) 1824 – George Waterhouse, English-New Zealand politician, 7th Prime Minister of New Zealand (d. 1906) 1826 – Gustave Moreau, French painter and academic (d. 1898) 1844 – William Lyne, Australian politician, 13th Premier of New South Wales (d. 1913) 1851 – Guillaume Bigourdan, French astronomer and academic (d. 1932) 1852 – Will Crooks, English trade unionist and politician (d. 1921) 1855 – Charles Huot, Canadian painter and illustrator (d. 1930) 1857 – Arthur Wesley Dow, American painter and photographer (d. 1922) 1860 – René Lalique, French sculptor and jewellery designer (d. 1945) 1861 – Stanislas de Guaita, French poet and author (d. 1897) 1864 – William Bate Hardy, English biologist and academic (d. 1934) 1866 – Felix-Raymond-Marie Rouleau, Canadian cardinal (d. 1931) 1869 – Levon Shant, Armenian author, poet, and playwright (d. 1951) 1878 – Erich Mühsam, German author, poet, and playwright (d. 1934) 1881 – Karl Staaf, Swedish pole vaulter and hammer thrower (d. 1953) 1884 – J. G. Parry-Thomas, Welsh race car driver and engineer (d. 1927) 1886 – Athenagoras I of Constantinople (d. 1972) 1886 – Walter Dandy, American physician and neurosurgeon (d. 1946) 1886 – Osman Ali Khan, Asaf Jah VII, Indian ruler (d. 1967) 1888 – Hans Richter, Swiss painter, illustrator, and director (d. 1976) 1888 – Gerhard Ritter, German historian and academic (d. 1967) 1890 – Anthony Fokker, Dutch engineer and businessman, founded Fokker Aircraft Manufacturer (d. 1939) 1892 – Donald Wills Douglas, Sr., American businessman, founded the Douglas Aircraft Company (d. 1981) 1892 – Lowell Thomas, American journalist and author (d. 1981) 1895 – Dudley Nichols, American director, producer, and screenwriter (d. 1960) 1898 – Jeanne Hébuterne, French painter and author (d. 1920) 1900 – Leo Robin, American composer and songwriter (d. 1984) 1901–present 1901 – Pier Giorgio Frassati, Italian activist (d. 1925) 1902 – Julien Torma, French author, poet, and playwright (d. 1933) 1903 – Mickey Cochrane, American baseball player and manager (d. 1962) 1903 – Harold Eugene Edgerton, American engineer and academic (d. 1990) 1904 – Kurt Georg Kiesinger, German lawyer, politician and Chancellor of Germany (d. 1988) 1904 – Erwin Komenda, Austrian car designer and engineer (d. 1966) 1908 – Marcel-Marie Desmarais, Canadian preacher, missionary, and author (d. 1994) 1909 – William M. Branham, American minister and theologian (d. 1965) 1909 – Hermann Lang, German race car driver (d. 1987) 1910 – Barys Kit, Belarusian-American rocket scientist (d. 2018) 1911 – Feodor Felix Konrad Lynen, German biochemist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1979) 1911 – Phyllis Tate, British composer (d. 1987) 1913 – Shannon Boyd-Bailey McCune, American geographer and academic (d. 1993) 1915 – Tadeusz Kantor, Polish director, painter, and set designer (d. 1990) 1916 – Phil Leeds, American actor (d. 1998) 1916 – Vincent Ellis McKelvey, American geologist and author (d. 1987) 1917 – Leonora Carrington, English-Mexican painter and author (d. 2011) 1918 – Alfredo Ovando Candía, Bolivian general and politician, 56th President of Bolivia (d. 1982) 1919 – Georgios Mylonas, Greek politician, 11th Greek Minister of Culture (d. 1998) 1920 – Jack Cover, American pilot and physicist, invented the Taser gun (d. 2009) 1920 – Edmond H. Fischer, Swiss-American biochemist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 2021) 1921 – Wilbur Thompson, American shot putter (d. 2013) 1922 – Gordon Chater, English-Australian comedian and actor (d. 1999) 1923 – Herb Thomas, American race car driver (d. 2000) 1926 – Sergio Franchi, Italian-American singer and actor (d. 1990) 1926 – Gil Kane, Latvian-American author and illustrator (d. 2000) 1926 – Ian Paisley, Northern Irish evangelical minister and politician, 2nd First Minister of Northern Ireland (d. 2014) 1926 – Randy Weston, American jazz pianist and composer (d. 2018) 1927 – Gerry Mulligan, American saxophonist, clarinet player, and composer (d. 1996) 1928 – James Watson, American biologist, geneticist, and zoologist, Nobel Prize laureate 1929 – Willis Hall, English playwright and author (d. 2005) 1929 – Joi Lansing, American model, actress and nightclub singer (d. 1972) 1929 – André Previn, American pianist, composer, and conductor (d. 2019) 1931 – Ram Dass, American author and educator (d. 2019) 1931 – Ivan Dixon, American actor, director, and producer (d. 2008) 1932 – Connie Broden, Canadian ice hockey player (d. 2013) 1932 – Helmut Griem, German actor and director (d. 2004) 1933 – Roy Goode, English lawyer and academic 1933 – Tom C. Korologos, American journalist and diplomat, United States Ambassador to Belgium 1933 – Eduardo Malapit, American lawyer and politician, Mayor of Kauai (d. 2007) 1934 – Enrique Álvarez Félix, Mexican actor (d. 1996) 1934 – Anton Geesink, Dutch martial artist and wrestler (d. 2010) 1934 – Guy Peellaert, Belgian painter, illustrator, and photographer (d. 2008) 1935 – Douglas Hill, Canadian author and critic (d. 2007) 1936 – Helen Berman, Dutch-Israeli painter and illustrator 1936 – Jean-Pierre Changeux, French neuroscientist, biologist, and academic 1937 – Merle Haggard, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (d. 2016) 1937 – Tom Veivers, Australian cricketer and politician 1937 – Billy Dee Williams, American actor, singer, and writer 1938 – Paul Daniels, English magician and television host (d. 2016) 1938 – Roy Thinnes, American television and film actor 1939 – André Ouellet, Canadian lawyer and politician, 1st Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs 1939 – John Sculley, American businessman, co-founded Zeta Interactive 1940 – Homero Aridjis, Mexican journalist, author, and poet 1940 – Pedro Armendáriz, Jr., Mexican-American actor and producer (d. 2011) 1941 – Christopher Allsopp, English economist and academic 1941 – Phil Austin, American comedian, actor, and screenwriter (d. 2015) 1941 – Hans W. Geißendörfer, German director and producer 1941 – Don Prudhomme, American race car driver and manager 1941 – Gheorghe Zamfir, Romanian flute player and composer 1942 – Barry Levinson, American actor, director, producer, and screenwriter 1942 – Anita Pallenberg, Italian-English model, actress, and fashion designer (d. 2017) 1943 – Max Clifford, English journalist and publicist (d. 2017) 1943 – Roger Cook, New Zealand-English journalist and academic 1943 – Ian MacRae, New Zealand rugby player 1943 – Mitchell Melton, American lawyer and politician (d. 2013) 1944 – Felicity Palmer, English operatic soprano 1945 – Rodney Bickerstaffe, English trade union leader (d. 2017) 1945 – Peter Hill, English journalist 1946 – Paul Beresford, New Zealand-English dentist and politician 1947 – John Ratzenberger, American actor and director 1947 – André Weinfeld, French-American director, producer, and screenwriter 1947 – Mike Worboys, English mathematician and computer scientist 1949 – Alyson Bailes, English academic and diplomat (d. 2016) 1949 – Patrick Hernandez, French singer-songwriter 1949 – Ng Ser Miang, Singaporean athlete, entrepreneur and diplomat 1949 – Horst Ludwig Störmer, German physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate 1950 – Claire Morissette, Canadian cycling activist (d. 2007) 1950 – Cleo Odzer, American anthropologist and author (d. 2001) 1951 – Bert Blyleven, Dutch-American baseball player and sportscaster 1951 – Jean-Marc Boivin, French skier, mountaineer, and pilot (d. 1990) 1951 – Pascal Rogé, French pianist 1952 – Udo Dirkschneider, German singer-songwriter 1952 – Marilu Henner, Greek-Polish American actress and author 1952 – Michel Larocque, Canadian ice hockey player and manager (d. 1992) 1953 – Patrick Doyle, Scottish actor and composer 1953 – Christopher Franke, German-American drummer and songwriter 1955 – Rob Epstein, American director and producer 1955 – Michael Rooker, American actor, director, and producer 1955 – Cathy Jones, Canadian actress,
1970 – Sylvain Bouchard, Canadian speed skater 1971 – Nicholas Brendon, American actor 1971 – Shannen Doherty, American actress, director, and producer 1972 – Paul Lo Duca, American baseball player and sportscaster 1973 – J. Scott Campbell, American author and illustrator 1973 – Ryan Kisor, American trumpet player and composer 1973 – Antonio Osuna, Mexican-American baseball player 1973 – Christian Panucci, Italian footballer and manager 1974 – Belinda Emmett, Australian actress (d. 2006) 1974 – Bryan Fletcher, Australian rugby league player and sportscaster 1974 – Roman Hamrlík, Czech ice hockey player 1974 – Marley Shelton, American actress 1974 – Sylvinho, Brazilian footballer and manager 1976 – Olga Kotlyarova, Russian runner 1976 – Brad Miller, American basketball player 1977 – Giovanny Espinoza, Ecuadorian footballer 1977 – Sarah Monahan, Australian actress 1977 – Jason Price, Welsh footballer 1977 – Glenn Rogers, Australian-Scottish cricketer 1978 – Guy Berryman, Scottish bass player and producer 1978 – Scott Crary, American director, producer, and screenwriter 1978 – Svetlana Lapina, Russian high jumper 1978 – Robin Walker, English businessman and politician 1979 – Claire Danes, American actress 1979 – Elena Grosheva, Russian gymnast 1979 – Mateja Kežman, Serbian footballer 1979 – Jennifer Morrison, American actress 1979 – Cristian Ranalli, Italian footballer 1979 – Lee Soo-young, South Korean singer 1980 – Sara Head, Welsh Paralympic table tennis champion 1980 – Brian McFadden, Irish singer-songwriter 1981 – Yuriy Borzakovskiy, Russian runner 1981 – Nicolás Burdisso, Argentinian footballer 1981 – Tulsi Gabbard, American politician 1981 – Grant Holt, English footballer and professional wrestler 1981 – Hisashi Iwakuma, Japanese baseball pitcher 1983 – Jelena Dokic, Serbian-Australian tennis player 1983 – Luke Kibet, Kenyan runner 1984 – Aleksey Dmitrik, Russian high jumper 1985 – Brennan Boesch, American baseball player 1985 – Hitomi Yoshizawa, Japanese singer 1986 – Brad Brach, American baseball pitcher 1986 – Blerim Džemaili, Swiss footballer 1986 – Marcel Granollers, Spanish tennis player 1986 – Jonathan Pitroipa, Burkinabé footballer 1987 – Brooklyn Decker, American model and actress 1987 – Shawn Gore, Canadian football player 1987 – Josh McCrone, Australian rugby league player 1987 – Luiz Adriano, Brazilian professional footballer 1987 – Brendon Urie, American singer, songwriter, musician and multi-instrumentalist 1988 – Ricky Álvarez, Argentinian footballer 1988 – Stephen Brogan, English footballer 1988 – Amedeo Calliari, Italian footballer 1988 – Jessie James Decker, American singer-songwriter 1989 – Bethan Dainton, Welsh rugby union player 1989 – Miguel Ángel Ponce, American-Mexican footballer 1989 – Ádám Hanga, Hungarian basketball player 1989 – Kaitlyn Weaver, Canadian-American ice dancer 1989 – Valentin Stocker, Swiss footballer 1990 – Francesca Halsall, English swimmer 1990 – Hiroki Sakai, Japanese footballer 1991 – Torey Krug, American ice hockey player 1991 – Lionel Carole, French professional footballer 1991 – Oliver Norwood, English born Northern Irish international footballer 1991 – Magnus Pääjärvi, Swedish ice hockey player 1991 – Jazz Richards, Welsh international footballer 1992 – Chad le Clos, South African swimmer 1993 – Jordan Archer, English-Scottish footballer 1993 – Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, Canadian ice hockey player 1994 – Isabelle Drummond, Brazilian actress and singer 1994 – Saoirse Ronan, American-born Irish actress 1994 – Oh Sehun, South Korean musician 1994 – Eric Bailly, Ivorian professional footballer 1994 – Guido Rodríguez, Argentine footballer 1995 – Pedro Cachín, Argentine tennis player 1996 – Elizaveta Kulichkova, Russian tennis player Deaths Pre-1600 45 BC – Gnaeus Pompeius, Roman general and politician (b. 75 BC) 352 – Julius I, pope of the Catholic Church 434 – Maximianus, archbishop of Constantinople 901 – Eudokia Baïana, Byzantine empress and wife of Leo VI 1125 – Vladislaus I, Duke of Bohemia (b. 1065) 1167 – Charles VII, king of Sweden (b. c. 1130) 1256 – Margaret of Bourbon, Queen of Navarre, regent of Navarre (b. c. 1217) 1443 – Henry Chichele, English archbishop (b. 1364) 1500 – Leonhard of Gorizia, Count of Gorz (b. 1440) 1530 – Joanna La Beltraneja, Princess of Castile (b. 1462) 1550 – Claude, Duke of Guise (b. 1496) 1555 – Joanna of Castile, nominal Queen of Castile, Aragon and so on (b. 1479) 1601–1900 1675 – Richard Bennett, English politician, colonial Governor of Virginia (b. 1609) 1684 – Nicola Amati, Italian instrument maker (b. 1596) 1687 – Ambrose Dixon, English-American soldier (b. 1619) 1704 – Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet, French bishop and theologian (b. 1627) 1748 – William Kent, English architect, designed Holkham Hall and Chiswick House (b. 1685) 1782 – Metastasio, Italian-Austrian poet and composer (b. 1698) 1788 – Carlo Antonio Campioni, French-Italian composer (b. 1719) 1795 – Johann Kaspar Basselet von La Rosée, Bavarian general (b. 1710) 1814 – Charles Burney, English composer and historian (b. 1726) 1817 – Charles Messier, French astronomer and academic (b. 1730) 1850 – Adoniram Judson, American lexicographer and missionary (b. 1788) 1866 – Peter Hesketh-Fleetwood, English politician, founded Fleetwood (b. 1801) 1872 – Nikolaos Mantzaros, Greek composer and theorist (b. 1795) 1878 – William M. Tweed, American lawyer and politician (b. 1823) 1879 – Richard Taylor, Confederate general (b. 1826) 1885 – William Crowther, Dutch-Australian politician, 14th Premier of Tasmania (b. 1817) 1898 – Elzéar-Alexandre Taschereau, Canadian cardinal (b. 1820) 1901–present 1902 – Marie Alfred Cornu, French physicist and academic (b. 1842) 1906 – Mahesh Chandra Nyayratna Bhattacharyya, Indian scholar, academic, and philanthropist (b. 1836) 1912 – Clara Barton, American nurse and humanitarian, founded the American Red Cross (b. 1821) 1933 – Adelbert Ames, American general and politician, 30th Governor of Mississippi (b. 1835) 1937 – Abdülhak Hâmid Tarhan, Turkish playwright and poet (b. 1852) 1938 – Feodor Chaliapin, Russian opera singer (b. 1873) 1943 – Viktor Puskar, Estonian colonel (b. 1889) 1945 – Franklin D. Roosevelt, American lawyer and politician, 32nd President of the United States (b. 1882) 1953 – Lionel Logue, Australian actor and therapist (b. 1880) 1962 – Ron Flockhart, Scottish racing driver (b. 1923) 1966 – Sydney Allard, English racing driver and founder of the Allard car company (b. 1910) 1968 – Heinrich Nordhoff, German engineer (b. 1899) 1971 – Ed Lafitte, American baseball player and dentist (b. 1886) 1973 – Arthur Freed, American songwriter and producer (b. 1894) 1975 – Josephine Baker, French actress, activist, and humanitarian (b. 1906) 1977 – Philip K. Wrigley, American businessman, co-founded Lincoln Park Gun Club (b. 1894) 1980 – William R. Tolbert, Jr., Liberian politician, 20th President of Liberia (b. 1913) 1981 – Prince Yasuhiko Asaka of Japan (b. 1887) 1981 – Joe Louis, American boxer and wrestler (b. 1914) 1983 – Jørgen Juve, Norwegian football player and journalist (b. 1906) 1983 – Carl Morton, American baseball player (b. 1944) 1984 – Edwin T. Layton, American admiral and cryptanalyst (b. 1903) 1986 – Valentin Kataev, Russian author and playwright (b. 1897) 1988 – Colette Deréal, French singer and actress (b. 1927) 1988 – Alan Paton, South African historian and author (b. 1903) 1989 – Abbie Hoffman, American activist, co-founded Youth International Party (b. 1936) 1989 – Sugar Ray Robinson, American boxer (b. 1921) 1992 – Ilario Bandini, Italian racing driver and businessman (b. 1911) 1997 – George Wald, American neurologist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1906) 1998 – Robert Ford, Canadian poet and diplomat (b. 1915) 1999 – Boxcar Willie, American singer-songwriter (b. 1931) 2001 – Harvey Ball, American illustrator, created the smiley (b. 1921) 2002 – George Shevelov, Ukrainian-American linguist and philologist (b. 1908) 2004 – Moran Campbell, Canadian physician and academic, invented the venturi mask (b. 1925) 2006 – William Sloane Coffin, American minister and activist (b. 1924) 2007 – Kevin Crease, Australian journalist (b. 1936) 2008 – Cecilia Colledge, English-American figure skater and coach (b. 1920) 2008 – Patrick Hillery, Irish physician and politician, 6th President of Ireland (b. 1923) 2008 – Jerry Zucker, Israeli-American businessman and philanthropist (b. 1949) 2010 – Michel Chartrand, Canadian trade union leader (b. 1916) 2010 – Werner Schroeter, German director and screenwriter (b. 1945) 2011 – Karim Fakhrawi, Bahraini journalist, co-founded Al-Wasat (b. 1962) 2012 – Mohit Chattopadhyay, Indian poet and playwright (b. 1934) 2012 – Rodgers Grant, American pianist and composer (b. 1935) 2013 – Robert Byrne, American chess player and author (b. 1928) 2013 – Johnny du Plooy, South African boxer (b. 1964) 2013 – Michael France, American screenwriter (b. 1962) 2013 – Brennan Manning, American priest and author (b. 1934) 2013 – Annamária Szalai, Hungarian journalist and politician (b. 1961) 2013 – Ya'akov Yosef, Israeli rabbi and politician (b. 1946) 2014 – Pierre Autin-Grenier, French author and poet (b. 1947) 2014 – Pierre-Henri Menthéour, French cyclist (b. 1960) 2014 – Maurício Alves Peruchi, Brazilian footballer (b. 1990) 2014 – Hal Smith, American baseball player and coach (b. 1931) 2014 – Billy Standridge, American race car driver (b. 1953) 2015 – Paulo Brossard, Brazilian jurist and politician (b. 1924) 2015 – Patrice Dominguez, Algerian-French tennis player and trainer (b. 1950) 2015 – Alfred Eick, German commander (b. 1916) 2015 – André Mba Obame, Gabonese politician (b. 1957) 2016 – Anne Jackson, American actress (b. 1925) 2016 – Mohammad Al Gaz, Emirati politician & diplomat (b. 1930) 2017 – Charlie Murphy, American actor and comedian (b. 1959) 2020 – Tarvaris Jackson, American football player (b. 1983) 2021 – Joseph Siravo, American actor and producer (b. 1955) Holidays and observances Children's Day (Bolivia) Christian feast day: Adoniram Judson (Episcopal Church) Alferius Blessed Angelo Carletti di Chivasso Erkembode Pope Julius I Teresa of the Andes Zeno of Verona April 12 (Eastern Orthodox liturgics) Commemoration of first human in space by Yuri Gagarin: Cosmonautics Day (Russia) International Day of Human Space Flight Yuri's Night
(d. 2006) 1946 – John Dunsworth, Canadian actor and comedian (d. 2017) 1946 – Ed O'Neill, American actor and comedian 1946 – George Robertson, Baron Robertson of Port Ellen, Scottish politician and diplomat, 10th Secretary General of NATO 1947 – Roy M. Anderson, English epidemiologist, zoologist, and academic 1947 – Martin Brasier, English palaeontologist, biologist, and academic (d. 2014) 1947 – Tom Clancy, American historian and author (d. 2013) 1947 – David Letterman, American comedian and talk show host 1948 – Jeremy Beadle, English television host and producer (d. 2008) 1948 – Joschka Fischer, German academic and politician 1948 – Marcello Lippi, Italian footballer, manager, and coach 1949 – Scott Turow, American lawyer and author 1950 – Flavio Briatore, Italian businessman 1950 – David Cassidy, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (d. 2017) 1950 – Joyce Banda, Malawian politician, 4th president of Malawi 1950 – Nick Sackman, English composer and educator 1951 – Tom Noonan, American actor 1952 – Reuben Gant, American football player 1952 – Leicester Rutledge, New Zealand rugby player 1952 – Gary Soto, American poet, novelist, and memoirist 1952 – Ralph Wiley, American journalist (d. 2004) 1953 – Tanino Liberatore, Italian author and illustrator 1954 – John Faulkner, Australian educator and politician, 52nd Australian Minister for Defence 1954 – Steve Stevaert, Belgian businessman and politician (d. 2015) 1954 – Pat Travers, Canadian singer-songwriter and guitarist 1955 – Fabian Hamilton, English graphic designer, engineer, and politician 1956 – Andy Garcia, Cuban-American actor, director, and producer 1956 – Herbert Grönemeyer, German singer-songwriter and actor 1957 – Greg Child, Australian mountaineer and author 1957 – Vince Gill, American singer-songwriter and guitarist 1957 – Tama Janowitz, American novelist and short story writer 1958 – Will Sergeant, English guitarist 1958 – Klaus Tafelmeier, German javelin thrower 1958 – Ginka Zagorcheva, Bulgarian hurdler 1960 – David Thirdkill, American basketball player 1961 – Corrado Fabi, Italian racing driver 1961 – Charles Mann, American football player and sportscaster 1961 – Magda Szubanski, English-Australian actress, comedian and writer 1962 – Art Alexakis, American singer-songwriter and musician 1962 – Carlos Sainz, Spanish racing driver 1962 – Nobuhiko Takada, Japanese mixed martial artist and wrestler, founded Hustle 1963 – Lydia Cacho, Mexican journalist and author 1964 – Chris Fairclough, English footballer and coach 1965 – Amy Ray, American folk-rock singer-songwriter, musician, and music producer 1965 – Kim Bodnia, Danish actor and director 1965 – Chi Onwurah, English politician 1965 – Gervais Rufyikiri, Burundian politician 1965 – Mihai Stoica, Romanian footballer and manager 1966 – Nils-Olav Johansen, Norwegian guitarist and singer 1966 – Lorenzo White, American football player 1967 – Sarah Cracknell, English singer-songwriter 1968 – Alicia Coppola, American actress 1968 – Toby Gad, German songwriter and producer 1968 – Adam Graves, Canadian ice hockey player 1969 – Jörn Lenz, German footballer and manager 1969 – Lucas Radebe, South African footballer and sportscaster 1969 – Michael Jackson, American football player and politician (d. 2017) 1970 – Sylvain Bouchard, Canadian speed skater 1971 – Nicholas Brendon, American actor 1971 – Shannen Doherty, American actress, director, and producer 1972 – Paul Lo Duca, American baseball player and sportscaster 1973 – J. Scott Campbell, American author and illustrator 1973 – Ryan Kisor, American trumpet player and composer 1973 – Antonio Osuna, Mexican-American baseball player 1973 – Christian Panucci, Italian footballer and manager 1974 – Belinda Emmett, Australian actress (d. 2006) 1974 – Bryan Fletcher, Australian rugby league player and sportscaster 1974 – Roman Hamrlík, Czech ice hockey player 1974 – Marley Shelton, American actress 1974 – Sylvinho, Brazilian footballer and manager 1976 – Olga Kotlyarova, Russian runner 1976 – Brad Miller, American basketball player 1977 – Giovanny Espinoza, Ecuadorian footballer 1977 – Sarah Monahan, Australian actress 1977 – Jason Price, Welsh footballer 1977 – Glenn Rogers, Australian-Scottish cricketer 1978 – Guy Berryman, Scottish bass player and producer 1978 – Scott Crary, American director, producer, and screenwriter 1978 – Svetlana Lapina, Russian high jumper 1978 – Robin Walker, English businessman and politician 1979 – Claire Danes, American actress 1979 – Elena Grosheva, Russian gymnast 1979 – Mateja Kežman, Serbian footballer 1979 – Jennifer Morrison, American actress 1979 – Cristian Ranalli, Italian footballer 1979 – Lee Soo-young, South Korean singer 1980 – Sara Head, Welsh Paralympic table tennis champion 1980 – Brian McFadden, Irish singer-songwriter 1981 – Yuriy Borzakovskiy, Russian runner 1981 – Nicolás Burdisso, Argentinian footballer 1981 – Tulsi Gabbard, American politician 1981 – Grant Holt, English footballer and professional wrestler 1981 – Hisashi Iwakuma, Japanese baseball pitcher 1983 – Jelena Dokic, Serbian-Australian tennis player 1983 – Luke Kibet, Kenyan runner 1984 – Aleksey Dmitrik, Russian high jumper 1985 – Brennan Boesch, American baseball player 1985 – Hitomi Yoshizawa, Japanese singer 1986 – Brad Brach, American baseball pitcher 1986 – Blerim Džemaili, Swiss footballer 1986 – Marcel Granollers, Spanish tennis player 1986 – Jonathan Pitroipa, Burkinabé footballer 1987 – Brooklyn Decker, American model and actress 1987 – Shawn Gore, Canadian football player 1987 – Josh McCrone, Australian rugby league player 1987 – Luiz Adriano, Brazilian professional footballer 1987 – Brendon Urie, American singer, songwriter, musician and multi-instrumentalist 1988 – Ricky Álvarez, Argentinian footballer 1988 – Stephen Brogan, English footballer 1988 – Amedeo Calliari, Italian footballer 1988 – Jessie James Decker, American singer-songwriter 1989 – Bethan Dainton, Welsh rugby union player 1989 – Miguel Ángel Ponce, American-Mexican footballer 1989 – Ádám Hanga, Hungarian basketball player 1989 – Kaitlyn Weaver, Canadian-American ice dancer 1989 – Valentin Stocker, Swiss footballer 1990 – Francesca Halsall, English swimmer 1990 – Hiroki Sakai, Japanese footballer 1991 – Torey Krug, American ice hockey player 1991 – Lionel Carole, French professional footballer 1991 – Oliver Norwood, English born Northern Irish international footballer 1991 – Magnus Pääjärvi, Swedish ice hockey player 1991 – Jazz Richards, Welsh international footballer 1992 – Chad le Clos, South African swimmer 1993 – Jordan Archer, English-Scottish footballer 1993 – Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, Canadian ice hockey player 1994 – Isabelle Drummond, Brazilian actress and singer 1994 – Saoirse Ronan, American-born Irish actress 1994 – Oh Sehun, South Korean musician 1994 – Eric Bailly, Ivorian professional footballer 1994 – Guido Rodríguez, Argentine footballer 1995 – Pedro Cachín, Argentine tennis player 1996 – Elizaveta Kulichkova, Russian tennis player Deaths Pre-1600 45 BC – Gnaeus Pompeius, Roman general and politician (b. 75 BC) 352 – Julius I, pope of the Catholic Church 434 – Maximianus, archbishop of Constantinople 901 – Eudokia Baïana, Byzantine empress and wife of Leo VI 1125 – Vladislaus I, Duke of Bohemia (b. 1065) 1167 – Charles VII, king of Sweden (b. c. 1130) 1256 – Margaret of Bourbon, Queen of Navarre, regent of Navarre (b. c. 1217) 1443 – Henry Chichele, English archbishop (b. 1364) 1500 – Leonhard of Gorizia, Count of Gorz (b. 1440) 1530 – Joanna La Beltraneja, Princess of Castile (b. 1462) 1550 – Claude, Duke of Guise (b. 1496) 1555 – Joanna of Castile, nominal Queen of Castile, Aragon and so on (b. 1479) 1601–1900 1675 – Richard Bennett, English politician, colonial Governor of Virginia (b. 1609) 1684 – Nicola Amati, Italian instrument maker (b. 1596) 1687 – Ambrose Dixon, English-American soldier (b. 1619) 1704 – Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet, French bishop and theologian (b. 1627) 1748 – William Kent, English architect, designed Holkham Hall and Chiswick House (b. 1685) 1782 – Metastasio, Italian-Austrian poet and composer (b. 1698) 1788 – Carlo Antonio Campioni, French-Italian composer (b. 1719) 1795 – Johann Kaspar Basselet von La Rosée, Bavarian general (b. 1710) 1814 – Charles Burney, English composer and historian (b. 1726) 1817 – Charles Messier, French astronomer and academic (b. 1730) 1850 – Adoniram Judson, American lexicographer and missionary (b. 1788) 1866 – Peter Hesketh-Fleetwood, English politician, founded Fleetwood (b. 1801) 1872 – Nikolaos Mantzaros, Greek composer and theorist (b. 1795) 1878 – William M. Tweed, American lawyer and politician (b. 1823) 1879 – Richard Taylor, Confederate general (b. 1826) 1885 – William Crowther, Dutch-Australian politician, 14th Premier of Tasmania (b. 1817) 1898 – Elzéar-Alexandre Taschereau, Canadian cardinal (b. 1820) 1901–present 1902 – Marie Alfred Cornu, French physicist and academic (b. 1842) 1906 – Mahesh Chandra Nyayratna Bhattacharyya, Indian scholar, academic, and philanthropist (b. 1836) 1912 – Clara Barton, American nurse and humanitarian, founded the American Red Cross (b. 1821) 1933 – Adelbert Ames, American general and politician, 30th Governor of Mississippi (b. 1835) 1937 – Abdülhak Hâmid Tarhan, Turkish playwright and poet (b. 1852) 1938 – Feodor Chaliapin, Russian opera singer (b. 1873) 1943 – Viktor Puskar, Estonian colonel (b. 1889) 1945 – Franklin D. Roosevelt, American lawyer and politician, 32nd President of the United States (b. 1882) 1953 – Lionel Logue, Australian actor and therapist (b. 1880) 1962 – Ron Flockhart, Scottish racing driver (b. 1923) 1966 – Sydney Allard, English racing driver and founder of the Allard car company (b. 1910) 1968 – Heinrich Nordhoff, German engineer (b. 1899) 1971 – Ed Lafitte, American baseball player and dentist (b. 1886) 1973 – Arthur Freed, American songwriter and producer (b. 1894) 1975 – Josephine Baker, French actress, activist, and humanitarian (b. 1906) 1977 – Philip K. Wrigley, American businessman, co-founded Lincoln Park Gun Club (b. 1894) 1980 – William R. Tolbert, Jr., Liberian politician, 20th President of Liberia (b. 1913) 1981 – Prince Yasuhiko Asaka of Japan (b. 1887) 1981 – Joe Louis, American boxer and wrestler (b. 1914) 1983 – Jørgen Juve, Norwegian football player and journalist (b. 1906) 1983 – Carl Morton, American baseball player (b. 1944) 1984 – Edwin T. Layton, American admiral and cryptanalyst (b. 1903) 1986 – Valentin Kataev, Russian author and playwright (b. 1897) 1988 – Colette Deréal, French singer and actress (b. 1927) 1988 – Alan Paton, South African historian and author (b. 1903) 1989 – Abbie Hoffman, American activist, co-founded Youth International Party (b. 1936) 1989 – Sugar Ray Robinson, American boxer (b. 1921) 1992 – Ilario Bandini, Italian racing driver and businessman (b. 1911) 1997 – George Wald, American neurologist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1906) 1998 – Robert Ford, Canadian poet and diplomat (b. 1915) 1999 – Boxcar Willie, American singer-songwriter (b. 1931) 2001 – Harvey Ball, American illustrator, created the smiley (b. 1921) 2002 – George Shevelov, Ukrainian-American linguist and philologist (b. 1908) 2004 – Moran Campbell, Canadian physician and academic, invented the venturi mask (b. 1925) 2006 – William Sloane Coffin, American minister and activist (b. 1924) 2007 – Kevin Crease, Australian journalist (b. 1936) 2008 – Cecilia Colledge, English-American figure skater and coach (b. 1920) 2008 – Patrick Hillery, Irish physician and politician, 6th President of Ireland (b. 1923) 2008 – Jerry Zucker, Israeli-American businessman and philanthropist (b. 1949) 2010 – Michel Chartrand, Canadian trade union leader (b. 1916) 2010 – Werner Schroeter, German director and screenwriter (b. 1945) 2011 – Karim Fakhrawi, Bahraini journalist, co-founded Al-Wasat (b. 1962) 2012 – Mohit Chattopadhyay, Indian poet and playwright (b. 1934) 2012 – Rodgers Grant, American pianist and composer (b. 1935) 2013 – Robert Byrne, American chess player and author (b. 1928) 2013 – Johnny du Plooy, South African boxer (b. 1964) 2013 – Michael France, American screenwriter (b. 1962) 2013 – Brennan Manning, American priest and author (b. 1934) 2013 – Annamária Szalai, Hungarian journalist and politician (b. 1961) 2013 – Ya'akov Yosef, Israeli rabbi and politician (b. 1946) 2014 – Pierre Autin-Grenier, French author and poet (b. 1947) 2014 – Pierre-Henri Menthéour, French cyclist (b. 1960) 2014 – Maurício Alves Peruchi, Brazilian footballer (b. 1990) 2014 – Hal Smith, American baseball player and coach (b. 1931) 2014 – Billy Standridge, American race car driver (b. 1953) 2015 – Paulo Brossard, Brazilian jurist and politician (b. 1924) 2015 – Patrice Dominguez, Algerian-French tennis player and trainer (b. 1950) 2015 – Alfred Eick, German commander (b. 1916) 2015 – André Mba Obame, Gabonese politician (b. 1957) 2016 – Anne
(d. 2008) 1929 – Adrian Cadbury, English rower and businessman (d. 2015) 1930 – Georges Descrières, French actor (d. 2013) 1930 – Vigdís Finnbogadóttir, Icelandic educator and politician, 4th President of Iceland 1931 – Kenneth Bloomfield, Northern Irish civil servant 1931 – Tomas Tranströmer, Swedish poet, translator, and psychologist Nobel Prize laureate (d. 2015) 1933 – Roy Clark, American musician and television personality (d. 2018) 1933 – David Hamilton, English-French photographer and director (d. 2016) 1933 – Elizabeth Montgomery, American actress and producer (d. 1995) 1935 – Stavros Paravas, Greek actor and producer (d. 2008) 1936 – Raymond Poulidor, French cyclist (d. 2019) 1937 – Bob Luman, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (d. 1978) 1937 – Robert W. Gore, American engineer and businessman, co-inventor of Gore-Tex (d. 2020) 1938 – Claudia Cardinale, Italian actress 1938 – Hso Khan Pha, Burmese-Canadian geologist and politician (d. 2016) 1939 – Marty Wilde, English singer-songwriter and actor 1939 – Desiré Ecaré, Ivorian filmmaker (d. 2009) 1940 – Jeffrey Archer, English author, playwright, and politician 1940 – Penelope Coelen, South African actress, model, beauty queen and 1958 Miss World 1940 – Willie Davis, American baseball player and actor (d. 2010) 1940 – Robert Lacroix, Canadian economist and academic 1940 – Robert Walker, American actor (d. 2019) 1941 – Howard Berman, American lawyer and politician 1942 – Francis X. DiLorenzo, American bishop (d. 2017) 1942 – Walt Hazzard, American basketball player and coach (d. 2011) 1942 – Kenneth Lay, American businessman (d. 2006) 1942 – Tim Lankester, English economist and academic 1943 – Pınar Kür, Turkish author, playwright, and academic 1943 – Robert Lefkowitz, American physician and biochemist, Nobel Prize laureate 1943 – Veronica Linklater, Baroness Linklater, English politician 1943 – Hugh Thompson, Jr., American soldier and pilot (d. 2006) 1944 – Dave Edmunds, Welsh singer-songwriter, guitarist, and producer 1946 – John Lloyd, Scottish journalist and author 1946 – Pete Rouse, American politician, White House Chief of Staff 1947 – Linda Bloodworth-Thomason, American screenwriter and producer 1947 – Martin Broughton, English businessman 1947 – Lois Chiles, American model and actress 1947 – David Omand, English civil servant and academic 1947 – Cristina Husmark Pehrsson, Swedish nurse and politician, Swedish Minister for Social Security 1948 – Christopher Brown, English historian, curator, and academic 1948 – Michael Kamen, American composer and conductor (d. 2003) 1948 – Phil Mogg, English singer-songwriter and musician 1949 – Alla Pugacheva, Russian singer-songwriter and actress 1949 – Craig Zadan, American director, producer, and screenwriter (d. 2018) 1950 – Josiane Balasko, French actress, director, and screenwriter 1950 – Amy Wright, American actress 1950 – Karel Kroupa, Czech football player 1951 – Heloise, American journalist and author 1951 – John L. Phillips, American captain and astronaut 1951 – Stuart Prebble, English journalist and producer 1951 – Marsha Ivins, American engineer and astronaut 1952 – Kym Gyngell, Australian actor, comedian, and screenwriter 1952 – Brian Muir, English sculptor and set designer 1952 – Avital Ronell, Czech-American philosopher and academic 1955 – Dodi Fayed, Egyptian film producer (d. 1997) 1955 – Joice Mujuru, Zimbabwean politician 1956 – Michael Cooper, American basketball player and coach 1957 – Evelyn Ashford, American runner and coach 1958 – Keith Acton, Canadian ice hockey player and coach 1958 – John Bracewell, New Zealand cricketer 1958 – Memos Ioannou, Greek basketball player and coach 1958 – Benjamin Zephaniah, English actor, author, poet, and playwright 1959 – Fruit Chan, Chinese director, producer, and screenwriter 1959 – Kevin Lowe, Canadian ice hockey player, coach, and manager 1959 – Emma Thompson, English actress, comedian, author, activist and screenwriter 1960 – Pierre Aubry, Canadian ice hockey player 1960 – Susanne Bier, Danish director and screenwriter 1960 – Pedro Delgado, Spanish cyclist and sportscaster 1960 – Tony Jones, English snooker player 1961 – Neil Carmichael, English academic and politician 1961 – Carol W. Greider, American molecular biologist 1961 – Dawn Wright, American geographer and oceanographer 1962 – Nawal El Moutawakel, Moroccan athlete and politician 1962 – Tom Kane, American voice actor 1963 – Alex Crawford, Nigerian-South African journalist 1963 – Manzoor Elahi, Pakistani cricketer 1963 – Manoj Prabhakar, Indian cricketer and sportscaster 1964 – Andre Joubert, South African rugby player 1964 – Lee Kernaghan, Australian singer-songwriter and guitarist 1965 – Linda Perry, American singer-songwriter, musician and record producer 1965 – Kevin Stevens, American ice hockey player 1966 – Samantha Fox, English singer-songwriter and actress 1966 – Mott Green, American businessman (d. 2013) 1967 – Frankie Poullain, Scottish bass player and songwriter 1967 – Dara Torres, American swimmer and journalist 1968 – Ben Clarke, English rugby player and coach 1968 – Brahim Lahlafi, Moroccan-French runner 1968 – Ed O'Brien, English guitarist 1969 – Jeromy Burnitz, American baseball player 1969 – Kaisa Roose, Estonian pianist and conductor 1969 – Jimmy Waite, Canadian-German ice hockey player and coach 1970 – Chris Huffins, American decathlete and coach 1971 – Philippe Carbonneau, French rugby player 1971 – Finidi George, Nigerian footballer 1971 – Jason Sehorn, American football player 1971 – Josia Thugwane, South African runner 1971 – Karl Turner, English lawyer and politician 1972 – Arturo Gatti, Italian-Canadian boxer (d. 2009) 1972 – Lou Romano, American animator and voice actor 1974 – Kim Min-kyo, South Korean actor and director 1974 – Danny Pino, American actor and screenwriter 1974 – Mike Quinn, American football player 1974 – Douglas Spain, American actor, director, and producer 1974 – Tim Thomas, American ice hockey player 1975 – Sarah Teichmann, German-American biophysicist and immunologist 1976 – Jason Bonsignore, Canadian ice hockey player and coach 1976 – Darius Regelskis, Lithuanian footballer 1976 – Kęstutis Šeštokas, Lithuanian basketball player 1976 – Steve Williams, English rower 1977 – Sudarsan Pattnaik, Indian sculptor 1977 – Brian Pothier, American ice hockey player 1978 – Milton Bradley, American baseball player 1978 – Tim Corcoran, American baseball player 1978 – Luis Fonsi, Puerto Rican-American singer-songwriter and dancer 1978 – Chris Stapleton, American country singer-songwriter and guitarist 1980 – Patrick Carney, American drummer, musician, and producer 1980 – James Foster, English cricketer 1980 – Raül López, Spanish basketball player 1980 – Willie Mason, New Zealand-Australian rugby league player 1980 – Aida Mollenkamp, American chef and author 1980 – Billy Yates, American football player 1981 – Andrés D'Alessandro, Argentinian footballer 1982 – Michael Aubrey, American baseball player 1982 – Anthony Green, American singer-songwriter 1982 – Seth Rogen, Canadian-American actor, director, producer, and screenwriter 1983 – Alice Braga, Brazilian actress 1983 – Matt Cardle, English singer-songwriter and guitarist 1983 – Dudu Cearense, Brazilian footballer 1983 – Andreas Fransson, Swedish skier (d. 2014) 1983 – Ilya Kovalchuk, Russian ice hockey player 1983 – Martin Pedersen, Danish cyclist 1984 – Antonio Cromartie, American football player 1984 – Cam Janssen, American ice hockey player 1984 – Daniel Paille, Canadian ice hockey player 1985 – Ryan Hamilton, Canadian ice hockey player 1986 – Tom Heaton, English footballer 1986 – Sylvain Marveaux, French footballer 1988 – Blake Ayshford, Australian rugby league player 1988 – Steven Defour, Belgian footballer 1988 – Chris Tillman, American baseball pitcher 1989 – Darren Nicholls, Australian rugby league player 1990 – Emma Watson, English actress 1991 – Daiki Arioka, Japanese idol, singer, and actor 1991 – Javier Fernández López, Spanish figure skater 1992 – Jeremy McGovern, Australian rules football player 1994 – Brodie Grundy, Australian rules football player 1994 – Shaunae Miller-Uibo, Bahamian sprinter 1995 – Leander Dendoncker, Belgian footballer 1997 – Ashleigh Gardner, Australian cricketer 1999 – Denis Shapovalov, Canadian tennis player 2001 – Shanti Dope, Filipino rapper Deaths Pre-1600 628 – Suiko, emperor of Japan (b. 554) 943 – Liu Bin, emperor of Southern Han (b. 920) 956 – Lin Yanyu, Chinese court official and eunuch 1053 – Godwin, Earl of Wessex (b. 1001) 1136 – Richard Fitz Gilbert de Clare (b. 1094) 1220 – Adolf of Altena, German archbishop (b. 1157) 1237 – Richard Poore, English ecclesiastic 1415 – Manuel Chrysoloras, Greek philosopher and translator (b. 1355) 1446 – Filippo Brunelleschi, Italian sculptor and architect (b. 1377) 1502 – John IV of Chalon-Arlay, Prince of Orange (b. 1443) 1558 – Roxelana, wife of Suleiman the Magnificent (b. c. 1500) 1601–1900 1610 – Robert Persons, English Jesuit priest, insurrectionist, and author (b. 1546) 1632 – George Calvert, 1st Baron Baltimore, English politician, English Secretary of State (b. 1580) 1652 – Patriarch Joseph of Moscow, Russian patriarch 1659 – Simon Dach, German poet and hymnwriter (b. 1605) 1719 – Françoise d'Aubigné, Marquise de Maintenon, French wife of Louis XIV of France (b. 1635) 1754 – Jacopo Riccati, Italian mathematician and academic (b. 1676) 1757 – Rosalba Carriera, Italian painter (b. 1673) 1761 – Archibald Campbell, 3rd Duke of Argyll, Scottish lawyer and politician, Lord President of the Court of Session (b. 1682) 1761 – William Oldys, English historian and author (b. 1696) 1764 – Peder Horrebow, Danish astronomer and mathematician (b. 1679) 1764 – Madame de Pompadour, mistress of King Louis XV (d. 1764) 1765 – Mikhail Lomonosov, Russian chemist and physicist (b. 1711) 1788 – Giuseppe Bonno, Austrian composer (b. 1711) 1793 – Ignacije Szentmartony, Croatian priest, mathematician, and astronomer (b. 1718) 1854 – Arthur Aikin, English chemist and mineralogist (b. 1773) 1861 – Sylvester Jordan, Austrian-German lawyer and politician (b. 1792) 1865 – Abraham Lincoln, 16th President of the United States (b. 1809) 1888 – Matthew Arnold, English poet and critic (b. 1822) 1889 – Father Damien, Belgian priest and saint (b. 1840) 1898 – Te Keepa Te Rangihiwinui, New Zealand commander and politician 1901–present 1912 – Victims of the Titanic disaster: Thomas Andrews, Irish shipbuilder (b. 1873) John Jacob Astor IV, American colonel, businessman, and author (b. 1864) Archibald Butt, American general and journalist (b. 1865) Jacques Futrelle, American journalist and author (b. 1875) Benjamin Guggenheim, American businessman (b. 1865) Henry B. Harris, American producer and manager (b. 1866) Wallace Hartley, English violinist and bandleader (b. 1878) James Paul Moody, English Sixth Officer (b. 1887) William McMaster Murdoch, Scottish First Officer (b. 1873) Jack Phillips, English telegraphist (b. 1887) Edward Smith, English Captain (b. 1850) William Thomas Stead, English journalist (b. 1849) Ida Straus, German-American businesswoman (b. 1849) Isidor Straus, German-American businessman and politician (b. 1845) John B. Thayer, American business and sportsman (b. 1862) Henry Tingle Wilde, English chief officer (b. 1872) 1917 – János Murkovics, Slovene author, poet, and educator (b. 1839) 1927 – Gaston Leroux, French journalist and author (b. 1868) 1938 – César Vallejo, Peruvian journalist, poet, and playwright (b. 1892) 1942 – Robert Musil, Austrian-Swiss author and playwright (b. 1880) 1943 – Aristarkh Lentulov, Russian painter and set designer (b. 1882) 1944 – Nikolai Fyodorovich Vatutin, Russian general (b. 1901) 1945 – Hermann Florstedt, German SS officer (b. 1895) 1948 – Radola Gajda, Montenegrin-Czech general and politician (b. 1892) 1949 – Wallace Beery, American actor, director, and screenwriter (b. 1885) 1962 – Clara Blandick, American actress (b. 1880) 1962 – Arsenio Lacson, Filipino journalist and politician, Mayor of Manila (b. 1912) 1963 – Edward Greeves, Jr., Australian footballer (b. 1903) 1966 – Habibullah Bahar Chowdhury, Bengali politician, writer, journalist, first health minister of East Pakistan 1967 – Totò, Italian comedian (b. 1898) 1971 – Gurgen Boryan, Armenian poet and playwright (b. 1915) 1971 – Friedebert Tuglas,
receives its premiere performance in London, England. 1755 – Samuel Johnson's A Dictionary of the English Language is published in London. 1817 – Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet and Laurent Clerc found the American School for the Deaf, the first American school for deaf students, in Hartford, Connecticut. 1861 – President Abraham Lincoln calls for 75,000 Volunteers to quell the insurrection that soon became the American Civil War. 1865 – President Abraham Lincoln dies after being shot the previous evening by actor John Wilkes Booth. Vice President Andrew Johnson becomes President upon Lincoln's death. 1892 – The General Electric Company is formed. 1896 – Closing ceremony of the Games of the I Olympiad in Athens, Greece. 1900 – Philippine–American War: Filipino guerrillas launch a surprise attack on U.S. infantry and begin a four-day siege of Catubig, Philippines. 1901–present 1912 – The British passenger liner sinks in the North Atlantic at 2:20 a.m., two hours and forty minutes after hitting an iceberg. Only 710 of 2,224 passengers and crew on board survive. 1920 – Two security guards are murdered during a robbery in South Braintree, Massachusetts. Anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti would be convicted of and executed for the crime, amid much controversy. 1922 – U.S. Senator John B. Kendrick of Wyoming introduces a resolution calling for an investigation of a secret land deal, which leads to the discovery of the Teapot Dome scandal. 1923 – Insulin becomes generally available for use by people with diabetes. 1936 – First day of the Arab revolt in Mandatory Palestine. 1941 – In the Belfast Blitz, two hundred bombers of the German Luftwaffe attack Belfast, killing around one thousand people. 1942 – The George Cross is awarded "to the island fortress of Malta" by King George VI. 1945 – Bergen-Belsen concentration camp is liberated. 1947 – Jackie Robinson debuts for the Brooklyn Dodgers, breaking baseball's color line. 1952 – First flight of the Boeing B-52 Stratofortress. 1955 – McDonald's restaurant dates its founding to the opening of a franchised restaurant by Ray Kroc, in Des Plaines, Illinois. 1960 – At Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina, Ella Baker leads a conference that results in the creation of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, one of the principal organizations of the civil rights movement in the 1960s. 1969 – The EC-121 shootdown incident: North Korea shoots down a United States Navy aircraft over the Sea of Japan, killing all 31 on board. 1970 – During the Cambodian Civil War, massacre of the Vietnamese minority results in 800 bodies flowing down the Mekong river into South Vietnam. 1986 – The United States launches Operation El Dorado Canyon, its bombing raids against Libyan targets in response to a discotheque bombing in West Germany that killed two U.S. servicemen. 1989 – Hillsborough disaster: A human crush occurs at Hillsborough Stadium, home of Sheffield Wednesday, in the FA Cup Semi-final, resulting in the deaths of 97 Liverpool fans. 1989 – Upon Hu Yaobang's death, the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 begin in China. 1994 – Marrakesh Agreement relating to foundation of World Trade Organization is adopted. 2002 – Air China Flight 129 crashes on approach to Gimhae International Airport in Busan, South Korea, killing 129 people. 2013 – Two bombs explode near the finish line at the Boston Marathon in Boston, Massachusetts, killing three people and injuring 264 others. 2013 – A wave of bombings across Iraq kills at least 75 people. 2014 – In the worst massacre of the South Sudanese Civil War, at least 200 civilians are gunned down after seeking refuge in houses of worship as well as hospitals. 2019 – The cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris in France is seriously damaged by a large fire. Births Pre-1600 68 BC – Gaius Maecenas, Roman politician (d. 8 BC) 1282 – Frederick IV, Duke of Lorraine (d. 1329) 1367 – Henry IV of England (d. 1413) 1442 – John Paston, English noble (d. 1479) 1452 – Leonardo da Vinci, Italian painter, sculptor, and architect (d. 1519) 1469 – Guru Nanak, the first Sikh guru (d. 1539) 1552 – Pietro Cataldi, Italian mathematician and astronomer (d. 1626) 1563 – Guru Arjan Dev, fifth Sikh leader (d. 1606) 1588 – Claudius Salmasius, French author and scholar (d. 1653) 1592 – Francesco Maria Brancaccio, Catholic cardinal (d. 1675) 1601–1900 1641 – Robert Sibbald, Scottish physician and geographer (d. 1722) 1642 – Suleiman II, Ottoman sultan (d. 1691) 1646 – Christian V of Denmark (d. 1699) 1684 – Catherine I of Russia (d. 1727) 1688 – Johann Friedrich Fasch, German violinist and composer (d. 1758) 1707 – Leonhard Euler, Swiss mathematician and physicist (d. 1783) 1710 – William Cullen, Scottish physician and chemist (d. 1790) 1741 – Charles Willson Peale, American painter and soldier (d. 1827) 1771 – Nicolas Chopin, French-Polish educator (d. 1844) 1772 – Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, French biologist and zoologist (d. 1844) 1793 – Friedrich Georg Wilhelm von Struve, German astronomer and academic (d. 1864) 1795 – Maria Schicklgruber, mother of Alois Hitler and the paternal grandmother of Adolf Hitler (d.1847) 1800 – James Clark Ross, English captain and explorer (d. 1862) 1808 – William Champ, English-Australian politician, 1st Premier of Tasmania (d. 1892) 1809 – Hermann Grassmann, German linguist and mathematician (d. 1877) 1817 – William Crowther, Dutch-Australian politician, 14th Premier of Tasmania (d. 1885) 1828 – Jean Danjou, French captain (d. 1863) 1832 – Wilhelm Busch, German poet, painter, and illustrator (d. 1908) 1841 – Mary Grant Roberts, Australian zoo owner (d. 1921) 1841 – Joseph E. Seagram, Canadian businessman and politician, founded the Seagram Company Ltd (d. 1919) 1843 – Henry James, American novelist, short story writer, and critic (d. 1916) 1856 – Jean Moréas, Greek poet and critic (d. 1910) 1858 – Émile Durkheim, French sociologist, psychologist, and philosopher (d. 1917) 1861 – Bliss Carman, Canadian-British poet and playwright (d. 1929) 1863 – Ida Freund, Austrian-born chemist and educator (d. 1914) 1874 – George Harrison Shull, American botanist and geneticist (d. 1954) 1874 – Johannes Stark, German physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1957) 1875 – James J. Jeffries, American boxer and promoter (d. 1953) 1877 – Georg Kolbe, German sculptor (d. 1947) 1878 – Robert Walser, Swiss author and playwright (d. 1956) 1879 – Melville Henry Cane, American lawyer and poet (d. 1980) 1883 – Stanley Bruce, Australian captain and politician, 8th Prime Minister of Australia (d. 1967) 1885 – Tadeusz Kutrzeba, Polish general (d. 1947) 1886 – Nikolay Gumilyov, Russian poet and critic (d. 1921) 1887 – Felix Pipes, Austrian tennis player (d. 1983) 1887 – William Forgan Smith, Scottish-Australian politician, 24th Premier of Queensland (d. 1953) 1888 – Maximilian Kronberger, German poet and author (d. 1904) 1889 – Thomas Hart Benton, American painter and educator (d. 1975) 1889 – A. Philip Randolph, American activist (d. 1979) 1890 – Percy Shaw, English businessman, invented the cat's eye (d. 1976) 1892 – Theo Osterkamp, German general and pilot (d. 1975) 1892 – Corrie ten Boom, Dutch-American clocksmith, Nazi resister, and author (d. 1983) 1894 – Nikita Khrushchev, Russian general and politician, 7th Premier of the Soviet Union (d. 1971) 1894 – Bessie Smith, African-American singer and actress (d. 1937) 1895 – Clark McConachy, New Zealand snooker player (d. 1980) 1895 – Abigail Mejia, Dominican feminist activist, nationalist, literary critic and educator (d. 1941) 1896 – Nikolay Semyonov, Russian physicist and chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1986) 1898 – Harry Edward, Guyanese-English sprinter (d. 1973) 1901–present 1901 – Joe Davis, English snooker player (d. 1978) 1901 – Ajoy Mukherjee, Indian politician, Chief Minister of West Bengal (d. 1986) 1901 – René Pleven, French businessman and politician, Prime Minister of France (d. 1993) 1902 – Fernando Pessa, Portuguese journalist (d. 2002) 1903 – John Williams, English-American actor (d. 1983) 1904 – Arshile Gorky, Armenian-American painter and illustrator (d. 1948) 1907 – Nikolaas Tinbergen, Dutch-English ethologist and ornithologist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1988) 1908 – eden ahbez, Scottish-American songwriter and recording artist (d. 1995) 1908 – Lita Grey, American actress (d. 1995) 1910 – Sulo Bärlund, Finnish shot putter (d. 1986) 1910 – Miguel Najdorf, Polish-Argentinian chess player and theoretician (d. 1997) 1912 – William Congdon, American-Italian painter and sculptor (d. 1998) 1912 – Kim Il-sung, North Korean general and politician, 1st Supreme Leader of North Korea (d. 1994) 1915 – Elizabeth Catlett, African-American sculptor and illustrator (d. 2012) 1916 – Alfred S. Bloomingdale, American businessman (d. 1982) 1916 – Helene Hanff, American author and screenwriter (d. 1997) 1917 – Hans Conried, American actor (d. 1982) 1917 – Elmer Gedeon, American baseball player and bomber pilot (d. 1944) 1917 – James Kee, American lawyer and politician (d. 1989) 1918 – Hans Billian, German film director, screenwriter, and actor (d. 2007) 1919 – Alberto Breccia, Uruguayan-Argentinian author and illustrator (d. 1993) 1920 – Godfrey Stafford, English-South African physicist and academic (d. 2013) 1920 – Thomas Szasz, Hungarian-American psychiatrist and academic (d. 2012) 1920 – Richard von Weizsäcker, German soldier and politician, 6th President of Germany (d. 2015) 1921 – Georgy Beregovoy, Ukrainian-Russian general, pilot, and astronaut (d. 1995) 1921 – Angelo DiGeorge, American physician and endocrinologist (d. 2009) 1922 – Michael Ansara, Syrian-American actor (d. 2013) 1922 – Hasrat Jaipuri, Indian poet and songwriter (d. 1999) 1922 – Harold Washington, American lawyer and politician, 51st Mayor of Chicago (d. 1987) 1922 – Graham Whitehead, English racing driver (d. 1981) 1923
less than 40 hours. Soviet soldiers raise the Victory Banner over the Reichstag building. 1945 – World War II: Stalag Luft I prisoner-of-war camp near Barth, Germany is liberated by Soviet soldiers, freeing nearly 9000 American and British airmen. 1947 – In Nevada, Boulder Dam is renamed Hoover Dam. 1948 – In Bogotá, Colombia, the Organization of American States is established. 1956 – Former Vice President and Democratic Senator Alben Barkley dies during a speech in Virginia. 1957 – Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery entered into force. 1961 – K-19, the first Soviet nuclear submarine equipped with nuclear missiles, is commissioned. 1963 – The Bristol Bus Boycott is held in Bristol to protest the Bristol Omnibus Company's refusal to employ Black or Asian bus crews, drawing national attention to racial discrimination in the United Kingdom. 1973 – Watergate scandal: U.S. President Richard Nixon announces that White House Counsel John Dean has been fired and that other top aides, most notably H. R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman, have resigned. 1975 – Fall of Saigon: Communist forces gain control of Saigon. The Vietnam War formally ends with the unconditional surrender of South Vietnamese president Dương Văn Minh. 1980 – Beatrix is inaugurated as Queen of the Netherlands following the abdication of Juliana. 1980 – The Iranian Embassy siege begins in London. 1982 – The Bijon Setu massacre occurs in Calcutta, India. 1993 – CERN announces World Wide Web protocols will be free. 1994 – Formula One racing driver Roland Ratzenberger is killed in a crash during the qualifying session of the San Marino Grand Prix run at Autodromo Enzo e Dino Ferrari outside Imola, Italy. 1999 – Neo-Nazi David Copeland carries out the last of his three nail bombings in London at the Admiral Duncan gay pub, killing three people and injuring 79 others. 2000 – Canonization of Faustina Kowalska in the presence of 200,000 people and the first Divine Mercy Sunday celebrated worldwide. 2004 – U.S. media release graphic photos of American soldiers committing war crimes against Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison. 2008 – Two skeletal remains found near Yekaterinburg, Russia are confirmed by Russian scientists to be the remains of Alexei and Anastasia, two of the children of the last Tsar of Russia, whose entire family was executed at Yekaterinburg by the Bolsheviks. 2009 – Chrysler files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. 2009 – Seven civilians and the perpetrator are killed and another ten injured at a Queen's Day parade in Apeldoorn, Netherlands in an attempted assassination on Queen Beatrix. 2012 – An overloaded ferry capsizes on the Brahmaputra River in India killing at least 103 people. 2013 – Willem-Alexander is inaugurated as King of the Netherlands following the abdication of Beatrix. 2014 – A bomb blast in Ürümqi, China kills three people and injures 79 others. 2021 – 45 men and boys are killed in the Meron stampede in Israel. Births Pre-1600 1310 – King Casimir III of Poland (d. 1368) 1331 – Gaston III, Count of Foix (d. 1391) 1383 – Anne of Gloucester, English countess, granddaughter of King Edward III of England (d. 1438) 1425 – William III, Landgrave of Thuringia (d. 1482) 1504 – Francesco Primaticcio, Italian painter (d. 1570) 1553 – Louise of Lorraine (d. 1601) 1601–1900 1623 – François de Laval, French-Canadian bishop and saint (d. 1708) 1651 – Jean-Baptiste de La Salle, French priest and saint (d. 1719) 1662 – Mary II of England (d. 1694) 1664 – François Louis, Prince of Conti (d. 1709) 1710 – Johann Kaspar Basselet von La Rosée, Bavarian general (d. 1795) 1723 – Mathurin Jacques Brisson, French zoologist and philosopher (d. 1806) 1758 – Emmanuel Vitale, Maltese commander and politician (d. 1802) 1770 – David Thompson, English-Canadian cartographer and explorer (d. 1857) 1777 – Carl Friedrich Gauss, German mathematician and physicist (d. 1855) 1803 – Albrecht von Roon, Prussian soldier and politician, 10th Minister President of Prussia (d. 1879) 1829 – Ferdinand von Hochstetter, Austrian geologist and academic (d. 1884) 1857 – Eugen Bleuler, Swiss psychiatrist and eugenicist (d. 1940) 1857 – Walter Simon, German banker and philanthropist (d. 1920) 1865 – Max Nettlau, German historian and academic (d. 1944) 1866 – Mary Haviland Stilwell Kuesel, American pioneer dentist (d. 1936) 1869 – Hans Poelzig, German architect, designed the IG Farben Building and Großes Schauspielhaus (d. 1936) 1870 – Franz Lehár, Hungarian composer (d. 1948) 1870 – Dadasaheb Phalke, Indian director, producer, and screenwriter (d. 1944) 1874 – Cyriel Verschaeve, Flemish priest and author (d. 1949) 1876 – Orso Mario Corbino, Italian physicist and politician (d. 1937) 1877 – Léon Flameng, French cyclist (d. 1917) 1877 – Alice B. Toklas, American memoirist (d. 1967) 1878 – Władysław Witwicki, Polish psychologist, philosopher, translator, historian (of philosophy and art) and artist (d. 1948) 1879 – Richárd Weisz, Hungarian Olympic champion wrestler (d. 1945) 1880 – Charles Exeter Devereux Crombie, Scottish cartoonist (d. 1967) 1883 – Jaroslav Hašek, Czech soldier and author (d. 1923) 1883 – Luigi Russolo, Italian painter and composer (d. 1947) 1884 – Olof Sandborg, Swedish actor (d. 1965) 1888 – John Crowe Ransom, American poet, critic, and academic (d. 1974) 1893 – Harold Breen, Australian public servant (d. 1966) 1893 – Joachim von Ribbentrop, German soldier and politician, 14th German Reich Minister for Foreign Affairs (d. 1946) 1895 – Philippe Panneton, Canadian physician, academic, and diplomat (d. 1960) 1896 – Reverend Gary Davis, American singer and guitarist (d. 1972) 1896 – Hans List, Austrian scientist and businessman, founded the AVL Engineering Company (d. 1996) 1897 – Humberto Mauro, Brazilian director and screenwriter (d. 1983) 1900 – Erni Krusten, Estonian author and poet (d. 1984) 1901–present 1901 – Simon Kuznets, Belarusian-American economist, statistician, and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1985) 1902 – Theodore Schultz, American economist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1998) 1905 – Sergey Nikolsky, Russian mathematician and academic (d. 2012) 1908 – Eve Arden, American actress (d. 1990) 1908 – Bjarni Benediktsson, Icelandic professor of law and politician, 13th Prime Minister of Iceland (d. 1970) 1908 – Frank Robert Miller, Canadian air marshal and politician (d. 1997) 1909 – F. E. McWilliam, Irish sculptor and educator (d. 1992) 1909 – Juliana of the Netherlands (d. 2004) 1910 – Levi Celerio, Filipino pianist, violinist, and composer (d. 2002) 1914 – Charles Beetham, American middle-distance runner (d. 1997) 1914 – Dorival Caymmi, Brazilian singer-songwriter, actor, and painter (d. 2008) 1916 – Paul Kuusberg, Estonian journalist and author (d. 2003) 1916 – Claude Shannon, American mathematician and engineer (d. 2001) 1916 – Robert Shaw, American conductor (d. 1999) 1917 – Bea Wain, American singer (d. 2017) 1920 – Duncan Hamilton, Irish-English race car driver and pilot (d. 1994) 1920 – Tom Moore, British army officer and fundraiser (d. 2021) 1921 – Roger L. Easton, American scientist, co-invented the GPS (d. 2014) 1922 – Anton Murray, South African cricketer (d. 1995) 1923 – Percy Heath, American bassist (d. 2005) 1923 – Kagamisato Kiyoji, Japanese sumo wrestler, the 42nd Yokozuna (d. 2004) 1924 – Uno Laht, Estonian KGB officer and author (d. 2008) 1925 – Corinne Calvet, French actress (d. 2001) 1925 – Johnny Horton, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (d. 1960) 1926 – Shrinivas Khale, Indian composer (d. 2011) 1926 – Cloris Leachman, American actress and comedian (d. 2021) 1928 –
talk show host (d. 2012) 1938 – Juraj Jakubisko, Slovak director and screenwriter 1938 – Larry Niven, American author and screenwriter 1940 – Jeroen Brouwers, Dutch journalist and writer 1940 – Michael Cleary, Australian rugby player and politician 1940 – Ülo Õun, Estonian sculptor (d. 1988) 1941 – Stavros Dimas, Greek lawyer and politician, Greek Minister of Foreign Affairs 1941 – Max Merritt, New Zealand-Australian singer-songwriter (d. 2020) 1942 – Sallehuddin of Kedah, Sultan of Kedah 1943 – Frederick Chiluba, Zambian politician, 2nd President of Zambia (d. 2011) 1943 – Bobby Vee, American pop singer-songwriter (d. 2016) 1944 – Jon Bing, Norwegian author, scholar, and academic (d. 2014) 1944 – Jill Clayburgh, American actress (d. 2010) 1945 – J. Michael Brady, British radiologist 1945 – Annie Dillard, American novelist, essayist, and poet 1945 – Mimi Fariña, American singer-songwriter, guitarist, and activist (d. 2001) 1945 – Michael J. Smith, American pilot, and astronaut (d. 1986) 1946 – King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden 1946 – Bill Plympton, American animator, producer, and screenwriter 1946 – Don Schollander, American swimmer 1947 – Paul Fiddes, English theologian and academic 1947 – Finn Kalvik, Norwegian singer-songwriter and guitarist 1947 – Tom Køhlert, Danish footballer and manager 1947 – Mats Odell, Swedish economist and politician, Swedish Minister for Financial Markets 1948 – Wayne Kramer, American guitarist and singer-songwriter 1948 – Pierre Pagé, Canadian ice hockey player and coach 1948 – Margit Papp, Hungarian athlete 1949 – Phil Garner, American baseball player and manager 1949 – António Guterres, Portuguese academic and politician, 114th Prime Minister of Portugal and 9th Secretary-General of the United Nations 1949 – Karl Meiler, German tennis player (d. 2014) 1952 – Jacques Audiard, French director and screenwriter 1952 – Jack Middelburg, Dutch motorcycle racer (d. 1984) 1953 – Merrill Osmond, American singer and bass player 1954 – Jane Campion, New Zealand director, producer, and screenwriter 1954 – Kim Darroch, English diplomat, UK Permanent Representative to the European Union 1954 – Frank-Michael Marczewski, German footballer 1955 – Nicolas Hulot, French journalist and environmentalist 1955 – David Kitchin, English lawyer and judge 1955 – Zlatko Topčić, Bosnian writer and screenwriter 1956 – Lars von Trier, Danish director and screenwriter 1957 – Wonder Mike, American rapper and songwriter 1958 – Charles Berling, French actor, director, and screenwriter 1959 – Stephen Harper, Canadian economist and politician, 22nd Prime Minister of Canada 1960 – Geoffrey Cox, English lawyer and politician 1960 – Kerry Healey, American academic and politician, 70th Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts 1961 – Arnór Guðjohnsen, Icelandic footballer 1961 – Isiah Thomas, American basketball player, coach, and sportscaster 1963 – Andrew Carwood, English tenor and conductor 1963 – Michael Waltrip, American race car driver and sportscaster 1964 – Tony Fernandes, Malaysian-Indian businessman, co-founded Tune Group 1964 – Ian Healy, Australian cricketer, coach, and sportscaster 1964 – Lorenzo Staelens, Belgian footballer and manager 1964 – Abhishek Chatterjee, Indian actor 1965 – Daniela Costian, Romanian-Australian discus thrower 1965 – Adrian Pasdar, American actor 1966 – Jeff Brown, Canadian ice hockey player and coach 1966 – Dave Meggett, American football player and coach 1967 – Phil Chang, Taiwanese singer-songwriter and actor 1969 – Warren Defever, American bass player and producer 1969 – Justine Greening, English accountant and politician, Secretary of State for International Development 1969 – Paulo Jr., Brazilian bass player 1972 – Takako Tokiwa, Japanese actress 1973 – Leigh Francis, English comedian and actor 1974 – Christian Tamminga, Dutch athlete 1975 – Johnny Galecki, American actor 1976 – Davian Clarke, Jamaican sprinter 1976 – Amanda Palmer, American singer-songwriter and pianist 1976 – Daniel Wagon, Australian rugby league player 1976 – Victor J. Glover, American astronaut 1977 – Jeannie Haddaway, American politician 1977 – Meredith L. Patterson, American technologist, journalist, and author 1978 – Liljay, Taiwanese singer 1979 – Gerardo Torrado, Mexican footballer 1980 – Luis Scola, Argentinian basketball player 1980 – Jeroen Verhoeven, Dutch footballer 1981 – Nicole Kaczmarski, American basketball player 1981 – John O'Shea, Irish footballer 1981 – Kunal Nayyar, British-Indian actor 1981 – Justin Vernon, American singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and producer 1982 – Kirsten Dunst, American actress 1982 – Drew Seeley, Canadian-American singer-songwriter, dancer, and actor 1983 – Chris Carr, American football player 1983 – Tatjana Hüfner, German luger 1983 – Marina Tomić, Slovenian hurdler 1983 – Troy Williamson, American football player 1984 – Seimone Augustus, American basketball player 1984 – Shawn Daivari, American wrestler and manager 1984 – Risto Mätas, Estonian javelin thrower 1984 – Lee Roache, English footballer 1985 – Brandon Bass, American basketball player 1985 – Gal Gadot, Israeli actress and model 1985 – Ashley Alexandra Dupré, American journalist, singer, and prostitute 1986 – Dianna Agron, American actress and singer 1986 – Martten Kaldvee, Estonian biathlete 1987 – Alipate Carlile, Australian footballer 1987 – Chris Morris, South African cricketer 1987 – Rohit Sharma, Indian cricketer 1988 – Andy Allen, Australian chef 1988 – Sander Baart, Dutch field hockey player 1988 – Liu Xijun, Chinese singer 1988 – Oh Hye-ri, South Korean taekwondo athlete 1989 – Jang Wooyoung, South Korean singer and actor 1990 – Jonny Brownlee, English triathlete 1990 – Mac DeMarco, Canadian singer-songwriter 1990 – Kaarel Kiidron, Estonian footballer 1991 – Chris Kreider, American ice hockey player 1991 – Travis Scott, American rapper and producer 1992 – Marc-André ter Stegen, German footballer 1993 – Dion Dreesens, Dutch swimmer 1993 – Martin Fuksa, Czech canoeist 1994 – Chae Seo-jin, South Korean actress 1994 – Wang Yafan, Chinese tennis player 1996 – Luke Friend, English singer 1997 – Adam Ryczkowski, Polish footballer 1999 – Jorden van Foreest, Dutch chess grandmaster 1999 – Krit Amnuaydechkorn, Thai actor and singer 2000 – Yui Hiwatashi, Japanese singer 2002 – Teden Mengi, English footballer 2003 – Jung Yun-seok, South Korean actor Deaths Pre-1600 AD 65 – Lucan, Roman poet (b. 39) 125 – An, Chinese emperor (b. 94) 535 – Amalasuntha, Ostrogothic queen and regent 783 – Hildegard of the Vinzgau, Frankish queen 1002 – Eckard I, German nobleman 1030 – Mahmud of Ghazni, Ghaznavid emir (b. 971) 1063 – Ren Zong, Chinese emperor (b. 1010) 1131 – Adjutor, French knight and saint 1305 – Roger de Flor, Italian military adventurer (b. 1267) 1341 – John III, duke of Brittany (b. 1286) 1439 – Richard de Beauchamp, 13th Earl of Warwick, English commander (b. 1382) 1524 – Pierre Terrail, seigneur de Bayard, French soldier (b. 1473) 1544 – Thomas Audley, 1st Baron Audley of Walden, English lawyer and judge, Lord Chancellor of England (b. 1488) 1550 – Tabinshwehti, Burmese king (b. 1516) 1601–1900 1632 – Johann Tserclaes, Count of Tilly, Bavarian general (b. 1559) 1632 – Sigismund III Vasa, Swedish-Polish son of John III of Sweden (b. 1566) 1637 – Niwa Nagashige, Japanese daimyō (b. 1571) 1655 – Eustache Le Sueur, French painter (b. 1617) 1660 – Petrus Scriverius, Dutch historian and scholar (b. 1576) 1672 – Marie of the Incarnation, French-Canadian nun and saint, founded the Ursulines of Quebec (b. 1599) 1696 – Robert Plot, English chemist and academic (b. 1640) 1712 – Philipp van Limborch, Dutch theologian and author (b. 1633) 1733 – Rodrigo Anes de Sá Almeida e Meneses, 1st Marquis of Abrantes, Portuguese diplomat (b. 1676) 1736 – Johann Albert Fabricius, German scholar and author (b. 1668) 1758 – François d'Agincourt, French organist and composer (b. 1684) 1792 – John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich, English politician, Secretary of State for the Northern Department (b. 1718) 1795 – Jean-Jacques Barthélemy, French archaeologist and author (b. 1716) 1806 – Onogawa Kisaburō, Japanese sumo wrestler, the 5th Yokozuna (b. 1758) 1841 – Peter Andreas Heiberg, Danish philologist and author (b. 1758) 1847 – Charles, Austrian commander and duke of Teschen (b. 1771) 1863 – Jean Danjou, French captain (b. 1828) 1865 – Robert FitzRoy, English admiral, meteorologist, and politician, 2nd Governor of New Zealand (b. 1805) 1870 – Thomas Cooke, Canadian bishop and missionary (b. 1792) 1875 – Jean-Frédéric Waldeck, French explorer, lithographer, and cartographer (b. 1766) 1879 – Emma Smith, American religious leader (b. 1804) 1883 – Édouard Manet, French painter (b. 1832) 1891 – Joseph Leidy, American paleontologist and author (b. 1823) 1900 – Casey Jones, American railroad engineer (b. 1863) 1901–present 1903 – Emily Stowe, Canadian physician and activist (b. 1831) 1910 – Jean Moréas, Greek poet and critic (b. 1856) 1926 – Bessie Coleman, American pilot (b. 1892) 1936 – A. E. Housman, English poet and scholar (b. 1859) 1939 – Frank Haller, American boxer (b. 1883) 1943 – Eddy Hamel, American footballer (b. 1902) 1943 – Otto Jespersen, Danish linguist and academic (b. 1860) 1943 – Beatrice Webb, English sociologist and economist (b. 1858) 1953 – Jacob Linzbach, Estonian linguist and author (b. 1874) 1956 – Alben W. Barkley, American lawyer and politician, 35th Vice President of the United States (b. 1877) 1970 – Jacques Presser, Dutch historian, writer and poet (b. 1899) 1970 – Inger Stevens, Swedish-American actress (b. 1934) 1972 – Gia Scala, English-American model and actress (b. 1934) 1973 – Václav Renč, Czech poet and playwright (b. 1911) 1974 – Agnes Moorehead, American actress (b. 1900) 1980 – Luis Muñoz Marín, Puerto Rican journalist and politician, 1st Governor of Puerto Rico (b. 1898) 1982 – Lester Bangs, American journalist and author (b. 1949) 1983 – George Balanchine, Russian dancer and choreographer (b. 1904) 1983 – Muddy Waters, American singer-songwriter, guitarist, and bandleader (b. 1913) 1983 – Edouard Wyss-Dunant, Swiss physician and mountaineer (b. 1897) 1986 – Robert Stevenson, English director, producer, and screenwriter (b. 1905) 1989 – Sergio Leone, Italian director, producer, and screenwriter (b. 1929) 1993 – Tommy Caton, English footballer (b. 1962) 1994 – Roland Ratzenberger, Austrian race car driver (b. 1960) 1994 – Richard Scarry, American author and illustrator (b. 1919) 1995 – Maung Maung Kha, Burmese colonel and politician, 8th Prime Minister of Burma (b. 1920) 1998 – Nizar Qabbani, Syrian-English poet, publisher, and diplomat (b. 1926) 2000 – Poul Hartling, Danish politician, 36th Prime Minister of Denmark (b. 1914) 2002 – Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, German philanthropist, founded the Gründerzeit Museum (b. 1928) 2003 – Mark Berger, American economist and academic (b. 1955) 2003 – Possum Bourne, New Zealand race car driver (b. 1956) 2005 – Phil Rasmussen, American lieutenant and pilot (b. 1918) 2006 – Jean-François Revel, French philosopher (b. 1924) 2006 – Pramoedya Ananta Toer, Indonesian author and academic (b. 1925) 2007 – Kevin Mitchell, American football player (b. 1971) 2007 – Tom Poston, American actor, comedian, and game show panelist (b. 1921) 2007 – Gordon Scott, American film and television actor (b. 1926) 2008 – Juancho Evertsz, Dutch Antillean politician (b. 1923) 2009 – Henk Nijdam, Dutch cyclist (b. 1935) 2011 – Dorjee Khandu, Indian politician, 6th Chief Minister of Arunachal Pradesh (b. 1955) 2011 – Evald Okas, Estonian painter (b. 1915) 2011 – Ernesto Sabato, Argentinian physicist, author, and painter (b. 1911) 2012 – Tomás Borge, Nicaraguan poet and politician, co-founded the Sandinista National Liberation Front (b. 1930) 2012 – Alexander Dale Oen, Norwegian swimmer (b. 1985) 2012 – Giannis Gravanis, Greek footballer (b. 1958) 2012 – Benzion Netanyahu, Russian-Israeli historian and academic (b. 1910) 2013 – Roberto Chabet, Filipino painter and sculptor (b. 1937) 2013 – Shirley Firth, Canadian skier (b. 1953) 2013 – Viviane Forrester, French author and critic (b. 1925) 2014 – Khaled Choudhury, Indian painter and set designer (b. 1919) 2014 – Julian Lewis, English biologist and academic (b. 1946) 2014 – Carl E. Moses, American businessman and politician (b. 1929) 2014 – Ian Ross, Australian journalist (b. 1940) 2015 – Ben E. King, American singer-songwriter and producer (b. 1938) 2016 – Daniel Berrigan, American priest and activist (b. 1921) 2016 – Harry Kroto, English chemist and academic, Nobel
and general (d. 2017) 1930 – Gylmar dos Santos Neves, Brazilian footballer (d. 2013) 1932 – Gerald P. Carr, American engineer, colonel, and astronaut (d. 2020) 1933 – Sylva Koscina, Italian actress (d. 1994) 1934 – Norman Schwarzkopf, Jr., American general and engineer (d. 2012) 1935 – Annie Proulx, American novelist, short story writer, and journalist 1936 – Chuck Brown, American singer-songwriter, guitarist, and producer (d. 2012) 1936 – John Callaway, American journalist and producer (d. 2009) 1936 – Dale Hawkins, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (d. 2010) 1936 – Werner Stengel, German roller coaster designer and engineer, designed the Maverick roller coaster 1938 – Jean Berkey, American businesswoman and politician (d. 2013) 1939 – Valerie Harper, American actress (d. 2019) 1939 – Fred Milano, American doo-wop singer (d. 2012) 1939 – Carl Yastrzemski, American baseball player 1940 – Bill McCartney, American football player and coach, founded Promise Keepers 1941 – Bill Parcells, American football player and coach 1942 – Uğur Mumcu, Turkish journalist and author (d. 1993) 1943 – Alun Michael, Welsh police commissioner and politician, inaugural First Minister of Wales 1943 – Masatoshi Shima, Japanese computer scientist and engineer, co-designed the Intel 4004 1944 – Roger Cashmore, English physicist and academic 1945 – David Chase, American director, producer, and screenwriter 1945 – Ron Dante, American singer-songwriter and producer 1947 – Donna Jean Godchaux, American singer-songwriter 1947 – Cindy Williams, American actress and producer 1948 – David Marks, American singer-songwriter and guitarist 1949 – Doug Bair, American baseball player and coach 1949 – Diana Nyad, American swimmer and author 1950 – Ray Burris, American baseball player and coach 1950 – Scooter Libby, American lawyer and politician, Chief of Staff to the Vice President of the United States 1952 – Peter Laughner, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (d. 1977) 1953 – Paul Ellering, American weightlifter, wrestler, and manager 1955 – Chiranjeevi, Indian film actor, producer and politician 1956 – Paul Molitor, American baseball player and coach 1956 – Peter Taylor, Australian cricketer 1957 – Steve Davis, English snooker player, sportscaster, and author 1957 – Holly Dunn, American country music singer-songwriter (d. 2016) 1958 – Colm Feore, American-Canadian actor 1958 – Stevie Ray, American semi-retired wrestler 1958 – Vernon Reid, English-born American guitarist and songwriter 1959 – Juan Croucier, Cuban-American singer-songwriter, bass player, and producer 1959 – Pia Gjellerup, Danish lawyer and politician, Danish Minister of Finance 1959 – Mark Williams, English actor 1960 – Holger Gehrke, German footballer and manager 1960 – Collin Raye, American country music singer 1961 – Andrés Calamaro, Argentine singer-songwriter, guitarist, and producer 1961 – Iain Coucher, English businessman 1961 – Roland Orzabal, English singer-songwriter, guitarist, and producer 1961 – Debbi Peterson, American singer-songwriter and drummer 1962 – Stefano Tilli, Italian sprinter 1963 – Tori Amos, American singer-songwriter, pianist, and producer 1963 – James DeBarge, American R&B/soul singer 1963 – Terry Catledge, American basketball player 1964 – Trey Gowdy, American lawyer and U.S. Representative 1964 – Mats Wilander, Swedish-American tennis player and coach 1965 – Wendy Botha, South African-Australian surfer 1965 – David Reimer, Canadian victim of a botched circumcision and sex reassignment surgery (d. 2004) 1966 – GZA, American rapper and producer 1966 – Rob Witschge, Dutch footballer and manager 1967 – Ty Burrell, American actor and comedian 1967 – Paul Colman, Australian singer-songwriter and guitarist 1967 – Alfred Gough, American screenwriter and producer 1967 – Layne Staley, American singer-songwriter (d. 2002) 1968 – Casper Christensen, Danish comedian, actor, and screenwriter 1968 – Rich Lowry, American writer and magazine editor (National Review) 1968 – Aleksandr Mostovoi, Russian footballer 1968 – Elisabeth Murdoch, Australian businesswoman 1968 – Horst Skoff, Austrian tennis player (d. 2008) 1970 – Charlie Connelly, English author and broadcaster 1970 – Giada De Laurentiis, Italian-American chef and author 1970 – Tímea Nagy, Hungarian fencer 1971 – Craig Finn, American singer-songwriter and guitarist 1972 – Okkert Brits, South African pole vaulter 1972 – Paul Doucette, American singer-songwriter, guitarist, and drummer 1972 – Steve Kline, American baseball player and coach 1972 – Max Wilson, German-Brazilian race car driver 1973 – Roslina Bakar, Malaysian sport shooter 1973 – Howie Dorough, American singer-songwriter and dancer 1973 – Kristen Wiig, American actress, comedian, and screenwriter 1973 – Eurelijus Žukauskas, Lithuanian basketball player 1974 – Cory Gardner, American politician 1974 – Agustín Pichot, Argentinian rugby player 1975 – Clint Bolton, Australian footballer 1975 – Rodrigo Santoro, Brazilian actor 1976 – Marius Bezykornovas, Lithuanian footballer 1976 – Bryn Davies, American bassist, cellist, and pianist 1976 – Laurent Hernu, French decathlete 1976 – Randy Wolf, American baseball player 1977 – Heiðar Helguson, Icelandic footballer 1977 – Keren Cytter, Israeli visual artist and writer 1978 – James Corden, English actor, comedian, writer, and television presenter 1978 – Ioannis Gagaloudis, Greek basketball player 1979 – Matt Walters, American football player 1980 – Roland Benschneider, German footballer 1980 – Nicolas Macrozonaris, Canadian sprinter 1980 – Seiko Yamamoto, Japanese wrestler 1981 – Alex Holmes, American football player 1981 – Jang Hyun-kyu, South Korean footballer (d. 2012) 1981 – Christina Obergföll, German athlete 1983 – Theo Bos, Dutch cyclist 1983 – Jahri Evans, American football player 1984 – Lee Camp, English footballer 1984 – Lawrence Quaye, Ghanaian-Qatari footballer 1985 – Luke Russert, American journalist 1985 – Jey Uso, Samoan-American wrestler 1985 – Jimmy Uso, Samoan-American wrestler 1986 – Stephen Ireland, Irish footballer 1986 – Neville, English wrestler 1986 – Tokushōryū Makoto, Japanese sumo wrestler 1987 – Leonardo Moracci, Italian footballer 1987 – Apollo Crews, American wrestler 1989 – Giacomo Bonaventura, Italian footballer 1990 – Randall Cobb, American football player 1990 – Drew Hutchison, American baseball player 1990 – Robbie Rochow, Australian rugby league player 1991 – Federico Macheda, Italian footballer 1991 – Brayden Schenn, Canadian ice hockey player 1992 – Ema Burgić Bucko, Bosnian tennis player 1994 – Olli Määttä, Finnish ice hockey player 1995 – Dua Lipa, English singer-songwriter 1996 – Jessica-Jane Applegate, British Paralympic swimmer Deaths Pre-1600 408 – Stilicho, Roman general (b. 359) 1155 – Emperor Konoe of Japan (b. 1139) 1241 – Pope Gregory IX, (b. 1143) 1280 – Pope Nicholas III (b. 1225) 1304 – John II, Count of Holland (b. 1247) 1338 – William II, Duke of Athens (b. 1312) 1350 – Philip VI of France (b. 1293) 1358 – Isabella of France (b. 1295) 1425 – Eleanor, Princess of Asturias (b. 1423) 1456 – Vladislav II of Wallachia 1485 – Richard III of England (b. 1452) 1485 – James Harrington, Yorkist knight 1485 – John Howard, 1st Duke of Norfolk (b. 1430) 1485 – Richard Ratcliffe, supporter of Richard III 1485 – William Brandon, supporter of Henry VII (b. 1426) 1532 – William Warham, Archbishop of Canterbury (b. 1450) 1545 – Charles Brandon, 1st Duke of Suffolk, English politician and husband of Mary Tudor (b. c. 1484) 1553 – John Dudley, 1st Duke of Northumberland, English admiral and politician, Lord President of the Council (b. 1504) 1572 – Thomas Percy, 7th Earl of Northumberland, English leader of the Rising of the North (b. 1528) 1584 – Jan Kochanowski, Polish poet and playwright (b. 1530) 1599 – Luca Marenzio, Italian singer-songwriter (b. 1553) 1601–1900 1607 – Bartholomew Gosnold, English lawyer and explorer, founded the London Company (b. 1572) 1652 – Jacob De la Gardie, Estonian-Swedish soldier and politician, Lord High Constable of Sweden (b. 1583) 1664 – Maria Cunitz, Polish astronomer and author (b. 1610) 1680 – John George II, Elector of Saxony (b. 1613) 1681 – Philippe Delano, Dutch Plymouth Colony settler (b. 1602) 1701 – John Granville, 1st Earl of Bath, English soldier and politician, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland (b. 1628) 1711 – Louis François, duc de Boufflers, French general (b. 1644) 1752 – William Whiston, English mathematician, historian, and theologian (b. 1667) 1773 – George Lyttelton, 1st Baron Lyttelton, English poet and politician, Chancellor of the Exchequer (b. 1709) 1793 – Louis de Noailles, French general (b. 1713) 1797 – Dagobert Sigmund von Wurmser, French-Austrian field marshal (b. 1724) 1806 – Jean-Honoré Fragonard, French painter and illustrator (b. 1732) 1818 – Warren Hastings, English lawyer and politician, 1st Governor-General of Bengal (b. 1732) 1828 – Franz Joseph Gall, Austrian neuroanatomist and physiologist (b. 1758) 1850 – Nikolaus Lenau, Romanian-Austrian poet and author (b. 1802) 1861 – Xianfeng, Emperor of China (b. 1831) 1888 – Ágoston Trefort, Hungarian jurist and politician, Hungarian Minister of Education (b. 1817) 1891 – Jan Neruda, Czech journalist, author, and poet (b. 1834) 1901–present 1903 – Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury, English academic and politician, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (b. 1830) 1904 – Kate Chopin, American novelist and poet (b. 1850) 1909 – Henry Radcliffe Crocker, English dermatologist and author (b. 1846) 1914 – Giacomo Radini-Tedeschi, Italian bishop and academic (b. 1859) 1918 – Korbinian Brodmann, German neurologist and academic (b. 1868) 1920 – Anders Zorn, Swedish artist (b. 1860) 1922 – Michael Collins, Irish rebel, counter-intelligence and military tactician, and politician; 2nd Irish Minister of Finance (b. 1890) 1926 – Charles William Eliot, American academic (b. 1834) 1933 – Alexandros Kontoulis, Greek general and diplomat (b. 1858) 1940 – Oliver Lodge, English physicist and academic (b. 1851) 1940 – Gerald Strickland, 1st Baron Strickland, Maltese lawyer and politician, 4th Prime Minister of Malta (b. 1861) 1942 – Michel Fokine, Russian dancer and choreographer (b. 1880) 1946 – Döme Sztójay, Hungarian general and politician, 35th Prime Minister of Hungary (b. 1883) 1950 – Kirk Bryan, American geologist and academic (b. 1888) 1951 – Jack Bickell, Canadian businessman and philanthropist (b. 1884) 1953 – Jim Tabor, American baseball player (b. 1916) 1958 – Roger Martin du Gard, French novelist and paleographer, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1881) 1960 – Johannes Sikkar, Estonian soldier and politician, Prime Minister of Estonia in exile (b. 1897) 1963 – William Morris, 1st Viscount Nuffield, English businessman and philanthropist, founded Morris Motors (b. 1877) 1967 – Gregory Goodwin Pincus, American biologist and academic, co-created the birth-control pill (b. 1903) 1970 – Vladimir Propp, Russian philologist and scholar (b. 1895) 1974 – Jacob Bronowski, Polish-English mathematician, biologist, and author (b. 1908) 1976 – Gina Bachauer, Greek pianist and composer (b. 1913) 1976 – Juscelino Kubitschek, Brazilian physician and politician, 21st President of Brazil (b. 1902) 1977 – Sebastian Cabot, English actor (b. 1918) 1977 – Chunseong, Korean monk, philosopher and writer (b. 1891) 1978 – Jomo Kenyatta, Kenyan journalist and politician, 1st President of Kenya (b. 1894) 1979 – James T. Farrell, American novelist, short-story writer, and poet (b. 1904) 1980 – James Smith McDonnell, American pilot, engineer, and businessman, founded McDonnell Aircraft (b. 1899) 1981 – Vicente Manansala, Filipino painter (b. 1910) 1985 – Charles Gibson (historian), Historian of Mexico and its Indians, President of the American Historical Association (b. 1920) 1986 – Celâl Bayar, Turkish lawyer and politician, 3rd President of Turkey (b. 1883) 1987 – Joseph P. Lash, American author and journalist (b. 1909) 1989 – Robert Grondelaers, Belgian cyclist (b. 1933) 1989 – Huey P. Newton, American activist, co-founded the Black Panther Party (b. 1942) 1991 – Colleen Dewhurst, Canadian-American actress (b. 1924) 1991 – Boris Pugo, Russian soldier and politician, Soviet Minister of Interior (b. 1937) 1994 – Gilles Groulx, Canadian director and screenwriter (b. 1931) 1994 – Allan Houser, American sculptor and painter (b. 1914) 1995 – Johnny Carey, Irish footballer and manager (b. 1919) 1996 – Erwin Komenda, Austrian car designer and engineer (b. 1904) 2000 – Abulfaz Elchibey, 2nd President of Azerbaijan (b. 1938) 2003 – Arnold Gerschwiler, Swiss figure skater and coach (b. 1914) 2004 – Konstantin Aseev, Russian chess player and trainer (b. 1960) 2004 – Angus Bethune, Australian soldier and politician, 33rd Premier of Tasmania (b. 1908) 2004 – Daniel Petrie, Canadian director and producer (b. 1920) 2005 – Luc Ferrari, French-Italian director and composer (b. 1929) 2005 – Ernest Kirkendall, American chemist and metallurgist (b. 1914) 2007 – Grace Paley, American short story writer and poet (b. 1922) 2008 – Gladys Powers, English-Canadian soldier (b. 1899) 2009 – Muriel Duckworth, Canadian pacifist, feminist, and activist (b. 1908) 2009 – Elmer Kelton, American journalist and author (b. 1926) 2010 – Stjepan Bobek, Croatian footballer and manager (b. 1923) 2011 – Nick Ashford, American singer-songwriter and producer (b. 1942) 2011 – Jack Layton, Canadian academic and politician (b. 1950) 2011 – Casey Ribicoff, American philanthropist (b. 1922) 2012 – Nina Bawden, English author (b. 1925) 2012 – Paul Shan
of Massachusetts (d. 1924) 1847 – John Forrest, Australian politician, 1st Premier of Western Australia (d. 1918) 1848 – Melville Elijah Stone, American publisher, founded the Chicago Daily News (d. 1929) 1854 – Milan I of Serbia (d. 1901) 1857 – Ned Hanlon, American baseball player and manager (d. 1937) 1860 – Paul Gottlieb Nipkow, Polish-German technician and inventor, created the Nipkow disk (d. 1940) 1860 – Alfred Ploetz, German physician, biologist, and eugenicist (d. 1940) 1862 – Claude Debussy, French pianist and composer (d. 1918) 1867 – Maximilian Bircher-Benner, Swiss physician and nutritionist (d. 1939) 1867 – Charles Francis Jenkins, American inventor (d. 1934) 1868 – Willis R. Whitney, American chemist (d. 1958) 1873 – Alexander Bogdanov, Russian physician and philosopher (d. 1928) 1874 – Max Scheler, German philosopher and author (d. 1928) 1880 – Gorch Fock, German author and poet (d. 1916) 1880 – George Herriman, American cartoonist (d. 1944) 1881 – James Newland, Australian soldier and policeman (d. 1949) 1882 – Raymonde de Laroche, French pilot (d. 1919) 1887 – Lutz Graf Schwerin von Krosigk, German jurist and politician, German Minister of Foreign Affairs (d. 1977) 1890 – Cecil Kellaway, South African actor (d. 1973) 1891 – Henry Bachtold, Australian soldier and railway engineer (d. 1983) 1891 – Jacques Lipchitz, Lithuanian-Italian sculptor (d. 1973) 1893 – Wilfred Kitching, English 7th General of The Salvation Army (d. 1977) 1893 – Dorothy Parker, American poet, short story writer, critic, and satirist (d. 1967) 1893 – Ernest H. Volwiler, American chemist (d. 1992) 1895 – László Almásy, Hungarian captain, pilot, and explorer (d. 1951) 1895 – Paul Comtois, Canadian lawyer and politician, 21st Lieutenant Governor of Quebec (d. 1966) 1896 – Laurence McKinley Gould, American geologist, educator, and polar explorer (d. 1995) 1897 – Bill Woodfull, Australian cricketer and educator (d. 1965) 1900 – Lisy Fischer, Swiss-born pianist and child prodigy (d. 1999) 1901–present 1902 – Thomas Pelly, American lawyer and politician (d. 1973) 1902 – Leni Riefenstahl, German actress, film director and propagandist (d. 2003) 1902 – Edward Rowe Snow, American historian and author (d. 1982) 1903 – Jerry Iger, American cartoonist, co-founded Eisner & Iger (d. 1990) 1904 – Deng Xiaoping, Chinese soldier and politician, 1st Vice Premier of the People's Republic of China (d. 1997) 1908 – Henri Cartier-Bresson, French photographer and painter (d. 2004) 1908 – Erwin Thiesies, German rugby player and coach (d. 1993) 1909 – Julius J. Epstein, American screenwriter and producer (d. 2000) 1909 – Mel Hein, American football player and coach (d. 1992) 1913 – Leonard Pagliero, English businessman and pilot (d. 2008) 1913 – Bruno Pontecorvo, Italian physicist and academic (d. 1993) 1914 – Jack Dunphy, American author and playwright (d. 1992) 1914 – Connie B. Gay, American businessman, co-founded the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum (d. 1989) 1915 – David Dellinger, American activist (d. 2004) 1915 – James Hillier, Canadian-American scientist, co-designed the electron microscope (d. 2007) 1915 – Edward Szczepanik, Polish economist and politician, 15th Prime Minister of the Polish Republic in Exile (d. 2005) 1917 – John Lee Hooker, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (d. 2001) 1918 – Mary McGrory, American journalist and author (d. 2004) 1920 – Ray Bradbury, American science fiction writer and screenwriter (d. 2012) 1920 – Denton Cooley, American surgeon and scientist (d. 2016) 1921 – Dinos Dimopoulos, Greek director and screenwriter (d. 2003) 1921 – Tony Pawson, English cricketer, footballer, and journalist (d. 2012) 1922 – Roberto Aizenberg, Argentine painter and sculptor (d. 1996) 1922 – Theoni V. Aldredge, Greek-American costume designer (d. 2011) 1924 – James Kirkwood, Jr., American playwright and author (d. 1989) 1924 – Harishankar Parsai, Indian writer, satirist and humorist (d. 1995) 1925 – Honor Blackman, English actress and republican (d. 2020) 1926 – Bob Flanigan, American pop singer (d. 2011) 1928 – Tinga Seisay, Sierra Leonean academic and diplomat (d.2015) 1928 – Karlheinz Stockhausen, German composer and academic (d. 2007) 1929 – Valery Alekseyev, Russian anthropologist and author (d. 1991) 1929 – Ulrich Wegener, German police officer and general (d. 2017) 1930 – Gylmar dos Santos Neves, Brazilian footballer (d. 2013) 1932 – Gerald P. Carr, American engineer, colonel, and astronaut (d. 2020) 1933 – Sylva Koscina, Italian actress (d. 1994) 1934 – Norman Schwarzkopf, Jr., American general and engineer (d. 2012) 1935 – Annie Proulx, American novelist, short story writer, and journalist 1936 – Chuck Brown, American singer-songwriter, guitarist, and producer (d. 2012) 1936 – John Callaway, American journalist and producer (d. 2009) 1936 – Dale Hawkins, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (d. 2010) 1936 – Werner Stengel, German roller coaster designer and engineer, designed the Maverick roller coaster 1938 – Jean Berkey, American businesswoman and politician (d. 2013) 1939 – Valerie Harper, American actress (d. 2019) 1939 – Fred Milano, American doo-wop singer (d. 2012) 1939 – Carl Yastrzemski, American baseball player 1940 – Bill McCartney, American football player and coach, founded Promise Keepers 1941 – Bill Parcells, American football player and coach 1942 – Uğur Mumcu, Turkish journalist and author (d. 1993) 1943 – Alun Michael, Welsh police commissioner and politician, inaugural First Minister of Wales 1943 – Masatoshi Shima, Japanese computer scientist and engineer, co-designed the Intel 4004 1944 – Roger Cashmore, English physicist and academic 1945 – David Chase, American director, producer, and screenwriter 1945 – Ron Dante, American singer-songwriter and producer 1947 – Donna Jean Godchaux, American singer-songwriter 1947 – Cindy Williams, American actress and producer 1948 – David Marks, American singer-songwriter and guitarist 1949 – Doug Bair, American baseball player and coach 1949 – Diana Nyad, American swimmer and author 1950 – Ray Burris, American baseball player and coach 1950 – Scooter Libby, American lawyer and politician, Chief of Staff to the Vice President of the United States 1952 – Peter Laughner, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (d. 1977) 1953 – Paul Ellering, American weightlifter, wrestler, and manager 1955 – Chiranjeevi, Indian film actor, producer and politician 1956 – Paul Molitor, American baseball player and coach 1956 – Peter Taylor, Australian cricketer 1957 – Steve Davis, English snooker player, sportscaster, and author 1957 – Holly Dunn, American country music singer-songwriter (d. 2016) 1958 – Colm Feore, American-Canadian actor 1958 – Stevie Ray, American semi-retired wrestler 1958 – Vernon Reid, English-born American guitarist and songwriter 1959 – Juan Croucier, Cuban-American singer-songwriter, bass player, and producer 1959 – Pia Gjellerup, Danish lawyer and politician, Danish Minister of Finance 1959 – Mark Williams, English actor 1960 – Holger Gehrke, German footballer and manager 1960 – Collin Raye, American country music singer 1961 – Andrés Calamaro, Argentine singer-songwriter, guitarist, and producer 1961 – Iain Coucher, English businessman 1961 – Roland Orzabal, English singer-songwriter, guitarist, and producer 1961 – Debbi Peterson, American singer-songwriter and drummer 1962 – Stefano Tilli, Italian sprinter 1963 – Tori Amos, American singer-songwriter, pianist, and producer 1963 – James DeBarge, American R&B/soul singer 1963 – Terry Catledge, American basketball player 1964 – Trey Gowdy, American lawyer and U.S. Representative 1964 – Mats Wilander, Swedish-American tennis player and coach 1965 – Wendy Botha, South African-Australian surfer 1965 – David Reimer, Canadian victim of a botched circumcision and sex reassignment surgery (d. 2004) 1966 – GZA, American rapper and producer 1966 – Rob Witschge, Dutch footballer and manager 1967 – Ty Burrell, American actor and comedian 1967 – Paul Colman, Australian singer-songwriter and guitarist 1967 – Alfred Gough, American screenwriter and producer 1967 – Layne Staley, American singer-songwriter (d. 2002) 1968 – Casper Christensen, Danish comedian, actor, and screenwriter 1968 – Rich Lowry, American writer and magazine editor (National Review) 1968 – Aleksandr Mostovoi, Russian footballer 1968 – Elisabeth Murdoch, Australian businesswoman 1968 – Horst Skoff, Austrian tennis player (d. 2008) 1970 – Charlie Connelly, English author and broadcaster 1970 – Giada De Laurentiis, Italian-American chef and author 1970 – Tímea Nagy, Hungarian fencer 1971 – Craig Finn, American singer-songwriter and guitarist 1972 – Okkert Brits, South African pole vaulter 1972 – Paul Doucette, American singer-songwriter, guitarist, and drummer 1972 – Steve Kline, American baseball player and coach 1972 – Max Wilson, German-Brazilian race car driver 1973 – Roslina Bakar, Malaysian sport shooter 1973 – Howie Dorough, American singer-songwriter and dancer 1973 – Kristen Wiig, American actress, comedian, and screenwriter 1973 – Eurelijus Žukauskas, Lithuanian basketball player 1974 – Cory Gardner, American politician 1974 – Agustín Pichot, Argentinian rugby player 1975 – Clint Bolton, Australian footballer 1975 – Rodrigo Santoro, Brazilian actor 1976 – Marius Bezykornovas, Lithuanian footballer 1976 – Bryn Davies, American bassist, cellist, and pianist 1976 – Laurent Hernu, French decathlete 1976 – Randy Wolf, American baseball player 1977 – Heiðar Helguson,
1943 – Tuesday Weld, American model and actress 1944 – Tim Bogert, American singer and bass player (d. 2021) 1945 – Douglas R. Campbell, Canadian lawyer and judge 1946 – Tony Howard, Barbadian cricketer and manager 1947 – Halil Berktay, Turkish historian and academic 1947 – Kirk Francis, American engineer and producer 1947 – Peter Krieg, German director, producer, and screenwriter (d. 2009) 1947 – John Morrison, New Zealand cricketer and politician 1947 – Gavin Pfuhl, South African cricketer and sportscaster (d. 2002) 1948 – John Mehler, American drummer 1948 – Deborah Swallow, English historian and curator 1948 – Philippe Vallois, French director and screenwriter 1949 – Jeff Cook, American singer-songwriter and guitarist 1949 – Leah Jamieson, American computer scientist, engineer, and academic 1949 – Ann Murray, Irish soprano 1950 – Charles Fleischer, American comedian and actor 1950 – Neil Murray, Scottish bass player and songwriter 1950 – Edmund Weiner, English lexicographer and author 1951 – Buddy Bell, American baseball player and manager 1951 – Mack Brown, American football player and coach 1951 – Randall Garrison, American-Canadian criminologist and politician 1952 – Paul Reubens, American actor and comedian 1953 – Tom Berryhill, American businessman and politician 1953 – Alex Lifeson, Canadian singer-songwriter, guitarist, and producer 1953 – Joan Smith, English journalist and author 1953 – Peter Stormare, Swedish actor, director, and playwright 1954 – John Lloyd, English tennis player and sportscaster 1954 – Rajesh Thakker, English physician and academic 1954 – Derek Warwick, English race car driver 1955 – Robert Richardson, American cinematographer 1955 – Diana Scarwid, American actress 1956 – Glen Matlock, English singer-songwriter and bass player 1957 – Jeff Grubb, American game designer and author 1957 – Bernhard Langer, German golfer 1958 – Sergei Krikalev, Russian engineer and astronaut 1958 – Tom Lanoye, Belgian author, poet, and playwright 1958 – Hugh Orde, British police officer 1959 – Daniela Romo, Mexican singer, actress and TV hostess 1959 – Gerhard Berger, Austrian race car driver 1959 – Juan Fernando Cobo, Colombian painter and sculptor 1959 – Denice Denton, American engineer and academic (d. 2006) 1959 – Frode Fjellheim, Norwegian pianist and composer 1959 – András Petőcz, Hungarian author and poet 1959 – Jeanette Winterson, English journalist and novelist 1961 – Yolanda Adams, American singer, producer, and actress 1961 – Mark Curry, English television host and actor 1961 – Tom Ford, American fashion designer 1961 – Steve McDowall, New Zealand rugby player 1961 – Helmut Winklhofer, German footballer 1964 – Stephan Elliott, Australian actor, director, and screenwriter 1964 – Paul Bernardo, Canadian serial rapist and murderer 1965 – Scott Dibble, American lawyer and politician 1965 – Wayne James, Zimbabwean cricketer and coach 1965 – Ange Postecoglou, Greek-Australian footballer and coach 1966 – Jeroen Duyster, Dutch rower 1966 – René Higuita, Colombian footballer 1966 – Juhan Parts, Estonian lawyer and politician, 14th Prime Minister of Estonia 1967 – Ogie Alcasid, Filipino singer-songwriter, producer, and actor 1967 – Rob Burnett, American football player and sportscaster 1968 – Daphne Koller, Israeli-American computer scientist and academic 1968 – Michael Long, New Zealand golfer 1968 – Matthew Ridge, New Zealand rugby player and sportscaster 1969 – Mark Ealham, English cricketer 1969 – Cesar Millan, Mexican-American dog trainer, television personality, and author 1969 – Reece Shearsmith, English actor, comedian and writer 1969 – Chandra Wilson, American actress and director 1970 – Andy Bichel, Australian cricketer and coach 1970 – Mark Ilott, English cricketer 1970 – Tony Kanal, British-American bass player. songwriter, and record producer 1970 – Jim Thome, American baseball player and manager 1970 – Karl Unterkircher, Italian mountaineer (d. 2008) 1971 – Ernest Faber, Dutch footballer and manager 1971 – Kyung Lah, South Korean-American journalist 1971 – Hisayuki Okawa, Japanese runner 1971 – Aygül Özkan, German lawyer and politician 1972 – Jaap-Derk Buma, Dutch field hockey player 1972 – Denise Lewis, English heptathlete 1972 – Jimmy Pop, American singer-songwriter and guitarist 1972 – The Great Khali, Indian professional wrestler 1973 – Danny Coyne, Welsh footballer 1973 – Dietmar Hamann, German footballer and manager 1973 – Burak Kut, Turkish singer-songwriter 1973 – Johan Norberg, Swedish historian and author 1974 – Michael Mason, New Zealand cricketer 1974 – José Vidro, Puerto Rican-American baseball player 1974 – Mohammad Yousuf, Pakistani cricketer 1975 – Blake Adams, American golfer 1975 – Mase, American rapper, songwriter and pastor 1975 – Jonny Moseley, Puerto Rican-American skier and television host 1975 – Mark Rudan, Australian footballer and manager 1976 – Sarah Chalke, Canadian actress 1976 – Audrey C. Delsanti, French astronomer and biologist 1976 – Milano Collection A.T., Japanese wrestler 1976 – Carlos Moyá, Spanish-Swiss tennis player 1976 – Mark Webber, Australian race car driver 1977 – Deco, Brazilian-Portuguese footballer 1977 – Justin Miller, American baseball player (d. 2013) 1979 – Sarah Neufeld, Canadian violinist 1979 – Aaron Paul, American actor and producer 1979 – Rusty Smith, American speed skater 1981 – Maxwell Cabelino Andrade, Brazilian footballer 1981 – Alessandro Gamberini, Italian footballer 1983 – Joanna McGilchrist, English rugby player and physiotherapist 1984 – David Bentley, English footballer 1984 – Sulley Muntari, Ghanaian footballer 1985 – Kevan Hurst, English footballer 1985 – Nikica Jelavić, Croatian footballer 1985 – Alexandra Nechita, Romanian-American painter and sculptor 1986 – Sebastian Kurz, Austrian politician, 25th Chancellor of Austria 1987 – Joel Grant, English-Jamaican footballer 1987 – Darren McFadden, American football player 1989 – Romain Amalfitano, French footballer 1989 – Juliana Cannarozzo, American figure skater and actress 1990 – Tori Bowie, American athlete 1990 – Luuk de Jong, Dutch footballer 1991 – Lee Sung-yeol, South Korean actor and singer 1992 – Blake Jenner, American actor and singer 1992 – Stephen Morris, American football player 1992 – Kim Petras, German singer-songwriter 1992 – Ayame Goriki, Japanese actress and singer 1993 – Sarah Hecken, German figure skater 1993 – Olivier Le Gac, French cyclist 1995 – Sergey Sirotkin, Russian race car driver 1998 – Kevin Huerter, American basketball player Deaths Pre-1600 542 – Caesarius of Arles, French bishop and saint (b. 470) 749 – Qahtaba ibn Shabib al-Ta'i, Persian general 827 – Pope Eugene II 923 – Ageltrude, queen of Italy and Holy Roman Empress 1146 – King Eric III of Denmark 1255 – Little Saint Hugh of Lincoln (b. 1247) 1312 – Arthur II, Duke of Brittany (b. 1261) 1394 – Emperor Chōkei of Japan (b. 1343) 1450 – Reginald West, 6th Baron De La Warr, English politician (b. 1395) 1521 – Josquin des Prez, Flemish composer (b. 1450) 1545 – Piotr Gamrat, Polish archbishop (b. 1487) 1576 – Titian, Italian painter and educator (b. 1488) 1590 – Pope Sixtus V (b. 1521) 1601–1900 1611 – Tomás Luis de Victoria, Spanish composer (b. c. 1548) 1635 – Lope de Vega, Spanish poet and playwright (b. 1562) 1664 – Francisco de Zurbarán, Spanish painter and educator (b. 1598) 1748 – James Thomson, Scottish poet and playwright (b. 1700) 1782 – John Laurens, American Revolutionary and Congressman (b.1754) 1828 – Eise
– Lester Young, American saxophonist and clarinet player (d. 1959) 1911 – Kay Walsh, English actress and dancer (d. 2005) 1912 – Gloria Guinness, Mexican journalist (d. 1980) 1915 – Norman Foster Ramsey Jr., American physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 2011) 1916 – Gordon Bashford, English engineer, co-designed the Range Rover (d. 1991) 1916 – Tony Harris, South African cricketer and rugby player (d. 1993) 1916 – Martha Raye, American actress and comedian (d. 1994) 1917 – Peanuts Lowrey, American baseball player, coach, and manager (d. 1986) 1918 – Jelle Zijlstra, Dutch economist and politician, Prime Minister of the Netherlands (d. 2001) 1919 – Pee Wee Butts, American baseball player and coach (d. 1972) 1919 – Murray Grand, American singer-songwriter and pianist (d. 2007) 1920 – Baptiste Manzini, American football player (d. 2008) 1920 – James Molyneaux, Baron Molyneaux of Killead, Northern Irish soldier and politician (d. 2015) 1921 – Georg Alexander, Duke of Mecklenburg (d. 1996) 1921 – Leo Penn, American actor, director, and screenwriter (d. 1998) 1922 – Roelof Kruisinga, Dutch physician and politician, Minister of Defence for The Netherlands (d. 2012) 1923 – Jimmy Greenhalgh, English footballer and manager (d. 2013) 1924 – David Rowbotham, Australian journalist and poet (d. 2010) 1924 – Rosalie E. Wahl, American lawyer and jurist (d. 2013) 1925 – Andrea Cordero Lanza di Montezemolo, Italian cardinal (d. 2017) 1925 – Nat Lofthouse, English footballer and manager (d. 2011) 1925 – Saiichi Maruya, Japanese author and critic (d. 2012) 1925 – Bill Neilson, Australian politician, 34th Premier of Tasmania (d. 1989) 1925 – Jaswant Singh Neki, Indian poet and academic (d. 2015) 1925 – Carter Stanley, American bluegrass singer-songwriter and guitarist (d. 1966) 1926 – George Brecht, American-German chemist and composer (d. 2008) 1926 – Kristen Nygaard, Norwegian computer scientist and academic (d. 2002) 1928 – Péter Boross, Hungarian lawyer and politician, 54th Prime Minister of Hungary 1928 – Mangosuthu Buthelezi, South African politician, Chief Minister of KwaZulu 1928 – Joan Kroc, American philanthropist (d. 2003) 1929 – Ira Levin, American novelist, playwright, and songwriter (d. 2007) 1929 – George Scott, Canadian-American wrestler and promoter (d. 2014) 1930 – Gholamreza Takhti, Iranian wrestler and politician (d. 1968) 1931 – Sri Chinmoy, Indian-American guru and poet (d. 2007) 1931 – Joe Cunningham, American baseball player and coach (d. 2021) 1932 – Cor Brom, Dutch footballer and manager (d. 2008) 1932 – Antonia Fraser, English historian and author 1935 – Ernie Broglio, American baseball player (d. 2019) 1935 – Michael Holroyd, English author 1935 – Frank Yablans, American screenwriter and producer (d. 2014) 1936 – Joel Kovel, American scholar and author (d. 2018) 1936 – Lien Chan, Taiwanese politician, Vice President of the Republic of China 1937 – Alice Coltrane, American pianist and composer (d. 2007) 1937 – Tommy Sands, American pop singer and actor 1939 – William Least Heat-Moon, American travel writer and historian 1939 – Edward Patten, American singer-songwriter and producer (d. 2005) 1939 – Nikola Pilić, Yugoslav tennis player and coach 1940 – Fernest Arceneaux, American singer and accordion player (d. 2008) 1940 – Sonny Sharrock, American guitarist (d. 1994) 1941 – Cesária Évora, Cape Verdean singer (d. 2011) 1941 – János Konrád, Hungarian water polo player and swimmer (d. 2014) 1941 – Harrison Page, American actor 1942 – Daryl Dragon, American keyboard player and songwriter (d. 2019) 1942 – Brian Peckford, Canadian educator and politician, 3rd Premier of Newfoundland and Labrador 1943 – Chuck Girard, American singer-songwriter and pianist 1943 – Bob Kerrey, American lieutenant and politician, Medal of Honor recipient, 35th Governor of Nebraska 1943 – Tuesday Weld, American model and actress 1944 – Tim Bogert, American singer and bass player (d. 2021) 1945 – Douglas R. Campbell, Canadian lawyer and judge 1946 – Tony Howard, Barbadian cricketer and manager 1947 – Halil Berktay, Turkish historian and academic 1947 – Kirk Francis, American engineer and producer 1947 – Peter Krieg, German director, producer, and screenwriter (d. 2009) 1947 – John Morrison, New Zealand cricketer and politician 1947 – Gavin Pfuhl, South African cricketer and sportscaster (d. 2002) 1948 – John Mehler, American drummer 1948 – Deborah Swallow, English historian and curator 1948 – Philippe Vallois, French director and screenwriter 1949 – Jeff Cook, American singer-songwriter and guitarist 1949 – Leah Jamieson, American computer scientist, engineer, and academic 1949 – Ann Murray, Irish soprano 1950 – Charles Fleischer, American comedian and actor 1950 – Neil Murray, Scottish bass player and songwriter 1950 – Edmund Weiner, English lexicographer and author 1951 – Buddy Bell, American baseball player and manager 1951 – Mack Brown, American football player and coach 1951 – Randall Garrison, American-Canadian criminologist and politician 1952 – Paul Reubens, American actor and comedian 1953 – Tom Berryhill, American businessman and politician 1953 – Alex Lifeson, Canadian singer-songwriter, guitarist, and producer 1953 – Joan Smith, English journalist and author 1953 – Peter Stormare, Swedish actor, director, and playwright 1954 – John Lloyd, English tennis player and sportscaster 1954 – Rajesh Thakker, English physician and academic 1954 – Derek Warwick, English race car driver 1955 – Robert Richardson, American cinematographer 1955 – Diana Scarwid, American actress 1956 – Glen Matlock, English singer-songwriter and bass player 1957 – Jeff Grubb, American game designer and author 1957 – Bernhard Langer, German golfer 1958 – Sergei Krikalev, Russian engineer and astronaut 1958 – Tom Lanoye, Belgian author, poet, and playwright 1958 – Hugh Orde, British police officer 1959 – Daniela Romo, Mexican singer, actress and TV hostess 1959 – Gerhard Berger, Austrian race car driver 1959 – Juan Fernando Cobo, Colombian painter and sculptor 1959 – Denice Denton, American engineer and academic (d. 2006) 1959 – Frode Fjellheim, Norwegian pianist and composer 1959 – András Petőcz, Hungarian author and poet 1959 – Jeanette Winterson, English journalist and novelist 1961 – Yolanda Adams, American singer, producer, and actress 1961 – Mark Curry, English television host and actor 1961 – Tom Ford, American fashion designer 1961 – Steve McDowall, New Zealand rugby player 1961 – Helmut Winklhofer, German footballer 1964 – Stephan Elliott, Australian actor, director, and screenwriter 1964 – Paul Bernardo, Canadian serial rapist and murderer 1965 – Scott Dibble, American lawyer and politician 1965 – Wayne James, Zimbabwean cricketer and coach 1965 – Ange Postecoglou, Greek-Australian footballer and coach 1966 – Jeroen Duyster, Dutch rower 1966 – René Higuita, Colombian footballer 1966 – Juhan Parts, Estonian lawyer and politician, 14th Prime Minister of Estonia 1967 – Ogie Alcasid, Filipino singer-songwriter, producer, and actor 1967 – Rob Burnett, American football player and sportscaster 1968 – Daphne Koller, Israeli-American computer scientist and academic 1968 – Michael Long, New Zealand golfer 1968 – Matthew Ridge, New Zealand rugby player and sportscaster 1969 – Mark Ealham, English cricketer 1969 – Cesar Millan, Mexican-American dog trainer, television personality, and author 1969 – Reece Shearsmith, English actor, comedian and writer 1969 – Chandra Wilson, American actress and director 1970 – Andy Bichel, Australian cricketer and coach 1970 – Mark Ilott, English cricketer 1970 – Tony Kanal, British-American bass player. songwriter, and record producer 1970 – Jim Thome, American baseball player and manager 1970 – Karl Unterkircher, Italian mountaineer (d. 2008) 1971 – Ernest Faber, Dutch footballer and manager 1971 – Kyung Lah, South Korean-American journalist 1971 – Hisayuki Okawa, Japanese runner 1971 – Aygül Özkan, German lawyer and politician 1972 – Jaap-Derk Buma, Dutch field hockey player 1972 – Denise Lewis, English heptathlete 1972 – Jimmy Pop, American singer-songwriter and guitarist 1972 – The Great Khali, Indian professional wrestler 1973 – Danny Coyne, Welsh footballer 1973 – Dietmar Hamann, German footballer and manager 1973 – Burak Kut, Turkish singer-songwriter 1973 – Johan Norberg, Swedish historian and author 1974 – Michael Mason, New Zealand cricketer 1974 – José Vidro, Puerto Rican-American baseball player 1974 – Mohammad Yousuf, Pakistani cricketer 1975 – Blake Adams, American golfer 1975 – Mase, American rapper, songwriter and pastor 1975 – Jonny Moseley, Puerto Rican-American skier and television host 1975 – Mark Rudan, Australian footballer and manager 1976 – Sarah Chalke, Canadian actress 1976 – Audrey C. Delsanti, French astronomer and biologist 1976 – Milano Collection A.T., Japanese wrestler 1976 – Carlos Moyá, Spanish-Swiss tennis player 1976 – Mark Webber, Australian race car driver 1977 – Deco, Brazilian-Portuguese footballer 1977 – Justin Miller, American baseball player (d. 2013) 1979 – Sarah Neufeld, Canadian violinist 1979 – Aaron Paul, American actor and producer 1979 – Rusty Smith, American speed skater 1981 – Maxwell Cabelino Andrade, Brazilian footballer 1981 – Alessandro Gamberini, Italian footballer 1983 – Joanna McGilchrist, English rugby player and physiotherapist 1984 – David Bentley, English footballer 1984 – Sulley Muntari, Ghanaian footballer 1985 – Kevan Hurst, English footballer 1985 – Nikica Jelavić, Croatian footballer 1985 – Alexandra Nechita, Romanian-American painter and sculptor 1986 – Sebastian Kurz, Austrian politician, 25th Chancellor of Austria 1987 – Joel Grant, English-Jamaican footballer 1987 – Darren McFadden, American football player 1989 – Romain Amalfitano, French footballer 1989 – Juliana Cannarozzo, American figure skater and actress 1990 – Tori Bowie, American athlete 1990 – Luuk de Jong, Dutch footballer 1991 – Lee Sung-yeol, South Korean actor and singer 1992 – Blake Jenner, American actor and singer 1992 – Stephen Morris, American football player 1992 – Kim Petras, German singer-songwriter 1992 – Ayame Goriki, Japanese actress and singer 1993 – Sarah Hecken, German figure skater 1993 – Olivier Le Gac, French cyclist 1995 – Sergey Sirotkin, Russian race car driver 1998 – Kevin Huerter, American basketball player Deaths Pre-1600 542 – Caesarius of Arles, French bishop and saint (b. 470) 749 – Qahtaba ibn Shabib al-Ta'i, Persian general 827 – Pope Eugene II 923 – Ageltrude, queen of Italy and Holy Roman Empress 1146 – King Eric III of Denmark 1255 – Little Saint Hugh of Lincoln (b. 1247) 1312 – Arthur II, Duke of Brittany (b. 1261) 1394 – Emperor Chōkei of Japan (b. 1343) 1450 – Reginald West, 6th Baron De La Warr, English politician (b. 1395) 1521 – Josquin des Prez, Flemish composer (b. 1450) 1545 – Piotr Gamrat, Polish archbishop (b. 1487) 1576 – Titian, Italian painter and educator (b. 1488) 1590 – Pope Sixtus V (b. 1521) 1601–1900 1611 – Tomás Luis de Victoria, Spanish composer (b. c. 1548) 1635 – Lope de Vega, Spanish poet and playwright (b. 1562) 1664 – Francisco de Zurbarán, Spanish painter and educator (b. 1598) 1748 – James Thomson, Scottish poet and playwright (b. 1700) 1782 – John Laurens, American Revolutionary and Congressman (b.1754) 1828 – Eise Eisinga, Dutch astronomer and academic, built the Eisinga Planetarium (b. 1744) 1857 – Rufus Wilmot Griswold, American anthologist, poet, and critic (b. 1815) 1865 – Thomas Chandler Haliburton, Canadian judge and politician (b. 1796) 1871 – William Whiting Boardman, American lawyer and politician (b. 1794) 1875 – William Chapman Ralston, American businessman and financier, founded the Bank of California (b. 1826) 1891 – Samuel C. Pomeroy, American businessman and politician (b. 1816) 1901–present 1903 – Kusumoto Ine, first Japanese female doctor of Western medicine (b. 1827) 1909 – Emil Christian Hansen, Danish physiologist and mycologist (b. 1842) 1922 – Reşat Çiğiltepe, Turkish colonel (b. 1879) 1929 – Herman Potočnik, Croatian-Austrian engineer (b. 1892) 1931 – Frank Harris, Irish-American journalist and author (b. 1856) 1931 – Willem Hubert Nolens, Dutch priest and politician (b. 1860) 1931 – Francis Marion Smith, American miner and businessman (b. 1846) 1935 – Childe Hassam, American painter and academic (b. 1859) 1944 – Georg von Boeselager, German soldier (b. 1915) 1945 – Hubert Pál Álgyay, Hungarian engineer, designed the Petőfi Bridge (b. 1894) 1948 – Charles Evans Hughes, American lawyer and politician, 11th Chief Justice of the United States (b. 1862) 1950 – Cesare Pavese, Italian author, poet, and critic (b. 1908) 1956 – Pelageya Shajn, Russian astronomer and
hydrocarbons. Methanol, ethanol, and propanol are miscible in water. Butanol, with a four-carbon chain, is moderately soluble. Because of hydrogen bonding, alcohols tend to have higher boiling points than comparable hydrocarbons and ethers. The boiling point of the alcohol ethanol is 78.29 °C, compared to 69 °C for the hydrocarbon hexane, and 34.6 °C for diethyl ether. Occurrence in nature Simple alcohols are found widely in nature. Ethanol is the most prominent because it is the product of fermentation, a major energy-producing pathway. Other simple alcohols, chiefly fusel alcohols, are formed in only trace amounts. More complex alcohols however are pervasive, as manifested in sugars, some amino acids, and fatty acids. Production Ziegler and oxo processes In the Ziegler process, linear alcohols are produced from ethylene and triethylaluminium followed by oxidation and hydrolysis. An idealized synthesis of 1-octanol is shown: The process generates a range of alcohols that are separated by distillation. Many higher alcohols are produced by hydroformylation of alkenes followed by hydrogenation. When applied to a terminal alkene, as is common, one typically obtains a linear alcohol: Such processes give fatty alcohols, which are useful for detergents. Hydration reactions Some low molecular weight alcohols of industrial importance are produced by the addition of water to alkenes. Ethanol, isopropanol, 2-butanol, and tert-butanol are produced by this general method. Two implementations are employed, the direct and indirect methods. The direct method avoids the formation of stable intermediates, typically using acid catalysts. In the indirect method, the alkene is converted to the sulfate ester, which is subsequently hydrolyzed. The direct hydration using ethylene (ethylene hydration) or other alkenes from cracking of fractions of distilled crude oil. Hydration is also used industrially to produce the diol ethylene glycol from ethylene oxide. Biological routes Ethanol is obtained by fermentation using glucose produced from sugar from the hydrolysis of starch, in the presence of yeast and temperature of less than 37 °C to produce ethanol. For instance, such a process might proceed by the conversion of sucrose by the enzyme invertase into glucose and fructose, then the conversion of glucose by the enzyme complex zymase into ethanol and carbon dioxide. Several species of the benign bacteria in the intestine use fermentation as a form of anaerobic metabolism. This metabolic reaction produces ethanol as a waste product. Thus, human bodies contain some quantity of alcohol endogenously produced by these bacteria. In rare cases, this can be sufficient to cause "auto-brewery syndrome" in which intoxicating quantities of alcohol are produced. Like ethanol, butanol can be produced by fermentation processes. Saccharomyces yeast are known to produce these higher alcohols at temperatures above . The bacterium Clostridium acetobutylicum can feed on cellulose to produce butanol on an industrial scale. Substitution Primary alkyl halides react with aqueous NaOH or KOH mainly to primary alcohols in nucleophilic aliphatic substitution. (Secondary and especially tertiary alkyl halides will give the elimination (alkene) product instead). Grignard reagents react with carbonyl groups to secondary and tertiary alcohols. Related reactions are the Barbier reaction and the Nozaki-Hiyama reaction. Reduction Aldehydes or ketones are reduced with sodium borohydride or lithium aluminium hydride (after an acidic workup). Another reduction by aluminiumisopropylates is the Meerwein-Ponndorf-Verley reduction. Noyori asymmetric hydrogenation is the asymmetric reduction of β-keto-esters. Hydrolysis Alkenes engage in an acid catalysed hydration reaction using concentrated sulfuric acid as a catalyst that gives usually secondary or tertiary alcohols. The hydroboration-oxidation and oxymercuration-reduction of alkenes are more reliable in organic synthesis. Alkenes react with NBS and water in halohydrin formation reaction. Amines can be converted to diazonium salts, which are then hydrolyzed. The formation of a secondary alcohol via reduction and hydration is shown: Reactions Deprotonation With aqueous pKa values of around 16–19, they are, in general, slightly weaker acids than water. With strong bases such as sodium hydride or sodium they form salts called alkoxides, with the general formula RO− M+. The acidity of alcohols is strongly affected by solvation. In the gas phase, alcohols are more acidic than in water. In DMSO, alcohols (and water) have a pKa of around 29–32. As a consequence, alkoxides (and hydroxide) are powerful bases and nucleophiles (e.g., for the Williamson ether synthesis) in this solvent. In particular, RO– or HO– in DMSO can be used to generate significant equilibrium concentrations of acetylide ions through the deprotonation of alkynes (see Favorskii reaction). Nucleophilic substitution The OH group is not a good leaving group in nucleophilic substitution reactions, so neutral alcohols do not react in such reactions. However, if the oxygen is first protonated to give , the leaving group (water) is much more stable, and the nucleophilic substitution can take place. For instance, tertiary alcohols react with hydrochloric acid to produce tertiary alkyl halides, where the hydroxyl group is replaced by a chlorine atom by unimolecular nucleophilic substitution. If primary or secondary alcohols are to be reacted with hydrochloric acid, an activator such as zinc chloride is needed. In alternative fashion, the conversion may be performed directly using thionyl chloride.[1] Alcohols may, likewise, be converted to alkyl bromides using hydrobromic acid or phosphorus tribromide, for example: In the Barton-McCombie deoxygenation an alcohol is deoxygenated to an alkane with tributyltin hydride or a trimethylborane-water complex in a radical substitution reaction. Dehydration Meanwhile, the oxygen atom has lone pairs of nonbonded electrons that render it weakly basic in the presence of strong acids such as sulfuric acid. For example, with methanol: Upon treatment with strong acids, alcohols undergo the E1 elimination reaction to produce alkenes. The reaction, in general, obeys Zaitsev's Rule, which states that the most stable (usually the most substituted) alkene is formed. Tertiary alcohols eliminate easily at just above room temperature, but primary alcohols require a higher temperature. This is a diagram of acid catalysed dehydration of ethanol to produce ethylene: A more controlled elimination reaction requires the formation of the xanthate ester. Protonolysis Tertiary alcohols react with strong acids to generate carbocations. The reaction is related to their dehydration, e.g. isobutylene from tert-butyl alcohol. A special kind of dehydration reaction involves triphenylmethanol and especially its amine-substituted derivatives. When treated with acid, these alcohols lose water to give stable carbocations, which are commercial dyes. Esterification Alcohol and carboxylic acids react in the so-called Fischer esterification. The reaction usually requires a catalyst, such as concentrated sulfuric acid: Other types of ester are prepared in a similar manner for example, tosyl (tosylate) esters are made by reaction of the alcohol with p-toluenesulfonyl chloride in pyridine. Oxidation Primary alcohols () can be oxidized either to aldehydes (R-CHO) or to carboxylic acids (). The oxidation of secondary alcohols (R1R2CH-OH) normally terminates at the ketone (R1R2C=O) stage. Tertiary alcohols (R1R2R3C-OH) are resistant to oxidation. The direct oxidation of primary alcohols to carboxylic acids normally proceeds via the corresponding
an sp2 carbon on an aromatic ring, the molecule is classified separately as a phenol and is named using the IUPAC rules for naming phenols. Phenols have distinct properties and are not classified as alcohols. Common names In other less formal contexts, an alcohol is often called with the name of the corresponding alkyl group followed by the word "alcohol", e.g., methyl alcohol, ethyl alcohol. Propyl alcohol may be n-propyl alcohol or isopropyl alcohol, depending on whether the hydroxyl group is bonded to the end or middle carbon on the straight propane chain. As described under systematic naming, if another group on the molecule takes priority, the alcohol moiety is often indicated using the "hydroxy-" prefix. Alcohols are then classified into primary, secondary (sec-, s-), and tertiary (tert-, t-), based upon the number of carbon atoms connected to the carbon atom that bears the hydroxyl functional group. (The respective numeric shorthands 1°, 2°, and 3° are also sometimes used in informal settings.) The primary alcohols have general formulas . The simplest primary alcohol is methanol (), for which R=H, and the next is ethanol, for which , the methyl group. Secondary alcohols are those of the form RR'CHOH, the simplest of which is 2-propanol (). For the tertiary alcohols the general form is RR'R"COH. The simplest example is tert-butanol (2-methylpropan-2-ol), for which each of R, R', and R" is . In these shorthands, R, R', and R" represent substituents, alkyl or other attached, generally organic groups. In archaic nomenclature, alcohols can be named as derivatives of methanol using "-carbinol" as the ending. For instance, can be named trimethylcarbinol. Applications Alcohols have a long history of myriad uses. For simple mono-alcohols, which is the focus on this article, the following are most important industrial alcohols: methanol, mainly for the production of formaldehyde and as a fuel additive ethanol, mainly for alcoholic beverages, fuel additive, solvent 1-propanol, 1-butanol, and isobutyl alcohol for use as a solvent and precursor to solvents C6–C11 alcohols used for plasticizers, e.g. in polyvinylchloride fatty alcohol (C12–C18), precursors to detergents Methanol is the most common industrial alcohol, with about 12 million tons/y produced in 1980. The combined capacity of the other alcohols is about the same, distributed roughly equally. Toxicity With respect to acute toxicity, simple alcohols have low acute toxicities. Doses of several milliliters are tolerated. For pentanols, hexanols, octanols and longer alcohols, LD50 range from 2–5 g/kg (rats, oral). Methanol and ethanol are less acutely toxic. All alcohols are mild skin irritants. The metabolism of methanol (and ethylene glycol) is affected by the presence of ethanol, which has a higher affinity for liver alcohol dehydrogenase. In this way methanol will be excreted intact in urine. Physical properties In general, the hydroxyl group makes alcohols polar. Those groups can form hydrogen bonds to one another and to most other compounds. Owing to the presence of the polar OH alcohols are more water-soluble than simple hydrocarbons. Methanol, ethanol, and propanol are miscible in water. Butanol, with a four-carbon chain, is moderately soluble. Because of hydrogen bonding, alcohols tend to have higher boiling points than comparable hydrocarbons and ethers. The boiling point of the alcohol ethanol is 78.29 °C, compared to 69 °C for the hydrocarbon hexane, and 34.6 °C for diethyl ether. Occurrence in nature Simple alcohols are found widely in nature. Ethanol is the most prominent because it is the product of fermentation, a major energy-producing pathway. Other simple alcohols, chiefly fusel alcohols, are formed in only trace amounts. More complex alcohols however are pervasive, as manifested in sugars, some amino acids, and fatty acids. Production Ziegler and oxo processes In the Ziegler process, linear alcohols are produced from ethylene and triethylaluminium followed by oxidation and hydrolysis. An idealized synthesis of 1-octanol is shown: The process generates a range of alcohols that are separated by distillation. Many higher alcohols are produced by hydroformylation of alkenes followed by hydrogenation. When applied to a terminal alkene, as is common, one typically obtains a linear alcohol: Such processes give fatty alcohols, which are useful for detergents. Hydration reactions Some low molecular weight alcohols of industrial importance are produced by the addition of water to alkenes. Ethanol, isopropanol, 2-butanol, and tert-butanol are produced by this general method. Two implementations are employed, the direct and indirect methods. The direct method avoids the formation of stable intermediates, typically using acid catalysts. In the indirect method, the alkene is converted to the sulfate ester, which is subsequently hydrolyzed. The direct hydration using ethylene (ethylene hydration) or other alkenes from cracking of fractions of distilled crude oil. Hydration is also used industrially to produce the diol ethylene glycol from ethylene oxide. Biological routes Ethanol is obtained by fermentation using glucose produced from sugar from the hydrolysis of starch, in the presence of yeast and temperature of less than 37 °C to produce ethanol. For instance, such a process might proceed by the conversion of sucrose by the enzyme invertase into glucose and fructose, then the conversion of glucose by the enzyme complex zymase into ethanol and carbon dioxide. Several species of the benign bacteria in the intestine use fermentation as a form of anaerobic metabolism. This metabolic reaction produces ethanol as a
1894 attack on the Valley House in North Achill. Brother Paul also wrote accounts of his lengthy church fundraising trips across the US at the start of the twentieth century. The ruins of this monastery are still to be seen in Bunnacurry today. The Valley House The historic Valley House is located in The Valley, near Dugort in the north-east of Achill Island. The present building sits on the site of a hunting lodge built by the Earl of Cavan in the 19th century. Its notoriety arises from an incident in 1894 in which the then owner, an English landlady named Agnes McDonnell, was savagely beaten and the house set alight, allegedly by a local man, James Lynchehaun. Lynchehaun had been employed by McDonnell as her land agent, but the two fell out and he was sacked and told to quit his accommodation on her estate. A lengthy legal battle ensued, with Lynchehaun refusing to leave. At the time, in the 1890s, the issue of land ownership in Ireland was politically charged, and after the events at the Valley House in 1895 Lynchehaun was to claim that his actions were motivated by politics. He escaped custody and fled to the United States, where he successfully defeated legal attempts by the British authorities to have him extradited to face charges arising from the attack and the burning of the Valley House. Agnes McDonnell suffered terrible injuries from the attack but survived and lived for another 23 years, dying in 1923. Lynchehaun is said to have returned to Achill on two occasions, once in disguise as an American tourist, and eventually died in Girvan, Scotland, in 1937. The Valley House is now a Hostel and Bar. The Deserted Village Close by Dugort, at the base of Slievemore mountain lies the Deserted Village. There are approximately 80 ruined houses in the village. The houses were built of unmortared stone, which means that no cement or mortar was used to hold the stones together. Each house consisted of just one room and this room was used as a kitchen, living room, bedroom and even a stable. If one looks at the fields around the Deserted Village and right up the mountain, one can see the tracks in the fields of 'lazy beds', which is the way crops like potatoes were grown. In Achill, as in many areas of Ireland, a system called 'Rundale' was used for farming. This meant that the land around a village was rented from a landlord. This land was then shared by all the villagers to graze their cattle and sheep. Each family would then have two or three small pieces of land scattered about the village, which they used to grow crops. For many years people lived in the village and then in 1845 Famine struck in Achill as it did in the rest of Ireland. Most of the families moved to the nearby village of Dooagh, which is beside the sea, while some others emigrated. Living beside the sea meant that fish and shellfish could be used for food. The village was completely abandoned which is where the name 'Deserted Village' came from. No one has lived in these houses since the time of the Famine, however, the families that moved to Dooagh and their descendants, continued to use the village as a 'booley village'. This means that during the summer season, the younger members of the family, teenage boys and girls, would take the cattle to graze on the hillside and they would stay in the houses of the Deserted Village. This custom continued until the 1940s. Boolying was also carried out in other areas of Achill, including Annagh on Croaghaun mountain and in Curraun. At Ailt, Kildownet, the remains of a similar deserted village can be found. This village was deserted in 1855 when the tenants were evicted by the local landlord so the land could be used for cattle grazing; the tenants were forced to rent holdings in Currane, Dooega and Slievemore. Others emigrated to America. Archaeology Recent archaeological research suggests the village was occupied year-round at least as early as the 19th century, though it is known to have served as a seasonally occupied 'booley village' by the first half of the 20th century. A booley village (a number of which exist in a ruined state on the island) is a village occupied only during part of the year, such as a resort community, a lake community, or (as the case on Achill) a place to live while tending flocks or herds of ruminants during winter or summer pasturing. Specifically, some of the people of Dooagh and Pollagh would migrate in the summer to Slievemore and then go back to Dooagh in the autumn. The summer 2009 field school excavated Round House 2 on Slievemore Mountain under the direction of archaeologist Stuart Rathbone. Only the outside north wall, entrance way and inside of the Round House were completely excavated. From 2004 to 2006, the Achill Island Maritime Archaeology Project directed by Chuck Meide was sponsored by the College of William and Mary, the Institute of Maritime History, the Achill Folklife Centre (now the Achill Archaeology Centre), and the Lighthouse Archaeological Maritime Program (LAMP). This project focused on the documentation of archaeological resources related to Achill's rich maritime heritage. Maritime archaeologists recorded a 19th-century fishing station, an ice house, boat house ruins, a number of anchors which had been salvaged from the sea, 19th-century and more recent currach pens, a number of traditional vernacular watercraft including a possibly 100-year-old Achill yawl, and the remains of four historic shipwrecks. Other places of interest The cliffs of Croaghaun on the western end of the island are the third highest sea cliffs in Europe but are inaccessible by road. Near the westernmost point of Achill, Achill Head, is Keem Bay. Keel Beach is quite popular with tourists and some locals as a surfing location. South of Keem beach is Moytoge Head, which with its rounded appearance drops dramatically down to the ocean. An old British observation post, built during World War I to prevent the Germans from landing arms for the Irish Republican Army, is still standing on Moytoge. During the Second World War this post was rebuilt by the Irish Defence Forces as a Look Out Post for the Coast Watching Service wing of the Defence Forces. It operated from 1939 to 1945. The mountain of Slievemore, (672 m) rises dramatically in the north of the island and the Atlantic Drive (along the south/west of the island) has some dramatic views. On the slopes of Slievemore, there is an abandoned village (the "Deserted Village") The Deserted Village is traditionally thought to be a remnant village from An Gorta Mór (The Great Hunger of 1845–1849). Just west of the deserted village is an old Martello tower, again built by the British to warn of any possible French invasion during the Napoleonic Wars. The area also boasts an approximately 5000-year-old Neolithic tomb. Achillbeg (, Little Achill) is a small island just off Achill's southern tip. Its inhabitants were resettled on Achill in the 1960s. A plaque to Johnny Kilbane is situated on Achillbeg and was erected to celebrate 100 years since his first championship win. The villages of Dooniver and Askill have picturesque scenery and the cycle route is popular with tourists. Caisleán Ghráinne, also known as Kildownet Castle, is a small tower house built in the early 1400s. It is located in Cloughmore, on the south of Achill Island. It is noted for its associations with Grace O'Malley, along with the larger Rockfleet Castle in Newport. Economy While a number of attempts at setting up small industrial units on the island have been made, the economy of the island is largely dependent on tourism. Subventions from Achill people working abroad, in particular in the United Kingdom, the United States and Africa allowed many families to remain living in Achill throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. Since the advent of Ireland's "Celtic Tiger" economy fewer Achill people were forced to look for work abroad. Agriculture plays a small role and the fact that the island is mostly bog means that its potential for agriculture is limited largely to sheep farming. In the past, fishing was a significant activity but this aspect of the economy is small now. At one stage, the island was known for its shark fishing, basking shark in particular was fished for its valuable shark liver oil. There was a big spurt of growth in tourism in the 1960s and 1970s before which life was tough and difficult on the island. Despite healthy visitor numbers each year, the common perception is that tourism in Achill has been slowly declining since its heyday. Currently, the largest employers on Achill are two hotels. In late 2009 Ireland's only turbot farm opened in the Bunnacurry Business Park. Religion Most people on Achill are either Roman Catholic or Anglican (Church of Ireland). Overview of the churches Catholic: Bunnacurry Church (Saint Josephs) The Valley Church; Only open for certain events. Dookinella Church Currane Church Pollagh Church Derreens Church Dooega Church Belfarsed Church Achill Sound Church Church of Ireland: Dugort Church (St. Thomas's church) Innisbiggle Island church Other: House of Prayer, Achill Artists in Achill For almost two centuries, many artists have had a close relationship with Achill Island, including the prominent landscape painter Paul Henry. Within the emerging Irish Free State, Paul Henry's landscapes from Achill and other areas reinforced a vision of Ireland of communities living in harmony with the land. He lived in Achill for almost a decade with his wife, artist Grace Henry and, while using similar subject-matter, the pair developed very different styles. This relationship of artists with Achill was particularly intense in the early decades of the twentieth century when the figure of Eva O'Flaherty (1874-1963) became a focal point for artistic networking on the island. A network of over 200 artists linked to Achill is charted in Achill Painters - An Island History and includes painters such as the Belgian Marie Howet, the American Robert Henri, the leading modernist painter Mainie Jellett and contemporary artist Camille Souter. The 2018 Coming Home Art & The Great Hunger exhibition, in partnership with The Great Hunger Museum of Quinnipiac University, USA, featured Achill's Deserted Village and the island lazy beds prominently in works by Geraldine O'Reilly and Alanna O'Kelly; also included was an 1873 painting, 'Cottage, Achill Island' by Alexander Williams - one of the first artists to open up the island to a wider audience. Education Hedge schools existed in most villages of Achill in various periods of history. A university was started by the missions to Achill in Mweelin. In the modern age, there used to be two secondary schools in Achill, Mc Hale College and Scoil Damhnait. However, in
as the Battle of the Stones. A notable monk who lived at the monastery for almost thirty years was Brother Paul Carney. He wrote a biography of James Lynchehaun who rose to fame following his conviction for the 1894 attack on the Valley House in North Achill. Brother Paul also wrote accounts of his lengthy church fundraising trips across the US at the start of the twentieth century. The ruins of this monastery are still to be seen in Bunnacurry today. The Valley House The historic Valley House is located in The Valley, near Dugort in the north-east of Achill Island. The present building sits on the site of a hunting lodge built by the Earl of Cavan in the 19th century. Its notoriety arises from an incident in 1894 in which the then owner, an English landlady named Agnes McDonnell, was savagely beaten and the house set alight, allegedly by a local man, James Lynchehaun. Lynchehaun had been employed by McDonnell as her land agent, but the two fell out and he was sacked and told to quit his accommodation on her estate. A lengthy legal battle ensued, with Lynchehaun refusing to leave. At the time, in the 1890s, the issue of land ownership in Ireland was politically charged, and after the events at the Valley House in 1895 Lynchehaun was to claim that his actions were motivated by politics. He escaped custody and fled to the United States, where he successfully defeated legal attempts by the British authorities to have him extradited to face charges arising from the attack and the burning of the Valley House. Agnes McDonnell suffered terrible injuries from the attack but survived and lived for another 23 years, dying in 1923. Lynchehaun is said to have returned to Achill on two occasions, once in disguise as an American tourist, and eventually died in Girvan, Scotland, in 1937. The Valley House is now a Hostel and Bar. The Deserted Village Close by Dugort, at the base of Slievemore mountain lies the Deserted Village. There are approximately 80 ruined houses in the village. The houses were built of unmortared stone, which means that no cement or mortar was used to hold the stones together. Each house consisted of just one room and this room was used as a kitchen, living room, bedroom and even a stable. If one looks at the fields around the Deserted Village and right up the mountain, one can see the tracks in the fields of 'lazy beds', which is the way crops like potatoes were grown. In Achill, as in many areas of Ireland, a system called 'Rundale' was used for farming. This meant that the land around a village was rented from a landlord. This land was then shared by all the villagers to graze their cattle and sheep. Each family would then have two or three small pieces of land scattered about the village, which they used to grow crops. For many years people lived in the village and then in 1845 Famine struck in Achill as it did in the rest of Ireland. Most of the families moved to the nearby village of Dooagh, which is beside the sea, while some others emigrated. Living beside the sea meant that fish and shellfish could be used for food. The village was completely abandoned which is where the name 'Deserted Village' came from. No one has lived in these houses since the time of the Famine, however, the families that moved to Dooagh and their descendants, continued to use the village as a 'booley village'. This means that during the summer season, the younger members of the family, teenage boys and girls, would take the cattle to graze on the hillside and they would stay in the houses of the Deserted Village. This custom continued until the 1940s. Boolying was also carried out in other areas of Achill, including Annagh on Croaghaun mountain and in Curraun. At Ailt, Kildownet, the remains of a similar deserted village can be found. This village was deserted in 1855 when the tenants were evicted by the local landlord so the land could be used for cattle grazing; the tenants were forced to rent holdings in Currane, Dooega and Slievemore. Others emigrated to America. Archaeology Recent archaeological research suggests the village was occupied year-round at least as early as the 19th century, though it is known to have served as a seasonally occupied 'booley village' by the first half of the 20th century. A booley village (a number of which exist in a ruined state on the island) is a village occupied only during part of the year, such as a resort community, a lake community, or (as the case on Achill) a place to live while tending flocks or herds of ruminants during winter or summer pasturing. Specifically, some of the people of Dooagh and Pollagh would migrate in the summer to Slievemore and then go back to Dooagh in the autumn. The summer 2009 field school excavated Round House 2 on Slievemore Mountain under the direction of archaeologist Stuart Rathbone. Only the outside north wall, entrance way and inside of the Round House were completely excavated. From 2004 to 2006, the Achill Island Maritime Archaeology Project directed by Chuck Meide was sponsored by the College of William and Mary, the Institute of Maritime History, the Achill Folklife Centre (now the Achill Archaeology Centre), and the Lighthouse Archaeological Maritime Program (LAMP). This project focused on the documentation of archaeological resources related to Achill's rich maritime heritage. Maritime archaeologists recorded a 19th-century fishing station, an ice house, boat house ruins, a number of anchors which had been salvaged from the sea, 19th-century and more recent currach pens, a number of traditional vernacular watercraft including a possibly 100-year-old Achill yawl, and the remains of four historic shipwrecks. Other places of interest The cliffs of Croaghaun on the western end of the island are the third highest sea cliffs in Europe but are inaccessible by road. Near the westernmost point of Achill, Achill Head, is Keem Bay. Keel Beach is quite popular with tourists and some locals as a surfing location. South of Keem beach is Moytoge Head, which with its rounded appearance
around her caused Naomi to draw closer to young Allen, "her little pet", as Bill Morgan says in his biography of Ginsberg, titled I Celebrate Myself: The Somewhat Private Life of Allen Ginsberg. She also tried to kill herself by slitting her wrists and was soon taken to Greystone, a mental hospital; she would spend much of Ginsberg's youth in mental hospitals. His experiences with his mother and her mental illness were a major inspiration for his two major works, "Howl" and his long autobiographical poem "Kaddish for Naomi Ginsberg (1894–1956)". When he was in junior high school, he accompanied his mother by bus to her therapist. The trip deeply disturbed Ginsberg—he mentioned it and other moments from his childhood in "Kaddish". His experiences with his mother's mental illness and her institutionalization are also frequently referred to in "Howl". For example, "Pilgrim State, Rockland, and Grey Stone's foetid halls" is a reference to institutions frequented by his mother and Carl Solomon, ostensibly the subject of the poem: Pilgrim State Hospital and Rockland State Hospital in New York and Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital in New Jersey. This is followed soon by the line "with mother finally ******." Ginsberg later admitted the deletion was the expletive "fucked." He also says of Solomon in section three, "I'm with you in Rockland where you imitate the shade of my mother," once again showing the association between Solomon and his mother. Ginsberg received a letter from his mother after her death responding to a copy of "Howl" he had sent her. It admonished Ginsberg to be good and stay away from drugs; she says, "The key is in the window, the key is in the sunlight at the window—I have the key—Get married Allen don't take drugs—the key is in the bars, in the sunlight in the window". In a letter she wrote to Ginsberg's brother Eugene, she said, "God's informers come to my bed, and God himself I saw in the sky. The sunshine showed too, a key on the side of the window for me to get out. The yellow of the sunshine, also showed the key on the side of the window." These letters and the absence of a facility to recite kaddish inspired Ginsberg to write "Kaddish", which makes references to many details from Naomi's life, Ginsberg's experiences with her, and the letter, including the lines "the key is in the light" and "the key is in the window". New York Beats In Ginsberg's first year at Columbia he met fellow undergraduate Lucien Carr, who introduced him to a number of future Beat writers, including Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs, and John Clellon Holmes. They bonded, because they saw in one another an excitement about the potential of American youth, a potential that existed outside the strict conformist confines of post–World War II, McCarthy-era America. Ginsberg and Carr talked excitedly about a "New Vision" (a phrase adapted from Yeats' "A Vision"), for literature and America. Carr also introduced Ginsberg to Neal Cassady, for whom Ginsberg had a long infatuation. In the first chapter of his 1957 novel On the Road Kerouac described the meeting between Ginsberg and Cassady. Kerouac saw them as the dark (Ginsberg) and light (Cassady) side of their "New Vision", a perception stemming partly from Ginsberg's association with communism, of which Kerouac had become increasingly distrustful. Though Ginsberg was never a member of the Communist Party, Kerouac named him "Carlo Marx" in On the Road. This was a source of strain in their relationship. Also, in New York, Ginsberg met Gregory Corso in the Pony Stable Bar. Corso, recently released from prison, was supported by the Pony Stable patrons and was writing poetry there the night of their meeting. Ginsberg claims he was immediately attracted to Corso, who was straight, but understood of homosexuality after three years in prison. Ginsberg was even more struck by reading Corso's poems, realizing Corso was "spiritually gifted." Ginsberg introduced Corso to the rest of his inner circle. In their first meeting at the Pony Stable, Corso showed Ginsberg a poem about a woman who lived across the street from him and sunbathed naked in the window. Amazingly, the woman happened to be Ginsberg's girlfriend that he was living with during one of his forays into heterosexuality. Ginsberg took Corso over to their apartment. There the woman proposed sex with Corso, who was still very young and fled in fear. Ginsberg introduced Corso to Kerouac and Burroughs and they began to travel together. Ginsberg and Corso remained lifelong friends and collaborators. Shortly after this period in Ginsberg's life, he became romantically involved with Elise Nada Cowen after meeting her through Alex Greer, a philosophy professor at Barnard College whom she had dated for a while during the burgeoning Beat generation's period of development. As a Barnard student, Elise Cowen extensively read the poetry of Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot, when she met Joyce Johnson and Leo Skir, among other Beat players. As Cowen had felt a strong attraction to darker poetry most of the time, Beat poetry seemed to provide an allure to what suggests a shadowy side of her persona. While at Barnard, Cowen earned the nickname "Beat Alice" as she had joined a small group of anti-establishment artists and visionaries known to outsiders as beatniks, and one of her first acquaintances at the college was the beat poet Joyce Johnson who later portrayed Cowen in her books, including "Minor Characters" and Come and Join the Dance, which expressed the two women's experiences in the Barnard and Columbia Beat community. Through his association with Elise Cowen, Ginsberg discovered that they shared a mutual friend, Carl Solomon, to whom he later dedicated his most famous poem "Howl". This poem is considered an autobiography of Ginsberg up to 1955, and a brief history of the Beat Generation through its references to his relationship to other Beat artists of that time. "Blake vision" In 1948, in an apartment in Harlem, Ginsberg had an auditory hallucination while reading the poetry of William Blake (later referred to as his "Blake vision"). At first, Ginsberg claimed to have heard the voice of God but later interpreted the voice as that of Blake himself reading Ah! Sun-flower, The Sick Rose, and The Little Girl Lost, also described by Ginsberg as "voice of the ancient of days." The experience lasted several days. Ginsberg believed that he had witnessed the interconnectedness of the universe. He looked at latticework on the fire escape and realized some hand had crafted that; he then looked at the sky and intuited that some hand had crafted that also, or rather, that the sky was the hand that crafted itself. He explained that this hallucination was not inspired by drug use but said he sought to recapture that feeling later with various drugs. Ginsberg stated: "[...] not that some hand had placed the sky but that the sky was the living blue hand itself. Or that God was in front of my eyes—existence itself was God", and "[...] it was a sudden awakening into a totally deeper real universe than I'd been existing in." San Francisco Renaissance Ginsberg moved to San Francisco during the 1950s. Before Howl and Other Poems was published in 1956 by City Lights, he worked as a market researcher. In 1954, in San Francisco, Ginsberg met Peter Orlovsky (1933–2010), with whom he fell in love and who remained his lifelong partner. Selections from their correspondence have been published. Also in San Francisco, Ginsberg met members of the San Francisco Renaissance (James Broughton, Robert Duncan, Madeline Gleason and Kenneth Rexroth) and other poets who would later be associated with the Beat Generation in a broader sense. Ginsberg's mentor William Carlos Williams wrote an introductory letter to San Francisco Renaissance figurehead Kenneth Rexroth, who then introduced Ginsberg into the San Francisco poetry scene. There, Ginsberg also met three budding poets and Zen enthusiasts who had become friends at Reed College: Gary Snyder, Philip Whalen, and Lew Welch. In 1959, along with poets John Kelly, Bob Kaufman, A. D. Winans, and William Margolis, Ginsberg was one of the founders of the Beatitude poetry magazine. Wally Hedrick—a painter and co-founder of the Six Gallery—approached Ginsberg in mid-1955 and asked him to organize a poetry reading at the Six Gallery. At first, Ginsberg refused, but once he had written a rough draft of "Howl", he changed his "fucking mind", as he put it. Ginsberg advertised the event as "Six Poets at the Six Gallery". One of the most important events in Beat mythos, known simply as "The Six Gallery reading" took place on October 7, 1955. The event, in essence, brought together the East and West Coast factions of the Beat Generation. Of more personal significance to Ginsberg, the reading that night included the first public presentation of "Howl", a poem that brought worldwide fame to Ginsberg and to many of the poets associated with him. An account of that night can be found in Kerouac's novel The Dharma Bums, describing how change was collected from audience members to buy jugs of wine, and Ginsberg reading passionately, drunken, with arms outstretched. Ginsberg's principal work, "Howl", is well known for its opening line: "I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked [...]" "Howl" was considered scandalous at the time of its publication, because of the rawness of its language. Shortly after its 1956 publication by San Francisco's City Lights Bookstore, it was banned for obscenity. The ban became a cause célèbre among defenders of the First Amendment, and was later lifted, after Judge Clayton W. Horn declared the poem to possess redeeming artistic value. Ginsberg and Shig Murao, the City Lights manager who was jailed for selling "Howl," became lifelong friends. Biographical references in "Howl" Ginsberg claimed at one point that all of his work was an extended biography (like Kerouac's Duluoz Legend). "Howl" is not only a biography of Ginsberg's experiences before 1955, but also a history of the Beat Generation. Ginsberg also later claimed that at the core of "Howl" were his unresolved emotions about his schizophrenic mother. Though "Kaddish" deals more explicitly with his mother, "Howl" in many ways is driven by the same emotions. "Howl" chronicles the development of many important friendships throughout Ginsberg's life. He begins the poem with "I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness", which sets the stage for Ginsberg to describe Cassady and Solomon, immortalizing them into American literature. This madness was the "angry fix" that society needed to function—madness was its disease. In the poem, Ginsberg focused on "Carl Solomon! I'm with you in Rockland", and, thus, turned Solomon into an archetypal figure searching for freedom from his "straightjacket". Though references in most of his poetry reveal much about his biography, his relationship to other members of the Beat Generation, and his own political views, "Howl", his most famous poem, is still perhaps the best place to start. To Paris and the "Beat Hotel", Tangier and India In 1957, Ginsberg surprised the literary world by abandoning San Francisco. After a spell in Morocco, he and Peter Orlovsky joined Gregory Corso in Paris. Corso introduced them to a shabby lodging house above a bar at 9 rue Gît-le-Cœur that was to become known as the Beat Hotel. They were soon joined by Burroughs and others. It was a productive, creative time for all of them. There, Ginsberg began his epic poem "Kaddish", Corso composed Bomb and Marriage, and Burroughs (with help from Ginsberg and Corso) put together Naked Lunch from previous writings. This period was documented by the photographer Harold Chapman, who moved in at about the same time, and took pictures constantly of the residents of the "hotel" until it closed in 1963. During 1962–1963, Ginsberg and Orlovsky travelled extensively across India, living half a year at a time in Calcutta (now Kolkata) and Benares (Varanasi). Also during this time, he formed friendships with some of the prominent young Bengali poets of the time including Shakti Chattopadhyay and Sunil Gangopadhyay. Ginsberg had several political connections in India; most notably Pupul Jayakar who helped him extend his stay in India when the authorities were eager to expel him. England and the International Poetry Incarnation In May 1965, Ginsberg arrived in London, and offered to read anywhere for free. Shortly after his arrival, he gave a reading at Better Books, which was described by Jeff Nuttall as "the first healing wind on a very parched collective mind". Tom McGrath wrote: "This could well turn out to have been a very significant moment in the history of England—or at least in the history of English Poetry". Soon after the bookshop reading, plans were hatched for the International Poetry Incarnation, which was held at the Royal Albert Hall in London on June 11, 1965. The event attracted an audience of 7,000, who heard readings and live and tape performances by a wide variety of figures, including Ginsberg, Adrian Mitchell, Alexander Trocchi, Harry Fainlight, Anselm Hollo, Christopher Logue, George MacBeth, Gregory Corso, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Michael Horovitz, Simon Vinkenoog, Spike Hawkins and Tom McGrath. The event was organized by Ginsberg's friend, the filmmaker Barbara Rubin. Peter Whitehead documented the event on film and released it as Wholly Communion. A book featuring images from the film and some of the poems that were performed was also published under the same title by Lorrimer in the UK and Grove Press in US. Continuing literary activity Though the term "Beat" is most accurately applied to Ginsberg and his closest friends (Corso, Orlovsky, Kerouac, Burroughs, etc.), the term "Beat Generation" has become associated with many of the other poets Ginsberg met and became friends with in the late 1950s and early 1960s. A key feature of this term seems to be a friendship with Ginsberg. Friendship with Kerouac or Burroughs might also apply, but both writers later strove to disassociate themselves from the name "Beat Generation." Part of their dissatisfaction with the term came from the mistaken identification of Ginsberg as the leader. Ginsberg never claimed to be the leader of a movement. He claimed that many of the writers with whom he had become friends in this period shared many of the same intentions and themes. Some of these friends include: David Amram, Bob Kaufman; Diane di Prima; Jim Cohn; poets associated with the Black Mountain College such as Charles Olson, Robert Creeley, and Denise Levertov; poets associated with the New York School such as Frank O'Hara and Kenneth Koch. LeRoi Jones before he became Amiri Baraka, who, after reading "Howl", wrote a letter to Ginsberg on a sheet of toilet paper. Baraka's independent publishing house Totem Press published Ginsberg's early work. Through a party organized by Baraka, Ginsberg was introduced to Langston Hughes while Ornette Coleman played saxophone. Later in his life, Ginsberg formed a bridge between the beat movement of the 1950s and the hippies of the 1960s, befriending, among others, Timothy Leary, Ken Kesey, Hunter S. Thompson, and Bob Dylan. Ginsberg gave his last public reading at Booksmith, a bookstore in the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood of San Francisco, a few months before his death. In 1993, Ginsberg visited the University of Maine at Orono to pay homage to the 90-year-old great Carl Rakosi. Buddhism and Krishna In 1950, Kerouac began studying Buddhism and shared what he learned from Dwight Goddard's Buddhist Bible with Ginsberg. Ginsberg first heard about the Four Noble Truths and such sutras as the Diamond Sutra at this time. Ginsberg's spiritual journey began early on with his spontaneous visions, and continued with an early trip to India with Gary Snyder. Snyder had previously spent time in Kyoto to study at the First Zen Institute at Daitoku-ji Monastery. At one point, Snyder chanted the Prajnaparamita, which in Ginsberg's words "blew my mind." His interest piqued, Ginsberg traveled to meet the Dalai Lama as well as the Karmapa at Rumtek Monastery. Continuing on his journey, Ginsberg met Dudjom Rinpoche in Kalimpong, who taught him: "If you see something horrible, don't cling to it, and if you see something beautiful, don't cling to it." After returning to the United States, a chance encounter on a New York City street with Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche (they both tried to catch the same cab), a Kagyu and Nyingma Tibetan Buddhist master, led to Trungpa becoming his friend and lifelong teacher. Ginsberg helped Trungpa and New York poet Anne Waldman in founding the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado. Ginsberg was also involved with Krishnaism. He had started incorporating chanting the Hare Krishna mantra into his religious practice in the mid-1960s. After learning that A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, the founder of the Hare Krishna movement in the Western world had rented a store front in New York, he befriended him, visiting him often and suggesting publishers for his books, and a fruitful relationship began. This relationship is documented by Satsvarupa dasa Goswami in his biographical account Srila Prabhupada Lilamrta. Ginsberg donated money, materials, and his reputation to help the Swami establish the first temple, and toured with him to promote his cause. Despite disagreeing with many of Bhaktivedanta Swami's required prohibitions, Ginsberg often sang the Hare Krishna mantra publicly as part of his philosophy and declared that it brought a state of ecstasy. He was glad that Bhaktivedanta Swami, an authentic swami from India, was now trying to spread the chanting in America. Along with other counterculture ideologists like Timothy Leary, Gary Snyder, and Alan Watts, Ginsberg hoped to incorporate Bhaktivedanta Swami and his chanting into the hippie movement, and agreed to take part in the Mantra-Rock Dance concert and to introduce the swami to the Haight-Ashbury hippie community. On January 17, 1967, Ginsberg helped plan and organize a reception for Bhaktivedanta Swami at San Francisco International Airport, where fifty to a hundred hippies greeted the Swami, chanting Hare Krishna in the airport lounge with flowers in hands. To further support and promote Bhaktivendata Swami's message and chanting in San Francisco, Allen Ginsberg agreed to attend the Mantra-Rock Dance, a musical event 1967 held at the Avalon Ballroom by the San Francisco Hare Krishna temple. It featured some leading rock bands of the time: Big Brother and the Holding Company with Janis Joplin, the Grateful Dead, and Moby Grape, who performed there along with the Hare Krishna founder Bhaktivedanta Swami and donated proceeds to the Krishna temple. Ginsberg introduced Bhaktivedanta Swami to some three thousand hippies in the audience and led the chanting of the Hare Krishna mantra. Music and chanting were both important parts of Ginsberg's live delivery during poetry readings. He often accompanied himself on a harmonium, and was often accompanied by a guitarist. It is believed that the Hindi and Buddhist poet Nagarjun had introduced Ginsberg to the harmonium in Banaras. According to Malay Roy Choudhury, Ginsberg refined his practice while learning from his relatives, including his cousin Savitri Banerjee. When Ginsberg asked if he could sing a song in praise of Lord Krishna on William F. Buckley, Jr.'s TV show Firing Line on September 3, 1968, Buckley acceded and the poet chanted slowly as he played dolefully on a harmonium. According to Richard Brookhiser, an associate of Buckley's, the host commented that it was "the most unharried Krishna I've ever heard." At the 1967 Human Be-In in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park, the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, and the 1970 Black Panther rally at Yale campus Allen chanted "Om" repeatedly over a sound system for hours on end. Ginsberg further brought mantras into the world of rock and roll when he recited the Heart Sutra in the song "Ghetto Defendant". The song appears on the 1982 album Combat Rock by British first wave punk band The Clash. Ginsberg came in touch with the Hungryalist poets of Bengal, especially Malay Roy Choudhury, who introduced Ginsberg to the three fish with one head of Indian emperor Jalaluddin Mohammad Akbar. The three fish symbolised coexistence of all thought, philosophy and religion. In spite of Ginsberg's attraction to Eastern religions, the journalist Jane Kramer argues that he, like Whitman, adhered to an "American brand of mysticism" that was "rooted in humanism and in a romantic and visionary ideal of harmony among men." Illness and death In 1960, he was treated for a tropical disease, and it is speculated that he contracted hepatitis from an unsterilized needle administered by a doctor, which played a role in his death 37 years later. Ginsberg was a lifelong smoker, and though he tried to quit for health and religious reasons, his busy schedule in later life made it difficult, and he always returned to smoking. In the 1970s, Ginsberg suffered two minor strokes which were first diagnosed as Bell's palsy, which gave him significant paralysis and stroke-like drooping of the muscles in one side of his face. Later in life, he also suffered constant minor ailments such as high blood pressure. Many of these symptoms were related to stress, but he never slowed down his schedule. Ginsberg won a 1974 National Book Award for The Fall of America (split with Adrienne Rich, Diving into the Wreck). In 1986, Ginsberg was awarded the Golden Wreath by the Struga Poetry Evenings International Festival in Macedonia, the second American poet to be so awarded since W. H. Auden. At Struga, Ginsberg met with the other Golden Wreath winners, Bulat Okudzhava and Andrei Voznesensky. In 1989, Ginsberg appeared in Rosa von Praunheim's award-winning film Silence = Death about the fight of gay artists in New York City for AIDS-education and the rights of HIV infected people. In 1993, the French Minister of Culture appointed Ginsberg a Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres. Ginsberg continued to help his friends as much as he could: he gave money to Herbert Huncke out of his own pocket, regularly supplied neighbor Arthur Russell with an extension cord to power his home recording setup, and housed a broke, drug-addicted Harry Smith. With the exception of a special guest appearance at the NYU Poetry Slam on February 20, 1997, Ginsberg gave what is thought to be his last reading at The Booksmith in San Francisco on December 16, 1996. After returning home from the hospital for the last time, where he had been unsuccessfully treated for congestive heart failure, Ginsberg continued making phone calls to say goodbye to nearly everyone in his address book. Some of the phone calls, including one with Johnny Depp, were sad and interrupted by crying, and others were joyous and optimistic. Ginsberg continued to write through his final illness, with his last poem, "Things I'll Not Do (Nostalgias)", written on March 30. He died on April 5, 1997, surrounded by family and friends in his East Village loft in Manhattan, succumbing to liver cancer via complications of hepatitis at the age of 70. Gregory Corso, Roy Lichtenstein, Patti Smith and others came by to pay their respects. He was cremated, and his ashes were buried in his family plot in Gomel Chesed Cemetery in Newark. He was survived by Orlovsky. In 1998, various writers, including Catfish McDaris read at a gathering at Ginsberg's farm to honor Allen and the Beats. Good Will Hunting (released in December 1997) was dedicated to Ginsberg, as well as Burroughs, who died four months later. Social and political activism Free speech Ginsberg's willingness to talk about taboo subjects made him a controversial figure during the conservative 1950s, and a significant figure in the 1960s. In the mid-1950s, no reputable publishing company would even consider publishing Howl. At the time, such "sex talk" employed in Howl was considered by some to be vulgar or even a form of pornography, and could be prosecuted under law. Ginsberg used phrases such as "cocksucker", "fucked in the ass", and "cunt" as part of the poem's depiction of different aspects of American culture. Numerous books that discussed sex were banned at the time, including Lady Chatterley's Lover. The sex that Ginsberg described did not portray the sex between heterosexual married couples, or even longtime lovers. Instead, Ginsberg portrayed casual sex. For example, in Howl, Ginsberg praises the man "who sweetened the snatches of a million girls". Ginsberg used gritty descriptions and explicit sexual language, pointing out the man "who lounged hungry and lonesome through Houston seeking jazz or sex or soup." In his poetry, Ginsberg also discussed the then-taboo topic of homosexuality. The explicit sexual language that filled Howl eventually led to an important trial on First Amendment issues. Ginsberg's publisher was brought up on charges for publishing pornography, and the outcome led to a judge going on record dismissing charges, because the poem carried "redeeming social importance", thus setting an important legal precedent. Ginsberg continued to broach controversial subjects throughout the 1970s, 1980s, and
from mentors and idols Ginsberg's poetry was strongly influenced by Modernism (most importantly the American style of Modernism pioneered by William Carlos Williams), Romanticism (specifically William Blake and John Keats), the beat and cadence of jazz (specifically that of bop musicians such as Charlie Parker), and his Kagyu Buddhist practice and Jewish background. He considered himself to have inherited the visionary poetic mantle handed down from the English poet and artist William Blake, the American poet Walt Whitman and the Spanish poet Federico García Lorca. The power of Ginsberg's verse, its searching, probing focus, its long and lilting lines, as well as its New World exuberance, all echo the continuity of inspiration that he claimed. He corresponded with William Carlos Williams, who was then in the middle of writing his epic poem Paterson about the industrial city near his home. After attending a reading by Williams, Ginsberg sent the older poet several of his poems and wrote an introductory letter. Most of these early poems were rhymed and metered and included archaic pronouns like "thee." Williams disliked the poems and told Ginsberg, "In this mode perfection is basic, and these poems are not perfect." Though he disliked these early poems, Williams loved the exuberance in Ginsberg's letter. He included the letter in a later part of Paterson. He encouraged Ginsberg not to emulate the old masters, but to speak with his own voice and the voice of the common American. From Williams, Ginsberg learned to focus on strong visual images, in line with Williams' own motto "No ideas but in things." Studying Williams' style led to a tremendous shift from the early formalist work to a loose, colloquial free verse style. Early breakthrough poems include Bricklayer's Lunch Hour and Dream Record. Carl Solomon introduced Ginsberg to the work of Antonin Artaud (To Have Done with the Judgement of God and Van Gogh: The Man Suicided by Society), and Jean Genet (Our Lady of the Flowers). Philip Lamantia introduced him to other Surrealists and Surrealism continued to be an influence (for example, sections of "Kaddish" were inspired by André Breton's Free Union). Ginsberg claimed that the anaphoric repetition of Howl and other poems was inspired by Christopher Smart in such poems as Jubilate Agno. Ginsberg also claimed other more traditional influences, such as: Franz Kafka, Herman Melville, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Edgar Allan Poe, and Emily Dickinson. Ginsberg also made an intense study of haiku and the paintings of Paul Cézanne, from which he adapted a concept important to his work, which he called the Eyeball Kick. He noticed in viewing Cézanne's paintings that when the eye moved from one color to a contrasting color, the eye would spasm, or "kick." Likewise, he discovered that the contrast of two seeming opposites was a common feature in haiku. Ginsberg used this technique in his poetry, putting together two starkly dissimilar images: something weak with something strong, an artifact of high culture with an artifact of low culture, something holy with something unholy. The example Ginsberg most often used was "hydrogen jukebox" (which later became the title of a song cycle composed by Philip Glass with lyrics drawn from Ginsberg's poems). Another example is Ginsberg's observation on Bob Dylan during Dylan's hectic and intense 1966 electric-guitar tour, fuelled by a cocktail of amphetamines, opiates, alcohol, and psychedelics, as a Dexedrine Clown. The phrases "eyeball kick" and "hydrogen jukebox" both show up in Howl, as well as a direct quote from Cézanne: "Pater Omnipotens Aeterna Deus". Inspiration from music Allen Ginsberg also found inspiration in music. He frequently included music in his poetry, invariably composing his tunes on an old Indian harmonium, which he often played during his readings. He wrote and recorded music to accompany William Blake's Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience. He also recorded a handful of other albums. To create music for Howl and Wichita Vortex Sutra he worked with the minimalist composer, Philip Glass. Ginsberg worked with, drew inspiration from, and inspired artists such as Bob Dylan, The Clash, Patti Smith, Phil Ochs, and The Fugs. He worked with Dylan on various projects and maintained a friendship with him over many years. In 1996, he also recorded a song co-written with Paul McCartney and Philip Glass, "The Ballad of the Skeletons", which reached number 8 on the Triple J Hottest 100 for that year. Style and technique From the study of his idols and mentors and the inspiration of his friends—not to mention his own experiments—Ginsberg developed an individualistic style that's easily identified as Ginsbergian. Ginsberg stated that Whitman's long line was a dynamic technique few other poets had ventured to develop further, and Whitman is also often compared to Ginsberg because their poetry sexualized aspects of the male form. Many of Ginsberg's early long line experiments contain some sort of anaphora, repetition of a "fixed base" (for example "who" in Howl, "America" in America) and this has become a recognizable feature of Ginsberg's style. He said later this was a crutch because he lacked confidence; he did not yet trust "free flight". In the 1960s, after employing it in some sections of Kaddish ("caw" for example) he, for the most part, abandoned the anaphoric form. Several of his earlier experiments with methods for formatting poems as a whole became regular aspects of his style in later poems. In the original draft of Howl, each line is in a "stepped triadic" format reminiscent of William Carlos Williams. He abandoned the "stepped triadic" when he developed his long line although the stepped lines showed up later, most significantly in the travelogues of The Fall of America. Howl and Kaddish, arguably his two most important poems, are both organized as an inverted pyramid, with larger sections leading to smaller sections. In America, he also experimented with a mix of longer and shorter lines. Ginsberg's mature style made use of many specific, highly developed techniques, which he expressed in the "poetic slogans" he used in his Naropa teaching. Prominent among these was the inclusion of his unedited mental associations so as to reveal the mind at work ("First thought, best thought." "Mind is shapely, thought is shapely.") He preferred expression through carefully observed physical details rather than abstract statements ("Show, don't tell." "No ideas but in things.") In these he carried on and developed traditions of modernism in writing that are also found in Kerouac and Whitman In Howl and in his other poetry, Ginsberg drew inspiration from the epic, free verse style of the 19th-century American poet Walt Whitman. Both wrote passionately about the promise (and betrayal) of American democracy, the central importance of erotic experience, and the spiritual quest for the truth of everyday existence. J. D. McClatchy, editor of the Yale Review, called Ginsberg "the best-known American poet of his generation, as much a social force as a literary phenomenon." McClatchy added that Ginsberg, like Whitman, "was a bard in the old manner—outsized, darkly prophetic, part exuberance, part prayer, part rant. His work is finally a history of our era's psyche, with all its contradictory urges." McClatchy's barbed eulogies define the essential difference between Ginsberg ("a beat poet whose writing was [...] journalism raised by combining the recycling genius with a generous mimic-empathy, to strike audience-accessible chords; always lyrical and sometimes truly poetic") and Kerouac ("a poet of singular brilliance, the brightest luminary of a 'beat generation' he came to symbolise in popular culture [...] [though] in reality he far surpassed his contemporaries [...] Kerouac is an originating genius, exploring then answering—like Rimbaud a century earlier, by necessity more than by choice—the demands of authentic self-expression as applied to the evolving quicksilver mind of America's only literary virtuoso [...]"). Bibliography Howl and Other Poems (1956), Kaddish and Other Poems (1961), Empty Mirror: Early Poems (1961), Reality Sandwiches (1963), The Yage Letters (1963)with William S. Burroughs Planet News (1968), Indian Journals (1970), First Blues: Rags, Ballads & Harmonium Songs 1971 - 1974 (1975), The Gates of Wrath: Rhymed Poems 1948–1951 (1972), The Fall of America: Poems of These States (1973), Iron Horse (1973) Allen Verbatim: Lectures on Poetry, Politics, Consciousness by Allen Ginsberg (1974), edited by Gordon Ball, Sad Dust Glories: poems during work summer in woods (1975) Mind Breaths (1978), Plutonian Ode: Poems 1977–1980 (1981), Collected Poems 1947–1980 (1984), . Republished with later material added as Collected Poems 1947-1997, New York, Harper Collins, 2006 White Shroud Poems: 1980–1985 (1986), Cosmopolitan Greetings Poems: 1986–1993 (1994) Howl Annotated (1995) Illuminated Poems (1996) Selected Poems: 1947–1995 (1996) Death and Fame: Poems 1993–1997 (1999) Deliberate Prose 1952–1995 (2000) Howl & Other Poems 50th Anniversary Edition (2006), The Book of Martyrdom and Artifice: First Journals and Poems 1937-1952 (Da Capo Press, 2006) The Selected Letters of Allen Ginsberg and Gary Snyder (Counterpoint, 2009) I Greet You at the Beginning of a Great Career: The Selected Correspondence of Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Allen Ginsberg, 1955–1997 (City Lights, 2015) "The Best Minds of My Generation: A Literary History of the Beats" (Grove Press, 2017) Honors His collection The Fall of America shared the annual U.S. National Book Award for Poetry in 1974. In 1979, he received the National Arts Club gold medal and was inducted into the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. Ginsberg was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 1995 for his book Cosmopolitan Greetings: Poems 1986–1992. In 1993, he received a John Jay Award posthumously from Columbia. In 2014, Ginsberg was one of the inaugural honorees in the Rainbow Honor Walk, a walk of fame in San Francisco's Castro neighborhood noting LGBTQ people who have "made significant contributions in their fields." See also The Life and Times of Allen Ginsberg (film) :Category:Works by Allen Ginsberg Allen Ginsberg Live in London Hungry generation Howl (2010 film) LGBT culture in New York City List of LGBT people from New York City Central Park Be-In Trevor Carolan Counterculture of the 1960s Burroughs: the Movie by Howard Brookner List of peace activists Kill Your Darlings Jewish Buddhist American poetry Notes References Resources The Allen Ginsberg Papers, 1937–1994 (1,330 linear ft.) are housed in the Department of Special Collections and University Archives at Stanford University Libraries Further reading Boer, Charles. Charles Olson in Connecticut. North Carolina Wesleyan College Press, rpt. 1991, (1975). . Bullough, Vern L. "Before Stonewall: Activists for Gay and Lesbian Rights in Historical Context." Harrington Park Press, 2002. pp 304–311. Charters, Ann (ed.). The Portable Beat Reader. Penguin Books. New York. 1992. (hc); (pbk) Clark, Thomas. "Allen Ginsberg." Writers at WorkThe Paris Review Interviews. 3.1 (1968) pp. 279–320. Collins, Ronald & Skover, David. Mania: The Story of the Outraged & Outrageous Lives that Launched a Cultural Revolution (Top-Five books, March 2013) Gifford, Barry (ed.). As Ever: The Collected Letters of Allen Ginsberg & Neal Cassady. Berkeley: Creative Arts Books (1977). Ginsberg, Allen. Travels with Ginsberg: A Postcard Book. San Francisco: City Lights (2002). Hrebeniak, Michael. Action Writing: Jack Kerouac's Wild Form, Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois UP, 2006. Kashner, Sam, When I Was Cool, My Life at the Jack Kerouac School, New York: HarperCollins Perennial, 2005. Podhoretz, Norman. "At War with Allen Ginsberg", in Ex-Friends (Free Press, 1999), 22–56. . McBride, Dick: Cometh With Clouds (Memory: Allen Ginsberg) Cherry Valley Editions, 1982 Morgan, Bill (ed.), I Greet You at the Beginning of a Great Career: The Selected Correspondence of Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Allen Ginsberg, 1955–1997. San Francisco: City Lights Publishers, 2015. Schumacher, Michael (ed.). Family Business: Selected Letters Between a Father and Son. Bloomsbury (2002), paperback, 448 pages, Schumacher, Michael. Dharma Lion: A Biography of Allen Ginsberg. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1994. Trigilio, Tony. Allen Ginsberg's Buddhist Poetics. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 2007. Trigilio, Tony. "Strange Prophecies Anew": Rereading Apocalypse in Blake, H.D., and Ginsberg. Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2000. . Tytell, John. Naked Angels: Kerouac, Ginsberg, Burroughs. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1976. Warner, Simon (ed.). Howl for Now: A 50th anniversary celebration of Allen Ginsberg's epic protest poem. West Yorkshire, UK: Route (2005), paperback, 144 pages, Warner, Simon. "Raising the Consciousness? Re-visiting Allen Ginsberg's 1965 trip to Liverpool", chapter in Centre of the Creative Universe: Liverpool and the Avant Garde, edited by Christoph Grunenberg and Robert Knifton. Liverpool & Chicago: Liverpool University Press & Chicago University Press, 2007, (pbk); (hc) Young, Allen Gay Sunshine interview with Allen Ginsberg. Grey Fox Press, 1974. First Thought is Best Thought, an interview with Allen Ginsberg, in Scottish International Volume 6, September 1973, pp. 18 – 23 External links Archives George Dowden papers on the Allen Ginsberg bibliography, 1966–1971 at Rare Book and Manuscripts Library, Columbia University Libraries Materials related to Allen Ginsberg in the Robert A. Wilson collection at Special Collections, University of Delaware Library Allen Ginsberg papers at Special Collections and University Archives, Stanford Libraries Audio recordings and interviews Audio recordings of Allen Ginsberg, from the Woodberry Poetry Room, Harvard University Audio recordings of Allen Ginsberg, from Maryland Institute College of Art's Decker Library, Internet Archive Modern American Poetry, interview Other links The Allen Ginsberg Trust Case Histories: Allen Ginsberg at PEN.org honoring Ginsberg's work, from PEN American Center Allen Ginsberg on Poets.org With audio clips, poems, and related essays, from the Academy of American Poets "After 50 Years, Ginsberg's Howl Still Resonates" NPR October 27, 2006 Allen Ginsberg photographs with hand-written captions at LensCulture Autobiographical Article in Shambhala Sun Magazine FBI agents were warned against interviewing Allen Ginsberg, fearing it would result in "embarrassment" from MuckRock.com Allen Ginsberg materials in "Beat Visions and the Counterculture" (online exhibition) at Special Collections, University of Delaware Library 1926 births 1997 deaths 20th-century American male writers 20th-century American poets 20th-century Buddhists Activists from New York (state) American anti–nuclear weapons activists American anti–Vietnam War activists American cannabis activists American expatriates in France American LGBT poets American male poets American pacifists American sailors American social commentators American spoken word artists American tax resisters Beat Generation poets Brooklyn College faculty Columbia College (New York) alumni Converts to Buddhism Cultural critics Deaths from cancer in New York (state) Deaths from liver cancer Eastside High School (Paterson, New Jersey) alumni English-language haiku poets Free speech activists Gay academics American gay writers Industrial Workers of the World members Jewish American poets LGBT Buddhists LGBT Jews LGBT people from Colorado LGBT people from New Jersey LGBT people from New York (state) LGBT rights activists from the United States Military personnel from New Jersey
x2 + 1 = 0 has no solution in real numbers, even though all its coefficients (1 and 0) are real. The same argument proves that no subfield of the real field is algebraically closed; in particular, the field of rational numbers is not algebraically closed. Also, no finite field F is algebraically closed, because if a1, a2, ..., an are the elements of F, then the polynomial (x − a1)(x − a2) ⋯ (x − an) + 1 has no zero in F. By contrast, the fundamental theorem of algebra states that the field of complex numbers is algebraically closed. Another example of an algebraically closed field is the field of (complex) algebraic numbers. Equivalent properties Given a field F, the assertion "F is algebraically closed" is equivalent to other assertions: The only irreducible polynomials are those of degree one The field F is algebraically closed if and only if the only irreducible polynomials in the polynomial ring F[x] are those of degree one. The assertion "the polynomials of degree one are irreducible" is trivially true for any field. If F is algebraically closed and p(x) is an irreducible polynomial of F[x], then it has some root a and therefore p(x) is a multiple of x − a. Since p(x) is irreducible, this means that p(x) = k(x − a), for some k ∈ F \ {0}. On the other hand, if F is not algebraically closed, then there is some non-constant polynomial p(x) in F[x] without roots in F. Let q(x) be some irreducible factor of p(x). Since p(x) has no roots in F, q(x) also has no roots in F. Therefore, q(x) has degree greater than one, since every first degree polynomial has one root in F. Every polynomial is a product of first degree polynomials The field F is algebraically closed if and only if every polynomial p(x) of degree n ≥ 1, with coefficients in F, splits into linear factors. In other words, there are elements k, x1, x2, ..., xn of the field F such that p(x) = k(x − x1)(x − x2) ⋯ (x − xn). If F has this property, then clearly every non-constant polynomial in F[x] has some root in F; in other words, F is algebraically closed. On the other hand, that the property stated here holds for F if F is algebraically closed follows from the previous property together with the fact that, for any field K, any polynomial in K[x] can be written as a product of irreducible polynomials. Polynomials of prime degree have roots If every polynomial over F of prime degree has a root in F, then every non-constant polynomial has a root in F. It follows that a field is algebraically closed if and only if every polynomial over F of prime degree has a root in F. The field has no proper algebraic extension The field F is algebraically closed if and only if it has no proper algebraic extension. If F has no proper algebraic extension, let p(x) be some irreducible polynomial in F[x]. Then the quotient of F[x] modulo the ideal generated by p(x) is an algebraic extension of F whose degree is equal to the degree of p(x). Since it is not a proper extension, its degree is 1 and therefore the degree of p(x) is 1. On the other hand, if F has some proper algebraic extension K, then the minimal polynomial of an element in K \ F is irreducible and its degree is greater than 1. The field has no proper finite extension The field F is algebraically closed if and only if it has no proper finite extension because if, within the previous proof, the term "algebraic extension" is replaced by the term "finite extension", then the proof is still valid. (Note that finite extensions are necessarily algebraic.) Every endomorphism of Fn has some eigenvector The field F is algebraically closed if and only if, for each natural number n, every linear map from Fn into itself has some eigenvector. An endomorphism of Fn has an eigenvector if and only if its characteristic
other hand, if F is not algebraically closed, then there is some non-constant polynomial p(x) in F[x] without roots in F. Let q(x) be some irreducible factor of p(x). Since p(x) has no roots in F, q(x) also has no roots in F. Therefore, q(x) has degree greater than one, since every first degree polynomial has one root in F. Every polynomial is a product of first degree polynomials The field F is algebraically closed if and only if every polynomial p(x) of degree n ≥ 1, with coefficients in F, splits into linear factors. In other words, there are elements k, x1, x2, ..., xn of the field F such that p(x) = k(x − x1)(x − x2) ⋯ (x − xn). If F has this property, then clearly every non-constant polynomial in F[x] has some root in F; in other words, F is algebraically closed. On the other hand, that the property stated here holds for F if F is algebraically closed follows from the previous property together with the fact that, for any field K, any polynomial in K[x] can be written as a product of irreducible polynomials. Polynomials of prime degree have roots If every polynomial over F of prime degree has a root in F, then every non-constant polynomial has a root in F. It follows that a field is algebraically closed if and only if every polynomial over F of prime degree has a root in F. The field has no proper algebraic extension The field F is algebraically closed if and only if it has no proper algebraic extension. If F has no proper algebraic extension, let p(x) be some irreducible polynomial in F[x]. Then the quotient of F[x] modulo the ideal generated by p(x) is an algebraic extension of F whose degree is equal to the degree of p(x). Since it is not a proper extension, its degree is 1 and therefore the degree of p(x) is 1. On the other hand, if F has some proper algebraic extension K, then the minimal polynomial of an element in K \ F is irreducible and its degree is greater than 1. The field has no proper finite extension The field F is algebraically closed if and only if it has no proper finite extension because if, within the previous proof, the term "algebraic extension" is replaced by the term "finite extension", then the proof is still valid. (Note that finite extensions are necessarily algebraic.) Every endomorphism of Fn has some eigenvector The field F is algebraically closed if and only if, for each natural number n, every linear map from Fn into itself has some eigenvector. An endomorphism of Fn has an eigenvector if and only if its characteristic polynomial has some root. Therefore, when F is algebraically closed, every endomorphism of Fn has some eigenvector. On the other hand, if every endomorphism of Fn has an eigenvector, let p(x) be an element of F[x]. Dividing by its leading coefficient, we get another polynomial q(x) which has roots if and only if p(x) has roots. But if q(x) = xn + an − 1xn − 1+ ⋯ + a0, then q(x) is the characteristic polynomial of the n×n companion matrix Decomposition of rational expressions The field F is algebraically closed if and only if every rational function in one variable x, with coefficients in F, can be written as the sum of a polynomial function with rational functions of the form a/(x − b)n, where n is a natural number, and a and b are elements of F. If F is algebraically closed then, since the irreducible polynomials in F[x] are all of degree 1, the property stated above holds by the theorem on partial fraction decomposition. On the other hand, suppose that the property stated above holds for the field F. Let p(x) be an irreducible element in F[x]. Then the rational function 1/p can be written as the sum of a polynomial function q with rational functions of the form a/(x – b)n. Therefore, the rational expression can be written as a quotient of two polynomials in which the denominator is a product of first degree polynomials. Since p(x) is irreducible,
Estonia becomes part of the Soviet Union. 1942 – Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands becomes the first reigning queen to address a joint session of the United States Congress. 1944 – The Warsaw Uprising occurs on August 1. It is brutally suppressed and all able-bodied men in Kraków are detained afterwards to prevent a similar uprising, the Kraków Uprising, that was planned but never carried out. 1945 – World War II: Hiroshima, Japan is devastated when the atomic bomb "Little Boy" is dropped by the United States B-29 Enola Gay. Around 70,000 people are killed instantly, and some tens of thousands die in subsequent years from burns and radiation poisoning. 1956 – After going bankrupt in 1955, the American broadcaster DuMont Television Network makes its final broadcast, a boxing match from St. Nicholas Arena in New York in the Boxing from St. Nicholas Arena series. 1960 – Cuban Revolution: Cuba nationalizes American and foreign-owned property in the nation. 1962 – Jamaica becomes independent from the United Kingdom. 1965 – US President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Voting Rights Act of 1965 into law. 1986 – A low-pressure system that redeveloped off the New South Wales coast dumps a record 328 millimeters (13 inches) of rain in a day on Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. 1990 – Gulf War: The United Nations Security Council orders a global trade embargo against Iraq in response to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. 1991 – Tim Berners-Lee releases files describing his idea for the World Wide Web. WWW makes its first appearance as a publicly available service on the Internet. 1991 – Takako Doi, chair of the Social Democratic Party, becomes Japan's first female speaker of the House of Representatives. 1996 – The Ramones played their farewell concert at The Palace, Los Angeles, CA. 1996 – NASA announces that the ALH 84001 meteorite, thought to originate from Mars, contains evidence of primitive life-forms. 1997 – Korean Air Flight 801 crashed at Nimitz Hill, Guam killing 228 of 254 people on board. 2001 – Erwadi fire incident: Twenty-eight mentally ill persons tied to a chain are burnt to death at a faith based institution at Erwadi, Tamil Nadu. 2008 – A military junta led by Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz stages a coup d'état in Mauritania, overthrowing president Sidi Ould Cheikh Abdallahi. 2010 – Flash floods across a large part of Jammu and Kashmir, India, damages 71 towns and kills at least 255 people. 2011 – War in Afghanistan: A United States military helicopter is shot down, killing 30 American special forces members and a working dog, seven Afghan soldiers, and one Afghan civilian. It was the deadliest single event for the United States in the War in Afghanistan. 2012 – NASA's Curiosity rover lands on the surface of Mars. 2015 – A suicide bomb attack kills at least 15 people at a mosque in the Saudi city of Abha. Births Pre-1600 1180 – Emperor Go-Toba of Japan (d. 1239) 1504 – Matthew Parker, English archbishop (d. 1575) 1572 – Fakhr-al-Din II, Ottoman prince (d. 1635) 1601–1900 1605 – Bulstrode Whitelocke, English lawyer (d. 1675) 1609 – Richard Bennett, English-American politician, Colonial Governor of Virginia (d. 1675) 1619 – Barbara Strozzi, Italian composer and singer-songwriter (d. 1677) 1622 – Tjerk Hiddes de Vries, Dutch admiral (d. 1666) 1638 – Nicolas Malebranche, French priest and philosopher (d. 1715) 1644 – Louise de La Vallière, French mistress of Louis XIV of France (d. 1710) 1651 – François Fénelon, French archbishop and poet (d. 1715) 1656 – Claude de Forbin, French general (d. 1733) 1666 – Maria Sophia of Neuburg (d. 1699) 1667 – Johann Bernoulli, Swiss mathematician (d. 1748) 1697 – Charles VII, Holy Roman Emperor (d. 1745) 1715 – Luc de Clapiers, marquis de Vauvenargues, French author (d. 1747) 1765 – Petros Mavromichalis, Greek general and politician, 2nd Prime Minister of Greece (d. 1848) 1766 – William Hyde Wollaston, English chemist and physicist (d. 1828) 1768 – Jean-Baptiste Bessières, French general and politician (d. 1813) 1775 – Daniel O'Connell, Irish lawyer and politician, Lord Mayor of Dublin (d. 1847) 1809 – Alfred, Lord Tennyson, English poet (d. 1892) 1826 – Thomas Alexander Browne, English-Australian author (d. 1915) 1835 – Hjalmar Kiærskou, Danish botanist (d. 1900) 1844 – Alfred, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha (d. 1900) 1844 – James Henry Greathead, South African-English engineer (d. 1896) 1848 – Susie Taylor, American writer and first black Army nurse (d. 1912) 1846 – Anna Haining Bates, Canadian-American giant (d. 1888) 1868 – Paul Claudel, French poet and playwright (d. 1955) 1874 – Charles Fort, American author (d. 1932) 1877 – Wallace H. White Jr., American lawyer and politician (d. 1952) 1880 – Hans Moser, Austrian actor and singer (d. 1964) 1881 – Leo Carrillo, American actor (d. 1961) 1881 – Alexander Fleming, Scottish biologist, pharmacologist, and botanist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1955) 1881 – Louella Parsons, American journalist (d. 1972) 1883 – Constance Georgina Adams, South African botanist (d. 1968) 1883 – Scott Nearing, American economist and educator (d. 1983) 1886 – Edward Ballantine, American composer and academic (d. 1971) 1887 – Dudley Benjafield, English racing driver (d. 1957) 1889 – George Kenney, Canadian-American general (d. 1977) 1889 – John Middleton Murry, English poet and author (d. 1957) 1890 – Wentworth Beaumont, 2nd Viscount Allendale, English captain and politician, Lord Lieutenant of Northumberland (d. 1956) 1891 – William Slim, 1st Viscount Slim, English field marshal and politician, 13th Governor-General of Australia (d. 1970) 1892 – Hoot Gibson, American actor, director, and producer (d. 1962) 1893 – Wright Patman, American lieutenant and politician (d. 1976) 1895 – Frank Nicklin, Australian politician, 28th Premier of Queensland (d. 1978) 1900 – Cecil Howard Green, English-American geophysicist and businessman, co-founded Texas Instruments (d. 2003) 1901–present 1901 – Dutch Schultz, American gangster (d. 1935) 1903 – Virginia Foster Durr, American civil rights activist (d. 1999) 1904 – Jean Dessès, Greek-Egyptian fashion designer (d. 1970) 1904 – Henry Iba, American basketball player and coach (d. 1993) 1906 – Vic Dickenson, American trombonist (d. 1984) 1908 – Maria Ludwika Bernhard, Polish classical archaeologist and a member of WWII Polish resistance (d. 1998) 1908 – Helen Jacobs, American tennis player and commander (d. 1997) 1908 – Lajos Vajda, Hungarian painter and illustrator (d. 1941) 1909 – Diana Keppel, Countess of Albemarle (d. 2013) 1910 – Adoniran Barbosa, Brazilian musician, singer, composer, humorist, and actor (d. 1982) 1910 – Charles Crichton, English director, producer, and screenwriter (d. 1999) 1911 – Lucille Ball, American actress, television producer and businesswoman (d. 1989) 1911 – Norman Gordon, South African cricketer (d. 2014) 1911 – Constance Heaven, English author and actress (d. 1995) 1912 – Richard C. Miller, American photographer (d. 2010) 1914 – Gordon Freeth, Australian lawyer and politician, 24th Australian Minister for Foreign Affairs (d. 2001) 1916 – Richard Hofstadter, American historian and academic (d. 1970) 1916 – Dom Mintoff, Maltese journalist and politician, 8th Prime
First Battle of the Atlantic: Two days after the United Kingdom had declared war on Germany over the German invasion of Belgium, ten German U-boats leave their base in Heligoland to attack Royal Navy warships in the North Sea. 1914 – World War I: Serbia declares war on Germany; Austria declares war on Russia. 1915 – World War I: Battle of Sari Bair: The Allies mount a diversionary attack timed to coincide with a major Allied landing of reinforcements at Suvla Bay. 1917 – World War I: Battle of Mărășești between the Romanian and German armies begins. 1926 – Gertrude Ederle becomes the first woman to swim across the English Channel. 1926 – In New York City, the Warner Bros.' Vitaphone system premieres with the movie Don Juan starring John Barrymore. 1940 – Estonia becomes part of the Soviet Union. 1942 – Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands becomes the first reigning queen to address a joint session of the United States Congress. 1944 – The Warsaw Uprising occurs on August 1. It is brutally suppressed and all able-bodied men in Kraków are detained afterwards to prevent a similar uprising, the Kraków Uprising, that was planned but never carried out. 1945 – World War II: Hiroshima, Japan is devastated when the atomic bomb "Little Boy" is dropped by the United States B-29 Enola Gay. Around 70,000 people are killed instantly, and some tens of thousands die in subsequent years from burns and radiation poisoning. 1956 – After going bankrupt in 1955, the American broadcaster DuMont Television Network makes its final broadcast, a boxing match from St. Nicholas Arena in New York in the Boxing from St. Nicholas Arena series. 1960 – Cuban Revolution: Cuba nationalizes American and foreign-owned property in the nation. 1962 – Jamaica becomes independent from the United Kingdom. 1965 – US President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Voting Rights Act of 1965 into law. 1986 – A low-pressure system that redeveloped off the New South Wales coast dumps a record 328 millimeters (13 inches) of rain in a day on Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. 1990 – Gulf War: The United Nations Security Council orders a global trade embargo against Iraq in response to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. 1991 – Tim Berners-Lee releases files describing his idea for the World Wide Web. WWW makes its first appearance as a publicly available service on the Internet. 1991 – Takako Doi, chair of the Social Democratic Party, becomes Japan's first female speaker of the House of Representatives. 1996 – The Ramones played their farewell concert at The Palace, Los Angeles, CA. 1996 – NASA announces that the ALH 84001 meteorite, thought to originate from Mars, contains evidence of primitive life-forms. 1997 – Korean Air Flight 801 crashed at Nimitz Hill, Guam killing 228 of 254 people on board. 2001 – Erwadi fire incident: Twenty-eight mentally ill persons tied to a chain are burnt to death at a faith based institution at Erwadi, Tamil Nadu. 2008 – A military junta led by Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz stages a coup d'état in Mauritania, overthrowing president Sidi Ould Cheikh Abdallahi. 2010 – Flash floods across a large part of Jammu and Kashmir, India, damages 71 towns and kills at least 255 people. 2011 – War in Afghanistan: A United States military helicopter is shot down, killing 30 American special forces members and a working dog, seven Afghan soldiers, and one Afghan civilian. It was the deadliest single event for the United States in the War in Afghanistan. 2012 – NASA's Curiosity rover lands on the surface of Mars. 2015 – A suicide bomb attack kills at least 15 people at a mosque in the Saudi city of Abha. Births Pre-1600 1180 – Emperor Go-Toba of Japan (d. 1239) 1504 – Matthew Parker, English archbishop (d. 1575) 1572 – Fakhr-al-Din II, Ottoman prince (d. 1635) 1601–1900 1605 – Bulstrode Whitelocke, English lawyer (d. 1675) 1609 – Richard Bennett, English-American politician, Colonial Governor of Virginia (d. 1675) 1619 – Barbara Strozzi, Italian composer and singer-songwriter (d. 1677) 1622 – Tjerk Hiddes de Vries, Dutch admiral (d. 1666) 1638 – Nicolas Malebranche, French priest and philosopher (d. 1715) 1644 – Louise de La Vallière, French mistress of Louis XIV of France (d. 1710) 1651 – François Fénelon, French archbishop and poet (d. 1715) 1656 – Claude de Forbin, French general (d. 1733) 1666 – Maria Sophia of Neuburg (d. 1699) 1667 – Johann Bernoulli, Swiss mathematician (d. 1748) 1697 – Charles VII, Holy Roman Emperor (d. 1745) 1715 – Luc de Clapiers, marquis de Vauvenargues, French author (d. 1747) 1765 – Petros Mavromichalis, Greek general and politician, 2nd Prime Minister of Greece (d. 1848) 1766 – William Hyde Wollaston, English chemist and physicist (d. 1828) 1768 – Jean-Baptiste Bessières, French general and politician (d. 1813) 1775 – Daniel O'Connell, Irish lawyer and politician, Lord Mayor of Dublin (d. 1847) 1809 – Alfred, Lord Tennyson, English poet (d. 1892) 1826 – Thomas Alexander Browne, English-Australian author (d. 1915) 1835 – Hjalmar Kiærskou, Danish botanist (d. 1900) 1844 – Alfred, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha (d. 1900) 1844 – James Henry Greathead, South African-English engineer (d. 1896) 1848 – Susie Taylor, American writer and first black Army nurse (d. 1912) 1846 – Anna Haining Bates, Canadian-American giant (d. 1888) 1868 – Paul Claudel, French poet and playwright (d. 1955) 1874 – Charles Fort, American author (d. 1932) 1877 – Wallace H. White Jr., American lawyer and politician (d. 1952) 1880 – Hans Moser, Austrian actor and singer (d. 1964) 1881 – Leo Carrillo, American actor (d. 1961) 1881 – Alexander Fleming, Scottish biologist, pharmacologist, and botanist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1955) 1881 – Louella Parsons, American journalist (d. 1972) 1883 – Constance Georgina Adams, South African botanist (d. 1968) 1883 – Scott Nearing, American economist and educator (d. 1983) 1886 – Edward Ballantine, American composer and academic (d. 1971) 1887 – Dudley Benjafield, English racing driver (d. 1957) 1889 – George Kenney, Canadian-American general (d. 1977) 1889 – John Middleton Murry, English poet and author (d. 1957) 1890 – Wentworth Beaumont, 2nd Viscount Allendale, English captain and politician, Lord Lieutenant of Northumberland (d. 1956) 1891 – William Slim, 1st Viscount Slim, English field marshal and politician, 13th Governor-General of Australia (d. 1970) 1892 – Hoot Gibson, American actor, director, and producer (d. 1962) 1893 – Wright Patman, American lieutenant and politician (d. 1976) 1895 – Frank Nicklin, Australian politician, 28th Premier of Queensland (d. 1978) 1900 – Cecil Howard Green, English-American geophysicist and businessman, co-founded Texas Instruments (d. 2003) 1901–present 1901 – Dutch Schultz, American gangster (d. 1935) 1903 – Virginia Foster Durr, American civil rights activist (d. 1999) 1904 – Jean Dessès, Greek-Egyptian fashion designer (d. 1970) 1904 – Henry Iba, American basketball player and coach (d. 1993) 1906 – Vic Dickenson, American trombonist (d. 1984) 1908 – Maria Ludwika Bernhard, Polish classical archaeologist and a member of WWII Polish resistance (d. 1998) 1908 – Helen Jacobs, American tennis player and commander (d. 1997) 1908 – Lajos Vajda, Hungarian painter and illustrator (d. 1941) 1909 – Diana Keppel, Countess of Albemarle (d. 2013) 1910 – Adoniran Barbosa, Brazilian musician, singer, composer, humorist, and actor (d. 1982) 1910 – Charles Crichton, English director, producer, and screenwriter (d. 1999) 1911 – Lucille Ball, American actress, television producer and businesswoman (d. 1989) 1911 – Norman Gordon, South African cricketer (d. 2014) 1911 – Constance Heaven, English author and actress (d. 1995) 1912 – Richard C. Miller, American photographer (d. 2010) 1914 – Gordon Freeth, Australian lawyer and politician, 24th Australian Minister for Foreign Affairs (d. 2001) 1916 – Richard Hofstadter, American historian and academic (d. 1970) 1916 – Dom Mintoff, Maltese journalist and politician, 8th Prime Minister of Malta (d. 2012) 1917 – Barbara Cooney, American author and illustrator (d. 2000) 1917 – Robert Mitchum, American actor (d. 1997) 1918 – Norman Granz, American-Swiss record producer and manager (d. 2001) 1919 – Pauline Betz, American tennis player (d. 2011) 1920 – John Graves, American author (d. 2013) 1920 – Ella Raines, American actress (d. 1988) 1922 – Freddie Laker, English businessman, founded Laker Airways (d. 2006) 1922 – Dan Walker, American lawyer and politician, 36th Governor of Illinois (d. 2015) 1923 – Jess Collins, American painter (d. 2004) 1923 – Paul Hellyer, Canadian engineer and politician, 16th Canadian Minister of Defence 1924 – Samuel Bowers, American activist, co-founded the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan (d. 2006) 1926 – Elisabeth Beresford, English journalist and author (d. 2010) 1926 – Frank Finlay, English actor (d. 2016) 1926 – Clem Labine, American baseball player and manager (d. 2007) 1926 – János Rózsás, Hungarian author (d. 2012) 1926 – Norman Wexler, American screenwriter (d. 1999) 1928 – Herb Moford, American baseball player (d. 2005) 1928 – Andy Warhol, American painter, photographer and film director (d. 1987) 1929 – Mike Elliott, Jamaican saxophonist 1929 – Roch La Salle, Canadian politician, 42nd Canadian Minister of Public Works (d. 2007) 1930 – Abbey Lincoln, American singer-songwriter and actress (d. 2010) 1931 – Chalmers Johnson, American scholar and author (d. 2010) 1932 – Michael Deeley, English screenwriter and producer 1932 – Howard Hodgkin, English painter (d. 2017) 1932 – Charles Wood, English playwright and screenwriter (d. 2020) 1933 – A. G. Kripal Singh, Indian cricketer (d. 1987) 1934 – Piers Anthony, English-American soldier and author 1934 – Chris Bonington, English mountaineer and author 1934 – Billy Boston, Welsh rugby player and soldier 1935 – Fortunato Baldelli, Italian cardinal (d. 2012) 1935 – Octavio Getino, Spanish-Argentinian director and screenwriter (d. 2012) 1937 – Baden Powell de Aquino, Brazilian guitarist and composer (d. 2000) 1937 – Charlie Haden, American bassist and composer (d. 2014) 1937 – Barbara Windsor, English actress (d. 2020) 1938 – Paul Bartel, American actor, director, and screenwriter (d. 2000) 1938 –
2–0). In the subsequent cycle, the format was changed, with the champion having to qualify. Karpov refused to defend his title, and ceased to be FIDE World Champion after the FIDE World Chess Championship 1999. Towards retirement Karpov's classical tournament play has been seriously limited since 1997, since he prefers to be more involved in Russian politics. He had been a member of the Supreme Soviet Commission for Foreign Affairs and the president of the Soviet Peace Fund before the Soviet Union dissolved. In addition, he has been involved in several disputes with FIDE. In the September 2009 FIDE rating list, he dropped out of the world's Top 100 for the first time. Karpov usually limits his play to exhibition events, and has revamped his style to specialize in rapid chess. In 2002, he won a match against Kasparov, defeating him in a rapid time control match 2½–1½. In 2006, he tied for first with Kasparov in a blitz tournament, ahead of Korchnoi and Judit Polgár. Karpov and Kasparov played a mixed 12-game match from September 21–24, 2009, in Valencia, Spain. It consisted of four rapid (or semi-rapid) and eight blitz games and took place exactly 25 years after the two players' legendary encounter at the World Chess Championship 1984. Kasparov won the match 9–3. Karpov played a match against Yasser Seirawan in 2012 in St. Louis, Missouri, an important center of the North American chess scene, winning 8–6 (+5−3=6). In November 2012, he won the Cap d'Agde rapid tournament that bears his name (Anatoly Karpov Trophy), beating Vasyl Ivanchuk (ranked 9th in the October 2012 FIDE world rankings) in the final. Personal life after retirement In 2003, Karpov opened his first American chess school in Lindsborg, Kansas. Karpov has been a member of the sixth, seventh and eighth Russian State Dumas. Since 2005, he has been a member of the Public Chamber of Russia. He has involved himself in several humanitarian causes, such as advocating the use of iodised salt. On December 17, 2012, Karpov supported the law in the Russian Parliament banning adoption of Russian orphans by U.S. citizens. Karpov expressed support of the annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation, and accused Europe of trying to demonize Putin. In August 2019, Maxim Dlugy said that Karpov had been waiting since March for the approval of a non-immigrant visa to the United States, despite frequently visiting the country since 1972. Karpov had been scheduled to teach a summer camp at the Chess Max Academy. Dlugy said that Karpov had been questioned at the US embassy in Moscow about whether he planned to communicate with American politicians. Karpov was among the Russian State Duma members placed under sanctions by the EU during the 2021–2022 Russo-Ukrainian crisis. Candidate for FIDE presidency In March 2010 Karpov announced that he would be a candidate for the presidency of FIDE. The election took place in September 2010 at the 39th Chess Olympiad. In May, a fund-raising event took place in New York with the participation of Kasparov and of Magnus Carlsen, both of whom supported his bid and campaigned for him. Nigel Short also supported Karpov's candidacy. On September 29, 2010, Kirsan Ilyumzhinov was reelected as president of FIDE, 95 votes to 55. Style Karpov's "boa constrictor" playing style is solidly positional, taking minimal risks but reacting mercilessly to the slightest error by his opponent. As a result, he is often compared to José Raúl Capablanca, the third world champion. Karpov himself describes his style as follows:Let us say the game may be continued in two ways: one of them is a beautiful tactical blow that gives rise to variations that don't yield to precise calculations; the other is clear positional pressure that leads to an endgame with microscopic chances of victory.... I would choose [the latter] without thinking twice. If the opponent offers keen play I don't object; but in such cases I get less satisfaction, even if I win, than from a game conducted according to all the rules of strategy with its ruthless logic. Notable games Viktor Korchnoi vs. Anatoly Karpov, Moscow 1973 Karpov sacrifices a pawn for a strong center and attack. Anatoly Karpov vs. Gyula Sax, Linares 1983 Karpov sacrifices for an attack that wins the game 20 moves later, after another spectacular sacrifice from Karpov and counter-sacrifice from Sax. It won the tournament's first . This was not the first time Karpov used the sharp Keres Attack (6.g4) – see his win in Anatoly Karpov vs. Vlastimil Hort, Alekhine Memorial Tournament, Moscow 1971. Anatoly Karpov vs. Veselin Topalov, Dos Hermanas 1994 This game features a sham sacrifice of two pieces, which Karpov regains with a variation, culminating in the win of an exchange with a technically won endgame. Hobbies Karpov's extensive stamp collection of Belgian philately and Belgian Congo stamps and postal history covering mail from 1742 through 1980 was sold by David Feldman's auction company between December 2011 and 2012. He is also known to have a large chess stamp and chess book collections. His private chess library consists of 9000 books. Honours and awards Order of Merit for the Fatherland, 3rd class (2001) – for outstanding contribution to the implementation of charitable programmes, the strengthening of peace and friendship between the peoples Order of Friendship (2011) – for his great contribution to strengthening peace and friendship between peoples and productive social activities Order of Lenin (1981) Order of the Red Banner of Labour (1978) Order of Merit, 2nd class (Ukraine) (November 13, 2006) – for his contribution to the victims of the Chernobyl disaster Order of Holy Prince Daniel of Moscow, 2nd class (1996) Order of St. Sergius of Radonezh, 2nd class (2001) Medal "For outstanding contribution to the Collector business in Russia" Honorary member of the Soviet Philately Society (1979) Diploma of the State Duma of the Russian Federation No. 1 Order "For outstanding achievements in sport" (Republic of Cuba) Medal of Tsiolkovsky Cosmonautics Federation of Russia Medal "For Strengthening the penal system", 1st and 2nd class Breastplate of the 1st degree of the Interior Ministry International Association of Chess Press, 9 times voted the best chess player of the year and awarded the "Chess Oscar" Order of Saint Nestor the Chronicler, 1st class
the winner needing six victories. As in 1974, Karpov took an early lead, winning the eighth game after seven draws to open the match. When the score was +5−2=20 in Karpov's favour, Korchnoi staged a comeback, and won three of the next four games to draw level with Karpov. Karpov then won the very next game to retain the title (+6−5=21). Three years later, Korchnoi reemerged as the Candidates' winner against German finalist Robert Hübner to challenge Karpov in Merano, Italy. Karpov handily won this match, 11–7 (+6−2=10), in what is remembered as the "Massacre in Merano". Karpov's tournament career reached a peak at the Montreal "Tournament of Stars" tournament in 1979, where he finished joint first (+7−1=10) with Mikhail Tal ahead of a field of strong grandmasters completed by Jan Timman, Ljubomir Ljubojević, Boris Spassky, Vlastimil Hort, Lajos Portisch, Hübner, Bent Larsen and Lubomir Kavalek. He dominated Las Palmas in 1977 with 13½/15. He also won the prestigious Bugojno tournament in 1978 (shared), 1980 and 1986, the Linares tournament in 1981 (shared with Larry Christiansen) and 1994, the Tilburg tournament in 1977, 1979, 1980, 1982, and 1983, and the Soviet Championship in 1976, 1983, and 1988. Karpov represented the Soviet Union at six Chess Olympiads, in all of which the USSR won the team gold medal. He played as the first reserve at Skopje 1972, winning the board prize with 13/15. At Nice 1974, he advanced to board one and again won the board prize with 12/14. At La Valletta 1980, he was again board one and scored 9/12. At Lucerne 1982, he scored 6½/8 on board one. At Dubai 1986, he scored 6/9 on board two. His last was Thessaloniki 1988, where on board two he scored 8/10. In Olympiad play, Karpov lost only two games out of 68 played. To illustrate Karpov's dominance over his peers as champion, his score was +11−2=20 versus Spassky, +5=12 versus Robert Hübner, +6−1=16 versus Ulf Andersson, +3−1=10 versus Vasily Smyslov, +1=16 versus Mikhail Tal, and +10−2=13 versus Ljubomir Ljubojević. Rivalry with Kasparov Karpov had cemented his position as the world's best player and world champion by the time Garry Kasparov arrived on the scene. In their first match, the World Chess Championship 1984 in Moscow, the first player to win six games would win the match. Karpov built a 4–0 lead after nine games. The next 17 games were drawn, setting a record for world title matches, and it took Karpov until game 27 to gain his fifth win. In game 31, Karpov had a winning position but failed to take advantage and settled for a draw. He lost the next game, after which 14 more draws ensued. Karpov held a solidly winning position in Game 41, but again blundered and had to settle for a draw. After Kasparov won games 47 and 48, FIDE President Florencio Campomanes unilaterally terminated the match, citing the players' health. Karpov is said to have lost 10 kg over the course of the match. The match had lasted an unprecedented five months, with five wins for Karpov, three for Kasparov, and 40 draws. A rematch was set for later in 1985, also in Moscow. The events of the so-called Marathon Match forced FIDE to return to the previous format, with a match limited to 24 games (with Karpov remaining champion if the match finished 12–12). Karpov needed to win the final game to draw the match and retain his title, but lost, surrendering the title to his opponent. The final score was 13–11 (+3−5=16) in favour of Kasparov. Karpov remained a formidable opponent (and the world No. 2) until the mid-1990s. He fought Kasparov in three more world championship matches in 1986 (held in London and Leningrad), 1987 (in Seville), and 1990 (in New York City and Lyon). All three matches were extremely close: the scores were 11½–12½ (+4−5=15), 12–12 (+4−4=16), and 11½–12½ (+3−4=17). In all three matches, Karpov had winning chances up to the last games. In particular, the 1987 Seville match featured an astonishing blunder by Kasparov in the 23rd game. In the final game, needing only a draw to win the title, Karpov cracked under time pressure at the end of the first session of play, missed a variation leading to an almost forced draw, and allowed Kasparov to adjourn the game with an extra pawn. After a further mistake in the second session, Karpov was slowly ground down and resigned on move 64, ending the match and allowing Kasparov to keep the title. In their five world championship matches, Karpov scored 19 wins, 21 losses, and 104 draws in 144 games.. Overall, Karpov played five matches against Kasparov for the title from 1984 to 1990 without ever defeating him in a match. FIDE champion again (1993–1999) In 1992, Karpov lost a Candidates Match against Nigel Short. But in the World Chess Championship 1993, Karpov reacquired the FIDE World Champion title when Kasparov and Short split from FIDE. Karpov defeated Timman – the loser of the Candidates' final against Short. The next major meeting of Kasparov and Karpov was the 1994 Linares chess tournament. The field, in eventual finishing order, was Karpov, Kasparov, Shirov, Bareev, Kramnik, Lautier, Anand, Kamsky, Topalov, Ivanchuk, Gelfand, Illescas, Judit Polgár, and Beliavsky; with an average Elo rating of 2685, the highest ever at that time. Impressed by the strength of the tournament, Kasparov had said several days before the tournament that the winner could rightly be called the world champion of tournaments. Perhaps spurred on by this comment, Karpov played the best tournament of his life. He was undefeated and earned 11 points out of 13 (the best world-class tournament winning percentage since Alekhine won San Remo in 1930), finishing 2½ points ahead of second-place Kasparov and Shirov. Many of his wins were spectacular (in particular, his win over Topalov is considered possibly the finest of his career). This performance against the best players in the world put his Elo rating tournament performance at 2985, the highest performance rating of any player in history up until 2009, when Magnus Carlsen won the category XXI Pearl Spring chess tournament with a performance of 3002. Chess statistician Jeff Sonas considers Karpov's Linares performance the best tournament result in history. Karpov defended his FIDE title against the rising star Gata Kamsky (+6−3=9) in 1996. In 1998, FIDE largely scrapped the old system of Candidates' Matches, instead having a large knockout event in which a large number
the ratio of the longest side to the shortest side. Applications and uses The term is most commonly used with reference to: Graphic / image Image aspect ratio Display aspect ratio Paper size Standard photographic print sizes Motion picture film formats Standard ad size Pixel aspect ratio Photolithography: the aspect ratio of an etched, or deposited structure is the ratio of the height of its vertical side wall to its width. HARMST High Aspect Ratios allow the construction of tall microstructures without slant Tire code Tire sizing Turbocharger impeller sizing Wing aspect ratio of an aircraft or bird Astigmatism of an optical lens Nanorod dimensions Shape factor (image analysis and microscopy) Aspect ratios of simple shapes Rectangles For a rectangle, the aspect ratio denotes the ratio of the width to the height of the rectangle. A square has the smallest possible aspect ratio of 1:1. Examples: 4:3 = 1.: Some (not all) 20th century computer monitors (VGA, XGA, etc.), standard-definition television : international paper sizes (ISO 216) 3:2 = 1.5: 35mm still camera
of its sizes in different dimensions. For example, the aspect ratio of a rectangle is the ratio of its longer side to its shorter sidethe ratio of width to height, when the rectangle is oriented as a "landscape". The aspect ratio is most often expressed as two integer numbers separated by a colon (x:y), less commonly as a simple or decimal fraction. The values x and y do not represent actual widths and heights but, rather, the proportion between width and height. As an example, 8:5, 16:10, 1.6:1, and 1.6 are all ways of representing the same aspect ratio. In objects of more than two dimensions, such as hyperrectangles, the aspect ratio can still be defined as the ratio of the longest side to the shortest side. Applications and uses The term is most commonly used with reference to: Graphic / image Image aspect ratio Display aspect ratio Paper size Standard photographic print sizes Motion picture film formats Standard ad size Pixel aspect ratio Photolithography: the aspect ratio of an etched, or deposited structure is the ratio of the height of its vertical side wall to its width. HARMST High Aspect Ratios allow the construction of tall microstructures without slant Tire code Tire sizing Turbocharger impeller sizing Wing aspect ratio of an aircraft or bird Astigmatism of an optical lens Nanorod dimensions Shape factor (image analysis and microscopy) Aspect ratios of simple shapes Rectangles For a rectangle, the aspect ratio denotes the ratio of the width to the height of the rectangle. A square has the smallest possible aspect ratio of 1:1. Examples: 4:3 = 1.: Some
since 1923) and in the (European) Le Mans series, Asian Le Mans Series and the WeatherTech SportsCar Championship. These cars are referred to as LMP (Le Mans prototype) cars with LMP1 being run mainly by manufacturers and the slightly less powerful LMP2 cars run by privateer teams. All three Le Mans Series run GT cars in addition to Le Mans Prototypes; these cars have different restrictions than the FIA GT cars. Another prototype and GT racing championship exists in the United States; the Grand-Am, which began in 2000, sanctions its own endurance series, the Rolex Sports Car Series, which consists of slower and lower-cost race cars compared to LMP and FIA GT cars. The Rolex Sports Car Series and American Le Mans Series announced a merger between the two series forming the WeatherTech SportsCar Championship starting in 2014. These races are often conducted over long distances, at least , and cars are driven by teams of two or more drivers, switching every few hours. Due to the performance difference between production-based sports cars and purpose-built sports prototypes, one race usually involves several racing classes, each fighting for their own championship. Famous sports car races include the 24 Hours of Le Mans, the Rolex 24 at Daytona, 24 Hours of Spa-Franchorchamps, the 12 Hours of Sebring, the 6 Hours of Watkins Glen, and the Petit Le Mans at Road Atlanta. There is also the 24 Hours of the Nürburgring on the infamous Nordschleife track and the Dubai 24 Hour, which is aimed at GT3 and below cars with a mixture of professional and pro-am drivers. Production-car racing Production-car racing, otherwise known as "showroom stock" in the US, is an economical and rules-restricted version of touring-car racing, mainly used to restrict costs. Numerous production racing categories are based on particular makes of cars. Most series, with a few exceptions, follow the Group N regulation. There are several different series that are run all over the world, most notably, Japan's Super Taikyu and IMSA's Firehawk Series, which ran in the 1980s and 1990s all over the United States. One-make racing One-make, or single marque, championships often employ production-based cars from a single manufacturer or even a single model from a manufacturer's range. There are numerous notable one-make formulae from various countries and regions, some of which – such as the Porsche Supercup and, previously, IROC – have fostered many distinct national championships. Single marque series are often found at club level, to which the production-based cars, limited modifications, and close parity in performance are very well suited. Some of the better-known single-make series are the Mini 7 Championship (Europe's longest-running one make championship), the Radical European Masters, John Cooper Mini Challenge, Clio Cup, Ginettas, Caterhams, BMWs, and MX5s. There are also single-chassis single seater formulae, such as Formula Renault and Formula BMW, usually as "feeder" series for "senior" race formula (in the fashion of farm teams). Time Attack Series Time attack events began in Japan in the mid-1960s. They have since spread around the world. Time Attack racing is a type of motorsport in which the racers compete for the best lap time. Each vehicle is timed through numerous circuits of the track. The racers make a preliminary circuit, then run the timed laps, and then finish with a cool-down lap. Time Attack and time trial events differ by competition format and rules. Time Attack has a limited number of laps, time trial has open sessions. Unlike other timed motorsport disciplines such as sprinting and hillclimbing, the car is required to start off under full rolling start conditions following a warm up lap in which they will have to accelerate out as fast as possible to determine how fast they enter their timed lap. Commonly, as the cars are modified road-going cars, they are required to have tires authorized for road use. Stock car racing In North America, stock car racing is the most popular form of auto racing. Primarily raced on oval tracks, stock cars vaguely resemble production cars, but are in fact purpose-built racing machines that are built to tight specifications and, together with touring cars, also called Silhouette racing cars. The largest stock car racing governing body is NASCAR (National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing). NASCAR's premier series is the NASCAR Cup Series, its most famous races being the Daytona 500, the Southern 500, the Coca-Cola 600, and the Brickyard 400. NASCAR also runs several feeder series, including the Xfinity Series and Gander RV & Outdoors Truck Series (a pickup truck racing series). The series conduct races across the entire continental United States. The NASCAR Pinty's Series conducts races across Canada and the NASCAR PEAK Mexico Series conducts races across Mexico. NASCAR also governs several smaller regional series, such as the Whelen Modified Tour. Modified cars are best described as open-wheel cars. Modified cars have no parts related to the stock vehicle for which they are named after. A number of modified cars display a "manufacturer's" logo and "vehicle name", yet use components produced by another automobile manufacturer. There are also other stock car governing bodies, most notably the Automobile Racing Club of America (ARCA). In the UK, British Stock car racing is also referred to as "Short Circuit Racing". UK Stock car racing started in the 1950s and grew rapidly through the 1960s and 1970s. Events take place on shale or tarmac tracks – usually around 1/4 mile long. The governing bodies for the sport are the Oval Racing Council (ORC) and BriSCA. Both bodies are made up of individual stadium promoters. There are around 35 tracks in the UK and upwards of 7000 active drivers. The sport is split into three basic divisions – distinguished by the rules regarding car contact during racing. The most famous championship is the BriSCA F1 Stock Cars. Full-contact formulas include Bangers, Bombers and Rookie Bangers – and racing features Demolitions Derbies, Figure of Eight and Oval Racing. Semi Contact Formulas include BriSCA F1, F2 and Superstox – where bumpers are used tactically. Non-contact formulas include National Hot Rods, Stock Rods, and Lightning Rods. Rallying Rallying at international and most national championship levels involves two classes of homologated road-legal production-based cars; Group N production cars and more modified Group A cars. Cars compete on closed public roads or off-road areas on a point-to-point format where participants and their co-drivers "rally" to a set of points, leaving in regular intervals from start points. A rally is typically conducted over a number of "special stages" on any terrain, which entrants are often allowed to scout beforehand at reduced speeds compiling detailed shorthand descriptions of the track or road as they go. These detailed descriptions are known as pace notes. During the actual rally, the co-driver reads the pace notes aloud (using an in-helmet intercom system) to the driver, enabling them to complete each stage as quickly as possible. Competition is based on lowest total elapsed time over the course of an event's special stages, including penalties. The top series is the World Rally Championship (WRC), first contested in 1973, but there are also regional championships, and many countries have their own national championships. Some famous rallies include the Monte Carlo Rally, Rally Argentina, Rally Finland, and Rally GB. Another famous event (actually best described as a rally raid) is the Paris-Dakar Rally, conceived in 1978. There are also many smaller, club level, categories of rallies, which are popular with amateurs, making up the "grass roots" of motor sports. Cars at this level may not comply fully with the requirements of group A or group N homologation. Other major rally events include the British Rally Championship, Intercontinental Rally Challenge, African Rally Championship, Asia-Pacific Rally Championship, and endurance rally events like the Dakar Rally. The Targa Tasmania, held on the Australian island state of Tasmania and run annually since 1992, takes its name from the Targa Florio, a former motoring event held on the island of Sicily. The competition concept is drawn directly from the best features of the Mille Miglia, the Coupe des Alpes, and the Tour de Corse. Similarly named events around the world include the Targa Newfoundland based in Canada, Targa West based in Western Australia, Targa New Zealand, and other smaller events. Drag racing In drag racing, the objective is to complete a given straight-line distance, from a standing start, ahead of a vehicle in a parallel lane. This distance is traditionally , though has become popular since the 1990s. The vehicles may or may not be given the signal to start at the same time, depending on the class of racing. Vehicles range from the everyday car to the purpose-built dragster. Speeds and elapsed time differ from class to class. Average street cars cover the mile in 12 to 16 seconds, whereas a top fuel dragster takes 4.5 seconds or less, reaching speeds of up to . Drag racing was organized as a sport by Wally Parks in the early 1950s through the National Hot Rod Association (NHRA). The NHRA was formed to discourage street racing. When launching, a top fuel dragster will accelerate at 3.4 g (33 m/s²), and when braking parachutes are deployed the deceleration is 4 g (39 m/s²), more than the Space Shuttle experiences. A top fuel car can be heard over away and can generate a reading from 1.5 to 3.9 on the Richter scale. Drag racing is two cars head-to-head, the winner proceeding to the next round. Professional classes are all first to the finish line wins. Sportsman racing is handicapped (slower car getting a head start) using an index (a lowest e.t. allowed), and cars running under (quicker than) their index "break out" and lose. The slowest cars, bracket racers, are also handicapped, but rather than an index, they use a dial-in. Off-road racing In off-road racing, various classes of specially modified vehicles, including cars, compete in races through off-road environments. In North America these races often take place in the desert, such as the famous Baja 1000. Another format for off-road racing happens on closed-course short course tracks such as Crandon International Off-Road Raceway. In the 1980s and 1990s,
(Le Mans prototype) cars with LMP1 being run mainly by manufacturers and the slightly less powerful LMP2 cars run by privateer teams. All three Le Mans Series run GT cars in addition to Le Mans Prototypes; these cars have different restrictions than the FIA GT cars. Another prototype and GT racing championship exists in the United States; the Grand-Am, which began in 2000, sanctions its own endurance series, the Rolex Sports Car Series, which consists of slower and lower-cost race cars compared to LMP and FIA GT cars. The Rolex Sports Car Series and American Le Mans Series announced a merger between the two series forming the WeatherTech SportsCar Championship starting in 2014. These races are often conducted over long distances, at least , and cars are driven by teams of two or more drivers, switching every few hours. Due to the performance difference between production-based sports cars and purpose-built sports prototypes, one race usually involves several racing classes, each fighting for their own championship. Famous sports car races include the 24 Hours of Le Mans, the Rolex 24 at Daytona, 24 Hours of Spa-Franchorchamps, the 12 Hours of Sebring, the 6 Hours of Watkins Glen, and the Petit Le Mans at Road Atlanta. There is also the 24 Hours of the Nürburgring on the infamous Nordschleife track and the Dubai 24 Hour, which is aimed at GT3 and below cars with a mixture of professional and pro-am drivers. Production-car racing Production-car racing, otherwise known as "showroom stock" in the US, is an economical and rules-restricted version of touring-car racing, mainly used to restrict costs. Numerous production racing categories are based on particular makes of cars. Most series, with a few exceptions, follow the Group N regulation. There are several different series that are run all over the world, most notably, Japan's Super Taikyu and IMSA's Firehawk Series, which ran in the 1980s and 1990s all over the United States. One-make racing One-make, or single marque, championships often employ production-based cars from a single manufacturer or even a single model from a manufacturer's range. There are numerous notable one-make formulae from various countries and regions, some of which – such as the Porsche Supercup and, previously, IROC – have fostered many distinct national championships. Single marque series are often found at club level, to which the production-based cars, limited modifications, and close parity in performance are very well suited. Some of the better-known single-make series are the Mini 7 Championship (Europe's longest-running one make championship), the Radical European Masters, John Cooper Mini Challenge, Clio Cup, Ginettas, Caterhams, BMWs, and MX5s. There are also single-chassis single seater formulae, such as Formula Renault and Formula BMW, usually as "feeder" series for "senior" race formula (in the fashion of farm teams). Time Attack Series Time attack events began in Japan in the mid-1960s. They have since spread around the world. Time Attack racing is a type of motorsport in which the racers compete for the best lap time. Each vehicle is timed through numerous circuits of the track. The racers make a preliminary circuit, then run the timed laps, and then finish with a cool-down lap. Time Attack and time trial events differ by competition format and rules. Time Attack has a limited number of laps, time trial has open sessions. Unlike other timed motorsport disciplines such as sprinting and hillclimbing, the car is required to start off under full rolling start conditions following a warm up lap in which they will have to accelerate out as fast as possible to determine how fast they enter their timed lap. Commonly, as the cars are modified road-going cars, they are required to have tires authorized for road use. Stock car racing In North America, stock car racing is the most popular form of auto racing. Primarily raced on oval tracks, stock cars vaguely resemble production cars, but are in fact purpose-built racing machines that are built to tight specifications and, together with touring cars, also called Silhouette racing cars. The largest stock car racing governing body is NASCAR (National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing). NASCAR's premier series is the NASCAR Cup Series, its most famous races being the Daytona 500, the Southern 500, the Coca-Cola 600, and the Brickyard 400. NASCAR also runs several feeder series, including the Xfinity Series and Gander RV & Outdoors Truck Series (a pickup truck racing series). The series conduct races across the entire continental United States. The NASCAR Pinty's Series conducts races across Canada and the NASCAR PEAK Mexico Series conducts races across Mexico. NASCAR also governs several smaller regional series, such as the Whelen Modified Tour. Modified cars are best described as open-wheel cars. Modified cars have no parts related to the stock vehicle for which they are named after. A number of modified cars display a "manufacturer's" logo and "vehicle name", yet use components produced by another automobile manufacturer. There are also other stock car governing bodies, most notably the Automobile Racing Club of America (ARCA). In the UK, British Stock car racing is also referred to as "Short Circuit Racing". UK Stock car racing started in the 1950s and grew rapidly through the 1960s and 1970s. Events take place on shale or tarmac tracks – usually around 1/4 mile long. The governing bodies for the sport are the Oval Racing Council (ORC) and BriSCA. Both bodies are made up of individual stadium promoters. There are around 35 tracks in the UK and upwards of 7000 active drivers. The sport is split into three basic divisions – distinguished by the rules regarding car contact during racing. The most famous championship is the BriSCA F1 Stock Cars. Full-contact formulas include Bangers, Bombers and Rookie Bangers – and racing features Demolitions Derbies, Figure of Eight and Oval Racing. Semi Contact Formulas include BriSCA F1, F2 and Superstox – where bumpers are used tactically. Non-contact formulas include National Hot Rods, Stock Rods, and Lightning Rods. Rallying Rallying at international and most national championship levels involves two classes of homologated road-legal production-based cars; Group N production cars and more modified Group A cars. Cars compete on closed public roads or off-road areas on a point-to-point format where participants and their co-drivers "rally" to a set of points, leaving in regular intervals from start points. A rally is typically conducted over a number of "special stages" on any terrain, which entrants are often allowed to scout beforehand at reduced speeds compiling detailed shorthand descriptions of the track or road as they go. These detailed descriptions are known as pace notes. During the actual rally, the co-driver reads the pace notes aloud (using an in-helmet intercom system) to the driver, enabling them to complete each stage as quickly as possible. Competition is based on lowest total elapsed time over the course of an event's special stages, including penalties. The top series is the World Rally Championship (WRC), first contested in 1973, but there are also regional championships, and many countries have their own national championships. Some famous rallies include the Monte Carlo Rally, Rally Argentina, Rally Finland, and Rally GB. Another famous event (actually best described as a rally raid) is the Paris-Dakar Rally, conceived in 1978. There are also many smaller, club level, categories of rallies, which are popular with amateurs, making up the "grass roots" of motor sports. Cars at this level may not comply fully with the requirements of group A or group N homologation. Other major rally events include the British Rally Championship, Intercontinental Rally Challenge, African Rally Championship, Asia-Pacific Rally Championship, and endurance rally events like the Dakar Rally. The Targa Tasmania, held on the Australian island state of Tasmania and run annually since 1992, takes its name from the Targa Florio, a former motoring event held on the island of Sicily. The competition concept is drawn directly from the best features of the Mille Miglia, the Coupe des Alpes, and the Tour de Corse. Similarly named events around the world include the Targa Newfoundland based in Canada, Targa West based in Western Australia, Targa New Zealand, and other smaller events. Drag racing In drag racing, the objective is to complete a given straight-line distance, from a standing start, ahead of a vehicle in a parallel lane. This distance is traditionally , though has become popular since the 1990s. The vehicles may or may not be given the signal to start at the same time, depending on the class of racing. Vehicles range from the everyday car to the purpose-built dragster. Speeds and elapsed time differ from class to class. Average street cars cover the mile in 12 to 16 seconds, whereas a top fuel dragster takes 4.5 seconds or less, reaching speeds of up to . Drag racing was organized as a sport by Wally Parks in the early 1950s through the National Hot Rod Association (NHRA). The NHRA was formed to discourage street racing. When launching, a top fuel dragster will accelerate at 3.4 g (33 m/s²), and when braking parachutes are deployed the deceleration is 4 g (39 m/s²), more than the Space Shuttle experiences. A top fuel car can be heard over away and can generate a reading from 1.5 to 3.9 on the Richter scale. Drag racing is two cars head-to-head, the winner proceeding to the next round. Professional classes are all first to the finish line wins. Sportsman racing is handicapped (slower car getting a head start) using an index (a lowest e.t. allowed), and cars running under (quicker than) their index "break out" and lose. The slowest cars, bracket racers, are also handicapped, but rather than an index, they use a dial-in. Off-road racing In off-road racing, various classes of specially modified vehicles, including cars, compete in races through off-road environments. In North America these races often take place in the desert, such as the famous Baja 1000. Another format for off-road racing happens on closed-course short course tracks such as Crandon International Off-Road Raceway. In the 1980s and 1990s, short course was extended to racing inside stadiums in the Mickey Thompson Entertainment Group; this format was revived by Robby Gordon in 2013 with his Stadium Super Trucks series. In Europe, "offroad" refers to events such as autocross or rallycross, while desert races and rally-raids such as the Paris-Dakar, Master Rallye or European "bajas" are called "cross-country rallies." Kart racing The modern kart was invented by Art Ingels, a fabricator at the Indianapolis-car manufacturer Kurtis-Kraft, in Southern California in 1956. Ingels took a small chainsaw engine and mounted it to a simple tube-frame chassis weighing less than 100 lb. Ingels, and everyone else who drove the kart, were startled at its performance capabilities. The sport soon blossomed in Southern California, and quickly spread around the world. Although often seen as the entry point for serious racers into the sport, kart racing, or karting, can be an economical way for amateurs to try racing and is also a fully fledged international sport in its own right. A large proportion of professional racing drivers began in karts, often from a very young age, such as Michael Schumacher and Fernando Alonso. Several former motorcycle champions have also taken up the sport, notably Wayne Rainey, who was paralysed in a racing accident and now races a hand-controlled kart. As one of the cheapest ways to race, karting is seeing its popularity grow worldwide. Despite their diminutive size, karts of the most powerful class, superkart (assuming a weight of 205 kg (452 lb), and a power output of 100 hp (75 kW)), can have a power-to-weight ratio (including the driver) of 490 hp/tonne (0.22 hp/lb). Without the driver,
to Rothbard is self-ownership which he believes is both axiomatic and universal. In general, the non-aggression axiom is described by Rothbard as a prohibition against the initiation of force, or the threat of force, against persons (in which he includes direct violence, assault and murder) or property (in which he includes fraud, burglary, theft and taxation). The initiation of force is usually referred to as aggression or coercion. The difference between anarcho-capitalists and other libertarians is largely one of the degree to which they take this axiom. Minarchist libertarians such as libertarian political parties would retain the state in some smaller and less invasive form, retaining at the very least public police, courts, and military. However, others might give further allowance for other government programs. In contrast, Rothbard rejects any level of "state intervention", defining the state as a coercive monopoly and as the only entity in human society that derives its income from what he refers to as "legal aggression", an entity that inherently violates the central axiom of libertarianism. Some anarcho-capitalists such as Rothbard accept the non-aggression axiom on an intrinsic moral or natural law basis. It is in terms of the non-aggression principle that Rothbard defined his interpretation of anarchism, "a system which provides no legal sanction for such aggression ['against person and property']"; and wrote that "what anarchism proposes to do, then, is to abolish the State, i.e. to abolish the regularized institution of aggressive coercion". In an interview published in the American libertarian journal The New Banner, Rothbard stated that "capitalism is the fullest expression of anarchism, and anarchism is the fullest expression of capitalism". Property Private property Anarcho-capitalists postulate the privatization of everything, including cities with all their infrastructures, public spaces, streets and urban management systems. Central to Rothbardian anarcho-capitalism are the concepts of self-ownership and original appropriation that combines personal and private property. Hans-Hermann Hoppe wrote: Rothbard however rejected the Lockean proviso, and followed the rule of "first come, first served", without any consideration of how much resources are left for other individuals, which opposed John Locke's beliefs. Anarcho-capitalists advocate private ownership of the means of production and the allocation of the product of labor created by workers within the context of wage labour and the free market – that is through decisions made by property and capital owners, regardless of what an individual needs or does not need. Original appropriation allows an individual to claim any never-before-used resources, including land and by improving or otherwise using it, own it with the same "absolute right" as their own body, and retaining those rights forever, regardless of the resource is still being used by them. According to Rothbard, property can only come about through labor, therefore original appropriation of land is not legitimate by merely claiming it or building a fence around it—it is only by using land and by mixing one's labor with it that original appropriation is legitimized: "Any attempt to claim a new resource that someone does not use would have to be considered invasive of the property right of whoever the first user will turn out to be". Rothbard argued that the resource need not continue to be used in order for it to be the person's property as "for once his labor is mixed with the natural resource, it remains his owned land. His labor has been irretrievably mixed with the land, and the land is therefore his or his assigns' in perpetuity". Rothbard also spoke about a theory of justice in property rights: In Justice and Property Right, Rothbard wrote that "any identifiable owner (the original victim of theft or his heir) must be accorded his property". In the case of slavery, Rothbard claimed that in many cases "the old plantations and the heirs and descendants of the former slaves can be identified, and the reparations can become highly specific indeed". Rothbard believed slaves rightfully own any land they were forced to work on under the homestead principle. If property is held by the state, Rothbard advocated its confiscation and "return to the private sector", writing that "any property in the hands of the State is in the hands of thieves, and should be liberated as quickly as possible". Rothbard proposed that state universities be seized by the students and faculty under the homestead principle. Rothbard also supported the expropriation of nominally "private property" if it is the result of state-initiated force such as businesses that receive grants and subsidies. Rothbard further proposed that businesses who receive at least 50% of their funding from the state be confiscated by the workers, writing: "What we libertarians object to, then, is not government per se but crime, what we object to is unjust or criminal property titles; what we are for is not 'private' property per se but just, innocent, non-criminal private property". Similarly, Karl Hess wrote that "libertarianism wants to advance principles of property but that
in practice and a de facto state, and ignores the coercive nature of capitalism; the term "anarcho-capitalism" is generally seen as fraudulent and an oxymoron by anarchists. Philosophy Author J Michael Oliver says that during the 1960s, a philosophical movement arose in the United States that championed "reason, ethical egoism, and free-market capitalism". According to Oliver, anarcho-capitalism is a political theory which logically follows the philosophical conclusions of Objectivism, a philosophical system developed by Russian-American writer Ayn Rand. Professor Lisa Duggan also says that Rand's anti-statist, pro–“free market” stances went on to shape the politics of anarcho-capitalism. According to Patrik Schumacher, the political ideology and programme of Anarcho-capitalism envisages the radicalisation of the neoliberal "rollback of the state", and calls for the extension of "entrepreneurial freedom" and "competitive market rationality" to the point where the scope for private enterprise is all-encompassing and "leaves no space for state action whatsoever". On the state Anarcho-capitalists opposition to the state is reflected in their goal of keeping but privatizing all functions of the state. They see capitalism and the "free market" as the basis for a free and prosperous society. Murray Rothbard, who is credited with coining the term anarcho-capitalism, stated that the difference between free-market capitalism and state capitalism is the difference between "peaceful, voluntary exchange" and a "collusive partnership" between business and government that "uses coercion to subvert the free market". Rothbard argued that all government services, including defense, are inefficient because they lack a market-based pricing mechanism regulated by "the voluntary decisions of consumers purchasing services that fulfill their highest-priority needs" and by investors seeking the most profitable enterprises to invest in. Furthermore, Linda and Morris Tannehill believe that no coercive monopoly of force can arise on a truly free market and that a government's citizenry can not desert them in favor of a competent protection and defense agency. Maverick Edwards of the Liberty University describes anarcho-capitalism as a political, social, and economic theory that places markets as the central "governing body" and where government no longer "grants" rights to its citizenry. Non-aggression principle Writer Stanisław Wójtowicz says that although anarcho-capitalists are against centralized states, they hold that all people would naturally share and agree to a specific moral theory based on the non-aggression principle. While the Friedmanian formulation of anarcho-capitalism is robust to the presence of violence and in fact, assumes some degree of violence will occur, anarcho-capitalism as formulated by Rothbard and others holds strongly to the central libertarian nonaggression axiom, sometimes non-aggression principle. Rothbard wrote: Rothbard's defense of the self-ownership principle stems from what he believed to be his falsification of all other alternatives, namely that either a group of people can own another group of people, or that no single person has full ownership over one's self. Rothbard dismisses these two cases on the basis that they cannot result in a universal ethic, i.e. a just natural law that can govern all people, independent of place and time. The only alternative that remains to Rothbard is self-ownership which he believes is both axiomatic and universal. In general, the non-aggression axiom is described by Rothbard as a prohibition against the initiation of force, or the threat of force, against persons (in which he includes direct violence, assault and murder) or property (in which he includes fraud, burglary, theft and taxation). The initiation of force is usually referred to as aggression or coercion. The difference between anarcho-capitalists and other libertarians is largely one of the degree to which they take this axiom. Minarchist libertarians such as libertarian political parties would retain the state in some smaller and less invasive form, retaining at the very least public police, courts, and military. However, others might give further allowance for other government programs. In contrast, Rothbard rejects any level of "state intervention", defining the state as a coercive monopoly and as the only entity in human society that derives its income from what he refers to as "legal aggression", an entity that inherently violates the central axiom of libertarianism. Some anarcho-capitalists such as Rothbard accept the non-aggression axiom on an intrinsic moral or natural law basis. It is in terms of the non-aggression principle that Rothbard defined his interpretation of anarchism, "a system which provides no legal sanction for such aggression ['against person and property']"; and wrote that "what anarchism proposes to do, then, is to abolish the State, i.e. to abolish the regularized institution of aggressive coercion". In an interview published in the American libertarian journal The New Banner, Rothbard stated that "capitalism is the fullest expression of anarchism, and anarchism is the fullest expression of capitalism". Property Private property Anarcho-capitalists postulate the privatization of everything, including cities with all their infrastructures, public spaces, streets and urban management systems. Central to Rothbardian anarcho-capitalism are the concepts of self-ownership and original appropriation that combines personal and private property. Hans-Hermann Hoppe wrote: Rothbard however rejected the Lockean proviso, and
Piaget, Swiss psychologist and philosopher (d. 1980) 1899 – P. L. Travers, Australian-English author and actress (d. 1996) 1900 – Charles Farrell, American actor and singer (d. 1990) 1901–present 1902 – Zino Francescatti, French violinist (d. 1991) 1902 – Panteleimon Ponomarenko, Russian general and politician (d. 1984) 1905 – Leo Genn, British actor and barrister (d. 1978) 1909 – Vinayaka Krishna Gokak, Indian scholar, author, and academic (d. 1992) 1909 – Willa Beatrice Player, American educator, first Black woman college president (d. 2003) 1909 – Adam von Trott zu Solz, German lawyer and diplomat (d. 1944) 1911 – William Alfred Fowler, American astronomer and astrophysicist, Nobel Laureate (d. 1996) 1911 – Eddie Futch, American boxer and trainer (d. 2001) 1911 – John McQuade, Northern Irish soldier, boxer, and politician (d. 1984) 1913 – Wilbur Norman Christiansen, Australian astronomer and engineer (d. 2007) 1914 – Ferenc Fricsay, Hungarian-Austrian conductor and director (d. 1963) 1914 – Tove Jansson, Finnish author and illustrator (d. 2001) 1914 – Joe Mercer, English footballer and manager (d. 1990) 1915 – Mareta West, American astronomer and geologist (d. 1998) 1918 – Kermit Beahan, American colonel (d. 1989) 1918 – Giles Cooper, Irish soldier and playwright (d. 1966) 1918 – Albert Seedman, American police officer (d. 2013) 1919 – Joop den Uyl, Dutch journalist, economist, and politician, Deputy Prime Minister of the Netherlands (d. 1987) 1919 – Ralph Houk, American baseball player and manager (d. 2010) 1920 – Enzo Biagi, Italian journalist and author (d. 2007) 1921 – Ernest Angley, American evangelist and author (d. 2021) 1921 – J. James Exon, American soldier and politician, 33rd Governor of Nebraska (d. 2005) 1922 – Philip Larkin, English poet and novelist (d. 1985) 1924 – Mathews Mar Barnabas, Indian metropolitan (d. 2012) 1924 – Frank Martínez, American soldier and painter (d. 2013) 1925 – David A. Huffman, American computer scientist, developed Huffman coding (d. 1999) 1926 – Denis Atkinson, Barbadian cricketer (d. 2001) 1927 – Daniel Keyes, American short story writer and novelist (d. 2014) 1927 – Robert Shaw, English actor and screenwriter (d. 1978) 1928 – Bob Cousy, American basketball player and coach 1928 – Camilla Wicks, American violinist and educator 1928 – Dolores Wilson, American soprano and actress (d. 2010) 1929 – Abdi İpekçi, Turkish journalist and activist (d. 1979) 1930 – Milt Bolling, American baseball player and scout (d. 2013) 1930 – Jacques Parizeau, Canadian economist and politician, 26th Premier of Quebec (d. 2015) 1931 – Chuck Essegian, American baseball player and lawyer 1931 – James Freeman Gilbert, American geophysicist and academic (d. 2014) 1931 – Paula Kent Meehan, American businesswoman, co-founded Redken (d. 2014) 1931 – Mário Zagallo, Brazilian footballer and coach 1932 – Tam Dalyell, Scottish academic and politician (d. 2017) 1932 – John Gomery, Canadian lawyer and jurist 1933 – Tetsuko Kuroyanagi, Japanese actress, talk show host, and author 1935 – Beverlee McKinsey, American actress (d. 2008) 1936 – Julián Javier, Dominican-American baseball player 1936 – Patrick Tse, Chinese-Hong Kong actor, director, producer, and screenwriter 1938 – Leonid Kuchma, Ukrainian engineer and politician, 2nd President of Ukraine 1938 – Rod Laver, Australian tennis player and coach 1938 – Otto Rehhagel, German footballer, coach, and manager 1939 – Hércules Brito Ruas, Brazilian footballer 1939 – Vincent Hanna, Northern Irish journalist (d. 1997) 1939 – The Mighty Hannibal, American singer-songwriter and producer (d. 2014) 1939 – Billy Henderson, American singer (d. 2007) 1939 – Bulle Ogier, French actress and screenwriter 1939 – Romano Prodi, Italian academic and politician, 52nd Prime Minister of Italy 1939 – Butch Warren, American bassist (d. 2013) 1940 – Linda Keen, American mathematician and academic 1942 – David Steinberg, Canadian actor, director, producer, and screenwriter 1943 – Ken Norton, American boxer and actor (d. 2013) 1944 – George Armstrong, English footballer (d. 2000) 1944 – Patrick Depailler, French racing driver (d. 1980) 1944 – Sam Elliott, American actor and producer 1944 – Patricia McKissack, American soldier, engineer, and author 1945 – Barbara Delinsky, American author 1945 – Aleksandr Gorelik, Russian figure skater and sportscaster (d. 2012) 1945 – Posy Simmonds, English author and illustrator 1946 – Rinus Gerritsen, Dutch rock bass player 1947 – Roy Hodgson, English footballer and manager 1947 – Barbara Mason, American R&B/soul singer-songwriter 1947 – John Varley, American author 1948 – Bill Campbell, American baseball player and coach 1949 – Jonathan Kellerman, American psychologist and author 1949 – Ted Simmons, American baseball player and coach 1951 – James Naughtie, Scottish journalist and radio host 1951 – Steve Swisher, American baseball player and manager 1952 – Prateep Ungsongtham Hata, Thai activist and politician 1953 – Kay Stenshjemmet, Norwegian speed skater 1953 – Jean Tirole, French economist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate 1954 – Ray Jennings, South African cricketer and coach 1954 – Pete Thomas, English drummer 1955 – John E. Sweeney, American lawyer and politician 1956 – Gordon Singleton, Canadian Olympic cyclist 1957 – Melanie Griffith, American actress and producer 1958 – Amanda Bearse, American actress, comedian and director 1958 – James Lileks, American journalist and blogger 1958 – Calie Pistorius, South African engineer and academic 1959 – Kurtis Blow, American rapper, producer, and actor 1959 – Michael Kors, American fashion designer 1961 – Brad Gilbert, American tennis player and sportscaster 1961 – John Key, New Zealand businessman and politician, 38th Prime Minister of New Zealand 1962 – Louis Lipps, American football player and radio host 1962 – Kevin Mack, American football player 1962 – John "Hot Rod" Williams, American basketball player (d. 2015) 1963 – Whitney Houston, American singer-songwriter, producer, and actress (d. 2012) 1963 – Jay Leggett, American actor, director, producer, and screenwriter (d. 2013) 1963 – Barton Lynch, Australian surfer 1964 – Brett Hull, Canadian-American ice hockey player and manager 1964 – Hoda Kotb, American journalist and television personality 1966 – Vinny Del Negro, American basketball player and coach 1966 – Linn Ullmann, Norwegian journalist and author 1967 – Deion Sanders, American football and baseball player 1968 – Gillian Anderson, American-British actress, activist and writer 1968 – Eric Bana, Australian actor, comedian, producer, and screenwriter 1968 – Sam Fogarino, American drummer 1968 – McG, American director and producer 1969 – Troy Percival, American baseball player and coach 1970 – Rod Brind'Amour, Canadian ice hockey player and coach 1970 – Chris Cuomo, American lawyer and journalist 1973 – Filippo Inzaghi, Italian footballer and manager 1973 – Kevin McKidd, Scottish actor and director 1973 – Gene Luen Yang, American author and illustrator 1974 – Derek Fisher, American basketball player and coach 1974 – Stephen Fung, Hong Kong actor, singer, director, and screenwriter 1974 – Lesley McKenna, Scottish snowboarder 1974 – Matt Morris, American baseball player 1974 – Kirill Reznik, American lawyer and politician 1974 – Raphaël Poirée, French biathlete 1975 – Mahesh Babu, Indian actor and producer 1975 – Valentin Kovalenko, Uzbek football referee 1975 – Mike Lamb, American baseball player 1975 – Robbie Middleby, Australian soccer player 1976 – Rhona Mitra, English actress and singer 1976 – Audrey Tautou, French model and actress 1976 – Jessica Capshaw, American actress 1977 – Jason Frasor, American baseball player 1977 – Chamique Holdsclaw, American basketball player 1977 – Ravshan Irmatov, Uzbek football referee 1977 – Adewale Ogunleye, American football player 1977 – Ime Udoka, American basketball player and coach 1977 – Mikaël Silvestre, French footballer 1978 – Dorin Chirtoacă, Moldavian lawyer and politician, Mayor of Chișinău 1978 – Ana Serradilla, Mexican actress and producer 1978 – Wesley Sonck, Belgian footballer 1979 – Michael Kingma, Australian basketball player 1979 – Lisa Nandy, British politician 1979 – Tony Stewart, American football player 1981 – Jarvis Hayes, American basketball player 1981 – Li Jiawei, Singaporean table tennis player 1982 – Joel Anthony, American basketball player 1982 – Tyson Gay, American sprinter 1982 – Yekaterina Samutsevich, Russian singer and activist 1982 – Kanstantsin Sivtsov, Belorussian cyclist 1983 – Shane O'Brien, Canadian ice hockey player 1983 – Hamilton Masakadza, Zimbabwean cricketer 1983 – Alicja Smietana, Polish-English violinist 1984 – Paul Gallagher, Scottish footballer 1985 – Luca Filippi, Italian racing driver 1985 – Filipe Luís, Brazilian footballer 1985 – Anna Kendrick, American actress and singer 1985 – Hayley Peirsol, American swimmer 1985 – JaMarcus Russell, American football player 1985 – Chandler Williams, American football player (d. 2013) 1986 – Michael Lerchl, German footballer 1986 – Daniel Preussner, German rugby player 1986 – Tyler Smith, American singer-songwriter and bass player 1987 – Marek Niit, Estonian sprinter 1988 – Anthony Castonzo, American football player 1988 – Willian, Brazilian footballer 1988 – Vasilios Koutsianikoulis, Greek footballer 1989 – Jason Heyward, American baseball player 1989 – Stefano Okaka, Italian footballer 1989 – Kento Ono, Japanese actor and model 1990 – İshak Doğan, Turkish footballer 1990 – Stuart McInally, Scottish rugby player 1990 – Brice Roger, French skier 1990 – Sarah McBride, American LGBT activist 1990 – D'Arcy Short, Australian cricketer 1991 – Alice Barlow, English actress 1991 – Alexa Bliss, American bodybuilder and wrestler 1991 – Hansika Motwani, Indian actress 1992 – Farahnaz Forotan, Afghan journalist 1993 – Jun.Q, South Korean singer and actor 1993 – Dipa Karmakar, Indian gymnast 1994 – Kelli Hubly, American soccer player 1995 – Eli Apple, American football player 1996 – Sanya Lopez, Filipino actress and model 1999 – Deniss Vasiļjevs, Latvian figure skater 2000 – Arlo Parks, British singer-songwriter Deaths Pre-1600 378 – Traianus, Roman general 378 – Valens, Roman emperor (b. 328) 803 – Irene of Athens, Byzantine ruler (b. 752) 833 – Al-Ma'mun, Iraqi caliph (b. 786) 1048 – Pope Damasus II 1107 – Emperor Horikawa of Japan (b. 1079) 1173 – Najm ad-Din Ayyub, Kurdish soldier and politician 1211 – William de Braose, 4th Lord of Bramber, exiled Anglo-Norman baron (b. 1144/53) 1260 – Walter of Kirkham, Bishop of Durham 1296 – Hugh, Count of Brienne, French crusader 1341 – Eleanor of Anjou, queen consort of Sicily (b. 1289) 1354 – Stephen, Duke of Slavonia, Hungarian prince (b. 1332) 1420 – Pierre d'Ailly, French theologian and cardinal (b. 1351) 1516 – Hieronymus Bosch, Early Netherlandish painter (b. circa 1450) 1534 – Thomas Cajetan, Italian cardinal and philosopher (b. 1470) 1580 – Metrophanes III of Constantinople (b. 1520) 1601–1900 1601 – Michael the Brave, Romanian prince (b. 1558) 1634 – William Noy, English lawyer and judge (b. 1577) 1720 – Simon Ockley, English orientalist and academic (b. 1678) 1744 – James Brydges, 1st Duke of Chandos, English academic and politician, Lord Lieutenant of Radnorshire (b. 1673) 1816 – Johann August Apel, German jurist and author (b. 1771) 1861 – Vincent Novello, English composer and publisher (b. 1781) 1886 – Samuel Ferguson, Irish lawyer and poet (b. 1810) 1901–present 1910 – Huo Yuanjia, Chinese martial artist, co-founded the Chin Woo Athletic Association (b. 1868) 1919 – Ruggero Leoncavallo, Italian composer and educator (b. 1857) 1920 – Samuel Griffith, Welsh-Australian politician, 9th Premier of Queensland (b. 1845) 1932 – John Charles Fields, Canadian mathematician, founder of the Fields Medal (b. 1863) 1942 – Edith Stein, German nun and saint (b. 1891) 1943 – Chaïm Soutine, Belarusian-French painter and educator (b. 1893) 1945 – Robert Hampton Gray, Canadian lieutenant and pilot, Victoria Cross recipient (b. 1917) 1945 – Harry Hillman, American runner and coach (b. 1881) 1946 – Bert Vogler, South African cricketer (b. 1876) 1948 – Hugo Boss, German fashion designer, founded Hugo Boss (b. 1885) 1949 – Edward Thorndike, American psychologist and academic (b. 1874) 1957 – Carl Clauberg, German Nazi physician (b. 1898) 1962 – Hermann Hesse, German-born Swiss poet, novelist, and painter, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1877) 1963 – Patrick Bouvier Kennedy, American son of John F. Kennedy (b. 1963) 1967 – Joe Orton, English author
people on board, as well as two people on the ground. 1971 – The Troubles: In Northern Ireland, the British authorities launch Operation Demetrius. The operation involves the mass arrest and internment without trial of individuals suspected of being affiliated with the Irish Republican Army (PIRA). Mass riots follow, and thousands of people flee or are forced out of their homes. 1973 – Mars 7 is launched from the USSR. 1974 – As a direct result of the Watergate scandal, Richard Nixon becomes the first President of the United States to resign from office. His Vice President, Gerald Ford, becomes president. 1991 – The Italian prosecuting magistrate Antonino Scopelliti is murdered by the 'Ndrangheta on behalf of the Sicilian Mafia while preparing the government's case in the final appeal of the Maxi Trial. 1993 – The Liberal Democratic Party of Japan loses a 38-year hold on national leadership. 1999 – Russian President Boris Yeltsin fires his Prime Minister, Sergei Stepashin, and for the fourth time fires his entire cabinet. 2006 – At least 21 suspected terrorists are arrested in the 2006 transatlantic aircraft plot that happened in the United Kingdom. The arrests are made in London, Birmingham, and High Wycombe in an overnight operation. 2013 – Gunmen open fire at a Sunni mosque in the city of Quetta killing at least ten people and injuring 30. 2014 – Michael Brown, an 18-year-old African American male in Ferguson, Missouri, is shot and killed by a Ferguson police officer after reportedly assaulting the officer and attempting to steal his weapon, sparking protests and unrest in the city. 2021 – The Tampere light rail officially started operating. Births Pre-1600 1201 – Arnold Fitz Thedmar, English historian and merchant (d. 1274) 1537 – Francesco Barozzi, Italian mathematician and astronomer (d. 1604) 1544 – Bogislaw XIII, Duke of Pomerania (d. 1606) 1590 – John Webster, colonial settler and governor of Connecticut (d. 1661) 1601–1900 1603 – Johannes Cocceius, German-Dutch theologian and academic (d. 1669) 1648 – Johann Michael Bach, German composer (d. 1694) 1653 – John Oldham, English poet and translator (d. 1683) 1674 – František Maxmilián Kaňka, Czech architect, designed the Veltrusy Mansion (d. 1766) 1696 – Joseph Wenzel I, Prince of Liechtenstein (d. 1772) 1722 – Prince Augustus William of Prussia (d. 1758) 1726 – Francesco Cetti, Italian priest, zoologist, and mathematician (d. 1778) 1748 – Bernhard Schott, German music publisher (d. 1809) 1757 – Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton, American humanitarian; wife of Alexander Hamilton (d. 1854) 1757 – Thomas Telford, Scottish architect and engineer, designed the Menai Suspension Bridge (d. 1834) 1776 – Amedeo Avogadro, Italian physicist and chemist (d. 1856) 1783 – Grand Duchess Alexandra Pavlovna of Russia (d. 1801) 1788 – Adoniram Judson, American missionary and lexicographer (d. 1850) 1797 – Charles Robert Malden, English lieutenant and surveyor (d. 1855) 1805 – Joseph Locke, English engineer and politician (d. 1860) 1845 – André Bessette, Canadian saint (d. 1937) 1847 – Maria Vittoria dal Pozzo, French-Italian wife of Amadeo I of Spain (d. 1876) 1848 – Alfred David Benjamin, Australian-born businessman and philanthropist. (d. 1900) 1861 – Dorothea Klumpke, American astronomer and academic (d. 1942) 1867 – Evelina Haverfield, Scottish nurse and activist (d. 1920) 1872 – Archduke Joseph August of Austria (d. 1962) 1874 – Reynaldo Hahn, Venezuelan composer and conductor (d. 1947) 1875 – Albert Ketèlbey, English pianist, composer, and conductor (d. 1959) 1878 – Eileen Gray, Irish architect and furniture designer (d. 1976) 1879 – John Willcock, Australian politician, 15th Premier of Western Australia, (d. 1956) 1881 – Prince Antônio Gastão of Orléans-Braganza, Brazilian prince (d. 1918) 1890 – Eino Kaila, Finnish philosopher and psychologist, attendant of the Vienna circle (d. 1958) 1896 – Erich Hückel, German physicist and chemist (d. 1980) 1896 – Jean Piaget, Swiss psychologist and philosopher (d. 1980) 1899 – P. L. Travers, Australian-English author and actress (d. 1996) 1900 – Charles Farrell, American actor and singer (d. 1990) 1901–present 1902 – Zino Francescatti, French violinist (d. 1991) 1902 – Panteleimon Ponomarenko, Russian general and politician (d. 1984) 1905 – Leo Genn, British actor and barrister (d. 1978) 1909 – Vinayaka Krishna Gokak, Indian scholar, author, and academic (d. 1992) 1909 – Willa Beatrice Player, American educator, first Black woman college president (d. 2003) 1909 – Adam von Trott zu Solz, German lawyer and diplomat (d. 1944) 1911 – William Alfred Fowler, American astronomer and astrophysicist, Nobel Laureate (d. 1996) 1911 – Eddie Futch, American boxer and trainer (d. 2001) 1911 – John McQuade, Northern Irish soldier, boxer, and politician (d. 1984) 1913 – Wilbur Norman Christiansen, Australian astronomer and engineer (d. 2007) 1914 – Ferenc Fricsay, Hungarian-Austrian conductor and director (d. 1963) 1914 – Tove Jansson, Finnish author and illustrator (d. 2001) 1914 – Joe Mercer, English footballer and manager (d. 1990) 1915 – Mareta West, American astronomer and geologist (d. 1998) 1918 – Kermit Beahan, American colonel (d. 1989) 1918 – Giles Cooper, Irish soldier and playwright (d. 1966) 1918 – Albert Seedman, American police officer (d. 2013) 1919 – Joop den Uyl, Dutch journalist, economist, and politician, Deputy Prime Minister of the Netherlands (d. 1987) 1919 – Ralph Houk, American baseball player and manager (d. 2010) 1920 – Enzo Biagi, Italian journalist and author (d. 2007) 1921 – Ernest Angley, American evangelist and author (d. 2021) 1921 – J. James Exon, American soldier and politician, 33rd Governor of Nebraska (d. 2005) 1922 – Philip Larkin, English poet and novelist (d. 1985) 1924 – Mathews Mar Barnabas, Indian metropolitan (d. 2012) 1924 – Frank Martínez, American soldier and painter (d. 2013) 1925 – David A. Huffman, American computer scientist, developed Huffman coding (d. 1999) 1926 – Denis Atkinson, Barbadian cricketer (d. 2001) 1927 – Daniel Keyes, American short story writer and novelist (d. 2014) 1927 – Robert Shaw, English actor and screenwriter (d. 1978) 1928 – Bob Cousy, American basketball player and coach 1928 – Camilla Wicks, American violinist and educator 1928 – Dolores Wilson, American soprano and actress (d. 2010) 1929 – Abdi İpekçi, Turkish journalist and activist (d. 1979) 1930 – Milt Bolling, American baseball player and scout (d. 2013) 1930 – Jacques Parizeau, Canadian economist and politician, 26th Premier of Quebec (d. 2015) 1931 – Chuck Essegian, American baseball player and lawyer 1931 – James Freeman Gilbert, American geophysicist and academic (d. 2014) 1931 – Paula Kent Meehan, American businesswoman, co-founded Redken (d. 2014) 1931 – Mário Zagallo, Brazilian footballer and coach 1932 – Tam Dalyell, Scottish academic and politician (d. 2017) 1932 – John Gomery, Canadian lawyer and jurist 1933 – Tetsuko Kuroyanagi, Japanese actress, talk show host, and author 1935 – Beverlee McKinsey, American actress (d. 2008) 1936 – Julián Javier, Dominican-American baseball player 1936 – Patrick Tse, Chinese-Hong Kong actor, director, producer, and screenwriter 1938 – Leonid Kuchma, Ukrainian engineer and politician, 2nd President of Ukraine 1938 – Rod Laver, Australian tennis player and coach 1938 – Otto Rehhagel, German footballer, coach, and manager 1939 – Hércules Brito Ruas, Brazilian footballer 1939 – Vincent Hanna, Northern Irish journalist (d. 1997) 1939 – The Mighty Hannibal, American singer-songwriter and producer (d. 2014) 1939 – Billy Henderson, American singer (d. 2007) 1939 – Bulle Ogier, French actress and screenwriter 1939 – Romano Prodi, Italian academic and politician, 52nd Prime Minister of Italy 1939 – Butch Warren, American bassist (d. 2013) 1940 – Linda Keen, American mathematician and academic 1942 – David Steinberg, Canadian actor, director, producer, and screenwriter 1943 – Ken Norton, American boxer and actor (d. 2013) 1944 – George Armstrong, English footballer (d. 2000) 1944 – Patrick Depailler, French racing driver (d. 1980) 1944 – Sam Elliott, American actor and producer 1944 – Patricia McKissack, American soldier, engineer, and author 1945 – Barbara Delinsky, American author 1945 – Aleksandr Gorelik, Russian figure skater and sportscaster (d. 2012) 1945 – Posy
ahead of a comedy, but it is possible that many of the poorer citizens (typically the main supporters of demagogues like Cleon) occupied the festival holiday with other pursuits. The conservative views expressed in the plays might therefore reflect the attitudes of the dominant group in an unrepresentative audience. The production process might also have influenced the views expressed in the plays. Throughout most of Aristophanes' career, the Chorus was essential to a play's success and it was recruited and funded by a choregus, a wealthy citizen appointed to the task by one of the archons. A choregus could regard his personal expenditure on the Chorus as a civic duty and a public honour, but Aristophanes showed in The Knights that wealthy citizens might regard civic responsibilities as punishment imposed on them by demagogues and populists like Cleon. Thus the political conservatism of the plays may reflect the views of the wealthiest section of Athenian society, on whose generosity all dramatists depended for putting on their plays. When Aristophanes' first play The Banqueters was produced, Athens was an ambitious, imperial power and the Peloponnesian War was only in its fourth year. His plays often express pride in the achievement of the older generation (the victors at Marathon) yet they are not jingoistic, and they are staunchly opposed to the war with Sparta. The plays are particularly scathing in criticism of war profiteers, among whom populists such as Cleon figure prominently. By the time his last play was produced (around 386 BC) Athens had been defeated in war, its empire had been dismantled and it had undergone a transformation from being the political to the intellectual centre of Greece. Aristophanes was part of this transformation and he shared in the intellectual fashions of the period—the structure of his plays evolves from Old Comedy until, in his last surviving play, Wealth II, it more closely resembles New Comedy. However it is uncertain whether he led or merely responded to changes in audience expectations. Aristophanes won second prize at the City Dionysia in 427 BC with his first play The Banqueters (now lost). He won first prize there with his next play, The Babylonians (also now lost). It was usual for foreign dignitaries to attend the City Dionysia, and The Babylonians caused some embarrassment for the Athenian authorities since it depicted the cities of the Delian League as slaves grinding at a mill. Some influential citizens, notably Cleon, reviled the play as slander against the polis and possibly took legal action against the author. The details of the trial are unrecorded but, speaking through the hero of his third play The Acharnians (staged at the Lenaia, where there were few or no foreign dignitaries), the poet carefully distinguishes between the polis and the real targets of his acerbic wit: Aristophanes repeatedly savages Cleon in his later plays. But these satirical diatribes appear to have had no effect on Cleon's political career—a few weeks after the performance of The Knights—a play full of anti-Cleon jokes—Cleon was elected to the prestigious board of ten generals. Cleon also seems to have had no real power to limit or control Aristophanes: the caricatures of him continued up to and even beyond his death. In the absence of clear biographical facts about Aristophanes, scholars make educated guesses based on interpretation of the language in the plays. Inscriptions and summaries or comments by Hellenistic and Byzantine scholars can also provide useful clues. We know from a combination of these sources, and especially from comments in The Knights and The Clouds, that Aristophanes' first three plays were not directed by him—they were instead directed by Callistratus and Philoneides, an arrangement that seemed to suit Aristophanes since he appears to have used these same directors in many later plays as well (Philoneides for example later directed The Frogs and he was also credited, perhaps wrongly, with directing The Wasps.) Aristophanes's use of directors complicates our reliance on the plays as sources of biographical information because apparent self-references might have been made with reference to his directors instead. Thus for example a statement by the chorus in The Acharnians seems to indicate that the "poet" had a close, personal association with the island of Aegina. Similarly, the hero in The Acharnians complains about Cleon "dragging me into court" over "last year's play." Comments made by the Chorus referring to Aristophanes in The Clouds have been interpreted as evidence that he can hardly have been more than 18 years old when his first play The Banqueters was produced. The second parabasis in Wasps appears to indicate that he reached some kind of temporary accommodation with Cleon following either the controversy over The Babylonians or a subsequent controversy over The Knights. It has been inferred from statements in The Clouds and Peace that Aristophanes was prematurely bald. Aristophanes was probably victorious at least once at the City Dionysia (with Babylonians in 427) and at least three times at the Lenaia, with The Acharnians in 425, Knights in 424, and Frogs in 405. Frogs in fact won the unique distinction of a repeat performance at a subsequent festival. A son of Aristophanes, Araros, was also a comic poet and he could have been heavily involved in the production of his father's play Wealth II in 388. Araros is also thought to have been responsible for the posthumous performances of the now lost plays Aeolosicon II and Cocalus, and it is possible that the last of these won the prize at the City Dionysia in 387. It appears that a second son, Philippus, was twice victorious at the Lenaia and he could have directed some of Eubulus’ comedies. A third son was called either Nicostratus or Philetaerus, and a man by the latter name appears in the catalogue of Lenaia victors with two victories, the first probably in the late 370s. Plato's The Symposium appears to be a useful source of biographical information about Aristophanes, but its reliability is open to doubt. It purports to be a record of conversations at a dinner party at which both Aristophanes and Socrates are guests, held some seven years after the performance of The Clouds, the play in which Socrates was cruelly caricatured. One of the guests, Alcibiades, even quotes from the play when teasing Socrates over his appearance and yet there is no indication of any ill-feeling between Socrates and Aristophanes. Plato's Aristophanes is in fact a genial character and this has been interpreted as evidence of Plato's own friendship with him (their friendship appears to be corroborated by an epitaph for Aristophanes, reputedly written by Plato, in which the playwright's soul is compared to an eternal shrine for the Graces). Plato was only a boy when the events in The Symposium are supposed to have occurred and it is possible that his Aristophanes is in fact based on a reading of the plays. For example, conversation among the guests turns to the subject of Love and Aristophanes explains his notion of it in terms of an amusing allegory, a device he often uses in his plays. He is represented as suffering an attack of hiccups and this might be a humorous reference to the crude physical jokes in his plays. He tells the other guests that he is quite happy to be thought amusing but he is wary of appearing ridiculous. This fear of being ridiculed is consistent with his declaration in The Knights that he embarked on the career of comic playwright warily after witnessing the public contempt and ridicule that other dramatists had incurred. Aristophanes survived The Peloponnesian War, two oligarchic revolutions and two democratic restorations; this has been interpreted as evidence that he was not actively involved in politics despite his highly political plays. He was probably appointed to the Council of Five Hundred for a year at the beginning of the fourth century but such appointments were very common in democratic Athens. Socrates, in the trial leading up to his own death, put the issue of a personal conscience in those troubled times quite succinctly: "...he who will really fight for the right, if he would live even for a little while, must have a private station and not a public one. Poetry The language of Aristophanes' plays, and in Old Comedy generally, was valued by ancient commentators as a model of the Attic dialect. The orator Quintilian believed that the charm and grandeur of the Attic dialect made Old Comedy an example for orators to study and follow, and he considered it inferior in these respects only to the works of Homer. A revival of interest in the Attic dialect may have been responsible for the recovery and circulation of Aristophanes' plays during the 4th and 5th centuries AD, resulting in their survival today. In Aristophanes' plays, the Attic dialect is couched in verse and his plays can be appreciated for their poetic qualities. For Aristophanes' contemporaries the works of Homer and Hesiod formed the cornerstones of Hellenic history and culture. Thus poetry had a moral and social significance that made it an inevitable topic of comic satire. Aristophanes was very conscious of literary fashions and traditions and his plays feature numerous references to other poets. These include not only rival comic dramatists such as Eupolis and Hermippus and predecessors such as Magnes, Crates and Cratinus, but also tragedians, notably Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, all three of whom are mentioned in e.g. The Frogs. Aristophanes was the equal of these great tragedians in his subtle use of lyrics. He appears to have modelled his approach to language on that of Euripides in particular, so much so that the comic dramatist Cratinus labelled him a 'Euripidaristophanist' addicted to hair-splitting niceties. A full appreciation of Aristophanes' plays requires an understanding of the poetic forms he employed with virtuoso skill, and of their different rhythms and associations. There were three broad poetic forms: iambic dialogue, tetrameter verses and lyrics: Iambic dialogue: Aristophanes achieves an effect resembling natural speech through the use of the iambic trimeter (corresponding to the effects achieved by English poets such as Shakespeare using iambic pentameters). His realistic use of the meter makes it ideal for both dialogue and soliloquy, as for instance in the prologue, before the arrival of the Chorus, when the audience is introduced to the main issues in the plot. The Acharnians opens with these three lines by the hero, Dikaiopolis (rendered here in English as iambic pentameters): How many are the things that vex my heart! Pleasures are few, so very few – just four – But stressful things are manysandthousandsandheaps! Here Aristophanes employs a frequent device, arranging the syntax so that the final word in a line comes as a comic climax. The hero's pleasures are so few he can number them (, four) but his causes for complaint are so many they beggar numerical description and he must invent his own word for them (, literally "sandhundredheaps", here paraphrased "manysandthousandsandheaps"). The use of invented compound words is another comic device frequently found in the plays. Tetrameter catalectic verses: These are long lines of anapests, trochees or iambs (where each line is ideally measured in four dipodes or pairs of feet), used in various situations within each play such as: formal debates or agons between characters (typically in anapestic rhythm); excited dialogue or heated argument (typically trochaic rhythm, the same as in early tragedy); long speeches declaimed by the Chorus in parabases (in either anapestic or trochaic rhythms); informal debates barely above the level of ordinary dialogue (typically iambic). Anapestic rhythms are naturally jaunty (as in many limericks) and trochaic meter is suited to rapid delivery (the word "trochee" is in fact derived from trechein, "to run", as demonstrated for example by choruses who enter at speed, often in aggressive mood) However, even though both these rhythms can seem to "bowl along" Aristophanes often varies them through use of complex syntax and substituted meters, adapting the rhythms to the requirements of serious argument. In an anapestic passage in The Frogs, for instance, the character Aeschylus presents a view of poetry that is supposed to be serious but which leads to a comic interruption by the god, Dionysus: AES.:It was Orpheus singing who taught us religion and how wrong people are when they kill, And we learned from Musaeus medicinal cures and the science of divination. If it's farming you want, Hesiod knows it all, when to plant, when to harvest. How godlike Homer got to be famous, I'll tell if you ask: he taught us what all good men should know, Discipline, fortitude, battle-readiness. DIO.: But no-one taught Pantocles – yesterday He was marching his men up and down on parade when the crest of his helmet fell off! The rhythm begins at a typical anapestic gallop, slows down to consider the revered poets Hesiod and Homer, then gallops off again to its comic conclusion at the expense of the unfortunate Pantocles. Such subtle variations in rhythm are common in the plays, allowing for serious points to be made while still whetting the audience's appetite for the next joke. Lyrics: Almost nothing is known about the music that accompanied Greek lyrics, and the meter is often so varied and complex that it is difficult for modern readers or audiences to get a feel for the intended effects, yet Aristophanes still impresses with the charm and simplicity of his lyrics. Some of the most memorable and haunting lyrics are dignified hymns set free of the comic action. In the example below, taken from The Wasps, the lyric is merely a comic interlude and the rhythm is steadily trochaic. The syntax in the original Greek is natural and unforced and it was probably accompanied by brisk and cheerful music, gliding to a concluding pun at the expense of Amynias, who is thought to have lost his fortune gambling. Though to myself I often seem A bright chap and not awkward, None comes close to Amynias, Son of Sellos of the Bigwig Clan, a man I once saw Dine with rich Leogorus. Now as poor as Antiphon, He lives on apples and pomegranates Yet he got himself appointed Ambassador to Pharsalus, Way up there in Thessaly, Home of the poor Penestes: Happy to be where everyone Is as penniless as he is! The pun here in English translation (Penestes–penniless) is a weak version of the Greek pun , Penéstaisi-penéstĕs, "destitute". Many of the puns in the plays are based on words that are similar rather than identical, and it has been observed that there could be more of them than scholars have yet been able to identify. Others are based on double meanings. Sometimes entire scenes are constructed on puns, as in The Acharnians with the Megarian farmer and his pigs: the Megarian farmer defies the Athenian embargo against Megarian trade, and tries to trade his daughters disguised as pigs, except "pig" was ancient slang for "vagina". Since the embargo against Megara was the pretext for the Peloponnesian War, Aristophanes naturally concludes that this whole mess happened because of "three cunts". It can be argued that the most important feature of the language of the plays is imagery, particularly the use of similes, metaphors and pictorial expressions. In The Knights, for example, the ears of a character with selective hearing are represented as parasols that open and close. In The Frogs, Aeschylus is said to compose verses in the manner of a horse rolling in a sandpit. Some plays feature revelations of human perfectibility that are poetic rather than religious in character, such as the marriage of the hero Pisthetairos to Zeus's paramour in The Birds and the "recreation" of old Athens, crowned with roses, at the end of The Knights. Rhetoric It is widely believed that Aristophanes condemned rhetoric on both moral and political grounds. He states, "a speaker trained in the new rhetoric may use his talents to deceive the jury and bewilder his opponents so thoroughly that the trial loses all semblance of fairness" He is speaking to the "art" of flattery, and evidence points towards the fact that many of Aristophanes' plays were actually created with the intent to attack the view of rhetoric. The most noticeable attack can be seen in his play Banqueters, in which two brothers from different educational backgrounds argue over which education is better. One brother comes from a background of "old-fashioned" education while the other brother appears to be a product of the sophistic education The chorus was mainly used by Aristophanes as a defense against rhetoric and would often talk about topics such as the civic duty of those who were educated in classical teachings. In Aristophanes' opinion it was the job of those educated adults to protect the public from deception and to stand as a beacon of light for those who were more gullible than others. One of the main reasons why Aristophanes was so against the sophists came into existence from the requirements listed by the leaders of the organization. Money was essential, which meant that roughly all of the pupils studying with the sophists came from upper-class backgrounds and excluded the rest of the polis. Aristophanes believed that education and knowledge was a public service and that anything that excluded willing minds was nothing but an abomination. He concludes that all politicians that study rhetoric must have "doubtful citizenships, unspeakable morals, and too much arrogance". Old Comedy The Greek word for comedy (kōmōidía) derives from the words for 'revel' and 'song' (kōmos and ōdē) and according to Aristotle comic drama actually developed from song. The first official comedy at the City Dionysia was not staged until 487/6 BC, by which time tragedy had already been long established there. The first comedy at the Lenaia was staged later still, only about 20 years before the performance there of The Acharnians, the first of Aristophanes' surviving plays. According to Aristotle, comedy was slow to gain official acceptance because nobody took it seriously, yet only 60 years after comedy first appeared at the City Dionysia, Aristophanes observed that producing comedies was the most difficult work of all. Competition at the Dionysian festivals needed dramatic conventions for plays to be judged, but it also fuelled innovations. Developments were quite rapid and Aristotle could distinguish between 'old' and 'new' comedy by 330 BC. The trend from Old Comedy to New Comedy saw a move away from highly topical concerns with real individuals and local issues towards generalized situations and stock characters. This was partly due to the internationalization of cultural perspectives during and after the Peloponnesian War. For ancient commentators such as Plutarch, New Comedy was a more sophisticated form of drama than Old Comedy. However, Old Comedy was in fact a complex and sophisticated dramatic form incorporating many approaches to humour and entertainment. In Aristophanes' early plays, the genre appears to have developed around a complex set of dramatic conventions, and these were only gradually simplified and abandoned. The City Dionysia and the Lenaia were celebrated in honour of Dionysus, the god of wine and ecstasy. (Euripides' play The Bacchae offers the best insight into 5th century ideas about this god.) Old Comedy can be understood as a celebration of the exuberant sense of release inherent in his worship. It was more interested in finding targets for satire than in any kind of advocacy. During the City Dionysia, a statue of the god was brought to the theatre from a temple outside the city, and it remained in the theatre throughout the festival, overseeing the plays like a privileged member of the audience. In The Frogs, the god appears also as a dramatic character, and he enters the theatre ludicrously disguised as Hercules. He observes to the audience that every time he is on hand to hear a joke from a comic dramatist like Phrynichus (one of Aristophanes' rivals) he ages by more than a year. This scene opens the play, and it is a reminder to the audience that nobody is above mockery in Old Comedy—not even its patron god and its practitioners. Gods, artists, politicians and ordinary citizens were legitimate targets; comedy was a kind of licensed buffoonery, and there was no legal redress for anyone who was slandered in a play. There were certain limits to the scope of the satire, but they are not easily defined. Impiety could be punished in 5th century Athens, but the absurdities implicit in the traditional religion were open to ridicule. The polis was not allowed to be slandered, but as stated in the biography section of this article, that could depend on who was
highly fanciful escape from an intolerable situation. Thus Dikaiopolis in The Acharnians contrives a private peace treaty with the Spartans; Bdelucleon in The Wasps turns his own house into a private law court in order to keep his jury-addicted father safely at home; Trygaeus in Peace flies to Olympus on a giant dung beetle to obtain an end to the Peloponnesian War; Pisthetairus in Birds sets off to establish his own colony and becomes instead the ruler of the bird kingdom and a rival to the gods. The resourceful cast: The numerous surprising developments in an Aristophanic plot, the changes in scene, and the farcical comings and goings of minor characters towards the end of a play, were managed according to theatrical convention with only three principal actors (a fourth actor, often the leader of the chorus, was permitted to deliver short speeches). Songs and addresses to the audience by the Chorus gave the actors hardly enough time off-stage to draw breath and to prepare for changes in scene. Complex structure: The action of an Aristophanic play obeyed a crazy logic of its own and yet it always unfolded within a formal, dramatic structure that was repeated with minor variations from one play to another. The different, structural elements are associated with different poetic meters and rhythms and these are generally lost in English translations. Dramatic structure The structural elements of a typical Aristophanic plot can be summarized as follows: prologue – an introductory scene with a dialogue and/or soliloquy addressed to the audience, expressed in iambic trimeter and explaining the situation that is to be resolved in the play; parodos – the arrival of the chorus, dancing and singing, sometimes followed by a choreographed skirmish with one or more actors, often expressed in long lines of tetrameters; symmetrical scenes – passages featuring songs and declaimed verses in long lines of tetrameters, arranged symmetrically in two sections such that each half resembles the other in meter and line length; the agon and parabasis can be considered specific instances of symmetrical scenes: parabasis – verses through which the Chorus addresses the audience directly, firstly in the middle of the play and again near the end (see the section below, Parabasis); agon – a formal debate that decides the outcome of the play, typically in anapestic tetrameter, though iambs are sometimes used to delineate inferior arguments; episodes – sections of dialogue in iambic trimeter, often in a succession of scenes featuring minor characters towards the end of a play; songs ('strophes'/'antistrophes' or 'odes'/'antodes') – often in symmetrical pairs where each half has the same meter and number of lines as the other, used as transitions between other structural elements, or between scenes while actors change costume, and often commenting on the action; exodus – the departure of the Chorus and the actors, in song and dance celebrating the hero's victory and sometimes celebrating a symbolic marriage. The rules of competition did not prevent a playwright arranging and adjusting these elements to suit his particular needs. In The Acharnians and Peace, for example, there is no formal agon whereas in The Clouds there are two agons. Parabasis The parabasis is an address to the audience by the chorus or chorus leader while the actors leave or have left the stage. In this role, the chorus is sometimes out of character, as the author's voice, and sometimes in character, although these capacities are often difficult to distinguish. Generally the parabasis occurs somewhere in the middle of a play and often there is a second parabasis towards the end. The elements of a parabasis have been defined and named by scholars but it is probable that Aristophanes' own understanding was less formal. The selection of elements can vary from play to play and it varies considerably within plays between first and second parabasis. The early plays (The Acharnians to The Birds) are fairly uniform in their approach however and the following elements of a parabasis can be found within them. kommation: This is a brief prelude, comprising short lines and often including a valediction to the departing actors, such as (Go rejoicing!). parabasis proper: This is usually a defense of the author's work and it includes criticism of the audience's attitude. It is declaimed in long lines of 'anapestic tetrameters'. Aristophanes himself refers to the parabasis proper only as 'anapests'. pnigos: Sometimes known as 'a choker', it comprises a few short lines appended to the parabasis proper as a kind of rapid patter (it has been suggested that some of the effects achieved in a pnigos can be heard in "The Lord Chancellor's Nightmare Song", in act 2 of Gilbert and Sullivan's Iolanthe). epirrhematic syzygies: These are symmetrical scenes that mirror each other in meter and number of lines. They form part of the first parabasis and they often comprise the entire second parabasis. They are characterized by the following elements: strophe or ode: These are lyrics in a variety of meters, sung by the Chorus in the first parabasis as an invocation to the gods and as a comic interlude in the second parabasis. epirrhema: These are usually long lines of trochaic tetrameters. Broadly political in their significance, they were probably spoken by the leader of the Chorus in character. antistrophe or antode: These are songs that mirror the strophe/ode in meter, length and function. antepirrhema. This is another declaimed passage and it mirrors the epirrhema in meter, length and function. The Wasps is thought to offer the best example of a conventional approach and the elements of a parabasis can be identified and located in that play as follows. {| class="wikitable" style="margin: 1em auto 1em auto; background-color: #ffffff" ! Elements in The Wasps ! 1st parabasis ! 2nd parabasis |- | kommation | lines 1009–1014 | --- |- | parabasis proper | lines 1015–1050 | --- |- | pnigos | lines 1051–1059 | --- |- | strophe | lines 1060–1070 | lines 1265–1274 |- | epirrhema | lines 1071–1090 | lines 1275–1283 |- | antistrophe | lines 1091–1101 | missing |- | antepirrhema | lines 1102–1121 | lines 1284–1291 |} Textual corruption is probably the reason for the absence of the antistrophe in the second parabasis. However, there are several variations from the ideal even within the early plays. For example, the parabasis proper in The Clouds (lines 518–562) is composed in eupolidean meter rather than in anapests and the second parabasis includes a kommation but it lacks strophe, antistrophe and antepirrhema (The Clouds lines 1113–1130). The second parabasis in The Acharnians lines 971–999 can be considered a hybrid parabasis/song (i.e. the declaimed sections are merely continuations of the strophe and antistrophe) and, unlike the typical parabasis, it seems to comment on actions that occur on stage during the address. An understanding of Old Comedy conventions such as the parabasis is necessary for a proper understanding of Aristophanes' plays; on the other hand, a sensitive appreciation of the plays is necessary for a proper understanding of the conventions. Influence and legacy The tragic dramatists, Sophocles and Euripides, died near the end of the Peloponnesian War and the art of tragedy thereafter ceased to develop, yet comedy did continue to evolve after the defeat of Athens and it is possible that it did so because, in Aristophanes, it had a master craftsman who lived long enough to help usher it into a new age. Indeed, according to one ancient source (Platonius, c.9th Century AD), one of Aristophanes's last plays, Aioliskon, had neither a parabasis nor any choral lyrics (making it a type of Middle Comedy), while Kolakos anticipated all the elements of New Comedy, including a rape and a recognition scene. Aristophanes seems to have had some appreciation of his formative role in the development of comedy, as indicated by his comment in Clouds that his audience would be judged by other times according to its reception of his plays. Clouds was awarded third (i.e. last) place after its original performance and the text that has come down to the modern age was a subsequent draft that Aristophanes intended to be read rather than acted. The circulation of his plays in manuscript extended their influence beyond the original audience, over whom in fact they seem to have had little or no practical influence: they did not affect the career of Cleon, they failed to persuade the Athenians to pursue an honourable peace with Sparta and it is not clear that they were instrumental in the trial and execution of Socrates, whose death probably resulted from public animosity towards the philosopher's disgraced associates (such as Alcibiades), exacerbated of course by his own intransigence during the trial. The plays, in manuscript form, have been put to some surprising uses—as indicated earlier, they were used in the study of rhetoric on the recommendation of Quintilian and by students of the Attic dialect in the Fourth and Fifth Centuries AD. It is possible that Plato sent copies of the plays to Dionysius of Syracuse so that he might learn about Athenian life and government. Latin translations of the plays by Andreas Divus (Venice 1528) were circulated widely throughout Europe in the Renaissance and these were soon followed by translations and adaptations in modern languages. Racine, for example, drew Les Plaideurs (1668) from The Wasps. Goethe (who turned to Aristophanes for a warmer and more vivid form of comedy than he could derive from readings of Terence and Plautus) adapted a short play Die Vögel from The Birds for performance in Weimar. Aristophanes has appealed to both conservatives and radicals in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries—Anatoly Lunacharsky, first Commissar of Enlightenment for the USSR in 1917, declared that the ancient dramatist would have a permanent place in proletarian theatre and yet conservative, Prussian intellectuals interpreted Aristophanes as a satirical opponent of social reform. The avant-gardist stage-director Karolos Koun directed a version of The Birds under the Acropolis in 1959 that established a trend in modern Greek history of breaking taboos through the voice of Aristophanes. The plays have a significance that goes beyond their artistic function, as historical documents that open the window on life and politics in classical Athens, in which respect they are perhaps as important as the writings of Thucydides. The artistic influence of the plays is immeasurable. They have contributed to the history of European theatre and that history in turn shapes our understanding of the plays. Thus for example the operettas of Gilbert and Sullivan can give us insights into Aristophanes' plays and similarly the plays can give us insights into the operettas. The plays are a source of famous sayings, such as "By words the mind is winged." Listed below are some of the many works influenced (more or less) by Aristophanes. Drama 1909: Wasps, original Greek, Cambridge University undergraduate production, music by Vaughan Williams; 2004, July–October: The Frogs (musical), adapted by Nathan Lane, music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, performed at The Vivian Beaumont Theater Broadway; 1962–2006: various plays by students and staff, Kings College London, in the original Greek: Frogs 1962, 1971, 1988; Thesmophoriazusae 1965, 1974, 1985; The Acharnians 1968, 1992, 2004; Clouds 1977, 1990; Birds 1982, 2000; Ecclesiazusae 2006; Peace 1970; Wasps 1981 2002: Lysistrata, adapted by Robert Brustein, music by Galt McDermot, performed by American Repertory Theatre, Boston US; 2008, May–June: Frogs, adapted by David Greenspan, music by Thomas Cabaniss, performed by Classic Stage Company, New York, US. Literature The romantic poet, Percy Shelley, wrote a comic, lyrical drama (Swellfoot the Tyrant) in imitation of Aristophanes' play The Frogs after he was reminded of the Chorus in that play by a herd of pigs passing to market under the window of his lodgings in San Giuliano, Italy. Aristophanes (particularly in reference to The Clouds) is mentioned frequently by the character Menedemos in the Hellenic Traders series of novels by H. N. Turteltaub. A liberal version of the comedies have been published in comic book format, initially by "Agrotikes Ekdoseis" during the 1980s and republished over the years by other companies. The plot was written by Tasos Apostolidis and the sketches were of George Akokalidis. The stories feature either Aristophanes narrating them, directing the play, or even as a character inside one of his stories. Radio shows Acropolis Now is a comedy radio show for the BBC set in Ancient Greece. It features Aristophanes, Socrates and many other famous Greeks. (Not to be confused with the Australian sitcom of the same name.) Aristophanes is characterised as a celebrity playwright, and most of his plays have the title formula: One of Our [e.g] Slaves has an Enormous Knob (a reference to the exaggerated appendages worn by Greek comic actors) Aristophanes Against the World was a radio play by Martyn Wade and broadcast on BBC Radio 4. Loosely based on several of his plays, it featured Clive Merrison as Aristophanes. The Wasps, radio play adapted by David Pountney, music by Vaughan Williams, recorded 26–28 July 2005, Albert Halls, Bolten, in association with BBC, under Halle label Music Satiric Dances for a Comedy by Aristophanes is a three-movement piece for concert band composed by Norman Dello Joio. It was commissioned in commemoration of the Bicentennial of 19 April 1775 (the start of the American Revolutionary War) by the Concord (Massachusetts) Band. The commission was funded by the Town of Concord and assistance was given by the Eastern National Park and Monument Association in cooperation with the National Park Service. Ralph Vaughan Williams wrote The Wasps for a 1909 Cambridge University production of the play. Translation of Aristophanes Alan H. Sommerstein believes that although there are good translations of Aristophanes' comedies in English, none could be flawless, "for there is much truth in the paradox that the only really perfect translation is the original."
the totality of being and to Being in itself". Schweitzer claims that this form of mysticism is more intellectual and can be found "among the Brahmans and in the Buddha, in Platonism, in Stoicism, in Spinoza, Schopenhauer, and Hegel". Next, Schweitzer poses the question: "Of what precise kind then is the mysticism of Paul?" He locates Paul between the two extremes of primitive mysticism and developed mysticism. Paul stands high above primitive mysticism, due to his intellectual writings, but never speaks of being one with God or being in God. Instead, he conceives of sonship to God as "mediated and effected by means of the mystical union with Christ". He summarizes Pauline mysticism as "being in Christ" rather than "being in God". Paul's imminent eschatology (from his background in Jewish eschatology) causes him to believe that the kingdom of God has not yet come and that Christians are now living in the time of Christ. Christ-mysticism holds the field until God-mysticism becomes possible, which is in the near future. Therefore, Schweitzer argues that Paul is the only theologian who does not claim that Christians can have an experience of "being-in-God". Rather, Paul uses the phrase "being-in-Christ" to illustrate how Jesus is a mediator between the Christian community and God. Additionally, Schweitzer explains how the experience of "being-in-Christ" is not a "static partaking in the spiritual being of Christ, but as the real co-experiencing of His dying and rising again". The "realistic" partaking in the mystery of Jesus is only possible within the solidarity of the Christian community. One of Schweitzer's major arguments in The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle is that Paul's mysticism, marked by his phrase "being in Christ", gives the clue to the whole of Pauline theology. Rather than reading justification by faith as the main topic of Pauline thought, which has been the most popular argument set forward by Martin Luther, Schweitzer argues that Paul's emphasis was on the mystical union with God by "being in Christ". Jaroslav Pelikan, in his foreword to The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle, points out that: Paul's "realism" versus Hellenistic "symbolism" Schweitzer contrasts Paul's "realistic" dying and rising with Christ to the "symbolism" of Hellenism. Although Paul is widely influenced by Hellenistic thought, he is not controlled by it. Schweitzer explains that Paul focused on the idea of fellowship with the divine being through the "realistic" dying and rising with Christ rather than the "symbolic" Hellenistic act of becoming like Christ through deification. After baptism, Christians are continually renewed throughout their lifetimes due to participation in the dying and rising with Christ (most notably through the Sacraments). On the other hand, the Hellenist "lives on the store of experience which he acquired in the initiation" and is not continually affected by a shared communal experience. Another major difference between Paul's "realism" and Hellenistic "symbolism" is the exclusive nature of the former and the inclusive nature of the latter. Schweitzer unabashedly emphasizes the fact that "Paul's thought follows predestinarian lines". He explains, "only the man who is elected thereto can enter into relation with God". Although every human being is invited to become a Christian, only those who have undergone the initiation into the Christian community through baptism can share in the "realistic" dying and rising with Christ. Medicine At the age of 30, in 1905, Schweitzer answered the call of The Society of the Evangelist Missions of Paris, which was looking for a physician. The committee of this missionary society was not ready to accept his offer, considering his Lutheran theology to be "incorrect". He could easily have obtained a place in a German evangelical mission, but wished to follow the original call despite the doctrinal difficulties. Amid a hail of protests from his friends, family and colleagues, he resigned his post and re-entered the university as a student in a three-year course towards the degree of Doctorate in Medicine, a subject in which he had little knowledge or previous aptitude. He planned to spread the Gospel by the example of his Christian labour of healing, rather than through the verbal process of preaching, and believed that this service should be acceptable within any branch of Christian teaching. Even in his study of medicine, and through his clinical course, Schweitzer pursued the ideal of the philosopher-scientist. By extreme application and hard work, he completed his studies successfully at the end of 1911. His medical degree dissertation was another work on the historical Jesus, The Psychiatric Study of Jesus. He defended Jesus' mental health in it. In June 1912, he married Helene Bresslau, municipal inspector for orphans and daughter of the Jewish pan-Germanist historian Harry Bresslau. In 1912, now armed with a medical degree, Schweitzer made a definite proposal to go as a physician to work at his own expense in the Paris Missionary Society's mission at Lambaréné on the Ogooué river, in what is now Gabon, in Africa (then a French colony). He refused to attend a committee to inquire into his doctrine, but met each committee member personally and was at last accepted. Through concerts and other fund-raising, he was ready to equip a small hospital. In early 1913, he and his wife set off to establish a hospital (Albert Schweitzer Hospital) near an existing mission post. The site was nearly 200 miles (14 days by raft) upstream from the mouth of the Ogooué at Port Gentil (Cape Lopez) (and so accessible to external communications), but downstream of most tributaries, so that internal communications within Gabon converged towards Lambaréné. In the first nine months, he and his wife had about 2,000 patients to examine, some travelling many days and hundreds of kilometres to reach him. In addition to injuries, he was often treating severe sandflea and crawcraw sores, framboesia (yaws), tropical eating sores, heart disease, tropical dysentery, tropical malaria, sleeping sickness, leprosy, fevers, strangulated hernias, necrosis, abdominal tumours and chronic constipation and nicotine poisoning, while also attempting to deal with deliberate poisonings, fetishism and fear of cannibalism among the Mbahouin. Schweitzer's wife, Helene Schweitzer, was an anaesthetist for surgical operations. After briefly occupying a shed formerly used as a chicken hut, in late 1913 they built their first hospital of corrugated iron, with two 13-foot rooms (consulting room and operating theatre) and with a dispensary and sterilising room in spaces below the broad eaves. The waiting room and dormitory (42 by 20 feet) were built, like native huts, of unhewn logs along a 30-yard path leading from the hospital to the landing-place. The Schweitzers had their own bungalow and employed as their assistant Joseph, a French-speaking Galoa (Mpongwe) who first came as a patient. After World War I broke out in July 1914, Schweitzer and his wife, German citizens in a French colony when the countries were at war, were put under supervision by the French military at Lambaréné, where Schweitzer continued his work. In 1917, exhausted by over four years' work and by tropical anaemia, they were taken to Bordeaux and interned first in Garaison and then from March 1918 in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. In July 1918, after being transferred to his home in Alsace, he was a free man again. At this time Schweitzer, born a German citizen, had his parents' former (pre-1871) French citizenship reinstated and became a French citizen. Then, working as medical assistant and assistant-pastor in Strasbourg, he advanced his project on the philosophy of civilization, which had occupied his mind since 1900. By 1920, his health recovering, he was giving organ recitals and doing other fund-raising work to repay borrowings and raise funds for returning to Gabon. In 1922, he delivered the Dale Memorial Lectures in the University of Oxford, and from these in the following year appeared Volumes I and II of his great work, The Decay and Restoration of Civilization and Civilization and Ethics. The two remaining volumes, on The World-View of Reverence for Life and a fourth on the Civilized State, were never completed. In 1924, Schweitzer returned without his wife, with an Oxford undergraduate Noel Gillespie as his assistant. Everything was heavily decayed, and building and doctoring progressed together for months. He now had salvarsan for treating syphilitic ulcers and framboesia. Additional medical staff, nurse (Miss) Kottmann and Dr. Victor Nessmann, joined him in 1924, and Dr. Mark Lauterberg in 1925; the growing hospital was manned by native orderlies. Later Dr. Trensz replaced Nessmann, and Martha Lauterberg and Hans Muggenstorm joined them. Joseph also returned. In 1925–6, new hospital buildings were constructed, and also a ward for white patients, so that the site became like a village. The onset of famine and a dysentery epidemic created fresh problems. Much of the building work was carried out with the help of local people and patients. Drug advances for sleeping sickness included Germanin and tryparsamide. Trensz conducted experiments showing that the non-amoebic strain of dysentery was caused by a paracholera vibrion (facultative anaerobic bacteria). With the new hospital built and the medical team established, Schweitzer returned to Europe in 1927, this time leaving a functioning hospital at work. He was there again from 1929 to 1932. Gradually his opinions and concepts became acknowledged, not only in Europe, but worldwide. There was a further period of work in 1935. In January 1937, he returned again to Lambaréné and continued working there throughout World War II. Hospital conditions The journalist James Cameron visited Lambaréné in 1953 (when Schweitzer was 78) and found significant flaws in the practices and attitudes of Schweitzer and his staff. The hospital suffered from squalor and was without modern amenities, and Schweitzer had little contact with the local people. Cameron did not make public what he had seen at the time: according to a BBC dramatisation, he made the unusual journalistic decision to withhold the story, and resisted the expressed wish of his employers to publish an exposé. The poor conditions of the hospital in Lambaréné were also famously criticized by Nigerian professor and novelist Chinua Achebe in his essay on Joseph Conrad's novel Heart of Darkness: "In a comment which has often been quoted Schweitzer says: 'The African is indeed my brother but my junior brother.' And so he proceeded to build a hospital appropriate to the needs of junior brothers with standards of hygiene reminiscent of medical practice in the days before the germ theory of disease came into being." Schweitzer's views Colonialism Schweitzer considered his work as a medical missionary in Africa to be his response to Jesus' call to become "fishers of men" but also as a small recompense for the historic guilt of European colonizers: Schweitzer was one of colonialism's harshest critics. In a sermon that he preached on 6 January 1905, before he had told anyone of his plans to dedicate the rest of his life to work as a physician in Africa, he said: Paternalism Schweitzer was nonetheless still sometimes accused of being paternalistic in his attitude towards Africans. For instance, he thought that Gabonese independence came too early, without adequate education or accommodation to local circumstances. Edgar Berman quotes Schweitzer as having said in 1960, "No society can go from the primeval directly to an industrial state without losing the leavening that time and an agricultural period allow." Schweitzer believed dignity and respect must be extended to blacks, while also sometimes characterizing them as children. He summarized his views on European-African relations by saying "With regard to the negroes, then, I have coined the formula: 'I am your brother, it is true, but your elder brother.'" Chinua Achebe has criticized him for this characterization, though Achebe acknowledges that Schweitzer's use of the word "brother" at all was, for a European of the early 20th century, an unusual expression of human solidarity between Europeans and Africans. Schweitzer eventually emended and complicated this notion with his later statement that "The time for speaking of older and younger brothers has passed". American journalist John Gunther visited Lambaréné in the 1950s and reported Schweitzer's patronizing attitude towards Africans. He also noted the lack of Africans trained to be skilled workers. By comparison, his English contemporary Albert Ruskin Cook in Uganda had been training nurses and midwives since the 1910s, and had published a manual of midwifery in the local language of Luganda. After three decades in Africa, Schweitzer still depended on Europe for nurses. Reverence for life The keynote of Schweitzer's personal philosophy (which he considered to be his greatest contribution to mankind) was the idea of Reverence for Life ("Ehrfurcht vor dem Leben"). He thought that Western civilization was decaying because it had abandoned affirmation of life as its ethical foundation. In the Preface to Civilization and Ethics (1923) he argued that Western philosophy from Descartes to Kant had set out to explain the objective world expecting that humanity would be found to have a special meaning within it. But no such meaning was found, and the rational, life-affirming optimism of the Age of Enlightenment began to evaporate. A rift opened between this world-view, as material knowledge, and the life-view, understood as Will, expressed in the pessimist philosophies from Schopenhauer onward. Scientific materialism (advanced by Herbert Spencer and Charles Darwin) portrayed an objective world process devoid of ethics, entirely an expression of the will-to-live. Schweitzer wrote, "True philosophy must start from the most immediate and comprehensive fact of consciousness, and this may be formulated as follows: 'I am life which wills to live, and I exist in the midst of life which wills to live.'" In nature one form of life must always prey upon another. However, human consciousness holds an awareness of, and sympathy for, the will of other beings to live. An ethical human strives to escape from this contradiction so far as possible. Though we cannot perfect the endeavour we should strive for it: the will-to-live constantly renews itself, for it is both an evolutionary necessity and a spiritual phenomenon. Life and love are rooted in this same principle, in a personal spiritual relationship to the universe. Ethics themselves proceed from the need to respect the wish of other beings to exist as one does towards oneself. Even so, Schweitzer found many instances in world religions and philosophies in which the principle was denied, not least in the European Middle Ages, and in the Indian Brahminic philosophy. For Schweitzer, mankind had to accept that objective reality is ethically neutral. It could then affirm a new Enlightenment through spiritual rationalism, by giving priority to volition or ethical will as the primary meaning of life. Mankind had to choose to create the moral structures of civilization: the world-view must derive from the life-view, not vice versa. Respect for life, overcoming coarser impulses and hollow doctrines, leads the individual to live in the service of other people and of every living creature. In contemplation of the will-to-life, respect for the life of others becomes the highest principle and the defining purpose of humanity. Such was the theory which Schweitzer sought to put into practice in his own life. According to some authors, Schweitzer's thought, and specifically his development of reverence for life, was influenced by Indian religious thought and in particular the Jain principle of ahimsa, or non-violence. Albert Schweitzer noted the contribution of Indian influence in his book Indian Thought and Its Development: Further on ahimsa and the reverence for life in the same book, he elaborates on the ancient Indian didactic work of the Tirukkural, which he observed that, like the Buddha and the Bhagavad Gita, "stands for the commandment not to kill and not to damage". Translating several couplets from the work, he remarked that the Kural insists on the idea that "good must be done for its own sake" and said, "There hardly exists in the literature of the world a collection of maxims in which we find so much lofty wisdom." Later life After the birth of their daughter (Rhena Schweitzer Miller), Albert's wife, Helene Schweitzer was no longer able to live in Lambaréné due to her health. In
before the foundation of the world but was manifest in these last times for you", as well as "But the end of all things is at hand" (1 Peter 4:7) and "Surely, I come quickly." (Revelation 22:20). Schweitzer concluded his treatment of Jesus with what has been called the most famous words of twentieth-century theology: “He comes to us as One unknown, without a name, as of old, by the lake-side, He came to those men who knew him not. He speaks to us the same word: ‘Follow thou me’ and sets us to the task which He has to fulfill for our time. He commands. And to those who obey Him, whether they be wise or simple, He will reveal Himself in the toils, the conflicts, the sufferings which they shall pass through in His fellowship, and as an ineffable mystery, they shall learn in their own experience Who He is.” The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle (1931) In The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle, Schweitzer first distinguishes between two categories of mysticism: primitive and developed. Primitive mysticism "has not yet risen to a conception of the universal, and is still confined to naive views of earthly and super-earthly, temporal and eternal". Additionally, he argues that this view of a "union with the divinity, brought about by efficacious ceremonies, is found even in quite primitive religions". On the other hand, a more developed form of mysticism can be found in the Greek mystery-cults that were popular in first-century A.D. society. These included the cults of Attis, Osiris, and Mithras. A developed form of mysticism is attained when the "conception of the universal is reached and a man reflects upon his relation to the totality of being and to Being in itself". Schweitzer claims that this form of mysticism is more intellectual and can be found "among the Brahmans and in the Buddha, in Platonism, in Stoicism, in Spinoza, Schopenhauer, and Hegel". Next, Schweitzer poses the question: "Of what precise kind then is the mysticism of Paul?" He locates Paul between the two extremes of primitive mysticism and developed mysticism. Paul stands high above primitive mysticism, due to his intellectual writings, but never speaks of being one with God or being in God. Instead, he conceives of sonship to God as "mediated and effected by means of the mystical union with Christ". He summarizes Pauline mysticism as "being in Christ" rather than "being in God". Paul's imminent eschatology (from his background in Jewish eschatology) causes him to believe that the kingdom of God has not yet come and that Christians are now living in the time of Christ. Christ-mysticism holds the field until God-mysticism becomes possible, which is in the near future. Therefore, Schweitzer argues that Paul is the only theologian who does not claim that Christians can have an experience of "being-in-God". Rather, Paul uses the phrase "being-in-Christ" to illustrate how Jesus is a mediator between the Christian community and God. Additionally, Schweitzer explains how the experience of "being-in-Christ" is not a "static partaking in the spiritual being of Christ, but as the real co-experiencing of His dying and rising again". The "realistic" partaking in the mystery of Jesus is only possible within the solidarity of the Christian community. One of Schweitzer's major arguments in The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle is that Paul's mysticism, marked by his phrase "being in Christ", gives the clue to the whole of Pauline theology. Rather than reading justification by faith as the main topic of Pauline thought, which has been the most popular argument set forward by Martin Luther, Schweitzer argues that Paul's emphasis was on the mystical union with God by "being in Christ". Jaroslav Pelikan, in his foreword to The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle, points out that: Paul's "realism" versus Hellenistic "symbolism" Schweitzer contrasts Paul's "realistic" dying and rising with Christ to the "symbolism" of Hellenism. Although Paul is widely influenced by Hellenistic thought, he is not controlled by it. Schweitzer explains that Paul focused on the idea of fellowship with the divine being through the "realistic" dying and rising with Christ rather than the "symbolic" Hellenistic act of becoming like Christ through deification. After baptism, Christians are continually renewed throughout their lifetimes due to participation in the dying and rising with Christ (most notably through the Sacraments). On the other hand, the Hellenist "lives on the store of experience which he acquired in the initiation" and is not continually affected by a shared communal experience. Another major difference between Paul's "realism" and Hellenistic "symbolism" is the exclusive nature of the former and the inclusive nature of the latter. Schweitzer unabashedly emphasizes the fact that "Paul's thought follows predestinarian lines". He explains, "only the man who is elected thereto can enter into relation with God". Although every human being is invited to become a Christian, only those who have undergone the initiation into the Christian community through baptism can share in the "realistic" dying and rising with Christ. Medicine At the age of 30, in 1905, Schweitzer answered the call of The Society of the Evangelist Missions of Paris, which was looking for a physician. The committee of this missionary society was not ready to accept his offer, considering his Lutheran theology to be "incorrect". He could easily have obtained a place in a German evangelical mission, but wished to follow the original call despite the doctrinal difficulties. Amid a hail of protests from his friends, family and colleagues, he resigned his post and re-entered the university as a student in a three-year course towards the degree of Doctorate in Medicine, a subject in which he had little knowledge or previous aptitude. He planned to spread the Gospel by the example of his Christian labour of healing, rather than through the verbal process of preaching, and believed that this service should be acceptable within any branch of Christian teaching. Even in his study of medicine, and through his clinical course, Schweitzer pursued the ideal of the philosopher-scientist. By extreme application and hard work, he completed his studies successfully at the end of 1911. His medical degree dissertation was another work on the historical Jesus, The Psychiatric Study of Jesus. He defended Jesus' mental health in it. In June 1912, he married Helene Bresslau, municipal inspector for orphans and daughter of the Jewish pan-Germanist historian Harry Bresslau. In 1912, now armed with a medical degree, Schweitzer made a definite proposal to go as a physician to work at his own expense in the Paris Missionary Society's mission at Lambaréné on the Ogooué river, in what is now Gabon, in Africa (then a French colony). He refused to attend a committee to inquire into his doctrine, but met each committee member personally and was at last accepted. Through concerts and other fund-raising, he was ready to equip a small hospital. In early 1913, he and his wife set off to establish a hospital (Albert Schweitzer Hospital) near an existing mission post. The site was nearly 200 miles (14 days by raft) upstream from the mouth of the Ogooué at Port Gentil (Cape Lopez) (and so accessible to external communications), but downstream of most tributaries, so that internal communications within Gabon converged towards Lambaréné. In the first nine months, he and his wife had about 2,000 patients to examine, some travelling many days and hundreds of kilometres to reach him. In addition to injuries, he was often treating severe sandflea and crawcraw sores, framboesia (yaws), tropical eating sores, heart disease, tropical dysentery, tropical malaria, sleeping sickness, leprosy, fevers, strangulated hernias, necrosis, abdominal tumours and chronic constipation and nicotine poisoning, while also attempting to deal with deliberate poisonings, fetishism and fear of cannibalism among the Mbahouin. Schweitzer's wife, Helene Schweitzer, was an anaesthetist for surgical operations. After briefly occupying a shed formerly used as a chicken hut, in late 1913 they built their first hospital of corrugated iron, with two 13-foot rooms (consulting room and operating theatre) and with a dispensary and sterilising room in spaces below the broad eaves. The waiting room and dormitory (42 by 20 feet) were built, like native huts, of unhewn logs along a 30-yard path leading from the hospital to the landing-place. The Schweitzers had their own bungalow and employed as their assistant Joseph, a French-speaking Galoa (Mpongwe) who first came as a patient. After World War I broke out in July 1914, Schweitzer and his wife, German citizens in a French colony when the countries were at war, were put under supervision by the French military at Lambaréné, where Schweitzer continued his work. In 1917, exhausted by over four years' work and by tropical anaemia, they were taken to Bordeaux and interned first in Garaison and then from March 1918 in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. In July 1918, after being transferred to his home in Alsace, he was a free man again. At this time Schweitzer, born a German citizen, had his parents' former (pre-1871) French citizenship reinstated and became a French citizen. Then, working as medical assistant and assistant-pastor in Strasbourg, he advanced his project on the philosophy of civilization, which had occupied his mind since 1900. By 1920, his health recovering, he was giving organ recitals and doing other fund-raising work to repay borrowings and raise funds for returning to Gabon. In 1922, he delivered the Dale Memorial Lectures in the University of Oxford, and from these in the following year appeared Volumes I and II of his great work, The Decay and Restoration of Civilization and Civilization and Ethics. The two remaining volumes, on The World-View of Reverence for Life and a fourth on the Civilized State, were never completed. In 1924, Schweitzer returned without his wife, with an Oxford undergraduate Noel Gillespie as his assistant. Everything was heavily decayed, and building and doctoring progressed together for months. He now had salvarsan for treating syphilitic ulcers and framboesia. Additional medical staff, nurse (Miss) Kottmann and Dr. Victor Nessmann, joined him in 1924, and Dr. Mark Lauterberg in 1925; the growing hospital was manned by native orderlies. Later Dr. Trensz replaced Nessmann, and Martha Lauterberg and Hans Muggenstorm joined them. Joseph also returned. In 1925–6, new hospital buildings were constructed, and also a ward for white patients, so that the site became like a village. The onset of famine and a dysentery epidemic created fresh problems. Much of the building work was carried out with the help of local people and patients. Drug advances for sleeping sickness included Germanin and tryparsamide. Trensz conducted experiments showing that the non-amoebic strain of dysentery was caused by a paracholera vibrion (facultative anaerobic bacteria). With the new hospital built and the medical team established, Schweitzer returned to Europe in 1927, this time leaving a functioning hospital at work. He was there again from 1929 to 1932. Gradually his opinions and concepts became acknowledged, not only in Europe, but worldwide. There was a further period of work in 1935. In January 1937, he returned again to Lambaréné and continued working there throughout World War II. Hospital conditions The journalist James Cameron visited Lambaréné in 1953 (when Schweitzer was 78) and found significant flaws in the practices and attitudes of Schweitzer and his staff. The hospital suffered from squalor and was without modern amenities, and Schweitzer had little contact with the local people. Cameron did not make public what he had seen at the time: according to a BBC dramatisation, he made the unusual journalistic decision to withhold the story, and resisted the expressed wish of his employers to publish an exposé. The poor conditions of the hospital in Lambaréné were also famously criticized by Nigerian professor and novelist Chinua Achebe in his essay on Joseph Conrad's novel Heart of Darkness: "In a comment which has often been quoted Schweitzer says: 'The African is indeed my brother but my junior brother.' And so he proceeded to build a hospital
by individuals on the basis of whatever knowledge they have or believe to have and whatever expectations they entertain regarding external developments and especially the perceived consequences of their own intended actions. Tastes and preferences: subjective valuations of goods and services determine the demand for them so that their prices are influenced by (actual and potential) consumers. Opportunity costs: the costs with which producers and other economic actors calculate reflect the alternative opportunities that must be foregone; as productive services are employed for one purpose, all alternative uses have to be sacrificed. Marginalism: in all economic designs, the values, costs, revenues, productivity and so on are determined by the significance of the last unit added to or subtracted from the total. Time structure of production and consumption: decisions to save reflect "time preferences" regarding consumption in the immediate, distant, or indefinite future and investments are made in view of larger outputs expected to be obtained if more time-taking production processes are undertaken. He included two additional tenets held by the Mises branch of Austrian economics: Consumer sovereignty: the influence consumers have on the effective demand for goods and services and through the prices which result in free competitive markets, on the production plans of producers and investors, is not merely a hard fact but also an important objective, attainable only by complete avoidance of governmental interference with the markets and of restrictions on the freedom of sellers and buyers to follow their own judgment regarding quantities, qualities and prices of products and services. Political individualism: only when individuals are given full economic freedom will it be possible to secure political and moral freedom. Restrictions on economic freedom lead, sooner or later, to an extension of the coercive activities of the state into the political domain, undermining and eventually destroying the essential individual liberties which the capitalistic societies were able to attain in the 19th century. Contributions to economic thought Opportunity cost The opportunity cost doctrine was first explicitly formulated by the Austrian economist Friedrich von Wieser in the late 19th century. Opportunity cost is the cost of any activity measured in terms of the value of the next best alternative foregone (that is not chosen). It is the sacrifice related to the second best choice available to someone, or group, who has picked among several mutually exclusive choices. Opportunity cost is a key concept in mainstream economics and has been described as expressing "the basic relationship between scarcity and choice". The notion of opportunity cost plays a crucial part in ensuring that resources are used efficiently. Capital and interest The Austrian theory of capital and interest was first developed by Eugen Böhm von Bawerk. He stated that interest rates and profits are determined by two factors, namely supply and demand in the market for final goods and time preference. Böhm-Bawerk's theory equates capital intensity with the degree of roundaboutness of production processes. Böhm-Bawerk also argued that the law of marginal utility necessarily implies the classical law of costs. Some Austrian economists therefore entirely reject the notion that interest rates are affected by liquidity preference. Inflation In Mises's definition, inflation is an increase in the supply of money: Hayek pointed out that inflationary stimulation exploits the lag between an increase in money supply and the consequent increase in the prices of goods and services: Economic calculation problem The economic calculation problem refers to a criticism of planned economies which was first stated by Max Weber in 1920. Mises subsequently discussed Weber's idea with his student Friedrich Hayek, who developed it in various works including The Road to Serfdom. What the calculation problem essentially states is that without price signals, the factors of production cannot be allocated in the most efficient way possible, rendering planned economies inefficacious. Austrian theory emphasizes the organizing power of markets. Hayek stated that market prices reflect information, the totality of which is not known to any single individual, which determines the allocation of resources in an economy. Because socialist systems lack the individual incentives and price discovery processes by which individuals act on their personal information, Hayek argued that socialist economic planners lack all of the knowledge required to make optimal decisions. Those who agree with this criticism view it as a refutation of socialism, showing that socialism is not a viable or sustainable form of economic organization. The debate rose to prominence in the 1920s and 1930s and that specific period of the debate has come to be known by historians of economic thought as the socialist calculation debate. Mises argued in a 1920 essay "Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth" that the pricing systems in socialist economies were necessarily deficient because if the government owned the means of production, then no prices could be obtained for capital goods as they were merely internal transfers of goods in a socialist system and not "objects of exchange", unlike final goods. Therefore, they were unpriced and hence the system would be necessarily inefficient since the central planners would not know how to allocate the available resources efficiently. This led him to write "that rational economic activity is impossible in a socialist commonwealth". Business cycles The Austrian theory of the business cycle (ABCT) focuses on banks' issuance of credit as the cause of economic fluctuations. Although later elaborated by Hayek and others, the theory was first set forth by Mises, who posited that fractional reserve banks extend credit at artificially low interest rates, causing businesses to invest in relatively roundabout production processes which leads to an artificial "boom". Mises stated that this artificial "boom" then led to a misallocation of resources which he called "malinvestment" - which eventually must end in a "bust". Mises surmised how government manipulation of money and credit in the banking system throws savings and investment out of balance, resulting in misdirected investment projects that are eventually found to be unsustainable, at which point the economy has to rebalance itself through a period of corrective recession. Austrian economist Fritz Machlup summarized the Austrian view by stating, "monetary factors cause the cycle but real phenomena constitute it." For Austrians, the only prudent strategy for government is to leave money and the financial system to the free market's competitive forces to eradicate the business cycle's inflationary booms and recessionary busts, allowing markets to keep people's saving and investment decisions in place for well-coordinated economic stability and growth. A Keynesian would suggest government intervention during a recession to inject spending into the economy when people are not. However, the heart of Austrian macroeconomic theory states the government "fine tuning" through expansions and contractions in the money supply orchestrated by the government are actually the cause of business cycles because of the differing impact of the resulting interest rate changes on different stages in the structure of production. Austrian economist Thomas Woods further supports this view by arguing it is not consumption, but rather production that should be emphasized. A country cannot become rich by consuming, and therefore, by using up all their resources. Instead, production is what enables consumption as a possibility in the first place, since a producer would be working for nothing, if not for the desire to consume. Central banks According to Ludwig von Mises, central banks enable the commercial banks to fund loans at artificially low interest rates, thereby inducing an unsustainable expansion of bank credit and impeding any subsequent contraction and argued for a gold standard to constrain growth in fiduciary media. Friedrich Hayek took a different perspective not focusing on gold but focusing on regulation of the banking sector via strong central banking. Criticism General Mainstream economists generally reject modern-day Austrian economics, and argue that modern-day Austrian economists are excessively averse to the use of mathematics and statistics in economics. Austrian opposition to mathematization extends to economic theorizing only, as they argue that human behavior is too variable for overarching mathematical models to hold true across time and context. Austrians do, however, support analyzing revealed preference via mathematization to aid business and finance. Economist Paul Krugman has stated that they are unaware of holes in their own thinking because Austrians do not use "explicit models". Economist Benjamin Klein has criticized the economic methodological work of Austrian economist Israel M. Kirzner. While praising Kirzner for highlighting shortcomings in traditional methodology, Klein argued that Kirzner did not provide a viable alternative for economic methodology. Economist Tyler Cowen has written that Kirzner's theory of entrepreneurship can ultimately be reduced to a neoclassical search model and is thus not in the radical subjectivist tradition of Austrian praxeology. Cowen states that Kirzner's entrepreneurs can be modeled in mainstream terms of search. Economist Jeffrey Sachs argues that
(or inaction) of individuals; groups or "collectives" cannot act except through the actions of individual members. Groups don't think; people think. Methodological subjectivism: in the explanation of economic phenomena, we have to go back to judgments and choices made by individuals on the basis of whatever knowledge they have or believe to have and whatever expectations they entertain regarding external developments and especially the perceived consequences of their own intended actions. Tastes and preferences: subjective valuations of goods and services determine the demand for them so that their prices are influenced by (actual and potential) consumers. Opportunity costs: the costs with which producers and other economic actors calculate reflect the alternative opportunities that must be foregone; as productive services are employed for one purpose, all alternative uses have to be sacrificed. Marginalism: in all economic designs, the values, costs, revenues, productivity and so on are determined by the significance of the last unit added to or subtracted from the total. Time structure of production and consumption: decisions to save reflect "time preferences" regarding consumption in the immediate, distant, or indefinite future and investments are made in view of larger outputs expected to be obtained if more time-taking production processes are undertaken. He included two additional tenets held by the Mises branch of Austrian economics: Consumer sovereignty: the influence consumers have on the effective demand for goods and services and through the prices which result in free competitive markets, on the production plans of producers and investors, is not merely a hard fact but also an important objective, attainable only by complete avoidance of governmental interference with the markets and of restrictions on the freedom of sellers and buyers to follow their own judgment regarding quantities, qualities and prices of products and services. Political individualism: only when individuals are given full economic freedom will it be possible to secure political and moral freedom. Restrictions on economic freedom lead, sooner or later, to an extension of the coercive activities of the state into the political domain, undermining and eventually destroying the essential individual liberties which the capitalistic societies were able to attain in the 19th century. Contributions to economic thought Opportunity cost The opportunity cost doctrine was first explicitly formulated by the Austrian economist Friedrich von Wieser in the late 19th century. Opportunity cost is the cost of any activity measured in terms of the value of the next best alternative foregone (that is not chosen). It is the sacrifice related to the second best choice available to someone, or group, who has picked among several mutually exclusive choices. Opportunity cost is a key concept in mainstream economics and has been described as expressing "the basic relationship between scarcity and choice". The notion of opportunity cost plays a crucial part in ensuring that resources are used efficiently. Capital and interest The Austrian theory of capital and interest was first developed by Eugen Böhm von Bawerk. He stated that interest rates and profits are determined by two factors, namely supply and demand in the market for final goods and time preference. Böhm-Bawerk's theory equates capital intensity with the degree of roundaboutness of production processes. Böhm-Bawerk also argued that the law of marginal utility necessarily implies the classical law of costs. Some Austrian economists therefore entirely reject the notion that interest rates are affected by liquidity preference. Inflation In Mises's definition, inflation is an increase in the supply of money: Hayek pointed out that inflationary stimulation exploits the lag between an increase in money supply and the consequent increase in the prices of goods and services: Economic calculation problem The economic calculation problem refers to a criticism of planned economies which was first stated by Max Weber in 1920. Mises subsequently discussed Weber's idea with his student Friedrich Hayek, who developed it in various works including The Road to Serfdom. What the calculation problem essentially states is that without price signals, the factors of production cannot be allocated in the most efficient way possible, rendering planned economies inefficacious. Austrian theory emphasizes the organizing power of markets. Hayek stated that market prices reflect information, the totality of which is not known to any single individual, which determines the allocation of resources in an economy. Because socialist systems lack the individual incentives and price discovery processes by which individuals act on their personal information, Hayek argued that socialist economic planners lack all of the knowledge required to make optimal decisions. Those who agree with this criticism view it as a refutation of socialism, showing that socialism is not a viable or sustainable form of economic organization. The debate rose to prominence in the 1920s and 1930s and that specific period of the debate has come to be known by historians of economic thought as the socialist calculation debate. Mises argued in a 1920 essay "Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth" that the pricing systems in socialist economies were necessarily deficient because if the government owned the means of production, then no prices could be obtained for capital goods as they were merely internal transfers of goods in a socialist system and not "objects of exchange", unlike final goods. Therefore, they were unpriced and hence the system would be necessarily inefficient since the central planners would not know how to allocate the available resources efficiently. This led him to write "that rational economic activity is impossible in a socialist commonwealth". Business cycles The Austrian theory of the business cycle (ABCT) focuses on banks' issuance of credit as the cause of economic fluctuations. Although later elaborated by Hayek and others, the theory was first set forth by Mises, who posited that fractional reserve banks extend credit at artificially low interest rates, causing businesses to invest in relatively roundabout production processes which leads to an artificial "boom". Mises stated that this artificial "boom" then led to a misallocation of resources which he called "malinvestment" - which eventually must end in a "bust". Mises surmised how government manipulation of money and credit in the banking system throws savings and investment out of balance, resulting in misdirected investment projects that are eventually found to be unsustainable, at which point the economy has to rebalance itself through a period of corrective recession. Austrian economist Fritz Machlup summarized the Austrian view by stating, "monetary factors cause the cycle but real phenomena constitute it." For Austrians, the only prudent strategy for government is to leave money and the financial system to the free market's competitive forces to eradicate the business cycle's inflationary booms and recessionary busts, allowing markets to keep people's saving and investment decisions in place for well-coordinated economic stability and growth. A Keynesian would suggest government intervention during a recession to inject spending into the economy when people are not. However, the heart of Austrian macroeconomic theory states the government "fine tuning" through expansions and contractions in the money supply orchestrated by the government are actually the cause of business cycles because of the differing impact of the resulting interest rate changes on different stages in the structure of production. Austrian economist Thomas Woods further supports this view by arguing it is not consumption, but rather production that should be emphasized. A country cannot become rich by consuming, and therefore, by using up all their resources. Instead, production is what enables consumption as a possibility in the first place, since a producer would be working for nothing, if not for the desire to consume. Central banks According to Ludwig von Mises, central banks enable the commercial banks to fund loans at artificially low interest rates, thereby inducing an unsustainable expansion of bank credit and impeding any subsequent contraction and argued for a gold standard to constrain growth in fiduciary media. Friedrich Hayek took a different perspective not focusing on gold but focusing on regulation of the banking sector via strong central banking. Criticism General Mainstream economists generally reject modern-day Austrian economics, and argue that modern-day Austrian economists are excessively averse to the use of mathematics and statistics in economics. Austrian opposition to mathematization extends to economic theorizing only, as they argue that human behavior is too variable for overarching mathematical models to hold true across time and context. Austrians do, however, support analyzing revealed preference via mathematization to aid business and finance. Economist Paul Krugman has stated that they are unaware of holes in their own thinking because Austrians do not use "explicit models". Economist Benjamin Klein has criticized the economic methodological work of Austrian economist Israel M. Kirzner. While praising Kirzner for highlighting shortcomings in traditional methodology, Klein argued that Kirzner did not provide a viable alternative for economic methodology. Economist Tyler Cowen has written that Kirzner's theory of entrepreneurship can ultimately be reduced to a neoclassical search model and is thus not in the radical subjectivist tradition of Austrian praxeology. Cowen states that Kirzner's entrepreneurs can be modeled in mainstream terms of search. Economist Jeffrey Sachs argues that among developed countries, those with high rates of taxation and high social welfare spending perform better on most measures of economic performance compared to countries with low rates of taxation and low social outlays. He concludes that Friedrich Hayek was wrong to argue that high levels of government spending harms an economy and "a generous social-welfare state is not a road to serfdom but rather to fairness, economic equality and international competitiveness". Economist Bryan Caplan has noted that Mises has been criticized for overstating the strength of his case in describing socialism as "impossible" rather than as something that would need to establish non-market institutions to deal with the inefficiency. Methodology Critics generally argue that Austrian economics lacks scientific rigor and rejects scientific methods and the use of empirical data in modelling economic behavior. Some economists describe Austrian methodology as being a priori or non-empirical. Economist Mark Blaug has criticized over-reliance on methodological individualism, arguing it would rule out all macroeconomic propositions that cannot be reduced to microeconomic ones, and hence reject almost
of abscess that often involve hair follicles, with carbuncles being larger. They are usually caused by a bacterial infection. Often many different types of bacteria are involved in a single infection. In many areas of the world, the most common bacteria present is methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. Rarely, parasites can cause abscesses; this is more common in the developing world. Diagnosis of a skin abscess is usually made based on what it looks like and is confirmed by cutting it open. Ultrasound imaging may be useful in cases in which the diagnosis is not clear. In abscesses around the anus, computer tomography (CT) may be important to look for deeper infection. Standard treatment for most skin or soft tissue abscesses is cutting it open and drainage. There appears to be some benefit from also using antibiotics. A small amount of evidence supports not packing the cavity that remains with gauze after drainage. Closing this cavity right after draining it rather than leaving it open may speed healing without increasing the risk of the abscess returning. Sucking out the pus with a needle is often not sufficient. Skin abscesses are common and have become more common in recent years. Risk factors include intravenous drug use, with rates reported as high as 65% among users. In 2005, in the United States, 3.2 million people went to the emergency department for an abscess. In Australia, around 13,000 people were hospitalized in 2008 with the condition. Signs and symptoms Abscesses may occur in any kind of tissue but most frequently within the skin surface (where they may be superficial pustules known as boils or deep skin abscesses), in the lungs, brain, teeth, kidneys, and tonsils. Major complications may include spreading of the abscess material to adjacent or remote tissues, and extensive regional tissue death (gangrene). The main symptoms and signs of a skin abscess are redness, heat, swelling, pain, and loss of function. There may also be high temperature (fever) and chills. If superficial, abscesses may be fluctuant when palpated; this wave-like motion is caused by movement of the pus inside the abscess. An internal abscess is more difficult to identify, but signs include pain in the affected area, a high temperature, and generally feeling unwell. Internal abscesses rarely heal themselves, so prompt medical attention is indicated if such an abscess is suspected. An abscess can potentially be fatal depending on where it is located. Causes Risk factors for abscess formation include intravenous drug use. Another possible risk factor is a prior history of disc herniation or other spinal abnormality, though this has not been proven. Abscesses are caused by bacterial infection, parasites, or foreign substances. Bacterial infection is the most common cause. Often many different types of bacteria are involved in a single infection. In many areas of the world the most common bacteria present is methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. Among spinal subdural abscesses, methicillin-sensitive Staphylococcus aureus is the most common organism involved. Rarely parasites can cause abscesses and this is more common in the developing world. Specific parasites known to do this include dracunculiasis and myiasis. Perianal abscess Surgery of the anal fistula to drain an abscess treats the fistula and reduces likelihood of its recurrence and the need for repeated surgery. There is no evidence that fecal incontinence is a consequence of this surgery for abscess drainage. Perianal abscesses can be seen in people with, for example, inflammatory bowel disease (such as Crohn's disease) or diabetes. Often the abscess will start as an internal wound caused by ulceration, hard stool, or penetrative objects with insufficient lubrication. This wound typically becomes infected as a result of the normal presence of feces in the rectal area, and then develops into an abscess. This often presents itself as a lump of tissue near the anus which grows larger and more painful with time. Like other abscesses, perianal abscesses may require prompt medical treatment, such as an incision and debridement or lancing. Incisional abscess An incisional abscess is one that develops as a complication secondary to a surgical incision. It presents as redness and warmth at the margins of the incision with purulent drainage from it. If the diagnosis is uncertain, the wound should be aspirated with a needle, with aspiration of pus confirming the diagnosis and availing for Gram stain and bacterial culture. Pathophysiology An abscess is a defensive reaction of the tissue to prevent the spread of infectious materials to other parts of the body. The organisms or foreign materials kill the local cells, resulting in the release of cytokines. The cytokines trigger an inflammatory response, which draws large numbers of white blood cells to the area and increases the regional blood flow. The final structure of the abscess is an abscess wall, or capsule, that is formed by the adjacent healthy cells in an attempt to keep the pus from infecting neighboring structures. However, such encapsulation tends to prevent immune cells from attacking bacteria in the pus, or from reaching the causative organism or foreign object. Diagnosis An abscess is a localized collection of pus (purulent inflammatory tissue) caused by suppuration buried in a tissue, an organ, or a confined space, lined by the pyogenic membrane. Ultrasound imaging can help in a diagnosis. Classification Abscesses may be classified as either skin abscesses or internal abscesses. Skin abscesses are common; internal abscesses tend to be harder to diagnose, and more serious. Skin abscesses are also called cutaneous or subcutaneous abscesses. IV drug use
from it. If the diagnosis is uncertain, the wound should be aspirated with a needle, with aspiration of pus confirming the diagnosis and availing for Gram stain and bacterial culture. Pathophysiology An abscess is a defensive reaction of the tissue to prevent the spread of infectious materials to other parts of the body. The organisms or foreign materials kill the local cells, resulting in the release of cytokines. The cytokines trigger an inflammatory response, which draws large numbers of white blood cells to the area and increases the regional blood flow. The final structure of the abscess is an abscess wall, or capsule, that is formed by the adjacent healthy cells in an attempt to keep the pus from infecting neighboring structures. However, such encapsulation tends to prevent immune cells from attacking bacteria in the pus, or from reaching the causative organism or foreign object. Diagnosis An abscess is a localized collection of pus (purulent inflammatory tissue) caused by suppuration buried in a tissue, an organ, or a confined space, lined by the pyogenic membrane. Ultrasound imaging can help in a diagnosis. Classification Abscesses may be classified as either skin abscesses or internal abscesses. Skin abscesses are common; internal abscesses tend to be harder to diagnose, and more serious. Skin abscesses are also called cutaneous or subcutaneous abscesses. IV drug use For those with a history of intravenous drug use, an X-ray is recommended before treatment to verify that no needle fragments are present. If there is also a fever present in this population, infectious endocarditis should be considered. Differential Abscesses should be differentiated from empyemas, which are accumulations of pus in a preexisting, rather than a newly formed, anatomical cavity. Other conditions that can cause similar symptoms include: cellulitis, a sebaceous cyst, and necrotising fasciitis. Cellulitis typically also has an erythematous reaction, but does not confer any purulent drainage. Treatment The standard treatment for an uncomplicated skin or soft tissue abscess is the act of opening and draining. There does not appear to be any benefit from also using antibiotics in most cases. A small amount of evidence did not find a benefit from packing the abscess with gauze. Incision and drainage The abscess should be inspected to identify if foreign objects are a cause, which may require their removal. If foreign objects are not the cause, incising and draining the abscess is standard treatment. In critical areas where surgery presents a high risk, it may be delayed or used as a last resort. The drainage of a lung abscess may be performed by positioning the affected individual in a way that enables the contents to be discharged via the respiratory tract. Warm compresses and elevation of the limb may be beneficial for a skin abscess. Antibiotics Most people who have an uncomplicated skin abscess should not use antibiotics. Antibiotics in addition to standard incision and drainage is recommended in persons with severe abscesses, many sites of infection, rapid disease progression, the presence of cellulitis, symptoms indicating bacterial illness throughout the body, or a health condition causing immunosuppression. People who are very young or very old may also need antibiotics. If the abscess does not heal only with incision and drainage, or if the abscess is in a place that is difficult to drain such as the face, hands, or genitals, then antibiotics may be indicated. In those cases of abscess which do require antibiotic treatment, Staphylococcus aureus bacteria is a common cause and an anti-staphylococcus antibiotic such as flucloxacillin or dicloxacillin is used. The Infectious Diseases Society of America advises that the draining of an abscess is not enough to address community-acquired methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), and in those cases, traditional antibiotics may be ineffective. Alternative antibiotics effective against community-acquired MRSA often include clindamycin, doxycycline, minocycline, and trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole. The American College of Emergency Physicians advises that typical cases of abscess from MRSA get no benefit from having antibiotic treatment in addition to the standard treatment. If the condition is thought to be cellulitis rather than an abscess, consideration should be given to the possibility of the strep species as a cause, that are still sensitive to traditional anti-staphylococcus agents such as dicloxacillin or cephalexin. This would be in the case of people that are able to tolerate penicillin. Antibiotic therapy alone without surgical drainage of the abscess is seldom effective due to antibiotics often being unable to get into the abscess and their ineffectiveness at low pH levels. Culturing the wound is not needed if standard follow-up care can be provided after the incision and drainage. Performing a wound culture is unnecessary because it rarely gives information which can be used to guide treatment. Packing In North America, after drainage, an abscess cavity is often packed, perhaps with cloth, in an attempt to protect the healing wound. However, evidence from emergency medicine literature reports that packing wounds after draining causes pain to the person and does not decrease the rate of recurrence, nor bring faster healing, or fewer physician
the north, Aabybro and Nibe to the west, and Støvring and Skørping to the south. It belonged to North Jutland County. Geography Surroundings The waters in the Limfjord splitting the municipality are called Langerak to the east and Gjøl Bredning to the west. The island of Egholm is located in Gjøl Bredning, and is connected by ferry to the city of Aalborg at its southern shore. The area is typical for the north of Jutland. To the west the Limfjord broadens into an irregular lake (salt water), with low, marshy shores and many islands. Northwest is Store Vildmose ("Greater Wild bog"), a swamp where a mirage is sometimes seen in summer. Southeast lies the similar Lille Vildmose ("Lesser Wild bog"). Store Vildmose was drained and farmed in the beginning of the 20th century, and Lille Vildmose is now the largest moor in Denmark. Urban areas in Aalborg Municipality Aalborg City has a total population at 123,432. The metropolitan area is a conurbation of
is connected by ferry to the city of Aalborg at its southern shore. The area is typical for the north of Jutland. To the west the Limfjord broadens into an irregular lake (salt water), with low, marshy shores and many islands. Northwest is Store Vildmose ("Greater Wild bog"), a swamp where a mirage is sometimes seen in summer. Southeast lies the similar Lille Vildmose ("Lesser Wild bog"). Store Vildmose was drained and farmed in the beginning of the 20th century, and Lille Vildmose is now the largest moor in Denmark. Urban areas in Aalborg Municipality Aalborg City has a total population at 123,432. The metropolitan area is a conurbation of the Aalborg urban area in Himmerland (102,312) and the Nørresundby urban area in Vendsyssel (21,120). Economy North Flying has its head office on the property of Aalborg Airport in Nørresundby, Aalborg Municipality. Politics Municipal council Aalborg's municipal council consists of 31 members, elected every four years. Below are the municipal councils elected since the Municipal Reform of 2007. Twin towns – sister cities Aalborg is twinned
suburbs closer to central Aarhus in the future, with the next phase including local lines to Brabrand in the east and Hinnerup to the north. Accelerating growth since the early 2000s, brought the inner urban area to roughly 260,000 inhabitants by 2014. The rapid growth is expected to continue until at least 2030 when Aarhus municipality has set an ambitious target for 375,000 inhabitants. Geography Aarhus is located at the Bay of Aarhus facing the Kattegat sea in the east with the peninsulas of Mols and Helgenæs across the bay to the northeast. Mols and Helgenæs are both part of the larger regional peninsula of Djursland. A number of larger cities and towns is within easy reach from Aarhus by road and rail, including Randers ( by road north), Grenå (northeast), Horsens ( south) and Silkeborg ( east). Topography At Aarhus's location, the Bay of Aarhus provides a natural harbour with a depth of quite close to the shore. Aarhus was founded at the mouth of a brackish water fjord, but the original fjord no longer exists, as it has gradually narrowed into what is now the Aarhus River and the Brabrand Lake, due to natural sedimentation. The land around Aarhus was once covered by forests, remains of which exist in parts of Marselisborg Forest to the south and Riis Skov to the north. Several lakes extend west from the inner city as the landscape merges with the larger region of Søhøjlandet with heights exceeding at Himmelbjerget between Skanderborg and Silkeborg. The highest natural point in Aarhus Municipality is Jelshøj at 128 metres above sea level, in the southern district of Højbjerg. The hilltop is home to a Bronze Age barrow shrouded in local myths and legends. The hilly area around Aarhus consists of a morainal plateau from the last ice age, broken by a complex system of tunnel valleys. The most prominent valleys of this network are the Aarhus Valley in the south, stretching inland east–west with the Aarhus River, Brabrand Lake, Årslev Lake and Tåstrup Lake, and the Egå Valley to the north, with the stream of Egåen, Egå Engsø, the bog of Geding-Kasted Mose and Geding Lake. Most parts of the two valleys have been drained and subsequently farmed, but in the early 2000s some of the drainage was removed and parts of the wetlands were restored for environmental reasons. The valley system also includes the stream of Lyngbygård Å in the west and valleys to the south of the city, following erosion channels from the pre-quaternary. By contrast, the Aarhus River Valley and the Giber River Valley are late glacial meltwater valleys. The coastal cliffs along the Bay of Aarhus consist of shallow tertiary clay from the Eocene and Oligocene (57 to 24 million years ago). Climate Aarhus has a temperate oceanic climate (Köppen: Cfb) and the weather is constantly influenced by major weather systems from all four ordinal directions, resulting in unstable conditions throughout the year. Temperature varies a great deal across the seasons with a mild spring in April and May, warmer summer months from June to August, frequently rainy and windy autumn months in October and September and cooler winter months, often with frost and occasional snow, from December to March. The city centre experiences the same climatic effects as other larger cities with higher wind speeds, more fog, less precipitation and higher temperatures than the surrounding, open land. Western winds from the Atlantic and North Sea are dominant resulting in more precipitation in western Denmark. In addition, Jutland rises sufficiently in the centre to lift air to higher, colder altitudes contributing to increased precipitation in eastern Jutland. Combined, these factors make east and south Jutland comparatively wetter than other parts of the country. Average temperature over the year is with February being the coldest month () and August the warmest (). Temperatures in the sea can reach in June to August, but it is not uncommon for beaches to register locally. The geography in the area affects the local climate of the city with the Aarhus Bay imposing a temperate effect on the low-lying valley floor where central Aarhus is located. Brabrand Lake to the west further contributes to this effect and as a result, the valley has a comparably mild, temperate climate. The sandy ground on the valley floor dries up quickly after winter and warms faster in the summer than the surrounding hills of moist-retaining boulder clay. These conditions affect crops and plants that often bloom 1–2 weeks earlier in the valley than on the northern and southern hillsides. Because of the northern latitude, the number of daylight hours varies considerably between summer and winter. On the summer solstice, the sun rises at 04:26 and sets at 21:58, providing 17 hours 32 minutes of daylight. On the winter solstice, it rises at 08:37 and sets at 15:39 with 7 hours and 2 minutes of daylight. The difference in length of days and nights between summer and winter solstices is 10 hours and 30 minutes. Politics and administration Aarhus is the seat of Aarhus Municipality, and Aarhus City Council (Aarhus Byråd) is also the municipal government with headquarters in Aarhus City Hall. The Mayor of Aarhus since 2010 is Jacob Bundsgaard of the Social Democrats. Municipal elections are held every fourth year on the third Tuesday of November with the next election in 2021. The city council consists of 31 members elected for four-year terms. When an election has determined the composition of the council, it elects a mayor, two deputy mayors and five aldermen from their ranks. Anyone who is eligible to vote and who resides within the municipality can run for a seat on the city council provided they can secure endorsements and signatures from 50 inhabitants of the municipality. The first publicly elected mayor of Aarhus was appointed in 1919. In the 1970 Danish Municipal Reform the current Aarhus municipality was created by merging 20 municipalities. Aarhus was the seat of Aarhus County until the 2007 Danish municipal reform, which substituted the Danish counties with five regions and replaced Aarhus County with Central Denmark Region (Region Midtjylland), seated in Viborg. Subdivisions Aarhus Municipality has 45 electoral wards and polling stations in four electoral districts for the Folketing (national Parliament). The diocese of Aarhus has four deaneries composed of 60 parishes within Aarhus municipality. Aarhus municipality contains 21 postal districts and some parts of another 9. The urban area of Aarhus and the immediate suburbs are divided into the districts Aarhus C, Aarhus N, Aarhus V, Viby J, Højbjerg and Brabrand. Environmental planning Aarhus has increasingly been investing in environmental planning and, in accordance with national policy, aims to be -neutral and independent of fossil fuels for heating by 2030. The municipal power plants were adapted for this purpose in the 2010s. In 2015, the municipality took over three private straw-fired heating plants and the year after, a new 77 MW combined heat and power biomass plant at Lisbjerg Power Station was completed while Studstrup Power Station finished a refit to move from coal to wood chips. In conjunction with the development of the Docklands district there are plans for a utility scale seawater heat pump which will take advantage of fluctuating electricity prices to supply the district heating system. Since 2015, the city has been implementing energy saving LED technology in street lighting; by January 2019, about half of the municipal street lighting had been changed. Apart from reducing the city's CO2 emissions, it saves 30% on the electricity bill, thereby making it a self-financed project over a 20-year period. The municipality aims for a coherent and holistic administration of the water cycle to protect against, or clean up, previous pollution and encourage green growth and self-sufficiency. The main issues are excessive nutrients, adapting to increased (and increasing) levels of precipitation brought on by climate change, and securing the water supply. These goals have manifested in a number of large water treatment projects often in collaboration with private partners. In the 2000s, underground rainwater basins were built across the city while the two lakes Årslev Engsø and Egå Engsø were created in 2003 and 2006 respectively. The number of sewage treatment plants is planned to be reduced from 17 to 2 by 2025 as the treatment plants in Marselisborg and Egå are scheduled for expansion to take over all waste water treatment. They have already been refitted for biogas production to become net producers of electricity and heat. To aid the new treatment plants, and avoid floodings, sewage and stormwater throughout the municipality is planned to be separated into two different drainage systems. Construction began in 2017 in several areas, but it is a long process and is scheduled to be finished by 2085. Afforestation projects have been undertaken to prevent groundwater pollution, secure drinking water, sequester , increase biodiversity, create an attractive countryside, provide easy access to nature and offer outdoor activities to the public. In 2000, the first project, the New Forests of Aarhus, was completed, which aimed to double the forest cover in the municipality and, in 2009, another phase was announced to double forest cover once more before the year 2030. The afforestation plans were realised as a local project in collaboration with private landowners, under a larger national agenda. Other projects to expand natural habitats include a rewilding effort in Geding-Kasted Bog and continuous monitoring of the four Natura 2000 areas in the municipality. Demographics Aarhus has a population of 261,570 on for a density of 2,874/km2 (7,444/sq mi). Aarhus municipality has a population of 330,639 on 468 km2 with a density of 706/km2 (1,829/sq mi). Less than a fifth of the municipal population resides beyond city limits and almost all live in an urban area. The population of Aarhus is both younger and better-educated than the national average which can be attributed to the high concentration of educational institutions. More than 40% of the population have an academic degree while only some 14% have no secondary education or trade. The largest age group is 20- to 29-year-olds and the average age is 37.5, making it the youngest city in the country and one of its youngest municipalities. Women have slightly outnumbered men for many years. The city is home to 75 different religious groups and denominations, most of which are Christian or Muslim with a smaller number of Buddhist, Hindu, and Jewish communities. Since the 1990s there has been a marked growth in diverse new spiritual groups although the total number of followers remains small. The majority of the population are members of the Protestant state church, Church of Denmark, which is by far the largest religious institution both in the city and the country as a whole. Some 20% of the population are not officially affiliated with any religion, a percentage that has been slowly rising for many years. During the 1990s there was significant immigration from Turkey and in the 2000s, there was a fast growth in the overall immigrant community, from 27,783 people in 1999 to 40,431 in 2008. The majority of immigrants have roots outside Europe and the developed world, comprising some 25,000 people from 130 different nationalities, with the largest groups coming from the Middle East and North Africa. Some 15,000 have come from within Europe, with Poland, Germany, Romania and Norway being the largest contributors. Many immigrants have established themselves in the suburbs of Brabrand, Hasle and Viby, where the percentage of inhabitants with foreign origins has risen by 66% since 2000. This has resulted in a few so-called ghettos, defined as residential areas with more than half of inhabitants from non-Western countries and with relatively high levels of poverty and/or crime. Gellerup is the most notable neighbourhood in that respect. The ghetto-labelling has been criticized as unnecessarily stigmatising and counterproductive for social and economical development of the related areas. Economy The economy of Aarhus is predominantly knowledge- and service-based, strongly influenced by the University of Aarhus and the large healthcare industry. The service sector dominates the economy and is growing as the city transitions away from manufacturing. Trade and transportation remain important sectors, benefiting from the large port and central position on the rail network. Manufacturing has been in slow but steady decline since the 1960s while agriculture has long been a marginal sector within the municipality. The municipality is home to 175,000 jobs with some 100,000 in the private sector and the rest split between state, region and municipality. The region is a major agricultural producer, with many large farms in the outlying districts. People commute to Aarhus from as far away as Randers, Silkeborg and Skanderborg and almost a third of those employed within the Aarhus municipality commute from neighbouring communities. Aarhus is a centre for retail in the Nordic and Baltic countries, with expansive shopping centres, the busiest commercial street in the country and a dense urban core with many speciality shops. The job market is knowledge- and service-based, and the largest employment sectors are healthcare and social services, trade, education, consulting, research, industry and telecommunications. The municipality has more high- and middle-income jobs, and fewer low-income jobs, than the national average. Today, te majority of the largest companies in the municipality are in the sectors of trade, transport and media. The wind power industry has strong roots in Aarhus and the larger region of Central Jutland, and nationally, most of the revenue in the industry is generated by companies in the greater Aarhus area. The wind industry employs about a thousand people within the municipality, making it a central component in the local economy. The biotech industry is well-established in the city, with many small- and medium-sized companies mainly focused on research and development. Several major companies are headquartered in Aarhus, including four of the ten largest in the country. These include Arla Foods, one of the largest dairy groups in Europe, Salling Group, Denmark's largest retailer, Jysk, a worldwide retailer of household goods, Vestas, a global wind turbine manufacturer, Terma A/S, a major defence and aerospace manufacturer, Per Aarsleff, a civil engineering company and several large retail companies. Other large employers of note include Krifa, Systematic A/S,), and Bestseller A/S. Since the early 2000s, the city has experienced an influx of larger companies moving from other parts of the Jutland peninsula. Port of Aarhus The Port of Aarhus is one of the largest industrial ports in northern Europe with the largest container terminal in Denmark, processing more than 50% of Denmark's container traffic and accommodating the largest container vessels in the world. It is a municipal self-governing port with independent finances. The facilities handle some 9.5 million tonnes of cargo a year (2012). Grain is the principal export, while feedstuffs, stone, cement and coal are among the chief imports. Since 2012 the port has faced increasing competition from the Port of Hamburg and freight volumes have decreased somewhat from the peak in 2008. The ferry terminal presents the only alternative to the Great Belt Link for passenger transport between Jutland and Zealand. It has served different ferry companies since the first steamship route to Copenhagen opened in 1830. Currently, Mols-Linien operates the route and annually transports some two million passengers and a million vehicles. Additional roll-on/roll-off cargo ferries serve Finland and Kalundborg on a weekly basis and smaller outlying Danish ports at irregular intervals. Since the early 2000s the port has increasingly become a destination for cruise lines operating in the Baltic Sea. Tourism The ARoS Art Museum, the Old Town Museum and Tivoli Friheden are among Denmark's top tourist attractions. With a combined total of almost 1.4 million visitors they represent the driving force behind tourism but other venues such as Moesgård Museum and Kvindemuseet are also popular. The city's extensive shopping facilities are also said to be a major attraction for tourists, as are festivals, especially NorthSide and SPOT. Many visitors arrive on cruise ships: in 2012, 18 vessels visited the port with over 38,000 passengers. In the 2010s, there was a significant expansion of tourist facilities, culminating in the opening of the 240-room Comwell Hotel in July 2014, which increased the number of hotel rooms in the city by 25%. Some estimates put the number of visitors spending at least one night as high as 750,000 a year, most of them Danes from other regions, with the remainder coming mainly from Norway, Sweden, northern Germany and the United Kingdom. Overall, they spend roughly DKK 3 billion (€402 million) in the city each year. The primary motivation for tourists choosing Aarhus as a destination is experiencing the city and culture, family and couples vacation or as a part of a round trip in Denmark. The average stay is little more than three days on average. There are more than 30 tourist information spots across the city. Some of them are staffed, while others are online, publicly accessible touchscreens. The official tourist information service in Aarhus is organised under VisitAarhus, a corporate foundation initiated in 1994 by Aarhus Municipality and local commercial interest organisations. Research parks The largest research park in Aarhus is INCUBA Science Park, focused on IT and biomedical research, It is based on Denmark's first research park, Forskerpark Aarhus (Research Park Aarhus), founded in 1986, which in 2007 merged with another research park to form INCUBA Science Park. The organisation is owned partly by Aarhus University and private investors and aims to foster close relationships between public institutions and startup companies. It is physically divided across 4 locations after a new department was inaugurated in Navitas Park in 2015, which it will share with the Aarhus School of Marine and Technical Engineering and AU Engineering. Another major centre for knowledge is Agro Food Park in Skejby, established to facilitate co-operation between companies and public institutions working within food science and agriculture. In January 2017 Arla Foods will open the global innovation centre Arla Nativa in Agro Food Park and in 2018 Aarhus University is moving the Danish Centre for Food and Agriculture there as well. In 2016, some 1000 people worked at Agro Food Park, spread across 50 companies and institutions and in August 2016 Agro Food Park management published plans to expand facilities from 92,000 m2 to . In addition, Aarhus is home to the Aarhus School of Architecture, one of two Danish Ministry of Education institutions that provide degree programs in architecture, and some of the largest architecture firms in the Nordic Countries such as Schmidt Hammer Lassen Architects, Arkitema Architects and C. F. Møller Architects. Taken together these organisations form a unique concentration of expertise and knowledge in architecture outside Copenhagen, which the Danish Ministry of Business and Growth refers to as (the architecture cluster). To promote the "cluster", the School of Architecture will be given new school buildings centrally in the new Freight Station Neighborhood, planned for development in the 2020s. In the interim, the city council supports a culture, business and education centre in the area, which may continue in the future neighbourhood in some form. The future occupants of the neighbourhood will be businesses and organisations selected for their ability to be involved in the local community, and it is hoped that the area will evolve into a hotspot for creativity and design. Cityscape Aarhus has developed in stages, from the Viking Age to modern times, all visible in the city today. Many architectural styles are represented in different parts of the city such as Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque, Rococo, National Romantic, Nordic Classicism, Neoclassical, Empire and Functionalism. The city has developed around the main transport hubs - the river, the harbour, and later the railway station -, and as a result, the oldest parts are also the most central and busiest today. The streets of Volden (The Rampart) and Graven (The Moat) testify to the defences of the initial Viking town, and Allégaderingen in Midtbyen roughly follows the boundaries of that settlement. The street network in the inner city formed during the Middle Ages with narrow, curved streets and low, dense housing by the river and the coast. Vesterport (Westward Gate) still bears the name of the medieval city gate and the narrow alleyways Posthussmøgen and Telefonsmøgen are remnants of toll stations from that time. The inner city has the oldest preserved buildings, especially the Latin Quarter, with houses dating back to the early 17th century in Mejlgade and Skolegade. Medieval merchants' mansions with courtyards can be seen in Klostergade, Studsgade and Skolegade. By far, the largest part of the present-day city was built during and after the industrialization of the late 1800s, and the most represented architectural styles today are historicism and modernism, especially the subgenre of Danish functionalism of which there are many fine examples. The building boom of the 2000s has imprinted itself on Aarhus with a redeveloped harbourfront, many new neighbourhoods (also in the inner city), and a revitalized public
Viborg in extent. In 1441, Christopher III issued the oldest known charter granting market town status, although similar privileges may have existed as far back as the 12th century. The charter is the first official recognition of the town as a regional power and is by some considered Aarhus's birth certificate. The commercial and religious status spurred town growth so in 1477 the defensive earthen ramparts, ringing the town since the Viking Age, were abandoned to accommodate expansion. Parts of the ramparts are still in existence today and can be experienced as steep slopes at the riverside and they have also survived in some place names of the inner city, including the streets of Volden (The Rampart) and Graven (The Moat). Aarhus grew to become one of the largest cities in the country by the early 16th century. In 1657, octroi was imposed in larger Danish cities which changed the layout and face of Aarhus over the following decades. Wooden city walls were erected to prevent smuggling, with gates and toll booths on the major thoroughfares, Mejlgade and Studsgade. The city gates funnelled most traffic through a few streets where merchant quarters were built. In the 17th century, Aarhus entered a period of recession as it suffered blockades and bombardments during the Swedish wars and trade was dampened by the preferential treatment of the capital by the state. It was not until the middle of the 18th century growth returned in large part due to trade with the large agricultural catchment areas around the city; particularly grain proved to be a remunerative export. The first factories were established at this time as the industrial revolution reached the country and in 1810 the harbour was expanded to accommodate growing trade. Industrialisation Following the Napoleonic wars, Denmark lost Norway and was excluded from international trade for some years which caused a recession for Aarhus's trade-based economy that lasted until the 1830s. The economy turned around as the industrial revolution reached the city and factories with steam-driven machinery became more productive. In 1838, the electoral laws were reformed leading to elections for the 15 seats on the city council. The rules were initially very strict, allowing only the wealthiest citizens to run. In the 1844 elections, only 174 citizens qualified out of a total population of more than 7,000. The first city council, mainly composed of wealthy merchants and industrialists, quickly looked to improve the harbour, situated along the Aarhus River. Larger ships and growing freight volumes made a river harbour increasingly impractical. In 1840, the harbour was moved to the coast, north of the river, where it became the largest industrial harbour outside Copenhagen over the following 15 years. From the outset, the new harbour was controlled by the city council, as it is to this day. During the First Schleswig War, Aarhus was occupied by German troops from 21 June to 24 July 1849. The city was spared any fighting, but in Vejlby north of the city a cavalry skirmish known as Rytterfægtningen took place which stopped the German advance through Jutland. The war and occupation left a notable impact on the city as many streets, particularly on Frederiksbjerg, are named after Danish officers of the time. Fifteen years later, in 1864, the city was occupied again, this time for seven months, during the Second Schleswig War. In spite of wars and occupation, the city continued to expand and develop. In 1851, the octroi was abolished and the city walls were removed to provide easier access for trade. Regular steamship links with Copenhagen had begun with the Jylland in 1825-26 and the Dania (1827–36), and in 1862 Jutland's first railway was established between Aarhus and Randers. In the second half of the 19th century, industrialisation came into full effect and a number of new industries emerged around production and refinement of agricultural products, especially oil and butter. Many companies from this time would come to leave permanent iconic marks on Aarhus. The Ceres Brewery was established in 1856 and served as Aarhus's local brewery for more than 150 years, gradually expanding into an industrial district known as Ceres-grunden (lit.: the Ceres-ground). In 1896, local farmers and businessmen created Korn- og Foderstof Kompagniet (KFK), focused on grain and feedstuffs. KFK established departments all over the country, while its headquarters remained in Aarhus where its large grain silos still stand today. Otto Mønsted created the Danish Preserved Butter Company in 1874, focusing on butter export to England, China and Africa and later founded the Aarhus Butterine Company in 1883, the first Danish margarine factory. His company became an important local employer, with factory employees increasing from 100 in 1896 to 1,000 in 1931, partaking in the effective transformation of the city from a regional trade hub to an industrial centre. Other new factories of note included the dockyard Aarhus Flydedok, the oil mill Århus Oliefabrik and the ironworks Frichs. Aarhus became the largest provincial city in the country by the turn of the century and the city marketed itself as the "Capital of Jutland". The population increased from 15,000 in 1870 to 52,000 in 1901 and, in response, the city annexed large land areas to develop new residential quarters such as Trøjborg, Frederiksbjerg and Marselisborg. Many of its cultural institutions were also established at this time such as Aarhus Theatre (1900), the original State Library (1902), Aarhus University (1928) and several hospitals. Second World War On 9 April 1940, Germany invaded Denmark, occupying Aarhus the following day and 5 years hence. The occupation was a destructive period with major disasters, loss of life and economic depression. The Port of Aarhus became a hub for supplies to the Baltics and Norway, while the surrounding rail network supplied the Atlantic Wall in west Jutland and cargo headed for Germany. Combined, these factors resulted in a strong German presence, especially in 1944–45. The first years were peaceful in conjunction with the policies of the Danish Protectorate Government, but following the enactment of the Communist Law in August 1941, armed resistance and reprisals escalated. Small resistance groups first appeared in 1941–42 but the first to co-ordinate with the Freedom Council was the Samsing Group, responsible for most operations from early 1943. The Samsing group, along with others in and around Aarhus, was dismantled in June 1944 when Grethe "Thora" Bartram turned her family and acquaintances over to German authorities. In response, requests for assistance were sent to contacts in England and in October 1944 the Royal Air Force bombed the Gestapo headquarters successfully destroying archives and obstructing the ongoing investigation. In the summer of 1944 the Copenhagen-based resistance group Holger Danske helped establish the 5 Kolonne group and an SOE agent arrived from England to liaison with the L-groups. Subsequently, resistance operations escalated which was countered with Schalburgtage terror operations by the Peter group. The increasingly destructive occupation was compounded when an ammunition barge exploded in July 1944, destroying much of the harbour area. On 5 May 1945 German forces in Denmark surrendered but during the transitional period fighting broke out resulting in 22 dead. On 8 May the British Royal Dragoons entered the city. Post-World War II years In the 1980s the city entered a period of rapid growth and the service sector overtook trade, industry and crafts as the leading sector of employment for the first time. Workers gradually began commuting to the city from most of east and central Jutland as the region became more interconnected. The student population tripled between 1965 and 1977 turning the city into a Danish centre of research and education. The growing and comparably young population initiated a period of creativity and optimism; Gaffa and the KaosPilot school were founded in 1983 and 1991 respectively, and Aarhus was at the centre of a renaissance in Danish rock and pop music launching bands and musicians such as TV2, Gnags, Thomas Helmig, Bamses Venner, Anne Dorte Michelsen, Mek Pek and Shit & Chanel. The 2000s Since the turn of the millennium, Aarhus has seen an unprecedented building boom with many new institutions, infrastructure projects, city districts and recreational areas. Several of the construction projects are among the largest in Europe, such as the New University Hospital (DNU) and the harbourfront redevelopment. Both the skyline and land use of the inner city is changing as former industrial sites are being redeveloped into new city districts and neighbourhoods. Starting in 2008, the former docklands known as De Bynære Havnearealer (The Peri-urban Harbour-areas), and closest to the city seaside, are being converted to new mixed use districts. It is among the largest harbourfront projects in Europe. The northern part dubbed Aarhus Ø (Aarhus Docklands) is almost finished as of 2018, while the southern district dubbed Sydhavnskvarteret (The South-harbour neighbourhood) is only starting to be developed. The adjacent site of Frederiks Plads at the former DSB repair facilities have been under construction since 2014 as a new business and residential quarter. The main bus terminal close by is planned to be moved to the central railway station and the site will be redeveloped to a new residential neighbourhood. Elsewhere in the inner city, the site of the former Ceres breweries was redeveloped in 2012-2019 as a new mixed use neighbourhood known as CeresByen. Construction of Aarhus Letbane, the first light rail system in the country, commenced in 2013, and the first increment was finished in December 2017. Since then, the lightrail service has been expanded with two intercity sections to the towns of Odder and Grenå, respectively, and also includes a northward leg to the suburb of Lisbjerg. The light rail system is planned to tie many other suburbs closer to central Aarhus in the future, with the next phase including local lines to Brabrand in the east and Hinnerup to the north. Accelerating growth since the early 2000s, brought the inner urban area to roughly 260,000 inhabitants by 2014. The rapid growth is expected to continue until at least 2030 when Aarhus municipality has set an ambitious target for 375,000 inhabitants. Geography Aarhus is located at the Bay of Aarhus facing the Kattegat sea in the east with the peninsulas of Mols and Helgenæs across the bay to the northeast. Mols and Helgenæs are both part of the larger regional peninsula of Djursland. A number of larger cities and towns is within easy reach from Aarhus by road and rail, including Randers ( by road north), Grenå (northeast), Horsens ( south) and Silkeborg ( east). Topography At Aarhus's location, the Bay of Aarhus provides a natural harbour with a depth of quite close to the shore. Aarhus was founded at the mouth of a brackish water fjord, but the original fjord no longer exists, as it has gradually narrowed into what is now the Aarhus River and the Brabrand Lake, due to natural sedimentation. The land around Aarhus was once covered by forests, remains of which exist in parts of Marselisborg Forest to the south and Riis Skov to the north. Several lakes extend west from the inner city as the landscape merges with the larger region of Søhøjlandet with heights exceeding at Himmelbjerget between Skanderborg and Silkeborg. The highest natural point in Aarhus Municipality is Jelshøj at 128 metres above sea level, in the southern district of Højbjerg. The hilltop is home to a Bronze Age barrow shrouded in local myths and legends. The hilly area around Aarhus consists of a morainal plateau from the last ice age, broken by a complex system of tunnel valleys. The most prominent valleys of this network are the Aarhus Valley in the south, stretching inland east–west with the Aarhus River, Brabrand Lake, Årslev Lake and Tåstrup Lake, and the Egå Valley to the north, with the stream of Egåen, Egå Engsø, the bog of Geding-Kasted Mose and Geding Lake. Most parts of the two valleys have been drained and subsequently farmed, but in the early 2000s some of the drainage was removed and parts of the wetlands were restored for environmental reasons. The valley system also includes the stream of Lyngbygård Å in the west and valleys to the south of the city, following erosion channels from the pre-quaternary. By contrast, the Aarhus River Valley and the Giber River Valley are late glacial meltwater valleys. The coastal cliffs along the Bay of Aarhus consist of shallow tertiary clay from the Eocene and Oligocene (57 to 24 million years ago). Climate Aarhus has a temperate oceanic climate (Köppen: Cfb) and the weather is constantly influenced by major weather systems from all four ordinal directions, resulting in unstable conditions throughout the year. Temperature varies a great deal across the seasons with a mild spring in April and May, warmer summer months from June to August, frequently rainy and windy autumn months in October and September and cooler winter months, often with frost and occasional snow, from December to March. The city centre experiences the same climatic effects as other larger cities with higher wind speeds, more fog, less precipitation and higher temperatures than the surrounding, open land. Western winds from the Atlantic and North Sea are dominant resulting in more precipitation in western Denmark. In addition, Jutland rises sufficiently in the centre to lift air to higher, colder altitudes contributing to increased precipitation in eastern Jutland. Combined, these factors make east and south Jutland comparatively wetter than other parts of the country. Average temperature over the year is with February being the coldest month () and August the warmest (). Temperatures in the sea can reach in June to August, but it is not uncommon for beaches to register locally. The geography in the area affects the local climate of the city with the Aarhus Bay imposing a temperate effect on the low-lying valley floor where central Aarhus is located. Brabrand Lake to the west further contributes to this effect and as a result, the valley has a comparably mild, temperate climate. The sandy ground on the valley floor dries up quickly after winter and warms faster in the summer than the surrounding hills of moist-retaining boulder clay. These conditions affect crops and plants that often bloom 1–2 weeks earlier in the valley than on the northern and southern hillsides. Because of the northern latitude, the number of daylight hours varies considerably between summer and winter. On the summer solstice, the sun rises at 04:26 and sets at 21:58, providing 17 hours 32 minutes of daylight. On the winter solstice, it rises at 08:37 and sets at 15:39 with 7 hours and 2 minutes of daylight. The difference in length of days and nights between summer and winter solstices is 10 hours and 30 minutes. Politics and administration Aarhus is the seat of Aarhus Municipality, and Aarhus City Council (Aarhus Byråd) is also the municipal government with headquarters in Aarhus City Hall. The Mayor of Aarhus since 2010 is Jacob Bundsgaard of the Social Democrats. Municipal elections are held every fourth year on the third Tuesday of November with the next election in 2021. The city council consists of 31 members elected for four-year terms. When an election has determined the composition of the council, it elects a mayor, two deputy mayors and five aldermen from their ranks. Anyone who is eligible to vote and who resides within the municipality can run for a seat on the city council provided they can secure endorsements and signatures from 50 inhabitants of the municipality. The first publicly elected mayor of Aarhus was appointed in 1919. In the 1970 Danish Municipal Reform the current Aarhus municipality was created by merging 20 municipalities. Aarhus was the seat of Aarhus County until the 2007 Danish municipal reform, which substituted the Danish counties with five regions and replaced Aarhus County with Central Denmark Region (Region Midtjylland), seated in Viborg. Subdivisions Aarhus Municipality has 45 electoral wards and polling stations in four electoral districts for the Folketing (national Parliament). The diocese of Aarhus has four deaneries composed of 60 parishes within Aarhus municipality. Aarhus municipality contains 21 postal districts and some parts of another 9. The urban area of Aarhus and the immediate suburbs are divided into the districts Aarhus C, Aarhus N, Aarhus V, Viby J, Højbjerg and Brabrand. Environmental planning Aarhus has increasingly been investing in environmental planning and, in accordance with national policy, aims to be -neutral and independent of fossil fuels for heating by 2030. The municipal power plants were adapted for this purpose in the 2010s. In 2015, the municipality took over three private straw-fired heating plants and the year after, a new 77 MW combined heat and power biomass plant at Lisbjerg Power Station was completed while Studstrup Power Station finished a refit to move from coal to wood chips. In conjunction with the development of the Docklands district there are plans for a utility scale seawater heat pump which will take advantage of fluctuating electricity prices to supply the district heating system. Since 2015, the city has been implementing energy saving LED technology in street lighting; by January 2019, about half of the municipal street lighting had been changed. Apart from reducing the city's CO2 emissions, it saves 30% on the electricity bill, thereby making it a self-financed project over a 20-year period. The municipality aims for a coherent and holistic administration of the water cycle to protect against, or clean up, previous pollution and encourage green growth and self-sufficiency. The main issues are excessive nutrients, adapting to increased (and increasing) levels of precipitation brought on by climate change, and securing the water supply. These goals have manifested in a number of large water treatment projects often in collaboration with private partners. In the 2000s, underground rainwater basins were built across the city while the two lakes Årslev Engsø and Egå Engsø were created in 2003 and 2006 respectively. The number of sewage treatment plants is planned to be reduced from 17 to 2 by 2025 as the treatment plants in Marselisborg and Egå are scheduled for expansion to take over all waste water treatment. They have already been refitted for biogas production to become net producers of electricity and heat. To aid the new treatment plants, and avoid floodings, sewage and stormwater throughout the municipality is planned to be separated into two different drainage systems. Construction began in 2017 in several areas, but it is a long process and is scheduled to be finished by 2085. Afforestation projects have been undertaken to prevent groundwater pollution, secure drinking water, sequester , increase biodiversity, create an attractive countryside, provide easy access to nature and offer outdoor activities to the public. In 2000, the first project, the New Forests of Aarhus, was completed, which aimed to double the forest cover in the municipality and, in 2009, another phase was announced to double forest cover once more before the year 2030. The afforestation plans were realised as a local project in collaboration with private landowners, under a larger national agenda. Other projects to expand natural habitats include a rewilding effort in Geding-Kasted Bog and continuous monitoring of the four Natura 2000 areas in the municipality. Demographics Aarhus has a population of 261,570 on for a density of 2,874/km2 (7,444/sq mi). Aarhus municipality has a population of 330,639 on 468 km2 with a density of 706/km2 (1,829/sq mi). Less than a fifth of the municipal population resides beyond city limits and almost all live in an urban area. The population of Aarhus is both younger and better-educated than the national average which can be attributed to the high concentration of educational institutions. More than 40% of the population have an academic degree while only some 14% have no secondary education or trade. The largest age group is 20- to 29-year-olds and the average age is 37.5, making it the youngest city in the country and one of its youngest municipalities. Women have slightly outnumbered men for many years. The city is home to 75 different religious groups and denominations, most of which are Christian or Muslim with a smaller number of Buddhist, Hindu, and Jewish communities. Since the 1990s there has been a marked growth in diverse new spiritual groups although the total number of followers remains small. The majority of the population are members of the Protestant state church, Church of Denmark, which is by far the largest religious institution both in the city and the country as a whole. Some 20% of the population are not officially affiliated with any religion, a percentage that has been slowly rising for many years. During the 1990s there was significant immigration from Turkey and in the 2000s, there was a fast growth in the overall immigrant community, from 27,783 people in 1999 to 40,431 in 2008. The majority of immigrants have roots outside Europe and the developed world, comprising some 25,000 people from 130 different nationalities, with the largest groups coming from the Middle East and North Africa. Some 15,000 have come from within Europe, with Poland, Germany, Romania and Norway being the largest contributors. Many immigrants have established themselves in the suburbs of Brabrand, Hasle and Viby, where the percentage of inhabitants with foreign origins has risen by 66% since 2000. This has resulted in a few so-called ghettos, defined as residential areas with more than half of inhabitants from non-Western countries and with relatively high levels of poverty and/or crime. Gellerup is the most notable neighbourhood in that respect. The ghetto-labelling has been criticized as unnecessarily stigmatising and counterproductive for social and economical development of the related areas. Economy The economy of Aarhus is predominantly knowledge- and service-based, strongly influenced by the University of Aarhus and the large healthcare industry. The service sector dominates the economy and is growing as the city transitions away from manufacturing. Trade and transportation remain important sectors, benefiting from the large port and central position on the rail network. Manufacturing has been in slow but steady decline since the 1960s while agriculture has long been a marginal sector within the municipality. The municipality is home to 175,000 jobs with some 100,000 in the private sector and the rest split between state, region and municipality. The region is a major agricultural producer, with many large farms in the outlying districts. People commute to Aarhus from as far away as Randers, Silkeborg and Skanderborg and almost a third of those employed within the Aarhus municipality commute from neighbouring communities. Aarhus is a centre for retail in the Nordic and Baltic countries, with expansive shopping centres, the busiest commercial street in the country and a dense urban core with many speciality shops. The job market is knowledge- and service-based, and the largest employment sectors are healthcare and social services, trade, education, consulting, research, industry and telecommunications. The municipality has more high- and middle-income jobs, and fewer low-income jobs, than the national average. Today, te majority of the largest companies in the municipality are in the sectors of trade, transport and media. The wind power industry has strong roots in Aarhus and the larger region of Central Jutland, and nationally, most of the revenue in the industry is generated by companies in the greater Aarhus area. The wind industry employs about a thousand people within the municipality, making it a central component in the local economy. The biotech industry is well-established in the city, with many small- and medium-sized companies mainly focused on research and development. Several major companies are headquartered in Aarhus, including four of the ten largest in the country. These include Arla Foods, one of the largest dairy groups in Europe, Salling Group, Denmark's largest retailer, Jysk, a worldwide retailer of household goods, Vestas, a global wind turbine manufacturer, Terma A/S, a major defence and aerospace manufacturer, Per Aarsleff, a civil engineering company and several large retail companies. Other large employers of note include Krifa, Systematic A/S,), and Bestseller A/S. Since the early 2000s, the city has experienced an influx of larger companies moving from other parts of the Jutland peninsula. Port of Aarhus The Port of Aarhus is one of the largest industrial ports in northern Europe with the largest container terminal in Denmark, processing more than 50% of Denmark's container traffic and accommodating the largest container vessels in the world. It is a municipal self-governing port with independent finances. The facilities handle some 9.5 million tonnes of cargo a year (2012). Grain is the principal export, while feedstuffs, stone, cement and coal are among the chief imports. Since 2012 the port has faced increasing competition from the Port of Hamburg and freight volumes have decreased somewhat from the peak in 2008. The ferry terminal presents the only alternative to the Great Belt Link for passenger transport between Jutland and Zealand. It has served different ferry companies since the first steamship route to Copenhagen opened in 1830. Currently, Mols-Linien operates the route and annually transports some two million passengers and a million vehicles. Additional roll-on/roll-off cargo ferries serve Finland and Kalundborg on a weekly basis and smaller outlying Danish ports at irregular intervals. Since the early 2000s the port has increasingly become a destination for cruise lines operating in the Baltic Sea. Tourism The ARoS Art Museum, the Old Town Museum and Tivoli Friheden are among Denmark's top tourist attractions. With a combined total of almost 1.4 million visitors they represent the driving force behind tourism but other venues such as Moesgård Museum and Kvindemuseet are also popular. The city's extensive shopping facilities are also said to be a major attraction for tourists, as are festivals, especially NorthSide and SPOT. Many visitors arrive on cruise ships: in 2012, 18 vessels visited the port with over 38,000 passengers. In the 2010s, there was a significant expansion of tourist facilities, culminating in the opening of the 240-room Comwell Hotel in July 2014, which increased the number of hotel rooms in the city by 25%. Some estimates put the number of visitors spending at least one night as high as 750,000 a year,
Kentucky. The southern population retained the name A. spelaea and the northern was re-designated Amblyopsis hoosieri in a 2014 paper published in the journal ZooKeys. Neither species is found north of the White River, flowing east to west south of Bedford, Indiana. References Amblyopsidae Cave fish Cavefish, Northern Fish of the United
was divided into two distinct evolutionary lineages: one north of the Ohio River, in Indiana, and one south of the river, in Kentucky. The southern population retained the name A. spelaea and the northern was re-designated Amblyopsis hoosieri in a 2014 paper published
of excess soil dust, a pollutant that contributes to excess levels of particulate matter Graffiti abatement Nuisance abatement See also Abate (disambiguation) Noise mitigation, also known as noise abatement Tax holiday (or tax abatement) is used in the field of economic development to encourage businesses to relocate, expand, and more currently to retain facilities in a community 421-a tax abatement, a specific tax abatement program for affordable housing in New York City Marginal abatement cost, the
to: Abatement of debts and legacies, a common law doctrine of wills Abatement in pleading, a legal defense to civil and criminal actions based purely on procedural and technical issues involving the death of parties Abatement (heraldry), a modification of the shield or coat of arms that supposedly can be imposed by authority (in England supposedly by the Court of Chivalry) for misconduct Asbestos abatement Bird abatement, driving or removing undesired birds from an area Dust abatement, the process of inhibiting the creation of excess
art or a branch of knowledge, is often referred to as a dilettante. Amateur athletics Olympics Through most of the 20th century the Olympics allowed only amateur athletes to participate and this amateur code was strictly enforced - Jim Thorpe was stripped of track and field medals for having taken expense money for playing baseball in 1912. Later on, the nations of the Communist bloc entered teams of Olympians who were all nominally students, soldiers, or working in a profession, but many of whom were in reality paid by the state to train on a full-time basis. Near the end of the 1960s, the Canadian Amateur Hockey Association (CAHA) felt their amateur players could no longer be competitive against the Soviet team's full-time athletes and the other constantly improving European teams. They pushed for the ability to use players from professional leagues but met opposition from the International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) and the International Olympic Committee (IOC). At the IIHF Congress in 1969, the IIHF decided to allow Canada to use nine non-NHL professional hockey players at the 1970 World Championships in Montreal and Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. The decision was reversed in January 1970 after IOC President Avery Brundage said that ice hockey's status as an Olympic sport would be in jeopardy if the change was made. In response, Canada withdrew from all international ice hockey competitions and officials stated that they would not return until "open competition" was instituted. Günther Sabetzki became president of the IIHF in 1975 and helped to resolve the dispute with the CAHA. In 1976, the IIHF agreed to allow "open competition" between all players in the World Championships. However, NHL players were still not allowed to play in the Olympics, because of the unwillingness of the NHL to take a break mid-season and the IOC's amateur-only policy. Before the 1984 Winter Olympics, a dispute formed over what made a player a professional. The IOC had adopted a rule that made any player who had signed an NHL contract but played less than ten games in the league eligible. However, the United States Olympic Committee maintained that any player contracted with an NHL team was a professional and therefore not eligible to play. The IOC held an emergency meeting that ruled NHL-contracted players were eligible, as long as they had not played in any NHL games. This made five players on Olympic rosters—one Austrian, two Italians and two Canadians—ineligible. Players who had played in other professional leagues—such as the World Hockey Association—were allowed to play. Canadian hockey official Alan Eagleson stated that the rule was only applied to the NHL and that professionally contracted players in European leagues were still considered amateurs. Murray Costello of the CAHA suggested that a Canadian withdrawal was possible. In 1986, the IOC voted to allow all athletes to compete in Olympic Games starting in 1988, but let the individual sport federations decide if they wanted to allow professionals. After the 1972 retirement of IOC President Avery Brundage, the Olympic amateurism rules were steadily relaxed, amounting only to technicalities and lip service, until being completely abandoned in the 1990s (In the United States, the Amateur Sports Act of 1978 prohibits national governing bodies from having more stringent
money for playing baseball in 1912. Later on, the nations of the Communist bloc entered teams of Olympians who were all nominally students, soldiers, or working in a profession, but many of whom were in reality paid by the state to train on a full-time basis. Near the end of the 1960s, the Canadian Amateur Hockey Association (CAHA) felt their amateur players could no longer be competitive against the Soviet team's full-time athletes and the other constantly improving European teams. They pushed for the ability to use players from professional leagues but met opposition from the International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) and the International Olympic Committee (IOC). At the IIHF Congress in 1969, the IIHF decided to allow Canada to use nine non-NHL professional hockey players at the 1970 World Championships in Montreal and Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. The decision was reversed in January 1970 after IOC President Avery Brundage said that ice hockey's status as an Olympic sport would be in jeopardy if the change was made. In response, Canada withdrew from all international ice hockey competitions and officials stated that they would not return until "open competition" was instituted. Günther Sabetzki became president of the IIHF in 1975 and helped to resolve the dispute with the CAHA. In 1976, the IIHF agreed to allow "open competition" between all players in the World Championships. However, NHL players were still not allowed to play in the Olympics, because of the unwillingness of the NHL to take a break mid-season and the IOC's amateur-only policy. Before the 1984 Winter Olympics, a dispute formed over what made a player a professional. The IOC had adopted a rule that made any player who had signed an NHL contract but played less than ten games in the league eligible. However, the United States Olympic Committee maintained that any player contracted with an NHL team was a professional and therefore not eligible to play. The IOC held an emergency meeting that
when the French president Sadi Carnot was assassinated with a knife. Carnot bled to death due to severing of his portal vein, and surgeons who treated the president felt that the vein could not be successfully reconnected. This left a deep impression on Carrel, and he set about developing new techniques for suturing blood vessels. The technique of "triangulation", using three stay-sutures as traction points in order to minimize damage to the vascular wall during suturing, was inspired by sewing lessons he took from an embroideress and is still used today. Julius Comroe wrote: "Between 1901 and 1910, Alexis Carrel, using experimental animals, performed every feat and developed every technique known to vascular surgery today." He had great success in reconnecting arteries and veins, and performing surgical grafts, and this led to his Nobel Prize in 1912. Wound antisepsis During World War I (1914–1918), Carrel and the English chemist Henry Drysdale Dakin developed the Carrel–Dakin method of treating wounds based on chlorine (Dakin's solution) which, preceding the development of antibiotics, was a major medical advance in the care of traumatic wounds. For this, Carrel was awarded the Légion d'honneur. Carrel also advocated the use of wound debridement (cutting away necrotic or otherwise damaged tissue) and irrigation of wounds. His method of wound irrigation involved flushing the tissues with a high volume of antiseptic fluid so that dirt and other contaminants would be washed away (this is known today as "mechanical irrigation.") The World War I era Rockefeller War Demonstration Hospital (United States Army Auxiliary Hospital No. 1) was created, in part, to promote the Carrel–Dakin method: "The war demonstration hospital of the Rockefeller Institute was planned as a school in which to teach military surgeons the principles of and art of applying the Carrel-Dakin treatment." Organ transplants Carrel co-authored a book with pilot Charles A. Lindbergh, The Culture of Organs, and worked with Lindbergh in the mid-1930s to create the "perfusion pump," which allowed living organs to exist outside the body during surgery. The advance is said to have been a crucial step in the development of open-heart surgery and organ transplants, and to have laid the groundwork for the artificial heart, which became a reality decades later. Some critics of Lindbergh claimed that Carrel overstated Lindbergh's role to gain media attention, but other sources say Lindbergh played an important role in developing the device. Both Lindbergh and Carrel appeared on the cover of Time magazine on 13 June 1938. Cellular senescence Carrel was also interested in the phenomenon of senescence, or aging. He claimed that all cells continued to grow indefinitely, and this became a dominant view in the early 20th century. Carrel started an experiment on 17 January 1912, where he placed tissue cultured from an embryonic chicken heart in a stoppered Pyrex flask of his own design. He maintained the living culture for over 20 years with regular supplies of nutrient. This was longer than a chicken's normal lifespan. The experiment, which was conducted at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, attracted considerable popular and scientific attention. Carrel's experiment was never successfully replicated, and in the 1960s Leonard Hayflick and Paul Moorhead proposed that differentiated cells can undergo only a limited number of divisions before dying. This is known as the Hayflick limit, and is now a pillar of biology. It is not certain how Carrel obtained his anomalous results. Leonard Hayflick suggests that the daily feeding of nutrient was continually introducing new living cells to the alleged immortal culture. J. A. Witkowski has argued that, while "immortal" strains of visibly mutated cells have been obtained by other experimenters, a more likely explanation is deliberate introduction of new cells into the culture, possibly without Carrel's knowledge. Honors In 1972, the Swedish Post Office honored Carrel with a stamp that was part of its Nobel stamp series. In 1979, the lunar crater Carrel was named after him as a tribute to his scientific breakthroughs. In February 2002, as part of celebrations of the 100th anniversary of Charles Lindbergh's birth, the Medical University of South Carolina at Charleston established the Lindbergh-Carrel Prize, given to major contributors to "development of perfusion and bioreactor technologies for organ preservation and growth". Michael DeBakey and nine other scientists received the prize, a bronze statuette created for the event by the Italian artist C. Zoli and named "Elisabeth" after Elisabeth Morrow, sister of Lindbergh's wife Anne Morrow, who died from heart disease. It was in fact Lindbergh's disappointment that contemporary medical technology could not provide an artificial heart pump which would allow for heart surgery on her that led to Lindbergh's first contact with Carrel. Alexis Carrel and Lourdes In 1902, Alexis Carrel went from being a skeptic of the visions and miracles reported at Lourdes to being a believer in spiritual cures after experiencing a healing of Marie Bailly that he could not explain. The Catholic journal Le nouvelliste reported that she named him as the prime witness of her cure. Alexis Carrel refused to discount a supernatural explanation and steadfastly reiterated his beliefs, even writing the book The Voyage to Lourdes describing his experience, although it was not published until four years after his death. This was a detriment to his career and reputation among his fellow doctors, and feeling he had no future in academic medicine in France, he emigrated to Canada with the intention of farming and raising cattle. After a brief period, he accepted an appointment at the University of Chicago and, two years later, at the Rockefeller Institute of Medical Research. Man, the Unknown (1935, 1939) In 1935, Carrel published a book titled L'Homme, cet inconnu (Man, the Unknown), which became a best-seller. In the book, he attempted to outline a comprehensive account of what is known and more importantly unknown of the human body and human life "in light of discoveries in biology, physics, and medicine", to elucidate problems of the modern world, and to provide possible routes to a better life for human beings. For Carrel, the fundamental problem was that: [M]en cannot follow modern civilization along its present course, because they are degenerating. They have been fascinated by the beauty of the sciences of inert matter. They have not understood that their body and consciousness are subjected to natural laws, more obscure than, but as inexorable as, the laws of the sidereal world. Neither have they understood that they cannot transgress these laws without being punished. They must, therefore, learn the necessary relations of the cosmic universe, of their fellow men, and of their inner selves, and also those of their tissues and their mind. Indeed, man stands above all things. Should he degenerate, the beauty of civilization, and even the grandeur of the physical universe, would vanish. ... Humanity's attention must turn from the machines of the world of inanimate matter to the body and the soul of man, to the organic and mental processes which have created the machines and the universe of Newton and Einstein. Carrel advocated, in part, that mankind could better itself by following the guidance of an elite group of intellectuals, and by incorporating eugenics into the social framework. He argued for an aristocracy springing from individuals of potential, writing: We must single out the children who are endowed with high potentialities, and develop them as completely as possible. And in this manner give to the nation a non-hereditary aristocracy. Such children may be found in all classes of society, although distinguished men appear more frequently in distinguished families than in others. The descendants of the founders of American civilization may still possess the ancestral qualities. These qualities are generally hidden under the cloak of degeneration. But this degeneration is often superficial. It comes chiefly from education, idleness, lack of responsibility and moral discipline. The sons of very rich men, like those of criminals, should be removed while still infants from their natural surroundings. Thus separated from their family, they could manifest their hereditary strength. In the aristocratic families of Europe there are also individuals of great vitality. The issue of the Crusaders is by no means extinct. The laws of genetics indicate the probability that the legendary audacity and love of adventure can appear again in the lineage of the feudal lords. It is possible also that the offspring of the great criminals who had imagination, courage, and judgment, of the heroes of the French or Russian Revolutions, of the high-handed business men who live among us, might be excellent building stones for an enterprising minority. As we know, criminality is not hereditary if not united with feeble-mindedness or other mental or cerebral defects. High potentialities are rarely encountered in the sons of honest, intelligent, hard-working men who have had ill luck in their careers, who have failed in business or have muddled along all their lives in inferior positions. Or among peasants living on the same spot for centuries. However, from such people sometimes spring artists, poets, adventurers, saints. A brilliantly gifted and well-known New York family came from peasants who cultivated their farm in the south of France from the time of Charlemagne to that of Napoleon. Carrel advocated for euthanasia for criminals, and the criminally insane, specifically endorsing the use of gassing: (t)he conditioning of petty criminals with the whip, or some more scientific procedure, followed by a short stay in hospital, would probably suffice to insure order. Those who have murdered, robbed while armed with automatic pistol or machine gun, kidnapped children, despoiled the poor of their savings, misled
of responsibility and moral discipline. The sons of very rich men, like those of criminals, should be removed while still infants from their natural surroundings. Thus separated from their family, they could manifest their hereditary strength. In the aristocratic families of Europe there are also individuals of great vitality. The issue of the Crusaders is by no means extinct. The laws of genetics indicate the probability that the legendary audacity and love of adventure can appear again in the lineage of the feudal lords. It is possible also that the offspring of the great criminals who had imagination, courage, and judgment, of the heroes of the French or Russian Revolutions, of the high-handed business men who live among us, might be excellent building stones for an enterprising minority. As we know, criminality is not hereditary if not united with feeble-mindedness or other mental or cerebral defects. High potentialities are rarely encountered in the sons of honest, intelligent, hard-working men who have had ill luck in their careers, who have failed in business or have muddled along all their lives in inferior positions. Or among peasants living on the same spot for centuries. However, from such people sometimes spring artists, poets, adventurers, saints. A brilliantly gifted and well-known New York family came from peasants who cultivated their farm in the south of France from the time of Charlemagne to that of Napoleon. Carrel advocated for euthanasia for criminals, and the criminally insane, specifically endorsing the use of gassing: (t)he conditioning of petty criminals with the whip, or some more scientific procedure, followed by a short stay in hospital, would probably suffice to insure order. Those who have murdered, robbed while armed with automatic pistol or machine gun, kidnapped children, despoiled the poor of their savings, misled the public in important matters, should be humanely and economically disposed of in small euthanasic institutions supplied with proper gasses. A similar treatment could be advantageously applied to the insane, guilty of criminal acts. Otherwise he endorsed voluntary positive eugenics. He wrote: We have mentioned that natural selection has not played its part for a long while. That many inferior individuals have been conserved through the efforts of hygiene and medicine. But we cannot prevent the reproduction of the weak when they are neither insane nor criminal. Or destroy sickly or defective children as we do the weaklings in a litter of puppies. The only way to obviate the disastrous predominance of the weak is to develop the strong. Our efforts to render normal the unfit are evidently useless. We should, then, turn our attention toward promoting the optimum growth of the fit. By making the strong still stronger, we could effectively help the weak; For the herd always profits by the ideas and inventions of the elite. Instead of leveling organic and mental inequalities, we should amplify them and construct greater men. He continued: Carrel's endorsement of euthanasia of the criminal and insane was published in the mid-1930s, prior to the implementation of death camps and gas chambers in Nazi Germany. In the 1936 German introduction of his book, at the publisher's request, he added the following praise of the Nazi regime which did not appear in the editions in other languages: (t)he German government has taken energetic measures against the propagation of the defective, the mentally diseased, and the criminal. The ideal solution would be the suppression of each of these individuals as soon as he has proven himself to be dangerous. French Foundation for the Study of Human Problems In 1937, Carrel joined Jean Coutrot's Centre d'Etudes des Problèmes Humains - Coutrot's aim was to develop what he called an "economic humanism" through "collective thinking." In 1941, through connections to the cabinet of Vichy France president Philippe Pétain (specifically, French industrial physicians André Gros and Jacques Ménétrier) he went on to advocate for the creation of the French Foundation for the Study of Human Problems ( which was created by decree of the Vichy regime in 1941, and where he served as "regent". The foundation was at the origin of the 11 October 1946, law, enacted by the Provisional Government of the French Republic (GPRF), which institutionalized the field of occupational medicine. It worked on demographics (Robert Gessain, Paul Vincent, Jean Bourgeois-Pichat), on economics, (François Perroux), on nutrition (Jean Sutter), on habitation (Jean Merlet) and on the first opinion polls (Jean Stoetzel). "The foundation was chartered as a public institution under the joint supervision of the ministries of finance and public health. It was given financial autonomy and a budget of forty million francs—roughly one franc per inhabitant—a true luxury considering the burdens imposed by the German Occupation on the nation's resources. By way of comparison, the whole Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) was given a budget of fifty million francs." The Foundation made many positive accomplishments during its time. It promoted the 16 December 1942 Act which established the prenuptial certificate, which was required before marriage, and was aimed at insuring the good health of the spouses, in particular in regard to sexually transmitted diseases (STD) and "life hygiene". The institute also established the , which could be used to record students' grades in the French secondary schools, and thus classify and select them according to scholastic performance. According to Gwen Terrenoire, writing in Eugenics in France (1913–1941) : a review of research findings, "The foundation was a pluridisciplinary centre that employed around 300 researchers (mainly statisticians, psychologists, physicians) from the summer of 1942 to the end of the autumn of 1944. After the liberation of Paris, Carrel was suspended by the Minister of Health; he died
the Divine Worship Form of the Roman Rite on All Souls Day as well as at funerals, votive celebrations of all faithful departed, and anniversaries of deaths. In the ordinary form of the Roman Rite, as well as in the Personal Ordinariates established by Benedict XVI for former Anglicans, it remains on 2 November if this date falls on a Sunday; in the 1962–1969 form of the Roman Rite, use of which is still authorized, it is transferred to Monday, 3 November. Every priest is allowed to celebrate three holy masses on All Souls' Day. All Souls' indulgence According to the Enchiridion of Indulgences, an indulgence applicable only to the souls in purgatory (commonly called the poor souls) is granted to the faithful who devoutly visit a cemetery and pray for the departed. The indulgence is plenary each day from the first to the eighth of November; a partial indulgence is granted on other days of the year. Lutheran Churches Among continental Protestants its tradition has been more tenaciously maintained. During Luther's lifetime, All Souls' Day was widely observed in Saxony although the Roman Catholic meaning of the day was discarded; ecclesiastically in the Lutheran Church, the day was merged with, and is often seen as an extension of All Saints' Day, with many Lutherans still visiting and decorating graves on all the days of Allhallowtide, including All Souls' Day. Just as it is the custom of French people, of all ranks and creeds, to decorate the graves of their dead on the jour des morts, so German, Polish and Hungarian people stream to the graveyards once a year with offerings of flowers and special grave lights. Among Czech people the custom of visiting and tidying graves of relatives on the day is quite common. In 1816, Prussia introduced a new date for the remembrance of the Dead among its Lutheran citizens: Totensonntag, the last Sunday before Advent. This custom was later also adopted by the non-Prussian Lutherans in Germany, but it has not spread much beyond the Protestant areas of Germany. Anglican Communion In the Church of England it is called The Commemoration of the Faithful Departed and is an optional celebration; Anglicans view All Souls' Day as an extension of the observance of All Saints' Day and it serves to "remember those who have died", in connection with the theological doctrines of the resurrection of the body and the Communion of Saints. In the Anglican Communion, All Souls' Day is known liturgically as the Commemoration of All Faithful Departed, and is an optional observance seen as "an extension of All Saints' Day", the latter of which marks the second day of Allhallowtide. Historically and at present, several Anglican churches are dedicated to All Souls. During the English Reformation, the observance of All Souls' Day lapsed, although a new Anglican theological understanding of the day has "led to a widespread acceptance of this commemoration among Anglicans". Patricia Bays, with regard to the Anglican view of All Souls' Day, wrote that: As such, Anglican parishes "now commemorate all the faithful departed in the context of the All Saints' Day celebration", in keeping with this fresh perspective. Contributing to the revival was the need "to help Anglicans mourn the deaths of millions of soldiers in World War I". Members of the Guild of All Souls, an Anglican devotional society founded in 1873, "are encouraged to pray for the dying and the dead, to participate in a requiem of All Souls' Day and say a Litany of the Faithful Departed at least once a month". At the Reformation the celebration of All Souls' Day was fused with All Saints' Day in the Church of England or, in the judgement of some, it was "deservedly abrogated". It was reinstated in certain parishes in connection with the Oxford Movement of the 19th century and is acknowledged in United States Anglicanism in the Holy Women, Holy Men calendar and in the Church of England with the 1980 Alternative Service Book. It features in Common Worship as a Lesser Festival called "Commemoration of the Faithful Departed (All Souls' Day)". Methodist Churches In the Methodist Church, saints refer to all Christians and therefore, on All Saint's Day, the Church Universal, as well as the deceased members of a local congregation are honoured and remembered. In Methodist congregations that celebrate the liturgy on All Souls Day, the observance, as with Anglicanism and Lutheranism, is viewed as an extension of All Saints' Day and as such, Methodists "remember our loved ones who had died" in their observance of this feast. Popular customs Many All Souls' Day traditions are associated with popular notions about purgatory. Bell tolling is meant to comfort those being cleansed. Lighting candles serves to kindle a light for the poor souls languishing in the darkness. Soul cakes are given to children coming to sing or pray for the dead (cf. trick-or-treating), giving rise to the traditions of "going souling" and the baking of special types of bread or cakes (cf. Pão-por-Deus). Europe All Souls' Day is celebrated in many European countries with vigils, candles, the decoration of graves, and special prayers as well as many regional customs. Examples of regional customs include leaving cakes for departed loved ones on the table and keeping the room warm for their comfort in Tirol and the custom in Brittany, where people flock to the cemeteries at nightfall to kneel, bareheaded, at the graves of their loved ones and anoint the hollow of the tombstone with holy water or to pour libations of milk on it. At bedtime, supper is left on the table for the souls. All Souls' Day is known in Maltese as Jum il-Mejtin, and is accompanied a traditional supper including roasted pig, based on a custom of letting a pig loose on the streets with a bell around its neck, to be fed by the entire neighborhood and cooked on that day to feed the poor. In Linz, funereal musical pieces known as aequales were played from tower tops on All Souls' Day and the evening before. In the Czech Republic All Souls' Day is called Dušičky, or "little souls". Traditionally, candles are left on graves on Dušičky. In Sicily and other regions of southern Italy, All Souls' Day is celebrated as the Festa dei Morti or U juornu rii morti, the "Commemoration of the Dead" or the "Day of the Dead", which according to Joshua Nicolosi of the Sicilian Post could be seen "halfway between Christian and pagan traditions". Families visit and clean grave sites, home altars are decorated with family photos and votive candles, and children are gifted a special basket or cannistru of chocolates, pomegranate, and other gifts from their ancestors. Because of the gifting of sugary sweets and the emphasis on sugar puppet decorations, the Commemoration Day has spurred local Sicilian events such as the Notte di Zucchero ("Night of Sugar") in which communities celebrate the dead. Philippines In the Philippines, Hallow mas is variously called "Undás", "Todos los Santos" (Spanish, "All Saints"), and sometimes "Araw ng mga Patay / Yumao" (Tagalog, "Day of the dead / those who have passed away"), which incorporates All Saints' Day and All Souls' Day. Filipinos traditionally observe this day by visiting the family dead to clean and repair their tombs. Offerings of prayers, flowers, candles, and food. Chinese Filipinos additionally burn incense and kim. Many also spend the day and ensuing night holding reunions at the cemetery with feasts and merriment. See also Day of the Dead Festival of the Dead International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church Office of the Dead Prayer for the dead Thursday of the Dead Zaduszki Flowering Sunday Decoration Day (Appalachia and Liberia) Cemetery Sunday References Citations Sources Further reading Kirkham, John Paul. The Holy Souls- The Definitive book about The Holy Souls and Purgatory Tracey OSM, Liam. "The liturgy of All Souls Day", Catholic Ireland, 30 November 1999 External links Notes on Russian Orthodox observance by N. Bulgakov N. Bulgakov
the last day of Allhallowtide, after All Saints' Day (1 November) and Halloween (October 31). Prior to the standardization of Catholic observance on 2 November by St. Odilo of Cluny during the 10th century, many Catholic congregations celebrated All Souls Day on various dates during the Easter season as it is still observed in some Eastern Orthodox Churches and associated Eastern Catholic and Eastern Lutheran churches. Churches of the East Syriac Rite (Syro-Malabar Catholic Church, Chaldean Catholic Church, Assyrian Church of the East, Ancient Church of the East) commemorate all the faithful departed on the Friday before Lent. In other languages Known in Latin as Commemoratio Omnium Fidelium Defunctorum, All Souls' Day is known: in other Germanic languages as Allerseelen (German), Allerzielen (Dutch), Alla själars dag (Swedish), and Alle Sjæles Dag (Danish); in the Romance languages as Dia de Finados or Dia dos Fiéis Defuntos (Portuguese), Commémoration de tous les fidèles Défunts (French), Día de los Fieles Difuntos (Spanish), Commemorazione di tutti i fedeli defunti (Italian), and Ziua morților or Luminația (Romanian); and in the Slavic languages as Wspomnienie Wszystkich Wiernych Zmarłych (Polish), Vzpomínka na všechny věrné zesnulé (Czech), Spomen svih vjernih mrtvih (Croatian), and День всех усопших верных or День поминовения всех усопших(Den' vsekh usopshikh vernykh; Den' pominoveniya vsekh usopshih) (Russian). Background In the Catholic Church, "the faithful" refers essentially to baptized Catholics; "all souls" commemorates the church penitent of souls in purgatory, whereas "all saints" commemorates the church triumphant of saints in heaven. In the liturgical books of the Latin Church it is called the Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed (). The Catholic Church teaches that the purification of the souls in purgatory can be assisted by the actions of the faithful on earth. Its teaching is based also on the practice of prayer for the dead mentioned as far back as 2 Maccabees 12:42–46. The theological basis for the feast is the doctrine that the souls which, on departing from the body, are not perfectly cleansed from venial sins, or have not fully atoned for past transgressions, are debarred from the Beatific vision, and that the faithful on earth can help them by prayers, alms, deeds, and especially by the sacrifice of the Holy Mass. Religious observance by denomination Byzantine (Greek) Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Saturday of Souls (or Soul Saturday) is a day set aside for the commemoration of the dead within the liturgical year of the Eastern Orthodox and Byzantine Catholic Churches. Saturday is a traditional day of prayer for the dead, because Christ lay dead in the Tomb on Saturday. These days are devoted to prayer for departed relatives and others among the faithful who would not be commemorated specifically as saints. The Divine Services on these days have special hymns added to them to commemorate the departed. There is often a Panikhida (Memorial Service) either after the Divine Liturgy on Saturday morning or after Vespers on Friday evening, for which Koliva (a dish made of boiled wheatberries or rice and honey) is prepared and placed on the Panikhida table. After the Service, the priest blesses the Koliva. It is then eaten as a memorial by all present. Radonitsa Another Memorial Day in the East, Radonitsa, does not fall on a Saturday, but on either Monday or Tuesday of the second week after Pascha (Easter). Radonitsa does not have special hymns for the dead at the Divine Services. Instead a Panikhida will follow the Divine Liturgy, and then all will bring paschal foods to the cemeteries to greet the departed with the joy of the Resurrection. East Syriac tradition East Syriac churches including the Syro Malabar Church and Chaldean Catholic Church commemorates the feast of departed faithful on the last Friday of Epiphany season (which means Friday just before start of Great Lent). The season of Epiphany remembers the revelation of Christ to the world. Each Friday of Epiphany season, the church remembers important evangelistic figures. In the Syro Malabar Church, the Friday before the parish festival is also celebrated as feast of departed faithful when the parish remembers the activities of forebearers who worked for the parish and faithful. They also request the intercession of all departed souls for the faithful celebration of parish festival. In East Syriac liturgy, the church remembers departed souls including saints on every Friday throughout the year since the Christ was crucified and died on Friday. Western Catholicism History In the West there is ample evidence of the custom of praying for the dead in the inscriptions of the catacombs, with their constant prayers for the peace of the souls of the departed and in the early liturgies, which commonly contain commemorations of the dead. Tertullian, Cyprian and other early Western Fathers witness to the regular practice of praying for the dead among the early Christians. In the sixth century, it was customary in Benedictine monasteries to hold a commemoration of the deceased members at Whitsuntide. In the time of St. Isidore of Seville (d. 636) who lived in what is today Spain, the Monday after Pentecost was designated to remember the deceased. At the beginning of the ninth century, Abbot Eigil of Fulda set 17 December as commemoration of all deceased in part of what is today Germany. According to Widukind of Corvey (c. 975), there also existed a ceremony praying for the dead on 1 October in Saxony. But it was the day after All Saints' Day that Saint Odilo of Cluny chose when in the 11th century he instituted for all the monasteries dependent on the Abbey of Cluny an annual commemoration of all the faithful departed, to be observed with alms, prayers, and sacrifices for the relief of the suffering souls in purgatory. Odilo decreed that those requesting a Mass be offered for the departed should make an offering for the poor, thus linking almsgiving with fasting and prayer for the dead. The 2 November date and customs spread from the Cluniac monasteries to other Benedictine monasteries and thence to the Western Church in general. The Diocese of Liège was the first diocese to adopt the practice under Bishop Notger (d. 1008). 2 November was adopted in Italy and Rome in the thirteenth century. In the 15th century the Dominicans instituted a custom of each priest offering three Masses on the Feast of All Souls. During World War I, given the great number of war dead and the many destroyed churches where Mass could no longer be said, Pope Benedict XV, granted all priests the privilege of offering three Masses on All Souls Day. Liturgical practice In the Roman Rite as revised in 1969, if 2 November falls on a Sunday, the Mass is of All Souls, but the Liturgy of the Hours is that of the Sunday. However, public celebration of Lauds and Vespers of the Dead with the people participating is permitted. While celebration of a Sunday, a solemnity or a feast of the Lord replacing a Sunday begins on the previous evening with Vespers and perhaps evening Mass, the general norms do not allow for anticipation on Saturday evening of the liturgy of All Souls' Day falling
in charge of the third Parnasse Contemporain compilation. As a journalist, from 1867, he wrote many articles and notices. He became known with the novel (1881). Its protagonist, skeptical old scholar Sylvester Bonnard, embodied France's own personality. The novel was praised for its elegant prose and won him a prize from the Académie française. In (1893) France ridiculed belief in the occult; and in (1893), France captured the atmosphere of the . He was elected to the Académie française in 1896. France took a part in the Dreyfus affair. He signed Émile Zola's manifesto supporting Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish army officer who had been falsely convicted of espionage. France wrote about the affair in his 1901 novel Monsieur Bergeret. France's later works include L'Île des Pingouins (Penguin Island, 1908) which satirizes human nature by depicting the transformation of penguins into humans – after the birds have been baptized by mistake by the almost-blind Abbot Mael. It is a satirical history of France, starting in Medieval times, going on to the author's own time with special attention to the Dreyfus affair and concluding with a dystopian future. (The Gods Are Athirst, 1912) is a novel, set in Paris during the French Revolution, about a true-believing follower of Maximilien Robespierre and his contribution to the bloody events of the Reign of Terror of 1793–94. It is a wake-up call against political and ideological fanaticism and explores various other philosophical approaches to the events of the time. La Revolte des Anges (Revolt of the Angels, 1914) is often considered Anatole France's most profound and ironic novel. Loosely based on the Christian understanding of the War in Heaven, it tells the story of Arcade, the guardian angel of Maurice d'Esparvieu. Bored because Bishop d'Esparvieu is sinless, Arcade begins reading the bishop's books on theology and becomes an atheist. He moves to Paris, meets a woman, falls in love, and loses his virginity causing his wings to fall off, joins the revolutionary movement of fallen angels, and meets the Devil, who realizes that if he overthrew God, he would become just like God. Arcade realizes that replacing God with another is meaningless unless "in ourselves and in ourselves alone we attack and destroy Ialdabaoth." "Ialdabaoth", according to France, is God's secret name and means "the child who wanders". He was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1921. He died in 1924 and is buried in the Neuilly-sur-Seine community cemetery near Paris. On 31 May 1922, France's entire works were put on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum (Prohibited Books Index) of the Catholic Church. He regarded this as a "distinction". This Index was abolished in 1966. Personal life In 1877, France married Valérie Guérin de Sauville, a granddaughter of Jean-Urbain Guérin, a miniaturist who painted Louis XVI. Their daughter Suzanne was born in 1881 (and died in 1918). France's relations with women were always turbulent, and in 1888 he began a relationship with Madame Arman de Caillavet, who conducted a celebrated literary salon of the Third Republic. The affair lasted until shortly before her death in 1910. After his divorce, in 1893, France had many liaisons, notably with a Madame Gagey, who committed suicide in 1911. In 1920, France married for the second time, to Emma Laprévotte. France was a socialist and an outspoken supporter of the 1917 Russian
life In 1877, France married Valérie Guérin de Sauville, a granddaughter of Jean-Urbain Guérin, a miniaturist who painted Louis XVI. Their daughter Suzanne was born in 1881 (and died in 1918). France's relations with women were always turbulent, and in 1888 he began a relationship with Madame Arman de Caillavet, who conducted a celebrated literary salon of the Third Republic. The affair lasted until shortly before her death in 1910. After his divorce, in 1893, France had many liaisons, notably with a Madame Gagey, who committed suicide in 1911. In 1920, France married for the second time, to Emma Laprévotte. France was a socialist and an outspoken supporter of the 1917 Russian Revolution. In 1920, he gave his support to the newly founded French Communist Party. In his book The Red Lily, France famously wrote, "The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal loaves of bread." Reputation The English writer George Orwell defended France and declared that his work remained very readable, and that "it is unquestionable that he was attacked partly from political motives". Works Poetry "Les Légions de Varus", poem published in 1867 in the Gazette rimée. Poèmes dorés (1873) Les Noces corinthiennes (The Bride of Corinth) (1876) Prose fiction Jocaste et le chat maigre (Jocasta and the Famished Cat) (1879) Le Crime de Sylvestre Bonnard (The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard) (1881) Les Désirs de Jean Servien (The Aspirations of Jean Servien) (1882) Abeille (Honey-Bee) (1883) Balthasar (1889) Thaïs (1890) L'Étui de nacre (Mother of Pearl) (1892) La Rôtisserie de la reine Pédauque (At the Sign of the Reine Pédauque) (1892) Les Opinions de Jérôme Coignard (The Opinions of Jerome Coignard) (1893) Le Lys rouge (The Red Lily) (1894) Le Puits de Sainte Claire (The Well of Saint Clare) (1895) L'Histoire contemporaine (A Chronicle of Our Own Times) 1: L'Orme du mail (The Elm-Tree on the Mall)(1897) 2: Le Mannequin d'osier (The Wicker-Work Woman) (1897) 3: L'Anneau d'améthyste (The Amethyst Ring) (1899) 4: Monsieur
painter Théo van Rysselberghe. This caused the only crisis in the long-standing relationship between Allégret and Gide and damaged the relation with van Rysselberghe. This was possibly Gide's only sexual relationship with a woman, and it was brief in the extreme. Catherine became his only descendant by blood. He liked to call Elisabeth "La Dame Blanche" ("The White Lady"). Elisabeth eventually left her husband to move to Paris and manage the practical aspects of Gide's life (they had adjoining apartments built for each on the rue Vavin). She worshiped him, but evidently they no longer had a sexual relationship. Gide's legal wife, Madeleine, died in 1938. Later he explored their unconsummated marriage in his memoir of Madeleine, Et nunc manet in te. In 1924, he published an autobiography, If it Die... (French: Si le grain ne meurt). In the same year, he produced the first French language editions of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness and Lord Jim. After 1925, he began to campaign for more humane conditions for convicted criminals. Africa From July 1926 to May 1927, he traveled through the French Equatorial Africa colony with his lover Marc Allégret. Gide went successively to Middle Congo (now the Republic of the Congo), Ubangi-Shari (now the Central African Republic), briefly to Chad and then to Cameroon before returning to France. He related his peregrinations in a journal called Travels in the Congo (French: Voyage au Congo) and Return from Chad (French: Retour du Tchad). In this published journal, he criticized the behavior of French business interests in the Congo and inspired reform. In particular, he strongly criticized the Large Concessions regime (French: Régime des Grandes Concessions), i.e., a regime that conceded part of the colony to French companies and where these companies could exploit all of the area's natural resources, in particular rubber. He related, for instance, how natives were forced to leave their village for several weeks to collect rubber in the forest, and went as far as comparing their exploitation to slavery. The book had important influence on anti-colonialism movements in France and helped re-evaluate the impact of colonialism. Soviet Union During the 1930s, he briefly became a communist, or more precisely, a fellow traveler (he never formally joined any communist party). As a distinguished writer sympathizing with the cause of communism, he was invited to speak at Maxim Gorky's funeral and to tour the Soviet Union as a guest of the Soviet Union of Writers. He encountered censorship of his speeches and was particularly disillusioned with the state of culture under Soviet communism, breaking with his socialist friends in Retour de L'U.R.S.S. in 1936. In the 1949 anthology The God That Failed Gide describes his early enthusiasm: 1930s and 1940s In 1930 Gide published a book about the Blanche Monnier case called La Séquestrée de Poitiers, changing little but the names of the protagonists. Monnier was a young woman who was kept captive by her own mother for more than 25 years. In 1939, Gide became the first living author to be published in the prestigious Bibliothèque de la Pléiade. He left France for Africa in 1942 and lived in Tunis from December 1942 until it was re-taken by French, British and American forces in May 1943 and he was able to travel to Algiers where he stayed until the end of World War II. In 1947, he received the Nobel Prize in Literature "for his comprehensive and artistically significant writings, in which human problems and conditions have been presented with a fearless love of truth and keen psychological insight". He devoted much of his last years to publishing his Journal. Gide died in Paris on 19 February 1951. The Roman Catholic Church placed his works on the Index of Forbidden Books in 1952. Gide's life as a writer Gide's biographer Alan Sheridan summed up Gide's life as a writer and an intellectual: "Gide's fame rested ultimately, of course, on his literary works. But, unlike many writers, he was no recluse: he had a need of friendship and a genius for sustaining it." But his "capacity for love was not confined to his friends: it spilled over into a concern for others less fortunate than himself." Writings André Gide's writings spanned many genres – "As a master of prose narrative, occasional dramatist and translator, literary critic, letter writer, essayist, and diarist, André Gide provided twentieth-century French literature with one of its most intriguing examples of the man of letters." But as Gide's biographer Alan Sheridan points out, "It is the fiction that lies at the summit of Gide's work." "Here, as in the oeuvre as a whole, what strikes one first is the variety. Here, too, we see Gide's curiosity, his youthfulness, at work: a refusal to mine only one seam, to repeat successful formulas...The fiction spans the early years of Symbolism, to the "comic, more inventive, even fantastic" pieces, to the later "serious, heavily autobiographical, first-person narratives"...In France Gide was considered a great stylist in the classical sense, "with his clear, succinct, spare, deliberately, subtly phrased sentences." Gide's surviving letters run into the thousands. But it is the Journal that Sheridan calls "the pre-eminently Gidean mode of expression." "His first novel emerged from Gide's own journal, and many of the first-person narratives read more or less like journals. In Les faux-monnayeurs, Edouard's journal provides an alternative voice to the narrator's." "In 1946, when Pierre Herbert asked Gide which of his books he would choose if only one were to survive," Gide replied, 'I think it would be my Journal.'''" Beginning at the age of eighteen or nineteen, Gide kept a journal all of his life and when these were first made available to the public, they ran to thirteen hundred pages. Struggle for values "Each volume that Gide wrote was intended to challenge itself, what had preceded it, and what could conceivably follow it. This characteristic, according to Daniel Moutote in his Cahiers de André Gide essay, is what makes Gide's work
Writers. He encountered censorship of his speeches and was particularly disillusioned with the state of culture under Soviet communism, breaking with his socialist friends in Retour de L'U.R.S.S. in 1936. In the 1949 anthology The God That Failed Gide describes his early enthusiasm: 1930s and 1940s In 1930 Gide published a book about the Blanche Monnier case called La Séquestrée de Poitiers, changing little but the names of the protagonists. Monnier was a young woman who was kept captive by her own mother for more than 25 years. In 1939, Gide became the first living author to be published in the prestigious Bibliothèque de la Pléiade. He left France for Africa in 1942 and lived in Tunis from December 1942 until it was re-taken by French, British and American forces in May 1943 and he was able to travel to Algiers where he stayed until the end of World War II. In 1947, he received the Nobel Prize in Literature "for his comprehensive and artistically significant writings, in which human problems and conditions have been presented with a fearless love of truth and keen psychological insight". He devoted much of his last years to publishing his Journal. Gide died in Paris on 19 February 1951. The Roman Catholic Church placed his works on the Index of Forbidden Books in 1952. Gide's life as a writer Gide's biographer Alan Sheridan summed up Gide's life as a writer and an intellectual: "Gide's fame rested ultimately, of course, on his literary works. But, unlike many writers, he was no recluse: he had a need of friendship and a genius for sustaining it." But his "capacity for love was not confined to his friends: it spilled over into a concern for others less fortunate than himself." Writings André Gide's writings spanned many genres – "As a master of prose narrative, occasional dramatist and translator, literary critic, letter writer, essayist, and diarist, André Gide provided twentieth-century French literature with one of its most intriguing examples of the man of letters." But as Gide's biographer Alan Sheridan points out, "It is the fiction that lies at the summit of Gide's work." "Here, as in the oeuvre as a whole, what strikes one first is the variety. Here, too, we see Gide's curiosity, his youthfulness, at work: a refusal to mine only one seam, to repeat successful formulas...The fiction spans the early years of Symbolism, to the "comic, more inventive, even fantastic" pieces, to the later "serious, heavily autobiographical, first-person narratives"...In France Gide was considered a great stylist in the classical sense, "with his clear, succinct, spare, deliberately, subtly phrased sentences." Gide's surviving letters run into the thousands. But it is the Journal that Sheridan calls "the pre-eminently Gidean mode of expression." "His first novel emerged from Gide's own journal, and many of the first-person narratives read more or less like journals. In Les faux-monnayeurs, Edouard's journal provides an alternative voice to the narrator's." "In 1946, when Pierre Herbert asked Gide which of his books he would choose if only one were to survive," Gide replied, 'I think it would be my Journal.'''" Beginning at the age of eighteen or nineteen, Gide kept a journal all of his life and when these were first made available to the public, they ran to thirteen hundred pages. Struggle for values "Each volume that Gide wrote was intended to challenge itself, what had preceded it, and what could conceivably follow it. This characteristic, according to Daniel Moutote in his Cahiers de André Gide essay, is what makes Gide's work 'essentially modern': the 'perpetual renewal of the values by which one lives.'" Gide wrote in his Journal in 1930: "The only drama that really interests me and that I should always be willing to depict anew, is the debate of the individual with whatever keeps him from being authentic, with whatever is opposed to his integrity, to his integration. Most often the obstacle is within him. And all the rest is merely accidental." As a whole, "The works of André Gide reveal his passionate revolt against the restraints and conventions inherited from 19th-century France. He sought to uncover the authentic self beneath its contradictory masks." Sexuality In his journal, Gide distinguishes between adult-attracted "sodomites" and boy-loving "pederasts", categorizing himself as the latter. One, but not the first, of his early sexual encounters with a young boy was in the company of Oscar Wilde. Gide's novel Corydon, which he considered his most important work, erects a defense of pederasty. At that time, the age of consent for any type of sexual activity was set at thirteen. Bibliography See also Colonialism LGBT culture in Paris Mise en abymeReferences Citations Works cited Edmund White, André Gide: A Life in the Present. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998.] Further reading Noel I. Garde [Edgar H. Leoni], Jonathan to Gide: The Homosexual in History. New York:Vangard, 1964. For a chronology of Gide's life, see pp. 13–15 in Thomas Cordle, André Gide (The Griffin Authors Series). Twayne Publishers, Inc., 1969. For a detailed bibliography of Gide's writings and works about Gide, see pp. 655–678 in Alan Sheridan, André Gide: A Life in the Present. Harvard, 1999. External links Website of the Catherine Gide Foundation, held by Catherine Gide, his daughter. Center for Gidian Studies List of Works André Gide at Goodreads Amis d'André Gide in French Period newspaper articles on Gide interface in French'' André Gide, 1947 Nobel Laureate for Literature André Gide: A Brief Introduction Gide at Maderia in Jersey, 1901–07 19th-century LGBT people 1869 births 1951 deaths Writers from Paris French novelists French Protestants French travel writers French anti-communists French communists LGBT rights activists from France LGBT Nobel laureates Nobel laureates in Literature French Nobel laureates Writers about the Soviet Union Modernist writers Fyodor Dostoyevsky scholars Lycée Henri-IV alumni French LGBT novelists French male essayists French
n == 0: K = x n += 1 Ex += x - K Ex2 += (x - K) * (x - K) def remove_variable(x): global K, n, Ex, Ex2 n -= 1 Ex -= x - K Ex2 -= (x - K) * (x - K) def get_mean(): global K, n, Ex return K + Ex / n def get_variance(): global n, Ex, Ex2 return (Ex2 - (Ex * Ex) / n) / (n - 1) Two-pass algorithm An alternative approach, using a different formula for the variance, first computes the sample mean, and then computes the sum of the squares of the differences from the mean, where s is the standard deviation. This is given by the following code: def two_pass_variance(data): n = sum1 = sum2 = 0 for x in data: n += 1 sum1 += x mean = sum1 / n for x in data: sum2 += (x - mean) * (x - mean) variance = sum2 / (n - 1) return variance This algorithm is numerically stable if n is small. However, the results of both of these simple algorithms ("naïve" and "two-pass") can depend inordinately on the ordering of the data and can give poor results for very large data sets due to repeated roundoff error in the accumulation of the sums. Techniques such as compensated summation can be used to combat this error to a degree. Welford's online algorithm It is often useful to be able to compute the variance in a single pass, inspecting each value only once; for example, when the data is being collected without enough storage to keep all the values, or when costs of memory access dominate those of computation. For such an online algorithm, a recurrence relation is required between quantities from which the required statistics can be calculated in a numerically stable fashion. The following formulas can be used to update the mean and (estimated) variance of the sequence, for an additional element xn. Here, denotes the sample mean of the first n samples , their biased sample variance, and their unbiased sample variance. These formulas suffer from numerical instability, as they repeatedly subtract a small number from a big number which scales with n. A better quantity for updating is the sum of squares of differences from the current mean, , here denoted : This algorithm was found by Welford, and it has been thoroughly analyzed. It is also common to denote and . An example Python implementation for Welford's algorithm is given below. # For a new value newValue, compute the new count, new mean, the new M2. # mean accumulates the mean of the entire dataset # M2 aggregates the squared distance from the mean # count aggregates the number of samples seen so far def update(existingAggregate, newValue): (count, mean, M2) = existingAggregate count += 1 delta = newValue - mean mean += delta / count delta2 = newValue - mean M2 += delta * delta2 return (count, mean, M2) # Retrieve the mean, variance and sample variance from an aggregate def finalize(existingAggregate): (count, mean, M2) = existingAggregate if count < 2: return float("nan") else: (mean, variance, sampleVariance) = (mean, M2 / count, M2 / (count - 1)) return (mean, variance, sampleVariance) This algorithm is much less prone to loss of precision due to catastrophic cancellation, but might not be as efficient because of the division operation inside the loop. For a particularly robust two-pass algorithm for computing the variance, one can first compute and subtract an estimate of the mean, and then use this algorithm on the residuals. The parallel algorithm below illustrates how to merge multiple sets of statistics calculated online. Weighted incremental algorithm The algorithm can be extended to handle unequal sample weights, replacing the simple counter n with the sum of weights seen so far. West (1979) suggests this incremental algorithm: def weighted_incremental_variance(data_weight_pairs): w_sum = w_sum2 = mean = S = 0 for x, w in data_weight_pairs: w_sum = w_sum + w w_sum2 = w_sum2 + w * w mean_old = mean mean = mean_old + (w / w_sum) * (x - mean_old) S = S + w * (x - mean_old) * (x - mean) population_variance = S / w_sum # Bessel's correction for weighted samples # Frequency weights sample_frequency_variance = S / (w_sum - 1) # Reliability weights sample_reliability_variance = S / (w_sum - w_sum2 / w_sum) Parallel algorithm Chan et al. note that Welford's online algorithm detailed above is a special case of an algorithm that works for combining arbitrary sets and : . This may be useful when, for example, multiple processing units may be assigned to discrete parts of the input. Chan's method for estimating the mean is numerically unstable when and both are large, because the numerical error in is not scaled down in the way that
weights, replacing the simple counter n with the sum of weights seen so far. West (1979) suggests this incremental algorithm: def weighted_incremental_variance(data_weight_pairs): w_sum = w_sum2 = mean = S = 0 for x, w in data_weight_pairs: w_sum = w_sum + w w_sum2 = w_sum2 + w * w mean_old = mean mean = mean_old + (w / w_sum) * (x - mean_old) S = S + w * (x - mean_old) * (x - mean) population_variance = S / w_sum # Bessel's correction for weighted samples # Frequency weights sample_frequency_variance = S / (w_sum - 1) # Reliability weights sample_reliability_variance = S / (w_sum - w_sum2 / w_sum) Parallel algorithm Chan et al. note that Welford's online algorithm detailed above is a special case of an algorithm that works for combining arbitrary sets and : . This may be useful when, for example, multiple processing units may be assigned to discrete parts of the input. Chan's method for estimating the mean is numerically unstable when and both are large, because the numerical error in is not scaled down in the way that it is in the case. In such cases, prefer . def parallel_variance(n_a, avg_a, M2_a, n_b, avg_b, M2_b): n = n_a + n_b delta = avg_b - avg_a M2 = M2_a + M2_b + delta ** 2 * n_a * n_b / n var_ab = M2 / (n - 1) return var_ab This can be generalized to allow parallelization with AVX, with GPUs, and computer clusters, and to covariance. Example Assume that all floating point operations use standard IEEE 754 double-precision arithmetic. Consider the sample (4, 7, 13, 16) from an infinite population. Based on this sample, the estimated population mean is 10, and the unbiased estimate of population variance is 30. Both the naïve algorithm and two-pass algorithm compute these values correctly. Next consider the sample (, , , ), which gives rise to the same estimated variance as the first sample. The two-pass algorithm computes this variance estimate correctly, but the naïve algorithm returns 29.333333333333332 instead of 30. While this loss of precision may be tolerable and viewed as a minor flaw of the naïve algorithm, further increasing the offset makes the error catastrophic. Consider the sample (, , , ). Again the estimated population variance of 30 is computed correctly by the two-pass algorithm, but the naïve algorithm now computes it as −170.66666666666666. This is a serious problem with naïve algorithm and is due to catastrophic cancellation in the subtraction of two similar numbers at the final stage of the algorithm. Higher-order statistics Terriberry extends Chan's formulae to calculating the third and fourth central moments, needed for example when estimating skewness and kurtosis: Here the are again the sums of powers of differences from the mean , giving For the incremental case (i.e., ), this simplifies to: By preserving the value , only one division operation is needed and the higher-order statistics can thus be calculated for little incremental cost. An example of the online algorithm for kurtosis implemented as described is: def online_kurtosis(data): n = mean = M2 = M3 = M4 = 0 for x in data: n1 = n n = n + 1 delta = x - mean delta_n = delta / n delta_n2 = delta_n * delta_n term1 = delta * delta_n * n1 mean = mean + delta_n M4 = M4 + term1 * delta_n2 * (n*n - 3*n + 3) + 6 * delta_n2 * M2 - 4 * delta_n * M3 M3 = M3 + term1 * delta_n * (n - 2) - 3 * delta_n * M2 M2 = M2 + term1 # Note, you may also calculate variance using M2, and skewness using M3 # Caution: If all the inputs are the same, M2 will be 0, resulting in a division by 0. kurtosis = (n * M4) / (M2 * M2) - 3 return kurtosis Pébaÿ further extends these results to arbitrary-order central moments, for the incremental and the pairwise cases, and subsequently Pébaÿ et al. for weighted and compound moments. One can also find there similar formulas for covariance. Choi and Sweetman offer two alternative methods to compute the skewness and kurtosis, each of which can save substantial computer memory requirements and CPU time in certain applications. The first approach is to compute the statistical moments by separating the data into bins and then computing the moments from the geometry of the resulting histogram, which effectively becomes a one-pass algorithm for higher moments. One benefit is that the statistical moment calculations can be carried out to arbitrary accuracy such that the computations can be tuned to the precision of, e.g., the data storage format or the original measurement hardware. A relative histogram of a random variable can be constructed in the conventional way: the range of potential values is divided into bins and the number of occurrences within each bin are counted and plotted such that the area of each rectangle equals the portion of the sample values within that bin: where and represent the frequency and the relative frequency at bin and is the total area of the histogram. After this normalization, the raw moments and central moments of can be calculated from the relative histogram: where the superscript indicates the moments are calculated from the histogram. For constant bin width these two expressions can be simplified using : The second approach from Choi and Sweetman is an analytical methodology to combine statistical moments from individual segments of a time-history such that the resulting overall moments are those of the complete time-history. This methodology could be used for parallel computation of statistical moments with subsequent combination of those moments, or for combination of statistical moments computed at sequential times. If sets of statistical moments are known: for , then each can be expressed in terms of the equivalent raw moments: where is generally taken to be the duration of the time-history, or the number of points if is constant. The benefit of expressing the statistical moments in terms of is that the sets can be combined by addition, and there is no upper limit on the value of . where the subscript represents the concatenated time-history or combined . These combined values of can then be inversely transformed into raw moments representing the complete concatenated time-history Known relationships between the raw moments () and the central moments () are then used to compute the central moments of the concatenated time-history. Finally, the statistical moments of the concatenated history are computed from the central moments: Covariance Very similar algorithms can be used to compute the covariance. Naïve algorithm The naïve algorithm is For the algorithm above, one could use the following Python code: def naive_covariance(data1, data2): n = len(data1) sum12 = 0 sum1 = sum(data1) sum2 = sum(data2) for i1, i2 in zip(data1, data2): sum12 += i1 * i2 covariance = (sum12 - sum1 * sum2 / n) / n return covariance With estimate of the mean As for the variance, the covariance of two random variables is also shift-invariant, so given any two constant values and it can be written: and again choosing a value inside
The bitter almond is slightly broader and shorter than the sweet almond and contains about 50% of the fixed oil that occurs in sweet almonds. It also contains the enzyme emulsin which, in the presence of water, acts on the two soluble glucosides amygdalin and prunasin yielding glucose, cyanide and the essential oil of bitter almonds, which is nearly pure benzaldehyde, the chemical causing the bitter flavor. Bitter almonds may yield 4–9 mg of hydrogen cyanide per almond and contain 42 times higher amounts of cyanide than the trace levels found in sweet almonds. The origin of cyanide content in bitter almonds is via the enzymatic hydrolysis of amygdalin. P450 monooxygenases are involved in the amygdalin biosynthetic pathway. A point mutation in a bHLH transcription factor prevents transcription of the two cytochrome P450 genes, resulting in the sweet kernel trait. Extract of bitter almond was once used medicinally but even in small doses, effects are severe or lethal, especially in children; the cyanide must be removed before consumption. The acute oral lethal dose of cyanide for adult humans is reported to be of body weight (approximately 50 bitter almonds), so that for children consuming 5–10 bitter almonds may be fatal. All commercially grown almonds sold as food in the United States are sweet cultivars. The US Food and Drug Administration reported in 2010 that some fractions of imported sweet almonds were contaminated with bitter almonds. Eating such almonds could result in vertigo and other typical bitter almond (cyanide) poisoning effects. Culinary uses While the almond is often eaten on its own, raw or toasted, it is also a component of various dishes. Almonds are available in many forms, such as whole, slivered, and ground into flour. Almond pieces around 2–3 mm in size, called "nibs", are used for special purposes such as decoration. Almonds are a common addition to breakfast muesli or oatmeal. Use in desserts A wide range of classic sweets feature almonds as a central ingredient. Marzipan was developed in the Middle Ages. Since the 19th century almonds have been used to make bread, almond butter, cakes and puddings, candied confections, almond cream-filled pastries, nougat, cookies (macaroons, biscotti and qurabiya), and cakes (financiers, Esterházy torte), and other sweets and desserts. The young, developing fruit of the almond tree can be eaten whole (green almonds) when they are still green and fleshy on the outside and the inner shell has not yet hardened. The fruit is somewhat sour, but is a popular snack in parts of the Middle East, eaten dipped in salt to balance the sour taste. Also in the Middle East they are often eaten with dates. They are available only from mid-April to mid-June in the Northern Hemisphere; pickling or brining extends the fruit's shelf life. World cuisines In French cuisine, alternating layers of almond and hazelnut meringue are used to make the dessert dacquoise. Pithivier is one of many almond cream-filled pastries. In Germany, Easter bread called Deutsches Osterbrot is baked with raisins and almonds. In Greece almond flour is used to make amygdalopita, a glyka tapsiou dessert cake baking in a tray. Almonds are used for kourabiedes, a Greek version of the traditional quarabiya almond biscuits. A soft drink known as soumada is made from almonds in various regions. In Saudi Arabia, almonds are a typical embellishment for the rice dish kabsa. In Iran, green almonds are dipped in sea salt and eaten as snacks on street markets; they are called chaqale bâdam. Candied almonds called noghl are served alongside tea and coffee. Also, sweet almonds are used to prepare special food for babies, named harire badam. Almonds are added to some foods, cookies, and desserts, or are used to decorate foods. People in Iran consume roasted nuts for special events, for example, during New Year (Nowruz) parties. In Italy, colomba di Pasqua is a traditional Easter cake made with almonds. Bitter almonds are the base for amaretti cookies, a common dessert. Almonds are also a common choice as the nuts to include in torrone. In Morocco, almonds in the form of sweet almond paste are the main ingredient in pastry fillings, and several other desserts. Fried blanched whole almonds are also used to decorate sweet tajines such as lamb with prunes. Southwestern Berber regions of Essaouira and Souss are also known for amlou, a spread made of almond paste, argan oil, and honey. Almond paste is also mixed with toasted flour and among others, honey, olive oil or butter, anise, fennel, sesame seeds, and cinnamon to make sellou (also called zamita in Meknes or slilou in Marrakech), a sweet snack known for its long shelf life and high nutritive value. In Indian cuisine, almonds are the base ingredients of pasanda-style and Mughlai curries. Badam halva is a sweet made from almonds with added coloring. Almond flakes are added to many sweets (such as sohan barfi), and are usually visible sticking to the outer surface. Almonds form the base of various drinks which are supposed to have cooling properties. Almond sherbet or sherbet-e-badaam, is a popular summer drink. Almonds are also sold as a snack with added salt. In Israel almonds are used as a topping for tahini cookies or eaten as a snack. In Spain Marcona almonds are usually toasted in oil and lightly salted. They are used by Spanish confectioners to prepare a sweet called turrón. In Arabian cuisine, almonds are commonly used as garnishing for Mansaf. Certain natural food stores sell "bitter almonds" or "apricot kernels" labeled as such, requiring significant caution by consumers for how to prepare and eat these products. Marzipan Marzipan, a smooth, sweetened almond paste, is used in a number of elegant cakes and desserts. Princess cake is covered by marzipan (similar to fondant), as is Battenberg cake. In Sicily, sponge cake is covered with marzipan to make cassatella di sant'Agata and cassata siciliana, and marzipan is dyed and crafted into realistic fruit shaped to make frutta martorana. The Andalusian Christmas pastry pan de Cádiz is filled with marzipan and candied fruit. Almond milk Almonds can be processed into a milk substitute called almond milk; the nut's soft texture, mild flavor, and light coloring (when skinned) make for an efficient analog to dairy, and a soy-free choice for lactose intolerant people and vegans. Raw, blanched, and lightly toasted almonds work well for different production techniques, some of which are similar to that of soymilk and some of which use no heat, resulting in "raw milk" (see raw foodism). Almond milk, along with almond butter and almond oil, are a versatile products used in both sweet and savoury dishes. In Moroccan cuisine, sharbat billooz is one of the best known beverages, served for weddings, it is made by blending blanched almonds with milk, sugar and other flavorings. Almond flour and skins Almond flour or ground almond meal combined with sugar or honey as marzipan is often used as a gluten-free alternative to wheat flour in cooking and baking. Almonds contain polyphenols in their skins consisting of flavonols, flavan-3-ols, hydroxybenzoic acids and flavanones analogous to those of certain fruits and vegetables. These phenolic compounds and almond skin prebiotic dietary fiber have commercial interest as food additives or dietary supplements. Almond syrup Historically, almond syrup was an emulsion of sweet and bitter almonds, usually made with barley syrup (orgeat syrup) or in a syrup of orange flower water and sugar, often flavored with a synthetic aroma of almonds. Orgeat syrup is an important ingredient in the Mai Tai and many other Tiki drinks. Due to the cyanide found in bitter almonds, modern syrups generally are produced only from sweet almonds. Such syrup products do not contain significant levels of hydrocyanic acid, so are generally considered safe for human consumption. Nutrition Almonds are 4% water, 22% carbohydrates, 21% protein, and 50% fat (table). In a reference amount, almonds supply of food energy. The almond is a nutritionally dense food (table), providing a rich source (20% or more of the Daily Value, DV) of the B vitamins riboflavin and niacin, vitamin E, and the essential minerals calcium, copper, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, and zinc. Almonds are a moderate source (10–19% DV) of the B vitamins thiamine, vitamin B6, and folate, choline, and the essential mineral potassium. They also contain substantial dietary fiber, the monounsaturated fat, oleic acid, and the polyunsaturated fat, linoleic acid. Typical of nuts and seeds, almonds are a source of phytosterols such as beta-sitosterol, stigmasterol, campesterol, sitostanol, and campestanol. Health Almonds are included as a good source of protein among recommended healthy foods by the US Department of Agriculture. A 2016 review of clinical research indicated that regular consumption of almonds may reduce the risk of heart disease by lowering blood levels of LDL cholesterol. Potential allergy Almonds may cause allergy or intolerance. Cross-reactivity is common with peach allergens (lipid transfer proteins) and tree nut allergens. Symptoms range from local signs and symptoms (e.g., oral allergy syndrome, contact urticaria) to systemic signs and symptoms including anaphylaxis (e.g., urticaria, angioedema, gastrointestinal and respiratory symptoms). Oils Almonds are a rich source of oil, with 50% of kernel dry mass as fat (whole almond nutrition table). In relation to total dry mass of the kernel, almond oil contains 32% monounsaturated oleic acid (an omega-9 fatty acid), 13% linoleic acid (a polyunsaturated omega-6 essential fatty acid), and 10% saturated fatty acid (mainly as palmitic acid, USDA link in table). Linolenic acid, a polyunsaturated omega-3 fat, is not present (table). Almond oil is a rich source of vitamin E, providing 261% of the Daily Value per 100 ml (table). When almond oil is analyzed separately and expressed per 100 grams as a reference mass, the oil provides of food energy, 8 grams of saturated fat (81% of which is palmitic acid), 70 grams of oleic acid, and 17 grams of linoleic acid (oil table). Oleum amygdalae, the fixed oil, is prepared from either sweet or bitter almonds, and is a glyceryl oleate with a slight odour and a nutty taste. It is almost insoluble in alcohol but readily soluble in chloroform or ether. Almond oil is obtained from the dried kernel of almonds. Sweet almond oil is used as a carrier oil in aromatherapy and cosmetics while bitter almond oil, containing benzaldehyde, is used as a food flavouring and in perfume. Aflatoxins Almonds are susceptible to aflatoxin-producing molds. Aflatoxins are potent carcinogenic chemicals produced by molds such as Aspergillus flavus and Aspergillus parasiticus. The mold contamination may occur from soil, previously infested almonds, and almond pests such as navel-orange worm. High levels of mold growth typically appear as gray to black filament like growth. It is unsafe to eat mold-infected tree nuts. Some countries have strict limits on allowable levels of aflatoxin contamination of almonds and require adequate testing before the nuts can be marketed to
meal combined with sugar or honey as marzipan is often used as a gluten-free alternative to wheat flour in cooking and baking. Almonds contain polyphenols in their skins consisting of flavonols, flavan-3-ols, hydroxybenzoic acids and flavanones analogous to those of certain fruits and vegetables. These phenolic compounds and almond skin prebiotic dietary fiber have commercial interest as food additives or dietary supplements. Almond syrup Historically, almond syrup was an emulsion of sweet and bitter almonds, usually made with barley syrup (orgeat syrup) or in a syrup of orange flower water and sugar, often flavored with a synthetic aroma of almonds. Orgeat syrup is an important ingredient in the Mai Tai and many other Tiki drinks. Due to the cyanide found in bitter almonds, modern syrups generally are produced only from sweet almonds. Such syrup products do not contain significant levels of hydrocyanic acid, so are generally considered safe for human consumption. Nutrition Almonds are 4% water, 22% carbohydrates, 21% protein, and 50% fat (table). In a reference amount, almonds supply of food energy. The almond is a nutritionally dense food (table), providing a rich source (20% or more of the Daily Value, DV) of the B vitamins riboflavin and niacin, vitamin E, and the essential minerals calcium, copper, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, and zinc. Almonds are a moderate source (10–19% DV) of the B vitamins thiamine, vitamin B6, and folate, choline, and the essential mineral potassium. They also contain substantial dietary fiber, the monounsaturated fat, oleic acid, and the polyunsaturated fat, linoleic acid. Typical of nuts and seeds, almonds are a source of phytosterols such as beta-sitosterol, stigmasterol, campesterol, sitostanol, and campestanol. Health Almonds are included as a good source of protein among recommended healthy foods by the US Department of Agriculture. A 2016 review of clinical research indicated that regular consumption of almonds may reduce the risk of heart disease by lowering blood levels of LDL cholesterol. Potential allergy Almonds may cause allergy or intolerance. Cross-reactivity is common with peach allergens (lipid transfer proteins) and tree nut allergens. Symptoms range from local signs and symptoms (e.g., oral allergy syndrome, contact urticaria) to systemic signs and symptoms including anaphylaxis (e.g., urticaria, angioedema, gastrointestinal and respiratory symptoms). Oils Almonds are a rich source of oil, with 50% of kernel dry mass as fat (whole almond nutrition table). In relation to total dry mass of the kernel, almond oil contains 32% monounsaturated oleic acid (an omega-9 fatty acid), 13% linoleic acid (a polyunsaturated omega-6 essential fatty acid), and 10% saturated fatty acid (mainly as palmitic acid, USDA link in table). Linolenic acid, a polyunsaturated omega-3 fat, is not present (table). Almond oil is a rich source of vitamin E, providing 261% of the Daily Value per 100 ml (table). When almond oil is analyzed separately and expressed per 100 grams as a reference mass, the oil provides of food energy, 8 grams of saturated fat (81% of which is palmitic acid), 70 grams of oleic acid, and 17 grams of linoleic acid (oil table). Oleum amygdalae, the fixed oil, is prepared from either sweet or bitter almonds, and is a glyceryl oleate with a slight odour and a nutty taste. It is almost insoluble in alcohol but readily soluble in chloroform or ether. Almond oil is obtained from the dried kernel of almonds. Sweet almond oil is used as a carrier oil in aromatherapy and cosmetics while bitter almond oil, containing benzaldehyde, is used as a food flavouring and in perfume. Aflatoxins Almonds are susceptible to aflatoxin-producing molds. Aflatoxins are potent carcinogenic chemicals produced by molds such as Aspergillus flavus and Aspergillus parasiticus. The mold contamination may occur from soil, previously infested almonds, and almond pests such as navel-orange worm. High levels of mold growth typically appear as gray to black filament like growth. It is unsafe to eat mold-infected tree nuts. Some countries have strict limits on allowable levels of aflatoxin contamination of almonds and require adequate testing before the nuts can be marketed to their citizens. The European Union, for example, introduced a requirement since 2007 that all almond shipments to EU be tested for aflatoxin. If aflatoxin does not meet the strict safety regulations, the entire consignment may be reprocessed to eliminate the aflatoxin or it must be destroyed. Mandatory pasteurization in California The USDA approved a proposal by the Almond Board of California to pasteurize almonds sold to the public, after tracing cases of salmonellosis to almonds. The almond pasteurization program became mandatory for California companies in 2007. Raw, untreated California almonds have not been available in the U.S. since then. California almonds labeled "raw" must be steam-pasteurized or chemically treated with propylene oxide (PPO). This does not apply to imported almonds or almonds sold from the grower directly to the consumer in small quantities. The treatment also is not required for raw almonds sold for export outside of North America. The Almond Board of California states: "PPO residue dissipates after treatment". The U.S. EPA has reported: "Propylene oxide has been detected in fumigated food products; consumption of contaminated food is another possible route of exposure". PPO is classified as Group 2B ("possibly carcinogenic to humans"). The USDA-approved marketing order was challenged in court by organic farmers organized by the Cornucopia Institute, a Wisconsin-based farm policy research group. According to the Cornucopia Institute, this almond marketing order has imposed significant financial burdens on small-scale and organic growers and damaged domestic almond markets. A federal judge dismissed the lawsuit in the spring of 2009 on procedural grounds. In August 2010, a federal appeals court ruled that the farmers have a right to appeal the USDA regulation. In March 2013, the court vacated the suit on the basis that the objections should have been raised in 2007 when the regulation was first proposed. Cultural aspects The almond is highly revered in some cultures. The tree originated in the Middle East, and is mentioned numerous times in the Bible. In the Hebrew Bible, the almond was a symbol of watchfulness and promise due to its early flowering. In the Bible the almond is mentioned ten times, beginning with Book of Genesis 43:11, where it is described as "among the best of fruits". In Numbers 17 Levi is chosen from the other tribes of Israel by Aaron's rod, which brought forth almond flowers. According to tradition, the rod of Aaron bore sweet almonds on one side and bitter on the other; if the Israelites followed the Lord, the sweet almonds would be ripe and edible, but if they were to forsake the path of the Lord, the bitter almonds would predominate. The almond blossom supplied a model for the menorah which stood in the Holy Temple, "Three cups, shaped like almond blossoms, were on one branch, with a knob and a flower; and three cups, shaped like almond blossoms, were on the other...on the candlestick itself were four cups, shaped like almond blossoms, with its knobs and flowers" (Exodus 25:33–34; 37:19–20). Many Sephardic Jews give 5 almonds to each guest before special occasions like weddings. Similarly, Christian symbolism often uses almond branches as a symbol of the Virgin Birth of Jesus; paintings and icons often include almond-shaped haloes encircling the Christ Child and as a symbol of Mary. The word "Luz", which appears in Genesis 30:37, sometimes translated as "hazel", may actually be derived from the Aramaic name for almond (Luz), and is translated as such in some Bible versions such as the NIV. The Arabic name for almond is لوز "lauz" or "lūz". In some parts of the Levant and North Africa it is pronounced "loz", which is very close to its Aramaic origin. La entrada de la flor is an event celebrated on 1 February in Torrent, Spain, in which the clavarios and members of the Confrerie of the Mother of God deliver a branch of the first-blooming almond-tree to the Virgin. See also Fruit tree forms Fruit tree propagation Fruit tree pruning List of almond dishes List of edible seeds References External links University of California Fruit and Nut Research
foreign born came from Guyana, 3,300 or 17 per cent came from Dominica and 2,800 or 14 per cent came from Jamaica. The largest single group from a country outside the region came from the United States. Of the total of 1,715 persons, nine per cent of the foreign born, came from the United States while three per cent and one per cent came from the United Kingdom and Canada, respectively. Many of these are the children of Antiguans and Barbudans who had emigrated to these countries, mainly during the 1980s, and subsequently returned. Other demographics statistics Demographic statistics according to the World Population Review in 2019. One birth every 360 minutes One death every 720 minutes One net migrant every Infinity minutes Net gain of one person every 720 minutes Demographic statistics according to the CIA World Factbook, unless otherwise indicated. Population 99,287 (Feb. 2022 est.) Nationality Noun: Antiguan(s), Barbudan(s) Adjective: Antiguan, Barbudan Ethnic groups African descent 87.3%, mixed 4.7%, Hispanic 2.7%, white 1.6%, other 2.7%, unspecified 0.9% (2011 est.) note: data represent population by ethnic group Age structure 0-14 years: 22.52% (male 11,243/female 10,871) 15-24 years: 16.15% (male 7,891/female 7,961) 25-54 years: 41.68% (male 18,757/female 22,167) 55-64 years: 10.74% (male 4,693/female 5,848) 65 years and over: 8.91% (male 3,736/female 5,012) (2020 est.) Median age Total: 32.7 years Country comparison to the world: 106th Male: 30.7 years Female: 34.4 years (2020 est.) Birth rate 15.3 births/1,000 population (2021 est.) Country comparison to the world: 113th Death rate 5.63 deaths/1,000 population (2021 est.) Country comparison to the world: 177th Total fertility rate 1.96 children born/woman
0.7% East Indian. There is also a small Amerindian population: 177 in 1991 and 214 in 2001 (0.3% of the total population). The remaining 1.6% of the population includes people from the Middle East (0.6%) and China (0.2%). The 2001 census disclosed that 19,425, or 30 per cent of the total population of Antigua and Barbuda, reported their place of birth as a foreign country. Over 15,000 of these persons were from other Caribbean states, representing 80 of the total foreign born. The main countries of origin were Guyana, Dominica and Jamaica. Approximately 4,500 or 23 per cent of all foreign born came from Guyana, 3,300 or 17 per cent came from Dominica and 2,800 or 14 per cent came from Jamaica. The largest single group from a country outside the region came from the United States. Of the total of 1,715 persons, nine per cent of the foreign born, came from the United States while three per cent and one per cent came from the United Kingdom and Canada, respectively. Many of these are the children of Antiguans and Barbudans who had emigrated to these countries, mainly during the 1980s, and subsequently returned. Other demographics statistics Demographic statistics according to the World Population Review in 2019. One birth every 360 minutes One death every 720 minutes One net migrant every Infinity minutes Net gain of one person every 720 minutes Demographic statistics according to the CIA World Factbook, unless otherwise indicated. Population 99,287 (Feb. 2022 est.) Nationality Noun: Antiguan(s), Barbudan(s) Adjective: Antiguan, Barbudan Ethnic groups African descent 87.3%, mixed 4.7%, Hispanic 2.7%, white 1.6%, other 2.7%, unspecified 0.9% (2011 est.) note:
the 1999 general election. However, the opposition United Progressive Party (UPP) won 2004 elections, following its leader Winston Baldwin Spencer was Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda from 2004 to 2014. The elections to the House of Representatives were held on 12 June 2014. The Antigua and Barbuda Labour Party (ABLP) government was elected with fourteen seats. The United Progressive Party had three seats in the House of Representatives. ABLP won 15 of the 17 seats in the 2018 snap election under the leadership of incumbent Prime Minister Gaston Browne. Constitutional safeguards include freedom of speech, press, worship, movement, and association. Antigua and Barbuda is a member of the eastern Caribbean court system. The Judiciary is independent of the executive and the legislature. Jurisprudence is based on English common law. Executive branch As head of state, Queen Elizabeth II is represented in Antigua and Barbuda by a governor general who acts on the advice of the prime minister and the cabinet. |Monarch |Queen Elizabeth II | |1 November 1981 |- |Governor-General |Rodney Williams | |14 August 2014 |- |Prime Minister |Gaston Browne |Labour Party |13 June 2014 |} Legislative branch Antigua and Barbuda elects on national level a legislature. Parliament has two chambers. The House of Representatives has 19 members, 17 members elected for a five-year term in single-seat constituencies, 2 ex-officio member (President and Speaker). The Senate has 17 appointed members. The prime minister is the leader of the majority party in the House and conducts affairs of state with the cabinet. The prime minister and the cabinet are responsible to the Parliament. Elections must be held at least every five years but may be called by the prime minister at any time. There are special legislative provisions to account for Barbuda's low population relative to that of Antigua. Barbuda is guaranteed one member of the House of Representatives and two members of the Senate. In addition, there is a Barbuda Council to govern the internal affairs of the island. Political parties and elections Administrative divisions The country is divided into six parishes, Saint George, Saint John, Saint Mary, Saint Paul, Saint Peter, and Saint Philip, which are all on the island of Antigua. Additionally, the islands of Barbuda and Redonda are considered dependencies. Judicial branch Antigua and Barbuda is a member of the Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court. This court is headquartered in Saint Lucia, but at least one judge of the Supreme Court resides in Antigua
in the House of Representatives. ABLP won 15 of the 17 seats in the 2018 snap election under the leadership of incumbent Prime Minister Gaston Browne. Constitutional safeguards include freedom of speech, press, worship, movement, and association. Antigua and Barbuda is a member of the eastern Caribbean court system. The Judiciary is independent of the executive and the legislature. Jurisprudence is based on English common law. Executive branch As head of state, Queen Elizabeth II is represented in Antigua and Barbuda by a governor general who acts on the advice of the prime minister and the cabinet. |Monarch |Queen Elizabeth II | |1 November 1981 |- |Governor-General |Rodney Williams | |14 August 2014 |- |Prime Minister |Gaston Browne |Labour Party |13 June 2014 |} Legislative branch Antigua and Barbuda elects on national level a legislature. Parliament has two chambers. The House of Representatives has 19 members, 17 members elected for a five-year term in single-seat constituencies, 2 ex-officio member (President and Speaker). The Senate has 17 appointed members. The prime minister is the leader of the majority party in the House and conducts affairs of state with the cabinet. The prime minister and the cabinet are responsible to the Parliament. Elections must be held at least every five years but may be
comparison to the world: 177 Telephone system: domestic: good automatic telephone system international: 3 fiber optic submarine cables (2 to Saint Kitts and 1 to Guadeloupe); satellite earth station – 1 Intelsat (Atlantic Ocean) Radio Radio broadcast stations: AM 4, FM 6, shortwave 0 (2002) Radios: 36,000 (1997) Television Television broadcast stations: 2 (1997) Televisions: 31,000 (1997) Internet Internet Service Providers (ISPs): Cable & Wireless, Antigua Computer Technologies (ACT), Antigua Public Utilities Authority (APUA INET) Internet hosts: 2,215 (2008) country comparison to
– main lines in use: 37,500 (2006) country comparison to the world: 168 Telephones – mobile cellular: 110,200 (2006) (APUA PCS, Cable & Wireless, Digicel) country comparison to the world: 177 Telephone system: domestic: good automatic telephone system international: 3 fiber optic submarine
support to the rest of the defence force. Coast Guard — the maritime element of the defence force, and is divided into four units: Commanding Officer's Office Engineer Unit Administration Unit Flotilla — the flotilla is the operational part of the Coast Guard, and consists of the following water-craft: 1 Swiftships Shipbuilders 19.81-metre Commercial Cruiser-class patrol boat (P-01 Liberta), in service since 1984 1 SeaArk Boats Dauntless-class patrol boat (P-02 Palmetto), in service since 1995 1 Point-class cutter (P-03 Hermitage), transferred from the U.S. Coast Guard in 1998 1 Defender 380X-class all-weather interceptor (D-8), date of acquisition unknown 2 Boston Whaler 8.23-metre launches (071 and 072), in service since 1988 1 Zodiac Marine & Pool 8.23-metre Hurricane-type rigid-hulled inflatable boat (RHIB) in service since
Guard, and consists of the following water-craft: 1 Swiftships Shipbuilders 19.81-metre Commercial Cruiser-class patrol boat (P-01 Liberta), in service since 1984 1 SeaArk Boats Dauntless-class patrol boat (P-02 Palmetto), in service since 1995 1 Point-class cutter (P-03 Hermitage), transferred from the U.S. Coast Guard in 1998 1 Defender 380X-class all-weather interceptor (D-8), date of acquisition unknown 2 Boston Whaler 8.23-metre launches (071 and 072), in service since 1988 1 Zodiac Marine & Pool 8.23-metre Hurricane-type rigid-hulled inflatable boat (RHIB) in service since 1998 Antigua and Barbuda Cadet Corps Former deployments In 1983, fourteen men of the Antigua and Barbuda Defence Force were deployed to Grenada during the Operation Urgent Fury. In 1990, twelve soldiers were sent to Trinidad and Tobago after a failed coup attempt by radical Black Muslims against the constitutionally elected government headed by Prime Minister A.N.R. Robinson. In 1995, members of the Antigua and Barbuda Defence Force were deployed in Haiti as a part of Operation Uphold Democracy. Alliances – Mercian Regiment See also Regional Security System References External links Antigua and Barbuda Defence Force official page Article on the ABDF by Dr Dion Phillips Military units and formations established in
in the fraudulent Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and later repeated by Henry Ford and his Dearborn Independent. In the modern era, such myths continue to be spread in books such as The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews published by the Nation of Islam, and on the internet. Derek Penslar writes that there are two components to the financial canards: a) Jews are savages that "are temperamentally incapable of performing honest labor" b) Jews are "leaders of a financial cabal seeking world domination" Abraham Foxman describes six facets of the financial canards: All Jews are wealthy Jews are stingy and greedy Powerful Jews control the business world Jewish religion emphasizes profit and materialism It is okay for Jews to cheat non-Jews Jews use their power to benefit "their own kind" Gerald Krefetz summarizes the myth as "[Jews] control the banks, the money supply, the economy, and businesses—of the community, of the country, of the world". Krefetz gives, as illustrations, many slurs and proverbs (in several different languages) which suggest that Jews are stingy, or greedy, or miserly, or aggressive bargainers. During the nineteenth century, Jews were described as "scurrilous, stupid, and tight-fisted", but after the Jewish Emancipation and the rise of Jews to the middle- or upper-class in Europe were portrayed as "clever, devious, and manipulative financiers out to dominate [world finances]". Léon Poliakov asserts that economic antisemitism is not a distinct form of antisemitism, but merely a manifestation of theologic antisemitism (because, without the theological causes of the economic antisemitism, there would be no economic antisemitism). In opposition to this view, Derek Penslar contends that in the modern era, the economic antisemitism is "distinct and nearly constant" but theological antisemitism is "often subdued". An academic study by Francesco D'Acunto, Marcel Prokopczuk, and Michael Weber showed that people who live in areas of Germany that contain the most brutal history of antisemitic persecution are more likely to be distrustful of finance in general. Therefore, they tended to invest less money in the stock market and make poor financial decisions. The study concluded "that the persecution of minorities reduces not only the long-term wealth of the persecuted, but of the persecutors as well." Racial antisemitism Racial antisemitism is prejudice against Jews as a racial/ethnic group, rather than Judaism as a religion. Racial antisemitism is the idea that the Jews are a distinct and inferior race compared to their host nations. In the late 19th century and early 20th century, it gained mainstream acceptance as part of the eugenics movement, which categorized non-Europeans as inferior. It more specifically claimed that Northern Europeans, or "Aryans", were superior. Racial antisemites saw the Jews as part of a Semitic race and emphasized their non-European origins and culture. They saw Jews as beyond redemption even if they converted to the majority religion. Racial antisemitism replaced the hatred of Judaism with the hatred of Jews as a group. In the context of the Industrial Revolution, following the Jewish Emancipation, Jews rapidly urbanized and experienced a period of greater social mobility. With the decreasing role of religion in public life tempering religious antisemitism, a combination of growing nationalism, the rise of eugenics, and resentment at the socio-economic success of the Jews led to the newer, and more virulent, racist antisemitism. According to William Nichols, religious antisemitism may be distinguished from modern antisemitism based on racial or ethnic grounds. "The dividing line was the possibility of effective conversion... a Jew ceased to be a Jew upon baptism." However, with racial antisemitism, "Now the assimilated Jew was still a Jew, even after baptism.... From the Enlightenment onward, it is no longer possible to draw clear lines of distinction between religious and racial forms of hostility towards Jews... Once Jews have been emancipated and secular thinking makes its appearance, without leaving behind the old Christian hostility towards Jews, the new term antisemitism becomes almost unavoidable, even before explicitly racist doctrines appear." In the early 19th century, a number of laws enabling emancipation of the Jews were enacted in Western European countries. The old laws restricting them to ghettos, as well as the many laws that limited their property rights, rights of worship and occupation, were rescinded. Despite this, traditional discrimination and hostility to Jews on religious grounds persisted and was supplemented by racial antisemitism, encouraged by the work of racial theorists such as Joseph Arthur de Gobineau and particularly his Essay on the Inequality of the Human Race of 1853–1855. Nationalist agendas based on ethnicity, known as ethnonationalism, usually excluded the Jews from the national community as an alien race. Allied to this were theories of Social Darwinism, which stressed a putative conflict between higher and lower races of human beings. Such theories, usually posited by northern Europeans, advocated the superiority of white Aryans to Semitic Jews. Political antisemitism William Brustein defines political antisemitism as hostility toward Jews based on the belief that Jews seek national and/or world power." Yisrael Gutman characterizes political antisemitism as tending to "lay responsibility on the Jews for defeats and political economic crises" while seeking to "exploit opposition and resistance to Jewish influence as elements in political party platforms." According to Viktor Karády, political antisemitism became widespread after the legal emancipation of the Jews and sought to reverse some of the consequences of that emancipation. Conspiracy theories Holocaust denial and Jewish conspiracy theories are also considered forms of antisemitism. Zoological conspiracy theories have been propagated by Arab media and Arabic language websites, alleging a "Zionist plot" behind the use of animals to attack civilians or to conduct espionage. New antisemitism Starting in the 1990s, some scholars have advanced the concept of new antisemitism, coming simultaneously from the left, the right, and radical Islam, which tends to focus on opposition to the creation of a Jewish homeland in the State of Israel, and they argue that the language of anti-Zionism and criticism of Israel are used to attack Jews more broadly. In this view, the proponents of the new concept believe that criticisms of Israel and Zionism are often disproportionate in degree and unique in kind, and they attribute this to antisemitism. Jewish scholar Gustavo Perednik posited in 2004 that anti-Zionism in itself represents a form of discrimination against Jews, in that it singles out Jewish national aspirations as an illegitimate and racist endeavor, and "proposes actions that would result in the death of millions of Jews". It is asserted that the new antisemitism deploys traditional antisemitic motifs, including older motifs such as the blood libel. Critics of the concept view it as trivializing the meaning of antisemitism, and as exploiting antisemitism in order to silence debate and to deflect attention from legitimate criticism of the State of Israel, and, by associating anti-Zionism with antisemitism, misusing it to taint anyone opposed to Israeli actions and policies. History Many authors see the roots of modern antisemitism in both pagan antiquity and early Christianity. Jerome Chanes identifies six stages in the historical development of antisemitism: Pre-Christian anti-Judaism in ancient Greece and Rome which was primarily ethnic in nature Christian antisemitism in antiquity and the Middle Ages which was religious in nature and has extended into modern times Traditional Muslim antisemitism which was—at least, in its classical form—nuanced in that Jews were a protected class Political, social and economic antisemitism of Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment Europe which laid the groundwork for racial antisemitism Racial antisemitism that arose in the 19th century and culminated in Nazism in the 20th century Contemporary antisemitism which has been labeled by some as the New Antisemitism Chanes suggests that these six stages could be merged into three categories: "ancient antisemitism, which was primarily ethnic in nature; Christian antisemitism, which was religious; and the racial antisemitism of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries." Ancient world The first clear examples of anti-Jewish sentiment can be traced to the 3rd century BCE to Alexandria, the home to the largest Jewish diaspora community in the world at the time and where the Septuagint, a Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, was produced. Manetho, an Egyptian priest and historian of that era, wrote scathingly of the Jews. His themes are repeated in the works of Chaeremon, Lysimachus, Poseidonius, Apollonius Molon, and in Apion and Tacitus. Agatharchides of Cnidus ridiculed the practices of the Jews and the "absurdity of their Law", making a mocking reference to how Ptolemy Lagus was able to invade Jerusalem in 320 BCE because its inhabitants were observing the Shabbat. One of the earliest anti-Jewish edicts, promulgated by Antiochus IV Epiphanes in about 170–167 BCE, sparked a revolt of the Maccabees in Judea. In view of Manetho's anti-Jewish writings, antisemitism may have originated in Egypt and been spread by "the Greek retelling of Ancient Egyptian prejudices". The ancient Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria describes an attack on Jews in Alexandria in 38 CE in which thousands of Jews died. The violence in Alexandria may have been caused by the Jews being portrayed as misanthropes. Tcherikover argues that the reason for hatred of Jews in the Hellenistic period was their separateness in the Greek cities, the poleis. Bohak has argued, however, that early animosity against the Jews cannot be regarded as being anti-Judaic or antisemitic unless it arose from attitudes that were held against the Jews alone, and that many Greeks showed animosity toward any group they regarded as barbarians. Statements exhibiting prejudice against Jews and their religion can be found in the works of many pagan Greek and Roman writers. Edward Flannery writes that it was the Jews' refusal to accept Greek religious and social standards that marked them out. Hecataetus of Abdera, a Greek historian of the early third century BCE, wrote that Moses "in remembrance of the exile of his people, instituted for them a misanthropic and inhospitable way of life." Manetho, an Egyptian historian, wrote that the Jews were expelled Egyptian lepers who had been taught by Moses "not to adore the gods." Edward Flannery describes antisemitism in ancient times as essentially "cultural, taking the shape of a national xenophobia played out in political settings." There are examples of Hellenistic rulers desecrating the Temple and banning Jewish religious practices, such as circumcision, Shabbat observance, study of Jewish religious books, etc. Examples may also be found in anti-Jewish riots in Alexandria in the 3rd century BCE. The Jewish diaspora on the Nile island Elephantine, which was founded by mercenaries, experienced the destruction of its temple in 410 BCE. Relationships between the Jewish people and the occupying Roman Empire were at times antagonistic and resulted in several rebellions. According to Suetonius, the emperor Tiberius expelled from Rome Jews who had gone to live there. The 18th-century English historian Edward Gibbon identified a more tolerant period in Roman-Jewish relations beginning in about 160 CE. However, when Christianity became the state religion of the Roman Empire, the state's attitude towards the Jews gradually worsened. James Carroll asserted: "Jews accounted for 10% of the total population of the Roman Empire. By that ratio, if other factors such as pogroms and conversions had not intervened, there would be 200 million Jews in the world today, instead of something like 13 million." Persecutions during the Middle Ages In the late 6th century CE, the newly Catholicised Visigothic kingdom in Hispania issued a series of anti-Jewish edicts which forbade Jews from marrying Christians, practicing circumcision, and observing Jewish holy days. Continuing throughout the 7th century, both Visigothic kings and the Church were active in creating social aggression and towards Jews with "civic and ecclesiastic punishments", ranging between forced conversion, slavery, exile and death. From the 9th century, the medieval Islamic world classified Jews and Christians as dhimmis, and allowed Jews to practice their religion more freely than they could do in medieval Christian Europe. Under Islamic rule, there was a Golden age of Jewish culture in Spain that lasted until at least the 11th century. It ended when several Muslim pogroms against Jews took place on the Iberian Peninsula, including those that occurred in Córdoba in 1011 and in Granada in 1066. Several decrees ordering the destruction of synagogues were also enacted in Egypt, Syria, Iraq and Yemen from the 11th century. In addition, Jews were forced to convert to Islam or face death in some parts of Yemen, Morocco and Baghdad several times between the 12th and 18th centuries. The Almohads, who had taken control of the Almoravids' Maghribi and Andalusian territories by 1147, were far more fundamentalist in outlook compared to their predecessors, and they treated the dhimmis harshly. Faced with the choice of either death or conversion, many Jews and Christians emigrated. Some, such as the family of Maimonides, fled east to more tolerant Muslim lands, while some others went northward to settle in the growing Christian kingdoms. In medieval Europe, Jews were persecuted with blood libels, expulsions, forced conversions and massacres. These persecutions were often justified on religious grounds and reached a first peak during the Crusades. In 1096, hundreds or thousands of Jews were killed during the First Crusade. This was the first major outbreak of anti-Jewish violence in Christian Europe outside Spain and was cited by Zionists in the 19th century as indicating the need for a state of Israel. In 1147, there were several massacres of Jews during the Second Crusade. The Shepherds' Crusades of 1251 and 1320 both involved attacks, as did Rintfleisch massacres in 1298. Expulsions followed, such as in 1290, the banishment of Jews from England; in 1394, the expulsion of 100,000 Jews in France; and in 1421, the expulsion of thousands from Austria. Many of the expelled Jews fled to Poland. In medieval and Renaissance Europe, a major contributor to the deepening of antisemitic sentiment and legal action among the Christian populations was the popular preaching of the zealous reform religious orders, the Franciscans (especially Bernardino of Feltre) and Dominicans (especially Vincent Ferrer), who combed Europe and promoted antisemitism through their often fiery, emotional appeals. As the Black Death epidemics devastated Europe in the mid-14th century, causing the death of a large part of the population, Jews were used as scapegoats. Rumors spread that they caused the disease by deliberately poisoning wells. Hundreds of Jewish communities were destroyed in numerous persecutions. Although Pope Clement VI tried to protect them by issuing two papal bulls in 1348, the first on 6 July and an additional one several months later, 900 Jews were burned alive in Strasbourg, where the plague had not yet affected the city. Reformation Martin Luther, an ecclesiastical reformer whose teachings inspired the Reformation, wrote antagonistically about Jews in his pamphlet On the Jews and their Lies, written in 1543. He portrays the Jews in extremely harsh terms, excoriates them and provides detailed recommendations for a pogrom against them, calling for their permanent oppression and expulsion. At one point he writes: "...we are at fault in not slaying them...", a passage that, according to historian Paul Johnson, "may be termed the first work of modern antisemitism, and a giant step forward on the road to the Holocaust." 17th century During the mid-to-late 17th century the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth was devastated by several conflicts, in which the Commonwealth lost over a third of its population (over 3 million people), and Jewish losses were counted in the hundreds of thousands. The first of these conflicts was the Khmelnytsky Uprising, when Bohdan Khmelnytsky's supporters massacred tens of thousands of Jews in the eastern and southern areas he controlled (today's Ukraine). The precise number of dead may never be known, but the decrease of the Jewish population during that period is estimated at 100,000 to 200,000, which also includes emigration, deaths from diseases and captivity in the Ottoman Empire, called jasyr. European immigrants to the United States brought antisemitism to the country as early as the 17th century. Peter Stuyvesant, the Dutch governor of New Amsterdam, implemented plans to prevent Jews from settling in the city. During the Colonial Era, the American government limited the political and economic rights of Jews. It was not until the American Revolutionary War that Jews gained legal rights, including the right to vote. However, even at their peak, the restrictions on Jews in the United States were never as stringent as they had been in Europe. In the Zaydi imamate of Yemen, Jews were also singled out for discrimination in the 17th century, which culminated in the general expulsion of all Jews from places in Yemen to the arid coastal plain of Tihamah and which became known as the Mawza Exile. Enlightenment In 1744, Archduchess of Austria Maria Theresa ordered Jews out of Bohemia but soon reversed her position, on the condition that Jews pay for their readmission every ten years. This extortion was known as malke-geld (queen's money). In 1752, she introduced the law limiting each Jewish family to one son. In 1782, Joseph II abolished most of these persecution practices in his Toleranzpatent, on the condition that Yiddish and Hebrew were eliminated from public records and that judicial autonomy was annulled. Moses Mendelssohn wrote that "Such a tolerance... is even more dangerous play in tolerance than open persecution." Voltaire According to Arnold Ages, Voltaire's "Lettres philosophiques, Dictionnaire philosophique, and Candide, to name but a few of his better known works, are saturated with comments on Jews and Judaism and the vast majority are negative". Paul H. Meyer adds: "There is no question but that Voltaire, particularly in his latter years, nursed a violent hatred of the Jews and it is equally certain that his animosity...did have a considerable impact on public opinion in France." Thirty of the 118 articles in Voltaire's Dictionnaire Philosophique concerned Jews and described them in consistently negative ways. Louis de Bonald and the Catholic Counter-Revolution The counter-revolutionary Catholic royalist Louis de Bonald stands out among the earliest figures to explicitly call for the reversal of Jewish emancipation in the wake of the French Revolution. Bonald's attacks on the Jews are likely to have influenced Napoleon's decision to limit the civil rights of Alsatian Jews. Bonald's article Sur les juifs (1806) was one of the most venomous screeds of its era and furnished a paradigm which combined anti-liberalism, a defense of a rural society, traditional Christian antisemitism, and the identification of Jews with bankers and finance capital, which would in turn influence many subsequent right-wing reactionaries such as Roger Gougenot des Mousseaux, Charles Maurras, and Édouard Drumont, nationalists such as Maurice Barrès and Paolo Orano, and antisemitic socialists such as Alphonse Toussenel. Bonald furthermore declared that the Jews were an "alien" people, a "state within a state", and should be forced to wear a distinctive mark to more easily identify and discriminate against them. Under the French Second Empire, the popular counter-revolutionary Catholic journalist Louis Veuillot propagated Bonald's arguments against the Jewish "financial aristocracy" along with vicious attacks against the Talmud and the Jews as a "deicidal people" driven by hatred to "enslave" Christians. Between 1882 and 1886 alone, French priests published twenty antisemitic books blaming France's ills on the Jews and urging the government to consign them back to the ghettos, expel them, or hang them from the gallows. Gougenot des Mousseaux's Le Juif, le judaïsme et la judaïsation des peuples chrétiens (1869) has been called a "Bible of modern antisemitism" and was translated into German by Nazi ideologue Alfred Rosenberg. Imperial Russia Thousands of Jews were slaughtered by Cossack Haidamaks in the 1768 massacre of Uman in the Kingdom of Poland. In 1772, the empress of Russia Catherine II forced the Jews into the Pale of Settlement – which was located primarily in present-day Poland, Ukraine and Belarus – and to stay in their shtetls and forbade them from returning to the towns that they occupied before the partition of Poland. From 1804, Jews were banned from their villages, and began to stream into the towns. A decree by emperor Nicholas I of Russia in 1827 conscripted Jews under 18 years of age into the cantonist schools for a 25-year military service in order to promote baptism. Policy towards Jews was liberalised somewhat under Czar Alexander II (). However, his assassination in 1881 served as a pretext for further repression such as the May Laws of 1882. Konstantin Pobedonostsev, nicknamed the "black czar" and tutor to the czarevitch, later crowned Czar Nicholas II, declared that "One third of the Jews must die, one third must emigrate, and one third be converted to Christianity". Islamic antisemitism in the 19th century Historian Martin Gilbert writes that it was in the 19th century that the position of Jews worsened in Muslim countries. Benny Morris writes that one symbol of Jewish degradation was the phenomenon of stone-throwing at Jews by Muslim children. Morris quotes a 19th-century traveler: "I have seen a little fellow of six years old, with a troop of fat toddlers of only three and four, teaching [them] to throw stones at a Jew, and one little urchin would, with the greatest coolness, waddle up to the man and literally spit upon his Jewish gaberdine. To all this the Jew is obliged to submit; it would be more than his life was worth to offer to strike a Mahommedan." In the middle of the 19th century, J. J. Benjamin wrote about the life of Persian Jews, describing conditions and beliefs that went back to the 16th century: "…they are obliged to live in a separate part of town… Under the pretext of their being unclean, they are treated with the greatest severity and should they enter a street, inhabited by Mussulmans, they are pelted by the boys and mobs with stones and dirt…." In Jerusalem at least, conditions for some Jews improved. Moses Montefiore, on his seventh visit in 1875, noted that fine new buildings had sprung up and, "surely we're approaching the time to witness God's hallowed promise unto Zion." Muslim and Christian Arabs participated in Purim and Passover; Arabs called the Sephardis 'Jews, sons of Arabs'; the Ulema and the Rabbis offered joint prayers for rain in time of drought. At the time of the Dreyfus trial in France, "Muslim comments usually favoured the persecuted Jew against his Christian persecutors". Secular or racial antisemitism In 1850, the German composer Richard Wagner – who has been called "the inventor of modern antisemitism" – published Das Judenthum in der Musik (roughly "Jewishness in Music") under a pseudonym in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik. The essay began as an attack on Jewish composers, particularly Wagner's contemporaries, and rivals, Felix Mendelssohn and Giacomo Meyerbeer, but expanded to accuse Jews of being a harmful and alien element in German culture, who corrupted morals and were, in fact, parasites incapable of creating truly "German" art. The crux was the manipulation and control by the Jews of the money economy: Although originally published anonymously, when the essay was republished 19 years later, in 1869, the concept of the corrupting Jew had become so widely held that Wagner's name was affixed to it. Antisemitism can also be found in many of the Grimms' Fairy Tales by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, published from 1812 to 1857. It is mainly characterized by Jews being the villain of a story, such as in "The Good Bargain" ("Der gute Handel") and "The Jew Among Thorns" ("Der Jude im Dorn"). The middle 19th century saw continued official harassment of the Jews, especially in Eastern Europe under Czarist influence. For example, in 1846, 80 Jews approached the governor in Warsaw to retain the right to wear their traditional dress, but were immediately rebuffed by having their hair and beards forcefully cut, at their own expense. In America, even such influential figures as Walt Whitman tolerated bigotry toward the Jews. During his time as editor of the Brooklyn Eagle (1846–1848), the newspaper published historical sketches casting Jews in a bad light. The Dreyfus Affair was an infamous antisemitic event of the late 19th century and early 20th century. Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish artillery captain in the French Army, was accused in 1894 of passing secrets to the Germans. As a result of these charges, Dreyfus was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment on Devil's Island. The actual spy, Marie Charles Esterhazy, was acquitted. The event caused great uproar among the French, with the public choosing sides on the issue of whether Dreyfus was actually guilty or not. Émile Zola accused the army of corrupting the French justice system. However, general consensus held that Dreyfus was guilty: 80% of the press in France condemned him. This attitude among the majority of the French population reveals the underlying antisemitism of the time period. Adolf Stoecker (1835–1909), the Lutheran court chaplain to Kaiser Wilhelm I, founded in 1878 an antisemitic, anti-liberal political party called the Christian Social Party. This party always remained small, and its support dwindled after Stoecker's death, with most of its members eventually joining larger conservative groups such as the German National People's Party. Some scholars view Karl Marx's essay "On The Jewish Question" as antisemitic, and argue that he often used antisemitic epithets in his published and private writings. These scholars argue that Marx equated Judaism with capitalism in his essay, helping to spread that idea. Some further argue that the essay influenced National Socialist, as well as Soviet and Arab antisemites. Marx himself had Jewish ancestry, and Albert Lindemann and Hyam Maccoby have suggested that he was embarrassed by it. Others argue that Marx consistently supported Prussian Jewish communities' struggles to achieve equal political rights. These scholars argue that "On the Jewish Question" is a critique of Bruno Bauer's arguments that Jews must convert to Christianity before being emancipated, and is more generally a critique of liberal rights discourses and capitalism. Iain Hamphsher-Monk wrote that "This work [On The Jewish Question] has been cited as evidence for Marx's supposed anti-semitism, but only the most superficial reading of it could sustain such an interpretation." David McLellan and Francis Wheen argue that readers should interpret On the Jewish Question in the deeper context of Marx's debates with Bruno Bauer, author of The Jewish Question, about Jewish emancipation in Germany. Wheen says that "Those critics, who see this as a foretaste of 'Mein Kampf', overlook one, essential point: in spite of the clumsy phraseology and crude stereotyping, the essay was actually written as a defense of the Jews. It was a retort to Bruno Bauer, who had argued that Jews should not be granted full civic rights and freedoms unless they were baptised as Christians". According to McLellan, Marx used the word Judentum colloquially, as meaning commerce, arguing that Germans must be emancipated from the capitalist mode of production not Judaism or Jews in particular. McLellan concludes that readers should interpret the essay's second half as "an extended pun at Bauer's expense". 20th century Between 1900 and 1924, approximately 1.75 million Jews migrated to America, the bulk from Eastern Europe escaping the pogroms. Before 1900 American Jews had always amounted to less than 1% of America's total population, but by 1930 Jews formed about 3.5%. This increase, combined with the upward social mobility of some Jews, contributed to a resurgence of antisemitism. In the first half of the 20th century, in the US, Jews were discriminated against in employment, access to residential and resort areas, membership in clubs and organizations, and in tightened quotas on Jewish enrolment and teaching positions in colleges and universities. The lynching of Leo Frank by a mob of prominent citizens in Marietta, Georgia, in 1915 turned the spotlight on antisemitism in the United States. The case was also used to build support for the renewal of the Ku Klux Klan which had been inactive since 1870. At the beginning of the 20th century, the Beilis Trial in Russia represented modern incidents of blood-libels in Europe. During the Russian Civil War, close to 50,000 Jews were killed in pogroms. Antisemitism in America reached its peak during the interwar period. The pioneer automobile manufacturer Henry Ford propagated antisemitic ideas in his newspaper The Dearborn Independent (published by Ford from 1919 to 1927). The radio speeches of Father Coughlin in the late 1930s attacked Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal and promoted the notion of a Jewish financial conspiracy. Some prominent politicians shared such views: Louis T. McFadden, Chairman of the United States House Committee on Banking and Currency, blamed Jews for Roosevelt's decision to abandon the gold standard, and claimed that "in the United States today, the Gentiles have the slips of paper while the Jews have the lawful money". In Germany, Nazism led Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party, who came to power on 30 January 1933 shortly afterwards instituted repressive legislation which denied the Jews basic civil rights. In September 1935, the Nuremberg Laws prohibited sexual relations and marriages between "Aryans" and Jews as Rassenschande ("race disgrace") and stripped all German Jews, even quarter- and half-Jews, of their citizenship, (their official title became "subjects of the state"). It instituted a pogrom on the night of 9–10 November 1938, dubbed Kristallnacht, in which Jews were killed, their property destroyed and their synagogues torched. Antisemitic laws, agitation and propaganda were extended to German-occupied Europe in the wake of conquest, often building on local antisemitic traditions. In 1940, the famous aviator Charles Lindbergh and many prominent Americans led the America First Committee in opposing any involvement in a European war. Lindbergh alleged that Jews were pushing America to go to war against Germany. Lindbergh adamantly denied being anti-Semitic, and yet he refers numerous times in his private writings – his letters and diary – to Jewish control of the media being used to pressure the U.S. to get involved in the European war. In one diary entry in November 1938, he responded to Kristallnacht by writing "I do not understand these riots on the part of the Germans. ... They have undoubtedly had a difficult Jewish problem, but why is it necessary to handle it so unreasonably?", acknowledgement on Lindbergh's part that he agreed with the Nazis that Germany had a "Jewish problem." An article by Jonathan Marwil in Antisemitism, A Historical Encyclopedia of Prejudice and Persecution claims that "no one who ever knew Lindbergh thought him antisemitic" and that claims of his antisemitism were solely tied to the remarks he made in that one speech. In the east the Third Reich forced Jews into ghettos in Warsaw, in Kraków, in Lvov, in Lublin and in Radom. After the beginning of the war between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union in 1941 a campaign of mass murder, conducted by the Einsatzgruppen, culminated from 1942 to 1945 in systematic genocide: the Holocaust. Eleven million Jews were targeted for extermination by the Nazis, and some six million were eventually killed. Contemporary antisemitism Post-WWII antisemitism There have continued to be antisemitic incidents since WWII, some of which had been state sponsored. In the Soviet Union, antisemitism has been used as an instrument for settling personal conflicts starting with the conflict between Joseph Stalin and Leon Trotsky and continuing through numerous conspiracy-theories spread by official propaganda. Antisemitism in the USSR reached new heights after 1948 during the campaign against the "rootless cosmopolitan" (euphemism for "Jew") in which numerous Yiddish-language poets, writers, painters and sculptors were killed or arrested. This culminated in the so-called Doctors' Plot in 1952. Similar antisemitic propaganda in Poland resulted in the flight of Polish Jewish survivors from the country. After the war, the Kielce pogrom and the "March 1968 events" in communist Poland represented further incidents of antisemitism in Europe. The anti-Jewish violence in postwar Poland has a common theme of blood libel rumours. 21st century European antisemitism Physical assaults against Jews in Europe has included beatings, stabbings and other violence, which increased markedly, sometimes resulting in serious injury and death. A 2015 report by the US State Department on religious freedom declared that "European anti-Israel sentiment crossed the line into anti-Semitism." This rise in antisemitic attacks is associated with both Muslim antisemitism and the rise of far-right political parties as a result of the economic crisis of 2008. This rise in the support for far right ideas in western and eastern Europe has resulted in the increase of antisemitic acts, mostly attacks on Jewish memorials, synagogues and cemeteries but also a number of physical attacks against Jews. In Eastern Europe the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the instability of the new states has brought the rise of nationalist movements and the accusation against Jews for the economic crisis, taking over the local economy and bribing the government, along with traditional and religious motives for antisemitism such as blood libels. Most of the antisemitic incidents are against Jewish cemeteries and building (community centers and synagogues). Nevertheless, there were several violent attacks against Jews in Moscow in 2006 when a neo-Nazi stabbed 9 people at the Bolshaya Bronnaya Synagogue, the failed bomb attack on the same synagogue in 1999, the threats against Jewish pilgrims in Uman, Ukraine and the attack against a menorah by extremist Christian organization in Moldova in 2009. According to Paul Johnson, antisemitic policies are a sign of a state which is poorly governed. While no European state currently has such policies, the Economist Intelligence Unit notes the rise in political uncertainty, notably populism and nationalism, as something that is particularly alarming for Jews. 21st century Arab antisemitism Robert Bernstein, founder of Human Rights Watch, says that antisemitism is "deeply ingrained and institutionalized" in "Arab nations in modern times." In a 2011 survey by the Pew Research Center, all of the Muslim-majority Middle Eastern countries polled held significantly negative opinions of Jews. In the questionnaire, only 2% of Egyptians, 3% of Lebanese Muslims, and 2% of Jordanians reported having a positive view of Jews. Muslim-majority countries outside the Middle East similarly held markedly negative views of Jews, with 4% of Turks and 9% of Indonesians viewing Jews favorably. According to a 2011 exhibition at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, United States, some of the dialogue from Middle East media and commentators about Jews bear a striking resemblance to Nazi propaganda. According to Josef Joffe of Newsweek, "anti-Semitism—the real stuff, not just bad-mouthing particular Israeli policies—is as much part of Arab life today as the hijab or the hookah. Whereas this darkest of creeds is no longer tolerated in polite society in the West, in the Arab world, Jew hatred remains culturally endemic." Muslim clerics in the Middle East have frequently referred to Jews as descendants of apes and pigs, which are conventional epithets for Jews and Christians. According to professor Robert Wistrich, director of the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism (SICSA), the calls for the destruction of Israel by Iran or by Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, or the Muslim Brotherhood, represent a contemporary mode of genocidal antisemitism. Causes Antisemitism has been explained in terms of racism, xenophobia, projected guilt, displaced aggression, and the search for a scapegoat. Some explanations assign partial blame to the perception of Jewish people as unsociable. Such a perception may have arisen by many Jews having strictly kept to their own communities, with their own practices and laws. It has also been suggested that parts of antisemitism arose from a perception of Jewish people as greedy (as often used in stereotypes of Jews), and this perception has probably evolved in Europe during Medieval times where a large portion of money lending was operated by Jews. Factors contributing to this situation included that Jews were restricted from other professions, while the Christian Church declared for their followers that money lending constituted immoral "usury". Prevention through education Education plays an important role in addressing and overcoming prejudice and countering social discrimination. However, education is not only about challenging the conditions of intolerance and ignorance in which antisemitism manifests itself; it is also about building a sense of global citizenship and solidarity, respect for, and enjoyment of diversity and the ability to live peacefully together as active, democratic citizens. Education equips learners with the knowledge to identify antisemitism and biased or prejudiced messages, and raises awareness about the forms, manifestations and impact of antisemitism faced by Jews and Jewish communities. Current situation A March 2008 report by the U.S. State Department found that there was an increase in antisemitism across the world, and that both old and new expressions of antisemitism persist. A 2012 report by the U.S. Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor also noted a continued global increase in antisemitism, and found that Holocaust denial and opposition to Israeli policy at times was used to promote or justify blatant antisemitism. In 2014, the Anti-Defamation League conducted a study titled Global 100: An Index of Anti-Semitism, which also reported high antisemitism figures around the world and, among other findings, that as many as "27% of people who have never met a Jew nevertheless harbor strong prejudices against him". Their study also showed that 75% of Muslims in the Middle East and North Africa held antisemitic views. Africa Middle Africa Cameroon In 2019, deputy justice minister Jean de Dieu Momo advanced an antisemitic canard during prime time on Cameroon Radio Television, and suggested that Jewish people had brought the Holocaust upon themselves. Northern Africa Algeria Almost all Jews in Algeria left upon independence in 1962. Algeria's 140,000 Jews had French citizenship since 1870 (briefly revoked by Vichy France in 1940), and they mainly went to France, with some going to Israel. Egypt In Egypt, Dar al-Fadhilah published a translation of Henry Ford's antisemitic treatise, The International Jew, complete with distinctly antisemitic imagery on the cover. On 5 May 2001, after Shimon Peres visited Egypt, the Egyptian al-Akhbar internet paper said that "lies and deceit are not foreign to Jews[...]. For this reason, Allah changed their shape and made them into monkeys and pigs." In July 2012, Egypt's Al Nahar channel fooled actors into thinking they were on an Israeli television show and filmed their reactions to being told it was an Israeli television show. In response, some of the actors launched into antisemitic rants or dialogue, and many became violent. Actress Mayer El Beblawi said that "Allah did not curse the worm and moth as much as he cursed the Jews" while actor Mahmoud Abdel Ghaffar launched into a violent rage and said, "You brought me someone who looks like a Jew... I hate the Jews to death" after finding out it was a prank. Libya Libya once had one of the oldest Jewish communities in the world, dating back to 300 BCE. Despite the repression of Jews in the late 1930s, as a result of the pro-Nazi Fascist Italian regime, Jews were a third of the population of Libya till 1941. In 1942, the Nazi German troops occupied the Jewish quarter of Benghazi, plundering shops and deporting more than 2,000 Jews across the desert. Sent to work in labor camps, more than one-fifth of this group of Jews perished. A series of pogroms started in November 1945, while more than 140 Jews were killed in Tripoli and most synagogues in the city looted. Upon Libya's independence in 1951, most of the Jewish community emigrated from Libya. After the Suez Crisis in 1956, another series of pogroms forced all but about 100 Jews to flee. When Muammar al-Gaddafi came to power in 1969, all remaining Jewish property was confiscated and all debts to Jews canceled. Morocco Jewish communities, in Islamic times often living in ghettos known as mellah, have existed in Morocco for at least 2,000 years. Intermittent large scale massacres (such as that of 6,000 Jews in Fez in 1033, over 100,000 Jews in Fez and Marrakesh in 1146 and again in Marrakesh in 1232) were accompanied by systematic discrimination through the years. In 1875, 20 Jews were killed by a mob in Demnat, Morocco; elsewhere in Morocco, Jews were attacked and killed in the streets in broad daylight. While the pro-Nazi Vichy regime during World War II passed discriminatory laws against Jews, King Muhammad prevented deportation of Jews to death camps (although Jews with French, as opposed to Moroccan, citizenship, being directly subject to Vichy law, were still deported.) In 1948, approximately 265,000 Jews lived in Morocco. Between 5,000 and 8,000 live there now. In June 1948, soon after Israel was established and in the midst of the first Arab-Israeli war, riots against Jews broke out in Oujda and Djerada, killing 44 Jews. In 1948–9, 18,000 Jews left the country for Israel. After this, Jewish emigration continued (to Israel and elsewhere), but slowed to a few thousand per year. Through the early fifties, Zionist organizations encouraged emigration, particularly in the poorer south of the country, seeing Moroccan Jews as valuable contributors to the Jewish State. In 1955, Morocco attained independence and emigration to Israel had increased further until 1956. Then it was prohibited until 1963, when it resumed. By 1967, only 60,000 Jews remained in Morocco. The Six-Day War in 1967 led to increased Arab-Jewish tensions worldwide, including Morocco. By 1971, the Jewish population was down to 35,000; however, most of this wave of emigration went to Europe and North America rather than Israel. Tunisia Jews have lived in Tunisia for at least 2,300 years. In the 13th century, Jews were expelled from their homes in Kairouan and were ultimately restricted to ghettos, known as hara. Forced to wear distinctive clothing, several Jews earned high positions in the Tunisian government. Several prominent international traders were Tunisian Jews. From 1855 to 1864, Muhammad Bey relaxed dhimmi laws, but reinstated them in the face of anti-Jewish riots that continued at least until 1869. Tunisia, as the only Middle Eastern country under direct Nazi control during World War II, was also the site of racist antisemitic measures such as the yellow star, prison camps, deportations, and other persecution. In 1948, approximately 105,000 Jews lived in Tunisia. Only about 1,500 remain there today. Following Tunisia's independence from France in 1956, a number of anti-Jewish policies led to emigration, of which half went to Israel and the other half to France. After attacks in 1967, Jewish emigration both to Israel and France accelerated. There were also attacks in 1982, 1985, and most recently in 2002 when a suicide bombing in Djerba took 21 lives (most of them German tourists) near the local synagogue, in a terrorist attack claimed by Al-Qaeda. In modern-day Tunisia, there have been many instances of antisemitic acts and statements. Since the government is not quick to condemn them, antisemitism spreads throughout Tunisian society. Following the Ben Ali regime, there have been an increasing number of public offenses against Jews in Tunisia. For example, in February 2012, when Egyptian cleric Wagdi Ghanaim entered Tunisia, he was welcomed by Islamists who chanted "Death to the Jews" as a sign of their support. The following month, during protests in Tunis, a Salafi sheik told young Tunisians to gather and learn to kill Jews. In the past, The Tunisian government has made efforts to block Jews from entering high positions, and some moderate members have tried to cover up the more extremist antisemitic efforts by appointing Jews to governmental positions. However, it is known that Muslim clerics believe that if the Muslim Brotherhood leads the regime, that will enhance their hatred towards Jews. In response to the prevalent antisemitism, the Tunisian government has publicly protected the dwindling population and its marks of Jewish culture, for example synagogues, and advised them to settle in Djerba, a French tourist attraction. Southern Africa South Africa Antisemitism has been present in the history of South Africa since Europeans first set foot ashore on the Cape Peninsula. In the years 1652–1795 Jews were not allowed to settle at the Cape. An 1868 Act would sanction religious discrimination. Antisemitism reached its apotheosis in the years leading up to World War II. Inspired by the rise of national socialism in Germany the Ossewabrandwag (OB) – whose membership accounted for almost 25% of the 1940 Afrikaner population – and the National Party faction New Order would champion a more programmatic solution to the 'Jewish problem'. Asia Eastern Asia Japan The Japanese first learned about antisemitism in 1918, during the cooperation of the Imperial Japanese Army with the White movement in Siberia. White Army soldiers had been issued copies of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and "The Protocols continue to be used as evidence of Jewish conspiracies even though they are widely acknowledged to be a forgery. During World War II, Nazi Germany encouraged Japan to adopt antisemitic policies. In the post-war period, extremist groups and ideologues have promoted conspiracy theories. Southern Asia Pakistan The U.S. State Department's first Report on Global Anti-Semitism mentioned a strong feeling of antisemitism in Pakistan. In Pakistan, a country without Jewish communities, antisemitic sentiment fanned by antisemitic articles in the press is widespread. In Pakistan, Jews are often regarded as miserly. After Israel's independence in 1948, violent incidents occurred against Pakistan's small Jewish community of about 2,000 Bene Israel Jews. The Magain Shalome Synagogue in Karachi was attacked, as were individual Jews. The persecution of Jews resulted in their exodus via India to Israel (see Pakistanis in Israel), the UK, Canada and other countries. The Peshawar Jewish community ceased to exist although a small community reportedly still exists in Karachi. A substantial number of people in Pakistan believe that the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York were a secret Jewish conspiracy organized by Israel's Mossad, as were the 7 July 2005 London bombings, allegedly perpetrated by Jews in order to discredit Muslims. Pakistani political commentator Zaid Hamid claimed that Indian Jews perpetrated the 2008 Mumbai attacks. Such allegations echo traditional antisemitic theories. The Jewish religious movement of Chabad Lubavich had a mission house in Mumbai, India, that was attacked in the 2008 Mumbai attacks, perpetrated by militants connected to Pakistan led by Ajmal Kasab, a Pakistani national. Antisemitic intentions were evident from the testimony of Kasab following his arrest and trial. Southeastern Asia Malaysia Although Malaysia presently has no substantial Jewish population, the country has reportedly become an example of a phenomenon called "antisemitism without Jews." In his treatise on Malay identity, "The Malay Dilemma", published in 1970, Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad wrote: "The Jews are not only hooked-nosed... but understand money instinctively.... Jewish stinginess and financial wizardry gained them the economic control of Europe and provoked antisemitism which waxed and waned throughout Europe through the ages." The Malay-language Utusan Malaysia daily stated in an editorial that Malaysians "cannot allow anyone, especially the Jews, to interfere secretly in this country's business... When the drums are pounded hard in the name of human rights, the pro-Jewish people will have their best opportunity to interfere in any Islamic country," the newspaper said. "We might not realize that the enthusiasm to support actions such as demonstrations will cause us to help foreign groups succeed in their mission of controlling this country." Prime Minister Najib Razak's office subsequently issued a statement late Monday saying Utusan's claim did "not reflect the views of the government." Indonesia Indonesian Jews face anti-Jewish discrimination. Western Asia Iran Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, former president of Iran, has frequently been accused of denying the Holocaust. Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader of Iran, has repeatedly doubted the validity of the reported casualties of the Holocaust. In one meeting he claimed that the Zionists have had "close relations" with the Nazi leaders and that "providing exaggerated statistics [of the Holocaust] has been a method to justify the Zionists' cruel treatment of the Palestinians". In July 2012, the winner of Iran's first annual International Wall Street Downfall Cartoon Festival, jointly sponsored by the semi-state-run Iranian media outlet Fars News, was an antisemitic cartoon depicting Jews praying before the New York Stock Exchange, which is made to look like the Western Wall. Other cartoons in the contest were antisemitic as well. The national director of the Anti-Defamation League, Abraham Foxman, condemned the cartoon, stating that "Here's the anti-Semitic notion of Jews and their love for money, the canard that Jews 'control' Wall Street, and a cynical perversion of the Western Wall, the holiest site in Judaism," and "Once again Iran takes the prize for promoting antisemitism." ADL/Global 100 reported in 2014 that 56% of Iranians hold antisemitic beliefs, and 18% of them agreed that Jews probably talk too much about the Holocaust. However, the reported results (56%) were reported to be the lowest in the Middle East. Iranian Jews along with Christians and Zoroastrians are protected under the Constitution and have seats reserved for them in the Iranian Parliament, However, de facto harassment still occurs. A 2021 report by ADL found antisemitism in Iranian textbooks, including characterizing Jews as the "enemies of Islam", inciting non-Jews to "annihilate Muslims", as stirring up "resentment and enmity among Muslims", as well as calling for Israel to be "wiped out." Lebanon In 2004, Al-Manar, a media network affiliated with Hezbollah, aired a drama series, The Diaspora, which observers allege is based on historical antisemitic allegations. BBC correspondents who have watched the program says it quotes extensively from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Palestine In March 2011, the Israeli government issued a paper claiming that "Anti-Israel and anti-Semitic messages are heard regularly in the government and private media and in the mosques and are taught in school books," to the extent that they are "an integral part of the fabric of life inside the PA." In August 2012, Israeli Strategic Affairs Ministry director-general Yossi Kuperwasser stated that Palestinian incitement to antisemitism is "going on all the time" and that it is "worrying and disturbing." At an institutional level, he said the PA has been promoting three key messages to the Palestinian people that constitute incitement: "that the Palestinians would eventually be the sole sovereign on all the land from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea; that Jews, especially those who live in Israel, were not really human beings but rather 'the scum of mankind'; and that all tools were legitimate in the struggle against Israel and the Jews." In August 2014, the Hamas' spokesman in Doha said on live television that Jews use blood to make matzos. Saudi Arabia Saudi textbooks vilify Jews, call Jews apes; demand that students avoid and not befriend Jews; claim that Jews worship the devil; and encourage Muslims to engage in Jihad to vanquish Jews. Saudi Arabian government officials and state religious leaders often promote the idea that Jews are conspiring to take over the entire world; as proof of their claims they publish and frequently cite The Protocols of the Elders of Zion as factual. In 2004, the official Saudi Arabia tourism website said that Jews and holders of Israeli passports would not be issued visas to enter the country. After an uproar, the restriction against Jews was removed from the website although the ban against Israeli passport-holders remained. In late 2014, a Saudi newspaper reported that foreign workers of most religions, including Judaism, were welcome in the kingdom, but Israeli citizens were not. Turkey In 2003, the Neve Shalom Synagogue was targeted in a car bombing, killing 21 Turkish Muslims and 6 Jews. In June 2011, the Economist suggested that "The best way for Turks to promote democracy would be to vote against the ruling party". Not long after, the Turkish Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, said that "The International media, as they are supported by Israel, would not be happy with the continuation of the AKP government". The Hurriyet Daily News quoted Erdoğan at the time as claiming "The Economist is part of an Israeli conspiracy that aims to topple the Turkish government". Moreover, during Erdogan's tenure, Hitler's Mein Kampf has once again become a best selling book in Turkey. Prime Minister Erdogan called antisemitism a "crime against humanity." He also said that "as a minority, they're our citizens. Both their security and the right to observe their faith are under our guarantee." While Erdoğan declared being against antisemitism, he has been accused of invoking antisemitic stereotypes in public statements. Europe According to a 2004 report from the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, antisemitism had increased significantly in Europe since 2000, with significant increases in verbal attacks against Jews and vandalism such as graffiti, fire bombings of Jewish schools, desecration of synagogues and cemeteries. Germany, France, Britain, and Russia are the countries with the highest rate of antisemitic incidents in Europe. The Netherlands and Sweden have also consistently had high rates of antisemitic attacks since 2000. Some claim that recent European antisemitic violence can actually be seen as a spillover from the long running Arab-Israeli conflict since the majority of the perpetrators are from the large Muslim immigrant communities in European cities. However, compared to France, the United Kingdom and much of the rest of Europe, in Germany Arab and pro-Palestinian groups are involved in only a small percentage of antisemitic incidents. According to The Stephen Roth Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism and Racism, most of the more extreme attacks on Jewish sites and physical attacks on Jews in Europe come from militant Islamic and Muslim groups, and most Jews tend to be assaulted in countries where groups of young Muslim immigrants reside. On 1 January 2006, Britain's chief rabbi, Lord Jonathan Sacks, warned that what he called a "tsunami of antisemitism" was spreading globally. In an interview with BBC Radio 4, Sacks said: "A number of my rabbinical colleagues throughout Europe have been assaulted and attacked on the streets.
standard, and claimed that "in the United States today, the Gentiles have the slips of paper while the Jews have the lawful money". In Germany, Nazism led Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party, who came to power on 30 January 1933 shortly afterwards instituted repressive legislation which denied the Jews basic civil rights. In September 1935, the Nuremberg Laws prohibited sexual relations and marriages between "Aryans" and Jews as Rassenschande ("race disgrace") and stripped all German Jews, even quarter- and half-Jews, of their citizenship, (their official title became "subjects of the state"). It instituted a pogrom on the night of 9–10 November 1938, dubbed Kristallnacht, in which Jews were killed, their property destroyed and their synagogues torched. Antisemitic laws, agitation and propaganda were extended to German-occupied Europe in the wake of conquest, often building on local antisemitic traditions. In 1940, the famous aviator Charles Lindbergh and many prominent Americans led the America First Committee in opposing any involvement in a European war. Lindbergh alleged that Jews were pushing America to go to war against Germany. Lindbergh adamantly denied being anti-Semitic, and yet he refers numerous times in his private writings – his letters and diary – to Jewish control of the media being used to pressure the U.S. to get involved in the European war. In one diary entry in November 1938, he responded to Kristallnacht by writing "I do not understand these riots on the part of the Germans. ... They have undoubtedly had a difficult Jewish problem, but why is it necessary to handle it so unreasonably?", acknowledgement on Lindbergh's part that he agreed with the Nazis that Germany had a "Jewish problem." An article by Jonathan Marwil in Antisemitism, A Historical Encyclopedia of Prejudice and Persecution claims that "no one who ever knew Lindbergh thought him antisemitic" and that claims of his antisemitism were solely tied to the remarks he made in that one speech. In the east the Third Reich forced Jews into ghettos in Warsaw, in Kraków, in Lvov, in Lublin and in Radom. After the beginning of the war between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union in 1941 a campaign of mass murder, conducted by the Einsatzgruppen, culminated from 1942 to 1945 in systematic genocide: the Holocaust. Eleven million Jews were targeted for extermination by the Nazis, and some six million were eventually killed. Contemporary antisemitism Post-WWII antisemitism There have continued to be antisemitic incidents since WWII, some of which had been state sponsored. In the Soviet Union, antisemitism has been used as an instrument for settling personal conflicts starting with the conflict between Joseph Stalin and Leon Trotsky and continuing through numerous conspiracy-theories spread by official propaganda. Antisemitism in the USSR reached new heights after 1948 during the campaign against the "rootless cosmopolitan" (euphemism for "Jew") in which numerous Yiddish-language poets, writers, painters and sculptors were killed or arrested. This culminated in the so-called Doctors' Plot in 1952. Similar antisemitic propaganda in Poland resulted in the flight of Polish Jewish survivors from the country. After the war, the Kielce pogrom and the "March 1968 events" in communist Poland represented further incidents of antisemitism in Europe. The anti-Jewish violence in postwar Poland has a common theme of blood libel rumours. 21st century European antisemitism Physical assaults against Jews in Europe has included beatings, stabbings and other violence, which increased markedly, sometimes resulting in serious injury and death. A 2015 report by the US State Department on religious freedom declared that "European anti-Israel sentiment crossed the line into anti-Semitism." This rise in antisemitic attacks is associated with both Muslim antisemitism and the rise of far-right political parties as a result of the economic crisis of 2008. This rise in the support for far right ideas in western and eastern Europe has resulted in the increase of antisemitic acts, mostly attacks on Jewish memorials, synagogues and cemeteries but also a number of physical attacks against Jews. In Eastern Europe the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the instability of the new states has brought the rise of nationalist movements and the accusation against Jews for the economic crisis, taking over the local economy and bribing the government, along with traditional and religious motives for antisemitism such as blood libels. Most of the antisemitic incidents are against Jewish cemeteries and building (community centers and synagogues). Nevertheless, there were several violent attacks against Jews in Moscow in 2006 when a neo-Nazi stabbed 9 people at the Bolshaya Bronnaya Synagogue, the failed bomb attack on the same synagogue in 1999, the threats against Jewish pilgrims in Uman, Ukraine and the attack against a menorah by extremist Christian organization in Moldova in 2009. According to Paul Johnson, antisemitic policies are a sign of a state which is poorly governed. While no European state currently has such policies, the Economist Intelligence Unit notes the rise in political uncertainty, notably populism and nationalism, as something that is particularly alarming for Jews. 21st century Arab antisemitism Robert Bernstein, founder of Human Rights Watch, says that antisemitism is "deeply ingrained and institutionalized" in "Arab nations in modern times." In a 2011 survey by the Pew Research Center, all of the Muslim-majority Middle Eastern countries polled held significantly negative opinions of Jews. In the questionnaire, only 2% of Egyptians, 3% of Lebanese Muslims, and 2% of Jordanians reported having a positive view of Jews. Muslim-majority countries outside the Middle East similarly held markedly negative views of Jews, with 4% of Turks and 9% of Indonesians viewing Jews favorably. According to a 2011 exhibition at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, United States, some of the dialogue from Middle East media and commentators about Jews bear a striking resemblance to Nazi propaganda. According to Josef Joffe of Newsweek, "anti-Semitism—the real stuff, not just bad-mouthing particular Israeli policies—is as much part of Arab life today as the hijab or the hookah. Whereas this darkest of creeds is no longer tolerated in polite society in the West, in the Arab world, Jew hatred remains culturally endemic." Muslim clerics in the Middle East have frequently referred to Jews as descendants of apes and pigs, which are conventional epithets for Jews and Christians. According to professor Robert Wistrich, director of the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism (SICSA), the calls for the destruction of Israel by Iran or by Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, or the Muslim Brotherhood, represent a contemporary mode of genocidal antisemitism. Causes Antisemitism has been explained in terms of racism, xenophobia, projected guilt, displaced aggression, and the search for a scapegoat. Some explanations assign partial blame to the perception of Jewish people as unsociable. Such a perception may have arisen by many Jews having strictly kept to their own communities, with their own practices and laws. It has also been suggested that parts of antisemitism arose from a perception of Jewish people as greedy (as often used in stereotypes of Jews), and this perception has probably evolved in Europe during Medieval times where a large portion of money lending was operated by Jews. Factors contributing to this situation included that Jews were restricted from other professions, while the Christian Church declared for their followers that money lending constituted immoral "usury". Prevention through education Education plays an important role in addressing and overcoming prejudice and countering social discrimination. However, education is not only about challenging the conditions of intolerance and ignorance in which antisemitism manifests itself; it is also about building a sense of global citizenship and solidarity, respect for, and enjoyment of diversity and the ability to live peacefully together as active, democratic citizens. Education equips learners with the knowledge to identify antisemitism and biased or prejudiced messages, and raises awareness about the forms, manifestations and impact of antisemitism faced by Jews and Jewish communities. Current situation A March 2008 report by the U.S. State Department found that there was an increase in antisemitism across the world, and that both old and new expressions of antisemitism persist. A 2012 report by the U.S. Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor also noted a continued global increase in antisemitism, and found that Holocaust denial and opposition to Israeli policy at times was used to promote or justify blatant antisemitism. In 2014, the Anti-Defamation League conducted a study titled Global 100: An Index of Anti-Semitism, which also reported high antisemitism figures around the world and, among other findings, that as many as "27% of people who have never met a Jew nevertheless harbor strong prejudices against him". Their study also showed that 75% of Muslims in the Middle East and North Africa held antisemitic views. Africa Middle Africa Cameroon In 2019, deputy justice minister Jean de Dieu Momo advanced an antisemitic canard during prime time on Cameroon Radio Television, and suggested that Jewish people had brought the Holocaust upon themselves. Northern Africa Algeria Almost all Jews in Algeria left upon independence in 1962. Algeria's 140,000 Jews had French citizenship since 1870 (briefly revoked by Vichy France in 1940), and they mainly went to France, with some going to Israel. Egypt In Egypt, Dar al-Fadhilah published a translation of Henry Ford's antisemitic treatise, The International Jew, complete with distinctly antisemitic imagery on the cover. On 5 May 2001, after Shimon Peres visited Egypt, the Egyptian al-Akhbar internet paper said that "lies and deceit are not foreign to Jews[...]. For this reason, Allah changed their shape and made them into monkeys and pigs." In July 2012, Egypt's Al Nahar channel fooled actors into thinking they were on an Israeli television show and filmed their reactions to being told it was an Israeli television show. In response, some of the actors launched into antisemitic rants or dialogue, and many became violent. Actress Mayer El Beblawi said that "Allah did not curse the worm and moth as much as he cursed the Jews" while actor Mahmoud Abdel Ghaffar launched into a violent rage and said, "You brought me someone who looks like a Jew... I hate the Jews to death" after finding out it was a prank. Libya Libya once had one of the oldest Jewish communities in the world, dating back to 300 BCE. Despite the repression of Jews in the late 1930s, as a result of the pro-Nazi Fascist Italian regime, Jews were a third of the population of Libya till 1941. In 1942, the Nazi German troops occupied the Jewish quarter of Benghazi, plundering shops and deporting more than 2,000 Jews across the desert. Sent to work in labor camps, more than one-fifth of this group of Jews perished. A series of pogroms started in November 1945, while more than 140 Jews were killed in Tripoli and most synagogues in the city looted. Upon Libya's independence in 1951, most of the Jewish community emigrated from Libya. After the Suez Crisis in 1956, another series of pogroms forced all but about 100 Jews to flee. When Muammar al-Gaddafi came to power in 1969, all remaining Jewish property was confiscated and all debts to Jews canceled. Morocco Jewish communities, in Islamic times often living in ghettos known as mellah, have existed in Morocco for at least 2,000 years. Intermittent large scale massacres (such as that of 6,000 Jews in Fez in 1033, over 100,000 Jews in Fez and Marrakesh in 1146 and again in Marrakesh in 1232) were accompanied by systematic discrimination through the years. In 1875, 20 Jews were killed by a mob in Demnat, Morocco; elsewhere in Morocco, Jews were attacked and killed in the streets in broad daylight. While the pro-Nazi Vichy regime during World War II passed discriminatory laws against Jews, King Muhammad prevented deportation of Jews to death camps (although Jews with French, as opposed to Moroccan, citizenship, being directly subject to Vichy law, were still deported.) In 1948, approximately 265,000 Jews lived in Morocco. Between 5,000 and 8,000 live there now. In June 1948, soon after Israel was established and in the midst of the first Arab-Israeli war, riots against Jews broke out in Oujda and Djerada, killing 44 Jews. In 1948–9, 18,000 Jews left the country for Israel. After this, Jewish emigration continued (to Israel and elsewhere), but slowed to a few thousand per year. Through the early fifties, Zionist organizations encouraged emigration, particularly in the poorer south of the country, seeing Moroccan Jews as valuable contributors to the Jewish State. In 1955, Morocco attained independence and emigration to Israel had increased further until 1956. Then it was prohibited until 1963, when it resumed. By 1967, only 60,000 Jews remained in Morocco. The Six-Day War in 1967 led to increased Arab-Jewish tensions worldwide, including Morocco. By 1971, the Jewish population was down to 35,000; however, most of this wave of emigration went to Europe and North America rather than Israel. Tunisia Jews have lived in Tunisia for at least 2,300 years. In the 13th century, Jews were expelled from their homes in Kairouan and were ultimately restricted to ghettos, known as hara. Forced to wear distinctive clothing, several Jews earned high positions in the Tunisian government. Several prominent international traders were Tunisian Jews. From 1855 to 1864, Muhammad Bey relaxed dhimmi laws, but reinstated them in the face of anti-Jewish riots that continued at least until 1869. Tunisia, as the only Middle Eastern country under direct Nazi control during World War II, was also the site of racist antisemitic measures such as the yellow star, prison camps, deportations, and other persecution. In 1948, approximately 105,000 Jews lived in Tunisia. Only about 1,500 remain there today. Following Tunisia's independence from France in 1956, a number of anti-Jewish policies led to emigration, of which half went to Israel and the other half to France. After attacks in 1967, Jewish emigration both to Israel and France accelerated. There were also attacks in 1982, 1985, and most recently in 2002 when a suicide bombing in Djerba took 21 lives (most of them German tourists) near the local synagogue, in a terrorist attack claimed by Al-Qaeda. In modern-day Tunisia, there have been many instances of antisemitic acts and statements. Since the government is not quick to condemn them, antisemitism spreads throughout Tunisian society. Following the Ben Ali regime, there have been an increasing number of public offenses against Jews in Tunisia. For example, in February 2012, when Egyptian cleric Wagdi Ghanaim entered Tunisia, he was welcomed by Islamists who chanted "Death to the Jews" as a sign of their support. The following month, during protests in Tunis, a Salafi sheik told young Tunisians to gather and learn to kill Jews. In the past, The Tunisian government has made efforts to block Jews from entering high positions, and some moderate members have tried to cover up the more extremist antisemitic efforts by appointing Jews to governmental positions. However, it is known that Muslim clerics believe that if the Muslim Brotherhood leads the regime, that will enhance their hatred towards Jews. In response to the prevalent antisemitism, the Tunisian government has publicly protected the dwindling population and its marks of Jewish culture, for example synagogues, and advised them to settle in Djerba, a French tourist attraction. Southern Africa South Africa Antisemitism has been present in the history of South Africa since Europeans first set foot ashore on the Cape Peninsula. In the years 1652–1795 Jews were not allowed to settle at the Cape. An 1868 Act would sanction religious discrimination. Antisemitism reached its apotheosis in the years leading up to World War II. Inspired by the rise of national socialism in Germany the Ossewabrandwag (OB) – whose membership accounted for almost 25% of the 1940 Afrikaner population – and the National Party faction New Order would champion a more programmatic solution to the 'Jewish problem'. Asia Eastern Asia Japan The Japanese first learned about antisemitism in 1918, during the cooperation of the Imperial Japanese Army with the White movement in Siberia. White Army soldiers had been issued copies of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and "The Protocols continue to be used as evidence of Jewish conspiracies even though they are widely acknowledged to be a forgery. During World War II, Nazi Germany encouraged Japan to adopt antisemitic policies. In the post-war period, extremist groups and ideologues have promoted conspiracy theories. Southern Asia Pakistan The U.S. State Department's first Report on Global Anti-Semitism mentioned a strong feeling of antisemitism in Pakistan. In Pakistan, a country without Jewish communities, antisemitic sentiment fanned by antisemitic articles in the press is widespread. In Pakistan, Jews are often regarded as miserly. After Israel's independence in 1948, violent incidents occurred against Pakistan's small Jewish community of about 2,000 Bene Israel Jews. The Magain Shalome Synagogue in Karachi was attacked, as were individual Jews. The persecution of Jews resulted in their exodus via India to Israel (see Pakistanis in Israel), the UK, Canada and other countries. The Peshawar Jewish community ceased to exist although a small community reportedly still exists in Karachi. A substantial number of people in Pakistan believe that the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York were a secret Jewish conspiracy organized by Israel's Mossad, as were the 7 July 2005 London bombings, allegedly perpetrated by Jews in order to discredit Muslims. Pakistani political commentator Zaid Hamid claimed that Indian Jews perpetrated the 2008 Mumbai attacks. Such allegations echo traditional antisemitic theories. The Jewish religious movement of Chabad Lubavich had a mission house in Mumbai, India, that was attacked in the 2008 Mumbai attacks, perpetrated by militants connected to Pakistan led by Ajmal Kasab, a Pakistani national. Antisemitic intentions were evident from the testimony of Kasab following his arrest and trial. Southeastern Asia Malaysia Although Malaysia presently has no substantial Jewish population, the country has reportedly become an example of a phenomenon called "antisemitism without Jews." In his treatise on Malay identity, "The Malay Dilemma", published in 1970, Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad wrote: "The Jews are not only hooked-nosed... but understand money instinctively.... Jewish stinginess and financial wizardry gained them the economic control of Europe and provoked antisemitism which waxed and waned throughout Europe through the ages." The Malay-language Utusan Malaysia daily stated in an editorial that Malaysians "cannot allow anyone, especially the Jews, to interfere secretly in this country's business... When the drums are pounded hard in the name of human rights, the pro-Jewish people will have their best opportunity to interfere in any Islamic country," the newspaper said. "We might not realize that the enthusiasm to support actions such as demonstrations will cause us to help foreign groups succeed in their mission of controlling this country." Prime Minister Najib Razak's office subsequently issued a statement late Monday saying Utusan's claim did "not reflect the views of the government." Indonesia Indonesian Jews face anti-Jewish discrimination. Western Asia Iran Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, former president of Iran, has frequently been accused of denying the Holocaust. Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader of Iran, has repeatedly doubted the validity of the reported casualties of the Holocaust. In one meeting he claimed that the Zionists have had "close relations" with the Nazi leaders and that "providing exaggerated statistics [of the Holocaust] has been a method to justify the Zionists' cruel treatment of the Palestinians". In July 2012, the winner of Iran's first annual International Wall Street Downfall Cartoon Festival, jointly sponsored by the semi-state-run Iranian media outlet Fars News, was an antisemitic cartoon depicting Jews praying before the New York Stock Exchange, which is made to look like the Western Wall. Other cartoons in the contest were antisemitic as well. The national director of the Anti-Defamation League, Abraham Foxman, condemned the cartoon, stating that "Here's the anti-Semitic notion of Jews and their love for money, the canard that Jews 'control' Wall Street, and a cynical perversion of the Western Wall, the holiest site in Judaism," and "Once again Iran takes the prize for promoting antisemitism." ADL/Global 100 reported in 2014 that 56% of Iranians hold antisemitic beliefs, and 18% of them agreed that Jews probably talk too much about the Holocaust. However, the reported results (56%) were reported to be the lowest in the Middle East. Iranian Jews along with Christians and Zoroastrians are protected under the Constitution and have seats reserved for them in the Iranian Parliament, However, de facto harassment still occurs. A 2021 report by ADL found antisemitism in Iranian textbooks, including characterizing Jews as the "enemies of Islam", inciting non-Jews to "annihilate Muslims", as stirring up "resentment and enmity among Muslims", as well as calling for Israel to be "wiped out." Lebanon In 2004, Al-Manar, a media network affiliated with Hezbollah, aired a drama series, The Diaspora, which observers allege is based on historical antisemitic allegations. BBC correspondents who have watched the program says it quotes extensively from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Palestine In March 2011, the Israeli government issued a paper claiming that "Anti-Israel and anti-Semitic messages are heard regularly in the government and private media and in the mosques and are taught in school books," to the extent that they are "an integral part of the fabric of life inside the PA." In August 2012, Israeli Strategic Affairs Ministry director-general Yossi Kuperwasser stated that Palestinian incitement to antisemitism is "going on all the time" and that it is "worrying and disturbing." At an institutional level, he said the PA has been promoting three key messages to the Palestinian people that constitute incitement: "that the Palestinians would eventually be the sole sovereign on all the land from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea; that Jews, especially those who live in Israel, were not really human beings but rather 'the scum of mankind'; and that all tools were legitimate in the struggle against Israel and the Jews." In August 2014, the Hamas' spokesman in Doha said on live television that Jews use blood to make matzos. Saudi Arabia Saudi textbooks vilify Jews, call Jews apes; demand that students avoid and not befriend Jews; claim that Jews worship the devil; and encourage Muslims to engage in Jihad to vanquish Jews. Saudi Arabian government officials and state religious leaders often promote the idea that Jews are conspiring to take over the entire world; as proof of their claims they publish and frequently cite The Protocols of the Elders of Zion as factual. In 2004, the official Saudi Arabia tourism website said that Jews and holders of Israeli passports would not be issued visas to enter the country. After an uproar, the restriction against Jews was removed from the website although the ban against Israeli passport-holders remained. In late 2014, a Saudi newspaper reported that foreign workers of most religions, including Judaism, were welcome in the kingdom, but Israeli citizens were not. Turkey In 2003, the Neve Shalom Synagogue was targeted in a car bombing, killing 21 Turkish Muslims and 6 Jews. In June 2011, the Economist suggested that "The best way for Turks to promote democracy would be to vote against the ruling party". Not long after, the Turkish Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, said that "The International media, as they are supported by Israel, would not be happy with the continuation of the AKP government". The Hurriyet Daily News quoted Erdoğan at the time as claiming "The Economist is part of an Israeli conspiracy that aims to topple the Turkish government". Moreover, during Erdogan's tenure, Hitler's Mein Kampf has once again become a best selling book in Turkey. Prime Minister Erdogan called antisemitism a "crime against humanity." He also said that "as a minority, they're our citizens. Both their security and the right to observe their faith are under our guarantee." While Erdoğan declared being against antisemitism, he has been accused of invoking antisemitic stereotypes in public statements. Europe According to a 2004 report from the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, antisemitism had increased significantly in Europe since 2000, with significant increases in verbal attacks against Jews and vandalism such as graffiti, fire bombings of Jewish schools, desecration of synagogues and cemeteries. Germany, France, Britain, and Russia are the countries with the highest rate of antisemitic incidents in Europe. The Netherlands and Sweden have also consistently had high rates of antisemitic attacks since 2000. Some claim that recent European antisemitic violence can actually be seen as a spillover from the long running Arab-Israeli conflict since the majority of the perpetrators are from the large Muslim immigrant communities in European cities. However, compared to France, the United Kingdom and much of the rest of Europe, in Germany Arab and pro-Palestinian groups are involved in only a small percentage of antisemitic incidents. According to The Stephen Roth Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism and Racism, most of the more extreme attacks on Jewish sites and physical attacks on Jews in Europe come from militant Islamic and Muslim groups, and most Jews tend to be assaulted in countries where groups of young Muslim immigrants reside. On 1 January 2006, Britain's chief rabbi, Lord Jonathan Sacks, warned that what he called a "tsunami of antisemitism" was spreading globally. In an interview with BBC Radio 4, Sacks said: "A number of my rabbinical colleagues throughout Europe have been assaulted and attacked on the streets. We've had synagogues desecrated. We've had Jewish schools burnt to the ground—not here but in France. People are attempting to silence and even ban Jewish societies on campuses on the grounds that Jews must support the state of Israel, therefore they should be banned, which is quite extraordinary because... British Jews see themselves as British citizens. So it's that kind of feeling that you don't know what's going to happen next that's making... some European Jewish communities uncomfortable." Following an escalation in antisemitism in 2012, which included the deadly shooting of three children at a Jewish school in France, the European Jewish Congress demanded in July a more proactive response. EJC President Moshe Kantor explained, "We call on authorities to take a more proactive approach so there would be no reason for statements of regret and denunciation. All these smaller attacks remind me of smaller tremors before a massive earthquake. The Jewish community cannot afford to be subject to an earthquake and the authorities cannot say that the writing was not on the wall." He added that European countries should take legislative efforts to ban any form of incitement, as well as to equip the authorities with the necessary tools to confront any attempt to expand terrorist and violent activities against Jewish communities in Europe. Eastern Europe Belarus Despite a dwindling number of Jews living in Belarus, antisemitism is still manifested, including defacing Holocaust monuments, and Nazi and racist graffiti, which are tolerated by many Belarusians and authorities. There are a number of reports about antisemitic attitudes of Belarusian authorities, including President Alexander Lukashenka, see "Antisemitism in Belarus" for details. In 2005, Yakov Basin, vice president of the Union of Jewish Organizations and Communities of Belarus reported that the authorities " turning a blind eye to blatant expressions of anti-Semitism among officials, writers and the dominant Russian Orthodox Church". He also reported about openly anti-Semitic books published by the Church. Still, Belarusian Jews do not generally feel threatened. Hungary In the 21st century, antisemitism in Hungary has evolved and received an institutional framework, while verbal and physical aggression against Jews has escalated, creating a great difference between its earlier manifestations in the 1990s and recent developments. One of the major representatives of this institutionalized antisemitic ideology is the popular Hungarian party Jobbik, which received 17 percent of the vote in the April 2010 national election. The far-right subculture, which ranges from nationalist shops to radical-nationalist and neo-Nazi festivals and events, plays a major role in the institutionalization of Hungarian antisemitism in the 21st century. The contemporary antisemitic rhetoric has been updated and expanded, but is still based on the old antisemitic notions. The traditional accusations and motifs include such phrases as Jewish occupation, international Jewish conspiracy, Jewish responsibility for the Treaty of Trianon, Judeo-Bolshevism, as well as blood libels against Jews. Nevertheless, the past few years have seen the reemergence of the blood libel and an increase in Holocaust relativization and denial, while the monetary crisis has revived references to the "Jewish banker class". Poland The University of Warsaw's study in 2016 found that 37% of surveyed Poles expressed negative attitudes towards Jews (up from 32% in 2015); 56% said that they wouldn't accept a Jew in their family (up from 46%); and 32% wouldn't want Jewish neighbors (up from 27%). In November 2015, following Antoni Macierewicz's (Law and Justice party) designation as Minister of National Defence, he faced allegations of antisemitism and protests by the Anti-Defamation League. In February 2018, the Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki stated that "there were Jewish perpetrators" of the Holocaust, "not only German perpetrators." Ronald Lauder, the president of the World Jewish Congress, condemned Morawiecki's words: "This is nothing short of an attempt to falsify history, that is one of the very worst forms of anti-Semitism and Holocaust obfuscation." Israeli politician Yair Lapid, head of the centrist Yesh Atid party, said Morawiecki's remark is "anti-Semitism of the oldest kind." Russia Since the early 2000s, levels of antisemitism in Russia have been low, and steadily decreasing. President of the Russian Jewish Congress attributes this in part to the vanished state sponsorship of antisemitism. At the same time experts warn that worsening economic conditions may lead to the surge of xenophobia and antisemitism in particular. The 2019 Pew Research poll found that 18% of Russians held unfavorable views of Jews, the number having dropped from 34% in 2009. Ukraine Oleh Tyahnybok, the leader of the far-right Svoboda party, whose members hold senior positions in Ukraine's government, urged his party to fight "the Moscow-Jewish mafia ruling Ukraine." The Algemeiner Journal reported: "Svoboda supporters include among their heroes leaders of pro-Nazi World War II organizations known for their atrocities against Jews and Poles, such as the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), and the 14th Waffen-SS Galicia Division". According to The Simon Wiesenthal Center (in January 2011) "Ukraine has, to the best of our knowledge, never conducted a single investigation of a local Nazi war criminal, let alone prosecuted a Holocaust perpetrator." According to Der Spiegel, Dmytro Yarosh, leader of the far-right Right Sector, wrote: "I wonder how it came to pass that most of the billionaires in Ukraine are Jews?" Late February 2014 Yarosh pledged during a meeting with Israel's ambassador in Kyiv to fight all forms of racism. Right Sector's leader for West Ukraine, Oleksandr Muzychko, has talked about fighting "communists, Jews and Russians for as long as blood flows in my veins." Muzychko was shot dead on 24 March 2014. An official inquiry concluded he had shot himself in the heart at the end of a chase with the Ukrainian police. In April 2014, Donetsk Chief Rabbi Pinchas Vishedski said that "Anti-Semitic incidents in the Russian-speaking east were rare, unlike in Kyiv and western Ukraine." In an April 2014 article about anti-Jewish violence in Ukraine in Haaretz no incidents outside this "Russian-speaking east" were mentioned. According to the Israel's Ambassador to Ukraine, the antisemitism occurs here much less frequently than in other European countries, and has more a hooligan's nature rather than a system. In March 2017, Ukrainian politician Nadiya Savchenko said during a television interview that Jews held disproportionate control over Ukraine. In May 2017, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) senior officer Vasily Vovk wrote that Jews "aren't Ukrainians and I will destroy you along with [Ukrainian oligarch and Jewish lawmaker Vadim] Rabinovych. I'm telling you one more time - go to hell, zhidi [kikes], the Ukrainian people have had it to here with you. Ukraine must be governed by Ukrainians." The antisemitism report for 2017 that Israel's Ministry of Diaspora Affairs under Naftali Bennett published in January 2018 stated that "A striking exception in the trend of decrease in antisemitic incidents in Eastern Europe was Ukraine, where the number of recorded antisemitic attacks was doubled from last year and surpassed the tally for all the incidents reported throughout the entire region combined.". Northern Europe Denmark Finland There have been some antisemitic crimes reported in the last decade among Finns; the most common types include defamation, verbal threats, and damage to property. Norway In 2010, the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation after one year of research, revealed that antisemitism was common among some 8th, 9th, and 10th graders in Oslo's schools. Teachers at schools with large numbers of Muslims revealed that Muslim students often "praise or admire Adolf Hitler for his killing of Jews", that "Jew-hate is legitimate within vast groups of Muslim students" and that "Muslims laugh or command [teachers] to stop when trying to educate about the Holocaust". Additionally, "while some students might protest when some express support for terrorism, none object when students express hate of Jews", saying that it says in "the Quran that you shall kill Jews, all true Muslims hate Jews". Most of these students were said to be born and raised in Norway. One Jewish father also stated that his child had been taken by a Muslim mob after school (though the child managed to escape), reportedly "to be taken out to the forest and hung because he was a Jew". Norwegian Education Minister Kristin Halvorsen referred to the antisemitism reported in this study as being "completely unacceptable." The head of a local Islamic council joined Jewish leaders and Halvorsen in denouncing such antisemitism. In October 2012, the Organization for Security and Co-Operation in Europe issued a report regarding antisemitism in Norway, criticizing Norway for an increase in antisemitism in the country and blaming Norwegian officials for failing to address antisemitism." Sweden After Germany and Austria, Sweden has the highest rate of antisemitic incidents in Europe, though the Netherlands has reported a higher rate of antisemitism in some years. A government study in 2006 estimated that 15% of Swedes agree with the statement: "The Jews have too much influence in the world today". 5% of the total adult population and 39% of adult Muslims "harbour systematic antisemitic views". The former prime minister Göran Persson described these results as "surprising and terrifying". However, the rabbi of Stockholm's Orthodox Jewish community, Meir Horden, said that "It's not true to say that the Swedes are anti-Semitic. Some of them are hostile to Israel because they support the weak side, which they perceive the Palestinians to be." In 2009, a synagogue that served the Jewish community in Malmö was set ablaze. Jewish cemeteries were repeatedly desecrated, worshippers were abused while returning home from prayer, and masked men mockingly chanted "Hitler" in the streets. As a result of security concerns, Malmö's synagogue has guards and rocket-proof glass in the windows, and the Jewish kindergarten can only be reached through thick steel security doors. In early 2010, the Swedish publication The Local published series of articles about the growing antisemitism in Malmö, Sweden. In 2009, the Malmö police received reports of 79 antisemitic incidents, which was twice the number of the previous year (2008). Fredrik Sieradzki, spokesman for the Malmö Jewish community, estimated that the already small Jewish population is shrinking by 5% a year. "Malmö is a place to move away from," he said, citing antisemitism as the primary reason. In March 2010, Fredrik Sieradzk told Die Presse, an Austrian Internet publication, that Jews are being "harassed and physically attacked" by "people from the Middle East," although he added that only a small number of Malmö's 40,000 Muslims "exhibit hatred of Jews." In October 2010, The Forward reported on the current state of Jews and the level of antisemitism in Sweden. Henrik Bachner, a writer and professor of history at the University of Lund, claimed that members of the Swedish Parliament have attended anti-Israel rallies where the Israeli flag was burned while the flags of Hamas and Hezbollah were waved, and the rhetoric was often antisemitic—not just anti-Israel. Judith Popinski, an 86-year-old Holocaust survivor, stated that she is no longer invited to schools that have a large Muslim presence to tell her story of surviving the Holocaust. In December 2010, the Jewish human rights organization Simon Wiesenthal Center issued a travel advisory concerning Sweden, advising Jews to express "extreme caution" when visiting the southern parts of the country due to an alleged increase in verbal and physical harassment of Jewish citizens in the city of Malmö. Ilmar Reepalu, the mayor of Malmö for over 15 years, has been accused of failing to protect the Jewish community in Malmö, causing 30 Jewish families to leave the city in 2010, and more preparing to leave, which has left the possibility that Malmö's Jewish community will disappear soon. Critics of Reepalu say that his statements, such as antisemitism in Malmö actually being an "understandable" consequence of Israeli policy in the Middle East, have encouraged young Muslims to abuse and harass the Jewish community. In an interview with the Sunday Telegraph in February 2010, Reepalu said, "There haven't been any attacks on Jewish people, and if Jews from the city want to move to Israel that is not a matter for Malmö," which renewed concerns about Reepalu. Southern Europe Greece Antisemitism in Greece manifests itself in religious, political and media discourse. The recent Greek government-debt crisis has facilitated the rise of far right groups in Greece, most notably the formerly obscure Golden Dawn. Jews have lived in Greece since antiquity, but the largest community of around 20,000 Sephardic Jews settled in Thessalonica after an invitation from the Ottoman Sultan in the 15th century. After Thessalonica was annexed to Greece in 1913, the Greek government recognized Jews as Greek citizens with full rights and attributed Judaism the status of a recognized and protected religion. Currently in Greece, Jewish communities representing the 5,000 Greek Jews are legal entities under public law. According to the ADL (Anti-Defamation League) report of 2015, the "ADL Global 100", a report of the status of antisemitism in 100 countries around the world, 69% of the adult population in Greece harbor antisemitic attitudes and 85% think that "Jews have too much power in the business world". In March 2015, a survey about the Greeks' perceptions of the holocaust was published. Its findings showed that less than 60 percent of the respondents think that holocaust teaching should be included in the curriculum. Italy The ongoing political conflict between Israel and Palestine has played an important role in the development and expression of antisemitism in the 21st century, and in Italy as well. The Second Intifada, which began in late September 2000, has set in motion unexpected mechanisms, whereby traditional anti-Jewish prejudices were mixed with politically based stereotypes. In this belief system, Israeli Jews were charged with full responsibility for the fate of the peace process and with the conflict presented as embodying the struggle between good (the Palestinians) and evil (the Israeli Jews). Spain Western Europe Austria Belgium In 2016, the Belgium government-funded, Catholic Sint-Jozefs Institute secondary school in Torhout declared that it was "very proud" of a retired teacher who won a prize for his antisemitic cartoon at the International Holocaust Cartoon Competition in Iran. Despite a backlash from the Jewish community, the cartoonist was celebrated as a champion of "free speech." Dimitri Verhulst claimed in an op-ed in the newspaper De Morgen that "being Jewish is not a religion, no God would give creatures such an ugly nose." He accused the Jews of harbouring a superiority complex due to the notion of Jews as the chosen people, and said "talking to the Chosen is difficult" because they unjustly accuse critics of antisemitism. De Morgen's editor-in-chief defended Verhulst on the basis that the op-ed was "a harsh criticism on Israel's politics towards the Palestinian people." France France is home to the continent's largest Jewish community (about 600,000). Jewish leaders decry an intensifying antisemitism in France, mainly among Muslims of Arab or African heritage, but also growing among Caribbean islanders from former French colonies. Former Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy denounced the killing of Ilan Halimi on 13 February 2006 as an antisemitic crime. Jewish philanthropist Baron Eric de Rothschild suggests that the extent of antisemitism in France has been exaggerated. In an interview with The Jerusalem Post he says that "the one thing you can't say is that France is an anti-Semitic country." In March 2012, Mohammed Merah opened fire at a Jewish school in Toulouse, killing a teacher and three children. An 8-year-old girl was shot in the head at point blank range. President Nicolas Sarkozy said that it was "obvious" it was an antisemitic attack and that, "I want to say to all the leaders of the Jewish community, how close we feel to them. All of France is by their side." The Israeli Prime Minister condemned the "despicable anti-Semitic" murders. After a 32-hour siege and standoff with the police outside his house, and a French raid, Merah jumped off a balcony and was shot in the head and killed. Merah told police during the standoff that he intended to keep on attacking, and he loved death the way the police loved life. He also claimed connections with al-Qaeda. 4 months later, in July 2012, a French Jewish teenager wearing a "distinctive religious symbol" was the victim of a violent antisemitic attack on a train travelling between Toulouse and Lyon. The teen was first verbally harassed and later beaten up by two assailants. Richard Prasquier from the French Jewish umbrella group, CRIF, called the attack "another development in the worrying trend of anti-Semitism in our country." Another incident in July 2012 dealt with the vandalism of the synagogue of Noisy-le-Grand of the Seine-Saint-Denis district in Paris. The synagogue was vandalized three times in a ten-day period. Prayer books and shawls were thrown on the floor, windows were shattered, drawers were ransacked, and walls, tables, clocks, and floors were vandalized. The authorities were alerted of the incidents by the Bureau National de Vigilance Contre L'Antisémtisme (BNVCA), a French antisemitism watchdog group, which called for more measures to be taken to prevent future hate crimes. BNVCA President Sammy Ghozlan stated that, "Despite the measures taken, things persist, and I think that we need additional legislation, because the Jewish community is annoyed." In August 2012, Abraham Cooper, a dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, met French Interior Minister Manuel Valls and reported that antisemitic attacks against French Jews increased by 40% since Merah's shooting spree in Toulouse. Cooper pressed Valls to take extra measures to secure the safety of French Jews, as well as to discuss strategies to foil an increasing trend of lone-wolf terrorists on the Internet. Germany Wolfgang Schäuble, the Interior Minister of Germany in 2006, pointed out the official policy of Germany: "We will not tolerate any form of extremism, xenophobia or anti-Semitism." Although the number of extreme right-wing groups and organisations grew from 141 (2001) to 182 (2006), especially in the formerly communist East Germany, Germany's measures against right-wing groups and antisemitism are effective, despite Germany having the highest rates of antisemitic acts in Europe. According to the annual reports of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution the overall number of far-right extremists in Germany dropped during the last years from 49,700 (2001), 45,000 (2002), 41,500 (2003), 40,700 (2004), 39,000 (2005), to 38,600 in 2006. Germany provided several million euros to fund "nationwide programs aimed at fighting far-right extremism, including teams of traveling consultants, and victims' groups." In July 2012, two women were assaulted in Germany, sprayed with tear gas, and were shown a "Hitler salute," apparently because of a Star of David necklace that they wore. In late August 2012, Berlin police investigated an attack on a 53-year-old rabbi and his 6-year-old daughter, allegedly by four Arab teens, after which the rabbi needed treatment for head wounds at a hospital. The police classified the attack as a hate crime. Jüdische Allgemeine reported that the rabbi was wearing a kippah and was approached by one of the teens, who asked the rabbi if he was Jewish. The teen then attacked the rabbi while yelling antisemitic comments, and threatened to kill the rabbi's daughter. Berlin's mayor condemned the attack, saying that "Berlin is an international city in which intolerance, xenophobia and anti-Semitism are not being tolerated. Police will undertake all efforts to find and arrest the perpetrators." In October 2012, various historians, including Dr. Julius H. Schoeps, a prominent German-Jewish historian and a member of the German Interior Ministry's commission to combat antisemitism, charged the majority of Bundestag deputies with failing to understand antisemitism and the imperativeness of periodic legislative reports on German antisemitism. Schoeps cited various antisemitic statements by German parliament members as well. The report in question determined that 15% of Germans are antisemitic while over 20% espouse "latent anti-Semitism," but the report has been criticized for downplaying the sharpness of antisemitism in Germany, as well as for failing to examine anti-Israel media coverage in Germany. Netherlands The Netherlands has the second highest incidence of antisemitic incidents in the European Union. However, it is difficult to obtain exact figures because the specific groups against whom attacks are made are not specifically identified in police reports, and analyses of police data for antisemitism therefore relies on key-word searches, e.g. "Jew" or "Israel". According to Centre for Information and Documentation on Israel (CIDI), a pro-Israel lobby group in the Netherlands, the number of antisemitic incidents reported in the whole of the Netherlands was 108 in 2008, 93 in 2009, and 124 in 2010. Some two-thirds of this are acts of aggression. There are approximately 52 000 Dutch Jews. According to the NRC Handelsblad newspaper, the number of antisemitic incidents in Amsterdam was 14 in 2008 and 30 in 2009. In 2010, Raphaël Evers, an orthodox rabbi in Amsterdam, told the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten that Jews can no longer be safe in the city anymore due to the risk of violent assaults. "We Jews no longer feel at home here in the Netherlands. Many people talk about moving to Israel," he said. According to the Anne Frank Foundation, antisemitism in the Netherlands in 2011 was roughly at the same level as in 2010. Actual antisemitic incidents increased from 19 in 2010 to 30 in 2011. Verbal antisemitic incidents dropped slightly from 1173 in 2010 to 1098 in 2011. This accounts for 75%–80% of all verbal racist incidents in the Netherlands. Antisemitism is more prevalent in the age group 23–27 years, which is a younger group than that of racist incidents in general. United Kingdom In 2017, an Institute for Jewish Policy Research survey found that the levels of antisemitism in Great Britain were among the lowest in the world, with 2.4% expressing multiple antisemitic attitudes, and about 70% having a favourable opinion of Jews. However, only 17% had a favourable opinion of Israel, with 33% holding an unfavourable view. In 2017, a report by the Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA) found that the previous year, 2016, had been the worst on record for antisemitic hate crime in the UK. Prior to that, 2015 had been the worst year on record, and 2014 was the worst year on record before that. The report found that in 2016, antisemitic crime rose by 15% compared to 2015, or 45% compared to 2014. It also found that 1 in 10 antisemitic crimes was violent. Despite rising levels of antisemitic crime, the report said there had been a decrease in the charging of antisemitic crime. In the report's foreword, the CAA's Chairman wrote: "Britain has the political will to fight antisemitism and strong laws with which to do it, but those responsible for tackling the rapidly growing racist targeting of British Jews are failing to enforce the law. There is a very real danger of Jewish citizens emigrating, as has happened elsewhere in Europe unless there is radical change." Every year since 2015, the CAA has commissioned polling by
is highly beneficial to Azerbaijan's economy as the nation is in the midst of an oil boom. Eastern Caspian producers in Kazakhstan also have expressed interest in accessing this pipeline to transport a portion of their production. In 2010, Azerbaijan entered into the top eight biggest oil suppliers to EU countries with €9.46 billion. In 2011, the amount of foreign investments in Azerbaijan was $20 billion, a 61% increase from 2010. According to Minister of Economic Development of Azerbaijan, Shahin Mustafayev, in 2011, "$15.7 billion was invested in the non-oil sector, while the rest in the oil sector." In 2012, because of its economic performance after the Soviet breakup, Azerbaijan was predicted to become "Tiger of Caucasus". In 2012, Globalization and World Cities Research Network study ranked Baku as a Gamma-level global city. In 2015, Turkey and Azerbaijan agreed to boost mutual trade to US$15 billion by 2023. Macro-economic trend The following is a chart of trend of gross domestic product of Azerbaijan at market prices with figures in USD. For purchasing power parity comparisons, the US dollar was exchanged at 1,565.88 Manats only. Currently, the new Manat is in use, with an exchange rate of about 1 manat = $1.10. Mean graduate pay was $5.76 per man-hour in 2010. The following table shows the main economic indicators in 1980–2017. Source: IMF For more than a century the backbone of the Azerbaijani economy has been petroleum, which represented 50 percent of Azerbaijan's GDP in 2005, and is projected to double to almost 125 percent of GDP in 2007. Now that Western oil companies are able to tap deepwater oilfields untouched by the Soviets because of poor technology, Azerbaijan is considered one of the most important areas in the world for oil exploration and development. Proven oil reserves in the Caspian Basin, which Azerbaijan shares with Russia, Kazakhstan, Iran, and Turkmenistan, are comparable in size to the North Sea, although exploration is still in the early stages. Sectors of the economy Agriculture Azerbaijan has the largest agricultural basin in the region. About 54.9 percent of Azerbaijan is agricultural lands. At the beginning of 2007 there were of utilized agricultural area. In the same year the total wood resources counted . Azerbaijan's agricultural scientific research institutes are focused on meadows and pastures, horticulture and subtropical crops, leaf vegetables, viticulture and wine-making, cotton growing and medicinal plants. In some lands it is profitable to grow grain, potatoes, sugar beets, cotton and tobacco. Livestock, dairy products, and wine and spirits are also important farm products. The Caspian fishing industry is concentrated on the dwindling stocks of sturgeon and beluga. Some portions of most products that were previously imported from abroad have begun to be produced locally (among them are Coca-Cola by Coca-Cola Bottlers LTD, beer by Baki-Kastel, parquet by Nehir and oil pipes by EUPEC Pipe Coating Azerbaijan). A new program which is prepared by the European Union is aimed to support the economic diversification of Azerbaijan. Program is considered for southern region Lankaran which has the lowest economic indicator and the lowest income per capita, as well as, the lowest level of investment, but at the same time, high potential for the production of garden products in high quality. The program will be focused on the development of the region at the local and international levels. Azerbaijan produced in 2018: 2.0 million tons of wheat; 916 thousand tons of barley; 898 thousand tons of potato; 609 thousand tons of tomato; 307 thousand tons of watermelon; 277 thousand tons of sugar beet; 277 thousand tons of apple; 247 thousand tons of maize; 235 thousand tons of onion; 233 thousand tons of cotton; 223 thousand tons of cucumber; 167 thousand tons of grape; 160 thousand tons of persimmon (5th largest world producer); 108 thousand tons of cabbage; In addition to smaller productions of other agricultural products, like melon (94 thousand tons), pear (52 thousand tons) and apricot (28 thousand tons). Manufacturing In 2007, mining and hydrocarbon industries accounted for well over 95 percent of the Azerbaijani economy. Diversification of the economy into manufacturing industries remains a long-term issue. As of late 2000s, the defense industry of Azerbaijan has emerged as an autonomous entity with a growing defense production capability. The ministry is cooperating with the defense sectors of Ukraine, Belarus and Pakistan. Along with other contracts, Azerbaijani defence industries and Turkish companies, Azerbaijan will produce 40 mm revolver grenade launchers, 107 mm and 122 mm MLRS systems, Cobra 4×4 vehicles and joint modernization of BTR vehicles in Baku. Services Financial and business services The GDP growth rates observed in Azerbaijan during the last years made the country one of the fastest growing economies in the world. But the banking sector of Azerbaijan has yet to tap the vast growth potential that should be achievable due to the continuation of the high economic growth. For this reason the banking sector remains small in relation to the size of the Azerbaijani economy. Since 2002, important stages of restructuring of the banking system have started to be carried out. Taking into consideration the entry of big oil revenues in the country, as a logical result of successful oil strategy, and in this base, as the banks were ready to an effective transfer of their financial resources to the strategic goals, development strategy was made for 2002–2005. By 1 April 2010, 47 banks, 631 bank branches function in Azerbaijan. One of the banks was founded with the participation of state capital, 23 of foreign capital. To the same date, 98 non-bank credit organizations operate in the republic along with banks. Growth of real money incomes of population, development of trust in the bank system, improving the legal bases of protection of interests of creditors and depositors, in particular launch of 'Deposits Insurance Fund' were the criteria characterizing rapid growth of deposits of population. As of 1 April 2010, bank deposits of population were equal to 2,4 billion AZN. 33,3% of them were long-term deposits (higher than a year). As of 1 April 2010, bank credits to customers is 8.5 bn AZN, which makes 70.5% of bank assets. Special weight of private sector in structure of credit investments is higher than 82% (7 bn AZN). Telecommunications In the 21st century, a new oil and gas boom helped to improve the situation in Azerbaijan's science and technology sectors, and the government launched a campaign aimed at modernization and innovation. The government estimates that profits from the information technology and communication industry will grow and become comparable with those from oil production. Azerbaijan has a large and steadily growing Internet sector, mostly uninfluenced by the financial crisis of 2007–2008; rapid growth is forecast for at least five more years. The country has also been making progress in developing its telecoms sector. The Ministry of Communications & Information Technologies (MCIT), as well as being an operator through its role in Aztelekom, is both a policy-maker and regulator. Public payphones are available for local calls and require the purchase of a token from the telephone exchange or some shops and kiosks. Tokens
as the nation is in the midst of an oil boom. Eastern Caspian producers in Kazakhstan also have expressed interest in accessing this pipeline to transport a portion of their production. In 2010, Azerbaijan entered into the top eight biggest oil suppliers to EU countries with €9.46 billion. In 2011, the amount of foreign investments in Azerbaijan was $20 billion, a 61% increase from 2010. According to Minister of Economic Development of Azerbaijan, Shahin Mustafayev, in 2011, "$15.7 billion was invested in the non-oil sector, while the rest in the oil sector." In 2012, because of its economic performance after the Soviet breakup, Azerbaijan was predicted to become "Tiger of Caucasus". In 2012, Globalization and World Cities Research Network study ranked Baku as a Gamma-level global city. In 2015, Turkey and Azerbaijan agreed to boost mutual trade to US$15 billion by 2023. Macro-economic trend The following is a chart of trend of gross domestic product of Azerbaijan at market prices with figures in USD. For purchasing power parity comparisons, the US dollar was exchanged at 1,565.88 Manats only. Currently, the new Manat is in use, with an exchange rate of about 1 manat = $1.10. Mean graduate pay was $5.76 per man-hour in 2010. The following table shows the main economic indicators in 1980–2017. Source: IMF For more than a century the backbone of the Azerbaijani economy has been petroleum, which represented 50 percent of Azerbaijan's GDP in 2005, and is projected to double to almost 125 percent of GDP in 2007. Now that Western oil companies are able to tap deepwater oilfields untouched by the Soviets because of poor technology, Azerbaijan is considered one of the most important areas in the world for oil exploration and development. Proven oil reserves in the Caspian Basin, which Azerbaijan shares with Russia, Kazakhstan, Iran, and Turkmenistan, are comparable in size to the North Sea, although exploration is still in the early stages. Sectors of the economy Agriculture Azerbaijan has the largest agricultural basin in the region. About 54.9 percent of Azerbaijan is agricultural lands. At the beginning of 2007 there were of utilized agricultural area. In the same year the total wood resources counted . Azerbaijan's agricultural scientific research institutes are focused on meadows and pastures, horticulture and subtropical crops, leaf vegetables, viticulture and wine-making, cotton growing and medicinal plants. In some lands it is profitable to grow grain, potatoes, sugar beets, cotton and tobacco. Livestock, dairy products, and wine and spirits are also important farm products. The Caspian fishing industry is concentrated on the dwindling stocks of sturgeon and beluga. Some portions of most products that were previously imported from abroad have begun to be produced locally (among them are Coca-Cola by Coca-Cola Bottlers LTD, beer by Baki-Kastel, parquet by Nehir and oil pipes by EUPEC Pipe Coating Azerbaijan). A new program which is prepared by the European Union is aimed to support the economic diversification of Azerbaijan. Program is considered for southern region Lankaran which has the lowest economic indicator and the lowest income per capita, as well as, the lowest level of investment, but at the same time, high potential for the production of garden products in high quality. The program will be focused on the development of the region at the local and international levels. Azerbaijan produced in 2018: 2.0 million tons of wheat; 916 thousand tons of barley; 898 thousand tons of potato; 609 thousand tons of tomato; 307 thousand tons of watermelon; 277 thousand tons of sugar beet; 277 thousand tons of apple; 247 thousand tons of maize; 235 thousand tons of onion; 233 thousand tons of cotton; 223 thousand tons of cucumber; 167 thousand tons of grape; 160 thousand tons of persimmon (5th largest world producer); 108 thousand tons of cabbage; In addition to smaller productions of other agricultural products, like melon (94 thousand tons), pear (52 thousand tons) and apricot (28 thousand tons). Manufacturing In 2007, mining and hydrocarbon industries accounted for well over 95 percent of the Azerbaijani economy. Diversification of the economy into manufacturing industries remains a long-term issue. As of late 2000s, the defense industry of Azerbaijan has emerged as an autonomous entity with a growing defense production capability. The ministry is cooperating with the defense sectors of Ukraine, Belarus and Pakistan. Along with other contracts, Azerbaijani defence industries and Turkish companies, Azerbaijan will produce 40 mm revolver grenade launchers, 107 mm and 122 mm MLRS systems, Cobra 4×4 vehicles and joint modernization of BTR vehicles in Baku. Services Financial and business services The GDP growth rates observed in Azerbaijan during the last years made the country one of the fastest growing economies in the world. But the banking sector of Azerbaijan has yet to tap the vast growth potential that should be achievable due to the continuation of the high economic growth. For this reason the banking sector remains small in relation to the size of the Azerbaijani economy. Since 2002, important stages of restructuring of the banking system have started to be carried out. Taking into consideration the entry of big oil revenues in the country, as a logical result of successful oil strategy, and in this base, as the banks were ready to an effective transfer of their financial resources to the strategic goals, development strategy was made for 2002–2005. By 1 April 2010, 47 banks, 631 bank branches function in Azerbaijan. One of the banks was founded with the participation of state capital, 23 of foreign capital. To the same date, 98 non-bank credit organizations operate in the republic along with banks. Growth of real money incomes of population, development of trust in the bank system, improving the legal bases of protection of interests of creditors and depositors, in particular launch of 'Deposits Insurance Fund' were the criteria characterizing rapid growth of deposits of population. As of 1 April 2010, bank deposits of population were equal to 2,4 billion AZN. 33,3% of them were long-term deposits (higher than a year). As of 1 April 2010, bank credits to customers is 8.5 bn AZN, which makes 70.5% of bank assets. Special weight of private sector in structure of credit investments is higher than 82% (7 bn AZN). Telecommunications In the 21st century, a new oil and gas boom helped to improve the situation in Azerbaijan's science and technology sectors, and the government launched a campaign aimed at modernization and innovation. The government estimates that profits from the information technology and communication industry will grow and become comparable with those from oil production. Azerbaijan has a large and steadily growing Internet sector, mostly uninfluenced by the financial crisis of 2007–2008; rapid growth is forecast for at least five more years. The country has also been making progress in developing its telecoms sector. The Ministry of Communications & Information Technologies (MCIT), as well as being an operator through its role in Aztelekom, is both a policy-maker and regulator. Public payphones are available for local calls and require the purchase of a token from the telephone exchange or some shops and kiosks. Tokens allow a call of indefinite duration. As of 2009, there were 1,397,000 main telephone lines and 1,485,000 internet users. There are five GSM providers: Azercell, Bakcell, Azerfon (Nar Mobile), Aztrank, Catel mobile network operators and one CDMA. Tourism Tourism is an important part of the economy of Azerbaijan. The country was a well-known tourist spot in the 1980s. However, the fall of the Soviet Union, and the First Nagorno-Karabakh War during the 1988–1994 period, damaged the tourist industry and the image of Azerbaijan as a tourist destination. It was not until the 2000s that the tourism industry began to recover, and the country has since experienced a high rate of growth in the number of tourist visits and overnight stays. In recent years, Azerbaijan has also become a popular destination for religious, spa, and health care tourism. During winter, the Shahdag Winter Complex offers skiing. The government of Azerbaijan has set the development of Azerbaijan as an elite tourist destination a top priority. It is a national strategy to make tourism a major, if not the single largest, contributor to the Azerbaijani economy. These activities are regulated by the State Tourism Agency and the Ministry of Culture. The Formula One Grand Prix is held in Baku, the capital city and has been held here for years. Currency system The Azerbaijani manat is the currency of Azerbaijani, denominated as the manat, subdivided into 100 qapik. The manat is issued by the Central Bank of Azerbaijan, the monetary authority of Azerbaijan. The ISO 4217 abbreviation is AZN. The Latinised symbol is (). The manat is held in a floating exchange-rate system managed primarily against the US dollar. The rate of exchange (Azerbaijani manat per US$1) for 28 January 2016, was AZN 1.60. There is a complex relationship between Azerbaijan's balance of trade, inflation, measured by the consumer price index and the value of its currency. Despite allowing the value of the manat to "float", Azerbaijan's central bank has decisive ability to control its value with relationship to other currencies. Infrastructure Energy Two-thirds of Azerbaijan is rich in oil and natural gas. The region of the Lesser Caucasus accounts for most of the country's gold, silver,
Western Asia. Three physical features dominate Azerbaijan: the Caspian Sea, whose shoreline forms a natural boundary to the east; the Greater Caucasus mountain range to the north; and the extensive flatlands at the country's center. About the size of Portugal or the US state of Maine, Azerbaijan has a total land area of approximately 86,600 square kilometers, less than 1% of the land area of the former Soviet Union. Of the three Transcaucasian states, Azerbaijan has the greatest land area. Special administrative subdivisions are the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic, which is separated from the rest of Azerbaijan by a strip of Armenian territory, and the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region, entirely within Azerbaijan. The status of Nagorno-Karabakh is disputed by Armenia. Located in the region of the southern Caucasus Mountains, Azerbaijan borders the Caspian Sea to the east, Georgia and Russia to the north, Iran to the south, and Armenia to the southwest and west. A small part of Nakhchivan also borders Turkey to the northwest. The capital of Azerbaijan is the ancient city of Baku, which has the largest and best harbor on the Caspian Sea and has long been the center of the republic's oil industry. Topography and drainage The elevation changes over a relatively short distance from lowlands to highlands; nearly half the country is considered mountainous. Notable physical features are the gently undulating hills of the subtropical southeastern coast, which are covered with tea plantations, orange groves, and lemon groves; numerous mud volcanoes and mineral springs in the ravines of Kobustan Mountain near Baku; and coastal terrain that lies as much as twenty-eight meters below sea level. Except for its eastern Caspian shoreline and some areas bordering Georgia and Iran, Azerbaijan is ringed by mountains. To the northeast, bordering Russia's Dagestan Autonomous Republic, is the Greater Caucasus range; to the west, bordering Armenia, is the Lesser Caucasus range. To the extreme southeast, the Talysh Mountains form part of the border with Iran. The highest elevations occur in the Greater Caucasus, where Mount Bazar-dyuzi rises 4,466 meters above sea level. Eight large rivers flow down from the Caucasus ranges into the central Kura-Aras Lowlands, alluvial flatlands and low delta areas along the seacoast designated by the Azerbaijani name for the Mtkvari River (Kura) and its main tributary, the Aras. The Mtkvari, the longest river in the Caucasus region, forms the delta and drains into the Caspian a short distance downstream from the confluence with the Aras. The Mingechaur Reservoir, with an area of 605 square kilometers that makes it the largest body of water in Azerbaijan, was formed by damming the Kura in western Azerbaijan. The waters of the reservoir provide hydroelectric power and irrigation of the Kura-Aras plain. Most of the country's rivers are not navigable. About 15%
features are the gently undulating hills of the subtropical southeastern coast, which are covered with tea plantations, orange groves, and lemon groves; numerous mud volcanoes and mineral springs in the ravines of Kobustan Mountain near Baku; and coastal terrain that lies as much as twenty-eight meters below sea level. Except for its eastern Caspian shoreline and some areas bordering Georgia and Iran, Azerbaijan is ringed by mountains. To the northeast, bordering Russia's Dagestan Autonomous Republic, is the Greater Caucasus range; to the west, bordering Armenia, is the Lesser Caucasus range. To the extreme southeast, the Talysh Mountains form part of the border with Iran. The highest elevations occur in the Greater Caucasus, where Mount Bazar-dyuzi rises 4,466 meters above sea level. Eight large rivers flow down from the Caucasus ranges into the central Kura-Aras Lowlands, alluvial flatlands and low delta areas along the seacoast designated by the Azerbaijani name for the Mtkvari River (Kura) and its main tributary, the Aras. The Mtkvari, the longest river in the Caucasus region, forms the delta and drains into the Caspian a short distance downstream from the confluence with the Aras. The Mingechaur Reservoir, with an area of 605 square kilometers that makes it the largest body of water in Azerbaijan, was formed by damming the Kura in western Azerbaijan. The waters of the reservoir provide hydroelectric power and irrigation of the Kura-Aras plain. Most of the country's rivers are not navigable. About 15% of the land in Azerbaijan is arable. Mountains The country's highest peak, Bazardyuze Dagi, rises to 4,485 m in this range near the Azerbaijan-Russia border. Climate Temperature The climate varies from subtropical and humid in the southeast to subtropical and dry in central and eastern Azerbaijan. Baku, on the Caspian, enjoys mild weather that averages in January and in July. Rainfall Physiographic conditions and different atmosphere circulations admit 8 types of air currents including continental, sea, arctic, tropical currents of air that formulates the climate of the Republic. The maximum annual precipitation falls in Lenkeran (1,600 to 1,800 mm.) and the minimum in Absheron (200 to 350 mm.). The maximum daily precipitation of 334 mm was observed at the Bilieser Station in 1955. Environmental problems Air and water pollution are widespread and pose great challenges to economic development. Major sources of pollution include oil refineries and chemical and metallurgical industries, which in the early 1990s continued to operate as inefficiently as they had in the Soviet era. Air quality is extremely poor in Baku, the center of oil refining. Some reports have described Baku's air as the most polluted in the former Soviet Union, and other industrial centers suffer similar problems. The Caspian Sea, including Baku Bay, has been polluted by oil leakages and the dumping of raw or inadequately treated sewage, reducing the yield of caviar and fish. In the Soviet period, Azerbaijan was pressed to use extremely heavy applications of pesticides to improve its output of scarce subtropical crops for the rest of the Soviet Union. The continued regular use of the pesticide DDT in the 1970s and 1980s was an egregious lapse, although that chemical was officially banned in the Soviet Union because of its toxicity to humans. Excessive application of pesticides and chemical fertilizers has caused extensive groundwater pollution and has been linked by Azerbaijani scientists to birth defects and illnesses. Rising water levels in the Caspian Sea, mainly caused by natural factors exacerbated by man-made structures, have reversed the decades-long drying trend and now threaten coastal areas; the average level rose 1.5 meters between 1978 and 1993. Because of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, large numbers of trees were felled, roads were built through pristine areas, and large expanses of agricultural land were occupied by military forces. Like other former Soviet republics, Azerbaijan faces a gigantic environmental cleanup complicated by the economic uncertainties left
In 1994, a Russian-brokered ceasefire ended the war but more than 1 million ethnic Armenians and Azeris are still not able to return home. The conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh remains unresolved despite negotiations, that are ongoing since 1992 under the aegis of the Minsk Group of the OSCE, to resolve the conflict peacefully. Caviar diplomacy The European Stability Initiative (ESI) has revealed in a report from 2012 with the title "Caviar diplomacy: How Azerbaijan silenced the Council of Europe", that since Azerbaijan's entry into the Council of Europe, each year 30 to 40 deputies are invited to Azerbaijan and generously paid with expensive gifts, including caviar (worth up to 1.400 euro), silk carpets, gold, silver and large amounts of money. In return they become lobbyists for Azerbaijan. This practice has been widely referred to as "Caviar diplomacy". ESI also published a report on 2013 Presidential elections in Azerbaijan titled "Disgraced: Azerbaijan and the end of election monitoring as we know it". The report revealed the ties between Azerbaijani government and the members of certain observation missions who praised the elections. Azerbaijan's "Caviar diplomacy" at 2013 presidential elections sparked a major international scandal, as the reports of two authoritative organizations Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe/European Parliament and OSCE/ODIHR completely contradicted one another in their assessments of elections. Non-governmental anti-corruption organization Transparency International has regularly judged Azerbaijan to be one of the most corrupt countries in the world and has also criticized Azerbaijan for the "Caviar diplomacy". At June 2016 the public prosecutor of Milan has accused the former leader of the (Christian) Union of the center and of the European People's Party of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe Luca Volonte of accepting large bribes from representatives of the Azerbaijani government. Two people with high-level experience of the Council of Europe's parliamentary assembly (Pace) have told the Guardian they believe its members have been offered bribes for votes by Azerbaijan. Former Azerbaijani diplomat, Arif Mammadov, alleged that a member of Azerbaijan's delegation at the Council of Europe had €30m (£25m) to spend on lobbying its institutions, including the Council of Europe assembly. PACE ratified the terms of reference
silk carpets, gold, silver and large amounts of money. In return they become lobbyists for Azerbaijan. This practice has been widely referred to as "Caviar diplomacy". ESI also published a report on 2013 Presidential elections in Azerbaijan titled "Disgraced: Azerbaijan and the end of election monitoring as we know it". The report revealed the ties between Azerbaijani government and the members of certain observation missions who praised the elections. Azerbaijan's "Caviar diplomacy" at 2013 presidential elections sparked a major international scandal, as the reports of two authoritative organizations Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe/European Parliament and OSCE/ODIHR completely contradicted one another in their assessments of elections. Non-governmental anti-corruption organization Transparency International has regularly judged Azerbaijan to be one of the most corrupt countries in the world and has also criticized Azerbaijan for the "Caviar diplomacy". At June 2016 the public prosecutor of Milan has accused the former leader of the (Christian) Union of the center and of the European People's Party of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe Luca Volonte of accepting large bribes from representatives of the Azerbaijani government. Two people with high-level experience of the Council of Europe's parliamentary assembly (Pace) have told the Guardian they believe its members have been offered bribes for votes by Azerbaijan. Former Azerbaijani diplomat, Arif Mammadov, alleged that a member of Azerbaijan's delegation at the Council of Europe had €30m (£25m) to spend on lobbying its institutions, including the Council of Europe assembly. PACE ratified the terms of reference of an independent external investigation body to carry out a detailed independent inquiry into the allegations of corruption at the council involving Azerbaijan. ESISC report On 6 March 2017, ESISC (European Strategic Intelligence and Security Center) published a scandalous report called "The Armenian Connection" where it veraciously attacked human rights NGOs and research organisations criticising human rights violations and corruption in Azerbaijan, Turkey, and Russia. ESISC in that report asserted that "Caviar diplomacy" report elaborated by ESI aimed to create climate of suspicion based on slander to form a network of MPs that would engage in a political war against Azerbaijan. In the Second Chapter of the report called "The Armenian Connection: «Mr X», Nils Muižnieks, Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights" that was published on 18 April 2017 ESISC asserted that the network composed of European PMs, Armenian officials and some NGOs: Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, "Human Rights House Foundation", "Open Dialog", European Stability Initiative, and Helsinki Committee for Human Rights, was financed by the Soros Foundation. According to ESISC the key figure of the network since 2012 has been Nils Muižnieks, Commissioner for Human Rights of the Council of Europe and the network
Dollyar Air Base, Nakhchivan Airport, Sanqacal Air Base, and Sitalcay Air Base. The Azerbaijani Air Force using MiG-21, Su-24 and Su-25 aircraft, as well as the MiG-29 purchased from Ukraine in 2006 and Il-76 transport aircraft. The MiG-29 have been designated as the standard aircraft for the AzAF. Azerbaijan is holding talks with either the People's Republic of China or Pakistan to purchase JF-17 Thunder aircraft. MiG-25s previously in service have been retired seemingly in the 2007–09 period. Azerbaijan's helicopter force is concentrated at Baku Kala Air Base and according to the IISS consists of a single regiment with around 14–15 Mi-24, 12–13 Mi-8 and 7 Mi-2. Jane's Information Group and the IISS give figures which agree with only a single aircraft's difference. Recently, end of 2010 Russian Rosvertol announced that Azerbaijan armed forces signed a deal for 24 pieces of Mi-35M (Hind-E) gunships what would further enhance the Azerbaijani ground attack formations. The Air Force has L-39 advanced training aircraft in store. The Azerbaijan Border Guard and Voluntary Society of Defense, Patriotism and Sport have Yakovlev light training aircraft. Azerbaijan has missile and radar systems intended to defend Azerbaijani airspace. There are at least 2 divisions of S-300PMU2. Thereby the country has one of the most capable SAM surface-to-air missile system in the region. Azerbaijan also operates two S-200 (SA-5 GAMMON) batteries near Baku and Mingachevir; the S-300PMU-2 represents a logical replacement for these systems offering coverage of the majority of the nation. The country also has about 100 NATO designated SA-2 Guideline (original name S-75), SA-3 Goa (S-125 Pechora-2M), and the SA-5 Gammon (S-200) are in static installations. These may be around Baku and the central part to cover the whole Azerbaijani aerospace. However, August 2011 investigations shows that after purchase of S-300 surface-to-air missiles, the largest apparent gap in Azerbaijan's air defense system may have been filled. Also in Azerbaijan there was a former Soviet early warning radar. The Gabala Radar Station was a bistatic phased-array installation, operated by the Russian Space Forces. The contract was signed in 2002 and was due to expire in 2012 where it was to be given back to the Azerbaijani government. The contract costed Russia $7 million per year. The radar station had a range of up to , and was designed to detect intercontinental ballistic missile launches as far as from the Indian Ocean. In December 2012 Russia announced that negotiations had been unsuccessful and that they had stopped using the radar station. The site was given back to Azerbaijan and all the equipment dismantled and transported to Russia. Nowadays, Russia covers the area from the Armavir Radar Station. Navy The main naval base of the Soviet Union in the Caspian Sea was based in Baku. When the Soviet Union collapsed, Azerbaijan inherited the naval base and parts of the Caspian Sea Flotilla. The Azerbaijan Navy has about 2,200 personnel. In 2010, the navy had a Petya class light frigate, Qusar (G 121), and a number of patrol craft, including one Turk class, Araz, P 223, one Brya (Project 722) class, P 218, one Shelon (Project 1388M) class, P 212, one Poluchat class (Project 368), P 219, one Luga class (Project 888), T 710, and four Petrushka (Polish UK-3 class), P 213, P 214, P 215, and P 216. There are four minesweepers consisting of 2 Sonya class minesweeper and 2 Yevgenya class minesweepers. (Jane's Fighting Ships 2010) The Navy is also attributed with 5 landing craft, 3 Polnochny and 2 Vydra,(IISS 2007) plus three research ships, 1 Project 10470, A 671, ex Svyaga, 1 Balerian Uryvayev class survey vessel (AG) and one Vadim Popov class survey vessel (AG). The U.S. Navy has helped train the Azerbaijani Navy. There is also an agreement to provide US support to refurbish Azerbaijani warships in the Caspian Sea. In 2006, the US Government donated 3 motorboats to the Azerbaijani navy. In 2007, an agreement between Azerbaijani Navy and a US military company was concluded, which stated that a part of the Azerbaijani Navy would be equipped with advanced laser marksmanship systems. The US company specialists were also to give training on the use of the new equipment. A number of separate U.S. programmes are underway under the Caspian Guard Initiative, focused mostly on enhancing Azerbaijani and Kazakh maritime border security. In May 2011, President of the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan Republic Rovnag Abdullayev stated that Azerbaijan to start production of national warships after 2013. The Naval Intelligence of Azerbaijan maintains the 641st Special Warfare Naval Unit. The special forces were trained by the U.S. Navy SEALs Unit 641 has several midget submarines such as Triton-1M and Triton 2 at their disposal as well as underwater tool motion for individual divers. The special unit is composed of 3 reconnaissance groups, 2 groups for mountainous warfare and one diving group. Obligatory training includes parachute jumping day and night, on land and on water. Special forces The Special Forces of Azerbaijan are part of the Ministry of Defence. It was established in April 1999 with officers and warrant officers who had participated in the First Nagorno-Karabakh War of 1991–1994. The Turkish Special Forces Command played a role in the formation of the unit. During the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh War, personnel of the Special Forces reclaimed the city of Jebrayil and nine surrounding villages from the Armenian Army. On November 8, Aliyev congratulated the commander of the Special Forces on their "liberation of Shusha". The war was considered to be first time Azerbaijan has actively used all of its special forces units. Defense industry The Ministry of Defence Industry of Azerbaijan directs domestic military supplies for Azerbaijan. It was established in 2005. The Defence Industries Ministry subsumed the State Department for Military Industry and for Armaments and the Military Science Center, each of which was formerly a separate agency within the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry. The defense industry has emerged as an autonomous entity with a growing production capability. The ministry is cooperating with the defense sectors of Ukraine, Belarus and Pakistan. Along with other contracts, Azerbaijani defence industries and Turkish companies, Azerbaijan will produce 40mm revolver grenade launchers, 107mm and 122mm MLRS systems, Cobra 4×4 vehicles and joint modernization of BTR vehicles in Baku. The major military companies of Azerbaijan are: RPE Iglim, aviation and shipbuilding Radiogurashdirma, communication means and radio-electronic RPE Neftgazavtomat, devices and automation systems for monitoring technological processes RPE Automatic Lines, non-standard equipment and products for application in electrotechnical and machine engineering Avia-Agregat, multi-purpose aviation equipment, various airdrome conditioners, universal container of board conductor, air-to-air radiators, fuel-oil, air-to-air heat exchangers and ventilators In early 2008, reports indicated that an agreement with Turkey had been signed which would lead to Azerbaijan producing armoured personnel carriers, infantry fighting vehicles, and small calibre artillery pieces. International cooperation Azerbaijan cooperates with about 60 countries in the military-technical sphere and has an agreement on military-technical cooperation with more than 30 countries. Turkey In December 2009, an agreement on military assistance was signed by Turkey and Azerbaijan. The agreement envisions Ankara's supplying Azerbaijan with weapons, military equipment and, if necessary, soldiers in case war with Armenia over Karabakh resumes. Turkey has provided Azerbaijan with infantry weapons, tactical vehicles (jeeps, trucks, etc.) professional training, military organization, technology transfer, licensed military hardware production and other services. Due to help from Turkish specialists and instructors, thousands of Azerbaijani officers have been trained to western standards. The military position as international importance of Azerbaijan increased with agreement between Azerbaijan and Turkey on the participation an Azerbaijani peacekeeping platoon in the staff of Turkish battalion in Kosovo. Since 1992, Azerbaijan and Turkey have signed more than 100 military protocols, some of the major protocols include: Cooperation of staff members National security cooperation in the topographical area Forming and training of profession school of forces kind of Baku Carrying out of the material and technical purchasing Military industry cooperation Development of the 5th Army Corps also known as Nakhchivan Army Corps in Nakhchivan Cooperation in the area of military history, military archives and museum work and military publication Assistance on training, material and technical between the Azerbaijan Border Guard and the Turkish Armed Forces. Long-term economical and military cooperation and application of the financial aid Application of material and technical provision In May 2011, Azerbaijan had discussed the purchase of long-range rockets from two Chinese companies, the minister of the defence industry has said. Other arms deals were signed with Turkey. Turkish Defence Minister Vecdi Gonul and Yaver Jamalov signed a protocol of intent on future joint production of two types of output – 107-mm rockets and the national rifle, possibly the Mehmetçik-1. A protocol of intent was signed the same day with the Mechanical and Chemical Industry Corporation MKEK on the joint production of 120-mm mortar launchers. This project will come into force in a few months time. Agreement has also been reached with Turkish company Aselsan on the production of some types of defence output in Azerbaijan, specifically the latest types of weapons' sights. These projects will probably happen in the near future too. Recently, Turkish defense industries secretariat told that an export version of the T-155 Firtina self-propelled howitser is almost done and could start production. T-155 has been powered by a German MTU power pack, which restricts the sale to some countries like Azerbaijan. The Turkish manufacturer MKEK, has announced that they have found an alternate supplier for the power pack where Azerbaijan showed interest to buy the high tech, more capable 155mm 52 caliber from Turkish authorities. United States Section 907 of the United States Freedom Support Act bans any kind of direct United States aid to the Azerbaijani government. Since a waiver was made in 2001 there has been extensive U.S. military cooperation with Azerbaijan. This has included Special Forces and naval aid, consultations with United States European Command, and linkages through the U.S. National Guard State Partnership Program. On 19 May 2006, Azerbaijani Defense Minister Safar Abiyev and the then commander of United States Air Forces in Europe General Tom Hobbins met in Baku to discuss military cooperation. He said the objective of his visit was to become familiar with the state of Azerbaijani armed forces. Hobbins pointed to the progress made in the NATO-Azerbaijan relations, saying that the successful implementation of the NATO Partnership for Peace program in Azerbaijan has brought the country even closer to the alliance. He said that the two countries' air forces will expand cooperation. The U.S. state of Oklahoma is linked with Azerbaijan through the U.S. National Guard State Partnership Program (SPP). Oklahoma National Guard troops have been sent on training and humanitarian missions to Baku. Russia Russia is one of Azerbaijan's main supplier of arms. "As of today, military and technical cooperation with Russia is measured at $4 billion
forces During the Cold War, Azerbaijan had been the deployment area of units of the Soviet 4th Army whose principle formations in 1988 included four motor rifle divisions (23rd Guards, 60th, 75th, and 295th). The 75th Motor Rifle Division was isolated in Nakhchivan. The 4th Army also included missile and air defense brigades and artillery and rocket regiments. The 75th Division's stores and equipment were apparently transferred to the Nakhchivan authorities. Azerbaijan also hosted the 49th Arsenal of the Soviet Main Agency of Missiles and Artillery, which contained over 7,000 train-car loads of ammunition to the excess of one billion units. The first president of Azerbaijan, Ayaz Mutallibov, did not wish to build an independent army, wanting to rely instead largely on Soviet troops. Even when the Parliament decided that an army should be formed in September 1991, disagreements between the government and the opposition Azerbaijani Popular Front Party impeded creation of a unified force. Around this time, the first unit of the new army was formed on the basis of the 18–110 military unit of mechanized infantry of the Soviet Ground Forces (probably part of the 4th Army) located in Shikhov, south of Baku. At the time of the parliamentary decision, Lieutenant-General Valeh Barshadli became the first Minister of Defense of Azerbaijan, from 5 September to 11 December 1991. Later from May to 4 September 1992 he served as Chief of General Staff of Azerbaijani Armed Forces. Newly formed military In summer 1992, the nascent Defense Ministry received a resolution by the Azerbaijani president on the takeover of units and formations in Azerbaijani territory. It then forwarded an ultimatum to Moscow demanding control over vehicles and armaments of the 135th and 139th Motor Rifle Regiments of the 295th Motor Rifle Division. In July 1992, Azerbaijan ratified the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE), which establishes comprehensive limits on key categories of conventional military equipment. Azerbaijan approved the CFE flank agreement in May 1997. The transfer of the property of the 4th Army (except for part of the property of the 366th Motor Rifle Regiment of the 23rd Guards Motor Rifle Division captured by Armenian armed formations in 1992 during the regiment's withdrawal from Stepanakert) and the 49th arsenal was completed in 1992. Thus, by the end of 1992, Azerbaijan received arms and military hardware sufficient for approximately four motor rifle divisions with prescribed army units. It also inherited naval ships. There are also reports that 50 combat aircraft from the disbanded 19th Army of the Soviet Air Defence Forces came under Azerbaijani control. The Azerbaijani armed forces took a series of devastating defeats by Armenian forces during the 1992–1994 Nagorno-Karabakh War, which resulted in the loss of control of Nagorno-Karabakh proper and seven surrounding rayons, comprising roughly 20% of the territory of Azerbaijan. Azerbaijani sources insist that Armenian victory was largely due to military help from Russia and the wealthy Armenian diaspora. Armenians partially deny the allegation, claiming that Russian side was equally supplying Armenian and Azerbaijani sides with weapons and mercenaries. During the war, the Azerbaijani armed forces were also aided by Turkish military advisers, and Russian, Ukrainian, Chechen and Afghan volunteers. 21st century A number of Azerbaijani human rights groups have been tracking non-combat deaths and have noted an upward trend in early 2010s. Based on Defense Ministry statistics that had not been released to the public, the Group of Monitoring Compliance with Human Rights in the Army (GMCHRA) has recorded the deaths of 76 soldiers to date in non-combat incidents for 2011, and the injury of 91 others. In comparison, there were 62 non-combat deaths and 71 cases of injury in 2010. The string of non-combat deaths raises questions about the reform progress of the military. Factors behind the deaths include bullying, hazing, and the systemic corruption within the Azerbaijani military. Second Karabakh War The Second Karabakh War (also known in Azerbaijan as "The Patriotic War" or "Operation Iron Fist") began on the morning of 27 September 2020 when Azerbaijan launched an offensive along the Line of Contact. On the seventh day of the war, a major offensive was launched by the ground forces, advancing in the north, making some territorial gains while the fighting gradually shifted to the south. Following the capture of Shusha, the second-largest settlement in Nagorno-Karabakh, by Azerbaijani forces, a ceasefire agreement was signed between Azerbaijan, and Armenia, ending all hostilities in the area. Under the agreement, Armenia returned the surrounding territories it occupied in 1994 to Azerbaijan while Azerbaijan gained land access to its Nakhchivan exclave. Total casualties were in the low thousands. During the war, the Azerbaijani army was widely accused of committing war crimes against Armenian soldiers and civilians. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International both condemned Azerbaijan's “indiscriminate” shelling of Armenian civilians, including the use of cluster munitions. In addition, videos of Azerbaijani soldiers mistreating or executing captive Armenians were circulated online and received widespread condemnation. On 10 December, a victory parade was held in honor of the Azerbaijani Army on Azadliq Square, with 3,000 distinguished military servicemen marching alongside military equipment, unmanned aerial vehicles and aircraft. Structure Command Since the fall of the Soviet Union, there have been attempts in the defence ministry to reform the military to be more in line with the Turkish/NATO model, resulting in Soviet-legacy officers such as Rovshan Akbarov and Najmeddin Sadikov being removed from power. Land Forces The Azerbaijani Land Forces number 85,000 strong, according to UK Advanced Research and Assessment Group estimates. The 2,500 men of the National Guard are also part of the ground forces. In addition, there are 300,000 former service personnel who have had military service in the last 15 years. Other paramilitary agencies consist of Interior Ministry Internal Troops of Azerbaijan, 12,000 strong, and the land component of the State Border Service, 5,000 strong. Azerbaijan has signed numerous contracts to strengthen its armed forces and to train its military with Turkey's assistance. Over the last 15 years, Azerbaijan has been preparing its military for possible action against Armenian forces in Nagorno-Karabakh. The Land Forces consist of five army corps: 1st Army Corps also known as Barda Army Corps (concentrated near Ganja) 2nd Army Corps also known as Beylagan Army Corps (concentrated against Armenian occupied territories and part is deployed on the Azerbaijan-Iranian border) 3rd Army Corps also known as Shamkir Army Corps (concentrated against Armenian occupied territories) 4th Army Corps also known as Baku Army Corps (covers Absheron Peninsula and the coast) Nakhchivan Separate Combined Arms Army (deployed in Nakhchivan) The Land Forces include 23 motor rifle brigades, an artillery brigade, a multiple rocket launcher brigade, and an anti-tank regiment. The IISS Military Balance reported in 2007 that the Land Forces had an estimated 40 SA-13 Gopher, SA-4 Ganef, and SA-8 Gecko air defence missile systems, with '80–240 eff.' to support the army in the battlefield. (IISS 2007, p. 157) The peacekeeping forces of Azerbaijan are mostly supplied from the Land Forces, though the Internal Troops of Azerbaijan do also supply some. As of March 2011, 94 peacekeepers were deployed with the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan. In the past, it also actively supported the peacekeeping operation in Kosovo and Iraq. The Azerbaijani peacekeeping unit deployed in Iraq consisted of 14 officers, 16 sergeants and 120 privates, a total of 150 troops. The unit secured the hydroelectric power station and reservoir in Al Haditha from August 2003. In December 2008, Azerbaijan withdrew the unit from Iraq. Reportedly in December 2014 Azerbaijan created the Separate Combined Arms Army in Nakhchivan. Karam Mustafayev became commander of the corps. The army was created based on the Nakhchivan 5th Army Corps to strengthen defense capability of Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic, increase of combat capability of military units and formations of the Armed Forces, improve central control, reports quoting the Defence Ministry said. Air forces The Azerbaijani Air and Air Defence Force is a single unified service branch. Some 8,000 men serve in the air force and air defence force. The Air and Air Defence Force has around 106 aircraft and 35 helicopters. The country has four major airbases. Nasosnaya (air base) has fighters, Kyurdamir Air Base a bomber regiment, Ganja Air Base transports, and Baku Kala Air Base the helicopter unit. There are also four other airbases which do not appear to have aircraft based there. These are Dollyar Air Base, Nakhchivan Airport, Sanqacal Air Base, and Sitalcay Air Base. The Azerbaijani Air Force using MiG-21, Su-24 and Su-25 aircraft, as well as the MiG-29 purchased from Ukraine in 2006 and Il-76 transport aircraft. The MiG-29 have been designated as the standard aircraft for the AzAF. Azerbaijan is holding talks with either the People's Republic of China or Pakistan to purchase JF-17 Thunder aircraft. MiG-25s previously in service have been retired seemingly in the 2007–09 period. Azerbaijan's helicopter force is concentrated at Baku Kala Air Base and according to the IISS consists of a single regiment with around 14–15 Mi-24, 12–13 Mi-8 and 7 Mi-2. Jane's Information Group and the IISS give figures which agree with only a single aircraft's difference. Recently, end of 2010 Russian Rosvertol announced that Azerbaijan armed forces signed a deal for 24 pieces of Mi-35M (Hind-E) gunships what would further enhance the Azerbaijani ground attack formations. The Air Force has L-39 advanced training aircraft in store. The Azerbaijan Border Guard and Voluntary Society of Defense, Patriotism and Sport have Yakovlev light training aircraft. Azerbaijan has missile and radar systems intended to defend Azerbaijani airspace. There are at least 2 divisions of S-300PMU2. Thereby the country has one of the most capable SAM surface-to-air missile system in the region. Azerbaijan also operates two S-200 (SA-5 GAMMON) batteries near Baku and Mingachevir; the S-300PMU-2 represents a logical replacement for these systems offering coverage of the majority of the nation. The country also has about 100 NATO designated SA-2 Guideline (original name S-75), SA-3 Goa (S-125 Pechora-2M), and the SA-5 Gammon (S-200) are in static installations. These may be around Baku and the central part to cover the whole Azerbaijani aerospace. However, August 2011 investigations shows that after purchase of S-300 surface-to-air missiles, the largest apparent gap in Azerbaijan's air defense system may have been filled. Also in Azerbaijan there was a former Soviet early warning radar. The Gabala Radar Station was a bistatic phased-array installation, operated by the Russian Space Forces. The contract was signed in 2002 and was due to expire in 2012 where it was to be given back to the Azerbaijani government. The contract costed Russia $7 million per year. The radar station had a range of up to , and was designed to detect intercontinental ballistic missile launches as far as from the Indian Ocean. In December 2012 Russia announced that negotiations had been unsuccessful and that they had stopped using the radar station. The site was given back to Azerbaijan and all the equipment dismantled and transported to Russia. Nowadays, Russia covers the area from the Armavir Radar Station. Navy The main naval base of the Soviet Union in the Caspian Sea was based in Baku. When the Soviet Union collapsed, Azerbaijan inherited the naval base and parts of the Caspian Sea Flotilla. The Azerbaijan Navy has about 2,200 personnel. In 2010, the navy had a Petya class light frigate, Qusar (G 121), and a number of patrol craft, including one Turk class, Araz, P 223, one Brya (Project 722) class, P 218, one Shelon (Project 1388M) class, P 212, one Poluchat class (Project 368), P 219, one Luga class (Project 888), T 710, and four Petrushka (Polish UK-3 class), P 213, P 214, P 215, and P 216. There are four minesweepers consisting of 2 Sonya class minesweeper and 2 Yevgenya class minesweepers. (Jane's Fighting Ships 2010) The Navy is also attributed with 5 landing craft, 3 Polnochny and 2 Vydra,(IISS 2007) plus three research ships, 1 Project 10470, A 671, ex Svyaga, 1 Balerian Uryvayev class survey vessel (AG) and one Vadim Popov class survey vessel (AG). The U.S. Navy has helped train the Azerbaijani Navy. There is also an agreement to provide US support to refurbish Azerbaijani warships in the Caspian Sea. In 2006, the US Government donated 3 motorboats to the Azerbaijani navy. In 2007, an agreement between Azerbaijani Navy and a US military company was concluded, which stated that a part of the Azerbaijani Navy would be equipped with advanced laser marksmanship systems. The US company specialists were also to give training on the use of the new equipment. A number of separate U.S. programmes are underway under the Caspian Guard Initiative, focused mostly on enhancing Azerbaijani and Kazakh maritime border security. In May 2011, President of the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan Republic Rovnag Abdullayev stated that Azerbaijan to start production of national warships after 2013. The Naval Intelligence of Azerbaijan maintains the 641st Special Warfare Naval Unit. The special forces were trained by the U.S. Navy SEALs Unit 641 has several midget submarines such as Triton-1M and Triton 2 at their disposal as well as underwater tool motion for individual divers. The special unit is composed of 3 reconnaissance groups, 2 groups for mountainous warfare and one diving group. Obligatory training includes parachute jumping day and night, on land and on water. Special forces The Special Forces of Azerbaijan are part of the Ministry of Defence. It was established in April 1999 with officers and warrant officers who had participated in the First Nagorno-Karabakh War of 1991–1994. The Turkish Special Forces Command played a role in the formation of the unit. During the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh War, personnel of the Special Forces reclaimed the city of Jebrayil and nine surrounding villages from the Armenian Army. On November 8, Aliyev congratulated the commander of the Special Forces on their "liberation of Shusha". The war was considered to
extreme southeast, which is drained by the Bargushat River, and most moderate in the Araks River valley to the extreme southwest. Most of Armenia is drained by the Araks or its tributary, the Hrazdan, which flows from Lake Sevan. The Araks forms most of Armenia's border with Turkey and Iran, while the Zangezur Mountains form the border between Armenia's southern province of Syunik and Azerbaijan's adjacent Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic. Climate Temperatures in Armenia generally depend upon elevation. Mountain formations block the moderating climatic influences of the Mediterranean Sea and the Black Sea, creating wide seasonal variations with cold snowy winters, and warm to hot summers. On the Armenian Plateau, the mean midwinter temperature is to , and the mean midsummer temperature is to . Average precipitation ranges from per year in the lower Araks River valley to at the highest altitudes. Despite the harshness of winter in most parts (with frosts reaching and lower in Shirak region), the fertility of the plateau's volcanic soil made Armenia one of the world's earliest sites of agricultural activity. Area and boundaries Area:total: 29,743 km2 country comparison to the world: 143 land: 28,203 km2water: 1,540 km2 Area comparative Australia comparative: about one third (33%) the size of Tasmania Canada comparative: greater than half (56%) the size of Nova Scotia Turkey comparative: about a quarter (24%) smaller than the size of Konya Province. United Kingdom comparative: about one third larger (30%) than Wales United States comparative: slightly smaller (7%) than Maryland EU comparative: slightly smaller (8%) than Belgium Land boundaries:total: 1,570 kmborder countries: Azerbaijan and Republic of Artsakh-proper 566 km, Azerbaijan-Nakhchivan exclave 221 km, Georgia 219 km, Iran 44 km, Turkey 311 km Coastline: 0 km (landlocked) Elevation extremes:lowest point: 375mhighest point: Mount Aragats 4,090 m Extreme points of Armenia:North: Tavush ()South: Syunik' ()West: Shirak ()East: Syunik' () Resources and land use Natural resources: deposits
the republic, Leninakan (now Gyumri), was heavily damaged by a massive quake that killed more than 25,000 people. About half of Armenia's area of approximately has an elevation of at least , and only 3% of the country lies below . The lowest points are in the valleys of the Araks River and the Debed River in the far north, which have elevations of , respectively. Elevations in the Lesser Caucasus vary between . To the southwest of the range is the Armenian Plateau, which slopes southwestward toward the Araks River on the Turkish border. The plateau is masked by intermediate mountain ranges and extinct volcanoes. The largest of these, Mount Aragats, high, is also the highest point in Armenia. Most of the population lives in the western and northwestern parts of the country, where the two major cities, Yerevan and Gyumri, are located. The valleys of the Debed and Akstafa rivers form the chief routes into Armenia from the north as they pass through the mountains. Lake Sevan, across at its widest point and long, is by far the largest lake. It lies above sea level on the plateau and is large. Other main lakes are: Arpi, , Sev, , Akna . Terrain is most rugged in the extreme southeast, which is drained by the Bargushat River, and most moderate in the Araks River valley to the extreme southwest. Most of Armenia is drained by the Araks or its tributary, the Hrazdan, which flows from Lake Sevan. The Araks forms most of Armenia's border with Turkey and Iran, while the Zangezur Mountains form the border between Armenia's southern province of Syunik and Azerbaijan's
– 2,956,615, Yezidian – 30,973, Russian – 23,484, Assyrian – 2,402, Kurdish – 2,030. Armenia is a member of La Francophonie, and hosted its annual summit in 2018. The largest communities of the Armenian diaspora, are fluent in Russian and English. Religions Most Armenians are Christians, primarily of the Apostolic Church rite. Armenia is considered the first nation to officially adopt Christianity, which was first preached in Armenia by two Apostles of Jesus, St. Bartholomew and St. Thaddeus in the 1st century. The Armenian Apostolic Church can trace its roots back to the 3rd and 4th centuries. The country formally adopted the Christian faith in 301 A.D. Over 90% of Armenians belong to the Armenian Apostolic Church. Armenia also has a population of Catholics and Evangelical Protestants. According to the census of 2011, the primary religions in Armenia is the following: Christianity 2,862,366 (94.8%) of whom 2,797,187 Armenian Apostolic (92.5%), 29,280 Evangelical, 13,996 Armenian and Roman (Latin) Catholic, 8,695 Jehovah's Witness, 8,587 Eastern Orthodox (Russian, Ukrainian, Georgian, Greek), 2,874 Molokan (non-Orthodox Russians), 1,733 Assyrian Church of the East (Nestorian), 733 Protestant, 241 Mormon, Yazidism (0.8%), Paganism (0.2%), 812 Islam, 5,299 Other Religion (0.2%), 121,587 No Response (4%). Migration Compared to its neighbouring countries, Armenia has the highest share of immigrants (6.5% of total population, 2017 data). The estimated number of population net migration is −24.8 thousand persons, according to the Integrated living conditions survey of households of 2016; for urban population −13.8 thousand and for rural population −11.0 thousand persons. 24.9% of households were involved in external and internal migration processes over the period of 2013– 2016. Migration directions were distributed as follows: 12% – internal, 10.5% – Republic of Artsakh, rest (76.4%) – international (of which 89.8% – Russia). Among household members of age 15 and above, who left their permanent residence in 2013–2016 for 3 months and longer and had not returned as of 2016, 11.9% were in Armenia, 13.0% in Artsakh, and 75.1% in other countries, predominantly in Russia. More than 54% of migrant household members of the age 15 years and above sent money and/ or goods to their families/relatives/friends within 12 months preceding the survey. According to 2019 UN data, the emigration rate averaged annually around 1.7 per 1000 inhabitants in years 2015–2020 and is expected to remain the same until year 2045. These are below average emigration rate of 11.5 per 1000 in years 2000–2010 and even below the emigration rate of 3.2 per 1000 in years 1980–1985. Wealth and poverty Inequality Out of 41 emerging economies, Armenia was among only four, which recorded rising inequality (measured
of deaths in 1988 is related to the Spitak earthquake, while in the rest of the 20th century the death rate was equal to the rate of other European countries (excluding England). 3 The population estimate for 2012 has been recalculated on the basis of the 2011 Census. Current vital statistics Ethnic groups Armenia is the most ethnically homogeneous country of the former Soviet Union. It is also the third most densely populated post-Soviet state. In 2002, ethnic minorities included Russians, Assyrians, Ukrainians, Yazidis, Kurds, Iranians, Greeks, Georgians, and Belarusians. There were also smaller communities of Vlachs, Mordvins, Ossetians, Udis, and Tats. Minorities of Poles and Caucasus Germans also exist, though they are heavily Russified. Languages Armenian is the sole official language. As per 2001 census data, Armenian is most widely spoken at 97.7%, Kurdish at 1%, Russian at 0.9%, among others at 0.4%. As per 2011 census data, native languages were reported as follows: Armenian – 2,956,615, Yezidian – 30,973, Russian – 23,484, Assyrian – 2,402, Kurdish – 2,030. Armenia is a member of La Francophonie, and hosted its annual summit in 2018. The largest communities of the Armenian diaspora, are fluent in Russian and English. Religions Most Armenians are Christians, primarily of the Apostolic Church rite. Armenia is considered the first nation to officially adopt Christianity, which was first preached in Armenia by two Apostles of Jesus, St. Bartholomew and St. Thaddeus in the 1st century. The Armenian Apostolic Church can trace its roots back to the 3rd and 4th centuries. The country formally adopted the Christian faith in 301 A.D. Over 90% of Armenians belong to the Armenian Apostolic Church. Armenia also has a population of Catholics and Evangelical Protestants. According to the census of 2011, the primary religions in Armenia is the following: Christianity 2,862,366 (94.8%) of whom 2,797,187 Armenian Apostolic (92.5%), 29,280 Evangelical, 13,996 Armenian and Roman (Latin) Catholic, 8,695 Jehovah's Witness, 8,587 Eastern Orthodox (Russian, Ukrainian, Georgian, Greek), 2,874 Molokan (non-Orthodox Russians), 1,733 Assyrian Church of the East (Nestorian), 733 Protestant, 241 Mormon, Yazidism (0.8%), Paganism (0.2%), 812 Islam, 5,299 Other Religion (0.2%), 121,587 No Response (4%). Migration Compared to its neighbouring countries, Armenia has the highest share of immigrants (6.5% of total population, 2017 data). The estimated number of population net migration is −24.8 thousand persons, according to the Integrated living conditions survey of households of 2016; for urban population −13.8 thousand and for rural population −11.0 thousand persons. 24.9% of households were involved in external and internal migration processes over the period of 2013– 2016. Migration directions were distributed as follows: 12% – internal, 10.5% – Republic of Artsakh, rest (76.4%) – international (of which 89.8% – Russia). Among household members of age 15 and above, who left their permanent residence in 2013–2016 for 3 months and longer and had not returned as of 2016, 11.9% were in Armenia, 13.0% in Artsakh, and 75.1% in other countries, predominantly in Russia. More than 54% of migrant household members of the age 15 years and above sent money and/ or goods to their families/relatives/friends within 12 months preceding the survey. According to 2019 UN data, the emigration rate averaged annually around 1.7 per 1000 inhabitants in years 2015–2020 and is expected to remain the same until year 2045. These are below average emigration rate of 11.5 per 1000 in years 2000–2010 and even below the emigration rate of 3.2 per 1000 in years 1980–1985. Wealth and poverty Inequality Out of 41 emerging economies, Armenia was among only four, which recorded rising inequality (measured by Gini coefficient) in years 2007–2015. Wealth According to Global Wealth Report, prepared by Credit Suisse, mean wealth per adult in Armenia in 2019 is estimated at $19,517 (rising 9 times from estimated $2,177 in year 2000). Mean wealth per adult in Armenia surpasses corresponding values for neighboring countries Georgia and Azerbaijan by over 50%, all CIS countries except Russia and Kazakhstan, and neighboring Iran. Growth rate of mean wealth per adult between 2000 and 2019 with the value of 9 times beats all neighboring countries, most of CIS countries as well as Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Median wealth per adult is reported at $8,309 in 2019, above the world average, rising 9.6 times from $862 in year 2000. Between 2000 and 2019, average debts per adult grew 28.7 times to $1,261, or 6.5% of wealth per adult (below the 11.9% world average). 55% of adults own less than $10,000, 42.7% — $10,000–$100,000, 2.2% — $100,000–$1 million and 0.1% — over $1 million. The share of adults owning less than $10,000 with the value of 55% is less than corresponding value in each of CIS countries, neighboring Iran and Turkey, as well as the world average. Gini coefficient for wealth is reported at 66.3%, less than 82.4% the European average and 88.5% the world average. Poverty As much as 53.5 % of the country’s population was officially considered poor in 2004. Poverty fell significantly in the following years amid double-digit economic growth that came to an end with the onset of the global financial crisis in late 2008. It soared to almost 36% in 2010, one year after Armenia’s Gross Domestic Product shrunk by over 14%. Afterwards, there
Apostolic Church must register with the government, and proselytizing was forbidden by law, though since 1997 the government has pursued more moderate policies. The government's policy toward conscientious objection is in transition, as part of Armenia's accession to the Council of Europe. Armenia boasts a good record on the protection of national minorities, for whose representatives (Assyrians, Kurds, Russians and Yazidis) four seats are reserved in the National Assembly. The government does not restrict internal or international travel. Transition to a parliamentary republic In December 2015, the country held a referendum which approved transformation of Armenia from a semi-presidential to a parliamentary republic. As a result, the president was stripped of his veto faculty and the presidency was downgraded to a figurehead position elected by parliament every seven years. The president is not allowed to be a member of any political party and re-election is forbidden. Skeptics saw the constitutional reform as an attempt of third president Serzh Sargsyan to remain in control by becoming Prime Minister after fulfilling his second presidential term in 2018. In March 2018, Armenian parliament elected Armen Sarksyan as the new President of Armenia. The controversial constitutional reform to reduce presidential power was implemented, while the authority of the prime minister was strengthened. In May 2018, parliament elected opposition leader Nikol Pashinyan as the new prime minister. His predecessor Serzh Sargsyan resigned two weeks earlier following widespread anti-government demonstrations. In June 2021, early parliamentary elections were held. Nikol Pashinyan's Civil Contract party won 71 seats, while 29 went to a bloc headed by former President Robert Kocharyan. A different bloc that formed around another former president, Serzh Sargsyan, won seven seats. After the election, Armenia's acting Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan was officially appointed to the post of prime minister by the country's president Armen Sarkissian. In January 2022, Armenian President Armen Sarkissian resigned from office, stating that the constitution does no longer give the president sufficient powers or influence. Government |President |Armen Sarkissian |Independent |9 April 2018 |- |Prime Minister |Nikol Pashinyan |Civil Contract |8 May 2018 |} Legislative branch The unicameral National Assembly of Armenia (Azgayin Zhoghov) is the legislative branch of the government of Armenia. Before the 2015 Armenian constitutional referendum, it was initially made of 131 members, elected for five-year terms: 41 members in single-seat constituencies and 90 by proportional representation. The proportional-representation seats in the National Assembly are assigned on a party-list basis among those parties that receive at least 5% of the total of the number of the votes. Following the 2015 referendum, the number of MPs was reduced from the original 131 members to 101 and single-seat constituencies were removed. Political parties and elections The electoral threshold is currently set at 5% for single parties and 7% for blocs. Latest national elections Latest presidential elections Independent agencies Independent of three traditional branches are the following independent agencies, each with separate powers and responsibilities: the Constitutional Court of Armenia the Central Electoral Commission of
Armenia (Azgayin Zhoghov) is the legislative branch of the government of Armenia. Before the 2015 Armenian constitutional referendum, it was initially made of 131 members, elected for five-year terms: 41 members in single-seat constituencies and 90 by proportional representation. The proportional-representation seats in the National Assembly are assigned on a party-list basis among those parties that receive at least 5% of the total of the number of the votes. Following the 2015 referendum, the number of MPs was reduced from the original 131 members to 101 and single-seat constituencies were removed. Political parties and elections The electoral threshold is currently set at 5% for single parties and 7% for blocs. Latest national elections Latest presidential elections Independent agencies Independent of three traditional branches are the following independent agencies, each with separate powers and responsibilities: the Constitutional Court of Armenia the Central Electoral Commission of Armenia the Human Rights Defender of Armenia the Central Bank of Armenia the General Prosecutor's Office the Audit Chamber of Armenia Corruption Armenia has seen substantive improvement in corruption over the past decade or so. In 2008, Transparency International reduced its Corruption Perceptions Index for Armenia from 3.0 in 2007 to 2.9 out of 10 (a lower score means more perceived corruption); Armenia slipped from 99th place in 2007 to 109th out of 180 countries surveyed (on a par with Argentina, Belize, Moldova, Solomon Islands, and Vanuatu). However, Transparency International's 2020 Corruption Perceptions Index ranked Armenia 60th in the world with 49 points - an increase by 7 points compared to 2019. According to Transparency International, Armenia has improved significantly on the Corruption Perception Index, rising 15 points since 2012. With that, "Armenia has taken a gradual approach to reform, resulting in steady and positive improvements in anti-corruption. However, safeguarding judicial independence and ensuring checks and balances remain critical first steps in its anti-corruption efforts. The effectiveness of those efforts is additionally challenged by the current political and economic crisis as a result of the recent Nagorno Karabakh conflict and the subsequent protests against Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan over a ceasefire deal". See also Constitution of Armenia Constitutional economics Elections in Armenia Foreign relations of Armenia List of political parties in Armenia Politics of Artsakh Programs of political parties in Armenia Rule according to higher law Notes References External links Global Integrity Report: Armenia has information on anti-corruption efforts Petrosyan, David: "The Political System
2018 compared with a year before and stood at 55.7 per cent at the end of 2018. The government's public debt at the end of 2019 stood at $6.94 billion, making 50.3% of its GDP. In March 2019, sovereign debt comprised $5488 million, $86.5 million (about 2%) less than a year ago. Other sources quote Armenia's debt at $10.8 billion in September 2018, possibly including non-public debt too. In 2018, debt-to-GDP ratio stood at 55.7% down from 58.7% in 2017. Armenia revised the country's fiscal rules in 2018, setting a permissible threshold for public debt in the amount of 40, 50 and 60% of GDP. At the same time, it established that in case of force majeure situations such as natural disasters, wars, the government will be allowed to exceed this threshold. The debt rose by $863.5 million in 2016 and by another $832.5 million in 2017. It totalled just $1.9 billion before the 2008-2009 (13.5% of GDP) global financial crisis that plunged the county into a severe recession. Exchange rate of national currency National Statistics Office publishes official reference exchange rates for each year. Inflation For 2019, IMF forecasts inflation at 1.7%, which is below all neighbouring countries. The Armenian government projects inflation at 2.7% in 2019. The inflation rate in Armenia in 2020 was 1.21 percent, a 0.23 percent decrease over 2019, in 2019 was 1.44 percent, a 1.08 percent decrease over 2018, in 2018 was 2.52 percent, up 1.55 percent from 2017 and in 2017 was 0.97 percent, a 2.37 percent rise from 2016. Cash remittances Cash remittances sent back home from Armenians working abroad — mostly in Russia and the United States — contribute significantly to Armenia's Gross Domestic Product making up 14% of GDP in 2018. They help Armenia sustain double-digit economic growth and finance its massive trade deficit. In 2008, transfers reached record high of $2.3 billion. In 2015, they reached 10-year low at $1.6 billion. In 2018, they run at round $1.8 billion. $0.8 billion were transferred in first half of 2019. According to CBA their impact on economy is decreasing, as GDP grows at outperforming rate. Net private transfers decreased in 2009, but saw a continuous increase during the first six months of 2010. Since private transfers from the Diaspora tend to be mostly injected into consumption of imports and not in high value-added sectors, the transfers have not resulted in sizeable increases in productivity. According to the Central Bank of Armenia, during the first half of 2008, cash remittances sent back to Armenia by Armenians working abroad rose by 57.5 percent and totaled US$668.6 million, equivalent to 15 percent of the country's first-half Gross Domestic Product. However, the latter figures only represent cash remittances processed through Armenian commercial banks. According to RFE/RL, comparable sums are believed to be transferred through non-bank systems, implying that cash remittances make up approximately 30 percent of Armenia's GDP in the first half of 2008. In 2007, cash remittances through bank transfers rose by 37 percent to a record-high level of US$1.32 billion. According to the Central Bank of Armenia, in 2005, cash remittances from Armenians working abroad reached a record-high level of $1 billion, which is worth more than one fifth of the country's 2005 GDP. Banking The central bank has set additional capital buffers in the banking sector. In force since April 2019, the regulator set three buffers exceeding the current capital adequacy requirement compliant with the Basel III regulation: a capital conservation buffer, a counter-cyclical capital buffer and a systemic risk buffer. Full implementation of the buffers over the course of the next few years will strengthen the financial sector's resistance to economic shocks and help increase the efficiency of macroprudential policies. Armenian banks' lending grew by 10 percent in 2019. Government revenues and taxation Government revenues In August 2019 Moody's Investors Service upgraded Armenia to Ba3 rating with stable outlook. According to the National Statistical Service, Armenia's government debt stood at AMD 3.1 trillion (about $6,4 billion, including $5,1 billion of external debt) as of November 30, 2017. Armenia's debt-to-GDP ratio will drop by 1% in 2018 according to finance minister. In Armenia's external debt ($5.5 billion as of January 1, 2018), the arrears for multi-country credit programs dominate - 66.2% or $3.6 billion, followed by debt on bilateral loan programs - 17.5% or $958.9 million and investments of non-residents in Armenian Eurobonds - 15,4% or $844.9 million. For the whole Armenian economy and international commerce, 2020 was a year of decline. In a variety of areas, Armenian commodities are being exported and imported at a lower rate. According to the Armenian Statistical Committee, Armenia exported goods worth $2.544 billion in 2020, a fall of 3.9 percent from 2019. Armenia imported items worth 4.559 billion dollars in 2020, down 17.7% from the previous year.The volume of Armenia's international trade has varied throughout the previous 10 years. Taxation Employee income tax From January 1, 2020, Armenia will switch to a flat income taxation system, which, regardless of the amount will tax wages at 23%. Moreover, until 2023 the taxation rate will gradually decrease from 23% to 20%. Corporate income tax The reform adopted in June 2019, aims to boost medium-term economic activity and to increase tax compliance. Among other measures, the corporate income tax was reduced by two percentage points to 18.0 per cent and the tax on dividends for non-resident organisations halved to 5.0 per cent. Special taxation for small business From January 1, 2020, the republic will abandon two alternative tax systems - self-employed and family entrepreneurship. They will be replaced by micro-entrepreneurship with a non-taxable threshold of up to 24 million drams. Business entities that carry out specialized activities, in particular, accounting, advocacy, and consulting will not be considered as micro-business entities. Micro business will be exempted from all types of taxes other than income tax, which will be 5 thousand drams per employee. Value-added tax Over half of the tax revenues in the January–August 2008 time period were generated from value-added taxes (VAT) of 20%. By comparison, corporate profit tax generated less than 16 percent of the revenues. This suggests that tax collection in Armenia is improving at the expense of ordinary citizens, rather than wealthy citizens (who have been the main beneficiaries of Armenia's double-digit economic growth in recent years). VAT (Value Added Tax): In Armenia, VAT-paying individuals subtract the VAT paid on their inputs from the VAT levied on their sales and account to the tax authorities for the difference. The standard rate of VAT on domestic sales of goods and services, as well as imports importation, is 20%. Exports of products and services are not taxed. Foreign trade, direct investments and aid Foreign trade Exports According to the National Statistical Committee, in 2018, exports amounted to $2.411.9 billion, having grown by 7.8% from the previous year.IMF expects exports to grow at a rate of 5-8% p.a. in years 2019–2024. The goods export structure changed considerably in 2018 as the export of the traditional mining sector decreased while the share of textiles, agriculture and precious metals increased. Geographical location of the country and relatively low electricity costs are comparative advantages supporting to boost the production of the textile and leather products in Armenia. Proximity to Europe in comparison with manufacturers in East Asia creates opportunity to strengthen Armenia's position as contract manufacturing destination for European brands. Foreign companies that put orders to Armenian companies are mainly famous European brands, particularly, from Italy (La Perla, SARTIS, VERSACE etc.) and Germany (LEBEK International Fashion, KUBLER Bekliedungswerk). With the Armenia's entry into Eurasian Economic Commission, the opportunity to increase its presence with textile and leather production raised also in the countries of Eurasian Economic Commission as no customs duty applies to Armenian products in the export markets within the customs union. According to the study REGIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL TRADE OF ARMENIA: PERSPECTIVES AND POTENTIALS authors investigated the trade potential of Armenia for different product groups by employing a gravity model of trade approach. The study explored Armenia's trade flows to 139 countries for the period of 2003 to 2007. According to the results of the paper, the authors concluded that "Armenia has exceeded its export potential almost with all the CIS countries". In addition, the authors concluded that the most perspective product groups of Armenian export tend to be "Industrial products", "Food and beverages" and "Consumer goods". On the other hand, the paper “The effects of exchange rate volatility on exports: evidence from Armenia” analyzes the effect of Armenian floating exchange rate regime and exchange rate volatility on Armenian exports to Russia. According to the paper exchange rate volatility has long-run and short-run negative effects on exports. Moreover, authors stated that high exchange rate risk resulted in decreasing exports to Russia. According to most recent (2019 Jan-Feb compared to 2018 Jan-Feb) ArmStat calculations, biggest growth in export quantities was measured towards Turkmenistan by 23.6 times (from $37K to $912K), Estonia by 15 times (from $8.4K to $136.5K) and Canada by 11.5 times (from $623K to $7.8 mln). Meanwhile, exports to Russia, Germany, USA and UAE dropped. Imports In 2017, Armenia imported $3.96B, making it the 133rd largest importer in the world. During the last five years the imports of Armenia have decreased at an annualized rate of -1.2%, from $3.82B in 2012 to $3.96B in 2017. The most recent imports are led by Petroleum Gas which represent 8.21% of the total imports of Armenia, followed by Refined Petroleum, which account for 5.46%. Armenia's main imports are oil, natural gas, cereals, rubber manufactures, cork and wood, and electrical machinery. Armenia's main imports partners are Russia, China, Ukraine, Iran, Germany, Italy, Turkey, France and Japan. The European Union (28.7% of total exports), Russia (26.9%), Switzerland (14.1%), and Iraq (14.1%) are Armenia's largest export partners (6.3 percent ). The Russian Federation is the most important import partner (26.2%), followed by the EU (22.6%), China (13.8%), and Iran (13.8%). (5.6 percent ). After the 2008 Russian-Georgian conflict, which briefly halted the nation's hydrocarbon supply and exposed the country's energy vulnerabilities, the country has been looking for other energy sources. Tensions with a few of its neighbors, notably as Azerbaijan and Turkey, continue to exist, affecting commerce. Armenia's ties to Russia, as well as its membership in the Eurasian Economic Union, constrain the country's potential to integrate further with the EU. Imports in 2017 amounted to $4.183 billion, up 27.8% from 2016. IMF expects exports to grow at a rate of 4-5% p.a. in years 2019–2024. In 2018, the country's structural trade imbalance was predicted to be 15.7 percent of GDP (World Bank). According to World Trade Organization data, Armenia exported commodities worth US$2.4 billion in 2018, up 7% from the previous year, and imported goods worth US$4.9 billion, up 18%. In terms of services, the country exported US$2 billion in 2018 and imported US$2.1 billion. The global economic crisis has had less impact on imports because the sector is more diversified than exports. In the first nine months of 2010, imports grew about 19 percent, just about equal to the decline of the same sector in 2009. Deficit According to the National Statistical Service foreign trade deficit amounted to US$1.94 billion in 2017. The current account deficit represented 2.4 percent of GDP in 2017 and increased up to 8.1 percent of GDP during the first three quarters of 2018. This was a result of about 8 percent increase in goods export and 21 percent increase on goods import in nominal terms year on year in 2018. Armenia's foreign trade turnover increased by 11.6 percent in January–May 2021, compared to an 11.2 percent decline a year earlier, owing to a reversal of the y-o-y dynamics of exports and imports from 8.1 to 12.8 percent decline to 20.8-6.7 percent growth, according to preliminary data from the RA Statistical Committee. As a consequence, Armenia's foreign trade turnover reached 1.5 trillion drams ($2.9 billion), with exports totaling 567.4 billion drams ($1.1 billion) and imports being 931.8 billion drams ($1.8 billion), resulting in a 364.4 billion drams ($695 million) international trade deficit. Foreign trade turnover climbed by 3.9 percent in May 2021,resulting to a 7.9% increase in exports and a minimal 1.5 percent increase in imports. As a consequence, Armenia's international trade deficit in May 2021 was 83.4 billion drams ($160 million), decreasing 7.4% from the same month in 2020. (by 21.1 percent ). Foreign trade turnover increased by 13% year over year in May 2020, due to a 30.7 percent increase in exports and a moderate 4.3 percent increase in imports. Partners European Union In 2017, EU countries accounted for 24.3 percent of Armenia's foreign trade. Whereby exports to EU countries grew by 32,2% to $633 million. In 2010, EU countries accounted for 32.1 percent of Armenia's foreign trade. Germany is Armenia's largest trading partner among EU member states, accounting for 7.2 percent of trade; this is due largely to mining exports. Armenian exports to EU countries have skyrocketed by 65.9 percent, making up more than half of all 2010 January to September exports. Imports from EU countries increased by 17.1 percent, constituting 22.5 percent of all imports. During January–February 2007, Armenia's trade with the European Union totaled $200 million. During the first 11 months of 2006, the European Union remained Armenia's largest trading partner, accounting for 34.4 percent of its $2.85 billion commercial exchange during the 11-month period. Russia and former Soviet republics In first quarter of 2019 share of Russia in foreign trade turnover fell to 11% from 29% in previous year. 2017 CIS countries accounted for 30 percent of Armenia's foreign trade. Exports to CIS countries rose by 40,3% to $579,5 million. Bilateral trade with Russia stood at more than $700 million for the first nine months of 2010 – on track to rebound to $1 billion mark first reached in 2008 prior to the global economic crisis. During January–February 2007, Armenia's trade with Russia and other former Soviet republics was $205.6 million (double the amount from the same period the previous year), making them the country's number one trading partner. During the first 11 months of 2006, the volume of Armenia's trade with Russia was $376.8 million or 13.2 percent of the total commercial exchange. China In 2017, trade with China grew by 33.3 percent. As of early 2011, trade with China is dominated by imports of Chinese goods and accounts for about 10 percent of Armenia's foreign trade. The volume of Chinese-Armenian trade soared by 55 percent to $390 million in January–November 2010. Armenian exports to China, though still modest in absolute terms, nearly doubled in that period. Iran Armenia's trade with Iran grew significantly from 2015 and 2020. Because Armenia's land borders to the east and west have been closed by the governments of Turkey and Azerbaijan, domestic firms have looked to Iran as a key economic partner. In 2020, trade between the countries exceeded $300 million. The number of Iranian tourists has risen in recent years, with an estimated 80,000 Iranian tourists in 2010. In January 2021, Iran's finance minister Farhad Dejpasand said that trade between the two countries could reach $1 billion annually as Iran looks to become a regional economic force. United States From January–September 2010, bilateral trade with the United States measured approximately $150 million, on track for about a 30 percent increase over 2009. An increase in Armenia's exports to the US in 2009 and 2010 has been due to shipments of aluminum foil. During the first 11 months of 2006, U.S.-Armenian trade totaled $152.6 million. Georgia The volume of Georgian-Armenian trade remains modest in both relative and absolute terms. According to official Armenian statistics, it rose by 11 percent to $91.6 million in January–November 2010. The figure was equivalent to just over 2 percent of Armenia's overall foreign trade. Turkey In 2019, the volume of bilateral trade with Turkey was about $255 million, with trade taking place across Georgian territory. This figure is not expected to increase significantly so long as the land border between the Armenia and Turkey remains closed. Foreign direct investments Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) into Armenia decreased by US$2.7 million in December 2020, compared to a reduction of US$10.3 million the previous quarter. Armenia Foreign Direct Investment: USD mn Net Flows data is available from March 1993 through December 2020, and is updated quarterly. The statistics ranged from a high of US$425.9 million in December 2008 to a low of -67.6 USD mn in December 2014. Armenia's current account surplus is US$51.7 million in December 2020, according to the most recent statistics. -In June 2021, Armenian Direct Investment Abroad increased by 12.8 million dollars. -In June 2021, it boosted its Foreign Portfolio Investment by $14.6 million. -In December 2020, the country's nominal GDP was reported to be 3.8 billion dollars. Yearly FDI figures Despite robust economic growth foreign direct investment (FDI) in Armenia remain low as of 2018. in January–September 2019, the net flow of direct foreign investment in the real sector of the Armenian economy stood at about $267 million. Jersey was the main source of FDI in 2017. Moreover, combined net FDI from all other sources was negative, indicating capital outflow. The tax haven Jersey is home to an Anglo-American company, Lydian International, which is currently building a controversial massive gold mine in the southeastern Vayots Dzor province. Lydian has pledged to invest a total of $370 million in the Amulsar gold mine. Negative values indicate investments of Armenian corporations to foreign country exceeding investments from that country in Armenia. Stock FDI FDI stock to GDP ratio grew continuously during 2014-2016 and reached 44.1% in 2016, surpassing average figures for Commonwealth of Independent States countries, transition economies and the world. By the end of 2017 stock net FDI (for the period 1988–2017) reached 1824 billion AMD, while gross flow of FDI for the same period reached 3869 billion AMD. As of February 2019, the European Investment Bank (EIB) has invested about 380 million euros in the various projects implemented in Armenia. FDI in founding capital of financial institutions During the sector consolidation process in 2014-2017 the share of foreign capital in the authorized capital of the Armenian commercial banks decreased from 74,6% to 61,8%. Net FDI in founding capital of financial institutions accumulated by end of September 2017 is presented in pie chart below. Foreign aid United States The Armenian government receives foreign aid from the government of the United States through the United States Agency for International Development and the Millennium Challenge Corporation. On March 27, 2006, the Millennium Challenge Corporation signed a five-year, $235.65 million compact with the Government of Armenia. The single stated goal of the "Armenian Compact" is "the reduction of rural poverty through a sustainable increase in the economic performance of the agricultural sector." The compact includes a $67 million to rehabilitate up to 943 kilometers of rural roads, more than a third of Armenia's proposed "Lifeline road network". The Compact also includes a $146 million project to increase the productivity of approximately 250,000 farm households through improved water supply, higher yields, higher-value crops, and a more competitive agricultural sector. In 2010, the volume of US assistance to Armenia remained near 2009 levels; however, longer-term decline continued. The original Millennium Challenge Account commitment for $235 million had been reduced to about $175 million due to Armenia's poor governance record. Thus, the MCC would not complete road construction. Instead, the irrigated agriculture project was headed for completion with apparently no prospects for extension beyond 2011. On May 8, 2019, conditioned with the political events in Armenia since April 2018, United States Agency for International Development signed an extension of U.S.-Armenia bilateral agreement in the area of governance and public administration, which would add additional US$8.5 million to the agreement. By signing another document on the same day, USAID increased the aid by additional US$7.5 million in support for more competitive and diversified private sector in Armenia. The financial allocations will be directed to the financing of the USAID-funded project in infrastructures, agriculture, tourism․ After the signing of the new bilateral agreements, the total amount of the U.S. grants to Armenia amounted to around US$81 million. European Union According to the agreement signed in 2020 EU will provide Armenia with 65 million euros for implementation of three programs in such areas as energy efficiency, environment and community development and formation of tools for implementation of the Comprehensive and Enhanced Partnership Agreement. With curtailment of the MCC funding, the European Union may replace the US as Armenia's chief source of foreign aid for the first time since independence. From 2011 to 2013, the European Union is expected to advance at least €157.3 million ($208 million) in aid to Armenia. Domestic business environment Since transition of power to new leadership in 2018 Armenian government works on improving domestic business environment. Numerous formerly privileged business are now required to pay taxes and officially register all workers. Mainly due to this there were 9.7% more payroll employees registered in January 2019 as compared to January 2018. In April 2019 Armenian parliament approved reforms of management of joint stock companies effectively enacting a blocking minority shareholders stake of 25% to cope with shareholder oppression. Following the advice of economic advisers who cautioned Armenia's leadership against the consolidation of economic power in the hands of a few, in January 2001, the Government of Armenia established the State Commission for the Protection of Economic Competition. Its members cannot be dismissed by the government. Foreign trade facilitation In June 2011, Armenia adopted a Law on Free Economic Zones (FEZ), and developed several key regulations at the end of 2011 to attract foreign investments into FEZs: exemptions from VAT (value added tax), profit tax, customs duties, and property tax. The “Alliance” FEZ was opened in August 2013, and currently has nine businesses taking advantage of its facilities. The focus of “Alliance” FEZ is on high-tech industries which include information and communication technologies, electronics, pharmaceuticals and biotechnology, architecture and engineering, industrial design and alternative energy. In 2014, the government expanded operations in the Alliance FEZ to include industrial production as long as there is no similar production already occurring in Armenia. In 2015, another “Meridian” FEZ, focused on jewelry production, watch-making, and diamond-cutting opened in Yerevan, with six businesses operating in it. The investment programs for these companies must still be approved by government. The Armenian Government approved the program to construct the Meghri free economic zone at the border with Iran, which is expected
the construction sector. However, during the January to September 2010 period, the sector experienced a 5.2 percent year-on-year decrease, which according to the Civilitas Foundation is an indication of the unsustainability of a sector based on an elite market, with few products for the median or low budgets. This decrease comes despite the fact that an important component of the government stimulus package was to support the completion of ongoing construction projects. Energy In 2017, electricity generation increased by 6.1% reaching 7.8 billion KWh. Digital economy The digital economy is a branch of the economy based on digital computing technologies. The digital economy is sometimes referred to as the Internet economy or the web economy. The digital economy is often intertwined with the traditional economy, making it difficult to distinguish between them. Aimed at the sector's development on November 15, 2021, the Silicon Mountains Summit dedicated to introducing intelligent solutions in the economy was held in Yerevan. The main topic of the summit was the prospect of digitalization of the economy in Armenia. The main driving force of this sphere in Armenia is the banks. Digital transformation is a necessity for banks and financial institutions. At the moment, ACBA Bank is the leader․ Industrial sector In 2017, industrial output increased by 12.6% annually reaching 1661 billion AMD. Industrial output was relatively positive throughout 2010, with year-on-year average growth of 10.9 percent in the period January to September 2010, due largely to the mining sector where higher global demand for commodities led to higher prices. According to the National Statistical Service, during the January–August 2007 period, Armenia's industrial sector was the single largest contributor to the country's GDP, but remained largely stagnant with industrial output increasing only by 1.7 percent per year. In 2005, Armenia's industrial output (including electricity) made up about 30 percent of GDP. Services sector In the 2000s, along with the construction sector, the services sector was the driving force behind Armenia's recent high economic growth rate. Between 2017 and 2019, Armenia's economy increased fast, with annual rate of GDP growth averaging 6.8 percent. Following the political realignment of 2018, prudent macroeconomic policy helped develop a track record of macroeconomic stability and an enhanced business environment. In Armenia, the service sector in 2020 reduced volumes by 14.7%, against 15% growth a year earlier, amounting to 1.7 trillion drams ($3.5 billion). According to the RA Statistical Committee, a negative trend was recorded in all service segments except for the finance, as well as information and communication. A similar trend is due to the coronavirus pandemic, the outbreak of which in Armenia in March 2020 led to restrictions on a number of economic activities that were in effect until September of last year. Retail trade In 2010, retail trade turnover was largely unaltered compared to 2009. The existing monopolies throughout the retail sector have made the sector non-responsive to the crisis and resulted in near zero growth. The aftermath of the crisis has started to shift the structure in the retail sector in favor of food products. Nowadays(2019), Armenia has improved standards of living and growing income, which brought to the improvement of retail sector in Armenia. retail sector has the highest employment level. While the sector improves, currently the major sector is still in Yerevan, and not in the other cities of Armenia. The development that happened in this sector was the opening of Dalma Garden Mall, and later Yerevan mall, Rio mall and Rossia mall, which dramatically increased the quality of retail in Yerevan. Currently there is a new development, as in Gyumri there is a new mall opened called Shirak Mall. Another reason for the development of the retail is the development that happened in the banking industry. Today people can easily get financial assistance from the banks right to their credit cards, without visiting the bank. Information and Communication Technologies As of February 2019 nearly 23 thousand employees were counted in ICT sector. With 404 thousand AMD they enjoyed highest pay rate among surveyed sectors of economy. Average salaries in pure IT sector (excluding communications sub-sector) stood at 582 thousand AMD. Financial Services In January 2019 there were 20.5 thousand employees registered in the financial sector. According to Moody's, robust economic growth will benefit banks with GDP growth remaining robust at around 4.5% in 2019–20. Industry report on banking sector prepared by AmRating presents slightly varying figures for some of above data. Tourism Tourism in Armenia has been a key sector to the Armenian economy since the 1990s when tourist numbers exceeded half a million people visiting the country every year (mostly ethnic Armenians from the Diaspora). The Armenian Ministry of Economy reports that most international tourists come from Russia, EU states, the United States and Iran. Though relatively small in size, Armenia has four UNESCO world heritage sites. Despite internal and external problems, the number of incoming tourists has been continually increasing. 2018 saw a record high of over 1.6 million inbound tourists. In 2018, receipts from international tourism amounted to $1.2 billion, nearly twice the value for 2010. In per capita terms these stood at $413, ahead of Turkey and Azerbaijan, but behind Georgia. In 2019, the largest growth at 27.2% was shown by accommodation and catering sector, which came as a result of the growth of tourist flows. Financial system Foreign debt The amount of interest paid on the public debt rose significantly (from AMD 11 billion in 2008 to AMD 46.5 billion in 2013), as did the amount of principle repayments (from annual repayments of US$15–16 million in 2005-2008 exceeding US$150 million in 2013). This is a significant financial load on the state budget. Because of additional borrowings and lower concessionality of new loans, the burden might rise in the future years. In 2019, the Armenian government planned to obtain about $490 million in fresh loans rising public debt to about $7.5 billion. Just over $6.9 billion of that would be the government's debt. After reaching nearly 60.0 per cent of GDP, the public debt to GDP ratio decreased by approximately three percentage points in 2018 compared with a year before and stood at 55.7 per cent at the end of 2018. The government's public debt at the end of 2019 stood at $6.94 billion, making 50.3% of its GDP. In March 2019, sovereign debt comprised $5488 million, $86.5 million (about 2%) less than a year ago. Other sources quote Armenia's debt at $10.8 billion in September 2018, possibly including non-public debt too. In 2018, debt-to-GDP ratio stood at 55.7% down from 58.7% in 2017. Armenia revised the country's fiscal rules in 2018, setting a permissible threshold for public debt in the amount of 40, 50 and 60% of GDP. At the same time, it established that in case of force majeure situations such as natural disasters, wars, the government will be allowed to exceed this threshold. The debt rose by $863.5 million in 2016 and by another $832.5 million in 2017. It totalled just $1.9 billion before the 2008-2009 (13.5% of GDP) global financial crisis that plunged the county into a severe recession. Exchange rate of national currency National Statistics Office publishes official reference exchange rates for each year. Inflation For 2019, IMF forecasts inflation at 1.7%, which is below all neighbouring countries. The Armenian government projects inflation at 2.7% in 2019. The inflation rate in Armenia in 2020 was 1.21 percent, a 0.23 percent decrease over 2019, in 2019 was 1.44 percent, a 1.08 percent decrease over 2018, in 2018 was 2.52 percent, up 1.55 percent from 2017 and in 2017 was 0.97 percent, a 2.37 percent rise from 2016. Cash remittances Cash remittances sent back home from Armenians working abroad — mostly in Russia and the United States — contribute significantly to Armenia's Gross Domestic Product making up 14% of GDP in 2018. They help Armenia sustain double-digit economic growth and finance its massive trade deficit. In 2008, transfers reached record high of $2.3 billion. In 2015, they reached 10-year low at $1.6 billion. In 2018, they run at round $1.8 billion. $0.8 billion were transferred in first half of 2019. According to CBA their impact on economy is decreasing, as GDP grows at outperforming rate. Net private transfers decreased in 2009, but saw a continuous increase during the first six months of 2010. Since private transfers from the Diaspora tend to be mostly injected into consumption of imports and not in high value-added sectors, the transfers have not resulted in sizeable increases in productivity. According to the Central Bank of Armenia, during the first half of 2008, cash remittances sent back to Armenia by Armenians working abroad rose by 57.5 percent and totaled US$668.6 million, equivalent to 15 percent of the country's first-half Gross Domestic Product. However, the latter figures only represent cash remittances processed through Armenian commercial banks. According to RFE/RL, comparable sums are believed to be transferred through non-bank systems, implying that cash remittances make up approximately 30 percent of Armenia's GDP in the first half of 2008. In 2007, cash remittances through bank transfers rose by 37 percent to a record-high level of US$1.32 billion. According to the Central Bank of Armenia, in 2005, cash remittances from Armenians working abroad reached a record-high level of $1 billion, which is worth more than one fifth of the country's 2005 GDP. Banking The central bank has set additional capital buffers in the banking sector. In force since April 2019, the regulator set three buffers exceeding the current capital adequacy requirement compliant with the Basel III regulation: a capital conservation buffer, a counter-cyclical capital buffer and a systemic risk buffer. Full implementation of the buffers over the course of the next few years will strengthen the financial sector's resistance to economic shocks and help increase the efficiency of macroprudential policies. Armenian banks' lending grew by 10 percent in 2019. Government revenues and taxation Government revenues In August 2019 Moody's Investors Service upgraded Armenia to Ba3 rating with stable outlook. According to the National Statistical Service, Armenia's government debt stood at AMD 3.1 trillion (about $6,4 billion, including $5,1 billion of external debt) as of November 30, 2017. Armenia's debt-to-GDP ratio will drop by 1% in 2018 according to finance minister. In Armenia's external debt ($5.5 billion as of January 1, 2018), the arrears for multi-country credit programs dominate - 66.2% or $3.6 billion, followed by debt on bilateral loan programs - 17.5% or $958.9 million and investments of non-residents in Armenian Eurobonds - 15,4% or $844.9 million. For the whole Armenian economy and international commerce, 2020 was a year of decline. In a variety of areas, Armenian commodities are being exported and imported at a lower rate. According to the Armenian Statistical Committee, Armenia exported goods worth $2.544 billion in 2020, a fall of 3.9 percent from 2019. Armenia imported items worth 4.559 billion dollars in 2020, down 17.7% from the previous year.The volume of Armenia's international trade has varied throughout the previous 10 years. Taxation Employee income tax From January 1, 2020, Armenia will switch to a flat income taxation system, which, regardless of the amount will tax wages at 23%. Moreover, until 2023 the taxation rate will gradually decrease from 23% to 20%. Corporate income tax The reform adopted in June 2019, aims to boost medium-term economic activity and to increase tax compliance. Among other measures, the corporate income tax was reduced by two percentage points to 18.0 per cent and the tax on dividends for non-resident organisations halved to 5.0 per cent. Special taxation for small business From January 1, 2020, the republic will abandon two alternative tax systems - self-employed and family entrepreneurship. They will be replaced by micro-entrepreneurship with a non-taxable threshold of up to 24 million drams. Business entities that carry out specialized activities, in particular, accounting, advocacy, and consulting will not be considered as micro-business entities. Micro business will be exempted from all types of taxes other than income tax, which will be 5 thousand drams per employee. Value-added tax Over half of the tax revenues in the January–August 2008 time period were generated from value-added taxes (VAT) of 20%. By comparison, corporate profit tax generated less than 16 percent of the revenues. This suggests that tax collection in Armenia is improving at the expense of ordinary citizens, rather than wealthy citizens (who have been the main beneficiaries of Armenia's double-digit economic growth in recent years). VAT (Value Added Tax): In Armenia, VAT-paying individuals subtract the VAT paid on their inputs from the VAT levied on their sales and account to the tax authorities for the difference. The standard rate of VAT on domestic sales of goods and services, as well as imports importation, is 20%. Exports of products and services are not taxed. Foreign trade, direct investments and aid Foreign trade Exports According to the National Statistical Committee, in 2018, exports amounted to $2.411.9 billion, having grown by 7.8% from the previous year.IMF expects exports to grow at a rate of 5-8% p.a. in years 2019–2024. The goods export structure changed considerably in 2018 as the export of the traditional mining sector decreased while the share of textiles, agriculture and precious metals increased. Geographical location of the country and relatively low electricity costs are comparative advantages supporting to boost the production of the textile and leather products in Armenia. Proximity to Europe in comparison with manufacturers in East Asia creates opportunity to strengthen Armenia's position as contract manufacturing destination for European brands. Foreign companies that put orders to Armenian companies are mainly famous European brands, particularly, from Italy (La Perla, SARTIS, VERSACE etc.) and Germany (LEBEK International Fashion, KUBLER Bekliedungswerk). With the Armenia's entry into Eurasian Economic Commission, the opportunity to increase its presence with textile and leather production raised also in the countries of Eurasian Economic Commission as no customs duty applies to Armenian products in the export markets within the customs union. According to the study REGIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL TRADE OF ARMENIA: PERSPECTIVES AND POTENTIALS authors investigated the trade potential of Armenia for different product groups by employing a gravity model of trade approach. The study explored Armenia's trade flows to 139 countries for the period of 2003 to 2007. According to the results of the paper, the authors concluded that "Armenia has exceeded its export potential almost with all the CIS countries". In addition, the authors concluded that the most perspective product groups of Armenian export tend to be "Industrial products", "Food and beverages" and "Consumer goods". On the other hand, the paper “The effects of exchange rate volatility on exports: evidence from Armenia” analyzes the effect of Armenian floating exchange rate regime and exchange rate volatility on Armenian exports to Russia. According to the paper exchange rate volatility has long-run and short-run negative effects on exports. Moreover, authors stated that high exchange rate risk resulted in decreasing exports to Russia. According to most recent (2019 Jan-Feb compared to 2018 Jan-Feb) ArmStat calculations, biggest growth in export quantities was measured towards Turkmenistan by 23.6 times (from $37K to $912K), Estonia by 15 times (from $8.4K to $136.5K) and Canada by 11.5 times (from $623K to $7.8 mln). Meanwhile, exports to Russia, Germany, USA and UAE dropped. Imports In 2017, Armenia imported $3.96B, making it the 133rd largest importer in the world. During the last five years the imports of Armenia have decreased at an annualized rate of -1.2%, from $3.82B in 2012 to $3.96B in 2017. The most recent imports are led by Petroleum Gas which represent 8.21% of the total imports of Armenia, followed by Refined Petroleum, which account for 5.46%. Armenia's main imports are oil, natural gas, cereals, rubber manufactures, cork and wood, and electrical machinery. Armenia's main imports partners are Russia, China, Ukraine, Iran, Germany, Italy, Turkey, France and Japan. The European Union (28.7% of total exports), Russia (26.9%), Switzerland (14.1%), and Iraq (14.1%) are Armenia's largest export partners (6.3 percent ). The Russian Federation is the most important import partner (26.2%), followed by the EU (22.6%), China (13.8%), and Iran (13.8%). (5.6 percent ). After the 2008 Russian-Georgian conflict, which briefly halted the nation's hydrocarbon supply and exposed the country's energy vulnerabilities, the country has been looking for other energy sources. Tensions with a few of its neighbors, notably as Azerbaijan and Turkey, continue to exist, affecting commerce. Armenia's ties to Russia, as well as its membership in the Eurasian Economic Union, constrain the country's potential to integrate further with the EU. Imports in 2017 amounted to $4.183 billion, up 27.8% from 2016. IMF expects exports to grow at a rate of 4-5% p.a. in years 2019–2024. In 2018, the country's structural trade imbalance was predicted to be 15.7 percent of GDP (World Bank). According to World Trade Organization data, Armenia exported commodities worth US$2.4 billion in 2018, up 7% from the previous year, and imported goods worth US$4.9 billion, up 18%. In terms of services, the country exported US$2 billion in 2018 and imported US$2.1 billion. The global economic crisis has had less impact on imports because the sector is more diversified than exports. In the first nine months of 2010, imports grew about 19 percent, just about equal to the decline of the same sector in 2009. Deficit According to the National Statistical Service foreign trade deficit amounted to US$1.94 billion in 2017. The current account deficit represented 2.4 percent of GDP in 2017 and increased up to 8.1 percent of GDP during the first three quarters of 2018. This was a result of about 8 percent increase in goods export and 21 percent increase on goods import in nominal terms year on year in 2018. Armenia's foreign trade turnover increased by 11.6 percent in January–May 2021, compared to an 11.2 percent decline a year earlier, owing to a reversal of the y-o-y dynamics of exports and imports from 8.1 to 12.8 percent decline to 20.8-6.7 percent growth, according to preliminary data from the RA Statistical Committee. As a consequence, Armenia's foreign trade turnover reached 1.5 trillion drams ($2.9 billion), with exports totaling 567.4 billion drams ($1.1 billion) and imports being 931.8 billion drams ($1.8 billion), resulting in a 364.4 billion drams ($695 million) international trade deficit. Foreign trade turnover climbed by 3.9 percent in May 2021,resulting to a 7.9% increase in exports and a minimal 1.5 percent increase in imports. As a consequence, Armenia's international trade deficit in May 2021 was 83.4 billion drams ($160 million), decreasing 7.4% from the same month in 2020. (by 21.1 percent ). Foreign trade turnover increased by 13% year over year in May 2020, due to a 30.7 percent increase in exports and a moderate 4.3 percent increase in imports. Partners European Union In 2017, EU countries accounted for 24.3 percent of Armenia's foreign trade. Whereby exports to EU countries grew by 32,2% to $633 million. In 2010, EU countries accounted for 32.1 percent of Armenia's foreign trade. Germany is Armenia's largest trading partner among EU member states, accounting for 7.2 percent of trade; this is due largely to mining exports. Armenian exports to EU countries have skyrocketed by 65.9 percent, making up more than half of all 2010 January to September exports. Imports from EU countries increased by 17.1 percent, constituting 22.5 percent of all imports. During January–February 2007, Armenia's trade with the European Union totaled $200 million. During the first 11 months of 2006, the European Union remained Armenia's largest trading partner, accounting for 34.4 percent of its $2.85 billion commercial exchange during the 11-month period. Russia and former Soviet republics In first quarter of 2019 share of Russia in foreign trade turnover fell to 11% from 29% in previous year. 2017 CIS countries accounted for 30 percent of Armenia's foreign trade. Exports to CIS countries rose by 40,3% to $579,5 million. Bilateral trade with Russia stood at more than $700 million for the first nine months of 2010 – on track to rebound to $1 billion mark first reached in 2008 prior to the global economic crisis. During January–February 2007, Armenia's trade with Russia and other former Soviet republics was $205.6 million (double the amount from the same period the previous year), making them the country's number one trading partner. During the first 11 months of 2006, the volume of Armenia's trade with Russia was $376.8 million or 13.2 percent of the total commercial exchange. China In 2017, trade with China grew by 33.3 percent. As of early 2011, trade with China is dominated by imports of Chinese goods and accounts for about 10 percent of Armenia's foreign trade. The volume of Chinese-Armenian trade soared by 55 percent to $390 million in January–November 2010. Armenian exports to China, though still modest in absolute terms, nearly doubled in that period. Iran Armenia's trade with Iran grew significantly from 2015 and 2020. Because Armenia's land borders to the east and west have been closed by the governments of Turkey and Azerbaijan, domestic firms have looked to Iran as a key economic partner. In 2020, trade between the countries exceeded $300 million. The number of Iranian tourists has risen in recent years, with an estimated 80,000 Iranian tourists in 2010. In January 2021, Iran's finance minister Farhad Dejpasand said that trade between the two countries could reach $1 billion annually as Iran looks to become a regional economic force. United States From January–September 2010, bilateral trade with the United States measured approximately $150 million, on track for about a 30 percent increase over 2009. An increase in Armenia's exports to the US in 2009 and 2010 has been due to shipments of aluminum foil. During the first 11 months of 2006, U.S.-Armenian trade totaled $152.6 million. Georgia The volume of Georgian-Armenian trade remains modest in both relative and absolute terms. According to official Armenian statistics, it rose by 11 percent to $91.6 million in January–November 2010. The figure was equivalent to just over 2 percent of Armenia's overall foreign trade. Turkey In 2019, the volume of bilateral trade with Turkey was about $255 million, with trade taking place across Georgian territory. This figure is not expected to increase significantly so long as the land border between the Armenia and Turkey remains closed. Foreign direct investments Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) into Armenia decreased by US$2.7 million in December 2020, compared to a reduction of US$10.3 million the previous quarter. Armenia Foreign Direct Investment: USD mn Net Flows data is available from March 1993 through December 2020, and is updated quarterly. The statistics ranged from a high of US$425.9 million in December 2008 to a low of -67.6 USD mn in December 2014. Armenia's current account surplus is US$51.7 million in December 2020, according to the most recent statistics. -In June 2021, Armenian Direct Investment Abroad increased by 12.8 million dollars. -In June 2021, it boosted its Foreign Portfolio Investment by $14.6 million. -In December 2020, the country's nominal GDP was reported to be 3.8 billion dollars. Yearly FDI figures Despite robust economic growth foreign direct investment (FDI) in Armenia remain low as of 2018. in January–September 2019, the net flow of direct foreign investment in the real sector of the Armenian economy stood at about $267 million. Jersey was the main source of FDI in 2017. Moreover, combined net FDI from all other sources was negative, indicating capital outflow. The tax haven Jersey is home to an Anglo-American company, Lydian International, which is currently building a controversial massive gold mine in the southeastern Vayots Dzor province. Lydian has pledged to invest a total of $370 million in the Amulsar gold mine. Negative values indicate investments of Armenian corporations to foreign country exceeding investments from that country in Armenia. Stock FDI FDI stock to GDP ratio grew continuously during 2014-2016 and reached 44.1% in 2016, surpassing average figures for Commonwealth of Independent States countries, transition economies and the world. By the end of 2017 stock net FDI (for the period 1988–2017) reached 1824 billion AMD, while gross flow of FDI for the same period reached 3869 billion AMD. As of February 2019, the European Investment Bank (EIB) has invested about 380 million euros in the various projects implemented in Armenia. FDI in founding capital of financial institutions During the sector consolidation process in 2014-2017 the share of foreign capital in the authorized capital of the Armenian commercial banks decreased from 74,6% to 61,8%. Net FDI in founding capital of financial institutions accumulated by end of September 2017 is presented in pie chart below. Foreign aid United States The Armenian government receives foreign aid from the government of the United States through the United States Agency for International Development and the Millennium Challenge Corporation. On March 27, 2006, the Millennium Challenge Corporation signed a five-year, $235.65 million compact with the Government of Armenia. The single stated goal of the "Armenian Compact" is "the reduction of rural poverty through a sustainable increase in the economic performance of the agricultural sector." The compact includes a $67 million to rehabilitate up to 943 kilometers of rural roads, more than a third of Armenia's proposed "Lifeline road network". The Compact also includes a $146 million project to increase the productivity of approximately 250,000 farm households through improved water supply, higher yields, higher-value crops, and a more competitive agricultural sector. In 2010, the volume of US assistance to Armenia remained near 2009 levels; however, longer-term decline continued. The original Millennium Challenge Account commitment for $235 million had been reduced to about $175 million due to Armenia's poor governance record. Thus, the MCC would not complete road construction. Instead, the irrigated agriculture project was headed for completion with apparently no prospects for extension beyond 2011. On May 8, 2019, conditioned with the political events in Armenia since April 2018, United States Agency for International Development signed an extension of U.S.-Armenia bilateral agreement in the area of governance and public administration, which would add additional US$8.5 million to the agreement. By signing another document on the same day, USAID increased the aid by additional US$7.5 million in support for more competitive and diversified private sector in Armenia. The financial allocations will be directed to the financing of the USAID-funded project in infrastructures, agriculture, tourism․ After the signing of the new bilateral agreements, the total amount of the U.S. grants to Armenia amounted to around US$81 million. European Union According to the agreement signed in 2020 EU will provide Armenia with 65 million euros for implementation of three programs in such areas as energy efficiency, environment and community development and formation of tools for implementation of the Comprehensive and Enhanced Partnership Agreement. With curtailment of the MCC funding, the European Union may replace the US as Armenia's chief source of foreign aid for the first time since independence. From 2011 to 2013, the European Union is expected to advance at least €157.3 million ($208 million) in aid to Armenia. Domestic business environment Since transition of power to new leadership in 2018 Armenian government works on improving domestic business environment. Numerous formerly privileged business are now required to pay taxes and officially register all workers. Mainly due to this there were 9.7% more payroll employees registered in January 2019 as compared to January 2018. In April 2019 Armenian parliament approved reforms of management of joint stock companies effectively enacting a blocking minority shareholders stake of 25% to cope with shareholder oppression. Following the advice of economic advisers who cautioned Armenia's leadership against the consolidation of economic power in the hands of a few, in January 2001, the Government of Armenia established the State Commission for the Protection of Economic Competition. Its members cannot be dismissed by the government. Foreign trade facilitation In June 2011, Armenia adopted a Law on Free Economic Zones (FEZ), and developed several key regulations at the end of 2011 to attract foreign investments into FEZs: exemptions from VAT (value added tax), profit tax, customs duties, and property tax. The “Alliance” FEZ was opened in August 2013, and currently has nine businesses taking advantage of its facilities. The focus of “Alliance” FEZ is on high-tech industries which include information and communication technologies, electronics, pharmaceuticals and biotechnology, architecture and engineering, industrial design and alternative energy. In 2014, the government expanded operations in the Alliance FEZ to include industrial production as long as there is no similar production already occurring in Armenia. In 2015, another “Meridian” FEZ, focused on jewelry production, watch-making, and diamond-cutting opened in Yerevan, with six businesses operating in it. The investment programs for these companies must still be approved by government. The Armenian Government approved the program to construct the Meghri free economic zone at the border with Iran, which is expected to open in 2017. Controversial issues Monopolies Major monopolies in Armenia include: Natural gas import and distribution, held by Gazprom Armenia, formerly named ArmRosGazprom (controlled by Russian monopoly Gazprom) Armenia's railway, South Caucasus Railway, owned by Russian Railways (RZD) Electricity transmission and distribution (see Electricity sector in Armenia) Newspaper distribution, held by Haymamul Former notable monopolies in Armenia : Wireless (mobile) telephony, held by Armentel until 2004 Internet access, held by Armentel until September 2006 Fixed-line telephony, held by Armentel until August 2007 Assumed (unofficial) monopolies until 2018 velvet revolution: Oil import and distribution (claimed by Armenian opposition parties to belonging to a handful of government-linked individuals, one of which - "Mika Limited" - is owned by Mikhail Baghdasarian, while the other - "Flash" - is owned by Barsegh Beglarian, a "prominent representative of the Karabakh clan") Aviation kerosene (supplying to Zvartnots airport), held by Mika Limited Various basic foodstuffs such as rice, sugar, wheat, cooking oil and butter (the Salex Group enjoys a de facto monopoly on imports of wheat, sugar, flour, butter and cooking oil. Its owner was a parliament deputy Samvel Aleksanian (a.k.a. "Lfik Samo") and close to the country's leadership.). According to one analyst, Armenia's economic system in 2008 was anticompetitive due to the structure of the economy being a type of "monopoly or oligopoly". "The result is the prices with us do not drop even if they do on international market, or they do quite belated and not to the size of the international market." According to 2008 estimate of a former prime minister, Hrant Bagratian, 55 percent of Armenia's GDP is controlled by 44 families. In early 2008, the State Commission for the Protection of Economic Competition named 60 companies having "dominant positions" in Armenia. In October 2009, when visiting Yerevan, the World Bank’s managing director, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, warned that Armenia will not reach a higher level of development unless its leadership changes the "oligopolistic" structure of the national economy, bolsters the rule of law and shows "zero tolerance" towards corruption. "I think you can only go so far with this economic model," Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala told a news conference in Yerevan. "Armenia is a lower middle-income country. If it wants to become a high-income or upper middle-income country, it can not do so with this kind of economic structure. That is clear." She also called for a sweeping reform of tax and customs administration, the creation of a "strong and independent judicial system" as well as a tough fight against government corruption. The warning was
closed - same gauge Georgia - yes - same gauge Iran - via Azerbaijan - closed - break of gauge - / Turkey - closed - break of gauge -/ Most of the cross-border lines are currently closed due to political problems. However, there are daily inbound and outbound trains connecting Tbilisi and Yerevan. Departing from Yerevan railway station trains connect to both Tbilisi and Batumi. From neighboring Georgia, trains depart to Yerevan from Tbilisi railway station. Within Armenia, new electric trains connect passengers from Yerevan to Armenia's second largest city of Gyumri. The new trains run four times a day and the journey takes approximately two hours. There is also discussion to establish a rail link between Yerevan and Tehran. Armenia is pursuing funding from the Asian Development Bank to launch construction of this infrastructure project. The completion of the project could establish a major commodities transit corridor and would serve as the shortest transportation route between Europe and the Persian Gulf. In June 2019, Iranian president Hassan Rouhani backed this project and stated that “we want the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman to be connected to the Black Sea, and one of the ways to make this happen is through Iran, Armenia and Georgia.” Metros The capital city of Armenia, Yerevan, is serviced by the Yerevan Metro. The system was launched in 1981 and like most former Soviet Metros, its stations are very deep (20–70 meters underground) and intricately decorated with national motifs. The metro runs on a 13.4 kilometres (8.3 mi) line and currently serves 10 active stations. Trains run every five minutes from 6:30 a.m. until 11 p.m. local AMT time. As of 2017, the annual ridership of the metro is 16.2 million passengers. Free Wi-Fi is available at all stations and some trains. Buses International connections Land borders are open with both Georgia and Iran. Yerevan Central Bus Station, also known as Kilikia Bus Station is the main bus terminal in Yerevan with buses connecting to both internal and international destinations. There are daily bus connections between Yerevan and Tbilisi and Yerevan and Tehran. Approximately three times daily, buses depart from Yerevan Central Bus Station to Stepanakert, the capital of the partially recognized state of Artsakh. There are also scheduled bus routes which connect Yerevan with Kyiv, Moscow, Saint Petersburg as well as several other cities across Russia. It is also possible to connect to Chișinău Moldova, Minsk Belarus and other cities in Eastern Europe from Yerevan through connecting bus routes via Georgia and Ukraine. In addition, there is a once a week bus service to Istanbul via Georgia. In June 2019, a new bus route from Baghdad to Yerevan via Iran began. Local connections The Armenian bus network connects all major cities and towns and many villages throughout the country. In larger cities and towns such as Yerevan, Gyumri, Vanadzor and Armavir, bus stations are equipped with a waiting room and a ticket office, in other towns bus stations may not have shelters. Most of the routes are operated by GAZelle minivans with a capacity of 15 passengers, some routes are operated by soviet bus producer LiAZ (Russia). Yerevan itself has a large integrated bus network, with a newly acquired bus fleet, passengers are able to connect from one end of the city to the other. Wi-Fi is available on most city buses. Despite this, buses often have difficulty meeting the demand for capacity, mainly in Yerevan, where vehicles are typically overcrowded. There are no night services between 11 p.m. and 6 a.m. There is no ticket system in the country, passengers pay in cash to drivers. Passengers on the national bus network pay before boarding, passengers on the Yerevan bus
The new trains run four times a day and the journey takes approximately two hours. There is also discussion to establish a rail link between Yerevan and Tehran. Armenia is pursuing funding from the Asian Development Bank to launch construction of this infrastructure project. The completion of the project could establish a major commodities transit corridor and would serve as the shortest transportation route between Europe and the Persian Gulf. In June 2019, Iranian president Hassan Rouhani backed this project and stated that “we want the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman to be connected to the Black Sea, and one of the ways to make this happen is through Iran, Armenia and Georgia.” Metros The capital city of Armenia, Yerevan, is serviced by the Yerevan Metro. The system was launched in 1981 and like most former Soviet Metros, its stations are very deep (20–70 meters underground) and intricately decorated with national motifs. The metro runs on a 13.4 kilometres (8.3 mi) line and currently serves 10 active stations. Trains run every five minutes from 6:30 a.m. until 11 p.m. local AMT time. As of 2017, the annual ridership of the metro is 16.2 million passengers. Free Wi-Fi is available at all stations and some trains. Buses International connections Land borders are open with both Georgia and Iran. Yerevan Central Bus Station, also known as Kilikia Bus Station is the main bus terminal in Yerevan with buses connecting to both internal and international destinations. There are daily bus connections between Yerevan and Tbilisi and Yerevan and Tehran. Approximately three times daily, buses depart from Yerevan Central Bus Station to Stepanakert, the capital of the partially recognized state of Artsakh. There are also scheduled bus routes which connect Yerevan with Kyiv, Moscow, Saint Petersburg as well as several other cities across Russia. It is also possible to connect to Chișinău Moldova, Minsk Belarus and other cities in Eastern Europe from Yerevan through connecting bus routes via Georgia and Ukraine. In addition, there is a once a week bus service to Istanbul via Georgia. In June 2019, a new bus route from Baghdad to Yerevan via Iran began. Local connections The Armenian bus network connects all major cities and towns and many villages throughout the country. In larger cities and towns such as Yerevan, Gyumri, Vanadzor and Armavir, bus stations are equipped with a waiting room and a ticket office, in other towns bus stations may not have shelters. Most of the routes are operated by GAZelle minivans with a capacity of 15 passengers, some routes are operated by soviet bus producer LiAZ (Russia). Yerevan itself has a large integrated bus network, with a newly acquired bus fleet, passengers are able to connect from one end of the city to the other. Wi-Fi is available on most city buses. Despite this, buses often have difficulty meeting the demand for capacity, mainly in Yerevan, where vehicles are typically overcrowded. There are no night services between 11 p.m. and 6 a.m. There is no ticket system in the country, passengers pay in cash to drivers. Passengers on the national bus network pay before boarding, passengers on the Yerevan bus network pay after the ride, while leaving the vehicle. Timetables and fares are published on Transport for Armenia. From Yeritasardakan metro station in downtown Yerevan, travelers can take the 201 airport shuttle which goes directly to Zvartnots International Airport, which takes approximately 20 minutes from the city center. Roadways Since independence, Armenia has been developing its internal highway network. The "North-South Road Corridor Investment Program" is a major infrastructure project which aims at connecting the southern border of Armenia with its northern by means of a 556 km-long Meghri-Yerevan-Bavra highway. It is a major US$1.5 billion infrastructure project funded by the Asian Development Bank, European Investment Bank and the Eurasian Development Bank. When completed, the highway will provide access to European countries via the Black Sea. It could also eventually interconnect the Black Sea ports of Georgia
Rifle Division – Leninakan (now Gyumri) 164th Motor Rifle Division – Yerevan On 1 June 1992, ITAR-TASS reported that General Fyodor Reut said that some units of the 7th Guards Army would begin leaving Armenia in 10–15 days. The army was disbanded later that summer. The former Soviet Air Defense Forces in Armenia were drawn from the 14th Air Defense Corps of the 19th Separate Air Defense Army. 1988-1992 The modern Armenian military entered its first stage at the beginning of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, when Armenian militias were formed to combat Azerbaijani units in Artsakh. On 20 September 1990, the first military unit was created, the Yerevan Special Regiment, with the first oath being held in the Republican Assembly Point and was attended by the first President of Armenia Levon Ter-Petrosyan, Prime Minister Vazgen Manukyan, and defence minister Vazgen Sargsyan. Five battalions were also formed in Ararat, Goris, Vardenis, Ijan and Meghri. In 1991, by the decision of the government, the State Committee of Defense under the Council of Ministers, which facilitated the task of coordinating the defense operations of Armenia, becoming the basis on which the Ministry of Defense was to be established later on. Post-1992 Armenia established a Ministry of Defence on 28 January 1992. The first military unit of the defence ministry to be formed was the 1st Airborne Regiment, where the first Armenian soldier took the oath to the nation that March. Since a significant part of the officers of the Armed Forces were fighters of the self-defense volunteer detachments, a center for raising the qualification of officers was established for their qualification and training, which during its activity it provided about 1,500 officer-graduates. The School of Non-Commissioned Officers produced about 1,000 graduates. The Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe was ratified by the Armenian parliament in July 1992. The treaty establishes comprehensive limits on key categories of military equipment, such as tanks, artillery, armored combat vehicles, combat aircraft, and combat helicopters, and provides for the destruction of weaponry in excess of those limits. Armenian officials have consistently expressed determination to comply with its provisions and thus Armenia has provided data on armaments as required under the CFE Treaty. Despite this, Azerbaijan accuses Armenia of diverting a large part of its military forces to Nagorno-Karabakh and thus circumventing these international regulations. In March 1993, Armenia signed the multilateral Chemical Weapons Convention, which calls for the eventual elimination of chemical weapons. Armenia acceded to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty as a non-nuclear weapons state in July 1993. In addition to the branches of services listed above, Armenia established its own Internal Troops from the former Soviet Interior Troops after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Up until December 2002, Armenia maintained a Ministry of Internal Affairs, but along with the Ministry of National Security, it was reorganized as a non-ministerial institution. The two organizations became the Police of Armenia and the National Security Service. Organization and service branches The Armenian Armed Forces are Headquartered in Yerevan, where most of the general staff is based. The general staff is responsible for operational command of the Armenian Military and its two major branches. The armed forces also has the following personnel branches: Department of Military Preparedness Department of Military Apparatus Department of Aviation Department of Missile Troops Department of Air Defence Department of Rear Services Department of Signal Troops Department of the Engineer Troops Department of Armaments Department of the RNBC Defence Troops Medical Department Personnel Department Intelligence Department Strategic Planning Department Mobilization Department Operative Department Department of Military Service Security Department of Military Commissars Financial Department Human Resources Department Ground Forces According to IISS 2010, Armenia has 20 T-80 tanks, 137 T-72 tanks, 8 T-54/55 tanks and 80 BMP-1's, 7 BMP-1K, 55 BMP-2 and 12 BRM-1K. Wheeled APCs reported included 11 BTR-60s, 21 BTR-70s, 4 BTR-80s, 145 MT-LBs, 5 BMD-1S, and 120 BRDM-2 scout vehicles. Although the Russians have supplied newer equipment to Armenia over the years, the numbers have never been sufficient to upgrade all ground force formations and many of the lower readiness units still have older, Soviet-legacy systems that have not been upgraded or in many cases effectively maintained. These older systems are placing great demands on the logistics system for service, maintenance, replacement parts and necessary upgrades, costing the army both financially and in overall readiness. The ground force is engaged in an effort of reassessment, reorganisation and restructuring, as the future of Armenia's defence needs a revised force structure and unit mix. The army sees the need to maintain much of its traditional mechanised formations, but is looking to lighten and make more mobile and self-sustainable a small number of other formations. It must develop these newer formations to support its international requirements and effectively operate in mountainous and other rugged terrain, but it must do this without affecting the mechanised capability that is needed to confront Azerbaijan's conventional forces. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, Armenia has followed a policy of developing its armed forces into a professional, well trained, and mobile military. In 2000, the Centre for International Studies and Research reported that at that time the Armenian Army had the strongest combat capability of the three South Caucasus countries' armies (the other two being Georgia and Azerbaijan). CSTO Secretary, Nikolay Bordyuzha, came to a similar conclusion after collective military drills in 2007 when he stated that, "the Armenian Army is the most efficient one in the post-Soviet space". This was echoed more recently by Igor Korotchenko, a member of the Public Council, Russian Ministry of Defense, in a March 2011 interview with Voice of Russia radio. The Army is functionally divided into Active and Reserve Forces. Their main functions include deterrence, defense, peace support and crisis management, humanitarian and rescue missions, as well as social functions within Armenian society. The Active Forces mainly have peacekeeping and defensive duties, and are further divided into Deployment Forces, Immediate Reaction, and Main Defense Forces. The Reserve Forces consists of Enhancement Forces, Territorial Defense Forces, and Training Grounds. They deal with planning and reservist preparation, armaments and equipment storage, training of formations for active forces rotation or increase in personnel. During peacetime the Army maintains permanent combat and mobilization readiness. They become part of multinational military formations in compliance with international treaties Armenia is a signatory to, participate in the preparation of the population, the national economy and the maintenance of wartime reserves and the infrastructure of the country for defense. In times of crisis the Army's main tasks relate to participation in operations countering terrorist activities and defense of strategic facilities (such as nuclear power plants and major industrial facilities), assisting the security forces in proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, illegal armaments traffic and international terrorism. In case of low- and medium-intensity military conflict the Active Forces that are part of the Army participate in carrying out the initial tasks for the defense of the territorial integrity and sovereignty of the country. In case of a high intensity conflict the Land Forces, together with the Air Force, Air Defense and Border Guards, form the defense group of the Armenian Armed Forces aiming at countering aggression and protect the territorial integrity and sovereignty of the country. Experiments in developing small arms have been undertaken in Armenia, producing the K-3 assault rifle, but Jane's Infantry Weapons estimates that the program has ceased, and the rifle is not in widespread service with the army. The AK-74 is the standard issue rifle of the Armenian Army with older AKMs in reserve use. Beside AK rifles Armenian forces use mostly Russian small arms like the Makarov pistol, SVD sniper rifle, and the PKM General Purpose machine Gun. Air Force and Air Defense The Armenian Air Force consists of 15 Su-25 ground attack planes, 18 Su-30 jet fighters, 1 Mig 25, 16 Mil Mi-24 helicopter gunships, 6 L-39 trainer and attack aircraft, 16 Yak-52 trainer aircraft, 3 Il-76 cargo planes, 18 Mil Mi-8 transport helicopters, and 10 Mil Mi-2 light utility helicopters. There are an additional 18 MiG-29 fighter jets of the Russian 102nd Military Base stationed in Gyumri. The Armenian anti-aircraft branch was equipped and organized as part of the military reform program of Lieutenant-General Norat Ter-Grigoryants. It consists of an anti-aircraft missile brigade and two regiments armed with 100 anti-aircraft complexes of various models and modifications, including the SA-8, Krug, S-75, S-125, SA-7, SA-10, SA-13, SA-16 and SA-18. Russia has SA-6 and S-300 long range surface-to-air missiles at the Russian 102nd Military Base. There are also 24 Scud ballistic missiles with eight launchers. Numerical strength is estimated at 3,000 servicemen, with plans for further expansion. In late December 2010, the Armenian Defense Minister, Seyran Ohanyan, officially acknowledged that the army are equipped with the Russian-made S-300 surface-to-air missiles. The statement was made while the Minister was inspecting a new air-defense command point that maintains "state-of-the-art equipment" built specifically for the operation of the S-300's. Russian specialist started to train Armenian teams on sophisticated Missiles and Defensive Systems. The S-300 was paraded for the first time in the 2011 Parade and the only S-300 missile system (SA10 Grumble) which likes mobility. The S-300 is the main Air Defensive system that protects Armenia's air security. In the 2016 Armenian Parade celebrating the Armenian Independence BUK-M2 Air Defense Systems were shown. These systems were not part of the 200 million dollar contract agreement between Yerevan and Moscow but an agreement between CSTO partners. Other devices such as stem of electronic warfare (EW) "Infauna" and P-325U consist in the Armenian Armed Forces. Military of Artsakh In addition to forces mentioned above, there are around 20,000 active soldiers defending Nagorno-Karabakh, a disputed territory which seceded from Azerbaijan in 1991 and is now a de facto independent state. They are
Armenian parliament in July 1992. The treaty establishes comprehensive limits on key categories of military equipment, such as tanks, artillery, armored combat vehicles, combat aircraft, and combat helicopters, and provides for the destruction of weaponry in excess of those limits. Armenian officials have consistently expressed determination to comply with its provisions and thus Armenia has provided data on armaments as required under the CFE Treaty. Despite this, Azerbaijan accuses Armenia of diverting a large part of its military forces to Nagorno-Karabakh and thus circumventing these international regulations. In March 1993, Armenia signed the multilateral Chemical Weapons Convention, which calls for the eventual elimination of chemical weapons. Armenia acceded to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty as a non-nuclear weapons state in July 1993. In addition to the branches of services listed above, Armenia established its own Internal Troops from the former Soviet Interior Troops after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Up until December 2002, Armenia maintained a Ministry of Internal Affairs, but along with the Ministry of National Security, it was reorganized as a non-ministerial institution. The two organizations became the Police of Armenia and the National Security Service. Organization and service branches The Armenian Armed Forces are Headquartered in Yerevan, where most of the general staff is based. The general staff is responsible for operational command of the Armenian Military and its two major branches. The armed forces also has the following personnel branches: Department of Military Preparedness Department of Military Apparatus Department of Aviation Department of Missile Troops Department of Air Defence Department of Rear Services Department of Signal Troops Department of the Engineer Troops Department of Armaments Department of the RNBC Defence Troops Medical Department Personnel Department Intelligence Department Strategic Planning Department Mobilization Department Operative Department Department of Military Service Security Department of Military Commissars Financial Department Human Resources Department Ground Forces According to IISS 2010, Armenia has 20 T-80 tanks, 137 T-72 tanks, 8 T-54/55 tanks and 80 BMP-1's, 7 BMP-1K, 55 BMP-2 and 12 BRM-1K. Wheeled APCs reported included 11 BTR-60s, 21 BTR-70s, 4 BTR-80s, 145 MT-LBs, 5 BMD-1S, and 120 BRDM-2 scout vehicles. Although the Russians have supplied newer equipment to Armenia over the years, the numbers have never been sufficient to upgrade all ground force formations and many of the lower readiness units still have older, Soviet-legacy systems that have not been upgraded or in many cases effectively maintained. These older systems are placing great demands on the logistics system for service, maintenance, replacement parts and necessary upgrades, costing the army both financially and in overall readiness. The ground force is engaged in an effort of reassessment, reorganisation and restructuring, as the future of Armenia's defence needs a revised force structure and unit mix. The army sees the need to maintain much of its traditional mechanised formations, but is looking to lighten and make more mobile and self-sustainable a small number of other formations. It must develop these newer formations to support its international requirements and effectively operate in mountainous and other rugged terrain, but it must do this without affecting the mechanised capability that is needed to confront Azerbaijan's conventional forces. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, Armenia has followed a policy of developing its armed forces into a professional, well trained, and mobile military. In 2000, the Centre for International Studies and Research reported that at that time the Armenian Army had the strongest combat capability of the three South Caucasus countries' armies (the other two being Georgia and Azerbaijan). CSTO Secretary, Nikolay Bordyuzha, came to a similar conclusion after collective military drills in 2007 when he stated that, "the Armenian Army is the most efficient one in the post-Soviet space". This was echoed more recently by Igor Korotchenko, a member of the Public Council, Russian Ministry of Defense, in a March 2011 interview with Voice of Russia radio. The Army is functionally divided into Active and Reserve Forces. Their main functions include deterrence, defense, peace support and crisis management, humanitarian and rescue missions, as well as social functions within Armenian society. The Active Forces mainly have peacekeeping and defensive duties, and are further divided into Deployment Forces, Immediate Reaction, and Main Defense Forces. The Reserve Forces consists of Enhancement Forces, Territorial Defense Forces, and Training Grounds. They deal with planning and reservist preparation, armaments and equipment storage, training of formations for active forces rotation or increase in personnel. During peacetime the Army maintains permanent combat and mobilization readiness. They become part of multinational military formations in compliance with international treaties Armenia is a signatory to, participate in the preparation of the population, the national economy and the maintenance of wartime reserves and the infrastructure of the country for defense. In times of crisis the Army's main tasks relate to participation in operations countering terrorist activities and defense of strategic facilities (such as nuclear power plants and major industrial facilities), assisting the security forces in proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, illegal armaments traffic and international terrorism. In case of low- and medium-intensity military conflict the Active Forces that are part of the Army participate in carrying out the initial tasks for the defense of the territorial integrity and sovereignty of the country. In case of a high intensity conflict the Land Forces, together with the Air Force, Air Defense and Border Guards, form the defense group of the Armenian Armed Forces aiming at countering aggression and protect the territorial integrity and sovereignty of the country. Experiments in developing small arms have been undertaken in Armenia, producing the K-3 assault rifle, but Jane's Infantry Weapons estimates that the program has ceased, and the rifle is not in widespread service with the army. The AK-74 is the standard issue rifle of the Armenian Army with older AKMs in reserve use. Beside AK rifles Armenian forces use mostly Russian small arms like the Makarov pistol, SVD sniper rifle, and the PKM General Purpose machine Gun. Air Force and Air Defense The Armenian Air Force consists of 15 Su-25 ground attack planes, 18 Su-30 jet fighters, 1 Mig 25, 16 Mil Mi-24 helicopter gunships, 6 L-39 trainer and attack aircraft, 16 Yak-52 trainer aircraft, 3 Il-76 cargo planes, 18 Mil Mi-8 transport helicopters, and 10 Mil Mi-2 light utility helicopters. There are an additional 18 MiG-29 fighter jets of the Russian 102nd Military Base stationed in Gyumri. The Armenian anti-aircraft branch was equipped and organized as part of the military reform program of Lieutenant-General Norat Ter-Grigoryants. It consists of an anti-aircraft missile brigade and two regiments armed with 100 anti-aircraft complexes of various models and modifications, including the SA-8, Krug, S-75, S-125, SA-7, SA-10, SA-13, SA-16 and SA-18. Russia has SA-6 and S-300 long range surface-to-air missiles at the Russian 102nd Military Base. There are also 24 Scud ballistic missiles with eight launchers. Numerical strength is estimated at 3,000 servicemen, with plans for further expansion. In late December 2010, the Armenian Defense Minister, Seyran Ohanyan, officially acknowledged that the army are equipped with the Russian-made S-300 surface-to-air missiles. The statement was made while the Minister was inspecting a new air-defense command point that maintains "state-of-the-art equipment" built specifically for the operation of the S-300's. Russian specialist started to train Armenian teams on sophisticated Missiles and Defensive Systems. The S-300 was paraded for the first time in the 2011 Parade and the only S-300 missile system (SA10 Grumble) which likes mobility. The S-300 is the main Air Defensive system that protects Armenia's air security. In the 2016 Armenian Parade celebrating the Armenian Independence BUK-M2 Air Defense Systems were shown. These systems were not part of the 200 million dollar contract agreement between Yerevan and Moscow but an agreement between CSTO partners. Other devices such as stem of electronic warfare (EW) "Infauna" and P-325U consist in the Armenian Armed Forces. Military of Artsakh In addition to forces mentioned above, there are around 20,000 active soldiers defending Nagorno-Karabakh, a disputed territory which seceded from Azerbaijan in 1991 and is now a de facto independent state. They are well trained and well equipped with the latest in military software and hardware. The Karabakh army's heavy military hardware includes: 316 tanks, 324 armored vehicles, 322 artillery pieces of calibers over 122 mm, 44 multiple rocket launchers, and a new anti-aircraft defense system. In addition, the NKR Defence Army maintains a small air-force of 2 Su-25s, 5 Mi-24s and 5 other helicopters. Personnel The Armed Forces of Armenia is constitutionally a conscript force, but there is also a growing number of professional officers. There were roughly 19,000 conscripts and 23,000 professionals serving in 2017. Enlistment, which is performed twice a year, is handled by military commissariats. Male draftees between the ages of 18-27 are obliged to present themselves in the commissariats for registration. People who have changed their citizenship or have dual citizenship are also subject to conscription, unless they have already served in the armed forces of another country. Since 2003, conscientious objectors can apply for alternative service. Draft evaders can not be appointed to public service positions. Citizens who have completed military service are registered in the reserve and are divided into rank and file, non-commissioned and commissioned staff of the reserve. Reservists can be called up to training musters and exercises in peacetime. Reserve obligation lasts up to the age of 50. Educational institutions National Defense Research University Vazgen Sargsyan Military University Monte Melkonian Military Academy Armenak Khanperyants Military Aviation University Yerevan State Medical University Military Faculty Foreign institutions for Armenian soldiers Military Academy of Modena École spéciale militaire de Saint-Cyr Hellenic Military Academy Military University of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation - College of Military Finance Higher military education is provided by the National Defense Research University in Yerevan. It was established in 2016, on the basis of the Institute for National Strategic Studies. Contract service A contractual military service is a service last for 3–12 months, or for a term of three or five years. Males under 36 who have not previously served as contract servicemen and are registered in the reserve, can be enrolled in contractual military service as privates. Felons and those not fit for service are ineligible for contract service. Since 2008, sergeant training courses for contract servicemen have operated in the Armed Forces and since 2013, the duration of the courses has three months. The courses are open to reservist privates under the age of 25. Conscription and Reserve Military service in Armenia is obligatory. Citizens aged 27 to 50 are registered in the reserve and may be drafted if a national mobilization was declared. The enlistment process is handled by the military commissariats in January and May. Dual citizens are not be exempt from the draft. If one fails to follow through with their obligations, a criminal case is then instituted, which could lead to 3 years in jail. The following military commissariats operate in Armenia: Yerevan Conscription and Mobilization Service No.1 territorial subdivision No.2 Territorial Subdivision No.3 Territorial Subdivision No.4 Territorial Subdivision Ashtarak Aragatsotn Regional Subdivision Artashat Ararat Regional Subdivision Armavir Armavir Regional Subdivision Martuni Gegharkunik Regional Subdivision Abovyan Kotayk Regional Subdivision Vanadzor Lori Regional Subdivision Gyumri Shirak Regional Subdivision Goris Syunik Regional Subdivision Ijevan Tavush Regional Subdivision Yeghegnadzor Vayots Dzor Province Regional Subdivision The armed forces also sport the following volunteer units: Sisakan Regiment Erato Detachment Vanadzor Volunteer Detachment Homeland Detachment ARF Battalion Tigran the Great International Military Regiment Women in the armed forces During the First Nagorno-Karabakh War in the early 90s, at least 115 Armenian women were known to have taken part in combat operations. Many women from the diaspora arrived to serve in non-combat missions. The first woman to have been given a significant position in the military was Zhanna Galstyan, who was appointed deputy commander of the Central District Defensive Unit after the formation of the Artsakh Defense Army. More than 2,000 women currently serve in the army, with most working in administrative positions or in liaison and medical units. In October 2016, a program, approved by the National Assembly, committed the military to "creating additional opportunities" for women serving in the army or seeking military service. Defense Minister Vigen Sargsyan at the time told the MPs that "It would be wrong not to let them (women) reach their full potential." The Erato Detachment was the first all-women military unit in the Armenian Armed Forces, being created after of clashes between the Azerbaijani Army and Armenia occurred in July 2020. Anna Hakobyan, the wife of the current Prime Minister of Armenia, Nikol Pashinyan, underwent a week long combat readiness program with women from the Republic of Artsakh who joined the unit. Minorities During the 2020 war, a group of Yazidi reservists formed a reserve military unit that joined the frontline in Karabakh. The unit was led by Rzgan Sarhangyan and is composed of 50 soldiers aged between 18 and 55. Equipment The Armenian Army operates a wide variety of older equipment, mostly of Soviet origin. There is
conflict peacefully have been ongoing since 1992 under the Minsk Group of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe. The Minsk Group is co-chaired by Russia, France, and the United States and has representation from Turkey, the U.S., several European nations, Armenia and Azerbaijan. Despite the 1994 cease-fire, sporadic violations, sniper-fire and land mine incidents continue to claim over 100 lives each year. Since 1997, the Minsk Group co-chairs have presented three proposals to serve as a framework for resolving the conflict. Each proposal was rejected. Beginning in 1999, the presidents of Azerbaijan and Armenia initiated a direct dialogue through a series of face-to-face meetings, often facilitated by the Minsk Group Co-Chairs. The OSCE sponsored a round of negotiations between the presidents in Key West, Florida. U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell launched the talks on 3 April 2001, and the negotiations continued with mediation by the U.S., Russia and France until 6 April 2001. The Co-Chairs are still continuing to work with the two presidents in the hope of finding lasting peace. The two countries are still at war. Citizens of Armenia, as well as citizens of any other country who are of Armenian descent, are forbidden entry to Azerbaijan. If a person's passport shows evidence of travel to Nagorno–Karabakh, they are forbidden entry to Azerbaijan. In 2008, in what became known as the 2008 Mardakert Skirmishes, Armenian forces and Azerbaijan clashed over Nagorno-Karabakh. The fighting between the sides was brief, with few casualties on either side. The 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war was the latest escalation of the unresolved conflict. Countries without diplomatic relations Armenia does not have diplomatic relations with the following countries (organized by continent): Africa Botswana, Lesotho, São Tomé and Príncipe, South Sudan The Americas Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago Asia Azerbaijan, Pakistan (Pakistan is the only country in the world that does not recognize Armenia), Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Yemen Europe Hungary (suspended by Armenia since 31 August 2012 due to Ramil Safarov's extradition to Azerbaijan) Oceania Marshall Islands, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga Armenia also has no diplomatic relations with states with limited recognition. Countries with diplomatic relations Armenia has diplomatic relations with 178 separate entities (including the African Union, Arab League, European Union, the Order of Malta, and Vatican City). These include: Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria, Andorra, Angola, Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina, Australia, Austria, Bahamas, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Belarus, Belgium, Belize, Benin, Bhutan, Bolivia, Brazil, Brunei Darussalam, Bulgaria, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cambodia, Cameroon, Canada, Cape Verde, Central African Republic, Chad, Chile, the People's Republic of China, Colombia, Comoros, Costa Rica, Côte d'Ivoire, Croatia, Cuba, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Djibouti, Dominica, Dominican Republic, DR Congo, East Timor, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Estonia, Eswatini, Ethiopia, Fiji, Finland, France, Gabon, The Gambia, Georgia, Germany, Ghana, Greece, Grenada, Guatemala, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Haiti, Holy See (Vatican City), Honduras, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kiribati, North Korea, South Korea, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Latvia, Lebanon, Liberia, Libya, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Madagascar, Malawi, Malaysia, Maldives, Mali, Malta, Mauritania, Mexico, Micronesia, Moldova, Monaco, Mongolia, Montenegro, Morocco, Mozambique, Myanmar, Namibia, Nauru, Nepal, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Niger, Nigeria, North Macedonia, Norway, Oman, Palau, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Romania, Russia, Rwanda, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, San Marino, Senegal, Serbia, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, Somalia, South Africa, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Suriname, Sweden, Switzerland, Syria, Tajikistan, Tanzania, Thailand, Togo, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, Tuvalu, Uganda, Ukraine, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, the United States of America, Uruguay, Vanuatu, Venezuela, Vietnam, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Notes on some of these relations follow (organized by continent): Africa The Americas Asia Europe Oceania Other international organizations Armenia is additionally a full member, unless otherwise noted, in the following international organizations, programs and treaties: See also Armenia and the United Nations Armenia in the Council of Europe Armenian diaspora Euronest Parliamentary Assembly Largest Armenian diaspora communities List of ambassadors of Armenia List of diplomatic missions in Armenia List of diplomatic missions of Armenia List of Ministers of Foreign Affairs of Armenia Foreign relations of Artsakh Politics of Europe Visa requirements for Armenian citizens Visa policy of Armenia Footnotes References External links Argentina List of Treaties ruling the relations Argentina and Armenia (Argentine Foreign Ministry, in Spanish) Canada Armenian embassy in Ottawa Canadian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Trade about relations with Armenian Chile Chilean Senate: recognition of the Armenian genocide (in Spanish only) Czech Armenian embassy in London British Foreign and Commonwealth Office about relations with Armenia *British embassy in Yerevan Denmark Danish Foreign Ministry: development program with Armenia NATO Iskandaryan, Alexander:"NATO and Armenia: A Long Game of Complementarism" in the Caucasus Analytical Digest No. 5 International Khachatrian, Haroutiun: "Foreign Investments in Armenia: Influence of the Crisis and Other Peculiarities" in the Caucasus Analytical Digest
militia and Soviet forces targeted Armenian populations in Karabakh, known as Operation Ring. Moscow also deployed troops to Yerevan. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, conflict escalated into a full-scale war between the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic (supported by Armenia), and Azerbaijan. Military action was influenced by the Russian military, which manipulated the rivalry between the two neighbouring sides in order to keep both under control. More than 30,000 people were killed in the fighting during the period of 1988 to 1994. In May 1992, Armenian forces seized Shusha and Lachin (thereby linking Nagorno-Karabakh to Armenia). By October 1993, Armenian forces succeeded in taking almost all of former NKAO, Lachin and large areas in southwestern Azerbaijan. In 1993, the UN Security Council adopted four resolutions calling for the cessation of hostilities, unimpeded access for international humanitarian relief efforts, and the eventual deployment of a peacekeeping force in the region. Fighting continued, however, until May 1994 at which time Russia brokered a cease-fire between the three sides. Negotiations to resolve the conflict peacefully have been ongoing since 1992 under the Minsk Group of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe. The Minsk Group is co-chaired by Russia, France, and the United States and has representation from Turkey, the U.S., several European nations, Armenia and Azerbaijan. Despite the 1994 cease-fire, sporadic violations, sniper-fire and land mine incidents continue to claim over 100 lives each year. Since 1997, the Minsk Group co-chairs have presented three proposals to serve as a framework for resolving the conflict. Each proposal was rejected. Beginning in 1999, the presidents of Azerbaijan and Armenia initiated a direct dialogue through a series of face-to-face meetings, often facilitated by the Minsk Group Co-Chairs. The OSCE sponsored a round of negotiations between the presidents in Key West, Florida. U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell launched the talks on 3 April 2001, and the negotiations continued with mediation by the U.S., Russia and France until 6 April 2001. The Co-Chairs are still continuing to work with the two presidents in the hope of finding lasting peace. The two countries are still at war. Citizens of Armenia, as well as citizens of any other country who are of Armenian descent, are forbidden entry to Azerbaijan. If a person's passport shows evidence of travel to Nagorno–Karabakh, they are forbidden entry to Azerbaijan. In 2008, in what became known as the 2008 Mardakert Skirmishes, Armenian forces and Azerbaijan clashed over Nagorno-Karabakh. The fighting between the sides was brief, with few casualties on either side. The 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war was the latest escalation of the unresolved conflict. Countries without diplomatic relations Armenia does not have diplomatic relations with the following countries (organized by continent): Africa Botswana, Lesotho, São Tomé and Príncipe, South Sudan The Americas Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago Asia Azerbaijan, Pakistan (Pakistan is the only country in the world that does not recognize Armenia), Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Yemen Europe Hungary (suspended by Armenia since 31 August 2012 due to Ramil Safarov's extradition to Azerbaijan) Oceania Marshall Islands, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga Armenia also has no diplomatic relations with states with limited recognition. Countries with diplomatic relations Armenia has diplomatic relations with 178 separate entities (including the African Union, Arab League, European Union, the Order of Malta, and Vatican City). These include: Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria, Andorra, Angola, Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina, Australia, Austria, Bahamas, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Belarus, Belgium, Belize, Benin, Bhutan, Bolivia, Brazil, Brunei Darussalam, Bulgaria, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cambodia, Cameroon, Canada, Cape Verde, Central African Republic, Chad, Chile, the People's Republic of China, Colombia, Comoros, Costa Rica, Côte d'Ivoire, Croatia, Cuba, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Djibouti, Dominica, Dominican Republic, DR Congo, East Timor, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Estonia, Eswatini, Ethiopia, Fiji, Finland, France, Gabon, The Gambia, Georgia, Germany, Ghana, Greece, Grenada, Guatemala, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Haiti, Holy See (Vatican City), Honduras, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kiribati, North Korea, South Korea, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Latvia, Lebanon, Liberia, Libya, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Madagascar, Malawi, Malaysia, Maldives, Mali, Malta, Mauritania, Mexico, Micronesia, Moldova, Monaco, Mongolia, Montenegro, Morocco, Mozambique, Myanmar, Namibia, Nauru, Nepal, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Niger, Nigeria, North Macedonia, Norway, Oman, Palau, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Romania, Russia, Rwanda, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, San Marino, Senegal, Serbia, Seychelles, Sierra Leone,
0–14 years: 1.06 male(s)/female 15–24 years: 1.01 male(s)/female 25–54 years: 0.98 male(s)/female 55–64 years: 0.96 male(s)/female 65 years and over: 0.86 male(s)/female Total population: 1 male(s)/female (2020 est.) Infant mortality rate Total: 10.25 deaths/1,000 live births Male: 12.39 deaths/1,000 live births Female: 8 deaths/1,000 live births (2021 est.) Life expectancy at birth Total population: 75.06 years Male: 72.55 years Female: 77.72 years (2021 est.) Total fertility rate 2.28 children born/woman (2021 est.) Nationality Noun: American Samoan(s) (US Nationals) Adjective: American Samoan Ethnic groups Pacific Islander 92.6% (includes Samoan 88.9%, Tongan 2.9%, other 0.8%) Asian 3.6% (includes Filipino 2.2%, other 1.4%) Mixed 2.7% Other 1.2% (2010 est.) Religions Christian 98.3% Other 1% Unaffiliated 0.7% (2010 est.) Major Christian denominations on the island include the Congregational Christian Church in American Samoa, the Catholic Church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the Methodist Church of Samoa. Collectively, these churches account for the vast majority of the population. J. Gordon Elton in his book claims that the Methodists, Congregationalists with the London Missionary Society, and Catholics led the first Christian missions to the islands. Other denominations arrived later, beginning in 1895 with the Seventh-day Adventists, various Pentecostals (including the Assemblies of God), Church of the Nazarene, Jehovah's Witnesses, and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The World Factbook 2010 estimate shows the religious affiliations of American Samoa as 98.3% Christian, other 1%, unaffiliated 0.7%. World Christian Database 2010 estimate shows the religious affiliations of American Samoa as 98.3% Christian, 0.7% agnostic, 0.4% Chinese Universalist, 0.3% Buddhist and 0.3% Baháʼí. According to Pew Research Center, 98.3% of the total population is Christian. Among Christians, 59.5% are Protestant, 19.7% are Catholic and 19.2% are other Christians. A major
Factbook, unless otherwise indicated. Population Approximately 55,212, but the Factbook states 49,437 (2020 estimate). About 65% of the population are U.S. nationals, of whom at least 10% are U.S. citizens. Of the foreign-born population, 81% are from Samoa, 9% are from other parts of Oceania, and 9% are from Asia. Age structure 0–14 years: 27.76% (male 7,063/female 6,662) 15–24 years: 18.16% (male 4,521/female 4,458) 25–54 years: 37.49% (male 9,164/female 9,370) 55–64 years: 9.69% (male 2,341/female 2,447) 65 years and over: 6.9% (male 1,580/female 1,831) (2020 est.) Median age total: 27.2 years male: 26.7 years female: 27.7 years (2020 est.) Population growth rate -2.1% (2021 est.) Birth rate 17.19 births/1,000 population (2021 est.) Death rate 6 deaths/1,000 population (2021 est.) Net migration rate -32.18 migrant(s)/1,000 population (2021 est.) Urbanization Urban population: 87.2% of total population (2020) Rate of urbanization: 0.07% annual rate of change (2015-20 est.) Sex ratio At birth: 1.06 male(s)/female 0–14 years: 1.06 male(s)/female 15–24 years: 1.01 male(s)/female 25–54 years: 0.98 male(s)/female 55–64 years: 0.96 male(s)/female 65 years and over: 0.86 male(s)/female Total population: 1 male(s)/female (2020 est.) Infant mortality rate Total: 10.25 deaths/1,000 live births Male: 12.39 deaths/1,000 live births Female: 8 deaths/1,000 live births (2021 est.) Life expectancy at birth Total population: 75.06 years Male: 72.55
of family exchanges and tenancy of communal lands. The majority of lands in American Samoa and independent Samoa are communal. A matai can represent a small family group or a great extended family that reaches across islands, and to both American Samoa and independent Samoa. Government The government of American Samoa is defined under the Constitution of American Samoa. As an unincorporated territory, the Ratification Act of 1929 vested all civil, judicial, and military powers in the President, who in turn delegated authority to the Secretary of the Interior in . The Secretary promulgated the Constitution of American Samoa which was approved by a Constitutional Convention of the people of American Samoa and a majority of the voters of American Samoa voting at the 1966 election, and came into effect in 1967. The Governor of American Samoa is the head of government and along with the lieutenant governor of American Samoa is elected on the same ticket by popular vote for four-year terms. The legislative power is vested in the American Samoa Fono, which has two chambers. The House of Representatives has 21 members serving two-year terms, being 20 representatives popularly elected from various districts and one non-voting delegate from Swains Island elected in a public meeting. The Senate has 18 members, elected for four-year terms by and from the chiefs of the islands. The judiciary of American Samoa is composed of the High Court of American Samoa, a District Court,
Fa'amatai the protocols of the "fono" (council) and the chiefly system. The Fa'amatai and the Fono take place at all levels of the Samoan body politic, from the family, to the village, to the region, to national matters. The "matai" (chiefs) are elected by consensus within the fono of the extended family and village(s) concerned. The matai and the fono (which is itself made of matai) decide on distribution of family exchanges and tenancy of communal lands. The majority of lands in American Samoa and independent Samoa are communal. A matai can represent a small family group or a great extended family that reaches across islands, and to both American Samoa and independent Samoa. Government The government of American Samoa is defined under the Constitution of American Samoa. As an unincorporated territory, the Ratification Act of 1929 vested all civil, judicial, and military powers in the President, who in turn delegated authority to the Secretary of the Interior in . The Secretary promulgated the Constitution of American Samoa which was approved by a Constitutional Convention of the people of American Samoa and a majority of the voters of American Samoa voting at the 1966 election, and came into effect
vessels), handicrafts Industrial production growth rate: NA% Electricity – production: 180 GWh (2006) country comparison to the world: 179 Electricity – production by source: fossil fuel: 100% hydro: 0% nuclear: 0% other: 0% (2001) Electricity – consumption: 167.4 GWh (2006) country comparison to the world: 179 Electricity – exports: 0 kWh (2007) Electricity – imports: 0 kWh (2007) Oil – production: (2007 est.) country comparison to the world: 209 Oil – consumption: (604 m³/d), 2006 country comparison to the world: 170 Oil – exports: (2005) country comparison to the world: 142 Oil – imports: (2005) country comparison to the world: 166 Natural gas – production: 0 cu m (2007) country comparison to the world: 208 Natural gas – consumption: 0 cu m (2007) country comparison to the world: 207 Natural gas – exports: 0 cu m (2007) country comparison to the world: 202 Natural gas – imports: 0 cu m (2007) country comparison to the world: 201 Natural gas – proved reserves: 0 cu m (2006) country comparison to the world:
by source: fossil fuel: 100% hydro: 0% nuclear: 0% other: 0% (2001) Electricity – consumption: 167.4 GWh (2006) country comparison to the world: 179 Electricity – exports: 0 kWh (2007) Electricity – imports: 0 kWh (2007) Oil – production: (2007 est.) country comparison to the world: 209 Oil – consumption: (604 m³/d), 2006 country comparison to the world: 170 Oil – exports: (2005) country comparison to the world: 142 Oil – imports: (2005) country comparison to the world: 166 Natural gas – production: 0 cu m (2007) country comparison to the world: 208 Natural gas – consumption: 0 cu m (2007) country comparison to the world: 207 Natural gas – exports: 0 cu m (2007) country comparison to the world: 202 Natural gas – imports: 0 cu m (2007) country comparison to the world: 201 Natural gas – proved reserves: 0 cu m (2006) country comparison to the world: 205 Exports: $445.6 million (2004) country comparison to the world: 167 Exports – commodities: canned tuna 93% (2004) Exports – partners: Indonesia 70%, Australia 6.7%, Japan 6.7%, Samoa 6.7% (2002) Imports: $308.8 million (2004) country comparison to the world: 195 Imports – commodities: materials
(died 1993) 1959 – Danny Bonaduce, American actor and wrestler 1959 – Bruce French, English cricketer and coach 1959 – Tom Niedenfuer, American baseball player 1960 – Ivar Stukolkin, Estonian swimmer 1961 – Koji Kondo, Japanese composer and sound director 1961 – Neil Mallender, English cricketer and umpire 1961 – Tom Perrotta, American novelist and screenwriter 1962 – John Slattery, American actor, director, producer, and screenwriter 1963 – Steve Higgins, American talk show co-host and announcer, writer, producer, comedian and impressionist 1963 – Valerie Plame, American CIA agent and author 1963 – Sridevi, Indian actress (died 2018) 1964 – Jay Buhner, American baseball player and sportscaster 1964 – Debi Mazar, American actress 1964 – Tom Prince, American baseball player and manager 1965 – Mark Lemke, American baseball player, coach, and radio host 1965 – Hayato Matsuo, Japanese composer and conductor 1966 – Scooter Barry, American basketball player 1966 – Shayne Corson, Canadian ice hockey player 1967 – Dave Jamerson, American basketball player 1967 – Digna Ketelaar, Dutch tennis player 1968 – Tal Bachman, Canadian singer-songwriter 1968 – Todd Hendricks, American football player and coach 1968 – Tony Jarrett, English sprinter and hurdler 1969 – Midori Ito, Japanese figure skater 1970 – Will Clarke, American author 1970 – Elvis Grbac, American football player and coach 1970 – Alan Shearer, English footballer and manager 1971 – Patrick Carpentier, Canadian race car driver 1971 – Adam Housley, American baseball player and journalist 1972 – Kevin Plank, American businessman, founded Under Armour 1973 – Molly Henneberg, American journalist 1973 – Eric Medlen, American race car driver (died 2007) 1974 – Scott MacRae, American baseball player and coach 1974 – Joe Perry, English snooker player 1974 – Niklas Sundin, Swedish musician and artist 1974 – Jarrod Washburn, American baseball player and coach 1975 – Shoaib Akhtar, Pakistani cricketer 1975 – Marty Turco, Canadian ice hockey player and sportscaster 1976 – Geno Carlisle, American basketball player 1976 – Nicolás Lapentti, Ecuadorian tennis player 1977 – Michael Klim, Polish-Australian swimmer 1977 – Kenyan Weaks, American basketball player and coach 1978 – Dwight Smith, American football player 1979 – Román Colón, Dominican baseball player 1979 – Corey Patterson, American baseball player 1979 – Taizō Sugimura, Japanese politician 1980 – Murtz Jaffer, Canadian journalist 1982 – Christopher Raeburn, English fashion designer 1982 – Sarah Huckabee Sanders, American political consultant and press secretary 1982 – Sebastian Stan, Romanian-American actor 1983 – Dallas Braden, American baseball player 1983 – Aleš Hemský, Czech ice hockey player 1983 – Ľubomír Michalík, Slovak footballer 1983 – Christian Müller, German footballer 1984 – Alona Bondarenko, Ukrainian tennis player 1984 – Niko Kranjčar, Croatian footballer 1984 – Boone Logan, American baseball player 1984 – James Morrison, English singer-songwriter and guitarist 1985 – Gerrit van Look, German rugby player and coach 1987 – Jose Lorenzo Diokno, Filipino director, producer, and screenwriter 1987 – Devin McCourty, American football player 1987 – Jason McCourty, American football player 1987 – Jamie Reed, Welsh footballer 1988 – Keith Benson, American basketball player 1988 – Brandon Workman, American baseball player 1989 – Greg Draper, New Zealand footballer 1989 – Justin Greene, American basketball player 1989 – Israel Jiménez, Mexican footballer 1990 – DeMarcus Cousins, American basketball player 1990 – Benjamin Stambouli, French footballer 1991 – Dave Days, American singer-songwriter and guitarist 1991 – Lesley Doig, Scottish lawn bowler 1992 – Lucas Moura, Brazilian footballer 1992 – Katrina Gorry, Australian football player 1992 – Alicja Tchórz, Polish swimmer 1993 – Moses Mbye, Australian rugby league player 1994 – Filip Forsberg, Swedish ice hockey player 1996 – Antonia Lottner, German tennis player 1998 – Dalma Gálfi, Hungarian tennis player 2000 - Na Jaemin, K-pop Idol Deaths Pre-1600 587 – Radegund, Frankish princess and saint (born 520) 604 – Wen, emperor of the Sui Dynasty (born 541) 612 – Fabia Eudokia, Byzantine empress (born 580) 662 – Maximus the Confessor, Byzantine theologian 696 – Takechi, Japanese prince 900 – Zwentibold, king of Lotharingia (born 870) 908 – Al-Muktafi, Abbasid caliph 981 – Gyeongjong, king of Goryeo (Korea) (born 955) 1134 – Irene of Hungary, Byzantine empress (born 1088) 1297 – Nawrūz, Mongol emir 1311 – Pietro Gradenigo, doge of Venice 1382 – Eleanor of Aragon, queen of Castile (born 1358) 1447 – Filippo Maria Visconti, duke of Milan (born 1392) 1523 – Gerard David, Flemish painter (born 1460) 1601–1900 1608 – Giambologna, Italian sculptor (born 1529) 1617 – Johann Jakob Grynaeus, Swiss clergyman and theologian (born 1540) 1667 – Jeremy Taylor, Irish bishop and saint (born 1613) 1686 – Louis Maimbourg, French priest and historian (born 1610) 1721 – Jacques Lelong, French priest and author (born 1665) 1744 – John Cruger, Danish-American businessman and politician, 39th Mayor of New York City (born 1678) 1749 – Johann Elias Schlegel, German poet and critic (born 1719) 1766 – Margaret Fownes-Luttrell, English painter (born 1726) 1795 – Ahilyabai Holkar, Queen of Indore (born 1725) 1826 – René Laennec, French physician, invented the stethoscope (born 1781) 1863 – Eugène Delacroix, French painter and lithographer (born 1798) 1865 – Ignaz Semmelweis, Hungarian physician and obstetrician (born 1818) 1901–present 1910 – Florence Nightingale, Italian-English nurse and theologian (born 1820) 1912 – Jules Massenet, French composer (born 1842) 1917 – Eduard Buchner, German chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (born 1860) 1934 – Mary Hunter Austin, American author and playwright (born 1868) 1937 – Sigizmund Levanevsky, Soviet aircraft pilot of Polish origin (born 1902) 1946 – H. G. Wells, English novelist, historian, and critic (born 1866) 1954 – Demetrius Constantine Dounis, Greek violinist and mandolin player (born 1886) 1958 – Francis J. McCormick, American football, basketball player, and coach (born 1903) 1963 – Louis Bastien, French cyclist and fencer (born 1881) 1965 – Hayato Ikeda, Japanese lawyer and politician, 58th Prime Minister of Japan (born 1899) 1971 – W. O. Bentley, English race car driver and engineer, founded Bentley Motors Limited (born 1888) 1973 – Willy Rey, Dutch-Canadian model (born 1949) 1975 – Murilo Mendes, Brazilian poet and telegrapher (born 1901) 1978 – Lonnie Mayne, American wrestler (born 1944) 1979 – Andrew Dasburg, American painter and sculptor (born 1887) 1984 – Tigran Petrosian, Georgian-Armenian chess player (born 1929) 1986 – Helen Mack, American actress (born 1913) 1989 – Tim Richmond, American race car driver (born 1955) 1989 – Larkin I. Smith, American police officer and politician (born 1944) 1991 – James Roosevelt, American general and politician (born 1907) 1995 – Alison Hargreaves, English mountaineer (born 1963) 1995 – Jan Křesadlo, Czech-English psychologist and author (born 1926) 1995 – Mickey Mantle, American baseball player and sportscaster (born 1931) 1996 – António de Spínola, Portuguese general and politician, 14th President of Portugal (born 1910) 1998 – Nino Ferrer, Italian-French singer-songwriter and guitarist (born 1934) 1998 – Edward Ginzton, Ukrainian-American physicist and academic (born 1915) 1998 – Julien Green, American author (born 1900) 1998 – Rafael Robles, Dominican-American baseball player (born 1947) 1999 – Ignatz Bubis, German Jewish religious leader (born 1927) 1999 – Jaime Garzón, Colombian journalist and lawyer (born 1960) 2000 – Nazia Hassan, Pakistani singer-songwriter (born 1965) 2001 – Otto Stuppacher, Austrian race car driver (born 1947) 2001 – Jim Hughes, American baseball player and manager (born 1923) 2001 – Betty Cavanna, American author (born 1909) 2003 – Ed Townsend, American singer-songwriter and producer (born 1929) 2004 – Julia Child, American chef, author, and television host (born 1912) 2005 – Miguel Arraes, Brazilian lawyer and politician (born 1916) 2005 – David Lange, New Zealand lawyer and politician, 32nd Prime Minister of New Zealand (born 1942) 2006 – Tony Jay, English actor and singer (born 1933) 2006 – Jon Nödtveidt, Swedish musician (born 1975) 2007 – Brian Adams, American wrestler (born 1964) 2007 – Brooke Astor, American philanthropist and socialite (born 1902) 2007 – Phil Rizzuto, American baseball player and sportscaster (born 1917) 2008 – Henri Cartan, French mathematician and academic (born 1904) 2008 – Bill Gwatney, American politician (born 1959) 2008 – Jack Weil, American businessman (born 1901) 2009 – Lavelle Felton, American basketball player (born 1980) 2010 – Panagiotis Bachramis, Greek footballer (born 1976) 2010 – Lance Cade, American wrestler (born 1981) 2010 – Edwin Newman, American journalist and author (born 1919) 2011 – Tareque Masud, Bangladeshi director, producer, and screenwriter (born 1957) 2011 – Mishuk Munier, Bangladeshi journalist and cinematographer (born 1959) 2012 – Hugo Adam Bedau, American philosopher and academic (born 1926) 2012 – Helen Gurley Brown, American journalist and author (born 1922) 2012 – Ray Jordon, Australian cricketer and coach (born 1937) 2012 – Johnny Pesky, American baseball player and manager (born 1919) 2012 – Joan Roberts, American actress and singer (born 1917) 2013 – Lothar Bisky, German politician (born 1941) 2013 – Aaron Selber, Jr., American businessman and philanthropist (born 1927) 2013 – Jean Vincent, French footballer and manager (born 1930) 2014 – Frans Brüggen, Dutch flute player and conductor (born 1934) 2014 – Eduardo Campos, Brazilian politician, 14th Brazilian Minister of Science and
pillage and razing of Anogeia in Crete that would continue until September 5. 1954 – Radio Pakistan broadcasts the "Qaumī Tarāna", the national anthem of Pakistan for the first time. 1960 – The Central African Republic declares independence from France. 1961 – Cold War: East Germany closes the border between the eastern and western sectors of Berlin to thwart its inhabitants' attempts to escape to the West, and construction of the Berlin Wall is started. The day is known as Barbed Wire Sunday. 1964 – Peter Allen and Gwynne Evans are hanged for the murder of John Alan West becoming the last people executed in the United Kingdom. 1967 – Two young women became the first fatal victims of grizzly bear attacks in the 57-year history of Montana's Glacier National Park in separate incidents. 1968 – Alexandros Panagoulis attempts to assassinate the Greek dictator Colonel Georgios Papadopoulos in Varkiza, Athens. 1969 – The Apollo 11 astronauts enjoy a ticker tape parade in New York City. That evening, at a state dinner in Los Angeles, they are awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by U.S. President Richard Nixon. 1973 – Aviaco Flight 118 crashes on approach to A Coruña Airport in A Coruña, Spain, killing 85. 1977 – Members of the British National Front (NF) clash with anti-NF demonstrators in Lewisham, London, resulting in 214 arrests and at least 111 injuries. 1978 – One hundred fifty Palestinians in Beirut are killed in a terrorist attack during the second phase of the Lebanese Civil War. 1990 – A mainland Chinese fishing boat Min Ping Yu No. 5202 is hit by a Taiwanese naval vessel and sinks in a repatriation operation of mainland Chinese immigrants, resulting in 21 deaths. This is the second tragedy less than a month after Min Ping Yu No. 5540 incident. 2004 – One hundred fifty-six Congolese Tutsi refugees are massacred at the Gatumba refugee camp in Burundi. 2008 – Russo-Georgian War: Russian units occupy the Georgian city of Gori. 2015 – At least 76 people are killed and 212 others are wounded in a truck bombing in Baghdad, Iraq. 2020 – Israel–United Arab Emirates relations are formally established. Births Pre-1600 985 – Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah, Fatimid caliph (died 1021) 1311 – Alfonso XI, king of Castile and León (died 1350) 1584 – Theophilus Howard, 2nd Earl of Suffolk, English admiral and politician, Lord Lieutenant of Cumberland (died 1640) 1601–1900 1625 – Rasmus Bartholin, Danish physician, mathematician, and physicist (died 1698) 1662 – Charles Seymour, 6th Duke of Somerset, English politician, Lord President of the Council (died 1748) 1666 – William Wotton, English linguist and scholar (died 1727) 1700 – Heinrich von Brühl, Polish-German politician (died 1763) 1717 – Louis François, Prince of Conti (died 1776) 1756 – James Gillray, English caricaturist and printmaker (d.1815) 1764 – Louis Baraguey d'Hilliers, French general (died 1813) 1790 – William Wentworth, Australian journalist, explorer, and politician (died 1872) 1803 – Vladimir Odoyevsky, Russian philosopher and critic (died 1869) 1814 – Anders Jonas Ångström, Swedish physicist and astronomer (died 1874) 1818 – Lucy Stone, American abolitionist and suffragist (died 1893) 1819 – Sir George Stokes, 1st Baronet, Anglo-Irish mathematician and physicist (died 1903) 1820 – George Grove, English musicologist and historian (died 1900) 1823 – Goldwin Smith, English-Canadian historian and journalist (died 1910) 1831 – Salomon Jadassohn, German pianist and composer (died 1902) 1841 – Johnny Mullagh, Australian cricketer (died 1891) 1842 – Charles Wells, English brewer, founded Charles Wells Ltd (died 1914) 1849 – Leonora Barry, Irish-born American social activist (died 1930) 1851 – Felix Adler, German-American religious leader and educator (died 1933) 1860 – Annie Oakley, American target shooter (died 1926) 1866 – Giovanni Agnelli, Italian businessman, founded Fiat S.p.A. (died 1945) 1867 – George Luks, American painter and illustrator (died 1933) 1872 – Richard Willstätter, German-Swiss chemist and academic, Nobel Prize Laureate (died 1942) 1879 – John Ireland, English composer and educator (died 1962) 1884 – Harry Dean, English cricketer and coach (died 1957) 1888 – John Logie Baird, Scottish engineer, invented the television (died 1946) 1888 – Gleb W. Derujinsky, Russian-American sculptor (died 1975) 1889 – Camillien Houde, Canadian lawyer and politician, 34th Mayor of Montreal (died 1958) 1895 – István Barta, Hungarian water polo player (died 1948) 1895 – Bert Lahr, American actor (died 1967) 1898 – Jean Borotra, French tennis player (died 1994) 1898 – Regis Toomey, American actor (died 1991) 1899 – Alfred Hitchcock, English-American director and producer (died 1980) 1899 – José Ramón Guizado, Panamanian politician, 17th President of Panama (died 1964) 1901–present 1902 – Felix Wankel, German engineer (died 1988) 1904 – Buddy Rogers, American actor and musician (died 1999) 1904 – Margaret Tafoya, Native American Pueblo potter (died 2001) 1906 – Chuck Carroll, American football player and lawyer (died 2003) 1906 – Art Shires, American baseball player and boxer (died 1967) 1907 – Basil Spence, Scottish architect, designed Coventry Cathedral (died 1976) 1908 – Gene Raymond, American actor and pilot (died 1998) 1911 – William Bernbach, American advertiser, co-founded DDB Worldwide (died 1982) 1912 – Claire Cribbs, American basketball player and coach (died 1985) 1912 – Ben Hogan, American golfer and sportscaster (died 1997) 1912 – Salvador Luria, Italian-American microbiologist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (died 1991) 1913 – Makarios III, Greek archbishop and politician, 1st President of Cyprus (died 1977) 1913 – Fred Davis, English snooker player (died 1998) 1914 – Grace Bates, American mathematician and academic (died 1996) 1917 – Sid Gordon, American baseball player (died 1975) 1918 – Noor Hassanali, Trinidadian lawyer and politician, 2nd President of Trinidad and Tobago (died 2006) 1918 – Frederick Sanger, English biochemist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (died 2013) 1919 – Rex Humbard, American evangelist and television host (died 2007) 1919 – George Shearing, English jazz pianist and bandleader (died 2011) 1920 – Neville Brand, American actor (died 1992) 1921 –
in an unfavorable position after the fall of his suzerain. It was through the minister of Gurganj, Abu'l-Husayn as-Sahi, a patron of Greek sciences, that Avicenna entered into the service of Abu al-Hasan Ali. Under the Ma'munids, Gurganj became a centre of learning, attracting many prominent figures, such as Avicenna and his former teacher Abu Sahl al-Masihi, the mathematician Abu Nasr Mansur, the physician Ibn al-Khammar, and the philologist al-Tha'alibi. In Gurgan Avicenna later moved due to "necessity" once more (in 1012), this time to the west. There he travelled through the Khurasani cities of Nasa, Abivard, Tus, Samangan and Jajarm. He was planning to visit the ruler of the city of Gurgan, the Ziyarid Qabus (), a cultivated patron of writing, whose court attracted many distinguished poets and scholars. However, when Avicenna eventually arrived, he discovered that the ruler had been dead since the winter of 1013. Avicenna then left Gurgan for Dihistan, but returned after becoming ill. There he met Abu 'Ubayd al-Juzjani (died 1070) who became his pupil and companion. Avicenna stayed briefly in Gurgan, reportedly serving Qabus' son and successor Manuchihr () and resided in the house of a patron. In Ray and Hamadan In , Avicenna went to the city of Ray, where he entered into the service of the Buyid amir (ruler) Majd al-Dawla () and his mother Sayyida Shirin, the de facto ruler of the realm. There he served as the physician at the court, treating Majd al-Dawla, who was suffering from melancholia. Avicenna reportedly later served as the "business manager" of Sayyida Shirin in Qazvin and Hamadan, though details regarding this tenure are unclear. During his period, Avicenna finished his Canon of Medicine, and started writing his Book of Healing. In 1015, during Avicenna's stay in Hamadan, he participated in a public debate, as was custom for newly arrived scholars in western Iran at that time. The purpose of the debate was to examining one's reputation against a prominent local resident. The person whom Avicenna debated against was Abu'l-Qasim al-Kirmani, a member of the school of philosophers of Baghdad. The debate became heated, resulting in Avicenna accusing Abu'l-Qasim of lack of basic knowledge in logic, while Abu'l-Qasim accused Avicenna of impoliteness. After the debate, Avicenna sent a letter to the Baghdad Peripatetics, asking if Abu'l-Qasim's claim that he shared the same opinion as them was true. Abu'l-Qasim later retaliated by writing a letter to an unknown person, in which he made accusations so serious, that Avicenna wrote to a deputy of Majd al-Dawla, named Abu Sa'd, to investigate the matter. The accusation made towards Avicenna may have been the same as he had received earlier, in which he was accused by the people of Hamadan of copying the stylistic structures of the Quran in his Sermons on Divine Unity. The seriousness of this charge, in the words of the historian Peter Adamson, "cannot be underestimated in the larger Muslim culture." Not long afterwards, Avicenna shifted his allegiance to the rising Buyid amir Shams al-Dawla (the younger brother of Majd al-Dawla), which Adamson suggests was due to Abu'l-Qasim also working under Sayyida Shirin. Avicenna had been called upon by Shams al-Dawla to treat him, but after the latters campaign in the same year against his former ally, the Annazid ruler Abu Shawk (), he forced Avicenna to become his vizier. Although Avicenna would sometimes clash with Shams al-Dawla's troops, he remained vizier until the latter died of colic in 1021. Avicenna was asked by Shams al-Dawla's son and successor Sama' al-Dawla () stay as vizier, but instead went into hiding with his patron Abu Ghalib al-Attar, to wait for better opportunities to emerge. It was during this period that Avicenna was secretly in contact with Ala al-Dawla Muhammad (), the Kakuyid ruler of Isfahan and uncle of Sayyida Shirin. During his stay at Attar's home that Avicenna completed his Book of Healing, writing fifty pages a day. The Buyid court in Hamadan, particularly the Kurdish vizier Taj al-Mulk, suspected Avicenna of correspondence with Ala al-Dawla, and as result had the house of Attar ransacked and Avicenna imprisoned in the fortress of Fardajan, outside Hamadan. Juzjani blames one of Avicenna's informers for his capture. Avicenna was imprisoned in four months, until Ala al-Dawla captured Hamadan, thus putting an end to Sama al-Dawla's reign. In Isfahan Avicenna was subsequently released, and went to Isfahan, where he was well received by Ala al-Dawla. In the words of Juzjani, the Kakuyid ruler gave Avicenna "the respect and esteem which someone like him deserved." Adamson also says that Avicenna's service under Ala al-Dawla "proved to be the most stable period of his life." Avicenna served as the advisor, if not vizier of Ala al-Dawla, accompanying him in many of his military expeditions and travels. Avicenna dedicated two Persian works to him, a philosophical treatise named Danish-nama-yi Ala'i ("Book of Science for Ala"), and a medical treatise about the pulse. During the brief occupation of Isfahan by the Ghaznavids in January 1030, Avicenna and Ala al-Dawla relocated to the southwestern Iranian region of Khuzistan, where they stayed until the death of the Ghaznavid ruler Mahmud (), which occurred two months later. It was seemingly when Avicenna returned to Isfahan that he started writing his Pointers and Reminders. In 1037, while Avicenna was accompanying Ala al-Dawla to a battle near Isfahan, he was hit by a severe colic, which he had been constantly suffering from throughout his life. He died shortly afterwards in Hamadan, where he was buried. Philosophy Avicenna wrote extensively on early Islamic philosophy, especially the subjects logic, ethics and metaphysics, including treatises named Logic and Metaphysics. Most of his works were written in Arabic—then the language of science in the Middle East—and some in Persian. Of linguistic significance even to this day are a few books that he wrote in nearly pure Persian language (particularly the Danishnamah-yi 'Ala', Philosophy for Ala' ad-Dawla'). Avicenna's commentaries on Aristotle often criticized the philosopher, encouraging a lively debate in the spirit of ijtihad. Avicenna's Neoplatonic scheme of "emanations" became fundamental in the Kalam (school of theological discourse) in the 12th century. His Book of Healing became available in Europe in partial Latin translation some fifty years after its composition, under the title Sufficientia, and some authors have identified a "Latin Avicennism" as flourishing for some time, paralleling the more influential Latin Averroism, but suppressed by the Parisian decrees of 1210 and 1215. Avicenna's psychology and theory of knowledge influenced William of Auvergne, Bishop of Paris and Albertus Magnus, while his metaphysics influenced the thought of Thomas Aquinas. Metaphysical doctrine Early Islamic philosophy and Islamic metaphysics, imbued as it is with Islamic theology, distinguishes more clearly than Aristotelianism between essence and existence. Whereas existence is the domain of the contingent and the accidental, essence endures within a being beyond the accidental. The philosophy of Avicenna, particularly that part relating to metaphysics, owes much to al-Farabi. The search for a definitive Islamic philosophy separate from Occasionalism can be seen in what is left of his work. Following al-Farabi's lead, Avicenna initiated a full-fledged inquiry into the question of being, in which he distinguished between essence (Mahiat) and existence (Wujud). He argued that the fact of existence cannot be inferred from or accounted for by the essence of existing things, and that form and matter by themselves cannot interact and originate the movement of the universe or the progressive actualization of existing things. Existence must, therefore, be due to an agent-cause that necessitates, imparts, gives, or adds existence to an essence. To do so, the cause must be an existing thing and coexist with its effect. Avicenna's consideration of the essence-attributes question may be elucidated in terms of his ontological analysis of the modalities of being; namely impossibility, contingency and necessity. Avicenna argued that the impossible being is that which cannot exist, while the contingent in itself (mumkin bi-dhatihi) has the potentiality to be or not to be without entailing a contradiction. When actualized, the contingent becomes a 'necessary existent due to what is other than itself' (wajib al-wujud bi-ghayrihi). Thus, contingency-in-itself is potential beingness that could eventually be actualized by an external cause other than itself. The metaphysical structures of necessity and contingency are different. Necessary being due to itself (wajib al-wujud bi-dhatihi) is true in itself, while the contingent being is 'false in itself' and 'true due to something else other than itself'. The necessary is the source of its own being without borrowed existence. It is what always exists. The Necessary exists 'due-to-Its-Self', and has no quiddity/essence (mahiyya) other than existence (wujud). Furthermore, It is 'One' (wahid ahad) since there cannot be more than one 'Necessary-Existent-due-to-Itself' without differentia (fasl) to distinguish them from each other. Yet, to require differentia entails that they exist 'due-to-themselves' as well as 'due to what is other than themselves'; and this is contradictory. However, if no differentia distinguishes them from each other, then there is no sense in which these 'Existents' are not one and the same. Avicenna adds that the 'Necessary-Existent-due-to-Itself' has no genus (jins), nor a definition (hadd), nor a counterpart (nadd), nor an opposite (did), and is detached (bari) from matter (madda), quality (kayf), quantity (kam), place (ayn), situation (wad) and time (waqt). Avicenna's theology on metaphysical issues (ilāhiyyāt) has been criticized by some Islamic scholars, among them al-Ghazali, Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn al-Qayyim. While discussing the views of the theists among the Greek philosophers, namely Socrates, Plato and Aristotle in Al-Munqidh min ad-Dalal ("Deliverance from Error"), al-Ghazali noted that the Greek philosophers "must be taxed with unbelief, as must their partisans among the Muslim philosophers, such as Avicenna and al-Farabi and their likes." He added that "None, however, of the Muslim philosophers engaged so much in transmitting Aristotle's lore as did the two men just mentioned. [...] The sum of what we regard as the authentic philosophy of Aristotle, as transmitted by al-Farabi and Avicenna, can be reduced to three parts: a part which must be branded as unbelief; a part which must be stigmatized as innovation; and a part which need not be repudiated at all." Argument for God's existence Avicenna made an argument for the existence of God which would be known as the "Proof of the Truthful" (Arabic: burhan al-siddiqin). Avicenna argued that there must be a "necessary existent" (Arabic: wajib al-wujud), an entity that cannot not exist and through a series of arguments, he identified it with the Islamic conception of God. Present-day historian of philosophy Peter Adamson called this argument one of the most influential medieval arguments for God's existence, and Avicenna's biggest contribution to the history of philosophy. Al-Biruni correspondence Correspondence between Avicenna (with his student Ahmad ibn 'Ali al-Ma'sumi) and Al-Biruni has survived in which they debated Aristotelian natural philosophy and the Peripatetic school. Abu Rayhan began by asking Avicenna eighteen questions, ten of which were criticisms of Aristotle's On the Heavens. Theology Avicenna was a devout Muslim and sought to reconcile rational philosophy with Islamic theology. His aim was to prove the existence of God and His creation of the world scientifically and through reason and logic. Avicenna's views on Islamic theology (and philosophy) were enormously influential, forming part of the core of the curriculum at Islamic religious schools until the 19th century. Avicenna wrote a number of short treatises dealing with Islamic theology. These included treatises on the prophets (whom he viewed as "inspired philosophers"), and also on various scientific and philosophical interpretations of the Quran, such as how Quranic cosmology corresponds to his own philosophical system. In general these treatises linked his philosophical writings to Islamic religious ideas; for example, the body's afterlife. There are occasional brief hints and allusions in his longer works, however, that Avicenna considered philosophy as the only sensible way to distinguish real prophecy from illusion. He did not state this more clearly because of the political implications of such a theory, if prophecy could be questioned, and also because most of the time he was writing shorter works which concentrated on explaining his theories on philosophy and theology clearly, without digressing to consider epistemological matters which could only be properly considered by other philosophers. Later interpretations of Avicenna's philosophy split into three different schools; those (such as al-Tusi) who continued to apply his philosophy as a system to interpret later political events and scientific advances; those (such as al-Razi) who considered Avicenna's theological works in isolation from his wider philosophical concerns; and those (such as al-Ghazali) who selectively used parts of his philosophy to support their own attempts to gain greater spiritual insights through a variety of mystical means. It was the theological interpretation championed by those such as al-Razi which eventually came to predominate in the madrasahs. Avicenna memorized the Quran by the age of ten, and as an adult, he wrote five treatises commenting on suras from the Quran. One of these texts included the Proof of Prophecies, in which he comments on several Quranic verses and holds the Quran in high esteem. Avicenna argued that the Islamic prophets should be considered higher than philosophers. Avicenna is generally understood to have been aligned with the Sunni Hanafi school of thought. Avicenna studied Hanafi law, many of his notable teachers were Hanafi jurists, and he served under the Hanafi court of Ali ibn Mamun. Avicenna said at an early age that he remained "unconvinced" by Ismaili missionary attempts to convert him. Medieval historian Ẓahīr al-dīn al-Bayhaqī (d. 1169) also believed Avicenna to be a follower of the Brethren of Purity. Thought experiments While he was imprisoned in the castle of Fardajan near Hamadhan, Avicenna wrote his famous "floating man"—literally falling man—a thought experiment to demonstrate human self-awareness and the substantiality and immateriality of the soul. Avicenna believed his "Floating Man" thought experiment demonstrated that the soul is a substance, and claimed humans cannot doubt their own consciousness, even in a situation that prevents all sensory data input. The thought experiment told its readers to imagine themselves created all at once while suspended in the air, isolated from all sensations, which includes no sensory contact with even their own bodies. He argued that, in this scenario, one would still have self-consciousness. Because it is conceivable that a person, suspended in air while cut
'Ala', Philosophy for Ala' ad-Dawla'). Avicenna's commentaries on Aristotle often criticized the philosopher, encouraging a lively debate in the spirit of ijtihad. Avicenna's Neoplatonic scheme of "emanations" became fundamental in the Kalam (school of theological discourse) in the 12th century. His Book of Healing became available in Europe in partial Latin translation some fifty years after its composition, under the title Sufficientia, and some authors have identified a "Latin Avicennism" as flourishing for some time, paralleling the more influential Latin Averroism, but suppressed by the Parisian decrees of 1210 and 1215. Avicenna's psychology and theory of knowledge influenced William of Auvergne, Bishop of Paris and Albertus Magnus, while his metaphysics influenced the thought of Thomas Aquinas. Metaphysical doctrine Early Islamic philosophy and Islamic metaphysics, imbued as it is with Islamic theology, distinguishes more clearly than Aristotelianism between essence and existence. Whereas existence is the domain of the contingent and the accidental, essence endures within a being beyond the accidental. The philosophy of Avicenna, particularly that part relating to metaphysics, owes much to al-Farabi. The search for a definitive Islamic philosophy separate from Occasionalism can be seen in what is left of his work. Following al-Farabi's lead, Avicenna initiated a full-fledged inquiry into the question of being, in which he distinguished between essence (Mahiat) and existence (Wujud). He argued that the fact of existence cannot be inferred from or accounted for by the essence of existing things, and that form and matter by themselves cannot interact and originate the movement of the universe or the progressive actualization of existing things. Existence must, therefore, be due to an agent-cause that necessitates, imparts, gives, or adds existence to an essence. To do so, the cause must be an existing thing and coexist with its effect. Avicenna's consideration of the essence-attributes question may be elucidated in terms of his ontological analysis of the modalities of being; namely impossibility, contingency and necessity. Avicenna argued that the impossible being is that which cannot exist, while the contingent in itself (mumkin bi-dhatihi) has the potentiality to be or not to be without entailing a contradiction. When actualized, the contingent becomes a 'necessary existent due to what is other than itself' (wajib al-wujud bi-ghayrihi). Thus, contingency-in-itself is potential beingness that could eventually be actualized by an external cause other than itself. The metaphysical structures of necessity and contingency are different. Necessary being due to itself (wajib al-wujud bi-dhatihi) is true in itself, while the contingent being is 'false in itself' and 'true due to something else other than itself'. The necessary is the source of its own being without borrowed existence. It is what always exists. The Necessary exists 'due-to-Its-Self', and has no quiddity/essence (mahiyya) other than existence (wujud). Furthermore, It is 'One' (wahid ahad) since there cannot be more than one 'Necessary-Existent-due-to-Itself' without differentia (fasl) to distinguish them from each other. Yet, to require differentia entails that they exist 'due-to-themselves' as well as 'due to what is other than themselves'; and this is contradictory. However, if no differentia distinguishes them from each other, then there is no sense in which these 'Existents' are not one and the same. Avicenna adds that the 'Necessary-Existent-due-to-Itself' has no genus (jins), nor a definition (hadd), nor a counterpart (nadd), nor an opposite (did), and is detached (bari) from matter (madda), quality (kayf), quantity (kam), place (ayn), situation (wad) and time (waqt). Avicenna's theology on metaphysical issues (ilāhiyyāt) has been criticized by some Islamic scholars, among them al-Ghazali, Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn al-Qayyim. While discussing the views of the theists among the Greek philosophers, namely Socrates, Plato and Aristotle in Al-Munqidh min ad-Dalal ("Deliverance from Error"), al-Ghazali noted that the Greek philosophers "must be taxed with unbelief, as must their partisans among the Muslim philosophers, such as Avicenna and al-Farabi and their likes." He added that "None, however, of the Muslim philosophers engaged so much in transmitting Aristotle's lore as did the two men just mentioned. [...] The sum of what we regard as the authentic philosophy of Aristotle, as transmitted by al-Farabi and Avicenna, can be reduced to three parts: a part which must be branded as unbelief; a part which must be stigmatized as innovation; and a part which need not be repudiated at all." Argument for God's existence Avicenna made an argument for the existence of God which would be known as the "Proof of the Truthful" (Arabic: burhan al-siddiqin). Avicenna argued that there must be a "necessary existent" (Arabic: wajib al-wujud), an entity that cannot not exist and through a series of arguments, he identified it with the Islamic conception of God. Present-day historian of philosophy Peter Adamson called this argument one of the most influential medieval arguments for God's existence, and Avicenna's biggest contribution to the history of philosophy. Al-Biruni correspondence Correspondence between Avicenna (with his student Ahmad ibn 'Ali al-Ma'sumi) and Al-Biruni has survived in which they debated Aristotelian natural philosophy and the Peripatetic school. Abu Rayhan began by asking Avicenna eighteen questions, ten of which were criticisms of Aristotle's On the Heavens. Theology Avicenna was a devout Muslim and sought to reconcile rational philosophy with Islamic theology. His aim was to prove the existence of God and His creation of the world scientifically and through reason and logic. Avicenna's views on Islamic theology (and philosophy) were enormously influential, forming part of the core of the curriculum at Islamic religious schools until the 19th century. Avicenna wrote a number of short treatises dealing with Islamic theology. These included treatises on the prophets (whom he viewed as "inspired philosophers"), and also on various scientific and philosophical interpretations of the Quran, such as how Quranic cosmology corresponds to his own philosophical system. In general these treatises linked his philosophical writings to Islamic religious ideas; for example, the body's afterlife. There are occasional brief hints and allusions in his longer works, however, that Avicenna considered philosophy as the only sensible way to distinguish real prophecy from illusion. He did not state this more clearly because of the political implications of such a theory, if prophecy could be questioned, and also because most of the time he was writing shorter works which concentrated on explaining his theories on philosophy and theology clearly, without digressing to consider epistemological matters which could only be properly considered by other philosophers. Later interpretations of Avicenna's philosophy split into three different schools; those (such as al-Tusi) who continued to apply his philosophy as a system to interpret later political events and scientific advances; those (such as al-Razi) who considered Avicenna's theological works in isolation from his wider philosophical concerns; and those (such as al-Ghazali) who selectively used parts of his philosophy to support their own attempts to gain greater spiritual insights through a variety of mystical means. It was the theological interpretation championed by those such as al-Razi which eventually came to predominate in the madrasahs. Avicenna memorized the Quran by the age of ten, and as an adult, he wrote five treatises commenting on suras from the Quran. One of these texts included the Proof of Prophecies, in which he comments on several Quranic verses and holds the Quran in high esteem. Avicenna argued that the Islamic prophets should be considered higher than philosophers. Avicenna is generally understood to have been aligned with the Sunni Hanafi school of thought. Avicenna studied Hanafi law, many of his notable teachers were Hanafi jurists, and he served under the Hanafi court of Ali ibn Mamun. Avicenna said at an early age that he remained "unconvinced" by Ismaili missionary attempts to convert him. Medieval historian Ẓahīr al-dīn al-Bayhaqī (d. 1169) also believed Avicenna to be a follower of the Brethren of Purity. Thought experiments While he was imprisoned in the castle of Fardajan near Hamadhan, Avicenna wrote his famous "floating man"—literally falling man—a thought experiment to demonstrate human self-awareness and the substantiality and immateriality of the soul. Avicenna believed his "Floating Man" thought experiment demonstrated that the soul is a substance, and claimed humans cannot doubt their own consciousness, even in a situation that prevents all sensory data input. The thought experiment told its readers to imagine themselves created all at once while suspended in the air, isolated from all sensations, which includes no sensory contact with even their own bodies. He argued that, in this scenario, one would still have self-consciousness. Because it is conceivable that a person, suspended in air while cut off from sense experience, would still be capable of determining his own existence, the thought experiment points to the conclusions that the soul is a perfection, independent of the body, and an immaterial substance. The conceivability of this "Floating Man" indicates that the soul is perceived intellectually, which entails the soul's separateness from the body. Avicenna referred to the living human intelligence, particularly the active intellect, which he believed to be the hypostasis by which God communicates truth to the human mind and imparts order and intelligibility to nature. Following is an English translation of the argument: However, Avicenna posited the brain as the place where reason interacts with sensation. Sensation prepares the soul to receive rational concepts from the universal Agent Intellect. The first knowledge of the flying person would be "I am," affirming his or her essence. That essence could not be the body, obviously, as the flying person has no sensation. Thus, the knowledge that "I am" is the core of a human being: the soul exists and is self-aware. Avicenna thus concluded that the idea of the self is not logically dependent on any physical thing, and that the soul should not be seen in relative terms, but as a primary given, a substance. The body is unnecessary; in relation to it, the soul is its perfection. In itself, the soul is an immaterial substance. The Canon of Medicine Avicenna authored a five-volume medical encyclopedia: The Canon of Medicine (Al-Qanun fi't-Tibb). It was used as the standard medical textbook in the Islamic world and Europe up to the 18th century. The Canon still plays an important role in Unani medicine. Liber Primus Naturalium Avicenna considered whether events like rare diseases or disorders have natural causes. He used the example of polydactyly to explain his perception that causal reasons exist for all medical events. This view of medical phenomena anticipated developments in the Enlightenment by seven centuries. The Book of Healing Earth sciences Avicenna wrote on Earth sciences such as geology in The Book of Healing. While discussing the formation of mountains, he explained: Philosophy of science In the Al-Burhan (On Demonstration) section of The Book of Healing, Avicenna discussed the philosophy of science and described an early scientific method of inquiry. He discussed Aristotle's Posterior Analytics and significantly diverged from it on several points. Avicenna discussed the issue of a proper methodology for scientific inquiry and the question of "How does one acquire the first principles of a science?" He asked how a scientist would arrive at "the initial axioms or hypotheses of a deductive science without inferring them from some more basic premises?" He explained that the ideal situation is when one grasps that a "relation holds between the terms, which would allow for absolute, universal certainty". Avicenna then added two further methods for arriving at the first principles: the ancient Aristotelian method of induction (istiqra), and the method of examination and experimentation (tajriba). Avicenna criticized Aristotelian induction, arguing that "it does not lead to the absolute, universal, and certain premises that it purports to provide." In its place, he developed a "method of experimentation as a means for scientific inquiry." Logic An early formal system of temporal logic was studied by Avicenna. Although he did not develop a real theory of temporal propositions, he did study the relationship between temporalis and the implication. Avicenna's work was further developed by Najm al-Dīn al-Qazwīnī al-Kātibī and became the dominant system of Islamic logic until modern times. Avicennian logic also influenced several early European logicians such as Albertus Magnus and William of Ockham. Avicenna endorsed the law of non-contradiction proposed by Aristotle, that a fact could not be both true and false at the same time and in the same sense of the terminology used. He stated, "Anyone who denies the law of non-contradiction should be beaten and burned until he admits that to be beaten is not the same as not to be beaten, and to be burned is not the same as not to be burned." Physics In mechanics, Avicenna, in The Book of Healing, developed a theory of motion, in which he made a distinction between the inclination (tendency to motion) and force of a projectile, and concluded that motion was a result of an inclination (mayl) transferred to the projectile by the thrower, and that projectile motion in a vacuum would not cease. He viewed inclination as a permanent force whose effect is dissipated by external forces such as air resistance. The theory of motion presented by Avicenna was probably influenced by the 6th-century Alexandrian scholar John Philoponus. Avicenna's is a less sophisticated variant of the theory of impetus developed by Buridan in the 14th century. It is unclear if Buridan was influenced by Avicenna, or by Philoponus directly. In optics, Avicenna was among those who argued that light had a speed, observing that "if the perception of light is due to the emission of some sort of particles by a luminous source, the speed of light must be finite." He also provided a wrong explanation of the rainbow phenomenon. Carl Benjamin Boyer described Avicenna's ("Ibn Sīnā") theory on the rainbow as follows: In 1253, a Latin text entitled Speculum Tripartitum stated the following regarding Avicenna's theory on heat: Psychology Avicenna's legacy in classical psychology is primarily embodied in the Kitab al-nafs parts of his Kitab al-shifa (The Book of Healing) and Kitab al-najat (The Book of Deliverance). These were known in Latin under the title De Anima (treatises "on the soul"). Notably, Avicenna develops what is called the Flying Man argument in the Psychology of The Cure I.1.7 as defence of the argument that the soul is without quantitative extension, which has an affinity with Descartes's cogito argument (or what phenomenology designates as a form of an "epoche"). Avicenna's psychology requires that connection between the body and soul be strong enough to ensure the soul's individuation, but weak enough to allow for its immortality. Avicenna grounds his psychology on physiology, which means his account of the soul is one that deals almost entirely with the natural science of the body and its abilities of perception. Thus, the philosopher's connection between the soul and body is explained almost entirely by his understanding of perception; in this way, bodily perception interrelates with the immaterial human intellect. In sense perception, the perceiver senses the form of the object; first, by perceiving features of the object by our external senses. This sensory information is supplied to the internal senses, which merge all the pieces into a whole, unified conscious experience. This process of perception and abstraction is the nexus of the soul and body, for the material body may only perceive material objects, while the immaterial soul may only receive the immaterial, universal forms. The way the soul and body interact in the final abstraction of the universal from the concrete particular is the key to their relationship and interaction, which takes place in the physical body. The soul completes the action of intellection by accepting forms that have been abstracted from matter. This process requires a concrete particular (material) to be abstracted into the universal intelligible (immaterial). The material and immaterial interact through the Active Intellect, which is a "divine light" containing the intelligible forms. The Active Intellect reveals the universals concealed in material objects much like the sun makes colour available to our eyes. Other contributions Astronomy and astrology Avicenna wrote an attack on astrology titled Resāla fī ebṭāl aḥkām al-nojūm, in which he cited passages from the Quran to dispute the power of astrology to foretell the future. He believed that each planet had some influence on the earth, but argued against astrologers being able to determine the exact effects. Avicenna's astronomical writings had some influence on later writers, although in general his work could be considered less developed than Alhazen or Al-Biruni. One important feature of his writing is that he considers mathematical astronomy as a separate discipline to astrology. He criticized Aristotle's view of the stars receiving their light from the Sun, stating that the stars are self-luminous, and believed that the planets are also self-luminous. He claimed to have observed Venus as a spot on the Sun. This is possible, as there was a transit on 24 May 1032, but Avicenna did not give the date of his observation, and modern scholars have questioned whether he could have observed the transit from his location at that time; he may have mistaken a sunspot for Venus. He used his transit observation to help establish that Venus was, at least sometimes, below the Sun in Ptolemaic cosmology, i.e. the sphere of Venus comes before the sphere of the Sun when moving out from the Earth in the prevailing geocentric model. He also wrote the Summary of the Almagest, (based on Ptolemy's Almagest), with an appended treatise "to bring that which is stated in the Almagest and what is understood from Natural Science into conformity". For example, Avicenna considers the motion of the solar apogee, which Ptolemy had taken to be fixed. Chemistry Avicenna was first to derive the attar of flowers from distillation and used steam distillation to produce essential oils such as rose essence, which he used as aromatherapeutic treatments for heart conditions. Unlike al-Razi, Avicenna explicitly disputed the theory of the transmutation of substances commonly believed by alchemists: Four works on alchemy attributed to Avicenna were translated into Latin as: was the most influential, having influenced later medieval chemists and alchemists such as Vincent of Beauvais. However, Anawati argues (following Ruska) that the de Anima is a fake by a Spanish author. Similarly the Declaratio is believed not to be actually by Avicenna. The third work (The Book of Minerals) is agreed to be Avicenna's writing, adapted from the Kitab al-Shifa (Book of the Remedy). Avicenna classified minerals into stones, fusible substances, sulfurs and salts, building on the ideas of Aristotle and Jabir. The epistola de Re recta is somewhat less sceptical of alchemy; Anawati argues that it is by Avicenna, but written earlier in his career when he had not yet firmly decided that transmutation was impossible. Poetry Almost half of Avicenna's works are versified. His poems appear in both Arabic and Persian. As an example, Edward Granville Browne claims that the following Persian verses are incorrectly attributed to Omar Khayyám, and were originally written by Ibn Sīnā: Legacy Classical Islamic civilization Robert Wisnovsky, a scholar of Avicenna attached to the McGill University, says that "Avicenna was the central figure in the long history of the rational sciences in Islam, particularly in the fields of metaphysics, logic and medicine" but that his works didn't only have an influence in these "secular" fields of knowledge alone, as "these works, or portions of them, were read, taught, copied, commented upon, quoted, paraphrased and cited by thousands of post-Avicennian scholars—not only philosophers, logicians, physicians and specialists in the mathematical or exact sciences, but also by those who specialized in the disciplines of ʿilm al-kalām (rational theology, but understood to include natural philosophy, epistemology and philosophy of mind) and usūl al-fiqh (jurisprudence, but understood to include philosophy of law, dialectic, and philosophy of language)." Middle Ages and Renaissance As early as the 14th century when Dante Alighieri depicted him in Limbo alongside the virtuous non-Christian thinkers in his Divine Comedy such as Virgil, Averroes, Homer, Horace, Ovid, Lucan, Socrates, Plato and Saladin. Avicenna has been recognized by both East and West, as one of the great figures in intellectual history. George Sarton, the author of The History of Science, described Avicenna as "one of the greatest thinkers and medical scholars in history" and called him "the most famous scientist of Islam and one of the most famous of all races, places, and times". He was one of the Islamic world's leading writers in the field of medicine. Along with Rhazes, Abulcasis, Ibn al-Nafis and al-Ibadi, Avicenna is considered an important compiler of early Muslim medicine. He is remembered in the Western history of medicine as a major historical figure who made important contributions to medicine and the European Renaissance. His medical texts were unusual in that where controversy existed between Galen and Aristotle's views on medical matters (such as anatomy), he preferred to side with Aristotle, where necessary updating Aristotle's position to take into account post-Aristotelian advances in anatomical knowledge. Aristotle's dominant intellectual influence among medieval European scholars meant that Avicenna's linking of Galen's medical writings with Aristotle's philosophical writings in the Canon of Medicine (along with its comprehensive and logical organisation of knowledge) significantly increased Avicenna's importance in medieval Europe in comparison to other Islamic writers on medicine. His influence following translation of the Canon was such that from the early fourteenth to the mid-sixteenth centuries he was ranked with Hippocrates and Galen as one of the acknowledged authorities, ("prince of physicians"). Modern reception In present-day Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan, he is considered a national icon, and is often regarded as among the greatest Persians. A monument was erected outside
England 4–0. Well led by Allan Border, the team included the young cricketers Mark Taylor, Merv Hughes, David Boon, Ian Healy and Steve Waugh, who were all to prove long-serving and successful Ashes competitors. England, now led once again by David Gower, suffered from injuries and poor form. During the Fourth Test news broke that prominent England players had agreed to take part in a "rebel tour" of South Africa the following winter; three of them (Tim Robinson, Neil Foster and John Emburey) were playing in the match, and were subsequently dropped from the England side. Australia reached a cricketing peak in the 1990s and early 2000s, coupled with a general decline in England's fortunes. After re-establishing its credibility in 1989, Australia underlined its superiority with victories in the 1990–91, 1993, 1994–95, 1997, 1998–99, 2001 and 2002–03 series, all by convincing margins. Great Australian players in the early years included batsmen Border, Boon, Taylor and Steve Waugh. The captaincy passed from Border to Taylor in the mid-1990s and then to Steve Waugh before the 2001 series. In the latter part of the 1990s Waugh himself, along with his twin brother Mark, scored heavily for Australia and fast bowlers Glenn McGrath and Jason Gillespie made a serious impact, especially the former. The wicketkeeper-batsman position was held by Ian Healy for most of the 1990s and by Adam Gilchrist from 2001 to 2006–07. In the 2000s, batsmen Justin Langer, Damien Martyn and Matthew Hayden became noted players for Australia. But the most dominant Australian player was leg-spinner Shane Warne, whose first delivery in Ashes cricket in 1993, to dismiss Mike Gatting, became known as the Ball of the Century. Australia's record between 1989 and 2005 had a significant impact on the statistics between the two sides. Before the 1989 series began, the win-loss ratio was almost even, with 87 test wins for Australia to England's 86, 74 tests having been drawn. By the 2005 series Australia's test wins had increased to 115 whereas England's had increased to only 93 (with 82 draws). In the period between 1989 and the beginning of the 2005 series, the two sides had played 43 times; Australia winning 28 times, England 7 times, with 8 draws. Only a single England victory had come in a match in which the Ashes were still at stake, namely the First Test of the 1997 series. All others were consolation victories when the Ashes had been secured by Australia. 2005 to 2015 England were undefeated in Test matches through the 2004 calendar year. This elevated them to second in the ICC Test Championship. Hopes that the 2005 Ashes series would be closely fought proved well-founded, the series remaining undecided as the closing session of the final Test began. Experienced journalists including Richie Benaud rated the series as the most exciting in living memory. It has been compared with the great series of the distant past, such as 1894–95 and 1902. The First Test at Lord's was convincingly won by Australia, but in the remaining four matches the teams were evenly matched and England fought back to win the Second Test by 2 runs, the smallest winning margin in Ashes history, and the second-smallest in all Tests. The rain-affected Third Test ended with the last two Australian batsmen holding out for a draw; and England won the Fourth Test by three wickets after forcing Australia to follow-on for the first time in 191 Tests. A draw in the final Test gave England victory in an Ashes series for the first time in 18 years and their first Ashes victory at home since 1985. Australia regained the Ashes on its home turf in the 2006–07 series with a convincing 5–0 victory, only the second time an Ashes series had been won by that margin. Glenn McGrath, Shane Warne and Justin Langer retired from Test cricket after that series, while Damien Martyn retired during the series. The 2009 series began with a tense draw in the First Test at SWALEC Stadium in Cardiff, with England's last-wicket batsmen James Anderson and Monty Panesar surviving 69 balls. England then achieved its first Ashes win at Lord's since 1934 to go 1–0 up. After a rain-affected draw at Edgbaston, the fourth match at Headingley was convincingly won by Australia by an innings and 80 runs to level the series. Finally, England won the Fifth Test at The Oval by a margin of 197 runs to regain the Ashes. Andrew Flintoff retired from Test cricket soon afterwards. The 2010–11 series was played in Australia. The First Test at Brisbane ended in a draw, but England won the Second Test, at Adelaide, by an innings and 71 runs. Australia came back with a victory at Perth in the Third Test. In the Fourth Test at Melbourne Cricket Ground, England batting second scored 513 to defeat Australia (98 and 258) by an innings and 157 runs. This gave England an unbeatable 2–1 lead in the series and so it retained the Ashes. England went on to win the series 3–1, beating Australia by an innings and 83 runs at Sydney in the Fifth Test, including their highest innings total since 1938 (644). England's series victory was its first on Australian soil for 24 years. The 2010–11 Ashes series was the only one in which a team had won three Tests by innings margins and it was the first time England had scored 500 or more four times in a single series. Australia's build-up to the 2013 Ashes series was far from ideal. Darren Lehmann took over as coach from Mickey Arthur following a string of poor results. A batting line-up weakened by the previous year's retirements of former captain Ricky Ponting and Mike Hussey was also shorn of opener David Warner, who was suspended for the start of the series following an off-field incident. England won a closely fought First Test by 14 runs, despite 19-year-old debutant Ashton Agar making a world-record 98 for a number 11 in the first innings. England then won a very one-sided Second Test by 347 runs while the rain-affected Third Test, held at a newly refurbished Old Trafford, was drawn, ensuring that England retained the Ashes. England won the Fourth Test by 74 runs after Australia lost their last eight second-innings wickets for only 86 runs. The final Test was drawn, giving England a 3–0 series win. In the second of two Ashes series held in 2013 (the series ended in 2014), this time hosted by Australia, the home team won the series five test matches to nil. This was the third time Australia has completed a clean sweep (or "whitewash") in Ashes history, a feat never matched by England. All six Australian specialist batsmen scored more runs than any Englishman with 10 centuries among them, with only debutant Ben Stokes scoring a century for England. Mitchell Johnson took 37 English wickets at 13.97 and Ryan Harris 22 wickets at 19.31 in the 5-Test series. Only Stuart Broad and all-rounder Stokes bowled effectively for England, with their spinner Graeme Swann retiring due to a chronic elbow injury after the decisive Third Test. Australia came into the 2015 Ashes series in England as favourites to retain the Ashes. Although England won the first Test in Cardiff, Australia won comfortably in the second Test at Lords. In the next two Tests, the Australian batsmen struggled, being bowled out for 136 in the first innings at Edgbaston, with England proceeding to win by eight wickets. This was followed by Australia being bowled out for 60 as Stuart Broad took five wickets and finished the spell with 8 for 15 in the first innings at Trent Bridge, the quickest – in terms of balls faced – a team has been bowled out in the first innings of a Test match. With victory by an innings and 78 runs on the morning of the third day of the Fourth Test, England regained the Ashes. 2017 to present During the buildup, the 2017–18 Ashes series was regarded as a turning point for both sides. Australia were criticised for being too reliant on captain Steve Smith and vice-captain David Warner, while England was said to have a shoddy middle to lower order. Off the field, England all-rounder Ben Stokes was ruled out of the side indefinitely due to a police investigation. Australia won the first Test match in Brisbane by 10 wickets and the second Test at Adelaide by 120 runs in the first ever day-night Ashes test match. Australia regained The Ashes with an innings and 41 run win in the third Test at Perth; the final Ashes Test at the WACA Ground. Prior to the 2019 Ashes series, both teams were considered to have very strong bowling attacks but struggling batting orders. Australia had its top-order batsmen David Warner, Steve Smith and Cameron Bancroft available for international selection after being banned from international cricket for 9–12 months following the ball-tampering scandal in South Africa, during which time India had won its first ever Test series in Australia. However, Australia recovered to win the Test series against Sri Lanka 2–0. Despite winning the Cricket World Cup in July 2019 for the first time, England had also been criticised for its fragile top-order in Tests. The retirement of opener Alastair Cook in August 2018 ensured potential top-order batsmen Rory Burns, Joe Denly and Jason Roy were able to secure a place in the side. Despite losing a Test series 2–1 in their tour of the West Indies, England then improved to win the one-off Test against Ireland, by 143 runs. The 2019 series was eventually drawn 2–2, with Australia retaining the Ashes. The 2021 Ashes series was played from December 2021 through January 2022, and featured the first Ashes test match to be played in Tasmania, at Hobart's Bellerive Oval. Australia retained the Ashes in the 2021-22 Ashes series, after Scott Boland achieved the third best bowling figures in the history of Australian cricket at 6-7 (4 overs). Summary of results and statistics In the 138 years since 1883, Australia have held the Ashes for approximately 82.5 years, and England for 55.5 years: Test results, up to and including the 2021-22 Ashes series in Australia:Australia and England have played an additional 16 Tests but the Ashes were not at stake in those games. Including these Tests, the win–loss record stands at 144 Australian wins, 108 English wins, and 94 draws (up to and including the 5th Test of the 2019 series). See Cricinfo statistics. Series results, up to and including the 2021-22 Ashes series: A team must win a series to gain the right to hold the Ashes. A drawn series results in the previous holders retaining the Ashes. Ashes series have generally been played over five Test matches, although there have been four-match series (1938; 1975) and six-match series (1970–71; 1974–75; 1978–79; 1981; 1985; 1989; 1993 and 1997). Australians have made 264 centuries in Ashes Tests, of which 23 have been scores over 200, while Englishmen have scored 212 centuries, of which 10 have been over 200. Australians have taken 10 wickets in a match on 41 occasions, Englishmen 38 times. Match venues The series alternates between England (and Wales) and Australia, and each match of a series is held at a different ground. In Australia, the grounds currently used are The Gabba in Brisbane (first staged an England–Australia Test in the 1932–33 season), Adelaide Oval (1884–85), the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG) (1876–77), and the Sydney Cricket Ground (SCG) (1881–82). A single Test was held at the Brisbane Exhibition Ground in 1928–29. Traditionally, Melbourne hosts the Boxing Day Test and Sydney hosts the New Year's Day Test. Additionally the WACA in Perth (1970–71) hosted its final Ashes Test in 2017–18 and was due to be replaced by Perth Stadium for the 2021–22 series. However, Western Australian border restrictions and quarantine requirements during the COVID-19 pandemic led to a change in venue for the final Ashes Test to Bellerive Oval in Hobart. This was the first Ashes Test match to be held in Tasmania. Cricket Australia proposed that the 2010–11 series consist of six Tests, with the additional game to be played at Bellerive Oval in Hobart. The England and Wales Cricket Board declined and the series was played over five Tests. In England and Wales, the grounds currently used are: Old Trafford in Manchester (1884), The Oval in Kennington, South London (1884); Lord's in St John's Wood, North London (1884); Headingley in Leeds (1899) and Edgbaston in Birmingham (1902). Additionally Sophia Gardens in Cardiff, Wales (2009); the Riverside Ground in Chester-le-Street, County Durham (2013) and Trent Bridge at West Bridgford (1899), have been used and one Test was also held at Bramall Lane in Sheffield in 1902. Traditionally the final Test of the series is played at the Oval. Sophia Gardens and the Riverside were excluded as Test grounds between the years of 2020 and 2024 and therefore will not host an Ashes Test until at least 2027. Trent Bridge is also not due to host an Ashes Test until 2027. *Including abandoned tests †County cricket clubs who play at the grounds ‡Former grounds which no longer host Test Matches Cultural references The popularity and reputation of the cricket series has led to other sports and games using the name "Ashes" for contests between England and Australia. The best-known and longest-running of these events is the rugby league rivalry between Great Britain and Australia (see rugby league "Ashes"). Use of the name "Ashes" was suggested by the Australian team when rugby league matches between the two countries commenced in 1908. Other examples included the television game shows Gladiators and Sale of the Century, both of which broadcast special editions containing contestants from the Australian and English versions of the shows competing against each other. The term became further genericised in Australia in the first half of the twentieth century, and was used to describe many sports rivalries or competitions outside the context of Australia vs England. The Australian rules football interstate carnival, and the small silver casket which served as its trophy, were symbolically known as "the Ashes" of Australian football, and was spoken of as such until at least the 1940s. The soccer rivalry between Australia and New Zealand was described as "the soccer ashes of Australasia" until as late as the 1950s; ashes from cigars smoked by the two countries' captains were put into a casket in 1923 to make the trophy literal. The interstate rugby league rivalry between Queensland and New South Wales was known for a time as Australia's rugby league ashes, and bowls competitions between the two states also regularly used the term. Even some local rivalries, such as southern Western Australia's annual Great Southern Football Carnival, were locally described as "the ashes". This genericised usage is no longer common, and "the Ashes" would today be assumed only to apply to a contest between Australia and England. The Ashes featured in the film The Final Test, released in 1953, based on a television play by Terence Rattigan. It stars Jack Warner as an England cricketer playing the last Test of his career, which is the last of an Ashes series; the film includes cameo appearances of English captain Len Hutton and other players who were part of England's 1953 triumph. Douglas Adams's 1982 science fiction comedy novel Life, the Universe and Everything – the third part of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series – features the urn containing the Ashes as a significant element of its plot. The urn is stolen by alien robots, as the burnt stump inside is part of a key needed to unlock the "Wikkit Gate" and release an imprisoned world called Krikkit.Bodyline, a fictionalised television miniseries based on the "Bodyline" Ashes series of 1932–33, was screened in Australia in 1984. The cast included Gary Sweet as Donald Bradman and Hugo Weaving as England captain Douglas Jardine. In the 1938 film The Lady Vanishes, Charters and Caldicott, played by Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne are two cricket fans who are desperate to get home from Europe in order to see the last day's play in the 3rd Test at Manchester. It is not until they see a newsboy's poster near the end of the film that they discover that the match had been abandoned, due to floods. See also History of Test cricket from 1877 to 1883 History of Test cricket from 1884 to 1889 History of Test cricket from 1890 to 1900 Notes References Further reading Willis, R. Cricket's Biggest Mystery: The Ashes, The Lutterworth Press (1987), . Other Wisden's Cricketers Almanack'' (various editions) External links Ashes to Ashes An audio history of the first hundred years of the Ashes, narrated by
in history as The Invincibles. Playing 34 matches on tour—three of which were not first-class—and including the five Tests, they remained unbeaten, winning 27 and drawing 7. Bradman's men were greeted by packed crowds across the country, and records for Test attendances in England were set in the Second and Fourth Tests at Lord's and Headingley respectively. Before a record attendance of spectators at Headingley, Australia set a world record by chasing down 404 on the last day for a seven-wicket victory. The 1948 series ended with one of the most poignant moments in cricket history, as Bradman played his final innings for Australia in the Fifth Test at The Oval, needing to score only four runs to end with a career batting average of exactly 100. However, Bradman made a second-ball duck, bowled by an Eric Hollies googly that sent him into retirement with a career average of 99.94. Bradman was succeeded as Australian captain by Lindsay Hassett, who led the team to a 4–1 series victory in 1950–51. The series was not as one-sided as the number of wins suggest, with several tight matches. The tide finally turned in 1953 when England won the final Test at The Oval to take the series 1–0, having narrowly avoided defeat in the preceding Test at Headingley. This was the beginning of one of the greatest periods in English cricket history with players such as captain Len Hutton, batsmen Denis Compton, Peter May, Tom Graveney, Colin Cowdrey, bowlers Fred Trueman, Brian Statham, Alec Bedser, Jim Laker, Tony Lock, wicket-keeper Godfrey Evans and all-rounder Trevor Bailey. 1954 to 1971 In 1954–55, Australia's batsmen had no answer to the pace of Frank Tyson and Statham. After winning the First Test by an innings after being controversially sent in by Hutton, Australia lost its way and England took a hat-trick of victories to win the series 3–1. A dramatic series in 1956 saw a record that will probably never be beaten: off-spinner Jim Laker's monumental effort at Old Trafford when he bowled 68 of 191 overs to take 19 out of 20 possible Australian wickets in the Fourth Test. It was Australia's second consecutive innings defeat in a wet summer, and the hosts were in strong positions in the two drawn Tests, in which half the playing time was washed out. Bradman rated the team that won the series 2–1 as England's best ever. England's dominance was not to last. Australia won 4–0 in 1958–59, having found a high-quality spinner of their own in new skipper Richie Benaud, who took 31 wickets in the five-Test series, and paceman Alan Davidson, who took 24 wickets at 19.00. The series was overshadowed by the furore over various Australian bowlers, most notably Ian Meckiff, whom the English management and media accused of illegally throwing Australia to victory. In 1961, Australia won a hard-fought series 2–1, their first Ashes series win in England for 13 years. After narrowly winning the Second Test at Lord's, dubbed "The Battle of the Ridge" because of a protrusion on the pitch that caused erratic bounce, Australia mounted a comeback on the final day of the Fourth Test at Old Trafford and sealed the series with Richie Benaud taking 6-70 during the English runchase. The tempo of the play changed over the next four series in the 1960s, held in 1962–63, 1964, 1965–66 and 1968. The powerful array of bowlers that both countries boasted in the preceding decade moved into retirement, and their replacements were of lesser quality, making it more difficult to force a result. England failed to win any series during the 1960s, a period dominated by draws as teams found it more prudent to save face than risk losing. Of the 20 Tests played during the four series, Australia won four and England three. As they held the Ashes, Australia's captains Bob Simpson and Bill Lawry were happy to adopt safety-first tactics and their strategy of sedate batting saw many draws. During this period, spectator attendances dropped and media condemnation increased, but Simpson and Lawry flatly disregarded the public dissatisfaction. It was in the 1960s that the bipolar dominance of England and Australia in world cricket was seriously challenged for the first time. West Indies defeated England twice in the mid-1960s and South Africa, in two series before they were banned for apartheid, completely outplayed Australia 3–1 and 4–0. Australia had lost 2–1 during a tour of the West Indies in 1964–65, the first time it had lost a series to any team other than England. In 1970–71, Ray Illingworth led England to a 2–0 win in Australia, mainly due to John Snow's fast bowling, and the prolific batting of Geoffrey Boycott and John Edrich. It was not until the last session of what was the 7th Test (one match having been abandoned without a ball bowled) that England's success was secured. Lawry was sacked after the Sixth Test after the selectors finally lost patience with Australia's lack of success and dour strategy. Lawry was not informed of the decision privately and heard his fate over the radio. 1972 to 1987 The 1972 series finished 2–2, with England under Illingworth retaining the Ashes. In the 1974–75 series, with the England team breaking up and their best batsman Geoff Boycott refusing to play, Australian pace bowlers Jeff Thomson and Dennis Lillee wreaked havoc. A 4–1 result was a fair reflection as England were left shell shocked. England then lost the 1975 series 0–1, but at least restored some pride under new captain Tony Greig. Australia won the 1977 Centenary Test which was not an Ashes contest, but then a storm broke as Kerry Packer announced his intention to form World Series Cricket. WSC affected all Test-playing nations but it weakened Australia especially as the bulk of its players had signed up with Packer; the Australian Cricket Board (ACB) would not select WSC-contracted players and an almost completely new Test team had to be formed. WSC came after an era during which the duopoly of Australian and English dominance dissipated; the Ashes had long been seen as a cricket world championship but the rise of the West Indies in the late 1970s challenged that view. The West Indies would go on to record resounding Test series wins over Australia and England and dominated world cricket until the 1990s. With Greig having joined WSC, England appointed Mike Brearley as its captain and he enjoyed great success against Australia. Largely assisted by the return of Boycott, Brearley's men won the 1977 series 3–0 and then completed an overwhelming 5–1 series win against an Australian side missing its WSC players in 1978–79. Allan Border made his Test debut for Australia in 1978–79. Brearley retired from Test cricket in 1980 and was succeeded by Ian Botham, who started the 1981 series as England captain, by which time the WSC split had ended. After Australia took a 1–0 lead in the first two Tests, Botham was forced to resign or was sacked (depending on the source). Brearley surprisingly agreed to be reappointed before the Third Test at Headingley. This was a remarkable match in which Australia looked certain to take a 2–0 series lead after it had forced England to follow-on 227 runs behind. England, despite being 135 for 7, produced a second innings total of 356, Botham scoring 149*. Chasing just 130, Australia were sensationally dismissed for 111, Bob Willis taking 8–43. It was the first time since 1894–95 that a team following on had won a Test match. Under Brearley's leadership, England went on to win the next two matches before a drawn final match at The Oval. In 1982–83 Australia had Greg Chappell back from WSC as captain, while the England team was weakened by the enforced omission of their South African tour rebels, particularly Graham Gooch and John Emburey. Australia went 2–0 up after three Tests, but England won the Fourth Test by 3 runs (after a 70-run last wicket stand) to set up the final decider, which was drawn. In 1985, David Gower's England team was strengthened by the return of Gooch and Emburey as well as the emergence at international level of Tim Robinson and Mike Gatting. Australia, now captained by Allan Border, had itself been weakened by a rebel South African tour, the loss of Terry Alderman being a particular factor. England won 3–1. Despite suffering heavy defeats against the West Indies during the 1980s, England continued to do well in the Ashes. Mike Gatting was the captain in 1986–87 but his team started badly and attracted some criticism. Then Chris Broad scored three hundreds in successive Tests and bowling successes from Graham Dilley and Gladstone Small meant England won the series 2–1. 1989 to 2003 The Australian team of 1989 was comparable to the great Australian teams of the past, and resoundingly defeated England 4–0. Well led by Allan Border, the team included the young cricketers Mark Taylor, Merv Hughes, David Boon, Ian Healy and Steve Waugh, who were all to prove long-serving and successful Ashes competitors. England, now led once again by David Gower, suffered from injuries and poor form. During the Fourth Test news broke that prominent England players had agreed to take part in a "rebel tour" of South Africa the following winter; three of them (Tim Robinson, Neil Foster and John Emburey) were playing in the match, and were subsequently dropped from the England side. Australia reached a cricketing peak in the 1990s and early 2000s, coupled with a general decline in England's fortunes. After re-establishing its credibility in 1989, Australia underlined its superiority with victories in the 1990–91, 1993, 1994–95, 1997, 1998–99, 2001 and 2002–03 series, all by convincing margins. Great Australian players in the early years included batsmen Border, Boon, Taylor and Steve Waugh. The captaincy passed from Border to Taylor in the mid-1990s and then to Steve Waugh before the 2001 series. In the latter part of the 1990s Waugh himself, along with his twin brother Mark, scored heavily for Australia and fast bowlers Glenn McGrath and Jason Gillespie made a serious impact, especially the former. The wicketkeeper-batsman position was held by Ian Healy for most of the 1990s and by Adam Gilchrist from 2001 to 2006–07. In the 2000s, batsmen Justin Langer, Damien Martyn and Matthew Hayden became noted players for Australia. But the most dominant Australian player was leg-spinner Shane Warne, whose first delivery in Ashes cricket in 1993, to dismiss Mike Gatting, became known as the Ball of the Century. Australia's record between 1989 and 2005 had a significant impact on the statistics between the two sides. Before the 1989 series began, the win-loss ratio was almost even, with 87 test wins for Australia to England's 86, 74 tests having been drawn. By the 2005 series Australia's test wins had increased to 115 whereas England's had increased to only 93 (with 82 draws). In the period between 1989 and the beginning of the 2005 series, the two sides had played 43 times; Australia winning 28 times, England 7 times, with 8 draws. Only a single England victory had come in a match in which the Ashes were still at stake, namely the First Test of the 1997 series. All others were consolation victories when the Ashes had been secured by Australia. 2005 to 2015 England were undefeated in Test matches through the 2004 calendar year. This elevated them to second in the ICC Test Championship. Hopes that the 2005 Ashes series would be closely fought proved well-founded, the series remaining undecided as the closing session of the final Test began. Experienced journalists including Richie Benaud rated the series as the most exciting in living memory. It has been compared with the great series of the distant past, such as 1894–95 and 1902. The First Test at Lord's was convincingly won by Australia, but in the remaining four matches the teams were evenly matched and England fought back to win the Second Test by 2 runs, the smallest winning margin in Ashes history, and the second-smallest in all Tests. The rain-affected Third Test ended with the last two Australian batsmen holding out for a draw; and England won the Fourth Test by three wickets after forcing Australia to follow-on for the first time in 191 Tests. A draw in the final Test gave England victory in an Ashes series for the first time in 18 years and their first Ashes victory at home since 1985. Australia regained the Ashes on its home turf in the 2006–07 series with a convincing 5–0 victory, only the second time an Ashes series had been won by that margin. Glenn McGrath, Shane Warne and Justin Langer retired from Test cricket after that series, while Damien Martyn retired during the series. The 2009 series began with a tense draw in the First Test at SWALEC Stadium in Cardiff, with England's last-wicket batsmen James Anderson and Monty Panesar surviving 69 balls. England then achieved its first Ashes win at Lord's since 1934 to go 1–0 up. After a rain-affected draw at Edgbaston, the fourth match at Headingley was convincingly won by Australia by an innings and 80 runs to level the series. Finally, England won the Fifth Test at The Oval by a margin of 197 runs to regain the Ashes. Andrew Flintoff retired from Test cricket soon afterwards. The 2010–11 series was played in Australia. The First Test at Brisbane ended in a draw, but England won the Second Test, at Adelaide, by an innings and 71 runs. Australia came back with a victory at Perth in the Third Test. In the Fourth Test at Melbourne Cricket Ground, England batting second scored 513 to defeat Australia (98 and 258) by an innings and 157 runs. This gave England an unbeatable 2–1 lead in the series and so it retained the Ashes. England went on to win the series 3–1, beating Australia by an innings and 83 runs at Sydney in the Fifth Test, including their highest innings total since 1938 (644). England's series victory was its first on Australian soil for 24 years. The 2010–11 Ashes series was the only one in which a team had won three Tests by innings margins and it was the first time England had scored 500 or more four times in a single series. Australia's build-up to the 2013 Ashes series was far from ideal. Darren Lehmann took over as coach from Mickey Arthur following a string of poor results. A batting line-up weakened by the previous year's retirements of former captain Ricky Ponting and Mike Hussey was also shorn of opener David Warner, who was suspended for the start of the series following an off-field incident. England won a closely fought First Test by 14 runs, despite 19-year-old debutant Ashton Agar making a world-record 98 for a number 11 in the first innings. England then won a very one-sided Second Test by 347 runs while the rain-affected Third Test, held at a newly refurbished Old Trafford, was drawn, ensuring that England retained the Ashes. England won the Fourth Test by 74 runs after Australia lost their last eight second-innings wickets for only 86 runs. The final Test was drawn, giving England a 3–0 series win. In the second of two Ashes series held in 2013 (the series ended in 2014), this time hosted by Australia, the home team won the series five test matches to nil. This was the third time Australia has completed a clean sweep (or "whitewash") in Ashes history, a feat never matched by England. All six Australian specialist batsmen scored more runs than any Englishman with 10 centuries among them, with only debutant Ben Stokes scoring a century for England. Mitchell Johnson took 37 English wickets at 13.97 and Ryan Harris 22 wickets at 19.31 in the 5-Test series. Only Stuart Broad and all-rounder Stokes bowled effectively for England, with their spinner Graeme Swann retiring due to a chronic elbow injury after the decisive Third Test. Australia came into the 2015 Ashes series in England as favourites to retain the Ashes. Although England won the first Test in Cardiff, Australia won comfortably in the second Test at Lords. In the next two Tests, the Australian batsmen struggled, being bowled out for 136 in the first innings at Edgbaston, with England proceeding to win by eight wickets. This was followed by Australia being bowled out for 60 as Stuart Broad took five wickets and finished the spell with 8 for 15 in the first innings at Trent Bridge, the quickest – in terms of balls faced – a team has been bowled out in the first innings of a Test match. With victory by an innings and 78 runs on the morning of the third day of the
methods are primarily analytical in nature, the main approach to the teaching of literature in the west since the mid-twentieth century, literary formal analysis or close reading, is. This method, rooted in the academic movement labelled The New Criticism, approaches texts – chiefly short poems such as sonnets, which by virtue of their small size and significant complexity lend themselves well to this type of analysis – as units of discourse that can be understood in themselves, without reference to biographical or historical frameworks. This method of analysis breaks up the text linguistically in a study of prosody (the formal analysis of meter) and phonic effects such as alliteration and rhyme, and cognitively in examination of the interplay of syntactic structures, figurative language, and other elements of the poem that work to produce its larger effects. Mathematics Modern mathematical analysis is the study of infinite processes. It is the branch of mathematics that includes calculus. It can be applied in the study of classical concepts of mathematics, such as real numbers, complex variables, trigonometric functions, and algorithms, or of non-classical concepts like constructivism, harmonics, infinity, and vectors. Florian Cajori explains in A History of Mathematics (1893) the difference between modern and ancient mathematical analysis, as distinct from logical analysis, as follows: The terms synthesis and analysis are used in mathematics in a more special sense than in logic. In ancient mathematics they had a different meaning from what they now have. The oldest definition of mathematical analysis as opposed to synthesis is that given in [appended to] Euclid, XIII. 5, which in all probability was framed by Eudoxus: "Analysis is the obtaining of the thing sought by assuming it and so reasoning up to an admitted truth; synthesis is the obtaining of the thing sought by reasoning up to the inference and proof of it." The analytic method is not conclusive, unless all operations involved in it are known to be reversible. To remove all doubt, the Greeks, as a rule, added to the analytic process a synthetic one, consisting of a reversion of all operations occurring in the analysis. Thus the aim of analysis was to aid in the discovery of synthetic proofs or solutions. James Gow uses a similar argument as Cajori, with the following clarification, in his A Short History of Greek Mathematics (1884): The synthetic proof proceeds by shewing that the proposed new truth involves certain admitted truths. An analytic proof begins by an assumption, upon which a synthetic reasoning is founded. The Greeks distinguished theoretic from problematic analysis. A theoretic analysis is of the following kind. To prove that A is B, assume first that A is B. If so, then, since B is C and C is D and D is E, therefore A is E. If this be known a falsity, A is not B. But if this be a known truth and all the intermediate propositions be convertible, then the reverse process, A is E, E is D, D is C, C is B, therefore A is B, constitutes a synthetic proof of the original theorem. Problematic analysis is applied in all cases where it is proposed to construct a figure which is assumed to satisfy a given condition. The problem is then converted into some theorem which is involved in the condition and which is proved synthetically, and the steps of this synthetic proof taken backwards are a synthetic solution of the problem. Music Musical analysis – a process attempting to answer the question "How does this music work?" Musical Analysis is a study of how the composers use the notes together to compose music. Those studying music will find differences with each composer's musical analysis, which differs depending on the culture and history of music studied. An analysis of music is meant to simplify the music for you. Schenkerian analysis Schenkerian analysis is a collection of music analysis that focuses on the production of the graphic representation. This includes both analytical procedure as well as the notational style. Simply put, it analyzes tonal music which includes all chords and tones within a composition. Philosophy Philosophical analysis – a general term for the techniques used by philosophers Philosophical analysis refers to the clarification and composition of words put together and the entailed meaning behind them. Philosophical analysis dives deeper into the meaning of words and seeks to clarify that meaning by contrasting the various definitions. It is the study of reality, justification of claims, and the analysis of various concepts. Branches of philosophy include logic, justification, metaphysics, values and ethics. If questions can be answered empirically,
processes and examine chemical reactions between elements of matter. For an example of its use, analysis of the concentration of elements is important in managing a nuclear reactor, so nuclear scientists will analyze neutron activation to develop discrete measurements within vast samples. A matrix can have a considerable effect on the way a chemical analysis is conducted and the quality of its results. Analysis can be done manually or with a device. Types of Analysis: A) Qualitative Analysis: It is concerned with which components are in a given sample or compound. Example: Precipitation reaction B) Quantitative Analysis: It is to determine the quantity of individual component present in a given sample or compound. Example: To find concentration by uv-spectrophotometer. Isotopes Chemists can use isotope analysis to assist analysts with issues in anthropology, archeology, food chemistry, forensics, geology, and a host of other questions of physical science. Analysts can discern the origins of natural and man-made isotopes in the study of environmental radioactivity. Business Financial statement analysis – the analysis of the accounts and the economic prospects of a firm Fundamental analysis – a stock valuation method that uses financial analysis Gap analysis – involves the comparison of actual performance with potential or desired performance of an organization Business analysis – involves identifying the needs and determining the solutions to business problems Price analysis – involves the breakdown of a price to a unit figure Market analysis – consists of suppliers and customers, and price is determined by the interaction of supply and demand Technical analysis – the study of price action in securities markets in order to forecast future prices Opportunity analysis – consists of customers trends within the industry, customer demand and experience determine purchasing behavior Computer science Requirements analysis – encompasses those tasks that go into determining the needs or conditions to meet for a new or altered product, taking account of the possibly conflicting requirements of the various stakeholders, such as beneficiaries or users. Competitive analysis (online algorithm) – shows how online algorithms perform and demonstrates the power of randomization in algorithms Lexical analysis – the process of processing an input sequence of characters and producing as output a sequence of symbols Object-oriented analysis and design – à la Booch Program analysis (computer science) – the process of automatically analysing the behavior of computer programs Semantic analysis (computer science) – a pass by a compiler that adds semantical information to the parse tree and performs certain checks Static code analysis – the analysis of computer software that is performed without actually executing programs built from that Structured systems analysis and design methodology – à la Yourdon Syntax analysis – a process in compilers that recognizes the structure of programming languages, also known as parsing Worst-case execution time – determines the longest time that a piece of software can take to run Economics Agroecosystem analysis Input–output model if applied to a region, is called Regional Impact Multiplier System Engineering Analysts in the field of engineering look at requirements, structures, mechanisms, systems and dimensions. Electrical engineers analyse systems in electronics. Life cycles and system failures are broken down and studied by engineers. It is also looking at different factors incorporated within the design. Intelligence The field of intelligence employs analysts to break down and understand a wide array of questions. Intelligence agencies may use heuristics, inductive and deductive reasoning, social network analysis, dynamic network analysis, link analysis, and brainstorming to sort through problems they face. Military intelligence may explore issues through the use of game theory, Red Teaming, and wargaming. Signals intelligence applies cryptanalysis and frequency analysis to break codes and ciphers. Business intelligence applies theories of competitive intelligence analysis and competitor analysis to resolve questions in the marketplace. Law enforcement intelligence applies a number of theories in crime analysis. Linguistics Linguistics explores individual languages and language in general. It breaks language down and analyses its component parts: theory, sounds and their meaning, utterance usage, word origins, the history of words, the meaning of words and word combinations, sentence construction, basic construction beyond the sentence level, stylistics, and conversation. It examines the above using statistics and modeling, and semantics. It analyses language in context of anthropology, biology, evolution, geography, history, neurology, psychology, and sociology. It also takes the applied approach, looking at individual language development and clinical issues. Literature Literary criticism is the analysis of literature. The focus can be as diverse as the analysis of Homer or Freud. While not all literary-critical methods are primarily analytical in nature, the main approach to the teaching of literature in the west since the mid-twentieth century, literary formal analysis or close reading, is. This method, rooted in the academic movement labelled The New Criticism, approaches texts – chiefly short poems such as sonnets, which by virtue of their small size and significant complexity lend themselves well to this type of analysis – as units of discourse that can be understood in themselves, without reference to biographical or historical frameworks. This method of analysis breaks up the text linguistically in a study of prosody (the formal analysis of meter) and phonic effects such as alliteration and rhyme, and cognitively in examination of the interplay of syntactic structures, figurative language, and other elements of the poem that work to produce its larger effects. Mathematics Modern mathematical analysis is the study of infinite processes. It is the branch of mathematics that includes calculus. It can be applied in the study of classical concepts of mathematics, such as real numbers, complex variables, trigonometric functions, and algorithms, or
am. His men fought well in the morning, putting up a stout resistance, but as overwhelming Confederate forces massed against them, their line eventually broke and they retreated back through the town of Gettysburg to the relative safety of Cemetery Hill south of town. It was Doubleday's finest performance during the war, five hours leading 9,500 men against ten Confederate brigades that numbered more than 16,000. Seven of those brigades sustained casualties that ranged from 35 to 50 percent, indicating the ferocity of the Union defense. On Cemetery Hill, however, the I Corps could muster only a third of its men as effective for duty, and the corps was essentially destroyed as a combat force for the rest of the battle; it would be decommissioned in March 1864, its surviving units consolidated into other corps. On July 2, 1863, Army of the Potomac commander Maj. Gen. George G. Meade replaced Doubleday with Major General John Newton, a more junior officer from another corps. The ostensible reason was a false report by XI Corps commander Major General Oliver O. Howard that Doubleday's corps broke first, causing the entire Union line to collapse, but Meade also had a long history of disdain for Doubleday's combat effectiveness, dating back to South Mountain. Doubleday was humiliated by this snub and held a lasting grudge against Meade, but he returned to division command and fought well for the remainder of the battle. He was wounded in the neck on the second day of Gettysburg and received a brevet promotion to colonel in the regular army for his service. He formally requested reinstatement as I Corps commander, but Meade refused, and Doubleday left Gettysburg on July 7 for Washington. Doubleday's staff nicknamed him "Forty-Eight Hours" as a compliment to recognize his tendency to avoid reckless or impulsive actions and his thoughtfulness and deliberateness in considering circumstances and possible responses. In recent years, biographers have turned the nickname into an insult, incorrectly claiming "Forty-Eight Hours" was coined to highlight Doubleday's supposed incompetence and slowness to act. Washington Doubleday assumed administrative duties in the defenses of Washington, D.C., where he was in charge of courts martial, which gave him legal experience that he used after the war. His only return to combat was directing a portion of the defenses against the attack by Confederate Lieutenant General Jubal A. Early in the Valley Campaigns of 1864. Also while in Washington, Doubleday testified against George Meade at the United States Congress Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War, criticizing him harshly over his conduct of the Battle of Gettysburg. While in Washington, Doubleday remained a loyal Republican and staunch supporter of President Abraham Lincoln. Doubleday rode with Lincoln on the train to Gettysburg for the Gettysburg Address and Col. and Mrs. Doubleday attended events with Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln in Washington. Postbellum career After the Civil War, Doubleday mustered out of the volunteer service on August 24, 1865, reverted to the rank of lieutenant colonel, and became the colonel of the 35th U.S. Infantry in September 1867. He was stationed in San Francisco from 1869 through 1871 and he took out a patent for the cable car railway that still runs there, receiving a charter for its operation, but signing away his rights when he was reassigned. In 1871, he commanded the 24th U.S. Infantry, an all African-American regiment with headquarters at Fort McKavett, Texas. He retired in 1873. In the 1870s, he was listed in the New York business directory as lawyer. Doubleday spent much of his time writing. He published two important works on the Civil War: Reminiscences of Forts Sumter and Moultrie (1876), and Chancellorsville and Gettysburg (1882), the latter being a volume of the series Campaigns of the Civil War. Theosophy In the summer of 1878, Doubleday lived in Mendham Township, New Jersey, and became a prominent member of the Theosophical Society. When two of the founders of that society, Helena Blavatsky and Henry Steel Olcott, moved to India at the end of that year, he was constituted as the president of the American body. Death Doubleday died of heart disease in Mendham Township on January 26, 1893. Doubleday's body was laid in state in New York's City Hall and then was taken to Washington by train from Mendham, and was buried in Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia. He was survived by his wife. Baseball Although Doubleday achieved minor fame as a competent combat general with experience in many important Civil War battles, he is more widely known as the supposed inventor of the game of baseball, in Elihu Phinney's cow pasture in Cooperstown, New York, in 1839. The Mills Commission, chaired by Abraham G. Mills, the fourth president of the National League, was appointed in 1905 to determine the origin of baseball. The committee's final report, on December 30, 1907, stated, in part, that "the first scheme for playing baseball, according to the best evidence obtainable to date, was devised by Abner Doubleday at Cooperstown, New York, in 1839." It concluded by saying, "in the years to come, in the view of the hundreds of thousands of people who are devoted to baseball, and the millions who will be, Abner Doubleday's fame will rest evenly, if not quite as much, upon the fact that he was its inventor ... as upon his brilliant and distinguished career as an officer in the Federal Army." However, there is considerable evidence to dispute this claim. Baseball historian George B. Kirsch has described the results of the Mills Commission as a "myth". He wrote, "Robert Henderson, Harold Seymour, and other scholars have since debunked the Doubleday-Cooperstown myth, which nonetheless remains powerful in the American imagination because of the efforts of Major League Baseball and the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown." At his death, Doubleday left many letters and papers, none of which describe baseball or give any suggestion that he considered himself a prominent person in the evolution of the game, and his New York Times obituary did not mention the game at all. Chairman Mills himself, who had been a Civil War colleague of Doubleday and a member of the honor guard for Doubleday's body as it lay in state in New York City, never recalled hearing Doubleday describe his role as the inventor. Doubleday was a cadet at West Point in the year of the alleged invention and his family had moved away from Cooperstown the prior year. Furthermore, the primary testimony to the commission that connected baseball to Doubleday was that of Abner Graves, whose credibility is questionable; a few years later, he shot his wife to death and was committed to an institution for the criminally insane for the rest of his life. Part of the confusion could stem from there being another man by the same name in Cooperstown in 1839. Despite the lack of solid evidence linking Doubleday to the origins of baseball, Cooperstown, New York, became the new home of what is today the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in 1937. There may have been some relationship to baseball as a national sport and Abner Doubleday. While the modern rules of baseball were formulated in New York during the 1840s, it was the scattering of New Yorkers exposed to these rules throughout the country, that spread not only baseball, but also the "New York Rules", thereby harmonizing the rules, and being a catalyst for its growth. Doubleday was a high-ranking officer, whose duties included seeing to provisions for the US Army fighting throughout the south and border states. For the morale of the men, he is said to have provisioned balls and
his lifetime). This claim has been thoroughly debunked by baseball historians. Early years Doubleday, the son of Ulysses F. Doubleday and Hester Donnelly, was born in Ballston Spa, New York, in a small house on the corner of Washington and Fenwick streets. As a child, Abner was very short. The family all slept in the attic loft of the one-room house. His paternal grandfather, also named Abner, had fought in the American Revolutionary War. His maternal grandfather Thomas Donnelly had joined the army at 14 and was a mounted messenger for George Washington. His great grandfather Peter Donnelly was a Minuteman. His father, Ulysses F., fought in the War of 1812, published newspapers and books, and represented Auburn, New York for four years in the United States Congress. Abner spent his childhood in Auburn and later was sent to Cooperstown to live with his uncle and attend a private preparatory high school. He practiced as a surveyor and civil engineer for two years before entering the United States Military Academy in 1838. He graduated in 1842, 24th in a class of 56 cadets, and was commissioned a brevet second lieutenant in the 3rd U.S. Artillery. In 1852, he married Mary Hewitt of Baltimore, the daughter of a local lawyer. Early commands and Fort Sumter Doubleday initially served in coastal garrisons and then in the Mexican–American War from 1846 to 1848 and the Seminole Wars from 1856 to 1858. In 1858, he was transferred to Fort Moultrie in Charleston Harbor serving under Colonel John L. Gardner. By the start of the Civil War, he was a captain and second in command in the garrison at Fort Sumter, under Major Robert Anderson. He aimed the cannon that fired the first return shot in answer to the Confederate bombardment on April 12, 1861. He subsequently referred to himself as the "hero of Sumter" for this role. Brigade and division command in Virginia Doubleday was promoted to major on May 14, 1861, and commanded the Artillery Department in the Shenandoah Valley from June to August, and then the artillery for Major General Nathaniel Banks's division of the Army of the Potomac. He was appointed brigadier general of volunteers on February 3, 1862, and was assigned to duty in northern Virginia while the Army of the Potomac conducted the Peninsula Campaign. His first combat assignment was to lead the 2nd Brigade, 1st Division, III Corps of the Army of Virginia during the Northern Virginia Campaign. In the actions at Brawner's farm, just before the Second Battle of Bull Run, he took the initiative to send two of his regiments to reinforce Brigadier General John Gibbon's brigade against a larger Confederate force, fighting it to a standstill. (Personal initiative was required since his division commander, Brig. Gen. Rufus King, was incapacitated by an epileptic seizure at the time. He was replaced by Brigadier General John P. Hatch.) His men were routed when they encountered Major General James Longstreet's corps, but by the following day, August 30, he took command of the division when Hatch was wounded, and he led his men to cover the retreat of the Union Army. Doubleday again led the division, now assigned to the I Corps of the Army of the Potomac, after South Mountain, where Hatch was wounded again. At Antietam, he led his men into the deadly fighting in the Cornfield and the West Woods, and one colonel described him as a "gallant officer ... remarkably cool and at the very front of battle." He was wounded when an artillery shell exploded near his horse, throwing him to the ground in a violent fall. He received a brevet promotion to lieutenant colonel in the regular army for his actions at Antietam and was promoted in March 1863 to major general of volunteers, to rank from November 29, 1862. At Fredericksburg in December 1862, his division mostly sat idle. During the winter, the I Corps was reorganized and Doubleday assumed command of the 3rd Division. At Chancellorsville in May 1863, the division was kept in reserve. Gettysburg At the start of the Battle of Gettysburg, July 1, 1863, Doubleday's division was the second infantry division on the field to reinforce the cavalry division of Brigadier General John Buford. When his corps commander, Major General John F. Reynolds, was killed very early in the fighting, Doubleday found himself in command of the corps at 10:50 am. His men fought well in the morning, putting up a stout resistance, but as overwhelming Confederate forces massed against them, their line eventually broke and they retreated back through the town of Gettysburg to the relative safety of Cemetery Hill south of town. It was Doubleday's finest performance during the war, five hours leading 9,500 men against ten Confederate brigades that numbered more than 16,000. Seven of those brigades sustained casualties that ranged from 35 to 50 percent, indicating the ferocity of the Union defense. On Cemetery Hill, however, the I Corps could muster only a third of its men as effective for duty, and the corps was essentially destroyed as a combat force for the rest of the battle; it would be decommissioned in March 1864, its surviving units consolidated into other corps. On July 2, 1863, Army of the Potomac commander Maj. Gen. George G. Meade replaced Doubleday with Major General John Newton, a more junior officer from another corps. The ostensible reason was a false report by XI Corps commander Major General Oliver O. Howard that Doubleday's corps broke first, causing the entire Union line to collapse, but Meade also had a long history of disdain for Doubleday's combat effectiveness, dating back to South Mountain. Doubleday was humiliated by this snub and held a lasting grudge against Meade, but he returned to division command and fought well for the remainder of the battle. He was wounded in the neck on the second day of Gettysburg and received a brevet promotion to colonel in the regular army for his service. He formally requested reinstatement as I Corps commander, but Meade refused, and Doubleday left Gettysburg on July 7 for Washington. Doubleday's staff nicknamed him "Forty-Eight Hours" as a compliment to recognize his tendency to avoid reckless or impulsive actions and his thoughtfulness and deliberateness in considering circumstances and possible responses. In recent years, biographers have turned the nickname into an insult, incorrectly claiming "Forty-Eight Hours" was coined to highlight Doubleday's supposed incompetence and slowness to act. Washington Doubleday assumed administrative duties in the defenses of Washington, D.C., where he was in charge of courts martial, which gave him legal experience that he used after the war. His only return to combat was directing a portion of the defenses against the attack by Confederate Lieutenant General Jubal A. Early in the Valley Campaigns of 1864. Also while in Washington, Doubleday testified against George Meade at the United States Congress Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War, criticizing him harshly over his conduct of the Battle of Gettysburg. While in Washington, Doubleday remained a loyal Republican and staunch supporter of President Abraham Lincoln. Doubleday rode with Lincoln on the train to Gettysburg for the Gettysburg Address and Col. and Mrs. Doubleday attended events with Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln in Washington. Postbellum career After the Civil War, Doubleday mustered out of the volunteer service on August 24, 1865, reverted to the rank of lieutenant colonel, and became the colonel of the 35th U.S. Infantry in September 1867. He was stationed in San Francisco from 1869 through 1871 and he took out a patent for the cable car railway that still runs there, receiving a charter for its operation, but signing
manufacturer of sporting goods. In addition to his personal recollections, he had access to the records of Henry Chadwick, the game's first statistician and archivist. Much of his early history of the game is considered to be reliable. Spalding was, however,
the story is told first-hand; since the 1850s, Spalding had been involved in the game, first as a pitcher and later a manager and club owner. Later he branched out to become a leading manufacturer of sporting goods. In addition to his personal recollections, he had access to the
side of the carrier frequency, and passing the modulated signal through another nonlinear device would extract the original baseband signal. His analysis also showed only one sideband was necessary to transmit the audio signal, and Carson patented single-sideband modulation (SSB) on 1 December 1915. This more advanced variant of amplitude modulation was adopted by AT&T for longwave transatlantic telephone service beginning 7 January 1927. After WW2 it was developed by the military for aircraft communication. Analysis The carrier wave (sine wave) of frequency fc and amplitude A is expressed by . The message signal, such as an audio signal that is used for modulating the carrier, is m(t), and has a frequency fm, much lower than fc: , where m is the amplitude sensitivity, M is the amplitude of modulation. If m < 1, (1 + m(t)/A) is always positive for undermodulation. If m > 1 then overmodulation occurs and reconstruction of message signal from the transmitted signal would lead in loss of original signal. Amplitude modulation results when the carrier c(t) is multiplied by the positive quantity (1 + m(t)/A): In this simple case m is identical to the modulation index, discussed below. With m = 0.5 the amplitude modulated signal y(t) thus corresponds to the top graph (labelled "50% Modulation") in figure 4. Using prosthaphaeresis identities, y(t) can be shown to be the sum of three sine waves: Therefore, the modulated signal has three components: the carrier wave c(t) which is unchanged in frequency, and two sidebands with frequencies slightly above and below the carrier frequency fc. Spectrum A useful modulation signal m(t) is usually more complex than a single sine wave, as treated above. However, by the principle of Fourier decomposition, m(t) can be expressed as the sum of a set of sine waves of various frequencies, amplitudes, and phases. Carrying out the multiplication of 1 + m(t) with c(t) as above, the result consists of a sum of sine waves. Again, the carrier c(t) is present unchanged, but each frequency component of m at fi has two sidebands at frequencies fc + fi and fc - fi. The collection of the former frequencies above the carrier frequency is known as the upper sideband, and those below constitute the lower sideband. The modulation m(t) may be considered to consist of an equal mix of positive and negative frequency components, as shown in the top of figure 2. One can view the sidebands as that modulation m(t) having simply been shifted in frequency by fc as depicted at the bottom right of figure 2. The short-term spectrum of modulation, changing as it would for a human voice for instance, the frequency content (horizontal axis) may be plotted as a function of time (vertical axis), as in figure 3. It can again be seen that as the modulation frequency content varies, an upper sideband is generated according to those frequencies shifted above the carrier frequency, and the same content mirror-imaged in the lower sideband below the carrier frequency. At all times, the carrier itself remains constant, and of greater power than the total sideband power. Power and spectrum efficiency The RF bandwidth of an AM transmission (refer to figure 2, but only considering positive frequencies) is twice the bandwidth of the modulating (or "baseband") signal, since the upper and lower sidebands around the carrier frequency each have a bandwidth as wide as the highest modulating frequency. Although the bandwidth of an AM signal is narrower than one using frequency modulation (FM), it is twice as wide as single-sideband techniques; it thus may be viewed as spectrally inefficient. Within a frequency band, only half as many transmissions (or "channels") can thus be accommodated. For this reason analog television employs a variant of single-sideband (known as vestigial sideband, somewhat of a compromise in terms of bandwidth) in order to reduce the required channel spacing. Another improvement over standard AM is obtained through reduction or suppression of the carrier component of the modulated spectrum. In figure 2 this is the spike in between the sidebands; even with full (100%) sine wave modulation, the power in the carrier component is twice that in the sidebands, yet it carries no unique information. Thus there is a great advantage in efficiency in reducing or totally suppressing the carrier, either in conjunction with elimination of one sideband (single-sideband suppressed-carrier transmission) or with both sidebands remaining (double sideband suppressed carrier). While these suppressed carrier transmissions are efficient in terms of transmitter power, they require more sophisticated receivers employing synchronous detection and regeneration of the carrier frequency. For that reason, standard AM continues to be widely used, especially in broadcast transmission, to allow for the use of inexpensive receivers using envelope detection. Even (analog) television, with a (largely) suppressed lower sideband, includes sufficient carrier power for use of envelope detection. But for communications systems where both transmitters and receivers can be optimized, suppression of both one sideband and the carrier represent a net advantage and are frequently employed. A technique used widely in broadcast AM transmitters is an application of the Hapburg carrier, first proposed in the 1930s but impractical with the technology then available. During periods of low modulation the carrier power would be reduced and would return to full power during periods of high modulation levels. This has the effect of reducing the overall power demand of the transmitter and is most effective on speech type programmes. Various trade names are used for its implementation by the transmitter manufacturers from the late 80's onwards. Modulation index The AM modulation index is a measure based on the ratio of the modulation excursions of the RF signal to the level of the unmodulated carrier. It is thus defined as: where and are the modulation amplitude and carrier amplitude, respectively; the modulation amplitude is the peak (positive or negative) change in the RF amplitude from its unmodulated value. Modulation index is normally expressed as a percentage, and may be displayed on a meter connected to an AM transmitter. So if , carrier amplitude varies by 50% above (and below) its unmodulated level, as is shown in the first waveform, below. For , it varies by 100% as shown in the illustration below it. With 100% modulation the wave amplitude sometimes reaches zero, and this represents full modulation using standard AM and is often a target (in order to obtain the highest possible signal-to-noise ratio) but mustn't be exceeded. Increasing the modulating signal beyond that point, known as overmodulation, causes a standard AM modulator (see below) to fail, as the negative excursions of the wave envelope cannot become less than zero, resulting in distortion ("clipping") of the received modulation. Transmitters typically incorporate a limiter circuit to avoid overmodulation, and/or a compressor circuit (especially for voice communications) in order to still approach 100% modulation for maximum intelligibility above the noise. Such circuits are sometimes referred to as a vogad. However it is possible to talk about a modulation index exceeding 100%, without introducing distortion, in the case of double-sideband reduced-carrier transmission. In that case, negative excursions beyond zero entail a reversal of the carrier phase, as shown in the third waveform below. This cannot be produced using the efficient high-level (output stage) modulation techniques (see below) which are widely used especially in high power broadcast transmitters. Rather, a special modulator produces such a waveform at a low level followed by a linear amplifier. What's more, a standard AM receiver using an envelope detector is incapable of properly demodulating such a signal. Rather, synchronous detection is required. Thus double-sideband transmission is generally not referred to as "AM" even though it generates an identical RF waveform as standard AM as long as the modulation index is below 100%. Such systems more often attempt a radical reduction of the carrier level compared to the sidebands (where the useful information is present) to the point of double-sideband suppressed-carrier transmission where the carrier is (ideally) reduced to zero. In all such cases the term "modulation index" loses its value as it refers to the ratio of the modulation amplitude to a rather small (or zero) remaining carrier amplitude. Modulation methods Modulation circuit designs may be classified as low- or high-level (depending on whether they modulate in a low-power domain—followed by amplification for transmission—or in the high-power domain of the transmitted signal). Low-level generation In modern radio systems, modulated signals are generated via digital signal processing (DSP). With DSP many types of AM are possible with software control (including DSB with carrier, SSB suppressed-carrier and independent sideband, or ISB). Calculated digital samples are converted to voltages with a digital-to-analog converter, typically at a frequency less than the desired RF-output frequency. The analog signal must then be shifted in frequency and linearly amplified to the desired frequency and power level (linear amplification must be used to prevent modulation distortion). This low-level method for AM is used in many Amateur Radio transceivers. AM may also be generated at a low level, using analog methods described in the next section. High-level generation High-power AM transmitters (such as those used for AM broadcasting) are based on high-efficiency class-D and class-E power amplifier stages, modulated by varying the supply voltage. Older designs (for broadcast and amateur radio) also generate AM by controlling the gain of the transmitter's final amplifier (generally class-C, for efficiency). The following types are for vacuum tube transmitters (but similar options are available with transistors): Plate modulation In plate modulation, the plate voltage of the RF amplifier is modulated with the audio signal. The audio power requirement is 50 percent of the RF-carrier power. Heising (constant-current) modulation RF amplifier plate voltage is fed through a choke (high-value inductor). The AM modulation tube plate is fed through the same inductor, so the modulator tube diverts current from the RF amplifier. The choke acts as a constant current source in the audio range. This system has a low power efficiency. Control grid modulation The operating bias and gain of the final RF amplifier can be controlled by varying
ITU designations In 1982, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) designated the types of amplitude modulation: History Although AM was used in a few crude experiments in multiplex telegraph and telephone transmission in the late 1800s, the practical development of amplitude modulation is synonymous with the development between 1900 and 1920 of "radiotelephone" transmission, that is, the effort to send sound (audio) by radio waves. The first radio transmitters, called spark gap transmitters, transmitted information by wireless telegraphy, using different length pulses of carrier wave to spell out text messages in Morse code. They couldn't transmit audio because the carrier consisted of strings of damped waves, pulses of radio waves that declined to zero, that sounded like a buzz in receivers. In effect they were already amplitude modulated. Continuous waves The first AM transmission was made by Canadian researcher Reginald Fessenden on 23 December 1900 using a spark gap transmitter with a specially designed high frequency 10 kHz interrupter, over a distance of 1 mile (1.6 km) at Cobb Island, Maryland, US. His first transmitted words were, "Hello. One, two, three, four. Is it snowing where you are, Mr. Thiessen?". The words were barely intelligible above the background buzz of the spark. Fessenden was a significant figure in the development of AM radio. He was one of the first researchers to realize, from experiments like the above, that the existing technology for producing radio waves, the spark transmitter, was not usable for amplitude modulation, and that a new kind of transmitter, one that produced sinusoidal continuous waves, was needed. This was a radical idea at the time, because experts believed the impulsive spark was necessary to produce radio frequency waves, and Fessenden was ridiculed. He invented and helped develop one of the first continuous wave transmitters - the Alexanderson alternator, with which he made what is considered the first AM public entertainment broadcast on Christmas Eve, 1906. He also discovered the principle on which AM is based, heterodyning, and invented one of the first detectors able to rectify and receive AM, the electrolytic detector or "liquid baretter", in 1902. Other radio detectors invented for wireless telegraphy, such as the Fleming valve (1904) and the crystal detector (1906) also proved able to rectify AM signals, so the technological hurdle was generating AM waves; receiving them was not a problem. Early technologies Early experiments in AM radio transmission, conducted by Fessenden, Valdemar Poulsen, Ernst Ruhmer, Quirino Majorana, Charles Herrold, and Lee de Forest, were hampered by the lack of a technology for amplification. The first practical continuous wave AM transmitters were based on either the huge, expensive Alexanderson alternator, developed 1906–1910, or versions of the Poulsen arc transmitter (arc converter), invented in 1903. The modifications necessary to transmit AM were clumsy and resulted in very low quality audio. Modulation was usually accomplished by a carbon microphone inserted directly in the antenna or ground wire; its varying resistance varied the current to the antenna. The limited power handling ability of the microphone severely limited the power of the first radiotelephones; many of the microphones were water-cooled. Vacuum tubes The 1912 discovery of the amplifying ability of the Audion tube, invented in 1906 by Lee de Forest, solved these problems. The vacuum tube feedback oscillator, invented in 1912 by Edwin Armstrong and Alexander Meissner, was a cheap source of continuous waves and could be easily modulated to make an AM transmitter. Modulation did not have to be done at the output but could be applied to the signal before the final amplifier tube, so the microphone or other audio source didn't have to modulate a high-power radio signal. Wartime research greatly advanced the art of AM modulation, and after the war the availability of cheap tubes sparked a great increase in the number of radio stations experimenting with AM transmission of news or music. The vacuum tube was responsible for the rise of AM broadcasting around 1920, the first electronic mass communication medium. Amplitude modulation was virtually the only type used for radio broadcasting until FM broadcasting began after World War II. At the same time as AM radio began, telephone companies such as AT&T were developing the other large application for AM: sending multiple telephone calls through a single wire by modulating them on separate carrier frequencies, called frequency division multiplexing. Single-sideband John Renshaw Carson in 1915 did the first mathematical analysis of amplitude modulation, showing that a signal and carrier frequency combined in a nonlinear device would create two sidebands on either side of the carrier frequency, and passing the modulated signal through another nonlinear device would extract the original baseband signal. His analysis also showed only one sideband was necessary to transmit the audio signal, and Carson patented single-sideband modulation (SSB) on 1 December 1915. This more advanced variant of amplitude modulation was adopted by AT&T for longwave transatlantic telephone service beginning 7 January 1927. After WW2 it was developed by the military for aircraft communication. Analysis The carrier wave (sine wave) of frequency fc and amplitude A is expressed by . The message signal, such as an audio signal that is used for modulating the carrier, is m(t), and has a frequency fm, much lower than fc: , where m is the amplitude sensitivity, M is the amplitude of modulation. If m < 1, (1 + m(t)/A) is always positive for undermodulation. If m > 1 then overmodulation occurs and reconstruction of message signal from the transmitted signal would lead in loss of original signal. Amplitude modulation results when the carrier c(t) is multiplied by the positive quantity (1 + m(t)/A): In this simple case m is identical to the modulation index, discussed below. With m = 0.5 the amplitude modulated signal y(t) thus corresponds to the top graph (labelled "50% Modulation") in figure 4. Using prosthaphaeresis identities, y(t) can be shown to be the sum of three sine waves: Therefore, the modulated signal has three components: the carrier wave c(t) which is unchanged in frequency, and two sidebands with frequencies slightly above and below the carrier frequency fc. Spectrum A useful modulation signal m(t) is usually more complex than a single sine wave, as treated above. However, by the principle of Fourier decomposition, m(t) can be expressed as the sum of a set of sine waves of various frequencies, amplitudes, and phases. Carrying out the multiplication of 1 + m(t) with c(t) as above, the result consists of a sum of sine waves. Again, the carrier c(t) is present unchanged, but each frequency component of m at fi has two sidebands at frequencies fc + fi and fc - fi. The collection of the former frequencies above the carrier frequency is known as the upper sideband, and those below constitute the lower sideband. The modulation m(t) may be considered to consist of an equal mix of positive and negative frequency components, as shown in the top of figure 2. One can view the sidebands as that modulation m(t) having simply been shifted in frequency by fc as depicted at the bottom right of figure 2. The short-term spectrum of modulation, changing as it would for a human voice for instance, the frequency content (horizontal axis) may be plotted as a function of time (vertical axis), as in figure 3. It can again be seen that as the modulation frequency content varies, an upper sideband is generated according to those frequencies shifted above the carrier frequency, and the same content mirror-imaged in the lower sideband below the carrier frequency. At all times, the carrier itself remains constant, and of greater power than the total sideband power. Power and spectrum efficiency The RF bandwidth of an AM transmission (refer to figure 2, but only considering positive frequencies) is twice the bandwidth of the modulating (or "baseband") signal, since the upper and lower sidebands around the carrier frequency each have a bandwidth as wide as the highest modulating frequency. Although the bandwidth of an AM signal is narrower than one using frequency modulation (FM), it is twice as wide as single-sideband techniques; it thus may be viewed as spectrally inefficient. Within a frequency band, only half as many transmissions (or "channels") can thus be accommodated. For this reason analog television employs a variant of single-sideband (known as vestigial sideband, somewhat of a compromise in terms of bandwidth) in order to reduce the required channel spacing. Another improvement over standard AM is obtained through reduction or suppression of the carrier component of the modulated spectrum. In figure 2 this is the spike in between the sidebands; even with full (100%) sine wave modulation, the power in the carrier component is twice that in the sidebands, yet it carries no unique information. Thus there is a great advantage in efficiency in reducing or totally suppressing the carrier, either in conjunction with elimination of one sideband (single-sideband suppressed-carrier transmission) or with both sidebands remaining (double sideband suppressed carrier). While these suppressed carrier transmissions are efficient in terms of transmitter power, they require more sophisticated receivers employing synchronous detection and regeneration of the carrier frequency. For that reason, standard AM continues to be widely used, especially in broadcast transmission, to allow for the use of inexpensive receivers using envelope detection. Even (analog) television, with a (largely) suppressed lower sideband, includes sufficient carrier power for use of envelope detection. But for communications systems where both transmitters and receivers can be optimized, suppression of both one sideband and the carrier represent a net advantage and are frequently employed. A technique used widely in broadcast AM transmitters is an application of the Hapburg carrier, first proposed in the 1930s but impractical with the technology then available. During periods of low modulation the carrier power would be reduced and would return to full power during periods of high modulation levels. This has the effect of reducing the overall power demand of the transmitter and is most effective on speech type programmes. Various trade names are used for its implementation by the transmitter manufacturers from the late 80's onwards.
the secondary wavefront that expands from the origin in unit time—that is, the surface that reduces to Huygens's sphere and spheroid in the uniaxial case. He noted that this "wave surface" (surface de l'onde) is tangential to all possible plane wavefronts that could have crossed the origin one unit of time ago, and he listed the mathematical conditions that it must satisfy. But he doubted the feasibility of deriving the surface from those conditions. In a "second supplement", Fresnel eventually exploited two related facts: (i) the "wave surface" was also the ray-velocity surface, which could be obtained by sectioning the ellipsoid that he had initially mistaken for the surface of elasticity, and (ii) the "wave surface" intersected each plane of symmetry of the ellipsoid in two curves: a circle and an ellipse. Thus he found that the "wave surface" is described by the 4th-degree equation where and are the propagation speeds in directions normal to the coordinate axes for vibrations along the axes (the ray and wave-normal speeds being the same in those special cases). Later commentators put the equation in the more compact and memorable form Earlier in the "second supplement", Fresnel modeled the medium as an array of point-masses and found that the force-displacement relation was described by a symmetric matrix, confirming the existence of three mutually perpendicular axes on which the displacement produced a parallel force. Later in the document, he noted that in a biaxial crystal, unlike a uniaxial crystal, the directions in which there is only one wave-normal velocity are not the same as those in which there is only one ray velocity. Nowadays we refer to the former directions as the optic axes or binormal axes, and the latter as the ray axes or biradial axes . Fresnel's "second supplement" was signed on 31 March 1822 and submitted the next day – less than a year after the publication of his pure-transverse-wave hypothesis, and just less than a year after the demonstration of his prototype eight-panel lighthouse lens . Second memoir (1822–26) Having presented the pieces of his theory in roughly the order of discovery, Fresnel needed to rearrange the material so as to emphasize the mechanical foundations; and he still needed a rigorous treatment of Biot's dihedral law. He attended to these matters in his "second memoir" on double refraction, published in the Recueils of the Académie des Sciences for 1824; this was not actually printed until late 1827, a few months after his death. In this work, having established the three perpendicular axes on which a displacement produces a parallel reaction, and thence constructed the surface of elasticity, he showed that Biot's dihedral law is exact provided that the binormals are taken as the optic axes, and the wave-normal direction as the direction of propagation. As early as 1822, Fresnel discussed his perpendicular axes with Cauchy. Acknowledging Fresnel's influence, Cauchy went on to develop the first rigorous theory of elasticity of non-isotropic solids (1827), hence the first rigorous theory of transverse waves therein (1830) — which he promptly tried to apply to optics. The ensuing difficulties drove a long competitive effort to find an accurate mechanical model of the aether. Fresnel's own model was not dynamically rigorous; for example, it deduced the reaction to a shear strain by considering the displacement of one particle while all others were fixed, and it assumed that the stiffness determined the wave velocity as in a stretched string, whatever the direction of the wave-normal. But it was enough to enable the wave theory to do what selectionist theory could not: generate testable formulae covering a comprehensive range of optical phenomena, from mechanical assumptions. Photoelasticity, multiple-prism experiments (1822) In 1815, Brewster reported that colors appear when a slice of isotropic material, placed between crossed polarizers, is mechanically stressed. Brewster himself immediately and correctly attributed this phenomenon to stress-induced birefringence — now known as photoelasticity. In a memoir read in September 1822, Fresnel announced that he had verified Brewster's diagnosis more directly, by compressing a combination of glass prisms so severely that one could actually see a double image through it. In his experiment, Fresnel lined up seven 45°-90°-45° prisms, short side to short side, with their 90° angles pointing in alternating directions. Two half-prisms were added at the ends to make the whole assembly rectangular. The prisms were separated by thin films of turpentine (térébenthine) to suppress internal reflections, allowing a clear line of sight along the row. When the four prisms with similar orientations were compressed in a vise across the line of sight, an object viewed through the assembly produced two images with perpendicular polarizations, with an apparent spacing of 1.5mm at one metre. At the end of that memoir, Fresnel predicted that if the compressed prisms were replaced by (unstressed) monocrystalline quartz prisms with matching directions of optical rotation, and with their optic axes aligned along the row, an object seen by looking along the common optic axis would give two images, which would seem unpolarized when viewed through an analyzer but, when viewed through a Fresnel rhomb, would be polarized at ±45° to the plane of reflection of the rhomb (indicating that they were initially circularly polarized in opposite directions). This would show directly that optical rotation is a form of birefringence. In the memoir of December 1822, in which he introduced the term circular polarization, he reported that he had confirmed this prediction using only one 14°-152°-14° prism and two glass half-prisms. But he obtained a wider separation of the images by replacing the glass half-prism with quartz half-prisms whose rotation was opposite to that of the 14°-152°-14° prism. He added in passing that one could further increase the separation by increasing the number of prisms. Reception For the supplement to Riffault's translation of Thomson's System of Chemistry, Fresnel was chosen to contribute the article on light. The resulting 137-page essay, titled De la Lumière (On Light), was apparently finished in June 1821 and published by February 1822. With sections covering the nature of light, diffraction, thin-film interference, reflection and refraction, double refraction and polarization, chromatic polarization, and modification of polarization by reflection, it made a comprehensive case for the wave theory to a readership that was not restricted to physicists. To examine Fresnel's first memoir and supplements on double refraction, the Académie des Sciences appointed Ampère, Arago, Fourier, and Poisson. Their report, of which Arago was clearly the main author, was delivered at the meeting of 19 August 1822. Then, in the words of Émile Verdet, as translated by Ivor Grattan-Guinness: Whether Laplace was announcing his conversion to the wave theory – at the age of 73 – is uncertain. Grattan-Guinness entertained the idea. Buchwald, noting that Arago failed to explain that the "ellipsoid of elasticity" did not give the correct planes of polarization, suggests that Laplace may have merely regarded Fresnel's theory as a successful generalization of Malus's ray-velocity law, embracing Biot's laws. In the following year, Poisson, who did not sign Arago's report, disputed the possibility of transverse waves in the aether. Starting from assumed equations of motion of a fluid medium, he noted that they did not give the correct results for partial reflection and double refraction – as if that were Fresnel's problem rather than his own – and that the predicted waves, even if they were initially transverse, became more longitudinal as they propagated. In reply Fresnel noted, inter alia, that the equations in which Poisson put so much faith did not even predict viscosity. The implication was clear: given that the behavior of light had not been satisfactorily explained except by transverse waves, it was not the responsibility of the wave-theorists to abandon transverse waves in deference to pre-conceived notions about the aether; rather, it was the responsibility of the aether modelers to produce a model that accommodated transverse waves. According to Robert H. Silliman, Poisson eventually accepted the wave theory shortly before his death in 1840. Among the French, Poisson's reluctance was an exception. According to Eugene Frankel, "in Paris no debate on the issue seems to have taken place after 1825. Indeed, almost the entire generation of physicists and mathematicians who came to maturity in the 1820s – Pouillet, Savart, Lamé, Navier, Liouville, Cauchy – seem to have adopted the theory immediately." Fresnel's other prominent French opponent, Biot, appeared to take a neutral position in 1830, and eventually accepted the wave theory – possibly by 1846 and certainly by 1858. In 1826, the British astronomer John Herschel, who was working on a book-length article on light for the Encyclopædia Metropolitana, addressed three questions to Fresnel concerning double refraction, partial reflection, and their relation to polarization. The resulting article, titled simply "Light", was highly sympathetic to the wave theory, although not entirely free of selectionist language. It was circulating privately by 1828 and was published in 1830. Meanwhile, Young's translation of Fresnel's De la Lumière was published in installments from 1827 to 1829. George Biddell Airy, the former Lucasian Professor at Cambridge and future Astronomer Royal, unreservedly accepted the wave theory by 1831. In 1834, he famously calculated the diffraction pattern of a circular aperture from the wave theory, thereby explaining the limited angular resolution of a perfect telescope . By the end of the 1830s, the only prominent British physicist who held out against the wave theory was Brewster, whose objections included the difficulty of explaining photochemical effects and (in his opinion) dispersion. A German translation of De la Lumière was published in installments in 1825 and 1828. The wave theory was adopted by Fraunhofer in the early 1820s and by Franz Ernst Neumann in the 1830s, and then began to find favor in German textbooks. The economy of assumptions under the wave theory was emphasized by William Whewell in his History of the Inductive Sciences, first published in 1837. In the corpuscular system, "every new class of facts requires a new supposition," whereas in the wave system, a hypothesis devised in order to explain one phenomenon is then found to explain or predict others. In the corpuscular system there is "no unexpected success, no happy coincidence, no convergence of principles from remote quarters"; but in the wave system, "all tends to unity and simplicity." Hence, in 1850, when Foucault and Fizeau found by experiment that light travels more slowly in water than in air, in accordance with the wave explanation of refraction and contrary to the corpuscular explanation, the result came as no surprise. Lighthouses and the Fresnel lens Fresnel was not the first person to focus a lighthouse beam using a lens. That distinction apparently belongs to the London glass-cutter Thomas Rogers, whose first lenses, 53cm in diameter and 14cm thick at the center, were installed at the Old Lower Lighthouse at Portland Bill in 1789. Further samples were installed in about half a dozen other locations by 1804. But much of the light was wasted by absorption in the glass. Nor was Fresnel the first to suggest replacing a convex lens with a series of concentric annular prisms, to reduce weight and absorption. In 1748, Count Buffon proposed grinding such prisms as steps in a single piece of glass. In 1790, the Marquis de Condorcet suggested that it would be easier to make the annular sections separately and assemble them on a frame; but even that was impractical at the time. These designs were intended not for lighthouses, but for burning glasses. Brewster, however, proposed a system similar to Condorcet's in 1811, and by 1820 was advocating its use in British lighthouses. Meanwhile, on 21 June 1819, Fresnel was "temporarily" seconded by the Commission des Phares (Commission of Lighthouses) on the recommendation of Arago (a member of the Commission since 1813), to review possible improvements in lighthouse illumination. The commission had been established by Napoleon in 1811 and placed under the Corps des Ponts – Fresnel's employer. By the end of August 1819, unaware of the Buffon-Condorcet-Brewster proposal, Fresnel made his first presentation to the commission, recommending what he called lentilles à échelons (lenses by steps) to replace the reflectors then in use, which reflected only about half of the incident light. One of the assembled commissioners, Jacques Charles, recalled Buffon's suggestion, leaving Fresnel embarrassed for having again "broken through an open door". But, whereas Buffon's version was biconvex and in one piece, Fresnel's was plano-convex and made of multiple prisms for easier construction. With an official budget of 500 francs, Fresnel approached three manufacturers. The third, François Soleil, produced the prototype. Finished in March 1820, it had a square lens panel 55cm on a side, containing 97 polygonal (not annular) prisms – and so impressed the Commission that Fresnel was asked for a full eight-panel version. This model, completed a year later in spite of insufficient funding, had panels 76cm square. In a public spectacle on the evening of 13 April 1821, it was demonstrated by comparison with the most recent reflectors, which it suddenly rendered obsolete. Fresnel's next lens was a rotating apparatus with eight "bull's-eye" panels, made in annular arcs by Saint-Gobain, giving eight rotating beams – to be seen by mariners as a periodic flash. Above and behind each main panel was a smaller, sloping bull's-eye panel of trapezoidal outline with trapezoidal elements. This refracted the light to a sloping plane mirror, which then reflected it horizontally, 7 degrees ahead of the main beam, increasing the duration of the flash. Below the main panels were 128 small mirrors arranged in four rings, stacked like the slats of a louver or Venetian blind. Each ring, shaped as a frustum of a cone, reflected the light to the horizon, giving a fainter steady light between the flashes. The official test, conducted on the unfinished Arc de Triomphe on 20 August 1822, was witnessed by the commission – and by Louis and his entourage – from 32km away. The apparatus was stored at Bordeaux for the winter, and then reassembled at Cordouan Lighthouse under Fresnel's supervision. On 25 July 1823, the world's first lighthouse Fresnel lens was lit. Soon afterwards, Fresnel started coughing up blood. In May 1824, Fresnel was promoted to secretary of the Commission des Phares, becoming the first member of that body to draw a salary, albeit in the concurrent role of Engineer-in-Chief. He was also an examiner (not a teacher) at the École Polytechnique since 1821; but poor health, long hours during the examination season, and anxiety about judging others induced him to resign that post in late 1824, to save his energy for his lighthouse work. In the same year he designed the first fixed lens – for spreading light evenly around the horizon while minimizing waste above or below. Ideally the curved refracting surfaces would be segments of toroids about a common vertical axis, so that the dioptric panel would look like a cylindrical drum. If this was supplemented by reflecting (catoptric) rings above and below the refracting (dioptric) parts, the entire apparatus would look like a beehive. The second Fresnel lens to enter service was indeed a fixed lens, of third order, installed at Dunkirk by 1 February 1825. However, due to the difficulty of fabricating large toroidal prisms, this apparatus had a 16-sided polygonal plan. In 1825, Fresnel extended his fixed-lens design by adding a rotating array outside the fixed array. Each panel of the rotating array was to refract part of the fixed light from a horizontal fan into a narrow beam. Also in 1825, Fresnel unveiled the Carte des Phares (Lighthouse Map), calling for a system of 51 lighthouses plus smaller harbor lights, in a hierarchy of lens sizes (called orders, the first order being the largest), with different characteristics to facilitate recognition: a constant light (from a fixed lens), one flash per minute (from a rotating lens with eight panels), and two per minute (sixteen panels). In late 1825, to reduce the loss of light in the reflecting elements, Fresnel proposed to replace each mirror with a catadioptric prism, through which the light would travel by refraction through the first surface, then total internal reflection off the second surface, then refraction through the third surface. The result was the lighthouse lens as we now know it. In 1826 he assembled a small model for use on the Canal Saint-Martin, but he did not live to see a full-sized version. The first fixed lens with toroidal prisms was a first-order apparatus designed by the Scottish engineer Alan Stevenson under the guidance of Léonor Fresnel, and fabricated by Isaac Cookson & Co. from French glass; it entered service at the Isle of May in 1836. The first large catadioptric lenses were fixed third-order lenses made in 1842 for the lighthouses at Gravelines and Île Vierge. The first fully catadioptric first-order lens, installed at Ailly in 1852, gave eight rotating beams assisted by eight catadioptric panels at the top (to lengthen the flashes), plus a fixed light from below. The first fully catadioptric lens with purely revolving beams – also of first order – was installed at Saint-Clément-des-Baleines in 1854, and marked the completion of Augustin Fresnel's original Carte des Phares. Production of one-piece stepped dioptric lenses—roughly as envisaged by Buffon—became practical in 1852, when John L. Gilliland of the Brooklyn Flint-Glass Company patented a method of making such lenses from press-molded glass. By the 1950s, the substitution of plastic for glass made it economic to use fine-stepped Fresnel lenses as condensers in overhead projectors. Still finer steps can be found in low-cost plastic "sheet" magnifiers. Honors Fresnel was elected to the Société Philomathique de Paris in April 1819, and in 1822 became one of the editors of the Société's Bulletin des Sciences. As early as May 1817, at Arago's suggestion, Fresnel applied for membership of the Académie des Sciences, but received only one vote. The successful candidate on that occasion was Joseph Fourier. In November 1822, Fourier's elevation to Permanent Secretary of the Académie created a vacancy in the physics section, which was filled in February 1823 by Pierre Louis Dulong, with 36 votes to Fresnel's 20. But in May 1823, after another vacancy was left by the death of Jacques Charles, Fresnel's election was unanimous. In 1824, Fresnel was made a chevalier de la Légion d'honneur (Knight of the Legion of Honour). Meanwhile, in Britain, the wave theory was yet to take hold; Fresnel wrote to Thomas Young in November 1824, saying in part: But "the praise of English scholars" soon followed. On 9 June 1825, Fresnel was made a Foreign Member of the Royal Society of London. In 1827 he was awarded the society's Rumford Medal for the year 1824, "For his Development of the Undulatory Theory as applied to the Phenomena of Polarized Light, and for his various important discoveries in Physical Optics." A monument to Fresnel at his birthplace was dedicated on 14 September 1884 with a speech by , Permanent Secretary of the Académie des Sciences. "" is among the 72 names embossed on the Eiffel Tower (on the south-east side, fourth from the left). In the 19th century, as every lighthouse in France acquired a Fresnel lens, every one acquired a bust of Fresnel, seemingly watching over the coastline that he had made safer. The lunar features Promontorium Fresnel and Rimae Fresnel were later named after him. Decline and death Fresnel's health, which had always been poor, deteriorated in the winter of 1822–1823, increasing the urgency of his original research, and (in part) preventing him from contributing an article on polarization and double refraction for the Encyclopædia Britannica. The memoirs on circular and elliptical polarization and optical rotation, and on the detailed derivation of the Fresnel equations and their application to total internal reflection, date from this period. In the spring he recovered enough, in his own view, to supervise the lens installation at Cordouan. Soon afterwards, it became clear that his condition was tuberculosis. In 1824, he was advised that if he wanted to live longer, he needed to scale back his activities. Perceiving his lighthouse work to be his most important duty, he resigned as an examiner at the École Polytechnique, and closed his scientific notebooks. His last note to the Académie, read on 13 June 1825, described the first radiometer and attributed the observed repulsive force to a temperature difference. Although his fundamental research ceased, his advocacy did not; as late as August or September 1826, he found the time to answer Herschel's queries on the wave theory. It was Herschel who recommended Fresnel for the Royal Society's Rumford Medal. Fresnel's cough worsened in the winter of 1826–1827, leaving him too ill to return to Mathieu in the spring. The Académie meeting of 30 April 1827 was the last that he attended. In early June he was carried to Ville-d'Avray, 12km west of Paris. There his mother joined him. On 6 July, Arago arrived to deliver the Rumford Medal. Sensing Arago's distress, Fresnel whispered that "the most beautiful crown means little, when it is laid on the grave of a friend." Fresnel did not have the strength to reply to the Royal Society. He died eight days later, on Bastille Day. He is buried at Père Lachaise Cemetery, Paris. The inscription on his headstone is partly eroded away; the legible part says, when translated, "To the memory of Augustin Jean Fresnel, member of the Institute of France". Posthumous publications Fresnel's "second memoir" on double refraction was not printed until late 1827, a few months after his death. Until then, the best published source on his work on double refraction was an extract of that memoir, printed in 1822. His final treatment of partial reflection and total internal reflection, read to the Académie in January 1823, was thought to be lost until it was rediscovered among the papers of the deceased Joseph Fourier (1768–1830), and was printed in 1831. Until then, it was known chiefly through an extract printed in 1823 and 1825. The memoir introducing the parallelepiped form of the Fresnel rhomb, read in March 1818, was mislaid until 1846, and then attracted such interest that it was soon republished in English. Most of Fresnel's writings on polarized light before 1821 – including his first theory of chromatic polarization (submitted 7 October 1816) and the crucial "supplement" of January 1818 — were not published in full until his Oeuvres complètes ("complete works") began to appear in 1866. The "supplement" of July 1816, proposing the "efficacious ray" and reporting the famous double-mirror experiment, met the same fate, as did the "first memoir" on double refraction. Publication of Fresnel's collected works was itself delayed by the deaths of successive editors. The task was initially entrusted to Félix Savary, who died in 1841. It was restarted twenty years later by the Ministry of Public Instruction. Of the three editors eventually named in the Oeuvres, Sénarmont died in 1862, Verdet in 1866, and Léonor Fresnel in 1869, by which time only two of the three volumes had appeared. At the beginning of vol. 3 (1870), the completion of the project is described in a long footnote by "J. Lissajous." Not included in the Oeuvres are two short notes by Fresnel on magnetism, which were discovered among Ampère's manuscripts. In response to Ørsted's discovery of electromagnetism in 1820, Ampère initially supposed that the field of a permanent magnet was due to a macroscopic circulating current. Fresnel suggested instead that there was a microscopic current circulating around each particle of the magnet. In his first note, he argued that microscopic currents, unlike macroscopic currents, would explain why a hollow cylindrical magnet does not lose its magnetism when cut longitudinally. In his second note, dated 5 July 1821, he further argued that a macroscopic current had the counterfactual implication that a permanent magnet should be hot, whereas microscopic currents circulating around the molecules might avoid the heating mechanism. He was not to know that the fundamental units of permanent magnetism are even smaller than molecules . The two notes, together with Ampère's acknowledgment, were eventually published in 1885. Lost works Fresnel's essay Rêveries of 1814 has not survived. While its content would have been interesting to historians, its quality may perhaps be gauged from the fact that Fresnel himself never referred to it in his maturity. More disturbing is the fate of the late article "Sur les Différents Systèmes relatifs à la Théorie de la Lumière" ("On the Different Systems relating to the Theory of Light"), which Fresnel wrote for the newly launched English journal European Review. This work seems to have been similar in scope to the essay De la Lumière of 1821/22, except that Fresnel's views on double refraction, circular and elliptical polarization, optical rotation, and total internal reflection had developed since then. The manuscript was received by the publisher's agent in Paris in early September 1824, and promptly forwarded to London. But the journal failed before Fresnel's contribution could be published. Fresnel tried unsuccessfully to recover the manuscript. The editors of his collected works were also unable to find it, and admitted that it was probably lost. Unfinished business Aether drag and aether density In 1810, Arago found experimentally that the degree of refraction of starlight does not depend on the direction of the earth's motion relative to the line of sight. In 1818, Fresnel showed that this result could be explained by the wave theory, on the hypothesis that if an object with refractive index moved at velocity relative to the external aether (taken as stationary), then the velocity of light inside the object gained the additional component . He supported that hypothesis by supposing that if the density of the external aether was taken as unity, the density of the internal aether was , of which the excess, namely , was dragged along at velocity , whence the average velocity of the internal aether was . The factor in parentheses, which Fresnel originally expressed in terms of wavelengths, became known as the Fresnel drag coefficient. In his analysis of double refraction, Fresnel supposed that the different refractive indices in different directions within the same medium were due to a directional variation in elasticity, not density (because the concept of mass per unit volume is not directional). But in his treatment of partial reflection, he supposed that the different refractive indices of different media were due to different aether densities, not different elasticities. The latter decision, although puzzling in the context of double refraction, was consistent with the earlier treatment of aether drag. In 1846, George Gabriel Stokes pointed out that there was no need to divide the aether inside a moving object into two portions; all of it could be considered as moving at a common velocity. Then, if the aether was conserved while its density changed in proportion to , the resulting velocity of the aether inside the object was equal to Fresnel's additional velocity component. Dispersion The analogy between light waves and transverse waves in elastic solids does not predict dispersion — that is, the frequency-dependence of the speed of propagation, which enables prisms to produce spectra and causes lenses to suffer from chromatic aberration. Fresnel, in De la Lumière and in the second supplement to his first memoir on double refraction, suggested that dispersion could be accounted for if the particles of the medium exerted forces on each other over distances that were significant fractions of a wavelength. Later, more than once, Fresnel referred to the demonstration of this result as being contained in a note appended to his "second memoir" on double refraction. But no such note appeared in print, and the relevant manuscripts found after his death showed only that, around 1824, he was comparing refractive indices (measured by Fraunhofer) with a theoretical formula, the meaning of which was not fully explained. In the 1830s, Fresnel's suggestion was taken up by Cauchy, Powell, and Kelland, and it was indeed found to be tolerably consistent with the variation of refractive indices with wavelength over the visible spectrum, for a variety of transparent media . These investigations were enough to show that the wave theory was at least compatible with dispersion. However, if the model of dispersion was to be accurate over a wider range of frequencies, it needed to be modified so as to take account of resonances within the medium . Conical refraction The analytical complexity of Fresnel's derivation of the ray-velocity surface was an implicit challenge to find a shorter path to the result. This was answered by MacCullagh in 1830, and by William Rowan Hamilton in 1832. Hamilton went further, establishing two properties of the surface that Fresnel, in the short time given to him, had overlooked: (i) at each of the four points where the inner and outer sheets of the surface make contact, the surface has a tangent cone (tangential to both sheets), hence a cone of normals, indicating that a cone of wave-normal directions corresponds to a single ray-velocity vector; and (ii) around each of these points, the outer sheet has a circle of contact with a tangent plane, indicating that a cone of ray directions corresponds to a single wave-normal velocity vector. As Hamilton noted, these properties respectively imply that (i) a narrow beam propagating inside the crystal in the direction of the single ray velocity will, on exiting the crystal through a flat surface, break into a hollow cone (external conical refraction), and (ii) a narrow beam striking a flat surface of the crystal in the appropriate direction (corresponding to that of the single internal wave-normal velocity) will, on entering the crystal, break into a hollow cone (internal conical refraction). Thus a new pair of phenomena, qualitatively different from anything previously observed or suspected, had been predicted by mathematics as consequences of Fresnel's theory. The prompt experimental confirmation of those predictions by Humphrey Lloyd brought Hamilton a prize that had never come to Fresnel: immediate fame. Legacy Within a century of Fresnel's initial stepped-lens proposal, more than 10,000 lights with Fresnel lenses were protecting lives and property around the world. Concerning the other benefits, the science historian Theresa H. Levitt has remarked: In the history of physical optics, Fresnel's successful revival of the wave theory nominates him as the pivotal figure between Newton, who held that light consisted of corpuscles, and James Clerk Maxwell, who established that light waves are electromagnetic. Whereas Albert Einstein described Maxwell's work as "the most profound and the most fruitful that physics has experienced since the time of Newton," commentators of the era between Fresnel and Maxwell made similarly strong statements about Fresnel: MacCullagh, as early as 1830, wrote that Fresnel's mechanical theory of double refraction "would do honour to the sagacity of Newton". Lloyd, in his Report on the progress and present state of physical optics (1834) for the British Association for the Advancement of Science, surveyed previous knowledge of double refraction and declared:The theory of Fresnel to which I now proceed,— and which not only embraces all the known phenomena, but has even outstripped observation, and predicted consequences which were afterwards fully verified,— will, I am persuaded, be regarded as the finest generalization in physical science which has been made since the discovery of universal gravitation.In 1841, Lloyd published his Lectures on the Wave-theory of Light, in which he described Fresnel's transverse-wave theory as "the noblest fabric which has ever adorned the domain of physical science, Newton's system of the universe alone excepted." William Whewell, in all three editions of his History of the Inductive Sciences (1837, 1847, and 1857), at the end of Book , compared the histories of physical astronomy and physical optics and concluded:It would, perhaps, be too fanciful to attempt to establish a parallelism between the prominent persons who figure in these two histories. If we were to do this, we must consider Huyghens and Hooke as standing in the place of Copernicus, since, like him, they announced the true theory, but left it to a future age to give it development and mechanical confirmation; Malus and Brewster, grouping them together, correspond to Tycho Brahe and Kepler, laborious in accumulating observations, inventive and happy in discovering laws of phenomena; and Young and Fresnel combined, make up the Newton of optical science. What Whewell called the "true theory" has since undergone two major revisions. The first, by Maxwell, specified the physical fields whose variations constitute the waves of light. Without the benefit of this knowledge, Fresnel managed to construct the world's first coherent theory of light, showing in retrospect that his methods are applicable to multiple types of waves. The second revision, initiated by Einstein's explanation of the photoelectric effect, supposed that the energy of light waves was divided into quanta, which were eventually identified with particles called photons. But photons did not exactly correspond to Newton's corpuscles; for example, Newton's explanation of ordinary refraction required the corpuscles to travel faster in media of higher refractive index, which photons do not. Neither did photons displace waves; rather, they led to the paradox of wave–particle duality. Moreover, the phenomena studied by Fresnel, which included nearly all the optical phenomena known at his time, are still most easily explained in terms of the wave nature of light. So it was that, as late as 1927, the astronomer Eugène Michel Antoniadi declared Fresnel to be "the dominant figure in optics." See also Explanatory notes References Citations Bibliography D.F.J. Arago (tr. B. Powell), 1857, "Fresnel" (elegy read at the Public Meeting of the Academy of Sciences, 26 July 1830), in D.F.J. Arago (tr. W.H. Smyth, B. Powell, and R. Grant), Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men (single-volume edition), London: Longman, Brown, Green, Longmans, & Roberts, 1857, pp. 399–471. (On the translator's identity, see pp. 425n,452n.) Erratum: In the translator's note on p. 413, a plane tangent to the outer sphere at point t should intersect the refractive surface (assumed flat); then, through that intersection, tangent planes should be drawn to the inner sphere and spheroid (cf. Mach, 1926, p.263). D.F.J. Arago and A. Fresnel, 1819, "Mémoire sur l'action que les rayons de lumière polarisée exercent les uns sur les autres", Annales de Chimie et de Physique, Ser.2, vol. 10, pp. 288–305, March 1819; reprinted in Fresnel, 1866–70, vol. 1, pp. 509–22; translated as "On the action of rays of polarized light upon each other", in Crew, 1900, pp. 145–55. G.-A. Boutry, 1948, "Augustin Fresnel: His time, life and work, 1788–1827", Science Progress, vol. 36, no. 144 (October 1948), pp. 587–604; jstor.org/stable/43413515. J.Z. Buchwald, 1989, The Rise of the Wave Theory of Light: Optical Theory and Experiment in the Early Nineteenth Century, University of Chicago Press, . J.Z. Buchwald, 2013, "Optics in the Nineteenth Century", in J.Z. Buchwald and R. Fox (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of the History of Physics, Oxford, , pp. 445–72. H. Crew (ed.), 1900, The Wave Theory of Light: Memoirs by Huygens, Young and Fresnel, American Book Company. O. Darrigol, 2012, A History of Optics: From Greek Antiquity to the Nineteenth Century, Oxford, . J. Elton, 2009, "A Light to Lighten our Darkness: Lighthouse Optics and the Later Development of Fresnel's Revolutionary Refracting Lens 1780–1900", International Journal for the History of Engineering & Technology, vol. 79, no. 2 (July 2009), pp. 183–244; . E. Frankel, 1974, "The search for a corpuscular theory of double refraction: Malus, Laplace and the competition of 1808", Centaurus, vol. 18, no. 3 (September 1974), pp. 223–245. E. Frankel, 1976, "Corpuscular optics and the wave theory of light: The science and politics of a revolution in physics", Social Studies of Science, vol. 6, no. 2 (May 1976), pp. 141–84; jstor.org/stable/284930. A. Fresnel, 1815a, Letter to Jean François "Léonor" Mérimée, 10 February 1815 (Smithsonian Dibner Library, MSS 546A), printed in G. Magalhães, "Remarks on a new autograph letter from Augustin Fresnel: Light aberration and wave theory", Science in Context, vol. 19, no.2 (June 2006), pp. 295–307, , at p.306 (original French) and p.307 (English translation). A. Fresnel, 1816, "Mémoire sur la diffraction de la lumière" ("Memoir on the diffraction of light"), Annales de Chimie et de Physique, Ser.2, vol. 1, pp. 239–81 (March 1816); reprinted as "Deuxième Mémoire…" ("Second Memoir…") in Fresnel, 1866–70, vol. 1, pp. 89–122. Not to be confused with the later "prize memoir" (Fresnel, 1818b). A. Fresnel, 1818a, "Mémoire sur les couleurs développées dans les fluides homogènes par la lumière polarisée", read 30 March 1818 (according to Kipnis, 1991, p. 217), published 1846; reprinted in Fresnel, 1866–70, vol. 1, pp. 655–83; translated by E. Ronalds & H. Lloyd as "Memoir upon the colours produced in homogeneous fluids by polarized light", in Taylor, 1852, pp. 44–65. (Cited page numbers refer to the translation.) A. Fresnel, 1818b, "Mémoire sur la diffraction de la lumière" ("Memoir on the diffraction of light"), deposited 29 July 1818, "crowned" 15 March 1819, published (with appended notes) in Mémoires de l'Académie Royale des Sciences de l'Institut de France, vol. (for 1821 & 1822, printed 1826), pp. 339–475; reprinted (with notes) in Fresnel, 1866–70, vol. 1, pp. 247–383; partly translated as "Fresnel's prize memoir on the diffraction of light", in Crew, 1900, pp. 81–144. Not to be confused with the earlier memoir with the same French title (Fresnel, 1816). A. Fresnel, 1818c, "Lettre de M. Fresnel à M. Arago sur l'influence du mouvement terrestre dans quelques phénomènes d'optique", Annales de Chimie et de Physique, Ser.2, vol. 9, pp. 57–66 & plate after p.111 (Sep. 1818), & p.286–7 (Nov. 1818); reprinted in Fresnel, 1866–70, vol. 2, pp. 627–36; translated as "Letter from Augustin Fresnel to François Arago, on the influence of the movement of the earth on some phenomena of optics" in K.F. Schaffner, Nineteenth-Century Aether Theories, Pergamon, 1972 (), pp. 125–35; also translated (with several errors) by R.R. Traill as "Letter from Augustin Fresnel to François Arago concerning the influence of terrestrial movement on several optical phenomena", General Science Journal, 23 January 2006 (PDF, 8pp.). A. Fresnel, 1821a, "Note sur le calcul des teintes que la polarisation développe dans les lames cristallisées" et seq., Annales de Chimie et de Physique, Ser.2, vol. 17, pp. 102–11 (May 1821), 167–96 (June 1821), 312–15 ("Postscript", July 1821); reprinted (with added section nos.) in Fresnel, 1866–70, vol. 1, pp. 609–48; translated as "On the calculation of the tints that polarization develops in crystalline plates, & postscript", / , 2021. A. Fresnel, 1821b, "Note sur les remarques de M. Biot...", Annales de Chimie et de Physique, Ser.2, vol. 17, pp. 393–403 (August 1821); reprinted (with added section nos.) in Fresnel, 1866–70, vol. 1, pp. 601–608; translated as "Note on the remarks of Mr. Biot relating to colors of thin plates", / , 2021. A. Fresnel, 1821c, Letter to D.F.J.Arago, 21 September 1821, in Fresnel, 1866–70, vol. 2, pp. 257–9; translated as "Letter to Arago on biaxial birefringence", Wikisource, April 2021. A. Fresnel, 1822a, De la Lumière (On Light), in J. Riffault (ed.), Supplément à la traduction française de la cinquième édition du "Système de Chimie" par Th.Thomson, Paris: Chez Méquignon-Marvis, 1822, pp. 1–137,535–9; reprinted in Fresnel, 1866–70, vol. 2, pp. 3–146; translated by T. Young as "Elementary view of the undulatory theory of light", Quarterly Journal of Science, Literature, and Art, vol. 22 (Jan.–Jun.1827), pp. 127–41, 441–54; vol. 23 (Jul.–Dec.1827), pp. 113–35, 431–48; vol. 24 (Jan.–Jun.1828), pp. 198–215; vol. 25 (Jul.–Dec.1828), pp. 168–91, 389–407; vol. 26 (Jan.–Jun.1829), pp. 159–65. A. Fresnel, 1822b, "Mémoire sur un nouveau système d'éclairage des phares", read 29 July 1822; reprinted in Fresnel, 1866–70, vol. 3, pp. 97–126; translated by T. Tag as "Memoir upon a new system of lighthouse illumination", U.S. Lighthouse Society, accessed 26 August 2017; archived 19 August 2016. (Cited page numbers refer to the translation.) A. Fresnel, 1827, "Mémoire sur la double réfraction", Mémoires de l'Académie Royale des Sciences de l'Institut de France, vol. (for 1824, printed 1827), pp. 45–176; reprinted as "Second mémoire…" in Fresnel, 1866–70, vol. 2, pp. 479–596; translated by A.W. Hobson as "Memoir on double refraction", in Taylor, 1852, pp. 238–333. (Cited page numbers refer to the translation. For notable errata in the original edition, and consequently in the translation, see Fresnel, 1866–70, vol. 2, p. 596n.) A. Fresnel (ed. H. de Sénarmont, E. Verdet, and L. Fresnel), 1866–70, Oeuvres complètes d'Augustin Fresnel (3 volumes), Paris: Imprimerie Impériale; vol. 1 (1866), vol. 2 (1868), vol. 3 (1870). I. Grattan-Guinness, 1990, Convolutions in French Mathematics, 1800–1840, Basel: Birkhäuser, vol. 2, , chapter 13 (pp. 852–915, "The entry of Fresnel: Physical optics, 1815–1824") and chapter 15 (pp. 968–1045, "The entry of Navier and the triumph of Cauchy: Elasticity theory, 1819–1830"). C. Huygens, 1690, Traité de la Lumière (Leiden: Van der Aa), translated by S.P. Thompson as Treatise on Light, University of Chicago Press, 1912; Project Gutenberg, 2005. (Cited page numbers match the 1912 edition and the Gutenberg HTML edition.) F.A. Jenkins and H.E. White, 1976, Fundamentals of Optics, 4th Ed., New York: McGraw-Hill, . N. Kipnis, 1991, History of the Principle of Interference of Light, Basel: Birkhäuser, , chapters . K.A. Kneller (tr. T.M. Kettle), 1911, Christianity and the Leaders of Modern Science: A contribution to the history of culture in the nineteenth century, Freiburg im Breisgau: B. Herder, pp. 146–9. T.H. Levitt, 2009, The Shadow of Enlightenment: Optical and Political Transparency in France, 1789–1848, Oxford, . T.H. Levitt, 2013, A Short Bright Flash: Augustin Fresnel and the Birth of the Modern Lighthouse, New York: W.W. Norton, . H. Lloyd, 1834, "Report on the progress and present state of physical optics", Report of the Fourth Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (held at Edinburgh in 1834), London: J. Murray, 1835, pp. 295–413. E. Mach (tr. J.S. Anderson & A.F.A. Young), The Principles of Physical Optics: An Historical and Philosophical Treatment, London: Methuen & Co., 1926. I. Newton, 1730, Opticks: or, a Treatise of the Reflections, Refractions, Inflections, and Colours of Light, 4th Ed. (London: William Innys, 1730; Project Gutenberg, 2010); republished with Foreword by A. Einstein and Introduction by E.T. Whittaker (London: George Bell & Sons, 1931); reprinted with additional Preface by I.B. Cohen and Analytical Table of Contents by D.H.D. Roller, Mineola, NY: Dover, 1952, 1979 (with revised preface), 2012. (Cited page numbers match the Gutenberg HTML edition and the Dover editions.) R.H. Silliman, 1967, Augustin Fresnel (1788–1827) and the Establishment of the Wave Theory of Light (PhD dissertation, ), Princeton University, submitted 1967, accepted 1968; available from ProQuest (missing the first page of the preface). R.H. Silliman, 2008, "Fresnel, Augustin Jean", Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography, Detroit: Charles Scribner's Sons, vol. 5, pp. 165–71. (The version at encyclopedia.com lacks the diagram and equations.) R. Taylor (ed.), 1852, Scientific Memoirs, selected from the Transactions of Foreign Academies of Science and Learned Societies, and from Foreign Journals (in English), vol. , London: Taylor & Francis. W. Whewell, 1857, History of the Inductive Sciences: From the Earliest to the Present Time, 3rd Ed., London: J.W. Parker & Son, vol. 2, book , chapters . E. T. Whittaker, 1910, A History of the Theories of Aether and Electricity: From the age of Descartes to the close of the nineteenth century, London: Longmans, Green, & Co., chapters . J. Worrall, 1989, "Fresnel, Poisson and the white spot: The role of successful predictions in the acceptance of scientific theories", in D. Gooding, T. Pinch, and S. Schaffer (eds.), The Uses of Experiment: Studies in the Natural Sciences, Cambridge University Press, , pp. 135–57. T. Young, 1807, A Course of Lectures on Natural Philosophy and the Mechanical Arts (2 volumes), London: J.Johnson; vol. 1, vol.
than the corpuscular theory, but had nothing to say about the role of polarization; and its explanation of the periodicity was largely ignored. And Arago had founded the study of chromatic polarization, only to lose the lead, controversially, to Biot. Such were the circumstances in which Arago first heard of Fresnel's interest in optics. Rêveries Fresnel's letters from later in 1814 reveal his interest in the wave theory, including his awareness that it explained the constancy of the speed of light and was at least compatible with stellar aberration. Eventually he compiled what he called his rêveries (musings) into an essay and submitted it via Léonor Mérimée to André-Marie Ampère, who did not respond directly. But on 19 December, Mérimée dined with Ampère and Arago, with whom he was acquainted through the École Polytechnique; and Arago promised to look at Fresnel's essay. In mid 1815, on his way home to Mathieu to serve his suspension, Fresnel met Arago in Paris and spoke of the wave theory and stellar aberration. He was informed that he was trying to break down open doors ("il enfonçait des portes ouvertes"), and directed to classical works on optics. Diffraction First attempt (1815) On 12 July 1815, as Fresnel was about to leave Paris, Arago left him a note on a new topic: Fresnel would not have ready access to these works outside Paris, and could not read English. But, in Mathieu – with a point-source of light made by focusing sunlight with a drop of honey, a crude micrometer of his own construction, and supporting apparatus made by a local locksmith – he began his own experiments. His technique was novel: whereas earlier investigators had projected the fringes onto a screen, Fresnel soon abandoned the screen and observed the fringes in space, through a lens with the micrometer at its focus, allowing more accurate measurements while requiring less light. Later in July, after Napoleon's final defeat, Fresnel was reinstated with the advantage of having backed the winning side. He requested a two-month leave of absence, which was readily granted because roadworks were in abeyance. On 23 September he wrote to Arago, beginning "I think I have found the explanation and the law of colored fringes which one notices in the shadows of bodies illuminated by a luminous point." In the same paragraph, however, Fresnel implicitly acknowledged doubt about the novelty of his work: noting that he would need to incur some expense in order to improve his measurements, he wanted to know "whether this is not useless, and whether the law of diffraction has not already been established by sufficiently exact experiments." He explained that he had not yet had a chance to acquire the items on his reading lists, with the apparent exception of "Young's book", which he could not understand without his brother's help. Not surprisingly, he had retraced many of Young's steps. In a memoir sent to the institute on 15 October 1815, Fresnel mapped the external and internal fringes in the shadow of a wire. He noticed, like Young before him, that the internal fringes disappeared when the light from one side was blocked, and concluded that "the vibrations of two rays that cross each other under a very small angle can contradict each other…" But, whereas Young took the disappearance of the internal fringes as confirmation of the principle of interference, Fresnel reported that it was the internal fringes that first drew his attention to the principle. To explain the diffraction pattern, Fresnel constructed the internal fringes by considering the intersections of circular wavefronts emitted from the two edges of the obstruction, and the external fringes by considering the intersections between direct waves and waves reflected off the nearer edge. For the external fringes, to obtain tolerable agreement with observation, he had to suppose that the reflected wave was inverted; and he noted that the predicted paths of the fringes were hyperbolic. In the part of the memoir that most clearly surpassed Young, Fresnel explained the ordinary laws of reflection and refraction in terms of interference, noting that if two parallel rays were reflected or refracted at other than the prescribed angle, they would no longer have the same phase in a common perpendicular plane, and every vibration would be cancelled by a nearby vibration. He noted that his explanation was valid provided that the surface irregularities were much smaller than the wavelength. On 10 November, Fresnel sent a supplementary note dealing with Newton's rings and with gratings, including, for the first time, transmission gratings – although in that case the interfering rays were still assumed to be "inflected", and the experimental verification was inadequate because it used only two threads. As Fresnel was not a member of the institute, the fate of his memoir depended heavily on the report of a single member. The reporter for Fresnel's memoir turned out to be Arago (with Poinsot as the other reviewer). On 8 November, Arago wrote to Fresnel: Fresnel was troubled, wanting to know more precisely where he had collided with Young. Concerning the curved paths of the "colored bands", Young had noted the hyperbolic paths of the fringes in the two-source interference pattern, corresponding roughly to Fresnel's internal fringes, and had described the hyperbolic fringes that appear on the screen within rectangular shadows. He had not mentioned the curved paths of the external fringes of a shadow; but, as he later explained, that was because Newton had already done so. Newton evidently thought the fringes were caustics. Thus Arago erred in his belief that the curved paths of the fringes were fundamentally incompatible with the corpuscular theory. Arago's letter went on to request more data on the external fringes. Fresnel complied, until he exhausted his leave and was assigned to Rennes in the département of Ille-et-Vilaine. At this point Arago interceded with Gaspard de Prony, head of the École des Ponts, who wrote to Louis-Mathieu Molé, head of the Corps des Ponts, suggesting that the progress of science and the prestige of the Corps would be enhanced if Fresnel could come to Paris for a time. He arrived in March 1816, and his leave was subsequently extended through the middle of the year. Meanwhile, in an experiment reported on 26 February 1816, Arago verified Fresnel's prediction that the internal fringes were shifted if the rays on one side of the obstacle passed through a thin glass lamina. Fresnel correctly attributed this phenomenon to the lower wave velocity in the glass. Arago later used a similar argument to explain the colors in the scintillation of stars. Fresnel's updated memoir was eventually published in the March 1816 issue of Annales de Chimie et de Physique, of which Arago had recently become co-editor. That issue did not actually appear until May. In March, Fresnel already had competition: Biot read a memoir on diffraction by himself and his student Claude Pouillet, containing copious data and arguing that the regularity of diffraction fringes, like the regularity of Newton's rings, must be linked to Newton's "fits". But the new link was not rigorous, and Pouillet himself would become a distinguished early adopter of the wave theory. "Efficacious ray", double-mirror experiment (1816) On 24 May 1816, Fresnel wrote to Young (in French), acknowledging how little of his own memoir was new. But in a "supplement" signed on 14 July and read the next day, Fresnel noted that the internal fringes were more accurately predicted by supposing that the two interfering rays came from some distance outside the edges of the obstacle. To explain this, he divided the incident wavefront at the obstacle into what we now call Fresnel zones, such that the secondary waves from each zone were spread over half a cycle when they arrived at the observation point. The zones on one side of the obstacle largely canceled out in pairs, except the first zone, which was represented by an "efficacious ray". This approach worked for the internal fringes, but the superposition of the efficacious ray and the direct ray did not work for the external fringes. The contribution from the "efficacious ray" was thought to be only partly canceled, for reasons involving the dynamics of the medium: where the wavefront was continuous, symmetry forbade oblique vibrations; but near the obstacle that truncated the wavefront, the asymmetry allowed some sideways vibration towards the geometric shadow. This argument showed that Fresnel had not (yet) fully accepted Huygens's principle, which would have permitted oblique radiation from all portions of the front. In the same supplement, Fresnel described his well-known double mirror, comprising two flat mirrors joined at an angle of slightly less than 180°, with which he produced a two-slit interference pattern from two virtual images of the same slit. A conventional double-slit experiment required a preliminary single slit to ensure that the light falling on the double slit was coherent (synchronized). In Fresnel's version, the preliminary single slit was retained, and the double slit was replaced by the double mirror – which bore no physical resemblance to the double slit and yet performed the same function. This result (which had been announced by Arago in the March issue of the Annales) made it hard to believe that the two-slit pattern had anything to do with corpuscles being deflected as they passed near the edges of the slits. But 1816 was the "Year Without a Summer": crops failed; hungry farming families lined the streets of Rennes; the central government organized "charity workhouses" for the needy; and in October, Fresnel was sent back to Ille-et-Vilaine to supervise charity workers in addition to his regular road crew. According to Arago, Fresnel's letters from December 1816 reveal his consequent anxiety. To Arago he complained of being "tormented by the worries of surveillance, and the need to reprimand…" And to Mérimée he wrote: "I find nothing more tiresome than having to manage other men, and I admit that I have no idea what I'm doing." Prize memoir (1818) and sequel On 17 March 1817, the Académie des Sciences announced that diffraction would be the topic for the biannual physics Grand Prix to be awarded in 1819. The deadline for entries was set at 1 August 1818 to allow time for replication of experiments. Although the wording of the problem referred to rays and inflection and did not invite wave-based solutions, Arago and Ampère encouraged Fresnel to enter. In the fall of 1817, Fresnel, supported by de Prony, obtained a leave of absence from the new head of the Corp des Ponts, Louis Becquey, and returned to Paris. He resumed his engineering duties in the spring of 1818; but from then on he was based in Paris, first on the Canal de l'Ourcq, and then (from May 1819) with the cadastre of the pavements. On 15 January 1818, in a different context (revisited below), Fresnel showed that the addition of sinusoidal functions of the same frequency but different phases is analogous to the addition of forces with different directions. His method was similar to the phasor representation, except that the "forces" were plane vectors rather than complex numbers; they could be added, and multiplied by scalars, but not (yet) multiplied and divided by each other. The explanation was algebraic rather than geometric. Knowledge of this method was assumed in a preliminary note on diffraction, dated 19 April 1818 and deposited on 20 April, in which Fresnel outlined the elementary theory of diffraction as found in modern textbooks. He restated Huygens's principle in combination with the superposition principle, saying that the vibration at each point on a wavefront is the sum of the vibrations that would be sent to it at that moment by all the elements of the wavefront in any of its previous positions, all elements acting separately . For a wavefront partly obstructed in a previous position, the summation was to be carried out over the unobstructed portion. In directions other than the normal to the primary wavefront, the secondary waves were weakened due to obliquity, but weakened much more by destructive interference, so that the effect of obliquity alone could be ignored. For diffraction by a straight edge, the intensity as a function of distance from the geometric shadow could then be expressed with sufficient accuracy in terms of what are now called the normalized Fresnel integrals: The same note included a table of the integrals, for an upper limit ranging from 0 to 5.1 in steps of 0.1, computed with a mean error of 0.0003, plus a smaller table of maxima and minima of the resulting intensity. In his final "Memoir on the diffraction of light", deposited on 29 July and bearing the Latin epigraph "Natura simplex et fecunda" ("Nature simple and fertile"), Fresnel slightly expanded the two tables without changing the existing figures, except for a correction to the first minimum of intensity. For completeness, he repeated his solution to "the problem of interference", whereby sinusoidal functions are added like vectors. He acknowledged the directionality of the secondary sources and the variation in their distances from the observation point, chiefly to explain why these things make negligible difference in the context, provided of course that the secondary sources do not radiate in the retrograde direction. Then, applying his theory of interference to the secondary waves, he expressed the intensity of light diffracted by a single straight edge (half-plane) in terms of integrals which involved the dimensions of the problem, but which could be converted to the normalized forms above. With reference to the integrals, he explained the calculation of the maxima and minima of the intensity (external fringes), and noted that the calculated intensity falls very rapidly as one moves into the geometric shadow. The last result, as Olivier Darrigol says, "amounts to a proof of the rectilinear propagation of light in the wave theory, indeed the first proof that a modern physicist would still accept." For the experimental testing of his calculations, Fresnel used red light with a wavelength of 638nm, which he deduced from the diffraction pattern in the simple case in which light incident on a single slit was focused by a cylindrical lens. For a variety of distances from the source to the obstacle and from the obstacle to the field point, he compared the calculated and observed positions of the fringes for diffraction by a half-plane, a slit, and a narrow strip – concentrating on the minima, which were visually sharper than the maxima. For the slit and the strip, he could not use the previously computed table of maxima and minima; for each combination of dimensions, the intensity had to be expressed in terms of sums or differences of Fresnel integrals and calculated from the table of integrals, and the extrema had to be calculated anew. The agreement between calculation and measurement was better than 1.5% in almost every case. Near the end of the memoir, Fresnel summed up the difference between Huygens's use of secondary waves and his own: whereas Huygens says there is light only where the secondary waves exactly agree, Fresnel says there is complete darkness only where the secondary waves exactly cancel out. The judging committee comprised Laplace, Biot, and Poisson (all corpuscularists), Gay-Lussac (uncommitted), and Arago, who eventually wrote the committee's report. Although entries in the competition were supposed to be anonymous to the judges, Fresnel's must have been recognizable by the content. There was only one other entry, of which neither the manuscript nor any record of the author has survived. That entry (identified as "no.1") was mentioned only in the last paragraph of the judges' report, noting that the author had shown ignorance of the relevant earlier works of Young and Fresnel, used insufficiently precise methods of observation, overlooked known phenomena, and made obvious errors. In the words of John Worrall, "The competition facing Fresnel could hardly have been less stiff." We may infer that the committee had only two options: award the prize to Fresnel ("no. 2"), or withhold it. The committee deliberated into the new year. Then Poisson, exploiting a case in which Fresnel's theory gave easy integrals, predicted that if a circular obstacle were illuminated by a point-source, there should be (according to the theory) a bright spot in the center of the shadow, illuminated as brightly as the exterior. This seems to have been intended as a reductio ad absurdum. Arago, undeterred, assembled an experiment with an obstacle 2mm in diameter – and there, in the center of the shadow, was Poisson's spot. The unanimous report of the committee, read at the meeting of the Académie on 15 March 1819, awarded the prize to "the memoir marked no. 2, and bearing as epigraph: Natura simplex et fecunda." At the same meeting, after the judgment was delivered, the president of the Académie opened a sealed note accompanying the memoir, revealing the author as Fresnel. The award was announced at the public meeting of the Académie a week later, on 22 March. Arago's verification of Poisson's counter-intuitive prediction passed into folklore as if it had decided the prize. That view, however, is not supported by the judges' report, which gave the matter only two sentences in the penultimate paragraph. Neither did Fresnel's triumph immediately convert Laplace, Biot, and Poisson to the wave theory, for at least four reasons. First, although the professionalization of science in France had established common standards, it was one thing to acknowledge a piece of research as meeting those standards, and another thing to regard it as conclusive. Second, it was possible to interpret Fresnel's integrals as rules for combining rays. Arago even encouraged that interpretation, presumably in order to minimize resistance to Fresnel's ideas. Even Biot began teaching the Huygens-Fresnel principle without committing himself to a wave basis. Third, Fresnel's theory did not adequately explain the mechanism of generation of secondary waves or why they had any significant angular spread; this issue particularly bothered Poisson. Fourth, the question that most exercised optical physicists at that time was not diffraction, but polarization – on which Fresnel had been working, but was yet to make his critical breakthrough. Polarization Background: Emissionism and selectionism An emission theory of light was one that regarded the propagation of light as the transport of some kind of matter. While the corpuscular theory was obviously an emission theory, the converse did not follow: in principle, one could be an emissionist without being a corpuscularist. This was convenient because, beyond the ordinary laws of reflection and refraction, emissionists never managed to make testable quantitative predictions from a theory of forces acting on corpuscles of light. But they did make quantitative predictions from the premises that rays were countable objects, which were conserved in their interactions with matter (except absorbent media), and which had particular orientations with respect to their directions of propagation. According to this framework, polarization and the related phenomena of double refraction and partial reflection involved altering the orientations of the rays and/or selecting them according to orientation, and the state of polarization of a beam (a bundle of rays) was a question of how many rays were in what orientations: in a fully polarized beam, the orientations were all the same. This approach, which Jed Buchwald has called selectionism, was pioneered by Malus and diligently pursued by Biot. Fresnel, in contrast, decided to introduce polarization into interference experiments. Interference of polarized light, chromatic polarization (1816–21) In July or August 1816, Fresnel discovered that when a birefringent crystal produced two images of a single slit, he could not obtain the usual two-slit interference pattern, even if he compensated for the different propagation times. A more general experiment, suggested by Arago, found that if the two beams of a double-slit device were separately polarized, the interference pattern appeared and disappeared as the polarization of one beam was rotated, giving full interference for parallel polarizations, but no interference for perpendicular polarizations . These experiments, among others, were eventually reported in a brief memoir published in 1819 and later translated into English. In a memoir drafted on 30 August 1816 and revised on 6 October, Fresnel reported an experiment in which he placed two matching thin laminae in a double-slit apparatus – one over each slit, with their optic axes perpendicular – and obtained two interference patterns offset in opposite directions, with perpendicular polarizations. This, in combination with the previous findings, meant that each lamina split the incident light into perpendicularly polarized components with different velocities – just like a normal (thick) birefringent crystal, and contrary to Biot's "mobile polarization" hypothesis. Accordingly, in the same memoir, Fresnel offered his first attempt at a wave theory of chromatic polarization. When polarized light passed through a crystal lamina, it was split into ordinary and extraordinary waves (with intensities described by Malus's law), and these were perpendicularly polarized and therefore did not interfere, so that no colors were produced (yet). But if they then passed through an analyzer (second polarizer), their polarizations were brought into alignment (with intensities again modified according to Malus's law), and they would interfere. This explanation, by itself, predicts that if the analyzer is rotated 90°, the ordinary and extraordinary waves simply switch roles, so that if the analyzer takes the form of a calcite crystal, the two images of the lamina should be of the same hue (this issue is revisited below). But in fact, as Arago and Biot had found, they are of complementary colors. To correct the prediction, Fresnel proposed a phase-inversion rule whereby one of the constituent waves of one of the two images suffered an additional 180° phase shift on its way through the lamina. This inversion was a weakness in the theory relative to Biot's, as Fresnel acknowledged, although the rule specified which of the two images had the inverted wave. Moreover, Fresnel could deal only with special cases, because he had not yet solved the problem of superposing sinusoidal functions with arbitrary phase differences due to propagation at different velocities through the lamina. He solved that problem in a "supplement" signed on 15 January 1818 (mentioned above). In the same document, he accommodated Malus's law by proposing an underlying law: that if polarized light is incident on a birefringent crystal with its optic axis at an angle θ to the "plane of polarization", the ordinary and extraordinary vibrations (as functions of time) are scaled by the factors cosθ and sinθ, respectively. Although modern readers easily interpret these factors in terms of perpendicular components of a transverse oscillation, Fresnel did not (yet) explain them that way. Hence he still needed the phase-inversion rule. He applied all these principles to a case of chromatic polarization not covered by Biot's formulae, involving two successive laminae with axes separated by 45°, and obtained predictions that disagreed with Biot's experiments (except in special cases) but agreed with his own. Fresnel applied the same principles to the standard case of chromatic polarization, in which one birefringent lamina was sliced parallel to its axis and placed between a polarizer and an analyzer. If the analyzer took the form of a thick calcite crystal with its axis in the plane of polarization, Fresnel predicted that the intensities of the ordinary and extraordinary images of the lamina were respectively proportional to where is the angle from the initial plane of polarization to the optic axis of the lamina, is the angle from the initial plane of polarization to the plane of polarization of the final ordinary image, and is the phase lag of the extraordinary wave relative to the ordinary wave due to the difference in propagation times through the lamina. The terms in are the frequency-dependent terms and explain why the lamina must be thin in order to produce discernible colors: if the lamina is too thick, will pass through too many cycles as the frequency varies through the visible range, and the eye (which divides the visible spectrum into only three bands) will not be able to resolve the cycles. From these equations it is easily verified that for all so that the colors are complementary. Without the phase-inversion rule, there would be a plus sign in front of the last term in the second equation, so that the -dependent term would be the same in both equations, implying (incorrectly) that the colors were of the same hue. These equations were included in an undated note that Fresnel gave to Biot, to which Biot added a few lines of his own. If we substitute and then Fresnel's formulae can be rewritten as which are none other than Biot's empirical formulae of 1812, except that Biot interpreted and as the "unaffected" and "affected" selections of the rays incident on the lamina. If Biot's substitutions were accurate, they would imply that his experimental results were more fully explained by Fresnel's theory than by his own. Arago delayed reporting on Fresnel's works on chromatic polarization until June 1821, when he used them in a broad attack on Biot's theory. In his written response, Biot protested that Arago's attack went beyond the proper scope of a report on the nominated works of Fresnel. But Biot also claimed that the substitutions for and and therefore Fresnel's expressions for and were empirically wrong because when Fresnel's intensities of spectral colors were mixed according to Newton's rules, the squared cosine and sine functions varied too smoothly to account for the observed sequence of colors. That claim drew a written reply from Fresnel, who disputed whether the colors changed as abruptly as Biot claimed, and whether the human eye could judge color with sufficient objectivity for the purpose. On the latter question, Fresnel pointed out that different observers may give different names to the same color. Furthermore, he said, a single observer can only compare colors side by side; and even if they are judged to be the same, the identity is of sensation, not necessarily of composition. Fresnel's oldest and strongest point – that thin crystals were subject to the same laws as thick ones and did not need or allow a separate theory – Biot left unanswered. Arago and Fresnel were seen to have won the debate. Moreover, by this time Fresnel had a new, simpler explanation of his equations on chromatic polarization. Breakthrough: Pure transverse waves (1821) In the draft memoir of 30 August 1816, Fresnel mentioned two hypotheses – one of which he attributed to Ampère – by which the non-interference of orthogonally-polarized beams could be explained if polarized light waves were partly transverse. But Fresnel could not develop either of these ideas into a comprehensive theory. As early as September 1816, according to his later account, he realized that the non-interference of orthogonally-polarized beams, together with the phase-inversion rule in chromatic polarization, would be most easily explained if the waves were purely transverse, and Ampère "had the same thought" on the phase-inversion rule. But that would raise a new difficulty: as natural light seemed to be unpolarized and its waves were therefore presumed to be longitudinal, one would need to explain how the longitudinal component of vibration disappeared on polarization, and why it did not reappear when polarized light was reflected or refracted obliquely by a glass plate. Independently, on 12 January 1817, Young wrote to Arago (in English) noting that a transverse vibration would constitute a polarization, and that if two longitudinal waves crossed at a significant angle, they could not cancel without leaving a residual transverse vibration. Young repeated this idea in an article published in a supplement to the Encyclopædia Britannica in February 1818, in which he added that Malus's law would be explained if polarization consisted in a transverse motion. Thus Fresnel, by his own testimony, may not have been the first person to suspect that light waves could have a transverse component, or that polarized waves were exclusively transverse. And it was Young, not Fresnel, who first published the idea that polarization depends on the orientation of a transverse vibration. But these incomplete theories had not reconciled the nature of polarization with the apparent existence of unpolarized light; that achievement was to be Fresnel's alone. In a note that Buchwald dates in the summer of 1818, Fresnel entertained the idea that unpolarized waves could have vibrations of the same energy and obliquity, with their orientations distributed uniformly about the wave-normal, and that the degree of polarization was the degree of non-uniformity in the distribution. Two pages later he noted, apparently for the first time in writing, that his phase-inversion rule and the non-interference of orthogonally-polarized beams would be easily explained if the vibrations of fully polarized waves were "perpendicular to the normal to the wave"—that is, purely transverse. But if he could account for lack of polarization by averaging out the transverse component, he did not also need to assume a longitudinal component. It was enough to suppose that light waves are purely transverse, hence always polarized in the sense of having a particular transverse orientation, and that the "unpolarized" state of natural or "direct" light is due to rapid and random variations in that orientation, in which case two coherent portions of "unpolarized" light will still interfere because their orientations will be synchronized. It is not known exactly when Fresnel made this last step, because there is no relevant documentation from 1820 or early 1821 (perhaps because he was too busy working on lighthouse-lens prototypes; see below). But he first published the idea in a paper on "Calcul des teintes…" ("calculation of the tints…"), serialized in Arago's Annales for May, June, and July 1821. In the first installment, Fresnel described "direct" (unpolarized) light as "the rapid succession of systems of waves polarized in all directions", and gave what is essentially the modern explanation of chromatic polarization, albeit in terms of the analogy between polarization and the resolution of forces in a plane, mentioning transverse waves only in a footnote. The introduction of transverse waves into the main argument was delayed to the second installment, in which he revealed the suspicion that he and Ampère had harbored since 1816, and the difficulty it raised. He continued: According to this new view, he wrote, "the act of polarization consists not in creating these transverse movements, but in decomposing them into two fixed perpendicular directions and in separating the two components". While selectionists could insist on interpreting Fresnel's diffraction integrals in terms of discrete, countable rays, they could not do the same with his theory of polarization. For a selectionist, the state of polarization of a beam concerned the distribution of orientations over the population of rays, and that distribution was presumed to be static. For Fresnel, the state of polarization of a beam concerned the variation of a displacement over time. That displacement might be constrained but was not static, and rays were geometric constructions, not countable objects. The conceptual gap between the wave theory and selectionism had become unbridgeable. The other difficulty posed by pure transverse waves, of course, was the apparent implication that the aether was an elastic solid, except that, unlike other elastic solids, it was incapable of transmitting longitudinal waves. The wave theory was cheap on assumptions, but its latest assumption was expensive on credulity. If that assumption was to be widely entertained, its explanatory power would need to be impressive. Partial reflection (1821) In the second installment of "Calcul des teintes" (June 1821), Fresnel supposed, by analogy with sound waves, that the density of the aether in a refractive medium was inversely proportional to the square of the wave velocity, and therefore directly proportional to the square of the refractive index. For reflection and refraction at the surface between two isotropic media of different indices, Fresnel decomposed the transverse vibrations into two perpendicular components, now known as the s and p components, which are parallel to the surface and the plane of incidence, respectively; in other words, the s and p components are respectively square and parallel to the plane of incidence. For the s component, Fresnel supposed that the interaction between the two media was analogous to an
out to hunt, with their men carrying bows and arrows; keeping horses, dogs and huntsmen; and special mention is made of an abbot of Leicester, c. 1360, who was the most skilled of all the nobility in hare hunting. In magnificence of equipage and retinue the abbots vied with the first nobles of the realm. They rode on mules with gilded bridles, rich saddles and housings, carrying hawks on their wrist, followed by an immense train of attendants. The bells of the churches were rung as they passed. They associated on equal terms with laymen of the highest distinction, and shared all their pleasures and pursuits. This rank and power was, however, often used most beneficially. For instance, we read of Richard Whiting, the last abbot of Glastonbury, judicially murdered by Henry VIII, that his house was a kind of well-ordered court, where as many as 300 sons of noblemen and gentlemen, who had been sent to him for virtuous education, had been brought up, besides others of a lesser rank, whom he fitted for the universities. His table, attendance and officers were an honour to the nation. He would entertain as many as 500 persons of rank at one time, besides relieving the poor of the vicinity twice a week. He had his country houses and fisheries, and when he travelled to attend parliament his retinue amounted to upwards of 100 persons. The abbots of Cluny and Vendôme were, by virtue of their office, cardinals of the Roman church. In the process of time, the title abbot was extended to clerics who had no connection with the monastic system, as to the principal of a body of parochial clergy; and under the Carolingians to the chief chaplain of the king, , or military chaplain of the emperor, It even came to be adopted by purely secular officials. Thus the chief magistrate of the republic at Genoa was called . Lay abbots (M. Lat. , , , , or , , or sometimes simply ) were the outcome of the growth of the feudal system from the 8th century onwards. The practice of commendation, by which—to meet a contemporary emergency—the revenues of the community were handed over to a lay lord, in return for his protection, early suggested to the emperors and kings the expedient of rewarding their warriors with rich abbeys held in commendam. During the Carolingian epoch, the custom grew up of granting these as regular heritable fiefs or benefices, and by the 10th century, before the great Cluniac reform, the system was firmly established. Even the abbey of St Denis was held in commendam by Hugh Capet. The example of the kings was followed by the feudal nobles, sometimes by making a temporary concession permanent, sometimes without any form of commendation whatever. In England the abuse was rife in the 8th century, as may be gathered from the acts of the council of Cloveshoe. These lay abbacies were not merely a question of overlordship, but implied the concentration in lay hands of all the rights, immunities and jurisdiction of the foundations, i.e. the more or less complete secularization of spiritual institutions. The lay abbot took his recognized rank in the feudal hierarchy, and was free to dispose of his fief as in the case of any other. The enfeoffment of abbeys differed in form and degree. Sometimes the monks were directly subject to the lay abbot; sometimes he appointed a substitute to perform the spiritual functions, known usually as dean (), but also as abbot (, , ). When the great reform of the 11th century had put an end to the direct jurisdiction of the lay abbots, the honorary title of abbot continued to be held by certain of the great feudal families, as late as the 13th century and later, with the head of the community retaining the title of dean. The connection of the lesser lay abbots with the abbeys, especially in the south of France, lasted longer; and certain feudal families retained the title of () for centuries, together with certain rights over the abbey lands or revenues. The abuse was not confined to the West. John, patriarch of Antioch at the beginning of the 12th century, informs us that in his time most monasteries had been handed over to laymen, , for life, or for part of their lives, by the emperors. Giraldus Cambrensis reported (Itinerary, ii.iv) the common customs of lay abbots in the late 12th-century Church of Wales: In conventual cathedrals, where the bishop occupied the place of the abbot, the functions usually devolving on the superior of the monastery were performed by a prior. Modern practices In the Roman Catholic Church, abbots continue to be elected by the monks of an abbey to lead them as their religious superior in those orders and monasteries that make use of the term (some orders of monks, as the Carthusians for instance, have no abbots, only priors). A monastery must have been granted the status of an abbey by the pope, and such monasteries are normally raised to this level after showing a degree of stability—a certain number of monks in vows, a certain number of years of establishment, a certain firmness to the foundation in economic, vocational and legal aspects. Prior to this, the monastery would be a mere priory, headed by a prior who acts as superior but without the same degree of legal authority that an abbot has. The abbot is chosen by the monks from among the fully professed monks. Once chosen, he must request blessing: the blessing of an abbot is celebrated by the bishop in whose diocese the monastery is or, with his permission, another abbot or bishop. The ceremony of such a blessing is similar in some aspects to the consecration of a bishop, with the new abbot being presented with the mitre, the ring, and the crosier as symbols of office and receiving the laying on of hands and blessing from the celebrant. Though the ceremony installs the new abbot into a position of legal authority, it does not confer further sacramental authority- it is not a further degree of Holy Orders (although some abbots have been ordained to the episcopacy). Once he has received this blessing, the abbot not only becomes father of his monks in a spiritual sense, but their major superior under canon law, and has the additional authority to confer the ministries of acolyte and lector (formerly, he could confer the minor orders, which are not sacraments, that these ministries have replaced). The abbey is a species of "exempt religious" in that it is, for the most part, answerable to the pope, or to the abbot primate, rather than to the local bishop. The abbot wears the same habit as his fellow monks, though by tradition he adds to it a pectoral cross. Territorial abbots follow all of the above, but in addition must receive a mandate of authority from the pope over the territory around the monastery for which they are responsible. Abbatial hierarchy In some monastic families, there is a hierarchy of precedence or authority among abbots. In some cases, this is the result of an abbey being considered the "mother" of several "daughter" abbeys founded as dependent priories of the "mother." In other cases, abbeys have affiliated in networks known as "congregations." Some monastic families recognize one abbey as the motherhouse of the entire order. The abbot of Sant'Anselmo di Aventino, in Rome, is styled the "abbot primate," and is acknowledged the senior abbot for the Order of St. Benedict (O.S.B.) An abbot president is the head of a
One of the main goals of monasticism was the purgation of self and selfishness, and obedience was seen as a path to that perfection. It was sacred duty to execute the abbot's orders, and even to act without his orders was sometimes considered a transgression. Examples among the Egyptian monks of this submission to the commands of the superiors, exalted into a virtue by those who regarded the entire crushing of the individual will as a goal, are detailed by Cassian and others, e.g. a monk watering a dry stick, day after day, for months, or endeavoring to remove a huge rock immensely exceeding his powers. Appointments When a vacancy occurred, the bishop of the diocese chose the abbot out of the monks of the monastery, but the right of election was transferred by jurisdiction to the monks themselves, reserving to the bishop the confirmation of the election and the benediction of the new abbot. In abbeys exempt from the archbishop's diocesan jurisdiction, the confirmation and benediction had to be conferred by the pope in person, the house being taxed with the expenses of the new abbot's journey to Rome. It was necessary that an abbot should be at least 30 years of age, of legitimate birth, a monk of the house for at least 10 years, unless it furnished no suitable candidate, when a liberty was allowed of electing from another monastery, well instructed himself, and able to instruct others, one also who had learned how to command by having practised obedience. In some exceptional cases an abbot was allowed to name his own successor. Cassian speaks of an abbot in Egypt doing this; and in later times we have another example in the case of St Bruno. Popes and sovereigns gradually encroached on the rights of the monks, until in Italy the pope had usurped the nomination of all abbots, and the king in France, with the exception of Cluny, Premontré and other houses, chiefs of their order. The election was for life, unless the abbot was canonically deprived by the chiefs of his order, or when he was directly subject to them, by the pope or the bishop, and also in England it was for a term of 8–12 years. The ceremony of the formal admission of a Benedictine abbot in medieval times is thus prescribed by the consuetudinary of Abingdon. The newly elected abbot was to put off his shoes at the door of the church, and proceed barefoot to meet the members of the house advancing in a procession. After proceeding up the nave, he was to kneel and pray at the topmost step of the entrance of the choir, into which he was to be introduced by the bishop or his commissary, and placed in his stall. The monks, then kneeling, gave him the kiss of peace on the hand, and rising, on the mouth, the abbot holding his staff of office. He then put on his shoes in the vestry, and a chapter was held, and the bishop or his delegate preached a suitable sermon. General information Before the late modern era, the abbot was treated with the utmost reverence by the brethren of his house. When he appeared either in church or chapter all present rose and bowed. His letters were received kneeling, as were those of the pope and the king. No monk might sit in his presence, or leave it without his permission, reflecting the hierarchical etiquette of families and society. The highest place was assigned to him, both in church and at table. In the East he was commanded to eat with the other monks. In the West the Rule of St Benedict appointed him a separate table, at which he might entertain guests and strangers. Because this permission opened the door to luxurious living, Synods of Aachen (816–819), decreed that the abbot should dine in the refectory, and be content with the ordinary fare of the monks, unless he had to entertain a guest. These ordinances proved, however, generally ineffectual to secure strictness of diet, and contemporaneous literature abounds with satirical remarks and complaints concerning the inordinate extravagance of the tables of the abbots. When the abbot condescended to dine in the refectory, his chaplains waited upon him with the dishes, a servant, if necessary, assisting them. When abbots dined in their own private hall, the Rule of St Benedict charged them to invite their monks to their table, provided there was room, on which occasions the guests were to abstain from quarrels, slanderous talk and idle gossiping. The ordinary attire of the abbot was according to rule to be the same as that of the monks. But by the 10th century the rule was commonly set aside, and we find frequent complaints of abbots dressing in silk, and adopting sumptuous attire. Some even laid aside the monastic habit altogether, and assumed a secular dress. With the increase of wealth and power, abbots had lost much of their special religious character, and become great lords, chiefly distinguished from lay lords by celibacy. Thus we hear of abbots going out to hunt, with their men carrying bows and arrows; keeping horses, dogs and huntsmen; and special mention is made of an abbot of Leicester, c. 1360, who was the most skilled of all the nobility in hare hunting. In magnificence of equipage and retinue the abbots vied with the first nobles of the realm. They rode on mules with gilded bridles, rich saddles and housings, carrying hawks on their wrist, followed by an immense train of attendants. The bells of the churches were rung as they passed. They associated on equal terms with laymen of the highest distinction, and shared all their pleasures and pursuits. This rank and power was, however, often used most beneficially. For instance, we read of Richard Whiting, the last abbot of Glastonbury, judicially murdered by Henry VIII, that his house was a kind of well-ordered court, where as many as 300 sons of noblemen and gentlemen, who had been sent to him for virtuous education, had been brought up, besides others of a lesser rank, whom he fitted for the universities. His table, attendance and officers were an honour to the nation. He would entertain as many as 500 persons of rank at one time, besides relieving the poor of the vicinity twice a week. He had his country houses and fisheries, and when he travelled to attend parliament his retinue amounted to upwards of 100 persons. The abbots of Cluny and Vendôme were, by virtue of their office, cardinals of the Roman church. In the process of time, the title abbot was extended to clerics who had no connection with the monastic system, as to the principal of a body of parochial clergy; and under the Carolingians to the chief chaplain of the king, , or military chaplain of the emperor, It even came to be adopted by purely secular officials. Thus the chief magistrate of the republic at Genoa was called . Lay abbots (M. Lat. , , , , or , , or sometimes simply ) were the outcome of the growth of the feudal system from the 8th century onwards. The practice of commendation, by which—to meet a contemporary emergency—the revenues of the community were handed over to a lay lord, in return for his protection, early suggested to the emperors and kings the expedient of rewarding their warriors with rich abbeys held in commendam. During the Carolingian epoch, the custom grew up of granting these as regular heritable fiefs or benefices, and by the 10th century, before the great Cluniac reform, the system was firmly established. Even the abbey of St Denis was held in commendam by Hugh Capet. The example of the kings was followed by the feudal nobles, sometimes by making a temporary concession permanent, sometimes without any form of commendation whatever. In England the abuse was rife in the 8th century, as may be gathered from the acts of the council of Cloveshoe. These lay abbacies were not merely a question of overlordship, but implied the concentration in lay hands of all the rights, immunities and jurisdiction of the foundations, i.e. the more or less complete secularization of spiritual institutions. The lay abbot took his recognized rank in the feudal hierarchy, and was free to dispose of his fief as in the case of any other. The enfeoffment of abbeys differed in form and degree. Sometimes the monks were directly subject to the lay abbot; sometimes he appointed a substitute to perform the spiritual functions, known usually as dean (), but also as abbot (, , ). When the great reform of the 11th century had put an end to the direct jurisdiction of the lay abbots, the honorary title of abbot continued to be held by certain of the great feudal families, as late as the 13th century and later, with the head of the community retaining the title of dean. The connection of the lesser lay abbots with the abbeys, especially in the south of France, lasted longer; and certain feudal families retained the title of () for centuries, together with certain rights over the abbey lands or revenues. The abuse was not confined to the West. John, patriarch of Antioch at the beginning of the 12th century, informs us that in his time most monasteries had been handed over to laymen, , for life, or for part of their lives, by the emperors. Giraldus Cambrensis reported (Itinerary, ii.iv) the common customs of lay abbots in the late 12th-century Church of Wales: In conventual cathedrals, where the bishop occupied the place of the abbot, the functions usually devolving on the superior of the monastery were performed by a prior. Modern practices In the Roman Catholic Church, abbots continue to be elected by the monks of an abbey to lead them as their religious superior in those orders and monasteries that make use of the term (some orders of monks, as the Carthusians for instance, have no abbots, only priors). A monastery must have been granted the status of an abbey by the pope, and such monasteries are normally raised to this level after showing a degree of stability—a certain number of monks in vows, a certain number of years of establishment, a certain firmness to the foundation in economic, vocational and legal aspects. Prior to this, the monastery would be a mere priory, headed by a prior who acts as superior but without the same degree of legal authority that an abbot has. The abbot is chosen by the monks from among the fully professed monks. Once chosen, he must request blessing: the blessing of an abbot is celebrated by the bishop in whose diocese the monastery is or, with his permission, another abbot or bishop. The ceremony of such a blessing is similar in some aspects to the consecration of a bishop, with the new abbot being presented with the mitre, the ring, and the crosier as symbols of office and receiving the laying on of hands and blessing from the celebrant. Though the ceremony installs the new abbot into a position of legal authority, it does not confer further sacramental authority- it is not a further degree of Holy Orders (although some abbots have been ordained to the episcopacy). Once he has received this blessing, the abbot not only becomes father of his monks in a spiritual sense, but their major superior under canon law, and has the additional authority to confer the ministries of acolyte and lector (formerly, he could confer the minor orders, which are not sacraments, that these ministries have replaced). The abbey is a species of "exempt religious" in that it is, for the most part, answerable to the pope, or to the abbot primate, rather than to the local bishop. The abbot wears the same habit as his fellow monks, though by tradition he adds to it a pectoral cross. Territorial abbots follow all of the above, but in addition must receive a mandate of authority from the pope over the territory around the monastery
candidate who lived 3.2 million years ago, and was discovered in 1974 just away from Ardi's discovery site. However, because the "Ardi" skeleton is no more than 200,000 years older than the earliest fossils of Australopithecus, and may in fact be younger than they are, some researchers doubt that it can represent a direct ancestor of Australopithecus. Some researchers infer from the form of her pelvis and limbs and the presence of her abductable hallux, that "Ardi" was a facultative biped: bipedal when moving on the ground, but quadrupedal when moving about in tree branches. A. ramidus had a more primitive walking ability than later hominids, and could not walk or run for long distances. The teeth suggest omnivory, and are more generalised than those of modern apes. Ardipithecus kadabba Ardipithecus kadabba is "known only from teeth and bits and pieces of skeletal bones", and is dated to approximately 5.6 million years ago. It has been described as a "probable chronospecies" (i.e. ancestor) of A. ramidus. Although originally considered a subspecies of A. ramidus, in 2004 anthropologists Yohannes Haile-Selassie, Gen Suwa, and Tim D. White published an article elevating A. kadabba to species level on the basis of newly discovered teeth from Ethiopia. These teeth show "primitive morphology and wear pattern" which demonstrate that A. kadabba is a distinct species from A. ramidus. The specific name comes from the Afar word for "basal family ancestor". Classification Due to several shared characteristics with chimpanzees, its closeness to ape divergence period, and due to its fossil incompleteness, the exact position of Ardipithecus in the fossil record is a subject of controversy. Primatologist Esteban Sarmiento had systematically compared and concluded that there is not sufficient anatomical evidence to support an exclusively human lineage. Sarmiento noted that Ardipithecus does not share any characteristics exclusive to humans, and some of its characteristics (those in the wrist and basicranium) suggest it diverged from humans prior to the human–gorilla last common ancestor. His comparative (narrow allometry) study in 2011 on the molar and body segment lengths (which included living primates of similar body size) noted that some dimensions including short upper limbs, and metacarpals are reminiscent of humans, but other dimensions such as long toes and relative molar surface area are great ape-like. Sarmiento concluded that such length measures can change back and forth during evolution and are not very good indicators of relatedness (homoplasy). However, some later studies still argue for its classification in the human lineage. In 2014, it was reported that the hand bones of Ardipithecus, Australopithecus sediba and A. afarensis have the third metacarpal styloid process, which is absent in other apes. Unique brain organisations (such as lateral shift of the carotid foramina, mediolateral abbreviation of the lateral tympanic, and a shortened, trapezoidal basioccipital element) in Ardipithecus are also found only in the Australopithecus and Homo. Comparison of the tooth root morphology with those of the earlier Sahelanthropus also indicated strong resemblance, also pointing to inclusion to the human line. Evolutionary tree according to a 2019 study: Paleobiology The Ardipithecus length measures are good indicators of function and together with dental isotope data and the fauna and flora from the fossil site indicate Ardipithecus was mainly a terrestrial quadruped collecting a large portion of its food on the ground. Its arboreal behaviors would have been limited and suspension from branches solely from the upper limbs rare. A comparative study in 2013 on carbon and oxygen stable isotopes within modern and fossil tooth enamel revealed that Ardipithecus fed both arboreally (on trees) and on the ground in a more open habitat, unlike chimpanzees. In 2015, Australian anthropologists Gary Clark and Maciej Henneberg said that Ardipithecus adults have a facial anatomy more similar to chimpanzee subadults than adults, with a less-projecting face and smaller canines (large canines in primate males are used to compete within mating hierarchies), and attributed this to a decrease in craniofacial growth in favour of brain growth. This is only seen in humans, so they argued that the species may show the first trend towards human social, parenting and sexual psychology. Previously, it was assumed that such ancient human ancestors behaved much like chimps, but this is no longer considered to be a viable comparison. This view has yet to be corroborated by more detailed studies of the growth of A.ramidus. The study also provides support for Stephen Jay Gould's theory in Ontogeny and Phylogeny that the paedomorphic (childlike) form of early hominin craniofacial morphology results from dissociation of growth trajectories. Clark and Henneberg also argued that such shortening of the skull—which may have caused a descension of the larynx—as well as lordosis—allowing better movement of the larynx—increased vocal ability, significantly pushing back the origin of language to well before the evolution of Homo. They argued that self domestication was aided by the development of vocalization, living in a pro-social society. They conceded that chimps and A. ramidus likely had the same vocal capabilities, but said that A. ramidus made use of more complex vocalizations, and vocalized at the same level as a human infant due to selective pressure to become more social. This would have allowed their society to become more complex. They also noted that the base of the skull stopped growing with the brain by the end of
ramidus. Although originally considered a subspecies of A. ramidus, in 2004 anthropologists Yohannes Haile-Selassie, Gen Suwa, and Tim D. White published an article elevating A. kadabba to species level on the basis of newly discovered teeth from Ethiopia. These teeth show "primitive morphology and wear pattern" which demonstrate that A. kadabba is a distinct species from A. ramidus. The specific name comes from the Afar word for "basal family ancestor". Classification Due to several shared characteristics with chimpanzees, its closeness to ape divergence period, and due to its fossil incompleteness, the exact position of Ardipithecus in the fossil record is a subject of controversy. Primatologist Esteban Sarmiento had systematically compared and concluded that there is not sufficient anatomical evidence to support an exclusively human lineage. Sarmiento noted that Ardipithecus does not share any characteristics exclusive to humans, and some of its characteristics (those in the wrist and basicranium) suggest it diverged from humans prior to the human–gorilla last common ancestor. His comparative (narrow allometry) study in 2011 on the molar and body segment lengths (which included living primates of similar body size) noted that some dimensions including short upper limbs, and metacarpals are reminiscent of humans, but other dimensions such as long toes and relative molar surface area are great ape-like. Sarmiento concluded that such length measures can change back and forth during evolution and are not very good indicators of relatedness (homoplasy). However, some later studies still argue for its classification in the human lineage. In 2014, it was reported that the hand bones of Ardipithecus, Australopithecus sediba and A. afarensis have the third metacarpal styloid process, which is absent in other apes. Unique brain organisations (such as lateral shift of the carotid foramina, mediolateral abbreviation of the lateral tympanic, and a shortened, trapezoidal basioccipital element) in Ardipithecus are also found only in the Australopithecus and Homo. Comparison of the tooth root morphology with those of the earlier Sahelanthropus also indicated strong resemblance, also pointing to inclusion to the human line. Evolutionary tree according to a 2019 study: Paleobiology The Ardipithecus length measures are good indicators of function and together with dental isotope data and the fauna and flora from the fossil site indicate Ardipithecus was mainly a terrestrial quadruped collecting a large portion of its food on the ground. Its arboreal behaviors would have been limited and suspension from branches solely from the upper limbs rare. A comparative study in 2013 on carbon and oxygen stable isotopes within modern and fossil tooth enamel revealed that Ardipithecus fed both arboreally (on trees) and on the ground in a more open habitat, unlike chimpanzees. In 2015, Australian anthropologists Gary Clark and Maciej Henneberg said that Ardipithecus adults have a facial anatomy more similar to chimpanzee subadults than adults, with a less-projecting face and smaller canines (large canines in primate males are used to compete within mating hierarchies), and attributed this to a decrease in craniofacial growth in favour of brain growth. This is only seen in humans, so they argued that the species may show the first trend towards human social, parenting and sexual psychology. Previously, it was assumed that such ancient human ancestors behaved much like chimps, but this is no longer considered to be a viable comparison. This view has yet to be corroborated by more detailed studies of the growth of A.ramidus. The study also provides support for Stephen Jay Gould's theory in Ontogeny and Phylogeny that the paedomorphic (childlike) form of early hominin craniofacial morphology results from dissociation of growth trajectories. Clark and Henneberg also argued that such shortening of the skull—which may have caused a descension of the larynx—as well as lordosis—allowing better movement of the larynx—increased vocal ability, significantly pushing back the origin of language to well before the evolution of Homo. They argued that self domestication was aided by the development of vocalization, living in a pro-social society. They conceded that chimps and A. ramidus likely had the same vocal capabilities, but said that A. ramidus made use of more complex vocalizations, and vocalized at the same level as a human infant due to selective pressure to become more social. This would have allowed their society to become more complex. They also noted that the base of the skull stopped growing with the brain by the end of juvenility, whereas in chimps it continues growing with the rest of the body into adulthood; and considered this evidence of a switch from a gross skeletal anatomy trajectory to a neurological development trajectory due to selective pressure for sociability. Nonetheless, their conclusions are highly speculative. According to Scott Simpson, the Gona Project's physical anthropologist, the fossil evidence from the Middle Awash indicates that both A. kadabba and A. ramidus lived in "a mosaic of woodland and grasslands with lakes, swamps and springs nearby," but further research is needed to determine which habitat Ardipithecus at Gona preferred.
to the assembly work and moving the semi-finished assembly from work station to work station, a finished product can be assembled faster and with less labor than by having workers carry parts to a stationary piece for assembly. Assembly lines are common methods of assembling complex items such as automobiles and other transportation equipment, household appliances and electronic goods. Workers in charge of the works of assembly line are called assemblers. Concepts Assembly lines are designed for the sequential organization of workers, tools or machines, and parts. The motion of workers is minimized to the extent possible. All parts or assemblies are handled either by conveyors or motorized vehicles such as fork lifts, or gravity, with no manual trucking. Heavy lifting is done by machines such as overhead cranes or forklifts. Each worker typically performs one simple operation unless job rotation strategies are applied. According to Henry Ford: Designing assembly lines is a well-established mathematical challenge, referred to as an assembly line balancing problem. In the simple assembly line balancing problem the aim is to assign a set of tasks that need to be performed on the workpiece to a sequence of workstations. Each task requires a given task duration for completion. The assignment of tasks to stations is typically limited by two constraints: (1) a precedence graph which indicates what other tasks need to be completed before a particular task can be initiated (e.g. not putting in a screw before drilling the hole) and (2) a cycle time which restricts the sum of task processing times which can be completed at each workstation before the work-piece is moved to the next station by the conveyor belt. Major planning problems for operating assembly lines include supply chain integration, inventory control and production scheduling. Simple example Consider the assembly of a car: assume that certain steps in the assembly line are to install the engine, install the hood, and install the wheels (in that order, with arbitrary interstitial steps); only one of these steps can be done at a time. In traditional production, only one car would be assembled at a time. If engine installation takes 20 minutes, hood installation takes five minutes, and wheels installation takes 10 minutes, then a car can be produced every 35 minutes. In an assembly line, car assembly is split between several stations, all working simultaneously. When a station is finished with a car, it passes it on to the next. By having three stations, three cars can be operated on at the same time, each at a different stage of assembly. After finishing its work on the first car, the engine installation crew can begin working on the second car. While the engine installation crew works on the second car, the first car can be moved to the hood station and fitted with a hood, then to the wheels station and be fitted with wheels. After the engine has been installed on the second car, the second car moves to the hood assembly. At the same time, the third car moves to the engine assembly. When the third car's engine has been mounted, it then can be moved to the hood station; meanwhile, subsequent cars (if any) can be moved to the engine installation station. Assuming no loss of time when moving a car from one station to another, the longest stage on the assembly line determines the throughput (20 minutes for the engine installation) so a car can be produced every 20 minutes, once the first car taking 35 minutes has been produced. History Before the Industrial Revolution, most manufactured products were made individually by hand. A single craftsman or team of craftsmen would create each part of a product. They would use their skills and tools such as files and knives to create the individual parts. They would then assemble them into the final product, making cut-and-try changes in the parts until they fit and could work together (craft production). Division of labor was practiced in China, where state-run monopolies mass-produced metal agricultural implements, china, armor, and weapons centuries before mass production appeared in Europe on the eve of the Industrial Revolution. Adam Smith discussed the division of labour in the manufacture of pins at length in his book The Wealth of Nations (published in 1776). The Venetian Arsenal, dating to about 1104, operated similar to a production line. Ships moved down a canal and were fitted by the various shops they passed. At the peak of its efficiency in the early 16th century, the Arsenal employed some 16,000 people who could apparently produce nearly one ship each day and could fit out, arm, and provision a newly built galley with standardized parts on an assembly-line basis. Although the Arsenal lasted until the early Industrial Revolution, production line methods did not become common even then. Industrial Revolution The Industrial Revolution led to a proliferation of manufacturing and invention. Many industries, notably textiles, firearms, clocks and watches, horse-drawn vehicles, railway locomotives, sewing machines, and bicycles, saw expeditious improvement in materials handling, machining, and assembly during the 19th century, although modern concepts such as industrial engineering and logistics had not yet been named. The automatic flour mill built by Oliver Evans in 1785 was called the beginning of modern bulk material handling by Roe (1916). Evans's mill used a leather belt bucket elevator, screw conveyors, canvas belt conveyors, and other mechanical devices to completely automate the process of making flour. The innovation spread to other mills and breweries. Probably the earliest industrial example of a linear and continuous assembly process is the Portsmouth Block Mills, built between 1801 and 1803. Marc Isambard Brunel (father of Isambard Kingdom Brunel), with the help of Henry Maudslay and others, designed 22 types of machine tools to make the parts for the rigging blocks used by the Royal Navy. This factory was so successful that it remained in use until the 1960s, with the workshop still visible at HM Dockyard in Portsmouth, and still containing some of the original machinery. One of the earliest examples of an almost modern factory layout, designed for easy material handling, was the Bridgewater Foundry. The factory grounds were bordered by the Bridgewater Canal and the Liverpool and Manchester Railway. The buildings were arranged in a line with a railway for carrying the work going through the buildings. Cranes
early 19th century, the development of machine tools such as the screw-cutting lathe, metal planer, and milling machine, and of toolpath control via jigs and fixtures, provided the prerequisites for the modern assembly line by making interchangeable parts a practical reality. Late 19th-century steam and electric conveyors Steam-powered conveyor lifts began being used for loading and unloading ships some time in the last quarter of the 19th century. Hounshell (1984) shows a sketch of an electric-powered conveyor moving cans through a filling line in a canning factory. The meatpacking industry of Chicago is believed to be one of the first industrial assembly lines (or disassembly lines) to be utilized in the United States starting in 1867. Workers would stand at fixed stations and a pulley system would bring the meat to each worker and they would complete one task. Henry Ford and others have written about the influence of this slaughterhouse practice on the later developments at Ford Motor Company. 20th century According to Domm, the implementation of mass production of an automobile via an assembly line may be credited to Ransom Olds, who used it to build the first mass-produced automobile, the Oldsmobile Curved Dash. Olds patented the assembly line concept, which he put to work in his Olds Motor Vehicle Company factory in 1901. At Ford Motor Company, the assembly line was introduced by William "Pa" Klann upon his return from visiting Swift & Company's slaughterhouse in Chicago and viewing what was referred to as the "disassembly line", where carcasses were butchered as they moved along a conveyor. The efficiency of one person removing the same piece over and over without himself moving caught his attention. He reported the idea to Peter E. Martin, soon to be head of Ford production, who was doubtful at the time but encouraged him to proceed. Others at Ford have claimed to have put the idea forth to Henry Ford, but Pa Klann's slaughterhouse revelation is well documented in the archives at the Henry Ford Museum and elsewhere, making him an important contributor to the modern automated assembly line concept. Ford was appreciative, having visited the highly automated 40-acre Sears mail order handling facility around 1906. At Ford, the process was an evolution by trial and error of a team consisting primarily of Peter E. Martin, the factory superintendent; Charles E. Sorensen, Martin's assistant; Clarence W. Avery; C. Harold Wills, draftsman and toolmaker; Charles Ebender; and József Galamb. Some of the groundwork for such development had recently been laid by the intelligent layout of machine tool placement that Walter Flanders had been doing at Ford up to 1908. The moving assembly line was developed for the Ford Model T and began operation on October 7, 1913, at the Highland Park Ford Plant, and continued to evolve after that, using time and motion study. The assembly line, driven by conveyor belts, reduced production time for a Model T to just 93 minutes by dividing the process into 45 steps. Producing cars quicker than paint of the day could dry, it had an immense influence on the world. In 1922, Ford (through his ghostwriter Crowther) said of his 1913 assembly line: Charles E. Sorensen, in his 1956 memoir My Forty Years with Ford, presented a different version of development that was not so much about individual "inventors" as a gradual, logical development of industrial engineering: As a result of these developments in method, Ford's cars came off the line in three-minute intervals or six feet per minute. This was much faster than previous methods, increasing production by eight to one (requiring 12.5 man-hours before, 1 hour 33 minutes after), while using less manpower. It was so successful, paint became a bottleneck. Only japan black would dry fast enough, forcing the company to drop the variety of colours available before 1914, until fast-drying Duco lacquer was developed in 1926. The assembly line technique was an integral part of the diffusion of the automobile into American society. Decreased costs of production allowed the cost of the Model T to fall within the budget of the American middle class. In 1908, the price of a Model T was around $825, and by 1912 it had decreased to around $575. This price reduction is comparable to a reduction from $15,000 to $10,000 in dollar terms from the year 2000. In 1914, an assembly line worker could buy a Model T with four months' pay. Ford's complex safety procedures—especially assigning each worker to a specific location instead of allowing them to roam about—dramatically reduced the rate of injury. The combination of high wages and high efficiency is called "Fordism", and was copied by most major industries. The efficiency gains from the assembly line also coincided with the take-off of the United States. The assembly line forced workers to work at a certain pace with very repetitive motions which led to more output per worker while other countries were using less productive methods. In the automotive industry, its success was dominating, and quickly spread worldwide. Ford France and Ford Britain in 1911, Ford Denmark 1923, Ford Germany and Ford Japan 1925; in 1919, Vulcan (Southport, Lancashire) was the first native European manufacturer to adopt it. Soon, companies had to have assembly lines, or risk going broke by not being able to compete; by 1930, 250 companies which did not had disappeared. The massive demand for military hardware in World War II prompted assembly-line techniques in shipbuilding and aircraft production. Thousands of Liberty ships were built making extensive use of prefabrication, enabling ship assembly to be completed in weeks or even days. After having produced fewer than 3,000 planes for the United States Military in 1939, American aircraft manufacturers built over 300,000 planes in World War II. Vultee pioneered the use of the powered assembly line for aircraft manufacturing. Other companies quickly followed. As William S. Knudsen (having worked at Ford, GM and the National Defense Advisory Commission) observed, "We won because we smothered the enemy in an avalanche of production, the like of which he had never seen, nor dreamed possible." Improved working conditions In his 1922 autobiography, Henry Ford mentions several benefits of the assembly line including: Workers do not do any heavy lifting. No stooping or bending over. No special training was required. There are jobs that almost anyone can do. Provided employment to immigrants. The gains in productivity allowed Ford to increase worker pay from $1.50 per day to $5.00 per day once employees reached three years of service on the assembly line. Ford continued on to reduce the hourly work week while continuously lowering the Model T price. These goals appear altruistic; however, it has been argued that they were implemented by Ford in order to reduce high employee turnover: when the assembly line was introduced in 1913, it was discovered that "every time the company wanted to add 100 men to its factory personnel, it was necessary to hire 963" in order to counteract the natural distaste the assembly line seems to have inspired. Sociological problems Sociological work has explored the social alienation and boredom that many workers feel because of the repetition of doing the same specialized task all day long. One of capitalism's most famous critics, Karl Marx, expressed in his Entfremdung theory the belief that, in order to achieve job satisfaction, workers need to see themselves in the objects they have created, that products should be "mirrors in which workers see their reflected essential nature". Marx viewed labour as a chance for us to externalize facets of our personality. Marxists argue that specialization makes it very difficult for any worker to feel they may be contributing to the real needs of humanity. The repetitive nature of specialized tasks causes, they say, a feeling of disconnection between what a worker does all day, who they really are, and what they would ideally be able to contribute to society. Marx also argued that specialised jobs are insecure, since the worker is expendable as soon as costs rise and technology can replace more expensive human labour. Since workers have to stand in the same place for hours and repeat the same motion hundreds of times per
surrounding area is one of the most seismically active regions in Australia. On 1 March 1954 at 3:40 am Adelaide experienced its largest recorded earthquake to date, with the epicentre 12 km from the city centre at Darlington, and a reported magnitude of 5.6. There have been smaller earthquakes in 2010, 2011, 2014, 2017, and 2018. The uplands of the Adelaide Hills, part of the southern Mount Lofty Ranges to the east of Adelaide, are defined on their western side by a number of arcuate faults (the Para, Eden, Clarendon and Willunga Faults), and consist of rocks such as siltstone, dolomite and quartzite, dating from the Neoproterozoic to the middle Cambrian, laid down in the Adelaide Rift Complex, the oldest part of the Adelaide Superbasin. Most of the Adelaide metropolitan area lies in the downthrown St Vincent Basin and its embayments, including the Adelaide Plains Sub-basin, and the Golden Grove, Noarlunga and Willunga Embayments. These basins contain deposits of Tertiary marine and non-marine sands and limestones, which form important aquifers. These deposits are overlain by Quaternary alluvial fans and piedmont slope deposits, derived from erosion of the uplands, consisting of sands, clays and gravels, interfingering to the west with transgressive Pleistocene to Holocene marine sands and coastal sediments of the shoreline of Gulf St Vincent. Urban layout Adelaide is a planned city, designed by the first Surveyor-General of South Australia, Colonel William Light. His plan, sometimes referred to as "Light's Vision" (also the name of a statue of him on Montefiore Hill), arranged Adelaide in a grid, with five squares in the Adelaide city centre and a ring of parks, known as the Adelaide Parklands, surrounding it. Light's selection of the location for the city was initially unpopular with the early settlers, as well as South Australia's first governor, John Hindmarsh, due to its distance from the harbour at Port Adelaide, and the lack of fresh water there. Light successfully persisted with his choice of location against this initial opposition. Recent evidence suggests that Light worked closely with George Kingston as well as a team of men to set out Adelaide, using various templates for city plans going back to Ancient Greece, including Italian Renaissance designs and the similar layouts of the American cities Philadelphia and Savannah–which, like Adelaide, follow the same layout of a central city square, four complementing city squares surrounding it and a parklands area that surrounds the city centre. The benefits of Light's design are numerous: Adelaide has had wide multi-lane roads from its beginning, an easily navigable cardinal direction grid layout and an expansive green ring around the city centre. There are two sets of ring roads in Adelaide that have resulted from the original design. The inner ring route (A21) borders the parklands, and the outer route (A3/A13/A16/A17) completely bypasses the inner city via (in clockwise order) Grand Junction Road, Hampstead Road, Ascot Avenue, Portrush Road, Cross Road and South Road. Suburban expansion has to some extent outgrown Light's original plan. Numerous former outlying villages and "country towns", as well as the satellite city of Elizabeth, have been enveloped by its suburban sprawl. Expanding developments in the Adelaide Hills region led to the construction of the South Eastern Freeway to cope with growth, which has subsequently led to new developments and further improvements to that transport corridor. Similarly, the booming development in Adelaide's South led to the construction of the Southern Expressway. New roads are not the only transport infrastructure developed to cope with the urban growth. The O-Bahn Busway is an example of a unique solution to Tea Tree Gully's transport woes in the 1980s. The development of the nearby suburb of Golden Grove in the late 1980s is an example of well-thought-out urban planning. In the 1960s, a Metropolitan Adelaide Transport Study Plan was proposed to cater for the future growth of the city. The plan involved the construction of freeways, expressways and the upgrade of certain aspects of the public transport system. The then premier Steele Hall approved many parts of the plan and the government went as far as purchasing land for the project. The later Labor government elected under Don Dunstan shelved the plan, but allowed the purchased land to remain vacant, should the future need for freeways arise. In 1980, the Liberal party won government and premier David Tonkin committed his government to selling off the land acquired for the MATS plan, ensuring that even when needs changed, the construction of most MATS-proposed freeways would be impractical. Some parts of this land have been used for transport, (e.g. the O-Bahn Busway and Southern Expressway), while most has been progressively subdivided for residential use. In 2008, the SA Government announced plans for a network of transport-oriented developments across the Adelaide metropolitan area and purchased a 10 hectare industrial site at Bowden for $52.5 million as the first of these developments. The site covers 102,478 square metres, or about 10 hectares, and is bounded by Park Terrace to the south, the Adelaide to Outer Harbour railway line to the west, Drayton Street to the north and Sixth and Seventh Streets to the east. Housing Historically, Adelaide's suburban residential areas have been characterised by single-storey detached houses built on blocks. A relative lack of suitable, locally-available timber for construction purposes led to the early development of a brick-making industry, as well as the use of stone, for houses and other buildings. By 1891 68% of houses were built of stone, 15% of timber, and 10% of brick, with brick also being widely used in stone houses for quoins, door and window surrounds, and chimneys and fireplaces. There is a wide variety in the styles of these houses. Until the 1960s most of the more substantial houses were built of red brick, though many front walls were of ornamental stone. Then cream bricks became fashionable, and in the 1970s, deep red and brown bricks became popular. Until the 1970s, roofs tended to be clad with (painted) corrugated iron or tiles (cement or clay, usually red "terracotta"). Since then, Colorbond corrugated steel has dominated. Most roofs are pitched; flat roofs are not common. Up to the 1970s, most houses were of "double brick" construction on concrete footings, with timber floors laid on joists supported by "dwarf walls". Later houses have mainly been of "brick veneer" construction – structural timber or, more recently, lightweight steel frame on a concrete slab foundation, lined with Gyprock, and with an outer skin of brickwork, to cope with Adelaide's reactive soils, particularly Keswick Clay, black earth and some red-brown earth soils. The use of precast concrete panels for floor and wall construction has also increased. In addition to this, a significant factor in Adelaide's suburban history is the role of the South Australian Housing Trust. Climate Adelaide has a Mediterranean climate (Köppen climate classification: Csa). The city has hot, dry summers and cool winters with moderate rainfall. Most precipitation falls in the winter months, leading to the suggestion that the climate be classified as a "cold monsoon". Rainfall is unreliable, light and infrequent throughout summer, although heavy falls can occur. In contrast, the winter has fairly reliable rainfall with June being the wettest month of the year, averaging around 80 mm. Frosts are occasional, with the most notable occurrences in 1908 and 1982. Hail is also common in winter. Adelaide is a windy city with significant wind chill in winter, which makes the temperature seem colder than it actually is. Snowfall in the metropolitan area is extremely uncommon, although light and sporadic falls in the nearby hills and at Mount Lofty occur during winter. Dewpoints in the summer typically range from . There are usually several days in summer where the temperature reaches or above; the frequency of these temperatures has been increasing in recent years. Temperature extremes range from -0.4 °C (31.4 °F), 8 June 1982 to 47.7 °C (117.9 °F), 24 January 2019. The average sea temperature ranges from in August to in February. Liveability Adelaide was consistently ranked in the world's 10 most liveable cities through the 2010s by The Economist Intelligence Unit. In June 2021, The Economist ranked Adelaide the third most liveable city in the world, behind Auckland and Osaka. In December 2021, Adelaide was named the world's second National Park City, after the state government had lobbied for this title. It was ranked the most liveable city in Australia by the Property Council of Australia, based on surveys of residents’ views of their own city, between 2010 and 2013, dropping to second place in 2014. Governance Adelaide, as the capital of South Australia, is the seat of the Government of South Australia as well as the bicameral Parliament of South Australia, which consists of the lower house known as the House of Assembly and the upper house known as the Legislative Council. General elections are held every four years, the last being the 2018 election. As Adelaide is South Australia's capital and most populous city, the State Government co-operates extensively with the City of Adelaide. In 2006, the Ministry for the City of Adelaide was created to facilitate the State Government's collaboration with the Adelaide City Council and the Lord Mayor to improve Adelaide's image. The State Parliament's Capital City Committee is also involved in the governance of the City of Adelaide, being primarily concerned with the planning of Adelaide's urban development and growth. Reflecting South Australia's status as Australia's most centralised state, Adelaide elects a substantial majority of the South Australian House of Assembly. Of the 47 seats in the chamber, 34 seats (three-quarters of the legislature) are based in Adelaide, and two rural seats include Adelaide suburbs. Local governments The Adelaide metropolitan area is divided between nineteen local government areas. At its centre, the City of Adelaide administers the Adelaide city centre, North Adelaide, and the surrounding Adelaide Parklands. It is the oldest municipal authority in Australia and was established in 1840, when Adelaide and Australia's first mayor, James Hurtle Fisher, was elected. From 1919 onwards, the city has had a Lord Mayor, the current being Lord Mayor The Right Honourable Sandy Verschoor. Demography Adelaide's inhabitants are known as Adelaideans. Compared with Australia's other state capitals, Adelaide is growing at a rate similar to Sydney, Canberra, and Hobart (see List of cities in Australia by population). In 2020, it had a metropolitan population (including suburbs) of more than 1,376,601, making it Australia's fifth-largest city. Some 77% of the population of South Australia are residents of the Adelaide metropolitan area, making South Australia one of the most centralised states. Major areas of population growth in recent years have been in outer suburbs such as Mawson Lakes and Golden Grove. Adelaide's inhabitants occupy 366,912 houses, 57,695 semi-detached, row terrace or town houses and 49,413 flats, units or apartments. About one sixth (17.1%) of the population had university qualifications. The number of Adelaideans with vocational qualifications (such as tradespersons) fell from 62.1% of the labour force in the 1991 census to 52.4% in the 2001 census. Adelaide is ageing more rapidly than other Australian capital cities. More than a quarter (27.5%) of Adelaide's population is aged 55 years or older, in comparison to the national average of 25.6%. Adelaide has the lowest number of children (under-15-year-olds), who comprised 17.7% of the population, compared to the national average of 19.3%. Ancestry and immigration At the 2016 census, the most commonly nominated ancestries were: Overseas-born Adelaideans composed 31.8% of the total population at the 2016 census. The five largest groups of overseas-born were from England (6.2%), India (2%), China (1.8%), Italy (1.3%) and Vietnam (1.1%). Suburbs including Newton, Payneham and Campbelltown in the east and Torrensville, West Lakes and Fulham to the west, have large Greek and Italian communities. The Italian consulate is located in the eastern suburb of Payneham. Large Vietnamese populations are settled in the north-western suburbs of Woodville, Kilkenny, Pennington, Mansfield Park and Athol Park and also Parafield Gardens and Pooraka in Adelaide's north. Migrants from India and Sri Lanka have settled into inner suburban areas of Adelaide including the inner northern suburbs of Blair Athol, Kilburn and Enfield and the inner southern suburbs of Plympton, Park Holme and Kurralta Park. Suburbs such as Para Hills, Salisbury, Ingle Farm and Blair Athol in the north and Findon, West Croydon and Seaton and other Western suburbs have sizeable Afghan communities. Chinese migrants favour settling in the eastern and north eastern suburbs including Kensington Gardens, Greenacres, Modbury and Golden Grove. Mawson Lakes has a large international student population, due to its proximity to the University of South Australia campus. 1.4% of the population, or 18,403 people, identified as Indigenous Australians (Aboriginal Australians and Torres Strait Islanders) in 2016. Language At the 2016 census, 75.4% of the population spoke English at home. The other languages most commonly spoken at home were Italian (2.1%), Standard Mandarin (2.1%), Greek (1.7%) Vietnamese (1.4%), and Cantonese (0.7%). Religion Adelaide was founded on a vision of religious tolerance that attracted a wide variety of religious practitioners. This led to it being known as The City of Churches. But approximately 28% of the population expressed no religious affiliation in the 2011 Census, compared with the national average of 22.3%, making Adelaide one of Australia's least religious cities. Over half of the population of Adelaide identifies as Christian, with the largest denominations being Catholic (21.3%), Anglican (12.6%), Uniting Church (7.6%) and Eastern Orthodox (3.5%). The Jewish community of the city dates back to 1840. Eight years later, 58 Jews lived in the city. A synagogue was built in 1871, when 435 Jews lived in the city. Many took part in the city councils, such as Judah Moss Solomon (1852–66) and others after him. Three Jews have been elected to the position of city mayor. In 1968, the Jewish population of Adelaide numbered about 1,200; in 2001, according to the Australian census, 979 persons declared themselves to be Jewish by religion. In 2011, over 1,000 Jews were living in the city, operating an Orthodox and a Reform school, in addition to a virtual Jewish museum. The "Afghan" community in Australia first became established in the 1860s when camels and their Pathan, Punjabi, Baluchi and Sindhi handlers began to be used to open up settlement in the continent's arid interior. Until eventually superseded by the advent of the railways and motor vehicles, camels played an invaluable economic and social role in transporting heavy loads of goods to and from isolated settlements and mines. This is acknowledged by the name of The Ghan, the passenger train operating between Adelaide, Alice Springs, and Darwin. The Central Adelaide Mosque is regarded as Australia's oldest permanent mosque; an earlier mosque at Marree in northern South Australia, dating from 1861 to 1862 and subsequently abandoned or demolished, has now been rebuilt. Economy South Australia's largest employment sectors are health care and social assistance, surpassing manufacturing in SA as the largest employer since 2006–07. In 2009–10, manufacturing in SA had average annual employment of 83,700 persons compared with 103,300 for health care and social assistance. Health care and social assistance represented nearly 13% of the state average annual employment. The Adelaide Hills wine region is an iconic and viable economic region for both the state and country in terms of wine production and sale. The 2014 vintage is reported as consisting of red grapes crushed valued at A$8,196,142 and white grapes crushed valued at $14,777,631. The retail trade is the second largest employer in SA (2009–10), with 91,900 jobs, and 12 per cent of the state workforce. Manufacturing, defence technology, high-tech electronic systems and research, commodity export and corresponding service industries all play a role in the SA economy. Almost half of all cars produced in Australia were made in Adelaide at the General Motors Holden plant in Elizabeth. The site ceased operating in November 2017. The collapse of the State Bank in 1992 resulted in large levels of state public debt (as much as A$4 billion). The collapse meant that successive governments enacted lean budgets, cutting spending, which was a setback to the further economic development of the city and state. The debt has more recently been reduced with the State Government once again receiving a AAA+ Credit Rating. The global media conglomerate News Corporation was founded in, and until 2004 incorporated in, Adelaide and it is still considered its "spiritual" home by its founder, Rupert Murdoch. Australia's largest oil company, Santos, prominent South Australian brewery, Coopers, and national retailer Harris Scarfe also call Adelaide their home. In 2018, at which time more than 80 organisations employed 800 people in the space sector in South Australia, Adelaide was chosen for the headquarters of a new Australian Space Agency. The agency opened its in 2020. It is working to triple the size of the Australian space industry and create 20,000 new jobs by 2030. Defence industry Adelaide is home to a large proportion of Australia's defence industries, which contribute over A$1 billion to South Australia's Gross State Product. The principal government military research institution, the Defence Science and Technology Organisation, and other defence technology organisations such as BAE Systems Australia and Lockheed Martin Australia, are north of Salisbury and west of Elizabeth in an area now called "Edinburgh Parks", adjacent to RAAF Base Edinburgh. Others, such as Saab Systems and Raytheon, are in or near Technology Park. ASC Pty Ltd, is based in the industrial suburb of Osborne and is also a part of Technology Park. South Australia was charged with constructing Australia's Collins class submarines and more recently the A$6 billion contract to construct the Royal Australian Navy's new air-warfare destroyers. Employment statistics , Greater Adelaide had an unemployment rate of 7.4% with a youth unemployment rate of 15%. The median weekly individual income for people aged 15 years and over was $447 per week in 2006, compared with $466 nationally. The median family income was $1,137 per week, compared with $1,171 nationally. Adelaide's housing and living costs are substantially lower than that of other Australian cities, with housing being notably cheaper. The median Adelaide house price is half that of Sydney and two-thirds that of Melbourne. The three-month trend unemployment rate to March 2007 was 6.2%. The Northern suburbs' unemployment rate is disproportionately higher than the other regions of Adelaide at 8.3%, while the East and South are lower than the Adelaide average at 4.9% and 5.0% respectively. House prices Over the decade March 2001 – March 2010, Metropolitan Adelaide median house prices approximately tripled. (approx. 285% – approx. 11%p.a. compounding) In the five years March 2007 – March 2012, prices increased by approx. 27% – approx. 5%p.a. compounding. March 2012 – March 2017 saw a further increase of 19% – approx. 3.5%p.a. compounding. In summary: Each quarter, The Alternative and Direct Investment Securities Association (ADISA) publishes a list of median house sale prices by suburb and Local Government Area. (Previously, this was done by REISA) Due to the small sizes of many of Adelaide's suburbs, the low volumes of sales in these suburbs, and (over time) the huge variations in the numbers of sales in a suburb in a quarter, statistical analysis of "the most expensive suburb" is unreliable; the suburbs appearing in the "top 10 most expensive suburbs this quarter" list is constantly varying. Quarterly Reports for the last two years can be found on the REISA website. Education and research Education forms an increasingly important part of the city's economy, with the South Australian Government and educational institutions attempting to position Adelaide as "Australia's education hub" and marketing it as a "Learning City." The number of international students studying in Adelaide has increased rapidly in recent years to 30,726 in 2015, of which 1,824 were secondary school students. In addition to the city's existing institutions, foreign institutions have been attracted to set up campuses to increase its attractiveness as an education hub. Adelaide is the birthplace of three Nobel laureates, more than any other Australian city: physicist William Lawrence Bragg and pathologists Howard Florey and Robin Warren, all of whom completed secondary and tertiary education at St Peter's College and the University of Adelaide. Primary and secondary education At the level of primary and secondary education, there are two systems of school education. There is a public system operated by the South Australian Government and a private system of independent and Catholic schools. All schools provide education under the South Australian Certificate of Education (SACE)
campus for Carnegie Mellon University, University College London, and Torrens University; the Stock Exchange building as the Science Exchange of the Royal Institution Australia; and the Glenside Psychiatric Hospital as the Adelaide Studios of the SA Film Corporation. The government also invested more than A$2 billion to build a desalination plant, powered by renewable energy, as an 'insurance policy' against droughts affecting Adelaide's water supply. The Adelaide Festival, Fringe, and Womadelaide became annual events. The COVID-19 Pandemic had an impact the economy and resident life of the city. Comparing to other major cities in Australia, Adelaide is less affected. The city only went to fully lockdown twice since the beginning of the pandemic, once in November 2020 (4 days) and another once in July 2021 (7 days), despite being the nearest city to Melbourne (262 days of lockdown) with 1 million or more population. Geography Adelaide is north of the Fleurieu Peninsula, on the Adelaide Plains between the Gulf St Vincent and the low-lying Mount Lofty Ranges. The city stretches from the coast to the foothills, and from Gawler at its northern extent to Sellicks Beach in the south. According to the Regional Development Australia, an Australian government planning initiative, the "Adelaide Metropolitan Region" has a total land area of , while a more expansive definition by the Australian Bureau of Statistics defines a "Greater Adelaide" statistical area totalling . The city sits at an average elevation of above sea level. Mount Lofty, east of the Adelaide metropolitan region in the Adelaide Hills at an elevation of , is the tallest point of the city and in the state south of Burra. Much of Adelaide was bushland before British settlement, with some variation – sandhills, swamps and marshlands were prevalent around the coast. The loss of the sandhills to urban development had a particularly destructive effect on the coastline due to erosion. Where practical, the government has implemented programs to rebuild and vegetate sandhills at several of Adelaide's beachside suburbs. Much of the original vegetation has been cleared with what is left to be found in reserves such as the Cleland National Park and Belair National Park. A number of creeks and rivers flow through the Adelaide region. The largest are the Torrens and Onkaparinga catchments. Adelaide relies on its many reservoirs for water supply with the Happy Valley Reservoir supplying around 40% and the much larger Mount Bold Reservoir 10% of Adelaide's domestic requirements respectively. Geology Adelaide and its surrounding area is one of the most seismically active regions in Australia. On 1 March 1954 at 3:40 am Adelaide experienced its largest recorded earthquake to date, with the epicentre 12 km from the city centre at Darlington, and a reported magnitude of 5.6. There have been smaller earthquakes in 2010, 2011, 2014, 2017, and 2018. The uplands of the Adelaide Hills, part of the southern Mount Lofty Ranges to the east of Adelaide, are defined on their western side by a number of arcuate faults (the Para, Eden, Clarendon and Willunga Faults), and consist of rocks such as siltstone, dolomite and quartzite, dating from the Neoproterozoic to the middle Cambrian, laid down in the Adelaide Rift Complex, the oldest part of the Adelaide Superbasin. Most of the Adelaide metropolitan area lies in the downthrown St Vincent Basin and its embayments, including the Adelaide Plains Sub-basin, and the Golden Grove, Noarlunga and Willunga Embayments. These basins contain deposits of Tertiary marine and non-marine sands and limestones, which form important aquifers. These deposits are overlain by Quaternary alluvial fans and piedmont slope deposits, derived from erosion of the uplands, consisting of sands, clays and gravels, interfingering to the west with transgressive Pleistocene to Holocene marine sands and coastal sediments of the shoreline of Gulf St Vincent. Urban layout Adelaide is a planned city, designed by the first Surveyor-General of South Australia, Colonel William Light. His plan, sometimes referred to as "Light's Vision" (also the name of a statue of him on Montefiore Hill), arranged Adelaide in a grid, with five squares in the Adelaide city centre and a ring of parks, known as the Adelaide Parklands, surrounding it. Light's selection of the location for the city was initially unpopular with the early settlers, as well as South Australia's first governor, John Hindmarsh, due to its distance from the harbour at Port Adelaide, and the lack of fresh water there. Light successfully persisted with his choice of location against this initial opposition. Recent evidence suggests that Light worked closely with George Kingston as well as a team of men to set out Adelaide, using various templates for city plans going back to Ancient Greece, including Italian Renaissance designs and the similar layouts of the American cities Philadelphia and Savannah–which, like Adelaide, follow the same layout of a central city square, four complementing city squares surrounding it and a parklands area that surrounds the city centre. The benefits of Light's design are numerous: Adelaide has had wide multi-lane roads from its beginning, an easily navigable cardinal direction grid layout and an expansive green ring around the city centre. There are two sets of ring roads in Adelaide that have resulted from the original design. The inner ring route (A21) borders the parklands, and the outer route (A3/A13/A16/A17) completely bypasses the inner city via (in clockwise order) Grand Junction Road, Hampstead Road, Ascot Avenue, Portrush Road, Cross Road and South Road. Suburban expansion has to some extent outgrown Light's original plan. Numerous former outlying villages and "country towns", as well as the satellite city of Elizabeth, have been enveloped by its suburban sprawl. Expanding developments in the Adelaide Hills region led to the construction of the South Eastern Freeway to cope with growth, which has subsequently led to new developments and further improvements to that transport corridor. Similarly, the booming development in Adelaide's South led to the construction of the Southern Expressway. New roads are not the only transport infrastructure developed to cope with the urban growth. The O-Bahn Busway is an example of a unique solution to Tea Tree Gully's transport woes in the 1980s. The development of the nearby suburb of Golden Grove in the late 1980s is an example of well-thought-out urban planning. In the 1960s, a Metropolitan Adelaide Transport Study Plan was proposed to cater for the future growth of the city. The plan involved the construction of freeways, expressways and the upgrade of certain aspects of the public transport system. The then premier Steele Hall approved many parts of the plan and the government went as far as purchasing land for the project. The later Labor government elected under Don Dunstan shelved the plan, but allowed the purchased land to remain vacant, should the future need for freeways arise. In 1980, the Liberal party won government and premier David Tonkin committed his government to selling off the land acquired for the MATS plan, ensuring that even when needs changed, the construction of most MATS-proposed freeways would be impractical. Some parts of this land have been used for transport, (e.g. the O-Bahn Busway and Southern Expressway), while most has been progressively subdivided for residential use. In 2008, the SA Government announced plans for a network of transport-oriented developments across the Adelaide metropolitan area and purchased a 10 hectare industrial site at Bowden for $52.5 million as the first of these developments. The site covers 102,478 square metres, or about 10 hectares, and is bounded by Park Terrace to the south, the Adelaide to Outer Harbour railway line to the west, Drayton Street to the north and Sixth and Seventh Streets to the east. Housing Historically, Adelaide's suburban residential areas have been characterised by single-storey detached houses built on blocks. A relative lack of suitable, locally-available timber for construction purposes led to the early development of a brick-making industry, as well as the use of stone, for houses and other buildings. By 1891 68% of houses were built of stone, 15% of timber, and 10% of brick, with brick also being widely used in stone houses for quoins, door and window surrounds, and chimneys and fireplaces. There is a wide variety in the styles of these houses. Until the 1960s most of the more substantial houses were built of red brick, though many front walls were of ornamental stone. Then cream bricks became fashionable, and in the 1970s, deep red and brown bricks became popular. Until the 1970s, roofs tended to be clad with (painted) corrugated iron or tiles (cement or clay, usually red "terracotta"). Since then, Colorbond corrugated steel has dominated. Most roofs are pitched; flat roofs are not common. Up to the 1970s, most houses were of "double brick" construction on concrete footings, with timber floors laid on joists supported by "dwarf walls". Later houses have mainly been of "brick veneer" construction – structural timber or, more recently, lightweight steel frame on a concrete slab foundation, lined with Gyprock, and with an outer skin of brickwork, to cope with Adelaide's reactive soils, particularly Keswick Clay, black earth and some red-brown earth soils. The use of precast concrete panels for floor and wall construction has also increased. In addition to this, a significant factor in Adelaide's suburban history is the role of the South Australian Housing Trust. Climate Adelaide has a Mediterranean climate (Köppen climate classification: Csa). The city has hot, dry summers and cool winters with moderate rainfall. Most precipitation falls in the winter months, leading to the suggestion that the climate be classified as a "cold monsoon". Rainfall is unreliable, light and infrequent throughout summer, although heavy falls can occur. In contrast, the winter has fairly reliable rainfall with June being the wettest month of the year, averaging around 80 mm. Frosts are occasional, with the most notable occurrences in 1908 and 1982. Hail is also common in winter. Adelaide is a windy city with significant wind chill in winter, which makes the temperature seem colder than it actually is. Snowfall in the metropolitan area is extremely uncommon, although light and sporadic falls in the nearby hills and at Mount Lofty occur during winter. Dewpoints in the summer typically range from . There are usually several days in summer where the temperature reaches or above; the frequency of these temperatures has been increasing in recent years. Temperature extremes range from -0.4 °C (31.4 °F), 8 June 1982 to 47.7 °C (117.9 °F), 24 January 2019. The average sea temperature ranges from in August to in February. Liveability Adelaide was consistently ranked in the world's 10 most liveable cities through the 2010s by The Economist Intelligence Unit. In June 2021, The Economist ranked Adelaide the third most liveable city in the world, behind Auckland and Osaka. In December 2021, Adelaide was named the world's second National Park City, after the state government had lobbied for this title. It was ranked the most liveable city in Australia by the Property Council of Australia, based on surveys of residents’ views of their own city, between 2010 and 2013, dropping to second place in 2014. Governance Adelaide, as the capital of South Australia, is the seat of the Government of South Australia as well as the bicameral Parliament of South Australia, which consists of the lower house known as the House of Assembly and the upper house known as the Legislative Council. General elections are held every four years, the last being the 2018 election. As Adelaide is South Australia's capital and most populous city, the State Government co-operates extensively with the City of Adelaide. In 2006, the Ministry for the City of Adelaide was created to facilitate the State Government's collaboration with the Adelaide City Council and the Lord Mayor to improve Adelaide's image. The State Parliament's Capital City Committee is also involved in the governance of the City of Adelaide, being primarily concerned with the planning of Adelaide's urban development and growth. Reflecting South Australia's status as Australia's most centralised state, Adelaide elects a substantial majority of the South Australian House of Assembly. Of the 47 seats in the chamber, 34 seats (three-quarters of the legislature) are based in Adelaide, and two rural seats include Adelaide suburbs. Local governments The Adelaide metropolitan area is divided between nineteen local government areas. At its centre, the City of Adelaide administers the Adelaide city centre, North Adelaide, and the surrounding Adelaide Parklands. It is the oldest municipal authority in Australia and was established in 1840, when Adelaide and Australia's first mayor, James Hurtle Fisher, was elected. From 1919 onwards, the city has had a Lord Mayor, the current being Lord Mayor The Right Honourable Sandy Verschoor. Demography Adelaide's inhabitants are known as Adelaideans. Compared with Australia's other state capitals, Adelaide is growing at a rate similar to Sydney, Canberra, and Hobart (see List of cities in Australia by population). In 2020, it had a metropolitan population (including suburbs) of more than 1,376,601, making it Australia's fifth-largest city. Some 77% of the population of South Australia are residents of the Adelaide metropolitan area, making South Australia one of the most centralised states. Major areas of population growth in recent years have been in outer suburbs such as Mawson Lakes and Golden Grove. Adelaide's inhabitants occupy 366,912 houses, 57,695 semi-detached, row terrace or town houses and 49,413 flats, units or apartments. About one sixth (17.1%) of the population had university qualifications. The number of Adelaideans with vocational qualifications (such as tradespersons) fell from 62.1% of the labour force in the 1991 census to 52.4% in the 2001 census. Adelaide is ageing more rapidly than other Australian capital cities. More than a quarter (27.5%) of Adelaide's population is aged 55 years or older, in comparison to the national average of 25.6%. Adelaide has the lowest number of children (under-15-year-olds), who comprised 17.7% of the population, compared to the national average of 19.3%. Ancestry and immigration At the 2016 census, the most commonly nominated ancestries were: Overseas-born Adelaideans composed 31.8% of the total population at the 2016 census. The five largest groups of overseas-born were from England (6.2%), India (2%), China (1.8%), Italy (1.3%) and Vietnam (1.1%). Suburbs including Newton, Payneham and Campbelltown in the east and Torrensville, West Lakes and Fulham to the west, have large Greek and Italian communities. The Italian consulate is located in the eastern suburb of Payneham. Large Vietnamese populations are settled in the north-western suburbs of Woodville, Kilkenny, Pennington, Mansfield Park and Athol Park and also Parafield Gardens and Pooraka in Adelaide's north. Migrants from India and Sri Lanka have settled into inner suburban areas of Adelaide including the inner northern suburbs of Blair Athol, Kilburn and Enfield and the inner southern suburbs of Plympton, Park Holme and Kurralta Park. Suburbs such as Para Hills, Salisbury, Ingle Farm and Blair Athol in the north and Findon, West Croydon and Seaton and other Western suburbs have sizeable Afghan communities. Chinese migrants favour settling in the eastern and north eastern suburbs including Kensington Gardens, Greenacres, Modbury and Golden Grove. Mawson Lakes has a large international student population, due to its proximity to the University of South Australia campus. 1.4% of the population, or 18,403 people, identified as Indigenous Australians (Aboriginal Australians and Torres Strait Islanders) in 2016. Language At the 2016 census, 75.4% of the population spoke English at home. The other languages most commonly spoken at home were Italian (2.1%), Standard Mandarin (2.1%), Greek (1.7%) Vietnamese (1.4%), and Cantonese (0.7%). Religion Adelaide was founded on a vision of religious tolerance that attracted a wide variety of religious practitioners. This led to it being known as The City of Churches. But approximately 28% of the population expressed no religious affiliation in the 2011 Census, compared with the national average of 22.3%, making Adelaide one of Australia's least religious cities. Over half of the population of Adelaide identifies as Christian, with the largest denominations being Catholic (21.3%), Anglican (12.6%), Uniting Church (7.6%) and Eastern Orthodox (3.5%). The Jewish community of the city dates back to 1840. Eight years later, 58 Jews lived in the city. A synagogue was built in 1871, when 435 Jews lived in the city. Many took part in the city councils, such as Judah Moss Solomon (1852–66) and others after him. Three Jews have been elected to the position of city mayor. In 1968, the Jewish population of Adelaide numbered about 1,200; in 2001, according to the Australian census, 979 persons declared themselves to be Jewish by religion. In 2011, over 1,000 Jews were living in the city, operating an Orthodox and a Reform school, in addition to a virtual Jewish museum. The "Afghan" community in Australia first became established in the 1860s when camels and their Pathan, Punjabi, Baluchi and Sindhi handlers began to be used to open up settlement in the continent's arid interior. Until eventually superseded by the advent of the railways and motor vehicles, camels played an invaluable economic and social role in transporting heavy loads of goods to and from isolated settlements and mines. This is acknowledged by the name of The Ghan, the passenger train operating between Adelaide, Alice Springs, and Darwin. The Central Adelaide Mosque is regarded as Australia's oldest permanent mosque; an earlier mosque at Marree in northern South Australia, dating from 1861 to 1862 and subsequently abandoned or demolished, has now been rebuilt. Economy South Australia's largest employment sectors are health care and social assistance, surpassing manufacturing in SA as the largest employer since 2006–07. In 2009–10, manufacturing in SA had average annual employment of 83,700 persons compared with 103,300 for health care and social assistance. Health care and social assistance represented nearly 13% of the state average annual employment. The Adelaide Hills wine region is an iconic and viable economic region for both the state and country in terms of wine production and sale. The 2014 vintage is reported as consisting of red grapes crushed valued at A$8,196,142 and white grapes crushed valued at $14,777,631. The retail trade is the second largest employer in SA (2009–10), with 91,900
book. Set in Alderley Edge, it revolves around two children, Susan and Colin, who are sent to live in the area with their mother's old nursemaid, Bess, and her husband, Gowther Mossock. While exploring the Edge, they encounter a race of malevolent creatures, the svart alfar, who dwell in the Edge's abandoned mines and who seem intent on capturing them. They are rescued by the wizard Cadellin, who reveals that the forces of darkness are massing at the Edge in search of a powerful magical talisman, the eponymous "weirdstone of Brisingamen". Whilst writing in his spare time Garner attempted to gain employment as a teacher, but soon gave that up, believing that "I couldn't write and teach; the energies were too similar." Instead, he worked off and on as a general labourer for four years, remaining unemployed for much of that time. Garner sent his debut novel to the publishing company Collins, where it was picked up by the company's head, Sir William Collins, who was on the look out for new fantasy novels following the recent commercial and critical success of J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings (1954–55). Garner, who went on to become a personal friend of Collins, would later relate that "Billy Collins saw a title with funny-looking words in it on the stockpile, and he decided to publish it." On its release in 1960, The Weirdstone of Brisingamen proved to be a critical and commercial success, later being described as "a tour de force of the imagination, a novel that showed almost every writer who came afterwards what it was possible to achieve in novels ostensibly published for children." Garner himself however would later denounce his first novel as "a fairly bad book" in 1968. With his first book published, Garner abandoned his work as a labourer and gained a job as a freelance television reporter, living a "hand to mouth" lifestyle on a "shoestring" budget. He also began a sequel to The Weirdstone of Brisingamen, which would be known as The Moon of Gomrath. The Moon of Gomrath also revolves around the adventures of Colin and Susan, with the latter being possessed by a malevolent creature called the Brollachan who has recently entered the world. With the help of the wizard Cadellin, the Brollachan is exorcised, but Susan's soul also leaves her body, being sent to another dimension, leaving Colin to find a way to bring it back. Critic Neil Philip characterised it as "an artistic advance" but "a less satisfying story". In a 1989 interview, Garner stated that he had left scope for a third book following the adventures of Colin and Susan, envisioning a trilogy, but that he had intentionally decided not to write it, instead moving on to write something different. However Boneland, the conclusion to the sequence, was belatedly published in August 2012. Elidor, The Owl Service and Red Shift: 1964–73 In 1962, Garner began work on a radio play entitled Elidor, which eventually became a novel of the same name. Set in contemporary Manchester, Elidor tells the story of four children who enter a derelict Victorian church and find a portal to the magical realm of Elidor. In Elidor, they are entrusted by King Malebron to help rescue four treasures which have been stolen by the forces of evil, who are attempting to take control of the kingdom. The children succeed and return to Manchester with the treasures, but are pursued by the malevolent forces who need the items to seal their victory. Before writing Elidor, Garner had seen a dinner service set which could be arranged to make pictures of either flowers or owls. Inspired by this design, he produced his fourth novel, The Owl Service. The story, which was heavily influenced by the Medieval Welsh tale of Math fab Mathonwy from the Mabinogion, was critically acclaimed, winning both the Carnegie Medal and Guardian Children's Fiction Prize. It also sparked discussions among critics as to whether Garner should properly be considered a children's writer, given that this book in particular was deemed equally suitable for an adult readership. It took Garner six years to write his next novel, Red Shift. The book centres on three intertwined love stories, one set in the present, another during the English Civil War, and the third in the second century CE. Philip referred to it as "a complex book but not a complicated one: the bare lines of story and emotion stand clear". Academic specialist in children's literature Maria Nikolajeva characterised Red Shift as "a difficult book" for an unprepared reader, identifying its main themes as those of "loneliness and failure to communicate". Ultimately, she thought that repeated re-readings of the novel bring about the realisation that "it is a perfectly realistic story with much more depth and psychologically more credible than the most so-called "realistic" juvenile novels." The Stone Book series and folkloric collections: 1974–94 From 1976 to 1978, Garner published a series of four novellas, which have come to be collectively known as The Stone Book quartet: The Stone Book, Granny Reardun, The Aimer Gate, and Tom Fobble's Day. Each focused on a day in the life of a child in the Garner family, each from a different generation. In a 1989 interview, Garner noted that although writing The Stone Book Quartet had been "exhausting", it had been "the most rewarding of everything" he'd done to date. Philip described the quartet as "a complete command of the material he had been working and reworking since the start of his career". Garner pays particular attention to language, and strives to render the cadence of the Cheshire tongue in modern English. This he explains by the sense of anger he felt on reading Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: the footnotes would not have been needed by his father. In 1981, the literary critic Neil Philip published an analysis of Garner's novels as A Fine Anger, which was based on his doctoral thesis, produced for the University of London in 1980. In this study he noted that "The Stone Book quartet marks a watershed in Garner's writing career, and provides a suitable moment for an evaluation of his work thus far." Strandloper, Thursbitch, Boneland, and Treacle Walker: 1995–present In 1996, Garner's novel Strandloper was published. His collection of essays and public talks, The Voice That Thunders, contains much autobiographical material (including an account of his life with bipolar disorder), as well as critical reflection upon folklore and language, literature and education, the nature of myth and time. In The Voice That Thunders he reveals the commercial pressure placed upon him during the decade-long drought which preceded Strandloper to 'forsake "literature", and become instead a "popular" writer, cashing in on my established name by producing sequels to, and making series of, the earlier books'. Garner feared that "making series ... would render sterile the existing work, the life that produced it, and bring about my artistic and spiritual death" and felt unable to comply. Garner's novel Thursbitch was published in 2003. Garner's novel, Boneland, was published in 2012, nominally completing a trilogy begun some 50 years earlier with The Weirdstone of Brisingamen. The novel Treacle Walker was published in October 2021. Where Shall We Run To? 2018 In August 2018 Garner published his only set of memoirs, Where Shall We Run To?, which describes his childhood during the Second World War. Personal life With his first wife Ann Cook he had three children. In 1972, he married for a second time, this time to Griselda Greaves, a teacher and critic with whom he had two children. In a 2014 interview conducted with Mike Pitts for British Archaeology magazine, Garner stated that "I don't have anything to do with the literary world. I avoid writers. I don't like them. Most of my close personal friends are professional archaeologists." Literary style Although Garner's early work is often labelled as "children's literature", Garner himself rejects such a description, informing one interviewer that "I certainly have never written for children" but that instead he has always written purely for himself. Neil Philip, in his critical study of Garner's work (1981), commented that up till that point, "Everything Alan Garner has published has been published for children", although he went on to relate that "It may be that Garner's is a case" where the division between children's and adult's literature is "meaningless" and that his fiction is instead "enjoyed by a type of person, no matter what their age." Philip offered the opinion that the "essence of his work" was "the struggle to render the complex in simple, bare terms; to couch the abstract in the concrete and communicate it directly to the reader". He added that Garner's work is "intensely autobiographical, in both obvious and subtle ways". Highlighting Garner's use of mythological and folkloric sources, Philip stated that his work explores "the disjointed and troubled psychological and emotional landscape of the twentieth century through the symbolism of myth and folklore." He also expressed the opinion that "Time is Garner's most consistent theme". The English author and academic Catherine Butler noted that Garner was attentive to the "geological, archaeological and cultural history of his settings, and careful to integrate his fiction with the physical reality beyond the page." As a part of this, Garner had included maps of Alderley Edge in both The Weirdstone of Brisingamen and The Moon of Gomrath. Garner has spent much time investigating the areas that he deals with in his books; writing in the Times Literary Supplement in 1968, Garner commented that in preparation for writing his book Elidor: I had to read extensively textbooks on physics, Celtic symbolism, unicorns, medieval watermarks, megalithic archaeology; study the writings of Jung; brush up my Plato; visit Avebury, Silbury and Coventry Cathedral; spend a lot of time with demolition
on three intertwined love stories, one set in the present, another during the English Civil War, and the third in the second century CE. Philip referred to it as "a complex book but not a complicated one: the bare lines of story and emotion stand clear". Academic specialist in children's literature Maria Nikolajeva characterised Red Shift as "a difficult book" for an unprepared reader, identifying its main themes as those of "loneliness and failure to communicate". Ultimately, she thought that repeated re-readings of the novel bring about the realisation that "it is a perfectly realistic story with much more depth and psychologically more credible than the most so-called "realistic" juvenile novels." The Stone Book series and folkloric collections: 1974–94 From 1976 to 1978, Garner published a series of four novellas, which have come to be collectively known as The Stone Book quartet: The Stone Book, Granny Reardun, The Aimer Gate, and Tom Fobble's Day. Each focused on a day in the life of a child in the Garner family, each from a different generation. In a 1989 interview, Garner noted that although writing The Stone Book Quartet had been "exhausting", it had been "the most rewarding of everything" he'd done to date. Philip described the quartet as "a complete command of the material he had been working and reworking since the start of his career". Garner pays particular attention to language, and strives to render the cadence of the Cheshire tongue in modern English. This he explains by the sense of anger he felt on reading Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: the footnotes would not have been needed by his father. In 1981, the literary critic Neil Philip published an analysis of Garner's novels as A Fine Anger, which was based on his doctoral thesis, produced for the University of London in 1980. In this study he noted that "The Stone Book quartet marks a watershed in Garner's writing career, and provides a suitable moment for an evaluation of his work thus far." Strandloper, Thursbitch, Boneland, and Treacle Walker: 1995–present In 1996, Garner's novel Strandloper was published. His collection of essays and public talks, The Voice That Thunders, contains much autobiographical material (including an account of his life with bipolar disorder), as well as critical reflection upon folklore and language, literature and education, the nature of myth and time. In The Voice That Thunders he reveals the commercial pressure placed upon him during the decade-long drought which preceded Strandloper to 'forsake "literature", and become instead a "popular" writer, cashing in on my established name by producing sequels to, and making series of, the earlier books'. Garner feared that "making series ... would render sterile the existing work, the life that produced it, and bring about my artistic and spiritual death" and felt unable to comply. Garner's novel Thursbitch was published in 2003. Garner's novel, Boneland, was published in 2012, nominally completing a trilogy begun some 50 years earlier with The Weirdstone of Brisingamen. The novel Treacle Walker was published in October 2021. Where Shall We Run To? 2018 In August 2018 Garner published his only set of memoirs, Where Shall We Run To?, which describes his childhood during the Second World War. Personal life With his first wife Ann Cook he had three children. In 1972, he married for a second time, this time to Griselda Greaves, a teacher and critic with whom he had two children. In a 2014 interview conducted with Mike Pitts for British Archaeology magazine, Garner stated that "I don't have anything to do with the literary world. I avoid writers. I don't like them. Most of my close personal friends are professional archaeologists." Literary style Although Garner's early work is often labelled as "children's literature", Garner himself rejects such a description, informing one interviewer that "I certainly have never written for children" but that instead he has always written purely for himself. Neil Philip, in his critical study of Garner's work (1981), commented that up till that point, "Everything Alan Garner has published has been published for children", although he went on to relate that "It may be that Garner's is a case" where the division between children's and adult's literature is "meaningless" and that his fiction is instead "enjoyed by a type of person, no matter what their age." Philip offered the opinion that the "essence of his work" was "the struggle to render the complex in simple, bare terms; to couch the abstract in the concrete and communicate it directly to the reader". He added that Garner's work is "intensely autobiographical, in both obvious and subtle ways". Highlighting Garner's use of mythological and folkloric sources, Philip stated that his work explores "the disjointed and troubled psychological and emotional landscape of the twentieth century through the symbolism of myth and folklore." He also expressed the opinion that "Time is Garner's most consistent theme". The English author and academic Catherine Butler noted that Garner was attentive to the "geological, archaeological and cultural history of his settings, and careful to integrate his fiction with the physical reality beyond the page." As a part of this, Garner had included maps of Alderley Edge in both The Weirdstone of Brisingamen and The Moon of Gomrath. Garner has spent much time investigating the areas that he deals with in his books; writing in the Times Literary Supplement in 1968, Garner commented that in preparation for writing his book Elidor: I had to read extensively textbooks on physics, Celtic symbolism, unicorns, medieval watermarks, megalithic archaeology; study the writings of Jung; brush up my Plato; visit Avebury, Silbury and
favor of his grandson Henri. 1858 – The Government of India Act 1858 replaces Company rule in India with that of the British Raj. 1869 – Japan's Edo society class system is abolished as part of the Meiji Restoration reforms. 1870 – Tower Subway, the world's first underground tube railway, opens in London, England, United Kingdom. 1873 – The Clay Street Hill Railroad begins operating the first cable car in San Francisco's famous cable car system. 1897 – Anglo-Afghan War: The Siege of Malakand ends when a relief column is able to reach the British garrison in the Malakand states. 1901–present 1903 – The Ilinden–Preobrazhenie Uprising against the Ottoman Empire begins. 1914 – The German occupation of Luxembourg during World War I begins. 1916 – World War I: Austrian sabotage causes the sinking of the Italian battleship Leonardo da Vinci in Taranto. 1918 – The first general strike in Canadian history takes place in Vancouver. 1922 – A typhoon hits Shantou, Republic of China, killing more than 50,000 people. 1923 – Vice President Calvin Coolidge becomes U.S. President upon the death of President Warren G. Harding. 1932 – The positron (antiparticle of the electron) is discovered by Carl D. Anderson. 1934 – Gleichschaltung: Adolf Hitler becomes Führer of Germany following the death of President Paul von Hindenburg. 1937 – The Marihuana Tax Act of 1937 is passed in America, the effect of which is to render marijuana and all its by-products illegal. 1939 – Albert Einstein and Leo Szilard write a letter to Franklin D. Roosevelt, urging him to begin the Manhattan Project to develop a nuclear weapon. 1943 – The Holocaust: Jewish prisoners stage a revolt at Treblinka, one of the deadliest of Nazi death camps where approximately 900,000 persons were murdered in less than 18 months. 1943 – World War II: The Motor Torpedo Boat PT-109 is rammed by the Japanese destroyer Amagiri and sinks. Lt. John F. Kennedy, future U.S. president, saves all but two of his crew. 1944 – ASNOM: Birth of the Socialist Republic of Macedonia, celebrated as Day of the Republic in North Macedonia. 1944 – World War II: The largest trade convoy of the world wars arrives safely in the Western Approaches. 1945 – World War II: End of the Potsdam Conference. 1947 – A British South American Airways Avro Lancastrian airliner crashes into a mountain during a flight from Buenos Aires, Argentina to Santiago, Chile. The wreckage would not be found until 1998. 1968 – An earthquake hits Casiguran, Aurora, Philippines killing more than 270 people and wounding 261. 1973 – A flash fire kills 51 people at the Summerland amusement centre at Douglas, Isle of Man. 1980 – A bomb explodes at the railway station in Bologna, Italy, killing 85 people and wounding more than 200. 1982 – The Helsinki Metro, the first rapid transit system of Finland, was opened to the general public. 1985 – Delta Air Lines Flight 191, a Lockheed L-1011 TriStar, crashes at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport killing 137. 1989 – Pakistan is re-admitted to the Commonwealth of Nations after having restored democracy for the first time since 1972. 1989 – A massacre is carried out by an Indian Peace Keeping Force in Sri Lanka killing 64 ethnic Tamil civilians. 1990 – Iraq invades Kuwait, eventually leading to the Gulf War. 1999 – The Gaisal train disaster claims 285 lives in Assam, India. 2005 – Air France Flight 358 lands at Toronto Pearson International Airport and runs off the runway, causing the plane to burst into flames leaving 12 injuries and no fatalities. 2014 – At least 146 people were killed and more than 114 injured in a factory explosion in Kunshan, Jiangsu, China. Births Pre-1600 1260 – Kyawswa of Pagan, last ruler of the Pagan Kingdom (d. 1299) 1455 – John Cicero, Elector of Brandenburg (d. 1499) 1533 – Theodor Zwinger, Swiss physician and scholar (d. 1588) 1549 – Mikołaj Krzysztof "the Orphan" Radziwiłł, Polish nobleman (d. 1616) 1601–1900 1612 – Saskia van Uylenburgh, Dutch model and wife of Rembrandt van Rijn (d. 1642) 1627 – Samuel Dirksz van Hoogstraten, Dutch painter (d. 1678) 1630 – Estephan El Douaihy, Maronite patriarch (d. 1704) 1646 – Jean-Baptiste du Casse, French admiral and buccaneer (d. 1715) 1672 – Johann Jakob Scheuchzer, Swiss paleontologist and scholar (d. 1733) 1674 – Philippe II, Duke of Orléans (d. 1723) 1696 – Mahmud I, Ottoman sultan (d. 1754) 1702 – Dietrich of Anhalt-Dessau (d. 1769) 1703 – Lorenzo Ricci, Italian religious leader, 18th Superior General of the Society of Jesus (d. 1775) 1740 – Jean Baptiste Camille Canclaux, French general (d. 1817) 1754 – Pierre Charles L'Enfant, French-American architect and engineer, designed Washington, D.C. (d. 1825) 1788 – Leopold Gmelin, German chemist and academic (d. 1853) 1815 – Adolf Friedrich von Schack, German poet and historian (d. 1894) 1820 – John Tyndall, Irish-English physicist and mountaineer (d. 1893) 1828 – Manuel Pavía y Rodríguez de Alburquerque, Spanish general (d. 1895) 1834 – Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi, French sculptor, designed the Statue of Liberty (d. 1904) 1835 – Elisha Gray, American businessman, co-founded Western Electric (d. 1901) 1861 – Prafulla Chandra Ray, Indian chemist and academic (d. 1944) 1865 – Irving Babbitt, American academic and critic (d. 1933) 1865 – John Radecki, Australian stained glass artist (d. 1955) 1867 – Ernest Dowson, English poet, novelist, and short story writer (d. 1900) 1868 – Constantine I of Greece (d. 1923) 1870 – Marianne Weber, German sociologist and suffragist (d. 1954) 1871 – John French Sloan, American painter and illustrator (d. 1951) 1872 – George E. Stewart, Australian-American colonel, Medal of Honor recipient (d. 1946) 1876 – Pingali Venkayya, Indian geologist, designed the Flag of India (d. 1963) 1877 – Ravishankar Shukla, Indian lawyer and politician, 1st Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh (d. 1956) 1878 – Aino Kallas, Finnish-Estonian author (d. 1956) 1880 – Arthur Dove, American painter and educator (d. 1946) 1882 – Red Ames, American baseball player and manager (d. 1936) 1882 – Albert Bloch, American painter and academic (d. 1961) 1884 – Rómulo Gallegos, Venezuelan author and politician, 46th President of Venezuela (d. 1969) 1886 – John Alexander Douglas McCurdy, Canadian pilot and politician, 20th Lieutenant Governor of Nova Scotia (d. 1961) 1887 – Oskar Anderson, Bulgarian-German mathematician and statistician (d. 1960) 1889 – Margaret Lawrence, American stage actress (d. 1929) 1891 – Arthur Bliss, English composer and conductor (d. 1975) 1891 – Viktor Zhirmunsky, Russian linguist and historian (d. 1971) 1892 – Jack L. Warner, Canadian-born American production manager and producer, co-founded Warner Bros. (d. 1978) 1894 – Bertha Lutz, Brazilian feminist and scientist (d.1976) 1895 – Matt Henderson, New Zealand cricketer (d. 1970) 1897 – Karl-Otto Koch, German SS officer (d. 1945) 1897 – Max Weber, Swiss lawyer and politician (d. 1974) 1898 – Ernő Nagy, Hungarian fencer (d. 1977) 1899 – Charles Bennett, English director and screenwriter (d. 1995) 1900 – Holling C. Holling, American author and illustrator (d. 1973) 1900 – Helen Morgan, American actress and singer (d. 1941) 1901–present 1902 – Pope Cyril VI of Alexandria (d. 1971) 1902 – Mina Rees, American mathematician (d.1997) 1905 – Karl Amadeus Hartmann, German composer (d. 1963) 1905 – Myrna Loy, American actress (d. 1993) 1907 – Mary Hamman, American journalist and author (d. 1984) 1910 – Roger MacDougall, Scottish director, playwright, and screenwriter (d. 1993) 1911 – Ann Dvorak, American actress (d. 1979) 1912 – Palle Huld, Danish actor (d. 2010) 1912 – Håkon Stenstadvold, Norwegian painter, illustrator, and critic (d. 1977) 1912 – Vladimir Žerjavić, Croatian economist and author (d. 2001) 1913 – Xavier Thaninayagam, Sri Lankan scholar and academic (d. 1980) 1914 – Félix Leclerc, Canadian singer-songwriter, actor, and poet (d. 1988) 1914 – Big Walter Price, American singer-songwriter and pianist (d. 2012) 1914 – Beatrice Straight, American actress (d. 2001) 1915 – Gary Merrill, American actor (d. 1990) 1916 – Alfonso A. Ossorio, Filipino-American painter and sculptor (d. 1990) 1917 – Wah Chang, Chinese-American artist and designer (d. 2003) 1919 – Nehemiah Persoff, Israeli-American actor 1920 – Louis Pauwels, French journalist and author (d. 1997) 1920 – Augustus Rowe, Canadian physician and politician (d. 2013) 1921 – Alan Whicker, Egyptian-English journalist (d. 2013) 1922 – Betsy Bloomingdale, American philanthropist and socialite (d. 2016) 1922 – Geoffrey Dutton, Australian historian and author (d. 1998) 1923 – Shimon Peres, Polish-Israeli lawyer and politician, 9th President of Israel (d. 2016) 1923 – Ike Williams, American boxer (d. 1994) 1924 – James Baldwin, American novelist, poet, and critic (d. 1987) 1924 – Joe Harnell, American pianist and composer (d. 2005) 1924 – Carroll O'Connor, American actor, director, producer, and screenwriter (d. 2001) 1925 – K. Arulanandan, Ceylon-American engineer and academic (d. 2004) 1925 – John Dexter, English director and producer (d. 1990) 1925 – John McCormack, Canadian ice hockey player (d. 2017) 1925 – Jorge Rafael Videla, Argentinian general and politician, 43rd President of Argentina (d. 2013) 1927 – Peter Swinnerton-Dyer, English mathematician and academic (d. 2018) 1928 – Malcolm Hilton, English cricketer (d. 1990) 1929 – Roy Crimmins, English trombonist and composer (d. 2014) 1929 – John Gale, English director and producer 1929 – Vidya Charan Shukla, Indian politician, Indian Minister of External Affairs (d. 2013) 1929 – David Waddington, Baron Waddington, English lawyer and politician, Governor of Bermuda (d. 2017) 1930 – Vali Myers, Australian painter and dancer (d. 2003) 1931 – Pierre DuMaine, American bishop and academic (d. 2019) 1931 – Eddie Fuller, South African cricketer (d. 2008) 1931 – Karl Miller, English journalist and critic (d. 2014) 1931 – Viliam Schrojf, Czech footballer (d. 2007) 1932 – Lamar Hunt, American businessman, co-founded the American Football League and World Championship Tennis (d. 2006) 1932 – Peter O'Toole, British-Irish actor and producer (d. 2013) 1933 – Ioannis Varvitsiotis, Greek politician, Greek Minister of Defence 1934 – Valery Bykovsky, Russian general and astronaut (d. 2019) 1935 – Hank Cochran, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (d. 2010) 1936 – Anthony Payne, English composer and author (d. 2021) 1937 – Ron Brierley, New Zealand businessman 1937 – Billy Cannon, American football player and dentist (d. 2018) 1937 – María Duval, Mexican actress and singer 1937 – Garth Hudson, Canadian keyboard player, songwriter, and producer 1938 – Dave Balon, Canadian ice hockey player and coach (d. 2007) 1938 – Pierre de Bané, Israeli-Canadian lawyer and politician (d. 2019) 1938 – Terry Peck,
relief column is able to reach the British garrison in the Malakand states. 1901–present 1903 – The Ilinden–Preobrazhenie Uprising against the Ottoman Empire begins. 1914 – The German occupation of Luxembourg during World War I begins. 1916 – World War I: Austrian sabotage causes the sinking of the Italian battleship Leonardo da Vinci in Taranto. 1918 – The first general strike in Canadian history takes place in Vancouver. 1922 – A typhoon hits Shantou, Republic of China, killing more than 50,000 people. 1923 – Vice President Calvin Coolidge becomes U.S. President upon the death of President Warren G. Harding. 1932 – The positron (antiparticle of the electron) is discovered by Carl D. Anderson. 1934 – Gleichschaltung: Adolf Hitler becomes Führer of Germany following the death of President Paul von Hindenburg. 1937 – The Marihuana Tax Act of 1937 is passed in America, the effect of which is to render marijuana and all its by-products illegal. 1939 – Albert Einstein and Leo Szilard write a letter to Franklin D. Roosevelt, urging him to begin the Manhattan Project to develop a nuclear weapon. 1943 – The Holocaust: Jewish prisoners stage a revolt at Treblinka, one of the deadliest of Nazi death camps where approximately 900,000 persons were murdered in less than 18 months. 1943 – World War II: The Motor Torpedo Boat PT-109 is rammed by the Japanese destroyer Amagiri and sinks. Lt. John F. Kennedy, future U.S. president, saves all but two of his crew. 1944 – ASNOM: Birth of the Socialist Republic of Macedonia, celebrated as Day of the Republic in North Macedonia. 1944 – World War II: The largest trade convoy of the world wars arrives safely in the Western Approaches. 1945 – World War II: End of the Potsdam Conference. 1947 – A British South American Airways Avro Lancastrian airliner crashes into a mountain during a flight from Buenos Aires, Argentina to Santiago, Chile. The wreckage would not be found until 1998. 1968 – An earthquake hits Casiguran, Aurora, Philippines killing more than 270 people and wounding 261. 1973 – A flash fire kills 51 people at the Summerland amusement centre at Douglas, Isle of Man. 1980 – A bomb explodes at the railway station in Bologna, Italy, killing 85 people and wounding more than 200. 1982 – The Helsinki Metro, the first rapid transit system of Finland, was opened to the general public. 1985 – Delta Air Lines Flight 191, a Lockheed L-1011 TriStar, crashes at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport killing 137. 1989 – Pakistan is re-admitted to the Commonwealth of Nations after having restored democracy for the first time since 1972. 1989 – A massacre is carried out by an Indian Peace Keeping Force in Sri Lanka killing 64 ethnic Tamil civilians. 1990 – Iraq invades Kuwait, eventually leading to the Gulf War. 1999 – The Gaisal train disaster claims 285 lives in Assam, India. 2005 – Air France Flight 358 lands at Toronto Pearson International Airport and runs off the runway, causing the plane to burst into flames leaving 12 injuries and no fatalities. 2014 – At least 146 people were killed and more than 114 injured in a factory explosion in Kunshan, Jiangsu, China. Births Pre-1600 1260 – Kyawswa of Pagan, last ruler of the Pagan Kingdom (d. 1299) 1455 – John Cicero, Elector of Brandenburg (d. 1499) 1533 – Theodor Zwinger, Swiss physician and scholar (d. 1588) 1549 – Mikołaj Krzysztof "the Orphan" Radziwiłł, Polish nobleman (d. 1616) 1601–1900 1612 – Saskia van Uylenburgh, Dutch model and wife of Rembrandt van Rijn (d. 1642) 1627 – Samuel Dirksz van Hoogstraten, Dutch painter (d. 1678) 1630 – Estephan El Douaihy, Maronite patriarch (d. 1704) 1646 – Jean-Baptiste du Casse, French admiral and buccaneer (d. 1715) 1672 – Johann Jakob Scheuchzer, Swiss paleontologist and scholar (d. 1733) 1674 – Philippe II, Duke of Orléans (d. 1723) 1696 – Mahmud I, Ottoman sultan (d. 1754) 1702 – Dietrich of Anhalt-Dessau (d. 1769) 1703 – Lorenzo Ricci, Italian religious leader, 18th Superior General of the Society of Jesus (d. 1775) 1740 – Jean Baptiste Camille Canclaux, French general (d. 1817) 1754 – Pierre Charles L'Enfant, French-American architect and engineer, designed Washington, D.C. (d. 1825) 1788 – Leopold Gmelin, German chemist and academic (d. 1853) 1815 – Adolf Friedrich von Schack, German poet and historian (d. 1894) 1820 – John Tyndall, Irish-English physicist and mountaineer (d. 1893) 1828 – Manuel Pavía y Rodríguez de Alburquerque, Spanish general (d. 1895) 1834 – Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi, French sculptor, designed the Statue of Liberty (d. 1904) 1835 – Elisha Gray, American businessman, co-founded Western Electric (d. 1901) 1861 – Prafulla Chandra Ray, Indian chemist and academic (d. 1944) 1865 – Irving Babbitt, American academic and critic (d. 1933) 1865 – John Radecki, Australian stained glass artist (d. 1955) 1867 – Ernest Dowson, English poet, novelist, and short story writer (d. 1900) 1868 – Constantine I of Greece (d. 1923) 1870 – Marianne Weber, German sociologist and suffragist (d. 1954) 1871 – John French Sloan, American painter and illustrator (d. 1951) 1872 – George E. Stewart, Australian-American colonel, Medal of Honor recipient (d. 1946) 1876 – Pingali Venkayya, Indian geologist, designed the Flag of India (d. 1963) 1877 – Ravishankar Shukla, Indian lawyer and politician, 1st Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh (d. 1956) 1878 – Aino Kallas, Finnish-Estonian author (d. 1956) 1880 – Arthur Dove, American painter and educator (d. 1946) 1882 – Red Ames, American baseball player and manager (d. 1936) 1882 – Albert Bloch, American painter and academic (d. 1961) 1884 – Rómulo Gallegos, Venezuelan author and politician, 46th President of Venezuela (d. 1969) 1886 – John Alexander Douglas McCurdy, Canadian pilot and politician, 20th Lieutenant Governor of Nova Scotia (d. 1961) 1887 – Oskar Anderson, Bulgarian-German mathematician and statistician (d. 1960) 1889 – Margaret Lawrence, American stage actress (d. 1929) 1891 – Arthur Bliss, English composer and conductor (d. 1975) 1891 – Viktor Zhirmunsky, Russian linguist and historian (d. 1971) 1892 – Jack L. Warner, Canadian-born American production manager and producer, co-founded Warner Bros. (d. 1978) 1894 – Bertha Lutz, Brazilian feminist and scientist (d.1976) 1895 – Matt Henderson, New Zealand cricketer (d. 1970) 1897 – Karl-Otto Koch, German SS officer (d. 1945) 1897 – Max Weber, Swiss lawyer and politician (d. 1974) 1898 – Ernő Nagy, Hungarian fencer (d. 1977) 1899 – Charles Bennett, English director and screenwriter (d. 1995) 1900 – Holling C. Holling, American author and illustrator (d. 1973) 1900 – Helen Morgan, American actress and singer (d. 1941) 1901–present 1902 – Pope Cyril VI of Alexandria (d. 1971) 1902 – Mina Rees, American mathematician (d.1997) 1905 – Karl Amadeus Hartmann, German composer (d. 1963) 1905 – Myrna Loy, American actress (d. 1993) 1907 – Mary Hamman, American journalist and author (d. 1984) 1910 – Roger MacDougall, Scottish director, playwright, and screenwriter (d. 1993) 1911 – Ann Dvorak, American actress (d. 1979) 1912 – Palle Huld, Danish actor (d. 2010) 1912 – Håkon Stenstadvold, Norwegian painter, illustrator, and critic (d. 1977) 1912 – Vladimir Žerjavić, Croatian economist and author (d. 2001) 1913 – Xavier Thaninayagam, Sri Lankan scholar and academic (d. 1980) 1914 – Félix Leclerc, Canadian singer-songwriter, actor, and poet (d. 1988) 1914 – Big Walter Price, American singer-songwriter and pianist (d. 2012) 1914 – Beatrice Straight, American actress (d. 2001) 1915 – Gary Merrill, American actor (d. 1990) 1916 – Alfonso A. Ossorio, Filipino-American painter and sculptor (d. 1990) 1917 – Wah Chang, Chinese-American artist and designer (d. 2003) 1919 – Nehemiah Persoff, Israeli-American actor 1920 – Louis Pauwels, French journalist and author (d. 1997) 1920 – Augustus Rowe, Canadian physician and politician (d. 2013) 1921 – Alan Whicker, Egyptian-English journalist (d. 2013) 1922 – Betsy Bloomingdale, American philanthropist and socialite (d. 2016) 1922 – Geoffrey Dutton, Australian historian and author (d. 1998) 1923 – Shimon Peres, Polish-Israeli lawyer and politician, 9th President of Israel (d. 2016) 1923 – Ike Williams, American boxer (d. 1994) 1924 – James Baldwin, American novelist, poet, and critic (d. 1987) 1924 – Joe Harnell, American pianist and composer (d. 2005) 1924 – Carroll O'Connor, American actor, director, producer, and screenwriter (d. 2001) 1925 – K. Arulanandan, Ceylon-American engineer and academic (d. 2004) 1925 – John Dexter, English director and producer (d. 1990) 1925 – John McCormack, Canadian ice hockey player (d. 2017) 1925 – Jorge Rafael Videla, Argentinian general and politician, 43rd President of Argentina (d. 2013) 1927 – Peter Swinnerton-Dyer, English mathematician and academic (d. 2018) 1928 – Malcolm Hilton, English cricketer (d. 1990) 1929 – Roy Crimmins, English trombonist and composer (d. 2014) 1929 – John Gale, English director and producer 1929 – Vidya Charan Shukla, Indian politician, Indian Minister of External Affairs (d. 2013) 1929 – David Waddington, Baron Waddington, English lawyer and politician, Governor of Bermuda (d. 2017) 1930 – Vali Myers, Australian painter and dancer (d. 2003) 1931 – Pierre DuMaine, American bishop and academic (d. 2019) 1931 – Eddie Fuller, South African cricketer (d. 2008) 1931 – Karl Miller, English journalist and critic (d. 2014) 1931 – Viliam Schrojf, Czech footballer (d. 2007) 1932 – Lamar Hunt, American businessman, co-founded the American Football League and World Championship Tennis (d. 2006) 1932 – Peter O'Toole, British-Irish actor and producer (d. 2013) 1933 – Ioannis Varvitsiotis, Greek politician, Greek Minister of Defence 1934 – Valery Bykovsky, Russian general and astronaut (d. 2019) 1935 – Hank Cochran, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (d. 2010) 1936 – Anthony Payne, English composer and author (d. 2021) 1937 – Ron Brierley, New Zealand businessman 1937 – Billy Cannon, American football player and dentist (d. 2018) 1937 – María Duval, Mexican actress and singer 1937 – Garth Hudson, Canadian keyboard player, songwriter, and producer 1938 – Dave Balon, Canadian ice hockey player and coach (d. 2007) 1938 – Pierre de Bané, Israeli-Canadian lawyer and politician (d. 2019) 1938 – Terry Peck, Falkland Islander soldier (d. 2006) 1939 – Benjamin Barber, American theorist, author, and academic (d. 2017) 1939 – Wes Craven, American director, producer, and screenwriter (d. 2015) 1939 – John W. Snow, American businessman and politician, 73rd United States Secretary of the Treasury 1940 – Angel Lagdameo, Filipino archbishop 1940 – Beko Ransome-Kuti, Nigerian physician and activist (d. 2006) 1940 – Will Tura, Belgian singer-songwriter and guitarist 1941 – Doris Coley, American singer (d. 2000) 1941 – Jules A. Hoffmann, Luxembourgian-French biologist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate 1941 – François Weyergans, Belgian director and screenwriter 1942 – Isabel Allende, Chilean-American novelist, essayist, essayist 1942 – Leo Beenhakker, Dutch football manager 1942 – Juan Formell, Cuban singer-songwriter and bass player (d. 2014) 1942 – Nell Irvin Painter, American author and historian 1943 – Herbert M. Allison, American lieutenant and businessman (d. 2013) 1943 – Tom Burgmeier, American baseball player and coach 1943 – Jon R. Cavaiani, English-American sergeant, Medal of Honor recipient (d. 2014) 1943 – Rose Tremain, English novelist and short story writer 1944 – Jim Capaldi, English drummer and singer-songwriter (d. 2005) 1944 – Naná Vasconcelos, Brazilian singer and berimbau player (d. 2016) 1945 – Joanna Cassidy, American actress 1945 – Alex Jesaulenko, Austrian-Australian footballer and coach 1945 – Bunker Roy, Indian educator and activist 1945 – Eric Simms, Australian rugby league player and coach 1946 – James Howe, American journalist and author 1947 – Ruth Bakke, Norwegian organist and composer 1947 – Lawrence Wright, American journalist, author, and screenwriter 1948 – Andy Fairweather Low, Welsh singer-songwriter, guitarist, and producer 1948 – Dennis Prager, American radio host and author 1948 – Tapan Kumar Sarkar, Indian-American electrical engineer and academic (d. 2021) 1948 – James Street, American football and baseball player (d. 2013) 1948 – Snoo Wilson, English playwright and screenwriter (d. 2013) 1949 – James Fallows, American journalist and author 1949 – Bertalan Farkas, Hungarian general and astronaut 1950 – Jussi Adler-Olsen, Danish author and publisher 1950 – Ted Turner, British guitarist 1951 – Andrew Gold, American singer-songwriter and producer (d. 2011) 1951 – Steve Hillage, English singer-songwriter and guitarist 1951 – Joe Lynn Turner, American singer-songwriter and guitarist 1951 – Per Westerberg, Swedish businessman and politician, Speaker of the Parliament of Sweden 1952 – Alain Giresse, French footballer and manager 1953 – Donnie Munro, Scottish singer and guitarist 1953 – Butch Patrick, American actor 1953 – Anthony Seldon, English historian and author 1954 – Sammy McIlroy, Northern Irish footballer and manager 1955 – Caleb Carr, American historian and author 1955 – Tony Godden, English footballer and manager 1955 – Butch Vig,
Peak (Colorado), a mountain Art, entertainment, and media Companies and labels Atlantic Books, an independent British publishing house Atlantic Monthly Press, an American publishing house Atlantic Entertainment Group, a defunct movie studio company Atlantic FM, a radio station serving Cornwall, United Kingdom Atlantic Records, a record company Music Groups The Atlantic, a post-hardcore band from Chicago, now known as Paper Cities The Atlantics, an Australian surf rock band formed in the early 1960s Albums Atlantic (Dufresne album) Atlantic (Theatre album) Songs "Atlantic" (song), by Keane "Atlantic", a song by Björk from Vessel (DVD) "Atlantic", a song by Thrice from Vheissu Other art, entertainment, and media Atlantic (film), a 1929 black and white British film The Atlantic, an American magazine founded as The Atlantic Monthly in 1857 Atlantic (2015 film), an Irish documentary film by Risteard Ó Domhnaill voiced by Brendan Gleeson, awarded Best Irish Documentary at the 2016 Dublin International Film Festival Enterprises and organizations Atlantic (cinema), a movie theater in Warsaw, Poland Atlantic (company), an Italian toy manufacturer Atlantic (supermarkets), a supermarket chain in Greece Atlantic Broadband, a cable company in Massachusetts Atlantic City Electric Company, a division of Elexon supplying electricity in New Jersey Atlantic LNG, a liquefied natural gas producing company based in Trinidad and Tobago Atlantic Petroleum, a former oil company in the United States
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is a unique monic polynomial with rational coefficients of least degree that has the number as a root. This polynomial is called its minimal polynomial. If its minimal polynomial has degree , then the algebraic number is said to be of degree . For example, all rational numbers have degree 1, and an algebraic number of degree 2 is a quadratic irrational. The algebraic numbers are dense in the reals. This follows from the fact they contain the rational numbers, which are dense in the reals themselves. The set of algebraic numbers is countable (enumerable), and therefore its Lebesgue measure as a subset of the complex numbers is 0 (essentially, the algebraic numbers take up no space in the complex numbers). That is to say, "almost all" real and complex numbers are transcendental. All algebraic numbers are computable and therefore definable and arithmetical. For real numbers and , the complex number is algebraic if and only if both and are algebraic. Field The sum, difference, product and quotient (if the denominator is nonzero) of two algebraic numbers is again algebraic, as can be demonstrated by using the resultant, and algebraic numbers thus form a field (sometimes denoted by , but that usually denotes the adele ring). Every root of a polynomial equation whose coefficients are algebraic numbers is again algebraic. That can be rephrased by saying that the field of algebraic numbers is algebraically closed. In fact, it is the smallest algebraically-closed field containing the rationals and so it is called the algebraic closure of the rationals. The set of real algebraic numbers itself forms a field. Related fields Numbers defined by radicals Any number that can be obtained from the integers using a finite number of additions, subtractions, multiplications, divisions, and taking (possibly complex) th roots where is a positive integer are algebraic. The converse, however, is not true: there are algebraic numbers
two roots of the quadratic . A constructible number can be constructed from a given unit length using a straightedge and compass. It includes all quadratic irrational roots, all rational numbers, and all numbers that can be formed from these using the basic arithmetic operations and the extraction of square roots. (By designating cardinal directions for 1, −1, , and −, complex numbers such as are considered constructible.) Any expression formed from algebraic numbers using any combination of the basic arithmetic operations and extraction of th roots gives another algebraic number. Polynomial roots that cannot be expressed in terms of the basic arithmetic operations and extraction of th roots (such as the roots of ). That happens with many but not all polynomials of degree 5 or higher. Values of trigonometric functions of rational multiples of (except when undefined): for example, , , and satisfy . This polynomial is irreducible over the rationals and so the three cosines are conjugate algebraic numbers. Likewise, , , , and satisfy the irreducible polynomial , and so are conjugate algebraic integers. Some but not all irrational numbers are algebraic: The numbers and are algebraic since they are roots of polynomials and , respectively. The golden ratio is algebraic since it is a root of the polynomial . The numbers and e are not algebraic numbers (see the Lindemann–Weierstrass theorem). Properties If a polynomial with rational coefficients is multiplied through by the least common denominator, the resulting polynomial with integer coefficients has the same roots. This shows that an algebraic number can be equivalently defined as a root of a polynomial with either integer or rational coefficients. Given an algebraic number, there is a unique monic polynomial with rational coefficients of least degree that has the number as a root. This polynomial is called its minimal polynomial. If its minimal polynomial has degree , then the algebraic number is said to be of degree . For example, all rational numbers have degree 1, and an algebraic number of degree 2 is a quadratic irrational. The algebraic numbers are dense in the reals. This follows from the fact they contain the rational numbers, which are dense in the reals themselves. The set of algebraic numbers is countable (enumerable), and therefore its Lebesgue measure as a subset of the complex numbers is 0 (essentially, the algebraic numbers take up no space in the complex numbers). That is to say, "almost all" real and complex numbers are transcendental. All algebraic numbers are computable and therefore definable and arithmetical. For real numbers and , the complex number is algebraic if and only if both and are algebraic. Field The sum, difference, product and quotient (if the denominator is nonzero) of two algebraic numbers is again algebraic, as can be demonstrated by using the resultant, and algebraic numbers thus form a field (sometimes denoted by , but that usually denotes the adele ring). Every root of a polynomial equation whose coefficients are algebraic numbers is again algebraic. That can be rephrased by saying that the field of algebraic numbers is algebraically closed. In fact, it is the smallest algebraically-closed field containing the rationals and so it is called the algebraic closure of the rationals. The set of real algebraic numbers itself forms a field. Related fields Numbers defined by radicals Any number that can be obtained from the integers using a finite number of additions, subtractions, multiplications, divisions, and taking (possibly complex) th roots where is a positive
It is part of the definition of a category that composition of morphisms is associative. Identity The identity is the identity morphism from an object to itself, which is an automorphism. Inverses By definition every isomorphism has an inverse which is also an isomorphism, and since the inverse is also an endomorphism of the same object it is an automorphism. The automorphism group of an object X in a category C is denoted AutC(X), or simply Aut(X) if the category is clear from context. Examples In set theory, an arbitrary permutation of the elements of a set X is an automorphism. The automorphism group of X is also called the symmetric group on X. In elementary arithmetic, the set of integers, Z, considered as a group under addition, has a unique nontrivial automorphism: negation. Considered as a ring, however, it has only the trivial automorphism. Generally speaking, negation is an automorphism of any abelian group, but not of a ring or field. A group automorphism is a group isomorphism from a group to itself. Informally, it is a permutation of the group elements such that the structure remains unchanged. For every group G there is a natural group homomorphism G → Aut(G) whose image is the group Inn(G) of inner automorphisms and whose kernel is the center of G. Thus, if G has trivial center it can be embedded into its own automorphism group. In linear algebra, an endomorphism of a vector space V is a linear operator V → V. An automorphism is an invertible linear operator on V. When the vector space is finite-dimensional, the automorphism group of V is the same as the general linear group, GL(V). (The algebraic structure of all endomorphisms of V is itself an algebra over the same base field as V, whose invertible elements precisely consist of GL(V).) A field automorphism is a bijective ring homomorphism from a field to itself. In the cases of the rational numbers (Q) and the real numbers (R) there are no nontrivial field automorphisms. Some subfields of R have nontrivial field automorphisms, which however do not extend to all of R (because they cannot preserve the property of a number having a square root in R). In the case of the complex numbers, C, there is a unique nontrivial automorphism that sends R into R: complex conjugation, but there are infinitely (uncountably) many "wild" automorphisms (assuming the axiom of choice). Field automorphisms are important to the theory of field extensions, in particular Galois extensions. In the case of a Galois extension L/K the subgroup of all automorphisms of L fixing K pointwise is called the Galois group of the extension. The automorphism group of the quaternions (H) as a ring are the inner automorphisms, by the Skolem–Noether theorem: maps of the form . This group is isomorphic to SO(3), the group of rotations in 3-dimensional space. The automorphism group of the octonions (O) is the exceptional Lie group G2. In graph theory an automorphism of a graph
By definition every isomorphism has an inverse which is also an isomorphism, and since the inverse is also an endomorphism of the same object it is an automorphism. The automorphism group of an object X in a category C is denoted AutC(X), or simply Aut(X) if the category is clear from context. Examples In set theory, an arbitrary permutation of the elements of a set X is an automorphism. The automorphism group of X is also called the symmetric group on X. In elementary arithmetic, the set of integers, Z, considered as a group under addition, has a unique nontrivial automorphism: negation. Considered as a ring, however, it has only the trivial automorphism. Generally speaking, negation is an automorphism of any abelian group, but not of a ring or field. A group automorphism is a group isomorphism from a group to itself. Informally, it is a permutation of the group elements such that the structure remains unchanged. For every group G there is a natural group homomorphism G → Aut(G) whose image is the group Inn(G) of inner automorphisms and whose kernel is the center of G. Thus, if G has trivial center it can be embedded into its own automorphism group. In linear algebra, an endomorphism of a vector space V is a linear operator V → V. An automorphism is an invertible linear operator on V. When the vector space is finite-dimensional, the automorphism group of V is the same as the general linear group, GL(V). (The algebraic structure of all endomorphisms of V is itself an algebra over the same base field as V, whose invertible elements precisely consist of GL(V).) A field automorphism is a bijective ring homomorphism from a field to itself. In the cases of the rational numbers (Q) and the real numbers (R) there are no nontrivial field automorphisms. Some subfields of R have nontrivial field automorphisms, which however do not extend to all of R (because they cannot preserve the property of a number having a square root in R). In the case of the complex numbers, C, there is a unique nontrivial automorphism that sends R into R: complex conjugation, but there are infinitely (uncountably) many "wild" automorphisms (assuming the axiom of choice). Field automorphisms are important to the theory of field extensions, in particular Galois extensions. In the case of a Galois extension L/K the subgroup of all automorphisms of L fixing K pointwise is called the Galois group of the extension. The automorphism group of the quaternions (H) as a ring are the inner automorphisms, by the Skolem–Noether theorem: maps of the form . This group is isomorphic to SO(3), the group of rotations in 3-dimensional space. The automorphism group of the octonions (O) is the exceptional Lie group G2. In graph theory an automorphism of a graph is a permutation of the nodes that preserves edges and non-edges. In particular, if two nodes are joined by an edge, so are their images under the permutation. In geometry, an automorphism may be called a motion of the space. Specialized terminology is also used: In metric geometry an automorphism is a self-isometry. The automorphism group is also called the isometry group. In the category of Riemann surfaces, an automorphism is a biholomorphic map (also called a conformal map), from
use a buttonboard with three rows of buttons in a "uniform" or "whole-tone" arrangement, generally known as a Jankó keyboard. The chromatic scale consists of two rows. The third row is a repetition of the first row, so there is the same fingering in all twelve scales. These accordions are produced only in special editions e.g. the logicordion produced by Harmona. Left-hand manual systems Different systems are also in use for the left-hand manual, which is normally used for playing the accompaniment. These almost always use distinct bass buttons and often have buttons with concavities or studs to help the player navigate the layout despite not being able to see the buttons while playing. There are three general categories: The Stradella bass system, also called standard bass, is arranged in a circle of fifths and uses single buttons for bass notes and additional rows of single buttons for preset major, minor, dominant seventh, and diminished chords. The dominant seventh and diminished chords are three-note chord voicings that omit the fifths of the chords. The Belgian bass system is a variation used in Belgian chromatic accordions. It is also arranged in a circle of fifths but in reverse order. This system has three rows of basses, three rows of chord buttons allowing easier fingering for playing melodies, combined chords, better use of fingers one and five, and more space between the buttons. This system was rarely used outside of its native Belgium. Various free-bass systems for greater access to playing melodies and complex basslines on the left-hand manual and to forming one's own chords note-by-note. These are often chosen for playing jazz and classical music. Some models can convert between free-bass and Stradella bass; this is called converter bass. The free-bass left hand notes are arranged chromatically in three rows with one additional duplicate row of buttons. Luttbeg double-keyboard piano accordions have a piano keyboard layout on both the treble and bass sides. This allows pianists, most notably Duke Ellington, to double up on the accordion without difficulty. The Bercandeon is an improved version of that instrument, also making it a "keyboard bandoneon". Reed ranks and switches Inside the accordion are the reeds that generate the instrument tones. These are organized in different sounding banks, which can be further combined into registers producing differing timbres. All but the smaller accordions are equipped with switches that control which combination of reed banks operate, organized from high to low registers. Each register stop produces a separate sound timbre, many of which also differ in octaves or in how different octaves are combined. See the accordion reed ranks and switches article for further explanation and audio samples. All but the smaller accordions usually have treble switches. The larger and more expensive accordions often also have bass switches to give options for the reed bank on the bass side. Classification of chromatic and piano type accordions In describing or pricing an accordion, the first factor is size, expressed in number of keys on either side. For a piano type, this could for one example be 37/96, meaning 37 treble keys (three octaves plus one note) on the treble side and 96 bass keys. A second aspect of size is the width of the white keys, which means that even accordions with the same number of keys have keyboards of different lengths, ranging from for a child's accordion to for an adult-sized instrument. After size, the price and weight of an accordion is largely dependent on the number of reed ranks on either side, either on a cassotto or not, and to a lesser degree on the number of combinations available through register switches. Price is also affected by the use of costly woods, luxury decorations, and features such as a palm switch, grille mute, and so on. Some accordion makers sell the same model in a range of different models, from a less-expensive base model to a more costly luxury model. Typically, the register switches are described as Reeds: 5 + 3, meaning five reeds on the treble side and three on the bass, and Registers: 13 + M, 7, meaning 13 register buttons on the treble side plus a special "master" that activates all ranks, like the "tutti" or "full organ" switch on an organ, and seven register switches on the bass side. Another factor affecting the price is the presence of electronics, such as condenser microphones, volume and tone controls, or MIDI sensors and connections. Straps The larger piano and chromatic button accordions are usually heavier than other smaller squeezeboxes, and are equipped with two shoulder straps to make it easier to balance the weight and increase bellows control while sitting, and avoid dropping the instrument while standing. Other accordions, such as the diatonic button accordion, have only a single shoulder strap and a right hand thumb strap. All accordions have a (mostly adjustable) leather strap on the left-hand manual to keep the player's hand in position while drawing the bellows. There are also straps above and below the bellows to keep it securely closed when the instrument is not playing. Electronic and digital In the 2010s, a range of electronic and digital accordions were introduced. They have an electronic sound module which creates the accordion sound, and most use MIDI systems to encode the keypresses and transmit them to the sound module. A digital accordion can have hundreds of sounds, which can include different types of accordions and even non-accordion sounds, such as pipe organ, piano, or guitar. Sensors are used on the buttons and keys, such as magnetic reed switches. Sensors are also used on the bellows to transmit the pushing and pulling of the bellows to the sound module. Digital accordions may have features not found in acoustic instruments, such as a piano-style sustain pedal, a modulation control for changing keys, and a portamento effect. As an electronic instrument, these types of accordions are plugged into a PA system or keyboard amplifier to produce sound. Some digital accordions have a small internal speaker and amplifier, so they can be used without a PA system or keyboard amplifier, at least for practicing and small venues like coffeehouses. One benefit of electronic accordions is that they can be practiced with headphones, making them inaudible to other people nearby. On a digital accordion, the volume of the right-hand keyboard and the left-hand buttons can be independently adjusted. Acoustic-digital hybrid accordions also exist. They are acoustic accordions (with reeds, bellows, and so on), but they also contain sensors, electronics, and MIDI connections, which provides a wider range of sound options. An acoustic-digital hybrid may be manufactured in this form, or it may be an acoustic accordion which has had aftermarket electronics sensors and connections added. Several companies sell aftermarket electronics kits, but they are typically installed by professional accordion technicians, due to the complex and delicate nature of the internal parts of an accordion. Unusual accordions Various hybrid accordions have been created between instruments of different buttonboards and actions. Many remain curiosities – only a few have remained in use: The Schrammel accordion, used in Viennese chamber music and klezmer, which has the treble buttonboard of a chromatic button accordion and a bisonoric bass buttonboard, similar to an expanded diatonic button accordion The Steirische Harmonika, a type of bisonoric diatonic button accordion particular to the Alpine folk music of Slovenia, Austria, the Czech Republic, the German state of Bavaria, and the Italian South Tyrol The schwyzerörgeli or Swiss organ, which usually has a three-row diatonic treble and 18 unisonoric bass buttons in a bass/chord arrangement – a subset of the Stradella system in reverse order like the Belgian bass – that travel parallel to the bellows motion The trikitixa of the Basque people, which has a two-row diatonic, bisonoric treble and a 12-button diatonic unisonoric bass The British chromatic accordion, the favoured diatonic accordion in Scotland. While the right hand is bisonoric, the left hand follows the Stradella system. The elite form of this instrument is generally considered the German manufactured Shand Morino, produced by Hohner with the input of Sir Jimmy Shand Pedal harmony, a type of accordion used sometimes in Polish folk music, which has a pair of pump organ-like bellows attached. The Finnish composer and accordionist Veli Kujala developed a quarter tone accordion together with the Italian accordion manufacturer Pigini in 2005, and has written works for it. It deploys the same system as the concert accordion, with a scale of five octaves, each divided into 24 quarter tones. Other notable composers who have written concertos for the quarter tone accordion include Jukka Tiensuu and Sampo Haapamäki. History The accordion's basic form is believed to have been invented in Berlin, in 1822, by Christian Friedrich Ludwig Buschmann, although one instrument has been recently discovered that appears to have been built earlier. The earliest history of the accordion in Russia is poorly documented. Nevertheless, according to Russian researchers, the earliest known simple accordions were made in Tula, Russia, by Ivan Sizov and Timofey Vorontsov around 1830, after they received an early accordion from Germany. By the late 1840s, the instrument was already very widespread;<ref>[http://publ.lib.ru/ARCHIVES/__Raritetnye_knigi/IRGO_Etnograficheskij_sbornik_02_1854.pdf Etnograficheskii sbornik Russkogo geograficheskogo obshchestva. Vol.2], Saint Petersburg, 1854. p.26, 162.</ref> together the factories of the two masters were producing 10,000 instruments a year. By 1866, over 50,000 instruments were being produced yearly by Tula and neighbouring villages, and by 1874 the yearly production was over 700,000. By the 1860s, Novgorod, Vyatka and Saratov governorates also had significant accordion production. By the 1880s, the list included Oryol, Ryazan, Moscow, Tver, Vologda, Kostroma, Nizhny Novgorod and Simbirsk, and many of these places created their own varieties of the instrument. The accordion is one of several European inventions of the early 19th century that use free reeds driven by a bellows. An instrument called accordion was first patented in 1829 by Cyrill Demian, of Armenian origin, in Vienna. Demian's instrument bore little resemblance to modern instruments. It only had a left hand buttonboard, with the right hand simply operating the bellows. One key feature for which Demian sought the patent was the sounding of an entire chord by depressing one key. His instrument also could sound two different chords with the same key, one for each bellows direction (a bisonoric action). At that time in Vienna, mouth harmonicas with Kanzellen (chambers) had already been available for many years, along with bigger instruments driven by hand bellows. The diatonic key arrangement was also already in use on mouth-blown instruments. Demian's patent thus covered an accompanying instrument: an accordion played with the left hand, opposite to the way that contemporary chromatic hand harmonicas were played, small and light enough for travelers to take with them and used to accompany singing. The patent also described instruments with both bass and treble sections, although Demian preferred the
with them and used to accompany singing. The patent also described instruments with both bass and treble sections, although Demian preferred the bass-only instrument owing to its cost and weight advantages. The accordion was introduced from Germany into Britain in about the year 1828. The instrument was noted in The Times in 1831 as one new to British audiences and was not favourably reviewed, but nevertheless it soon became popular. It had also become popular with New Yorkers by the mid-1840s. After Demian's invention, other accordions appeared, some featuring only the right-handed keyboard for playing melodies. It took English inventor Charles Wheatstone to bring both chords and keyboard together in one squeezebox. His 1844 patent for what he called a concertina also featured the ability to easily tune the reeds from the outside with a simple tool. The Austrian musician Adolf Müller described a great variety of instruments in his 1854 book Schule für Accordion. At the time, Vienna and London had a close musical relationship, with musicians often performing in both cities in the same year, so it is possible that Wheatstone was aware of this type of instrument and may have used them to put his key-arrangement ideas into practice. Jeune's flutina resembles Wheatstone's concertina in internal construction and tone colour, but it appears to complement Demian's accordion functionally. The flutina is a one-sided bisonoric melody-only instrument whose keys are operated with the right hand while the bellows is operated with the left. When the two instruments are combined, the result is quite similar to diatonic button accordions still manufactured today. Further innovations followed and continue to the present. Various buttonboard and keyboard systems have been developed, as well as voicings (the combination of multiple tones at different octaves), with mechanisms to switch between different voices during performance, and different methods of internal construction to improve tone, stability and durability. Modern accordions may incorporate electronics such as condenser microphones and tone and volume controls, so that the accordion can be plugged into a PA system or keyboard amplifier for live shows. Some 2010s-era accordions may incorporate MIDI sensors and circuitry, enabling the accordion to be plugged into a synth module and produce accordion sounds or other synthesized instrument sounds, such as piano or organ. Use in various music genres The accordion has traditionally been used to perform folk or ethnic music, popular music, and transcriptions from the operatic and light-classical music repertoire. It was also used by the Kikuyu tribe in Kenya and is the main instrument in the traditional Mwomboko dance. Today the instrument is sometimes heard in contemporary pop styles, such as rock and pop-rock, and occasionally even in serious classical music concerts, as well as advertisements. Use in traditional music The accordion's popularity spread rapidly: it has mostly been associated with the common people, and was propagated by Europeans who emigrated around the world. The accordion in both button and piano forms became a favorite of folk musicians and has been integrated into traditional music styles all over the world: see the list of music styles that incorporate the accordion. Use in jazz Early jazz accordionists include Charles Melrose, who recorded Wailing Blues/Barrel House Stomp (1930, Voc. 1503) with the Cellar Boys; Buster Moten, who played second piano and accordion in the Bennie Moten orchestra; and Jack Cornell, who did recordings with Irving Mills. Later jazz accordionists from the United States include Steve Bach, Milton DeLugg, Orlando DiGirolamo, Dominic Frontiere, Guy Klucevsek, Yuri Lemeshev, Frank Marocco, John Serry Sr., Lee Tomboulian, and Art Van Damme. French jazz accordionists include Richard Galliano, Bernard Lubat, and Vincent Peirani. Norwegian jazz accordionists include Asmund Bjørken, Stian Carstensen, Gabriel Fliflet, Frode Haltli, and Eivin One Pedersen. While the accordion's left hand preset chord buttons are limited to triads and seventh chords (for the dominant seventh chord and the diminished seventh chord), jazz accordionists expand the range of chord possibilities by using more than one chord button simultaneously, or by using combinations of a chord button and a bass note other than the typical root of the chord. An example of the former technique is used to play a minor seventh chord. To play an "a minor" seventh chord (with an added ninth), the "a minor" and "e minor" preset buttons are pressed simultaneously, along with an "A" bassnote. An example of the latter technique is used to play the half-diminished chord. To play an "e" half-diminished seventh chord, a "g minor" preset button is pressed along with an "E" bassnote. Use in popular music The accordion appeared in popular music from the 1900s to the 1960s. This half-century is often called the "golden age of the accordion". Five players, Pietro Frosini, the two brothers Count Guido Deiro and Pietro Deiro and Slovenian brothers Vilko Ovsenik and Slavko Avsenik, Charles Magnante were major influences at this time. Most vaudeville theaters closed during the Great Depression, but accordionists during the 1930s–1950s taught and performed for radio. Included among this group was the concert virtuoso John Serry, Sr.Jacobson, Marion (21 February 2012). Squeeze This: A Cultural History of the Accordion in America. University of Illinois Press, Chicago, Il. 2012, Pg. 61. During the 1950s through the 1980s the accordion received significant exposure on television with performances by Myron Floren on The Lawrence Welk Show. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the accordion declined in popularity due to the rise of rock and roll. The first accordionist to appear and perform at the Newport Jazz Festival was Angelo DiPippo. He can be seen playing his accordion in the motion picture The Godfather. He also composed and performed with his accordion on part of the soundtrack of Woody Allen's movie To Rome With Love. He was featured twice on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. Richard Galliano is an internationally known accordionist whose repertoire covers jazz, tango nuevo, Latin, and classical. Some popular bands use the instrument to create distinctive sounds. A notable example is Grammy Award-winning parodist "Weird Al" Yankovic, who plays the accordion on many of his musical tracks, particularly his polkas. Yankovic was trained in the accordion as a child. The accordion has also been used in the rock genre, most notably by John Linnell of They Might Be Giants, featuring more prominently in the band's earlier works. The instrument is still frequently used during live performances, and continues to make appearances in their studio albums. Accordion is also used in the music of the Dropkick Murphys and Gogol Bordello. Accordionists in heavy metal music make their most extensive appearances in the folk metal subgenre, and are otherwise generally rare. Full-time accordionists in folk metal seem even rarer, but they are still utilized for studio work, as flexible keyboardists are usually more accessible for live performances. The Finnish symphonic folk-metal band Turisas used to have a full-time accordionist, employing classical and polka sensibilities alongside a violinist. One of their accordionists, Netta Skog, is now a member of Ensiferum, another folk-metal band. Another Finnish metal band, Korpiklaani, invokes a type of Finnish polka called humppa, and also has a full-time accordionist. Sarah Kiener, the former hurdy-gurdy player for the Swiss melodic-death-folk metal band Eluveitie, played a Helvetic accordion known as a zugerörgeli. Use in classical music Although best known as a folk instrument, it has grown in popularity among classical composers. The earliest surviving concert piece is , written in 1836 by Louise Reisner of Paris. Other composers, including the Russian Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, the Italian Umberto Giordano, and the American Charles Ives, wrote works for the diatonic button accordion. The first composer to write specifically for the chromatic accordion was Paul Hindemith. In 1922, the Austrian Alban Berg included an accordion in Wozzeck, Op. 7. In 1937, the first accordion concerto was composed in Russia. Other notable composers have written for the accordion during the first half of the 20th century. Included among this group was the Italian-American John Serry Sr., whose Concerto for Free Bass Accordion was completed in 1964.Accordion World, Bedford Hills, NY, 1968. In addition, the American accordionist Robert Davine composed his Divertimento for Flute, Clarinet, Bassoon and Accordion as a work for chamber orchestra. American composer William P. Perry featured the accordion in his orchestral suite Six Title Themes in Search of a Movie (2008). The experimental composer Howard Skempton began his musical career as an accordionist, and has written numerous solo works for it. In his work Drang (1999), British composer John Palmer pushed the expressive possibilities of the accordion/bayan. Luciano Berio wrote Sequenza XIII (1995) for accordionist Teodoro Anzellotti. Accordionists like Mogens Ellegaard, Joseph Macerollo, Friedrich Lips, Hugo Noth, Stefan Hussong, Teodoro Anzellotti, and Geir Draugsvoll, encouraged composers to write new music for the accordion (solo and chamber music) and also started playing baroque music on the free bass accordion. French composer Henri Dutilleux used an accordion in both his late song cycles Correspondances (2003) and Le Temps l'Horloge (2009). Russian-born composer Sofia Gubaidulina has composed solos, concertos, and chamber works for accordion. Astor Piazzolla's concert tangos are performed widely. Piazzolla performed on the bandoneon, but his works are performed on either bandoneon or accordion. Australia The earliest mention of the novel accordion instrument in Australian music occurs in the 1830s. The accordion initially competed against cheaper and more convenient reed instruments such as mouth organ, concertina and melodeon. Frank Fracchia was an Australian accordion composer and copies of his works "My dear, can you come out tonight" and "Dancing with you" are preserved in Australian libraries. Other Australian composers who arranged music for accordion include Reginald Stoneham. The popularity of the accordion peaked in the late 1930s and continued until the 1950s. The accordion was particularly favoured by buskers. Bosnia and Herzegovina The accordion is a traditional instrument in Bosnia and Herzegovina. It is the dominant instrument used in sevdalinka, a traditional genre of folk music from Bosnia and Herzegovina. It is also considered a national instrument of the country. Brazil The accordion was brought to Brazil by settlers and immigrants from Europe, especially from Italy and Germany, who mainly settled in the south (Rio Grande do Sul, Santa Catarina and Paraná). The first instrument brought was a "Concertina" (a 120 button chromatic accordion). The instrument was popular in the 1950s, and was common to find several accordions in the same house. There are many different configurations and tunes which were adapted from the cultures that came from Europe. Accordion is the official symbol instrument of the Rio Grande do Sul state, where was voted by unanimity in the deputy chamber. During the boom of accordions there were around 65 factories in Brazil, where most of them (52) in the south, in Rio Grande do Sul state, with only 7 outside the south. One of the most famous and genuinely Brazilian brands was Acordeões Todeschini from Bento Gonçalves-RS, closed in 1973. The Todeschini accordion is very appreciated today and survives with very few maintainers. The most notable musicians of button accordions are Renato Borghetti, Adelar Bertussi, Albino Manique and Edson Dutra. Compared to many other countries, the instrument is very popular in mainstream pop music. In some parts of the country, such as the northeast it is the most popular melodic instrument. As opposed to most European folk accordions, a very dry tuning is usually used in Brazil. Outside the south, the accordion (predominantly the piano accordion) is used in almost all styles of Forró (in particular in the subgenres of Xote and Baião) as the principal instrument, Luiz Gonzaga (the "King of the Baião") and Dominguinhos being among the notable musicians in this style from the northeast. In this musical style the typical combination is a trio of accordion, triangle and zabumba (a type of drum). This style has gained popularity recently, in particular among the student population of the southeast of the country (in the Forró Universitário genre, with important exponents today being Falamansa, and trios such as Trio Dona Zefa, Trio Virgulino and Trio Alvorada). Moreover, the accordion is the principal instrument in Junina music (music of the São João Festival), with Mario Zan having been a very important exponent of this music. It is an important instrument in Sertanejo (and Caipira) music, which originated in the midwest and southeast of Brazil, and subsequently has gained popularity throughout the country. Colombia The accordion is also a traditional instrument in Colombia, commonly associated with the vallenato and cumbia genres. The accordion has been used by tropipop musicians such as Carlos Vives, Andrés Cabas, Fonseca (singer) and Bacilos, as well as rock musicians such as Juanes and pop musicians as Shakira. Vallenato, who emerged in the early twentieth century in a city known as Valledupar, and have come to symbolize the folk music of Colombia. Every year in April, Colombia holds one of the most important musical festivals in the country: the Vallenato Legend Festival. The festival holds contests for best accordion player. Once every decade, the "King of Kings" accordion competition takes place, where winners of the previous festivals compete for the highest possible award for a vallenato accordion player: the Pilonera Mayor prize. This is the world's largest competitive accordion festival. Mexico Norteño heavily relies on the accordion; it is a genre related to polka. Ramón Ayala, known in Mexico as the "King of the Accordion", is a norteño musician. Cumbia, which features the accordion, is also popular with musicians such as Celso Piña, creating a more contemporary style. U.S.-born Mexican musician Julieta Venegas incorporates the sound of the instrument into rock, pop and folk. She was influenced by her fellow Chicanos Los Lobos who also use the music of the accordion. North Korea According to Barbara Demick in Nothing to Envy, the accordion is known as "the people's instrument" and all North Korean teachers were expected to learn the accordion. China The number of accordionists in China exceed every other country in the world, and possibly every country combined. Introduced in 1926, the accordion has rose to popularity in China throughout the years, thanks to Russian teachers and being a popular instrument in the People's Liberation Army, and remains popular. Manufacturing process The most expensive accordions are typically fully hand-made, particularly the reeds; completely hand-made reeds have a better tonal quality than even the best automatically manufactured ones. Some accordions have been modified by individuals striving to bring a more pure sound out of low-end instruments, such as the ones improved by Yutaka Usui, a Japanese craftsman. The manufacture of an accordion is only a partly automated process. In a sense, all accordions are handmade, since there is always some hand assembly of the small parts required. The general process involves making the individual parts, assembling the subsections, assembling the entire instrument, and final decorating and packaging. Famous centres of production are the Italian cities of Stradella and Castelfidardo, with many small and medium size manufacturers especially at the latter. Castelfidardo honours the memory of Paolo Soprani who was one of the first large-scale producers. Maugein Freres has built accordions in the French town of Tulle since 1919, and the company is now the last complete-process manufacturer of accordions in France. German companies such as Hohner and Weltmeister made large numbers of accordions, but production diminished by the end of the 20th century. Hohner still manufactures its top-end models in Germany, and Weltmeister'' instruments are still handmade by
the same issues now discussed in the ethics of artificial intelligence. The study of mechanical or "formal" reasoning began with philosophers and mathematicians in antiquity. The study of mathematical logic led directly to Alan Turing's theory of computation, which suggested that a machine, by shuffling symbols as simple as "0" and "1", could simulate any conceivable act of mathematical deduction. This insight that digital computers can simulate any process of formal reasoning is known as the Church–Turing thesis. The Church-Turing thesis, along with concurrent discoveries in neurobiology, information theory and cybernetics, led researchers to consider the possibility of building an electronic brain. The first work that is now generally recognized as AI was McCullouch and Pitts' 1943 formal design for Turing-complete "artificial neurons". When access to digital computers became possible in the mid-1950s, AI research began to explore the possibility that human intelligence could be reduced to step-by-step symbol manipulation, known as Symbolic AI or GOFAI. Approaches based on cybernetics or artificial neural networks were abandoned or pushed into the background. The field of AI research was born at a workshop at Dartmouth College in 1956. The attendees became the founders and leaders of AI research. They and their students produced programs that the press described as "astonishing": computers were learning checkers strategies, solving word problems in algebra, proving logical theorems and speaking English. By the middle of the 1960s, research in the U.S. was heavily funded by the Department of Defense and laboratories had been established around the world. Researchers in the 1960s and the 1970s were convinced that symbolic approaches would eventually succeed in creating a machine with artificial general intelligence and considered this the goal of their field. Herbert Simon predicted, "machines will be capable, within twenty years, of doing any work a man can do". Marvin Minsky agreed, writing, "within a generation ... the problem of creating 'artificial intelligence' will substantially be solved". They failed to recognize the difficulty of some of the remaining tasks. Progress slowed and in 1974, in response to the criticism of Sir James Lighthill and ongoing pressure from the US Congress to fund more productive projects, both the U.S. and British governments cut off exploratory research in AI. The next few years would later be called an "AI winter", a period when obtaining funding for AI projects was difficult. In the early 1980s, AI research was revived by the commercial success of expert systems, a form of AI program that simulated the knowledge and analytical skills of human experts. By 1985, the market for AI had reached over a billion dollars. At the same time, Japan's fifth generation computer project inspired the U.S and British governments to restore funding for academic research. However, beginning with the collapse of the Lisp Machine market in 1987, AI once again fell into disrepute, and a second, longer-lasting winter began. Many researchers began to doubt that the symbolic approach would be able to imitate all the processes of human cognition, especially perception, robotics, learning and pattern recognition. A number of researchers began to look into "sub-symbolic" approaches to specific AI problems. Robotics researchers, such as Rodney Brooks, rejected symbolic AI and focused on the basic engineering problems that would allow robots to move, survive, and learn their environment. Interest in neural networks and "connectionism" was revived by Geoffrey Hinton, David Rumelhart and others in the middle of the 1980s. Soft computing tools were developed in the 80s, such as neural networks, fuzzy systems, Grey system theory, evolutionary computation and many tools drawn from statistics or mathematical optimization. AI gradually restored its reputation in the late 1990s and early 21st century by finding specific solutions to specific problems. The narrow focus allowed researchers to produce verifiable results, exploit more mathematical methods, and collaborate with other fields (such as statistics, economics and mathematics). By 2000, solutions developed by AI researchers were being widely used, although in the 1990s they were rarely described as "artificial intelligence". Faster computers, algorithmic improvements, and access to large amounts of data enabled advances in machine learning and perception; data-hungry deep learning methods started to dominate accuracy benchmarks around 2012. According to Bloomberg's Jack Clark, 2015 was a landmark year for artificial intelligence, with the number of software projects that use AI within Google increased from a "sporadic usage" in 2012 to more than 2,700 projects. He attributes this to an increase in affordable neural networks, due to a rise in cloud computing infrastructure and to an increase in research tools and datasets. In a 2017 survey, one in five companies reported they had "incorporated AI in some offerings or processes". The amount of research into AI (measured by total publications) increased by 50% in the years 2015–2019. Numerous academic researchers became concerned that AI was no longer pursuing the original goal of creating versatile, fully intelligent machines. Much of current research involves statistical AI, which is overwhelmingly used to solve specific problems, even highly successful techniques such as deep learning. This concern has led to the subfield artificial general intelligence (or "AGI"), which had several well-funded institutions by the 2010s. Goals The general problem of simulating (or creating) intelligence has been broken down into sub-problems. These consist of particular traits or capabilities that researchers expect an intelligent system to display. The traits described below have received the most attention. Reasoning, problem solving Early researchers developed algorithms that imitated step-by-step reasoning that humans use when they solve puzzles or make logical deductions. By the late 1980s and 1990s, AI research had developed methods for dealing with uncertain or incomplete information, employing concepts from probability and economics. Many of these algorithms proved to be insufficient for solving large reasoning problems because they experienced a "combinatorial explosion": they became exponentially slower as the problems grew larger. Even humans rarely use the step-by-step deduction that early AI research could model. They solve most of their problems using fast, intuitive judgments. Knowledge representation Knowledge representation and knowledge engineering allow AI programs to answer questions intelligently and make deductions about real world facts. A representation of "what exists" is an ontology: the set of objects, relations, concepts, and properties formally described so that software agents can interpret them. The most general ontologies are called upper ontologies, which attempt to provide a foundation for all other knowledge and act as mediators between domain ontologies that cover specific knowledge about a particular knowledge domain (field of interest or area of concern). A truly intelligent program would also need access to commonsense knowledge; the set of facts that an average person knows. The semantics of an ontology is typically represented in a description logic, such as the Web Ontology Language. AI research has developed tools to represent specific domains, such as: objects, properties, categories and relations between objects; situations, events, states and time; causes and effects; knowledge about knowledge (what we know about what other people know);. default reasoning (things that humans assume are true until they are told differently and will remain true even when other facts are changing); as well as other domains. Among the most difficult problems in AI are: the breadth of commonsense knowledge (the number of atomic facts that the average person knows is enormous); and the sub-symbolic form of most commonsense knowledge (much of what people know is not represented as "facts" or "statements" that they could express verbally). Formal knowledge representations are used in content-based indexing and retrieval, scene interpretation, clinical decision support, knowledge discovery (mining "interesting" and actionable inferences from large databases), and other areas. Planning An intelligent agent that can plan makes a representation of the state of the world, makes predictions about how their actions will change it and makes choices that maximize the utility (or "value") of the available choices. In classical planning problems, the agent can assume that it is the only system acting in the world, allowing the agent to be certain of the consequences of its actions. However, if the agent is not the only actor, then it requires that the agent reason under uncertainty, and continuously re-assess its environment and adapt. Multi-agent planning uses the cooperation and competition of many agents to achieve a given goal. Emergent behavior such as this is used by evolutionary algorithms and swarm intelligence. Learning Machine learning (ML), a fundamental concept of AI research since the field's inception, is the study of computer algorithms that improve automatically through experience. Unsupervised learning finds patterns in a stream of input. Supervised learning requires a human to label the input data first, and comes in two main varieties: classification and numerical regression. Classification is used to determine what category something belongs in—the program sees a number of examples of things from several categories and will learn to classify new inputs. Regression is the attempt to produce a function that describes the relationship between inputs and outputs and predicts how the outputs should change as the inputs change. Both classifiers and regression learners can be viewed as "function approximators" trying to learn an unknown (possibly implicit) function; for example, a spam classifier can be viewed as learning a function that maps from the text of an email to one of two categories, "spam" or "not spam". In reinforcement learning the agent is rewarded for good responses and punished for bad ones. The agent classifies its responses to form a strategy for operating in its problem space. Transfer learning is when knowledge gained from one problem is applied to a new problem. Computational learning theory can assess learners by computational complexity, by sample complexity (how much data is required), or by other notions of optimization. Natural language processing Natural language processing (NLP) allows machines to read and understand human language. A sufficiently powerful natural language processing system would enable natural-language user interfaces and the acquisition of knowledge directly from human-written sources, such as newswire texts. Some straightforward applications of NLP include information retrieval, question answering and machine translation. Symbolic AI used formal syntax to translate the deep structure of sentences into logic. This failed to produce useful applications, due to the intractability of logic and the breadth of commonsense knowledge. Modern statistical techniques include co-occurrence frequencies (how often one word appears near another), "Keyword spotting" (searching for a particular word to retrieve information), transformer-based deep learning (which finds patterns in text), and others. They have achieved acceptable accuracy at the page or paragraph level, and, by 2019, could generate coherent text. Perception Machine perception is the ability to use input from sensors (such as cameras, microphones, wireless signals, and active lidar, sonar, radar, and tactile sensors) to deduce aspects of the world. Applications include speech recognition, facial recognition, and object recognition. Computer vision is the ability to analyze visual input. Motion and manipulation AI is heavily used in robotics. Localization is how a robot knows its location and maps its environment. When given a small, static, and visible environment, this is easy; however, dynamic environments, such as (in endoscopy) the interior of a patient's breathing body, pose a greater challenge. Motion planning is the process of breaking down a movement task into "primitives" such as individual joint movements. Such movement often involves compliant motion, a process where movement requires maintaining physical contact with an object. Robots can learn from experience how to move efficiently despite the presence of friction and gear slippage. Social intelligence Affective computing is an interdisciplinary umbrella that comprises systems which recognize, interpret, process, or simulate human feeling, emotion and mood. For example, some virtual assistants are programmed to speak conversationally or even to banter humorously; it makes them appear more sensitive to the emotional dynamics of human interaction, or to otherwise facilitate human–computer interaction. However, this tends to give naïve users an unrealistic conception of how intelligent existing computer agents actually are. Moderate successes related to affective computing include textual sentiment analysis and, more recently, multimodal sentiment analysis), wherein AI classifies the affects displayed by a videotaped subject. General intelligence A machine with general intelligence can solve a wide variety of problems with a breadth and versatility similar to human intelligence. There are several competing ideas about how to develop artificial general intelligence. Hans Moravec and Marvin Minsky argue that work in different individual domains can be incorporated into an advanced multi-agent system or cognitive architecture with general intelligence. Pedro Domingos hopes that there is a conceptually straightforward, but mathematically difficult, "master algorithm" that could lead to AGI. Others believe that anthropomorphic features like an artificial brain or simulated child development will someday reach a critical point where general intelligence emerges. Tools Search and optimization Many problems in AI can be solved theoretically by intelligently searching through many possible solutions: Reasoning can be reduced to performing a search. For example, logical proof can be viewed as searching for a path that leads from premises to conclusions, where each step is the application of an inference rule. Planning algorithms search through trees of goals and subgoals, attempting to find a path to a target goal, a process called means-ends analysis. Robotics algorithms for moving limbs and grasping objects use local searches in configuration space. Simple exhaustive searches are rarely sufficient for most real-world problems: the search space (the number of places to search) quickly grows to astronomical numbers. The result is a search that is too slow or never completes. The solution, for many problems, is to use "heuristics" or "rules of thumb" that prioritize choices in favor of those more likely to reach a goal and to do so in a shorter number of steps. In some search methodologies, heuristics can also serve to eliminate some choices unlikely to lead to a goal (called "pruning the search tree"). Heuristics supply the program with a "best guess" for the path on which the solution lies. Heuristics limit the search for solutions into a smaller sample size. A very different kind of search came to prominence in the 1990s, based on the mathematical theory of optimization. For many problems, it is possible to begin the search with some form of a guess and then refine the guess incrementally until no more refinements can be made. These algorithms can be visualized as blind hill climbing: we begin the search at a random point on the landscape, and then, by jumps or steps, we keep moving our guess uphill, until we reach the top. Other optimization algorithms are simulated annealing, beam search and random optimization. Evolutionary computation uses a form of optimization search. For example, they may begin with a population of organisms (the guesses) and then allow them to mutate and recombine, selecting only the fittest to survive each generation (refining the guesses). Classic evolutionary algorithms include genetic algorithms, gene expression programming, and genetic programming. Alternatively, distributed search processes can coordinate via swarm intelligence algorithms. Two popular swarm algorithms used in search are particle swarm optimization (inspired by bird flocking) and ant colony optimization (inspired by ant trails). Logic Logic is used for knowledge representation and problem solving, but it can be applied to other problems as well. For example, the satplan algorithm uses logic for planning and inductive logic programming is a method for learning. Several different forms of logic are used in AI research. Propositional logic involves truth functions such as "or" and "not". First-order logic adds quantifiers and predicates, and can express facts about objects, their properties, and their relations with each other. Fuzzy logic assigns a "degree of truth" (between 0 and 1) to vague statements such as "Alice is old" (or rich, or tall, or hungry), that are too linguistically imprecise to be completely true or false. Default logics, non-monotonic logics and circumscription are forms of logic designed to help with default reasoning and the qualification problem. Several extensions of logic have been designed to handle specific domains of knowledge, such as: description logics; situation calculus, event calculus and fluent calculus (for representing events and time); causal calculus; belief calculus (belief revision); and modal logics. Logics to model contradictory or inconsistent statements arising in multi-agent systems have also been designed, such as paraconsistent logics. Probabilistic methods for uncertain reasoning Many problems in AI (in reasoning, planning, learning, perception, and robotics) require the agent to operate with incomplete or uncertain information. AI researchers have devised a number of powerful tools to solve these problems using methods from probability theory and economics. Bayesian networks are a very general tool that can be used for various problems: reasoning (using the Bayesian inference algorithm), learning (using the expectation-maximization algorithm), planning (using decision networks) and perception (using dynamic Bayesian networks). Probabilistic algorithms can also be used for filtering, prediction, smoothing and finding explanations for streams of data, helping perception systems to analyze processes that occur over time (e.g., hidden Markov models or Kalman filters). A key concept from the science of economics is "utility": a measure of how valuable something is to an intelligent agent. Precise mathematical tools have been developed that analyze how an agent can make choices and plan, using decision theory, decision analysis, and information value theory. These tools include models such as Markov decision processes, dynamic decision networks, game theory and mechanism design. Classifiers and statistical learning methods The simplest AI applications can be divided into two types: classifiers ("if shiny then diamond") and controllers ("if diamond then pick up"). Controllers do, however, also classify conditions before inferring actions, and therefore classification forms a central part of many AI systems. Classifiers are functions that use pattern matching to determine a closest match. They can be tuned according to examples, making them very attractive for use in AI. These examples are known as observations or patterns. In supervised learning, each pattern belongs to a certain predefined class. A class is a decision that has to be made. All the observations combined with their class labels are known as a data set. When a new observation is received, that observation is classified based on previous experience. A classifier can be trained in various ways; there are many statistical and machine learning approaches. The decision tree is the simplest and most widely used symbolic machine learning algorithm. K-nearest neighbor algorithm was the most widely used analogical AI until the mid-1990s. Kernel methods such as the support vector machine (SVM) displaced k-nearest neighbor in the 1990s. The naive Bayes classifier is reportedly the "most widely used learner" at Google, due in part to its scalability. Neural networks are also used for classification. Classifier performance depends greatly on the characteristics of the data to be classified, such as the dataset size, distribution of samples across classes, the dimensionality, and the level of noise. Model-based classifiers perform well if the assumed model is an extremely good fit for the actual data. Otherwise, if no matching model is available, and if accuracy (rather than speed or scalability) is the sole concern, conventional wisdom is that discriminative classifiers (especially SVM) tend to be more accurate than model-based classifiers such as "naive Bayes" on most practical data sets. Artificial neural networks Neural networks were inspired by the architecture of neurons in the human brain. A simple "neuron" N accepts input from other neurons, each of which, when activated (or "fired"), casts a weighted "vote" for or against whether neuron N should itself activate. Learning requires an algorithm to adjust these weights based on the training data; one simple algorithm (dubbed "fire together, wire together") is to increase the weight between two connected neurons when the activation of one triggers the successful activation of another. Neurons have a continuous spectrum of activation; in addition, neurons can process inputs in a nonlinear way rather than weighing straightforward votes. Modern neural networks model complex relationships between inputs and outputs or and find patterns in data. They can learn continuous functions and even digital logical operations. Neural networks can be viewed a type of mathematical optimization — they perform a gradient descent on a multi-dimensional topology that was created by training the network. The most common training technique is the backpropagation algorithm. Other learning techniques for neural networks are Hebbian learning ("fire together, wire together"), GMDH or competitive learning. The main categories of networks are acyclic or feedforward neural networks (where the signal passes in only one direction) and recurrent neural networks (which allow feedback and short-term memories of previous input events). Among the most popular feedforward networks are perceptrons, multi-layer perceptrons and radial basis networks. Deep learning Deep learning uses several layers of neurons between the network's inputs and outputs. The multiple layers can progressively extract higher-level features from the raw input. For example, in image processing, lower layers may identify edges, while higher layers may identify the concepts relevant to a human such as digits or letters or faces. Deep learning has drastically improved the performance of programs in many important subfields of artificial intelligence, including computer vision, speech recognition, image classification and others. Deep learning often uses convolutional neural networks for many or all of its layers. In a convolutional layer, each neuron receives input from only a restricted area of the previous layer called the neuron's receptive field. This can substantially reduce the number of weighted connections between neurons, and creates a hierarchy similar to the organization of the animal visual cortex. In a recurrent neural network the signal will propagate through a layer more than once; thus, an RNN is an example of deep learning. RNNs can be trained by gradient descent, however long-term gradients which are back-propagated can "vanish" (that is, they can tend to zero) or "explode" (that is, they can tend
large databases), and other areas. Planning An intelligent agent that can plan makes a representation of the state of the world, makes predictions about how their actions will change it and makes choices that maximize the utility (or "value") of the available choices. In classical planning problems, the agent can assume that it is the only system acting in the world, allowing the agent to be certain of the consequences of its actions. However, if the agent is not the only actor, then it requires that the agent reason under uncertainty, and continuously re-assess its environment and adapt. Multi-agent planning uses the cooperation and competition of many agents to achieve a given goal. Emergent behavior such as this is used by evolutionary algorithms and swarm intelligence. Learning Machine learning (ML), a fundamental concept of AI research since the field's inception, is the study of computer algorithms that improve automatically through experience. Unsupervised learning finds patterns in a stream of input. Supervised learning requires a human to label the input data first, and comes in two main varieties: classification and numerical regression. Classification is used to determine what category something belongs in—the program sees a number of examples of things from several categories and will learn to classify new inputs. Regression is the attempt to produce a function that describes the relationship between inputs and outputs and predicts how the outputs should change as the inputs change. Both classifiers and regression learners can be viewed as "function approximators" trying to learn an unknown (possibly implicit) function; for example, a spam classifier can be viewed as learning a function that maps from the text of an email to one of two categories, "spam" or "not spam". In reinforcement learning the agent is rewarded for good responses and punished for bad ones. The agent classifies its responses to form a strategy for operating in its problem space. Transfer learning is when knowledge gained from one problem is applied to a new problem. Computational learning theory can assess learners by computational complexity, by sample complexity (how much data is required), or by other notions of optimization. Natural language processing Natural language processing (NLP) allows machines to read and understand human language. A sufficiently powerful natural language processing system would enable natural-language user interfaces and the acquisition of knowledge directly from human-written sources, such as newswire texts. Some straightforward applications of NLP include information retrieval, question answering and machine translation. Symbolic AI used formal syntax to translate the deep structure of sentences into logic. This failed to produce useful applications, due to the intractability of logic and the breadth of commonsense knowledge. Modern statistical techniques include co-occurrence frequencies (how often one word appears near another), "Keyword spotting" (searching for a particular word to retrieve information), transformer-based deep learning (which finds patterns in text), and others. They have achieved acceptable accuracy at the page or paragraph level, and, by 2019, could generate coherent text. Perception Machine perception is the ability to use input from sensors (such as cameras, microphones, wireless signals, and active lidar, sonar, radar, and tactile sensors) to deduce aspects of the world. Applications include speech recognition, facial recognition, and object recognition. Computer vision is the ability to analyze visual input. Motion and manipulation AI is heavily used in robotics. Localization is how a robot knows its location and maps its environment. When given a small, static, and visible environment, this is easy; however, dynamic environments, such as (in endoscopy) the interior of a patient's breathing body, pose a greater challenge. Motion planning is the process of breaking down a movement task into "primitives" such as individual joint movements. Such movement often involves compliant motion, a process where movement requires maintaining physical contact with an object. Robots can learn from experience how to move efficiently despite the presence of friction and gear slippage. Social intelligence Affective computing is an interdisciplinary umbrella that comprises systems which recognize, interpret, process, or simulate human feeling, emotion and mood. For example, some virtual assistants are programmed to speak conversationally or even to banter humorously; it makes them appear more sensitive to the emotional dynamics of human interaction, or to otherwise facilitate human–computer interaction. However, this tends to give naïve users an unrealistic conception of how intelligent existing computer agents actually are. Moderate successes related to affective computing include textual sentiment analysis and, more recently, multimodal sentiment analysis), wherein AI classifies the affects displayed by a videotaped subject. General intelligence A machine with general intelligence can solve a wide variety of problems with a breadth and versatility similar to human intelligence. There are several competing ideas about how to develop artificial general intelligence. Hans Moravec and Marvin Minsky argue that work in different individual domains can be incorporated into an advanced multi-agent system or cognitive architecture with general intelligence. Pedro Domingos hopes that there is a conceptually straightforward, but mathematically difficult, "master algorithm" that could lead to AGI. Others believe that anthropomorphic features like an artificial brain or simulated child development will someday reach a critical point where general intelligence emerges. Tools Search and optimization Many problems in AI can be solved theoretically by intelligently searching through many possible solutions: Reasoning can be reduced to performing a search. For example, logical proof can be viewed as searching for a path that leads from premises to conclusions, where each step is the application of an inference rule. Planning algorithms search through trees of goals and subgoals, attempting to find a path to a target goal, a process called means-ends analysis. Robotics algorithms for moving limbs and grasping objects use local searches in configuration space. Simple exhaustive searches are rarely sufficient for most real-world problems: the search space (the number of places to search) quickly grows to astronomical numbers. The result is a search that is too slow or never completes. The solution, for many problems, is to use "heuristics" or "rules of thumb" that prioritize choices in favor of those more likely to reach a goal and to do so in a shorter number of steps. In some search methodologies, heuristics can also serve to eliminate some choices unlikely to lead to a goal (called "pruning the search tree"). Heuristics supply the program with a "best guess" for the path on which the solution lies. Heuristics limit the search for solutions into a smaller sample size. A very different kind of search came to prominence in the 1990s, based on the mathematical theory of optimization. For many problems, it is possible to begin the search with some form of a guess and then refine the guess incrementally until no more refinements can be made. These algorithms can be visualized as blind hill climbing: we begin the search at a random point on the landscape, and then, by jumps or steps, we keep moving our guess uphill, until we reach the top. Other optimization algorithms are simulated annealing, beam search and random optimization. Evolutionary computation uses a form of optimization search. For example, they may begin with a population of organisms (the guesses) and then allow them to mutate and recombine, selecting only the fittest to survive each generation (refining the guesses). Classic evolutionary algorithms include genetic algorithms, gene expression programming, and genetic programming. Alternatively, distributed search processes can coordinate via swarm intelligence algorithms. Two popular swarm algorithms used in search are particle swarm optimization (inspired by bird flocking) and ant colony optimization (inspired by ant trails). Logic Logic is used for knowledge representation and problem solving, but it can be applied to other problems as well. For example, the satplan algorithm uses logic for planning and inductive logic programming is a method for learning. Several different forms of logic are used in AI research. Propositional logic involves truth functions such as "or" and "not". First-order logic adds quantifiers and predicates, and can express facts about objects, their properties, and their relations with each other. Fuzzy logic assigns a "degree of truth" (between 0 and 1) to vague statements such as "Alice is old" (or rich, or tall, or hungry), that are too linguistically imprecise to be completely true or false. Default logics, non-monotonic logics and circumscription are forms of logic designed to help with default reasoning and the qualification problem. Several extensions of logic have been designed to handle specific domains of knowledge, such as: description logics; situation calculus, event calculus and fluent calculus (for representing events and time); causal calculus; belief calculus (belief revision); and modal logics. Logics to model contradictory or inconsistent statements arising in multi-agent systems have also been designed, such as paraconsistent logics. Probabilistic methods for uncertain reasoning Many problems in AI (in reasoning, planning, learning, perception, and robotics) require the agent to operate with incomplete or uncertain information. AI researchers have devised a number of powerful tools to solve these problems using methods from probability theory and economics. Bayesian networks are a very general tool that can be used for various problems: reasoning (using the Bayesian inference algorithm), learning (using the expectation-maximization algorithm), planning (using decision networks) and perception (using dynamic Bayesian networks). Probabilistic algorithms can also be used for filtering, prediction, smoothing and finding explanations for streams of data, helping perception systems to analyze processes that occur over time (e.g., hidden Markov models or Kalman filters). A key concept from the science of economics is "utility": a measure of how valuable something is to an intelligent agent. Precise mathematical tools have been developed that analyze how an agent can make choices and plan, using decision theory, decision analysis, and information value theory. These tools include models such as Markov decision processes, dynamic decision networks, game theory and mechanism design. Classifiers and statistical learning methods The simplest AI applications can be divided into two types: classifiers ("if shiny then diamond") and controllers ("if diamond then pick up"). Controllers do, however, also classify conditions before inferring actions, and therefore classification forms a central part of many AI systems. Classifiers are functions that use pattern matching to determine a closest match. They can be tuned according to examples, making them very attractive for use in AI. These examples are known as observations or patterns. In supervised learning, each pattern belongs to a certain predefined class. A class is a decision that has to be made. All the observations combined with their class labels are known as a data set. When a new observation is received, that observation is classified based on previous experience. A classifier can be trained in various ways; there are many statistical and machine learning approaches. The decision tree is the simplest and most widely used symbolic machine learning algorithm. K-nearest neighbor algorithm was the most widely used analogical AI until the mid-1990s. Kernel methods such as the support vector machine (SVM) displaced k-nearest neighbor in the 1990s. The naive Bayes classifier is reportedly the "most widely used learner" at Google, due in part to its scalability. Neural networks are also used for classification. Classifier performance depends greatly on the characteristics of the data to be classified, such as the dataset size, distribution of samples across classes, the dimensionality, and the level of noise. Model-based classifiers perform well if the assumed model is an extremely good fit for the actual data. Otherwise, if no matching model is available, and if accuracy (rather than speed or scalability) is the sole concern, conventional wisdom is that discriminative classifiers (especially SVM) tend to be more accurate than model-based classifiers such as "naive Bayes" on most practical data sets. Artificial neural networks Neural networks were inspired by the architecture of neurons in the human brain. A simple "neuron" N accepts input from other neurons, each of which, when activated (or "fired"), casts a weighted "vote" for or against whether neuron N should itself activate. Learning requires an algorithm to adjust these weights based on the training data; one simple algorithm (dubbed "fire together, wire together") is to increase the weight between two connected neurons when the activation of one triggers the successful activation of another. Neurons have a continuous spectrum of activation; in addition, neurons can process inputs in a nonlinear way rather than weighing straightforward votes. Modern neural networks model complex relationships between inputs and outputs or and find patterns in data. They can learn continuous functions and even digital logical operations. Neural networks can be viewed a type of mathematical optimization — they perform a gradient descent on a multi-dimensional topology that was created by training the network. The most common training technique is the backpropagation algorithm. Other learning techniques for neural networks are Hebbian learning ("fire together, wire together"), GMDH or competitive learning. The main categories of networks are acyclic or feedforward neural networks (where the signal passes in only one direction) and recurrent neural networks (which allow feedback and short-term memories of previous input events). Among the most popular feedforward networks are perceptrons, multi-layer perceptrons and radial basis networks. Deep learning Deep learning uses several layers of neurons between the network's inputs and outputs. The multiple layers can progressively extract higher-level features from the raw input. For example, in image processing, lower layers may identify edges, while higher layers may identify the concepts relevant to a human such as digits or letters or faces. Deep learning has drastically improved the performance of programs in many important subfields of artificial intelligence, including computer vision, speech recognition, image classification and others. Deep learning often uses convolutional neural networks for many or all of its layers. In a convolutional layer, each neuron receives input from only a restricted area of the previous layer called the neuron's receptive field. This can substantially reduce the number of weighted connections between neurons, and creates a hierarchy similar to the organization of the animal visual cortex. In a recurrent neural network the signal will propagate through a layer more than once; thus, an RNN is an example of deep learning. RNNs can be trained by gradient descent, however long-term gradients which are back-propagated can "vanish" (that is, they can tend to zero) or "explode" (that is, they can tend to infinity), known as the vanishing gradient problem. The long short term memory (LSTM) technique can prevent this in most cases. Specialized languages and hardware Specialized languages for artificial intelligence have been developed, such as Lisp, Prolog, TensorFlow and many others. Hardware developed for AI includes AI accelerators and neuromorphic computing. Applications AI is relevant to any intellectual task. Modern artificial intelligence techniques are pervasive and are too numerous to list here. Frequently, when a technique reaches mainstream use, it is no longer considered artificial intelligence; this phenomenon is described as the AI effect. In the 2010s, AI applications were at the heart of the most commercially successful areas of computing, and have become a ubiquitous feature of daily life. AI is used in search engines (such as Google Search), targeting online advertisements, recommendation systems (offered by Netflix, YouTube or Amazon), driving internet traffic, targeted advertising (AdSense, Facebook), virtual assistants (such as Siri or Alexa), autonomous vehicles (including drones and self-driving cars), automatic language translation (Microsoft Translator, Google Translate), facial recognition (Apple's Face ID or Microsoft's DeepFace), image labeling (used by Facebook, Apple's iPhoto and TikTok) and spam filtering. There are also thousands of successful AI applications used to solve problems for specific industries or institutions. A few examples are: energy storage, deepfakes, medical diagnosis, military logistics, or supply chain management. Game playing has been a test of AI's strength since the 1950s. Deep Blue became the first computer chess-playing system to beat a reigning world chess champion, Garry Kasparov, on 11 May 1997. In 2011, in a Jeopardy! quiz show exhibition match, IBM's question answering system, Watson, defeated the two greatest Jeopardy! champions, Brad Rutter and Ken Jennings, by a significant margin. In March 2016, AlphaGo won 4 out of 5 games of Go in a match with Go champion Lee Sedol, becoming the first computer Go-playing system to beat a professional Go player without handicaps. Other programs handle imperfect-information games; such as for poker at a superhuman level, Pluribus and Cepheus. DeepMind in the 2010s developed a "generalized artificial intelligence" that could learn many diverse Atari games on its own. By 2020, Natural Language Processing systems such as the enormous GPT-3 (then by far the largest artificial neural network) were matching human performance on pre-existing benchmarks, albeit without the system attaining commonsense understanding of the contents of the benchmarks. DeepMind's AlphaFold 2 (2020) demonstrated the ability to approximate, in hours rather than months, the 3D structure of a protein. Other applications predict the result of judicial decisions, create art (such as poetry or painting) and prove mathematical theorems. Philosophy Defining artificial intelligence Thinking vs. acting: the Turing test Alan Turing wrote in 1950 "I propose to consider the question 'can machines think'?" He advised changing the question from whether a machine "thinks", to "whether or not it is possible for machinery to show intelligent behaviour". The only thing visible is the behavior of the machine, so it does not matter if the machine is conscious, or has a mind, or whether the intelligence is merely a "simulation" and not "the real thing". He noted that we also don't know these things about other people, but that we extend a "polite convention" that they are actually "thinking". This idea forms the basis of the Turing test. Acting
McNally and Martin Russell. Emmerson's version of the band released the album The Source in 2016. The dispute ended on 21 December 2016, with an announcement on social media. The band released their eighth studio album, Flight, on 23 November 2018. Formation The inspiration behind the project dates back to 1991, when Simon Emmerson, a Grammy Award-nominated British producer and guitarist, collaborated with Afro-pop star Baaba Maal. While making an album with Maal in Senegal, Emmerson was struck by the similarity between one African melody and a traditional Irish air. Back in London, Irish musician Davy Spillane told Emmerson about a belief that nomadic Celts lived in Africa or India before they migrated to Western Europe. Whether or not the theory was true, Emmerson was intrigued by the two countries' musical affinities. In an experiment that would prove successful, Emmerson brought two members of Baaba Maal's band together with traditional Irish musicians to see what kind of music the two groups would create. Adding a dash of modern sound, Emmerson also brought in English dance mixers for an electronic beat. "People thought I was mad when I touted the idea," Emmerson told Jim Carroll of The Irish Times. "At the time, I was out of favour with the London club scene. I was broke and on income support but the success was extraordinary". Career Jamming in the studios at Real World, musician Peter Gabriel's recording facilities in Wiltshire, England, the group of musicians recorded the basis of their first album in one week. This album, Volume 1: Sound Magic, was released by Real World Records in 1996, and marked the debut of the Afro Celt Sound System. "Prior to that first album being made, none of us knew if it would work," musician James McNally told Larry Katz of the Boston Herald. "We were strangers who didn't even speak the same language. But we were bowled over by this communication that took place beyond language." McNally, who grew up second-generation Irish in London, played whistles, keyboards, piano, bodhran, and bamboo flute. Sound Magic has now sold over 300,000 copies. The band performed at festivals, raves, and dance clubs and regularly included two African musicians, Moussa Sissokho on talking drum and djembe and N'Faly Kouyate on vocals, kora and balafon. Just as the second album was getting off the ground, one of the group's core musicians, 27-year-old keyboardist Jo Bruce, (son of Cream bass player Jack Bruce), died suddenly of an asthma attack. The band was devastated, and the album was put on hold. Sinéad O'Connor then collaborated with the band and helped them cope with their loss. "[O'Connor] blew into the studio on a windy November night and blew away again leaving us something incredibly emotional and powerful," McNally told Katz. "We had this track we didn't know what to do with. Sinéad scribbled a few lyrics and bang! She left us completely choked up." The band used the name of O'Connor's song, "Release", for the title of their album. Volume 2: Release was released in 1999, and by the spring of 2000 it had sold more than half a million copies worldwide. Release is also used as one of the GCSE music set works in the UK that students are required to study for their exam. In 2000, the
told Patrick MacDonald of The Seattle Times. "We're breaking down categories of world music and rock music and black music. We leave a door open to communicate with each other's traditions. And it's changed our lives". In 2001, the group released Volume 3: Further in Time, which climbed to number one on Billboards Top World Music Albums chart. Featuring guest spots by Peter Gabriel and Robert Plant, the album also incorporated a heightened African sound. "On the first two records, the pendulum swung more toward the Celtic, London club side of the equation," Emmerson told The Irish Times Carroll. "For this one, we wanted to have more African vocals and input than we'd done before." Again the Afro Celt Sound System met with success. Chuck Taylor of Billboard praised the album as "a cultural phenomenon that bursts past the traditional boundaries of contemporary music." The single "When You're Falling", with vocals by Gabriel, became a radio hit in the United States. In 2003, for the Seed album, they changed their name to Afrocelts. They reverted to the longer band name for their subsequent albums, Pod, a compilation of new mixes of songs from the first four albums, Volume 5: Anatomic (their fifth studio album), and Capture (1995–2010). They played a number of shows to promote Volume 5: Anatomic in 2006 and summer 2007, ending with a gig in Korea, before taking an extended break to work on side projects, amongst them The Imagined Village featuring Simon Emmerson and Johnny Kalsi. Starting in the summer of 2010, the band performed a series of live shows to promote Capture (1995–2010), released on 6 September 2010 on Real World Records. Further performances continue to the present day, and a new album-in-progress titled Born was announced on their website in 2014. Following the split (see below), Emmerson's version of the band released the album The Source in 2016. Split During 2015, the band had split into two formations, one of them including Simon Emmerson, N'Faly Kouyate and Johnny Kalsi, the other one James McNally and Martin Russell. The split was announced on the band's website in January 2016. The dispute officially ended with an announcement on social media on 21 December 2016. Members When Afro Celt Sound System formed in the mid-1990s during the Real World Recording Week, the difference between a guest artist and a band member was virtually non-existent. However, over time, a combination of people became
perfection. Confucianism holds that one should give up one's life, if necessary, either passively or actively, for the sake of upholding the cardinal moral values of ren and yi. Legalism. Often compared with Machiavelli, and foundational for the traditional Chinese bureaucratic empire, the Legalists examined administrative methods, emphasizing a realistic consolidation of the wealth and power of autocrat and state. Taoism (also called Daoism), a philosophy which emphasizes the Three Jewels of the Tao: compassion, moderation, and humility, while Taoist thought generally focuses on nature, the relationship between humanity and the cosmos; health and longevity; and wu wei (action through inaction). Harmony with the Universe, or the source thereof (Tao), is the intended result of many Taoist rules and practices. Mohism, which advocated the idea of universal love: Mozi believed that "everyone is equal before heaven", and that people should seek to imitate heaven by engaging in the practice of collective love. His epistemology can be regarded as primitive materialist empiricism; he believed that human cognition ought to be based on one's perceptions – one's sensory experiences, such as sight and hearing – instead of imagination or internal logic, elements founded on the human capacity for abstraction. Mozi advocated frugality, condemning the Confucian emphasis on ritual and music, which he denounced as extravagant. Naturalism, the School of Naturalists or the Yin-yang school, which synthesized the concepts of yin and yang and the Five Elements; Zou Yan is considered the founder of this school. Agrarianism, or the School of Agrarianism, which advocated peasant utopian communalism and egalitarianism. The Agrarians believed that Chinese society should be modeled around that of the early sage king Shen Nong, a folk hero which was portrayed in Chinese literature as "working in the fields, along with everyone else, and consulting with everyone else when any decision had to be reached." The Logicians or the School of Names, which focused on definition and logic. It is said to have parallels with that of the Ancient Greek sophists or dialecticians. The most notable Logician was Gongsun Longzi. The School of Diplomacy or School of Vertical and Horizontal [Alliances], which focused on practical matters instead of any moral principle, so it stressed political and diplomatic tactics, and debate and lobbying skill. Scholars from this school were good orators, debaters and tacticians. The Miscellaneous School, which integrated teachings from different schools; for instance, Lü Buwei found scholars from different schools to write a book called Lüshi Chunqiu cooperatively. This school tried to integrate the merits of various schools and avoid their perceived flaws. The School of "Minor-talks", which was not a unique school of thought, but a philosophy constructed of all the thoughts which were discussed by and originated from normal people on the street. Another group is the School of the Military that studied strategy and the philosophy of war; Sunzi and Sun Bin were influential leaders. However, this school was not one of the "Ten Schools" defined by Hanshu. Early Imperial China The founder of the Qin Dynasty, who implemented Legalism as the official philosophy, quashed Mohist and Confucianist schools. Legalism remained influential until the emperors of the Han Dynasty adopted Daoism and later Confucianism as official doctrine. These latter two became the determining forces of Chinese thought until the introduction of Buddhism. Confucianism was particularly strong during the Han Dynasty, whose greatest thinker was Dong Zhongshu, who integrated Confucianism with the thoughts of the Zhongshu School and the theory of the Five Elements. He also was a promoter of the New Text school, which considered Confucius as a divine figure and a spiritual ruler of China, who foresaw and started the evolution of the world towards the Universal Peace. In contrast, there was an Old Text school that advocated the use of Confucian works written in ancient language (from this comes the denomination Old Text) that were so much more reliable. In particular, they refuted the assumption of Confucius as a godlike figure and considered him as the greatest sage, but simply a human and mortal. The 3rd and 4th centuries saw the rise of the Xuanxue (mysterious learning), also called Neo-Taoism. The most important philosophers of this movement were Wang Bi, Xiang Xiu and Guo Xiang. The main question of this school was whether Being came before Not-Being (in Chinese, ming and wuming). A peculiar feature of these Taoist thinkers, like the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove, was the concept of feng liu (lit. wind and flow), a sort of romantic spirit which encouraged following the natural and instinctive impulse. Buddhism arrived in China around the 1st century AD, but it was not until the Northern and Southern, Sui and Tang Dynasties that it gained considerable influence and acknowledgement. At the beginning, it was considered a sort of Taoist sect, and there was even a theory about Laozi, founder of Taoism, who went to India and taught his philosophy to Buddha. Mahayana Buddhism was far more successful in China than its rival Hinayana, and both Indian schools and local Chinese sects arose from the 5th century. Two chiefly important monk philosophers were Sengzhao and Daosheng. But probably the most influential and original of these schools was the Chan sect, which had an even stronger impact in Japan as the Zen sect. Philosophers Taoism Laozi (5th–4th century BCE) Zhuangzi (4th century BCE) Zhang Daoling Zhang Jue (died 184 CE) Ge Hong (283 – 343 CE) Confucianism Confucius Mencius Xun Zi (c. 312 – 230 BCE) Legalism Li Si Li Kui Han Fei Mi Su Yu Shang Yang Shen Buhai Shen Dao Mohism Mozi Song Xing Logicians Deng Xi Hui Shi (380–305 BCE) Gongsun Long (c. 325 – c. 250 BCE) Agrarianism Xu Xing Naturalism Zou Yan (305
(500 – 428 BCE) Atomists Leucippus (first half of 5th century BCE) Democritus (460 – 370 BCE) Metrodorus of Chios (4th century BCE) Pherecydes of Syros (6th century BCE) Sophists Protagoras (490 – 420 BCE) Gorgias (487 – 376 BCE) Antiphon (480 – 411 BCE) Prodicus (465/450 – after 399 BCE) Hippias (middle of the 5th century BCE) Thrasymachus (459 – 400 BCE) Callicles Critias Lycophron Diogenes of Apollonia (c. 460 BCE – ?) Classical Greek philosophers Socrates (469 – 399 BCE) Euclid of Megara (450 – 380 BCE) Antisthenes (445 – 360 BCE) Aristippus (435 – 356 BCE) Plato (428 – 347 BCE) Speusippus (407 – 339 BCE) Diogenes of Sinope (400 – 325 BCE) Xenocrates (396 – 314 BCE) Aristotle (384 – 322 BCE) Stilpo (380 – 300 BCE) Theophrastus (370 – 288 BCE) Hellenistic philosophy Pyrrho (365 – 275 BCE) Epicurus (341 – 270 BCE) Metrodorus of Lampsacus (the younger) (331 – 278 BCE) Zeno of Citium (333 – 263 BCE) Cleanthes (c. 330 – c. 230 BCE) Timon (320 – 230 BCE) Arcesilaus (316 – 232 BCE) Menippus (3rd century BCE) Archimedes (c. 287 – 212 BCE) Chrysippus (280 – 207 BCE) Carneades (214 – 129 BCE) Clitomachus (187 – 109 BCE) Metrodorus of Stratonicea (late 2nd century BCE) Philo of Larissa (160 – 80 BCE) Posidonius (135 – 51 BCE) Antiochus of Ascalon (130 – 68 BCE) Aenesidemus (1st century BCE) Agrippa (1st century CE) Hellenistic schools of thought Academic skepticism Cynicism Cyrenaicism Eclecticism Epicureanism Middle Platonism Neo-Platonism Neopythagoreanism Peripatetic School Pyrrhonism Stoicism Sophism Early Roman and Christian philosophy See also: Christian philosophy School of the Sextii Philosophers during Roman times Cicero (106 – 43 BCE) Lucretius (94 – 55 BCE) Seneca (4 BCE – 65 CE) Musonius Rufus (30 – 100 CE) Plutarch (45 – 120 CE) Epictetus (55 – 135 CE) Favorinus (c. 80 – c. 160 CE) Marcus Aurelius (121 – 180 CE) Clement of Alexandria (150 – 215 CE) Alcinous (philosopher) (2nd century CE) Sextus Empiricus (3rd century CE) Alexander of Aphrodisias (3rd century CE) Ammonius Saccas (3rd century CE) Plotinus (205 – 270 CE) Porphyry (232 – 304 CE) Iamblichus (242 – 327 CE) Themistius (317 – 388 CE) Ambrose (340 – 397 CE) Augustine of Hippo (354 – 430 CE) Proclus (411 – 485 CE) Damascius (462 – 540 CE) Boethius (472 – 524 CE) Simplicius of Cilicia (490 – 560 CE) John Philoponus (490 – 570 CE) Ancient Indian philosophy The ancient Indian philosophy is a fusion of two ancient traditions: the Vedic tradition and the Sramana tradition. Vedic philosophy Indian philosophy begins with the Vedas wherein questions pertaining to laws of nature, the origin of the universe and the place of man in it are asked. In the famous Rigvedic Hymn of Creation (Nasadiya Sukta) the poet asks: "Whence all creation had its origin, he, whether he fashioned it or whether he did not, he, who surveys it all from highest heaven, he knows—or maybe even he does not know." In the Vedic view, creation is ascribed to the self-consciousness of the primeval being (Purusha). This leads to the inquiry into the one being that underlies the diversity of empirical phenomena and the origin of all things. Cosmic order is termed rta and causal law by karma. Nature (prakriti) is taken to have three qualities (sattva, rajas, and tamas). Vedas Upanishads Hindu philosophy Sramana philosophy Jainism and Buddhism are continuation of the Sramana school of thought. The Sramanas cultivated a pessimistic worldview of the samsara as full of suffering and advocated renunciation and austerities. They laid stress on philosophical concepts like Ahimsa, Karma, Jnana, Samsara and Moksa. Cārvāka (Sanskrit: चार्वाक) (atheist) philosophy, also known as Lokāyata, it is a system of Hindu philosophy that assumes various forms of philosophical skepticism and religious indifference. It is named after its founder, Cārvāka, author of the Bārhaspatya-sūtras. Classical Indian philosophy In classical times, these inquiries were systematized in six schools of philosophy. Some of the questions asked were: What is the ontological nature of consciousness? How is cognition itself experienced? Is mind (chit) intentional or not? Does cognition have its own structure? The six schools of Indian philosophy are: Nyaya Vaisheshika Samkhya Yoga Mimamsa (Purva Mimamsa) Vedanta (Uttara Mimamsa) Ancient Indian philosophers 1st millennium BCE Parashara – writer of Viṣṇu Purāṇa. Philosophers of Vedic Age (c. 1500 – c. 600 BCE) Rishi Narayana – seer of the Purusha Sukta of the Rig Veda. Seven Rishis – Atri, Bharadwaja, Gautama, Jamadagni, Kasyapa, Vasishtha, Viswamitra. Other Vedic Rishis – Gritsamada, Sandilya, Kanva etc. Rishaba – Rishi mentioned in Rig Veda and later in several Puranas, and believed by Jains to be the first official religious guru of Jainism, as accredited by later followers. Yajnavalkya – one of the Vedic sages, greatly influenced Buddhistic thought. Lopamudra Gargi Vachaknavi Maitreyi Parshvanatha Ghosha Angiras – one of the seers of the Atharva Veda and author of Mundaka Upanishad. Uddalaka Aruni – an Upanishadic sage who authored major portions of Chāndogya Upaniṣad. Ashvapati – a King in the Later Vedic age who authored Vaishvanara Vidya of Chāndogya Upaniṣad. Ashtavakra – an Upanishadic Sage mentioned in the Mahabharata, who authored Ashtavakra Gita. Philosophers of Axial Age (600–185 BCE) Gotama (c. 600 BCE), logician, author of Nyaya Sutra Kanada (c. 600 BCE), founded the philosophical school of Vaisheshika, gave theory of atomism Mahavira (599–527 BCE) – heavily influenced Jainism, the 24th Tirthankara of Jainism. Purana Kassapa Ajita Kesakambali Payasi Makkhali Gośāla Sañjaya Belaṭṭhiputta Mahavira Dandamis Nagasena Lakulisha Pakudha
"in poetic terms", meaning that he used the old mythical language. The goddess Justice (Dike) keeps the cosmic order. This concept of returning to the element of origin was often revisited afterwards, notably by Aristotle, and by the Greek tragedian Euripides: "what comes from earth must return to earth." Friedrich Nietzsche, in his Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks, stated that Anaximander viewed "... all coming-to-be as though it were an illegitimate emancipation from eternal being, a wrong for which destruction is the only penance." Physicist Max Born, in commenting upon Werner Heisenberg's arriving at the idea that the elementary particles of quantum mechanics are to be seen as different manifestations, different quantum states, of one and the same “primordial substance,”' proposed that this primordial substance be called apeiron. Cosmology Anaximander's bold use of non-mythological explanatory hypotheses considerably distinguishes him from previous cosmology writers such as Hesiod. It confirms that pre-Socratic philosophers were making an early effort to demystify physical processes. His major contribution to history was writing the oldest prose document about the Universe and the origins of life; for this he is often called the "Father of Cosmology" and founder of astronomy. However, pseudo-Plutarch states that he still viewed celestial bodies as deities. Anaximander was the first to conceive a mechanical model of the world. In his model, the Earth floats very still in the centre of the infinite, not supported by anything. It remains "in the same place because of its indifference", a point of view that Aristotle considered ingenious, but false, in On the Heavens. Its curious shape is that of a cylinder]ref>"A column of stone", Aetius reports in De Fide (III, 7, 1), or "similar to a pillar-shaped stone", pseudo-Plutarch (III, 10).</ref> with a height one-third of its diameter. The flat top forms the inhabited world, which is surrounded by a circular oceanic mass. Anaximander's realization that the Earth floats free without falling and does not need to be resting on something has been indicated by many as the first cosmological revolution and the starting point of scientific thinking. Karl Popper calls this idea "one of the boldest, most revolutionary, and most portentous ideas in the whole history of human thinking." Such a model allowed the concept that celestial bodies could pass under the Earth, opening the way to Greek astronomy. At the origin, after the separation of hot and cold, a ball of flame appeared that surrounded Earth like bark on a tree. This ball broke apart to form the rest of the Universe. It resembled a system of hollow concentric wheels, filled with fire, with the rims pierced by holes like those of a flute. Consequently, the Sun was the fire that one could see through a hole the same size as the Earth on the farthest wheel, and an eclipse corresponded with the occlusion of that hole. The diameter of the solar wheel was twenty-seven times that of the Earth (or twenty-eight, depending on the sources) and the lunar wheel, whose fire was less intense, eighteen (or nineteen) times. Its hole could change shape, thus explaining lunar phases. The stars and the planets, located closer, followed the same model. Anaximander was the first astronomer to consider the Sun as a huge mass, and consequently, to realize how far from Earth it might be, and the first to present a system where the celestial bodies turned at different distances. Furthermore, according to Diogenes Laertius (II, 2), he built a celestial sphere. This invention undoubtedly made him the first to realize the obliquity of the Zodiac as the Roman philosopher Pliny the Elder reports in Natural History (II, 8). It is a little early to use the term ecliptic, but his knowledge and work on astronomy confirm that he must have observed the inclination of the celestial sphere in relation to the plane of the Earth to explain the seasons. The doxographer and theologian Aetius attributes to Pythagoras the exact measurement of the obliquity. Multiple worlds According to Simplicius, Anaximander already speculated on the plurality of worlds, similar to atomists Leucippus and Democritus, and later philosopher Epicurus. These thinkers supposed that worlds appeared and disappeared for a while, and that some were born when others perished. They claimed that this movement was eternal, "for without movement, there can be no generation, no destruction". In addition to Simplicius, Hippolytus reports Anaximander's claim that from the infinite comes the principle of beings, which themselves come from the heavens and the worlds (several doxographers use the plural when this philosopher is referring to the worlds within, which are often infinite in quantity). Cicero writes that he attributes different gods to the countless worlds. This theory places Anaximander close to the Atomists and the Epicureans who, more than a century later, also claimed that an infinity of worlds appeared and disappeared. In the timeline of the Greek history of thought, some thinkers conceptualized a single world (Plato, Aristotle, Anaxagoras and Archelaus), while others instead speculated on the existence of a series of worlds, continuous or non-continuous (Anaximenes, Heraclitus, Empedocles and Diogenes). Meteorological phenomena Anaximander attributed some phenomena, such as thunder and lightning, to the intervention of elements, rather than to divine causes. In his system, thunder results from the shock of clouds hitting each other; the loudness of the sound is proportionate with that of the shock. Thunder without lightning is the result of the wind being too weak to emit any flame, but strong enough to produce a sound. A flash of lightning without thunder is a jolt of the air that disperses and falls, allowing a less active fire to break free. Thunderbolts are the result of a thicker and more violent air flow. He saw the sea as a remnant of the mass of humidity that once surrounded Earth. A part of that mass evaporated under the sun's action, thus causing the winds and even the rotation of the celestial bodies, which he believed were attracted to places where water is more abundant. He explained rain as a product of the humidity pumped up from Earth by the sun. For him, the Earth was slowly drying up and water only remained in the deepest regions, which someday would go dry as well. According to Aristotle's Meteorology (II, 3), Democritus also shared this opinion. Origin of humankind Anaximander speculated about the beginnings and origin of animal life, and that humans came from other animals in waters. According to his evolutionary theory, animals sprang out of the sea long ago, born trapped in a spiny bark, but as they got older, the bark would dry up and animals would be able to break it. As the early humidity evaporated, dry land emerged and, in time, humankind had to adapt. The 3rd century Roman writer Censorinus reports: Anaximander put forward the idea that humans had to spend part of this transition inside the mouths of big fish to protect themselves from the Earth's climate until they could come out in open air and lose their scales. He thought that, considering humans' extended infancy, we could not have survived in the primeval world in the same manner we do presently. Other accomplishments Cartography Both Strabo and Agathemerus (later Greek geographers) claim that, according to the geographer Eratosthenes, Anaximander was the first to publish a map
dying things are returning to the element from which they came (apeiron). The one surviving fragment of Anaximander's writing deals with this matter. Simplicius transmitted it as a quotation, which describes the balanced and mutual changes of the elements: Whence things have their origin, Thence also their destruction happens, According to necessity; For they give to each other justice and recompense For their injustice In conformity with the ordinance of Time. Simplicius mentions that Anaximander said all these "in poetic terms", meaning that he used the old mythical language. The goddess Justice (Dike) keeps the cosmic order. This concept of returning to the element of origin was often revisited afterwards, notably by Aristotle, and by the Greek tragedian Euripides: "what comes from earth must return to earth." Friedrich Nietzsche, in his Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks, stated that Anaximander viewed "... all coming-to-be as though it were an illegitimate emancipation from eternal being, a wrong for which destruction is the only penance." Physicist Max Born, in commenting upon Werner Heisenberg's arriving at the idea that the elementary particles of quantum mechanics are to be seen as different manifestations, different quantum states, of one and the same “primordial substance,”' proposed that this primordial substance be called apeiron. Cosmology Anaximander's bold use of non-mythological explanatory hypotheses considerably distinguishes him from previous cosmology writers such as Hesiod. It confirms that pre-Socratic philosophers were making an early effort to demystify physical processes. His major contribution to history was writing the oldest prose document about the Universe and the origins of life; for this he is often called the "Father of Cosmology" and founder of astronomy. However, pseudo-Plutarch states that he still viewed celestial bodies as deities. Anaximander was the first to conceive a mechanical model of the world. In his model, the Earth floats very still in the centre of the infinite, not supported by anything. It remains "in the same place because of its indifference", a point of view that Aristotle considered ingenious, but false, in On the Heavens. Its curious shape is that of a cylinder]ref>"A column of stone", Aetius reports in De Fide (III, 7, 1), or "similar to a pillar-shaped stone", pseudo-Plutarch (III, 10).</ref> with a height one-third of its diameter. The flat top forms the inhabited world, which is surrounded by a circular oceanic mass. Anaximander's realization that the Earth floats free without falling and does not need to be resting on something has been indicated by many as the first cosmological revolution and the starting point of scientific thinking. Karl Popper calls this idea "one of the boldest, most revolutionary, and most portentous ideas in the whole history of human thinking." Such a model allowed the concept that celestial bodies could pass under the Earth, opening the way to Greek astronomy. At the origin, after the separation of hot and cold, a ball of flame appeared that surrounded Earth like bark on a tree. This ball broke apart to form the rest of the Universe. It resembled a system of hollow concentric wheels, filled with fire, with the rims pierced by holes like those of a flute. Consequently, the Sun was the fire that one could see through a hole the same size as the Earth on the farthest wheel, and an eclipse corresponded with the occlusion of that hole. The diameter of the solar wheel was twenty-seven times that of the Earth (or twenty-eight, depending on the sources) and the lunar wheel, whose fire was less intense, eighteen (or nineteen) times. Its hole could change shape, thus explaining lunar phases. The stars and the planets, located closer, followed the same model. Anaximander was the first astronomer to consider the Sun as a huge mass, and consequently, to realize how far from Earth it might be, and the first to present a system where the celestial bodies turned at different distances. Furthermore, according to Diogenes Laertius (II, 2), he built a celestial sphere. This invention undoubtedly made him the first to realize the obliquity of the Zodiac as the Roman philosopher Pliny the Elder reports in Natural History (II, 8). It is a little early to use the term ecliptic, but his knowledge and work on astronomy confirm that he must have observed the inclination of the celestial sphere in relation to the plane of the Earth to explain the seasons. The doxographer and theologian Aetius attributes to Pythagoras the exact measurement of the obliquity. Multiple worlds According to Simplicius, Anaximander already speculated on the plurality of worlds, similar to atomists Leucippus and Democritus, and later philosopher Epicurus. These thinkers supposed that worlds appeared and disappeared for a while, and that some were born when others perished. They claimed that this movement was eternal, "for without movement, there can be no generation, no destruction". In addition to Simplicius, Hippolytus reports Anaximander's claim that from the infinite comes the principle of beings, which themselves come from the heavens and the worlds (several doxographers use the plural when this philosopher is referring to the worlds within, which are often infinite in quantity). Cicero writes that he attributes different gods to the countless worlds. This theory places Anaximander close to the Atomists and the Epicureans who, more than a century later, also claimed that an infinity of worlds appeared and disappeared. In the timeline of the Greek history of thought, some thinkers conceptualized a single world (Plato, Aristotle, Anaxagoras and Archelaus), while others instead speculated on the existence of a series of worlds, continuous or non-continuous (Anaximenes, Heraclitus, Empedocles and Diogenes). Meteorological phenomena Anaximander attributed some phenomena, such as thunder and lightning, to the intervention of elements, rather than to divine causes. In his system, thunder results from the shock of clouds hitting each other; the loudness of the sound is proportionate with that of the shock. Thunder without lightning is the result of the wind being too weak to emit any flame, but strong enough to produce a sound. A flash of lightning without thunder is a jolt of the air that disperses and falls, allowing a less active fire to break free. Thunderbolts are the result of a thicker and more violent air flow. He saw the sea as a remnant of the mass of humidity that once surrounded Earth. A part of that mass evaporated under the sun's action, thus causing the winds and even the rotation of the celestial bodies, which he believed were attracted to places where water is more abundant. He explained rain as a product of the humidity pumped up from Earth by the sun. For him, the Earth was slowly drying up and water only remained in the deepest regions, which someday would go dry as well. According to Aristotle's Meteorology (II, 3), Democritus also shared this opinion. Origin of humankind Anaximander speculated about the beginnings and origin of animal life, and that humans came from other animals in waters. According to his evolutionary theory, animals sprang out of the sea long ago, born trapped in a spiny bark, but as they got older, the bark would dry up and animals would be able to break it. As the early humidity evaporated, dry land emerged and, in time, humankind had to adapt. The 3rd century Roman writer Censorinus reports: Anaximander put forward the idea that humans had to spend part of this transition inside the mouths of big fish to protect themselves from the Earth's climate until they could come out in open air and lose their scales. He thought that, considering humans' extended infancy, we could not have survived in the primeval world in the
War I-era pro-war organization Applied Physics Laboratory, at Johns Hopkins University Association of Pension Lawyers, UK Irish Anti-Partition League, a Northern Ireland political organisation Aurora Public Library (disambiguation), several Aurora Public Libraries use the APL abbreviation Science and technology Abductor pollicis longus muscle, in the human hand Acute promyelocytic leukemia, a subtype of acute myelogenous leukemia 132524 APL, an asteroid Nampula Airport (IATA: APL), in Mozambique Applied Physics Letters, a physics journal also abbreviated as Appl. Phys. Lett. Computers .apl, the file extension of the Monkey's Audio metadata
American President Lines, a container transportation and shipping company American Protective League, a World War I-era pro-war organization Applied Physics Laboratory, at Johns Hopkins University Association of Pension Lawyers, UK Irish Anti-Partition League, a Northern Ireland political organisation Aurora Public Library (disambiguation), several Aurora Public Libraries use the APL abbreviation Science and technology Abductor pollicis longus muscle, in the human hand Acute promyelocytic leukemia, a subtype of acute myelogenous leukemia 132524 APL, an asteroid Nampula Airport (IATA: APL), in Mozambique Applied Physics Letters, a physics journal also abbreviated as Appl. Phys. Lett. Computers .apl, the file extension of the Monkey's Audio metadata file Address Prefix List, a DNS record type Address programming language, an early high-level programming language developed in the Soviet Union Advanced Physical Layer, an extension of Ethernet 10BASE-T1L for field devices Alexa Presentation Language, a language for developing Amazon Alexa skills APL
their principal purpose. Etymologically, the term architect derives from the Latin architectus, which derives from the Greek (arkhi-, chief + tekton, builder), i.e., chief builder. The professional requirements for architects vary from place to place. An architect's decisions affect public safety, and thus the architect must undergo specialized training consisting of advanced education and a practicum (or internship) for practical experience to earn a license to practice architecture. Practical, technical, and academic requirements for becoming an architect vary by jurisdiction, though the formal study of architecture in academic institutions has played a pivotal role in the development of the profession as a whole. Origins Throughout ancient and medieval history, most of the architectural design and construction was carried out by artisans—such as stone masons and carpenters, rising to the role of master builder. Until modern times, there was no clear distinction between architect and engineer. In Europe, the titles architect and engineer were primarily geographical variations that referred to the same person, often used interchangeably. It is suggested that various developments in technology and mathematics allowed the development of the professional 'gentleman' architect, separate from the hands-on craftsman. Paper was not used in Europe for drawing until the 15th century but became increasingly available after 1500. Pencils were used more often for drawing by 1600. The availability of both allowed pre-construction drawings to be made by professionals. Concurrently, the introduction of linear perspective and innovations such as the use of different projections to describe a three-dimensional building in two dimensions, together with an increased understanding of dimensional accuracy, helped building designers communicate their ideas. However, the development was gradual. Until the 18th-century, buildings continued to be designed and set out by craftsmen with the exception of high-status projects. Architecture In most developed countries, only those qualified with an appropriate license, certification, or registration with a relevant body (often governmental) may legally practice architecture. Such licensure usually requires a university degree, successful completion of exams, as well as a training period. Representation of oneself as an architect through the use of terms and titles is restricted to licensed individuals by law, although in general, derivatives such as architectural designer are often not legally protected. To practice architecture implies the ability to practice independently of supervision. The term building design professional (or design professional), by contrast, is a much broader term that includes professionals who practice independently under an alternate profession, such as engineering professionals, or those who assist in the practice of architecture under the supervision of a licensed architect such as intern architects. In many places, independent, non-licensed individuals may perform design services outside the professional restrictions, such design houses and other smaller structures. Practice In the architectural profession, technical and environmental knowledge, design and construction management, and an understanding of business are as important as design. However, the design is the driving force throughout the project and beyond. An architect accepts a commission from a client. The commission might involve preparing feasibility reports, building audits, the design of a building or of several buildings, structures, and the spaces among them. The architect participates in developing the requirements the client wants in the building. Throughout the project (planning to occupancy), the architect coordinates a design team. Structural, mechanical, and electrical engineers and other specialists are hired by the client or the architect, who must ensure that the work is coordinated to construct the design. Design role The architect, once hired by a client, is responsible for creating a design concept that both meets the requirements of that client and provides a facility suitable to the required use. The architect must meet with, and question, the client in order to ascertain all the requirements (and nuances) of the planned project. Often the full brief is not entirely clear at the beginning: entailing a degree of risk in the design undertaking. The architect may make early proposals to the client, which may rework the very terms of the brief. The "program" (or brief) is essential to producing a project that meets all the needs of the owner. This then is a guide for the architect in creating the design concept. Design proposal(s) are generally expected to be both imaginative and pragmatic. Depending on the place, time, finance, culture, and available crafts and technology in which the design takes place, the precise extent and nature of these expectations will vary. Foresight is a prerequisite as designing buildings is a very complex and demanding undertaking. Any design concept must at a very early stage in its generation take into account a great number of issues and variables which include qualities of space(s), the end-use and life-cycle of these proposed spaces, connections, relations, and aspects between spaces including how they are put together as well as the impact of proposals on the immediate and wider locality. Selection of appropriate materials and technology must be considered, tested and reviewed at an early stage in the design to ensure there are no setbacks (such as higher-than-expected costs) which may occur later. The site and its environs, as well as the culture and history of the place, will also influence the design. The design must also countenance increasing concerns with environmental sustainability. The architect may introduce (intentionally or not), to greater or lesser degrees, aspects of mathematics and architecture, new or current architectural theory, or references to architectural history. A key part of the design is that the architect often consults with engineers, surveyors and other specialists throughout the design, ensuring that aspects such as the structural supports and air conditioning elements are coordinated in the scheme as a whole. The control and planning of construction costs are also a part of these consultations. Coordination of the different aspects involves a high degree of specialized communication, including advanced computer technology such as BIM (building information modeling), CAD, and cloud-based technologies. At all
designs and oversees the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to provide services in connection with the design of buildings and the space within the site surrounding the buildings that have human occupancy or use as their principal purpose. Etymologically, the term architect derives from the Latin architectus, which derives from the Greek (arkhi-, chief + tekton, builder), i.e., chief builder. The professional requirements for architects vary from place to place. An architect's decisions affect public safety, and thus the architect must undergo specialized training consisting of advanced education and a practicum (or internship) for practical experience to earn a license to practice architecture. Practical, technical, and academic requirements for becoming an architect vary by jurisdiction, though the formal study of architecture in academic institutions has played a pivotal role in the development of the profession as a whole. Origins Throughout ancient and medieval history, most of the architectural design and construction was carried out by artisans—such as stone masons and carpenters, rising to the role of master builder. Until modern times, there was no clear distinction between architect and engineer. In Europe, the titles architect and engineer were primarily geographical variations that referred to the same person, often used interchangeably. It is suggested that various developments in technology and mathematics allowed the development of the professional 'gentleman' architect, separate from the hands-on craftsman. Paper was not used in Europe for drawing until the 15th century but became increasingly available after 1500. Pencils were used more often for drawing by 1600. The availability of both allowed pre-construction drawings to be made by professionals. Concurrently, the introduction of linear perspective and innovations such as the use of different projections to describe a three-dimensional building in two dimensions, together with an increased understanding of dimensional accuracy, helped building designers communicate their ideas. However, the development was gradual. Until the 18th-century, buildings continued to be designed and set out by craftsmen with the exception of high-status projects. Architecture In most developed countries, only those qualified with an appropriate license, certification, or registration with a relevant body (often governmental) may legally practice architecture. Such licensure usually requires a university degree, successful completion of exams, as well as a training period. Representation of oneself as an architect through the use of terms and titles is restricted to licensed individuals by law, although in general, derivatives such as architectural designer are often not legally protected. To practice architecture implies the ability to practice independently of supervision. The term building design professional (or design professional), by contrast, is a much broader term that includes professionals who practice independently under an alternate profession, such as engineering professionals, or those who assist in the practice of architecture under the supervision of a licensed architect such as intern architects. In many places, independent, non-licensed individuals may perform design services outside the professional restrictions, such design houses and other smaller structures. Practice In the architectural profession, technical and environmental knowledge, design and construction management, and an understanding of business are as important as design. However, the design is the driving force throughout the project and beyond. An architect accepts a commission from a client. The commission might involve preparing feasibility reports, building audits, the design of a building or of several buildings, structures, and the spaces among them. The architect participates in developing the requirements the client wants in the building. Throughout the project (planning to occupancy), the architect coordinates a design team. Structural, mechanical, and electrical engineers and other specialists are hired by the client or the architect, who must ensure that the work is coordinated to construct the design. Design role The architect, once hired by a client, is responsible for creating a design concept that both meets the requirements of that client and provides a facility suitable to the required use. The architect must meet with, and question, the client in order to ascertain all the requirements (and nuances) of the planned project. Often the full brief is not entirely clear at the beginning: entailing a degree of risk in the design undertaking. The architect may make early proposals to the client, which may rework the very terms of the brief. The "program" (or brief) is essential to producing a project that meets all the needs of the owner. This then is a guide for the architect in creating the design concept. Design proposal(s) are generally expected to be both imaginative and pragmatic. Depending on the place, time, finance, culture, and available crafts and technology in which the design takes place, the precise extent and nature of these expectations will vary. Foresight is a prerequisite as designing buildings is a very complex and demanding undertaking. Any design concept must at a very early stage in its generation take into account a great number of issues and variables which include qualities of space(s), the end-use and life-cycle of these proposed spaces, connections, relations, and aspects between spaces including how they are put together as well as the impact of proposals on the immediate and wider locality. Selection of appropriate materials and technology must be considered, tested and reviewed at an early stage in the design to ensure there are no setbacks (such as higher-than-expected costs) which may occur later. The site and its environs, as well as the culture and history of the place, will also influence the design. The design must also countenance increasing concerns with environmental sustainability. The architect may introduce (intentionally or not), to greater or lesser degrees, aspects of mathematics and architecture, new or current architectural theory, or references to architectural history. A key part of the design is that the architect often consults with engineers, surveyors and other specialists throughout the design, ensuring that aspects such as the structural supports and air conditioning elements are coordinated in the scheme as a whole. The control and planning of construction costs are also a part of these consultations. Coordination of the different aspects involves a high degree of specialized communication, including advanced computer technology such as BIM (building information modeling), CAD, and cloud-based technologies. At all times in the design, the architect reports back to the client who may have reservations or recommendations, introducing a further variable into the design. Architects deal with local and federal jurisdictions about regulations and building codes. The architect might need to comply with local planning and zoning laws, such as required setbacks, height limitations, parking requirements, transparency requirements (windows), and land use. Some established jurisdictions require adherence to design and historic preservation guidelines. Health and safety risks form a vital part of the current design, and in many jurisdictions, design reports and records are required which include ongoing considerations such as materials and contaminants, waste management and recycling, traffic control and fire safety. Means of design Previously, architects employed drawings to illustrate and generate design proposals. While conceptual sketches are
the full version of the word or phrase; for example, the word abbreviation can itself be represented by the abbreviation abbr., abbrv., or abbrev.; NPO, for nil (or nothing) per (by) os (mouth) is an abbreviated medical instruction. It may also consist of initials only, a mixture of initials and words, or words or letters representing words in another language (for example, e.g., i.e. or RSVP). Some types of abbreviations are acronyms (some pronounceable, some initialism) or grammatical contractions or crasis. An abbreviation is a shortening by any of these or other methods. Different types of abbreviation Acronyms, initialisms, contractions and crasis share some semantic and phonetic functions, and all four are connected by the term "abbreviation" in loose parlance. A contraction is a reduction in size of a word or phrase made by omitting certain of its letters or syllables. Consequently, contractions are a subset of abbreviations. Often, but not always, the contraction includes the first and last letters or elements. Examples of contractions are "li'l" (for "little"), "I'm" (for "I am"), and "he'd've" (for "he would have"). History Abbreviations have a long history, created so that spelling out a whole word could be avoided. This might be done to save time and space, and also to provide secrecy. In both Greece and Rome the reduction of words to single letters was common. In Roman inscriptions, "Words were commonly abbreviated by using the initial letter or letters of words, and most inscriptions have at least one abbreviation". However, "some could have more than one meaning, depending on their context. (For example, can be an abbreviation for many words, such as , , , , , , and .)" Abbreviations in English were frequently used from its earliest days. Manuscripts of copies of the old English poem Beowulf used many abbreviations, for example the Tironian et () or for and, and for since, so that "not much space is wasted". The standardisation of English in the 15th through 17th centuries included such a growth in the use of abbreviations. At first, abbreviations were sometimes represented with various suspension signs, not only periods. For example, sequences like ‹er› were replaced with ‹ɔ›, as in ‹mastɔ› for master and ‹exacɔbate› for exacerbate. While this may seem trivial, it was symptomatic of an attempt by people manually reproducing academic texts to reduce the copy time. In the Early Modern English period, between the 15th and 17th centuries, the thorn was used for th, as in ('the'). However, in modern times, was often misread and wrongly rewritten as , as in . During the growth of philological linguistic theory in academic Britain, abbreviating became very fashionable. For example J. R. R. Tolkien, his friend C. S. Lewis and other members of the Oxford literary group were known as the Inklings. Likewise, a century earlier in Boston, a fad of abbreviation started that swept the United States, with the globally popular term OK generally credited as a remnant of its influence. Over the years, however, the lack of convention in some style guides has made it difficult to determine which two-word abbreviations should be abbreviated with periods and which should not. This question is considered below, Widespread use of electronic communication through mobile phones and the Internet during the 1990s allowed for a marked rise in colloquial abbreviation. This was due largely to increasing popularity of textual communication services such as instant- and text messaging. The original SMS, supported message lengths of 160 characters at most (using the GSM 03.38 character set), for instance. This brevity gave rise to an informal abbreviation scheme sometimes called Textese, with which 10% or more of the words in a typical SMS message are abbreviated. More recently Twitter, a popular social networking service, began driving abbreviation use with 140 character message limits. Style conventions in English In modern English, there are several conventions for abbreviations, and the choice may be confusing. The only rule universally accepted is that one should be consistent, and to make this easier, publishers express their preferences in a style guide. Questions which arise include those in the following subsections. Lowercase letters If the original word was capitalized then the first letter of its abbreviation should retain the capital, for example Lev. for Leviticus. When a word is abbreviated to more than a single letter and was originally spelled with lower case letters then there is no need for capitalization. However, when abbreviating a phrase where only the first letter of each word is taken, then all letters should be capitalized, as in YTD for year-to-date, PCB for printed circuit board and FYI for for your information. However, see the following section regarding abbreviations that have become common vocabulary: these are no longer written with capital letters. Periods (full stops) and spaces A period (full stop) is often used to signify an abbreviation, but opinion is divided as to when and if this should happen. According to Hart's Rules, the traditional rule is that abbreviations (in the narrow sense that includes only words with the ending, and not the middle, dropped) terminate with a full stop, whereas contractions (in the sense of words missing a middle part) do not, but there are exceptions. Fowler's Modern English Usage says full stops are used to mark both abbreviations and contractions, but recommends against this practice: advising them only for abbreviations and lower-case initialisms and not for upper-case initialisms and contractions. In American English, the period is usually included regardless of whether or not it is a contraction, e.g. Dr. or Mrs.. In some cases, periods are optional, as in either US or U.S. for United States, EU or E.U. for European Union, and UN or U.N. for United Nations. There are some house styles, however—American ones included—that remove the periods from almost all abbreviations. For example: The U.S. Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices advises that periods should not be used with abbreviations on road signs, except for cardinal directions as part of a destination name. (For example, "Northwest Blvd", "W. Jefferson", and "PED XING" all follow this recommendation.) AMA style, used in many medical journals, uses no periods in abbreviations or acronyms, with almost no exceptions. Thus eg, ie, vs, et al., Dr, Mr, MRI, ICU, and hundreds of others contain no periods. The only exceptions are (an abbreviation of Numero, Number) (to avoid the appearance of "No" (yes and no); initials within persons' names (such as "George R. Smith"); and "St." within persons' names when the person prefers it (such as "Emily R. St. Clair") (but not in city names such as St Louis or St Paul). (AMA style also forgoes italic on terms long since naturalized into English from Latin, New Latin, other languages, or ISV; thus, no italic for eg, ie, vs, et al., in vivo, in vitro, or in situ.) Acronyms that were originally capitalized (with or without periods) but have since entered the vocabulary as generic words are no longer written with capital letters nor with any periods. Examples are sonar, radar, lidar, laser, snafu, and scuba. Today, spaces are generally not used between single-letter abbreviations of words in the same phrase, so one almost never encounters "U. S." When an abbreviation appears at the end of a sentence, only one period is used: The capital of the United States is Washington, D.C. Plural forms There is a question about how to pluralize abbreviations, particularly acronyms. Some writers tend to pluralize abbreviations by adding (apostrophe s), as in "two PC's have broken screens", although this notation typically indicates possessive case. However, this style is not preferred by many style guides. For instance, Kate Turabian, writing about style in academic writings, allows for an apostrophe to form plural acronyms "only when an abbreviation contains internal periods or both capital and
services such as instant- and text messaging. The original SMS, supported message lengths of 160 characters at most (using the GSM 03.38 character set), for instance. This brevity gave rise to an informal abbreviation scheme sometimes called Textese, with which 10% or more of the words in a typical SMS message are abbreviated. More recently Twitter, a popular social networking service, began driving abbreviation use with 140 character message limits. Style conventions in English In modern English, there are several conventions for abbreviations, and the choice may be confusing. The only rule universally accepted is that one should be consistent, and to make this easier, publishers express their preferences in a style guide. Questions which arise include those in the following subsections. Lowercase letters If the original word was capitalized then the first letter of its abbreviation should retain the capital, for example Lev. for Leviticus. When a word is abbreviated to more than a single letter and was originally spelled with lower case letters then there is no need for capitalization. However, when abbreviating a phrase where only the first letter of each word is taken, then all letters should be capitalized, as in YTD for year-to-date, PCB for printed circuit board and FYI for for your information. However, see the following section regarding abbreviations that have become common vocabulary: these are no longer written with capital letters. Periods (full stops) and spaces A period (full stop) is often used to signify an abbreviation, but opinion is divided as to when and if this should happen. According to Hart's Rules, the traditional rule is that abbreviations (in the narrow sense that includes only words with the ending, and not the middle, dropped) terminate with a full stop, whereas contractions (in the sense of words missing a middle part) do not, but there are exceptions. Fowler's Modern English Usage says full stops are used to mark both abbreviations and contractions, but recommends against this practice: advising them only for abbreviations and lower-case initialisms and not for upper-case initialisms and contractions. In American English, the period is usually included regardless of whether or not it is a contraction, e.g. Dr. or Mrs.. In some cases, periods are optional, as in either US or U.S. for United States, EU or E.U. for European Union, and UN or U.N. for United Nations. There are some house styles, however—American ones included—that remove the periods from almost all abbreviations. For example: The U.S. Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices advises that periods should not be used with abbreviations on road signs, except for cardinal directions as part of a destination name. (For example, "Northwest Blvd", "W. Jefferson", and "PED XING" all follow this recommendation.) AMA style, used in many medical journals, uses no periods in abbreviations or acronyms, with almost no exceptions. Thus eg, ie, vs, et al., Dr, Mr, MRI, ICU, and hundreds of others contain no periods. The only exceptions are (an abbreviation of Numero, Number) (to avoid the appearance of "No" (yes and no); initials within persons' names (such as "George R. Smith"); and "St." within persons' names when the person prefers it (such as "Emily R. St. Clair") (but not in city names such as St Louis or St Paul). (AMA style also forgoes italic on terms long since naturalized into English from Latin, New Latin, other languages, or ISV; thus, no italic for eg, ie, vs, et al., in vivo, in vitro, or in situ.) Acronyms that were originally capitalized (with or without periods) but have since entered the vocabulary as generic words are no longer written with capital letters nor with any periods. Examples are sonar, radar, lidar, laser, snafu, and scuba. Today, spaces are generally not used between single-letter abbreviations of words in the same phrase, so one almost never encounters "U. S." When an abbreviation appears at the end of a sentence, only one period is used: The capital of the United States is Washington, D.C. Plural forms There is a question about how to pluralize abbreviations, particularly acronyms. Some writers tend to pluralize abbreviations by adding (apostrophe s), as in "two PC's have broken screens", although this notation typically indicates possessive case. However, this style is not preferred by many style guides. For instance, Kate Turabian, writing about style in academic writings, allows for an apostrophe to form plural acronyms "only when an abbreviation contains internal periods or both capital and lowercase letters". Turabian would therefore prefer "DVDs" and "URLs" and "Ph.D.'s", while the Modern Language Association explicitly says, "do not use an apostrophe to form the plural of an abbreviation". Also, the American Psychological Association specifically says, "without an apostrophe". However, the 1999 style guide for The New York Times states that the addition of an apostrophe is necessary when pluralizing all abbreviations, preferring "PC's, TV's and VCR's". Following those who would generally omit the apostrophe, to form the plural of run batted in, simply add an s to the end of RBI. RBIs For all other rules, see below: To form the plural of an abbreviation, a number, or a capital letter used as a noun, simply add a lowercase s to the end. Apostrophes following decades and single letters are also common. A group of MPs The roaring 20s Mind your Ps and Qs To indicate the plural of the abbreviation or symbol of a unit of measure, the same form is used as in the singular. 1 lb or 20 lb 1 ft or 16 ft 1 min or 45 min When an abbreviation contains more than one full point, Hart's Rules recommends putting the s after the final one. Ph.D.s M.Phil.s the d.t.s However, subject to any house style or consistency requirement, the same plurals may be rendered less formally as: PhDs MPhils the DTs. (This is the recommended form in the New Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors.) According to Hart's Rules, an apostrophe may be used in rare cases where clarity calls for it, for example when letters or symbols are referred to as objects. The x's of the equation Dot the i's and cross the t's However, the apostrophe can be dispensed with if the items are set in italics or quotes: The xs of the equation Dot the 'i's and cross the 't's In Latin, and continuing to the derivative forms in European languages as well as English, single-letter abbreviations had the plural being a doubling of the letter for note-taking. Most of these deal with writing and publishing. A few longer abbreviations use this as well. Conventions followed by publications and newspapers United States Publications based in the U.S. tend to follow the style guides of The Chicago Manual of Style and the Associated Press. The U.S. Government follows a style guide published by the U.S. Government
beautiful jewelry, including a strophion () known as the (), a saltire-shaped undergarment (usually translated as "girdle"), which accentuated her breasts and made her even more irresistible to men. Such strophia were commonly used in depictions of the Near Eastern goddesses Ishtar and Atargatis. Attendants Aphrodite is almost always accompanied by Eros, the god of lust and sexual desire. In his Theogony, Hesiod describes Eros as one of the four original primeval forces born at the beginning of time, but, after the birth of Aphrodite from the sea foam, he is joined by Himeros and, together, they become Aphrodite's constant companions. In early Greek art, Eros and Himeros are both shown as idealized handsome youths with wings. The Greek lyric poets regarded the power of Eros and Himeros as dangerous, compulsive, and impossible for anyone to resist. In modern times, Eros is often seen as Aphrodite's son, but this is actually a comparatively late innovation. A scholion on Theocritus's Idylls remarks that the sixth-century BC poet Sappho had described Eros as the son of Aphrodite and Uranus, but the first surviving reference to Eros as Aphrodite's son comes from Apollonius of Rhodes's Argonautica, written in the third century BC, which makes him the son of Aphrodite and Ares. Later, the Romans, who saw Venus as a mother goddess, seized on this idea of Eros as Aphrodite's son and popularized it, making it the predominant portrayal in works on mythology until the present day. Aphrodite's main attendants were the three Charites, whom Hesiod identifies as the daughters of Zeus and Eurynome and names as Aglaea ("Splendor"), Euphrosyne ("Good Cheer"), and Thalia ("Abundance"). The Charites had been worshipped as goddesses in Greece since the beginning of Greek history, long before Aphrodite was introduced to the pantheon. Aphrodite's other set of attendants was the three Horae (the "Hours"), whom Hesiod identifies as the daughters of Zeus and Themis and names as Eunomia (“Good Order”), Dike (“Justice”), and Eirene (“Peace”). Aphrodite was also sometimes accompanied by Harmonia, her daughter by Ares, and Hebe, the daughter of Zeus and Hera. The fertility god Priapus was usually considered to be Aphrodite's son by Dionysus, but he was sometimes also described as her son by Hermes, Adonis, or even Zeus. A scholion on Apollonius of Rhodes's Argonautica states that, while Aphrodite was pregnant with Priapus, Hera envied her and applied an evil potion to her belly while she was sleeping to ensure that the child would be hideous. In another version, Hera cursed Aphrodite's unborn son because he had been fathered by Zeus. When Aphrodite gave birth, she was horrified to see that the child had a massive, permanently erect penis, a potbelly, and a huge tongue. Aphrodite abandoned the infant to die in the wilderness, but a herdsman found him and raised him, later discovering that Priapus could use his massive penis to aid in the growth of plants. Anchises The First Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite (Hymn 5), which was probably composed sometime in the mid-seventh century BC, describes how Zeus once became annoyed with Aphrodite for causing deities to fall in love with mortals, so he caused her to fall in love with Anchises, a handsome mortal shepherd who lived in the foothills beneath Mount Ida near the city of Troy. Aphrodite appears to Anchises in the form of a tall, beautiful, mortal virgin while he is alone in his home. Anchises sees her dressed in bright clothing and gleaming jewelry, with her breasts shining with divine radiance. He asks her if she is Aphrodite and promises to build her an altar on top of the mountain if she will bless him and his family. Aphrodite lies and tells him that she is not a goddess, but the daughter of one of the noble families of Phrygia. She claims to be able to understand the Trojan language because she had a Trojan nurse as a child and says that she found herself on the mountainside after she was snatched up by Hermes while dancing in a celebration in honor of Artemis, the goddess of virginity. Aphrodite tells Anchises that she is still a virgin and begs him to take her to his parents. Anchises immediately becomes overcome with mad lust for Aphrodite and swears that he will have sex with her. Anchises takes Aphrodite, with her eyes cast downwards, to his bed, which is covered in the furs of lions and bears. He then strips her naked and makes love to her. After the lovemaking is complete, Aphrodite reveals her true divine form. Anchises is terrified, but Aphrodite consoles him and promises that she will bear him a son. She prophesies that their son will be the demigod Aeneas, who will be raised by the nymphs of the wilderness for five years before going to Troy to become a nobleman like his father. The story of Aeneas's conception is also mentioned in Hesiod's Theogony and in Book II of Homer's Iliad. Adonis The myth of Aphrodite and Adonis is probably derived from the ancient Sumerian legend of Inanna and Dumuzid. The Greek name (Adōnis, ) is derived from the Canaanite word ʼadōn, meaning "lord". The earliest known Greek reference to Adonis comes from a fragment of a poem by the Lesbian poet Sappho (c. 630 – c. 570 BC), in which a chorus of young girls asks Aphrodite what they can do to mourn Adonis's death. Aphrodite replies that they must beat their breasts and tear their tunics. Later references flesh out the story with more details. According to the retelling of the story found in the poem Metamorphoses by the Roman poet Ovid (43 BC – 17/18 AD), Adonis was the son of Myrrha, who was cursed by Aphrodite with insatiable lust for her own father, King Cinyras of Cyprus, after Myrrha's mother bragged that her daughter was more beautiful than the goddess. Driven out after becoming pregnant, Myrrha was changed into a myrrh tree, but still gave birth to Adonis. Aphrodite found the baby, and took him to the underworld to be fostered by Persephone. She returned for him once he was grown and discovered him to be strikingly handsome. Persephone wanted to keep Adonis, resulting in a custody battle between the two goddesses over whom should rightly possess Adonis. Zeus settled the dispute by decreeing that Adonis would spend one third of the year with Aphrodite, one third with Persephone, and one third with whomever he chose. Adonis chose to spend that time with Aphrodite. Then, one day, while Adonis was hunting, he was wounded by a wild boar and bled to death in Aphrodite's arms. In different versions of the story, the boar was either sent by Ares, who was jealous that Aphrodite was spending so much time with Adonis, or by Artemis, who wanted revenge against Aphrodite for having killed her devoted follower Hippolytus. The story also provides an etiology for Aphrodite's associations with certain flowers. Reportedly, as she mourned Adonis's death, she caused anemones to grow wherever his blood fell, and declared a festival on the anniversary of his death. In one version of the story, Aphrodite injured herself on a thorn from a rose bush and the rose, which had previously been white, was stained red by her blood. According to Lucian's On the Syrian Goddess, each year during the festival of Adonis, the Adonis River in Lebanon (now known as the Abraham River) ran red with blood. The myth of Adonis is associated with the festival of the Adonia, which was celebrated by Greek women every year in midsummer. The festival, which was evidently already celebrated in Lesbos by Sappho's time, seems to have first become popular in Athens in the mid-fifth century BC. At the start of the festival, the women would plant a "garden of Adonis", a small garden planted inside a small basket or a shallow piece of broken pottery containing a variety of quick-growing plants, such as lettuce and fennel, or even quick-sprouting grains such as wheat and barley. The women would then climb ladders to the roofs of their houses, where they would place the gardens out under the heat of the summer sun. The plants would sprout in the sunlight, but wither quickly in the heat. Then the women would mourn and lament loudly over the death of Adonis, tearing their clothes and beating their breasts in a public display of grief. Divine favoritism In Hesiod's Works and Days, Zeus orders Aphrodite to make Pandora, the first woman, physically beautiful and sexually attractive, so that she may become "an evil men will love to embrace". Aphrodite "spills grace" over Pandora's head and equips her with "painful desire and knee-weakening anguish", thus making her the perfect vessel for evil to enter the world. Aphrodite's attendants, Peitho, the Charites, and the Horae, adorn Pandora with gold and jewelry. According to one myth, Aphrodite aided Hippomenes, a noble youth who wished to marry Atalanta, a maiden who was renowned throughout the land for her beauty, but who refused to marry any man unless he could outrun her in a footrace. Atalanta was an exceedingly swift runner and she beheaded all of the men who lost to her. Aphrodite gave Hippomenes three golden apples from the Garden of the Hesperides and instructed him to toss them in front of Atalanta as he raced her. Hippomenes obeyed Aphrodite's order and Atalanta, seeing the beautiful, golden fruits, bent down to pick up each one, allowing Hippomenes to outrun her. In the version of the story from Ovid's Metamorphoses, Hippomenes forgets to repay Aphrodite for her aid, so she causes the couple to become inflamed with lust while they are staying at the temple of Cybele. The couple desecrate the temple by having sex in it, leading Cybele to turn them into lions as punishment. The myth of Pygmalion is first mentioned by the third-century BC Greek writer Philostephanus of Cyrene, but is first recounted in detail in Ovid's Metamorphoses. According to Ovid, Pygmalion was an exceedingly handsome sculptor from the island of Cyprus, who was so sickened by the immorality of women that he refused to marry. He fell madly and passionately in love with the ivory cult statue he was carving of Aphrodite and longed to marry it. Because Pygmalion was extremely pious and devoted to Aphrodite, the goddess brought the statue to life. Pygmalion married the girl the statue became and they had a son named Paphos, after whom the capital of Cyprus received its name. Pseudo-Apollodorus later mentions "Metharme, daughter of Pygmalion, king of Cyprus". Anger myths Aphrodite generously rewarded those who honored her, but also punished those who disrespected her, often quite brutally. A myth described in Apollonius of Rhodes's Argonautica and later summarized in the Bibliotheca of Pseudo-Apollodorus tells how, when the women of the island of Lemnos refused to sacrifice to Aphrodite, the goddess cursed them to stink horribly so that their husbands would never have sex with them. Instead, their husbands started having sex with their Thracian slave-girls. In anger, the women of Lemnos murdered the entire male population of the island, as well as all the Thracian slaves. When Jason and his crew of Argonauts arrived on Lemnos, they mated with the sex-starved women under Aphrodite's approval and repopulated the island. From then on, the women of Lemnos never disrespected Aphrodite again. In Euripides's tragedy Hippolytus, which was first performed at the City Dionysia in 428 BC, Theseus's son Hippolytus worships only Artemis, the goddess of virginity, and refuses to engage in any form of sexual contact. Aphrodite is infuriated by his prideful behavior and, in the prologue to the play, she declares that, by honoring only Artemis and refusing to venerate her, Hippolytus has directly challenged her authority. Aphrodite therefore causes Hippolytus's stepmother, Phaedra, to fall in love with him, knowing Hippolytus will reject her. After being rejected, Phaedra commits suicide and leaves a suicide note to Theseus telling him that she killed herself because Hippolytus attempted to rape her. Theseus prays to Poseidon to kill Hippolytus for his transgression. Poseidon sends a wild bull to scare Hippolytus's horses as he is riding by the sea in his chariot, causing the horses to bolt and smash the chariot against the cliffs, dragging Hippolytus to a bloody death across the rocky shoreline. The play concludes with Artemis vowing to kill Aphrodite's own mortal beloved (presumably Adonis) in revenge. Glaucus of Corinth angered Aphrodite by refusing to let his horses for chariot racing mate, since doing so would hinder their speed. During the chariot race at the funeral games of King Pelias, Aphrodite drove his horses mad and they tore him apart. Polyphonte was a young woman who chose a virginal life with Artemis instead of marriage and children, as favoured by Aphrodite. Aphrodite cursed her, causing her to have children by a bear. The resulting offspring, Agrius and Oreius, were wild cannibals who incurred the hatred of Zeus. Ultimately, he transformed all the members of the family into birds of ill omen. According to Pseudo-Apollodorus, a jealous Aphrodite cursed Eos, the goddess of dawn, to be perpetually in love and have insatiable sexual desire because Eos once had lain with Aphrodite's sweetheart Ares, the god of war. According to Ovid in his Metamorphoses (book 10.238 ff.), Propoetides who are the daughters of Propoetus from the city of Amathus on the island of Cyprus denied Aphrodite's divinity and failing to worship her properly. Therefore, Aphrodite turn them into the world's first prostitutes. According to Diodorous, Rhodian sea nymphe Halia's six sons by Poseidon arrogantly refused to let Aphrodite land upon their shore, the goddess cursed them with insanity. In their madness, they raped Halia. As punishment, Poseidon buried them in the island's sea-caverns. Bellerophon's descendant Xanthius had two children. Leucippus and an unnamed daughter. Through the wrath of Aphrodite (reasons unknown), Leucippus fell in love with his own sister. They started a secret relationship but the girl was already betrothed to another man and he went on to inform her father Xanthius, without telling him the name of the seducer. Xanthius went straight to his daughter's chamber, where she was together with Leucippus right at the moment. On hearing him enter, she tried to escape, but Xanthius hit her with a dagger, thinking that he was slaying the seducer, and killed her. Leucippus, failing to recognize his father at first, slew him. When the truth was revealed, he had to leave the country and took part in colonization of Crete and the lands in Asia Minor. Queen Cenchreis of Cyprus and wife of King Cinyras bragged her daughter Myrrha more beautiful than Aphrodite. Therefore, Myrrha was cursed by Aphrodite with insatiable lust for her own father, King Cinyras of Cyprus and he slept with her unknowingly in dark. she eventually transformed into the myrrh tree and gave birth to Adonis in this form. Cinyras has also three another daughters and their names Braesia, Laogora, Orsedice. These girls by reason of the wrath of Aphrodite (reasons unknown) cohabited with foreigners, and ended their life in Egypt. Mousa Clio derided the goddess' own love for Adonis. Therefore, Clio fell in love with Pierus, son of Magnes and bore Hyacinth. Aegialeia was a daughter of Adrastus and Amphithea and she was married to Diomedes. Because of anger of Aphrodite, whom Diomedes had wounded in the war against Troy, She had multiple lovers, including a certain Hippolytus. when Aegiale went so far as to threaten his life, he fled to Italy. In one of the versions of the legend, Pasiphae did not make offerings to the goddess Venus [Aphrodite]. Because of this Venus [Aphrodite] inspired in her an unnatural love for a bull or she cursed her because she was Helios's daughter who revealed her adultery to Hephaestus. Lysippe, mother of Tanais by Berossos. Her son only venerated Ares and was fully devoted to war, neglecting love and marriage. Aphrodite cursed him with falling in love with his own mother. Preferring to die rather than give up his chastity, he threw himself into the river Amazonius, which was subsequently renamed Tanais. According to Pseudo-Hyginus At the behest of Zeus, Orpheus's mother the Muse Calliope judged the dispute between the goddesses Aphrodite and Persephone over Adonis and she decided that each should possess him half of the year. But Venus [Aphrodite], angry because she had not been granted what she thought was her right. Therefore, Venus [Aphrodite] inspired love the women in Thrace for Orpheus and they eventually tore him limb from limb because each to seek Orpheus for herself. Judgment of Paris and Trojan War The myth of the Judgement of Paris is mentioned briefly in the Iliad, but is described in depth in an epitome of the Cypria, a lost poem of the Epic Cycle, which records that all the gods and goddesses as well as various mortals were invited to the marriage of Peleus and Thetis (the eventual parents of Achilles). Only Eris, goddess of discord, was not invited. She was annoyed at this, so she arrived with a golden apple inscribed with the word καλλίστῃ (kallistēi, "for the fairest"), which she threw among the goddesses. Aphrodite, Hera, and Athena all claimed to be the fairest, and thus the rightful owner of the apple. The goddesses chose to place the matter before Zeus, who, not wanting to favor one of the goddesses, put the choice into the hands of Paris, a Trojan prince. After bathing in the spring of Mount Ida where Troy was situated, the goddesses appeared before Paris for his decision. In the extant ancient depictions of the Judgement of Paris, Aphrodite is only occasionally represented nude, and Athena and Hera are always fully clothed. Since the Renaissance, however, Western paintings have typically portrayed all three goddesses as completely naked. All three goddesses were ideally beautiful and Paris could not decide between them, so they resorted to bribes. Hera tried to bribe Paris with power over all Asia and Europe, and Athena offered wisdom, fame and glory in battle, but Aphrodite promised Paris that, if he were to choose her as the fairest, she would let him marry the most beautiful woman on earth. This woman was Helen, who was already married to King Menelaus of Sparta. Paris selected Aphrodite and awarded her the apple. The other two goddesses were enraged and, as a direct result, sided with the Greeks in the Trojan War. Aphrodite plays an important and active role throughout the entirety of Homer's Iliad. In Book III, she rescues Paris from Menelaus after he foolishly challenges him to a one-on-one duel. She then appears to Helen in the form of an old woman and attempts to persuade her to have sex with Paris, reminding her of his physical beauty and athletic prowess. Helen immediately recognizes Aphrodite by her beautiful neck, perfect breasts, and flashing eyes and chides the goddess, addressing her as her equal. Aphrodite sharply rebukes Helen, reminding her that, if she vexes her, she will punish her just as much as she has favored her already. Helen demurely obeys Aphrodite's command. In Book V, Aphrodite charges into battle to rescue her son Aeneas from the Greek hero Diomedes. Diomedes recognizes Aphrodite as a "weakling" goddess and, thrusting his spear, nicks her wrist through her "ambrosial robe". Aphrodite borrows Ares's chariot to ride back to Mount Olympus. Zeus chides her for putting herself in danger, reminding her that "her specialty is love, not war." According to Walter Burkert, this scene directly parallels a scene from Tablet VI of the Epic of Gilgamesh in which Ishtar, Aphrodite's Akkadian precursor, cries to her mother Antu after the hero Gilgamesh rejects her sexual advances, but is mildly rebuked by her father Anu. In Book XIV of the Iliad, during the Dios Apate episode, Aphrodite lends her kestos himas to Hera for the purpose of seducing Zeus and distracting him from the combat while Poseidon aids the Greek forces on the beach. In the Theomachia in Book XXI, Aphrodite again enters the battlefield to carry Ares away after he is wounded. Offspring Sometimes poets and dramatists recounted ancient traditions, which varied, and sometimes they invented new details; later scholiasts might draw on either or simply guess. Thus while Aeneas and Phobos were regularly described as offspring of Aphrodite, others listed here such as Priapus and Eros were sometimes said to be children of Aphrodite but with varying fathers and sometimes given other mothers or none at all. Iconography Symbols Aphrodite's most prominent avian symbol was the dove, which was originally an important symbol of her Near Eastern precursor Inanna-Ishtar. (In fact, the ancient Greek word for "dove", peristerá, may be derived from a Semitic phrase peraḥ Ištar, meaning "bird of Ishtar".) Aphrodite frequently appears with doves in ancient Greek pottery and the temple of Aphrodite Pandemos on the southwest slope of the Athenian Acropolis was decorated with relief sculptures of doves with knotted fillets in their beaks. Votive offerings of small, white, marble doves were also discovered in the temple of Aphrodite at Daphni. In addition to her associations with doves, Aphrodite was also closely linked with sparrows and she is described riding in a chariot pulled by sparrows in Sappho's "Ode to Aphrodite". Because of her connections to the sea, Aphrodite was associated with a number of different types of water fowl, including swans, geese, and ducks. Aphrodite's other symbols included the sea, conch shells, and roses. The rose and myrtle flowers were both sacred to Aphrodite. Her most important fruit emblem was the apple, but she was also associated with pomegranates, possibly because the red seeds suggested sexuality or because Greek women sometimes used pomegranates as a method of birth control. In Greek art, Aphrodite is often also accompanied by dolphins and Nereids. In classical art A scene of Aphrodite rising from the sea appears on the back of the Ludovisi Throne ( 460 BC), which was probably originally part of a massive altar that was constructed as part of the Ionic temple to Aphrodite in the Greek polis of Locri Epizephyrii in Magna Graecia in southern Italy. The throne shows Aphrodite rising from the sea, clad in a diaphanous garment, which is drenched with seawater and clinging to her body, revealing her upturned breasts and the outline of her navel. Her hair hangs dripping as she reaches to two attendants standing barefoot on the rocky shore on either side of her, lifting her out of the water. Scenes with Aphrodite appear in works of classical Greek pottery, including a famous white-ground kylix by the Pistoxenos Painter dating the between 470 and 460 BC, showing her riding on a swan or goose. In BC, the Athenian sculptor Praxiteles carved the marble statue Aphrodite of Knidos, which Pliny the Elder later praised as the greatest sculpture ever made. The statue showed a nude Aphrodite modestly covering her pubic region while resting against a water pot with her robe draped over it for support. The Aphrodite of Knidos was the first full-sized statue to depict Aphrodite completely naked and one of the first sculptures that was intended to be viewed from all sides. The statue was purchased by the people of Knidos in around 350 BC and proved to be tremendously influential on later depictions of Aphrodite. The original sculpture has been lost, but written descriptions of it as well several depictions of it on coins are still extant and over sixty copies, small-scale models, and fragments of it have been identified. The Greek painter Apelles of Kos, a contemporary of Praxiteles, produced the panel painting Aphrodite Anadyomene (Aphrodite Rising from the Sea). According to Athenaeus, Apelles was inspired to paint the painting after watching the courtesan Phryne take off her clothes, untie her hair, and bathe naked in the sea at Eleusis. The painting was displayed in the Asclepeion on the island of Kos. The Aphrodite Anadyomene went unnoticed for centuries, but Pliny the Elder records that, in his own time, it was regarded as Apelles's most famous work. During the Hellenistic and Roman periods, statues depicting Aphrodite proliferated; many of these statues were modeled at least to some extent on Praxiteles's Aphrodite of Knidos. Some statues show Aphrodite crouching naked; others show her wringing water out of her hair as she rises from the sea. Another common type of statue is known as Aphrodite Kallipygos, the name of which is Greek for "Aphrodite of the Beautiful Buttocks"; this type of sculpture shows Aphrodite lifting her peplos to display her buttocks to the viewer while looking back at them from over her shoulder. The ancient Romans produced massive numbers of copies of Greek sculptures of Aphrodite and more sculptures of Aphrodite have survived from antiquity than of any other deity. Post-classical culture Middle Ages Early Christians frequently adapted pagan iconography to suit Christian purposes. In the Early Middle Ages, Christians adapted elements of Aphrodite/Venus's iconography and applied them to Eve and prostitutes, but also female saints and even the Virgin Mary. Christians in the east reinterpreted the story of Aphrodite's birth as a metaphor for baptism; in a Coptic stele from the sixth century AD, a female orant is shown wearing Aphrodite's conch shell as a sign that she is newly baptized. Throughout the Middle Ages, villages and communities across Europe still maintained folk tales and traditions about Aphrodite/Venus and travelers reported a wide variety of stories. Numerous Roman mosaics of Venus survived in Britain, preserving memory of the pagan past. In North Africa in the late fifth century AD, Fulgentius of Ruspe encountered mosaics of Aphrodite and reinterpreted her as a symbol of the sin of Lust, arguing that she was shown naked because "the sin of lust is never cloaked" and that she was often shown "swimming" because "all lust suffers shipwreck of its affairs." He also argued that she was associated with doves and conchs because these are symbols of copulation, and that she was associated with roses because "as the rose gives pleasure, but is swept away by the swift movement of the seasons, so lust is pleasant for a moment, but is swept away forever." While Fulgentius had appropriated Aphrodite as a symbol of Lust, Isidore of Seville ( 560–636) interpreted her as a symbol of marital procreative sex and declared that the moral of the story of Aphrodite's birth is that sex can only be holy in the presence of semen, blood, and heat, which he regarded as all being necessary for procreation. Meanwhile, Isidore denigrated Aphrodite/Venus's son Eros/Cupid as a "demon of fornication" (daemon fornicationis). Aphrodite/Venus was best known to Western European scholars through her appearances in Virgil's Aeneid and Ovid's Metamorphoses. Venus is mentioned in the Latin poem Pervigilium Veneris ("The Eve of Saint Venus"), written in the third or fourth century AD, and in Giovanni Boccaccio's Genealogia Deorum Gentilium. Since the Late Middle Ages. the myth of the Venusberg (German; French Mont de Vénus, "Mountain of Venus") – a subterranean realm ruled by Venus, hidden underneath Christian Europe – became a motif of European folklore rendered in various legends and epics. In German folklore of the 16th century, the narrative becomes associated with the minnesinger Tannhäuser, and in that form the myth was taken up in later literature and opera. Art Aphrodite is the central figure in Sandro Botticelli's painting Primavera, which has been described as "one of the most written about, and most controversial paintings in the world", and "one of the most popular paintings in Western art". The story of Aphrodite's birth from the foam was a popular subject matter for painters
and Late Babylonian texts. Hammarström looks to Etruscan, comparing (e)prθni "lord", an Etruscan honorific loaned into Greek as πρύτανις. This would make the theonym in origin an honorific, "the lady". Most scholars reject this etymology as implausible, especially since Aphrodite actually appears in Etruscan in the borrowed form Apru (from Greek , clipped form of Aphrodite). The medieval Etymologicum Magnum (c. 1150) offers a highly contrived etymology, deriving Aphrodite from the compound habrodíaitos (), "she who lives delicately", from habrós and díaita. The alteration from b to ph is explained as a "familiar" characteristic of Greek "obvious from the Macedonians". Origins Near Eastern love goddess The cult of Aphrodite in Greece was imported from, or at least influenced by, the cult of Astarte in Phoenicia, which, in turn, was influenced by the cult of the Mesopotamian goddess known as "Ishtar" to the East Semitic peoples and as "Inanna" to the Sumerians. Pausanias states that the first to establish a cult of Aphrodite were the Assyrians, followed by the Paphians of Cyprus and then the Phoenicians at Ascalon. The Phoenicians, in turn, taught her worship to the people of Cythera. Aphrodite took on Inanna-Ishtar's associations with sexuality and procreation. Furthermore, she was known as Ourania (Οὐρανία), which means "heavenly", a title corresponding to Inanna's role as the Queen of Heaven. Early artistic and literary portrayals of Aphrodite are extremely similar on Inanna-Ishtar. Like Inanna-Ishtar, Aphrodite was also a warrior goddess; the second-century AD Greek geographer Pausanias records that, in Sparta, Aphrodite was worshipped as Aphrodite Areia, which means "warlike". He also mentions that Aphrodite's most ancient cult statues in Sparta and on Cythera showed her bearing arms. Modern scholars note that Aphrodite's warrior-goddess aspects appear in the oldest strata of her worship and see it as an indication of her Near Eastern origins. Nineteenth century classical scholars had a general aversion to the idea that ancient Greek religion was at all influenced by the cultures of the Near East, but, even Friedrich Gottlieb Welcker, who argued that Near Eastern influence on Greek culture was largely confined to material culture, admitted that Aphrodite was clearly of Phoenician origin. The significant influence of Near Eastern culture on early Greek religion in general, and on the cult of Aphrodite in particular, is now widely recognized as dating to a period of orientalization during the eighth century BC, when archaic Greece was on the fringes of the Neo-Assyrian Empire. Indo-European dawn goddess Some early comparative mythologists opposed to the idea of a Near Eastern origin argued that Aphrodite originated as an aspect of the Greek dawn goddess Eos and that she was therefore ultimately derived from the Proto-Indo-European dawn goddess *Haéusōs (properly Greek Eos, Latin Aurora, Sanskrit Ushas). Most modern scholars have now rejected the notion of a purely Indo-European Aphrodite, but it is possible that Aphrodite, originally a Semitic deity, may have been influenced by the Indo-European dawn goddess. Both Aphrodite and Eos were known for their erotic beauty and aggressive sexuality and both had relationships with mortal lovers. Both goddesses were associated with the colors red, white, and gold. Michael Janda etymologizes Aphrodite's name as an epithet of Eos meaning "she who rises from the foam [of the ocean]" and points to Hesiod's Theogony account of Aphrodite's birth as an archaic reflex of Indo-European myth. Aphrodite rising out of the waters after Cronus defeats Uranus as a mytheme would then be directly cognate to the Rigvedic myth of Indra defeating Vrtra, liberating Ushas. Another key similarity between Aphrodite and the Indo-European dawn goddess is her close kinship to the Greek sky deity, since both of the main claimants to her paternity (Zeus and Uranus) are sky deities. Forms and epithets Aphrodite's most common cultic epithet was Ourania, meaning "heavenly", but this epithet almost never occurs in literary texts, indicating a purely cultic significance. Another common name for Aphrodite was Pandemos ("For All the Folk"). In her role as Aphrodite Pandemos, Aphrodite was associated with Peithō (), meaning "persuasion", and could be prayed to for aid in seduction. The character of Pausanias in Plato's Symposium, takes differing cult-practices associated with different epithets of the goddess to claim that Ourania and Pandemos are, in fact, separate goddesses. He asserts that Aphrodite Ourania is the celestial Aphrodite, born from the sea foam after Cronus castrated Uranus, and the older of the two goddesses. According to the Symposium, Aphrodite Ourania is the inspiration of male homosexual desire, specifically the ephebic eros, and pederasty. Aphrodite Pandemos, by contrast, is the younger of the two goddesses: the common Aphrodite, born from the union of Zeus and Dione, and the inspiration of heterosexual desire and sexual promiscuity, the "lesser" of the two loves. Paphian (Παφία), was one of her epithets, after the Paphos in Cyprus where she had emerged from the sea at her birth. Among the Neoplatonists and, later, their Christian interpreters, Ourania is associated with spiritual love, and Pandemos with physical love (desire). A representation of Ourania with her foot resting on a tortoise came to be seen as emblematic of discretion in conjugal love; it was the subject of a chryselephantine sculpture by Phidias for Elis, known only from a parenthetical comment by the geographer Pausanias. One of Aphrodite's most common literary epithets is Philommeidḗs (), which means "smile-loving", but is sometimes mistranslated as "laughter-loving". This epithet occurs throughout both of the Homeric epics and the First Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite. Hesiod references it once in his Theogony in the context of Aphrodite's birth, but interprets it as "genital-loving" rather than "smile-loving". Monica Cyrino notes that the epithet may relate to the fact that, in many artistic depictions of Aphrodite, she is shown smiling. Other common literary epithets are Cypris and Cythereia, which derive from her associations with the islands of Cyprus and Cythera respectively. On Cyprus, Aphrodite was sometimes called Eleemon ("the merciful"). In Athens, she was known as Aphrodite en kopois ("Aphrodite of the Gardens"). At Cape Colias, a town along the Attic coast, she was venerated as Genetyllis "Mother". The Spartans worshipped her as Potnia "Mistress", Enoplios "Armed", Morpho "Shapely", Ambologera "She who Postpones Old Age". Across the Greek world, she was known under epithets such as Melainis "Black One", Skotia "Dark One", Androphonos "Killer of Men", Anosia "Unholy", and Tymborychos "Gravedigger", all of which indicate her darker, more violent nature. A male version of Aphrodite known as Aphroditus was worshipped in the city of Amathus on Cyprus. Aphroditus was depicted with the figure and dress of a woman, but had a beard, and was shown lifting his dress to reveal an erect phallus. This gesture was believed to be an apotropaic symbol, and was thought to convey good fortune upon the viewer. Eventually, the popularity of Aphroditus waned as the mainstream, fully feminine version of Aphrodite became more popular, but traces of his cult are preserved in the later legends of Hermaphroditus. Worship Classical period Aphrodite's main festival, the Aphrodisia, was celebrated across Greece, but particularly in Athens and Corinth. In Athens, the Aphrodisia was celebrated on the fourth day of the month of Hekatombaion in honor of Aphrodite's role in the unification of Attica. During this festival, the priests of Aphrodite would purify the temple of Aphrodite Pandemos on the southwestern slope of the Acropolis with the blood of a sacrificed dove. Next, the altars would be anointed and the cult statues of Aphrodite Pandemos and Peitho would be escorted in a majestic procession to a place where they would be ritually bathed. Aphrodite was also honored in Athens as part of the Arrhephoria festival. The fourth day of every month was sacred to Aphrodite. Pausanias records that, in Sparta, Aphrodite was worshipped as Aphrodite Areia, which means "warlike". This epithet stresses Aphrodite's connections to Ares, with whom she had extramarital relations. Pausanias also records that, in Sparta and on Cythera, a number of extremely ancient cult statues of Aphrodite portrayed her bearing arms. Other cult statues showed her bound in chains. Aphrodite was the patron goddess of prostitutes of all varieties, ranging from pornai (cheap street prostitutes typically owned as slaves by wealthy pimps) to hetairai (expensive, well-educated hired companions, who were usually self-employed and sometimes provided sex to their customers). The city of Corinth was renowned throughout the ancient world for its many hetairai, who had a widespread reputation for being among the most skilled, but also the most expensive, prostitutes in the Greek world. Corinth also had a major temple to Aphrodite located on the Acrocorinth and was one of the main centers of her cult. Records of numerous dedications to Aphrodite made by successful courtesans have survived in poems and in pottery inscriptions. References to Aphrodite in association with prostitution are found in Corinth as well as on the islands of Cyprus, Cythera, and Sicily. Aphrodite's Mesopotamian precursor Inanna-Ishtar was also closely associated with prostitution. Scholars in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries believed that the cult of Aphrodite may have involved ritual prostitution, an assumption based on ambiguous passages in certain ancient texts, particularly a fragment of a skolion by the Boeotian poet Pindar, which mentions prostitutes in Corinth in association with Aphrodite. Modern scholars now dismiss the notion of ritual prostitution in Greece as a "historiographic myth" with no factual basis. Hellenistic and Roman periods During the Hellenistic period, the Greeks identified Aphrodite with the ancient Egyptian goddesses Hathor and Isis. Aphrodite was the patron goddess of the Lagid queens and Queen Arsinoe II was identified as her mortal incarnation. Aphrodite was worshipped in Alexandria and had numerous temples in and around the city. Arsinoe II introduced the cult of Adonis to Alexandria and many of the women there partook in it. The Tessarakonteres, a gigantic catamaran galley designed by Archimedes for Ptolemy IV Philopator, had a circular temple to Aphrodite on it with a marble statue of the goddess herself. In the second century BC, Ptolemy VIII Physcon and his wives Cleopatra II and Cleopatra III dedicated a temple to Aphrodite Hathor at Philae. Statuettes of Aphrodite for personal devotion became common in Egypt starting in the early Ptolemaic times and extending until long after Egypt became a Roman province. The ancient Romans identified Aphrodite with their goddess Venus, who was originally a goddess of agricultural fertility, vegetation, and springtime. According to the Roman historian Livy, Aphrodite and Venus were officially identified in the third century BC when the cult of Venus Erycina was introduced to Rome from the Greek sanctuary of Aphrodite on Mount Eryx in Sicily. After this point, Romans adopted Aphrodite's iconography and myths and applied them to Venus. Because Aphrodite was the mother of the Trojan hero Aeneas in Greek mythology and Roman tradition claimed Aeneas as the founder of Rome, Venus became venerated as Venus Genetrix, the mother of the entire Roman nation. Julius Caesar claimed to be directly descended from Aeneas's son Iulus and became a strong proponent of the cult of Venus. This precedent was later followed by his nephew Augustus and the later emperors claiming succession from him. This syncretism greatly impacted Greek worship of Aphrodite. During the Roman era, the cults of Aphrodite in many Greek cities began to emphasize her relationship with Troy and Aeneas. They also began to adopt distinctively Roman elements, portraying Aphrodite as more maternal, more militaristic, and more concerned with administrative bureaucracy. She was claimed as a divine guardian by many political magistrates. Appearances of Aphrodite in Greek literature also vastly proliferated, usually showing Aphrodite in a characteristically Roman manner. Mythology Birth Aphrodite is usually said to have been born near her chief center of worship, Paphos, on the island of Cyprus, which is why she is sometimes called "Cyprian", especially in the poetic works of Sappho. The Sanctuary of Aphrodite Paphia, marking her birthplace, was a place of pilgrimage in the ancient world for centuries. Other versions of her myth have her born near the island of Cythera, hence another of her names, "Cytherea". Cythera was a stopping place for trade and culture between Crete and the Peloponesus, so these stories may preserve traces of the migration of Aphrodite's cult from the Middle East to mainland Greece. According to the version of her birth recounted by Hesiod in his Theogony, Cronus severed Uranus' genitals and threw them behind him into the sea. The foam from his genitals gave rise to Aphrodite (hence her name, which Hesiod interprets as "foam-arisen"), while the Giants, the Erinyes (furies), and the Meliae emerged from the drops of his blood. Hesiod states that the genitals "were carried over the sea a long time, and white foam arose from the immortal flesh; with it a girl grew." Hesiod's account of Aphrodite's birth following Uranus's castration is probably derived from The Song of Kumarbi, an ancient Hittite epic poem in which the god Kumarbi overthrows his father Anu, the god of the sky, and bites off his genitals, causing him to become pregnant and give birth to Anu's children, which include Ishtar and her brother Teshub, the Hittite storm god. In the Iliad, Aphrodite is described as the daughter of Zeus and Dione. Dione's name appears to be a feminine cognate to Dios and Dion, which are oblique forms of the name Zeus. Zeus and Dione shared a cult at Dodona in northwestern Greece. In Theogony, Hesiod describes Dione as an Oceanid. Marriage Aphrodite is consistently portrayed as a nubile, infinitely desirable adult, having had no childhood. She is often depicted nude. In the Iliad, Aphrodite is the apparently unmarried consort of Ares, the god of war, and the wife of Hephaestus is a different goddess named Charis. Likewise, in Hesiod's Theogony, Aphrodite is unmarried and the wife of Hephaestus is Aglaea, the youngest of the three Charites. In Book Eight of the Odyssey, however, the blind singer Demodocus describes Aphrodite as the wife of Hephaestus and tells how she committed adultery with Ares during the Trojan War. The sun-god Helios saw Aphrodite and Ares having sex in Hephaestus's bed and warned Hephaestus, who fashioned a net of gold. The next time Ares and Aphrodite had sex together, the net trapped them both. Hephaestus brought all the gods into the bedchamber to laugh at the captured adulterers, but Apollo, Hermes, and Poseidon had sympathy for Ares and Poseidon agreed to pay Hephaestus for Ares's release. Humiliated, Aphrodite returned to Cyprus, where she was attended by the Charites. This narrative probably originated as a Greek folk tale, originally independent of the Odyssey. Later stories were invented to explain Aphrodite's marriage to Hephaestus. In the most famous story, Zeus hastily married Aphrodite to Hephaestus in order to prevent the other gods from
Holy Roman Emperor (d. 1347) 1328 – Blanche of France, Duchess of Orléans (d. 1382) 1543 – François de Bonne, Duke of Lesdiguières (d. 1626) 1578 – William Harvey, English physician and academic (d. 1657) 1601–1900 1610 – Charles de Saint-Évremond, French soldier and critic (d. 1703) 1629 – Jean-Henri d'Anglebert, French organist and composer (d. 1691) 1640 – Georg Mohr, Danish mathematician and academic (d. 1697) 1647 – John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester, English poet and courtier (d. 1680) 1697 – Antoine François Prévost, French novelist and translator (d. 1763) 1721 – Pieter Hellendaal, Dutch-English organist, violinist, and composer (d. 1799) 1741 – George Dance the Younger, English architect and surveyor (d. 1825) 1753 – Joseph de Maistre, French philosopher, lawyer, and diplomat (d. 1821) 1755 – Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, French lawyer and politician (d. 1826) 1765 – Luigi Schiavonetti, Italian engraver and etcher (d. 1810) 1776 – Sophie Germain, French mathematician, physicist, and philosopher (d. 1831) 1786 – William Mulready, Irish genre painter (d. 1863) 1815 – Otto von Bismarck, German lawyer and politician, 1st Chancellor of the German Empire (d. 1898) 1815 – Edward Clark, American lawyer and politician, 8th Governor of Texas (d. 1880) 1823 – Simon Bolivar Buckner, American general and politician, 30th Governor of Kentucky (d. 1891) 1824 – Louis-Zéphirin Moreau, Canadian bishop (d. 1901) 1834 – James Fisk, American businessman (d. 1872) 1852 – Edwin Austin Abbey, American painter and illustrator (d. 1911) 1865 – Richard Adolf Zsigmondy, Austrian-German chemist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1929) 1866 – William Blomfield, New Zealand cartoonist and politician (d. 1938) 1866 – Ferruccio Busoni, Italian pianist, composer, and conductor (d. 1924) 1866 – Ève Lavallière, French actress (d. 1929) 1868 – Edmond Rostand, French poet and playwright (d. 1918) 1868 – Walter Mead, English cricketer (d. 1954) 1871 – F. Melius Christiansen, Norwegian-American violinist and conductor (d. 1955) 1873 – Sergei Rachmaninoff, Russian pianist, composer, and conductor (d. 1943) 1874 – Ernest Barnes, English mathematician and theologian (d. 1953) 1874 – Prince Karl of Bavaria (d. 1927) 1875 – Edgar Wallace, English journalist, author, and playwright (d. 1932) 1878 – C. Ganesha Iyer, Ceylon Tamil philologist (d. 1958) 1879 – Stanislaus Zbyszko, Polish wrestler and strongman (d. 1967) 1881 – Octavian Goga, Romanian Prime Minister (d. 1938) 1883 – Lon Chaney, American actor, director, and screenwriter (d. 1930) 1883 – Edvard Drabløs, Norwegian actor and director (d. 1976) 1883 – Laurette Taylor, Irish-American actress (d. 1946) 1885 – Wallace Beery, American actor (d. 1949) 1885 – Clementine Churchill, English wife of Winston Churchill (d. 1977) 1889 – K. B. Hedgewar, Indian physician and activist (d. 1940) 1893 – Cicely Courtneidge, Australian-English actress (d. 1980) 1895 – Alberta Hunter, African-American singer-songwriter and nurse (d. 1984) 1898 – William James Sidis, Ukrainian-Russian Jewish American mathematician, anthropologist, and historian (d. 1944) 1899 – Gustavs Celmiņš, Latvian academic and politician (d. 1968) 1900 – Stefanie Clausen, Danish Olympic diver (d. 1981) 1901–present 1901 – Whittaker Chambers, American journalist and spy (d. 1961) 1905 – Gaston Eyskens, Belgian economist and politician, 47th Prime Minister of Belgium (d. 1988) 1905 – Paul Hasluck, Australian historian, poet, and politician, 17th Governor-General of Australia (d. 1993) 1906 – Alexander Sergeyevich Yakovlev, Russian engineer, founded the Yakovlev Design Bureau (d. 1989) 1907 – Shivakumara Swami, Indian religious leader and philanthropist (d. 2019) 1908 – Abraham Maslow, American psychologist and academic (d. 1970) 1908 – Harlow Rothert, American shot putter, lawyer, and academic (d. 1997) 1909 – Abner Biberman, American actor, director, and screenwriter (d. 1977) 1909 – Eddy Duchin, American pianist and bandleader (d. 1951) 1910 – Harry Carney, American saxophonist and clarinet player (d. 1974) 1910 – Bob Van Osdel, American high jumper and soldier (d. 1987) 1911 – Augusta Braxton Baker, African American librarian (d. 1998) 1913 – Memos Makris, Greek sculptor (d. 1993) 1915 – O. 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Fischer, Austrian-Swiss actor and director (d. 2004) 1916 – Sheila May Edmonds, British mathematician (d. 2002) 1917 – Sydney Newman, Canadian screenwriter and producer, co-created Doctor Who (d. 1997) 1917 – Melville Shavelson, American director, producer, and screenwriter (d. 2007) 1919 – Joseph Murray, American surgeon and soldier, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 2012) 1920 – Toshiro Mifune, Japanese actor (d. 1997) 1921 – William Bergsma, American composer and educator (d. 1994) 1921 – Arthur "Guitar Boogie" Smith, American guitarist, fiddler, and composer (d. 2014) 1922 – Duke Jordan, American pianist and composer (d. 2006) 1922 – William Manchester, American historian and author (d. 2004) 1924 – Brendan Byrne, American lieutenant, judge, and politician, 47th Governor of New Jersey (d. 2018) 1926 – Anne McCaffrey, American-Irish author (d. 2011) 1927 – Walter Bahr, American soccer player, coach, and manager (d. 2018) 1927 – Amos Milburn, American R&B singer-songwriter and pianist (d. 1980) 1927 – Ferenc Puskás, Hungarian footballer and manager (d. 2006) 1929 – Jonathan Haze, American actor, producer, screenwriter, and production manager 1929 – Milan Kundera, Czech-born novelist, poet, and playwright 1929 – Payut Ngaokrachang, Thai animator and director (d. 2010) 1929 – Jane Powell, American actress, singer, and dancer (d. 2021) 1930 – Grace Lee Whitney, American actress and singer (d. 2015) 1931 – George Baker, Bulgarian-English actor and screenwriter (d. 2011) 1931 – Rolf Hochhuth, German author and playwright (d. 2020) 1932 – Debbie Reynolds, American actress, singer, and dancer (d. 2016) 1933 – Claude Cohen-Tannoudji, Algerian-French physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate 1933 – Dan Flavin, American sculptor and educator (d. 1996) 1934 – Vladimir Posner, French-American journalist and radio host 1935 – Larry McDonald, American physician and politician (d. 1983) 1936 – Peter Collinson, English-American director and producer (d. 1980) 1936 – Jean-Pascal Delamuraz, Swiss politician, 80th President of the Swiss Confederation (d. 1998) 1936 – Tarun Gogoi, Indian politician, 14th Chief Minister of Assam (d. 2020) 1936 – Abdul Qadeer Khan, Indian-Pakistani physicist, chemist, and engineer (d. 2021) 1939 – Ali MacGraw, American model and actress 1939 – Phil Niekro, American baseball player and manager (d. 2020) 1940 – Wangari Maathai, Kenyan environmentalist and politician, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 2011) 1941 – Gideon Gadot, Israeli journalist and politician (d. 2012) 1941 – Ajit Wadekar, Indian cricketer, coach, and manager (d. 2018) 1942 – Samuel R. 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Boon, American singer and musician (d. 1985) 1959 – Helmuth Duckadam, Romanian footballer 1961 – Susan Boyle, Scottish singer 1961 – Sergio Scariolo, Italian professional basketball head coach 1961 – Mark White, English singer-songwriter and guitarist 1962 – Mark Shulman, American author 1962 – Chris Grayling, English journalist and politician, Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain 1962 – Samboy Lim, Filipino basketball player and manager 1962 – Phillip Schofield, English television host 1963 – Teodoro de Villa Diaz, Filipino guitarist and songwriter (d. 1988) 1963 – Aprille Ericsson-Jackson, American aerospace engineer 1964 – Erik Breukink, Dutch cyclist and manager 1964 – Kevin Duckworth, American basketball player (d. 2008) 1964 – John Morris, English cricketer 1964 – José Rodrigues dos Santos, Portuguese journalist, author, and educator 1965 – Jane Adams, American film, television, and stage actress 1965 – Mark Jackson, American basketball player and coach 1966 – Chris Evans, English radio and television host 1966 – Mehmet Özdilek, Turkish footballer and manager 1967 – Nicola Roxon, Australian lawyer and politician, 34th Attorney-General for Australia 1968 – Mike Baird, Australian politician, 44th Premier of New South Wales 1968 – Andreas Schnaas, German actor and director 1968 – Alexander Stubb, Finnish academic and politician, 43rd Prime Minister of Finland 1969 – Lev Lobodin, Ukrainian-Russian decathlete 1969 – Andrew Vlahov, Australian basketball player 1969 – Dean Windass, English footballer and manager 1970 – Brad Meltzer, American author, screenwriter, and producer 1971 – Sonia Bisset, Cuban javelin thrower 1971 – Shinji Nakano, Japanese racing driver 1972 – Darren McCarty, Canadian ice hockey player and sportscaster 1972 – Jesse Tobias, American guitarist and songwriter 1973 – Christian Finnegan, American comedian and actor 1973 – Stephen Fleming, New Zealand cricketer and coach 1973 – Rachel Maddow, American journalist and author 1974 – Hugo Ibarra, Argentinian footballer and manager 1975 – John Butler, American-Australian singer-songwriter and producer 1975 – Magdalena Maleeva, Bulgarian tennis player 1976 – Hazem El Masri, Lebanese-Australian rugby league player and educator 1976 – David Gilliland, American race car driver 1976 – David Oyelowo, English actor 1976 – Clarence Seedorf, Dutch-Brazilian footballer and manager 1976 – Yuka Yoshida, Japanese tennis player 1977 – Vitor Belfort, Brazilian-American boxer and mixed martial artist 1977 – Haimar Zubeldia, Spanish cyclist 1978 – Antonio de Nigris, Mexican footballer (d. 2009)
Vertical/Short Takeoff and Landing capabilities, enters service with the Royal Air Force. 1970 – President Richard Nixon signs the Public Health Cigarette Smoking Act into law. 1971 – Bangladesh Liberation War: The Pakistan Army massacre over 1,000 people in Keraniganj Upazila, Bangladesh. 1973 – Project Tiger, a tiger conservation project, is launched in the Jim Corbett National Park, India. 1974 – The Local Government Act 1972 of England and Wales comes into effect. 1977 – Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak found Apple Computer, Inc. 1979 – Iran becomes an Islamic republic by a 99% vote, officially overthrowing the Shah. 1986 – Communist Party of Nepal (Mashal) cadres attack a number of police stations in Kathmandu, seeking to incite a popular rebellion. 1989 – Margaret Thatcher's new local government tax, the Community Charge (commonly known as the "poll tax"), is introduced in Scotland. 1997 – Comet Hale–Bopp is seen passing at perihelion. 1999 – Nunavut is established as a Canadian territory carved out of the eastern part of the Northwest Territories. 2001 – An EP-3E United States Navy surveillance aircraft collides with a Chinese People's Liberation Army Shenyang J-8 fighter jet. The Chinese pilot ejected but is subsequently lost. The Navy crew makes an emergency landing in Hainan, China and is detained. 2001 – Former President of Federal Republic of Yugoslavia Slobodan Milošević surrenders to police special forces, to be tried on war crimes charges. 2001 – Same-sex marriage becomes legal in the Netherlands, the first contemporary country to allow it. 2006 – Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) of the Government of the United Kingdom is enforced, but later merged into National Crime Agency on 7 October 2013. 2011 – After protests against the burning of the Quran turn violent, a mob attacks a United Nations compound in Mazar-i-Sharif, Afghanistan, resulting in the deaths of thirteen people, including eight foreign workers. 2016 – The 2016 Nagorno-Karabakh conflict begins along the Nagorno-Karabakh Line of Contact. Births Pre-1600 1220 – Emperor Go-Saga of Japan (d. 1272) 1282 – Louis IV, Holy Roman Emperor (d. 1347) 1328 – Blanche of France, Duchess of Orléans (d. 1382) 1543 – François de Bonne, Duke of Lesdiguières (d. 1626) 1578 – William Harvey, English physician and academic (d. 1657) 1601–1900 1610 – Charles de Saint-Évremond, French soldier and critic (d. 1703) 1629 – Jean-Henri d'Anglebert, French organist and composer (d. 1691) 1640 – Georg Mohr, Danish mathematician and academic (d. 1697) 1647 – John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester, English poet and courtier (d. 1680) 1697 – Antoine François Prévost, French novelist and translator (d. 1763) 1721 – Pieter Hellendaal, Dutch-English organist, violinist, and composer (d. 1799) 1741 – George Dance the Younger, English architect and surveyor (d. 1825) 1753 – Joseph de Maistre, French philosopher, lawyer, and diplomat (d. 1821) 1755 – Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, French lawyer and politician (d. 1826) 1765 – Luigi Schiavonetti, Italian engraver and etcher (d. 1810) 1776 – Sophie Germain, French mathematician, physicist, and philosopher (d. 1831) 1786 – William Mulready, Irish genre painter (d. 1863) 1815 – Otto von Bismarck, German lawyer and politician, 1st Chancellor of the German Empire (d. 1898) 1815 – Edward Clark, American lawyer and politician, 8th Governor of Texas (d. 1880) 1823 – Simon Bolivar Buckner, American general and politician, 30th Governor of Kentucky (d. 1891) 1824 – Louis-Zéphirin Moreau, Canadian bishop (d. 1901) 1834 – James Fisk, American businessman (d. 1872) 1852 – Edwin Austin Abbey, American painter and illustrator (d. 1911) 1865 – Richard Adolf Zsigmondy, Austrian-German chemist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1929) 1866 – William Blomfield, New Zealand cartoonist and politician (d. 1938) 1866 – Ferruccio Busoni, Italian pianist, composer, and conductor (d. 1924) 1866 – Ève Lavallière, French actress (d. 1929) 1868 – Edmond Rostand, French poet and playwright (d. 1918) 1868 – Walter Mead, English cricketer (d. 1954) 1871 – F. Melius Christiansen, Norwegian-American violinist and conductor (d. 1955) 1873 – Sergei Rachmaninoff, Russian pianist, composer, and conductor (d. 1943) 1874 – Ernest Barnes, English mathematician and theologian (d. 1953) 1874 – Prince Karl of Bavaria (d. 1927) 1875 – Edgar Wallace, English journalist, author, and playwright (d. 1932) 1878 – C. Ganesha Iyer, Ceylon Tamil philologist (d. 1958) 1879 – Stanislaus Zbyszko, Polish wrestler and strongman (d. 1967) 1881 – Octavian Goga, Romanian Prime Minister (d. 1938) 1883 – Lon Chaney, American actor, director, and screenwriter (d. 1930) 1883 – Edvard Drabløs, Norwegian actor and director (d. 1976) 1883 – Laurette Taylor, Irish-American actress (d. 1946) 1885 – Wallace Beery, American actor (d. 1949) 1885 – Clementine Churchill, English wife of Winston Churchill (d. 1977) 1889 – K. B. Hedgewar, Indian physician and activist (d. 1940) 1893 – Cicely Courtneidge, Australian-English actress (d. 1980) 1895 – Alberta Hunter, African-American singer-songwriter and nurse (d. 1984) 1898 – William James Sidis, Ukrainian-Russian Jewish American mathematician, anthropologist, and historian (d. 1944) 1899 – Gustavs Celmiņš, Latvian academic and politician (d. 1968) 1900 – Stefanie Clausen, Danish Olympic diver (d. 1981) 1901–present 1901 – Whittaker Chambers, American journalist and spy (d. 1961) 1905 – Gaston Eyskens, Belgian economist and politician, 47th Prime Minister of Belgium (d. 1988) 1905 – Paul Hasluck, Australian historian, poet, and politician, 17th Governor-General of Australia (d. 1993) 1906 – Alexander Sergeyevich Yakovlev, Russian engineer, founded the Yakovlev Design Bureau (d. 1989) 1907 – Shivakumara Swami, Indian religious leader and philanthropist (d. 2019) 1908 – Abraham Maslow, American psychologist and academic (d. 1970) 1908 – Harlow Rothert, American shot putter, lawyer, and academic (d. 1997) 1909 – Abner Biberman, American actor, director, and screenwriter (d. 1977) 1909 – Eddy Duchin, American pianist and bandleader (d. 1951) 1910 – Harry Carney, American saxophonist and clarinet player (d. 1974) 1910 – Bob Van Osdel, American high jumper and soldier (d. 1987) 1911 – Augusta Braxton Baker, African American librarian (d. 1998) 1913 – Memos Makris, Greek sculptor (d. 1993) 1915 – O. W. Fischer, Austrian-Swiss actor and director (d. 2004) 1916 – Sheila May Edmonds, British mathematician (d. 2002) 1917 – Sydney Newman, Canadian screenwriter and producer, co-created Doctor Who (d. 1997) 1917 – Melville Shavelson, American director, producer, and screenwriter (d. 2007) 1919 – Joseph Murray, American surgeon and soldier, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 2012) 1920 – Toshiro Mifune, Japanese actor (d. 1997) 1921 – William Bergsma, American composer and educator (d. 1994) 1921 – Arthur "Guitar Boogie" Smith, American guitarist, fiddler, and composer (d. 2014) 1922 – Duke Jordan, American pianist and composer (d. 2006) 1922 – William Manchester, American historian and author (d. 2004) 1924 – Brendan Byrne, American lieutenant, judge, and politician, 47th Governor of New Jersey (d. 2018) 1926 – Anne McCaffrey, American-Irish author (d. 2011) 1927 – Walter Bahr, American soccer player, coach, and manager (d. 2018) 1927 – Amos Milburn, American R&B singer-songwriter and pianist (d. 1980) 1927 – Ferenc Puskás, Hungarian footballer and manager (d. 2006) 1929 – Jonathan Haze, American actor, producer, screenwriter, and production manager 1929 – Milan Kundera, Czech-born novelist, poet, and playwright 1929 – Payut Ngaokrachang, Thai animator and director (d. 2010) 1929 – Jane Powell, American actress, singer, and dancer (d. 2021) 1930 – Grace Lee Whitney, American actress and singer (d. 2015) 1931 – George Baker, Bulgarian-English actor and screenwriter (d. 2011) 1931 – Rolf Hochhuth, German author and playwright (d. 2020) 1932 – Debbie Reynolds, American actress, singer, and dancer (d. 2016) 1933 – Claude Cohen-Tannoudji, Algerian-French physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate 1933 – Dan Flavin, American sculptor and educator (d. 1996) 1934 – Vladimir Posner, French-American journalist and radio host 1935 – Larry McDonald, American physician and politician (d. 1983) 1936 – Peter Collinson, English-American director and producer (d. 1980) 1936 – Jean-Pascal Delamuraz, Swiss politician, 80th President of the Swiss Confederation (d. 1998) 1936 – Tarun Gogoi, Indian politician, 14th Chief Minister of Assam (d. 2020) 1936 – Abdul Qadeer Khan, Indian-Pakistani physicist, chemist, and engineer (d. 2021) 1939 – Ali MacGraw, American model and actress 1939 – Phil Niekro, American baseball player and manager (d. 2020) 1940 – Wangari Maathai, Kenyan environmentalist and politician, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 2011) 1941 – Gideon Gadot, Israeli journalist and politician (d. 2012) 1941 – Ajit Wadekar, Indian cricketer, coach, and manager (d. 2018) 1942 – Samuel R. Delany, American author and critic 1942 – Richard D. Wolff, American economist and academic 1943 – Dafydd Wigley, Welsh academic and politician 1946 – Nikitas Kaklamanis, Greek academic and politician, Greek Minister of Health and Social Security 1946 – Ronnie Lane, English bass player, songwriter, and producer (d. 1997) 1946 – Arrigo Sacchi, Italian footballer, coach, and manager 1947 – Alain Connes, French mathematician and academic 1948 – Jimmy Cliff, Jamaican singer and musician 1948 – Javier Irureta, Spanish footballer and manager 1948 – Peter Law, Welsh politician and independent Member of Parliament (d. 2006) 1949 – Gérard Mestrallet, French businessman 1949 – Paul Manafort, American lobbyist, political consultant, and convicted felon 1949 – Sammy Nelson, Northern Irish footballer and coach 1949 – Gil Scott-Heron, American singer-songwriter and author (d. 2011) 1950 – Samuel Alito, American lawyer and jurist, Associate Justice of the Supreme
distinct elements of each of which is related by to the other. More formally, is antisymmetric precisely if for all or equivalently, The definition of antisymmetry says nothing about whether actually holds or not for any . An antisymmetric relation on a set may be reflexive (that is, for all ), irreflexive (that is, for no ), or neither reflexive nor irreflexive. A relation is asymmetric if and only if it is both antisymmetric and irreflexive. Examples The divisibility relation on the natural numbers is an important example of an antisymmetric relation. In this context, antisymmetry means that the only way each of two numbers can be divisible by the
by the other is if the two are, in fact, the same number; equivalently, if and are distinct and is a factor of then cannot be a factor of For example, 12 is divisible by 4, but 4 is not divisible by 12. The usual order relation on the real numbers is antisymmetric: if for two real numbers and both inequalities and hold then and must be equal. Similarly, the subset order on the subsets of any given set is antisymmetric: given two sets and if every element in also is in and every element in is also in then and must contain all the same elements and therefore be equal: A real-life example of a relation that is typically antisymmetric is "paid the restaurant bill of" (understood as restricted to a given occasion). Typically
the others, who thought that he was reckless. They eventually mutinied against Crowley's control, with the other climbers heading back down the mountain as nightfall approached despite Crowley's warnings that it was too dangerous. Subsequently, Pache and several porters were killed in an accident, something for which Crowley was widely blamed by the mountaineering community. Spending time in Moharbhanj, where he took part in big-game hunting and wrote the homoerotic work The Scented Garden, Crowley met up with Rose and Lilith in Calcutta before being forced to leave India after non-lethally shooting two men who tried to mug him. Briefly visiting Bennett in Burma, Crowley and his family decided to tour Southern China, hiring porters and a nanny for the purpose. Crowley smoked opium throughout the journey, which took the family from Tengyueh through to Yungchang, Tali, Yunnanfu, and then Hanoi. On the way, he spent much time on spiritual and magical work, reciting the "Bornless Ritual", an invocation to his Holy Guardian Angel, on a daily basis. While Rose and Lilith returned to Europe, Crowley headed to Shanghai to meet old friend Elaine Simpson, who was fascinated by The Book of the Law; together they performed rituals in an attempt to contact Aiwass. Crowley then sailed to Japan and Canada, before continuing to New York City, where he unsuccessfully solicited support for a second expedition up Kanchenjunga. Upon arrival in Britain, Crowley learned that his daughter Lilith had died of typhoid in Rangoon, something he later blamed on Rose's increasing alcoholism. Under emotional distress, his health began to suffer, and he underwent a series of surgical operations. He began short-lived romances with actress Vera "Lola" Neville (née Snepp) and author Ada Leverson, while Rose gave birth to Crowley's second daughter, Lola Zaza, in February 1907. The A∴A∴ and The Holy Books of Thelema: 1907–1909 With his old mentor George Cecil Jones, Crowley continued performing the Abramelin rituals at the Ashdown Park Hotel in Coulsdon, Surrey. Crowley claimed that in doing so he attained samadhi, or union with Godhead, thereby marking a turning point in his life. Making heavy use of hashish during these rituals, he wrote an essay on "The Psychology of Hashish" (1909) in which he championed the drug as an aid to mysticism. He also claimed to have been contacted once again by Aiwass in late October and November 1907, adding that Aiwass dictated two further texts to him, "Liber VII" and "Liber Cordis Cincti Serpente", both of which were later classified in the corpus of The Holy Books of Thelema. Crowley wrote down more Thelemic Holy Books during the last two months of the year, including "Liber LXVI", "Liber Arcanorum", "Liber Porta Lucis, Sub Figura X", "Liber Tau", "Liber Trigrammaton" and "Liber DCCCXIII vel Ararita", which he again claimed to have received from a preternatural source. Crowley stated that in June 1909, when the manuscript of The Book of the Law was rediscovered at Boleskine, he developed the opinion that Thelema represented objective truth. Crowley's inheritance was running out. Trying to earn money, he was hired by George Montagu Bennett, the Earl of Tankerville, to help protect him from witchcraft; recognizing Bennett's paranoia as being based in his cocaine addiction, Crowley took him on holiday to France and Morocco to recuperate. In 1907, he also began taking in paying students, whom he instructed in occult and magical practice. Victor Neuburg, whom Crowley met in February 1907, became his sexual partner and closest disciple; in 1908 the pair toured northern Spain before heading to Tangier, Morocco. The following year Neuburg stayed at Boleskine, where he and Crowley engaged in sadomasochism. Crowley continued to write prolifically, producing such works of poetry as Ambergris, Clouds Without Water, and Konx Om Pax, as well as his first attempt at an autobiography, The World's Tragedy. Recognizing the popularity of short horror stories, Crowley wrote his own, some of which were published, and he also published several articles in Vanity Fair, a magazine edited by his friend Frank Harris. He also wrote Liber 777, a book of magical and Qabalistic correspondences that borrowed from Mathers and Bennett. In November 1907, Crowley and Jones decided to found an occult order to act as a successor to the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, being aided in doing so by Fuller. The result was the A∴A∴. The group's headquarters and temple were situated at 124 Victoria Street in central London, and their rites borrowed much from those of the Golden Dawn, but with an added Thelemic basis. Its earliest members included solicitor Richard Noel Warren, artist Austin Osman Spare, Horace Sheridan-Bickers, author George Raffalovich, Francis Henry Everard Joseph Feilding, engineer Herbert Edward Inman, Kenneth Ward, and Charles Stansfeld Jones. In March 1909, Crowley began production of a biannual periodical titled The Equinox. He billed this periodical, which was to become the "Official Organ" of the A∴A∴, as "The Review of Scientific Illuminism". Crowley had become increasingly frustrated with Rose's alcoholism, and in November 1909 he divorced her on the grounds of his own adultery. Lola was entrusted to Rose's care; the couple remained friends and Rose continued to live at Boleskine. Her alcoholism worsened, and as a result she was institutionalized in September 1911. Algeria and the Rites of Eleusis: 1909–1911 In November 1909, Crowley and Neuburg travelled to Algeria, touring the desert from El Arba to Aumale, Bou Saâda, and then Dā'leh Addin, with Crowley reciting the Quran on a daily basis. During the trip he invoked the thirty aethyrs of Enochian magic, with Neuburg recording the results, later published in The Equinox as The Vision and the Voice. Following a mountaintop sex magic ritual; Crowley also performed an evocation to the demon Choronzon involving blood sacrifice, and considered the results to be a watershed in his magical career. Returning to London in January 1910, Crowley found that Mathers was suing him for publishing Golden Dawn secrets in The Equinox; the court found in favour of Crowley. The case was widely reported in the press, with Crowley gaining wider fame. Crowley enjoyed this, and played up to the sensationalist stereotype of being a Satanist and advocate of human sacrifice, despite being neither. The publicity attracted new members to the A∴A∴, among them Frank Bennett, James Bayley, Herbert Close, and James Windram. The Australian violinist Leila Waddell soon became Crowley's lover. Deciding to expand his teachings to a wider audience, Crowley developed the Rites of Artemis, a public performance of magic and symbolism featuring A∴A∴ members personifying various deities. It was first performed at the A∴A∴ headquarters, with attendees given a fruit punch containing peyote to enhance their experience. Various members of the press attended, and reported largely positively on it. In October and November 1910, Crowley decided to stage something similar, the Rites of Eleusis, at Caxton Hall, Westminster; this time press reviews were mixed. Crowley came under particular criticism from West de Wend Fenton, editor of The Looking Glass newspaper, who called him "one of the most blasphemous and cold-blooded villains of modern times". Fenton's articles suggested that Crowley and Jones were involved in homosexual activity; Crowley did not mind, but Jones unsuccessfully sued for libel. Fuller broke off his friendship and involvement with Crowley over the scandal, and Crowley and Neuburg returned to Algeria for further magical workings. The Equinox continued publishing, and various books of literature and poetry were also published under its imprint, like Crowley's Ambergris, The Winged Beetle, and The Scented Garden, as well as Neuburg's The Triumph of Pan and Ethel Archer's The Whirlpool. In 1911, Crowley and Waddell holidayed in Montigny-sur-Loing, where he wrote prolifically, producing poems, short stories, plays, and 19 works on magic and mysticism, including the two final Holy Books of Thelema. In Paris, he met Mary Desti, who became his next "Scarlet Woman", with the two undertaking magical workings in St. Moritz; Crowley believed that one of the Secret Chiefs, Ab-ul-Diz, was speaking through her. Based on Desti's statements when in trance, Crowley wrote the two-volume Book 4 (1912–13) and at the time developed the spelling "magick" in reference to the paranormal phenomenon as a means of distinguishing it from the stage magic of illusionists. Ordo Templi Orientis and the Paris Working: 1912–1914 In early 1912, Crowley published The Book of Lies, a work of mysticism that biographer Lawrence Sutin described as "his greatest success in merging his talents as poet, scholar, and magus". The German occultist Theodor Reuss later accused him of publishing some of the secrets of his own occult order, the Ordo Templi Orientis (O.T.O.), within The Book. Crowley convinced Reuss that the similarities were coincidental, and the two became friends. Reuss appointed Crowley as head of the O.T.O's British branch, the Mysteria Mystica Maxima (MMM), and at a ceremony in Berlin Crowley adopted the magical name of Baphomet and was proclaimed "X° Supreme Rex and Sovereign Grand Master General of Ireland, Iona, and all the Britons". With Reuss' permission, Crowley set about advertising the MMM and re-writing many O.T.O. rituals, which were then based largely on Freemasonry; his incorporation of Thelemite elements proved controversial in the group. Fascinated by the O.T.O's emphasis on sex magic, Crowley devised a magical working based on anal sex and incorporated it into the syllabus for those O.T.O. members who had been initiated into the eleventh degree. In March 1913, Crowley acted as producer for The Ragged Ragtime Girls, a group of female violinists led by Waddell, as they performed at London's Old Tivoli theatre. They subsequently performed in Moscow for six weeks, where Crowley had a sadomasochistic relationship with the Hungarian Anny Ringler. In Moscow, Crowley continued to write plays and poetry, including "Hymn to Pan", and the Gnostic Mass, a Thelemic ritual that became a key part of O.T.O. liturgy. Churton suggested that Crowley had travelled to Moscow on the orders of British intelligence to spy on revolutionary elements in the city. In January 1914, Crowley and Neuburg settled into an apartment in Paris, where the former was involved in the controversy surrounding Jacob Epstein's new monument to Oscar Wilde. Together Crowley and Neuburg performed the six-week "Paris Working", a period of intense ritual involving strong drug use in which they invoked the gods Mercury and Jupiter. As part of the ritual, the couple performed acts of sex magic together, at times being joined by journalist Walter Duranty. Inspired by the results of the Working, Crowley wrote Liber Agapé, a treatise on sex magic. Following the Paris Working, Neuburg began to distance himself from Crowley, resulting in an argument in which Crowley cursed him. United States: 1914–1919 By 1914, Crowley was living a hand-to-mouth existence, relying largely on donations from A∴A∴ members and dues payments made to O.T.O. In May, he transferred ownership of Boleskine House to the MMM for financial reasons, and in July he went mountaineering in the Swiss Alps. During this time the First World War broke out. After recuperating from a bout of phlebitis, Crowley set sail for the United States aboard the RMS Lusitania in October 1914. Arriving in New York City, he moved into a hotel and began earning money writing for the American edition of Vanity Fair and undertaking freelance work for the famed astrologer Evangeline Adams. In the city, he continued experimenting with sex magic, through the use of masturbation, female prostitutes, and male clients of a Turkish bathhouse; all of these encounters were documented in his diaries. Professing to be of Irish ancestry and a supporter of Irish independence from Great Britain, Crowley began to espouse support for Germany in their war against Britain. He became involved in New York's pro-German movement, and in January 1915 German spy George Sylvester Viereck employed him as a writer for his propagandist paper, The Fatherland, which was dedicated to keeping the US neutral in the conflict. In later years, detractors denounced Crowley as a traitor to Britain for this action. Crowley entered into a relationship with Jeanne Robert Foster, with whom he toured the West Coast. In Vancouver, headquarters of the North American O.T.O., he met with Charles Stansfeld Jones and Wilfred Talbot Smith to discuss the propagation of Thelema on the continent. In Detroit he experimented with Peyote at Parke-Davis, then visited Seattle, San Francisco, Santa Cruz, Los Angeles, San Diego, Tijuana, and the Grand Canyon, before returning to New York. There he befriended Ananda Coomaraswamy and his wife Alice Richardson; Crowley and Richardson performed sex magic in April 1916, following which she became pregnant and then miscarried. Later that year he took a "magical retirement" to a cabin by Lake Pasquaney owned by Evangeline Adams. There, he made heavy use of drugs and undertook a ritual after which he proclaimed himself "Master Therion". He also wrote several short stories based on J.G. Frazer's The Golden Bough and a work of literary criticism, The Gospel According to Bernard Shaw. In December, he moved to New Orleans, his favourite US city, before spending February 1917 with evangelical Christian relatives in Titusville, Florida. Returning to New York City, he moved in with artist and A∴A∴ member Leon Engers Kennedy in May, learning of his mother's death. After the collapse of The Fatherland, Crowley continued his association with Viereck, who appointed him contributing editor of arts journal The International. Crowley used it to promote Thelema, but it soon ceased publication. He then moved to the studio apartment of Roddie Minor, who became his partner and Scarlet Woman. Through their rituals, which Crowley called "The Amalantrah Workings", he believed that they were contacted by a preternatural entity named Lam. The relationship soon ended. In 1918, Crowley went on a magical retreat in the wilderness of Esopus Island on the Hudson River. Here, he began a translation of the Tao Te Ching, painted Thelemic slogans on the riverside cliffs, and—he later claimed—experienced past life memories of being Ge Xuan, Pope Alexander VI, Alessandro Cagliostro, and Eliphas Levi. Back in New York City, he moved to Greenwich Village, where he took Leah Hirsig as his lover and next Scarlet Woman. He took up painting as a hobby, exhibiting his work at the Greenwich Village Liberal Club and attracting the attention of the New York Evening World. With the financial assistance of sympathetic Freemasons, Crowley revived The Equinox with the first issue of volume III, known as The Blue Equinox. He spent mid-1919 on a climbing holiday in Montauk before returning to London in December. Abbey of Thelema: 1920–1923 Now destitute and back in London, Crowley came under attack from the tabloid John Bull, which labelled him traitorous "scum" for his work with the German war effort; several friends aware of his intelligence work urged him to sue, but he decided not to. When he was suffering from asthma, a doctor prescribed him heroin, to which he soon became addicted. In January 1920, he moved to Paris, renting a house in Fontainebleau with Leah Hirsig; they were soon joined in a ménage à trois by Ninette Shumway, and also (in living arrangement) by Leah's newborn daughter Anne "Poupée" Leah. Crowley had ideas of forming a community of Thelemites, which he called the Abbey of Thelema after the Abbaye de Thélème in François Rabelais' satire Gargantua and Pantagruel. After consulting the I Ching, he chose Cefalù (on Sicily, Italy) as a location, and after arriving there, began renting the old Villa Santa Barbara as his Abbey on 2 April. Moving to the commune with Hirsig, Shumway, and their children Hansi, Howard, and Poupée, Crowley described the scenario as "perfectly happy ... my idea of heaven." They wore robes, and performed rituals to the sun god Ra at set times during the day, also occasionally performing the Gnostic Mass; the rest of the day they were left to follow their own interests. Undertaking widespread correspondences, Crowley continued to paint, wrote a commentary on The Book of the Law, and revised the third part of Book 4. He offered a libertine education for the children, allowing them to play all day and witness acts of sex magic. He occasionally travelled to Palermo to visit rent boys and buy supplies, including drugs; his heroin addiction came to dominate his life, and cocaine began to erode his nasal cavity. There was no cleaning rota, and wild dogs and cats wandered throughout the building, which soon became unsanitary. Poupée died in October 1920, and Ninette gave birth to a daughter, Astarte Lulu Panthea, soon afterwards. New followers continued to arrive at the Abbey to be taught by Crowley. Among them was film star Jane Wolfe, who arrived in July 1920, where she was initiated into the A∴A∴ and became Crowley's secretary. Another was Cecil Frederick Russell, who often argued with Crowley, disliking the same-sex sexual magic that he was required to perform, and left after a year. More conducive was the Australian Thelemite Frank Bennett, who also spent several months at the Abbey. In February 1922, Crowley returned to Paris for a retreat in an unsuccessful attempt to kick his heroin addiction. He then went to London in search of money, where he published articles in The English Review criticising the Dangerous Drugs Act 1920 and wrote a novel, Diary of a Drug Fiend, completed in July. On publication, it received mixed reviews; he was lambasted by the Sunday Express, which called for its burning and used its influence to prevent further reprints. Subsequently, a young Thelemite named Raoul Loveday moved to the Abbey with his wife Betty May; while Loveday was devoted to Crowley, May detested him and life at the commune. She later said that Loveday was made to drink the blood of a sacrificed cat, and that they were required to cut themselves with razors every time they used the pronoun "I". Loveday drank from a local polluted stream, soon developing a liver infection resulting in his death in February 1923. Returning to London, May told her story to the press. John Bull proclaimed Crowley "the wickedest man in the world" and "a man we'd like to hang", and although Crowley deemed many of their accusations against him to be slanderous, he was unable to afford the legal fees to sue them. As a result, John Bull continued its attack, with its stories being repeated in newspapers throughout Europe and in North America. The Fascist government of Benito Mussolini learned of Crowley's activities, and in April 1923 he was given a deportation notice forcing him to leave Italy; without him, the Abbey closed. Later life Tunisia, Paris, and London: 1923–1929 Crowley and Hirsig went to Tunis, where, dogged by continuing poor health, he unsuccessfully tried again to give up heroin, and began writing what he termed his "autohagiography", The Confessions of Aleister Crowley. They were joined in Tunis by the Thelemite Norman Mudd, who became Crowley's public relations consultant. Employing a local boy, Mohammad ben Brahim, as his servant, Crowley went with him on a retreat to Nefta, where they performed sex magic together. In January 1924, Crowley travelled to Nice, France, where he met with Frank Harris, underwent a series of nasal operations, and visited the Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man and had a positive opinion of its founder, George Gurdjieff. Destitute, he took on a wealthy student, Alexander Zu Zolar, before taking on another American follower, Dorothy Olsen. Crowley took Olsen back to Tunisia for a magical retreat in Nefta, where he also wrote To Man (1924), a declaration of his own status as a prophet entrusted with bringing Thelema to humanity. After spending the winter in Paris, in early 1925 Crowley and Olsen returned to Tunis, where he wrote The Heart of the Master (1938) as an account of a vision he experienced in a trance. In March Olsen became pregnant, and Hirsig was called to take care of her; she miscarried, following which Crowley took Olsen back to France. Hirsig later distanced herself from Crowley, who then denounced her. According to Crowley, Reuss had named him head of the O.T.O. upon his death, but this was challenged by a leader of the German O.T.O., Heinrich Tränker. Tränker called the Hohenleuben Conference in Thuringia, Germany, which Crowley attended. There, prominent members like Karl Germer and Martha Küntzel championed Crowley's leadership, but other key figures like Albin Grau, Oskar Hopfer, and Henri Birven backed Tränker by opposing it, resulting in a split in the O.T.O. Moving to Paris, where he broke with Olsen in 1926, Crowley went through a large number of lovers over the following years, with whom he experimented in sex magic. Throughout, he was dogged by poor health, largely caused by his heroin and cocaine addictions. In 1928, Crowley was introduced to young Englishman Israel Regardie, who embraced Thelema and became Crowley's secretary for the next three years. That year, Crowley also met Gerald Yorke, who began organising Crowley's finances but never became a Thelemite. He also befriended the homosexual journalist Tom Driberg; Driberg did not accept Thelema either. It was here that Crowley also published one of his most significant works, Magick in Theory and Practice, which received little attention at the time. In December 1928 Crowley met the Nicaraguan Maria Teresa Sanchez. Crowley was deported from France by the authorities, who disliked his reputation and feared that he was a German agent. So that she could join him in Britain, Crowley married Sanchez in August 1929. Now based in London, Mandrake Press agreed to publish his autobiography in a limited edition six-volume set, also publishing his novel Moonchild and book of short stories The Stratagem. Mandrake went into liquidation in November 1930, before the entirety of Crowley's Confessions could be published. Mandrake's owner P.R. Stephenson meanwhile wrote The Legend of Aleister Crowley, an analysis of the media coverage surrounding him. Berlin and London: 1930–1938 In April 1930, Crowley moved to Berlin, where he took Hanni Jaegar as his magical partner; the relationship was troubled. In September he went to Lisbon in Portugal to meet the poet Fernando Pessoa. There, he decided to fake his own death, doing so with Pessoa's help at the Boca do Inferno rock formation. He then returned to Berlin, where he reappeared three weeks later at the opening of his art exhibition at the Gallery Neumann-Nierendorf. Crowley's paintings fitted with the fashion for German Expressionism; few of them sold, but the press reports were largely favourable. In August 1931, he took Bertha Busch as his new lover; they had a violent relationship, and often physically assaulted one another. He continued to have affairs with both men and women while in the city, and met with famous people like Aldous Huxley and Alfred Adler. After befriending him, in January 1932 he took the communist Gerald Hamilton as a lodger, through whom he was introduced to many figures within the Berlin far left; it is possible that he was operating as a spy for British intelligence at this time, monitoring the communist movement. Crowley left Busch and returned to London, where he took Pearl Brooksmith as his new Scarlet Woman. Undergoing further nasal surgery, it was here in 1932 that he was invited to be guest of honour at Foyles' Literary Luncheon, also being invited by Harry Price to speak at the National Laboratory of Psychical Research. In need of money, he launched a series of court cases against people whom he believed had libelled him, some of which proved successful. He gained much publicity for his lawsuit against Constable and Co for publishing Nina Hamnett's Laughing Torso (1932)—a book he claimed libelled him by referring to his occult practice as black magic—but lost the case. The court case added to Crowley's financial problems, and in February 1935 he was declared bankrupt. During the hearing, it was revealed that Crowley had been spending three times his income for several years. Crowley developed a friendship with Deidre Patricia Doherty; she offered to bear his child, who was born in May 1937. Named Randall Gair, Crowley nicknamed him Aleister Atatürk. He died in a car accident in 2002 at the age of 65. Crowley continued to socialize with friends, holding curry parties in which he cooked particularly spicy food for them. In 1936, he published his first book in six years, The Equinox of the Gods, which contained a facsimile of The Book of the Law and was considered to be volume III, number 3, of The Equinox periodical. The work sold well, resulting in a second print run. In 1937, he gave a series of public lectures on yoga in Soho. Crowley was now living largely off contributions supplied by the O.T.O.'s Agape Lodge in California, led by rocket scientist John Whiteside "Jack" Parsons. Crowley was intrigued by the rise of Nazism in Germany, and influenced by his friend Martha Küntzel believed that Adolf Hitler might convert to Thelema; when the Nazis abolished the German O.T.O. and imprisoned Germer, who fled to the US, Crowley then lambasted Hitler as a black magician. Second World War and death: 1939–1947 When the Second World War broke out, Crowley wrote to the Naval Intelligence Division offering his services, but they declined. He associated with a variety of figures in Britain's intelligence community at the time, including Dennis Wheatley, Roald Dahl, Ian Fleming, and Maxwell Knight, and claimed to have been behind the "V for Victory" sign first used by the BBC; this has never been proven. In 1940, his asthma worsened, and with his German-produced medication unavailable, he returned to using heroin, once again becoming addicted. As the Blitz hit London, Crowley relocated to Torquay, where he was briefly hospitalized with asthma, and entertained himself with visits to the local chess club. Tiring of Torquay, he returned to London, where he was visited by American Thelemite Grady McMurtry, to whom Crowley awarded the title of "Hymenaeus Alpha". He stipulated that though Germer would be his immediate successor, McMurty should succeed Germer as head of the O.T.O. after the latter's death. With O.T.O. initiate Lady Frieda Harris, Crowley developed plans to produce a tarot card set, designed by him and painted by Harris. Accompanying this was a book, published in a limited edition as The Book of Thoth by Chiswick Press in 1944. To aid the war effort, he wrote a proclamation on the rights of humanity, Liber Oz, and a poem for the liberation of France, Le Gauloise. Crowley's final publication during his lifetime was a book of poetry, Olla: An Anthology of Sixty Years of Song. Another of his projects, Aleister Explains Everything, was posthumously published as Magick Without Tears. In April 1944 Crowley briefly moved to Aston Clinton in Buckinghamshire, where he was visited by the poet Nancy Cunard, before relocating to Hastings in Sussex, where he took up residence at the Netherwood boarding house. He took a young man named Kenneth Grant as his secretary, paying him in magical teaching rather than wages. He was also introduced to John Symonds, whom he appointed to be his literary executor; Symonds thought little of Crowley, later publishing negative biographies of him. Corresponding with the illusionist Arnold Crowther, it was through him that Crowley was introduced to Gerald Gardner, the future founder of Gardnerian Wicca. They became friends, with Crowley authorising Gardner to revive Britain's ailing O.T.O. Another visitor was Eliza Marian Butler, who interviewed Crowley for her book The Myth of the Magus. Other friends and family also spent time with him, among them Doherty and Crowley's son Aleister Atatürk. On 1 December 1947, Crowley died at Netherwood of chronic bronchitis aggravated by pleurisy and myocardial degeneration, aged 72. His funeral was held at a Brighton crematorium on 5 December; about a dozen people attended, and Louis Wilkinson read excerpts from the Gnostic Mass, The Book of the Law, and "Hymn to Pan". The funeral generated press controversy, and was labelled a Black Mass by the tabloids. Crowley's body was cremated, his ashes were sent to Karl Germer in the US, who buried them in his garden in Hampton, New Jersey. Beliefs and thought Crowley's belief system, Thelema, has been described by scholars as a religion, and more specifically as both a new religious movement, and as a "magico-religious doctrine". It has also been characterized as a form of esotericism and Modern Paganism. Although holding The Book of the Law—which was composed in 1904—as its central text, Thelema took shape as a complete system in the years after 1904. In his autobiography, Crowley claimed that his purpose in life had been to "bring oriental wisdom to Europe and to restore paganism in a purer form", although what he meant by "paganism" was unclear. Crowley's thought was not always cohesive, and was influenced by a variety of sources, ranging from eastern religious movements and practices like Hindu yoga and Buddhism, scientific naturalism, and various currents within Western esotericism, among them ceremonial magic, alchemy, astrology, Rosicrucianism, Kabbalah, and the Tarot. He was steeped in the esoteric teachings he had learned from the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, although pushed further with his own interpretations and strategies than the Golden Dawn had done. Crowley incorporated concepts and terminology from South Asian religious traditions like yoga and Tantra into his Thelemic system, believing that there was a fundamental underlying resemblance between Western and Eastern spiritual systems. The historian Alex Owen noted that Crowley adhered to the "modus operandi" of the Decadent movement throughout his life. Crowley believed that the twentieth century marked humanity's entry to the Aeon of Horus, a new era in which humans would take increasing control of their destiny. He believed that this Aeon follows on from the Aeon of Osiris, in which paternalistic religions like Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism dominated the world, and that this in turn had followed the Aeon of Isis, which had been maternalistic and dominated by goddess worship. He believed that Thelema was the proper religion of the Aeon of Horus, and also deemed himself to be the prophet of this new Aeon. Thelema revolves around the idea that human beings each have their own True Will that they should discover and pursue, and that this exists in harmony with the Cosmic Will that pervades the universe. Crowley referred to this process of searching and discovery of one's True Will to be "the Great Work" or the attaining of the "knowledge and conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel". His favoured method of doing so was through the performance of the Abramelin operation, a ceremonial magic ritual obtained from a 17th-century grimoire. The moral code of "Do What Thou Wilt" is believed by Thelemites to be the religion's ethical law, although the historian of religion Marco Pasi noted that this was not anarchistic or libertarian in structure, as Crowley saw individuals as part of a wider societal organism. Magick and theology Crowley believed in the objective existence of magic, which he chose to spell "Magick", an older archaic spelling of the word. He provided various different definitions of this term over his career. In his book Magick in Theory and Practice, Crowley defined Magick as "the Science and Art of causing change to occur in conformity with Will". He also told his disciple Karl Germer that "Magick is getting into communication with individuals who exist on a higher plane than ours. Mysticism is the raising of oneself to their level." Crowley saw Magick as a third way between religion and science, giving The Equinox the subtitle of The Method of Science; the Aim of Religion. Within that journal he expressed positive sentiments toward science and the scientific method, and urged magicians to keep detailed records of their magical experiments, "The more scientific the record is, the better." His understanding of magic was also influenced by the work of the anthropologist James Frazer, in particular the view that magic was a precursor to science in a cultural evolutionary framework. Unlike Frazer, however, Crowley did not see magic as a survival from the past that required eradication, but rather he believed that magic had to be adapted to suit the new age of science. In Crowley's alternative schema, old systems of magic had to decline (per Frazer's framework) so that science and magic could synthesize into magick, which would simultaneously accept the existence of the supernatural and an experimental method. Crowley deliberately adopted an exceptionally broad definition of magick that included almost all forms of technology as magick, adopting an instrumentalist interpretation of magic, science, and technology. Sexuality
of the Cambridge University Footlights Dramatic Club, and the two entered into a relationship. They broke apart because Pollitt did not share Crowley's increasing interest in Western esotericism, a break-up that Crowley would regret for many years. In 1897, Crowley travelled to Saint Petersburg in Russia, later saying that he was trying to learn Russian as he was considering a future diplomatic career there. In October 1897, a brief illness triggered considerations of mortality and "the futility of all human endeavour", and Crowley abandoned all thoughts of a diplomatic career in favour of pursuing an interest in the occult. In March 1898, he obtained A.E. Waite's The Book of Black Magic and of Pacts, and then Karl von Eckartshausen's The Cloud Upon the Sanctuary, furthering his occult interests. That same year, Crowley privately published 100 copies of his poem Aceldama: A Place to Bury Strangers In, but it was not a particular success. Aceldama was issued by Leonard Smithers. That same year, Crowley published a string of other poems, including White Stains, a Decadent collection of erotic poetry that was printed abroad lest its publication be prohibited by the British authorities. In July 1898, he left Cambridge, not having taken any degree at all despite a "first class" showing in his 1897 exams and consistent "second class honours" results before that. The Golden Dawn: 1898–99 In August 1898, Crowley was in Zermatt, Switzerland, where he met the chemist Julian L. Baker, and the two began discussing their common interest in alchemy. Back in London, Baker introduced Crowley to George Cecil Jones, Baker's brother-in-law and a fellow member of the occult society known as the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, which had been founded in 1888. Crowley was initiated into the Outer Order of the Golden Dawn on 18 November 1898 by the group's leader, Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers. The ceremony took place in the Golden Dawn's Isis-Urania Temple held at London's Mark Masons Hall, where Crowley took the magical motto and name "Frater Perdurabo", which he interpreted as "I shall endure to the end". Crowley moved into his own luxury flat at 67–69 Chancery Lane and soon invited a senior Golden Dawn member, Allan Bennett, to live with him as his personal magical tutor. Bennett taught Crowley more about ceremonial magic and the ritual use of drugs, and together they performed the rituals of the Goetia, until Bennett left for South Asia to study Buddhism. In November 1899, Crowley purchased Boleskine House in Foyers on the shore of Loch Ness in Scotland. He developed a love of Scottish culture, describing himself as the "Laird of Boleskine", and took to wearing traditional highland dress, even during visits to London. He continued writing poetry, publishing Jezebel and Other Tragic Poems, Tales of Archais, Songs of the Spirit, Appeal to the American Republic, and Jephthah in 1898–99; most gained mixed reviews from literary critics, although Jephthah was considered a particular critical success. Crowley soon progressed through the lower grades of the Golden Dawn, and was ready to enter the group's inner Second Order. He was unpopular in the group; his bisexuality and libertine lifestyle had gained him a bad reputation, and he had developed feuds with some of the members, including W. B. Yeats. When the Golden Dawn's London lodge refused to initiate Crowley into the Second Order, he visited Mathers in Paris, who personally admitted him into the Adeptus Minor Grade. A schism had developed between Mathers and the London members of the Golden Dawn, who were unhappy with his autocratic rule. Acting under Mathers' orders, Crowley—with the help of his mistress and fellow initiate Elaine Simpson—attempted to seize the Vault of the Adepts, a temple space at 36 Blythe Road in West Kensington, from the London lodge members. When the case was taken to court, the judge ruled in favour of the London lodge, as they had paid for the space's rent, leaving both Crowley and Mathers isolated from the group. Mexico, India, Paris, and marriage: 1900–1903 In 1900, Crowley travelled to Mexico via the United States, settling in Mexico City and starting a relationship with a local woman. Developing a love of the country, he continued experimenting with ceremonial magic, working with John Dee's Enochian invocations. He later claimed to have been initiated into Freemasonry while there, and he wrote a play based on Richard Wagner's Tannhäuser as well as a series of poems, published as Oracles (1905). Eckenstein joined him later in 1900, and together they climbed several mountains, including Iztaccihuatl, Popocatepetl, and Colima, the latter of which they had to abandon owing to a volcanic eruption. Leaving Mexico, Crowley headed to San Francisco before sailing for Hawaii aboard the Nippon Maru. On the ship, he had a brief affair with a married woman named Mary Alice Rogers; saying he had fallen in love with her, he wrote a series of poems about the romance, published as Alice: An Adultery (1903). Briefly stopping in Japan and Hong Kong, Crowley reached Ceylon, where he met with Allan Bennett, who was there studying Shaivism. The pair spent some time in Kandy before Bennett decided to become a Buddhist monk in the Theravada tradition, travelling to Burma to do so. Crowley decided to tour India, devoting himself to the Hindu practice of Rāja yoga, from which he claimed to have achieved the spiritual state of dhyana. He spent much of this time studying at the Meenakshi Temple in Madura. At this time he also wrote poetry which was published as The Sword of Song (1904). He contracted malaria, and had to recuperate from the disease in Calcutta and Rangoon. In 1902, he was joined in India by Eckenstein and several other mountaineers: Guy Knowles, H. Pfannl, V. Wesseley, and Jules Jacot-Guillarmod. Together, the Eckenstein-Crowley expedition attempted K2, which had never been climbed. On the journey, Crowley was afflicted with influenza, malaria, and snow blindness, and other expedition members were also struck with illness. They reached an altitude of before turning back. Having arrived in Paris in November 1902, he socialized with friend and future brother-in-law, the painter Gerald Kelly, and through him became a fixture of the Parisian arts scene. Whilst there, Crowley wrote a series of poems on the work of an acquaintance, the sculptor Auguste Rodin. These poems were later published as Rodin in Rime (1907). One of those frequenting this milieu was W. Somerset Maugham, who after briefly meeting Crowley later used him as a model for the character of Oliver Haddo in his novel The Magician (1908). He returned to Boleskine in April 1903. In August, Crowley wed Gerald's sister Rose Edith Kelly in a "marriage of convenience" to prevent her from entering an arranged marriage; the marriage appalled the Kelly family and damaged his friendship with Gerald. Heading on a honeymoon to Paris, Cairo, and then Ceylon, Crowley fell in love with Rose and worked to prove his affections. While on his honeymoon, he wrote her a series of love poems, published as Rosa Mundi and other Love Songs (1906), as well as authoring the religious satire Why Jesus Wept (1904). Developing Thelema Egypt and The Book of the Law: 1904 In February 1904, Crowley and Rose arrived in Cairo. Claiming to be a prince and princess, they rented an apartment in which Crowley set up a temple room and began invoking ancient Egyptian deities, while studying Islamic mysticism and Arabic. According to Crowley's later account, Rose regularly became delirious and informed him "they are waiting for you." On 18 March, she explained that "they" were the god Horus, and on 20 March proclaimed that "the Equinox of the Gods has come". She led him to a nearby museum, where she showed him a seventh-century BCE mortuary stele known as the Stele of Ankh-ef-en-Khonsu; Crowley thought it important that the exhibit's number was 666, the Number of the Beast in Christian belief, and in later years termed the artefact the "Stele of Revealing." According to Crowley's later statements, on 8 April he heard a disembodied voice claiming to be that of Aiwass, the messenger of Horus, or Hoor-Paar-Kraat. Crowley said that he wrote down everything the voice told him over the course of the next three days, and titled it Liber AL vel Legis or The Book of the Law. The book proclaimed that humanity was entering a new Aeon, and that Crowley would serve as its prophet. It stated that a supreme moral law was to be introduced in this Aeon, "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law," and that people should learn to live in tune with their Will. This book, and the philosophy that it espoused, became the cornerstone of Crowley's religion, Thelema. Crowley said that at the time he had been unsure what to do with The Book of the Law. Often resenting it, he said that he ignored the instructions which the text commanded him to perform, which included taking the Stele of Revealing from the museum, fortifying his own island, and translating the book into all the world's languages. According to his account, he instead sent typescripts of the work to several occultists he knew, putting the manuscript away and ignoring it. Kanchenjunga and China: 1905–06 Returning to Boleskine, Crowley came to believe that Mathers had begun using magic against him, and the relationship between the two broke down. On 28 July 1905, Rose gave birth to Crowley's first child, a daughter named Lilith, with Crowley writing the pornographic Snowdrops from a Curate's Garden to entertain his recuperating wife. He also founded a publishing company through which to publish his poetry, naming it the Society for the Propagation of Religious Truth in parody of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. Among its first publications were Crowley's Collected Works, edited by Ivor Back, an old friend of Crowley's who was both a practicing surgeon and an enthusiast of literature. His poetry often received strong reviews (either positive or negative), but never sold well. In an attempt to gain more publicity, he issued a reward of £100 for the best essay on his work. The winner of this was J. F. C. Fuller, a British Army officer and military historian, whose essay, The Star in the West (1907), heralded Crowley's poetry as some of the greatest ever written. Crowley decided to climb Kanchenjunga in the Himalayas of Nepal, widely recognized as the world's most treacherous mountain. The collaboration between Jacot-Guillarmod, Charles Adolphe Reymond, Alexis Pache, and Alcesti C. Rigo de Righi, the expedition was marred by much argument between Crowley and the others, who thought that he was reckless. They eventually mutinied against Crowley's control, with the other climbers heading back down the mountain as nightfall approached despite Crowley's warnings that it was too dangerous. Subsequently, Pache and several porters were killed in an accident, something for which Crowley was widely blamed by the mountaineering community. Spending time in Moharbhanj, where he took part in big-game hunting and wrote the homoerotic work The Scented Garden, Crowley met up with Rose and Lilith in Calcutta before being forced to leave India after non-lethally shooting two men who tried to mug him. Briefly visiting Bennett in Burma, Crowley and his family decided to tour Southern China, hiring porters and a nanny for the purpose. Crowley smoked opium throughout the journey, which took the family from Tengyueh through to Yungchang, Tali, Yunnanfu, and then Hanoi. On the way, he spent much time on spiritual and magical work, reciting the "Bornless Ritual", an invocation to his Holy Guardian Angel, on a daily basis. While Rose and Lilith returned to Europe, Crowley headed to Shanghai to meet old friend Elaine Simpson, who was fascinated by The Book of the Law; together they performed rituals in an attempt to contact Aiwass. Crowley then sailed to Japan and Canada, before continuing to New York City, where he unsuccessfully solicited support for a second expedition up Kanchenjunga. Upon arrival in Britain, Crowley learned that his daughter Lilith had died of typhoid in Rangoon, something he later blamed on Rose's increasing alcoholism. Under emotional distress, his health began to suffer, and he underwent a series of surgical operations. He began short-lived romances with actress Vera "Lola" Neville (née Snepp) and author Ada Leverson, while Rose gave birth to Crowley's second daughter, Lola Zaza, in February 1907. The A∴A∴ and The Holy Books of Thelema: 1907–1909 With his old mentor George Cecil Jones, Crowley continued performing the Abramelin rituals at the Ashdown Park Hotel in Coulsdon, Surrey. Crowley claimed that in doing so he attained samadhi, or union with Godhead, thereby marking a turning point in his life. Making heavy use of hashish during these rituals, he wrote an essay on "The Psychology of Hashish" (1909) in which he championed the drug as an aid to mysticism. He also claimed to have been contacted once again by Aiwass in late October and November 1907, adding that Aiwass dictated two further texts to him, "Liber VII" and "Liber Cordis Cincti Serpente", both of which were later classified in the corpus of The Holy Books of Thelema. Crowley wrote down more Thelemic Holy Books during the last two months of the year, including "Liber LXVI", "Liber Arcanorum", "Liber Porta Lucis, Sub Figura X", "Liber Tau", "Liber Trigrammaton" and "Liber DCCCXIII vel Ararita", which he again claimed to have received from a preternatural source. Crowley stated that in June 1909, when the manuscript of The Book of the Law was rediscovered at Boleskine, he developed the opinion that Thelema represented objective truth. Crowley's inheritance was running out. Trying to earn money, he was hired by George Montagu Bennett, the Earl of Tankerville, to help protect him from witchcraft; recognizing Bennett's paranoia as being based in his cocaine addiction, Crowley took him on holiday to France and Morocco to recuperate. In 1907, he also began taking in paying students, whom he instructed in occult and magical practice. Victor Neuburg, whom Crowley met in February 1907, became his sexual partner and closest disciple; in 1908 the pair toured northern Spain before heading to Tangier, Morocco. The following year Neuburg stayed at Boleskine, where he and Crowley engaged in sadomasochism. Crowley continued to write prolifically, producing such works of poetry as Ambergris, Clouds Without Water, and Konx Om Pax, as well as his first attempt at an autobiography, The World's Tragedy. Recognizing the popularity of short horror stories, Crowley wrote his own, some of which were published, and he also published several articles in Vanity Fair, a magazine edited by his friend Frank Harris. He also wrote Liber 777, a book of magical and Qabalistic correspondences that borrowed from Mathers and Bennett. In November 1907, Crowley and Jones decided to found an occult order to act as a successor to the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, being aided in doing so by Fuller. The result was the A∴A∴. The group's headquarters and temple were situated at 124 Victoria Street in central London, and their rites borrowed much from those of the Golden Dawn, but with an added Thelemic basis. Its earliest members included solicitor Richard Noel Warren, artist Austin Osman Spare, Horace Sheridan-Bickers, author George Raffalovich, Francis Henry Everard Joseph Feilding, engineer Herbert Edward Inman, Kenneth Ward, and Charles Stansfeld Jones. In March 1909, Crowley began production of a biannual periodical titled The Equinox. He billed this periodical, which was to become the "Official Organ" of the A∴A∴, as "The Review of Scientific Illuminism". Crowley had become increasingly frustrated with Rose's alcoholism, and in November 1909 he divorced her on the grounds of his own adultery. Lola was entrusted to Rose's care; the couple remained friends and Rose continued to live at Boleskine. Her alcoholism worsened, and as a result she was institutionalized in September 1911. Algeria and the Rites of Eleusis: 1909–1911 In November 1909, Crowley and Neuburg travelled to Algeria, touring the desert from El Arba to Aumale, Bou Saâda, and then Dā'leh Addin, with Crowley reciting the Quran on a daily basis. During the trip he invoked the thirty aethyrs of Enochian magic, with Neuburg recording the results, later published in The Equinox as The Vision and the Voice. Following a mountaintop sex magic ritual; Crowley also performed an evocation to the demon Choronzon involving blood sacrifice, and considered the results to be a watershed in his magical career. Returning to London in January 1910, Crowley found that Mathers was suing him for publishing Golden Dawn secrets in The Equinox; the court found in favour of Crowley. The case was widely reported in the press, with Crowley gaining wider fame. Crowley enjoyed this, and played up to the sensationalist stereotype of being a Satanist and advocate of human sacrifice, despite being neither. The publicity attracted new members to the A∴A∴, among them Frank Bennett, James Bayley, Herbert Close, and James Windram. The Australian violinist Leila Waddell soon became Crowley's lover. Deciding to expand his teachings to a wider audience, Crowley developed the Rites of Artemis, a public performance of magic and symbolism featuring A∴A∴ members personifying various deities. It was first performed at the A∴A∴ headquarters, with attendees given a fruit punch containing peyote to enhance their experience. Various members of the press attended, and reported largely positively on it. In October and November 1910, Crowley decided to stage something similar, the Rites of Eleusis, at Caxton Hall, Westminster; this time press reviews were mixed. Crowley came under particular criticism from West de Wend Fenton, editor of The Looking Glass newspaper, who called him "one of the most blasphemous and cold-blooded villains of modern times". Fenton's articles suggested that Crowley and Jones were involved in homosexual activity; Crowley did not mind, but Jones unsuccessfully sued for libel. Fuller broke off his friendship and involvement with Crowley over the scandal, and Crowley and Neuburg returned to Algeria for further magical workings. The Equinox continued publishing, and various books of literature and poetry were also published under its imprint, like Crowley's Ambergris, The Winged Beetle, and The Scented Garden, as well as Neuburg's The Triumph of Pan and Ethel Archer's The Whirlpool. In 1911, Crowley and Waddell holidayed in Montigny-sur-Loing, where he wrote prolifically, producing poems, short stories, plays, and 19 works on magic and mysticism, including the two final Holy Books of Thelema. In Paris, he met Mary Desti, who became his next "Scarlet Woman", with the two undertaking magical workings in St. Moritz; Crowley believed that one of the Secret Chiefs, Ab-ul-Diz, was speaking through her. Based on Desti's statements when in trance, Crowley wrote the two-volume Book 4 (1912–13) and at the time developed the spelling "magick" in reference to the paranormal phenomenon as a means of distinguishing it from the stage magic of illusionists. Ordo Templi Orientis and the Paris Working: 1912–1914 In early 1912, Crowley published The Book of Lies, a work of mysticism that biographer Lawrence Sutin described as "his greatest success in merging his talents as poet, scholar, and magus". The German occultist Theodor Reuss later accused him of publishing some of the secrets of his own occult order, the Ordo Templi Orientis (O.T.O.), within The Book. Crowley convinced Reuss that the similarities were coincidental, and the two became friends. Reuss appointed Crowley as head of the O.T.O's British branch, the Mysteria Mystica Maxima (MMM), and at a ceremony in Berlin Crowley adopted the magical name of Baphomet and was proclaimed "X° Supreme Rex and Sovereign Grand Master General of Ireland, Iona, and all the Britons". With Reuss' permission, Crowley set about advertising the MMM and re-writing many O.T.O. rituals, which were then based largely on Freemasonry; his incorporation of Thelemite elements proved controversial in the group. Fascinated by the O.T.O's emphasis on sex magic, Crowley devised a magical working based on anal sex and incorporated it into the syllabus for those O.T.O. members who had been initiated into the eleventh degree. In March 1913, Crowley acted as producer for The Ragged Ragtime Girls, a group of female violinists led by Waddell, as they performed at London's Old Tivoli theatre. They subsequently performed in Moscow for six weeks, where Crowley had a sadomasochistic relationship with the Hungarian Anny Ringler. In Moscow, Crowley continued to write plays and poetry, including "Hymn to Pan", and the Gnostic Mass, a Thelemic ritual that became a key part of O.T.O. liturgy. Churton suggested that Crowley had travelled to Moscow on the orders of British intelligence to spy on revolutionary elements in the city. In January 1914, Crowley and Neuburg settled into an apartment in Paris, where the former was involved in the controversy surrounding Jacob Epstein's new monument to Oscar Wilde. Together Crowley and Neuburg performed the six-week "Paris Working", a period of intense ritual involving strong drug use in which they invoked the gods Mercury and Jupiter. As part of the ritual, the couple performed acts of sex magic together, at times being joined by journalist Walter Duranty. Inspired by the results of the Working, Crowley wrote Liber Agapé, a treatise on sex magic. Following the Paris Working, Neuburg began to distance himself from Crowley, resulting in an argument in which Crowley cursed him. United States: 1914–1919 By 1914, Crowley was living a hand-to-mouth existence, relying largely on donations from A∴A∴ members and dues payments made to O.T.O. In May, he transferred ownership of Boleskine House to the MMM for financial reasons, and in July he went mountaineering in the Swiss Alps. During this time the First World War broke out. After recuperating from a bout of phlebitis, Crowley set sail for the United States aboard the RMS Lusitania in October 1914. Arriving in New York City, he moved into a hotel and began earning money writing for the American edition of Vanity Fair and undertaking freelance work for the famed astrologer Evangeline Adams. In the city, he continued experimenting with sex magic, through the use of masturbation, female prostitutes, and male clients of a Turkish bathhouse; all of these encounters were documented in his diaries. Professing to be of Irish ancestry and a supporter of Irish independence from Great Britain, Crowley began to espouse support for Germany in their war against Britain. He became involved in New York's pro-German movement, and in January 1915 German spy George Sylvester Viereck employed him as a writer for his propagandist paper, The Fatherland, which was dedicated to keeping the US neutral in the conflict. In later years, detractors denounced Crowley as a traitor to Britain for this action. Crowley entered into a relationship with Jeanne Robert Foster, with whom he toured the West Coast. In Vancouver, headquarters of the North American O.T.O., he met with Charles Stansfeld Jones and Wilfred Talbot Smith to discuss the propagation of Thelema on the continent. In Detroit he experimented with Peyote at Parke-Davis, then visited Seattle, San Francisco, Santa Cruz, Los Angeles, San Diego, Tijuana, and the Grand Canyon, before returning to New York. There he befriended Ananda Coomaraswamy and his wife Alice Richardson; Crowley and Richardson performed sex magic in April 1916, following which she became pregnant and then miscarried. Later that year he took a "magical retirement" to a cabin by Lake Pasquaney owned by Evangeline Adams. There, he made heavy use of drugs and undertook a ritual after which he proclaimed himself "Master Therion". He also wrote several short stories based on J.G. Frazer's The Golden Bough and a work of literary criticism, The Gospel According to Bernard Shaw. In December, he moved to New Orleans, his favourite US city, before spending February 1917 with evangelical Christian relatives in Titusville, Florida. Returning to New York City, he moved in with artist and A∴A∴ member Leon Engers Kennedy in May, learning of his mother's death. After the collapse of The Fatherland, Crowley continued his association with Viereck, who appointed him contributing editor of arts journal The International. Crowley used it to promote Thelema, but it soon ceased publication. He then moved to the studio apartment of Roddie Minor, who became his partner and Scarlet Woman. Through their rituals, which Crowley called "The Amalantrah Workings", he believed that they were contacted by a preternatural entity named Lam. The relationship soon ended. In 1918, Crowley went on a magical retreat in the wilderness of Esopus Island on the Hudson River. Here, he began a translation of the Tao Te Ching, painted Thelemic slogans on the riverside cliffs, and—he later claimed—experienced past life memories of being Ge Xuan, Pope Alexander VI, Alessandro Cagliostro, and Eliphas
of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam do not believe that individuals reincarnate, particular groups within these religions do refer to reincarnation; these groups include the mainstream historical and contemporary followers of Kabbalah, the Cathars, Alawites, the Druze, and the Rosicrucians. The historical relations between these sects and the beliefs about reincarnation that were characteristic of Neoplatonism, Orphism, Hermeticism, Manicheanism, and Gnosticism of the Roman era as well as the Indian religions have been the subject of recent scholarly research. Unity Church and its founder Charles Fillmore teach reincarnation. Rosicrucians speak of a life review period occurring immediately after death and before entering the afterlife's planes of existence (before the silver cord is broken), followed by a judgment, more akin to a final review or end report over one's life. Heaven and Hell Heaven, the heavens, Seven Heavens, pure lands, Tian, Jannah, Valhalla, or the Summerland, is a common religious, cosmological, or transcendent place where beings such as gods, angels, jinn, saints, or venerated ancestors are said to originate, be enthroned, or live. According to the beliefs of some religions, heavenly beings can descend to earth or incarnate, and earthly beings can ascend to heaven in the afterlife, or in exceptional cases, enter heaven alive. Heaven is often described as a "higher place", the holiest place, a paradise, in contrast to hell or the underworld or the "low places", and universally or conditionally accessible by earthly beings according to various standards of divinity, goodness, piety, faith or other virtues or right beliefs or simply the will of God. Some believe in the possibility of a heaven on Earth in a world to come. In Hinduism, heaven is considered as Svarga loka. There are seven positive regions the soul can go to after death and seven negative regions. After completing its stay in the respective region, the soul is subjected to rebirth in different living forms according to its karma. This cycle can be broken after a soul achieves Moksha or Nirvana. Any place of existence, either of humans, souls or deities, outside the tangible world (heaven, hell, or other) is referred to as otherworld. Hell, in many religious and folkloric traditions, is a place of torment and punishment in the afterlife. Religions with a linear divine history often depict hell as an eternal destination, while religions with a cyclic history often depict a hell as an intermediary period between incarnations. Typically, these traditions locate hell in another dimension or under the earth's surface and often include entrances to hell from the land of the living. Other afterlife destinations include purgatory and limbo. Traditions that do not conceive of the afterlife as a place of punishment or reward merely describe hell as an abode of the dead, the grave, a neutral place (for example, Sheol or Hades) located under the surface of earth. Ancient religions Ancient Egyptian religion The afterlife played an important role in Ancient Egyptian religion, and its belief system is one of the earliest known in recorded history. When the body died, parts of its soul known as ka (body double) and the ba (personality) would go to the Kingdom of the Dead. While the soul dwelt in the Fields of Aaru, Osiris demanded work as restitution for the protection he provided. Statues were placed in the tombs to serve as substitutes for the deceased. Arriving at one's reward in afterlife was a demanding ordeal, requiring a sin-free heart and the ability to recite the spells, passwords, and formulae of the Book of the Dead. In the Hall of Two Truths, the deceased's heart was weighed against the Shu feather of truth and justice taken from the headdress of the goddess Ma'at. If the heart was lighter than the feather, they could pass on, but if it were heavier they would be devoured by the demon Ammit. Egyptians also believed that being mummified and put in a sarcophagus (an ancient Egyptian "coffin" carved with complex symbols and designs, as well as pictures and hieroglyphs) was the only way to have an afterlife. What are referred to as the Coffin Texts, are inscribed on a coffin and serve as a guide for the challenges in the afterlife. The Coffin texts are more or less a duplication of the Pyramid Texts, which would serve as a guide for Egyptian pharaohs or queens in the afterlife. Only if the corpse had been properly embalmed and entombed in a mastaba, could the dead live again in the Fields of Yalu and accompany the Sun on its daily ride. Due to the dangers the afterlife posed, the Book of the Dead was placed in the tomb with the body as well as food, jewelry, and 'curses'. They also used the "opening of the mouth". Ancient Egyptian civilization was based on religion. The belief in the rebirth after death became the driving force behind funeral practices. Death was simply a temporary interruption, rather than complete cessation of life. Eternal life could be ensured by means like piety to the gods, preservation of the physical form through mummification, and the provision of statuary and other funerary equipment. Each human consisted of the physical body, the ka, the ba, and the akh. The Name and Shadow were also living entities. To enjoy the afterlife, all these elements had to be sustained and protected from harm. On 30 March 2010, a spokesman for the Egyptian Culture Ministry claimed it had unearthed a large red granite door in Luxor with inscriptions by User, a powerful adviser to the 18th Dynasty Queen Hatshepsut who ruled between 1479 BC and 1458 BC, the longest of any woman. It believes the false door is a 'door to the Afterlife'. According to the archaeologists, the door was reused in a structure in Roman Egypt. Ancient Greek and Roman religions The Greek god Hades is known in Greek mythology as the king of the underworld, a place where souls live after death. The Greek god Hermes, the messenger of the gods, would take the dead soul of a person to the underworld (sometimes called Hades or the House of Hades). Hermes would leave the soul on the banks of the River Styx, the river between life and death. Charon, also known as the ferry-man, would take the soul across the river to Hades, if the soul had gold: Upon burial, the family of the dead soul would put coins under the deceased's tongue. Once crossed, the soul would be judged by Aeacus, Rhadamanthus and King Minos. The soul would be sent to Elysium, Tartarus, or Asphodel Fields. The Elysian Fields were for the ones that lived pure lives. It consisted of green fields, valleys and mountains, everyone there was peaceful and contented, and the Sun always shone there. Tartarus was for the people that blasphemed against the gods, or were simply rebellious and consciously evil. The Asphodel Fields were for a varied selection of human souls including those whose sins equalled their goodness, those who were indecisive in their lives, and those who were not judged. Those who had sinned went to the deepest pit, Tartarus. In Tartarus, the soul would be punished by being burned in lava, or stretched on racks. Some heroes of Greek legend are allowed to visit the underworld. The Romans had a similar belief system about the afterlife, with Hades becoming known as Pluto. In the ancient Greek myth about the Labours of Heracles, the hero Heracles had to travel to the underworld to capture Cerberus, the three-headed guard dog, as one of his tasks. In Dream of Scipio, Cicero describes what seems to be an out of body experience, of the soul traveling high above the Earth, looking down at the small planet, from far away. In Book VI of Virgil's Aeneid, the hero, Aeneas, travels to the underworld to see his father. By the River Styx, he sees the souls of those not given a proper burial, forced to wait by the river until someone buries them. While down there, along with the dead, he is shown the place where the wrongly convicted reside, the fields of sorrow where those who committed suicide and now regret it reside, including Aeneas' former lover, the warriors and shades, Tartarus (where the titans and powerful non-mortal enemies of the Olympians reside) where he can hear the groans of the imprisoned, the palace of Pluto, and the fields of Elysium where the descendants of the divine and bravest heroes reside. He sees the river of forgetfulness, Lethe, which the dead must drink to forget their life and begin anew. Lastly, his father shows him all of the future heroes of Rome who will live if Aeneas fulfills his destiny in founding the city. Norse religion The Poetic and Prose Eddas, the oldest sources for information on the Norse concept of the afterlife, vary in their description of the several realms that are described as falling under this topic. The most well-known are: Valhalla: (lit. "Hall of the Slain" i.e. "the Chosen Ones") Half the warriors who die in battle join the god Odin who rules over a majestic hall called Valhalla in Asgard. Fólkvangr: (lit. "Field of the Host") The other half join the goddess Freyja in a great meadow known as Fólkvangr. Hel: (lit. "The Covered Hall") Niflhel: (lit. "The Dark" or "Misty Hel") Abrahamic religions Judaism Sheol Sheol, in the Hebrew Bible, is a place of darkness (Job x. 21, 22) to which all the dead go, both the righteous and the unrighteous, regardless of the moral choices made in life, (Gen. xxxvii. 36; Ezek. xxxii.; Isa. xiv.; Job xxx. 23), a place of stillness, (Ps. lxxxviii. 13, xciv. 17; Eccl. ix. 10), at the longest possible distance from heaven (Job xi. 8; Amos ix. 2; Ps. cxxxix. 8). The inhabitants of Sheol are the "shades" (rephaim), entities without personality or strength. Under some circumstances they are thought to be able to be contacted by the living, as the Witch of Endor contacts the shade of Samuel for Saul, but such practices are forbidden (Deuteronomy 18:10). While the Hebrew Bible appears to describe Sheol as the permanent place of the dead, in the Second Temple period (roughly 500 BC – 70 AD) a more diverse set of ideas developed. In some texts, Sheol is considered to be the home of both the righteous and the wicked, separated into respective compartments; in others, it was considered a place of punishment, meant for the wicked dead alone. When the Hebrew scriptures were translated into Greek in ancient Alexandria around 200 BC, the word "Hades" (the Greek underworld) was substituted for Sheol. This is reflected in the New Testament where Hades is both the underworld of the dead and the personification of the evil it represents. World to Come The Talmud offers a number of thoughts relating to the afterlife. After death, the soul is brought for judgment. Those who have led pristine lives enter immediately into the Olam Haba or world to come. Most do not enter the world to come immediately, but experience a period of reflection of their earthly actions and are made aware of what they have done wrong. Some view this period as being a "re-schooling", with the soul gaining wisdom as one's errors are reviewed. Others view this period to include spiritual discomfort for past wrongs. At the end of this period, not longer than one year, the soul then takes its place in the world to come. Although discomforts are made part of certain Jewish conceptions of the afterlife, the concept of eternal damnation is not a tenet of the Jewish afterlife. According to the Talmud, extinction of the soul is reserved for a far smaller group of malicious and evil leaders, either whose very evil deeds go way beyond norms, or who lead large groups of people to utmost evil. This is also part of Maimonides' 13 principles of faith. Maimonides describes the Olam Haba in spiritual terms, relegating the prophesied physical resurrection to the status of a future miracle, unrelated to the afterlife or the Messianic era. According to Maimonides, an afterlife continues for the soul of every human being, a soul now separated from the body in which it was "housed" during its earthly existence. The Zohar describes Gehenna not as a place of punishment for the wicked but as a place of spiritual purification for souls. Reincarnation in Jewish tradition Although there is no reference to reincarnation in the Talmud or any prior writings, according to rabbis such as Avraham Arieh Trugman, reincarnation is recognized as being part and parcel of Jewish tradition. Trugman explains that it is through oral tradition that the meanings of the Torah, its commandments and stories, are known and understood. The classic work of Jewish mysticism, the Zohar, is quoted liberally in all Jewish learning; in the Zohar the idea of reincarnation is mentioned repeatedly. Trugman states that in the last five centuries the concept of reincarnation, which until then had been a much hidden tradition within Judaism, was given open exposure. Shraga Simmons commented that within the Bible itself, the idea [of reincarnation] is intimated in Deut. 25:5–10, Deut. 33:6 and Isaiah 22:14, 65:6. Yirmiyahu Ullman wrote that reincarnation is an "ancient, mainstream belief in Judaism". The Zohar makes frequent and lengthy references to reincarnation. Onkelos, a righteous convert and authoritative commentator of the same period, explained the verse, "Let Reuben live and not die ..." (Deuteronomy 33:6) to mean that Reuben should merit the World to Come directly, and not have to die again as a result of being reincarnated. Torah scholar, commentator and kabbalist, Nachmanides (Ramban 1195–1270), attributed Job's suffering to reincarnation, as hinted in Job's saying "God does all these things twice or three times with a man, to bring back his soul from the pit to... the light of the living' (Job 33:29, 30)." Reincarnation, called gilgul, became popular in folk belief, and is found in much Yiddish literature among Ashkenazi Jews. Among a few kabbalists, it was posited that some human souls could end up being reincarnated into non-human bodies. These ideas were found in a number of Kabbalistic works from the 13th century, and also among many mystics in the late 16th century. Martin Buber's early collection of stories of the Baal Shem Tov's life includes several that refer to people reincarnating in successive lives. Among well known (generally non-kabbalist or anti-kabbalist) rabbis who rejected the idea of reincarnation are Saadia Gaon, David Kimhi, Hasdai Crescas, Yedayah Bedershi (early 14th century), Joseph Albo, Abraham ibn Daud, the Rosh and Leon de Modena. Saadia Gaon, in Emunoth ve-Deoth (Hebrew: "beliefs and opinions") concludes Section VI with a refutation of the doctrine of metempsychosis (reincarnation). While rebutting reincarnation, Saadia Gaon further states that Jews who hold to reincarnation have adopted non-Jewish beliefs. By no means do all Jews today believe in reincarnation, but belief in reincarnation is not uncommon among many Jews, including Orthodox. Other well-known rabbis who are reincarnationists include Yonassan Gershom, Abraham Isaac Kook, Talmud scholar Adin Steinsaltz, DovBer Pinson, David M. Wexelman, Zalman Schachter, and many others. Reincarnation is cited by authoritative biblical commentators, including Ramban (Nachmanides), Menachem Recanti and Rabbenu Bachya. Among the many volumes of Yitzchak Luria, most of which come down from the pen of his primary disciple, Chaim Vital, are insights explaining issues related to reincarnation. His Shaar HaGilgulim, "The Gates of Reincarnation", is a book devoted exclusively to the subject of reincarnation in Judaism. Rabbi Naftali Silberberg of The Rohr Jewish Learning Institute notes that "Many ideas that originate in other religions and belief systems have been popularized in the media and are taken for granted by unassuming Jews." Christianity Mainstream Christianity professes belief in the Nicene Creed, and English versions of the Nicene Creed in current use include the phrase: "We look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come." When questioned by the Sadducees about the resurrection of the dead (in a context relating to who one's spouse would be if one had been married several times in life), Jesus said that marriage will be irrelevant after the resurrection as the resurrected will be like the angels in heaven. Jesus also maintained that the time would come when the dead would hear the voice of the Son of God, and all who were in the tombs would come out; those who have heard His "[commandments] and believes in the one who sent [Him]" to the resurrection of life, but those who do not to the resurrection of condemnation. The Book of Enoch describes Sheol as divided into four compartments for four types of the dead: the faithful saints who await resurrection in Paradise, the merely virtuous who await their reward, the wicked who await punishment, and the wicked who have already been punished and will not be resurrected on Judgment Day. The Book of Enoch is considered apocryphal by most denominations of Christianity and all denominations of Judaism. The book of 2 Maccabees gives a clear account of the dead awaiting a future resurrection and judgment in addition to prayers and offerings for the dead to remove the burden of sin. The author of Luke recounts the story of Lazarus and the rich man, which shows people in Hades awaiting the resurrection either in comfort or torment. The author of the Book of Revelation writes about God and the angels versus Satan and demons in an epic battle at the end of times when all souls are judged. There is mention of ghostly bodies of past prophets, and the transfiguration. The non-canonical Acts of Paul and Thecla speak of the efficacy of prayer for the dead so that they might be "translated to a state of happiness". Hippolytus of Rome pictures the underworld (Hades) as a place where the righteous dead, awaiting in the bosom of Abraham their resurrection, rejoice at their future prospect, while the unrighteous are tormented at the sight of the "lake of unquenchable fire" into which they are destined to be cast. Gregory of Nyssa discusses the long-before believed possibility of purification of souls after death. Pope Gregory I repeats the concept, articulated over a century earlier by Gregory of Nyssa that the saved suffer purification after death, in connection with which he wrote of "purgatorial flames". The noun "purgatorium" (Latin: place of cleansing) is used for the first time to describe a state of painful purification of the saved after life. The same word in adjectival form (purgatorius -a -um, cleansing), which appears also in non-religious writing, was already used by Christians such as Augustine of Hippo and Pope Gregory I to refer to an after-death cleansing. During the Age of Enlightenment, theologians and philosophers presented various philosophies and beliefs. A notable example is Emanuel Swedenborg who wrote some 18 theological works which describe in detail the nature of the afterlife according to his claimed spiritual experiences, the most famous of which is Heaven and Hell. His report of life there covers a wide range of topics, such as marriage in heaven (where all angels are married), children in heaven (where they are raised by angel parents), time and space in heaven (there are none), the after-death awakening process in the World of Spirits (a place halfway between Heaven and Hell and where people first wake up after death), the allowance of a free will choice between Heaven or Hell (as opposed to being sent to either one by God), the eternity of Hell (one could leave but would never want to), and that all angels or devils were once people on earth. The Catholic Church The "Spiritual Combat", a written work by Lorenzo Scupoli, states that four assaults are attempted by the "evil one" at the hour of death. The Catholic conception of the afterlife teaches that after the body dies, the soul is judged, the righteous and free of sin enter Heaven. However, those who die in unrepented mortal sin go to hell. In the 1990s, the Catechism of the Catholic Church defined hell not as punishment imposed on the sinner but rather as the sinner's self-exclusion from God. Unlike other Christian groups, the Catholic Church teaches that those who die in a state of grace, but still carry venial sin, go to a place called Purgatory where they undergo purification to enter Heaven. Limbo Despite popular opinion, Limbo, which was elaborated upon by theologians beginning in the Middle Ages, was never recognized as a dogma of the Catholic Church, yet, at times, it has been a very popular theological theory within the Church. Limbo is a theory that unbaptized but innocent souls, such as those of infants, virtuous individuals who lived before Jesus Christ was born on earth, or those that die before baptism exist in neither Heaven or Hell proper. Therefore, these souls neither merit the beatific vision, nor are subjected to any punishment, because they are not guilty of any personal sin although they have not received baptism, so still bear original sin. So they are generally seen as existing in a state of natural, but not supernatural, happiness, until the end of time. In other Christian denominations it has been described as an intermediate place or state of confinement in oblivion and neglect. Purgatory The notion of purgatory is associated particularly with the Catholic Church. In the Catholic Church, all those who die in God's grace and friendship, but still imperfectly purified, are indeed assured of their eternal salvation; but after death they undergo purification, so as to achieve the holiness necessary to enter the joy of heaven or the final purification of the elect, which is entirely different from the punishment of the damned. The tradition of the church, by reference to certain texts of scripture, speaks of a "cleansing fire" although it is not always called purgatory. Anglicans of the Anglo-Catholic tradition generally also hold to the belief. John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, believed in an intermediate state between death and the resurrection of the dead and in the possibility of "continuing to grow in holiness there", but Methodism does not officially affirm this belief and denies the possibility of helping by prayer any who may be in that state. Orthodox Christianity The Orthodox Church is intentionally reticent on the afterlife, as it acknowledges the mystery especially of things that have not yet occurred. Beyond the second coming of Jesus, bodily resurrection, and final judgment, all of which is affirmed in the Nicene Creed (325 CE), Orthodoxy does not teach much else in any definitive manner. Unlike Western forms of Christianity, however, Orthodoxy is traditionally non-dualist and does not teach that there are two separate literal locations of heaven and hell, but instead acknowledges that "the 'location' of one's final destiny—heaven or hell—as being figurative." Instead, Orthodoxy teaches that the final judgment is simply one's uniform encounter with divine love and mercy, but this encounter is experienced multifariously depending on the extent to which one has been transformed, partaken of divinity, and is therefore compatible or incompatible with God. "The monadic, immutable, and ceaseless object of eschatological encounter is therefore the love and mercy of God, his glory which infuses the heavenly temple, and it is the subjective human reaction which engenders multiplicity or any division of experience." For instance, St. Isaac the Syrian observes that "those who are punished in Gehenna, are scourged by the scourge of love. ... The power of love works in two ways: it torments sinners ... [as] bitter regret. But love inebriates the souls of the sons of Heaven
this earth in the sense that this entity will bear a similar relationship to the soul as the soul bears relationship with the human existence on earth. On earth, if a person leads a righteous life and submits to the will of God, his or her tastes become attuned to enjoying spiritual pleasures as opposed to carnal desires. With this, an "embryonic soul" begins to take shape. Different tastes are said to be born which a person given to carnal passions finds no enjoyment. For example, sacrifice of one's own rights over that of others becomes enjoyable, or that forgiveness becomes second nature. In such a state a person finds contentment and peace at heart and at this stage, according to Ahmadiyya beliefs, it can be said that a soul within the soul has begun to take shape. Sufism The Sufi Muslim scholar Ibn 'Arabi defined Barzakh as the intermediate realm or "isthmus". It is between the world of corporeal bodies and the world of spirits, and is a means of contact between the two worlds. Without it, there would be no contact between the two and both would cease to exist. He described it as simple and luminous, like the world of spirits, but also able to take on many different forms just like the world of corporeal bodies can. In broader terms Barzakh, "is anything that separates two things". It has been called the dream world in which the dreamer is in both life and death. Baháʼí Faith The teachings of the Baháʼí Faith state that the nature of the afterlife is beyond the understanding of those living, just as an unborn fetus cannot understand the nature of the world outside of the womb. The Baháʼí writings state that the soul is immortal and after death it will continue to progress until it finally attains God's presence. In Baháʼí belief, souls in the afterlife will continue to retain their individuality and consciousness and will be able to recognize and communicate spiritually with other souls whom they have made deep profound friendships with, such as their spouses. The Baháʼí scriptures also state there are distinctions between souls in the afterlife, and that souls will recognize the worth of their own deeds and understand the consequences of their actions. It is explained that those souls that have turned toward God will experience gladness, while those who have lived in error will become aware of the opportunities they have lost. Also, in the Baháʼí view, souls will be able to recognize the accomplishments of the souls that have reached the same level as themselves, but not those that have achieved a rank higher than them. Indian religions Buddhism Buddhists maintain that rebirth takes place without an unchanging self or soul passing from one form to another. The type of rebirth will be conditioned by the moral tone of the person's actions (kamma or karma). For example, if a person has committed harmful actions by body, speech and mind based on greed, hate and delusion, would have his/her rebirth in a lower realm, i.e. an animal, a hungry ghost or a hell realm, is to be expected. On the other hand, where a person has performed skillful actions based on generosity, loving-kindness (metta), compassion and wisdom, rebirth in a happy realm, i.e. human or one of the many heavenly realms, can be expected. However, the mechanism of rebirth with Kamma is not deterministic. It depends on various levels of kamma. The most important moment that determines where a person is reborn into is the last thought moment. At that moment, heavy kamma would ripen if there were performed. If not, near death kamma would ripen, and if not death kamma, then habitual kamma would ripen. Finally if none of the above happened, then residual kamma from previous actions can ripen. According to Theravada Buddhism, there are 31 realms of existence that one can be reborn into. Pure Land Buddhism of Mahayana believes in a special place apart from the 31 planes of existence called Pure Land. It is believed that each Buddha has their own pure land, created out of their merits for the sake of sentient beings who recall them mindfully to be able to be reborn in their pure land and train to become a Buddha there. Thus the main practice of pure land Buddhism is to chant a Buddha's name. In Tibetan Buddhism the Tibetan Book of the Dead explains the intermediate state of humans between death and reincarnation. The deceased will find the bright light of wisdom, which shows a straightforward path to move upward and leave the cycle of reincarnation. There are various reasons why the deceased do not follow that light. Some had no briefing about the intermediate state in the former life. Others only used to follow their basic instincts like animals. And some have fear, which results from foul deeds in the former life or from insistent haughtiness. In the intermediate state the awareness is very flexible, so it is important to be virtuous, adopt a positive attitude, and avoid negative ideas. Ideas which are rising from subconsciousness can cause extreme tempers and cowing visions. In this situation they have to understand, that these manifestations are just reflections of the inner thoughts. No one can really hurt them, because they have no more material body. The deceased get help from different Buddhas who show them the path to the bright light. The ones who do not follow the path after all will get hints for a better reincarnation. They have to release the things and beings on which or whom they still hang from the life before. It is recommended to choose a family where the parents trust in the Dharma and to reincarnate with the will to care for the welfare of all beings. "Life is cosmic energy of the universe and after death it merges in universe again and as the time comes to find the suitable place for the entity died in the life condition it gets born. There are 10 life states of any life: Hell, hunger, anger, animality, rapture, humanity, learning, realization, bodhisatva and buddhahood. The life dies in which life condition it reborn in the same life condition." Hinduism There are two major views of afterlife in Hinduism: mythical and philosophical. The philosophies of Hinduism consider each individual consists of 3 bodies: physical body compose of water and bio-matter (sthūla śarīra), an energetic/psychic/mental/subtle body (sūkṣma-śarīra) and a causal body (kāraṇa śarīra) comprising subliminal stuff i.e. mental impressions etc. The individual is a stream of consciousness (Ātman) which flows through all the physical changes of the body and at the death of the physical body, flows on into another physical body. The two components that transmigrate are the subtle body and the causal body. The thought that occupies the mind at the time of death determines the quality of our rebirth (antim smaraṇa), hence Hinduism advises to be mindful of one's thoughts and cultivate positive wholesome thoughts - Mantra chanting (Japa) is commonly practiced for this. The mythical includes the philosophical but adds heaven and hell myths. When one leaves the physical body at death he appears in the court of Lord Yama, the God of Death for an exit interview. The panel consists of Yama and Chitragupta - the cosmic accountant, and Varuna the cosmic intelligence officer. He is counseled about his life, achievements and failures and is shown a mirror in which his entire life is reflected. (Philosophically these three men are projections of one's mind) Yama the Lord of Justice then sends him to a heavenly realm (svarga) if he has been exceptionally benevolent and beneficent for a period of Rest and Recreation. his period is limited in time by the weight of his good deeds. If he has been exceptionally malevolent and caused immense suffering to other beings then he is sent to a cosmic gulag (naraka) for his sins. After one has exhausted his karmas, he takes birth again to continue his spiritual evolution. Rebirth can take place as a god (deva), a human (manuṣya) an animal (tiryak) — but it is generally taught that the spiritual evolution takes place from lower to higher species. In certain cases of traumatic death a person can take the form of a Preta or Hungry Ghost - and remains in an earth-bound state interminably - until certain ceremonies are done to liberate them. This mythological part is extensively elaborated in the Hindu Puranas especially in the Garuda Purana. The Upanishads are the first scriptures in Hinduism which explicitly mention about Afterlife, The Bhagavad Gita, a famous Hindu script, says that just as a man discards his old clothes and wears new ones; similarly the Atman discards the old body and takes on a new one. In Hinduism, the belief is that the body is nothing but a shell, the consciousness inside is immutable and indestructible and takes on different lives in a cycle of birth and death. The end of this cycle is called mukti (Sanskrit: मुक्ति) and staying finally with the ultimate reality forever; is moksha (Sanskrit: मोक्ष) or liberation Jainism Jainism also believes in the afterlife. They believe that the soul takes on a body form based on previous karmas or actions performed by that soul through eternity. Jains believe the soul is eternal and that the freedom from the cycle of reincarnation is the means to attain eternal bliss. Sikhism The essential doctrine of Sikhism is to experience the divine through simple living, meditation and contemplation while being alive. Sikhism also has the belief of being in union with God while living. Accounts of afterlife are considered to be aimed at the popular prevailing views of the time so as to provide a referential framework without necessarily establishing a belief in the afterlife. Thus while it is also acknowledged that living the life of a householder is above the metaphysical truth, Sikhism can be considered agnostic to the question of an afterlife. Some scholars also interpret the mention of reincarnation to be naturalistic akin to the biogeochemical cycles. But if one analyses the Sikh Scriptures carefully, one may find that on many occasions the afterlife and the existence of heaven and hell are mentioned in Guru Granth Sahib and in Dasam Granth, so from that it can be concluded that Sikhism does believe in the existence of heaven and hell; however, heaven and hell are created to temporarily reward and punish, and one will then take birth again until one merges in God. According to the Sikh scriptures, the human form is the closet form to God and the best opportunity for a human being to attain salvation and merge back with God. Sikh Gurus said that nothing dies, nothing is born, everything is ever present, and it just changes forms. Like standing in front of a wardrobe, you pick up a dress and wear it and then you discard it. You wear another one. Thus, in the view of Sikhism, your soul is never born and never dies. Your soul is a part of God and hence lives forever. Others Traditional African religions Traditional African religions are diverse in their beliefs in an afterlife. Hunter-gatherer societies such as the Hadza have no particular belief in an afterlife, and the death of an individual is a straightforward end to their existence. Ancestor cults are found throughout Sub-Saharan Africa, including cultures like the Yombe, Beng, Yoruba and Ewe, "[T]he belief that the dead come back into life and are reborn into their families is given concrete expression in the personal names that are given to children....What is reincarnated are some of the dominant characteristics of the ancestor and not his soul. For each soul remains distinct and each birth represents a new soul." The Yoruba, Dogon and LoDagoa have eschatological ideas similar to Abrahamic religions, "but in most African societies, there is a marked absence of such clear-cut notions of heaven and hell, although there are notions of God judging the soul after death." In some societies like the Mende, multiple beliefs coexist. The Mende believe that people die twice: once during the process of joining the secret society, and again during biological death after which they become ancestors. However, some Mende also believe that after people are created by God they live ten consecutive lives, each in progressively descending worlds. One cross-cultural theme is that the ancestors are part of the world of the living, interacting with it regularly. Shinto It is common for families to participate in ceremonies for children at a shrine, yet have a Buddhist funeral at the time of death. In old Japanese legends, it is often claimed that the dead go to a place called yomi (黄泉), a gloomy underground realm with a river separating the living from the dead mentioned in the legend of Izanami and Izanagi. This yomi very closely resembles the Greek Hades; however, later myths include notions of resurrection and even Elysium-like descriptions such as in the legend of Okuninushi and Susanoo. Shinto tends to hold negative views on death and corpses as a source of pollution called kegare. However, death is also viewed as a path towards apotheosis in Shintoism as can be evidenced by how legendary individuals become enshrined after death. Perhaps the most famous would be Emperor Ojin who was enshrined as Hachiman the God of War after his death. Unitarian Universalism Some Unitarian Universalists believe in universalism: that all souls will ultimately be saved and that there are no torments of hell. Unitarian Universalists differ widely in their theology hence there is no exact same stance on the issue. Although Unitarians historically believed in a literal hell, and Universalists historically believed that everyone goes to heaven, modern Unitarian Universalists can be categorized into those believing in a heaven, reincarnation and oblivion. Most Unitarian Universalists believe that heaven and hell are symbolic places of consciousness and the faith is largely focused on the worldly life rather than any possible afterlife. Spiritualism According to Edgar Cayce, the afterlife consisted of nine realms equated with the nine planets of astrology. The first, symbolized by Saturn, was a level for the purification of the souls. The second, Mercury's realm, gives us the ability to consider problems as a whole. The third of the nine soul realms is ruled by Earth and is associated with the Earthly pleasures. The fourth realm is where we find out about love and is ruled by Venus. The fifth realm is where we meet our limitations and is ruled by Mars. The sixth realm is ruled by Neptune, and is where we begin to use our creative powers and free ourselves from the material world. The seventh realm is symbolized by Jupiter, which strengthens the soul's ability to depict situations, to analyze people and places, things, and conditions. The eighth afterlife realm is ruled by Uranus and develops psychic ability. The ninth afterlife realm is symbolized by Pluto, the astrological realm of the unconscious. This afterlife realm is a transient place where souls can choose to travel to other realms or other solar systems, it is the souls liberation into eternity, and is the realm that opens the doorway from our solar system into the cosmos point of view. Mainstream Spiritualists postulate a series of seven realms that are not unlike Edgar Cayce's nine realms ruled by the planets. As it evolves, the soul moves higher and higher until it reaches the ultimate realm of spiritual oneness. The first realm, equated with hell, is the place where troubled souls spend a long time before they are compelled to move up to the next level. The second realm, where most souls move directly, is thought of as an intermediate transition between the lower planes of life and hell and the higher perfect realms of the universe. The third level is for those who have worked with their karmic inheritance. The fourth level is that from which evolved souls teach and direct those on Earth. The fifth level is where the soul leaves human consciousness behind. At the sixth plane, the soul is finally aligned with the cosmic consciousness and has no sense of separateness or individuality. Finally, the seventh level, the goal of each soul, is where the soul transcends its own sense of "soulfulness" and reunites with the World Soul and the universe. Wicca The Wiccan afterlife is most commonly described as The Summerland. Here, souls rest, recuperate from life, and reflect on the experiences they had during their lives. After a period of rest, the souls are reincarnated, and the memory of their previous lives is erased. Many Wiccans see The Summerland as a place to reflect on their life actions. It is not a place of reward, but rather the end of a life journey at an end point of incarnations. Zoroastrianism Zoroastrianism states that the urvan, the disembodied spirit, lingers on earth for three days before departing downward to the kingdom of the dead that is ruled by Yima. For the three days that it rests on Earth, righteous souls sit at the head of their body, chanting the Ustavaiti Gathas with joy, while a wicked person sits at the feet of the corpse, wails and recites the Yasna. Zoroastrianism states that for the righteous souls, a beautiful maiden, which is the personification of the soul's good thoughts, words and deeds, appears. For a wicked person, a very old, ugly, naked hag appears. After three nights, the soul of the wicked is taken by the demon Vizaresa (Vīzarəša), to Chinvat bridge, and is made to go to darkness (hell). Yima is believed to have been the first king on earth to rule, as well as the first man to die. Inside of Yima's realm, the spirits live a shadowy existence, and are dependent on their own descendants which are still living on Earth. Their descendants are to satisfy their hunger and clothe them, through rituals done on earth. Rituals which are done on the first three days are vital and important, as they protect the soul from evil powers and give it strength to reach the underworld. After three days, the soul crosses Chinvat bridge which is the Final Judgment of the soul. Rashnu and Sraosha are present at the final judgment. The list is expanded sometimes, and include Vahman and Ormazd. Rashnu is the yazata who holds the scales of justice. If the good deeds of the person outweigh the bad, the soul is worthy of paradise. If the bad deeds outweigh the good, the bridge narrows down to the width of a blade-edge, and a horrid hag pulls the soul in her arms, and takes it down to hell with her. Misvan Gatu is the "place of the mixed ones" where the souls lead a gray existence, lacking both joy and sorrow. A soul goes here if his/her good deeds and bad deeds are equal, and Rashnu's scale is equal. Parapsychology The Society for Psychical Research was founded in 1882 with the express intention of investigating phenomena relating to Spiritualism and the afterlife. Its members continue to conduct scientific research on the paranormal to this day. Some of the earliest attempts to apply scientific methods to the study of phenomena relating to an afterlife were conducted by this organization. Its earliest members included noted scientists like William Crookes, and philosophers such as Henry Sidgwick and William James. Parapsychological investigation of the afterlife includes the study of haunting, apparitions of the deceased, instrumental trans-communication, electronic voice phenomena, and mediumship. A study conducted in 1901 by physician Duncan MacDougall sought to measure the weight lost by a human when the soul "departed the body" upon death. MacDougall weighed dying patients in an attempt to prove that the soul was material, tangible and thus measurable. Although MacDougall's results varied considerably from "21 grams", for some people this figure has become synonymous with the measure of a soul's mass. The title of the 2003 movie 21 Grams is a reference to MacDougall's findings. His results have never been reproduced, and are generally regarded either as meaningless or considered to have had little if any scientific merit. Frank Tipler has argued that physics can explain immortality, although such arguments are not falsifiable and, in Karl Popper's views, they do not qualify as science. After 25 years of parapsychological research Susan Blackmore came to the conclusion that, according to her experiences, there is not enough empirical evidence for many of these cases. Mediumship Mediums purportedly act as a vessel for communications from spirits in other realms. Mediumship is not specific to one culture or religion; it can be identified in several belief systems, most notably Spiritualism. While the practice gained popularity in Europe and North America in the 19th century, evidence of mediumship dates back thousands of years in Asia. Mediums who claim to have contact with deceased people include Tyler Henry and Pascal Voggenhuber. Near death research Research also includes the study of the near death experience. Scientists who have worked in this area include Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, Raymond Moody, Sam Parnia, Michael Sabom, Bruce Greyson, Peter Fenwick, Jeffrey Long, Susan Blackmore, Charles Tart, William James, Ian Stevenson, Michael Persinger, Pim van Lommel, Penny Sartori, Walter van Laack among others. Philosophy Modern philosophy There is a view based on the philosophical question of personal identity, termed open individualism by Daniel Kolak, that concludes that individual conscious experience is illusory, and because consciousness continues after death in all conscious beings, you do not die. This position has allegedly been supported by physicists such as Erwin Schrödinger and Freeman Dyson. Certain problems arise with the idea of a particular person continuing after death. Peter van Inwagen, in his argument regarding resurrection, notes that the materialist must have some sort of physical continuity. John Hick also raises questions regarding personal identity in his book, Death and Eternal Life, using an example of a person ceasing to exist in one place while an exact replica appears in another. If the replica had all the same experiences, traits, and physical appearances of the first person, we would all attribute the same identity to the second, according to Hick. Process philosophy In the panentheistic model of process philosophy and theology the writers Alfred North Whitehead and Charles Hartshorne rejected the idea that the universe was made of substance, instead saying reality is composed of living experiences (occasions of experience). According to Hartshorne people do not experience subjective (or personal) immortality in the afterlife, but they do have objective immortality because their experiences live on forever in God, who contains all that was. However other process philosophers such as David Ray Griffin have written that people may have subjective experience after death. Science Psychological proposals for the origin of a belief in an afterlife include cognitive disposition, cultural learning, and as an intuitive religious idea. In one study, children were able to recognize the ending of physical, mental, and perceptual activity in death, but were hesitant to conclude the ending of will, self, or emotion in death. In 2008, a large-scale study conducted by the University of Southampton involving 2060 patients from 15 hospitals in the United Kingdom, United States and Austria was launched. The AWARE (AWAreness during REsuscitation) study examined the broad range of mental experiences in relation to death. In a large study, researchers also tested the validity of conscious experiences for the first time using objective markers, to determine whether claims of awareness compatible with out-of-body experiences correspond with real or hallucinatory events. The results revealed that 40% of those who survived a cardiac arrest were aware during the time that they were clinically dead and before their hearts were restarted. One patient also had a verified out-of-body experience (over 80% of patients did not survive their cardiac arrest or were too sick to be interviewed), but his cardiac arrest occurred in a room without markers. Dr. Parnia in the interview stated, "The evidence thus far suggests that in the first few minutes after death, consciousness is not annihilated." The study continues in AWARE II, which is set to be completed in September 2020. Studies have also been done on the widely reported phenomenon of Near Death Experiences. Experiencers commonly report being transported to a different “realm” or “plane of existence” and they have been shown to display a lasting positive aftereffect on most experiencers. See also Allegory of the long spoons Astral Plane Bardo Brig of Dread (Bridge of Dread) Empiricism Epistemology Eternal oblivion Exaltation (Mormonism) Fate of the unlearned Heaven Rebecca Hensler Hell Immortality Mictlan Mind uploading Nirvana Omega Point Paradise Phowa Pre-existence Purgatory Rebirth Reincarnation Soul Soul retrieval Spiritism Suspended animation Spirit World Undead References Explanatory notes Citations Bibliography Afterlife: A History of Life after Death by Philip C Almond (London and Ithaca NY: I.B. Tauris and Cornell University Press, 2015). Death and Afterlife: Perspectives of World Religions edited by Hiroshi Obayashi, Praeger, 1991. Beyond Death: Theological and Philosophical Reflections on Life after Death edited by Dan Cohn-Sherbok and Christopher Lewis, Pelgrave-MacMillan, 1995. The Islamic Understanding of Death and Resurrection by Jane Idelman Smith and Yazbeck Haddad, Oxford UP, 2002. Life After Death: A History of the Afterlife in Western Religion by Alan F. Segal, Doubleday, 2004. Brain & Belief: An Exploration of the Human Soul by John J. McGraw, Aegis Press, 2004. Beyond the Threshold: Afterlife Beliefs and Experiences in World Religions by Christopher M. Moreman, Rowman & Littlefield, 2008. Is there an
could be less affected by mechanical forces of the Earth and optical distortions from its atmosphere. Operated from 1989 to 1993, Hipparcos measured large and small angles on the sky with much greater precision than any previous optical telescopes. During its 4-year run, the positions, parallaxes, and proper motions of 118,218 stars were determined with an unprecedented degree of accuracy. A new "Tycho catalog" drew together a database of 1,058,332 stars to within 20-30 mas (milliarcseconds). Additional catalogues were compiled for the 23,882 double and multiple stars and 11,597 variable stars also analyzed during the Hipparcos mission. In 2013, the Gaia satellite was launched and improved the accuracy of Hipparcos. The precision was improved by a factor of 100 and enabled the mapping of a billion stars. Today, the catalogue most often used is USNO-B1.0, an all-sky catalogue that tracks proper motions, positions, magnitudes and other characteristics for over one billion stellar objects. During the past 50 years, 7,435 Schmidt camera plates were used to complete several sky surveys that make the data in USNO-B1.0 accurate to within 0.2 arcsec. Applications Apart from the fundamental function of providing astronomers with a reference frame to report their observations in, astrometry is also fundamental for fields like celestial mechanics, stellar dynamics and galactic astronomy. In observational astronomy, astrometric techniques help identify stellar objects by their unique motions. It is instrumental for keeping time, in that UTC is essentially the atomic time synchronized to Earth's rotation by means of exact astronomical observations. Astrometry is an important step in the cosmic distance ladder because it establishes parallax distance estimates for stars in the Milky Way. Astrometry has also been used to support claims of extrasolar planet detection by measuring the displacement the proposed planets cause in their parent star's apparent position on the sky, due to their mutual orbit around the center of mass of the system. Astrometry is more accurate in space missions that are not affected by the distorting effects of the Earth's atmosphere. NASA's planned Space Interferometry Mission (SIM PlanetQuest) (now cancelled) was to utilize astrometric techniques to detect terrestrial planets orbiting 200 or so of the nearest solar-type stars.
made the first measurement of stellar parallax: 0.3 arcsec for the binary star 61 Cygni. Being very difficult to measure, only about 60 stellar parallaxes had been obtained by the end of the 19th century, mostly by use of the filar micrometer. Astrographs using astronomical photographic plates sped the process in the early 20th century. Automated plate-measuring machines and more sophisticated computer technology of the 1960s allowed more efficient compilation of star catalogues. Started in the late 19th century, the project Carte du Ciel to improve star mapping couldn't be finished but made photography a common technique for astrometry. In the 1980s, charge-coupled devices (CCDs) replaced photographic plates and reduced optical uncertainties to one milliarcsecond. This technology made astrometry less expensive, opening the field to an amateur audience. In 1989, the European Space Agency's Hipparcos satellite took astrometry into orbit, where it could be less affected by mechanical forces of the Earth and optical distortions from its atmosphere. Operated from 1989 to 1993, Hipparcos measured large and small angles on the sky with much greater precision than any previous optical telescopes. During its 4-year run, the positions, parallaxes, and proper motions of 118,218 stars were determined with an unprecedented degree of accuracy. A new "Tycho catalog" drew together a database of 1,058,332 stars to within 20-30 mas (milliarcseconds). Additional catalogues were compiled for the 23,882 double and multiple stars and 11,597 variable stars also analyzed during the Hipparcos mission. In 2013, the Gaia satellite was launched and improved the accuracy of Hipparcos. The precision was improved by a factor of 100 and enabled the mapping of a billion stars. Today, the catalogue most often used is USNO-B1.0, an all-sky catalogue that tracks proper motions, positions, magnitudes and other characteristics for over one billion stellar objects. During the past 50 years, 7,435 Schmidt camera plates were used to complete several sky surveys that make the data in USNO-B1.0 accurate to within 0.2 arcsec. Applications Apart from the fundamental function of providing astronomers with a reference frame to report their observations in, astrometry is also fundamental for fields like celestial mechanics, stellar dynamics and galactic astronomy. In observational astronomy, astrometric techniques help identify stellar objects by their unique motions. It is instrumental for keeping time, in that UTC is essentially the atomic time synchronized to Earth's rotation by means of exact astronomical observations. Astrometry is an important step in the cosmic distance ladder because it establishes parallax distance estimates for stars in the Milky Way. Astrometry has also been used to support claims of extrasolar planet detection
Zeus married the goddess Metis, who is described as the "wisest among gods and mortal men", and engaged in sexual intercourse with her. After learning that Metis was pregnant, however, he became afraid that the unborn offspring would try to overthrow him, because Gaia and Ouranos had prophesied that Metis would bear children wiser than their father. In order to prevent this, Zeus tricked Metis into letting him swallow her, but it was too late because Metis had already conceived. A later account of the story from the Bibliotheca of Pseudo-Apollodorus, written in the second century AD, makes Metis Zeus's unwilling sexual partner, rather than his wife. According to this version of the story, Metis transformed into many different shapes in effort to escape Zeus, but Zeus successfully raped her and swallowed her. After swallowing Metis, Zeus took six more wives in succession until he married his seventh and present wife, Hera. Then Zeus experienced an enormous headache. He was in such pain that he ordered someone (either Prometheus, Hephaestus, Hermes, Ares, or Palaemon, depending on the sources examined) to cleave his head open with the labrys, the double-headed Minoan axe. Athena leaped from Zeus's head, fully grown and armed. The "First Homeric Hymn to Athena" states in lines 9–16 that the gods were awestruck by Athena's appearance and even Helios, the god of the sun, stopped his chariot in the sky. Pindar, in his "Seventh Olympian Ode", states that she "cried aloud with a mighty shout" and that "the Sky and mother Earth shuddered before her." Hesiod states that Hera was so annoyed at Zeus for having given birth to a child on his own that she conceived and bore Hephaestus by herself, but in Imagines 2. 27 (trans. Fairbanks), the third-century AD Greek rhetorician Philostratus the Elder writes that Hera "rejoices" at Athena's birth "as though Athena were her daughter also." The second-century AD Christian apologist Justin Martyr takes issue with those pagans who erect at springs images of Kore, whom he interprets as Athena: "They said that Athena was the daughter of Zeus not from intercourse, but when the god had in mind the making of a world through a word (logos) his first thought was Athena." According to a version of the story in a scholium on the Iliad (found nowhere else), when Zeus swallowed Metis, she was pregnant with Athena by the Cyclops Brontes. The Etymologicum Magnum instead deems Athena the daughter of the Daktyl Itonos. Fragments attributed by the Christian Eusebius of Caesarea to the semi-legendary Phoenician historian Sanchuniathon, which Eusebius thought had been written before the Trojan war, make Athena instead the daughter of Cronus, a king of Byblos who visited "the inhabitable world" and bequeathed Attica to Athena. Pallas Athena Athena's epithet Pallas is derived either from , meaning "to brandish [as a weapon]", or, more likely, from and related words, meaning "youth, young woman". On this topic, Walter Burkert says "she is the Pallas of Athens, Pallas Athenaie, just as Hera of Argos is Here Argeie." In later times, after the original meaning of the name had been forgotten, the Greeks invented myths to explain its origin, such as those reported by the Epicurean philosopher Philodemus and the Bibliotheca of Pseudo-Apollodorus, which claim that Pallas was originally a separate entity, whom Athena had slain in combat. In one version of the myth, Pallas was the daughter of the sea-god Triton; she and Athena were childhood friends, but Athena accidentally killed her during a friendly sparring match. Distraught over what she had done, Athena took the name Pallas for herself as a sign of her grief. In another version of the story, Pallas was a Gigante; Athena slew him during the Gigantomachy and flayed off his skin to make her cloak, which she wore as a victory trophy. In an alternative variation of the same myth, Pallas was instead Athena's father, who attempted to assault his own daughter, causing Athena to kill him and take his skin as a trophy. The palladion was a statue of Athena that was said to have stood in her temple on the Trojan Acropolis. Athena was said to have carved the statue herself in the likeness of her dead friend Pallas. The statue had special talisman-like properties and it was thought that, as long as it was in the city, Troy could never fall. When the Greeks captured Troy, Cassandra, the daughter of Priam, clung to the palladion for protection, but Ajax the Lesser violently tore her away from it and dragged her over to the other captives. Athena was infuriated by this violation of her protection. Although Agamemnon attempted to placate her anger with sacrifices, Athena sent a storm at Cape Kaphereos to destroy almost the entire Greek fleet and scatter all of the surviving ships across the Aegean. Lady of Athens In Homer's Iliad, Athena, as a war goddess, inspired and fought alongside the Greek heroes; her aid was synonymous with military prowess. Also in the Iliad, Zeus, the chief god, specifically assigned the sphere of war to Ares, the god of war, and Athena. Athena's moral and military superiority to Ares derived in part from the fact that she represented the intellectual and civilized side of war and the virtues of justice and skill, whereas Ares represented mere blood lust. Her superiority also derived in part from the vastly greater variety and importance of her functions and from the patriotism of Homer's predecessors, Ares being of foreign origin. In the Iliad, Athena was the divine form of the heroic, martial ideal: she personified excellence in close combat, victory, and glory. The qualities that led to victory were found on the aegis, or breastplate, that Athena wore when she went to war: fear, strife, defense, and assault. Athena appears in Homer's Odyssey as the tutelary deity of Odysseus, and myths from later sources portray her similarly as helper of Perseus and Heracles (Hercules). As the guardian of the welfare of kings, Athena became the goddess of good counsel, of prudent restraint and practical insight, as well as of war. In a founding myth reported by Pseudo-Apollodorus, Athena competed with Poseidon for the patronage of Athens. They agreed that each would give the Athenians one gift and that Cecrops, the king of Athens, would determine which gift was better. Poseidon struck the ground with his trident and a salt water spring sprang up; this gave the Athenians access to trade and water. Athens at its height was a significant sea power, defeating the Persian fleet at the Battle of Salamis—but the water was salty and undrinkable. In an alternative version of the myth from Vergil's Georgics, Poseidon instead gave the Athenians the first horse. Athena offered the first domesticated olive tree. Cecrops accepted this gift and declared Athena the patron goddess of Athens. The olive tree brought wood, oil, and food, and became a symbol of Athenian economic prosperity. Robert Graves was of the opinion that "Poseidon's attempts to take possession of certain cities are political myths", which reflect the conflict between matriarchal and patriarchal religions. Pseudo-Apollodorus records an archaic legend, which claims that Hephaestus once attempted to rape Athena, but she pushed him away, causing him to ejaculate on her thigh. Athena wiped the semen off using a tuft of wool, which she tossed into the dust, impregnating Gaia and causing her to give birth to Erichthonius. Athena adopted Erichthonius as her son and raised him. The Roman mythographer Hyginus records a similar story in which Hephaestus demanded Zeus to let him marry Athena since he was the one who had smashed open Zeus's skull, allowing Athena to be born. Zeus agreed to this and Hephaestus and Athena were married, but, when Hephaestus was about to consummate the union, Athena vanished from the bridal bed, causing him to ejaculate on the floor, thus impregnating Gaia with Erichthonius. The geographer Pausanias records that Athena placed the infant Erichthonius into a small chest (cista), which she entrusted to the care of the three daughters of Cecrops: Herse, Pandrosos, and Aglauros of Athens. She warned the three sisters not to open the chest, but did not explain to them why or what was in it. Aglauros, and possibly one of the other sisters, opened the chest. Differing reports say that they either found that the child itself was a serpent, that it was guarded by a serpent, that it was guarded by two serpents, or that it had the legs of a serpent. In Pausanias's story, the two sisters were driven mad by the sight of the chest's contents and hurled themselves off the Acropolis, dying instantly, but an Attic vase painting shows them being chased by the serpent off the edge of the cliff instead. Erichthonius was one of the most important founding heroes of Athens and the legend of the daughters of Cecrops was a cult myth linked to the rituals of the Arrhephoria festival. Pausanias records that, during the Arrhephoria, two young girls known as the Arrhephoroi, who lived near the temple of Athena Polias, would be given hidden objects by the priestess of Athena, which they would carry on their heads down a natural underground passage. They would leave the objects they had been given at the bottom of the passage and take another set of hidden objects, which they would carry on their heads back up to the temple. The ritual was performed in the dead of night and no one, not even the priestess, knew what the objects were. The serpent in the story may be the same one depicted coiled at Athena's feet in Pheidias's famous statue of the Athena Parthenos in the Parthenon. Many of the surviving sculptures of Athena show this serpent. Herodotus records that a serpent lived in a crevice on the north side of the summit of the Athenian Acropolis and that the Athenians left a honey cake for it each month as an offering. On the eve of the Second Persian invasion of Greece in 480 BC, the serpent did not eat the honey cake and the Athenians interpreted it as a sign that Athena herself had abandoned them. Another version of the myth of the Athenian maidens is told in Metamorphoses by the Roman poet Ovid (43 BC17 AD); in this late variant Hermes falls in love with Herse. Herse, Aglaulus, and Pandrosus go to the temple to offer sacrifices to Athena. Hermes demands help from Aglaulus to seduce Herse. Aglaulus demands money in exchange. Hermes gives her the money the sisters have already offered to Athena. As punishment for Aglaulus's greed, Athena asks the goddess Envy to make Aglaulus jealous of Herse. When Hermes arrives to seduce Herse, Aglaulus stands in his way instead of helping him as she had agreed. He turns her to stone. Patron of heroes According to Pseudo-Apollodorus's Bibliotheca, Athena advised Argos, the builder of the Argo, the ship on which the hero Jason and his band of Argonauts sailed, and aided in the ship's construction. Pseudo-Apollodorus also records that Athena guided the hero Perseus in his quest to behead Medusa. She and Hermes, the god of travelers, appeared to Perseus after he set off on his quest and gifted him with tools he would need to kill the Gorgon. Athena gave Perseus a polished bronze shield to view Medusa's reflection rather than looking at her directly and thereby avoid being turned to stone. Hermes gave him an adamantine scythe to cut off Medusa's head. When Perseus swung his blade to behead Medusa, Athena guided it, allowing his scythe to cut it clean off. According to Pindar's Thirteenth Olympian Ode, Athena helped the hero Bellerophon tame the winged horse Pegasus by giving him a bit. In ancient Greek art, Athena is frequently shown aiding the hero Heracles. She appears in four of the twelve metopes on the Temple of Zeus at Olympia depicting Heracles's Twelve Labors, including the first, in which she passively watches him slay the Nemean lion, and the tenth, in which she is shown actively helping him hold up the sky. She is presented as his "stern ally", but also the "gentle... acknowledger of his achievements." Artistic depictions of Heracles's apotheosis show Athena driving him to Mount Olympus in her chariot and presenting him to Zeus for his deification. In Aeschylus's tragedy Orestes, Athena intervenes to save Orestes from the wrath of the Erinyes and presides over his trial for the murder of his mother Clytemnestra. When half the jury votes to acquit and the other half votes to convict, Athena casts the deciding vote to acquit Orestes and declares that, from then on, whenever a jury is tied, the defendant shall always be acquitted. In The Odyssey, Odysseus' cunning and shrewd nature quickly wins Athena's favour. For the first part of the poem, however, she largely is confined to aiding him only from afar, mainly by implanting thoughts in his head during his journey home from Troy. Her guiding actions reinforce her role as the "protectress of heroes," or, as mythologian Walter Friedrich Otto dubbed her, the "goddess of nearness," due to her mentoring and motherly probing. It is not until he washes up on the shore of the island of the Phaeacians, where Nausicaa is washing her clothes that Athena arrives personally to provide more tangible assistance. She appears in Nausicaa's dreams to ensure that the princess rescues Odysseus and plays a role in his eventual escort to Ithaca. Athena appears to Odysseus upon his arrival, disguised as a herdsman; she initially lies and tells him that Penelope, his wife, has remarried and that he is believed to be dead, but Odysseus lies back to her, employing skillful prevarications to protect himself. Impressed by his resolve and shrewdness, she reveals herself and tells him what he needs to know in order to win back his kingdom. She disguises him as an elderly beggar so that he will not be recognized by the suitors or Penelope, and helps him to defeat the suitors. Athena also appears to Odysseus's son Telemachus. Her actions lead him to travel around to Odysseus's comrades and ask about his father. He hears stories about some of Odysseus's journey. Athena's push for Telemachos's journey helps him grow into the man role, that his father once held. She also plays a role in ending the resultant feud against the suitors' relatives. She instructs Laertes to throw his spear and to kill Eupeithes, the father of Antinous. Punishment myths The Gorgoneion appears to have originated as an apotropaic symbol intended to ward off evil. In a late myth invented to explain the origins of the Gorgon, Medusa is described as having been a young priestess who served in the temple of Athena in Athens. Poseidon lusted after Medusa, and raped her in the temple of Athena, refusing to allow her vow of chastity to stand in his way. Upon discovering the desecration of her temple, Athena transformed Medusa into a hideous monster with serpents for hair whose gaze would turn any mortal to stone. In his Twelfth Pythian Ode, Pindar recounts the story of how Athena invented the aulos, a kind of flute, in imitation of the lamentations of Medusa's sisters, the Gorgons, after she was beheaded by the hero Perseus. According to Pindar, Athena gave the aulos to mortals as a gift. Later, the comic playwright Melanippides of Melos ( 480-430 BC) embellished the story in his comedy Marsyas, claiming that Athena looked in the mirror while she was playing the aulos and saw how blowing into it puffed up her cheeks and made her look silly, so she threw the aulos away and cursed it so that whoever picked it up would meet an awful death. The aulos was picked up by the satyr Marsyas, who was later killed by Apollo for his hubris. Later, this version of the story became accepted as canonical and the Athenian sculptor Myron created a group of bronze sculptures based on it, which was installed before the western front of the Parthenon in around 440 BC. A myth told by the early third-century BC Hellenistic poet Callimachus in his Hymn 5 begins with Athena bathing in a spring on Mount Helicon at midday with one of her favorite companions, the nymph Chariclo. Chariclo's son Tiresias happened to be hunting on the same mountain and came to the spring searching for water. He inadvertently saw Athena naked, so she struck him blind to ensure he would never again see what man was not intended to see. Chariclo intervened on her son's behalf and begged Athena to have mercy. Athena replied that she could not restore Tiresias's eyesight, so, instead, she gave him the ability to understand the language of the birds and thus foretell the future. The fable of Arachne appears in Ovid's Metamorphoses (8 AD) (vi.5–54 and 129–145), which is nearly the only extant source for the legend. The story does not appear to have been well known prior to Ovid's rendition of it and the only earlier reference to it is a brief allusion in Virgil's Georgics, (29 BC) (iv, 246) that does not mention Arachne by name. According to Ovid, Arachne (whose name means spider in ancient Greek) was the daughter of a famous dyer in Tyrian purple in Hypaipa of Lydia, and a weaving student of Athena. She became so conceited of her skill as a weaver that she began claiming that her skill was greater than that of Athena herself. Athena gave Arachne a chance to redeem herself by assuming the form of an old woman and warning Arachne not to offend the deities. Arachne scoffed and wished for a weaving contest, so she could prove her skill. Athena wove the scene of her victory over Poseidon in the contest for the patronage of Athens. Athena's tapestry also depicted the 12 Olympian gods and defeat of mythological figures who challenged their authority. Arachne's tapestry featured twenty-one episodes of the deities' infidelity, including Zeus being unfaithful with Leda, with Europa, and with Danaë. It represented the unjust and discrediting behavior of the gods towards mortals. Athena admitted that Arachne's work was flawless, but was outraged at Arachne's offensive choice of subject, which displayed the failings and transgressions of the deities. Finally, losing her temper, Athena destroyed Arachne's tapestry and loom, striking it with her shuttle. Athena then struck Arachne across the face with her staff four times. Arachne hanged herself in despair, but Athena took pity on her and brought her back from the dead in the form of a spider. Trojan War The myth of the Judgement of Paris is mentioned briefly in the Iliad, but is described in depth in an epitome of the Cypria, a lost poem of the Epic Cycle, which records that all the gods and goddesses as well as various mortals were invited to the marriage of Peleus and Thetis (the eventual parents of Achilles). Only Eris, goddess of discord, was not invited. She was annoyed at this, so she arrived with a golden apple inscribed with the word καλλίστῃ (kallistēi, "for the fairest"), which she threw among the goddesses. Aphrodite, Hera, and Athena all claimed to be the fairest, and thus the rightful owner of the apple. The goddesses chose to place the matter before Zeus, who, not wanting to favor one of the goddesses, put the choice into the hands of Paris, a Trojan prince. After bathing in the spring of Mount Ida where Troy was situated, the goddesses appeared before Paris for his decision. In the extant ancient depictions of the Judgement of Paris, Aphrodite is only occasionally represented nude, and Athena and Hera are always fully clothed. Since the Renaissance, however, Western paintings have typically portrayed all three goddesses as completely naked. All three goddesses were ideally beautiful and Paris could not decide between them, so they resorted to bribes. Hera tried to bribe Paris with power over all Asia and Europe, and Athena offered fame and glory in battle, but Aphrodite promised Paris that, if he were to choose her as the fairest, she would let him marry the most beautiful woman on earth. This woman was Helen, who was already married to King Menelaus of Sparta. Paris selected Aphrodite and awarded her the apple. The other two goddesses were enraged and, as a direct result, sided with the Greeks in the Trojan War. In Books V–VI of the Iliad, Athena aids the hero Diomedes, who, in the absence of Achilles, proves himself to be the most effective Greek warrior. Several artistic representations from the early sixth century BC may show Athena and Diomedes, including an early sixth-century BC shield band depicting Athena and an unidentified warrior riding on a chariot, a vase painting of a warrior with his charioteer facing Athena, and an inscribed clay plaque showing Diomedes and Athena riding in a chariot. Numerous passages in the Iliad also mention Athena having previously served as the patron of Diomedes's father Tydeus. When the Trojan women go to the temple of Athena on the Acropolis to plead her for protection from Diomedes, Athena ignores them. Athena also gets into a duel with Ares, the god of the brutal wars, and her male counterpart. Ares blames her for encouraging Diomedes to tear his beautiful flesh. He curses her and strikes with all his strength. Athena, however, cleverly deflects his blow with her aegis, a powerful shield which even Zeus's thunderbolt and lightning cannot blast through. Athena picked up a massive boulder and threw it at Ares, who immediately crumpled to the ground. Aphrodite, who was then a lover of the war god came down from Olympus to carry Ares away but was struck by Athena's golden spear and fell. Athena taunted the gods who supported Troy, saying that they will too eventually end up like Ares and Aphrodite, which scared them, therefore proving her power and reputation among the other gods. In Book XXII of the Iliad, while Achilles is chasing Hector around the walls of Troy, Athena appears to Hector disguised as his brother Deiphobus and persuades him to hold his ground so that they can fight Achilles together. Then, Hector throws his spear at Achilles and misses, expecting Deiphobus to hand him another, but Athena disappears instead, leaving Hector to face Achilles alone without his spear. In Sophocles's tragedy Ajax, she punishes Odysseus's rival Ajax the Great, driving him insane and causing him to massacre the Achaeans' cattle, thinking that he is slaughtering the Achaeans themselves. Even after Odysseus himself expresses pity for Ajax, Athena declares, "To laugh at your enemies - what sweeter laughter can there be than that?" (lines 78–9). Ajax later commits suicide as a result of his humiliation. Classical art Athena appears frequently in classical Greek art, including on coins and in paintings on ceramics. She is especially prominent in works produced in Athens. In classical depictions, Athena is usually portrayed standing upright, wearing a full-length chiton. She is most often represented dressed in armor like a male soldier and wearing a Corinthian helmet raised high atop her forehead. Her shield bears at its centre the aegis with the head of the gorgon (gorgoneion) in the center and snakes around the edge. Sometimes she is shown wearing the aegis as a cloak. As Athena Promachos, she is shown brandishing a spear. Scenes in which Athena was represented include her birth from the head of Zeus, her battle with the Gigantes, the birth of Erichthonius, and the Judgement of Paris. The Mourning Athena or Athena Meditating is a famous relief sculpture dating to around 470-460 BC that has been interpreted to represent Athena Polias. The most famous classical depiction of Athena was the Athena Parthenos, a now-lost gold and
since he was the one who had smashed open Zeus's skull, allowing Athena to be born. Zeus agreed to this and Hephaestus and Athena were married, but, when Hephaestus was about to consummate the union, Athena vanished from the bridal bed, causing him to ejaculate on the floor, thus impregnating Gaia with Erichthonius. The geographer Pausanias records that Athena placed the infant Erichthonius into a small chest (cista), which she entrusted to the care of the three daughters of Cecrops: Herse, Pandrosos, and Aglauros of Athens. She warned the three sisters not to open the chest, but did not explain to them why or what was in it. Aglauros, and possibly one of the other sisters, opened the chest. Differing reports say that they either found that the child itself was a serpent, that it was guarded by a serpent, that it was guarded by two serpents, or that it had the legs of a serpent. In Pausanias's story, the two sisters were driven mad by the sight of the chest's contents and hurled themselves off the Acropolis, dying instantly, but an Attic vase painting shows them being chased by the serpent off the edge of the cliff instead. Erichthonius was one of the most important founding heroes of Athens and the legend of the daughters of Cecrops was a cult myth linked to the rituals of the Arrhephoria festival. Pausanias records that, during the Arrhephoria, two young girls known as the Arrhephoroi, who lived near the temple of Athena Polias, would be given hidden objects by the priestess of Athena, which they would carry on their heads down a natural underground passage. They would leave the objects they had been given at the bottom of the passage and take another set of hidden objects, which they would carry on their heads back up to the temple. The ritual was performed in the dead of night and no one, not even the priestess, knew what the objects were. The serpent in the story may be the same one depicted coiled at Athena's feet in Pheidias's famous statue of the Athena Parthenos in the Parthenon. Many of the surviving sculptures of Athena show this serpent. Herodotus records that a serpent lived in a crevice on the north side of the summit of the Athenian Acropolis and that the Athenians left a honey cake for it each month as an offering. On the eve of the Second Persian invasion of Greece in 480 BC, the serpent did not eat the honey cake and the Athenians interpreted it as a sign that Athena herself had abandoned them. Another version of the myth of the Athenian maidens is told in Metamorphoses by the Roman poet Ovid (43 BC17 AD); in this late variant Hermes falls in love with Herse. Herse, Aglaulus, and Pandrosus go to the temple to offer sacrifices to Athena. Hermes demands help from Aglaulus to seduce Herse. Aglaulus demands money in exchange. Hermes gives her the money the sisters have already offered to Athena. As punishment for Aglaulus's greed, Athena asks the goddess Envy to make Aglaulus jealous of Herse. When Hermes arrives to seduce Herse, Aglaulus stands in his way instead of helping him as she had agreed. He turns her to stone. Patron of heroes According to Pseudo-Apollodorus's Bibliotheca, Athena advised Argos, the builder of the Argo, the ship on which the hero Jason and his band of Argonauts sailed, and aided in the ship's construction. Pseudo-Apollodorus also records that Athena guided the hero Perseus in his quest to behead Medusa. She and Hermes, the god of travelers, appeared to Perseus after he set off on his quest and gifted him with tools he would need to kill the Gorgon. Athena gave Perseus a polished bronze shield to view Medusa's reflection rather than looking at her directly and thereby avoid being turned to stone. Hermes gave him an adamantine scythe to cut off Medusa's head. When Perseus swung his blade to behead Medusa, Athena guided it, allowing his scythe to cut it clean off. According to Pindar's Thirteenth Olympian Ode, Athena helped the hero Bellerophon tame the winged horse Pegasus by giving him a bit. In ancient Greek art, Athena is frequently shown aiding the hero Heracles. She appears in four of the twelve metopes on the Temple of Zeus at Olympia depicting Heracles's Twelve Labors, including the first, in which she passively watches him slay the Nemean lion, and the tenth, in which she is shown actively helping him hold up the sky. She is presented as his "stern ally", but also the "gentle... acknowledger of his achievements." Artistic depictions of Heracles's apotheosis show Athena driving him to Mount Olympus in her chariot and presenting him to Zeus for his deification. In Aeschylus's tragedy Orestes, Athena intervenes to save Orestes from the wrath of the Erinyes and presides over his trial for the murder of his mother Clytemnestra. When half the jury votes to acquit and the other half votes to convict, Athena casts the deciding vote to acquit Orestes and declares that, from then on, whenever a jury is tied, the defendant shall always be acquitted. In The Odyssey, Odysseus' cunning and shrewd nature quickly wins Athena's favour. For the first part of the poem, however, she largely is confined to aiding him only from afar, mainly by implanting thoughts in his head during his journey home from Troy. Her guiding actions reinforce her role as the "protectress of heroes," or, as mythologian Walter Friedrich Otto dubbed her, the "goddess of nearness," due to her mentoring and motherly probing. It is not until he washes up on the shore of the island of the Phaeacians, where Nausicaa is washing her clothes that Athena arrives personally to provide more tangible assistance. She appears in Nausicaa's dreams to ensure that the princess rescues Odysseus and plays a role in his eventual escort to Ithaca. Athena appears to Odysseus upon his arrival, disguised as a herdsman; she initially lies and tells him that Penelope, his wife, has remarried and that he is believed to be dead, but Odysseus lies back to her, employing skillful prevarications to protect himself. Impressed by his resolve and shrewdness, she reveals herself and tells him what he needs to know in order to win back his kingdom. She disguises him as an elderly beggar so that he will not be recognized by the suitors or Penelope, and helps him to defeat the suitors. Athena also appears to Odysseus's son Telemachus. Her actions lead him to travel around to Odysseus's comrades and ask about his father. He hears stories about some of Odysseus's journey. Athena's push for Telemachos's journey helps him grow into the man role, that his father once held. She also plays a role in ending the resultant feud against the suitors' relatives. She instructs Laertes to throw his spear and to kill Eupeithes, the father of Antinous. Punishment myths The Gorgoneion appears to have originated as an apotropaic symbol intended to ward off evil. In a late myth invented to explain the origins of the Gorgon, Medusa is described as having been a young priestess who served in the temple of Athena in Athens. Poseidon lusted after Medusa, and raped her in the temple of Athena, refusing to allow her vow of chastity to stand in his way. Upon discovering the desecration of her temple, Athena transformed Medusa into a hideous monster with serpents for hair whose gaze would turn any mortal to stone. In his Twelfth Pythian Ode, Pindar recounts the story of how Athena invented the aulos, a kind of flute, in imitation of the lamentations of Medusa's sisters, the Gorgons, after she was beheaded by the hero Perseus. According to Pindar, Athena gave the aulos to mortals as a gift. Later, the comic playwright Melanippides of Melos ( 480-430 BC) embellished the story in his comedy Marsyas, claiming that Athena looked in the mirror while she was playing the aulos and saw how blowing into it puffed up her cheeks and made her look silly, so she threw the aulos away and cursed it so that whoever picked it up would meet an awful death. The aulos was picked up by the satyr Marsyas, who was later killed by Apollo for his hubris. Later, this version of the story became accepted as canonical and the Athenian sculptor Myron created a group of bronze sculptures based on it, which was installed before the western front of the Parthenon in around 440 BC. A myth told by the early third-century BC Hellenistic poet Callimachus in his Hymn 5 begins with Athena bathing in a spring on Mount Helicon at midday with one of her favorite companions, the nymph Chariclo. Chariclo's son Tiresias happened to be hunting on the same mountain and came to the spring searching for water. He inadvertently saw Athena naked, so she struck him blind to ensure he would never again see what man was not intended to see. Chariclo intervened on her son's behalf and begged Athena to have mercy. Athena replied that she could not restore Tiresias's eyesight, so, instead, she gave him the ability to understand the language of the birds and thus foretell the future. The fable of Arachne appears in Ovid's Metamorphoses (8 AD) (vi.5–54 and 129–145), which is nearly the only extant source for the legend. The story does not appear to have been well known prior to Ovid's rendition of it and the only earlier reference to it is a brief allusion in Virgil's Georgics, (29 BC) (iv, 246) that does not mention Arachne by name. According to Ovid, Arachne (whose name means spider in ancient Greek) was the daughter of a famous dyer in Tyrian purple in Hypaipa of Lydia, and a weaving student of Athena. She became so conceited of her skill as a weaver that she began claiming that her skill was greater than that of Athena herself. Athena gave Arachne a chance to redeem herself by assuming the form of an old woman and warning Arachne not to offend the deities. Arachne scoffed and wished for a weaving contest, so she could prove her skill. Athena wove the scene of her victory over Poseidon in the contest for the patronage of Athens. Athena's tapestry also depicted the 12 Olympian gods and defeat of mythological figures who challenged their authority. Arachne's tapestry featured twenty-one episodes of the deities' infidelity, including Zeus being unfaithful with Leda, with Europa, and with Danaë. It represented the unjust and discrediting behavior of the gods towards mortals. Athena admitted that Arachne's work was flawless, but was outraged at Arachne's offensive choice of subject, which displayed the failings and transgressions of the deities. Finally, losing her temper, Athena destroyed Arachne's tapestry and loom, striking it with her shuttle. Athena then struck Arachne across the face with her staff four times. Arachne hanged herself in despair, but Athena took pity on her and brought her back from the dead in the form of a spider. Trojan War The myth of the Judgement of Paris is mentioned briefly in the Iliad, but is described in depth in an epitome of the Cypria, a lost poem of the Epic Cycle, which records that all the gods and goddesses as well as various mortals were invited to the marriage of Peleus and Thetis (the eventual parents of Achilles). Only Eris, goddess of discord, was not invited. She was annoyed at this, so she arrived with a golden apple inscribed with the word καλλίστῃ (kallistēi, "for the fairest"), which she threw among the goddesses. Aphrodite, Hera, and Athena all claimed to be the fairest, and thus the rightful owner of the apple. The goddesses chose to place the matter before Zeus, who, not wanting to favor one of the goddesses, put the choice into the hands of Paris, a Trojan prince. After bathing in the spring of Mount Ida where Troy was situated, the goddesses appeared before Paris for his decision. In the extant ancient depictions of the Judgement of Paris, Aphrodite is only occasionally represented nude, and Athena and Hera are always fully clothed. Since the Renaissance, however, Western paintings have typically portrayed all three goddesses as completely naked. All three goddesses were ideally beautiful and Paris could not decide between them, so they resorted to bribes. Hera tried to bribe Paris with power over all Asia and Europe, and Athena offered fame and glory in battle, but Aphrodite promised Paris that, if he were to choose her as the fairest, she would let him marry the most beautiful woman on earth. This woman was Helen, who was already married to King Menelaus of Sparta. Paris selected Aphrodite and awarded her the apple. The other two goddesses were enraged and, as a direct result, sided with the Greeks in the Trojan War. In Books V–VI of the Iliad, Athena aids the hero Diomedes, who, in the absence of Achilles, proves himself to be the most effective Greek warrior. Several artistic representations from the early sixth century BC may show Athena and Diomedes, including an early sixth-century BC shield band depicting Athena and an unidentified warrior riding on a chariot, a vase painting of a warrior with his charioteer facing Athena, and an inscribed clay plaque showing Diomedes and Athena riding in a chariot. Numerous passages in the Iliad also mention Athena having previously served as the patron of Diomedes's father Tydeus. When the Trojan women go to the temple of Athena on the Acropolis to plead her for protection from Diomedes, Athena ignores
statistics for the new characters and an update of the older ones in light of their appearance in the second series, and (perhaps most usefully for GMs) plot summaries of each of the ten books. The book includes some material from the short story "The Salesman's Tale," and some unpublished material cut from Prince of Chaos, notably Coral's pregnancy by Merlin. Both books were translated into French and published by Jeux Descartes in 1994 and 1995. A third book, Rebma, was promised. Cover art was commissioned and pre-orders were taken, but it was never published. Wujcik also expressed a desire to create a book giving greater detail to the Courts of Chaos. The publishing rights to the Amber DRPG games were acquired in 2004 by Guardians of Order, who took over sales of the game and announced their intention to release a new edition of the game. However, no new edition was released before Guardians of Order went out of business in 2006. The two existing books are now out-of-print, but they have been made available as PDF downloads. In June 2007 a new publishing company, headed by Edwin Voskamp and Eric Todd, was formed with the express purpose of bringing Amber DRPG back into print. The new company is named Diceless by Design. In May 2010, Rite Publishing secured a license from Diceless by Design to use the rules system with a new setting in the creation of a new product to be written by industry and system veteran Jason Durall. The project Lords of Gossamer & Shadow (Diceless) was funded via Kickstarter in May 2013. In Sept 2013 the project was completed, and on in Nov 2013 Lords of Gossamer and Shadow (Diceless) was released publicly in full-color Print and PDF, along with additional supplements and continued support. Setting The game is set in the multiverse described in Zelazny's Chronicles of Amber. The first book assumes that gamemasters will set their campaigns after the Patternfall war; that is, after the end of the fifth book in the series, The Courts of Chaos, but uses material from the following books to describe those parts of Zelazny's cosmology that were featured there in more detail. The Amber multiverse consists of Amber, a city at one pole of the universe wherein is found the Pattern, the symbol of Order; The Courts of Chaos, an assembly of worlds at the other pole where can be found the Logrus, the manifestation of Chaos, and the Abyss, the source or end of all reality; and Shadow, the collection of all possible universes (shadows) between and around them. Inhabitants of either pole can use one or both of the Pattern and the Logrus to travel through Shadow. It is assumed that players will portray the children of the main characters from the books – the ruling family of Amber, known as the Elder Amberites – or a resident of the Courts. However, since some feel that being the children of the main characters is too limiting, it is fairly common to either start with King Oberon's death before the book begins and roleplay the Elder Amberites as they vie for the throne; or to populate Amber from scratch with a different set of Elder Amberites. The former option is one presented in the book; the latter is known in the Amber community as an "Amethyst" game. A third option is to have the players portray Corwin's children, in an Amber-like city built around Corwin's pattern; this is sometimes called an "Argent" game, since one of Corwin's heraldic colours is Silver. System Attributes Characters in Amber DRPG are represented by four attributes: Psyche, Strength, Endurance and Warfare. Psyche is used for feats of willpower or magic Strength is used for feats of strength or unarmed combat Endurance is used for feats of endurance Warfare is used for armed combat, from duelling to commanding armies The attributes run from −25 (normal human level), through −10 (normal level for a denizen of the Courts of Chaos) and 0 (normal level for an inhabitant of Amber), upwards without limit. Scores above 0 are "ranked", with the highest score being ranked 1st, the next-highest 2nd, and so on. The character with 1st rank in each attribute is considered "superior" in that attribute, being considered to be substantially better than the character with 2nd rank even if the difference in scores is small. All else being equal, a character with a higher rank in an attribute will always win a contest based on that attribute.
of Chaos. Some details were changed slightly to allow more player choice – for example, players can be full Trump Artists without having walked the Pattern or the Logrus, which Merlin says is impossible; and players' psychic abilities are far greater than those shown in the books. A 256-page companion volume, Shadow Knight, was published in 1993. This supplemental rule book includes the remaining elements from the Merlin novels, such as Broken Patterns, and allows players to create Constructs such as Merlin's Ghostwheel. The book presents the second series of novels not as additions to the series' continuity but as an example of a roleplaying campaign with Merlin, Luke, Julia, Jurt and Coral as the PCs. The remainder of the book is a collection of essays on the game, statistics for the new characters and an update of the older ones in light of their appearance in the second series, and (perhaps most usefully for GMs) plot summaries of each of the ten books. The book includes some material from the short story "The Salesman's Tale," and some unpublished material cut from Prince of Chaos, notably Coral's pregnancy by Merlin. Both books were translated into French and published by Jeux Descartes in 1994 and 1995. A third book, Rebma, was promised. Cover art was commissioned and pre-orders were taken, but it was never published. Wujcik also expressed a desire to create a book giving greater detail to the Courts of Chaos. The publishing rights to the Amber DRPG games were acquired in 2004 by Guardians of Order, who took over sales of the game and announced their intention to release a new edition of the game. However, no new edition was released before Guardians of Order went out of business in 2006. The two existing books are now out-of-print, but they have been made available as PDF downloads. In June 2007 a new publishing company, headed by Edwin Voskamp and Eric Todd, was formed with the express purpose of bringing Amber DRPG back into print. The new company is named Diceless by Design. In May 2010, Rite Publishing secured a license from Diceless by Design to use the rules system with a new setting in the creation of a new product to be written by industry and system veteran Jason Durall. The project Lords of Gossamer & Shadow (Diceless) was funded via Kickstarter in May 2013. In Sept 2013 the project was completed, and on in Nov 2013 Lords of Gossamer and Shadow (Diceless) was released publicly in full-color Print and PDF, along with additional supplements and continued support. Setting The game is set in the multiverse described in Zelazny's Chronicles of Amber. The first book assumes that gamemasters will set their campaigns after the Patternfall war; that is, after the end of the fifth book in the series, The Courts of Chaos, but uses material from the following books to describe those parts of Zelazny's cosmology that were featured there in more detail. The Amber multiverse consists of Amber, a city at one pole of the universe wherein is found the Pattern, the symbol of Order; The Courts of Chaos, an assembly of worlds at the other pole where can be found the Logrus, the manifestation of Chaos, and the Abyss, the source or end of all reality; and Shadow, the collection of all possible universes (shadows) between and around them. Inhabitants of either pole can use one or both of the Pattern and the Logrus to travel through Shadow. It is assumed that players will portray the children of the main characters from the books – the ruling family of Amber, known as the Elder Amberites – or a resident of the Courts. However, since some feel that being the children of the main characters is too limiting, it is fairly common to either start with King Oberon's death before the book begins and roleplay the Elder Amberites as they vie for the throne; or to populate Amber from scratch with a different set of Elder Amberites. The former option is one presented in the book; the latter is known in the Amber community as an "Amethyst" game. A third option is to have the players portray Corwin's children, in an Amber-like city built around Corwin's pattern; this is sometimes called an "Argent" game, since one of Corwin's heraldic colours is Silver. System Attributes Characters in Amber DRPG are represented by four attributes: Psyche, Strength, Endurance and Warfare. Psyche is used for feats of willpower or magic Strength is used for feats of strength or unarmed combat Endurance is used for feats of endurance Warfare is used for armed combat, from duelling to commanding armies The attributes run from −25 (normal human level), through −10 (normal level for a denizen of the Courts of Chaos) and 0 (normal level for an inhabitant of Amber), upwards without limit. Scores above 0 are "ranked", with the highest score being ranked 1st, the next-highest 2nd, and so on. The character with 1st rank in each attribute is considered "superior" in that attribute, being considered to be substantially better than the character with 2nd rank even if the difference in scores is small. All else being equal, a character with a higher
to: 881 Athene, a main-belt asteroid Athene (bird), a genus of small owls Athene (Cynuria), a town in ancient Cynuria, Greece Athene Glacier, a glacier in Antarctica HMS Athene, an aircraft transport USS Athene (AKA-22), an Artemis-class attack cargo ship Bachir Boumaaza or Athene (born 1980), Belgian YouTube
Athene or Athena is the shrewd companion of heroes and the goddess of heroic endeavour in Greek mythology. Athene may also refer to: 881 Athene, a main-belt asteroid Athene (bird), a genus of small owls Athene (Cynuria), a town in ancient
may also be performed with one or more constituents in a gaseous state, such as found in a blast furnace to make pig iron (liquid-gas), nitriding, carbonitriding or other forms of case hardening (solid-gas), or the cementation process used to make blister steel (solid-gas). It may also be done with one, more, or all of the constituents in the solid state, such as found in ancient methods of pattern welding (solid-solid), shear steel (solid-solid), or crucible steel production (solid-liquid), mixing the elements via solid-state diffusion. By adding another element to a metal, differences in the size of the atoms create internal stresses in the lattice of the metallic crystals; stresses that often enhance its properties. For example, the combination of carbon with iron produces steel, which is stronger than iron, its primary element. The electrical and thermal conductivity of alloys is usually lower than that of the pure metals. The physical properties, such as density, reactivity, Young's modulus of an alloy may not differ greatly from those of its base element, but engineering properties such as tensile strength, ductility, and shear strength may be substantially different from those of the constituent materials. This is sometimes a result of the sizes of the atoms in the alloy, because larger atoms exert a compressive force on neighboring atoms, and smaller atoms exert a tensile force on their neighbors, helping the alloy resist deformation. Sometimes alloys may exhibit marked differences in behavior even when small amounts of one element are present. For example, impurities in semiconducting ferromagnetic alloys lead to different properties, as first predicted by White, Hogan, Suhl, Tian Abrie and Nakamura. Unlike pure metals, most alloys do not have a single melting point, but a melting range during which the material is a mixture of solid and liquid phases (a slush). The temperature at which melting begins is called the solidus, and the temperature when melting is just complete is called the liquidus. For many alloys there is a particular alloy proportion (in some cases more than one), called either a eutectic mixture or a peritectic composition, which gives the alloy a unique and low melting point, and no liquid/solid slush transition. Heat treatment Alloying elements are added to a base metal, to induce hardness, toughness, ductility, or other desired properties. Most metals and alloys can be work hardened by creating defects in their crystal structure. These defects are created during plastic deformation by hammering, bending, extruding, et cetera, and are permanent unless the metal is recrystallized. Otherwise, some alloys can also have their properties altered by heat treatment. Nearly all metals can be softened by annealing, which recrystallizes the alloy and repairs the defects, but not as many can be hardened by controlled heating and cooling. Many alloys of aluminium, copper, magnesium, titanium, and nickel can be strengthened to some degree by some method of heat treatment, but few respond to this to the same degree as does steel. The base metal iron of the iron-carbon alloy known as steel, undergoes a change in the arrangement (allotropy) of the atoms of its crystal matrix at a certain temperature (usually between and , depending on carbon content). This allows the smaller carbon atoms to enter the interstices of the iron crystal. When this diffusion happens, the carbon atoms are said to be in solution in the iron, forming a particular single, homogeneous, crystalline phase called austenite. If the steel is cooled slowly, the carbon can diffuse out of the iron and it will gradually revert to its low temperature allotrope. During slow cooling, the carbon atoms will no longer be as soluble with the iron, and will be forced to precipitate out of solution, nucleating into a more concentrated form of iron carbide (Fe3C) in the spaces between the pure iron crystals. The steel then becomes heterogeneous, as it is formed of two phases, the iron-carbon phase called cementite (or carbide), and pure iron ferrite. Such a heat treatment produces a steel that is rather soft. If the steel is cooled quickly, however, the carbon atoms will not have time to diffuse and precipitate out as carbide, but will be trapped within the iron crystals. When rapidly cooled, a diffusionless (martensite) transformation occurs, in which the carbon atoms become trapped in solution. This causes the iron crystals to deform as the crystal structure tries to change to its low temperature state, leaving those crystals very hard but much less ductile (more brittle). While the high strength of steel results when diffusion and precipitation is prevented (forming martensite), most heat-treatable alloys are precipitation hardening alloys, that depend on the diffusion of alloying elements to achieve their strength. When heated to form a solution and then cooled quickly, these alloys become much softer than normal, during the diffusionless transformation, but then harden as they age. The solutes in these alloys will precipitate over time, forming intermetallic phases, which are difficult to discern from the base metal. Unlike steel, in which the solid solution separates into different crystal phases (carbide and ferrite), precipitation hardening alloys form different phases within the same crystal. These intermetallic alloys appear homogeneous in crystal structure, but tend to behave heterogeneously, becoming hard and somewhat brittle. In 1906, precipitation hardening alloys were discovered by Alfred Wilm. Precipitation hardening alloys, such as certain alloys of aluminium, titanium, and copper, are heat-treatable alloys that soften when quenched (cooled quickly), and then harden over time. Wilm had been searching for a way to harden aluminium alloys for use in machine-gun cartridge cases. Knowing that aluminium-copper alloys were heat-treatable to some degree, Wilm tried quenching a ternary alloy of aluminium, copper, and the addition of magnesium, but was initially disappointed with the results. However, when Wilm retested it the next day he discovered that the alloy increased in hardness when left to age at room temperature, and far exceeded his expectations. Although an explanation for the phenomenon was not provided until 1919, duralumin was one of the first "age hardening" alloys used, becoming the primary building material for the first Zeppelins, and was soon followed by many others. Because they often exhibit a combination of high strength and low weight, these alloys became widely used in many forms of industry, including the construction of modern aircraft. Mechanisms When a molten metal is mixed with another substance, there are two mechanisms that can cause an alloy to form, called atom exchange and the interstitial mechanism. The relative size of each element in the mix plays a primary role in determining which mechanism will occur. When the atoms are relatively similar in size, the atom exchange method usually happens, where some of the atoms composing the metallic crystals are substituted with atoms of the other constituent. This is called a substitutional alloy. Examples of substitutional alloys include bronze and brass, in which some of the copper atoms are substituted with either tin or zinc atoms respectively. In the case of the interstitial mechanism, one atom is usually much smaller than the other and can not successfully substitute for the other type of atom in the crystals of the base metal. Instead, the smaller atoms become trapped in the spaces between the atoms of the crystal matrix, called the interstices. This is referred to as an interstitial alloy. Steel is an example of an interstitial alloy, because the very small carbon atoms fit into interstices of the iron matrix. Stainless steel is an example of a combination of interstitial and substitutional alloys, because the carbon atoms fit into the interstices, but some of the iron atoms are substituted by nickel and chromium atoms. History and examples Meteoric iron The use of alloys by humans started with the use of meteoric iron, a naturally occurring alloy of nickel and iron. It is the main constituent of iron meteorites. As no metallurgic processes were used to separate iron from nickel, the alloy was used as it was. Meteoric iron could be forged from a red heat to make objects such as tools, weapons, and nails. In many cultures it was shaped by cold hammering into knives and arrowheads. They were often used as anvils. Meteoric iron was very rare and valuable, and difficult for ancient people to work. Bronze and brass Iron is usually found as iron ore on Earth, except for one deposit of native iron in Greenland, which was used by the Inuit people. Native copper, however, was found worldwide, along with silver, gold, and platinum, which were also used to make tools, jewelry, and other objects since Neolithic times. Copper was the hardest of these metals, and the most widely distributed. It became one of the most important metals to the ancients. Around 10,000 years ago in the highlands of Anatolia (Turkey), humans learned to smelt metals such as copper and tin from ore. Around 2500 BC, people began alloying the two metals to form bronze, which was much harder than its ingredients. Tin was rare, however, being found mostly in Great Britain. In the Middle East, people began alloying copper with zinc to form brass. Ancient civilizations took into account the mixture and the various properties it produced, such as hardness, toughness and melting point, under various conditions of temperature and work hardening, developing much of the information contained in modern alloy phase diagrams. For example, arrowheads from the Chinese Qin dynasty (around 200 BC) were often constructed with a hard bronze-head, but a softer bronze-tang, combining the alloys to prevent both dulling and breaking during use. Amalgams Mercury has been smelted from cinnabar for thousands of years. Mercury dissolves many metals, such as gold, silver, and tin, to form amalgams (an alloy in a soft paste or liquid form at ambient temperature). Amalgams have been used since 200 BC in China for gilding objects such as armor and mirrors with precious metals. The ancient Romans often used mercury-tin amalgams for gilding their armor. The amalgam was applied as a paste and then heated until the mercury vaporized, leaving the gold, silver, or tin behind. Mercury was often used in mining, to extract precious metals like gold and silver from their ores. Precious metals Many ancient civilizations alloyed metals for purely aesthetic purposes. In ancient Egypt and Mycenae, gold was often alloyed with copper to produce red-gold, or iron to produce a bright burgundy-gold. Gold was often found alloyed with silver or other metals to produce various types of colored gold. These metals were also used to strengthen each other, for more practical purposes. Copper was often added to silver to make sterling silver, increasing its strength for use in dishes, silverware, and other practical items. Quite often, precious metals were alloyed with less valuable substances as a means to deceive buyers. Around 250 BC, Archimedes was commissioned by the King of Syracuse to find a way to check the purity of the gold in a crown, leading to the famous bath-house shouting of "Eureka!" upon the discovery of Archimedes' principle. Pewter The term pewter covers a variety of alloys consisting primarily of tin. As a pure metal, tin is much too soft to use for most practical purposes. However, during the Bronze Age, tin was a rare metal in many parts of Europe and the Mediterranean, so it was often valued higher than gold. To make jewellery, cutlery, or other objects from tin, workers usually alloyed it with other metals to increase strength and hardness. These metals were typically lead, antimony, bismuth or copper. These solutes were sometimes added individually in varying amounts, or added together, making a wide variety of objects, ranging from practical items such as dishes, surgical tools, candlesticks or funnels, to decorative items like ear rings and hair clips. The earliest examples of pewter come from ancient Egypt, around 1450 BC. The use of pewter was widespread across Europe, from France to Norway and Britain (where most of the ancient tin was mined) to the Near East.
Nakamura. Unlike pure metals, most alloys do not have a single melting point, but a melting range during which the material is a mixture of solid and liquid phases (a slush). The temperature at which melting begins is called the solidus, and the temperature when melting is just complete is called the liquidus. For many alloys there is a particular alloy proportion (in some cases more than one), called either a eutectic mixture or a peritectic composition, which gives the alloy a unique and low melting point, and no liquid/solid slush transition. Heat treatment Alloying elements are added to a base metal, to induce hardness, toughness, ductility, or other desired properties. Most metals and alloys can be work hardened by creating defects in their crystal structure. These defects are created during plastic deformation by hammering, bending, extruding, et cetera, and are permanent unless the metal is recrystallized. Otherwise, some alloys can also have their properties altered by heat treatment. Nearly all metals can be softened by annealing, which recrystallizes the alloy and repairs the defects, but not as many can be hardened by controlled heating and cooling. Many alloys of aluminium, copper, magnesium, titanium, and nickel can be strengthened to some degree by some method of heat treatment, but few respond to this to the same degree as does steel. The base metal iron of the iron-carbon alloy known as steel, undergoes a change in the arrangement (allotropy) of the atoms of its crystal matrix at a certain temperature (usually between and , depending on carbon content). This allows the smaller carbon atoms to enter the interstices of the iron crystal. When this diffusion happens, the carbon atoms are said to be in solution in the iron, forming a particular single, homogeneous, crystalline phase called austenite. If the steel is cooled slowly, the carbon can diffuse out of the iron and it will gradually revert to its low temperature allotrope. During slow cooling, the carbon atoms will no longer be as soluble with the iron, and will be forced to precipitate out of solution, nucleating into a more concentrated form of iron carbide (Fe3C) in the spaces between the pure iron crystals. The steel then becomes heterogeneous, as it is formed of two phases, the iron-carbon phase called cementite (or carbide), and pure iron ferrite. Such a heat treatment produces a steel that is rather soft. If the steel is cooled quickly, however, the carbon atoms will not have time to diffuse and precipitate out as carbide, but will be trapped within the iron crystals. When rapidly cooled, a diffusionless (martensite) transformation occurs, in which the carbon atoms become trapped in solution. This causes the iron crystals to deform as the crystal structure tries to change to its low temperature state, leaving those crystals very hard but much less ductile (more brittle). While the high strength of steel results when diffusion and precipitation is prevented (forming martensite), most heat-treatable alloys are precipitation hardening alloys, that depend on the diffusion of alloying elements to achieve their strength. When heated to form a solution and then cooled quickly, these alloys become much softer than normal, during the diffusionless transformation, but then harden as they age. The solutes in these alloys will precipitate over time, forming intermetallic phases, which are difficult to discern from the base metal. Unlike steel, in which the solid solution separates into different crystal phases (carbide and ferrite), precipitation hardening alloys form different phases within the same crystal. These intermetallic alloys appear homogeneous in crystal structure, but tend to behave heterogeneously, becoming hard and somewhat brittle. In 1906, precipitation hardening alloys were discovered by Alfred Wilm. Precipitation hardening alloys, such as certain alloys of aluminium, titanium, and copper, are heat-treatable alloys that soften when quenched (cooled quickly), and then harden over time. Wilm had been searching for a way to harden aluminium alloys for use in machine-gun cartridge cases. Knowing that aluminium-copper alloys were heat-treatable to some degree, Wilm tried quenching a ternary alloy of aluminium, copper, and the addition of magnesium, but was initially disappointed with the results. However, when Wilm retested it the next day he discovered that the alloy increased in hardness when left to age at room temperature, and far exceeded his expectations. Although an explanation for the phenomenon was not provided until 1919, duralumin was one of the first "age hardening" alloys used, becoming the primary building material for the first Zeppelins, and was soon followed by many others. Because they often exhibit a combination of high strength and low weight, these alloys became widely used in many forms of industry, including the construction of modern aircraft. Mechanisms When a molten metal is mixed with another substance, there are two mechanisms that can cause an alloy to form, called atom exchange and the interstitial mechanism. The relative size of each element in the mix plays a primary role in determining which mechanism will occur. When the atoms are relatively similar in size, the atom exchange method usually happens, where some of the atoms composing the metallic crystals are substituted with atoms of the other constituent. This is called a substitutional alloy. Examples of substitutional alloys include bronze and brass, in which some of the copper atoms are substituted with either tin or zinc atoms respectively. In the case of the interstitial mechanism, one atom is usually much smaller than the other and can not successfully substitute for the other type of atom in the crystals of the base metal. Instead, the smaller atoms become trapped in the spaces between the atoms of the crystal matrix, called the interstices. This is referred to as an interstitial alloy. Steel is an example of an interstitial alloy, because the very small carbon atoms fit into interstices of the iron matrix. Stainless steel is an example of a combination of interstitial and substitutional alloys, because the carbon atoms fit into the interstices, but some of the iron atoms are substituted by nickel and chromium atoms. History and examples Meteoric iron The use of alloys by humans started with the use of meteoric iron, a naturally occurring alloy of nickel and iron. It is the main constituent of iron meteorites. As no metallurgic processes were used to separate iron from nickel, the alloy was used as it was. Meteoric iron could be forged from a red heat to make objects such as tools, weapons, and nails. In many cultures it was shaped by cold hammering into knives and arrowheads. They were often used as anvils. Meteoric iron was very rare and valuable, and difficult for ancient people to work. Bronze and brass Iron is usually found as iron ore on Earth, except for one deposit of native iron in Greenland, which was used by the Inuit people. Native copper, however, was found worldwide, along with silver, gold, and platinum, which were also used to make tools, jewelry, and other objects since Neolithic times. Copper was the hardest of these metals, and the most widely distributed. It became one of the most important metals to the ancients. Around 10,000 years ago in the highlands of Anatolia (Turkey), humans learned to smelt metals such as copper and tin from ore. Around 2500 BC, people began alloying the two metals to form bronze, which was much harder than its ingredients. Tin was rare, however, being found mostly in Great Britain. In the Middle East, people began alloying copper with zinc to form brass. Ancient civilizations took into account the mixture and the various properties it produced, such as hardness, toughness and melting point, under various conditions of temperature and work hardening, developing much of the information contained in modern alloy phase diagrams. For example, arrowheads from the Chinese Qin dynasty (around 200 BC) were often constructed with a hard bronze-head, but a softer bronze-tang, combining the alloys to prevent both dulling and breaking during use. Amalgams Mercury has been smelted from cinnabar for thousands of years. Mercury dissolves many metals, such as gold, silver, and tin, to form amalgams (an alloy in a soft paste or liquid form at ambient temperature). Amalgams have been used since 200 BC in China for gilding objects such as armor and mirrors with precious metals. The ancient Romans often used mercury-tin amalgams for gilding their armor. The amalgam was applied as a paste and then heated until the mercury vaporized, leaving the gold, silver, or tin behind. Mercury was often used in mining, to extract precious metals like gold and silver from their ores. Precious metals Many ancient civilizations alloyed metals for purely aesthetic purposes. In ancient Egypt and Mycenae, gold was often alloyed with copper to produce red-gold, or iron to produce a bright burgundy-gold. Gold was often found alloyed with silver or other metals to produce various types of colored gold. These metals were also used to strengthen each other, for more practical purposes. Copper was often added to silver to make sterling silver, increasing its strength for use in dishes, silverware, and other practical items. Quite often, precious metals were alloyed with less valuable substances as a means to deceive buyers. Around 250 BC, Archimedes was commissioned by the King of Syracuse to find a way to check the
quickly, and across an entire canvas, rather than carefully delineated single-color sections at a time; in short, to sketch directly in oil - racing across the canvas in every color that came to hand and thus inspiring their name of "impressionists" - since such speedy, bold brushwork and dabs of separate colors made contemporary critics think their paintings were mere impressions, not finished paintings, which were to have no visible brush marks at all, seamless under layers of varnish. Pierre-Auguste Renoir said, “Without colors in tubes, there would be no Cézanne, no Monet, no Pissarro, and no Impressionism.” Finally, the careful, hyper-realistic techniques of French neo-classicism were seen as stiff and lifeless when compared to the remarkable new vision of the world as seen through the new invention of photography by the mid-1850s. It was not merely that the increasing ability of this new invention, particularly by the French inventor Daguerre, made the realism of the painted image redundant as he deliberately competed in the Paris diorama with large-scale historical paintings. The neo-classical subject matter, limited by Academic tradition to Greek and Roman legends, historical battles and Biblical stories, seemed oppressively clichéd and limited to artists eager to explore the actual world in front of their own eyes revealed by the camera - daily life, candid groupings of everyday people doing simple things, Paris itself, rural landscapes and most particularly the play of captured light - not the imaginary lionizing of unseen past events. Early photographs influenced Impressionist style by its use of asymmetry, cropping and most obviously the blurring of motion, as inadvertently captured in the very slow speeds of early photography. Edgar Degas, Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir - in their framing, use of color, light and shadow, subject matter - put these innovations to work to create a new language of visual beauty and meaning. Faking revolution: the C.I.A. and Abstract Expressionism Their initial break with realism into an exploration of light, color and the nature of paint was brought to an ultimate conclusion by the Abstract Expressionists who broke away from recognizable content of any kind into works of pure shape, color and painterliness which emerged at the end of the second world war. At first thought of as primitive, inept works - as in "my four year old could do that"—these works were misunderstood and neglected until given critical and support by the rise of art journalists and critics who championed their work in the 1940s and 50's, expressing the power of such work in aesthetic terms the
up and carried out into the real world, to directly observe the play of color and natural light, in shadow and movement, to paint in the moment. Selling the oil paint in tubes also brought about the arrival of dazzling new pigments - chrome yellow, cadmium blue - invented by 19th century industrial chemists. The tubes freed the Impressionists to paint quickly, and across an entire canvas, rather than carefully delineated single-color sections at a time; in short, to sketch directly in oil - racing across the canvas in every color that came to hand and thus inspiring their name of "impressionists" - since such speedy, bold brushwork and dabs of separate colors made contemporary critics think their paintings were mere impressions, not finished paintings, which were to have no visible brush marks at all, seamless under layers of varnish. Pierre-Auguste Renoir said, “Without colors in tubes, there would be no Cézanne, no Monet, no Pissarro, and no Impressionism.” Finally, the careful, hyper-realistic techniques of French neo-classicism were seen as stiff and lifeless when compared to the remarkable new vision of the world as seen through the new invention of photography by the mid-1850s. It was not merely that the increasing ability of this new invention, particularly by the French inventor Daguerre, made the realism of the painted image redundant as he deliberately competed in the Paris diorama with large-scale historical paintings. The neo-classical subject matter, limited by Academic tradition to Greek and Roman legends, historical battles and Biblical stories, seemed oppressively clichéd and limited to artists eager to explore the actual world in front of their own eyes revealed by the camera - daily life, candid groupings of everyday people doing simple things, Paris itself, rural landscapes and most particularly the play of captured light - not the imaginary lionizing of unseen past events. Early photographs influenced Impressionist style by its use of asymmetry, cropping and most obviously the blurring of motion, as inadvertently captured in the very slow speeds of early photography. Edgar Degas, Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir - in their framing, use of color, light and shadow, subject matter - put these innovations to work to create a new language of visual beauty and meaning. Faking revolution: the C.I.A. and Abstract Expressionism Their initial break with realism into an exploration of light, color and the nature of paint was brought to an ultimate conclusion by the Abstract Expressionists who broke away from recognizable content of any kind into works of pure shape, color and painterliness which emerged at the end of the second world war. At first thought of as primitive, inept
with regard to the new irrigation systems and the wisdom of asking untrained peasants to produce good quality steel from scrap iron was not publicly questioned. Similarly, the experimentation with the crops did not produce results. In addition to this the Four Pests Campaign was launched, in which the peasants were called upon to destroy sparrows and other wild birds that ate crop seeds, in order to protect fields. Pest birds were shot down or scared away from landing until they dropped from exhaustion. This campaign resulted in an ecological disaster that saw an explosion of the vermin population, especially crop-eating insects, which was consequently not in danger of being killed by predators. None of these new systems were working, but local leaders did not dare to state this, instead, they falsified reports so as not to be punished for failing to meet the quotas. In many cases they stated that they were greatly exceeding their quotas, and in turn, the Chinese state developed a completely false sense of success with regard to the commune system. All of this culminated in the Great Chinese Famine, which began in 1959, lasted 3 years, and saw an estimated 15 to 30 million Chinese people die. A combination of bad weather and the new, failed farming techniques that were introduced by the state led to massive shortages of food. By 1962, the Great Leap Forward was declared to be at an end. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Mao once again radically altered life in rural China with the launching of the Down to the Countryside Movement. As a response to the Great Chinese Famine, the Chinese President Liu Shaoqi began "sending down" urban youths to rural China in order to recover its population losses and alleviate overcrowding in the cities. However, Mao turned the practice into a political crusade, declaring that the sending down would strip the youth of any bourgeois tendencies by forcing them to learn from the unprivileged rural peasants. In reality, it was the Communist Party's attempt to reign in the Red Guards, who had become uncontrollable during the course of the Cultural Revolution. 10% of the 1970 urban population of China was sent out to remote rural villages, often in Inner Mongolia. The villages, which were still poorly recovering from the effects of the Great Chinese Famine, did not have the excess resources that were needed to support the newcomers. Furthermore, the so-called "sent-down youth" had no agricultural experience and as a result, they were unaccustomed to the harsh lifestyle that existed in the countryside, and their unskilled labor in the villages provided little benefit to the agricultural sector. As a result, many of the sent-down youth died in the countryside. The relocation of the youths was originally intended to be permanent, but by the end of the Cultural Revolution, the Communist Party relented and some of those who had the capacity to return to the cities were allowed to do so. In imitation of Mao's policies, the Khmer Rouge of Cambodia (who were heavily funded and supported by the People's Republic of China) created their own version of the Great Leap Forward which was known as "Maha Lout Ploh". With the Great Leap Forward as its model, it had similarly disastrous effects, contributing to what is now known as the Cambodian genocide. As a part of the Maha Lout Ploh, the Khmer Rouge sought to create an entirely agrarian socialist society by forcibly relocating 100,000 people to move from Cambodia's cities into newly created communes. The Khmer Rouge leader, Pol Pot sought to "purify" the country by setting it back to "Year Zero", freeing it from "corrupting influences". Besides trying to completely de-urbanize Cambodia, ethnic minorities were slaughtered along with anyone else who was suspected of being a "reactionary" or a member of the "bourgeoisie", to the point that wearing glasses was seen as grounds for execution. The killings were only brought to an end when Cambodia was invaded by the neighboring socialist nation of Vietnam, whose army toppled the Khmer Rouge. However, with Cambodia's entire society and economy in disarray, including its agricultural sector, the country still plunged into renewed famine due to vast food shortages. However, as international journalists began to report on the situation and send images of it out to the world, a massive international response was provoked, leading to one of the most concentrated relief efforts of its time. Agrarian parties Peasant parties first appeared across Eastern Europe between 1860 and 1910, when commercialized agriculture and world market forces disrupted traditional rural society, and the railway and growing literacy facilitated the work of roving organizers. Agrarian parties advocated land reforms to redistribute land on large estates among those who work it. They also wanted village cooperatives to keep the profit from crop sales in local hands and credit institutions to underwrite needed improvements. Many peasant parties were also nationalist parties because peasants often worked their land for the benefit of landlords of different ethnicity. Peasant parties rarely had any power before World War I but some became influential in the interwar era, especially in Bulgaria and Czechoslovakia. For a while, in the 1920s and the 1930s, there was a Green International (International Agrarian Bureau) based on the peasant parties in Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Serbia. It functioned primarily as an information center that spread the ideas of agrarianism and combating socialism on the left and landlords on the right and never launched any significant activities. Tunisia The Farmers' Voice Party won a seat in the district of Jendouba after the parliamentary election of 2014. Europe Bulgaria In Bulgaria, the Bulgarian Agrarian National Union (BZNS) was organized in 1899 to resist taxes and build cooperatives. BZNS came to power in 1919 and introduced many economic, social, and legal reforms. However, conservative forces crushed BZNS in a 1923 coup and assassinated its leader, Aleksandar Stamboliyski (1879–1923). BZNS was made into a communist puppet group until 1989, when it reorganized as a genuine party. Czechoslovakia In Czechoslovakia, the Republican Party of Agricultural and Smallholder People often shared power in parliament as a partner in the five-party pětka coalition. The party's leader, Antonin Svehla (1873–1933), was prime minister several times. It was consistently the strongest party, forming and dominating coalitions. It moved beyond its original agrarian base to reach middle-class voters. The party was banned by the National Front after the Second World War. France In France, the Hunting, Fishing, Nature, Tradition party is a moderate conservative, agrarian party, reaching a peak of 4.23% in the 2002 French presidential election. It would later on become affiliated to France's main conservative party, Union for a Popular Movement. More recently, the Resistons! movement of Jean Lassalle espoused agrarianism. Hungary In Hungary, the first major agrarian party, the small-holders party was founded in 1908. The party became part of the government in the 1920s but lost influence in the government. A new party, the Independent Smallholders, Agrarian Workers and Civic Party was established in 1930 with a more radical program representing larger scale land redistribution initiatives. They implemented this program together with the other coalition parties after WWII. However, after 1949 the party was outlawed when a one-party system was introduced. They became part of the government again 1990-1994, and 1998-2002 after which they lost political support. The ruling Fidesz party has an agrarian faction, and promotes agrarian interest since 2010 with the emphasis now placed on supporting larger family farms versus small-holders. Ireland In the late 19th century, the Irish National Land League aimed to abolish landlordism in Ireland and enable tenant farmers to own the land they worked on. The "Land War" of 1878–1909 led to the Irish Land Acts, ending absentee landlords and ground rent and redistributing land among peasant farmers. Post-independence, the Farmers' Party operated in the Irish Free State from 1922, folding into the National Centre Party in 1932. It was mostly supported by wealthy farmers in the east of Ireland. Clann na Talmhan (Family of the Land; also called the National Agricultural Party) was founded in 1938. They focused more on the poor smallholders of the west, supporting land reclamation, afforestation, social democracy and rates reform. They formed part of the governing coalition of the Government of the 13th Dáil and Government of the 15th Dáil. Economic improvement in the 1960s saw farmers vote for other parties and Clann na Talmhan disbanded in 1965. Latvia In Latvia, the Union of Greens and Farmers is supportive of traditional small farms and perceives them as more environmentally friendly than large-scale farming: Nature is threatened by development, while small farms are threatened by large industrial-scale farms. Lithuania In Lithuania, as of 2017, the government is led by the Lithuanian Farmers and Greens Union, under the leadership of industrial farmer Ramūnas Karbauskis. Nepal In late 2021, former minister Hridayesh Tripathi formed People's Progressive Party under this ideology. Poland In Poland, the Polish
Peasantry as the prime source for a Marxist vanguard because it possessed two qualities: (i) they were poor, and (ii) they were a political blank slate; in Mao's words, “A clean sheet of paper has no blotches, and so the newest and most beautiful words can be written on it”. During the Chinese Civil War and the Second Sino-Japanese War, Mao and the Chinese Communist Party made extensive use of peasants and rural bases in their military tactics, often eschewing the cities. Following the eventual victory of the Communist Party in both wars, the countryside and how it should be run remained a focus for Mao. In 1958, Mao launched the Great Leap Forward, a social and economic campaign which, amongst other things, altered many aspects of rural Chinese life. It introduced mandatory collective farming and forced the peasantry to organize itself into communal living units which were known as people's communes. These communes, which consisted of 5,000 people on average, were expected to meet high production quotas while the peasants who lived on them adapted to this radically new way of life. The communes were run as co-operatives where wages and money were replaced by work points. Peasants who criticised this new system were persecuted as "rightists" and "counter-revolutionaries". Leaving the communes was forbidden and escaping from them was difficult or impossible, and those who attempted it were subjected to party-orchestrated "public struggle sessions," which further jeopardized their survival. These public criticism sessions were often used to intimidate the peasants into obeying local officials and they often devolved into little more than public beatings. On the communes, experiments were conducted in order to find new methods of planting crops, efforts were made to construct new irrigation systems on a massive scale, and the communes were all encouraged to produce steel backyard furnaces as part of an effort to increase steel production. However, following the Anti-Rightist Campaign, Mao had instilled a mass distrust of intellectuals into China, and thus engineers often were not consulted with regard to the new irrigation systems and the wisdom of asking untrained peasants to produce good quality steel from scrap iron was not publicly questioned. Similarly, the experimentation with the crops did not produce results. In addition to this the Four Pests Campaign was launched, in which the peasants were called upon to destroy sparrows and other wild birds that ate crop seeds, in order to protect fields. Pest birds were shot down or scared away from landing until they dropped from exhaustion. This campaign resulted in an ecological disaster that saw an explosion of the vermin population, especially crop-eating insects, which was consequently not in danger of being killed by predators. None of these new systems were working, but local leaders did not dare to state this, instead, they falsified reports so as not to be punished for failing to meet the quotas. In many cases they stated that they were greatly exceeding their quotas, and in turn, the Chinese state developed a completely false sense of success with regard to the commune system. All of this culminated in the Great Chinese Famine, which began in 1959, lasted 3 years, and saw an estimated 15 to 30 million Chinese people die. A combination of bad weather and the new, failed farming techniques that were introduced by the state led to massive shortages of food. By 1962, the Great Leap Forward was declared to be at an end. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Mao once again radically altered life in rural China with the launching of the Down to the Countryside Movement. As a response to the Great Chinese Famine, the Chinese President Liu Shaoqi began "sending down" urban youths to rural China in order to recover its population losses and alleviate overcrowding in the cities. However, Mao turned the practice into a political crusade, declaring that the sending down would strip the youth of any bourgeois tendencies by forcing them to learn from the unprivileged rural peasants. In reality, it was the Communist Party's attempt to reign in the Red Guards, who had become uncontrollable during the course of the Cultural Revolution. 10% of the 1970 urban population of China was sent out to remote rural villages, often in Inner Mongolia. The villages, which were still poorly recovering from the effects of the Great Chinese Famine, did not have the excess resources that were needed to support the newcomers. Furthermore, the so-called "sent-down youth" had no agricultural experience and as a result, they were unaccustomed to the harsh lifestyle that existed in the countryside, and their unskilled labor in the villages provided little benefit to the agricultural sector. As a result, many of the sent-down youth died in the countryside. The relocation of the youths was originally intended to be permanent, but by the end of the Cultural Revolution, the Communist Party relented and some of those who had the capacity to return to the cities were allowed to do so. In imitation of Mao's policies, the Khmer Rouge of Cambodia (who were heavily funded and supported by the People's Republic of China) created their own version of the Great Leap Forward which was known as "Maha Lout Ploh". With the Great Leap Forward as its model, it had similarly disastrous effects, contributing to what is now known as the Cambodian genocide. As a part of the Maha Lout Ploh, the Khmer Rouge sought to create an entirely agrarian socialist society by forcibly relocating 100,000 people to move from Cambodia's cities into newly created communes. The Khmer Rouge leader, Pol Pot sought to "purify" the country by setting it back to "Year Zero", freeing it from "corrupting influences". Besides trying to completely de-urbanize Cambodia, ethnic minorities were slaughtered along with anyone else who was suspected of being a "reactionary" or a member of the "bourgeoisie", to the point that wearing glasses was seen as grounds for execution. The killings were only brought to an end when Cambodia was invaded by the neighboring socialist nation of Vietnam, whose army toppled the Khmer Rouge. However, with Cambodia's entire society and economy in disarray, including its agricultural sector, the country still plunged into renewed famine due to vast food shortages. However, as international journalists began to report on the situation and send images of it out to the world, a massive international response was provoked, leading to one of the most concentrated relief efforts of its time. Agrarian parties Peasant parties first appeared across Eastern Europe between 1860 and 1910, when commercialized agriculture and world market forces disrupted traditional rural society, and the railway and growing literacy facilitated the work of roving organizers. Agrarian parties advocated land reforms to redistribute land on large estates among those who work it. They also wanted village cooperatives to keep the profit from crop sales in local hands and credit institutions to underwrite needed improvements. Many peasant parties were also nationalist parties because peasants often worked their land for the benefit of landlords of different ethnicity. Peasant parties rarely had any power before World War I but some became influential in the interwar era, especially in Bulgaria and Czechoslovakia. For a while, in the 1920s and the 1930s, there was a Green International (International Agrarian Bureau) based on the peasant parties in Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Serbia. It functioned primarily as an information center that spread the ideas of agrarianism and combating socialism on the left and landlords on the right and never launched any significant activities. Tunisia The Farmers' Voice Party won a seat in the district of Jendouba after the parliamentary election of 2014. Europe Bulgaria In Bulgaria, the Bulgarian Agrarian National Union (BZNS) was organized in 1899 to resist taxes and build cooperatives. BZNS came to power in 1919 and introduced many economic, social, and legal reforms. However, conservative forces crushed BZNS in a 1923 coup and assassinated its leader, Aleksandar Stamboliyski (1879–1923). BZNS was made into a communist puppet group until 1989, when it reorganized as a genuine party. Czechoslovakia In Czechoslovakia, the Republican Party of Agricultural and Smallholder People often shared power in parliament as a partner in the five-party pětka coalition. The party's leader, Antonin Svehla (1873–1933), was prime minister several times. It was consistently the strongest party, forming and dominating coalitions. It moved beyond its original agrarian base to reach middle-class voters. The party was banned by the National Front after the Second World War. France In France, the Hunting, Fishing, Nature, Tradition party is a moderate conservative, agrarian party, reaching a peak of 4.23% in the 2002 French presidential election. It would later on become affiliated to France's main conservative party, Union for a Popular Movement. More recently, the Resistons! movement of Jean Lassalle espoused agrarianism. Hungary In Hungary, the first major agrarian party, the small-holders party was founded in 1908. The party became part of the government in the 1920s but lost influence in the government. A new party, the Independent Smallholders, Agrarian Workers and Civic Party was established in 1930 with a more radical program representing larger scale land redistribution initiatives. They implemented this program together with the other coalition parties after WWII. However, after 1949 the party was outlawed when a one-party system was introduced. They became part of the government again 1990-1994, and 1998-2002 after which they lost political support. The ruling Fidesz party has an agrarian faction, and promotes agrarian interest since 2010 with the emphasis now placed on supporting larger family farms versus small-holders. Ireland In the late 19th century, the Irish National Land League aimed to abolish landlordism in Ireland and enable tenant farmers to own the land they worked on. The "Land War" of 1878–1909 led to the Irish Land Acts, ending absentee landlords and ground rent and redistributing land among peasant farmers. Post-independence, the Farmers' Party operated in the Irish Free State from 1922, folding into the National Centre Party in 1932. It was mostly supported by wealthy farmers in the east of Ireland. Clann na Talmhan (Family of the Land; also called the National Agricultural Party) was founded in 1938. They focused more on the poor smallholders of the west, supporting land reclamation, afforestation, social democracy and rates reform. They formed part of the governing
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jazz quintet Atomic (Lit album), 2001 Atomic (Mogwai album), 2016 Atomic, an album by Rockets, 1982 Atomic (EP), by , 2013 "Atomic" (song), by Blondie, 1979 "Atomic", a song by Tiger Army from Tiger Army III: Ghost Tigers Rise See also Atom (disambiguation) Atomicity (database systems) Nuclear (disambiguation) Atomism, philosophy about the basic building blocks of reality Atomic formula, a formula without subformulas Atomic number, the number of protons found in the nucleus of an atom Atomic chess, a chess variant Atomic coffee machine, a 1950s stovetop coffee machine